examples of such like sophisms Whatsoever Nation is the true Kingdom of Spain is proud and cruel against Protestants But there is no protection there due to any that are not of that Kingdom therefore there is no protection due to any that are not proud and cruel Or whatsoever Nation is the true Kingdom of France acknowledgeth the Pope but no protection is due from the Governours to any that are not of that Kingdom therefore no protection is due to any that acknowledge not the Pope Or what ever Nation is the Kingdom of Ireland in the daies of Queen Elizabeth was for the Earl of Tyrone but there was no right of Inheritance for any that were not of that Nation therefore there was no right of Inheritance for any that was not for the Earl of Tyrone Or suppose that you could have proved it of all the Church If you had lived four hundred years after Christ you might as well have argued thus Whatsoever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church of Christ is against kneeling in Adoration on the Lords daies But there is no Salvation to be had out of that Congregation of Christians which is now the true Church of Christ therefore there is no Salvation to be had out of that Congregation which is against kneeling on the Lords day c. But yet 1. There was Salvation to be had in that Congregation without being of that opinion 2. And there is now Salvation to be had in a Congregation that is not of that opinion as you will confess Or whatsoever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church of Christ doth hold the Canticles and the Epistle to Philemon to be Canonical Scripture and so have done c. But there is no Salvation to be had out of the true Church therefore there is no Salvation to be had out of that Congregation which holdeth the Canticles and Epistle to Philemon to be Canonical Scripture But yet 1. Salvation is to be had in that Church without holding it 2. and its possible hereafter a Church may deny those two books and yet you will think Salvation not thereby overthrown This is but to shew your fallacy from a corrupt accident and indeed but of a part of the Church and a small part Now to your proof of the Major Resp. ad Major The present matter of the Church was not visible in the last Generation for we were not then born but the same form of the Church was then existent in a visible Matter and their Profession was visible or audible though their faith it self was invisible I will do more then you shall do in maintaining the constant visibility of the Chruch Ad minorem 1. If you mean that no Congregation hath been alwaies visible but that Universal Church whose lesser corrupt part acknowledges the Popes Soveraignty I grant it For besides the whole containing all Christians as the parts there can be no other If you mean save that part which acknowledgeth you contradict your self because a part implyeth other parts If you mean save that Universal Church all whose members or the most acknowledge it there is no such subject existent 2. I distinguish of Visibility It s one thing to be a visible Church that is visible in its essentials and another thing to be visible quoad hoc as to some separable accident The Universal Church was ever visible because their Profession of Christianity was so and the persons professing But the acknowledgement of the Vice-christ was not alwaies visible no not in any part much less in the whole And if it had it was but a separable accident if your disease be not incurable that was visible and therefore 1. It was not necessary to Salvation nor a proper mark of the Church 2. Nor can it be so for the time to come I need to say no more to your conclusion Your Argument is no better then this whatsoever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church of Christ hath been alwaies visible since the time of Christ But no Congregation of Christians hath been so visible save only that which condemneth the Greeks which hath a Colledge of Cardinals to choose the Popes which denieth the cup to the laity which forbiddeth the reading of Scripture in a known tongue without license c. Therefore whatsoever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church of Christ hath all these 1. In a corrupt part it hath 2. But it had not alwaies 3. And may be cured hereafter To your proof of the Major 1. I grant your Major 2. Ad minorem 1. Either you mean Universal Pastors each one or someone having charge and Government of the whole Church or you mean unfixed Pastors having an indefinite charge of Preaching and Guiding when they come and have particular calls and opportunities or you mean the fixed Pastors of particular Churches In the first sense your Minor is false the Catholike Church was never so united to any Universal Head but Christ no one of the Apostles governed the rest the whole Church much less any since their time In the second sense I grant that the Church hath ever had Pastors since the Ascension In the third sense I grant that some parts or other of the Catholike Church have ever had fixed Pastors of Congregations since the first settling of such Pastors But any one particular Congregation may cease to have such Pastors and may cease it self and Rome hath been long without any true Pastors and therefore was then no such visible Church 2. If by Congregation you mean not the Universal Church but a part or if you mean it of all the parts of the Universal Church I deny your Minor Communities of Christians and particular persons have been and may be without any Pastors to whom they are united or subject The Indians that died in the faith while Frumentius and Edesius were there preaching before they had any Pastor were yet Christians and saved If a Lay-man Convert one or a thousand and you will say that he may baptize them and they die before they can have a Pastor or ever hear of any to whom they owe subjection they are nevertheless saved as members of the Church And if all the Pastors in a Nation were murdered or banished the people would not cease to be Christians and members of the Church Much less if the Pope were dead or deposed or a vacancy befell his seat would all the Catholike Church be annihilated or cease To your Confirmation of the Major that a visible Church is nothing but a Visible Pastor and people united I answer 1. It s true of the universal Church as united in Christ the great Pastor but not as united in a Vice-Christ or humane head 2. It is true of a particular Political or organized Church as united to their proper Pastors 3. But it is not true of every Community of Christians who are a part of the Universal Church A company converted to Christ
Protestants are chief Members is clearly proved And the Papists exceptions against it confuted LONDON Printed in the year 1660. Qu. Whether the Church of which the Protestants are Members have been Visible ever since the dayes of Christ on earth Aff. THe terms explained 1. The Church sometime signifieth a particular Congregation actually met or associated for such personal meeting for Communion in Gods worship 2. Sometime it signifieth an Association of Churches and that either of sewer or of more as they have opportunity of Communion or correspondency by their Pastors and also the Assemblies of the Pastors of the particular Churches so associated Scripture useth it in the first sense and Later custome whether Scripture also I omit in the later 3. Both Scripture and Custome have used the word to signifie the Church Universal of which all particular Churches are Members This is the Church that we speak of in the Question Defin. The Universal Church of which the Protestants profess themselves Members is The Kingdome of Iesus Christ or The whole company of Believers or true Christians upon earth subjected to Iesus Christ their Head The constitutive parts or the Relate and Correlate are as in every Politick Body the Pars Imperans and Pars subdita which is Christ and Christians The form consisteth in the mutuall Relation The End is the common good of the Church and the glory of the Head and the accomplishment of the will of God 2. The Protestants Defin. Protestants are Christians protesting against or disowning Popery The word Protestant expresseth not the essence of our Religion And therefore it must not denominate the Universal Church of which we are Members we are not to call it A Protestant Universal Church Nor doth it signifie an inseparable proper accident For when the Catholick Church had no Popery there was none to protest against and therefore there could be no Protestants And Ethiopia India and other Nations that never had Popery or those Nations that never heard of it have no occasion to protest against it Nor doth it signifie any Positive part directly of our Religion but only the Negation or Rejection of Popery Even as when a man is called Homo purgatus sanatus liberatus à leprâ peste tabe c. a man purged healed freed from the leprosie plague consumption c. it is no positive part nor inseparable proper accident much less any essential part of the man that is signified by the word Healed Purged c. Nor is it necessary in order to the proving him a man or a healthfull man to prove that he was ever a purged or healed man We undertake not therefore to prove that there have been alwayes Protestants that is men Protesting against Popery Nor have we any need in order to the proof of our Thesis to prove that the Catholick Church hath all been free from Popery in all ages or in any age since the Apostles no more then that it hath been free from Pride Ambition or Contention But yet we shall do it ex abundanti The Religion then of a Protestant is Christianity and he knoweth and owneth no other Which is called the Protestant Religion as cleansed from Popery Members that is true integral parts Of which are By Profession We profess our selves to be of no other Church And before men a man is to be taken to be of that Religion and Church of which he professeth himself to be till he be proved false in that Profession If a Papist affirm himself a member of the Roman Church in disputing with him we will take it for granted that he is so every man being best acquainted with his own mind and fittest to describe the Religion which he owns So that two things I here include 1. It is only such a Catholick Church that hath been still visible that Protestants own 2. And only such that really they are of their Profession being valid Note also that it is not directly the inexistency by internal invisible faith that is in question among us or that I mean but the inexistency by external Visible Profession Bellarmine thinks the bare Professors that are wicked are best termed Dead members and the true Professors Living members we will not stick needlesly on words We take the Living members only to be in strict propriety members but Sincerity and Hypocrisie being known only to God and the possessors we speak of Professors as Professors abstractively from their Sincerity or Hypocrisie Hath been Visible 1. Not visible to man in its Internal faith but in its external Profession 2. Not Visible at once to any one man for no man can see all the Christian world at once But Visible in its parts both in Congregations and individual persons 3. Not Visible in the soundness of its professed faith unto Infidels and Hereticks For they cannot see that faith to be sound which they take to be fabulous and false But Visible in the soundness of its professed faith to themselves that know the soundness of faith 4. Not Visible in the excellent degree of soundness in the better parts unto the corrupter or infirmer parts For though de facto they may know what Doctrine the better part do hold as Infidels know what Doctrine the Church holdeth yet they know it not to be true and sound in the points wherein they differ And note again that it is not the Visibility of every accident of the Church nor of every Truth or duty that is but of the Integrity of Religion and necessary only ad melius esse Ecclesiae to the Better being of the Church but it is the Visibility of the Church that we speak of Lastly it is the Body and not the Head whose Visibility is in Question by us Though the Head also is truly Visible in Heaven and Visus or seen to the most excellent Triumphant part of his Body who are fittest to be his Courtiers and in his presence and as much seen on earth as the Pope is to most of the Church which is not at all Ever since the dayes of Christ on earth 1. But not still in one and the same place on earth It might be in one age much of it in Iudea at Ephesus Sardis Laodicaea Colosse Philippi and other parts of Asia and in other ages removed thence either wholly or for the most part It might be in one age in Tenduâ— Nâ—bia and other great Kingdoms where it shall afâ—er cease to be But in some part or other of the earth it hath been still 2. Not equally visible in all Times and Places of the earth In some Times as in the Arrians prevalency it was so oppressed and obscured that the world groaned to find it self turn'd Arrian and the Arrians in General Councils and number of Bishops to whom the true Christians were very few did seem to carry away the Name and glory of the Catholick Church so that in their eyes and in the eyes of slanders by that were of neither
party the most Visible Catholick Church was theirs who yet had no part in it because they were not Christians as denying that which is essentiall to Christ the object of the Christian faith and therefore none of the Church and therefore though most visible and numerous yet not the visible Church And the Church which to others was as wheat hidden in this chaffe or rather a few ears among so many rares was yet Visible to it self in its Truth of faith and visible to its Enemies in its Profession and assemblies though in number far below them So also in some places it may be Latent through persecution the paucity of believers when in other places it is more Patent And its Degrees of soundness being various are accordingly variously visible One part may be really and visibly more strong and another more weak in the faith One part much more corrupt then others and other parts retain their purity And the same Countries increase or decrease in that purity as is apparent in the case of the Churches of Galatia Corinth the seven Asian Churches Rev. 2. and 3. c. Lastly note that it is only that part of the Church which is on earth whose visibility we assert though that in Heaven be also a true part of the Body of Christ. Nor is it in the same Individuals that the Church continueth Visible but in successive Matter So much for explication of the terms Thes. The Church of which the Protestants are Members hath been Visible ever since the dayes of Christ on earth Arg. 1. The Body of Christians on earth subjected to Christ their Head hath been in its parts Visible ever since the dayes of Christ on earth But the Body of Christians on earth subjected to Christ their Head is the Church of which the Protestants are Members Therefore the Church of which the Protestants are Members hath been visible ever since the dayes of Christ on earth I have not sagacity enough to conjecture what any Papist can say against the Major proposition The Minor is proved by our own Professions As the profession of Popery proveth a man a Papist so the profession of Christianity as much proveth us to be Christians α Those that profess the true Christian Religion in all its essentials are Members of that Church which is the Body of Christians on earth subjected to Christ the Head But the Protestants profess the true Christian Religion in all its essentialls therefore the Protestants are Members of that Church which is the Body of Christians on earth subjected to Christ the Head The Major is undeniable The Minor is thus proved 1. Those that profess so much as God hath promised salvation upon in the Covenant of Grace do profess the Christian Religion in all its Essentials For God promiseth salvation in that Covenant to none but Christians But the Protestants profess so much as God hath promised salvation upon in the Covenant of Grace Therefore the Protestants do profess the Christian Religion in all its essentials The Minor is thus proved All that profess faith in God the Father Son and holy Ghost our Creator Redeemer and Sanctifier and love to him and absolute obedience to all his Laws of Nature and holy Scripture with willingness and diligence to know the true meaning of all these Laws as far as they are able and with Repentance for all known sin do profess so much as God hath promised salvation upon Ioh. 3.16 17. Mark 16.16 Heb. 5.9 Rom. 8.28 1. Act 26.18 But so do the Protestants Therefore the Protestants profess so much as God hath promised salvation on 2. Those that profess as much and much more of the Christian faith and Religion as the Catechumens were ordinarily taught in the ancient Churches and the Competentes at Baptism did profess do profess the true Christian Religion in all its essentials But so do the Protestants Therefore c. 3. Those that explicitely profess the Belief of all that was contained in the Churches Symbols or Creeds for six hundred years after Christ and much more holy truth and implicitly to believe all that is contained in the holy Scriptures and to be willing and diligent for the explicite knowledge of all the rest with a Resolution to obey all the will of God which they know do profess the true Christian Religion in all its Essentials But so do the Protestants Therefore c. Ad hominem I confirm the Major and most that went before from the Testimonies of some most eminent Papists Bellarmine saith de Verbo Dei lib. 4. c. 11. In the Christian doctrine both of faith and manners some things are simply necessary to salvation to all as the knowledge of the Articles of the Apostles Creed of the ten Commandments and of some Sacraments The rest are not so necessary that a man cannot be saved without the explicite knowledge belief and profession of them These things that are simply necessary and are profitable to all the Apostles preached to all All things are written by the Apostles which are Necessary to all and which they openly preacht to all Costerus Enchirid. c. 1. p. 49. We deny not that those chief heads of Belief which are necessary to all Christians to be known to salvation are perspicuously enough comprehended in the writings of the Apostles But all this the Protestants profess to believe ◠If sincere Protestants are Members of the true Church as intrinsecally informed or as Bellarmine speaks Living Members then professed Protestants are Members of the true Church as extrinsecally denominated or as it is Visible consisting of Professors But the Antecedent is true Therefore so is the Consequent The Reason of the Consequence is because it is the same thing that is professed by all Professors and existent in all true Believers and that as to Profession is necessary to Visibility of Membership and as to sincere inexistence is necessary to salvation The Antecedent or Minor I thus prove All that by saith in Christ are brought to the unfeigned Love of God above all and speciall Love to his servants and unfeigned willingness to obey him are Members of the true Church as intrinsecally informed But such are all sincere Protestants Therefore all sincere Protestants are Members of the true Church as intrinsecally informed The Major is granted by the Papists who affirm charity to be the form of Grace and all that have it to be justified And the promises of Scripture prove it to our Comfort The Minor 1. Is proved to others by our Professions If this be in our Profession then the sincere are such indeed But this is in our Profession Therefore c. 2. It s certainly known to our selves by the inward knowledge and sense of our souls I know that I Love God and his servants and am willing to obey him Therefore all the Papists Sophisms shall never make me not know what I do know and not feel what I do feel They reason in vain with me when
they reason against the knowledge and experience of my soul. Your scope is to prove me in a state of damnation You confess that if I have charity I am in a state of salvation I know and feel that I have charity Therefore I know that your Reasonings are deceit Arg. 2. The Church whose faith is contained in the holy Scriptures as its Rule in all points necessary to salvation hath been Visible ever since the dayes of Christ on earth But the Church whose faith is contained in the holy Scriptures as its Rule in all points necessary to salvation is it of which the Protestants are Members Therefore the Church of which the Protestants are Members hath been visible ever since the dayes of Christ on earth That the Catholick Church which hath been Visible till now hath received the Holy Scriptures which we receive is confessed by all Papists that ever I heard or read making mention of it And no wonder for it cannot be denied That this Church hath taken these Scriptures for the Rule of faith in all points necessary to salvation allowing Church-Governours to make Canons about the circumstantials of Government and worship which in the Universal Law are not determined but left to humane prudence to determine 1. I have proved in my third Dispute of the safe Religion already 2. It is confessed by the Papists the forecited passages of Bellarmine and Costerus are sufficient But in the great Council at Basil Orat. Ragus Bin. p. 299. it is most plainly and with fuller authority asserted The holy Scripture in the Literal sense soundly and well understood is the infallible and Most sufficient Rule of faith See my vindication of this Testimony in my Catholick Key and the like from Card. Richlieu Gerson saith de exam doctr p. 2. cont 1. Nihil audendum dicere de divinis nisi quae nobis à sacra Scriptura tradita sunt Durandus in his Preface is wholly for the excellency and sufficiency of the Scriptures Three wayes he saith God revealeth himself and other things to man The lowest way is by the book of the creatures so heathens may know him The highest is by manifest Vision as in heaven and the middle way is in the Book of holy Scripture without which there is no coming to the highest way And going on to extoll the Scripture he citeth Ieromes words ad Paulinum Let us learn on earth the knowledge of those things which will abide with us in heaven But this is only saith he in the holy Scripture And after ex Hierom ad Marcell If Reason be brought against the authority of the Scriptures how acute soever it is it cannot be true And after We must speak of the mysterie of Christ and universally of those things that meerly concern faith conformably to what the holy Scripture delivereth So Christ Iohn 5. Search the Scriptures It is they that testifie of me If any observe not this he speaks not of the mysterie of Christ and of other things directly touching faith as he ought but falls into that of the Apostle 1 Cor. 8. If any man think he knoweth any thing he yet knoweth nothing as he ought to know For the measure is not to exceed the measure of faith of which the Apostle bids us Rom. 12. Not to be wiser then we ought to be but to be wise to sobriety and as God hath divided to every man the measure of faith Which Measure consisteth in two things to wit that we subtract not from faith that which is of faith nor N.B. attribute that to faith which is not of faith For by either of these wayes the measure of faith is exceeded and men deviate from the continence of the sacred Scripture which expresseth the measure of faith That is from the full sufficiency of the Scripture measure And this measure by Gods assistance we will hold that we may write or teach nothing dissonant to the holy Scripture But if by ignorance or inadvertency we should write any thing dissonant let it be taken ipso facto as not written This is a confession of the Religion of the Protestants And though he adjoyn a submission to the Roman Church because he was bred in it it is only as to an interpreter of doubtfull Texts of Scripture So that the sufficiency of our Rule and measure of faith is granted by him and zealously asserted and that without Bellarmine and Costerus limitation to points necessary to the salvation of all he extendeth it to all the faith Aquin. 22. q. 1. a. 10. ad 1. saith That in the Doctrine of Christ and his Apostles the truth of the faith is sufficiently explicated even when he is pleading for the Popes power to make new Creeds to obviate errours And in his sum de Verit. disp de fide q. 10. ad 11. he saith That all the means by which the faith cometh to us are free from suspicion The Prophets and Apostles we believe for this reason because God bore them witness by working Miracles as Mar. 16. confirming their speech with following signs But their successors we believe not but so far as they declare to us those things which they have left us in the Scripture This is the Religion of the Protestants Scotus in Prolog in sent 1. makes it his second Question Whether supernaturall knowledge necessary to us in the Way be sufficiently delivered in the holy Scâ—ipture which he proveth having first given ten arguments to prove the Truth of Scripture And first he shews it containeth the Doctrine of the End and 2. of the things necessary to that end and the sufficiency of them summarily in the Decalogue explained in the other Scriptures as to matter of faith hope and practice and so concludes that the holy Scripture sufficiently containeth the doctrine necessary viatori to us in the way And he answereth the objection of Difficulties in it without flying to the Church that no science explaineth all things to be known but those things from which the rest may conveniently be gathered and so many needfull truths are not expressed in Scripture though they are virtually there contained as conclusions in the Principles about the investigation whereof the labour of Expositors and Doctors hath been profitable This is his doctrine out of Origen Gregor Ariminensis in Prol. q. 1. act 2. Resp. ad act fol. 3. 4. saith A discourse properly Theologicall is that which consisteth of words or propositions contained in the holy Scripture or of those that are deduced from them or at least from one of these This is proved 1. by the forealledged authority of Dionys. For he will have it that there can be no leading of that man to Theologicall science that assenteth not to the sayings of the holy Scripture It follows therefore that no discourse that proceedeth not from the words of holy Scripture or of that which is deduced from them is Theologicall 2. The same is proved from the common conception of all men For
not at this day abhor the reading of the Office So that here is all invented new by Gregory which was hardly received in Spain and yet that changed since Arg. 9. If the Generality of Christians in the first ages and many if not most in the later ages have been free from the Essentials of the Papists faith â—hen their faith hath had no successive Visible Church professing it in all ages but the Christians that are against it have been Visible But the Antecedent is true as I prove in some instances 1. It is an Article of their faith determined in a General Council at Laterane and Florence that the Pope is above a Council But that this hath not been successively received the Council of Basil and Constance witness making it a new Heresie 2. It is an Article of their faith that a Generall Council is above the Pope for it is so determined at Basil and Constance But that this hath had no successive duration the Council of Laterane and Florence witness 3. It is an Article of their faith that the Pope may depose Princes for denying Transubstantiation and such like Heresies and also such as will not exterminate such Hereticks from their dominions and may give their dominions to others and discharge their Subjects from their oaths and fidelity For it is determined so in a Council at Laterane But this hath not been so from the beginning Not when the 13. Chapter to the Romans was written Not till the dayes of Constantine Not till the dayes of Gregory that spake in contrary language to Princes And Goldastus his three Volumes of Antiquities shew you that there hath been many Churches still against it 4. It is an Article of their faith that the Body and Blood together with the Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ is truly really and substantially in the Eucharist and that there is a Change made of the whole substance of Bread into the body and of the whole substance of Wine into the blood which they call Transubstantiation So the Council of Trent But the Catholick Church hath been of a contrary judgement from age to age as among many others Edm. Albertinus de Eucharist hath plainly evinced though a quarreller hath denyed it and little more And it s proved in that successively they judged sense and Reason by it a competent discerner of Bread and Wine 5. It is now de fide that the true Sacrament is rightly taken under one kind without the cup as the Councils of Constance and Trent shew But the Catholick Church hath practised and the Apostles and the Church taught otherwise as the Council of Constance and their Writers ordinarily confess 6. It is an Article of their faith as appears in the Trent Oath that we must never take and interpret Scripture but according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers But the Catholick Church before these Fathers could not be of that mind and the Fathers themselves are of a contrary mind and so are many learned Papists 7. It is an Article of their faith that there is a Purgatory and that the souls there detained are holpen by the suffrages of the faithful But the latter was strange to all the old Catholick Church as Bishop Vsher and others have proved and the very being of Purgatory was but a new doubtfull indifferent opinion of some very few men about Augustines time 8. It is now an Article of their faith that the holy Catholick Church of Rome is the mother and mistris of all Churches But I have shewed here and elsewhere that the Catholick Church judged otherwise and so doth for the most part to this day 9. It is now an Article of their faith that their Traditions are to be received with equall pious affection and reverence as the holy Scripture But the Catholick Church did never so believe 10. The Council of Basil made it de fide that the Virgin Mary was conceived without Originall sin But the Catholick Church never judged so 11. It s determined by a Council now that the people may not read the Scripture in a known tongue without the Popes License But the Catholick Church never so thought as I have proved Disp. 3. of the safe Religion 12. The Books of Maccabees and others are now taken into the Canon of faith which the Catholick Church received not as such as Dr. Cosin and Dr. Reignolds have fully proved To this I might add the Novelty of their Worship and Discipline but it would be too tedious and I have said enough of these in other writings See Dr. Challoner pag. 88 89. In 16. points Dr. Challoner proveth your Novelty from your Confessions Indeed his Book de Eccles. Cath. though small is a full answer to your main Question Arg. 10. If Multitudes yea the far greatest part of Christians in all ages have been ignorant of Popery but not of Christianity then hath there been a succession of Visible Professors of Christianity that were no Papists but the antecedent is true therefore so is the consequent In this age it is an apparent thing that the far greatest part are ignorant of formal Popery 1. They confess themselves that the common people and most of the nobility of Habassia Armenia Greece Russia and most other Eastern Churches that are not Papists are ignorant of the Controversie 2. They use to tell us here among Protestants that there is not one of many that know what a Papist is 3. We know that of those that go under the name of Papists there is not one of a multitude knoweth We hear it from the mouths of those we speak with I have not met with one of ten of the poorer sort of them even here among us that knoweth what a Papist or Popery is but they are taught to follow their Priests and to say that theirs is the true Church and old Religion and to use their Ceremonious worship and to forbear coming to our Churches c. and this is their Religion And in Ireland they are yet far more ignorant And it s well known to be so in other parts Their Priests they know and the Pope they hear of as some person of eminent Power in the Church But whether he be the Universal Vicar of Christ and be over all others as well as them whether this be of Gods institution or by the grant of Emperours or Councils c. they know not And no wonder when the Papists think that the Council of Chalcedon spoke falsly of the humane Originall of the Primacy in the Imperiall territories And when the Councils of Basil and Constance knew not whether Pope or Council was the Head And that the people were as ignorant and much more in former ages they testifie themselves And before Gregories dayes they must needs be ignorant of that which was not then risen in the world Yea Dr. Field hath largely proved Append lib. 3. that even the many particular points in which the Papists now differ
followeth Queries of R. B. on these definitions with Mr. Iohnsons Answer and my Reply Mr. J. The Catholick Church of Christ. THE Catholick Church of Christ is all those visible Assemblies Congregations or Communities of Christians who live in unity of true faith and external communion one with another and in dependance of their lawful Pastors R. B. Of the Church Qu. 1. Whether you exclude not all those converted among Infidels that never had external Communion with nor were members of any particular visible Church of which you mâ—ke the Catholick to be constituted Mr. J. Answ. It is sufficient that such be subject to the supream Pastor and in voto quantum in se est resolved to be of that particular Church actually which shall or may be assigned for them by that Pastor to be included in my definition R. B. Reply Q 1. Repl. ad 1 m 1. You see then that your Definitions signifie nothing no man can know your meaning by them First you make the Catholick Church to consist only of visible Assemblies and after you allow such to be members of the Church that are of no visible Assemblies 2. You now mention subjection to the supream Pastor as sufficient which in your description or definition you did not 3. If to be only in voto resolved to be of a particular Church will serve then inexistence is not necessary To be only in voto of the Catholick Church proves no man a member of the Catholick Church but proves the contrary because it is Terminus diminuens Seeing then by your own confession inexistence in a particular Church is not of necessity to inexistence in the Catholike Church why do you not only mention it in your definition but confine the Church to such will you say you meant in voto who then can understand you when you say they must be of visible Assemblies and mean they need not be of any but only to wish desire or purpose it 4. But yet you say nothing to my case in its latitude Many a one may be converted to Christ by a solitary Preacher or by two or three that neâ—er tell him that there is any supream Pastor in the world How then can he be subject to that supposed Pastor that never heard of him The English and Dutch convert many Indians to the faith of Christ that never hear of a supream Pastor 5. If it be necessary that a particular Church must be assigned for such members by the supream Pastor then they are yet little the better that never have any such assignation from him as few have R. B. Qu. 2. What is that faith in unity whereof all members of the Catholike Church do live is it the belief of all that God hath revealed to be believed or of part and what part Mr. J. Answ. Of all either explicitly or implicitly R. B. Reply Reply Ad 2m. Your second answer further proves that your definitions signifie just nothing They must live in unity of the faith that is either with faith or without it with a belief of what Goâ— hath revealed to be believed or without it For to believe any point implicitly in your ordinary sense is not to believe it but only to believe one of the Premises whence the conclusion must be inferred But why do you not tell me what you mean by an Implicite faith Faith is called Implicite in several senses 1. When several truths are actually understood and believed in confuso or in gross in some one proposition which containeth the substance of them all but not with accurate distinct conceptions nor such as are ripe for any fit expression This indistinct immature imperfect kind of apprehension may be called Implicite and the distinct and more digested conceptions Explicite 2. When a general proposition is believed as the matter of our faith but the particulars are not understood or not believed As to believe that omne animal vivit not knowing whether you are Animal or Cadaver Or to believe that all that is in the Scripture is the Word of God and true but not to know what is in the Scripture 3. When it is only the formal object of faith that is believed without understanding the material object The first sort of these I confess is Actual Belief though indistinct But I suppose you mean not this 1. Because it is not the ordinary sense of your party 2. Because else you damn either all the world or most of your own professed-party at least as no members of the Church for few or none have an Actual understanding and belief of all that ever God revealed to them because all men or most at least have been sinfully negligent in searching after and receiving truth and so are sinfully ignorant No man knoweth all that God hath revealed or that he ought to know 3. Because by this rule it is impossible for you or any man to know who is indeed a member of your Church for you cannot know mens confused knowledge or know that it extendeth to all revealed For if you speak of all revealed in general or in Scripture you still damn all or most in your own sense for none as I said understand it all to a word But if you speak of all which that particular man hath had sufficient means to know it is then impossible for you to make a judgement of any mans faith by this For you can never discern all the means internal or external that ever he had much less can you discern whether his faith be commensurate to the truth so far revealed So that by this course you make your Church invisible I pray tell me how you can avoid it 2. The second sort of Implicite Belief is no Belief of the particulars at all An Animal may live and yet it followeth not that you are alive or an animal If this were your meaning then either you mean that it is enough if all be believed Implicitly besides that general proposition or you mean that some must be believed explicitly that is actually and some Implicitly that is not at all If the former be your sense then Infidels or Heathens may be of your Church For a man may believe in general that the Bible is the Word of God and true and yet not know a word that 's in it and so not know that Christ is the Messias or that ever there was such a person But if somewhat must be explicitely that is Actually believed the Question that you should have answered was What is it For till that be known no man can know a Member of your Church by your description 3. If you take Implicite in the third sense then Implicite faith is either Divine or Humane Divine when the Divine Veracity is the formal Object Humane when mans Veracity is the formal Object Which may be Conjunct where the Testimonies are so conjunct as that we are sure it is God that speaks by man who is therefore credible because God infallibly
guideth or inspireth him This is at once to believe a Humane and Divine Veracity If any of this be your meaning the last questions remain still to be resolved by you A man may believe that God is true and that his Prophets or inspired messengers are true and yet not understand a word of the message so that still if this will serve a man may be of your Church that knoweth not that ever there was such a person as Jesus Christ or that ever he died for our sins or rose again or that we shall rise And are Infidels of your Church while you are arguing us out But if there be some truths besides the Veracity of God and his Messengers that must be believed you must shew what it is or your Church-members cannot be known Tell me therefore without tergiversation what are the revealed truths that must actually be believed or what is the faith materially in unity whereof all members of the Catholike Church do live I pray fly not but plainly tell me And if again you fly to uncertain points because of the diversity of means of information and say It must be so much to every man as he had means to know I again answer you 1. If a man had no means to know that there is a Christ it seems then he is one of your Church 2. You still damn all your own there being not a man that knoweth all that he had means to know because all have culpably neglected means And so you have no Church 3. Still you make your Church invisible if you had any For no man can tell as I said who knoweth in full proportion to his helps and means Do you not see now whither your Implicite faith hath brought you R. B. Qu. 3. Is it any lawful Pastors or All that must necessarily be depended on by every member and who are these Pastors Mr. J. Answ. Of all respectively to each subject that is that the authority of none of them mediate or immediate be rejected or contemned by him that is a true member of the Church R. B. Reply Ad Qu. 3. R. Reply 1. Here still you tell me that your descriptions signified nothing You told me that the members must live in dependance on their lawful Pastors And now you tell me that their authority must not be rejected or contemned And indeed is dependance and non-rejection all one The millions of heathens that never heard of the Pope or any of your Pastors reject them not nor contemn them Are they therefore fit matter for your Church 2. If you say that you mean it of such only as have a sufficient Revelation of the Authority of these Pastors I further reply 1. It seems then it is not only the Pope but every Priest respectively that is an essential member of your Church or to whom each member must be subject necessarily ad esse If so then every man that by falling out or prejudice doth culpably reject the authority of any one Pastor or Priest among a swarm is damned or none of the Church though he believe in the Pope and in twenty thousand Priests besides 2. And then have we not cause to pray God to bless us from the company of your Priests or at least that we may not have too many when among a multitude we may be in danger of rejecting some one and then we are cast out of the Church What if a Gentleman should find some such as Watson or Montaltus describe in bed with his wife or a Prince find a Garnet a Campion or a Parsons in a Treason and by such a temptation should be so weak as to contemn or reject the authority of that single Priest while he honoureth all the rest Is it certain that such a man is none of the Catholike Church for that How hard is it in France and Italy then to be a Catholike where Priests are so numerous that its ten to one but among the crowd the authority of some one may be rejected 3. But is it all the Priests that we never knew or knew not to be Priests that we must depend on or is it only those whose authority is manifested to us by sufficient evidence Doubtless you will confine our dependance to these only or else no man could be a Christian And if so you know we are never the nearer a resolution for your answer till you yet tell us how we must know our Pastors to have authority indeed What if they shew me the Bishops orders and I know that many have had forged Orders am I bound to believe in his authority what if I be utterly ignorant whether he that ordained him were himself ordained or had intentionem ordinandi how shall I then be sure of his authority that is ordained And how can the people be acquainted with the passages in Election and Ordination that are necessary to the knowledge of their authority especially of the Popes and prelates And what if you tell me your own opinion of the sufficient means by which I must be convinced of the Popes and Priests authority how shall I know that you are not deceived and that these are the sufficient means indeed unless a General Council have defined them to be sufficient And if they have if it were not as an Article of faith you 'l say I am not bound of necessity to believe their definition And what if I have sufficient means to know the authority of a thousand Priests but am culpably ignorant of it in some few through my neglect Doth it follow that therefore I am out of the Church Is my obedience to each Priest as necessary as my belief of every Article of my faith If so I know not whether your multiplying Articles or multiplying Priests doth fill hell faster if men must be judged by your laws But it is our Allegiance to our Soveraign that is the character of a Subject in the Common-wealth and not our Allegiance or duty to every inferiour Magistrate the rejection of one of them may stand with subjection though not with innocency It is not treason to reject a Constable why then should more be necessary to our Church-membership and salvation But still you make your Church invisible For as no man can know that liveth in the remote parts of the world whether your Popes themselves are truly Popes as being duly qualified and elected nor which is the true Pope when you have oft had more then one at once so you can never know concerning your members whether their dependance on their Pastors be extensively proportionate to the means that discovered their authority and whether their disobedience unchurch them or no I earnestly crave your answer to the thirty uncertainties which I have mentioned in my Safe Religion p. 93 to 104. And tell us how all our Pastours may be known And whether every particular sin unchurch men and if not why the contempt or rejection of a drunken Priest doth it while
are members of the Universal Church though they never heard of a Pope at Rome before they are United to Pastors of their own The Proof of the Minor from Eph. 4. I grant as aforesaid The text proveth that Pastors the Church shall have I disclaim the vain objection of Conditionality in the promise which you mention But it proves not 1. That the Church shall have an Universal Monarch or Vice-Christ under Christ. 2. Nor that every member of the Universal Church shall certainly be a member of a particular Church or ever see the face of a Pastor or be subject to him You say next There remains only to prove the Minor of the second Syllogism viz. that no Congregation of Christians hath been alwaies visible but that which acknowledges c. This is the great point which all lyeth on The rest hath been all nothing but a cunning shooing horn to this Prove this and prove all Prove not this and you have lost your time You say The Minor I prove by obliging the answerers to nominate any Congregation of Christians which alwaies till this present time since Christ hath been visible save that only which acknowledges c. And have I waited all this while for this You prove it by obliging me to prove the contrary Ridiculous sed quo jure 1. Your undertaken form of arguing obligeth you to prove your Minor You cannot cast your Respondent upon proving and so arguing and doing the Opponents part 2. And in your Postscript you presently forbid it me You require me to hold to a Concedo Nego Distingno Omitto Transeat threatning that else you will take it for an Effugium And I pray you tell me in your next to which of these doth the nomination or proof of such a Church as you describe belong Plainly you first slip away when you should prove your Minor and then oblige me to prove the Contrary and then tell me if I attempt it you 'l take it for an Effugium A good cause needs not such dealing as this which me thinks you should be loth a learned man should hear of 3. Your interest also in the Matter as well as your office as Opponent doth oblige you to the proof For though you make a Negative of it you may put it in other terms at your pleasure It is your main work to prove that All the members of the Universal Church have in all ages held the Popes Soveraignty or Universal Head-ship Or the whole Visible Church hath held it Prove this and I will be a Papist you have my promise You affirm and you must prove Prove a Catholike Church at least that in the Major part was of that mind though that would be nothing to prove the condemnation of the rest If you are an impartial enquirer after truth fly not when you come to the setting too I give you this further evident reason why you cannot oblige me to what you here impose 1. Because you require me to prove the Visibility of a Church which held not your point of Papacy and so put an unreasonable task upon me about a Negative or else I must prove that they held the contrary before your opinion was started And it is the Catholike Church that we are disputing about so that I must prove this Negative of the Catholike Church 2. It is you that lay the great stress of Necessity on your Affirmative more then we do on the Negative you say that no man can be saved without your Affirmative that the Pope is the universal Head and Governor But we say not that no man can be saved that holdeth not our Negative that he is not the Vice-Christ For one that hath the plague or leprosie may live Therefore it is you that must prove that all the Catholike Church was still of your mind 3. And it is an Accident and but an Accident of a smallâ—r corrupted part of the Catholike Church that you would oblige me to prove the Negation of and therefore it is utterly needless to my proof of a Visible Catholike Church For I will without it prove to you a successive Visibility of the Catholike Church from the Visibility of its Essential or Constitutive parts of which your Pope is none I will prove a successive visible Church that hath still professed faith in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost and been united to the Universal Head and had particular Pastors some fixed some unfixed and held all essential to a Christian. And proving this I have proved the Church of which I am a member To prove that England hath been so long a Kingdom requireth no more but to prove the two Essential parts King and Subjects to have so long continued united It requireth not that I prove that if ever either hâ—â—d or opposed a Vice-King This is our plain case If a man have a botch on one of his hands it is not needful in order to my proving him a man heretofore that I prove he was born and bred without it so be it I prove that he was born a man it sufficeth Nor is it needfull that I prove the other hand alwaies to have been free in order to prove it a member of the body It sufficeth that I prove it to have been still a hand I do therefore desire you to perform your work and prove that no Congregation hath been still visible but such as yours or that the whole Catholike Church hath ever since the ascention held a Humane Universal Governour under Christ or else I shall take it as a giving up your cause as indefensible And observe if you shall prove only that a part of the Catholike Church still held this which you can never do then 1. You will make the Contrary opinion as Consistent with salvation as yours For the rest of the Catholike Church is savable 2. And then you will allow me to turn your Argument against your self as much as it is against us and so cast it away e. g. what ever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church of Christ hath been alwaies Visible But no Congregation of Christians hath been alwaies Visible but that which quoad partem denyeth the Popes universal Headship therefore whatever Congregation of Christians is the true Church denyeth the Popes universal Headship Well! but for all this supposing you will do your part I will fail you in nothing that 's reasonable which I can perform A Catholike Church in all ages that was against the Pope in every member of it I hope I cannot shew you because I hope that you are members though corrupt But you shall have more then a particular Congregation or a hundred 1. At this present two or three parts of the Catholike Church is known to be against your Universal Monarchy The Greeks Armenians Ethiopians c. besides the Protestants 2. In the last age there were as many or more 3. In the former ages till An. D. 1000. there were neer as
only to conclude absolutely as you here do that all have been against us for many hundred years In your Num. 5. You name Ethiopia and India as having been without the limits of the Roman Empire whom you deny to have acknowledged any supremacy of power and authority above all other Bishops You might have done well to have cited at least one antient Author for this Assertion Were those primitive Christians of another kind of Church-order and Government then were those under the Roman Empire When the Roman Emperors were yet Heathens had not the Bishop of Rome the Supremacy over all other Bishops through the whole Church and did those Heathen Emperors give it him How came St. Cyprian in time of the Heathen Empire to request Stephen the Pope to punish and depose the Bishop of Arles as we shall see hereafter Had he that authority think you from an Heathen Emperour See now how little your Allegations are to the purpose where you nominate any determinate Congregations to satisfie my demand I had no reason to demand of you different congregations of all sorts and Sects opposing the Supremacy to have been shewn visible in all ages I was not so ignorant as not to know that the Nicolaitans Valentinians Gnosticks Manichees Montanists Arians Donatists Nestorians Eutychians Pelagians Iconoclasts Berengarians Waldensians Albigenses Wicleffists Hussits Lutherans Calvinists c. each following others had some kind of visibility divided and distracted each to his own respective age from our time to the Apostles in joyning their heads and hands together against the Popes Supremacy But because these could not be called one successive Congregation of Christians being all together by the ears amongst themselves I should not have thought it a demand beseeming a Scholar to have required such a visibility as this Seeing therefore all you determinately nominate are as much different as these pardon me if I take it not for any satisfaction at all to my demand or acquittance of your obligation Bring me a visible succession of any one Congregation of Christians of the same belief profession and communion for the designed time opposing that Supremacy and you will have satisfied but till that be done I leave it to any equal judgement whether my demand be satisfied or no. You answer to this That all those who are nominated by you are parts of the Catholike Church and so one Congregation But Sir give me leave to tell you that in your principles you put both the Church of Rome and your selves to be parts of the Catholike Church and yet sure you account them not one Congregation of Christians seeing by separation one from another they are made two or if you account them one why did you separate your selves and still remain separate from communion with the Roman Church why possessed you your selves of the Bishopricks and Cures of your own Prelates and Pastors they yet living in Queen Elizabeths time and drew both your selves and their other subjects from all subjection to them and communion with them Is this disunion think you fit to make one and the same Congregation of you and them is not charity subordination and obedience to the same state and government required as well to make one Congregation of Christians as it is required to make one Congregation of Common-wealths men Though therefore you do account them all parts of the Catholike Church yet you cannot make them in your principles one Congregation of Christians Secondly your position is not true the particulars named by you neither are nor can be parts of the Catholike Church unless you make Arians and Pelagians and Donatists parts of the Catholike Church which were either to deny them to be Hereticks and Schismaticks or to affirm that Hereticks and Schismaticks separating themselves from the communion of the Catholike Church notwithstanding that separation do continue parts of the Catholike Church For who knows not that the Ethiopians to this day are Eutychian Hereticks And a great part of those Greeks and Armenians who deny the Popes Supremacy are infected with the Heresie of Nestorius and all of them profess generally all those points of faith with us against you wherein you differ from us and deny to communicate with you or to esteem you other then Hereticks and Schismaticks unless you both agree with them in those differences of faith and subject your selves to the obedience of the Patriarch of Constantinople as to the chief Head and Governour of all Christian Churches next under Christ and consequently as much a vice-Christ in your account as the Pope can be conceived to be See if you please Hieremias Patriarch of Constantinople his Answer to the Lutherans especially in the beginning and end of the book Acta Theologorum Wittebergensium c. and Sir Edwyn Sands of this subject in his Survey p. 232 233 242 c. Either therefore you must make the Eutychians and Nestorians no Hereticks and so contradict the Oecumenical Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon which condemned them as such and the consent of all Orthodox Christians who ever since esteemed them no others or you must make condemned Hereticks parts of the Catholick Church against all antiquity and Christianity And for those Greeks neer Constantinople who are not infected with Nestorianism and Eutychianism yet in the Procession of the Holy Ghost against both us and you they must be thought to maintain manifest Heresie it being a point in a fundamental matter of faith the Trinity and the difference betwixt those Greeks and the Western Church now for many hundred of years and in many General Councils esteemed and defined to be real and great yea so great that the Greeks left the Communion of the Roman Church upon that difference alone and ever esteemed the Bishop of Rome and his party to have fallen from the true faith and lost his ancient authority by that sole pretended error and the Latins alwaies esteemed the Greeks to be in a damnable error in maintaining the contrary to the doctrine of the Western or Roman Church in that particular And yet sure they understood what they held and how far they differed one from another much better then some Novel writers of yours who prest by force of Argument have no other way left them to maintain a perpetual visibility then by extenuating that difference of Procession betwixt the Greek and Latin Church which so many ages before Protestancy sprung up was esteemed a main fundamental error by both parts caused the Greeks to abandon all subjection and Communion to the Bishops of Rome made them so divided the one from the other that they held each other Hereticks Schismaticks and desertors of the true faith as they continue still to do to this day and yet you will have them both to be parts of the Catholike Church But when you have made the best you can of these Greeks Armenians Ethiopians Protestants whom you first name you neither have deduced nor can deduce
them successively in all ages till Christ as a different Congregation of Christians from that which holds the Popes Supremacy which was my proposition For in the year 1500. those who became the first Protestants were not a Congregation different from those who held that supremacy nor in the year 500. were the Greeks a visible Congregation different from it nor in the year 300. were the Nestorians nor in the year 200. the Eutychians a different Congregation from those who held the said Supremacy But in those respective years those who first begun those Heresies were involved within that Congregation which held it as a part of it and assenting therein with it who after in their several ages and beginnings fell off from it as dead branches from the tree that still remaining what it ever was and only continuing in a perpetuall visibility of succession Though therefore you profess never to have seen convincing proof of this in the first 400 years labour to infringe it in the next ages yet I will make an essay to give you a taste of those innumerable proofs of this visible Consent in the Bishop of Rome's Supremacy not of Order only but of Power Authority Iurisdiction over all other Bishops in the ensuing instances which happened within the first 400 or 500 or 600 years Iohn Bishop of Antioch makes an Appeal to Pope Simplicius And Flavianus Bishop of Constantinople being deposed in the false Councill of Ephesus immediately appeals to the Pope as to his judge Theodoret was by Pope Leo restored and that by an appeal unto a just judgement Saint Cyprian desirâ—â— Pope Stephen to depose Marcian Bishop of Arles that another might be substituted in his place And to evince the supream Authority of the Bishops of Rome it is determined in the Council of Sardis That no Bishop deposed by other neighbouring Bishops pretending to be heard again was to have any successour appointed until the case were defined by the Pope Eustathius Bishop of Sebast in Armenia was restored by Pope Liberius his Letters read and received in the Council of Tyana and Saint Chrysostome expresly desires Pope Innocent not to punish his Adversaries if they do repent Which evinces that Saint Chrysostome thought that the Pope had power to punish them And the like is written to the Pope by the Council of Ephesus in the case of Iohn Bishop of Antioch The Bishops of the Greek or Eastern Church who sided with Arius before they declared themselves to be Arians sent their Legates to Iulius Bishop of Rome to have their cause heard before him against Saint Athanasius the same did Saint Athanasius to defend himself against them which Arian Bishops having understood from Iulius that their Accusations against Saint Athanasius upon due examination of both parties were found groundless and false required rather fraudulently then seriously to have a fuller Tryal before a General Council at Rome which to take away all shew of excuse from them Pope Iulius assembled Saint Athanasius was summoned by the Pope to appear before him and the Councill in Judgement which he presently did and many other Eastern Bishops unjustly accused by the Arians aforesaid had recourse to Rome with him and expected there a year and a half All which time his Accusers though also summoned appeared not fearing they should be condemned by the Pope and his Councill Yet they pretended not as Protestants have done in these last ages of the Kings of England That Constantius the Arian Emperour of the East was Head or chief Governour over their Church in all Causes Ecclesiasticalâ— and consequently that the Pope had nothing to do with them but only pretended certain frivolous excuses to delay their appearance from one time to another Where it is worth the noting that Iulius reprehending the said Arian Bishops before they published their Heresie and so taking them to be Catholikes for condemning Saint Athanasius in an Eastern Councill gathered by them before they had acquainted the Bishop of Rome with so important a cause useth these words An ignari â—stis hanc consuetudinâ—m esse ut primum nobis scribatur ut â—inc quod justum est à â—finiri possit c. Are you ignorant saith he that this is the custome to write to us first That hence that which is just may be defined c. where most cleerly it appears that it belonged particularly to the Bishop of Rome to pass a definitive sentence even against the Bishops of the Eastern or Greek Church which yet is more confirmed by the proceedings of Pope Innocent the first about 12. hundred years since in the Case of Saint Chrysostome Where first Saint Chrysostome appears to Innocentius from the Councill assembled at Constantinople wherein he was condemned Secondly Innocentius annulls this condemnation and declares him innocent Thridly he Excommunicates Atticus Bishop of Constantinople and Theophilus Bishop of Alexandria for persecuting Saint Chrysostome Fourthly after Saint Chrysostome was dead in Banishment Pope Innocentius Excommunicates Arcadius the Emperour of the East and Eudoxia his wife Fifthly the Emperour and Empress humble themselves crave pardon of him and were obsolved by him The same is evident in those matters which passed about the year 450. where Theodosius the Emperour of the East having too much favoured the Eutychian Hereticks by the instigation of Chrysaphius the Eunuch and Pulcheria his Empress and so intermedled too far in Ecclesiasticall causes yet he ever bore that respect to the See of Rome which doubtless in those circumstances he would not have done had he not believed it an Obligation that he would not permit the Eutychian Council at Ephesus to be assembled without the knowledge and Authority of the Roman Bishop Leo the first and so wrote to him to have his presence in it who sent his Legats unto them And though both Leo's letters were dissembled and his Legats affronted and himself excommunicated by wicked Dioscorus Patriarch of Alexandria and president of that Coventicle who also was the chief upholder of the Eutychians yet Theodosius repented before his death banished his wife Pulcheria and Chrysaphius the Eunuch the chief favourers of the Eutychians and reconciled himself to the Chruch with great evidences of Sorrow and Pennance Presently after Anno. 451. follows the Fourth General Council of Chalcedon concerning which these particulars occur to our present purpose First Martianus the Eastern Emperour wrote to Pope Leo That by the Popes Authority a General Council might be gathered in what City of the Eastern Church he should please to chuse Secondly both Anatolius Patriarch of Constantinople and the rest of the Eastern Bishops sent to the legats of Pope Leo by his order the profession of their Faith Thirdly the Popes Legats sate in the first place of the Council before all the Patriarchs Fourthly they prohibited by his order given them That Dioscorus Patriarch of Alexandria and chief upholder of
Pope have made it an Article of their faith that the whole substance of the Bread and Wine is turned into the Body and Blood of Christ so that there is left no Bread or Wine but only that colour quantity and tast that before belonged to it And if you know not Bread when you eat it or Wine when you drink it and when the senses of all the sound men in the world concur with yours is it not vain for me or any man to dispute with you Can you have any thing brought to a surer judgement then to all your senses And yet no doubt but your seducers can say something to prove that Bread is not Bread when you see and eat it No wonder then if they can confute me But do they indeed believe themselves how is it possible there is no exercise of reason and belief that supposeth not the certainty of sense If I cannot know Bread and Wine when I see touch â—ast them then cannot I know the Pope the Councils the Scripture the Priest or any thing else If you think to let go this point of Popery and hold the rest you know not what Popery is for a Pope and Council having determined it you are damned by them for denying the faith and if you depart from the infallibility of their Rule and judge in points of faith or at least from the obligation of it in one thing they will confess to you that you may as well do it in more False in this and certain in nothing is their own conclusion Sir I have not been unwilling to know the truth having a soul to save or lose as well as you and having as much reason to be loth to perish If you have so far forfeited the Grace of God as meerly to follow the pride of a pretended Vice-Christ that hath turned doctrine into error worship into superstition and dead formality light into darkness discipline into confusion mixt with tyranny if meerly to set up one Tyrant over the consciences and bodies too of all believers in the world you can fall into a Sect deny Scripture Reason the Judgement and Tradition of most of the Church and your own and all mens eye-sight tast and other senses the Lord have mercy on you if you be not past it I have done with you yet remaining An unfeigned desirer of your welfare and lamenter of the Apostacies and giddiness of these times Richard Baxter May. 18. 1659. Did you know what it is by loose and false allegations to be put to read so many Volumes in great part in folio to try whether the alledger say true or false you would not expect that I should return an answer and read so much of so many folios in any less then ten or eleven daies which I think hath been all that I have had to write and read so much The Reader must take notice that I wrote the former Letter to the person that sent Mr. Johnsons Letters with a charitable jealousie that if he were himself in doubt he might be resolved But in his return he fully disclaimed Popery and assured me that it is for the sake of some friends that he desired my labour and not for his own R. B. The Reply to Mr. Johnsons second PAPER Sir THE multitude and urgency of my employments gave me not leave till this day May 2. so much as to read over all your Papers But I shall be as loth to break off our Disputation as you can be though perhaps necessity may sometime cause some weeks delay And again I profess my indignation against the Hypocrital Jugling of this age doth provoke me to welcome so ingenuous and candid a disputant as your self with great content But I must confess also that I was the less hasty in sending you this Reply because I desired you might have leisure to peruse a Book which I published since your last A Key for Catholikes seeing that I have there answered you already and that more largely then I am like to do in this Reply For the sharpness of that I must crave your patience the persons and cause I thought required it Ad 1m. What explications were made to your Friend of your Thesis I could not take notice of who had nothing but your writing to Answer 2. If you will not be precise in Arguing you had little reason to expect much less so strictly to exact a precise Answer which cannot be made as you prescribed to an Argument not precise 3. I therefore expect accordingly that the unlearned be not made the Judges of a dispute which they are not fit to judge of seeing you desire us to avoid their road 4. Again I say if you will not be precise in arguing I can hardly be so in answering And by a Congregation of Christians you may mean Christians politically related to one Head whether Christ or the Pope But the word Assemblies expresseth their actuall Assembling together and so excludeth all Christians that are or were Members of no particular assemblies from having Relation as Members of Christ our Head or the Pope your Head and so from being of the Congregation as you Call The Church universall 5. I had great reason to avoid the snare of an equivocation or ambiguity of which you gave me cause of jealousie by your whatsoever as I told you as seeming to intimate a false supposition To your Like I answer it is unlike and still more intimates the false supposition Whatsoever Congregation of men is the Common-wealth of England is a phrase that importeth that There is a Congregation of men which is not the Common-wealth of England Which is true there being more men in the world So whatsoever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church doth seem to import that you suppose there is a Congregation of Christians univocally so called that are not the true Church which you would distinguish from the other Which I only let you know at the entrance that I deny that you may not think it granted Yet I must tell you that nothing is more ordinary then for the Body to be said to do that which a part of it only doth As that the Church administreth Sacraments Discipline Teatheth c. the Church is assembled in such a Council c. when yet it is but a small part of the Church that doth these things And when Bellarmine Gretser c. say the Church is the infallible judge of Controversies of faith they mean not the whole Church which containeth every Christian when they tell you that It is the Pope they mean and therefore I had reason to enquire into your sense unless I would willfully be over-reacht You now satisfie me that you mean it universally viz. â—ll that Congregation or Church of Christians which is now the true Church of Christ doth acknowledge c. which I told you I deny 6. To my following distinction you say that all the world knows that whatsoever is acknowledged
unacquainted with the opinions of your own Divines and upon this mistake so confidently feign that it is our Novel writers forced to it by your arguments that have been so charitable to these Churches against antiquity that knew better If the Greeks and Latins tear the Church of Christ by their Condemnations of each other they may both be schismatical as guilty of making divisions in the Church though not as dividing from the Church And if they pretend the denyal of the Christian faith against each other as the cause you shall not draw us into the guilt of the uncharitableness by telling us that they know better then we If wise men fall out and fight I will not justifie either side because they are wise and therefore likelier then I to know the cause But what need we more to open your strange mistake and unjust dealing then the authority of your so much approved Council of Florence that received both Greeks and Armenians and the very words of the Popes Bull of the union which declare that the Greeks and Latins were found to mean Orthodoxly both the words are these Convenientes Latini Graeci in hac sacrosancta Oecumenica synodo magno studio invicem usi sunt ut inter alia articulus etiam ille de Divina Spiritus Sancti processione summa cum diligentia assidua inquisitione discuteretur Prolatis vero testimoniis ex Divinis Scripturis plurimisque authoritatibus sanctorum doctorum orientalium occidentelium aliquibus quidem ex Patre Filio quibusdam vero ex Patre per Filium procedere dicentibus Spiritū Sanctum ad eandem intelligentiam aspicientibus omnibus sub diversis vocabulis Graeci quidem asseruerunt quod id quod dicunt Spiritum Sanctum ex Patre procedere non hac mente proferrent ut excludant Filiū sed quia eis videbatur ut aiunt Latinos asserere spiritum Sanctum ex Patre Filioque procedere tanquam ex duobus principiis duabus Spirationibus ideo abstinuerunt à dicendo quod Spiritus Sanctus ex Patre procedat Filio Latini vero affirmaverunt non se hac mente dicere Spiritum Sanctum ex Filioque procedere ut excludant Patrem quin sit fons ac principium totius Deitatis Filii scilicet Spiritus Sancti aut quod id quod Spiritus Sanctu procedat ex Filio Filius à Patre non habeat sive quod duo ponant esse principia seu duas spirationes sed ut unum tantum asserunt esse principium unicamque spirationem Spiritus Sancti prout hactenus asseruerunt cum ex his omnibus unus idem eliciatur veritatis sensus tandem c. I pray you now tell it to no more that it is same Novel writers of ours prest by force of argument that have been the authors of this extenuation May heart even trembleth to think that there should be a thing called Religion among you that can so far extinguish both Charity and Humanity as to cause you to pass so direful a doom without authority or tryal on so great a part of the Christian world for such a word as this about so exceeding high a mysterie when your Pope and Council have pronounced a union of meanings And what mean you in your Margin to refer me to Nilus as if he asserted That the Greeks left the Communion of the Roman Church upon that difference alone Verily Sir in the high matters of God this dealing is scarce fair pardon this plainness consider of it your self The substance of Nilus book is about the Primacy of the Pope The very contents prefixed to the first book are these Oratio demonstrans non aliam c. An Oration demonstrating that there is no other cause of the dissension between the Latin and Greek Churches then that the Pope refuseth to defer the cognisance and iudgement of that which is controverted to a general Council but he will sit the sole Master and Iudge of the Controversie and will have the rest as Disciples to be hearers of or obey his word which is a thing aliene from the Laws and actions of the Apostles and Fathers And he begins his Book after a few words thus Causa itaque hujus dissidii c. The cause therefore of this difference as I judge is not the sublimity of the point exceeding mans capacity For other matters that have divers times troubled the Church have been of the same kind This therefore is not the cause of the dissention much less is it the speech of the Scripture it self which as being concise doth pronounce nothing openly of that which is controverted For to accuse the Scripture is as much as to accuse God himself But God is without all fault But who the fault is in any one may easily tell that is well in his wits He next shews that it is not for want of learned men on both sides nor is it because the Greeks do claim the Primacy and then concludeth it as before He maintaineth that your Pope succeedeth Peter only as a Bishop ordained by him as many other Bishops that originally were ordained by him in like manner do succeed him and that his Primacy is no Governing power nor given him by Peter but by Princes and Councils for order sale and this he proves at large and makes this the main difference Bellarmines answering his so many Arguments might have told you this if you had never read Nilus himself If you say that This point was the first cause I deny it but if it were true yet was it not the only or chief cause afterward The Munner of bringing in the filioque by Papal authority without a general Council was it that greatly offended the Greeks from the beginning But you say that when I have made the best of these Greeks Armenians Ethiopians Protestants I cannot deduce them successively in all ages till Christ as a different Congregation of Christians from that which holds the Popes supremacy which was your proposition Reply I have oft told you we own no universal informing Head but Christ. In respect to him I have proved to you that is not my interest or design to prove us or them a different Congregation from you as you are Christians Nor shall you tempt me to be so uncharitable as to damn or unchristen all Papists as far as you do others incomparably safer and better then your selves But as you are Papal and set up a new informing head I have proved that you differ from all the antient Churches but yet that my cause requireth me not to make this proof but to call you to prove your own universal succession You add your Reason because these beforenamed were at first involved in your Congregation and then fell off as dead branches Reply This is but an untruth in a most publick matter of fact All the truth is this 1. Those Indians Ethiopians Persians c. without the Empire never fell
all men judge that then only is any thing proved Theologically when they prove it from the words of the holy Scripture This is more then the former say For to extend the sufficiency and necessity of Scripture to all that 's Theologicall is more then to extend it to matter of faith No Protestant goeth higher then this that I know of And note that he makes this the very common conception and judgement of all men See then where our Religion and Church was before Luther even among all Christians Yet more fully he proceeds ibid. Hence it further appeareth that Principles of Theology thus taken that is which is acquired by Theologicall discourse are the very Truths themselves of the holy Canon because the ultimate Resolution of all Theologicall discourse doth stand or belong to them and all Theologicall conclusions are deduced first from them But distinguishing the Conclusions Theologicall from the Principles I say that all truths are not in themselves formally contained in the holy Scripture but of necessity following from those that are contained in them and this whether they are Articles of faith or not N B and whether they are knowable or known by another science or not and whether they are determined by the Church or not But of other Truths to wit not following from the words of the holy Scripture I say there is no Theologicall conclusion This is proved c. When I read over the Schoolmen and Divines of all sorts that wrote before the Reformers fell so closely upon the Pope and find how generally even the Papists themselves maintained the sufficiency of the holy Scripture just as the Protestants now do I am convinced 1. of the succession of the Protestants Religion in the Universal Visible Church and 2. that it was the Reformers Arguments from Scripture that forced the Papists to oppose this holy Rule as to its sufficiency and to invent the new doctrine of supplementall Tradition for conservative Ministeriall Tradition of the holy Scriptures we are for as much at least as they The words of Guil. Parisieâ—sis too large to be recited in extolling the fulness and perfection of the Scripture even for all sorts of men you may read de Legibus cap. 16. pag. 46. Bellarmine de Verbo Dei lib. 3. cap. 10. ad Arg. 15. saith We must know that a Proposition of faith is concluded in such a syllogism Whatsoever God hath revealed in Scripture is true But this God hath revealed in Scripture Therefore it is true Though he require another word of God by the Pope or Council to prove that this is revealed in Scripture But if so then Scripture containeth all that 's true in points of faith 2. And that all things that are revealed and which we ought to believe are not Essentiall to the Christian faith and therefore that all are of the Church that hold these Essentialls and that such a distinction must be maintained the Papists have still confessed till lately that disputing hath encreased their novelties and errours Bellarmines and Costerus confession I recited even now Guliel Parisiensis in Operum pag. 9 10 11 12. de fide industriously proveth the necessity of distinguishing the fundamentalls or essentialls from the rest of the points of faith and it is they that constitute the Catholick faith which he saith is therefore called Catholick or Universal because it is the common faith or the common foundation of Religion And he proves that hence it is that the Catholick faith is but One and found in all Catholicks these fundamentalls being found in all By many arguments he proveth this And that there are some points even these common Articles necessary to be known of all necessitati medii the Schoolmen commonly grant as Aquin. 22. q. 2. a. 5. c. Bannes in 22. q. 2. a. 8. c. Of these saith Espencaeus in 2. Ti. c. 3. dig 17. which are the objects of faith per se and not the secondary objects the adult must have an explicite faith and the Colliers faith at this time decantate by the Catholicks will not serve the turn And we have both the Scripture sufficiency to all points of faith even the lowest and also the foresaid distinction given us together by Tho. Aquinas 22. q. art 5. c. We must say that the object of faith per se is that by which man is made blessed But by accident and secondarily all things are the object of faith which are contained in the holy Scripture See the judgement of Occham Canus Tolet and many more cited by Dr. Potter and yet more for the sufficiency of the Symbole or Creed as the test of Christianity pag. 89 90 91 92 93. Where you have the sense of the Ancients upon the point and p. 102 103. I conclude therefore with the Jesuite Azorius par 1. lib. 8. c. 6. The substance of the Article in which we believe One holy Catholick Church is that no man can be saved out of the Congregation of men professing the reception of the faith and Religion of Christ and that salvation may be obtained within this same Congregation of godly and faithfull men And as to the Essence of the Christian faith and Church we say with Tertullian of the Symbole Fides in Regula posita est habes legem salutem ex observatione legis exercitatio autem in curiositate consistit habens gloriam solam ex peritiae studio Cedat curiositas fidei Cedat gloria saluti Corte aut non obstrepant aut quiescant adversus regulam Nihil ultra scire est omnia scire That is Faith lieth in the Rule Here you have the Law and salvation in the observation of that Law but it is exercise that consisteth in curiosity having only a name or glory by the study of skill Let curiosity give place to faith Let glory give place to salvation Let them not prate or let them be quiet against the Rule To know nothing further is to know all things De Praescript cap. 13 14. So cap. 8. Nobis curiositate opus non est post Christum Iesum nec inquisitione post Evangelium Cum credimus nihil desideramus ultra credere hoc enim prius credimus non esse quod ultra credere debeamus That is As for us we need not curiosity after Jesus Christ nor inquisition after the Gospel When we believe we need to believe no further For we first believe this that there is nothing further that we ought to believe And here on the by for the right understanding of Tertullians Book de Praescript note 1. That the Rule of Essentialls extracted from the whole Scripture is the Churches ancient Creed 2. That the compleat Rule of all points of faith is the whole Scripture And that Tertullian had to do with Hereticks that denied the Essentials and desired the whole Scripture to dispute their case from both because they had questioned or rejected much of it and because it was a larger field to exercise their
wits in and whence they might gather more matter of dispute to puzzle the weak And therefore Tertullian adviseth the ordinary Christians of his time instead of long puzzling disputes with them out of Scripture to hold them to the Churches prescription of the simple doctrine of the Creed But now come in the Papists and 3. will neither be content with Creed nor Scripture but must have a Church or faith partly made up of supplemental Traditions of more then is in all the Scripture and so run further from Tertullian and the ancient simplicity then these Hereticks and yet are not ashamed to glory in this Book of Tertullian as for them Of the Fathers judgement of the Scripture sufficiency see the third part of my safe Religion where I have produced Testimonies enough to prove the Antiquity of the Protestants Religion and the Novelty of Popery But nothing can be so plain and full which pre-engaged men dare not deny Let me instance but in one or two passages of Augustine so plain as might put an end to the whole Controversie Aug. de Doctr. Christian. lib. 2. c. 9. In his omnibus libris timentes Deum pietate mansueti quaerunt voluntatem Dei. Cujus operis laboris prima observatio est ut diximus nosse istos libros si nondum ad intellectum legendo tamen vel mandare memoriae He was not against the Vulgars reading Scripture vel omnino incognitos non habere Deinde illa quae in eis aperte pofita sunt vel praecepta vivendi vel regulae credendi solertiùs diligentiúsque investiganda sunt Quae tanto quisque plura invenit quanto est intelligentia capacior In iis enim quae apertè in Scriptura posita sunt inveniuntur illa omnia quae continent fidem moresque vivendi N. B. spem scilicet atque charitatem de quibus libro superiore tractavimus Tum vero facta quadam familiaritate cum ipsa lingua divinarum scripturarum in ea quae obscura sunt aperienda discutienda pergendum est ut ad obscuriores locutiones illustrandas de manifestationibus sumantur exempla quaedam certarum sententiarum testimonia dubitationem de incertis auferant You see here that the Scripture as sufficient to faith and manners to be read by all that fear God and can read and the harder places to be expounded by the plainer was the ancient Rule of faith and Religion And this is the Religion of Protestants Aug. lib. 3. c. 6. contra lit Petiliani pag. 127. Proinde sive de Christo sive de ejus Ecclesia sive de quacunque alia re quae pertinet ad fidem vitamque nostram non dicam Nos nequaquam comparandi â—i qui dixit Licet si nos sed omnino quod secutus adjecit si Angelus de coelo vobis annunciaverit praeterquam quod in Scripturis Evangelicis accepistis Anathema sit I must needs English this short passage to the utter confusion of Popery And therefore whether it be of Christ or whether it be of the Church or whether it be of any other matter that pertaineth to our Faith or Life I will not say if we as being not worthy to be compared with him that said Though we but I will say plainly what he added following If an Angel from heaven shall declare to you any thing besides that which you have received in the Legall and Evangelicall Scriptures let him be Anathema or accursed Was not the Church then purely Protestant in their Religion The Minor needs no proof but our own Profession My profession is the best evidence of my own Religion to another And I profess this to be my Religion which is contained in the holy Scripture as the Test or Law or Rule And let no man contradict me that knoweth not my Religion better then I do The Articles of the Church of England profess this also to be the Religion of the Composers And the Protestants commonly uno ore do profess it It is the great difference between us and the Papists The whole Universal Law of God that we know of and own is contained in Nature and Scripture conjunct But the Papists take somewhat else to be another part We allow by-Laws about mutable undetermined things as aforesaid to Governours But we know no Universal Law of faith and holiness but Nature and Scripture This is our Religion And this Religion contained in Nature and Scriptures hath been still received Obj. We confess Scripture is sufficient to them that have no further light All that is necessary to the salvation of all is in that perspicuously as Costerus Bellarmine and others say but more is necessary to salvation to some Ans. 1. Then at least it containeth all the Essentialls of Christianity which sufficeth to our present end 2. And what maketh more Necessary to me or others here in England if it be not necessary to all Is it because that more is Revealed to us But how and by whom and with what Evidence We are willing to see it and can see no such thing But if this be it if I may speak so plainly without offence it seems it concerneth us to keep out Friars and Jesuites from the Land as much if we knew how as to keep out the Devil For they tell us 1. That we must believe the Popes Soveraignty against the Tradition and judgement of most of the Catholick Church 2. And we must believe our selves to be void of Charity because no Papists contrary to our internall sense and knowledge 3. And we must believe that bread is not bread and wine is not wine contrary to the common senses of all sound men and if we will not thus renounce the Churches Vote Tradition our Certain knowledge Reason and all our Senses we must be damned where as before this doctrine was brought us we might have been saved as having in the Scriptures all things necessary to the salvation of all But the Papists must needs have us shew them where our Church was and name the persons Answ. 1. It were not the Catholike Church if it were confined to any place that is but a part of the Christian territories 2. Nor were it the Catholike Church if we could name half or a considerable part of the members As Augustin oft tells the Donatists it is the Church which begun at Ierusalem and thence is spread throughout the world Part of it may be in one Nation one year which may forfeit and lose it before the next God hath not tyed it to any place 3. To tell you where the Catholike Church hath been in every age and who were the Members or the Leaders requireth much knowledge in History and Cosmography which God hath not made necessary to salvation 4. There are no known Histories that deliver us the Catalogues of the Christians in every age of the world Had any been so foolish as to write them they would have been too chargeable to keep and too
Roman Church and succession as being on the Catholicks side but never maketh them an Essentiall part of the Catholick Church nor talks of a Unity caused by subjection to them but Charity to all And therefore calls the Schismaticks lib. 3. p. 72. Charitatis desertores not subjectionis desertores Adding gaudâ—t totus Orbis de Vnitate Catholica but never de subjectione Romae Yea he saith more of the seven Asian Churches lib. 2. p 50. Extra septem Ecclesias quicquid foris est â—lienum est Never more iâ—â—o much can be found to be said to Rome and now Rome it self is extra septem Ecclesias So he supposeth God praising the Catholick p 77. lib. 4. Dissentio sehisma tibi displicuit Concordasti cum fratre tuo cum una Ecclesia quae est in toto orbe terrarum Communicasti septem Ecclesiis memoriis Apostolorum amplexus es unitatem So lib. 6. p. 95. he thus describeth the Catholick Communion An quia voluntatem jussionem Dei secuti sumus amando pacem communicando toti orbi terrarum societati Orientalibus ubi secundum hominem suum natus est Christus ubi ejus sancta sunt in pressa vestigia ubi ambuâ—averunt adorandi pedes ubi ab ipso factae sunt tot tantae virtutes ubi eum sunt tot Apostoli comitati ubi est septiformis Ecclesia à qua vos concisos esse c. Tertullian dealing with Hereticks indeed that denyed the Fundamentals thought it but a tiresome way to dispute with them out of Scripture who wrested so many things in it to their destruction but would have them convinced by Prescription because they lived near the Churches that were planted by the Apostles and near their daies And what doth he appeal to Rome as the Judge or Church that the rest are subjected to No but 1. It is the common Creed or Symbole of the Church that he would have made use of in stead of long disputes and not any other doctrine 2. And it is all the Churches planted by the Apostles that he will have to be the first witnesses 3. And the present Churches the immediate witnesses that they received this Creed not any supernumeraries from them as the Apostles doctrine So de praescript c. 13. he reciteth the Symbole it self and so cap. 20. he mentioneth the sending of the twelve to teach this faith and plant Churches which he describeth thus Statim igitur Apostoli primo per Iudaeam contestata fide in Iesum Christum Ecclesiis institutis dehinc in orbem profecti eandem doctrinam ejusdem fidei nationibus promulgaverunt proinde Ecclesias apud unamquamque civitatem condiderunt à quibus traducem fidei semina doctrinae caeterae exinde Ecclesiae mutuatae sunt quotidie mutuantur ut Ecclesiae fiant Ac per hoc ipsea Apostolicae deputantur ut soboles Apostolicarum Ecclesiarum Omne genus ad Originem suam censeatur necesse est Itaque tot ac tantae Ecclesiae una est illa ab Apostolis prima ex qua omnes Are not those too gross deceivers that would perswade us that he here meaneth the Church of Rome by the una illa when he plainly speaks of the Catholick Church of the Apostolick age from which all the rest did spring If of a particular Church it must be that of Ierusalem Did all the rest arise from Rome Can they say ex hac omnes Sic omnes primae omnes Apostolicae dum unam omnes probant unitatem Communicatio pacis appellatio fraternitatis contesseratio hospitalitatis quae jura non alia ratio regit quam ejusdem sacramenti una traditio Note here 1. That no Original Church is mentioned but those of Iudaea with the rest of the Apostles planting And 2. That the Churches planted by the Apostles themselvâ—s without any mentioned difference of superiority are that one Church which all the rest must try their faith by as the witnesses 3. That they are equally made traduces fidei and mother Churches to others propagated by them 4. That per hoc by this propagation without subjection to the Church or Pope of Rome all the rest are Apostolicall 5. And the sufficient proof to any Church then that it was prima Apostolica was not subjection to Rome but that nuam omnes probant unitatem That is of the Apostolick faith received from that one Apostolick Church 6. Yea when he reciteth the external Characters of the Church it is not subjection to Rome that is any one of them but Communicatio pacis appellatio fraternitatis contesseratio hospitalitatis 7. Yea utterly to exclude the Roman subjection he adds quae jura non alia ratio regit quam ejusdem sacramenti una traditio So he proceeds Si haec ita sunt constat proinde omnem doctrinam quae cum illis Ecclesiis Apostolicis matricibus originalibus fidei conspiret veritati deputandum id sine dubio tenentem quod Ecclesiae ab Apostolis Apostoli à Christo Christus a Deo suscepit reliquam verò omnem doctrinam de mendacio praejudicandam quae sapiat contra veritatem Ecclesiâ—rum Apostolorum Christi Dei Superest ergo ut demonstremus an haec nostra doctrina the Creed not the Popes additions cujus regulam supra edidimus de Apostolorum traditione censeatur ex hoc ipso an caeterae that contradict the Creed de mendacio veniant Communicamus cum Ecclesiis Apostolicis Rome is not made the standard quod nulla doctrina diversa hoc est testimonium veritatis And cap. 28. he doth not send us to the Roman Church as Head or Judge but calling the Holy Ghost only Vicarius Christi Christs Vicar makes it incredible that he should so far neglect his office as to let not Rome but all the Churches to lose the Apostles doctrine proving the certain succession of it by the Unity and not by Romes authority Ecquid verisimile est ut tot ac tantae in unam fidem irraverint Nullus inter multo seventus est unus exitus Variasse debuerat error doctrinae Ecclesiarum Caeterum quod apud multos unum invenitur non est erratum sed traditum Audeat ergo aliquis dicere illos errasse qui tradiderunt So c. 32. when he calls them to the Apostolical Church it is no more to Rome then another Aedant ergo origines Ecclesiarum suaerum ut primus ille Episcopus aliquis ex Apostolis vel Apostolicis viris qui tamen cum Apost lis perseveraverint habuerit auctorem antecessorem Hoc enim modo Ecclesiae Apostolicae census suos deferunt sicut Smyrneorum Ecclesia habens Polycarpum ab Iohanne Collocatum refert sicut Romanorum Clementem a Petro ordinatum edit proinde utique caeterae exhibent Here you see he puts Smyrna before Rome and Iohn before Peter and refers them to Rome but only as one of the Churches planted by the
Apostles and this is but to know their doctrine delivered in that first age which we appeal to And after he expresly saith Ad hanc it aque formam provocabantur ab illis Ecclesiis quae licet nullum ex Apostolis vel Apostâ—licus auctorem suum proferant ut multo posteriores quae denique quotidie institutum tamen in eadem fidem conspirantes non minus Apostolicae deputantur pro consanguinitate doctrinae The Apostles doctrine will prove an Apostolical Church when ever planted And c. 38. he draws them from disputing from the Scripture because they owned not the true Scripture but corrupted it and charged the Catholikes with corruption Sicut illis non potuit succedere corruptela doctrinae sine corruptela instrumentorum ejus Ita nobis integritaes doctrina non competisset sine integritate eorum not by real tradition alone per quae doctrina tractatur Etenim quid contrarium nobis in nostris quid de proprio intulimus ut aliquid contrarium ei in Scripturis deprehensum detractione vel adjectione vel transumtatione remediaremus Quod sumus hoc sunt Ab initio suo ex illis sumus antequam nihil aliter fuit quam sumus And cap. 36. He sends them by name to the particular Apostolical Churches and begins with Corinth then to Philippi Thessalonica Ephesus and then to Rome of whose Soveraignty he never speaks a syllable So more plainly l. 4. contr Marcion c. 5. because Marcion denied the true Scriptures he sends them to the Apostolike Churches for the true Scriptures first to the Corinthians then to the Galatians then to the Philippians Thessalonians Ephesians and last of all to Rome But it would be tedious to cite the rest of the Ancients that commonly describe the Church as we and such as we all own as members of it Arg. 3. If the Roman Church as Christian though not as Papal hath been visible ever since the daies of the Apostles then the Church of which the Protestants are members hath been visible ever since the daies of the Apostles But the Antecedent is their own therefore they may not deny the consequent The consequence also is past denyal 1. Because the Roman as Christian is part of the universal Christian Church 2. Because they profess to believe the same holy Scriptures and Creed as we do So that though they add more and so make a new form to their Church yet do they not deny our Church which is the Christian Church as such nor our Test and Rule of faith nor any Article that we account Essential to our Religion So that themselves are our sufficient witnesses Well! but this will not satisfie the Papists unless we shew a succession of our Church as Protestant 1. This we need not any more then a sound man lately cured of the Plague doth need to prove that he hath ever been not only sanus but sanatus a cured man before he was sick How could there be a Church protesting against an universal Vicar of Christ before any claimed that Vicarship 2. And when the Vicarship was usurped those millions abroad and even within the Roman territories that let the pretended Vicar talk and followed their own business and never consented to his usurpation were of the very same Religion with those that openly protested against him And so were those that never heard of his usurpation Object But at least say they you must prove a Church that hath been without the universal Vicar negatively though not against him positively Answ. 1. In all reason he that affirmeth must prove It is not incumbent on us to prove the negative that the Church had not such a Roman head but they must prove that it had Object But they have possession and therefore you that would dispossess them must disprove their title Ans. 1. This is nothing to most of the Catholike Church where they have no possession therefore with them they confess themselves obliged to the proof 2. This is a meer fallacious diversion for we are not now upon the question of their Title but the matter of fact and history we make good the negative that they have no Title from the Laws of Christ himself and so will not dispossess them without disproving their pretended Title But when the question is de facto whether they have ever had that possession from the Apostles daies they that affirm must prove when we have disabled their title from the Law 2. But what must we prove that all the Church hath been guiltless of the Papal usurpation or only some in every age of all its no more necessary to us then to prove that there have been no Heresies since the Apostles If a piece of the Church may turn Hereticks or but Schismaticks as the Novatians and African Donatists why may not another piece turn Papists 3. What will you say to a man that knoweth not a Protestant nor a Papist or believeth only Christianity it self and meddleth not with the Pope any further then to say I believe not in him Jesus I know and the Apostles and Scripture and Christianity I know but the Pope I know not and suppose he never subscribed to the Augustane English or any such confession but only to the Scripture and the Apostles and Nicene and other ancient Creeds By what shew of Justice can you require this man to prove that there hath been no Pope in every age 4. The foundation of all our controversie is doctrinal whether the Papal Soveraignty be Essential to the Church or necessary to our membership we deny it you affirm it If it be not Essential it is enough to us to prove that which is Essential to have been successive we be not bound in order to the proof of our Church it self to prove the succession of every thing that maketh but to its better being Yet professing that we do it not as necessary to our main cause we shall ex abundanti prove the negative that the Catholike Church hath not alwaies owned the Papal Soveraignty and so that there have been men that were not only Christians but as we Christians without Popery and against it and so shall both prove our Thesis and overthrow theirs Arg. 4. If there have been since the daies of Christ a Christian Church that was not subject to the Roman Pope as the Vicar of Christ and universal Head and Governour of the Church then the Church of which the Protestants are members hath been visible both in its being and its freedom from Popery But the Antecedent is true therefore so is the consequent I shall prove the Antecedent and therein the visibility of our Church and the non-existence in those times of the Papacy Arg. 1. My first Argument shall be from the general Council of Chalcedon If the priviledges of the Roman Sea were given to it by the Bishops consequently because of the Empire of that City and therefore equal priviledges after given to Constantinople on the same
account then had not Rome those priviledges from the Apostles and consequently the whole Catholike Church was without them But the Antecedent is affirmed by that fourth great approved Council In Act. 16. Bin. p. 134. We everywhere following the definitions of the holy Fathers and the Canon and the things that have been now read of the hundred and fifty Bishops most beloved to God that were congregate under the Emperour Theodosius the great of pious memory in the Royal City of Constantinople new Rome we also knowing them have defined the same things concerning the priviledges of the same most holy Church of Constantinople new Rome For to the seat of old Rome because of the Empire of that City the Fathers consequently gave the priviledges And the hundred and fifty Bishops most beloved of God being moved with the same intention have given equal priviledges to the most holy seat of new Rome reasonably judging that the City adorned with the Empire and Senate shall enjoy equal priviledges with old Regal Rome Here we have the Testimony of one of the greatest general Councils of the humane original of Romes priviledges Bellarmine hath nothing to say but that they spoke falsly and that this clause was not confirmed by the Pope which are fully answered by me elsewhere But this is nothing to our present business It is a matter of fact that I use their Testimony for And if all the Bishops in two of the most approved general Councils called the Representative Catholike Church were not competent witnesses in such a case to tell us what was done and what was not done in those times then we have none The Papists can pretend to no higher testimony on their part The Church it self therefore hath here decided the controversie And yet note that even these priviledges of Rome were none of his pretended universal Government It s in vain to talk of the Testimonies of particular Doctors if the most renowned general Councils cannot be believed Yet I will add an Argument from them as conjunct Arg. 2. Had the Roman universal Soveraignty as essential to the Catholike Church been known in the daies of Tertullian Cyprian Athanasius Nazianzen Nyssen Basil Optatus Augustine and the other Doctors that confounded the Heresies or Schisms of those times e. g. the Novatians Donatists Arrians c. the said Doctors would have plainly and frequently insisted on it for the conviction of those Hereticks and Schismaticks But this they do not therefore it was not known in those times The consequence of the Major is evident hence The Doctors of the Church were men at least of common wit and prudence in the matters which they did debate therefore they would have insisted on this argument if then it had been known The reason of the consequence is because it had been most obvious easie and potent to dispatch their controversies 1. When the Arrians and many other Hereticks denied Christs eternal Godhead had it not been the shortest expeditious course to have cited them to the barr of the Judge of controversies the infallible Soveraign Head of the Church and convinced them that they were to stand to his judgement 2. Had not this Argument been at hand to have confounded all Heresies at once That which agreeth not with the Belief of the Roman Pope and Church is false But such is your opinion therefore 2. So for the Donatists when they disputed for so many years against the Catholikes which was the true Church had it not been Augustins shortest surest way to have argued thus That only is the true Church that is subject to the Pope of Rome and adhereth to him But so do not you therefore Either the Arrians Donatists and such others did believe the Papal Soveraignty and Vicarship or not If they did 1. How is it possible they should actually reject both the Doctrine and Communion of the Pope and Roman Church 2. And why did not the Fathers rebuke them for sinning against conscience and their own profession herein But if they did not believe the Papal Soveraignty then 2. How came it to pass that the Fathers did labour no more to convince them of that now supposed fundamentall Errour when 1. It is supposed as hainous a sin as many of the rest 2. And was the maintainer of the rest Had they but first demonstrated to them that the Pope was their Governour and Judge and that his Headship being essentiall to the Church it must needs be of his faith all Heresies might have been confuted the people satisfied and the controversies dispatched in a few words 3. Either Arrians Donatists Novatians and such like were before their defection acquainted with the Roman Soveraignty or not If they were not then it is a sign it was not commonly then received in the Church and that there were multitudes of Christians that were no Papists If they were then why did not the Fathers 1. Urge them with this as a granted truth till they had renounced it 2. And then why did they not charge this defection from the Pope upon them among their hainous crimes why did they not tell them that they were subjected to him as soon as they were made Christians and therefore they should not perfidiously revolt from him How is it that we find not this point disputed by them on both sides yea and as copiously as the rest when it would have ended all And for the Minor that the Fathers have not thus dealt with Hereticks the whole Books of Tertullian Nazianzen Nyssen Basil Optatus Hierom Augustine and others are open certain witnesses They use no such Argument but fill their Books with others most imprudently and vainly if they had known of this and had believed it Otherwise the Papists would never have been put to gather up a few impertinent scraps to make a shew with We see by experience here among us that this point is Voluminously debated and if we differ in other matters the Papists call us to the Roman bar and bring in this as the principall difference And why would it not have been so then between the Fathers and the Donatists Arrians and such like if the Fathers had believed this It s clear hence that the Papall Vicarship was then unknown to the Church of Christ. Arg. 3. The Tradition witnessed by the greater part of the Universal Church saith that the Papal Vicarship or Soveraignty is an innovation and usurpation and that the Catholick Church was many hundred years without it Therefore there was then no such Papal Church This is not a single testimony nor of ten thousand or ten millions but of the Major Vote of the whole Church and in Councils the Major Vote stands for the whole If this witness therefore be refused we cannot expect that the words of a few Doctors should be credited Nor may they expect that we credit any witness of theirs that is not more credible And that the Antecedent is true is known to the world as
appetit quo vocari nullus praesumpsit qui veraciter sanctus fuit That is And to bind up all in the girdle of speech the Saints before the Law the Saints under the Law the Saints under Grace all these making up the Body of Christ were placed among the Members of the Church yet never man would be called Universal Let your Holiness therefore consider how with your self you swell that desire to be called by that name by which no man hath presumed to be called that was truly Holy Well! if this be not as pâ—â—in as Protestants speak against Popery I will never hope to understand a Pope I only add that Gregory makes this usurpation of the name of an Universal Bishop a forerunner of Antichrist And that Pope Pelagius condemned it before him which Gratian puts into their Decrees or Canon Law And that he took the Churches authority to be greater then his own when he tells Iohn Sed quoad in mea correptione despicior restat ut Ecclesiam debeam adhibere Lib. 7. Ep. 30. Dixi nec mihi vos nec cuiquam alteri tale aliquid scribere debere ecce in praefatione epistolae quam ad meipsum qui prohibui direxistis sâ—perbae appellationis verbum Universalem me Papam dicentes imprimere curastis Quod peto dulcissima sanctitas vestra ultra non faciat quia vobis subtrahitur quod alteri plusquam ratio exigit praebetur See then whether it be not judged by him undue to himself as well as to others And what the weight of the matter seemed to him judge more by these words Ep. 83. l. 4. ad Arrian In isto scelesto vocabulo consentire nihil est aliud quam fidem perdere To consent in that wicked word is nothing else but to lose or destroy the faith That is apostasie And l. 6. c. 194. Mauric Aug. Ego fidenter dico quia quisquis se universalem sacerdotem vocat vel vocare desiderat in elatione sua Antichristum praecurrit quia superbiendo se caeteris praeponit nec dispari superbia ad errorem ducitur Arg. 7. The Papists themselves confess that multitudes of Christians if not most by far have been the opposers of the Pope or none of his subjects therefore by their Testimony there have been visible Churches of such Aeneas Sylvius after Pope Pius 2. saith small regard was had to the Church of Rome before the Council of Nice Bellarmine saith This is partly true by reason of the persecution of those ages and partly false Ans. But if true we prove the matter of fact and leave Bellarmine better to prove his Reason If it be false then their own Historians are not to be believed â—hough worthy to be Popes And then wâ—at historicall testimony will they believe Voluminously do their Historians mention the Opposition of the Greeks on one side and of the Emperours and Kings and Divines that were under the Popes Patriarchal power as Mich. Goldastus in abundance of Treatises hath manifested I gave before the testimony of Reynerius that the Churches planted by the Apostles were not under the Pope I shall once more recite the words of Melch. Canus Loc. Theol. lib. 6. cap. 7. fol. 201. Not only the Greeks but almost all N. B. the rest of the Bishops of the whole world have vehemently fought to destroy the Priviledge of the Church of Rome and indeed they had on their side both the Arms of Emperours and the greater Number of Churches and yet they could never prevail to abrogate the Power of the One Pope of Rome By the Papists confession then most of the Churches and almost all the Bishops of the whole world and the Emperours their Armies have vehemently fought to abrogate the Popes power and destroy the Priviledges of Rome Reynerius his testimony concerning the Antiquity of the Waldenses as from Pope Sylvesters dayes if not the Apostles hath been oft cited Had they been but from Gregories dayes it had been enough when we have his own Testimony that no Bishop of Rome would own to that time that wicked prophane sacrilegious foolish blasphemous dividing name of Vniversal Patriarch or Bishop which who ever holds to destroys the faith Arg. 8. The next Argument should have been from the Historical Testimony of the Ancients that the Papal Soveraignty was then no part of the Churches faith nor owned by them But here to produce the Testimonies of all ages would be to write a Volume in Folio on this one Argument alone For how can the History of all Ages be so particularly delivered out of such a Multitude of Books but in a multitude of words And it is done already so fully that I provoke the Papists to answer the Catalogues and historicall Evidence given in if they can If you ask where I will now only tell you of 1. Blondell against Perron dâ— Primatu in Ecclesia in French that shews you the torrent of Antiquity against the Papal Soveraignty 2. Molinaeus in French de Novitate Papismi against the same Perron 3. Bishop Vsher de statu successione Ecclesiarum and his Answer to the â—esuites challenge 4. Dr. Field of the Church who lib. 5. answereth Bellarmines allegations from all sort of Antiquity which are their strength I pass by many others some of which I have named in the foresaid 3. Dispute of the safe Religion where also I have produced more of this evidence then they can answer At least much more then you have returned me in your last Paper for the contrary to which I desire your answer For it s in vain to write one thing so oft I shall only instance in the currant Testimony of their own Historians of the Beginning of their Universal Headship Saith Regino Chron. l. 1. An. 808. p. 13. Bonifacius obtinuit apud Phocam Principem ut sedes Romana Caput esset omnium Ecclesiarum quia Ecclesia Constantinâ—pâ—litana primum se omnium Ecclesiarum scribebat Hermannus Contractus An. M. 4550. p. 122. Hoc tempore Phocas Romanam Ecclesiam omnium Ecclesiâ—rum Caput esse constituit Nam Constantinop primam se esse scripsit So Marianus Scotus in Phoc. Bonifacius P. 67. impetravit á Phoca Caesare ut sedes Apostolica Romana Caput esset Ecclesiae quum antea Constantinopolis Primam omnium se scriberet The same hath Sigebertus Gemblac An. 607. p. 526. And so Compilat Chron. and many more Beneventus de Rambaldis Lib. Augustali saith p. 8. in Phoca Phocas occiâ—â—r Manritii qui Primus constituit Quod Ecclesia esset Caput omnium Ecclesiarum Cum prius Constantin supremum se nominaret Mark here the Primus Constituit So Beda P. Diaconus Anastasius Pomponius Laetus c. And of the Novelty of their worship saith Platina in Gregor 1. What should I say more of this holy man whose whole institution of the Church office specially the old one was invented and approved by him which Order I would we did follow then Learned men would
from us were but the opinions of a faction among them before Luther and that the Western Church before Luther was Protestant even in those particular Controversies though this is a thing that we need not prove And as Dr. Potter tells them pag. 68. The Roman Doctors do not fully and absolutely agree in any one point among themselves but only in such points wherein they agree with us In the other disputed between us they differ one from another as much almost as they differ from us He appeals for this to Bellarmines Tomes Though I cannot undertake to make this good in every point yet that proper Popery was held but by a Faction in the Western Church even at its height before Luther is easily made good He that readeth but the Writers before Luther and in History noteth the desires of Emperours Kings and Universities and Bishops for Reformation of the things that we have reformed may soon see this to be very true It was Avitas Leges consuetudines Angliae as Rog. Hovedâ—n and Matth. Paris in H. 2. shew that the Pope here damned and anathematized all that favoured and observed them O tender Father even to Kings O enemy of Novelties The German History collected by Reuberus Pistorus Freherus and Goldastus shews it as pâ—ain as day light that a Papal Faction by fury and turbulency kept under the far greater part of the Church by force that indeed dissented from them even from Hildebrands dayes till Luthers or near Saith the Apologia Henrici 4. Imperat. in M. Frâ—heri Tom. 1. p. 178. Behold Pope Hildebrands Bishops when doubtless they are murderers of Souls and bodies such as deservedly are called the Synagogue of Satan yet they write that on his and on their side or party is the holy Mother Church When the Catholick that is the Universal Church is not in the Schism of any side or parties but in the Universality of the faithfull agreeing together by the spirit of Peace and Charity And p. 179. See how this Minister of the Devil is beside himself and would draw us with him into the ditch of perdition that writeth that Gods holy Priesthood is with only 13. or few more Bishops of Hildebrands and that the Priesthood of all the rest through the world are separated from the Church of God when certainly not only the testimony of Gregory and Innocent but the judgement of all the holy Fathers agree with that of Cyprian that he is an Alien prophane an enemy that he cannot have God for his Father that holdeth not the Unity of the Church which he after describeth to have one Priesthood Et p. 181. But some that go out from us say and write that they defend the party of their Gregory not the Whole which is Christs which is the Catholick Church of Christ. And p. 180. But our Adversaries that went from us not we from them use thus to commend themselves We are the Catholicks we are in the Unity of the Church So the Writer calls them Catholicks and us that hold the faith of the holy Fathers that consent with all good men that love peace and brotherhood us he calls Schismaticks and Hereticks and Excommunicate because we resist not the King And p. 181. Isidore saith Etym. l. 8. The Church is called Catholick because it is not as the conventicles of Hereticks confined in certain countries but diffused through the whole world therefore they have not the Catholick faith that are in a part and not in the Whole which Christ hath redeemed and must reign with Christ. They that confess in the Creed that they believe the holy Catholick Church and being divided into parties hold not the Unity of the Church which Unity believers being of one heart and one soul properly belongs to the Catholick Church So this Apol. One Objection I must here remove which is all and nâ—thing viz. That the Armenians Greeks Georgians Abassines and many others here named differ from Protestants in many points of faith and therefore they cannot be of the same Church Ans. 1. They differ in nothing Essentiall to our Church or Religion nor near the Essence 2. Protestants differ in some lesser points and yet you call them all Protestants your selves 3. I prove undeniably from your own pens that men differing in matters of faith are all taken to be of your Church and so of one Church and therefore you contradict your selves in making all points of faith to be Essentials of the Christian Religion or Church 1. The Council of Basil and Constance differed de fide with the Popâ— and the Council of Laterane and Florence They expresly affirm their doctrine to be de fide that the Council is above the Pope and may depose him c. and the contrary Heresie And Pighius Hierarch Eccles. lib. 6. saith that these Councils went against the undoubted faith and judgement of the Orthodox Church it self 2. Their Saint Tho. Aquinas and most of their Doctors with him differ from the second Council of Nice in holding the Cross and Image of Christ to be worshipped with Latria which that Council determined against See more Arguments in my Key for Cath. p. 127 128. and after I will now add a Testimony sufficient to silence Papists in this point and that is The Determination of the Theological faculty of Paris under their great Seal against one Iohan. de Montesono ordinis Praedic as you may find it after the rest of the Errors rejected by that University in the end of Lombard printed at Paris 1557. pag. 426. Their 3. Conclusion is that Saint Thom. Aquin. doctrine is not so approved by the Church as that we must believe that it is in no part of it erroneous de fide in matter of faith or hereticall They prove it because it hath many contradictions even in matter of faith and therefore they ought not to believe it not hereticall Here fol. 426 427. they give six examples of his contradictions and therefore they conclude that though he were no Heretick because not pertinacious yet they ought not to believe that his doctrine was in no part hereticall or erroneous in the faith They further argue thus If we must believe his doctrine not hereticall c. this should be chiefly because it is approved by the Church But there is some doctrine much more approved by the Church then the doctrine of S. Tho. which yet is in some part of it hereticall or erroneous in the faith therefore The Minor they prove by many examples The first is of Peters doctrine Gal. 2. I own not this by citing it The second is of Cyprian The third of Hierom and they add that the same may be said of Augustine and many more approved Doctors The fourth example is Lombard himself who they say hath somewhat erroneous in the faith The fifth is Gratian who had he pertinaciously adhered to his doctrine they say had been a manifest Heretick And say they some say the
Council of Nice that many Princes were subjected to the Church of Rome by Ecclesiastical custom and no other right the Synod should do the greatest injury to the Bishop of Rome if it should attribute those things to him only from custom which were his due by Divine Right This Citation I take from Bishop Bromhall having not seen the Book my self The Popish Bishop of Calcedâ—n Survey cap. 5. To us it sufficeth that the Bishop of Rome is Saint Peters successour and this all the Fathers testifie and all the Catholick Church believeth but whether it be jure divino or humano is no point of Faith An ingenuous Confession destroying Popery See Aubert Miraeus notitia Episcopat where in the antient Notit and Leunclavius record of Leo Philos. Impera There are none of the Abassine or other extramperial Nations under the old Patriarcks Cassander Epist. 37. D. Ximenio operum p. 1132. saith of that learned pious Bishop of Valentia Monlucius so highly commended by Thuanus and other learned men that he said Si sibi permittatur in his tribus capitibus viz. forma publicarum precum de ritibus Baptismi de formâ Eucharistiae sive Missae Christianam formam ad normam priscae Ecclesiae Institutam legi conâ—idere se quod ex quinquaginta mill quos habet in suâ Dioecesi à praesenti disciplina Ecclesiae diversos quaùraginta millia ad Ecclesiasticam uniâ—nâ—m sit reducturus That is If he had but leave in these three heads the form of publick Prayers of the rites of Baptism and the form of the Eucharist or the Mass to follow the Christian form Instituted according to the rule of the Antient Church he was confident that of fifty thousand that he had in his Diocess that differed from the present discipline of the Church he should reduce forty thousand to Ecclesiastical union By this testimony it is plain that the Church of Rome hath forsaken the antient Discipline and Worship of the Church by Innovation and that the Protestants desire the restitution of it and would be satisfied therewith but cannot obtain it at the Papists hands So Cassâ—nder himself Epist. 42 p. 1138. I would not despair of moderation if they that hold the Church possessions would remove some intolerable abuses and would restore at tolerable form of the Church according to the prescript of the Word of God and of the antient Church especially that which flourished for some ages after Constantine when liberty was restored which if they will not do and that betime there is danger they may in many places be cast out of their possessions Still you see Rome is the Innovator and it is Restitution of the antient Church-form that would have quieted the Protestans which could never be obtained So again more plainly Epist. 45. p. 1141. Whether Hereticks are in the Church When I came to London I enquired after Mr. Iohnson to know whether I might at all expect any Answer to the foregoing Papers or not And at last instead of an Answer I received only these ensuing lines PAg. 5. part 1. You say I reply first had not you despaired of making good your cause you should have gone by argumentation till you had forced me to contradict some common principle Now I have by Argumentation forced you to this if you will maintain what after you seem to assert in divers passages viz. That Hereticks are true parts of Christs Catholick Church for thus you write p. 11. Some are called Hereticks for denying points essential to Christianity those are no Christians and so not in the Church but many also are called Hereticks by you and by the Fathers for lesser Errours consistent with Christianity And these may be in the Church And p. 12. you answer thus to your adversary Whereas you say it is against all antiquity and Christianity to admit condemned Hereticks into the Church I reply first I hate their condemnation rather then reverence it where you saying nothing against their admittance into the Church seem to grant it I therefore humbly entreate you to declare your opinion more fully in this question Whether any professed Hereticks properly so called are true parts of the universal visible Church of Christ so that they compose one universal Church with the other visible parts of it Iunii 6 to William Johnson The Answer ANsw. My words are plain and distinctly answer your question so that I know not what more is needful for the explication of my sense Unless you would call us back from the Thing to the meer Name by your properly so called you are answered already But I would speak as plainly as I can and if it be possible for me to be understood by you I shall do my part 1. It is supposed that you and I are not agreed What the Vniversal visible Church it self is while you take the Pope or any meer humane Head to be an essential part which is an assertion that with much abhorrence I deny You think each member of that Church must necessarily ad esse be a subject of the Pope and I think it enough that he be a subject of Christ and to his orderly and well-being that he hold local Communion with the parts within the reach of his capacity and be subject to the Pastors that are set over him maintaining due association with and charity to the rest of the more distinct members as he is capable of communion with them at that distance So that when I have proved a person to be a member of the Catholick Church it is not your Catholick Church that I mean No â—ound Christian is a member of yours it is Hereticks in the softer sense that are its matter It s necessary therefore that we first agree of the Definition of the Catholick Church before we dispute who is in it 2. Your word Properly so called is ambiguous referring either to the Etymologie or to some definition in an authentick Canon or to custom and common speech Of the first we have no reason now to enter controversie For the second I know no such stablisht Definition that we are agreed on For the third custom is so variable here not agreeing with it self that what is to be denominated Proper or Improper from it is not to be well conjectured However all this is but de nomine and What is the proper and What the improper use of the word Heretick is no Article of Faith nor necessary for our debate Therefore again you must accept of my distinguishing and give me leave to fly confusion 1. The word Heretick is either spoken of one that corrupteth the Doctrine of Faith as such or of one that upon some difference of Opinion or some personal quarrels withdraweth from the Communion of those particular Churches that before he held communion with and gathereth a separated party such are most usually called Schismaticks but of oâ—d the name Hereticks was oft applyed unto such 2. The word Heretick in the
Reply If so then all those were no Popes that were Hereticks or denied essential points of faith as Iohan. 23. and so were no Christians and all those that wanted the necessary abilities to the essentials of their work And so your Church hath oft been headless and your succession interrupted Councils having censured many Popes to be thus unqualified And the dispositio materiae being of it self necessary to the reception of the form it must needs follow that such were no Popes even before the Councils charged them with incapacity or Heresie because they had it before they were accused of it And Simony then made many uncapable R. B. Qu. 2. When and how must the institution of Christ be found Mr. J. Answ. In the revealed Word of God written or unwritten R. B. Reply Qu. 2. Reply 1. You never gave the world assurance how they may truly know the measure of your unwritten Word nor where to find it so as to know what it is 2. Till you prove Christs Institution which you have never done you free us from believing in the Pope R. B. Qu. 3. Will any ones election prove one to be Pope or who must elect him ad esse Mr. J. Answ. Such as by approved custome are esteemed by those to whom it belongs fit for that charge and with whose election the Church is satisfied R. B. Reply Qu. 3. Reply Here you are fain to hide your self instead of answering and shew indeed that a Pope that 's made an essential part of the Church subjection to whom is made of necessity to salvation is indeed but a meer name or a thing unknown and so can be certainly believed or acknowledged by none For either Election of him by some body is necessary or not If not then you or another man unchosen may be Pope for ought I know or any man else If yea then it is either any bodies Election of him that will serve turn or not If it will then you may be Pope if your Scholars choose you and then you have had three true Popes at once for so many were Elected But if it will not then it must be known who hath the Power of Election before it can be known who is indeed the Pope But you are forced here by your answer to intimate to us that the Power of Election cannot be known and therefore the Pope cannot be known For 1. Here are no determinate Electors mentioned and therefore it seems none known to you And no wonder for if you confine it to the people or to the Cardinals or to the Emperours or to Councils you cut off all your Popes that were chosen by the other waies 2. Nor do you determine of any particular discernable note by which the Electors and power of election may be known to the Church But all these patches make up your description 1. It must be those that are esteemed fit for the charge 2. And that by those to whom it belongs 3. And that by custome 4. And that approved 5. And the Church must be satisfied with the election O miserable body then that hath been so oft headless as Rome hath been 1. Will esteeming them fit serve turn though they be unfit then it is not the fitness that is necessary but the estimation true or false 2. But why did you not tell us to whom it is that it belongs to esteem the Choosers fit Here you were at a streight But is not this to say nothing while you pretend to speak and to hide what you pretend to open 3. And who knows what custome and of what continuance you mean Primitive custom went one way and afterward custom went another way and later custom hath varied from both and hath the power of Election changed so oft 4. And who is it that must approve this custom and what approbation must there be All these are meer hiding and not resolving of the doubt and tell us that a Pope is a thing invisible or unknown 5. And your last assureth us that your succession was interrupted through many usurpations yea indeed that you never had a Pope For the Church was unsatisfied with the election of abundance of your Popes when Whores and Simony and Murder and power set them up And most of the Church through the world is unsatisfied with them still to this day And you have no way to know whether the greater part of the Church is satisfied or not for non-resistance is no sign of satisfaction where men have not opportunity or power to resist And when one part of Europe was for one Pope and another for another through so many Schisms who knows which had the approbation of that which may be called the Church R. B. Qu. 4. Is Consecration necessary and by whom ad esse Mr. J. Answ. It is not absolutely necessary ad esse R. B. Reply Qu. 4. Reply If consecration be not necessary to the Papacy then it is not necessary that this or that man consecrate him more then another And then it is not necessary to a Bishop And then the want of it makes no interruption in succession in any Church any more then in yours R. B. Qu. 5. What 〈◊〉 or proof is necessary to your Subjects Mr. J. Answ. So much as is necessary to oblige them to accept of other Elected Princes to be their Soveraigns R. B. Reply Qu. 5. Reply When you have answered to the forementioned thirty doubts we shall know what that general signifieth Mr. J. Bishops I mean by Bishop such a Christian Pastor as hath power and jurisdiction to govern the inferior Pastors Clergy and people within his Diocesse and to confer holy orders to such as are subject to him R. B. Of Bishops Qu. 1. Do you mean that he must have this jure divino or humano and if jure divino whether mediately or immediately Mr. J. Answ. The definition abstracts from particulars and subsists without determining that question R. B. Reply Of Bishops Qu. 1. Repl. 1. You before seem to yeild that the Papacy is but jure humano and therefore sure of no necessity to salvation For if man can change the power of election and the foundation be humane it s like the relation is but humane And therefore if Bishops must be jure divino they are more excellent and necessary then the Pope 2. How gross a subterfuge is this either the Bishop in question is a divine creature or a humane If a divine as you may manifest it or express it at least so you ought it being no indifferent thing to turn a divine office and Church into an humane If he be not Divine he is not of necessity to a divine Church nor to salvation And yet thus your R. Smith Bishop of Calcedon ubi supra confesseth it to be no point of your faith that the Pope is St. Peters successor jure divino And if you leave it indifferent to be believed or not that both your Pope and Bishops are
necessary to the being of a true particular Church Bellarmine granteth Lib. 3. de Eccles. c. 10. that it is indeed to us uncertain that our Pastors have potestatem ordinis jurisdictionis and that we have but a moral certainty that they are true Bishops though we may know that they hold Christs place and that we owe them obedience and that to know that they are Our Pastors non requiritur nec fides nec Character Ordinis nec legitima electio sed solum ut habeantur pro talibus ab Ecclesia i. e. It is not requisite that they have faith or the Character of Order or lawful election but only that they be taken for such by the Church And if it be enough that their Church repute their Pastors to be elected ordained and believers though they are not so indeed then can no more be necessary to ours We repute ours as confidently to be lawfully elected and ordained as they do theirs 3. It is contrary to the Papists own opinion that any Consecration much less Canonical is necessary to the being of their Vniversal Head I need not cite their Authors for this as long as you have 1. The History of their Practices And 2. The confession of this learned man that I dispute with in the explication of the term Pope in these his last Papers And that which is not necessary to their Pope cannot by them be made necessary to our Bishops 4. Nothing in Church History more certain then that the Church of Rome hath had no continued succession of a truely elected or ordained Pope according to their own Canons 1. If Infidelity or Heresie judged by a Council in the case of Honorius Ioh. 23. Eugenius c. will not prove a nullity and intercision 2. If Simony Murder Adultery c. will not prove it 3. If about fourty years Schisme at once will not prove it none knowing who was the true Pope but by the prevalency of his secular power and their writers confessing that it is known to none but God 4. If intrusion without any just election will not prove it Then there is no danger to those Churches that are lyable to no such accusations But if any or all of these will prove it the Roman intercision is beyond dispute as I shall further manifest on any just call if it be denyed 5. The standing Law and Institution of Christ is it that gives the Power by imposing the duty of Ministration and Ordination only determineth of the person that shall receive it together with election and solemnizeth it by Investiture as Coronation to a King that is a King before I have already proved that an uninterrupted succession of Regular Ordination is no more necessary to the being of a Church then uninterrupted succession of Regular Coronation is to the being of a King or Kingdom which I am ready to make good 6. This whole case of Ordination I have already spoken to so carefully and fully according to my measure in my second Dispute of Church Government that I shall suppose that man hath said nothing to me requiring my reply on this point that doth not answer that And to write the same thing here over again cannot fairly be expected 7. Voetius de desperata causa Papatus hath copiously done the same against Iansenius which they should answer satisfactorily before they call for more 8. The Nullity which they suppose to make the Intercision is either the Ordination we had from the Papist Bishops before our Reformation or the Ordination that we received since If the former be a nullity then all the Papists Ordinations are null and so they nullifie their Church and Ministry That the latter is no nullity we are ready to make good against any of them all Object But if you own your Ordination as from the Church of Rome you own their Church Answ. We consider them 1. As Christian Pastors 2. As Popish Pastors As Christian Pastors in the Catholike Church their Ordination is no more a nullity than their Baptizing which we count valid But as Popish they have no authority for either Object But they gave both Baptism and Ordination as Papists and it must be judged of by the intention of the giver and receiver Answ. It is the Baptism and Ordination of Christs Institution as such which was pretended to be given and received Could we prove that they Administred any other or otherwise they say they would disown it As such therefore we must take it till we can prove that they destroy the very essence of it If it be given and taken secondarily as Popish the scab of their corruption polluteth it but not nullifieth it So they profess themselves first Ministers of Christ and but subordinately as they think of the Pope so much therefore as belongs to them in their first and lawful relation may be valid though so much as respecteth their usurped relation be sinful Had I been baptized or ordained by one of their Priests I would disown all the corruptions of them but not the baptism and ordination it self 9. There is no necessity to the being or well-being of a particular Church that it hath continued from the Apostles daies or that its particular Ministry have had no intercision If Germany were converted but lately to the Christian Faith it may be nevertheless a true part of the Catholike Church If Ierusalem had sometime a Church and sometime none it may have now a true Church nevertheless 10. If our Ordination had failed by an intercision it might as well be repaired from other Churches that have had a continued succession as from Rome And much better because without participation of their peculiar corruptions Or if any Bishops that were of the Papal faction should repent of their Poperie and not of their Ordination they might Ordain us as Bishops and repair our breach And indeed that was the way of our continued Ordination Many that repented that they were Popish Prelates continued the office of Christian Bishops and by such our Ancestors were Ordained As Christianity and Episcopacy were before Popery and so are they still separable from it and may continue when it is renounced Besides what I have more fully said in the foresaid dispute of Ordination I see no need of adding any more against this Objection about successive Ordination and Ministerial Power As to their other Objection which they make such a stir with and take no notice of the Answer which we have so often given viz. When every Sect pretend that they have the true Church and Ministry who shall judge I again Answer There is a Iudicium privatum and publicum A private judgement of discerning belongs to every man The publick judgement is either Civil or Ecclesiastical The Civil judgement is who shall be thus or thus esteemed of in order to Civil encouragement or discouragement as by corporal punishments or rewards This judgement belongeth only to the Civil Magistrate The Ecclesiastical
be of your Church because it is so little Catholike I am of the one universal Church which containeth all the true Christians in the world And you are of a Party which hath separated it self from most of the Christians in the world I am of that one body that is centred in Christ the Head you are of a piece of this body that hath centred in a man and oft a confessed heretical wicked man whom you take while he lives to be the infallible Judge and foundation of all your faith and hope and when he is dead perhaps pronounce him to be in hell as Bellarmine did Pope Sixtus and others commonly I know as every Sect hath a kind of unity among themselves however divided from all the rest of the Church so also hath yours but nothing will satisfie me but a Catholike Unity Church and Faith So much being premised I answer your Questions Quest. 1. Whether the Church of Rome was a true Church in the Apostles dayes Answ. The word Church signifies more things then one 1. Sometime it is used to signifie the whole mystical body of Christ containing all and only those that are justified whom Bellarmine calleth living members And in this sense the Church of Rome in the Apostles dayes was not the Church but the justified members were part of the Church 2. Sometime it is used to signifie all that profess true Christianity in the world And thus the Church of Rome was not the Church but part of it 3. It is oft used by your writers to signifie one Church that by Prerogative is the Head or Mistris of all Christians in the world to which they must all be subject and from which they must receive their name as the Kingdom of Mexico of Tripolis of Fez c. are so called from the chief Cities of the same name and from which they receive their Faith and Laws as the body hath life and motion from the head or heart In this sense the Church of Rome was no Church in the Apostles dayes 4. Sometime it is used to signifie one particular Church associated for personal Communion in Worship And thus the Church of Rome was a true Church in the Apostles dayes 5. Sometime it is used to signifie a Collection or Conjunction of many particular Churches though not all under the Bishop of one Church as their Patriarch or Metropolitan And thus the Church of Rome was no Church in the Apostles dayes but about two hundred years after Christ it was It is only the Church in the third of these senses that is in controversie between the Roman and Reformed Churches Now to your next Question Quest. 2. When was it that the Church of Rome ceased to be a true Church Answ. In the first second and third sences it never ceased to be a true Church for it never was one In the first and second sence it never was one either in title or claim I hope In the third it was never one in Title nor yet in claim for many hundred years after Christ but now it is Therefore the Question between us should not be when it ceased but when it begun to be such a Capital Ruling Church Essential to the whole In the fifth sence it never ceased otherwise then as it is swallowed up in a higher Title It begun to be a Patriarchal Church about two or three hundred years after Christ and it ceased to be meerly Patriarchal when it arrogated the Title of Vniversal or Mistris of all In the fourth sence the Question is not so easie and I shall thus answer it 1. By speaking to the use of the Question 2. By a direct answer to it 1. It is of small concernment to my salvation or yours to know whether the Church of Rome be a true particular Church or not no more then to know whether the Church of Thessalonica or Ephesus or Antioch be now a true Church In charity to them I am bound to regard it as I am bound to regard the life of my neighbour But what doth it concern my own life to know whether the Mayor and Aldermen of Worcester or Glocester be dead or alive So what doth it concern my Salvation to know whether the Church of Rome be now a true particular Church If I lived at the Antipodes or in Aethiopia and had never heard that there is such a place as Rome in the world as many a thousand Christians doubtless never heard of it this would not hinder my salvation as long as I believed in the blessed Trinity and were sanctified by the Spirit of Grace So that as I am none of their Judge so I know not that it much concerneth me to know whether they be a true particular Church save for charity or communion 2. Yet I answer it more directly 1. If they do not by their errors so far overthrow the Christian faith which they profess as that it cannot practically be believed by them then are they a true particular Church or part of the universal Church 2. And I am apt to hope at least of most that they do not so hold their errors but that they retain with them so much of the essentials of Religion as may denominate them a true professing Church More plainly Rome is considered first as Christian secondly as Papal As Christian it is a true Church As Papal it is no true Church For Popery is not the Church according to Christs Institution but a dangerous corruption in the Church As a Leprosie is not the man but the disease of the man Yet he that is a Leper may be a mâ—â— And he that is a Papist may be a Christian But 1. Not as he is a Papist 2. And he is but a leprous or diseased Christian. So much to your Questions By this much you may see that it no way concerneth me to prove when Rome ceased to be a true Church For if you mean such a Church as Corinth Philippi Ephesus c. was that is but a part of the Catholike Church so I stick not much saving in point of Charity whether it be true or false But if you mean as your party doth a Mistris Church to Rule the whole and denominate the Catholike Church Roman so I say its Vsurpation is not ceased that 's the misery and its just title never did begin and its claim was not of many hundred years after Christ so that your Question requireth no further Answer But what if you had put the Question At what time it was that your Church began to claim this universal Dominion I should give you these two answers 1. When I understand that it is of any great moment to the decision of our controversie I shall tell you my opinion of the man that first laid the claim and the year when 2. But it is sufficient for me to prove that from the beginning it was not so Little did the Bishops of Rome before Constantines dayes dream of governing all
told me those with whom he had to do about it were much offended with him in so much that he intimated himself to be apprehensive of danger from some of them yet he seemed resolved to adventure whatsoever might befall him in that respect rather then he would stifle those convictions which by Mr. Baxters letter had been begotten in him This letter of Mr. Baxters together with The Safe Religion a Book which he did refer him to either then or near that time in the press which he went for and had of the Stationer upon Mr. Baxters account which I had almost forgot gave him such resolution and satisfaction that he thereupon altered his judgement and practice and waited upon the Ordinances here in London in our Congregations for some time I my self having seen him at the morning exercise in London what further effects it wrought upon him I know not for that he left the City and went over into Flanders as his Mother hath informed me and is since dead Sir Your affectionate friend to serve you T. S. For Mr. William Johnson Sir WHen I was invited to this Disputation with you I entertained hopes from your profest desires of close argumentation that we should speedily bring it to such an issue as might in some good measure answer our endeavours in taking off the covering that Sophistry and carnal interest had cast upon the truth When my necessary employments denyed me the leisure of reading over your second Papers for some weeks and when the loss of my Reply by the Carrier and the difficulty of procuring another Copy had caused a little longer delay you urged so hard for a Reply as put me in some further hopes that you were resolved to go through with it your self But after near a twelve months expectation of a Rejoinder and of the Proof of your own succession from the Apostles being here at London I desired you to resolve me whether I might expect any such Return and Performance from you or not And when you would not promise it I took up the thoughts of publishing what had past between us But upon further urging you some moneths after you renewed my hopes which caused me to make some stay of my publication and to desire you to give me your sense of the most used terms promising you that I shall do the like when you require it which I am ready to perform But yet I hear nothing to this day of your Answer to my Papers or the Performance of what is incumbent on you for the justification of your Church And therefore having waited and importuned you in vain so long and finding by your last that you cannot or will not so explicate your terms as to be understood without which there is no disputing and also perceiving that my abode in London is like to be but little longer my discretion and the ends of my writing have commanded me to forbear no longer the publication of what hath past between us For though the work be not copious and elaborate yet being on a subject which your party do so much insist upon I am assured it may be of common use And I know that the publication is no breach of any promise on my part nor do I perceive how it can be any way injurious to you and therefore I see nothing to prohibite it And I am not willing to be used as Mr. Gunning and Mr. Pierson were by the partial unhansome publication of another If yet I may prevail with you to justifie your cause as you are engaged I must entreat you specially to try your strength for the proof of your own succession for we are most confident that its a notorious impossibility which you undertake Our Arguments against it are such as these 1. That Church which since the time of Christ hath received a new essential part hath not its being successively from the Apostles But such is the Church of Rome Ergo The Major is undenyable The Minor is thus proved A Vice-Christ or Vice-head or Governour of the Universal Church is an essential part of the now Church of Rome But a Vice-Christ or Vice-head or Goveâ—â—â—â— of the Universal Church is new or a â—oveâ—â— or hath not been from the time of Christ on earth Ergo the Church of Rome since the time of Christ hath received a new essential part The novelty I have here and elsewhere proved And Blondel and Molinaeus against Perron have done it more at large 2. That Church which hath had frequent and long interceisions in its head or essential part hath not had a continued succession from the Apostles But such is the Church of Rome Ergo The Minor is here proved and some hints of it are in the Appendix 3. That Church which hath had many new essential Articles of Religion hath not had a continued succession from the Apostles For if the essence be new the Church is new But such is the Church of Rome Ergo First it is commonly maintained by you that all Articles are Essential or Fundamental and you deride the contrary doctrine from the Protestants Secondly that you have had many new Articles of Religion of faith and points of worship is proved by our writers and your own confessions See Molinaeus de Novit Papismi Prove a succession of all that is de fide determined in your Councils or but of all in Pope Pius his Creed and the Council of Trent alone or of all that with you is de fide of those two and thirty points which I have named in my Key for Catholikes p. 143 144 145. Chap. 25. Detect 16. and I will yeild you all the cause or I will profess my belief of every one of those points of which you prove such a succession as held by the Catholike Church as you now hold them Read and answer my Detect 21. Cap. 33. in my Key for Catholikes And how far you own Innovations see what I have proved ibid. cap. 35. and 36. But these arguings being works of supererogation I shall trouble you here with no more but wait for such proof of all your essentials as we give you of all ours In the mean time I shall endeavour so to defend the Truth as not to lose or weaken Charity but approve my self An unfeigned lover of the Truth and you Richard Baxter Sep. 1. 1660. FINIS Syll. 2. * * But how far from truth this is appears from St. Leo in his Sermons de natali suo where he saies Sedes Roma Petri quicquid non possidet almis Religione tenet and by this that the Abyssines of Ethiopia were under the Patriarch of Alexandria antiently which Patriarch was under the Authority of the Romane Bishop as we shall presently see * * See Rosse his view of Religions p. 99. 489 492 c. Where he saies that they circumcise their children the eighth day they use Mosaical ceremonies They mention not the council of Calcedon because saies he they