all Churches in order to their being true Churches as is plain by the rise of this Controversie for Mr. Fisher was proving the Greek Church to be no true Church and in order to that proves that she erred Fundamentally for which he makes Vse of this Medium That whatever is defined by the Church is Fundamental So that the whole Process of the Dispute lyes thus TWhat ever Church is guilty of a Fundamental Errour ceaseth to be a true Church but the Greek Church is guilty of a Fundamental Errour ergo The Minor being denyed he thus proves it If whatever is defined by the Church be Fundamental then the Greek Church is guilty of a Fundamental errour because she denyes something defined by the Church but whatever is defined by the Church is Fundamental which is the thing his Lordship denyes and his adversary is bound to prove So that any one who was not resolved to wink as hard as you do might easily see the state of the Controversie doth not concern what things are Fundamental supposing men know them to be sufficiently propounded but what things are so necessary to be owned for Fundamentals that upon the denying them a Church ceaseth to be a true Church Yet this mistake as gross and palpable as it is runs through your whole Discourse of Fundamentals which without it cannot hold together If you will therefore prove that besides such things whose necessity ariseth from the matter there are other from the Formal Object which all Churches are equally bound to believe in order to their being true Churches you do something but not before But we must still attend your Motions especially when they tend towards proofs as yours do now For say you Now I shew the difficulty being understood as it ought to be of the Formal Object whereby Points of Faith are manifested to Christians that all Points defined by the Church as matter of Faith are Fundamental that is necessary to Salvation to be believed by all those to whom they are sufficiently propounded to be so defined by this Argument Whosoever refuseth to believe any thing sufficiently propounded to him for a truth revealed from God commits a sin damnable and destructive of Salvation But whosoever refuses to believe any Point sufficiently propounded to him for defined by the Church as matter of Faith refuses to believe a thing sufficiently propounded to him for a truth revealed from God Ergo Whosoever refuses to believe any Point sufficiently propounded to him for defined by the Church as matter of Faith commits a sin damnable and destructive of Salvation Before you proceed to the proof of your Minor several things must here be considered that we may better understand your meaning and know what it is you intend to prove Especially what you intend by sufficient Proposition Do you mean such a Proposition as carries evidence along with it or not in which case the very understanding the terms is sufficient Proposition as that two and two make four but I suppose you mean not this therefore it must be the sufficient Proposition of something which wants natural evidence and therefore something else must be required besides the propounding the thing to make the Proposition be said to be sufficient For Sufficiency relates to some end so that a sufficient Proposition must be such a Proposition as is sufficient for its end now the end of the Proposition of Matters of Faith is that they may be believed and therefore the sufficiency of the Proposition lyes in the Arguments or Motives inducing men to believe Now the Objects of Faith being of a different nature the Sufficiency of the Proposition must be taken from a respect to them for in things which are so clearly revealed as necessary to Salvation that none who acknowledge the Scripture to be God's Word can doubt but such things are necessary in this case the Sufficiency of the Proposition lyes in the Evidence of Divine Revelation and the clearness of it to all understandings who consider it and the Reasons or Motives of Faith in that case are the same with those which induce men to believe that the Scripture it self is from Divine Revelation But there being other things in Scripture which neither appear so clear or so necessary to be believed by all something else is required in order to a sufficient Proposition of them and in order to the making any of these things universally obligatory to Christians on pain of damnation for not believing them these things are necessary 1. It must be much clearer than the thing which is propounded to be believed on the account of it for to propound a thing to be believed by something at least as disputable as the matter it self cannot certainly be call'd a sufficient Proposition 2. It must be antecedently proved to be a true and certain Proposition before any thing can be believed on the account of it For if men cannot see any reason to believe that there is any necessary Connexion between that which you call a sufficient Proposition and any matter of Faith they cannot be guilty of any sin at all in not believing what you think is sufficiently propounded But in this case it is not your judgement what Proposition is sufficient that makes it so but the Reason of the Thing and the Evidence that God hath appointed that way to reveal his Will to men and that what is so propounded is necessary to be believed As for instance suppose you were told by the Greek Church that to believe the Pope's Supremacy jure divino were a damnable sin and that whosoever did not believe this being sufficiently propounded to them as a matter of Faith as defined by the Church were guilty of a sin destructive to Salvation what answer would you return in this case Would you not say That the Proposition though judged sufficient by them is not judged so by you and that they must first prove that whatever their Church defines as a matter of Faith is to be believed for such before the other can be believed on the account of it Just the same answer we return to you prove first of all to us in a clear and evident manner that God hath appointed the Definition of your Church as the means whereby we may be infallibly assured what is Matter of Faith and what not and then we may grant that what your Church propounds as a matter of Faith is sufficiently propounded as a matter revealed from God but not before For while I see no reason to believe the Churches Proposition to be sufficient I have no reason to believe that what she propoundes as defined for matter of Faith is truly so And as long as I can see no reason to believe it prove the disbelief of it to be a sin in me when you can Thus we see how far from being evident that Major of yours is though you are pleased to tell us it is so but we do not believe your Defining
none of your own proposing but yet your very calling it a pertinent Question renders it liable to suspicion and upon examination it will be found both unreasonable and impertinent The Question was What Points the Bishop would account Fundamental and that you may shew how necessary this Question was you add For if he will have some Fundamental which we are bound to believe under pain of damnation and others not Fundamental which we may without sin question or deny it behoves us much to know what they are I have ever desired say you a satisfactory Answer from Protestants to this Question but could never yet have it in the sense demanded An unhappy man you are who it seems have in your time propounded more foolish Questions than a great many wise men were never able to answer But is it not every jot as reasonable That since your Church pretends to the power of making things necessary to the Salvation of all which were not so before we should have from you an exact Catalogue of all your Churches Definitions If for that you referr us to the Confession of Faith at the end of the Council of Trent so may not we with far greater reason send you back to the Apostolical Creed there being no objection which will hold against this being a Catalogue of our Fundamentals but will hold against that Being a Catalogue of yours Nay you assert such things your self concerning the necessity of believing things defined by the Church as make it impossible for you to assign the definite number of such things as are necessary for all persons and therefore it is very unreasonable to demand it of us For still when you speak that the things defined by the Church are necessary to the Salvation of all you add Where they are sufficiently propounded so that the measure of Fundamentals depends on the sufficiency of the Proposition Now will you undertake to assign what number of things are sufficiently propounded to the belief of all persons Can you set down the exact bounds as to all individuals when their ignorance is inexcusable and when not Can you tell what the measure of their capacity was what allowance God makes for the prejudices of Education where there is a mind desirous of instruction Will you say God accounts all those things sufficiently proposed to mens belief which you judge to be so or that all men are bound to think those things necessary to Salvation which you think so by what means shall the Churches Power of defining matters of Faith be sufficiently proposed to men as an Article of Faith Either by its own Definition or without If by its the thing is proposed to be believed which is supposed to be believed already before that Proposition or else the Enquiry returns with as great force Why should I believe that Definition more than any other if without it then the sufficiency of Proposition and the necessity of believing depends not on the Churches Definition These Questions I am apt to think as pertinent and necessary as yours was and now you know my sense and are so discontented you could never meet with a satisfactory Answer from Protestants prevent the same dissatisfaction in me by giving a punctual Answer to such necessary Questions But if you think the demands unreasonable because they depend on such things which none can know but God himself I pray accept of that as a satisfactory Answer to your own very pertinent Question But if the Question be propounded not concerning what things are Fundamental and necessary to particular persons which on the reasons formerly given it is impossible to give a Catalogue of but of such things which are necessary to be owned for Christian Communion as I have shewed this Question of Fundamentals ought only to be taken here then his Lordship's Answer was more pertinent than the Question viz. That all the Points of the Creed were such For saith he Since the Fathers make the Creed the Rule of Faith since the agreeing sense of Scripture with those Articles are the two Regular Precepts by which a Divine is governed about the Faith since your own Council of Trent decrees That it is that principle of Faith in which all that profess Christ do necessarily agree Fundamentum firmum unicum not the firm only but the only Foundation since it is Excommunication ipso jure for any man to contradict the Articles contained in that Creed since the whole body of Faith is so contained in the Creed as that the substance of it was believed even before the coming of Christ though not so expresly as since in the number of the Articles Since Bellarlarmin confesses That all things simply necessary for all mens Salvation are in the Creed and Decalogue What reason can you have to except Thus far his Lordship though from hence it appears what little reason you have to except yet because of that I expect your Exceptions the sooner and therefore very fairly passing by the sense of the Fathers you ask concerning the Council of Trent What if that call the Creed the only Foundation Are you come to a What if with the Council of Trent But I suppose it is not from disputing its Authority but its meaning for you would seem to understand it only of prime Articles of Faith and not of such as all are bound upon sufficient Proposition expresly to believe for that is all the sense I can make of your words But whoever was so silly as to say That all such things which are to be believed on sufficient Proposition that they are revealed by God are contained in the Creed When you seem to imply That this was the sense the Question was propounded in it is a sign you little attend to the Consequence of things when it is most evident that the Question was started concerning the Greek Church and therefore must referr only to such Fundamentals as are necessary to be owned in order to the Being of a true Church And when you can prove that any other Articles are necessary to that besides those contained in the Creed you will do something to purpose but not before But you suppose them to take the Creed in a very large sense who would lap up in the folds of it all particular Points of Faith whatever and I am sure this is not the sense it is to be taken in here nor that in which his Lordship took it He saith indeed That if he had said that those Articles only which are expressed in the Creed are Fundamental it would have been hard to have excluded the Scripture upon which the Creed it self in every Point is grounded For nothing is supposed to shut out its own Foundation And this is built on very good reason For the things contained in the Creed are proposed as matters to be believed all Faith must suppose a Divine Testimony revealing those things to us as the ground on which we
believe them this Divine Testimor is never pretended to be contained in the Creed but that it is only a summary Collection of the most necessary Points which God hath revealed and therefore something else must be supposed as the ground and formal reason why we assent to the truth of those things therein contained So that the Creed must suppose the Scripture as the main and only Foundation of believing the matters of Faith therein contained But say you If all the Scripture be included in the Creed there appears no great reason of scruple why the same should not be said of Traditions and other Points especially of that for which we admit Scripture it self But do you make no difference between the Scripture being supposed as the ground of Faith and all Scripture being contained in the Creed And doth not his Lordship tell you That though some Articles may be Fundamental which are infolded in the Creed it would not follow that therefore some unwritten Traditions were Fundamental for though they may have Authority and use in the Church as Apostolical yet are they not Fundamental in the Faith And as for that Tradition That the Books of Holy Scripture are Divine and Infallible in every part he promises to handle it when he comes to the proper place for it And there we shall readily attend what you have to object to what his Lordship saith about it But yet you say His Lordship doth not answer the Question as far as it was necessary to be answered we say he doth No say you For the Question arising concerning the Greek Churches errour whether it were Fundamental or no Mr. Fisher demanded of the Bishop What Points he would account Fundamental to which he answers That all Points contained in the Creed are such but yet not only they and therefore this was no direct Answer to the Question for though the Greeks errour was not against the Creed yet it may be against some other Fundamental Article not contained in the Creed This you call fine shuffling To which I answer That when his Lordship speaks of its not being Fundamentum unicum in that sense to exclude all things not contained in the Creed from being Fundamental he spake it with an immediate respect to the belief of Scripture as an Infallible Rule of Faith For saith he The truth is I said and say still That all the Points of the Apostles Creed as they are there expressed are Fundamental And herein I say no more than some of your best learned have said before me But I never said or meant that they only are Fundamental that they are Fundamentum unicum is the Council of Trent's 't is not mine Mine is That the belief of Scripture to be the Word of God and Infallible is an equal or rather a preceding Principle of Faith with or to the whole body of the Creed Now what reason can you have to call this shuffling unless you will rank the Greeks errour equal with the denying the Scripture to be the Word of God otherwise his Lordship's Answer is as full and pertinent as your cavil is vain and trifling His Lordship adds That this agrees with one of your own great Masters Albertus Magnus who is not far from the Proposition in terminis To which your Exceptions are so pitiful that I shall answer them without reciting them for he that supposeth the sense of Scripture joyned with the Articles of Faith to be the Rule of Faith as Albertus doth must certainly suppose the belief of the Scripture as the Word of God else how is it possible its sense should be the Rule of Faith Again it is not enough for you to say That he believed other Articles of Faith besides these in the Creed but that he made them a Rule of Faith together with the sense of Scripture 3. All this while here is not one word of Tradition as the ground on which these Articles of Faith were to be believed If this therefore be your way of answering I know none will contend with you for fine shuffling What follows concerning the right sense of the Article of the Descent of Christ into Hell since you say You will not much trouble your self about it as being not Fundamental either in his Lordships sense or ours I look on that expression as sufficient to excuse me from undertaking so needless a trouble as the examining the several senses of it since you acknowledge That no one determinate sense is Fundamental and therefore not pertinent to our business Much less is that which follows concerning Mr. Rogers his Book and Authority in which and that which depends upon it I shall only give you your own words for an Answer That truly I conceive it of small importance to spend much time upon this subject and shall not so far contradict my judgement as to do that which I think when it is done is to very little purpose Of the same nature is that of Catharinus for it signifies nothing to us whether you account him an Heretick or no who know Men are not one jot more or less Heretick for your accounting them to be so or not You call the Bishop your good friend in saying That all Protestants do agree with the Church of England in the main Exceptions which they joyntly take against the Roman Church as appears by their several Confessions For say you by their agreeing in this but in little or nothing else they sufficiently shew themselves enemies to the true Church which is one and only one by Vnity of Doctrine from whence they must needs be judged to depart by reason of their Divisions As good a friend as you say his Lordship was to you in that saying of his I am sure you ill requite him for his Kindness by so palpable a falsification of his words and abuse of his meaning And all that Friendship you pretend lyes only in your leaving out that part of the Sentence which takes away all that you build on the rest For where doth his Lordship say That the Protestants only agree in their main Exceptions against the Roman Church and not in their Doctrines Nay doth he not expresly say That they agree in the chiefest Doctrines as well as main Exceptions which they take against the Church of Rome as appears by their several Confessions But you very conveniently to your purpose and with a fraud suitable to your Cause leave out the first part of agreement in the chiefest Doctrines and mention only the latter lest your Declamation should be spoiled as to your Unity and our Disagreements But we see by this by what means you would perswade men of both by Arts and Devices fit only to deceive such who look only on the appearance and outside of things and yet even there he that sees not your growing Divisions is a great stranger to the Christian world Your great Argument of the Vnity of your party because
one Visible Church free from errours and corruptions What if we should say in our own times What if in elder times For that which is possible to be may be supposed actually in any time If it be possible for one particular Church to fall into errours and corruptions Why is it not for another unless some particular priviledge of Infallibility be pretended but that is not our present Question if it be possible for every particular Church to fall into errour Why may not that possibility come into act in one Age as well as several Is there any promise that there shall be a succession and course of erring in Churches that one Church must erre for one age and another for the next but that it shall never fall out that by any means whatsoever they shall erre together If there be no such promise to the contrary the reason of the thing will hold that they may all erre at the same time No say you for then it would follow that the Catholick Church might erre To that I answer 1. Either you mean by that that all societies in the Christian world may concurr in the same errour or else that several of them may have several errours and this latter is it only which you prove for you do not suppose that the Romanists Hussites Albigenses c. were all guilty of the same errours but that these several societies were guilty of several errours and therefore from hence it follows not that they may all concurr in the same errour which is the only way to prove that the Church as Catholick may erre for otherwise you only prove that the several particular Churches which make up the Catholick may fall into errour 2. Supposing all these Churches should agree in one errour which is more than you have proved or it may be can have you proved that they concurr in such an errour which destroies the Being of the Catholick Church For you would do well to evince that the Church is secured from any but such errours which destroy its Being for the means of proving That the Catholick Church cannot erre are built on the promises of its perpetuity now those can only prove that the Church is secured from Fundamental errours for those are such only which destroy its Being And so his Lordship tells you That the whole Church cannot universally erre in the Doctrine of Faith is most true and granted by divers Protestants so you will but understand it s not erring in absolute Fundamental Doctrines and this he proves from that promise of Christ That the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it So that the Catholick Churche's not erring and the perpetuity of the Catholick Church do with us mean the same thing For his Lordship grants That she may erre in superstructures and deductions and other By and Vnnecessary truths if her curiosity or other weakness carry her beyond or cause her to fall short of her Rule There is then a great difference between saying That the Catholick Church cannot erre which is no more than to say That there shall be alwaies a Catholick Church and saying That there must be alwaies some one Visible Church which must be free from all errour and corruption For this we deny and you produce no reason at all to prove it Granting that all particular Churches whether of Romanists Greeks or others are subject to errours and corruptions we assert no more of them than you grant your selves that any particular Church is subject to for the only ground why you would have your Church exempt from errour is the supposing her not to be a particular but the Catholick Church which implies that if she were only a particular Church as she is no more she might be subject to errours as well as other Churches And what incongruity then there is in asserting that there may be no one Visible Church of any particular denomination free from all errour and corruption I cannot understand But further you say If there were no one Visible Church then free from errour it follows not only for some time but for many ages before Luther yea even up to the Apostles times there was no one Visible Church untainted throughout the whole world Not to meddle with the truth of the thing Whether there were so or no the consequence is that we are now to examine that if it were so in Luthers time it must be so even up to the Apostles times The proof of which depends upon the impossibility of a Churches degeneracy in Faith or Manners and so supposeth the thing in question that there must be some one Visible Church absolutely exempt from all impossibility of errour For otherwise that might be true in one age which might not in another For although we say that particular Churches may erre and be corrupt we do not say that it is necessary they should alwaies be so For in some ages particular Churches may be free from errour and corruption and yet in another age be overspread with them And thus we assert it to have been with the Roman Church for his Lordship saith In the prime times it was a most right and orthodox Church but in the immediate times before Luther or in some ages before that it was a corrupt and tainted Church And so in those times in which it was right those might be heretical who did not communicate with it not meerly because they did not communicate with it but because in not communicating with a right and orthodox Church they shewed themselves guilty of some errour or corruption We see then there is no connexion in the world in the parts of your consequence That if it were so at one time it must be so alwaies if in the time of Luther it must be so even up to the Apostles times 3. From hence you say it will follow That it will be necessary to separate from the external communion of the whole Church I answer there can be no separation from the whole Church but in such things wherein the Vnity of the whole Church lyes for separation is a violation of some Vnion now when men separate from the errours of all particular Churches they do not separate from the whole because those things which one separates from those particular Churches for are not such as make all them put together to be the whole or Catholick Church This must be somewhat further explained There are two things considerable in all particular Churches those things which belong to it as a Church and those things which belong to it as a particular Church Those things which belong to it as a Church are the common ligaments or grounds of union between all particular Churches which taken together make up the Catholick Church Those things which belong to it as a particular Church are such as it may retain the essence of a Church without Now I say Whosoever separates from any particular Church much more from
as immediate a revelation as the first discovery of it As is clear in the Council of the Apostles for I hope you will not deny but the non-obligation of the ceremonial Law was in some manner revealed to them before and yet I hope you will not say but the Apostles had an immediate revelation as to what they decreed in that Council It is very plain therefore that when you say General Councils neither have erred nor can err in their definitions they usurp as great a priviledge thereby as ever the Apostles had and in order to it must have as immediate an inspiration For never was there any such Infallibility either in the Prophets or Apostles as did suppose an absolute impossibility of errour but it was wholly hypothetical in case of Divine assistance which hindred them from any capacity of erring so long as that continued with them and no longer For inspiration was no permanent habit but a transient act in them and that being removed they were lyable to errours as well as others from whence it follows that where revelations were most immediate they did no more then what you assume to your Church viz. preserve them from actual errour in declaring Gods will So that nothing can be more evident then that you challenge as great an Infallibility and as immediate assistance of Gods Spirit in Councils as ever the Prophets and Apostles had And therefore that Divine was in the right of whom Canus speaks who asserted That since General Councils were Infallible their definitions ought to be equalled with the Scriptures themselves And although Canus and others dislike this it is rather because of the odium which would follow it than for any just reason they give why it should not follow For they not only suppose as great a Certainty or Infallibility in the Decrees of both but an equal obligation to internal assent in those to whom they are declared Which doth further prove that the revelation must be immediate for if by vertue of those definitions we are obliged to assent to the Doctrines contained in them as Infallibly true there must be an immediate Divine Authority which must command our Assent For nothing short of that can oblige us to believe any thing as of Divine revelation now Councils require that we must believe their definitions to be Divine truths though men were not obliged to believe them to be so before those definitions For that is your express Doctrine That though the matters decreed in Councils were in some manner revealed before yet not so as to oblige all men with an explicite assent to believe them but after the definitions of Councils they are bound to do it So that though there be not an object newly revealed yet there ariseth a new obligation to internal assent which obligation cannot come but from immediate Divine Authority If you say The obligation comes not simply by vertue of the Councils definitions but by a command extant in Scripture whereby all are bound to give this assent to the decrees of Councils I then say we must be excused from it till you have discharged this new obligation upon your self by producing some express testimony of Scripture to that purpose which is I think sufficient to keep our minds at liberty from this internal assent to the definitions of General Councils by vertue of any Infallibility in them And thus having more at large considered the nature of this Infallibility which you challenge to General Councils and having shewed that it implyes as immediate a revelation as the Apostles had the second thing is sufficiently demonstrated That this Infallibility cannot suppose discursiveness with fallibility in the use of the means because these two are repugnant to each other The next thing to be considered is Stapletons argument why Councils must be Prophetical in the conclusion because that which is determined by the Church is matter of Faith and not of knowledge and the assent required else would not be an assent of Faith but an habit of knowledge To which his Lordship Answers That he sees no inconvenience in it if it be granted for one and the same conclusion may be Faith to the believer that cannot prove and knowledge to the learned that can Which he further explains thus Some supernatural principles which reason cannot demonstrate simply must be supposed in order to Faith but these principles being owned reason being thereby inlightned that may serve to convert or convince Philosophers and the great men of reason in the very point of Faith where it is at the highest This he brings down to the business of Councils as to which he saith that the first immediate fundamental points of Faith as they cannot be proved simply by reason so neither need they be determined by any Council nor ever were they attempted they are so plain set down in Scripture If about the sense and true meaning of these or necessary deduction out of the prime Articles of Faith General Councils determine any thing as they have done at Nice and the rest there is no inconvenience that one and the same Canon of the Council should be believed as it reflects upon the Articles and grounds indemonstrable and yet known to the learned by the means and proof by which that deduction is vouched and made good And again the conclusion of a Council suppose that in Nice about the consubstantiality of Christ with the Father in it self considered is indemonstrable by reason there saith he I believe and assent in Faith but the same conclusion if you give me the ground of Scripture and the Creed for somewhat must be supposed in all whether Faith or knowledge is demonstrable by natural reason against any Arrian in the world So that he concludes The weaker sort of Christians may assent by Faith where the more learned may build it on reason the principles of Faith being supposed This is the substance of his Lordships Discourse In Answer to which you tell us That the Bishop seems to broach a new Doctrine that the assent of Faith may be an habit of knowledge But surely say you Divine Faith is according to the Apostle Heb. 11. an Argument of things which do not appear viz. by the same means by which we give this assent of Faith otherwise our Faith would not be free and meritorious An Answer I must needs say hugely suitable to your principles who are most concerned of all men to set reason at a distance from Faith and so you do sufficiently in this Discourse of it For it is no easie matter to understand what you mean but that is not to be wondered at since you make obscurity so necessary to Faith Divine Faith is you say an Argument of things which do not appear viz. by the same means by which we give this assent of Faith Do you mean that the objects of Faith do not appear or that the reason of believing doth not If only the former
and such as are capable of such easie impressions as these are His Lordship from that which was expressed comes to that which was implyed in this Argument viz. That we cannot be saved because we are out of the Church As to which he saith We are not out of the Catholick Church because not within the Roman For the Roman Church and the Church of England are but two distinct members of that Catholick Church which is spread over the face of the earth If you can prove that Rome is properly the Catholick Church it self speak out and prove it This you say you have done already but how poorly let the Reader judge But when you add That in the day of account the Roman Church will be found not an elder Sister but a Mother it will be well for her if it prove not only in the sense wherein Babylon the Great is called so viz. the Mother of Harlots and abominations of the Earth The Controversie you tell us goes on touching Roman Catholicks Salvation and we must follow it though without breaking it into several Chapters as you do that so we may lay together all that belongs to the same subject And here his Lordship distinguishes the case of such whose calling and sufficiency gives them a greater capacity for understanding the Truth and such whom as S. Augustin speaks the simplicity of believing makes safe So that there 's no Question saith he but many were saved in corrupted times of the Church when their leaders unless they repented before death were lost Which he understands of such Leaders as refuse to hear the Churches instruction or to use all the means they can to come to the knowledge of the Truth For if they do this erre they may but Hereticks they are not as is most manifest in S. Cyprian 's case of Re-baptization But when Leaders add Schism to Heresie and Obstinacy to both they are lost without Repentance while many that succeed them in the errour only without obstinacy may be saved That is in case they hold these errours not supinely not pertinaciously not uncharitably not factiously i. e. in case all endeavours be used after Truth and Peace and all expressions of Charity shewed to all who retain an internal Communion with the whole visible Church of Christ in the fundamental points of Faith Such as these he confesses to be in a state of Salvation though their mis-leaders perish This is the summ of his Lordships discourse Which you call a heavy doom against all the Roman Doctors in general for what you say before is a meer declamation and repetition of what hath been often examined But you ask How could they be all lost who by the Bishops own Principles were members of the true visible Church of Christ by reason of their being baptized and holding the Foundation But Doth his Lordship say that all such as are within the Church are undoubtedly saved For he only faith That no man can be said simply to be out of the visible Church that is baptized and holds the Foundation The most then that can be inferred meerly from being within the Church is only the possibility of Salvation notwithstanding which I suppose you will not deny but many who have a possibility of Salvation may yet certainly perish For many may hold the Foundation it self doctrinally who may not hold it savingly and therefore it is a pitiful inference because he grants they are members of the Church therefore it follows from his Principles they cannot be lost But you are in a very sad condition if you have no other ground for your Salvation but being members of that which you account the Catholick Church When Christ himself saith Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away How much more such who have nothing else to plead for their Salvation but that they are in the Church It is not therefore the bare doctrinal holding that Faith which makes them members of the Church which can give them a title to Salvation unless all sincere endeavours be used to find out what the will of God is and to practise it when it is known But you say Your leaders did not refuse the Churches instructions for they taught as the Church taught for many hundred years together and What other means could they be bound to use than they did to come to the knowledge of the Truth Yes there were other means which they most supinely neglected themselves and most dangerously with-held from others viz. the plain and undoubted word of God which is the only Infallible Rule of Faith And let any Church whatsoever teach against this it must incurr the same Anathema which S. Paul pronounces against an Angel from Heaven if he teaches any other Doctrine Did those then take care of their own and others souls whose greatest care was to lock the Scripture up from the view of the people and minded it so little themselves which yet alone is able to make men wise to Salvation But you take the greatest advantage of his vindication of S. Cyprian and his followers for therein you say He vindicates more the Roman Catholick Doctors who had alwaies the universal practice of the Church on their side which they opposed and condemns Protestants because if S. Cyprian 's followers were in such danger for opposing the whole Church so must they be too who you say have opposed the Churches Instruction given them by the voice of a General Council But Who is so blind as not to discern that all this proceeds upon a palpable begging the Question viz. that the whole Church is of your side and against us which I have so often discover'd to be a notorious falshood that there is no necessity at all here to repeat it But if we grant you that liberty to suppose your selves to be the whole and only Church you will not more easily acquit all your Doctors than condemn Protestants both teachers and people However by this we see that you have no other way to do the one or the other but by supposing what you can never prove and which none in their wits will ever grant you The greatest part of the thirty seventh Paragraph in his Lordships Book is you say taken up with personal matters and matters of fact in which you will not interpose and you might as well have spared your pains in that which you touch at since they are spent only upon a bare asserting the Greek Church to be guilty of fundamental errours which we have at large disproved at the very beginning but as his Lordship sayes you labour indeed but like a horse in a Mill no farther at night than at noon the same thing over and over again and so we find it almost to the end of your Book and as vain an attempt to clear your Church from any errour endangering Salvation For Whether the errours of your Church be
fundamental in themselves or only by reduction and consequence Whether you hold all fundamental points literally or no yet if we prove you guilty of any gross dangerous and damnable errours as his Lordship asserts you are that will be abundantly sufficient to our purpose that Yours cannot possibly be any safe way to Salvation And although we should grant your Church right in the exposition of the three Creeds yet if you assert any other errours of a dangerous nature your right exposition of them cannot secure the souls of men from the danger they run themselves upon by embracing the other So much for the Argument drawn from the possibility of Salvation in the Roman Church CHAP. V. The Safety of the Protestant Faith The sufficiency of the Protestant Faith to Salvation manifested by disproving the Cavils against it C's tedious Repetitions passed over The Argument from Possession at large consider'd No Prescription allowable where the Law hath antecedently determined the right Of the Infallibility of Oral Tradition That contrary to the received Doctrine of the Roman Church and in it self unreasonable The Grounds of it examined The ridiculousness of the Plea of bare Possession discovered General Answers returned to the remaining Chapters consisting wholly of things already discussed The place of S. Cyprian to Cornelius particularly vindicated The proof of Succession of Doctrine lyes on the Romanists by their own Principles ALthough this Subject hath been sufficiently cleared in the Controversie concerning the resolution of Faith yet the nature of our task requires that we so far resume the debate of it as any thing undiscussed already offers it self to consideration For I cannot think it a civil way of treating the Reader to cloy him with Tautologies or Repetitions nor can I think it a way to satisfie him rather by some incidental passages than by a full and free debate In all those things then which we have had occasion to handle already I shall remit the Reader to the precedent discourses but whatever hath the face of being new and pertinent I shall readily examine the force of it The occasion of this fresh Debate was a new Question of the Lady Whether she might be saved in the Protestant Faith In answering whereof you say The parties conferring are put into new heats Vpon my soul said the Bishop you may Vpon my soul said Mr. Fisher there 's but one saving Faith and that 's the Roman Since the confidence seems equal on both sides we must examine Which is built on the stronger reason And his Lordship's comes first to be examined which he offers very freely to examination For saith he to believe the Scripture and the Creeds to believe these in the sense of the Ancient Primitive Church to receive the four great General Councils so much magnified by Antiquity to believe all points of Doctrine generally received as fundamental in the Church of Christ is a Faith in which to live and dye cannot but give Salvation And therefore saith he I went upon sure ground in the adventure of my soul upon that Faith Besides in all the points controverted between us I would fain see any one point maintain'd by the Church of England that can be proved to depart from the foundation You have many dangerous errours about the very foundation in that which you call the Roman Faith but there I leave you to look to your own soul and theirs whom you seduce Thus far his Lordship Two things you seem to answer to this 1. That such a Faith may not be sufficient 2. That ours is not such a Faith 1. That such a Faith may not be sufficient because you suppose it necessary to believe the Infallibility of the present Church and General Councils But that we are now excused from a fresh enquiry into but you would seem to inferr it from his own principles of submission to General Councils But by what peculiar Arts you can thence draw that some thing else is necessary to be believed in order to Salvation besides what hath been owned as Fundamentals in all ages I am yet to learn And sure you were much to seek for Arguments when you could not distinguish between the necessity of external submission and internal assent But the second is the main thing you quarrel with viz. That the English-Protestant Faith is really and indeed such a Faith and this you undertake at large to disprove You ask first Whether we believe all Scripture or only a part of it we answer All without exception that is Scripture i. e. hath any evidence that ever it was of Divine Revelation In this you say we profess more then we can make good seeing we refuse many books owned for Canonical by the Primitive Church and imbrace some which were not But in both you assert that which we are sure you are never able to defend since we are content to put it upon as fair a tryal as you can desire viz. That the Church of England doth fully agree with the Primitive Church as to the Canon of Scripture Which hath been already made good by the successful diligence of a learned Bishop of our Church to whom I refer you either for satisfaction or confusion But you are the men whose bare words and bold affirmations must weigh more then the greatest evidence of reason or Antiquity You love to pronounce where you are loath to prove and think to bear men down with confidence where you are afraid to enter the lists But our Faith stands not on so sandy a Foundation to be blown down with your biggest words which have that property of wind in them to be leight and loud When you will attempt to prove that the Books call'd Apocrypha have had an equal testimony of Divine Authority with those we receive into the Canon of Scripture you may meet with a further Answer upon that Subject Just as much you say to disprove our believing Scripture and the Creeds in the Primitive Church For you say The Fathers oppose us we deny it you say The Councils condemn us we say and prove the contrary You offer again at some broken evidences of the Popes Supremacy from Councils and Fathers but those have been discussed already and the sense of the Church at large manifested to be contrary to it But I fear your matters lye very ill concocted upon your stomack you bring them us so often up but I am not bound to dance in a circle because you do so And therefore I proceed but when I hope to do so you pull me back again to the Infallibility of Councils and the Church the question of Fundamentals and the Greek Church and scarce a page between but in comes again the Popes Supremacy as fresh as if it had been never handled before But I assure you after this rate I wonder you ever came to an end for you might have writ all your life time after that manner For the
E Typographiâ prodeat opus istud cui Titulus A Rational Account of the Grounds of Protestant Religion being a Vindication of the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury's Relation of a Conference c. from the Pretended Answer by T. C. Humfr. London 2. Novemb. 1664. A Rational Account OF THE GROUNDS OF Protestant Religion BEING A VINDICATION OF THE Lord Archbishop of Canterbury's RELATION Of a CONFERENCE c. From the pretended ANSWER by T. C. Wherein the true GROUNDS of FAITH are cleared and the False discovered the CHURCH of ENGLAND Vindicated from the imputation of Schism and the most important particular Controversies between Us and Those of the Church of ROME throughly examined By EDWARD STILLINGFLEET B. D. LONDON Printed by Rob. White for Henry Mortlock at the Sign of the Phoenix in St. Pauls Church-yard near the little North-door 1665. TO HIS MOST Sacred Majesty CHARLES II. By the Grace of God King of Great Britain France and Ireland Defender of the Faith c. Most Gracious Soveraign SInce that great Miracle of Divine Providence in your Majesties most happy restauration we have seen those who before triumphed over the Church of England as dead as much expressing their envy at her resurrection Neither could it otherwise be expected but that so sudden a recovery of her former lustre would open the mouths of her weak but contentious Adversaries who see her shine in a Firmament so much above them But it is a part of her present Felicity that they are ashamed of that insulting Question What is become of your Church now and are driven back to their old impertinency Where was your Church before Luther They might as well alter the date of it and ask Where she was before your Majesties restauration For as she only suffered an Eclipse in the late confusions no more did she though of a longer stay in the times before the Reformation And it was her great Honour that she was not awakened out of it as of old they fancied by the beating of drums or the rude clamours of the people but as she Gradually regained her light so it was with the Influence of Supream Authority Which hath caused so close an union and combination of Interests between them that the Church of England and the Royal Family have like Hippocrates his Twins both wept and rejoyc'd together And nothing doth more argue the excellent constitution of our Church than that therein the purity of Christian Doctrine is joyned with the most hearty Acknowledgment of your Majesties Power and Supremacy So that the Loyalty of the members of it can neither be suspected of private Interest or of depending on the pleasure of a Forreign Bishop but is inlaid in the very Foundations of our Reformation Which stands on those two Grand Principles of Religion and Government The giving to God the things that are God's and to Caesar the things that are Caesar's And as long as these two remain unshaken we need not fear the continuance and flourishing of the Reformed Church of England and your Majesties Interest in the members of it Which it is hard to conceive those can have any zeal for who are the busie Factours among us for promoting so opposite an Interess as that of the Church of Rome For what a contradiction is it to suppose it consistent with your Majesties Honour and Interess to rob your Imperial Crown of one of the richest Jewels of it to expose Your Royal Scepter to the mercy of a Forreign Prelat to have another Supreme Head acknowledged within Your Dominions and thereby to cut off the dependence of a considerable part of the Nation wholly from Your Self and to exhaust the Nation of an Infinite Mass of Treasure meerly to support the Grandeur of the See of Rome They who can make men believe that these things tend to Your Majesties Service think they have gained thereby a considerable step to their Religion which is by baffling mens reason and perswading them to believe contradictions But if notwithstanding the received principles of their Church any have continued Faithful in their Loyalty to Your Majesty we have much more cause to attribute it to their Love to their King and Country than to their Religion We deny not but there may be such rare tempers which may conquer the malignity of poison but it would be a dangerous Inference from thence that it ought not to be accounted hurtful to humane nature If any such have been truly Loyal may they continue so and their number increase and since therein they so much come off from themselves we hope they may yet come nearer to us whose Religion tends as much to the settling the only sure Foundations of Loyalty as theirs doth to the weakning of them And were this the only Controversie between us there need not many Books be written to perswade men of the Truth of it But if these men may be believed we can as little please God on the principles of our Church as they Your Majesty on the principles of theirs A strange Assertion and impossible to be entertain'd by any but those who think there is no such way to please God as to renounce the judgement of Sense and Reason And then indeed we freely confess there are none so likely to do it as themselves With whom men are equally bound to believe the greatest repugnancies to sense and reason with the most Fundamental Verities of Christian Faith As though no Faith could carry men to Heaven but that which can not only remove but swallow Mountains Yet these are the persons who pretend to make our Faith Infallible while they undermine the Foundations of it as they advance Charity by denying Salvation to all but themselves and promote true Piety by their gross Superstitions By all which they have been guilty of debauching Christianity in so high a measure that it cannot but heartily grieve those who honour it as the most excellent Religion in the World to see its beauty so much clouded by the Errours and Superstitions of the Roman Church That these are great as well as sad truths is the design of the ensuing Book to discover Which I humbly present to Your Majesties hands both as it is a Defence of that Cause wherein Your Majesties Interess is so highly concern'd and of that Book which Your Royal Father of most Glorious Memory so highly honoured not only by his own perusal and approbation but by the commendation of it to his Dearest Children On which account I am more encouraged to hope for your Majesties acceptance of this because it appears under the Shadow as well as for the Defence of so great a Name And since God hath blessed Your Majesty with so happy and rare a mixture of Power and Sweetness of Temper May they be still imployed in the Love and Defence of our Reformed Church which is the hearty prayer of Your Majesties most Loyal and Obedient Subject E. STILLINGFLEET THE PREFACE TO THE READER IT
is now about a twelvemonth since there appeared to the world a Book under the Title of Dr. Lawd's Labyrinth but with the usual sincerity of those persons pretended to be Printed some years before It is not the business of this Preface to enquire Why if Printed then it remained so long unpublished but to acquaint the Reader with the scope and design of that Book and of this which comes forth as a Reply to it There are three things mainly in dispute between us and those of the Church of Rome viz. Whether they or we give the more satisfactory account of the Grounds of Faith Whether their Church or ours be guilty of the charge of Schism And Whether their Church be justly accused by us of introducing many Errours and Superstitions In the handling of these all our present Debate consists and therefore for the greater Advantage of the Reader I have distributed the whole into three distinct parts which I thought more commodious than carrying it on in one continued discourse And lest our Adversaries should complain that we still proceed in a destructive way I have not only endeavoured to lay open the palpable weakness of their Cause but to give a rational account of our own Doctrine in opposition to theirs Which I have especially done in the great Controversie of the Resolution of Faith as being the most difficult and important of any other I hope the Reader will have no cause to blame me for false or impertinent Allegations of the Fathers since it hath been so much my business to discover the fraud of our Adversaries in that particular which I have chiefly done from the scope and design of those very Books out of which their testimonies are produced In many of the particular Differences I have made use of several of their late Writers against themselves both to let them see how much Popery begins to grow weary of it self and how unjustly they condemn us for denying those things which the moderate and rational men of their own side disown and dispute against as well as we and chiefly to undeceive the world as to their great pretence of Unity among themselves Since their Divisions are grown to so great a height both at home and in foreign parts that the dissenting parties mutually charge each other with Heresie and that about their great Foundation of Faith viz. the Popes Infallibility The Jansenists in France and a growing party in England charging the Jesuits with Heresie in asserting it as they do them with the same for denying it As to my self I only declare that I have with freedom and impartiality enquired into the Reasons on both sides and no interest hath kept me from letting that side of the ballance fall where I saw the greater weight of reason In which respect I have been so far from dissembling the force of any of our Adversaries Arguments that if I could add greater weight to them I have done it being as unwilling to abuse my self as the world And therefore I have not only consulted their greatest Authours especially the three famous Cardinals Baronius Bellarmin and Perron but the chiefest of those who under the name of Conciliators have put the fairest Varnish on the Doctrine of that Church However I have kept close to my Adversary and followed him through all his windings from which I return with this satisfaction to my self that I have vindicated his Lordship and Truth together As to the style and way of writing I use all that I have to say is that my design hath been to joyn clearness of Expression with evidence of Reason What success I have had in it must be left to the Readers judgement I only desire him to lay aside prejudice as much in judging as I have done in writing otherwise I despair of his doing me right and of my doing him good For though reason be tractable and ingenuous yet prejudice and interest are invincible things Having done thus much by way of Preface I shall not detain thee longer by a particular Answer to the impertinencies of our Authours Preface since there is nothing contained therein but what is abundantly answered in a more proper place And I cannot think it reasonable to abuse so much the Readers Appetite as to give him a tedious Preface to cloy his stomach If any after perusal of the whole shall think fit to return an Answer if they do it fairly and rationally they shall receive the same civility if with clamour and impertinency I only let them know I have not leisure enough to kill Flyes though they make a troublesome noise If any service be done to God or the Church by this present work next to that Divine Assistance through which I have done it thou owest it to those great Pillars of our Church by whose command and encouragement I undertook it Who the Authour was of the Book I answer I have been the less solicitous to enquire because I would not betray the weakness of my cause by mixing personal matters in debates of so great importance And whether he be now living or dead I suppose our Adversaries cannot think it at all material unless they judge that their Cause doth live and dye with him THE CONTENTS PART I. Of the Grounds of Faith CHAP. I. The Occasion of the Conference and Defence of the Greek Church T. Cs. Title examined and retorted The Labyrinth found in his Book and Doctrine The occasion of the Conference about the Churches Infallibility The rise of the dispute about the Greek Church and the consequences from it The Charge of Heresie against the Greek Church examined and she found Not-guilty by the concurrent testimony of Fathers General Councils and Popes Of the Council of Florence and the proceedings there That Council neither General nor Free. The distinction of Ancient and Modern Greeks disproved The debate of the Filioque being inserted into the Creed The time when and the right by which it was done discussed The rise of the Schism between the Eastern and Western Churches mainly occasioned by the Church of Rome Page 1. CHAP. II. Of Fundamentals in General The Popish Tenet concerning Fundamentals a meer step to the Roman Greatness The Question about Fundamentals stated An enquiry into the nature of them What are Fundamentals in order to particular persons and what to be owned as such in order to Ecclesiastical Communion The Prudence and Moderation of the Church of England in defining Articles of Faith What judged Fundamental by the Catholick Church No new Articles of Faith can become necessary The Churches power in propounding matters of Faith examined What is a sufficient Proposition Of the Athanasian Creed and its being owned by the Church of England In what sense the Articles of it are necessary to Salvation Of the distinction of the material and formal object of Faith as to Fundamentals His Lordship's integrity and T. C. his forgery in the testimony of Scotus Of Heresie and how far
expect that your Anathema's will be accounted any other than bruta fulmina noise and no more CHAP. 2. Of Fundamentals in General The Popish Tenet concerning Fundamentals a meer step to the Roman Greatness The Question about Fundamentals stated An enquiry into the nature of them What are Fundamentals in order to particular persons and what to be owned as such in order to Ecclesiastical Communion The Prudence and Moderation of the Church of England in defining Articles of Faith What judged Fundamental by the Catholick Church No new Articles of Faith can become necessary The Churches Power in propounding matters of Faith examined What is a sufficient Proposition Of the Athanasian Creed and its being owned by the Church of England In what sense the Articles of it are necessary to Salvation Of the distinction of the material and formal object of Faith as to Fundamentals His Lordship's integrity and T. C's forgery in the testimony of Scotus Of Heresie and how far the Church may declare matters of Faith The testimony of S. Augustine vindicated THe Greek Church appearing not guilty of Heresie by any evidence of Scripture Reason or the Consent of the Primitive Church nothing is left to make good the charge but that the Church of Rome hath defin'd it to be so which Pretence at first view carrying the greatest partiality and unreasonableness in it great care is taken that the partiality be not discovered by not openly mentioning the Church of Rome but the Church in General as though it were impossible to conceive any other Church but that at Rome and for the unreasonableness of it it must be confidently asserted That all Points defin'd by the Church are Fundamental So to be sure the Greek Church will never escape the charge of Heresie For this end Mr. Fisher in the Conference acknowledgeth that when his Lordship had denyed the errour of the Greek Church to be Fundamental he was forced to repeat what he had formerly brought against Dr. White concerning Points Fundamental The reason of which was that easily perceiving that it was impossible to stand their ground in their charge on the Greek Church upon other terms he is forced to take Sanctuary in the Churches Definition and if that will not make it good there is nothing else remaining to do it And this is the cause of the following Dispute concerning Fundamentals wheren the main thing undertaken is the proof that the formal reason of Fundamentals is to be taken from the Definition of the present Church but as this must be confessed to be the main Fundamental of the Church of Rome for which yet the thing being manifest no Definition of that Church is necessary so withall I doubt not but it will be made evident in the progress of this discourse that never was there any pretence more partial absurd and tyrannical than this is Which his Lordship takes notice of in these words which deserve a repetition It was not the least means by which Rome grew to her Greatness to blast every opposer she had with the name of Heretick or Schismatick for this served to shrivel the credit of the persons And the persons once brought into Contempt and Ignominy all the good they desired in the Church fell to dust for want of creditable persons to back and support it To make this proceeding good in these latter years this course it seems was taken The School that must maintain and so they do that all Points defin'd by the Church are thereby Fundamental necessary to be believed of the substance of Faith and that though it be determined quite extra Scripturam And then leave the wise and active Heads to take order that there be strength enough ready to determine what is fittest for them To this you answer with an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 You call it a Squib a Fancy a weak Discourse one of the Bishop's Railleries and what not It seems it pinched you hard you cry out so Tragically But it is very certain you are more impatient to have your Politicks than your Errours discovered and if you have any Curses more dreadful than others they are sure to light on those who discover the intrigues of your Designs For if once men come to discern how much more of Artifice and cunning than of Truth and Religion there is in the managing the Interest of your Church they would not easily think the way to Heaven can lye among so many foldings of the old Serpent And this is not to think as you tragically speak That all the world is turn'd mad or Heathen for thanks be to God as Catholique as your Church is it must be a huge Catachresis to take it for all the world neither do we think your Church mad but very wise and Politick in these pretences and that still you are resolved to shew that though other Churches may be more Children of Light than yours ignorance being so much in favour with you yet yours is Wiser in its Generation But how the pretending of your Church to Infallibility and power to define Fundamentals should make us imagine all the world Heathen is not easie to conceive unless you are conscious to your self that such pretences as these are are the way to make it so But we must see still how your Cothurnus fits you No truth left upon earth but all become Juglers See what it is to be true Catholiques that if they juggle all the world must do so too as though totus mundus exercet histrioniam were Latin for the Infallibility of the Church of Rome But have you indeed such a Monopoly of Truth that if your party prove Juglers there will be no truth left upon earth if you had said none unsophisticated yet even that had been a great Truth left upon earth still But I shall cut you short in what follows of your Declamation by telling you that though your Harangue were ten times longer than it is and your exclamations louder and your Authorities better than of your Prelates Miracles Doctors Heads of Schools austere and religious persons in English Monks and Friers yet all these would not one jot perswade us contrary to common sense and the large experience of the world That Religion is not made by you an Instrument to advance the Pope's Ambition and that the Church is but a more plausible name whereby to maintain the Court of Rome And we need not go from our present subject for a proof of it I will not charge this upon all persons of your Communion for all of them do not believe the State-Principles of your Church and others are kept as much as may be from all waies of discovering the great Designs of it and therefore there may be so much innocency and simplicity in some as may keep them from prostituting their Salvation to the Pope's Greatness but this is no plea on behalf of those who have the managery of those Designs who if they do not
it to be so to be any matter of Faith unless we had better reason for it than we have For say you To refuse to believe God's Revelation is either to give God the lye or to doubt whether he speak truth or no But have you so little wit as not to distinguish between not believing God's Revelation and not believing what is propounded for God's Revelation Must every one who doth not believe every thing that is propounded for God's Revelation presently give God the lye and doubt whether he speak truth or no And are not you then guilty of that fault every time a Quaker or Enthusiast tells you That the Spirit of God within him told him this and that But you said Sufficiently propounded But the Question is What sufficient Proposition is and who must be Judge whether the Proposition be sufficient or no you or the conscience of the person to whom the thing is proposed to be believed If any one indeed that judgeth a Proposition sufficient do notwithstanding question the truth of it he doth interpretatively call God's Veracity into question but not he certainly who thinks not God's Veracity at all concerned in that which you call a sufficient Proposition but he judgeth not to be so Let us now see how you prove your Assumption which is very fairly done from a Supposition which his Lordship denies which is That General Councils cannot erre But say you he adds That though he should grant it yet this cannot down with him that all Points even so defined were Fundamentals I grant those are his words and his reasons follow them For Deductions are not prime and native Principles nor are Superstructures Foundations That which is a Foundation for all cannot be one and another to different Christians in regard of it self for then it could be no common Rule for any nor could the souls of men rest upon a shaking Foundation No if it be a true Foundation it must be common to all and firm under all in which sense the Articles of Christian Faith are Fundamental What now do you prove to destroy this You very strenuously prove That if men believe A General Council cannot erre they believe it cannot erre so far and no further than it cannot erre But if you mean any thing further your meaning is better than your proof for when you would prove that to disbelieve the Churches Definition is to dis-believe God's Revelation and in order to that confound the Church and General Councils together and from the General Council's not erring inferr the former Proposition because what is testified by the Church is testified by an Authority that cannot erre you do not consider that all this while you prove nothing against his Lordship unless you first prove that whatever is testified to be revealed from God is presently Fundamental to all Churches and Christians which his Lordship utterly denies by distinguishing even things which may be testified to be revealed from God into such things as are common to all Christians to be believed by them and such things as vary according to the different respects of Christians But yet further I add that taking Fundamentals in your sense you prove not the thing you intended but only to such as do acknowledge and as far as they do acknowledge that General Councils cannot erre For they who acknowledge them infallible only in Fundamentals do not judge any thing Fundamental by their Decision but judge their Decisions infallible so long as they hold to Fundamentals and so for all that I can see leave themselves Judges when General Councils are infallible and when not and therefore if they go about to testifie any thing as revealed from God which is not Fundamental they do not believe that their testimony cannot erre and so are not bound to believe that it is from God They who believe General Councils absolutely infallible I do verily think do believe General Councils infallible in all they say for that is the substance of all you say But what that is to those who neither do nor can see any reason to believe them infallible in all they say or testifie as revealed from God I neither do nor can possibly understand And if you hope such kind of Arguments can satisfie your ingenuous Reader you suppose him a good-natur'd man in the Greek sense of the phrase But all of a sudden we find you in a very generous strain and are contented to take Fundamentals for Fundamentals which is a huge Concession and his Lordship were he living would take it for a singular favour from you Yet to deal freely with the Bishop say you even taking Fundamentals in a General way as it ought to be taken only here for a thing belonging to the Foundation of Religion and it is a strange Fundamental which hath no respect to the Foundation but they who build downwards must have their Foundations on tops of their houses It is also manifest that all Points defined by the Church are Fundamental by reason of that formal Object or infallible Authority propounding them though not alwaies by reason of the matter which they contain The main proof of which lyes in this That he who doth not believe the Church infallible can believe nothing at all infallibly and therefore no Fundamental of Religion but if he believe any thing upon the Churches Infallibility he must believe all things on the same account of her Infallibility and therefore must believe all equally and so whatever is propounded by the Church is to be believed as Fundamental This you cannot deny to be the force and strength of your verbose and confused way of arguing And therefore I give you a short Answer That I utterly deny the Infallibility of any Church to be in any thing the Foundation of Divine and Infallible Faith as you will find it abundantly proved in the proper place for it in the Controversie of the Resolution of Faith Where it will be largely discussed in what sense Faith may be said to be Divine and Infallible what the proper grounds and reasons of our believing are and how much you impose upon the world in pretending that the Resolution of Faith is into the Catholick Churches Infallibility whereby it will appear to be far from a Fundamental Errour not to believe on the Churches Infallibility and that he who denies it will have no reason to call into Question the Canon of Scripture or the Foundations of all Religion But that you rather by these absurd and unreasonable pretences of yours have done your utmost to shake the true Foundations of Religion and advance nothing but Sceptiscism not to say Atheism in the world These things I take upon me to make good in their proper place and therefore shall not enter the discussion of them here but since this is the main and in truth the only Foundation of your Doctrine of Fundamentals the vanity falshood and absurdity of it cannot be sufficiently
understood till we have gone through the Account of the Grounds of Faith If S. Augustine make some no Catholick Christians for holding obstinately some things of no great moment in his Book of Heresies it was because by Catholick Christians he understood all such and only such as were the members of the sound and Orthodox Church in opposition to all kind of unnecessary separation from it upon matters of small moment and not because he believed the Churches Infallibility in defining all matters of Faith and that all such things were so defined which men are call'd Hereticks for denying of unless you will suppose it was ever infallibly defined that there were no Antipodes for some were accounted Hereticks for believing them and that by such whom you account greater than S. Austin But for S. Austin how far it was from his meaning to have all those accounted Fundamental Errours which he recounts in his Book of Heresies appears not only from the multitude of particulars mentioned in it which no one in his senses can acknowledge Fundamental or declared by the Church as necessary to be believed by all but from his declared scope and design in the preface to that Book wherein it appears he was desired not only to write the greater errours concerning Faith the Trinity Baptism Repentance Christ the Resurrection the Old and New Testament Sed omnia omnino quibus à veritate dissentiunt i. e. all kind of errours whatsoever and do you think that there could then be no errour but it must be against some thing then defined by the Church as necessary to Salvation If not then all truths were then defined by the Church and consequently there could be no new Definitions ever since if there might then those errours mentioned by S. Austin were not about matters necessary to be believed and so S. Austin's Book of Heresies makes nothing for you but very much against you considering that in all that black list of Hereticks there are none brought in for denying those grand Fundamentals of your Church the Pope's Supremacy your Churches Infallibility nor any of that new brood of necessary Articles which were so prudently hatcht by the Council of Trent But if S. Austin do you no good you hope S. Gregory Nazianzen may because he saith That nothing can be more perillous than those Hereticks who with a drop of poison do infect our Lord 's sincere Faith Therefore all things defined by the Church are Fundamental What an excellent Art this Logick is that can fetch out of things that which was never in them What a rare consequence is this If Heresie be dangerous then whatever is defined by the Church is Fundamental but it may be the strength lyes in the drop of poison as though S. Gregory thought a drop of poison as dangerous as a whole dose of it But were I your Physitian instead of the least drop of poison I should prescribe you good store of Hellebore and should hope to see the effect of it in making better consequences than these are But to see yet further the strange effects that Logick hath upon some men for say you in the prosecution of your proof that all things defined by the Church are Fundamental Hence it is that Christ our Saviour saith Matth. 8.17 If he will not hear the Church let him be to thee as a Heathen and a Publican The Argument in form runs thus Whosoever deserves excommunication is guilty of a Fundamental Errour but he that will not hear the Church deserves Excommunication ergo Or else there may be more in it than so For no doubt the Heathens and Publicans as such were guilty of Fundamental Errours therefore they who will not hear the Church are guilty of as Fundamental Errours as Heathens and Publicans But before you urge us any more with this dreadful Argument I pray tell us What that Church is which our Saviour speaks of what the cases are wherein the Church is to be heard what the full importance is of being as a Heathen and Publican and you must prove this Church to be understood in your sense of the Catholick Church and that this Church hath hereby power to define matters of Faith and that none can possibly in any other sense be accounted as Heathens and Publicans but as guilty of as Fundamental Errours as they were Your next Objection concerning giving God and the Church the lye and preferring and opposing a man's private judgement and will before and against the Judgement and Will of God and the Church if men deny or doubt of any thing made known by the Church to be a truth revealed by God signifies nothing at all unless it be antecedently proved that the Church can never erre in declaring any thing to be a truth revealed by God which none who know what you mean by the Church will easily assent to till you have attempted a further proof of it than yet we find And although the questioning Divine Veracity be destructive to that which you call Supernatural Faith yet I hope it is possible to believe God to be true and yet that all men are lyars or that there is no such inseparable Connexion between God's Veracity and the present Declarations of any Church but that one may heartily assent to the former and yet question the truth of the latter If you think otherwise shew your pity to the weakness of our understandings by something that may look like a proof of it which we are still much to seek for But your greatest strength like Sampson's seems to lye there where one would least suspect it viz. in Athanasius his Creed For thus you go on Wherefore it is said in S. Athanasius his Creed which is approved in the thirty nine Articles of the pretended English Church that Whosoever will be saved it is necessary that he hold the Catholick Faith which unless every one hold whole and inviolate without doubt he shall perish for ever Neither can the Bishop reply That all Points expressed therein are Fundamental in his sense for to omit the Article of our Saviours descent into Hell he mentions expresly the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son which his Lordship hath denyed to be a Fundamental Point as we saw in the former Chapter But the better to comprehend the force of this Argument we must first consider what it is you intend to prove by it and then in what way and manner you prove it from this Creed The matter which you are to prove is that all things defined by the Church are Fundamental i. e. in your sense necessary to Salvation and that the ground why such things whose matter is not necessary do become necessary is because the Church declares them to be revealed by God now in order to this you insist on the Creed commonly call'd Athanasius his wherein some things acknowledged not to be Fundamental in the matter are yet said to be necessary
of Athanasius therefore all things defined by the Church are eo nomine necessary to Salvation Other particulars concerning that Creed as to its Antiquity and Authority we may have occasion afterwards more at large to discuss it sufficeth now that nothing is thence produced pertinent to the present Controversie His Lordship in the progress of this Discourse takes away that slight and poor evasion That the Declaration of the Church makes any thing Fundamental quoad nos because that no respect to us can vary the Foundation And that the Churches Declaration can bind us only to peace and external obedience where there is not express letter of Scripture and sense agreed on but it cannot make any thing Fundamental to us that is not so in its own nature For saith he if the Church can so add that it can by a Declaration make a thing to be Fundamental in the Faith that was not then it can take a thing away from the Foundation and make it by declaring not to be Fundamental which all men grant no power of the Church can do For the power of adding any thing contrary and of detracting any thing necessary are alike forbidden and alike denyed Now you say That all this is satisfied by the foresaid distinction of material and formal Object and you desire the Reader to carry along with him this distinction of objectum materiale formale materia attestata authoritas attestantis and he will easily discover the fallacies of his Lordship's Discourse in this main Point of Controversie and solve all his difficulties supported by them No doubt an excellent Amulet to preserve from the infection of reason But it is your great mishap that where you commend it so much it doth you so little service For let your distinction of formal and material Object be supposed as sound and good as I have shewed it in your sense to be false and fallacious yet it doth not reach that part of his Lordship's Discourse which you apply it to For still his reason is conclusive though the necessity only be supposed to arise from the Churches Authority yet if it be in the power of the Church to make any thing necessary which was not why may it not be equally in her power to make something not necessary which was For either the grounds of the necessity of things to Salvation doth depend on the Doctrine of the Gospel as at first declared to the world or it doth not If it doth then it is not in the Churches Power to make any thing necessary which was not made necessary by it if it doth not then the Church may as well pretend to a power to make something not necessary which was as to make something necessary which was not So that your distinction of Formal and Material Object signifies nothing at all here only this is observable that you make the Churches Definition to be the Formal Object of Faith here which you very solemnly contradict afterwards Chap. 5. § 4. And can any thing be more evident from this Discourse of yours than that you make the last resolution of Faith as to the necessity of things to be believed into the Churches Definition as its Formal Object But this distinction with the grounds of it being removed in our former Discourse I shall ease my self and the Reader of any further labour in examining what follows in this Chapter which depends wholly upon it or else run out into the Churches Infallibility the infallible Assent requisite to Faith the Canon of Scripture and our certainty of it or the Authority of General Councils all which shall be fully and particularly examined in their proper places There being nothing said here but what either hath been answered already or will be more at large in a more convenient place The only things remaining then in this Chapter which deserve a further discussion here are the testimonies of Scotus and S. Austin and the Discourses which depend thereon For our better clearing the testimony of Scotus in which you charge his Lordship with falsification we must consider on what account and for what purposes that testimony is produced His Lordship had said before That Fundamentals are a Rock immovable and can never be varied therefore what is Fundamental after the Church hath defined it was Fundamental before the definition and no Decrees of Councils how general soever can alter immovable Verities wherefore if the Church in a Council define any thing the thing defined is not fundamental because the Church hath defined it nor can be made so by the definition of the Church if it be not so in it self For if the Church hath this power she might make a New Article of Faith which the learned among themselves deny For the Articles of Faith cannot increase in substance but only in explication For which he appeals to Bellarmin Nor saith he Is this hard to be further proved out of your own School For Scotus professeth it in this very particular of the Greek Church If there be saith he a true real difference between the Greeks and Latins about the Point of the Procession of the Holy Ghost then either they or we be vere haeretici truly and indeed Hereticks Which he speaks of the old Greeks long before any decision of the Church in this Controversie For he instances in S. Basil and Greg. Nazianzen on one side and S. Jerome Augustine and Ambrose on the other And who dares call any of these Hereticks is his challenge That then which his Lordship proves by this testimony is that the nature of Heresie doth not depend on the Churches Definition but on the Nature of the things for according to Scotus antecedently to the Churches Definition if there had been any real difference between the Greeks and Latins one side of them had been Hereticks To this you answer That hence it follows not that Scotus thought they could be Hereticks unless they denyed or doubted of that which they had reason to believe was revealed by God But it only follows that if they knew this as those learned Greeks had sufficient reason to know it they might well be esteemed Hereticks before any special Declaration of the Church although it be more clear that he is an Heretick who denies to believe that Doctrine after he confesses that it is defined by the Church From which answer of yours several things are to our purpose observable 1. That the Formal Reason of Heresie is denying something supposed to be of Divine Revelation 2. That none can reasonably be accused of Heresie but such as have sufficient reason to believe that which they deny is revealed by God 3. That none can be guilty of Heresie for denying any thing declared by the Church unless they have sufficient reason to believe that whatever is declared by the Church is revealed by God Which unavoidably follows from the former and therefore the Churches Definition cannot
she declares was intus or extra in the nature and verity of the thing or out of it If it were extra without the nature of the thing declared then the Declaration of the thing is false and so far from being Fundamental in the Faith If it were intus within the nature and compass of the thing though not open and apparent to every eye then the Declaration is true but not otherwise Fundamental then the thing is which is declared for that which is intus cannot be larger or deeper than that in which it is if it were it could not be intus Therefore nothing is simply Fundamental because the Church declares it but because it is so in the nature of the thing which the Church declares In answer to this you seem more ingenuous than usual for you acknowledge that his expression is learnedly solid and good but yet you would seem to return some answer to this Argument viz. That although there be no alteration in the nature of the Articles by the Churches Declaration yet this doth not hinder them from becoming Fundamental in that sense in which we dispute i. e. such as cannot be denyed or doubted of under pain of damnation although they were not thus Fundamental before the Declaration as not being so clearly proposed to us as that we were bound to believe them Neither doth this take away any thing from their intus or that Being which they had of themselves but only gives a certainty of their being so and declares that they ought to be so quoad nos as well as quoad se and internally And it is no evasion but a solid distinction that the Declaration of the Church varies not the thing in it self but quoad nos in its respect to us The substance of your Answer lyes in this That though the Church by her Declaration doth not alter the nature of things yet she may and doth our Obligation to believe them so that such things which men might have been saved without believing before when once the Church hath declared them become necessary to be believed in order to Salvation And yet you would not have this called making new Articles of Faith But I pray tell us what you mean by Articles of Faith are not those properly Articles of Faith as distinct from Theological Verities which are necessary to be believed by all If therefore those things which the Church declares were before not necessary and by the Churches Declaration do become necessary than certainly those things which were not Articles of Faith do become Articles of Faith and what then doth the Church by her Declaration but make New Articles of Faith But though you assert the thing you like not the terms because they do not sound so pleasantly to the ears of Christians who believe all Obligation to Faith doth depend upon immediate Divine Revelation Setting aside therefore the terms let us examine the thing to see upon what grounds the Church can make that necessary to us which was not in it self In which case the Obligation not arising from the necessity of the Matter in it self to be believed it is no otherwise intelligible but that it must result from the supposition of some Immediate Revelation For nothing else can bind us to an Internal Assent which you require as necessary to the Churches Definitions but that unless you can shew how any Society of men considered as such have power to oblige all other men to believe what they declare on pain of damnation for not doing it I pray tell me whether the Apostles themselves had power to bind all Christians to the belief of something as necessary which the Spirit of God did not immediately reveal to them to be so If not what power can any Church have to do it without a greater measure of Infallibility than the Apostles ever pretended to For they never attempted to define any thing as necessary which was supposed unnecessary to be believed after the Doctrine of the Gospel was declared to the world Before then you can perswade us to believe that your Church can make any thing necessary which was not so you must prove an Absolute Infallible Divine Assistance of God's Spirit with your Church in whatever she shall attempt to declare or define as matter of Faith As for instance Supposing it not necessary to Salvation in it self to believe the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary how is it possible to conceive after your Churches Definition of it it should become necessary unless it be supposed that there was an Immediate Divine Revelation in that Definition For nothing but Divine Authority commanding our Assent the ground of Faith must be resolved into that now in this case besides the Immediate Assent to the thing declared as a truth there is a distinct Proposition to be believed which is That what was not before necessary to be believed doth now become necessary to be believed by all and shew us either that there is Divine Revelation for this or else excuse us that we cannot give an Internal Assent to it For we have not learnt to give an Assent of Faith to a meer humane Proposition or in our Saviour's words we call no man Master upon Earth so as to promise to believe it in the power of any Church whatsoever to make any thing necessary to be believed which was not so before Hence it appears that your Distinction of in se quoad nos is as insignificant as your pretence of the Churches Power to define matters of Faith is presumptuous and arrogant being the highest degree of Lording it over the Christian world Why your Church may not as well declare something not to be of Faith which before was of Faith as declare something to be of Faith which before was not of Faith it is not easie to apprehend if that thing might be supposed of Faith before without the Churches explicit Declaration For in that case the Church would not so apparently contradict her self for that Contradiction doth not lye in varying the respects of things but in one Declaration contradicting another For otherwise it is as great a contradiction to say That something which was not necessary is become necessary as that a thing which was necessary is become not necessary Therefore if there be a contradiction in one there is in the other If the Contradiction lyes in the Declaration you must say That nothing could be supposed necessary to be believed but what was declared by the Church to be so and as declared by the Church which is a Province as difficult as necessary to be undertaken to rid your hands of this difficulty For otherwise that Answer of yours cannot reach the Objection And now we come to that Testimony of S. Augustine which was produced to prove That all Points defined by the Church are Fundamental Which say It is a thing founded An erring Disputant is to be born with in
other Questions not diligently digested not yet made firm by full Authority of the Church there errour is to be born with but it ought not to proceed so farre that it should labour to shake the Foundation it self of the Church Now to this place his Lordship answers 1. He speaks of a Foundation of Doctrine in Scripture not of a Church-Definition This appears saith he For few lines before he tells us There was a Question moved to S. Cyprian Whether Baptism was concluded to the eighth day as well as Circumcision and no doubt was made then of the beginning of sin and that out of this thing about which no Question was moved that Question that was made was answered And again that S. Cyprian took that which he gave in Answer from the Foundation of the Church to confirm a Stone that was shaking Now S. Cyprian in all the Answer that he gives hath not one word of any Definition of the Church therefore ea res that thing by which he answered was a Foundation of prime and setled Scripture-Doctrine not any Definition of the Church Therefore that which he took out of the Foundation of the Church to fasten the Stone that shook was not Definition of the Church but the Foundation of the Church it self the Scripture upon which it is builded as appeareth in the Milevitane Councils where the Rule by which Pelagius was condemned is the Rule of Scripture Therefore S. Augustine goes on in the same sense that the Disputer is not to be born any longer that shall endeavour to shake the Foundation it self upon which the whole Church is grounded 2. His Lordship answers That granting that the Churches Definition was meant by S. Austin yet it can never follow out of any or all these Circumstances that all Points defined by the Church are Fundamental because this Foundation may be upon Humane Authority and that which follows only is That things are not to be opposed which are made firm by full Authority of the Church but it cannot be thence concluded They are therefore Fundamental in the Faith This is the substance of his Lordships Answer to this place which we must consider what you reply to First you say That it cannot be doubted but that S. Austin 's judgement was that all our Faith depended on the Authority of the Church and therefore that he that opposeth himself against this endeavoureth to shake and destroy the very ground-work of all Divine and Supernatural Faith This is a rare way of silencing Adversaries by telling them That cannot be doubted which others can see no reason at all to believe As in this present case you tell me that cannot be doubted which I utterly deny viz. That S. Austins judgement was that all our Faith depended on the Authority of the Church and if all the proof you have for it be only that well-known place Ego verò Evangelio non crederem c. You shall in time see what an ill choice you made of fixing your proof wholly upon that But whoever is never so little conversant in S. Augustin's way of disputing either against the Donatists Pelagians or Manichees will find very little reason to doubt but that he made the Foundation of Faith to be God's Word and not the Authority of the Church Indeed S. Austin by way of Prescription often makes use of the Churches Authority not where there hath been particular Definitions but Vniversal Consent which he understands by the settlement by full Authority of the Church but this he insists not on as the ground of Faith but to shew the unreasonableness of mens opposing those things which the Vniversal Church was agreed in as in this Controversie here disputed by him concerning Original Sin in Infants Therefore if I understand S. Austin in this place he doth not at all speak concerning what is to be owned as a matter of Faith simply in it self but what the Churches Carriage towards Dissenters is For after that Citation of S. Cyprian at the Conclusion of his Sermon he addresseth himself to the Pelagians as his dissenting Brethren Therefore saith he Let us if possible intreat this of our Brethren That they would no longer call us Hereticks because we might as well call them so if we would but we do not Why was S. Austin so scrupulous of calling the Pelagians Hereticks if he made the Definition of the Church the Foundation of Faith and looked on this Controversie as defined by full Authority of the Church And after speakes of the Churches bearing with them still in order to their instruction though they were gone so far that they were scarce to be born with and that the Church exercised great patience towards them therefore intreats them not to abuse this patience of the Church but to be reformed since they did exhort as Friends and not contend as enemies And so brings in the former words which I thus paraphrase It is a thing to be taken for granted that in disputable Points and such as the Church hath not alwaies been agreed in dissenters may be born with but if direct and full opposition to the clear sense of the Church should still be suffered it would overthrow the very Foundation of the Church it self And that this and no other is the plain and genuine meaning of S. Austin is evident to any one who impartially considers antecedents and consequents and the natural sense of the words themselves Before he spake how far the Church had born with them in the words themselves he tells them They must not expect the Church would alwaies bear with them if they joyned Obstinacy with their Errours for that would ruine the Church if she continually suffered such as violently opposed things contrary to her clearest sense and after tells them This is not expedient for hitherto it may be our patience is not to be found fault withall but we ought likewise to fear lest we be blamed for our negligence Which words immediately follow the former And is not this now a rare consequence If the Church must not alwaies bear with such as oppose her then whatever is defined by the Church is Fundamental For it is most evident S. Austin speaks not of the Churches Power in defining matters of Faith but of the Churches proceeding with obstinate Hereticks And therefore the Foundation spoken of is not the Foundation of her Belief but of her Communion which the continual bearing with such obstinate persons as the Pelagians were would in time overthrow The want of understanding this to be S. Augustine's meaning hath made you spend many words to very little purpose supposing all along that he speaks of the Churches Definition and not her proceedings Your Reply to his Lordships second Answer runs upon the same mistake that he speaks of Shaking the Foundation of Faith whereas I have already shewed that he speaks of no such thing and therefore that as well as the former Answer fall to
the ground together being both built on the same mistaken Foundation CHAP. III. The Absurdities of the Romanists Doctrine of Fundamentals The Churches Authority must be Divine if whatever she defines be Fundamental His Lordship and not the Testimony of S. Augustine shamefully abused three several wayes Bellarmine not mis-cited the Pelagian Heresie condemned by the General Council at Ephesus The Pope's Authority not implyed in that of Councils The gross Absurdities of the distinction of the Church teaching and representative from the Church taught and dissusive in the Question of Fundamentals The Churches Authority and Testimony in matters of Faith distinguished The Testimonies of Vincentius Lerinensis explained and shewed to be directly contrary to the Roman Doctrine of Fundamentals Stapleton and Bellarmine not reconciled by the vain endeavours used to that end THe main Doctrine of Fundamentals being in the foregoing Chapter setled and cleared what remains of that subject will be capable of a quicker dispatch The scope of this Chapter is to assoil those difficulties which your doctrine of Fundamentals is subject to What little footing that hath in the place of S. Augustine was the last thing discussed in the preceding Chapter and therefore must not be repeated here His Lordship urgeth this reason why S. Augustine or any other reasonable man could not believe that whatever is defined by the Church is Fundamental in the Faith because full Church-Authority alwaies the time that included the Holy Apostles being past by and not comprehended in it is but Church-Authority and Church-Authority when it is at full Sea is not simply divine therefore the sentence of it not Fundamentall in the Faith To this you very wisely and learnedly answer I will not dispute with his Lordship whether it be or no because it is sufficient that such Authority be infallible For if it be infallible it cannot propose to us any thing as revealed by God but what is so revealed So that to dispute against this Authority is in effect to take away all Authority from divine Revelation we having no other absolute certainty that this or that is revealed by God but only the Infallibility of the Church proposing or attesting it unto us as revealed Whence also it follows that to doubt dispute against or deny any thing that is proposed by the Infallible Authority of the Church is to doubt dispute against and deny that which is Fundamental in Faith His Lordship denies the sentence of the Church to be Fundamental in the Faith because not Divine you dare not say It is Divine but contend that it is Infallible and from that Infallibility inferr That Whosoever denies the Churches Infallibility must deny something Fundamental in the Faith because we can have no other absolute certainty that any thing is revealed by God but only from the Churches Infallibility So that your whole proof rests upon a very rotten and uncertain Foundation viz. that all certainty in matters of Faith doth depend upon the Churches Infallibility the falshood and unreasonableness of which principle will at large be discovered in the succeeding Controversie And if this fails then the denial of the Churches Infallibility doth not inferr the denial of any thing Fundamental in the Faith because men may be certain of all Fundamentals without believing this Infallibility But yet say you There is no necessity of asserting Church-Authority to be Divine but only to be infallible in order to the making what she defines to be Fundamental A rare and excellent piece of your old Theological Reason as though any thing could be any further Infallible than it is Divine or any further owned to be Divine than as it is Infallible I pray acquaint us with these rare Arts of distinguishing between an Authority Divine and Infallible when the ground of that Infallibility is the supposition of something properly and simply Divine which is the Infallible Assistance of God's Spirit Is that Assistance Infallible too but not Divine If it be Divine as well as Infallible how comes that Infallibility which flows from it not to be Divine when the cause of it was simply and absolutely so Besides what Infallible Authority is that which makes all its Definitions Fundamental and yet is not in it self Divine From whence comes any thing to be Fundamental You tell us your self as it is known to be revealed by God And can any thing be known to be revealed by God but by an Authority Divine especially on your principles who make all certainty of knowing it to depend on that Churches Authority If so then since the Churches sentence makes things become matters of Faith some things may become matters of Faith which have no Divine Authority for them But this excellent and subtle distinction between Divine and Infallible Authority we shall have occasion to examine afterwards And therefore it is well you tell us Notwithstanding that Infallible and Divine seem to many great Divines to be terms convertible which only acquaints us with thus much that there are some men who understand things better than you do and that to do so is to be a great Divine And if Stapleton be one of these we are not much offended at it and so far we will take the Testimonies which you produce out of him That which next follows depends upon the proof of the Infallibility of General Councils which when you have sufficiently cleared we will believe that there can be no plain Scripture or Evident Reason against any of their Definitions but till then we must believe there may be room for both Your next Section promiseth to shew us a shameful abuse of S. Augustine 's Testimony three several waies But if it appears that not one of those waies will hold then it only follows that so many waies you have abused his Lordship and not he S. Augustine His Lordship having affirmed That plain Scripture with evident sense or a full demonstrative Argument must have room where a wrangling and erring Disputer may not be allowed it And there 's neither of these but may convince the Definition of the Council if it be ill founded Over against these words he cites that sentence of S. Austin Quae quidem si tam manifest a monstratur ut in dubium venire non possit praeponenda est omnibus illis rebus quibus in Catholicâ teneor Ita si aliquid apertissimum in Evangelio c. The plain meaning of which words of S. Augustine is That evident Truth is to be preferred before all Church-Authority Now a threefold Exception you take to his Lordships insisting on this Testimony 1. That S. Austin speaks not either of plain Scripture or evident sense or of a full demonstrative Argument but addressing his speech to the Manicheans he writes thus Apud vos autem ubi nihil horum est quod me invitet ac teneat sola personat veritatis pollicitatio and then follow the words cited by the Bishop quae quidem si
often-mention'd distinction of the Formal and Material Object of Faith the foundation of which having been already removed whatever you offer to build upon it must of necessity fall to the ground but I shall not follow your ill example in making tedious Repetitions and then cry out You are forced to it His Lordship urgeth further from the Romanists Doctrine of Fundamentals That the Churches Definition must be the Churches Foundation His words are Besides whatsoever is Fundamental in the Faith is Fundamental to the Church which is one by the Vnity of Faith Therefore if every thing defined by the Church be Fundamental in the Faith then the Churches Definition is the Churches Foundation And so upon the matter the Church can lay her own Foundation and then the Church must be in absolute and perfect Being before so much as her Foundation is laid To which you answer But what Absurdity is it to grant That the Definition of the Church teaching is the Foundation of the Church taught or the Definition of the Church representative is the Foundation of the Church diffusive I pray inform us whether this Church teaching and representing be the same Church with the Church taught and diffusive or one different from it If it be different it must have a different Foundation and so must be fundamentally different if it be the same then the Church must still lay its own Foundation for whatever becomes Fundamental by the Definition of the Church is I suppose to be believed as necessary i. e. Fundamental by the Church teaching and representing as well as taught and diffusive Unless you think those who decree things to be believed by all in order to salvation do exclude themselves out of that number and therefore though it be necessary for all others to believe it it is still indifferent for them whether they will believe it or no. And therefore were I of your Church I should heartily wish my self of the teaching and representative Church for then others might go to Hell for not believing that which I might chuse whether I would or no. What an excellent invention this is to make the Pope and Cardinals go to Heaven though they be Atheists and Infidels For you tell us we can have no assurance of any matter of Faith but from the Infallibility of your Church this Infallibility lyes not in the taught and diffusive but in the teaching and representative Church and this distinction here supposes that what is made the Foundation of the Church taught is not the Foundation of the Church teaching i. e. what is necessary to Salvation for one is not so for the other for that is your meaning of Fundamentals Now since all things become necessary to be believed by the Church diffusive upon the Authority of the Church representative it necessarily follows from this distinction That nothing at all is necessary to be believed by the Church representative And is not this a rare Church the mean while but what is it which makes it a Church for though it represents and teaches yet it is still call'd a Church teaching and representative If it be a Church something must make it so What can make it so if not the belief of what is necessary to Salvation And if it doth not believe all that is necessary to Salvation the Church diffusive is much more truly a Church than the representative If it doth believe all that is necessary then it must believe its own Definitions because those are supposed to be so and consequently if those be Fundamental the Church must still lay her own Foundation Or else these consequences follow 1. That may be a true Church which doth not believe all things necessary to Salvation 2. The Church teaching is not bound to believe that which she teaches but only the Church taught 3. That may be the same Church which Fundamentally differs from it self 4. When the Church defines a thing to be necessary she doth not believe it to be necessary but it becomes necessary after her Definition For I pray satisfie us as to this Teaching Church when she defines something necessary to be believed in order to Salvation which was not so defined before Doth she at that Instant of her Definition believe that to be necessary to Salvation or doth she not If she doth then it is necessary before her Definition and so the belief of it as necessary cannot depend upon it But if she believes it only to be necessary because she defines it to be so then she cannot believe it to be necessary till she hath defined it and consequently defines that to be necessary which she believes not to be necessary and so defines contrary to her own judgement and belief Let me therefore ask here some more Questions which I doubt you will think troublesome If the Church representative believed that not to be necessary to Salvation which she defined to be necessary to Salvation was she infallible in that belief or no If she was not infallible then at that time what assurance could men have of any matter of Faith since you tell us That must be had from the Churches Infallibility If she were infallible then either in some things only or in all she believed if only in some things we ought to know what she is infallible in and what not lest we deceive our selves in believing her infallible in that in which she is not infallible If in all things then she is infallible in believing that not to be necessary to Salvation which yet she infallibly defines to be necessary to Salvation And so the Church may infallibly define that to be true which at the very moment of that Definition she infallibly believes to be false All these are the just and excellent Consequences of this useful Distinction of yours which you look on as the only happy Expedient whereby to free your self from asserting that the Church by making things Fundamental by her Definitions doth thereby lay her own Foundation But as absurd and unreasonable as this is you would seem to have something to say for it for you tell us That the Pastors in all Ages preserving Christian People from being carried away with every wind of Doctrine are a Foundation to them of constancy in Doctrine Wonderfully subtle it is pity such excellent reasoning should want the ornaments of Mood and Figure but thus it is in them If the Pastors of the Church may be the means of preserving men from errours then the Definition of the Church teaching is the Foundation of the Church taught which in short amounts to this If the Pastors of the Church may be a Foundation of mens constancy in Doctrine then they may be a Foundation of mens inconstancy in Doctrine If this be not that you mean I can make no sense of what you say and if it be let any one else make Sense of it that hath a gift for it For by constancy in
have had Antiquity Vniversality and Consent which had not so such as the business of not rebaptizing Hereticks and the observation of Easter which you instance in And withall we add though nothing is to be admitted for matter of Faith which wants those three marks yet some things may have all three of them and yet be no matters of Faith at all and therefore not at all pertinent to this question Such as those things are which you insist on as deposita dogmata which doubtless is a rare way of probation viz. to shew that by dogmata deposita Vincentius means some articles of Faith which are not Fundamental in the matter of them and for that make choice of such instances which are no matters of faith at all but either ritual traditions or matters of order such as the form and matter of Sacraments the Hierarchy of the Church Paedobaptism not rebaptizing Hereticks the perpetual virginity of the Virgin Mary For that of the Canon of Scripture it will be elsewhere considered as likewise those other Church-traditions How the Church should still keep hoc idem quod antea as you confess she ought and yet make some things necessary to be believed by all which before her declaration were not so is somewhat hard to conceive and yet both these you assert together Is that which is necessary to be believed by all the same with that which was not necessary to be so believed if the same measure of Faith will not serve after which would have done before is there not an alteration made Yes you grant as to our believing but not as to the thing for that is the same it was But do you in the mean time consider what kind of thing that is which you speak of which is a thing propounded to be believed and considered in no other respect but as it is revealed by God in order to our believing it now when the same thing which was required only to be believed implicitely i. e. not at all necessarily is now propounded to be believed expresly and necessarily the Fundamental nature of it as an object of Faith is altered For that which you call implicite Faith doth really imply as to all those things to be believed implicitely that there is an indifferency whether they be believed or no nothing being necessary to be believed but what is propounded to be expresly believed Which being so Can it be imagined there should be a greater alteration in a matter of Faith then from its being indifferent whether it were believed or no to become necessary to be expresly believed by all in order to Salvation And where there is such an alteration as this in the thing to be believed who can without the help of a very commodious implicite Faith believe that still this is hoc idem quod antea the very same as a matter of Faith which it was before Though the Church were careful to preserve every Iota and tittle of Sacred Doctrines yet I hope it follows not that every Iota and tittle is of as much consequence and as necessary to be believed as the main substance of Christian Doctrine Although when any Doctrine was violently opposed in the Church she might declare her owning it by some overt act yet thence it doth not follow that the internal assent to every thing so declared is as necessary as to that proposition that Jesus is the Son of God the belief of which the Scripture tells us was the main design of the writing of Scripture That General Councils rightly proceeding may be great helps to the Faith of Christians I know none that deny but that by vertue of their definitions any thing becomes necessary to be believed which was not so before remains yet to be proved You much wonder his Lordship should father that saying on Vincentius That If new Doctrines be added to the old the Church which is Sacrarium veritatis the repository of verity may be changed in Lupanar errorum which his Lordship saith he is loth to English for you tell us That Vincentius is so far from entertaining the least thought of it that he presently adds Deus avertat God forbid it should be so A stout Inference Just as if one should say The Church of Rome may be in time overspread with the Mahumetan Religion but God forbid it should be so Were he not an excellent Disputer who should hence inferr it impossible ever to be so What you add out of Vincentius only proves that he did not believe it was so in his time but doth not in the least prove that he believed it impossible that ever it should be so afterwards but notwithstanding all that you say it is evident enough that Vincentius believed it a very supposable Case by that question he puts elsewhere What if any new contagion doth not only endeavour to defile a part only but the whole Church in which he saith we are to adhere to antiquity If you answer he speaks only of an endeavour it is soon replyed That he speaks of such an endeavour as puts men to dispute a question what they are to do in such a Case and he resolves at that time they are not to adhere to the judgement of the present Church but to that of Antiquity which is all we desire in that Case viz. That the present Church may so far add to matters of Faith that we can in no reason be obliged to rely only upon her judgement Wherein we are to consider the Question is not of that you call the diffusive but the representative Church all which may be overspread and yet but a part of the other but yet if that Church whose judgement you say only is to be relyed on may be so infected it is all one as to those who are to be guided by her judgement whether the other be or no. For here eadem est ratio non entis non apparentis because it is not the reality but the manifestation which is the ground of mens relying on the Churches judgement So that if as to all outward appearance and all judicial acts of the Church she may recede from the ancient Faith and add novitia veteribus whether all particular persons in it do so or no all ground of relying on the judgement of that Church is thereby taken away Whether it be the Church her self or Hereticks in the Church which make these additions is very little material if these Hereticks who add these new articles of Faith may carry themselves so cunningly as to get to themselves the reputation of the Catholick Church and so that which ought to have been Sacrarium veritatis may become impiorum turpium errorum Lupanar which your Church is concerned not to have Englished but by the help of Rider and other good Authours of yours it is no hard matter to come to understand it And thus we see how much you have abused his Lordship
whatever the private Opinions of men are they are ready to submit their judgements to the censure and determination of the Church if it be good will hold as well or better for our Unity as yours because all men are willing to submit their judgements to Scripture which is agreed on all sides to be Infallible If you say That it cannot be known what Scripture determines but it may be easily what the Church defines It is easily answered that the event shews it to be far otherwise for how many Disputes are there concerning the Power of determining matters of Faith to whom it belongs in what way it must be managed whether parties ought to be heard in matters of Doctrine what the meaning of the Decrees are when they are made which raise as many Divisions as were before them as appears by the Decrees of the Council of Trent and the latter of Pope Innocent relating to the five Propositions So that upon the whole it appears setting aside force and fraud which are excellent principles of Christian Vnity we are upon as fair terms of Vnion as you are among your selves You tell us That your Church doth Anathematize only such persons as are obstinate but who are they whom she accounts obstinate even all who dissent from her in any punctilio And therefore this is a singular piece of Moderation in your Church And you believe the troubles of Christendom rather come from too great freedom taken in matters of Faith than from any severity in the Church of Rome The truth is you have excellent waies of ending Controversies much like perswading men to put out their Eyes to end the Disputes about the nature of Colours and if they will not hearken to such prudent counsel they are pronounced obstinate and perverse for offering to keep their Eyes in their Heads And if men will not say that White is Black when your Church bids them do it these men are the troublers of Israel and the fomenters of the Discords of the Christian world But if your Church had kept to the primitive simplicity and moderation and not offered to define matters of Faith the occasion of most of the Controversies of the Christian world had been taken away Believe what you will and speak what you list there are none who consider what they believe or speak but easily discover whence the great Dissentions of the Christian world have risen viz. from the Ambition and Vsurpation of the Church of Rome which hath not been contented to have introduced many silly Superstitions into the publick exercise of Devotion but when any of these came to be discovered thought it her best course to defend her corruptions with greater by inforcing men to the belief of them and thereby rendring a Separation from her Communion unavoidable by all those who sought to retrieve the Piety and Devotion of the Primitive Church And yet this must be call'd Schism and the persons attempting it Hereticks by that same Pious and tender-hearted Mother of yours who loves her Children so dearly that if they do but desire any reformation of abuses she takes all possible care they shall complain no more As though the only way to prevent quarrelling in the world were to cut out peoples Tongues and cut off their Arms Such a kind of Vnity hath your Church shewed her self very desirous of where ever power and conveniency have met for the carrying it on But I hope you will give us leave not to envy the Vnity of those who therefore agree in the Church because as soon as they do in the least differ from it they are pronounced not to be of it for opposing the determinations of it And yet notwithstanding the violence and fraud used in your Church to preserve its Vnity the world is alarm'd with the noise of its Dissentions and the increase of the differing parties who manage their Contests with great heats and animosities against each other under all the great pretences of your Vnity I cannot but therefore judge it a very prudent expression of his Lordship That as the Church of England is not such a Shrew to her Children as to deny her blessing or denounce an Anathema against them if some peaceably dissent in some particulars remoter from the Foundation So if the Church of Rome since she grew to her greatness had not been so fierce in this course and too particular in determining too many things and making them matters of necessary belief which had gone for many hundred of years before only for things of pious Opinion Christendom I perswade my self had been in happier Peace at this day then I doubt we shall ever live to see it And it is an excellent reason you give why the Church of Rome doth impose her Doctrine on the whole world under pain of damnation because it is not in her power to do otherwise There is little hopes then of amendment in her if she thinks so But you tell us Christ hath commanded her to do it What hath he commanded her to do to add to his Doctrine by making things necessary which he never made to be so Is it in that place where he bids the Apostles to teach all that he commanded them that he gives power to the Church to teach more than he commanded But this is a new kind of Supererogation to make more Articles of Faith than ever men required to make Where still is this Command extant in Scripture Not sure any where but in that most apposite place produced to that and all other good purposes which have nothing else to prove them even Dic Ecclesiae If he will not hear the Church let him be to thee as a Heathen and a Publican therefore the Church of Rome is commanded by Christ to impose her Doctrine on the whole Church upon pain of damnation Sure you will pronounce men obstinate that dare in the least question this after so irrefragable a demonstration of it And you may well cry Scripture is not fit to decide Controversies when you consider the lame Consequences you above all men derive from it His Lordship shews the Moderation of the Church of England even in that Canon which A. C. looks on as the most severe where she pronounces Excommunication on such as affirm that the Articles are in any part superstitious or erronious c. by these things 1. That it is not meant of mens private judgements but of what they boldly and publickly affirm 2. That it is one thing to hold contrary to some part of an Article and anotherp ositively to affirm That the Articles in any part are superstitious or erronious 3. The Church of England doth this only for thirty nine Articles but the Church of Rome doth it for above a hundred in matter of Doctrine 4. The Church of England never declared That every one of her Articles are Fundamental in the Faith but the Church of Rome requires that all be
believed as Fundamental when once the Church hath determined them 5. The Church of England prescribes only to her own Children and by those Articles provides but for her own peaceable consent in those Doctrines of Truth But the Church of Rome severely imposes her Doctrine upon the whole world under pain of damnation To all these very considerable Instances of our Churches Moderation your Answer is The Question is not Whether the English Congregation or the Roman Church be more severe but Whether the English Protestants Severity be not unreasonable supposing she be subject to errour in defining those Articles For after many words to the same i. e. little purpose the reason you give for it is That every just Excommunication inflicted for opposing of Doctrine must necessarily suppose the Doctrine opposed to be infallibly true and absolutely exempt from errour otherwise the Sentence it self would be unreasonable and unjust as wanting sufficient ground From whence you charge Protestants with greater Tyranny and Injustice towards their people than they can with any colour or pretence of reason charge upon the Roman Church which excommunicates no man but for denying such Doctrine as is both infallibly True and also Fundamental at least as to its formal Object This is the strength of all you say which will be reduced to this short Question Whether the proceedings of that Church be more unreasonable which excommunicates such as openly oppose her Doctrine supposing her Fallible or of that Church which excommunicates all who will not believe whatever she defines to be Infallibly true This is the true State of the Controversie which must be judged by the resolving another Question Whether it be not a more unreasonable Vsurpation to bind men upon pain of damnation hereafter and excommunication here to believe every thing Infallible which a Church defines or to bind men to peace to a Churches Determinations reserving to men the liberty of their judgements on pain of Excommunication if they violate that peace For it is plain on the one side where a Church pretends Infallibility the Excommunication is directed against the persons for refusing to give Internal Assent to what she defines But where a Church doth not pretend to that the Excommunication respects wholly that Overt Act whereby the Churches Peace is broken And if a Church be bound to look to her own Peace no doubt she hath power to excommunicate such as openly violate the bonds of it which is only an Act of Caution in a Church to preserve her self in Vnity but where it is given out that the Church is Infallible the Excommunication must be so much the more unreasonable because it is against those Internal Acts of the mind over which the Church as such hath no direct power And thus I hope you see how much more just and reasonable the proceedings of our Church are then of yours and that eo nomine because she pretends to be infallible and ours doth not His Lordship shews further in Vindication of the Church of England and her grounds of Faith that the Church of England grounded her Positive Articles upon Scripture and her Negative do refute there where the thing affirmed by them is not affirmed by Scripture nor directly to be concluded out of it And this he saith is the main principle of all Protestants that Scripture is sufficient to Salvation and contains in it all things necessary to it The Fathers are plain the Schoolmen not strangers in it And Stapleton himself confesses as much Nay and you dare not deny it as to all material Objects of Faith and your formal here signifies nothing And when A. C. saith That the Church of England grounded her Positive Articles upon Scripture if themselves may be Judges in their own cause His Lordship answers We are contented to be judged by the joynt and constant belief of the Fathers which lived within the first four or five hundred years after Christ when the Church was at the best and by the Councils held within those times and to submit to them in all those Points of Doctrine This Offer you grant to be very fair and you do for your selves promise the same and say You will make it good upon all occasions Which we shall have tryal of before the end of this Book To what his Lordship saith concerning the Negative Articles That they refute where the thing affirmed by them is either not affirmed in Scripture or not directly to be concluded out of it A. C. replies That the Baptism of Infants is not expresly at least not evidently affirmed in Scripture nor directly at least not demonstratively concluded out of it Here two things his Lordship answers 1. To the Expression 2. To the thing 1. To the Expression That he is no way satisfied with A. C. his addition not expresly at least not evidently for saith he What means he If he speak of the lâ—tter of Scripture then whatsoever is expresly is evidently in the Scripture and so his addition is in vain If he speak of the meaning of Scripture then his addition is cunning For many things are expresly in Scripture which yet in their meaning are not evidently there And as little satisfied his Lordship declares himself with that other nor directly at least not demonstratively because many things are directly concluded which are not demonstratively To the first you answer That a Point may be exprest yet not evidently exprest otherwise there could be no doubt concerning what were exprest in Scripture since men never question things that are evident Now say you the Baptism of Infants must not only â—e exprest but evidently exprest to prove it sufficiently i. e. undeniably by Scripture alone But the Question being concerning matters of Doctrine and not meer words those things are expresly affirmed which are evidently and no other For it is one thing for words to be expresly in Scripture and another for Doctrines to be so For these latter are no further expresly affirmed there than as there is evidence that the meaning of such words doth contain such a Doctiine in them As to take your own Instance This is my Body we grant the words to be express but we deny that which he had then in his hands was his real Body for his hands were part of his real Body Now we do not say That the Doctrine of Transubstantiation is expresly but not evidently contained here for we say The Doctrine is not there at all but only that those are the express words This is my Body as it is in other figurative expressions in Scripture But that which causeth this litigation about words is That you look upon that which is evident and undeniable to be all one whereas there may be sufficient evidence where all men are not perswaded by it And so you would put his Lordship to prove out of Scripture Infant-Baptism evidently and demonstratively i. e. undeniably whereas his Lordship supposeth it
them and to acknowledge their words for infallible Oracles of Truth Was not here then sufficient ground for assent in the Primitive Christians to the Apostles Doctrine Not as you weakly imagine because the Doctrine of the Apostles was suitable to the Doctrine of Christ for the ground why they assented to the Doctrine of Christ was because of the Testimony of the Apostles And therefore to say They believed the Doctrine of the Apostles because it was agreeable to the Doctrine of Christ and then that they believed the Doctrine of Christ because it was suitable to the Testimony of the Apostles is a Circle fit for none but your self and that silly person of your own moulding whom you call the Sectary It were worth considering too How the works of Christ could prove the Doctrine of the Apostles suitable to his own I had thought Christs works had proved his own Testimony to be true and not the Apostles Doctrine to be consonant to his The works of Christ shew us the reason why he was to be believed in what he delivered and did not the works of the Apostles do so too What need then any rational person enquire further why the Apostles Doctrine was to be believed Was it not on the same account that the Doctrine of Christ was to be believed But say you How should you know their Doctrine was the same What do you want an infallible Testimony for this too or do you believe that God can contradict himself or that Christ should send such to deliver his Doctrine to the world and attest it with miracles who should falsifie and corrupt it Now you will say I am come over to you and answer as you do that the Apostles Testimony was to be believed because of the pregnant and convincing Motives of Credibility This I grant but must be excused as to what follows That these same Motives moved the Primitive Christians and us in our respective times to believe the Church Prove but that and I yield the cause But till then I pray give us leave to believe that still you prove idem per idem and your Answers are like your Proofs for this we have had often already and have sufficiently examined before as likewise your other Coccysm about the Formal Object of Faith and certain inducements to accept the Churches Infallibility which I shall not think worth repeating till you think what I have said against it before worth answering Your second Instance is ad hominem whereby you would prove That if he acknowledge the Church infallible in Fundamentals he must prove idem per idem as much as you do For say you if he be demanded a reason why he believes such Points as he calls Fundamental his Answer is because they are agreeable to the Doctrine of Christ. If he be asked How he knows them to be so he will no doubt produce the words sentences and works of Christ who taught the said Fundamental Points But if he be asked a third time By what means he is assured that these Testimonies do make for him then he will not have recourse to the words themselves i. e. to the Bible but his final Answer will be He knows them to be so and that they do make for him because the present Church doth infallibly witness so much from Tradition and according to Tradition which is say you to prove idem per idem as much as we Things are not alwaies just as you would have them If we allow you to make both Objections and Answers for us no doubt you are guilty of no Absurdity so great but we shall be equally guilty of it But it is the nature both of your Religion and Arguments not to be able to stand a Tryal but however they must undergo it I say then that granting the Church infallible in the belief of Fundamentals it doth not follow that we must prove idem per idem as you do For when we ask you Why you believe your Doctrine to be the sole Catholick Faith your final Answer is because your Church is infallible which is answering by the very thing in Question for you have no other way to judge of the Catholick Faith but by the Infallibility of your Church but when you ask us Why we believe such an Article to be Fundamental as for Instance That Christ will give Eternal Life to them that obey him we answer not because the Church which is infallible in Fundamentals delivers it to be so which were answering idem per idem but we appeal to that common reason which is in mankind Whether if the Doctrine of Christ be true this can be other than a Fundamental Article of it it being that without which the whole design of Christian Religion comes to nothing Therefore you much mistake when you think we resolve our Faith of Fundamentals into the Church as the infallible Witness of them for though the Church may be infallible in the belief of all things Fundamental for otherwise it were not a Church if it did not believe them it doth not thence necessarily follow That the Church must infallibly witness what is Fundamental and what not It is sufficient that the Church doth deliver from the consent of universal Tradition that infallible Rule of Faith which to be sure contains all things Fundamental in it though she never meddle with the deciding what Points are Fundamental and what not If you therefore ask me Why I believe any Point supposed Fundamental I answer By all the evidence which assures me that the Doctrine containing that Point is of Divine Revelation If you aske me How I know that this Point is part of that Doctrine I appeal to the common sense and reason of the world as to things plainly Fundamental and therefore by this means your third Question is prevented How I know this to be the meaning of those words for I suppose no one that can tell that two and two make four can question but if the Doctrine of Christ be true the belief of it is necessary to Salvation which is it we mean by Fundamental Either therefore prove it necessary that the Church must infallibly witness what is Fundamental and what not and that we must rely on such a Testimony in the belief of Fundamentals or you prove nothing at all to your purpose no more than your convincing Motives of Credibility which were they made into a grand Sallad would know the way to the Table they are served so often up But I have found them so dry and insipid already I have no encouragement to venture on them any more But still you are deservedly afraid we should not think worthily enough of your Churches Infallibility You therefore tell us very wisely that this Infallibility is not a thing that is not infallible For say you Which Infallibility must come from the Holy Ghost and be more than humane or moral and therefore must be truly supernatural c. It
before conclusions there is little hopes of your being a true Roman Catholick But I must tell you this is not the way You must first believe the Church and then you may believe any thing Scept But would you have me attain Infallible certainty without any reason that is Infallible But because you quarrel with my method I will yield to yours but let me desire to know first What those things are which I must believe upon this Infallibility and then Whether nothing short of this Infallible certainty will serve in order to Faith for if so I must confess my self not only a Sceptick but an Infidel T. C. All objects of Faith must be believed with Infallible certainty and nothing short of that can be true Faith for true Divine Faith must rely on Divine Authority or some Word of God now because you cannot rely on Gods written Word for the Divine Authority of it self you must rely on some Divine unwritten Word which can be no other but what is delivered by the Infallible Testimony of the present Roman Church Scept I was in hopes you intended my cure but now I perceive you aim at making me worse for I never heard so many things uttered in a breath with so great confidence and so little shew of reason that if I were not a Sceptick already I should commence one now You tell me indeed very magisterially that I cannot believe without Infallibility because Faith must rely on a Divine Testimony this Divine Testimony is not in Scripture as you call it but in the Infallibility of your present Roman Church I find my doubts so increase by this discourse of yours that they all croud so to get out I know not how to propose them in order but as well as I can You tell me the ground why you require Infallible certainty is because Faith must rest on Divine Authority and that this Authority must be that of your Church which you say is Infallible these things therefore I desire of you first to shew how your Churches Authority comes to be Divine 2. How her Testimony comes to be Infallible 3. How I may be Infallibly certain of this Infallibility 4. Supposing the Catholick Churches Testimony to be so how such a Sceptick as I am should know your Roman Church to be that Catholick Church T. C. Your first question is How our Churches Authority comes to be Divine I see there is little hopes of doing good on you that ask such questions as these are you ought quietly to submit your Faith to the Church and heartily believe all these things without questioning them for I must tell you such kind of questions have almost ruined us and hath made scrupulous men turn Hereticks and others Atheists but since I hope your questions may go no further then my answers nor be any better understood I must tell you That though we say that it is necessary that Divine Faith must rely on Divine Authority because that seems to promise Infallibility yet when we come to our Churches Testimony we dare not for fear of the Hereticks call it Divine but Infallible and in a manner and after a sort Divine hoping they would never take notice of any Contradiction in it but still we say As far as concerns precise Infallibility it is so truly supernatural and certain that it comes nothing short of the Divinest Testimony but yet this is not Divine though it be by the Testimony of the Holy Ghost and yet is no immediate revelation but still it is so much as if the Church should erre Gods veracity may be called in question assoon as the Churches Scept I took you for a Priest before but now I take you for an absolute conjurer but I confess I like this discourse well for I perceive your Religion is built on such grounds as you never intend should be understood wherein I commend your discretion for these distinctions will doubtless do your work among silly and ignorant people which are a great part of mankind and much the greatest of your Church I am therefore infinitely satisfied with this answer to my first question answer but the rest so and I promise you to be less a Sceptick then ever I was T. C. to your second How her Testimony comes to be Infallible because I perceive you are an understanding person I will acquaint you with our way The Hereticks trouble us with this question above all others for they presently cry out If you know the Scripture to be Infallible by the Church and the Church Infallible by Scripture we run into a Circle and this we know as well as they but do not think fit to let the people know it and therefore we tell them of things being known in themselves and to us between the formal object and the Infallible witness between the principal cause and a condition prerequisite between proving of it to Hereticks and to our selves but I see some of my brethren of late have been much beholding to some things with vizards upon them called Motives of credibility and the generality are so frighted with them that they will rather say they are satisfied then ask any more questions but if they do these do so little in truth belong to our Church that then we storm and sweat and cry out upon them as Atheists and that it is impossible they should believe any Religion who question them and if that doth it not then we patter over the former distinctions as we do our prayers and hope they are both in an unknown tongue Scept Well I see you are the man like to give me satisfaction I pray to your third question How I may be Infallibly certain of this Infallibility T.C. that is a question never asked by Catholicks and if we find any propounding it whom we hoped to proselyte we give them hard words and leave them for because we offer to prove our Infallibility by only motives of credibility they presently ask us Whether our Infallibility be an Article of Faith if it be then they may believe an Article of Faith without Infallible certainty and then what need our Churches Infallibility and then to what end do we quarrel with their Faith for being built on greater motives of credibility which being such untoward questions we see there is no good to be done on them and so leave them but in our Books we are sure to cry out of the fallibility and uncertainty of the Faith of Protestants because they acknowledge their Churches not Infallible and cry up our Church because she pretends to it if they ask How we prove it we seek to confound the state of the question and run out into the necessity of an unwritten Word or bring such motives as hold only for the Primitive and Apostolical Church and make them serve ours too If all this will not do we have other shifts still but it is not yet fit to discover them Scept To your fourth Question and then
that but only the concurrent Testimonies of some Schoolmen who must be confessed to be excellent Criticks and well versed in ancient M.SS. unless where they met with a little Greek or some hard Latin words and among whom the mistake of one would pass current for want of examining Copies let the Reader therefore judge whether Judgement be more probable But I think it not worth while to say more about it In your vindication of the Authority of Canus you make use of a very silly piece of Sophistry for say you Though he make Infidels and Novices in the Faith to be convinced by the Authority of the Church yet you say It doth not follow that he makes the said Authority a fallible but a certain and sure way to make them believe it But 1. The Question is Whether Canus doth understand that place of S. Augustine of Infidels and Novices or no 2. Suppose he sayes It is a sure way Doth it therefore follow that it is an infallible way Is nothing certain but what is infallible I hope you are certain that the Church of Rome is the Cacholick Church but Are you infallible that she is so If you advance all certainty to Infallibility or bring down all Infallibility to Certainty every Christian is as infallible as your Church is For I make no question but that every good Christian is certain of the Grounds and Principles of his Religion The same thing you return upon again after to little purpose you multiply words about Canus and Stapleton's Testimonies For say you because S. Augustine speaks of a sure way therefore he must mean an infallible way as though what was not supernaturally infallible was presently unsure I pray tell me Are you sure that two and two make four Yet I hope you will not say You are supernaturally infallible that they do so I hope you are sure there is a Pope at Rome and a goodly Colledge of Cardinals there but Are you infallible in this It is not then certainly the same to deny a thing to be infallible and to make it unsure And you are either very weak or very wilful in saying so In what sense this so much controverted place of S. Augustine is to be understood will be afterwards discussed and whether it be intended wholly for Infidels or no only I shall take notice now how in the last words of this Chapter you would again inferr Infallibility from undoubted certainty For say you the Church in S. Augustine's time esteemed her self undoubtedly certain that the Gospel was the infallible Word of God for otherwise she might be deceived her self and deceive others in commanding them to believe that to be God's Word which was only the word of man But What is it you would inferr from all this For we believe the Church as undoubtedly certain as may be that the Scriptures are God's Word yet we are far enough from believing that her Testimony now is supernaturally infallible CHAP. VII The Protestant Way of resolving Faith Several Principles premised in order to it The distinct Questions set down and their several Resolution given The Truth of matters of fact the Divinity of the Doctrine and of the Books of Scripture distinctly resolved into their proper grounds Moral Certainty a sufficient Foundation for Faith and yet Christian Religion proved to be infallibly True How Apostolical Tradition made by his Lordship a Foundation of Faith Of the certainty we have of the Copies of Scripture and the Authority of them S. Augustine's Testimony concerning Church-Authority largely discussed and vindicated Of the private Spirit and the necessity of Grace His Lordship's Way of resolving Faith vindicated How far Scripture may be said to be known by its own Light The several Testimonies of Bellarmine Brierly and Hooker cleared HAving thus far followed you through all your intricacies and windings and shewed with what diligence and subtilty you would juggle men out of their Faith under a pretence of Infallibility it will be necessary for the vindicating our Doctrine and the clearing this important Controversie with all evidence and perspicuity to lay down those certain grounds which we build our Faith upon And although it be one of the greatest of your Modern Artifices to perswade the world that Protestants have no certain grounds of Faith at all yet I doubt not but to make it evident that the way taken by the most judicious and considerative Protestants is as satisfactory and reasonable as I have already made it appear that yours is unreasonable and ridiculous Which I shall the rather do because through the want of a clear and distinct apprehension of the true way of resolving Faith no Controversie in Religion hath been more obscure and involved than this hath been Therefore for our more distinct method of proceeding I shall first endeavour to prevent misunderstanding by premising several things which are necessary for a through opening the state of the Controversie and then come to the resolution of it The things then I would premise are these following 1. That we enquire not after the reason why we assent to what is divinely revealed but after the reason why we believe any thing to be a Divine Revelation Therefore when men speak of the last resolution of Faith into the Veracity of God revealing they speak that which is undoubtedly true but it reacheth not our present enquiry I freely grant that the ultimate reason why any thing is believed is upon the Testimony of him from whom it comes and the greater the knowledge and fidelity is of him whose Testimony I believe the stronger my Assent is supposing I have sufficient evidence that it is his Testimony But that is our present Question for it being taken for granted among all Christians that God's Testimony is absolutely infallible there can no dispute arise concerning the ground of resolving Faith supposing God's Revelation to be sufficiently known For no one questions but God's Veracity however discovered is a sufficient ground for Faith but all the Question is How we come to know wherein this Veracity of God doth discover it self or what those things are which are immediately revealed by him Therefore to tell us that the resolution of Faith is into Gods Infallible Testimony without shewing on what account this testimony is to be beleeved to be from God is to tell us that which no one doubts of and to escape that which is the main question For in case Isaac should have denyed submission to his Fathers will when he went to be sacrificed till he could be satisfied concerning the lawfulness of that action which his Father went about Do you think it had been satisfactory to him if Abraham had told him that God had power to relax his own Laws and therefore he need not question the lawfulness of the action might not Isaac have presently answered That he did not question that what God commanded was lawful but that he desired was some evidence that he had
Customs controverted between the Papists and us which no doubt is the true reason why the three first ages are declined by Cardinal Perrone yet there is not the least shadow of pretence why they should be silent in this present Controversie since the great business of their writings was to vindicate the Christian Faith to perswade the Heathens to believe it and to manifest the grounds on which they were induced to believe themselves If therefore in this they do unanimously concurr with that resolution of Faith I have already laid down nothing can be desired more for the evidence and confirmation of the truth of our way than that it is not only most consonant to Scripture but built on the truest Reason and was the very same which the Primitive Christians used when they gave an account of their Faith Which I shall do not by some mangled citations but deducing it from the scope and design of their writings and drawing it successively down from the first after the Apostles who appeared in Vindication of the Christian Faith I begin with Justin Martyr who as Photius saith of him was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not far from the Apostles either in time or virtue and who being a professed Philosopher before he became a Christian we may in reason think that he was more inquisitive into the grounds of Christian Faith before he believed and the more able to give an account of them when he did Whether therefore we consider those arguments which first induced him to believe or those whereby he endeavours to perswade others to it we shall find how consonant and agreeable he is to our grounds of Faith how far from any imagination of the Churches Infallibility In the beginning of his excellent Dialogue with Trypho where if I may conjecture he represents the manner of his conversion in a Platonical way introducing a solemn conference between himself and an ancient person of great gravity and a venerable aspect in a solitary place whither he was retired for his meditations Pet. Halloix is much troubled who this person should be Whether an Angel in humane shape or a man immediately conveyed by an Angel to discover Christianity to him which when he had done he was as suddenly carried back again Scultetus I suppose from this story asserts Justin Martyr to be converted by Divine Revelation But if I be not much mistaken this whole Conference is no more than the setting forth the grounds of his becoming a Christian in the Platonical mode by way of Dialogue and probably the whole Disputation with Trypho may be nothing else but however that be it is apparent Trypho looked on him as a Platonist by his Pallium and Justin Martyr owns himself to have been so and therefore it was very congruous for him to discourse after the Academick manner In which discourse when Justin Martyr had stood up in vindication of the Platonick Philosophy and the other Person endeavours to convince him of the impossibility of attaining true happiness by any Philosophy For when Justin had said That by Philosophy he came to the Knowledge of God the other person demanded How they could know God who had never seen him nor heard him He replied That the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God was only intelligible by our minds as Plato said He again asks Whether there were such a faculty in the minds of men as to be able to see God without a Divine Power and Spirit assisting it Justin answers that according to Plato the eye of the understanding was sufficient to discover that there is such a Being which is the cause of all things but the nature of it is ineffable and incomprehensible Upon which he proceeds to enquire What relation there was between God and the Souls of men and what means to come to the participation of him after a great deal of discourse on which subject between them Justin comes at last to enquire if there were no truth and certainty in Philosophy By whose instruction or by what means he should come to it To which that person returns this excellent Answer That there had been a long time since several persons much elder than the reputed Philosophers blessed men just and lovers of God speaking by the inspiration of the Divine Spirit foretelling things which have come to pass since whom they call Prophets These only saw the Truth and declared it to men neither flattering nor fearing any nor conquered with the love of honour But they only spake the things which they heard and saw being filled with the Holy Spirit Whose Books are still extant which whosoever reads and assents to will find himself much improved in the principles and ends of things and whatever becomes a Philosopher to know For they write not by way of argument or demonstration but that which is above it they are most faithful witnesses of Truth For the things which have and do come to pass do enforce men to believe the Truth of what they spake And not only so but they are most worthy to be believed for the Miracles which they wrought Moreover they extol the Maker of the World God and the Father and declare to the World his Son Christ which the false Prophets who are acted by a seducing and impure spirit neither have done nor yet do do but they attempt to shew some tricks for the amazement of men and cry up the evil and deceiving spirits But do thou above all things pray that the gates of light may be opened to thee For these things are not seen nor understood by all but only by them to whom God and Christ shall grant the knowledge of them A most signal and remarkable Testimony as any is extant in all Antiquity for acquainting us with the true grounds and reasons of Faith which therefore I have at large produced The very reading of which is sufficient to tell us How true a Protestant this whether Angel or Man was When Justin asked him What Teachers he should have to lead him to Truth He tells him There had been long before Philosophers excellent persons in the world called Prophets men every way good who did nothing for fear or favour or love of themselves But Justin might further ask How he should come to be instructed by them He tells him Their Writings were still extant wherein were contained such things as might hugely satisfie a Philosophical mind concerning the Origine and Principles of things He might still enquire Whether those things were demonstrated or no in them No he replies but they deserve assent as much if not beyond any demonstration because they manifest themselves to be from God by two things the exact accomplishment of the Prophecies made by them and the unparalleld Miracles which were wrought by them But might not the evil spirits work such things No For although their false Prophetsâ—ay â—ay do several things to amaze men yet they can do no
of all his goods And when he speaks of the Doctrine it self of Christianity he saies It is suitable to whatever was rational among the Platonists or other Philosophers but far more agreeable to it self and containing much more excellent things than ever they could attain to the knowledge of In his second Apology for the Christians to the Emperour Antoninus Pius he insists much on the excellency of the Doâ—trine of Christianity from the Precepts of it chastity love of enemies liberality submission to authority worship of God c. Afterwards he proves the truth and certainty of all we believe concerning Christ from the exact accomplishment of the Prophecies made concerning him in the Old Testament which discourse he ends with this saying So many and so great things being seen are sufficient to perswade men to believe the truth of them who are lovers of truth and not seekers of applause and under the command of passions Thus we see in all his discourses where he had the most occasion administred to him to discover the most certain grounds of Christian Faith he resolves all into the rational evidence of the truth excellency and divinity of the Doctrine which was contained in the Scriptures For in his second Oration to the Greeks after he had spoken highly in commendation of the Scripture calling it The best expeller of all turbulent passions and the surest extinguisher of those preternatural heats in the souls of men which saith he makes men not Poets nor Philosophers nor Orators but it makes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dying men immortal and mortals become gods and transferrs them from the earth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to such places whose confines are far above Olympus therefore O ye Greeks come and be instructed be ye as I am for I was as you are And these were the things which prevailed with me the divine power and efficacy of the Doctrine What was it then I pray that Justin Martyr of a Philosopher becoming a Christian resolved his Faith into If we may believe himself it was into the evidence of the Doctrine of Christianity and not into the Infallibility of any Church The Testimony of this person I have the more largely insisted on both because he was so great a Philosopher as well as Christian and lived so near the Apostolical times Next him we produce Athenagoras as a Philosopher too as well as Christian who flourished under Antoninus and Commodus to whom he made his Apology in behalf of the Christians in which he first undertakes to manifest the reasonableness of the Doctrine which they owned the Foundation of it being the same with that which the best Philosophers acknowledged the existence and unity of the Deity But saith he if we had nothing but such reasons as he had produced our perswasion could only be humane but the words of the Prophets are they which establish our minds who being carried beyond themselves by the impulse of the Divine Spirit spake that which they were moved to when the Spirit used them as Instruments through which he spake Is not here a plain resolution of Faith into that Divine Authority by which the Prophets spake and that not as testified by any Infallible Church but as it was discernable by those persons he spake to for he appeals to the Emperours themselves concerning it which had been a fond and absurd thing for him to do if the knowledge of that Divine Inspiration did depend meerly on the testimony of Christians as such and were not to be discovered by some common Principles to them and others Much to the same purpose Tatianus speaks in that eloquent Oration of his against the Greeks who was Justin Martyrs Scholar and we shall see how agreeably he speaks to him in the account he gives how he became a Christian. After saith he he had abundantly discovered the vanity of the Theology and Superstitions of the Greeks he fell to the reading some strange Books much elder and more Divine than the Writings of the Greek Philosophers And to these saith he I yielded up my Faith for the great simplicity and plainness of the style and the freedom from affectation which was in the writers and that evidence and perspicuity which was in all they writ and because they foretold things to come made excellent promises and manifestly declared the Monarchy of the World What Protestant could speak higher of the Scripture and of those internal arguments which are the grounds of Faith than Tatianus in these words doth Yet we see these were the arguments which made him relinquish the Greek learning of which he was a Professor at Rome and betake himself to the profession of Christianity though he was sure to undergo not only contempt from the world but to be in continual hazard of his life by it That innate simplicity of the writings of the Scripture joyned with the perspicuity of it if at least those words be rightly translated 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by sermo nusquam obscurus and it doth not rather relate to the account of the worlds creation which I conjecture it may do but however the certainty of the predictions the excellency of the promises and the reasonableness of the Doctrine were the things which by the reading of the Books he was perswaded to believe them by But all this while we hear no news of any Churches Infallibility in order to Faith We come therefore to Irenaeus who was omnium doctrinarum curioâ—â—ssimus explorator as Tertullian speaks of him a great searcher into all kind of learning and therefore surely not to seek as to the true account of his Faith Whose judgement herein although we have had occasion to enquire into before yet we have testimonies enough beside to manifest his consent with them And although Irenaeus of all the ancient Fathers be looked on as the most favourable to Tradition and is most cited to that purpose in these disputes yet I doubt not but to make it appear that where he speaks most concerning Tradition he makes the resolution of Faith to be wholly and entirely into the Scripture and they who apprehend otherwise do either take the citations out of him upon trust or else only search him for the words of those citations and never take the pains to enquire into the scope and design of his discourse For clearing which we must consider what the subject was which he writ of what the plea's of the adverse party were what way Irenaeus takes to confute them and to establish the Faith of Christians as to the matter which was in Controversie The matter in dispute was this Valentinus and his Scholars not being contented with the simplicity of the Doctrine of the Gospel and in probability the better to suit their opinions to the Heathen Mythology had invented a strange Pedigree of Gods the better as they pretended to give an account of the production of things and the various dispensations
for being weak and mortal he cannot speak as he ought of a Being infinite and immortal nor he that is the work of him who made it besides he that cannot speak truth concerning Himself how much less is he to be believed concerning God For as much as man wants of Divine power so much must his speech fall short of God when he discourseth of him For mans speech is naturally weak and unable to express God not only as to his essence but as to his power and works thence he concludes a necessity that God by his Spirit must discover himself to men which revelation he proves to be only extant among Christians because of the many Divine testimonies that Christ was the Son of God because the knowledge that came by him was so remarkably dispersed abroad in the world and did prevail notwithstanding all opposition and persecution For saith he the Greek Philosophy if any ordinary Magistrate forbid it did presently sink but our doctrine hath been forbid from its first publishing by the Kings and Potentates of the earth who have used their utmost industry to destroy both us and that together but still it flourisheth and the more for its being persecuted for it dyes not like a humane doctrine nor perisheth like a weak gift Thus we see that he insists on rational evidence as the great and sufficient testimony into which our Faith is resolved as to the being of a Divine Revelation In his next Book he answers some objections of the Heathens against believing Christianity of which the chiefest was the dissension among the Christians wherein if ever he had an opportunity to declare what the certain rule of Faith is and what power God hath left his Church for determining matters to be believed by us But for want of understanding this necessary foundation of Faith viz. the Churches infallibility he is fain to answer this objection just as a Protestant would do 1. If this were an argument against truth the objectors had none themselves for both Jews and Greeks had heresies among them 2. The very coming of heresies was an argument of the truth of Scripture because that had expresly foretold them 3. This argument doth not hold any where else therefore it should not in reason here viz. where there is any dissent there can be no certainty for though Physitians differ much from one another yet Patients are not thereby discouraged from seeking to them for cure 4. This should only make men use more care and diligence in the search and enquiry after truth for they will find abundant recompence for their search in the pleasure of finding truth Would any one say because two apples are offered to him the one a real fruit the other made of wax that therefore he will meddle with neither but rather that he ought to use more care to distinguish the one from the other If there be but one high way and many by-paths which lead to precipices rivers or the Sea Will he not go in the highway because there are such false ones but rather go in it with the more care and get the exactest knowledge of it he can Doth a Gardener cast off the care of his Garden because weeds grow up with his herbs or rather doth he not use the more diligence to distinguish one from the other So ought we to do in discerning truth 5. That all those who seriously enquire after truth may receive satisfaction For either mans mind is capable of evidence or it is not if not it is to no purpose to trouble ourselves with any thing of knowledge at all if it be then we must descend to particular questions by which we may demonstratively learn from the Scriptures how the heresies fell off from them and that the most exact knowledge is preserved in truth alone and the ancient Church If then Heresies must be demonstratively confuted out of Scriptures what then doth he make to be the rule to judge of Controversies but only them For what he speaks of the ancient Church he speaks of it as in conjunction with truth and in opposition to those novel Heresies of the Basilidians and Valentinians For that he doth not at all appeal to the judgement of any Church much less the present as having any infallibility whereon men ought to rely in matters of Faith appears likewise by his following words But those saith he who are willing to imploy themselves in the most excellent things will never give over the search of truth till they have received a demonstration of it from the Scriptures themselves Here we see the last resolution of Assent is into the Scriptures themselves without any the least mention or intimation of any Infallibility in the Church either to deliver or interpret those Scriptures to us And after gives the true account of Heresies viz. mens not adhering to the Scriptures For saith he they must necessarily be deceived in the greatest things who undertake them unless they hold fast the Rule of Truth which they received from Truth it self And in this following discourse he goes as high as any Protestants whatever even such who suppose the Scripture to be principium indemonstrabile by any thing but it self for he makes the Doctrine delivered by Christ to be the Principle of our Faith and we make use of it saith he to be our 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to find out other things by But whatever is judged is not believed till it be judged therefore that can be no Principle which stands in need of being judged Justly therefore when we have by Faith received that indemonstrable Principle and from the Principle it self used demonstrations concerning it self we are by the voice of our Lord instructed in the knowledge of Truth Nothing can be more plain in what he saith than that if there were a higher 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 than Scripture as there must be if we are to receive it on the account of the Churches Infallible Testimony the Scripture could not be call'd the Principle of our Faith but when we receive the Scripture the evidence we have that it is our Principle must be fetched from it self and therefore he does here in terms as express as may be resolve the belief of Scripture into internal arguments and makes it as much a Principle supposed as ever his Lordship doth And immediately after when he proposeth that very Question How this should be proved to others We expect not saith he any proof from men but we prove the thing sought for by the Word of God which is more worthy belief than any demonstration or rather which is the only demonstration by the knowledge of which those who have tasted of the Scripture alone become believers Can any one who reads these words ever imagine that this man speaks like one that said That the Scriptures of themselves appear no more to be Gods Word than distinction of colours to a blind
Testimony for to what purpose else was the Similitude of the Woman of Samaria insisted on but to parallel the Testimony of the Church with that of the Woman and consequently the Faith built on the Churches Testimony to be like that which the Samaritans had of Christ upon the Womans Testimony and if you believe that Faith Infallible you must assert an Infalâ—â—ble Faith to be built on a fallible Testimony and yet to be as infallible as that which is built on an Infallible Testimony And then I pray tell me To what end would you make your Churches Testimony Infallible if Faith may be infallible without it But it may be though these seem hard things yet you prove them invincibly No doubt of it for you say That Christ enters by that Faith but Christ cannot enter into a soul by a meer humane fallible perswasion but by Divine Faith only Nay when he says That he more believes the Scripture than the Churches Testimony he saith That he believes the Church But how can he believe without Faith O the irresistible force of demonstrations But what silly people are we that thought a man might enter into a house by the door though he met not with his hearty entertainment till afterwards But Do you really think that Christ never enters into a soul but by Divine and Infallible Faith For Christ enters by that which gives him his first admission but his full reception must be by a higher degree of Faith Do you think men believe as much at first as ever after If not May not Christ be said to enter by that lower degree of Faith I pray What think you of the case in hand Did not the belief of Christ enter by the Woman of Samaria and was that as Divine a Faith as what they had afterwards Nay take Christs entring as improperly as you can imagine it for his hearty reception in the soul Can that be no other waies but by an Infallible Faith A Faith supposed to be built on infallible grounds I grant but whether all who do truly believe in Christ do build their Faith on grounds in themselves infallible my charity to some deluded souls in your Church as well as honest but ignorant persons elsewhere gives me just reason to question But still there is a greater subtilty behind which is if he believes the Scripture more than the Church then he must believe the Church equally with the Scripture for that must be the meaning of what you say when he sayes He believes the Scripture more than the Church he believes the Church but how can he believe without Faith Ergo this must be Divine Faith or else all the rest come to nothing So that if I say I believe the Scripture more than you it follows that I believe you as much as the Scripture by the very same consequence But you have gotten such a knack of contradicting your self that poor Gandavo cannot fall into your hands but you must make him do so too When you say A man cannot believe without Faith I dare justifie it to be one of the greatest truths in your Book but if your meaning be A man cannot believe without Divine Faith I hope we Protestants sufficiently confute that for you dare not deny that we believe at all but just as the Devils do we must according to you believe and tremble because our Faith is not Divine and Infallible But still your subtilty works with you for because Gandavensis saith That we must yield our first Faith to the Scripture but secundam sub ista a secondary Faith to the definitions and customs of the Catholick Church You cry out Here 's prima secunda fides but yet both of them are properly and truly Faith But Are both of them properly and truly Divine Faith If so How comes the distinction of the first and second one subordinate to the other if both be equally Divine and Infallible Nay according to your Principles the Faith given to the Church must be the first Faith and to the Scriptures the second under that because for the sake of the Churches Testimony we are to believe the Scriptures And Do you really think there may be no discovery of Infidelity in rejecting a sufficient Testimony for Faith where there is not an Infallible Testimony But whatever you think your great enemy Reason tells us the contrary and therefore what follows of believing the Church sub poenâ perfidiae is to no more purpose than what went before The strength therefore of all that you say as to this Testimony of Gandavensis lyes in the proof of this one thing That no man can believe any thing without an Infallible Faith yet I verily believe that you have miserably perverted the Schoolmens words and think no more Infallible Testimony requisite for it than your own words But it may be though you do so ill by the Schoolmen you may use the Fathers more civilly Three things therefore you have to answer to those Testimonies of the Fathers which seem most to make use of internal Arguments 1. That they use them not to such as had no Divine Faith but to such as had 2. That they do not use them as Primary Infallible and Divine proofs but as secondary arguments perswasive only to such as believed Scripture to be Gods Word antecedently to them 3. That they do not use only such proofs as are wholly internal to the Scripture it self As to the two first conditions you say 't is evident these proofs were made by Christians namely the Holy Fathers and commonly to Christians who lived in their times And as clear is it that they never pronounced them to be the Primary Infallible and Divine Motives of their belief in that point nor used they them as such How false and absurd these Answers are may appear by our precedent discourse wherein we manifested that the Christians insisted on those arguments there mentioned not for themselves and other Christians but chiefly to convince and perswade by them the Gentile world to the belief of Christianity And Did they suppose these Heathens to have a Divine Faith already Or Did they look on such arguments as only secondary motives when these were the chief nay only arguments which they used to perswade them if they had other that were Primary Divine and Infallible and only made use of secondary humane probable motives they were guilty of the highest betraying the Christian Cause imaginable And you make them only to defend Christianity as Vaninus did Divine Providence with such silly and weak arguments that by their overthrow the belief of it might fall with them Indeed if they had pretended the Infallible Testimony of the Church there might have been just reason for such a Suspicion and any wise men would have thought their design had been to make their Religion contemptible and expose it to the derision of Atheists instead of better establishing the Foundations of believing it But
general Foundations of Christian Society But if any Society shall pretend a necessity of communion with her because it is impossible this should be done by her this priviledge must in reason be as evident as the common grounds of Christianity are nay much more evident because the belief of Christianity it self doth upon this pretence depend on the knowledge of such Infallibility and the indispensable obligation to communion depends upon it 2. There being a possibility acknowledged that particular Churches may require unreasonable conditions of communion the obligation to communion cannot be absolute and indispensable but only so far as nothing is required destructive to the ends of Christian Society Otherwise men would be bound to destroy that which they believe and to do the most unjust and unreasonable things But the great difficulty lyes in knowing when such things are required and who must be the judge in that case to which I answer 3. Nothing can be more unreasonable then that the Society imposing such conditions of communion should be judge whether those conditions be just and equitable or no. If the question only were in matters of peace and conveniency and order the judgement of the Society ought to over-rule the judgements of particular persons but in such cases where great Bodies of Christians judge such things required to be unlawful conditions of communion what justice or reason is there that the party accused should sit Judge in her own cause 4. Where there is sufficient evidence from Scripture reason and tradition that such things which are imposed are unreasonable conditions of Christian communion the not communicating with that Society which requires these things cannot incurr the guilt of Schism Which necessarily follows from the precedent grounds because none can be obliged to communion in such cases and therefore the not communicating is no culpable separation 5. By how much the Societies are greater which are agreed in not communicating with a Church imposing such conditions by how much the power of those who rule those Societies so agreeing is larger by so much the more justifiable is the Reformation of any Church from these abuses and the setling the bonds of Christian communion without them And on those grounds viz. the Church of Romes imposing unlawful conditions of communion it was necessary not to communicate with her and on the Church of Englands power to reform it self by the assistance of the Supream power it was lawful and justifiable not only to redress those abuses but to settle the Church upon its proper and true foundations So that the Church of Romes imposing unlawful conditions of communion is the reason why we do not communicate with her and the Church of Englands power to govern and take care of her self is the reason of our joyning together in the service of God upon the principles of our Reformation On these grounds I doubt not but to make it appear how free the Church of England is from all imputation of Schism These things being thus in general premised we come to consider what those principles are on which you can found so high a charge as that of Schism on the Protestant Churches And having throughly considered your way of management of it I find all that you have to say may be resolved into one of these three grounds 1. That the Roman Church is the true and only Catholick Church 2. That our Churches could have no power or cause to divide in their Communion from her 3. That the Authority of the Roman Church is so great that upon no pretence soever could it be lawful to withdraw from Communion with her I confess if you can make good any one of these three you do something to the purpose but how little ground you have to charge us with Schism from any of these Principles will be the design of this Part at large to manifest I begin then with the first which is the pretence of your Churches being the Catholick Church and here we again enter the lists to see how fairly you deal with your Adversary Mr. Fisher saith That from the Controversie of the resolution of Faith the Lady callâ—d them and desiring to hear whether the Bishop would grant the Roman Church to be the right Church the Bishop saith he granted that it was To which his Lordship answers after a just complaint of the abuse of disputations by mens resolution to hold their own though it be by unworthy means and disparagement of truth that the question was neither asked in that form nor so answered And that there is a great deal of difference especially as Romanists handle the question of the Church between The Church and A Church and there is some between a True Church and a Right Church For The Church may import the only true Church and perhaps the root and ground of the Catholick And this saith he I never did grant of the Roman Church nor ever mean to do But A Church can imply no more then that it is a member of the whole And this I never did saith he nor ever will deny if it fall not absolutely away from Christ. That it is a True Church I granted also but not a Right For Truth only imports the being right perfection in conditions thus a Thief is a true man though not an upright man So a corrupt Church may be true as a Church is a company of men which profess the Faith of Christ and are baptized into his Name but it is not therefore a right Church either in doctrine or manners And this he saith is acknowledged by very learned Protestants before him This is the substance of his Lordships answer to which we must consider what you reply That about the terms of the Ladie 's question you grant to be a verbal Controversie and that whatever her words were she was to be understood to demand this alone viz. Whether the Roman were not the True Visible Infallible Church out of which none can be saved for herein you say she had from the beginning of the Controversie desired satisfaction And in this subject the Roman Church could not be any Church at all unless it were The Church and a Right Church The reason is because St. Peters successour being the Bishop of Rome and Head of the whole Church as you tell us you will prove anon that must needs be the Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if it be any Church at all And because the Church can be but one if it be a true Church it must be the right Church But all this amounts only to a confident assertion of that which wants evident proof which is that the notion of a Church relates to one as appointed the Head of the whole Church without which it would be no Church at all Which being a thing so hard to be understood and therefore much harder to be proved we must be content to wait your leasure till you shall think fit
Cyprian The second Authority is out of St. Hierome whose words are The Roman Faith commended by the Apostle admits not such praestigiae deceits and delusions into it though an Angel should Preach it otherwise than it was Preached at first being armed and fenced by St. Pauls Authority it cannot be changed Here you tell us You willingly agree with his Lordship that by Romanam fidem St. Hierom understands the Catholick Faith of Christ and so you concur with him against Bellarmine that it cannot be understood of the particular Church of Rome But by the way you charge your Adversaries with great inconsequence that in this place they make Roman and Catholick to be the same and yet usually condemn you for joyning as Synonyma 's Roman and Catholick together A wonderful want of judgement as though the Roman Faith might not be the Catholick Faith then and yet the Catholick Faith not be the Roman Faith now The former speech only affirms that the Faith at Rome was truly Catholick the latter implyes that no Faith can be Catholick but what agrees with Rome and think you there is no difference between these two But you say further That this Catholick Faith must not here be taken abstractly that so it cannot be changed for Ruffinus was not ignorant of that but that it must be understood of the immutable Faith of the See Apostolick so highly commended by the Apostle and St. Hierom which is founded upon such a rock that even an Angel himself is not able to shake it But St. Hierom speaking this with a reference to that Faith he supposeth the Apostle commended in them although the Apostle doth not so much commend the Catholickness or soundness of their Faith as the act of believing in them and therefore whatever is drawn from thence whether by St. Hierome or any else can have no force in it for if he should infeâ— the immutability of the Faith of the Church of Rome from so apparently weak a foundation there can be no greater strength in his testimony than there is in the ground on which it is built and if there be any force in this Argument the Church of Thessalonica will be as Infallible as Rome for her Faith is commended rather in a more ample manner by the Apostle then that of Rome is St. Hierome I say referring to that Faith he supposes the Apostle commended in them must only be understood of the unchangeableness of that first Faith which appears by the mention of an Angel from Heaven Preaching otherwise Which certainly cannot with any tolerable sense be meant thus that St. Hierome supposed it beyond the power of an Angel from Heaven to alter the Faith of the Roman Church For in the very same Apology he expresseth his great fears lest the Faith of the Romans should be corrupted by the Books of Ruffinus But say you What is this then to Ruffinus who knew as well as St. Hierom that Faith could not change its essence However though St. Hierome should here speak of the Primitive and Apostolical Faith which was then received at Rome that this could receive no alteration yet this was very pertinent to be told Ruffinus because St. Hierome charges him with an endeavour to subvert the Faith not meerly at Rome but in all other places by publishing the Books of Origen with an Encomiastick Preface to them and therefore the telling him The Catholick Faith would admit of no alteration which was received at Rome as elsewhere might be an Argument to discourage him from any attempts of that nature And the main charge against Ruffinus is not an endeavour to subvert meerly the people of Rome but the Latin Church by his translation and therefore these words ought to be taken in their greatest latitude and so imply not at all any Infallibility in the Roman See The remaining Testimonies of Gregory Nazianzene Cyril and Ruffinus as appears to any one who reads them only import that the Roman Church had to their time preserved the Catholick Faith but they do not assert it impossible it should ever do otherwise or that she is an Infallible preserver of it and none of their Testimonies are so proper to the Church of Rome but they would equally hold for any other Apostolical Churches at that time Gregory Nazianzene indeed sayes That it would become the Church of Rome to hold the entire Faith alwayes and would it not become any other Church to do so to doth this import that she shall Infallibly do it or rather that it is her duty to do it And if these then be such pregnant Authorities with you it is a sign there is little or nothing to be found in Antiquity for your purpose But before we end this Chapter we are called to a new task on occasion of a Testimony of St. Cyril produced by his Lordship in stead of that in Bellarmin which appeared not in that Chapter where his Name is mentioned In which he asserts That the foundation and firmness which the Church of Christ hath is placed not in or upon the person much less the Successour of St. Peter but upon the Faith which by Gods Spirit in him he so firmly professed which saith his Lordship is the common received opinion both of the ancient Fathers and of the Protestants Vpon this Rock that is upon this Faith will I build my Church On which occasion you run presently out into that large common place concerning Tu es Petrus and super hanc Petram and although I should grant all that you so earnestly contend for viz. That these words are not spoken of St. Peters Confession but of his Person I know no advantage which will accrue to your cause by it For although very many of the Fathers understand this place of St. Peters Confession as containing in it the ground and Foundation of Christian Religion Thou art Christ the Son of the Living God which therefore may well be said to be the Rock on which Christ would build his Church and although it were no matter of difficulty to defend this interpretation from all exceptions yet because I think it not improbable the words running by way of address to St. Peter that something peculiar to him is contained in them I shall not contend with you about that But then if you say that the meaning of St. Peters being the Rock is The constant Infallibility in Faith which was derived from St. Peter to the Church of Rome as you seem to suggest you must remember you have a new task to make good and it is not saying That St. Peter was meant by the Rock will come within some leagues of doing it I pass therefore by that discourse as a thing we are not much concerned in for it is brought in by his Lordship as the last thing out of that testimony of Cyril but you were contented to let go the other more material Observations that you might more
and fully in these words T is too true indeed that there is a miserable rent in the Church and I make no question but the best men do most bemoan it nor is he a Christian that would not have Vnity might he have it with Truth But I never said nor thought that the Protestants made this rent The cause of the Schism is yours for you thrust us from you because we call'd for truth and redress of abuses For a Schism must needs be theirs whose the cause of it is The woe runs full out of the mouth of Christ ever against him that gives the offence not against him that takes it ever And in the Margent shewing that a separation may sometimes be necessary he instanceth in the orthodox departing from the communion of the Arrians upon which he sayes It cannot be that a man should do well in making a Schism There may be therefore a necessary separation which yet incurrs not the guilt of Schism and that is when Doctrines are taught contrary to the Catholick Faith And after saith The Protestants did not depart for departure is voluntary so was not theirs I say not theirs taking their whole body and cause together For that some among them were peevish and some ignorantly zealous is neither to be doubted nor is there danger in confessing it Your body is not so perfect I wot well but that many amongst you are as pettish and as ignorantly zealous as any of ours You must not suffer for these nor we for those nor should the Church of Christ for either And when A. C. saith That though the Church of Rome did thrust the Protestants from her by excommunication yet they had first divided themselves by obstinate holding and teaching Opinions contrary to the Roman Faith His Lordship answers So then in his Opinion Excommunication on their part was not the prime cause of this division but the holding and teaching of contrary Opinions Why but then in my opinion saith he that holding and teaching was not the prime cause neither but the corruptions and superstitions of Rome which forced many men to hold and teach the contrary So the prime cause was theirs still And A. C. telling him That he said that it was ill done of those who first made the separation He answers That though he remembred not that he said those words yet withall adds If I did not say it then I do say it now and most true it is That it was ill done of those whoere they were who first made the separation But then A. C. must not understand me of Actual only but of Causal separation For as I said before the Schism is theirs whose the cause of it is and he makes the separation that gives the first just cause of it not he that makes an actual separation upon a just cause preceding And this is so evident a Truth that A. C. cannot deny it for he sayes it is most true These passages I have laid together that the Reader may clearly understand the full state of this great Controversie concerning Schism the upshot of which is that it is agreed between both parties that all separation from communion with a Church doth not involve in it the guilt of Schism but only such a separation as hath no sufficient cause or ground for it So that the Question comes to this Whether your Church were not guilty of such errours and corruptions as gave sufficient cause for such a separation The Question being thus stated we now come to consider how you make good your part in it Your first pretence is if reduced into argument for you seem to have a particular pique against a close way of disputing That your Church is a right and orthodox Church and therefore could never give any just cause of separation from it For the Lady asked as A. C. would have it Whether the Roman Church was not the right Church not be not but was not that is relating to the times before the breach was made Now his Lordship tells him That as to the terms he might take his choice For the Church of Rome neither is nor was the right Church as the Lady desired to hear A particular Church it is and was and in some times right and in some times wrong but the right Church or the Holy Catholick Church it never was nor ever can be And therefore was not such before Luther and others left it or were thrust from it A particular Church it was but then A. C. is not distinct enough here neither For the Church of Rome both was and was not a right or orthodox Church before Luther made a breach from it For the word ante before may look upon Rome and that Church a great way off or long before and then in the prime times of it it was a most right and orthodox Church But it may look also nearer home and upon the immediate times before Luther or some ages before that and then in those times Rome was a corrupt and tainted Church far from being Right And yet both these times before Luther made his breach And so he concludes that Section with this clause That the Roman Church which was once right is now become wrong by embracing superstition and errour And what say you now to all this Two things you have to return in answer to it or at least to these two all that you say may be reduced 1. That if the Roman Church was right once it is so still 2. That if the Roman Church were wrong before Luther the Catholick Church was so too These two containing all that is said in this case must be more particularly discussed 1. That if the Roman was the right Church it still is so seeing no change can be shewn in her Doctrine If there have been a change let it appear when and in what the change was made Thus you say but you know his Lordship never granted that the Roman Church ever was the right Church in the sense you take those words for the true Catholick Church that it was once a right particular Church he acknowledged and as such was afterwards tainted with errours and corruptions If so you desire to know what these were and when they came in to the former I shall reserve an Answer till I come to the third part of my task where you shall have an account of them to the latter the time when these came in because this is so much insisted on by your party I shall return you an Answer in this place And that I shall do in these following Propositions 1. Nothing can be more unreasonable than to deny that errours and corruptions have come into a Church meerly because the punctual time of their coming in cannot be assigned For Will any one question the birth of an Infant because he cannot know the time of his conception Will any one deny there are tares in the field because
there Roman nor Catholick for he speaks of things done and to be done and not for things believed or to be believed 4. A right sober man may without the least touch of insolency or madness dispute a business of Religion with the Roman either Church or Prelate as all men know Irenaeus did with Victor Now to all this you reply That the argument still holds à minori ad majus and reaches to every person that in any matter whatsoever obstinately opposes himself against the Church of God And is not this an excellent way of arguing from the less to the greater to argue from a rite or ceremony observed by the Universal Church to a matter of Faith determined by the Roman Church This is à minori ad majus with a witness But your Reason is as good as your Answer which is because there was alwaies some point or matter of Faith involved in every Vniversally practised rite or ceremony of the Church I pray Sir then Tell us what the matter of Faith was which lay in the offering on Maundy-Thursday in morning or after supper and by whom this point of Faith was determined and and how far it is obligatory and whether it be not sinful heretical and damnable so much as modestly to doubt of it For all this you told us belongs to all matters of Faith determined by the Catholick Church What remains of this Chapter need not hold us long for C's illation from the Catholick Churches not erring that therefore it cannot be lawful to separate from the Roman Church is absurd and illogical and depends on that gross mistake that the Roman and Catholick Church are all one which we have abundantly disproved in the precedent Chapter What follows concerning the Catholick Churches not erring and how far that extends concerning the Catalogue of Fundamentals and any errours admitted in the Church being destructive to its Being because derogatory to Gods Veracity have been so amply discussed in their proper places that I find no temptation from any new arguments here suggested to resume the debate of them There being then nothing material which hath not been handled already I here conclude this Chapter CHAP. III. Of keeping Faith with Hereticks The occasion of this Dispute The reason why this Doctrine is not commonly defended Yet all own such Principles from whence it necessarily follows The matter of fact as to the Council of Constance and John Hus opened Of the nature of the safe-conduct granted him by the Emperour that it was not a general one salvâ justitiâ but particular jure speciali which is largely proved The particulars concerning Hierom of Prague Of the safe-conduct granted by the Council of Trent Of the distinction of Secular and Ecclesiastical Power and that from thence it follows that Faith is not to be kept with Hereticks Simancha and several others fully assert this Doctrine Of the Invitation to the Council of Trent and the good Instructions there and of Publick Disputation A. C's Endeavour not only to charge Protestants with the guilt of Schism but to justifie and clear the proceedings of the Church of Rome towards them hath led us into a new dispute how far she is to be trusted in the greatest promises which are made to such whom she accounts Hereticks Which is occasioned by these words of his That after this breach was made the Church of Rome was so kind and careful to seek the Protestants that she invited them publickly with safe conduct to Rome to a General Council freely to speak what they could for themselves Or if we take his words as you give them us the sense is the same to our purpose and therefore you impertinently cavil with his Lordship for not keeping Faith with A.C. Which did at first seek to recall them from their Novel Opinions and after their breach did permit yea invite them publickly to Rome to a General Council c. Upon which his Lordship sayes Indeed I think the Church of Rome did carefully seek the Protestants but I doubt it was to bring them within their net And she invited them to Rome A very safe place if you mark it for them to come to just as the Lion in the Apologue invited the Fox to his own Den. Yea but there was safe-conduct offered too Yes conduct perhaps but not safe or safe perhaps for going thither but none for coming thence Vestigia nulla retrorsum Yea but it should have been to a General Council Perhaps so But was the conduct safe that was given to a Council which they call General to some others before them No sure John Hus and Jerom of Prague burnt for all their safe conduct And so long as the Jesuits write and maintain That Faith given is not to be kept with Hereticks And the Church of Rome leaves this lewd Doctrine uncensured as it hath hitherto done and no exception put in of force and violence A. C. shall pardon us that we come not to Rome nor within the reach of Roman Power what freedom of speech soever he promised us For to what end freedom of speech on their part since they are resolved to alter nothing And to what end freedom of speech on our part if after speech hath been free life shall not This you call a Theme which for the most part our Adversaries love to dwell upon as thinking they have some great advantage against us therein And Can you blame them for insisting much on that which their lives are concerned in and it will appear in the prosecution of this subject that we have this great advantage against you that we are come to understand your arts so well as not so easily to be catched by your perfidious subtilties And as we understand your practices better than to rely on your promises of this nature so we are not so ignorant of the intrigues of your proceedings as to suppose that commonly and openly you should defend this Position That Faith is not to be kept with Hereticks For thereby you would lose the intent and design of it for none would be so silly as to venture themselves into the hands of such who openly profess They are not bound to keep Faith with them For Do you think that Father Fulgentio would ever have gone to Rome on the safe-conduct most solemnly given by Paul 5. if he had understood beforehand with what perfidiousness he should have been dealt with there and all under this pretext That safe-conduct was given for his coming hither but not for his going thence Is this the Faith of the Apostolical See Is this the Catholick and Roman Faith If so the Roman Faith before ever it was Christian was much more infallible than this that never was acquainted with such a perfidious Infallibility Well then might his Lordship say The conduct might be safe for going thither but not for coming thence Vestigia nulla retrorsum And so Fulgentio to his sorrow found it
in the safe-conduct he had granted Thus we see how on all hands it appears from Husse's fears and desires the Emperours power the nature of safe-conducts the Emperours own sense of it and the Councils decree that this first Answer hath no ground at all viz. that the safe conduct was granted jure communi and that it was only to hinder unjust violence and not the execution of Justice But besides you say John Husse was justly burnt for two reasons The first is For being obstinate in his Heresie the second For having fled which the Emperour had prohibited in his safe-conduct under pain of death I answer It is not Whether a man obstinate in Heresie may be burnt which is now the Question although that may justly bear a dispute too But Whether one suspected for Heresie and coming to a Council with safe-conduct for coming and returning may be burnt without violation of Faith your first reason then is nothing to the purpose and your second as little First Because there is no certain evidence at all of Husse's flying it not being objected against him by the Emperour who only upbraided him with his obstinacy in his Heresie as the cause of his execution and withall if Husse had fled and had suffered death for that as you say he ought to have done he would not have suffered the death proper to Heresie and not to flying nor been accounted as by all your own Authours he is a sufferer on the account of Heresie But this being a groundless Calumny it needs no further confutation But before we come to your second Answer the case of Hierom of Prague must be discussed so far as it is distinct from that of John Husse who it seems was trepanned by a pretended safe-conduct granted him by the Council and not by the Emperour wherein you tell us that express clause of salvâ semper justitiâ was inserted which is another argument that the safe-conduct of the Emperour to Husse was of another nature because it ran in general terms without any such clause but poor Hierom who it seems was not acquainted with the arts and subtilties of his enemies but thought them as honest as himself ventures to Constance upon this safe-conduct but when he came thither and began to understand the jugglings of his enemies he thought to shift for himself by flight but being taken was burnt So that Hierom suffered through his honest simplicity and credulity not considering what that salvâ justitiâ would mean in his case which as they interpreted it was such another safe-conduct as known Malefactors have to the place of Justice but to call it a safe-conduct in the sense which Hierom apprehended it in is as proper as to say A man that is to be executed shall have a Salvo for his life This was therefore intended as appears by the event as a meer trick to bring him within their power and so all such safe-conducts granted with those clauses by such persons who are to interpret them themselves are and nothing else For they are the sole Judges what this Justice shall be Neither can you say then That Faith was kept with Hierom of Prague for no such thing as a safe-conduct truly so called was intended him and when the Emperour was sollicited to grant him one he utterly denied it because of the bad success he had in that of John Husse and some of the Council being then present with the Emperour offered to give him a safe-conduct but they very honestly explained themselves that it was a safe-conduct for coming thither but not for going thence again And so it proved So that Faith was well given to Hierom of Prague and as well kept to John Husse But say you Had the Protestants gone to the Council of Trent upon the safe-conduct granted them by that Council jure speciali in the second manner they could not at all have been punished under any pretence of Heresie without manifest breach of Faith which all Catholicks hold to be unlawful The like may be said of the safe-conduct offered them for going to Rome But you must better satisfie us that you look upon this as a breach of Faith than as yet you have done For so are your ambiguities in your expressions of this nature that men who know your arts can hardly tell when they have your right meaning For you may look on all breach of Faith as unlawful and yet not look on your acting contrary to your express words in safe-conducts offered to Hereticks to be a breach of Faith For you may say Faith is there only broken where men are bound to keep it but you are not bound to keep it with Hereticks and that because your obligation to the Church is greater than it can be to Hereticks when therefore you have Hereticks in your power it is an easie matter for you to say that were it in any thing else but in a matter so nearly concerning the Interest of your Holy Mother the Church you could not but observe it but your obligation to that is so great as destroies all other which are contrary to it and the obligation being destroyed there is no breach of Faith at all and therefore you may hold all breach of Faith unlawful and yet you may proceed against those whom you account Hereticks contrary to all engagements whatsoever and then say This is no breach of Faith And the truth is by your Doctrines of aequivocations and mental reservations you have made all manner of converse in the world so lubricous and uncertain that he who hath to deal with you especially in matters where the interest of your Church is concerned had need be wary and remember to distrust or else he may repent it afterwards If you therefore account the Protestants crafty Foxes in not coming to Rome or the Council of Trent it was because they would not venture too near the Lions Den but if you will not account them wise men for refusing so fair an offer you will give us leave to think them so till they see better reason to trust your offers And the Council of Trent did very well to tell them in their form of safe-conduct they would not do by them as the Council of Constance did for therein they shew how much the Faith of Councils was sunk by that so that if that were not particularly excepted no trust would ever be given to them more But supposing the safe-conduct of the Council of Trent to have been never so free from suspicion the Protestants had sufficient reasons not to appear there as will be manifested afterwards We come therefore now to your second Answer in vindication of the Council of Constance which is this That by that decree the Council declares that no Secular Power how soveraign soever can hinder the proceedings of the Ecclesiastical Tribunal in causes of Heresie for which there is great reason and consequently if the Emperour or any other Secular Prince
est If Faith be given against Christ that is to the dishonour of God or contrary to the precepts of true Religion it were perfidiousness to observe it But the Answer to this is easie for it appears from Simancha's own grounds that he supposeth it holds universally because Faith can never be given to Hereticks so as that promise can be lawfully performed because thereby he supposeth it given against Christ and to the dishonour of God and therefore concludes it would be perfidiousness to observe it And this is evident from Simancha's own grounds which he gives for it For saith he if Faith be not kept with Tyrants Pirats and other Robbers which kill the body much less with Hereticks who destroy souls which reason being absolute and universal his Proposition must be so too And very consonantly to his former assertions concludes That if Faith be given them with an Oath against the publick good against the salvation of souls against divine and humane Laws it is not to be kept and it is well known that all Heresies are accounted so by you and therefore in no case Faith is to be kept with Hereticks Neither can this possibly be understood meerly of private persons for his words are general and we see he vindicates the proceedings of the Council at Constance upon these grounds and he quotes Marius Salomonius and Placa who likewise assert in terms That Faith given to Hereticks is not to be kept and makes use of the instance of the Council of Constance to prove it And Menochius whom Simancha likewise cites who was an Italian Canonist and therefore might well know the practices of Rome in these cases saith That Placa expresly holds That Faith is not to be kept with Hereticks which he saith he understands so when Faith is given to the injury of the Catholick Faith and cites Conradus Brunus to this purpose That it is not lawful to make such agreements with Hereticks that they may enjoy the liberty of their own sect If therefore they must interpret how far the Faith given tends to the prejudice of the Catholick Faith we see how little security can be had from any solemn promise And Menochius himself asserts the safe-conduct granted by Princes in case of Heresie to be unlawful because the inferiour as he supposes Princes to be to the Ecclesiastical Tribunal cannot secure them who are condemned by the Superiour and because Kings and Emperours ought rather to destroy Hereticks than to secure them And therefore the Council of Constance did well in nulling the safe-conducts granted to Hereticks And what now is this but in plain terms to assert That Faith is not to be kept with Hereticks Neither can you say as some do That they are the Canonists and not the Church of Rome which assert this for besides that the Canonists understand well enough the intrigues and proceedings of the Court of Rome although it seems they do not conceal them so much as they should do yet they are not only these who have asserted it but some great men of your Church have upon occasion expresly said it for we are not to expect that this should be avowed as a publick Opinion of your Church for that were to make it unserviceable to you but when you have those whom you call Hereticks at an advantage then is the time to discover this So there wanted not some to perswade Charls the fifth notwithstanding the safe-conduct given to Luther at his coming to Worms to deal by him as the Council of Constance had done by John Husse and that upon this very account That no Faith was to be kept with Hereticks But the Emperour and the Princes about him were persons of too great honour and honesty to hearken to such perfidious Councils And no meaner a person than Cardinal Hosius admonishes Henry King of Poland that he ought not to keep the Faith he had given to the Protestants and gives this reason for it That an Oath ought to not be the bond of iniquity And the Jesuit Possevin is reported to have given the same counsel afterwards to Stephen King of Poland But these things are as much as possible kept from our view and the Books containing such Doctrines in them are like the Golden Legends bought up by themselves to prevent our discovery of their frauds and imposture and therefore if we cannot instance in those Jesuits who have expresly taught this Opinion in print yet that only argues the greater fraud and subtilty of them who will own and practise such things which they dare not publickly avow to the world And yet it appears from the way used by Becanus and you in vindication of your selves that you cannot possibly avoid the asserting such things from whence it necessarily follows That Faith is not to be kept with Hereticks But because the Doctrine it self is grown a matter so odious to the world being contrary to all principles of humanity and justice and which if practised by all those who call each other Hereticks would overthrow all civil societies therefore you dare not but in terms disown it though it still remains among those Arcana Societatis those hidden works of darkness which want only a fair opportunity to discover themselves But as much as you wipe your mouth though it be foul enough in saying That neither the Bishop nor all his gang are able to name one of them of that Opinion to make it appear how much you have abused your self in these words I shall make a short business of it and name your self for one and Becanus your Author for another and refer the Reader to what goes before for an evidence that you own those Principles from whence it unavoidably follows That no Faith is to be kept with Hereticks But Are the Jesuits indeed grown such honest men that not one of their number can be named who assert this Doctrine A happy change For sure they were not alwaies so if we believe that excellent person of as great integrity as learning and a Romanist too Jac. Augustus Thuanus in his Elegy in Parricidas wherewith he concludes his sacred Poems in which he speaks great and sad truths of that honest Society where he mentions those Cruelties and Assasinations which were brought into these parts of the world by the Arts and Opinions of a famous Society which makes nothing of Laws Faith Honesty Religion to advance that Interest which it hath espoused and expresly saith That they deny Faith to be kept that by their distinctions and subtilties they enervate the force of divine commands they deny obedience to authority destroy Religion under a pretence of Piety break engagements teach the murthering Kings and what not And yet all this while not one of all this Society ever taught That Faith was not to be kept with Hereticks But whence came then the great disputes Whether an Oath of Allegiance might be taken to Heretical Princes Was it
habit should be worn all over the world will you say That any number of men who found this habit extremely inconvenient for them and therefore should disuse it did on that account separate from humane nature and ceased to be men by it Such is the case of any particular Churches laying aside some customes or ceremonies which in some one age of the Church or more the greatest part of Christian Churches were agreed in the practice of for although this general practice should make men more diligent in enquiry and careful in what they did yet if such a Church having power to govern it self see reason to alter it it doth not separate from the Communion of the Catholick Church therein and therefore doth not cease to be a Church For there is no culpable separation from the Church Catholick but what relates to it properly as Catholick now that doth not relate to it as Catholick which it may be Catholick without now certainly you cannot have so little reason as to assert that the Church cannot be Catholick without such extrinsecal and accidental agreements And from hence it follows That no Church can be charged with a separation from the true Catholick Church but what may be proved to separate it self in some thing necessary to the Being of the Catholick Church and so long as it doth not separate as to these essentials it cannot cease to be a true member of the Catholick Church If you would therefore prove that the Church of England upon the Reformation is separated from the true Catholick Church you must not think it enough to say which as weakly as commonly is said That no one particular Church can be named which in all things agreed with it for that only proves that she differed from particular Churches in such things wherein they differed from each other but that she is divided from all Christian Churches in such things wherein they are all agreed and which are essential to the Being of the Catholick Church when you have proved this you may expect a further Answer This then can be no cause why your Church should expel the Protestants out of her Communion but it shews us sufficient cause to believe that your Church had separated her self from the Communion of the Catholick For which we must further consider that although nothing separates a Church properly from the Catholick but what is contrary to the Being of it yet a Church may separate her self from the Communion of the Catholick by taking upon her to make such things the necessary conditions of her Communion which never were the conditions of Communion with the Catholick Church As for Instance Though we should grant Adoration of the Eucharist Invocation of Saints and Veneration of Images to be only superstitious practices taken up without sufficient grounds in the Church yet since it appears that the Communion of the Catholick Church was free for many hundred years without approving or using these things that Church which shall not only publickly use but enjoyn such things upon pain of excommunication from the Church doth as much as in her lyes draw the bounds of Catholick Communion within her self and so divides her self from the true Catholick Church For whatever confines must likewise divide the Church for by that confinement a separation is made between the part confined and the other which separation must be made by the party so limiting Christian Communion As it was in the case of the Donatists who were therefore justly charged with Schism because they confined the Catholick Church within their own bounds And if any other Church doth the same which they did it must be liable to the same charge which they were The summ then of this discourse is That the Being of the Catholick Church lyes in Essentials that for a particular Church to disagree from all other particular Churches in some extrinsecal and accidental things is not to separate from the Catholick Church so as to cease to be a Church but still whatever Church makes such extrinsecal things the necessary conditions of Communion so as to cast men out of the Church who yield not to them is Schismatical in so doing for it thereby divides it self from the Catholick Church and the separation from it is so far from being Schism that being cast out of that Church on those terms only returns them to the Communion of the Catholick Church On which grounds it will appear that yours is the Schismatical Church and not ours For although before this imposing humour came into particular Churches Schism was defined by the Fathers and others to be a voluntary departure out of the Church yet that cannot in reason be understood of any particular but the true Catholick Church for not only persons but Churches may depart from the Catholick Church and in such cases not those who depart from the Communion of such Churches but those Churches which departed from the Catholick are guilty of the Schism These things I thought necessary to be further explained not only to shew how false that imputation is of our Churches departing from the true Catholick Church but with what great reason we charge your Church with departing from the Communion of it and therefore not those whom you thrust out of Communion but your Church so thrusting them out is apparently guilty of the present Schism But still you say Your Church had sufficient cause for the expulsion of Protestants out of her Communion and for this you barely repeat your former assertions and offer not at the proof of one of them as though you intended to carry your cause by the frequent repeating your Declaration But Sir it is the proof of what you say that we expect from you and not the bare telling us That Protestants are Schismaticks because they are Schismacicks When you will be at leisure to prove that the Protestants were guilty of Heretical Doctrine or Schismatical proceedings that they raised a new separate and mutinous faction of pretended Christians distinct from the one Catholick body of the Church by chusing new Pastors instituting new rites and ceremonies not in their power to do by Schismatical convening in several Synods and there broaching new heretical Confessions of Faith when I say You shall think good to prove all or any one of these you shall receive so full an Answer as will make it evident that the Protestants did not depart from the Catholick Churches Doctrine and Communion but that the Church of Rome is departed thence first by imposing erroneous Doctrines and superstitious practices as conditions of Communion and then by thrusting out all such as would not consent to them His Lordship disputing the terms on which a Separation in the Church may be lawful saith That corruption in manners only is no sufficient cause to make a separation in the Church And saith he This is as ingenuously confessed for you as by me For if corruption in manners were a
but his Lordship objects a shrewd Consequence from this Universal Pastourship that this brings the necks of Princes under the Roman Pride And if Kings be meant his Lordship saith yet the command is pasce feed them but deponere or occidere to depose or kill them is not pascere in any sense Lanii id est non Pastoris that 's the Butchers not the Shepheards part This you call his Lordships winding about and falling upon that odious Question of killing and deposing Kings An odious Question indeed whether we consider the grounds or the effects and consequents of it But yet you would seem to clear your selves from the odium of it First By saying that it is a gross fallacy to argue a negatione speciei ad negationem generis which is a new kind of Logick It is indeed for it is of your own coyning for his Lordship argues ab affirmatione generis ad affirmationem speciei and I hope this is no new Logick unless you think he that saith He hath power over all living creatures hath not thereby power over men too His Lordship therefore doth not argue against the Popes Vniversal Supremacy from the denyal of that but deduces that as a consequence from your assertion and explication of what you mean by Sheep and Lambs But this is but a sleight Answer in comparison of what follows Secondly we answer That the point of Killing Kings is a most false and scandalous Imputation scandalous enough indeed if false and though your Popes have not given express warrant for the doing it yet it is sufficiently known How the Pope in Consistory could not contain his joy when it was done in the case of Henry 3. of France And it hath been sufficiently confessed and lamented by persons of your own communion How much the Doctrine of the Jesuits hath encouraged those Assassinations of those two successive Henryes of France Will you or dare you vindicate the Doctrines of Mariana and others which do not obscurely deliver their judgement as to that very thing of Killing Haeretical Princes But if we should grant you this That the Pope may not command to kill What say you to that of deposing Princes which seldome falls much short of the other As to this you dare not cry It is a false and scandalous imputation as you did to the other but you answer 'T is no point of your Faith that the Pope hath power to do it and therefore you say it is no part of your task to dispute it Is this all the security Princes have from you that it is no point of your Faith that the Pope hath power to do it Is it not well enough known that there are many things which are held undoubtedly by the greatest part of your Church which yet you say are no points of Faith And yet in this you are directly contradicted by one who knew what were points of Faith among you as well as you and that was Father Creswell whose testimony I have cited already and he saith expresly Certum est de fide It is a thing certain and of Faith that the subjects of an Haeretical Prince are not only freed from Allegiance but are bound ex hominum Christianorum dominatu ejicere to cast him out of his power which certainly is more than the deposing of him And Sanders plainly enough saith That a King that will not submit to the Popes Authority is by no means to be suffered but his subjects ought to do their utmost endeavour that another may be placed in his room Indeed he saith not as the other doth That this is de fide but that is the only reserve you have when a Doctrine is odious and infamous to the world to cry out It is not de side when yet it may be as firmly believed among you as any that you account de fide And if you believe the Duke of Alva in his Manifesto at the siege of Pampelona when the Pope had deposed the King of Navarre to whom that City belonged he saith That it is not doubted but the Pope had power to depose Heretical Princes And if you had been of another opinion you ought to have declared your self more fully than you do If you had said that indeed some were of that opinion but you abhorred and detested it you had spoken to the purpose but when you use only that pitiful evasion That it is not of Faith c. you sufficiently shew What your judgement is but that you dare not publickly own it It seems you remember what was said by your Masters in reference to Emanuel SÃ Non fuit opus ad ista descendere There was no need to meddle with those things It seems if there had been there was no hurt in the Doctrine but only that it was unseasonable I pray God keep us from that time when you shall think it needful to declare your selves in this point But you conclude this with a most unworthy and scandalous reflection on Protestants in these words But what Protestants have both done and justified in the worst of these kinds is but too fresh in memory But Were those the practices and principles of Protestants Were they not abhorred and detested in the highest manner by all true Protestants both at home and abroad It will be well if you can clear some of your selves from having too much a hand in promoting both those principles and practices I suppose you cannot but have heard Who it was is said to have expressed so much joy at the time of that horrid execution What counsels and machinations are said to have been among some devoted Sons of the Church of Rome abroad about that time Therefore clear your selves more than yet you have done of those imputations before you charge that guilt on Protestants which they express the highest abhorrence of And let the names of such who either publickly or privately abett or justifie such horrid actions be under a continual Anathema to all Generations After all this discourse about the Popes Authority A. C. brings it at last home to the business of Schism For he saith The Bishop of Rome shall never refuse to feed and govern the whole Flock in such sort as that neither particular man nor Church shall have just cause under pretence of Reformation in manners of Faith to make a separation from the whole Church This his Lordship saith by A. C 's favour is meer begging the Question For this is the very thing which the Protestants charge upon him namely that he hath governed if not the whole yet so much of the Church as he hath been able to bring under his power so as that he hath given too just cause of the present continued Separation And as the corruptions in the Doctrine of Faith in the Church of Rome were the cause of the first Separation so are they at this present day the cause why the Separation continues
the Catholick Church with them and there was the greater hopes of it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Since neither part did agree with the Bishop of old Rome or the Church which joynes with him but both oppose the evil customs and abuses which come by him which bears the same date with the Patriarchs first Answer to the Tubing Divines May 15. 1576. And the Patriarch in his letter heartily wishes an union and conjunction between them From hence we may easily gather how true both those things were viz. That the intent of their writing was to be admitted into the communion of the Greek Church and that the Patriarch did not in the least approve their Doctrine but confirmed the Tenets of the Roman Catholick Church But we must look further into the writings themselves to see how far they agreed and wherein they differed It appears then that the Patriarch did profess his consent with them in these things besides the Articles of the Creed and the satisfaction of Christ and other more general points viz. That the Sacrament was to be received in both kinds that the use of marriage was not to be absolutely forbidden the Clergy though their custom is that they must be married before they take Orders besides the grand Articles of the Popes Supremacy and the Roman Churches Infallibility Doth he that joyns with them in these things not in the least approve their Doctrine but confirm the Tenets of the Roman Catholick Church But withall it must be confessed that besides that common Article of the Procession of the Spirit wherein he disputes most earnestly there are five others in which they dissented from each other about Free will justification by Faith the number of Sacraments Invocation of Saints and Monastick life and about these the remaining disputes were In some of which it is easie to discern how far the right state of the question was from being apprehended which the Lutheran Divines perceiving sent him a larger and fuller explication of their mind in a body of Divinity in Greek but the Patriarchs troubles coming on Cantacuzenus deposing him too and other businesses taking him off upon his restauration he breaks off the Conference between them But although he differed from them in these things yet he was far enough from rebuking them for departing from the Roman Church although he was desirous they should have joyned with them in the approbation of such things as were in use among themselves And in those things in which he seems to plead for some practises in use in the Roman Church yet there are many considerable circumstances about them wherein they differ from the Church of Rome as hath been manifested by many others As in the Article of Invocation of Saints the Patriarch saith They do not properly Invocate Saints but God for neither Peter nor Paul do hear us upon which ground it is impossible to maintain the Romish Doctrine of Invocation of Saints And in most of the other the main difference lies in the want of a true State of the Questions between them But is this any such great matter of admiration that the Patriarch upon the first sight of their confession should declare his dissent from them in these things It is well enough known how much Barbarism had crept into the Greek Church after their being subdued by the Turks the means of Instruction being taken from them and it being very rare at that time to have any Sermons at all in so much that one of your Calogeri being more learned then the rest and preaching there in Lent was thereby under great suspicion and at last was by the Patriarch himself sent out of the way It is therefore more to be wondered they should preserve so much of the Doctrine of Faith entire as they have done then that any corrupt practises should prevail amongst them The most then which you can make of the judgement of the Patriarch Hieremias is that in some things he was opposite to the Protestants as in others to the Church of Rome But what would you have said if any Patriarch of Constantinople had declared his consent so fully with the Church of Rome as the Patriarch Cyril did afterwards with the Protestants who on that account suffered so much by the practises of the Jesuits of whom he complains in his Epistle to Vtenbogard And although a Faction was raised against him by Parthenius who succeeded him yet another Parthenius succeeding him stood up in vindication of him Since therefore such different opinions have been among them about the present Controversies of the Christian world and there being no declared Confession of their Faith which is owned by the whole Greek Church as to these things there can be no confident pronouncing what their judgement is as to all our differences till they have further declared themselves PART III. Of Particular Controversies CHAP. I. Of the Infallibility of General Councils How far this tends to the ending Controversies Two distinct Questions concerning the Infallibility and Authority of General Councils The first entered upon with the state of the Question That there can be no certainty of faith that General Councils are infallible nor that the particular decrees of any of them are so which are largely proved Pighius his Arguments against the Divine Institution of General Councils The places of Scripture considered which are brought for the Churches infallibility and that these cannot prove that General Councils are so Matth. 18.20 Acts 15.28 particularly answered The sense of the Fathers in their high expressions of the decrees of Councils No consent of the Church as to their infallibility The place of St. Austin about the amendment of former General Councils by latter at large vindicated No other places in S. Austin prove them infallible but many to the contrary General Councils cannot be infallible in the conclusion if not in the use of the means No such infallibility without as immediate a revelation as the Prophets and Apostles had taking Infallibility not for an absolute unerring power but such as comes by a promise of Divine Assistance preserving from errour No obligation to internal assent but from immediate Divine Authority Of the consistency of Faith and reason in things propounded to be believed The suitableness of the contrary Doctrine to the Romanists principles IF high pretences and large promises were the only things which we ought to value any Church for there were none comparable to the Church of Rome For there can be nothing imagined amiss in the Christian world but if we believe the bills her Factours set up she hath an Infallible cure for it If any enquire into the grounds of Religion they tell us that her testimony only can give them Infallible Certainty if any are afraid of mistaking in opinions they have the only Infallible Judge of Controversies to go to if any complain of the rents and divisions of the Christian world they have Infallible Councils either to
time viz. the direction of the Holy Ghost this spiritual power not being of humane but divine Institution and not proceeding so much from the abilities of the persons as from the co-operation of the Holy Spirit with them To which I reply that all this had need be more then thus barely asserted it being confessed by your selves as his Lordship shews that a General Council is a representative of the whole Church you ought to have shewed us the Divine Institution of this Representative and the promises made to it under that notion or else we may still say with his Lordship That all the power and assistance it hath is by vertue of that body which it represents But I need not in this urge the Arguments of Protestants against you for in this as in most other Controversies we have enough from those of your own party to oppose against these affirmations of yours For Albertus Pighius not only asserts but proves that General Councils are not of divine but humane institution arising from a dictate of right reason that matters of doubt may be better debated by many prudent and experienced persons then by a few So that as the supream authority for administration of affairs belongs to one so it is most agreeable to right reason that debates should be by many This he proves at large that nothing but humane reason is the foundation of Councils in the Church for saith he In Scripturis Canonicis nullum de iis verbum est nec ex Apostolorum institutione speciale quicquam de illis accepit illa primitiva Christi Ecclesia There is not a word of them in Scripture neither did the primitive Church receive any particular order from the Apostles concerning them which he from thence proves because in all the time of the primitive Church till the Nicene Council there is no mention at all of them And at that time it did not receive any new revelation concerning the celebrating General Councils but the Emperour Constantines zeal for the peace of the Church was the first cause and original of them From whence he concludes that they have no supernatural or divine Institution sed prorsus humanam but altogether humane for they are saith he The invention of Constantine sometimes useful but not at all necessary This man speaks intelligibly and not like those who jumble Pope and Council together to make something Infallible between them For he sayes It is the better way by far to go immediately to the Apostolical See and consult that as the Infallible Oracle in all doubts of Faith And very honestly tells us That he believes Constantine was ignorant of that priviledge of the Holy See when he first instituted General Councils Than which nothing could be spoken truer If you have then nothing more to say for the Divine Institution of General Councils then what you have acquainted us with it would be much more wisedom in you to contend with Pighius for the Popes Infallibility and let that of General Councils shift for it self His Lordships second Consideration you admit of viz. That though the Act which is hammered out by many together must needs be perfecter then that which is but the child of one mans sufficiency yet this cannot be Infallible unless it be from some special assistance of the Holy Ghost Therefore omitting your very impertinent addition to this consideration viz. So as to make its Decrees Infallible which is the thing in question We proceed to the third which is That the Assistance of the Holy Ghost is without errour which saith he is no question and as little that a Council hath it But the doubt that troubles is whether all assistance of the Holy Ghost be afforded in such a high manner as to cause all the definitions of a Council in matters fundamental in the Faith and in remote deductions from it to be alike Infallible From this last expression you would very subtilly infer contrary to his Lordships design That he granted General Councils to be Infallible in deductions as well as fundamentals but not to be alike Infallible whereas it is plain his Lordship means no more by alike Infallible then Whether the assistance be alike in both to make them Infallible And this you might easily perceive but it would have prevented your cavil about a graduated Infallibility which I know none assert but your self This Consideration brings on the main of the battel in those texts of Scripture which are most insisted on to prove the Infallibility of General Councils viz. John 16.13 I will send you the Spirit of Truth and he shall lead you into all Truth John 14.16 This Spirit shall abide with you for ever Matth. 28.20 Behold I am with you to the end of the world Matth. 16.18 The founding of the Church upon the Rock against which the gates of hell shall not prevail Luke 22.32 Christs prayer for St. Peter that his Faith should not fail Matth. 18.20 Where two or three are gathered together in my Name I will be in the midst of them Acts 15.28 It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us All which places except the two last have been already examined as far as concerns any promise of Infallibility in the questions concerning the Churches and the Popes Infallibility and there being no reason at all given why any Infallibility at all is promised by them to the Church after the Apostles times it may seem wholly needless to bestow a particular consideration again upon all of them For it is evident in those places all your drift and design is only to prove a promise of Infallibility in the Church and to the Councils only by vertue of that But having at large before shewed that no such thing can be inferred from these or any other places that which is built upon it is wholly taken away too For the only pretence that you have why Councils should be proved hence Infallible is because the Church hath Infallibility promised by these texts which must be very well proved and much better then you have done either here or elsewhere before the other can be deduced from hence And yet supposing I should grant that Infallibility was promised to the Church I see no such necessary consequence from thence that General Councils must be Infallible unless you can prove from Scripture that the Infallibility of the Church is meant of the Church representative and not diffusive which is a new task which you have not yet undertaken For it is not enough to say That the body of the Church is bound to believe and profess the doctrine taught by the representative and therefore the representative must be Infallible unless you could first prove that there is a necessity of some continued Infallible teaching by the Church representative which I despair of ever seeing done I am so far therefore from thinking as you do That these texts are sufficiently clear in themselves to prove
besotted on their old worm-eaten Images that when they were to have new ones in their rooms they begg'd with tears to have their old ones still But although you grant these people guilty of indiscretion yet by no means of Idolatry because they did not call them their gods If you think none were Idolaters but such as did believe their Images to be gods I doubt you may find the number of Atheists as great as that of Idolaters in the world But if we may guess at peoples apprehensions by their actions these seemed as much to believe them to be gods as any Heathens you can instance in Your vindication of Llamas from saying That the Images of Christ and the Saints as they represent their exemplars have Deity or Divinity in them as it is undertaken somewhat fearfully because you say you hope to clear his meaning whatever his words seem to import so at last it stands on the sandy foundation of relative and absolute Worship which being taken away that and your Images fall together I conclude this subject with his Lordships wish That men of learning would not strain their wits to spoil the truth and rent the Peace of the Church of Christ by such dangerous such superstitious vanities For better they are not but they may be worse And I fear are so CHAP. IV. Of the possibility of Salvation in the Roman Church Protestants Concessions ought not to be any ground to preferr the Communion of the Church of Rome How far those Concessions extend The uncharitableness of Romanists if they yield not the same to us The weakness of the Arguments to prove the Roman Church the safer way to salvation on Protestant Principles The dangerous Doctrines of Romanists about the easiness of salvation by the Sacrament of Pennance The case parall'eld be-between the Donatists and Romanists in denying salvation to all but themselves and the advantages equal from their adversaries Concessions The advantage of the Protestants if that be the safest way which both parties are agreed in manifested and vindicated in several particulars The Principle it self at large shewed to be a meer contingent Proposition and such as may lead to Heresie and Infidelity The case of the Leaders in the Roman Church and others distinguished The Errours and Superstitions of the Roman Church make its communion very dangerous in order to Salvation THe main thing which now remains to be discussed is Whether the Communion of your Church or ours be rather to be chosen in order to salvation For that being the great end of our Faith the tendency to the promotion of that ought to be the Rule by which we should embrace or continue in the society of any Church And since the regard men ought to have of their eternal welfare doth oblige them to make choice of the best means in order to it the bare remote possibility of salvation in any Church ought to have no force or consideration at all in the determining their choice in a matter of so great importance As supposing a Pilot at Sea whose only desire is to bring his ship safe into his desired Port should be told that there are two passages homewards the one free and open in which there is no danger the other amidst many Rocks and Shelves in which yet there is a possibility of escaping Would not he be accounted a very weak man that should chuse this latter way meerly because it is possible he may escape and neglect the other in which there is no danger of miscarrying So it is here in our present case the Protestants confess there is a possibility for some to escape in the Communion of the Roman Church but it is as men may escape with their lives in a shipwrack but they undertake to make it evident there can be no danger if they observe the principles of Protestant Religion VVould it not be madness in any then to neglect this and make choice of the other meerly because Protestants agree with you that there is a possibility of salvation for some in the Roman Church Yet this is the great Argument you make use of whereby to Proselyte such persons who want judgement enough to discern the weakness and sophistry of it That therefore we are now to enquire into is Whether your Communion or ours be more eligible upon principles of reason and prudence in order to Salvation And two things are insisted on in behalf of your Church first That Protestants grant the possibility of salvation in your Church but you deny it in ours and therefore yours is the safer way Secondly That the Faith of Protestants doth not stand upon those sure grounds which your Faith doth As to the first there are two things to be considered 1. How far we grant a possibility of salvation to those in your Church 2. What can be infer'd from that Concession in the choice of Religion The occasion of entering upon this debate was the Lady's Query Whether she might be saved in the Roman Faith to which his Lordship answers in General that the ignorant that could not discern the errours of that Church so they held the Foundation and conformed themselves to a religious life might be saved and more particularly to the Lady that it must needs go harder with her even in point of salvation because she had been brought to understand very much for one of her condition in these Controverted causes of Religion And a person that comes to know much had need carefully bethink himself that he oppose not known truth against the Church that made him a Christian for salvation may be in the Church of Rome and they not find it that make surest of it And after he explains himself more fully That might be saved grants but a possibility no sure or safe way to salvation the possibility I think saith he cannot be denyed to the ignorants especially because they hold the Foundation and cannot survey the Building And the Foundation can deceive no man that rests upon it But a secure way they cannot go that hold with such corruptions when they know them Now whether it be wisdom in such a point as salvation is to forsake a Church in the which the ground of salvation is firm to follow a Church in which it is but possible one may be saved but very probable he may do worse if he look not well to the Foundation judge ye So that still his Lordship asserts the Protestants way to be the only safe way to salvation and that in the Church of Rome there is only a limited possibility of it which is such that he say's A. C. or his fellows can take little comfort in For as he after declares himself Many Protestants indeed confess there is salvation possible to be attained in the Roman Church but yet they say withall that the errours of that Church are so many and some so great as weaken the Foundation that it is very
their ship upon a rock because some have escaped upon a plank notwithstanding So that considering on what terms we grant this possibility of salvation this Concession of ours can be no Argument at all to judge yours to be the safer way and if upon the same terms you deny it to us it shews how much more unsafe your way is where there is so much of Interess and so little Charity But you attempt to prove against all Protestants whatsoever that yours is the safer way to salvation Your first Argument in short is Because we grant that you may be saved upon our own principles but you deny that we may be saved upon yours And what is there more in this Argument but a multitude of words to little purpose then there is in that which his Lordship examines For the main force of it lyes in this That is the safest way which both parties are agreed in and therefore although you would have your Major proposition put out of all doubt yet that wants more proof then I doubt you are able to give it For although we grant Men may be saved who have true Faith Repentance and a holy Conversation without any such Sacrament of Pennance which you make necessary for conveying the grace of Justification yet What security can thence come to a man in the choice of his Religion since we withall say That where there is a continuance in the corruptions and errours of your Church it is hard to conceive there should be that Faith and Repentance which we make necessary to Salvation You go therefore on a very false supposition when you take it for granted that we acknowledge that all those whom you admit to your Sacrament of Pennance have all things upon our own principles which are necessary to Salvation And so your Minor is as false as your Major uncertain viz. That many are saved in the Roman Church according to the principles which are granted on both sides But you would seem to prove That all admitted by you at death to the Sacrament of Pennance as you call it have all things necessary to Salvation upon Protestant principles because you say That Faith Hope true Repentance and a purpose of Amendment are necessary to the due receiving the Sacrament of Pennance and these are all which Protestants make necessary to Salvation But supposing that Is it necessary that all those things must be in them which make the necessary requisites to this Sacrament of yours Do none receive this unworthily as many do a far greater Sacrament than this granting it to be any at all It seems Salvation is very easie to be had in your Church then for this Sacrament is supposed by you to be given to men upon their death-beds when you say It cannot be supposed that men will omit any thing necessary for the attaining Salvation and by vertue of this Sacrament they receive the grace of Justification whereby of sinners they are made the Sons of God and heires of eternal life But I assure you we who believe Men must be saved only by the terms of the Gospel make no such easie matter of it as you do we profess the necessity of a through-renovation of heart and life to be indispensable in order to happiness for without holiness no man shall see the Lord and although we take not upon us to judge the final estate of men whose hearts we know not yet the Gospel gives us very little ground to think that such who defer the work of their Salvation to their death-beds shall ever attain to it The main design of Christian Religion being The turning mens souls from sin to God in order to the serving him in this world that they may be happy in another For if Salvation depended on no more then you require the greatest part of the Gospel might have been spared whose great end is to perswade men to holiness of heart and life It is not a meer purpose of amendment when men can sin no longer that we make only necessary to Salvation But so hearty a repentance of sin past as to carry with it an effectual reformation without this men may flatter themselves into their own ruine by your Sacraments of Pennance and such contrivances of men but there can be no grounded hopes of any freedom from eternal misery And their Faith too must be as weak as their Repentance shallow who dare venture their souls into another world upon no better security than that By receiving the Sacrament of Pennance they are made the Sons of God and heirs of eternal life But you betray men into stupid ignorance and carelesness as to their eternal Salvation and then deal most unfaithfully with them by telling them that a death-bed Repentance will suffice them and the Sacrament of Pennance will presently make them heirs of eternal life So that although your Doctrine be very unreasonable and your Superstitions very gross yet this unfaithfulness to the souls of men makes all true lovers of Christian Religion and of the Salvation of mens souls more averse from your Doctrine and Practises then any thing else whatsoever For what can really be more pernicious to the world then to flatter them into the hopes of Salvation without the performance of those things which if the Gospel be true are absolutely necessary in order to it How quietly do you permit the most stupid ignorance in such who are the zealous practisers of your fopperies and superstitions What excellent arts have you to allure debauches upon their death-beds to you by promising them that in another world which our principles will not allow us to do How many wayes have you to get the pardon of sin or at least to delude people with the hopes of it without any serious turning from sin to God What do your Doctrines of the sufficiency of bare contrition and the Sacraments working grace ex opere operato of Indulgences Satisfactions regulating the intention and the like tend to but to supersede the necessity of a holy life And at last you exchange the inward hatred and mortification of sin for some external severities upon mens bodies which is only beating the servant for the Masters fault So that it is hard to imagine any Doctrine or way of Religion which owns Christianity which doth with more apparent danger to the souls of men undermine the foundations of Faith and Obedience than yours doth And as I have at large shewed the former How destructive your principles are to the grounds of Faith so it hath been fully and lately manifested by a learned Bishop of our Church What Doctrines and practises are allowed in your Church which in themselves or their immediate consequences are direct impieties and give warranty to a wicked life Which being so of your own side we must see what reasons you give for your most uncharitable Censure That there are very few or none among Protestants that escape damnation And
this you call The Doctrine of Catholicks The Doctrine rather of a proud tyrannical and uncharitable faction of men who that they might gain Proselytes to themselves shew how little they are themselves the Proselytes of Christ. But you offer us a reason for it Because all Catholicks hold that neither Faith nor Hope nor any Repentance can save us but that only which is joyned with a perfect Love of God without the Sacrament of Pennance actually and duely received and because Protestants reject this they cannot be saved But you are not at all the less excusable because you assert such Doctrines from whence such uncharitableness follows but the dreadful consequence of such Doctrines ought rather to make you question the truth of them For can any one who knows and understands Christianity ever believe that although he had a most hearty repentance for sin and a most sincere love to God he should eternally perish because he did not confess his sins to a Priest and receive absolution from him I can hardly perswade my self that you can believe such things but that only such Doctrines are necessary to be taught to maintain the Priests authority and to fright men into that pick-lock of conscience the useful practise of Auricular Confession To what purpose are all the promises of grace and mercy through Christ upon the sincerity of our turning to him if after all this the effect depends upon that Sacrament of Pennance of which no precept is given us by Christ much less any necessity of it asserted in order to eternal Salvation If this then be all your ground of condemning Protestants they may rejoyce in this That your reasons are as weak as your malice strong But it would be more fit for you to enquire Whether such who live and dye in such a height of uncharitableness whether with or without the Sacrament of Pennance can be in any capacity of eternal Salvation For that is a plain violation of the Laws of Christ this other even among your selves a disputable Institution of Christ and by many said not to be at all of that necessity which you suppose it to be For neither Medina nor Maldonate even since the Council of Trent dare affirm the denyal of your Sacrament of Pennance to be Heresie and must then the souls of all Protestants be sent to hell for want of that which it is questionable whether it were Instituted by Christ or no. But if this Sacrament of Pennance be so necessary to Salvation that they cannot be saved who want it What becomes then of all the Primitive Church which was utterly a stranger to your Sacrament of Pennance as shall be manifested when you desire it what becomes of the Greek Church which as peremptorily denies the necessity of it as Protestants do Both which you may find confessed and proved by Father Barns and many testimonies of your own Authours are brought by him against the Divine Institution and necessity of it Who very ingenuously confesses That by the Law of Christ such a one by the sentence of very many Catholicks may be pronounced absolved before God who manifests the truth of his Faith and Charity although he discovers not a word of the number or weight of his sins What unreasonable as well as uncharitable men are you then to assert That no Protestants can escape damnation for want of that which so many among your selves make unnecessary for the pardon of sin But it is just with God that those who are so ready to condemn others should be condemned by themselves and if your Consciences do not condemn you here your Sentence may be the greater in another world Your second Argument against Protestants is Because they want certainty of Faith by denying the Infallibility of Church and Councils but this hath been so throughly sifted already that I suppose none who have read the preceding discourses will have the least cause to stick at this and therefore we proceed to the Vindication of your censures from being guilty of the want of Charity For you are the men who would have us thank God when you condemn us to hell that we escape so and are angry with us that we do not believe that you most entirely love us when you judge us to eternal flames For you say that your denyal of Salvation to us is grounded even upon Charity If it be so you are the most charitable people in the world for you deny Salvation to all but your selves and some Heathens But say you If Salvation may be had in your Church as Protestants confess and there be no true Church or Faith but one it follows that out of your Church there is no Salvation to be had To which his Lordship had fully answered by saying T is true there is but one true Faith and but one true Church but that one both Faith and Church is the Catholick Christian not the particular Roman So that this passage is a meer begging the question and then threatning upon it without all reason or charity And all your declamations about the way of knowing the Doctrine of the Catholick Church have been spoiled by what hath been said already upon that subject We come therefore to that which is the proper business of this Chapter which is to examine the strength of that Inference which is drawn from the Protestants concession of the possibility of Salvation in your Church viz. That thence it follows that the Roman Church and Religion is the safer way to Salvation Two things his Lordship observes the force of this Argument lyes in the one directly expressed viz. The consent of both parties of the possibility of Salvation in the Roman Church the other upon the By viz. That we cannot be saved because we are out of the Church And of these two he speaks in order First he begins with the confession as to which his Answer lyes in three things 1. That this was the way of the Donatists of old and would hold as well for them as the Church of Rome 2. That if the principle on which this Argument proceeds be true it will be more for the advantage of Protestants then of your Church 3. That the principle it self is a contingent Proposition and may justifie the greatest Heresies in the world By this methodizing his Lordships discourse we shall the better discern the strength of your Answers to the several particulars of it In the first place he shews How parallel this is with the proceedings of the Donatists for both parts granted that baptism was true among the Donatists but the Donatists denyed it to be true baptism among the Catholick Christians and therefore on this principle the Donatists side is the surer side if that principle be true That it is the safest taking that way which the differing parties agree on To this you Answer nothing but what will still return upon your selves and discover the
Proposition it is understood of all those common fundamental Truths which the Christian Church of all ages hath been agreed in And the saying There is but one saving Faith is of the same sense with the saying There is but one true Religion in the world The substance of what you would inferr from the saying of Athanasius his Creed Which if a man keeps whole and inviolate as you would have it is this That a man is equally bound to believe every Article of Faith But you cannot mean that it is simply necessary to do it for that you disclaim elsewhere by your distinction of things necessary from the matter and the formal reason of Faith and therefore it can only be meant of such to whom those objects of Faith are sufficiently proposed and so far we acknowledge it too that it is necessary to Salvation for every man to believe that which he is convinced to be an object of Faith For otherwise such persons must call in question God's Veracity but if you would hence make it necessary to believe all that your Church proposes for matter of Faith you must prove that whatever your Church delivers is as infallibly true as if God himself spake and when you can perswade us of this we shall believe whatever is propounded by her When you say We cannot believe all Articles of Faith on the same formal reason because we deny the Churches Infallibility it is apparent that you make the Churches testimony the formal reason of Faith and that you are bound to prove the Church absolutely Infallible before we can believe any thing on her account Neither doth it follow Because we deny that therefore we pick and chuse our Faith for we believe all without reservation which you or any man can convince us was ever revealed by God As to what at large occurrs here again about the Infallibility of Councils there is nothing but what hath been sufficiently answered on that subject and so reserving the Question of Purgatory which is here brought in by his Lordship as a further Instance of the errours of General Councils I pass on to the two last Chapters In which we meet again with the objected inconveniencies from questioning the Infallibility of the Church and Councils That then Faith would be uncertain and private persons might judge of Councils and if they may erre in one they may erre in all as fresh as if they had never been heard of before Only the Argument from Rom. 10.15 That because none can preach except they be sent therefore the present Church is Infallible is both new and excellent on which account I let it pass If your Church with all her Infallibility can do no more as you confess in reference to Heresies but only secure the faithful members of the Church who have due care of themselves and perform their duty well towards their lawful Pastors you have little cause to boast of the great priviledge of it and as little reason to contend for the necessity of it since so much is done without it and on surer grounds by the Scriptures and the use of other means which fall short of Infallibility In the beginning of your last Chapter we have a large dispute concerning S. Cyprian's meaning in his 45. Epistle to Cornelius where he speaks of the root and matrix of the Catholick Church viz. Whether by that the Roman Church be understood or no His Lordship saith Not and gives many reasons for it you maintain the contrary but the business may be soon decided upon a true state of the occasion of writing that Epistle Which in short was this It seems Letters had been sent in the name of Polycarp Bishop of the Colony of Adrumyttium directed to Cornelius at Rome but Cyprian and Liberalis coming thither and acquainting the Clergy there with the resolution of the African Bishops to suspend communion either with Cornelius or Novatianus till the return of Caldonius and Fortunatus who were sent on purpose to give an account of the proceedings there the Clergy of Adrumyttium upon this writing to Rome direct their Letters not to Cornelius but to the Roman Clergy Which Cornelius being it seems informed by some as though it were done by S. Cyprian's Counsel takes offence at and writes to Cyprian about it Who gives him in this Epistle the account of it that it was only done that there might be no dissent among themselves upon this difference at Rome and that they only suspended their sentence till the return of Caldonius and Fortunatus who might either bring them word that all was composed at Rome or else satisfie them Who was the lawfully ordained Bishop And therefore as soon as they understood that Cornelius was the lawful Bishop they unanimously declare for him and order all Letters to be sent to him and that his communion should be embraced This is the substance of that Epistle But it seems Cornelius was moved at S. Cyprian's suspending himself as though it were done out of dis-favour to him which Cyprian to clear himself of tells him That his design was only to preserve the Vnity of the Catholick Church For saith he we gave this advice to all those who the mean time had occasion to sail to Rome ut Ecclesiae Catholicae radicem matricem agnoscerent tenerent that they would acknowledge and hold to the root and matrix of the Catholick Church by which his Lordship understands the Vnity of the Church Catholick you the particular Church of Rome But it is apparent the meaning of this Counsel was to prevent their participation in the Schism So that if upon their coming to Rome the Schismatical party was evidently known from the other which they might I grant soon understand there by the circumstances of affairs they should joyn themselves with that part which preserved the Vnity of the Catholick Church Which I take to be the true meaning of S. Cyprian But in case the matter should prove disputable at Rome and the matter be referred to other Churches then by virtue of this advice they were bound to suspend their communion with either party till the Catholick Church had declared it self By this account of the business all your Arguments come to nothing for they only prove that which I grant viz. That in case it appeared at Rome Which was the Catholick party they were to communicate with it but this was not because the Catholick party at Rome was the root and matrix of the Catholick Church for on that account the party of Novatianus might have been so too if Novatianus had been lawful Bishop but their holding to the root of the Catholick Church would oblige them to communicate only with that part which did preserve the Vnity of it For the Controversie now at Rome was between two parties both challenging an equal right and therefore if S. Cyprian had only advised them to communicate with the Roman
prove that any of the Fathers have denyed this place to extend to infallibility is a very unreasonable thing which you put the Bishop and his party upon because they only deliver what they conceive the meaning of places to be without reflections on any Heresies but such as were most prevalent in their own times And if your Church had in their time challenged Infallibility from such places you might have heard of their Negative which at present you put us unreasonably to prove Your answer to John 14.16 only is that it must be understood in some absolute sense and doth not his Lordship say so too viz. in regard of Consolation and Grace But if you say there can be no other absolute sense but an infallible assistance you would do well to prove it and not barely to suppose it and so likewise what follows as to John 16.13 which his Lordship justly restrains to the Apostles alone you tell us That you contend that in whatsoever sense all truth is to be understood in respect of each Apostle apart it is also to be understood in relation to their Successors assembled in a full Representative of the whole Church That you contend we grant but we say it is without sense or reason And therefore come to examine what you produce for it Your first reason Because the Representative of the Church in General Council and the Bishop of Rome as Pastor of the whole Church have equal power to oblige the Church to believe what they deliver as each Apostle had is utterly denied and must be more then barely supposed as it is here Your second which you call the Fundamental reason of this Exposition is in short That the preservation of the Church requires infallibility in future ages of the Church as well as in the Apostles times which is again utterly denied And the next time you write I pray prove your reasons well and think not your confident producing things you know are denied by us will serve for reasons against us Before you can sufficiently prove that any rite of the Church not mentioned in Scripture had the Holy Ghost for its Authour especially when contrary to a custome expressed in Scripture you must do more then produce a single testimony of St. Augustine for it who was apt to suppose the Holy Ghost might be pleased with such things which the Church though not therein infallible might consent in the practise of Which certainly is far from supposing the Church to have infallible assistance with it in delivering Doctrines of Faith because some things might be used in the Church which the Holy Ghost might be supposed not displeased with which is the utmost can be made of your citation out of St. Austin It seems you were aware of that disparity between the Apostles times and ours as to the pretence of Infallibility because the Apostles were first to deliver this Doctrine to the world and after to consign it by writing to future ages from whence it were easie to inferr there could not be that necessity of a Continual Infallible Assistance in the Church because the Doctrine infallibly delivered by them is preserved in the Church by the Infallible Records of it But to this your answer is considerable What wise man say you would go about to raise a stately building for many ages and satisfie himself with laying a Foundation to last but for a few years Our Saviour the wisest of Architects is not to be thought to have founded this incomparable building of the Church upon sand which must infallibly have happened had he not intended to afford his continual assistance also to the succeeding Pastors of the Church to lead them when assembled in a General Council into all those truths wherein he first setled the Apostles Whether you call this arguing for the Churches infallibility or libelling against our blessed Saviour if he hath not done what you would have him is hard to determine I am sure it is arguing ab absurdo with a witness for if he hath not done just as you fancy he should have done he must venture to be accounted an Ignoramus and Impostor before and here to do that which no wise man would have done viz. build a stately Fabrick the Church upon the Sands So it seems you account the Prophets and the Apostles for if the Apostle may be credited we are built on the Foundation of the Apostles and Prophets Jesus Christ himself being the chief Corner-stone And this is it you must mean by being built on the sand for herein it is plain the Church is built on these viz. that Infallible doctrine which was delivered by them but here is not one word or the least intimation of an inherent infallibility in the Church which was to be its foundation so as to secure it from all errour And this you say must infallibly happen if there be not the same infallibility in General Councils which was in the Apostles for that I suppose must be the meaning of your last words if they be to the purpose But how groundless your pretence of the Infallibility of General Councils is will appear when we come to that subject but have you so little of common sense and reason with you as to suppose the Church presently notwithstanding the Divine Revelation of the Doctrine of Christianity in Scripture to be built on Sand if General Councils be not infallible Is there not sufficient ground to rely on the Doctrine of Christianity supposing there never had been any General Council in the world What was the Church built on before the Nicene Council only on Sand surely the Wind and Billows of persecutions would then have easily overturned it What if through civil combustions in the Empire there could never have been any Assembly's of the Bishops afterwards must the Church needs have fallen to the ground for want of General Councils But why I pray must the Infallibility of the Apostles be compared only to a foundation that can last but for few years Do you suppose that these Apostles never did commit their Doctrine infallibly to writing or that these writings of theirs did last but for a few years without one of these it is hard to find out your meaning by those expressions If you deny either of them I shall readily prove them but if you affirm both these as if you are heartily a Christian you must do with what face can you say that Christ in making the Apostles infallible did lay a Foundation but for a few years But thanks be to God although perverse and unreasonable men are alwaies quarrelling with the methods of Divine wisdom and goodness this Foundation of the Lord standeth sure still and as long as the Infallible Doctrine of the Gospel continues the Church will be built on a stedfast and unmoveable Rock which will prove a much surer Foundation than the seven Hills of Infallibility But this is your grand and fundamental
mistake to suppose a Church cannot continue without a vital inherent Principle of Infallibility in her self which must be discovered by Infallible Directions from the Head of it whereas we grant the necessity of an Infallible Foundation of Faith but cannot discern either from Scripture Reason or Antiquity that there must be a living and standing Infallible Judge which must deliver and interpret those Infallible Records to us We grant then Infallibility in the Foundation of Faith we assert the highest Certainty of the Infallibility of that Foundation we declare that the owning of that Infallible Foundation is that which makes men Christians the body of whom we call a Church we further grant that Christ hath left in his Church sufficient means for the preservation of it in Truth and Unity but we deny that ever he promised such an Infallibility to be constantly resident in that Church as was in the Prophets and Apostles and that neither any intention of Christ or any reason in the thing can be manifested why such an Infallibility should be so necessary for the Churches preservation that without it the Wisdom of Christ must be questioned and the Church built on a sandy Foundation Your citation of Vincentius Lyrinensis proves nothing but the Churches constancy in adhering to that Doctrine of Faith which was delivered from the beginning but how that should prove a Constant Infallibility I cannot understand unless it is impossible that there should be any Truth where there is no inherent Infallibility Thus we see what very little success you have in the attempt of proving the Churches continual Infallibility from Scripture From hence you proceed to the consideration of the way How Scripture and Tradition do mutually confirm each other His Lordship grants That they do mutually but not equally confirm the authority either of other For Scripture doth infallibly confirm the authority of Church-Traditions truly so called but Tradition doth but morally and probably confirm the authority of the Scripture This you say is apparently false but endeavour not to make it evident that it is so Only you say A. C. refused already to grant it Et quid tum postea Must every thing be false which A. C. refuses to grant But let us see whether his Similitude makes it out For saith he 't is as a Kings Embassadours word of mouth and his Kings Letters bear mutual witness to each other Just so indeed saith his Lordship For his Kings Letters of Credence under hand and Seal confirm the Embassadours authority infallibly to all that know his Seal and hand But the Embassadours word of mouth confirms his Kings Letters but only probably For else Why are they callâ—d Letters of Credence if they give not him more credit than he gives them To which you make a large Reply 1. That the Kings hand and Seal cannot confirm infallibly to a Forein King who neither knows hand nor Seal the Embassadours authority and therefore this reacheth not the business How we should know infallibly that the Scripture is Gods Word 2. That the primary reason Why the Embassadour is admitted is his own credit to which correspond the motives of Credibility of the Church by which the Letters of Credence are admitted 3. That none can give authority to the Letters of Credence or be infallibly certain of them but such as infallibly know that hand and Seal 4. That none can infallibly know that hand and Seal but such as are certain of the Embassadours sincerity But Doth all this disprove what his Lordship saith That though there be a mutual Testimony yet it is not equal for although the Letters of Credence might be the sooner read and admitted of on the Embassadours Reputation and Sincerity yet still those Letters themselves upon the delivery of them may further and in a higher degree confirm the Prince he is sent to of his authority to act as Embassadour Supposing then that there be a sufficient Testimony that these Letters were sealed by the Secretary of State who did manifest his Sincerity in the highest manner in the sealing of them though a Forein Prince might not know the hand and Seal yet upon such a creditable Testimony he may be assured that they were sealed by the Prince himself But then withall if the Embassadour to assure the Prince offers his own life to attest the truth of his Credentials and the Prince by reading the Letters find something in them which could not be written by any other than that Prince he then hath the highest certainty he can desire This is the case between Tradition and Scripture General Tradition at first makes way for the first admission of Scripture as the general repute of an Embassadours coming doth for his access to the Prince the particular Tradition of the Church is like the Embassadours affirming to the Prince that he hath Letters of Credence with him but then when he enquires into the Certainty of those Letters those Motives of Credibility not which relate to the person of the Embassadour but which evidently prove the sealing of those Letters as the constant Testimony of such who were present at it the Secretaries and Embassadours venturing their lives upon it must confirm him in that and lastly his own reading the Credentials give him the highest Confirmation i. e. The testimony of those who saw the miracles of Christ and his Apostles and confirmed the Truth of their Testimony by their dying for it are the highest inducement to our believing that the Scriptures were sealed by God himself in the miracles wrought and written by his own hand his Spirit infallibly assisting the Apostle but still after all this when in these very Scriptures we read such things as we cannot reasonably suppose could come from any but God himself this doth in the highest degree settle and confirm our Faith Therefore as to the main scope for which this Similitude was used by his Lordship it holds still but your mistake lyes in supposing that the Embassadours reception depended wholly on his own single Testimony and that was enough to make any Prince infallibly certain that his Letters of Credence are true which cannot be unless he knows before-hand that Embassadour to be infallibly true which is impossible to be supposed at his first reception Yet this is plainly your case that the Scriptures are to be infallibly believed on the single Testimony of the present Church which is to make the Embassadour himself give authority to his Letters of Credence and set hand and seal to them Whereas the contrary is most evident to be true But then supposing these Credentials admitted the Prince transacts with the Embassadour according to that power which is conveyed to him therein And thus it is in the present case Not as though a Prince treated every Envoy with equal respect to an Embassadour no more ought any Pastors of the Church be received but according to that power and authority which their Credentials viz. the