at Anatolius his rising and the equaling him with Rome but they never excepted one word that ever I found against the saying that it was because of the Empire that Rome by the Fathers had the Primacy given it And the Reason given by themselves Concil Constant Can. 5. is because Constantinople is new Rome But Binnius saith that Rome receiveth not the Canons of this Council neither but only their condemnation of Macedonius And he saith that every Council hath just so much strength and authority as the Apostolick seat bestoweth on it For saith he unless this be admitted no reason can be given why some Councils of greater numbers of Bishops were reprobated and others of a smaller number confirmed Bin. Vol. 2. p. 515. What would you have more Sirs Do you not see yet what the Popish Catholick Church is and what they mean when they mouth it out to you and ask you whether your private Judgement be safer or wiser then that of the whole Church or of all the Christian world You see they mean all this while but one man whom Gretser and others plainly confess they call the Church So that indeed it is General Councils and all the Christian world or Church that are the ignorant fallible and oft erring part and it is one man that sometime is reputed an incarnate Devil by a General Council too that is the unerring Pillar of the Church and wiser then all they Do you not see that they make a meer nothing or mockery of General Councils any further then they please the Pope And can you expect that any thing should please them that is against his Greatness or as Julius the second calls it his holding the place of the great God the Maker of all things and all Laws What a vile abuse is it then of the Pope to trouble the world by the meetings and Consultations of General Councils when he can sit at Rome and contradict them infallibly and Good man is fain to save the Catholick Church from the Errors that General Councils the Representative Catholick Church would else lead them into and therefore could he not with less ado infallibly make us Laws Canons and Scriptures without them For sure that which the Pope can do against a General Council he can do without them If he can Infallibly contradict a General Council and Infallibly Rule us contrary to their Judgement he may no doubt Infallibly Rule us without them And therefore of late times they have learnt so much wit that you may look long enough before you see a General Council And I think the Council of Constance were no better Prognosticators then William Lilly nor no more effectuall Lawgivers then Wat Tyler when they Prognosticated or Ordained Decennial Councils And I will be judged by all the world And here also you may see what account the Papists make even of the first General Councils It s all one with them to judge others Hereticks for contradicting especially the four first General Councils compared to the four Evangelists as the Scripture it self and yet who would have thought it they profess themselves to reject the Canons or Decrees of both these the first of Constantinople and that of Calcedon in part And now I think on it by this priviledge I cannot see but the Pope is priviledged from all possibility of being an Heretick personally But these things are on the by I return to the point in hand which is to prove to you that not only the Romish Universal Monarchy and Vice-godhead but even its Patriarchal Primacy was no Apostolical Tradition but an Humane Institution founded on this Consideration that Rome was the Imperial Seat and City 5. And Humane it must needs be 1. For we find that Councils did not declare it as any part of the Law of God but Ordain it as an act of their own 2. We find them adding the Patriarchate of Constantinople which was a new seat neither Patriarch nor Bishop residing there in the Apostles dayes or long after 3. Yea we find them giving this new Patriarch the second place and once making him equal with old Rome which they would never have presumed to do if they had thought that the Patriarchship of Alexandria Antioch or Rome had been of Divine Institution for what horrible arrogancy would that have been when the Holy Ghost by the Apostles had made Alexandria second and Antioch third and Rome first for a Council to set Constantinople before two of them and equal with the first 6. And therefore we have reason to think that if Patriarchs be desirable creatures there may more and more new ones now be made as lawfully as Constantinople was 7. And we do not think that a General Council or Pope can make a man of one Nation to be Patriarch of the Church in another Nation that perhaps may be in wars with the Prince of the first Nation but that each Prince with the Church under their Power hath more to do in it then either Pope or Council And if Portugal and France set up Patriarchs at home they do as lawfully as the Patriarch of Constantinople was set up 8. And therefore we must needs judge that to disobey the Pope or withdraw from his subjection if he had never forfeited his Patriarchship by the claim of an Universal Headship were no greater a sin then to disobey or withdraw from the Patriarch of Alexandria Antioch or Constantinople either the Government by Patriarchs and Arch-bishops is of Gods ordaining and approving or not if not as most of the Protestants hold then it is no sin to reject any of them If it be of God then to reject any of them though in simple error is a sin of disobedience through ignorance but is far from proving a man to be no member of the Catholick Church for sure Patriarchs are far from being Essential parts of the Catholick Church For 9. We conclude as in the Papists own Judgement the Catholick Church may be without the Patriarch of Constantinople Alexandria or Antioch so may it therefore without the Pope of Rome CHAP. XX. Detect 11. THE great endeavour of the Papists is to advance Tradition The Council of Trent Ses 4. hath equalled it with the Scriptures as to the pious affection and reverence wherewith they receive it On pretence of this Tradition they have added abundance of new Articles to the faith and accuse us as Hereticks for not receiving their Traditions And this is a principall difference betwixt us that we take the Scriptures to be sufficient to acquaint us with the will of God as the Rule of faith and holy living and they take it to be but part of the word of God and that the other part is in unwritten Tradition which they equal with this as afore For the maintaining of Tradition it is that they write so much to the dishonour of the holy Scripture as you may find in Rushworths Dialogues and Tho. Whites Defence of them and
many others so like to the Arguments and Language of the Seekers and Infidels that we can scarcely know whom we hear when they speak to us For the discovery of their desperate fraud in this point and the right confuting of them 1. You must distinguish them out of their confusion 2. You must grant them all that is true and just which we shall as stiffly defend as they 3. You must reject their errors and confute them And 4. You may turn their own principall weapon against them to the certain destruction of their cause Of all these briefly in course 1. For the first two I have spoke at large in the Preface to the second part of the Saints Rest and in the determination in the first part of my Book against Infidelity But briefly to touch some of the most necessary things here 1. We must distinguish the Tradition of the Scriptures or the Scripture doctrine from the Tradition of other doctrines pretended to be the rest of the word of God 2. We must distinguish between a certain proved Tradition and that which is unproved and uncertain if not grosly feigned 3. We must distinguish between the Tradition of the whole Catholick Church or the greater part and the Tradition of the lesser more corrupted selfish part even the Roman part 4. We must distinguish between a Tradition of necessary doctrine or practice and the Tradition of mutable Orders 5. And we must distinguish between Tradition by way of Testimony or History or by way of Teaching Ministry and Tradition by way of Decisive Judgement as to the Universal Church suffer them not to jumble all these together if you would not be cheated in the dark 2. And then concerning Tradition we grant all these following Propositions so that it is not all Tradition that we deny 1. We grant that the Holy Scriptures come down to us by the certain Tradition of our fathers and Teachers and that what the seeing and hearing of the Apostles was to them that lived with them that Tradition and belief of certain Tradition is to us by reason of our distance from the time and place So that though the Scripture bear its own evidence of a Divine author in the Image and superscription of God upon it yet we are beholden to Tradition for the Books themselves and for much of our knowledge that these are the true writings of the Apostles and Prophets and all and not depraved c. 2. We thankfully acknowledge that the Essentials of the faith and more hath been delivered even from the Apostles in other wayes or forms besides the Scriptures as 1. In the Professions of the Churches faith 2. In the baptismal Covenant and signs and whole administration 3. In the Sacrament of the Lords Supper 4. In Catechisms or Catechizings 5. In the prayers and praises of the Church 6. In the hearts of all true believers where God hath written all the Essentials of the Christian saith and Law So that we will not do as the Papists perversly do when God delivereth us the Christian Religion with two hands Scripture compleatly and Verbal Tradition in the essentials they quarrell with the one hand Scripture on pretence of defending the other so will not we quarrell with Tradition the other hand but thankfully confess a Tradition of the same Christianity by unwritten means which is delivered more fully in the Scripture and this Tradition is in some respect subordinate to Scripture and in some respect co-ordinate as the spirits left hand as it were to hold us out the truth 3. We confess that the Apostles delivered the Gospel by voice as well as by writing and that before they wrote it to the Churches 4. By this preaching we confess there were Christians made that had the doctrine of Christ in their hearts and Churches gathered that had his ordinances among them before the Gospel was written 5. And we confess that the Converted were bound to teach what they had received to their children servants and others 6. And that there was a setled Ministry in many Churches ordained to preach the Gospel as they had received it from the Apostles before it was written 7. And that the said ordinances of Baptism Catechizing Professions Eucharist Prayer Praise c. were instituted and in use before the Gospell was written for the Churches 8. And that when the Gospel was written as Tradition bringeth it to us so Ministers are commissioned to deliver both the Books and the doctrine of this Book as the Teachers of the Church and to preach it to those without for their conversion 9. And that Parents and Masters are bound to teach this doctrine to their children and servants yea if a Minister or other person were cast into the Indies or America without a Bible he must teach the doctrine though he remembred not the words 10. We grant that to the great benefit of the Church the writers of all ages have in subserviency to Scripture delivered down the Sacred Verities and Historians the matters of fact 11. And that the unanimous Consent of all the Churches manifested in their constant professions and practices is a great confirmation to us 12. And so is the suffering of the Martyrs for the same truth 13. And the Declarations of such consent by Councils is also a confirming Tradition 14. And the Confessions of Hereticks Jews and other Infidels are Providentiall and Historical Traditions for confirmation 15. And we profess that if we had any Certain proof of a Tradition from the Apostles of any thing more then is written in Scripture we would receive it All this we grant them for Tradition 3. But in these points following we oppose them 1. We take the holy Scriptures as the Compleat universal Rule or Law of faith and Holy living and we know of no Tradition that containeth another word of God Nay we know there is none such because the Scripture is true which asserteth its own sufficiency Scripture and unwritten Tradition are but two wayes of acquainting the world with the same Christian doctrine and not with divers parts of that Doctrine so as that Tradition should add to Scripture yea contrarily it is but the substance of greatest verities that are conveyed by unwritten Tradition but that and much more is contained in the Scripture where the Christian doctrine is compleat 2. The manner of delivery in a form of words which no man may alter and in so much fullness and perspicuity is much to be preferred before the meer verbal delivery of the same doctrine For 1. The Memory of man is not so strong as to retain as much as the Bible doth contain and preserve it safe from alterations or Corruptions Or if one man were of so strong a memory no man can imagine that all or most should be so Or if one Generation had such wonderfull memories we cannot imagine that all their posterity should have the like If there were no statute Books Records or Law-books in
when they had no being since the death of the Apostles 6. And also that we are able to prove the death and burial of many things that have gone long under the name of Traditions 7. And when we find so lame an account from your selves of the true Apostolical Traditions You are so confounded between your Ecclesiasticall Decrees and Traditions and your Apostolical Traditions that we despair of learning from you to know one from the other and of seeing under the hand of his Holiness and a General Council a Catalogue of the true Apostolical Traditions And sure it seems to us scarce fair dealing that in one thousand and five hundered years time if indeed there have been Popes so long the Church could never have an enumeration and description of these Traditions with the proofs of them Had you told us which are Apostolick Traditions but as fully and plainly as the Scriptures which you accuse of insufficiency and obscurity do deliver us their part you had discharged your pretended trust 8. And it is in our eyes an abominable impiety for you to equal your Traditions with the holy Scripture till you have enumerated and proved them And it makes us the more to suspect your Traditions when we perceive that they or their Patrons have such an enmity to the Holy Scriptures that they cannot be rightly defended without casting some reproach upon the Scriptures But this we do not much wonder at for it is no new thing with the applauders of Tradition We find the eighth General Council at Constantinople Can. 3. decreeing that the Image of Christ be adored with equal Honour with the Holy Scripture But whether that be an Apostolical Tradition we doubt 9. And if General Councils themselves and that of your own should be for the sufficiency of Scripture what then is become of all your Traditions Search your own Binnius page 299. whether it past not as sound doctrine at the Council of Basil in Ragusii Orat. Sup. 6. that faith and all things necessary to salvation both matters of belief and matters of practice are founded in the literal sense of Scripture and only from that may argumentation be taken for the proving of those things that are matters of faith or necessary to salvation and not from those passages that are spoken by allegory or other spiritual sence Sup. 7. The Holy Scripture in the literal sense soundly and well understood is the infallible and most sufficient Rule of faith Is not here enough against all other Traditional Articles of faith A plain man would think so Yea but Binnius noteth that he meaneth that explicitely or implicitely it is so Well! I confess the best of you are slippery enough but let us grant this for indeed he so explaineth himself afterward yet that 's nothing for Tradition He there maintaineth that Scripture is the Rule of faith not part of the Rule For saith he when the intellect hapneth to err as in hereticks its necessary that there be some Rule by the deviation or conformity to which the intellect may perceive that it doth or doth not err Else it would be still in doubt and fluctuate it appeareth that no humane science is the Rule of faith It remaineth therefore that the Holy Scripture is this Rule of faith This is the Rule John 20. where be saith these things are written that you might believe that Jesus is the son of God and believing might have life in his name And 2 Pet. 2. You have a more sure word of prophecy to which ye do well that ye attend as to a light c. And Rom. 15. Whatsoever things were written were written for our learning c. And its plain that the foresaid authorities are of holy Scripture and speak of the holy Scripture c. The second part also is plain because if the holy Scripture were not a sufficient Rule of faith it would follow that the Holy Ghost had insufficiently delivered it who is the author of it which is by no means to be thought of God whose works are all perfect Moreover if the Holy Scripture were wanting in any things that are necessary to salvation then those things that are wanting might lawfully and deservedly be superadded from some thing else aliunde or if any thing were superfluous be diminished But this is forbidden Rev. 22. From whence its plain that in Scripture there is nothing defective and nothing superfluous which is agreeable to its author the Holy Ghost to whose Omnipotency it agreeeth that nothing deminutely to his Wisdom that nothing superfluously and to his Goodness that in a congruous order he provide for the Necessity of our salvation Prov. 30. 5 6. The word of God is a fiery buckler to them that hope in him Add thou not to his words lest be reprove thee and thou be found a lyar How like you all this in a Popish General Council and in an Oration against the Sacrament in both kinds Well! but perhaps the distinction unsaith all again No such matter you shall hear it truly recited He proceeds thus But for the further declaration of this Rule as to that part it must be known that the sufficiency of any doctrine is necessarily to be understood two wayes one way Explicitely another way Implicitely And this is true in every Doctrine or science because no doctrine was ever so sufficiently delivered that all the Conclusions contained in its principles were delivered and expressed explicitely and in the proper terms and so it is in our purpose because there is nothing that any way or in any manner N.B. pertaineth to faith and salvation which is not most sufficiently contained in the holy Scripture explicitely or implicitely Hence saith Austin every truth is contained in the Scriptures latent or patent as in other sciences Speculative or Moral and Civil the Conclusions and determinations are contained in their principles c. and the deduction is by way of inference or determination This is the plain Protestant Doctrine There is nothing any way necessary to faith or salvation but what is contained in the Scriptures either expresly or as the Conclusion in the premises Good still we desire no more Let holy Reason then discern the Conclusion in the premises and let us not be sent for it to the Authority of Rome nay sent for some thing else that is no Conclusion deducible from any Scripture principles we grant Tradition or Church practices are very useful for our better understanding of some Scriptures But what is this to another Traditional word of God Prove your Traditions but by inference from Scripture and we will receive them Yet let us hear this Orator further clearing his mind Adding to a Doctrine may be understood four wayes 1. By way of explication or declaration 2. By way of supply 3. By way of ampliation 4. By way of destruction or contrary The first way is necessary in every science and doctrine and specially in Holy Scripture not for it self
which is most sufficient and most cleare in it self but for us This we all yield The second way is necessary to sciences diminutely and insufficiently delivered by their authors for their supplement so Aristotle is supplemented by Albertus Magnus c. The third way specially if it be not excessive is tolerable to the well being though it be not necessary The fourth way assertively is to be rejected as Poyson Thus are the authorities to be understood that forbid to add to or diminish from the Scripture Deut. 12 32. Well! by this time you may see that when such doctrine as this for Scripture sufficiency and perfection as the Rule of faith and life admitting no addition as necessary but explication nor any other as tolerable but moderate ampliation which indeed is the same I say when this doctrine past so lately in a Popish General Council you may see that the very Doctrine of Traditions equaled with Scripture or being another word of God necessary to faith and salvation containing what is wanting in Scripture is but lately sprung up in the world And sure the Traditions themselves be not old then when the conceit of them came but lately into the world 4. Well I have done the three first parts of this task but the chief is yet behind which is to shew 1 How little the Papists get by their Argument from Tradition 2. And how â—uch they lose by it even all their cause 1. Two things they very much plead Tradition for the one is their private doctrines and practices in which they disagree from other Christians and here they lose their labour with the judicious 1. Because they give us no sufficient proof that their Tradition is Apostolical 2. Because the dissent of other Churches sheweth that it is not universal with other Reasons before mentioned 2. The other Cause which they plead Tradition for is the Doctrine of Christianity it self And this they do in design to lead men to the Church of Rome as if we must be no Christians unless we are Christians upon the credit of the Pope and his Subjects And here I offer to their Consideration these two things to shew them the vanity of their arguing 1. We do not strive against you in producing any Tradition or Testimony of Antiquity for the Scripture or for Scripture Doctrine we make as much advantage of such just Tradition as you What do such men as White Vane Cressy c. think of when they argue so eagerly for the advantage of Tradition to prove the Scripture and Christian faith Is this any thing against us Nothing at all We accept our Religion from both the hands of Providence that bring it us Scripture and Tradition we abhor the contempt which these partial Disputers cast upon Scripture but we are not therefore so partial our selves as to refuse any collateral or subordinate help for our faith The more Testimonies the better The best of us have need of all the advantages for our faith that we can get When they have extolled the Certainty of Tradition to the highest we gladly joyn with them and accept of any certain Tradition of the mind of God And I advise all that would prove themselves wise defenders of the faith to take heed of rejecting Arguments from Providences or any necessary Testimony of man especially concerning matter of fact or of rejecting true Church History because the Papists over value it under the name of Tradition left such prove guilty of the like partiality and injuriousness to the truth as the Papists are And whereas the Papists imagine that this must lead us to their Church for Tradition I answer that in my next observation which is 2. We go beyond the Papists in arguing for just Tradition of the Christian faith and we make far greater advantage of it then they can do For 1. They argue but from Authoritative Decision by the Pope under the name of church-Church-Tradition excepting the French party whereas we argue from true History and certain Antiquity and prove what we say Where note 1. That their Tradition is indeed no Tradition for if it must be taken upon the credit of a man as supposed Infallible by supernatural if not miraculous endowment this is not Tradition but Prophesie And if they prove the man to be such a man it s all one to the Church whether he say that This was the Apostles doctrine or This I deliver my self to you from God For if he were so qualified he had the power and credit of a prophet or Apostle himself And therefore they must prove the Pope to be a Prophet before their kind of Tradition can get credit and when they have done that there is no need of it this their honest Dr. Holden was ware of upon which he hath so handsomely canvassed them 2. Note also that such as Dr. Holden Cressy Vane White and other of the French way that plead for Tradition mean a quite other thing then the Jesuited Italian Papist meanes and while they plead for universal Tradition they come nearer to the Protestants then to their Brethren if they did not contradict themselves when they have done by making meer Romish Tradition to be universal 3. Note also that when Papists speak of Tradition confusedly they give us just reason to call them to Define their Tradition and tell us what they mean by it before we dispute with them upon an ambiguous word seeing they are so divided among themselves that one party understands one thing by it and another another thing which we must not suffer these juglers to jumble together and confound 2. Another advantage in which we go beyond the Papists for Tradition is that as we argue not from the meer pretended supernatural Infallibility or Authority of any as they do but from rational Evidence of true Antiquity so we argue not from a sect or party as they do but from the Universal Church As far as the whole Church of Christ is of larger extent and greater credit then the Popish party so far is our Tradition more Credible then theirs And that is especially in three things 1. The Papists are fewer by far then the rest of the Christians in the world And the testimony of many yea of all is more then of a part 2. The Papists above other parties have espoused an interest that leads them to pretend and corrupt Tradition and bend all things to that interest of their own that they may Lord it over all the world But the whole Church can have no such Interest and Partiality 3. And the Papists are but one side and he that will judge rightly must hear the other sides speak too But the Tradition that we make use of is from all sides concurring yea Papists themselves in many points Yea our Tradition reacheth further then the Universal Church for we take in all rational Evidence even of Jews Heathens and Hereticks and Persecutors that bear witness to the matters of fact
Popes and Councils Their own Polidore Virgil de Inven. Rerum p. 410. lib 8. c. 4. calling us a Sect doth give you a just description of us Ita licentia pacta loquendi c. i. e. Having once got leave to speak that sect did marvailously increase in a short time which is called Evangelicall because they affirm that no Law is to be received which belongeth to salvation but what is given by Christ or the Apostles Mark what they confess themselves of our Religion And yet these very men have the face to charge us with Novelty as if Christ and his Apostles were not of sufficient Antiquity for them Our main quarrel with them is for adding new inventions in Religion and their principal business against us is to defend it and yet they call theirs the old Religion and ours the new Our Argument lieth thus That which is most conform to the Doctrine and Practice of Christ and his Apostles is the truly Antient Religion and Church But our Religion and Church is most conform to the doctrine and practice of the Apostles therefore it is the truly antient Religion and Church The Major they will yield For no older Religion is desirable further then as the Law of Nature and Moral Determinations of God are still in force I suppose they will not plead for Judaism For the Minor we lay our cause upon it and are ready to produce our evidence for the Conformity of our Religion and Churches to the doctrine and practice of the Apostles That Religion which is most conform to the Holy Scriture is most conform to the doctrine and practice of Christ and his Apostles But our Religion and Churches is most conform to the holy Scriptures therefore c. They can say nothing against the Major but that the Scripture is Insufficient without Tradition But for that 1. We have no Rule of faith but what is by themselves confessed to be true They acknowledge Scripture to be the true word of God So that the Truth of our Rule is Justified by themselves 2. Let them shew us as good Evidence that their Additional Articles of faith or Laws of life came from the Apostles as we do that the Scriptures came from them and then we shall confess that we come short of them Let them take the Controversies between us point by point and bring their proof and we will bring ours and let that Religion carry it that is Apostolicall But we are sure that by this means they will be proved Novelists For 1. Their Traditions in matter of faith superadded to the Scripture are meer Hereticall or Erroneous forgeries and they can give us no proof that ever they were Apostolicall 2. The Scripture affirmeth its own sufficiency and therefore excludeth their Traditions 3. I shewed you how in their own General Council at Basil the Scripture sufficiency was defended 4. I have shewed you in my Book called the Safe Religion that the ancient Fathers were for the sufficiency of Scripture 5. Their Traditions are the opinions of a dividing sect contrary to the Traditions or doctrine of the present Catholick Church the far greater part of Christians being against them 6. We are able to shew that the time was for some hundred years after Christ when most of their pretended Traditions were unknown or abhorred by the Christian Church and no such things were in being among them 7. And we can prove that the chief points of Controversie mantained against us are not only without Scripture but against it and from thence we have full particular evidence to disprove them If the Scriptures be true as they confess them to be then no Tradition can be Apostolicall or true that is contrary to them For example the Papists Tradition is that the Clergy is exempt from the Magistrates judgement But the holy Scripture saith Let every soul be subject to the higher power Rom. 13. 1 2 3 4 5. The Papists Tradition is for serving God publickly in an unknown tongue But the holy Scripture is fully against it Their Tradition is against Lay mens reading the Scripture in a known tongue without special License from their ordinary But Scripture and all antiquity is against them The like we may say of many other Controversies So that these seven wayes we know their Traditions to be deceitfull because they are 1. Unproved 2. Against the sufficiency of Scripture 3. Against their own former confessions 4. Against the concent of the Fathers 5. Contrary to the judgement of most of the Catholick Church 6. We can prove that once the Church was without them 7. And they are many of them contrary to express Scripture And if Scripture will but shew which of us is neerest the doctrine and practice of the Apostles then the controversie is ended or in a fair way to it For we provoke them to try the cause by Scripture and they deny it we profess it is the Rule and test of our Religion but they appeal to another Rule and test And thus you may see which is the old Religion which will be somewhat fullyer cleared in that which followeth II. And that our Church and Religion hath been continued from the dayes of Christ till now we prove thus 1. From the promise of Christ which cannot be broken Christ hath promised in his word that that Church and Religion which is most conform to the Scripture shall continue to the end But our Church and Religion is most conform to the Scripture therefore Christ hath promised that it shall continue to the end 2. From the event The Christian Religion and Catholick Church hath continued from the dayes of Christ till now But ours is the Christian Religion and Catholick Church therefore ours hath continued from the dayes of Christ till now The Major they will grant the Minor is proved by parts thus 1. That Religion which hath all the Essentials of Christianity and doth not deny or destroy any Essential part of it is the Christian Religion but such is ours therefore c. 2. That Religion which the Apostles were of is the Christian Religion But ours is the same that the Apostles were of therefore c. 3. That Religion which is neerer the Scripture then the Romish Religion is certainly the Christian Religion But so is ours therefore c. 4. They that believe not only all that in particular that is contained in the Ancient Creeds of the Church but also in generall all that is besides in the holy Scripture are of the Christian Religion But thus do the Reformed Churches believe c. 2. And for our Church 1. They that are of that one holy Catholick Church whereof Christ is the head and all true Christians are members are of the true Church For there is but one Catholick Church But so are we therefore c. 2. They that are Sanctified Justified have the love of God in them are members of the true Catholick Church But such are all that are sincere
Professors of our Religion therefore c. But all this will not serve them without a Catalogue and telling them where our Church was before Luther To this we further answer we have no peculiar Catholick Church of our own for there is but one and that is our Church Wherever the Christian Church was there was our Church And where-ever any Christians were congregate for Gods worship there were Churches of the same sort as our particular Churches And wherever Christianity was there our Religion was For we know no Religion but Christianity And would you have us give you a Catalogue of all the Christians in the world since Christ Or would you have us as vain as H. T. in his Manuall that names you some Popes and about twenty professors of their faith in each age as if twenty or thirty men were the Catholick Church Or as if those men were proved to be Papists by his naming them This is easie but silly disputing In a word Our Religion is Christianity 1. Christianity hath certain Essentials without which no man can be a Christian and it hath moreover many precious truths and duties necessary necessitate praecepti and also necessitate medii to the better being of a Christian Our being as Christians is in the former and our strength and increase and better-being is much in the latter From the former Religion and the Church is denominated Moreover 2. Our implicite and actuall explicite Belief as the Papists call them must be distinguished or our General and our particular Belief 3. And also the Positives of our Belief must be distinguished from the implyed Negatives and the express Articles themselves from their implyed Consectaries And now premising these three distinctions I shall tell you where our Church hath been in all Ages since the birth of Christ 1. In the dayes of Christ and his Apostles our Church was where they and all Christians were And our Religion was with them in all its parts both Essential and perfective That is we now Believe 1. All to be true that was delivered by the Apostles as from God with a General faith 2. We believe all the Essentials and as much more as we can understand with a Particular faith 3. But we cannot say that with such a particular faith we believe all that the Apostles believed or delivered for then we must say that we have the same degree of understanding as they and that we understand every word of the Scriptures 2. In the dayes of the A postles themselves the Consectaries and implied Verities and Rejections of all Heresies were not particularly and expresly delivered either in Scripture or Tradition as the Papists will confess 3. In the next ages after the Apostles our Church was the one Catholick Church containing all true Christians Headed by Jesus Christ and every such Christian too many to number was a member of it And for our Religion the Essential parts of it were contained both in the Holy Scriptures and in the Publick Professions Ordinances and Practices of the Church in those ages which you call Traditions and the rest of it even all the doctrines of faith and universal Laws of God which are its perfective parts they were fully contained in the holy Scriptures And some of our Rejections and Consectaries were then gathered and owned by the Church as Heresies occasioned the expressing of them and the rest were all implyed in the Apostolical Scripture doctrine which they preserved 4. By degrees many errors crept into the Church yet so that 1. Neither the Catholick Church nor one true Christian in sensu composito at least did reject any essential part of Christianity 2. And all parts of the Church were not alike corrupted with error but some more and some less 3. And still the whole Church held the holy Scripture it self and so had a perfect General or Implicite belief even while by evill consequences they oppugned many parts of their own profession 5. When in process of time by claiming the universall Soveraignty Rome had introduced a new pretended Catholick Church so far as their opinion took by superadding a New Head and form there was then a two fold Church in the West the Christian as Christian headed by Christ and the Papal as Papal Headed by the Pope yet so as they called it but one Church and by this usurped Monarchy as under Christ endeavoured to make but one of them by making both the Heads Essential when before one only was tolerable And if the Matter in any part may be the same and the same Man be a Christian and a Papist and so the same Assemblies yet still the forms are various and as Christians and part of the Catholick Church they are one thing and as Papists and members of the separating sect they are another thing Till this time there is no doubt of our Churches Visibility 6. In this time of the Romish Usurpation our Church was visible in three degrees in three severall sorts of persons 1. It was visible in the lowest degree among the Papists themselves not as Papists but as Christians For they never did to this day deny the Scriptures nor the Ancient Creeds nor Baptism the Lords Supper nor any of the substance of our Positive Articles of Religion They added a New Religion and Church of their own but still professed to hold all the old in consistency with it Wherever the truth of holy Scriptures and the ancient Creeds of the Church were professed there was our Religion before Luther But even among the Papists the holy Scriptures and the said Creeds were visibly professed therefore among them was our Religion And note here that Popery it self was not ripe for a corruption of the Christian faith professed till Luthers opposition heightned them For the Scripture was frequently before by Papists held to be a most sufficient Rule of faith as I shewed before from the Council of Basil and consequently Tradition was only pleaded as conservatory and expository of the Scripture but now the Council of Trent hath in a sort equalled them And this they were lately driven to when they found that out of Scripture they were unable to confute or suppress the truth 2. At the same time of the Churches oppression by the Papacy our Religion was visible and so our Church in a more illustrious sort among the Christians of the most of the world Greeks Ethiopians and the rest that never were subject to the usurpation of Rome but only many of them took him for the Patriarch primae sedis but not Episcopus Ecclesiae Catholicae or the Governour of the Universall Church So that here was a visibility of our Church doubly more eminent then among the Romanists 1. In that it was the far greatest part of the Catholick Church that thus held our Religion to whom the Papists were then but few 2. In that they did not only hold the same Positive Articles of faith with us but also among their Rejections
what is the thing whose succession is questioned A Protestant is a Christian that holdeth to the holy Scriptures as the sufficient Rule of faith and holy living and protesteth against Popery The Protestant Churches are Societies professing the Protestants Religion The Protestant Religion is an improper speech but the Protestants Religion is a phrase that we shall own For Protestancy is not our Religion it self but the Rejection of Popish corruptions of Religions or defiling Additions If my Rejections of other mens Additions be themselves Additions then is it in the power of any Heretick in the world to force me to Add to my Religion at his Pleasure A thousand new Articles Forms of Worship he may devise and then must I add to my Religion by rejecting them all even as I add to my Apple by wiping the dirt of it or to my Cloaths by brushing them The Protestants Religion is only the Christian Religion the naked Christian Religion alone The Papists the Christian Religion corrupted with abundance of additions The Protestants ever disavowed any Confessions of men as pretended to be the Rule or Law of their Religion The Protestants Religion is the Holy Scriptures alone The Papists Religion is all that is decreed by the Pope and Councils Our Religion containtd in the Scoipture hath its Essentials and Integrals All the Essentials and as much of the Integrals as in the use of means we are able to understand we believe particularly and explicitely the rest we believe generally and implicitely to be all true So that as the Papists will not give us leave to take the writings of Greâ—ser Bellarmine or any of their Doctors yea the Articles of their Divines at Thoren Ratisbone c. to be therefore Articles of their faith but only those that are contained in General Councils approved by the Pope so we require the same justice of them that they call Nothing the Articles of our Faith but what is contained in the Holy Scripture which is the only Rule of our Religion Do they know our Religion better then we do This is our Religion and this we stand to Well! Consider now whether any thing be easier then for a Protestant to shew you a visible Church that hath successively been of his Religion 1. The Christian Religion hath been in all ages since Christ in visible Societies The Religion of Protestants is the Christian Religion therefore the Religion of Protestants hath been in all ages since Christ in visible Societies 2. That Religion which is contained in the Holy Scripture as its Rule or sufficient Revelation hath been professed in all ages in visible Churches But the Religion of Protestants is contained in the Holy Scriptures as its Rule or sufficient Revelation therefore the Religion of Protestants hath been professed in all ages in visible Churches We name the Societies from the places of their residence Our Church as Augustine tels the Donatists begun at Hierusalem and thence was dispersed into Asia Africa and Europe it hath continued in Syria Aethiopia Aegypt India Greece c. If I could name but one Nation that had been of my Religion I should suspect it were not the true Religion It is the Christian world that is instead of a Catalogue to us O but say the Juglers This is a General answer to say you are Christians there are more sorts of Christians then One I Reply It is the General or Catholick that we are speaking of and therefore if it were not such a General answer it were not pertinent to the Question There are no more sorts of Christians but One that is there is no Essential difference among them but there is a gradual integral and modal difference But may not Christians of several Degrees of Knowledge be in the same Catholick Church Our question is not Where any Sect or any particular Church hath had its succession but where that Catholick Church hath been of which we are members And surely Christ hath but One Catholick Church O but say they would you make men believe that Ethiopians Armenians Greeks c. are Protestants you may be ashamed of so gross a fiction I answer Is it the Name of Protestants or their Religion that you would have us prove a succession of These deceivers cheat abundance of poor souls by this one device even supposing that the word Protestant doth denominate our Church from its Essential parts and so call for a Catalogue of Protestants But I would ask them whether we or they do better know our Religion and consequently what a Protestant is If they know it at all it is from our writings or expressions For sure they will not pretend without signs to know our hearts and that better then our selves You must take it from us if you will know what our Religion is as we must take it from you if we will know yours And therefore delude not silly souls by perswading them that you know what our Religion is better then we If you will believe our Books that tell you believe our sayings also and believe me that here tell you my own Religion A Protestant is a Christian that protesteth against Popery Christianity is our Religion Protesting against Popery is our Negation or Rejection of your Corruptions of Religion Men that never heard of the name of Papist or Protestants may be of the same Religion with us If many Nations of the world never received Popery and we reject it if they never knew it and we know it and disown it are we not both of one Religion even in the Integrals One man never heard of the Leprosie another catcheth it and is cured of it and a third flyeth from it and preventeth it And I think all these are truly men yea and in tantum sound men When you call to us for a proof of our succession either you mean it of the Essentials of our Religion and Church or of the Negation of your Corruptions Either you mean it of the points that we are Agreed in or of those we differ in Christianity is it that we are Agreed in and that is our Religion and nothing but that Protestancy as such is but our wiping off the dirt or curing the scab that you have brought upon our Religion Is he not a man as well as you that will not tumble with you in the dirt or come into your Pesthouse If we know not our own Religion then we cannot tell it you and then you cannot know it And if we do know it believe us when we profess our own Belief We still profess before men and Angels that we own no Religion but the Christian Religion nor any Church but the Christian Church nor dream of any Catholick Church but one containing all the true Christians in the world united in Jesus Christ the Head We protest before men and Angels that it is the Holy Scriptures that are the Law and Rule and Test of our Religion And why are we not to be
Believed in this our own Profession as well as you are in yours when you make the Decrees of Popes and Councils to be your Law and Rule and Tests We perform therefore more then you demand You ask us Where was our Church before Luther And we answer Where our Religion was You ask us Where was that and we tell you Where ever the Christian Religion was and the Holy Scriptures were received This were enough for us in answer to your Question But we do more We tell you not only where our Church and Religion was but where there were men that owned not your grand Corruptions no more then we What can you demand more of us when you call for a succession of Protestants then that we tell you of a succession of Christians which are of our Religion and which were no Papists yea against Popery which therefore were of our integrity And who knoweth not that the foresaid Abassines Armenians Egyptians Greeks c. are against your Papal Soveraignty Infallibility and all that is by us renounced as Essential to Popery O but say the Juglers these are not Protestants they differ from you in many particulars I answer Call them by what name you please they are not only Christians but also Anti-papists or free from Popery and then they are of our Religion and Church But indeed must the world be made believe that all that we Believe is essential to our Religion and that no man that differeth from us can be of our Religion be the difference never so small But say they tell us of a Church that professes your 39 Articles Silly deceivers Do not those very Articles profess that The Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation so that whatever is not read therein nor may be proved thereby is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an Article of the Faith or be thought requsite or necessary to Salvation Art 6. We never took these Articles instead of the Scripture but the Articles and all Protestants profess the Scripture to be the only Rule and Test of their Faith and Religion The substance of the 39 Articles may easily be proved to have been successively held by the Church from the beginning but it is not incumbent on us to prove that every word in the writings of every Divine or Church hath been so continued no more then you will own the writings of any Divines or Provincial Synods of your own as being the Rule of your Faith As you profess that the Decrees of Popes and general Councils approved by him besides the Scriptures are the Rule and Test of your Religion so do we profess that the Scriptures alone with the Law of Nature is the Rule of ours But what say they will you be of the same Church with Nestorians Eutichians and other Hereticks I Answ 1. We will not take all for Nestorians or Eutichians that a railer can call such that never knew them nor can prove it 2. Hereticks indeed that deny any essential part of Christianity are no Christians anh therefore none of the Church that we are of but if you will call those Hereticks that have all the essentials of Christianity because they err in lesser points we know that there are such in the Catholick Church We will be none of them our selves if we can escape it yet indeed have no hope of escaping all error till we are perfect in knowledge But we will not run out of the family of God because there are children and sick persons in it Nor will we for sake the Catholick Church because there are erring persons in it O but saith the Papist We acknowledge not your distinction of points Essential and not Essential all points of Faith are Essential with us and of necessity to Salvation Answ Reader thou shalt see here such impudent and faithless jugling as may make thee blush to think that Christianity hath such professors 1. The Outside of their assertion damneth no aess then all the world that live to the use of Reason 2. The Inside of their deceitful meaning is almost clean contrary and leaveth Heathens and Infidels in the Church or in a state of salvation as well as Christians 3. It leaveth no one Article of faith essential to a Christian or to one that shall be saved and leaveth the Church an Invisible thing clean contrary to their own assertions of its Visibility 4. And when they have thus wrangled themselves into a wood of contradictions and Unchristian absurdities the wisest of them say as we say in the main point All this I will now manifest to thee 1. The Out-side of their assertion is that Every point that we are bound to belive by a Divine faith is fundamental or essential to Christian faith or of necessity to salvation And if so then no man breathing can be saved For no man knoweth all that he is bound to know And no man believeth that which he understandeth not It is impossible to believe that such a Proposition is a truth distinctly and actually when I understand not what the Proposition is And that we all know but in part even what we are obliged to know no man will deny but he that is mad by pride or faction All that God hath revealed in his word is the matter of our faith There is to man can say I have no culpable ignorance of any one Truth of God that I should believe Had we been more perfect in our diligent studies and prayers and use of all means and had we never sinfully grieved the spirit that should illuminate us to say nothing of our Original sinfull darkness there is not one of us but might have known more then we do If sin of the will and life be consistent with true faith then some sin in the understanding is consistent with faith But the former is true therefore c. But according to the out-side of their doctrine no man that hath any sinfull ignorance and consequently unbelief in his understanding can be saved that is no man in the world If he that thinks he knowth any thing knoweth nothing as he ought to know 1 Cor. 8. 2. what shall be said of these men that think they and all the Church do know all things that they ought to know and that their understandings have no sin And must we needs be of that faith that damneth all men and of that Church where none are saved 2. As the Out-side of their Assertions is made for a bug-bear to frighten fools so that the In-side as expounded by many of them is that Heathens and Infidels may be of their Church or saved and that nothing of the Chrian faith at all is necessary to salvation is plain For they ' tell us that they mean that all points are of necessity where they are sufficiently proposed and mens ignorance is not invincible but where there is no sufficient proposal but mens ignorance is invincible or
do so by the Scriptures 2. And can any Learned Papists be so ignorant as not to know that the Arrians pretended the Authority of General Councils and so do many other Hereticks and that the Authority of Pope and Councils are frequently pretended for contrary opinions among them and may be pretended by many an Heretick And will they therefore grant that the Decrees of Popes and Councils are no sufficient discovery of their Faith If Hereticks pretending to your Test of Faith disprove not that to be your Faith then Hereticks pretending to our Rule and Test of Faith which is the Holy Scripture is no proof that it is not our Rule of Faith I do therefore conclude that the Proof of a Succession of such Churches as have received the Holy Scriptures is a valid proof of a succession of Churches of our Religion seeing we have no Religion doctrinally but the Holy Scriptures And this as far as modesty will permit I challenge all the Jesuites on Earth to confute with any solid Reasons yet adding that we do ex superabundanti prove a succession also of Churches that never owned Popery even the greatest part of the Christian world But let these men themselves but prove to us a succession of their Church even such as they require of us Let them prove that from the Apostles days the Catholick Church or any one Congregation of twenty men did hold all that now their Councils and Popes have Decreed and are esteemed Articles of their Faith and I am contented to be their bondslave for ever or to bear a fagot or be used by them as cruelly as their malice can invent or flames or their strappado's execute Let my Head be at their Mercy if they can but prove that Succession of Popery as they require us to do of Protestancy or as I have produced of our Churches and Religion In the 15th and 16th Detection I have more largely spoken to them of this point to which I refer the Reader In the very principal point of their Papal Soveraignty they have nothing but this gross deceit to cheat the world with The Roman Emperors divers ages after Christ did give the Bishop of Rome a Primacy in their Empire and hence these men would perswade us that even from Christ they have had a Soveraignty over all the Christian world Wink but at these small mistakes and they have won the Cause 1. Suppose but Christs Institution to stand in stead of the Emperors 2. Suppose divers hundred years after Christ to have been in the Apostles days 3. Suppose Primacy to be Soveraignty or Universal Government 4. But especially grant them that the Roman Empire was all the Christian world and then they have made good that part of their Cause That there were many Nations without the reach of the Roman Empire that had received the Christian Faith is past doubt Socrates lib. 1. c. 15. saith that Thomas chose Parthia Bartholomew chose India Matthew Ethiopia to plant the Gospel in but the middle India was not converted till Constantines days by Frumentius and Edesius and Iberia by a Maid So Euseb l. 3. c. 3. tells us of Thomas his Preaching to the Parthians and Andrew to the Scythians Et in vit Const l. 4. c. 8. that there were many Churches in Persia cap. 91. how Constantine wrote for them to the King Godignus and others of them maintain that the Abassines did receive the Gospel from the beginning Besides Scotland and many other Countries that were not under the Roman Power And none of these were Governed by the Pope These three Arguments against the Papal Cause I shall here premise to more that follow 1. If all that part of the Christian world that was out of the reach of the Roman Empire did never submit to the Soveraignty of the Pope then hath he not been successively or at any time the actual Head of the Universal Church But the Antecedent is most certain therefore so is the Consequent How an old woman the Emperors Mother of Habassia did baffle their Jesuites by asking them How it came to pass if obedience to the Pope be necessary to salvation that they never had heard from him till now I have told you after from themselves If Primacy were Soveraignty and Emperors and Councils were Gods yet the Indians Abassines Persians and many more in the East and the Scots and Irish and Danes and Sweeds and Poles and Muscovites and most of Germany in the West and North should be no subjects of the Pope 2. If the Rule and Test of the Faith of Papists never had a Real Being or no succession from the Apostles then their Faith and Church hath either no Real Being or no such Succession But the Antecedent is true as I prove It is either General Councils or Popes or the Church Essential as they use to call it that is the Whole Body that is the Rule of their Faith If it be General Councils 1. They had no being from the Apostles till the Council of Nice therefore the Rule of the Papists Faith was then unborn 2. Yea they never had a being in the world There was never any thing like a General Council since the days of the Apostles to this day The first at Nice had none save one John of Persia who its like was some persecuted Bishop that was fled or if one or two more its not material but the Bishops of the Empire and out of the Western parts so few as was next to none The following Councils as Constantinop 1. c. were only out of one piece of the Empire The Council of Trent I disdain to reckon among the modester pretenders to an Universality 2. And if it be not General Councils but the Pope that is the Rule of their Faith then 1. Their Faith hath been interrupted yea and turned to Heresie and to Infidelity when the Pope hath so turned 2. And why then do they tell our people that they take not the Pope for the Rule of their Faith 3. If it be the Major part of the Universal Church 1. It 's known that two to one are against them or at least the Greater part therefore by that Rule their Faith in the Papal Soveraignty is false 2. And yet it would be hard if a man must be of no Belief till he have brought the world to the pole for it Argum. 3. If all the stir that the Papists make in the world for the Papal Government be but to rob Christian Princes and Magistrates of their Power then are they but a seditious Sect But the Antecedent is apparent For there are but two sorts of Government in the Church The one is by the Word applyed unto the Conscience which worketh only on the willing either by General exhortations as in Preaching or by personal application as in Sacraments Excommunication and Absolution And this is the work of the present Pastors and cannot be performed by the Pope Nor would he be
Columbanus the Abbot coming into France that the Scots do nothing differ from the Brittains in their Conversation For Bishop Daganus coming to us refused not only to eat with us but even to eat in the same House where we did eat Usher Epist Hibern 7. p. 18. Our most peaceable Bishop Hall was forct to write a Roma irreconciliabilis While we are thinking of Reconciliation they are about our ears with Plots and violence and with swarms of Rome-bred Sects and are day and night industriously undermining us so that by their continual Alarms I am called off to these defensive wars which here I have undertaken yet still resolving that the Desperateness of the Cure shall not make me run from them into a contrary extream nor be out of the way of Peace nor neglect any necessary means how hopeless soever of success The Work that here I have undertaken is 1. To give you briefly those Grounds on which you must go if you will keep your ground against a Papist 2. To give a few invincible Arguments which the weakest may be able to use to overthrow the principal grounds of the Papists 3. To detect their Frauds and give to the younger sort of Ministers sufficient Directions for the Confutation of all the Papists in the world 4. To propound though in vain such terms of Peace as we can yield to CHAP. II. BEfore I mention the Grounds or Cause that you must maintain I must premise this Advice to the Common People 1. Wrong not the Truth and your selves by an unequal conflict Enter not rashly upon Disputes with those that are Learned and of nimble tongues if you be ignorant or of weak capacities your selves Though I shall here shew you that Scripture Church Tradition Reason and Sense are on your side yet experience tels us how the words of Juglers have made millions of men deny belief to their eyes their taste and other senses An ignorant man is soon silenced by a subtile wit and many think that when they cannot answer they must yield though they deny both Sense and Reason by it If any of them secretly entice you desire them to debate the case with some able learned experienced Minister in your hearing It is the office of your Pastors to defend you from the wolves If you once despise them or straggle from them and the Flocks and trust to your own Reason that is unfurnished and unprepared for such work you may take that you get by it if you be undone You need the help of Pastors for your souls as well as of Physicians for your Bodies and Lawyers for your Estates or else God would never have set them over you in his Church Let them but come on equal terms and you shall see what Truth can do In this way we will not avoid a Conference with any of them But alas with ignorant unlearned people what may not such Deceivers do that can perswade so many thousand souls to give no Credit to their own eyes or taste or feeling but to believe a Priest that Bread is not Bread and Wine is not Wine 2. Yet I would have the weakest to endeavour to understand the reasons of their Profession and to be able to repell Deceivers And to that end I shall here give you first some Directions concerning the cause which you must defend And concerning this Observe these things following 1. Understand what the Religion is that you must hold and maintain It is the antient Christian Religion Do not put every Truth among the Essentials of your Religion Our Religion doth not stand or fall with every Controversie that is raised about it That which was the true Religion in the Apostles days is ours now that which all were baptized into the Profession of and the Churches openly held forth as their Belief Reformation brings us not a new Religion but cleanseth the old from the dross of Popery which by innovation they had brought in A man that cannot confute a Papist may yet be a Christian and so hold fast the true Religion It followeth not that our Religion is questionable or unsafe if some point in Controversie between them and us be questionable or hard The Papists would fain bring you to believe that our Religion must lie upon some of these Controversies but it s no such matter Perhaps you will say That then it is not about Religion that we differ from them I answer yes it is about the Essentials of their Religion but it is but for the preserving the Integrity of ours against the Consequences and additions of theirs They have made them a New Religion which we call Popery and joined this to the Old Religion which we call Christianity Now we stick to the old Religion alone and therefore there is more essential to their Religion then is to ours so that our own Religion even the ancient Christianity is out of Controversie between us The Papists do confess that the Creed the Lords Prayer the ten Commandments are true yea that all the Scripture is the word of God and certainly true so that our Religion is granted us as past dispute And therefore it is only the Papists Religion that is in question between us and not ours If you will make those lower Truths to be of the Essence of your Religion which are not you will give the Papists the advantage which they desire 2. If the Papists call for a Rule or Test of your Religion and ask you where they may find it assign them to the Holy Scriptures and not to any Confessions of Churches further then as they agree with that We know of no Divine Rules and Laws of Faith and Life but the holy Scripture and the hearts of Believers have an imperfect Transcript of them The Confessions of Churches are but part of the Holy Scripture or Collections out of them containing the points of greatest weight And if in phrase or order much more in matter there be any thing humane we make it not our Rule nor are we bound to make it good no more then the Writings of godly men A point is not therefore with us an Article of Faith because our Churches or a Synod put it into a Confession but because it is in the Word of God For a Councils determinations do with us differ but gradually from the Judgement of a single man in this respect And therefore we give them the Scripture only as the full Doctrine of our Faith and the perfect Law of God And those points in it which Life or Death is laid upon and God hath told us we cannot be saved without we take as the Essentials of our Religion and the rest as the Integrals only If they ask Why then we do draw up Confessions of Faith I answer 1. To teach and help the people by gathering to their hands the most necessary points and giving them sometimes an explication of them 2. To let our Accusers see that we misunderstand not the
false So that here we must break with a Papist even where we might join in dispute with a heathen And how will Papists deal with Heathens if they will deny the proofs from sense and reason 3. But will they stand to the Validity of Proofs from Scripture No For 1. They take it to be but part of Gods word so that we may nor argue Negatively It is not in the holy Scripture therefore it is not an Article of faith or a Law of God For they will presently appeal to Tradition 2. And even so much as is in Scripture though they confess it to be true yet they confess it not to be by us intelligible and will not admit of any proof from it but with this limitation that you take it in that sense as the Church takes it For they are sworn by the Trent Oath to take it in that sence as the Holy Mother Church doth hold and hath held it in and never to take or interpret it but according to the unanimous sense of the Fathers So that they must know what sense all the Fathers are unanimous in before they can admit a proof from Scripture And before that can be done above a Cart-load of books must be read over or searched and when that 's done they will find that most texts were never medled with by most of those Fathers in their writings and in those that they did meddle with they disagreed in multitudes and where they disagree they are not unanimous and there the Papists are sworn to believe no sense at all And if they would have come down to a Major vote it is no short or easie matter to gather the votes And if they know the Fathers unanimous consent yet must they have the sense of the present Church too And is it not all one to make your adversary the Judge of your cause as the Judge of your Evidences and all your proofs 4. Well but at least may we not hope that they will stand to the Judgement of the Catholick Church And if so we will not take it for our adversary No they will not do so neither For 1. When they deny proof from sense and reason they must needs deny all that 's brought from the Church For the Church cannot judge it self but on supposition of the infallibility of sense 2. And when you argue from the judgement and practice of the greater part of the Church they presently disclaim them all as Hereticks or Schismaticks and will have no man be a Valid witness but themselves The Greeks the Aethiopians the Armenians the Protestants all are Hereticks or Schismaticks save they and therefore may not be witnesses in the case So that you see upon what terms we stand with the Papists that will admit of no proofs upon the Infallibility of Sense or Reason or the sufficiency of Scripture or the testimony of the Catholick Church but only from themselves CHAP. XIII Detect 4 UNderstand what the Papists mean when they are still calling to you for a Judge of Controversies If you would dispute with them they are presently asking you Who shall be the judge and perswading you that it is in vain to dispute without a living Judge for every man will be the Judge himself and every mans cause will be right in his own eyes and all the world will be still at odds till we are agreed who shall be the Judge To help you to see the sense of this deceit and then to confute it 1. You may easily observe that this is the plain drift of all to perswade you to make them your judges and yield the cause instead of disputing it For it is no other judge but themselves that they will admit Yield first that the Pope or his Council is the judge of all controversies and then its folly to dispute against them so that if you will yield them the cause first they will then dispute with you after 2. But what is to be said to the pretence of the Necessity of a Judge I answer 1. It s against all reason and experience to think that all enquiries or disputes are vain unless there be a Judge to decide the case A Judge is a Ruling decider not to satisfie mens minds so much as to preserve Order and Peace and Justice in the Society But there are thousands of cases to be privately discussed that we never need to bring to a Judge Every Husbandman and Tradesman and Navigator and other Artificer doth meet with doubts and difficulties in his way which he laboureth to Discern and satisfieth himself with a Judgement of Discretion without a Ruling Judge We eat and drink and clothe our selves and follow our daily labours without a Judge though we meet with controversies in almost all what meat or drink is best for quality or quantity and a hundred like doubts Men do marry and build and buy and sell and take Physick and dispatch their greatest worldly business without a Judge Judges are only for such controverted cases as cannot well be decided without them to the attaining of the Ends of Government 2. Is it not against the daily practice of the Papists to think or say that all disputes and controversies must have a Judge Who is the Judge between the Nominals Reals and Formalists the Dominicans Franciscans and Jesuites in all those controversies which have Cartloads of Books written on them Their Pope or Councils dare not Judge between them Do they not daily dispute in their Schools among themselves without a Judge and still write books against one another without a Judge 3. Understand well the use and differences of Judgement The sentence is but a means to the execution and Judges cannot determine the mind and will of man but preserve outward Order if men will not see the truth themselves Me thinks the Jesuits that are so eager for free will should easily grant that the Pope by his definition cannot determine the Will of man And they see that Hereticks remain Hereticks when the Pope hath said all that he can And if he can cure them all by his determinations he is much too blame that he doth not And if a mans mind be to be settled an Infallible Teacher is fitter then a Judge Judgement then being for Execution when you ask Who shall be the Judge I answer that Judgement is either total absolute and final or it is only to a certain particular end limited and subordinate from which there is an Appeal In the former case there is no Judge but Christ and the Father by him No absolute decision can be made till the great Judgement come and then all will be fully and finally decided And for the limited present Judgements of men they are of several sorts according to their several Ends. When the question is Who shall be corporally punished as an Heretick the Magistrate is Judge For coercive punishment being his work the Judgement must be his also But when the question is Who
shall be excommunicated as an Heretick as Gods Law hath told us who in specie and so is the Rule of decision about individuals so to try individual persons and cases according to this Law belongs to the Governours of the Church but not to the Governours of other Churches a thousand miles off that never received such an authority and are not capable of the work but to the Governours of the Church in which the party hath Communion and into which he shall at any time intrude and seek communion And all men have a Judgement of discerning that are concerned in the Execution So that if a disputing Papist will say that his business is not to Dispute with you but to Excommunicate or hang or burn you for an Heretick then I confess it s all the reason in the world that you should first agree of the Judge But why the Pope should be the Judge I know not unless it be in his own charge CHAP. XIV Detect 5. VVHen you have proceeded on these grounds the Papists will tell you that in their way there is an End of Controversies but in yours there is none For if you will not stand to ones Judgement as infallible you may dispute as long as you live before you come to an End To direct you in discussing this part of the Deceit also 1. We confess that on earth there will be no End of all controversies among the best nor of the great controversies which salvation lyeth on between the believers and the unbelievers that is there will be still Infidelity and Heresie in the world and errour in the godly themselves 1. Hath it not been so in every age till now And why should we expect that it should now be otherwise 2. Doth not Paul tell us that here we know but in part and prophesie in part and when is it that that which is imperfect will be done away but when that which is perfect is come While we know but in part we shall differ in part 2. Hath your way put an End to controversies any more then ours Are you not yet at controversie with Infidels Whether Christ be the Redeemer and with Hereticks whether he be true eternall God Are you not yet as full of controversies among your selves as any Christians on the face of the earth I do not believe but in the many Volumes of your Schoolmen Casuists and Commentators I can shew more controversies yet depending then you can find amongst any sort of Christians in the world yea then you can find among all other Christians in the world set together 3. And is there any thing in your way that better tendeth to the deciding of controversies then in ours Nothing at all but contrarily you have made more Controversies then you have ended For 1. We have a Certain infallible Rule to decide our controversies by even such as you confess your selves to be infallible Even the Holy Scriptures but you have an uncertain Rule even the Decrees of your Popes and Councils and the many Volumes of the Fathers which are at odds among themselves your very Rule is self-contradicting and your Judges are together by the ears as hath been shewed 2. Our Faith consisteth in those points which are granted by your selves and so are beyond Controversie between us and you But yours lyeth also in a mixture of mens corruptions which will ever be controverted and condemned 3. Our Faith consisteth in the few ancient Articles by which the Church was alwayes known as to its essentials But you confound the Essentials with the integrals and the Number of your necessary Articles is so great as must needs be matter of more controversie then ours 4. We know our Religion and where to find it For it is perfect at the first and receiveth no additions or diminutions One generation cometh and another goeth but the word of the Lord endureth for ever But you never know when you have all because you know not when your Pope will have done defining that is an article of faith to you one year that was none the year before nor ever before 5. We need no Judge to decide any controversies among us in the points of Absolute necessity to salvation both because the Scripture is so plain in those points as to serve for decision without a Judge and because we abhor to make a controversie of any of them and where there is no controversie there needs no Judge We are all agreed through the plainness of the Scripture that there is but one Eternal most Wise and Good and Omnipotent God and that there is one Mediator between God and man who is himself both God and man that was crucified dead buried went to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rose again ascended intercedeth for us and is King and Head of the Church and will raise the dead and judge the world some to Heaven and some to Hell These and all the rest of the Essentials of our faith and many more points that are not essentials are so plain in Scripture that we are past making them matter of Controversie If any man deny an Essential point of faith he is none of us no more then of you But you are it seems so deep in infidelity that you must have a judge to decide your Controversies in the necessary Articles of Faith For whatever is de fide you make to be of such equal necessity that you deride our distinguishing the Fundamentals from the rest as may be seen in Knots Infidelity unmaskt against Chillingworth Seriously tell us Do you think Christians need a Judge or must put it to a Judge to decide whether Christ be the Messias or not whether he died and rose again or not Whether he will judge the world or not or any such points If he be a Judge he must have power to oblige you to stand to his Determination on which side soever he determine And what if John 22. determine that the soul is not immortal or John 23. that there is no resurrection or life to come but a man dieth like a beast would you stand to this decision 6. If you say that your Judge hath power to oblige you only on one side that is when he judgeth right and so make no Judge of him but a Teacher we have such Judges as well as you even Teachers to shew us the Evidence of truth 7. If you say that you have a Judge to determine of heresies in order to the Punishing of them by the sword So have we as well as you and better then you For your Pope is a Priest that hath nothing to do with the sword at least out of his own Principalities but our Princes and other Rulers are lawful Magistrates that are appointed to be a terror to evill doers Rom. 13. 4 6. 8. If you say that you have a Judge to determine of heresie in Order to Excommunication so have we in every Church even the Pastors of the Churches who are
nothing can be added and therefore we are at a Certainty for our Religion for we have a sure and perfect Rule from Heaven Nothing may be added to it or taken from it But the Papists do profess that the Determinations of the Pope or Councill may make a point and so five thousand points for there is no certain number to be de fide articles of faith and necessary to salvation though not in se yet quoad nos as to us And what it is for a Law to be obligatory in se and not quoad nos is hard to understand So that the Papists never know when their faith is perfect and grown to its full stature For ought they know a thousand more Articles yet may be added And yet these men of uncertain growing faith have the face to perswade men that we are mutable and they are fixed You see our several Principles now to our Practices For our part 1. We never changed our Head our Lord our Faith or one Article of our Faith if malice it self be able to charge us with changing the smallest Article of our Faith let them say their worst we change not our Rule the holy Scriptures nor one clause or sentence of it but endeavour the preservation of the same which at the first we received In our contests with the Papists our great offence is at their mutation from the antient Rule and way we contend but for the faith once delivered to the Saints the old way with us is the good way we abhor a Religion that is new sprung up or is less then one thousand five hundred and fifty years standing at least If we change in any thing it is but by repenting of our former changeableness while our Nation was Popish having then changed from the Apostolick simplicity we change from that sinful change and return to the antient way again And if we have made any further changes since our first change at the Reformation it is but a perfecting the change to Antiquity and Apostolick simplicity which we then begun Rome was not built in a day and is not pulled down in a day The work of Reformation is but one change though it be not done all at one time If we find some spots of Romish dirt upon us that escaped us at our first washing it is no dangerous mutability yet to wash it off If a man converted by saving grace be not perfectly rid of all his former sin the first day of his Conversion should he be reproached as mutable for striving against it all his life after and casting it off by degrees as he is able If a man did but recover by degrees from the relicks of his disease they will not therefore reproach him as mutable If he sweep the dust or dirt out of his house every day they will not say He is mutable and knows not where to rest These men might as well reproach us as mutable because we rise in the morning and do not still lie in bed or because we go to bed at night and do not stay up still But what is it that we are changeable in we have changed none of the substance of worship did we baptize before and do we not so still Did we pray or administer the Lords Supper before and do we not so still what is the change why 1. We before used the common Prayer book and now we do not 2. Before we used prayers at the buria of the dead which now are omitted 3. Before we used the Cross and Surplice and kneeled at the Sacrament which are now omitted And what then therefore we have changed our Religion Even as a man changeth his cloaths by brushing them or his house by sweeping it or his face by washing it Do these men think us so sottish as to place our Religion in these Circumstances God hath bid us Pray continually but he hath not told us whether we shall use a Prayer book or not but left that to mens necessities or conveniences to determine of And doth a man change his Religion or Worship of God if he either begin or cease to use a Book If any man had so little wit or Religion as to place their Religion in a Prayer book it s no great loss to them if they have lost their Religion when the Prayer book is taken from them We doubt not but Prayer books are profitable to some and hinderances to others some should use them and some should not but whether we use them or not use them is no part of our Religion at all but a meer Accident or common help and appurtenance God hath not told preachers whether they shall use any Notes for their memory in Preaching to one it is an hinderance to another an help Doth a man change his Religion when he changeth a custome of using Notes God hath not told us what Chapter we shall read or what Psalm we shall sing or what Text we shall Preach on this day or that day What if one age think it best that some Pastors give Laws to all the rest that they shall read no Chapter preach on no Text and sing no Psalm but by their direction and the next age think it meeter to leave it to each Minister as thinking it unfit to Ordain such Ministers that have not wit enough to choose their Text or Chapter or Psalm according to occasions Will you say that here is a change of Religion These outside Hypocrites tell the world what a thing they take Religion to be and in what they place it What if one man use an hour-glass in preaching and another use none What if one read a Chapter with spectacles and another without or if one preach in a Pulpit and another below or if one preach in a white garment or another in a black or if one stand at the Sacrament and another sit and another kneel Are we therefore of several Religions or is this any part of the worship it self Do we not all now either stand sit or kneel at the hearing of a Sermon as we please Do we not kneel or stand at Prayer as we please Yea do not men commonly in singing Psalms of Prayer or Praise to God sit or stand as they please And what if we do so at the Sacrament Is it not all one Or doth standing kneeling or sitting make another Religion or any part of it And for Marrying Burying Baptizing and the rest we have altered no part at all of the worship of God but order them in that manner as seemeth most convenient What ignorant souls are these that think that the using a Prayer book or praying without book or the using this gesture or that these words or those words that are to the same sence doth make different Religions or Ordinances of worship These are tricks that none but the sottishly ignorant will be deluded with that know not whâ—â— Religion or worship is They may as well say If I change
my Lecture-day from Thursday to Friday that I change my Religion or the worship of God These are our great changes Well I will you now hear whether the Papists or we be the greatest Changlings 1. Some just changes they have made themselves that they know well enough are as great as ours It was so common in the antient Church to Pray only standing on every Lords day and not to kneel at all in any part of the worship of that day that it was taken for an universal Tradition and to kneel was taken for a great sin and condemned by General Councils many hundred years after Christ and yet the Church of Rome and other Churches as well as we have cast off this pretended Tradition violated this Decree of General Councils and forsaken this universal Custom of the Church And the Papists receive the Eucharist kneeling for all this Law and Custome In the primitive Church and in Tertullians dayes a Common Feast of the Church was used with the Lords Supper and the Sacrament taken then But now this Custom is also changed It was then the Custom to sing extempore in the Congregation to Gods praise But now Rome it self hath no such Custom It was once the Custom to give Infants the Lords Supper but now Rome it self hath cast off that Custom Once it was a Canon that Bishops must not read the books of Gentiles Concil Carthag 4. which yet Paul made use of and the Papists now do too much value Abundance such changes might be mentioned greater then ours in which we are justified by the Papists themselves 2. But they have yet other kind of changes then these They have changed the very Essence of the Catholick Church in their esteem they have changed the Officers the Doctrine the Discipline the Worship and what not as though they had been born for change to turn all upside down In the Primitive times the Church had no universal Monarch but Christ but they have set up a new universal Monarch at Rome In the primitive times the Catholick Church was the Universality of Christians and they have changed it to be only the subjects of the Pope In the Primitive times Rome was but a particular Church as Jerusalem and other Churches were but they have changed it to be the Mistris of all Churches For many hundred years after Christ the Scripture was taken to be a sufficient Rule of faith but they have changed it to be but part of the Rule In the antient Church all sorts were earnestly exhorted to read or hear and study the Scripture in a known tongue but they have changed this into a desperate restraint proclaiming it the cause of all Heresies In the antient Church the Bread and Wine was the Body and Blood of Christ Representative and Relative but they have changed it into the real Body and Blood Heretofore there was Bread and Wine remaining after the words of Consecration but they have changed so that there remaineth neither Bread nor Wine but the qualities and quantity without the substance and this must be believed because they say it against Scripture and Antiquity and in despight of sense it self In the antient Church the Lords Supper was administred in both kinds bread and wine to all but they have lately changed this into one kind only to the people denying them one half of the Sacrament Of old the Lords Supper was but the Commemoration of the sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross and a Sacrament of our Communion with him and his members but now they have changed it into a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of the quick and dead and in it they adore a piece of Bread as very God with Divine worship Of old men were taught to make daily confession of sin and beg pardon and when they had done all to confess themselves unprofitable servants but now they are so changed that they pretend not only to be perfect without sin and to Merit by the Condignity of their works with God but to supererogate and be more perfect then innocency could make them by doing more then their duty Of old those things were accounted sins deserving Hell and needing the blood of Christ for pardon which now are changed into venial sins which properly are no sins and deserve no more then temporal punishment Of old the Saints had no proper merits to plead for themselves and now men have some to spare for the buying of souls out of Purgatory Of old the Pastors of the Churches were subject to the Rulers of the Commonwealth even every soul not only for wrath but for Conscience sake was obliged to be subject but now all the Clergy are exempted from secular Judgement and yet the secular power is subject to them for the Pope hath power to depose Princes and dispossess them of their Dominions and put others in their rooms and dissolve the bonds of Oaths and Covenants in which the subjects were obliged to them and to allow men to murder them by stabbing poysoning c. If you do not believe me stay but till I come to it and I shall give you yet some further proof Would you have any more of the Popish Changes Why I might fill a volume with them Should I but recite all the changes they have made in Doctrines and all that they have made in Church Orders and Discipline and Religious Orders and their Discipline and in Worship and Ceremonies I should be over tedious their very Liturgy or Mass-book hath been changed and made by changes such abundance of additions it hath had since the beginning of it What changes Sixtus the fift and Clement the eighth made in their Bibles I told you before as also what changes they have had in the election of their Popes And now I am content that any impartial man be judge whether Papists or the Reformed Churches are the more mutable and unsetled in their Religion and which of them is at the greater certainty firmness and immutability CHAP. XXIV Detect 15. ANother fraud of the Papists which they place not the least of their confidence in is this They perswade the people that our Church and Religion is but new of the other dayes invention and that theirs is the only old Religion And therefore they call upon us to give them a Catalogue of the professors of our Religion in all ages which they pretend we cannot do and ask us where our Church was before Luther To this we shall give them once more a brief but satisfactory answer I. We are so fully assured that the oldest Religion is the best since the date of the Gospell that we are contented that our whole cause do stand or fall by this tryall Let him be esteemed of the true Religion that is of the oldest Religion This is the main difference between us and the Papists We are for no Religion that is not as old as the dayes of the Apostles but they are for the Novelties and Additions of
whether you believe that the Oral Tradition of all the Church did preserve the Knowledge of Augustines Epiphanius Chrysostomes c. doctrine so much as their writings do Is the doctrine of Aquinas Scotus Gabriel c. yea the Council of Trent preserved now more certainly in mens memories then in writing If so they have better memories then mine that keep them and they have better hap then I that light of such keepers For I can scarce tell how to deliver my mind so in any difficult point but one or other is misunderstanding and misreporting it and by leaving out or changing a word perhaps make it another matter so that I am forced to refer them to my writings and yet there by neglect they misinterpret me till I open the book it self to them 6. Either the Fathers of the fifth age are intelligible in their writings or not If they be then we may understand them I hope with industry If they be not then 1. Much less were their transient speeches intelligible 2. And then the writings of the sixth age be not intelligible nor of any other and so we cannot understand the Council of Trent as the Papists do not that controvert its sense voluminously nor can we know the Churches judgement 7. By your leave the Roman Corrupters take on them so much Power to make new Laws and new Articles of Faith quoad nos by definitions and to dispense with former Laws that unless they are all Knights of the Post they can never swear that they had all that they have from their Fore-fathers 8. Well! but all this is the least part of my answer But I grant you that the sixth age understood and retained the doctrine of the fifth age and have delivered it to us But that there were no Hereticks or corrupters you will not say your selves Well then the far greatest part of the Catholick Church did not only receive from the fifth age the same Christian Religion but also kept themselves from the grossest corruptions of the Pope and his flatterers that were then but a small part And thus we stick to the Catholick Church succeeding to this day and you to an usurper that then was newly set on the Throne of universal Soveraignty So that your chief Argument treadeth Popery in the dirt because the greater part of the Catholick Church not only in the fifth and sixth age but in the seventh eighth nineth tenth thirteenth fourteenth fifteenth and sixteenth ages have been aliens or enemies to the Roman universal Monarchy therefore if one age of the Church knew the mind of the former age better then the Pope did we may be sure that the Pope is an usurper The third Argument of H. T. is that the Fathers of the first five hundred years taught their tenets therefore its impossible they should be for the Protestants Answ 1. Protestants are Christians taking the Holy Scriptures for the Rule of their faith If the Fathers were Christians they were for the Protestants but its certain they were Christians If you could prove that they were for some of your mistakes that would not prove them against the Protestants in the doctrine of Christianity and the holy Scriptures and so that we are not their Successors in Christianity and of the same Church which was it that you should have proved but forgot the question And of this we shall speak to you more anon Well! by this time I have sufficiently shewed the succession of our Church and continuation of our Religion from the Apostles and where it was before Luther and given you the Catholick Church instead of a dozen or twenty names in each age which it seems will satisfie a Papist but yet we have not done with them but require this following Justice at their hands Seeing the Papists do so importunately call to us for Catalogues and proof of our succession Reason and Justice requireth that they first give us a Catalogue of Papists in all ages and prove the succession of their Roman Catholick Church which they can never do while they are men And here I must take notice of the delusory ridiculous Catalogue wherewith H. T. begins his Manual His Argument runs thus That is the only true Church of God which hath had a continued succession from Christ and his Apostles to this day very true But the Church now in Communion with the Sea of Rome and no other hath had a continued succession from Christ and his Apostles to this time therefore c. For the proof of the Minor he giveth us a Catalogue And here note the misery of poor souls that depend on these men that are deluded with such stuff that one would think they should be ashamed the world should see from them 1. What if his Catalogue were true and proved would it prove the Exclusion that no other Church had a succession Doth it prove that Constantinople or Alexandria had no such succession because the Romanists had it where is there ever a word here under this Argument to prove that exclusive part of his Minor 2. And note how he puts that for the Question that is not the Question between us A fair beginning The Question is not about Churches in Communion with you but about Churches in subjection to you But this is but a pious fraud to save men by decieving them The Ancient Church of Rome had the Church of Hierusalem Corinth Philippi Ephesus and many a hundred Churches in Communion with her that never were in subjection to her 3. And if the Papists can but prove themselves true Christians I will quickly prove that the Protestants are in Communion with them still as Christians by the same Head Christ the same spirit baptism faith love hope c. though not as Papists by subjection to the same usurper 4. Our question is of the Universal Church And this man nameth us twenty or thirty men in an age that he saith were professors of their Religion And doth he believe in good sadness that twenty or thirty men are either the universall Church or a sufficient proof that it was of their mind 5. But principally did this man think that all or any besides their subjects had their wits so far to seek as to believe that the persons named in his Catalogue were Papists without any proof in the world but meerly because they are listed here by H. T Or might he not to as good purpose have saved his labour and said nothing of them 6 But what need we go any further we will begin with him at lis first Century and so to the second and if he can prove that Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary or John Baptist or the Apostles or any one of the rest that he hath named were Papists much more all of them I am resolved presently to turn Papist But unless the man intended to provoke his reader to an unreverent laughter about this abuse of holy things one would think he should not have named
not the subject of the Pope as universal Monarch Nor can any other be saved as being without the Church 3. And that the Church of Rome is by Gods appointment the Mistris of all other Churches 4. And that the Pope of Rome is Infallible 5. That we cannot believe the Scriptures to be the word of God or the Christian doctrine to be true but upon the Authoritative Tradition of the Roman Church and upon the knowledge or belief of their Infallibility that is we must believe in the Pope as Infallible before we can believe in Christ who is pretended to give him that infallibility 6. That no Scripture is by any man to be interpreted but according to the sence of the Pope or Roman Church and the unanimous consent of the Fathers 7. That a General Council approved by the Pope cannot err but a General Council not approved by the Pope may err 8. That nothing is to us an Article of faith till it be declared by the Pope or a General Council though it was long before declared by Christ or his Apostles as plain as they can speak 9. That a General Council hath no more validity then the Pope giveth it 10. That no Pastor hath a valid Ordination unless it be derived from the Pope 11. That there are Articles of faith of Necessity to our Salvation which are not contained in the Holy Scriptures nor can be proved by them 12. That such Traditions are to be received with equal pious affection and reverence as the holy Scriptures 13. That Images have equal honour with the Holy Gospel 14. That the Clergy of the Catholick Church ought to swear obedience to the Pope as Christs Vicar 15. That the Pope should be a temporal Prince 16. That the Pope and his Clergy ought to be exempted from the Government of Princes and Princes ought not to judge and punish the Clergy till the Pope deliver them to their power having degraded them 17. That the Pope may dispossess Princes of their Dominions and give them to others if those Princes be such as he judgeth hereticks or will not exterminate Hereticks 18. That in such cases the Pope may discharge all the subjects from their allegiance and fidelity 19. That the Pope in his own Territories and Princes in theirs must burn or otherwise put to death all that deny Transubstantiation the Popes Soveraignty or such doctrines as are afore expressed when the Pope hath sentenced them 20. That the people should ordinarily be forbidden to read the Scripture in a known tongue except some few that have a license from the ordinary 21. That publick Prayers Prayses and other publick worship of God should be performed constantly in a language not understood by the People or only in Latine Greek or Hebrew 22. That the Bread and Wine in the Eucharist is Transubtantiate into the very body and blood of Christ so that it is no more true Bread or Wine though our eyes tast and feeling tell us that it is 23. That the consecrated host is to be worshipped with Divine worship and called our Lord God 24. That the Pope may oblige the people to receive the Eucharist only in one kind and forbid them the Cup. 25. That the sins called venial by the Papists are properly no sins and deserve no more but temporal punishment 26. That we may be perfect in this life by this double perfection 1. To have no sin but to keep all Gods Law perfectly 2. To supererogate by doing more then is our Duty 27. That our works properly merit salvation of God by way of Commutative Justice or by the Condignity of the works as proportioned to the Reward 28. That Priests should generally be fordidden Marriage 29. That there is a fire called Purgatory where souls are tormented and where sin is pardoned in another world 30. That in Baptism there is an implicite vow of obedience to the Pope of Rome 31. That God is ordinarily to be worshipped by the Oblation of a true proper propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead where the Priest only shall eat and drink the body and blood of Christ while the Congregation look on and partake not 32. That the Canon of Scripture is the same that is declared by the Council of Trent I will pass by abundance more to avoid tediousness And I will not stay to enquire which of these are proper to the Papists But I am resolved so to receive many of them as they can prove a Catholick succession of that is that they were in all ages the Doctrine of the Universal Church And I crave the charity of such a proof from some Papist or other if they have any charity in them and that they will no longer keep universal Tradition in their purses And I would desire H. T. to revise his Catalogue and instead of twenty or thirty dead and silent names that signifie no more then Blanks or Cyphers he would prove that both those persons and the Catholick Church did in every age hold these thirty two forementioned doctrines And when hath done then let him boast of his Catalogue Till they will perform this task let them never more for shame call to us for Catalogues or proof of succession But if they are so unkind that they will not give us any proof of such a Catholick succession of Popery we shall be ready to supererogate and give them full proof of the Negative That there hath been no such succession of these thirty two points as soon as we can perceive that they will ingeniously entertain it though indeed it hath been often done already But certainly it belongeth to them that superinduce more Articles of Faith to prove the continuation of their own Articles through all ages of which anon Well! but one of these Articles at least the Popes Soveraignty H. T. will prove successively if you will be credulous enough In the first age he proves it from Peters words Act. 15. 7 8 9 10. God chose Peter to convert Cornelius and his company therefore the Pope is the Universall Monarch Are you not all convinced by this admirable argument But he forgot that Bellarmine Ragusius in Concil Basil and others of them say that no Article can be proved from Scripture but from the proper literall sence To say somewhat more he unseasonably talks of the Council of Sardis and Calcedon an 400. 451. lest the first age have but a blank page In the second age he hath nothing but the names of a few that never dreamt of Popery and a Canon which you must believe was the Apostles that Priests must communicate Of which we are well content In the third Age he nameth fifteen Bishops of Rome of whom the last was deposed for offering incense to Saturn Jupiter c. But not a syllable to prove that one of these Bishops was the universal Monarch Much less that the Catholick Church was for such Monarchy But to excuse the matter he tells you that
the second and third Age produced no Councils the greater deceivers then are the Papists that have found us Councils then and so you have no Catholick succession proved Yea but he saith they have successions of Popes Martyrs and Confessors which is sufficient for their purposes See the strength of Popery Any thing is sufficient for your purposes it seems Rome had Bishops therefore they were the Universal Rulers of the Church A strong consequence Rome had Martyrs and Confessors therefore it was the Mistris of all Churches Who can resist these arguments But why did you not prove that your Confessors and Martyrs suffered for attesting the Popes Soveraignty If they suffered but for Christianity that will prove them but Christians and not Papists Thus you see to the confusion of the Papists that they have nothing to shew for the succession or antiquity of Popery for the three first Ages Yea worse then nothing For here he comes in with some of the Decretals forsooth of some of their Bishops Decretals unknown till a while ago in the world brought out by Isidore Mercator but with so little cunning as left them naked to the shame of the world the falshood of them being out of themselves fully proved by Blondell Reignolds and many more and confessed by some of themselves Here you see the first foundation of Papal succession even a bundle of fictions lately fetcht from whence they please to cheat the ignorant part of the world But in the fourth and fifth ages H. T. doth make us amends for his want of proof from the three first But suppose he do what 's that to a succession while the three first ages are strangers to Popery Well! but lets hear what he hath at last His first proof after a few silent names is from the Council of Nice And what saith that why 1. It defined that the Son of God is consubstantiall to his Father and true God And what 's that to Popery 2 But it defined the Popes Soveraignty But how prove you that Why it is in the thirty ninth Arab. Canon O what Consciences have those men that dare thus abuse and cheat the ignorant As if the Canons of the first General Council had never been known to the world till the other day that Alphonsus Pisanus a Jesuite publisheth them out of Pope Julius and I know not what Arabick book These men that can make both Councils and Canons at their pleasure above a thousand years after the supposed time of their existence do never need to want authority And indeed this is a cheaper way of Canon-making in a corner then to trouble all the Bishops in the world with a great deal of cost and travail to make them But if this be the foundation the building is answerable Their Bishop Zosimus had not been acquainted with these new Articles of an old Council when he put his trick upon the sixth Council of Carthage where for the advancement of his power though not to an universall Monarchy yet to a preparative degree he layeth his claim from the Council of Nice as saying Placuit ut si Episcopus accusatus fuerit c. which was that If an ejected Bishop appeal to Rome the Bishop of Rome appoint some of the next province to judge or if yet he destre his cause to be heard the Bishop of Rome shall appoint a Presbyter his Legate c. In this Council were 217. Bishops Aurelius being president and Augustine being one They told the Pope that they would yield to him till the true copies of the Council of Nice were searched for those that they had seen had none of them those words in that Zosimus alledged Hereupon they send abroad to the Churches of the East to Constantinople Alexandria Antioch c. for the ancient Canons From hence they received several copies which all agreed but none of them had either Zosimus forgery in nor the forged clause which Bellarmine must have in much less the eighty Canons of Pisanus the Jesuite or this one which H. T. doth found his succession on but only the twenty Canons there mentioned which have not a word for the Popes Soveraignty And here note 1. That Zosimus knew not then of Pisanus Canons or else he would have alledged them nor yet of Bellarmines new part of a Canon for the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome 2. That Zosimus himself had not the faith the wit or the memory to plead either Scripture Apostolical Institution or Tradition for his priviledge but only a false Canon of the Council of Nice as looking no higher it seems for his authority 3. How early the Roman Bishops begun both to aspire and make use of forgeries to accomplish it 4. That there was no such Apostolick or Church Tradition for this Roman power as our Masters of Tradition now plead for which all the Catholick Church must know For the whole Council with all the Churches of Constantinople Alexandria Antioch c. that is in a manner all save Rome were ignorant of that which Zosimus would have had them believe and Bellarmine and H. T. would have us to believe 5. Note also how little the Church then believed the Popes infallibility 6. Yea Note how upon the reception of the several Copies of the Nicene Canons they modestly convicted Zosimus of falshood And how the Council resolved against his usurpation See in the African Councils the Epistle of Cyril and Alexandria and Atticus of Constantinople and the Epistles of the Council to Boniface and Celestine In their Epistle to Boniface before they had received their answers from other Churches about the Nicene Canons they tell him that they believed they should not suffer that Arrogancy non sumus istum typhum passuri But to Celestine they conclude more plainly though modestly Presbyterorum quoque sequentium c. i. e. Let your holiness as beseemeth you repell the wicked refuges of Presbyters and the Clergy that follow them because this is not derogate or taken from the African Church by any Definition of the Fathers and the Nicene Decrees most plainly committed both the inferiour Clergy and Bishops themselves to the Metropolitans For they did most prudently and most justly provide that all businesses N. B. all should be ended in the very places where they begun and the Grace of the holy Ghost will not or should not be wanting to each province which equity should by the Priests of Christ be prudently observed and most constantly maintained Especially because it is granted to every one to appeal to the Councils of their own Province or to a Universall Council if he be offended with the judgement of the Cognitors Unless there should be any one that can think that our God can inspire a justice of tryall into any one man N. B. and deny it to innumerable Priests that are congregated in Councill Or how can that judgement that 's past beyond sea be valid to which the necessary persons of the witness
of any Father whereby it may appear that any account at all was made of it Where he citeth the full express words of the Fathers of those first ages against praying to Saints as Origen in Jus. Hom. 16. And in Rom. lib. 2. cap. 2. And Contr. Celsum lib. 8. page 432 433 406 411 412. lib. 5. pag. 239. Tertullian Apol. cap. 30. Tertullian and Cyprian of Prayer Athanasius Orat. 4. Cont. Arrium pag. 259 260. Eccles Smyrn apud Euseb Hist lib. 4. c. I am loth to recite what is there already given you 3. And when Prayer to the dead did come in how exceedingly it differed from the Romish Prayers to the dead I pray you read there in the same Author 4. And also of those Adorations and Devotions offered by the Papists to the Virgin Mary I desire you to read in the same Author and Place enough to make a Christian tremble and which for my part I am not able to excuse from horrid Blasphemy or Idolatry though I am willing to put the best interpretation on their words that reason will allow 5. The Reason why in the old Testament men were not wont to pray to Saints Bellarmine saith was because then they did not enter into heaven nor see God Bellar. de sanct Beat. li. 2. cap. 19. So Suarez in the third part Tom. 2. disp 42. Sect. 1. But abundance of the chief Doctors of the Church for divers Ages were of opinion that the Saints are not admitted into Heaven to the clear sight of God before the day of Judgement as most of the Eastern Churches do to this day therefore they could not be for the Popish Prayer to Saints And here again observe that men may be of the same faith and Church with us that differ and err in as great a matter as this The Council of Florence hath now defined it that departed souls are admitted into Heaven to the clear sight of God And yet Stapleton and Francis Pegna à Castro Medina Sotus affirm that Irenaeus Justin Martyr Tertullian Clemens Romanus Origen Ambrose Chrysostome Austin Lactantius Victorinus Prudentius Theodoret Aretas Oecumenius Theophilact Euthymius yea and Bernard have delivered the contrary sentence See Staplet Defens Eccles author cont Whitak lib. 1. cap. 2. with Fran. Pegna in part 2. Director Inquisitor com 21. Now as all these must needs be against the Popish Invocation of Saints so they were against that which is now determined to be de fide Whence I gather on the by 1. That the Romish faith increaseth and is not the same as heretofore 2. That they had not this Article by Tradition from any of these Fathers or from the Apostles by them unless from the Scriptures 3. That men that err in such points as are now defined by Councils to be de fide are yet accounted by Papists to be of their Church and faith And therefore they may be of ours notwithstanding such errours as this in hand 4. And note also by this tast whether the Papists be not a perjured generation that swear not to expound Scripture but according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers 6. The Council of Laodicea condemned them as Idolaters that prayed to Angels Can. 35. which Caranza Crab and other Papists have turned into Angulos whose falsification you may see fully detected by the said Bishop Usher ibid. pag. 470. 471 472. Read there also the full Testimonies of Greg. Nissen Athanasius Epiphanius c. against praying to Saints and Angels and the detection of Bellarmines fraud that pretendeth the Fathers to speak of the Gentiles Idolatry when they mention the Virgin Mary and the Saints and say expresly they were not to be adored But for all this H. T. Manual page 291 c. hath Fathers for this Adoration of Angels and Saints And who are they The first is Dionysius to which I answer 1. There is never a such a word in the place cited in Dionysius in the Book that I have at hand printed Lugdun 1572. 2. We are for praying the Saints to pray for us too that is those on earth And the words cited by him mention not the Saints in heaven 3. That Dionysius is not Dionysius but a spurious Apochryphal Book Not once known and mentioned in the world till Gregory the greats dayes six hundred years after Christ as Bellarmine himself saith Lib. de Scriptor Eccles de Dionys And lib. 2. de Monach. cap. 5. The second is Clem. Apostol Constit 5. Answ 1. The words speak only of honouring the Martyrs which is our unquestioned duty but not of Praying to them 2. It s an Apochryphal forgery and neither the Apostles nor Clements Work which he citeth but any thing will serve these men Let him believe Bellarmine de scriptor Eccles pag. 38 39. where he proveth it and saith that in the Latine Church these Constitutions are of almost no account and the Greeks themselves Canon 2. Trul. reject them as depraved by Hereticks and that the receiving of them is it that misleadeth the Aethiopians See more against them in Cooks Censurâ pag. 17 18 19. and Rivets Crit. Sac. Dalaeus in Pseudepigrap The third Testimony of H. T. is from Justins second Apol. Answ It is not Praying to Angels that Justin seemeth to intend but giving them due honour which we allow of His intent is to stop the mouths of Heathens that called the Christians impious for renouncing their Gods To whom he replyeth that we yet honour the true God and his Angels c. His Testimony for the third age is only Origen and yet none of Origen First in his Lament Answ 1. Origen there mentioneth the Saints but not the dead Saints It may be all the Saints in the Church on earth whose prayers he desireth 2. If this satisfie you not at least be satisfied with this that you cite a forgery that is none of Origens works Not only Erasmus saith that This Lamentation was neither written by Origen nor translated by Hierom but is the fiction of some unlearned man that by this trick devised to defame Origen But Baronius Annal. Tit. 2. ad an 253. p. 477. witnesseth that Pope Gelasius numbers it with the Apocryphals But H. T. hath a second testimony from Origen in Cantic Hom. 3. Answ 1. That speaks of the Saints prayer for us but not of our prayers to them one word which is the thing in question 2. But Erasmus and others have shewed that neither is this any of Origens works Sixtus Senensis saith that some old Books put Hieroms name to it And Lombard and Aquinas cite passages out of it as Ambroses You see now what Testimonies H. T. hath produced for the first three Ages even till above four hundred years after Christ And yet no doubt but this is currant proof with the poor deluded Papists that read his Book 2. The next exception to be considered is Praying for the Dead which they say the ancient Church was for Answ 1. We are for
are together by the ears who say that Merit of Condignity is but ex pacto by vertue of Gods Promise And now I leave it to the Conscience of any sober Papist whether we be guilty in any one point that this great Cardinal chargeth us with And whether Papists and Protestants were not in a fair way for reconciliation if we differed not more in other things then in these And here again I must let them know that Scripture only is the Rule and Test of our Faith and Religion Their Polidor Virgil in this speaks truly of us saying They are called Evangelical because they maintain that no Law is to be received in matters of Salvation but what is delivered by Christ or his Apostles so sapless and putid is their scorn of the Evangelium quintum If therefore Luther Calvin or any man speak in any word amiss blame the man that spoke it for that word but blame not all or any others for it if you are men Austin Retracted his own errors and which of us dare Justifie every word that hath faln from our mouths or pen before God How many hundred points do Schoolmen and Commentators charge on one another as Erroneous among yourselves shall all the errors of the Fathers be charged on the Catholick Church or all your writers errors upon yours And that we do well to stick to the Holy Scriptures as the sufficient Rule we are the more encouraged to think by the concessions of our adversaries of greatest Note as well as by the Testimony of the Scripture it self and the concent of the ancient Doctors of the Church and the unprovedness of of their pretended additonals Among others even this great Cardinal Richlieu saith thus pag. 38. Nos autem nullam aliam c. i. e. As for us we put or assert no other Rule but Scripture neither of another sort nor totall Yea we say that it is the Whole Rule of our Salvation and that on a double account both because it containeth immediately and formally the summ of our salvation that is all the Articles that are necessary to mans salvation by necessity of means N. B. and because it mediately containeth whatsoever we are bound to believe as it sends us to the Church to be instructed by her of whose infallibility it certainly confirmeth us Note here that 1. He grants us that all Articles necessary to our Salvation as Means are immediately and formally in the Scripture And then surely they may be saved that believe no more then is in the Scripture 2. That we are to believe no Church but that which the Scripture sends us to and to believe its infallibility no further then the Scripture doth confirm it And that the Scripture is our whole and only Rule O that all Papists would stand to this But let them not blame us now for standing to it Had this Cardinall done no more by Policie and Power then by Disputing against the Reformation he might easily have been dealt with CHAP. XL. Detect 31. ANother of their frauds is By ranking the Protestants among the rabble of Sects and Heresies that are in the world and then asking ignorant souls If you will needs be of any sect how many are here before you and what reason have you rather to be of the Protestants then of any other Answ Indeed this question is worth the considering by a Papist or any sectary but the true Catholick is quite out of the reach of it The Church of Christ is one and but One. This one Catholick Church containeth all the true Christians in the world This is the Church that I am a member of which is far wider then the Roman Church The Church that I profess my self a member of containeth three parts 1. The most sound and healthfull part and that is the Reformed Churches 2. The most unsound in doctrine though possest of many Learned men and that is the Papists themselves not as Papists simply but as Christians though infected with Popery 3. The middle part which is sounder then the Papists in doctrine but less learned and below the Protestants in both and that is all the Greeks and other Eastern and Southern Churches that are no subjects of the Pope All these even all true Christians are members of the Church that I belong to though some of them be more sound and some be leprous or lamentably polluted To these I may add many particular lesser sects that subvert not the foundation as some Anabaptists and divers others And will you ask me now why I will not be of another sect as well as of the Protestants Why my answer is ready A Sect divided from the body I abhor I am of no Sect It is the Unity Universality and Antiquity of the Church that are its honourable attributes in my eyes Protestants that unchurch all the rest of the world and count themselves the whole Church of Christ do in some sort make themselves a Sect But where is there any such I know none such nor I hope ever shall do And therefore I may say that Protestants are no more a sect then the Patients in an Hospital that are almost healed or then the higher form of Scholars in a school or then the Merchants or richer sort of Tradesmen in a City And such a Sect God grant that I may be of even one in the Church that shall be of soundest understanding and of purest worship and of the most carefull holy honest life But still I shall acknowledge them of the lowest form even them that learn the A. B. C. to be in the same School with me And if they Papists or any others will disclaim me that shall not unchurch me as long as Christ disclaims me not Nor shall it provoke me to disclaim them any further then I see Christ leading me the way So that the Papists may see that if they will deny the Church that I am of they must deny their own and all the Christian world But how will they answer this themselves Seriously I profess that besides their other errors it is one of the greatest reasons why I dare not be a Papist because then I know I must be a Sectary What is a Papist but as meer a sectary as any that retaineth a name in the Church They are a company of men that have set up a Humane Usurping Head or Vice-christ over the Catholick Church owning him themselves and unchurching and condemning all the Church that will not own him The Church that I am of is neer thrice as big as the Papists Church is Theirs is but a piece and a polluted piece that would divide it self from all the rest by condemning them And now I would seriously desire any Papist living to resolve the question If he will needs be of a sect and forsake the Universal Church why of the Popish sect rather then another If because it is the greatest I answer it s less then the whole If because it
without my own asking his opinion by that Learned Judicious man Arch-Bishop Usher a man well known to be acquainted with the Judgement and practice of the Antients if any other whoever His words were these Councils are not for Government but for Unity not as being in order of Government over the several Bishops but that by consultation they may know their duty more clearly and by agreement maintain Unity and to this end they were anciently celebrated Himself a Primate recommended to others these moderate Principles And this middle way of Reverend Usher is the true healing Mean between them that would have properly Governing Councils and them that would have none or think them needless or but indifferent things But yet as is before mentioned in the tenth Proposition consequentially we are obliged to perform the Agreements of these Councils if they be agreeable to the General Rules of the Scriptures or if our performance be not forbidden by the Word of God Because we are under the General obligation to do all things in as much unity concord and peace as we can Gal. 2. per totum 1 Cor. 3. 5 22. 2 Cor. 13. 11. 1 Cor. 1. 10. 4. 6. Mat. 20. 25. Phil. 3. 16. 4. 2. Mat. 23. 8 9 10. 1 Pet. 5. 3. And I grant that Pastors are related to the Universal Church as well as to a particular and are to have a common care of the whole though they have a special charge only of their particular flocks Therefore many Pastors in a Synod are Pastors as well as disjunct and therefore their acts are authoritative Governing Acts as to the flock But 1. to the Pastors themselves they are not properly Governors no more in Synods then out 2. And as to the flocks they are not in a direct superiour order above their particular Pastors but only from their concord are accidentally more to be regarded and obeyed then a single Pastor as a Colledge of Physitians is more to be regarded then a single Physitian not as being of higher authority but of greater credit in cases where men must be trusted 5. A Council consisting of Bishops or Pastors that by distance are not uncapable of ordinary local Communion whether it be a General Council as they are commonly called which are not such properly or National or Provincial 1. As they are Christians singly have a Judgement of Discerning what is sound Doctrine and whom to judge Catholicks and fit for their Communion And 2. As they are single Pastors they have the Judgement of Direction what Doctrine to recommend as found to their people limited to the Superiour Direction of God by his Word and whom they must hold or not hold Communion with And this is an Authoritative Direction which may be accompanyed with a Commanding as an Herald or Pursevant may command in the Princes name 3. And as they are many Pastors in Council assembled they have a Judgement of Concord or Power to enter solemnly into Consultations for mutual information and then into Agreements for the right performance of their duty in recommending that which is sound Doctrine to their people and receiving the true members of the Catholick Church and rejecting such as are to be rejected So that the most General Councils of true Pastors caeteris paribus are to be most reverenced by the Princes and people and in cases where they are sure it is lawful to follow their Agreements though they be not satisfied of the necessity of it à natura rei they ought to follow them on the account of unity and also in cases meerly doubtful to them in point of Doctrine to be ballanced by their judgements rather then by the Judgement of single Pastors and more then by any other humane judgement caeteris paribus which exception I add because a smaller Assembly yea a single Pastor or private man speaking according to the Word of God is to be believed and regarded more then the greatest Assembly contradicting the Word yet we are not easily to think without evident proof that one man should be rather in the right then so many seeing it is easier for one to err then so many and the promises are more to the publick then any single persons so far as they can be known to others And yet an Assembly of an hundred or twenty or ten apparent humble holy Judicious men is likelier to be in the right and more to be regarded then an Assembly of a thousand ignorant unlearned wicked Bishops One clear eye may see further then ten thousand purblind ones Act. 6. 5. Act. 5. 34. 1 Thes 2. 14. 1 Cor. 11. 16. 14. 33. 10. 32. 6. As the properest matter for such General Assemblies to Consult and Agree upon is General things as What Doctrine is sound and what unsound in General what persons in General fit for the Churches Communion and what unfit c. so smaller Assemblies that are capable of ordinary personal Communion and know the persons and circumstances of the cases are fittest to consult and agree whether such or such particular persons are fit for their own Communion yea and for their Churches Communion in difficult cases And also may consult and agree what Doctrines and practises to recommend to their own people as most agreeable to the Word of God And thus far these two sorts of Synods may be said to have a power of Judging viz. ad hoc in order to such agreements and practice Act. 6. 5 6. Rom. 15. 26 27. 2. Cor 8. 19. 7. The Postors of particular Worshipping Churches are the Authorized Guides Rulers or Teachers of those Churches and each Member thereof and must first discern in their own minds and next if they be many over a Church Agree among themselves and then teach the people what is to be believed and practised and with whom in General and in Particular to hold Communion and whom to avoid and may charge the people in Christs name to obey their just directions and when they have done must themselves execute their own part herein as by avoiding the Rejected and not delivering them the Symbols or Sacrament of Communion c. And though they must consult with neighbor Churches for carrying on the work of God in unity and to the best advantage of the Common cause yet are they not under the proper Government of them or any Assemblies Ecclesiastical though obliged in all just things to Agree with them So that Canons as Canons I mean the Conclusions of such Assemblies are but properly Agreements and not Laws though by consequence they may be said to oblige or rather we by another Law obliged to accord and practise them Heb. 13. 17. 1 Thes 5. 12 13. 1 Cor. 4. 1 2. Act. 20. 28. 8. The work of Councils how large so ever is not to make new Scriptures to be the Rule of our Faith and Life nor to make new Articles or Doctrines of Faith nor to frame God a new Worship in whole
in Scripture be a member of some particular Church where he may worship God in the Communion of Saints 3. Let those that make not the foresaid Christian Profession be excluded the number of Christians and those that own not the Fundamentals of communion the Church Ministry Word Prayer Praise Sacrament of Communion be taken as unmeet for actual communion with us though yet we censure them not to be no Christians 4. Let those that are obstinate and impenitent in any Errors contrary to the said Profession and Ordinances or in actual gross sin or discovering an ungodly heart be rejected by the Church after due admonition and patience 5 Let all the Pastors Associate and hold constant correspondency according to their neerness and opportunity for helping and strengthening each other and unanimous carrying on the work of Christ 6. Let these Associations have standing Presidents where the peace of the Church requireth it 7 Let no particular Pastors set up any thing in Gods publick Worship which is not Necessary and may tend to make divisions by driving tender Consciences from his communion 8. Let Associations forbear making Laws to others and imposing as Governours and let them make Agreements for certain Duty and not Laws that pretend to make new duties and let them Agree on nothing unnecessary 9. Let them study Holiness as much as Peace and keep clean themselves and their societies as far as they can and look at labour and suffering and not at any other honour and power but what is for duty and let them look abroad and help the dark parts within their reach and lay out themselves freely and industriously for God and have the chief regard to the most publick good 10. Let him that is justly cast out of one Church be received by none into communion till he be reconciled and if they suspect that he is unjustly cast out let him not be received till the Church that cast him out be heard and the injury or his Repentance manifest 11. Let those that cannot hold local communion because of some smaller practical difference as gestures words c. and yet agree in the foresaid Profession and Fundamentals of Communion yet own each other professedly as Brethren and maintain Love and communion in other respects 12. Let all differing Christians consult and agree how to hold their differences so as may least prejudice the common truths which all receive and as may least hinder the salvation of the ungodly or offend the weak 13. Let none judge or defame each other till they are heard and see they have sufficient cause by certain proof And then admonish them and bring the cause to the Association before they proceed further 14. Let the correspondency of Pastors extend as far as there is Capacity Opportunity and need We cannot correspond with the Antipodes nor much with the Ethiopians nor such remote parts there is seldom opportunity and seldom necessity of actual correspondence with forreign Nations But yet when publick occasions require it the publickest cases being the weightiest we should by Delegates or Messengers from several Associations perform our duties in all such correspondencies whether in Councils or otherwise 15. If any members of our Churches travail into other parts they should take Certificates or Communicatory Letters that they may be admitted to the communion of the Churches where they travail or abide 16. The chief consultations for General Peace and effectual promoting the healing of the Churches and the propagation of the Gospel into the unbelieving parts of the world should be done by Christian Princes by their Agents and though Ministers are fit to be partly their Agents in such consultations yet not meerly as Pastors but as fit men employed by their Princes He that lives to see but this much reduced to practise will see a better unity and peace in the Church then ever was or will be attained by an earthly Head and Judge of the Universal Church whether Pope or Council or then the Agreement of the five Patriarks and the later Primates and Metropolitans will procure Let us be content with one Head and one Heart and center there but though the fingers and toes be more we can well bear it Take up with the Holy Scriptures as the sufficient Rule Let the Profession of that be the mark of a believer and all such believers be taken to be as they are the Catholick Church and no faction Schismatically and presumptuously confine it to themselves Let this Intellectual Unity of faith be seconded with a cordial Unity of Holy Love to Christ and his Members that so our Unity may begin at the Head and Heart and not perversly at the fingers and toes of smaller matters or at the hair and nails of Ceremonies and indifferent Modes Let this be manifested in Professions of Love and publick ownings of the Catholick Brotherhood and of Christians as Christians and by publick disclaiming all selfishness and partiality and private Interests and all reproachfull words and writings and by actual communion as far as we can Let the Worship of God be performed in such holy simplicity that none may be driven from the sacred Assemblies and let the people be suffered to go the same way to heaven as Peter and Paul did go themselves and lead their hearers in Let us not be ambitious of Church Union or Communion with those that ought to be cast out of the Church and whom we are in Scripture commanded to avoid but let the three attributes of Holy Catholick and Apostolical be still affixed to the Church and be practically considered and those considerations issued in The Communion of Saints And then we shall have so much Unity and Peace as may honour the Christian Religion and strengthen us in the way to our Perfect Peace which is not to be expected in this dark diseased imperfect world This is the way and none but this But is there any hope that while men are as they are such healing Truths should be received and obeyed Yes by here and there a man who shall have the Peace of their peaceable Affections and Endeavours but not by the most either of the people or the Pastors let the evidence of the truth be never so clear Who can expect any great success of such Proposals that knows the world till the time come when Light shall go forth with an absolute resolution to prevail God is one and all that Deny themselves and center in him must needs be One But self is as various and numerous as Persons are And this self is the Heart of the Natural man and the Center of all the unsanctified And every self is a grain of Sand that 's hardly made coherent with another The Darkest mind is self-conceited and the poorest child or beggar is self-affected and high and low Princes and people have self-interests which draw them several waves And in the sanctified this self is mortified but in part and is the first living and
such as comes not from a wilfull neglect of means there no ignorance of the articles of faith is damnable and so no article absolutely necessary so that the question indeed is not Whether men believe or not but Whether they are Unbelievers or Heathens or ignorant persons by a willfull neglect of sufficiently proposed Truth or not So that all that part of the Heathen or Infidell world O how great that have no such proposals of the Gospel may not only be saved but be better and safer then most Christians if not all who certainly are sinfully ignorant of some truth which they ought to know Obj. But say they it will not stand with faith to deny belief to God in any thing sufficiently revealed for he that believeth him in one thing believeth him in all Answ Very true if they know it to be the Word of God And if this be all the Protestants are ready to averre upon their most solemn Oaths that they believe every thing without exception which they know to be a Divine Revelation and no wonder for so doth every man that believes that there is a God and that he is no lyar If this will serve your turn you have no more to say against us your mouths are stopt But may it not stand with faith to be ignorant and that through sinfull neglect of some revealed truth of God or of the meaning of his word If you are so proud as to think that all the justified are perfect and have no sin yet at last consider whether a man that liveth in Heathenism til fourscore years of age and then turns Christian is not afterward ignorant through his former sinfull negligene But dare you say that you have no sinfull ignorance to bewail Will you confess none nor beg pardon or be beholden to Christ to pardon it That they make no point of faith necessary while they seem to make all necssary see but what I have after cited from Frans à S. Clara probl 15 16 17. and abundance more that are mentioned there by him 3. And that by this Protean jugling they make the Church invisible is apparent For what man breathing knoweth the secrets of the souls of others whether they have resisted or not resisted the light and whether they are ignorant of the articles of faith upon sinfull contempt or for want of some due means of faith or internal capacity or opportunity We are as sure that all men are ignorant of some thing that God hath revealed to be known in nature and Scripture as that they are men But now whether any one of these men be free from those aggravations of his ignorance and that in every point upon which the Papists make him an unbeliever is unknown to others When the Faith or Infidelity of men and so their being in the Church or out of it must not be known by the Matter of Faith which they profess but by the secret passages of their hearts their willingness or unwillingness resistance or not resistance and such like the Church then is invisible no man can say which is it nor who is of it He that professeth not the Faith may be a Catholick and he that professeth it for ought they know may be an Infidel as being sinfully yet ignorant of some one truth that is not in his express confession thus by confusion the bulders of Babel marre their work 4. And that the wisest of them say in the main as we say see here in some proofs Bellarm. de Verbo Dei lib. 4. cap. 11. In the Christian Doctrine both of Faith and Manners some things are simply necessary to salvation to all as the Knowledge of the Articles of the Apostles Creed of the ten Commandements and of some Sacraments The restore not so necessary that a man cannot be saved without the explicite Knowledge belief and profession of them These things that are simply necessary and are profitable to all the Apostles preached to all Allthings are Written by the Apostles which are Necessary to all and which they openly preacht to all see the place Costerus Echirid c. 1. p. 49. Non inficiamur praecipua illa fidei capita quae omnibus Christianis cognitu sunt ad salutem Necessaria perspicuè satis esse Apostolicis scriptis comprehensa That is We deny not that those Chief Heads of the Faith which are to all Christians necessary to be known to salvation are perspicuously enough comprehended in the Writings of the Apostles Judge by these two to spare the trouble of citing more whether they be not forced after all their Cavils to say as we in distinguishing of Articles of Faith And they cannot be ignorant that the Church hath still had Forms of Profession which were called her Symbols as being the Badge of her Members and did not suspend all upon uncertain conjectures about the frame and temper of the Professors minds But if indeed it be not the want of Necessary Articles of Faith that they accuse us of but the want of willingness or diligence to know the truth let them prove their accusations and let those persons that they prove guilty bear the blame Do they think we would not as willingly know the truth as they and that we do not pray as earnestly for Divine illumination Do we not read their Books I verily think incomparably more then they do ours and are we not willing to confer with the wisest of them that can inform us I have often privately and publickly desired you that if any of them can say more then all these Schoolmen Fryars and Jesuites say which I have read they would let me hear it that I may want no means they can afford me for my fuller information But yet they have not done with us When we prove a succession of our Religion by proving a succession of such as adhered to the Scriptures which are the Doctrine of our Religion an Argument that no Papist under heaven can confute they vainly tell us that All Hereticks pretend to Scripture and therefore that will not prove the point But 1. Doth it follow that Scripture is not a sufficient Rule of our Religion because Hereticks may pretend to it You take the 39 Articles for our Religion and yet may Hereticks that are far from our minds pretend to them It 's the liker to be the Rule because all Hereticks pretend it and would borrow credit from it to their Heresies The Law of the Land is the Rule of our Justice and yet Lawyers and their Clients that are contrary to each other do plead it for their contrary Causes The Creed it self is pretended by Arrians for their Heresie What must we have no Rule or Test or discovery of our Religion which a Heretick can pretend for his impiety What words of God or man are not capable of being misinterpreted If we should give you every day a confession of Faith some Hereticks might pretend to hold the same No wonder then if they
and what was the doctrine and practice of the Christians in their times and what Books they made the ground of their faith so that as true Universal impartial naturally-or-rationally-infallible History or Testimony differeth from a private pretended-prophetical assertion or from the Testimony of one party only so doth our Tradition excell both the sorts of Popish Tradition both that of the Papal and that of the Councill party And now judge who may better boast of or extol Tradition they or we and to what purpose Cressy White and such men do bring their discourses of Tradition 2. But yet we have not so done with them till Tradition have given them their mortal stroak You appeal to Tradition to Tradition you shall go But what Tradition mean you The Tradition of the Catholick Church And where is this to be found and known but in the profession and practice of the Church and in the Records of the Church Well then of both these let us enquire The first and great Question between you and us is Whether the Pope be the Head and Soveraign Ruler of the whole Catholick Church and then whether the Catholick Church and the Roman are of equal extent What saith Tradition to this 1. Let us enquire of the present Church and there we have the profession and practice of all the Greek Church the Syrians the Moscovites the Georgians and all others of the Greek Religion dispersed throughout the Turks Dominions with the Jacobites Armenians Egyptians Abassines with all other Churches in Europe c. that disclaim the Headship of the Roman Pope all these do with one mouth proclaim that the Church of Rome is not and ought not to be the Mistriss of the world or of all other Churches but that the Pope for laying such a claim is an usurper if not the AntiChrist This is the Tradition of the Greeks this is the Tradition of the Abassines the far greatest part of the Church on earth agree in this Mark then what is become of the Roman Soveraignty by the verdict of Tradition even from the vote of the greatest part of the Church Rome hath no right to its pretended Soveraignty Babylon is faln by the judgement of Tradition If you have the faces again to say that all these are Hereticks or Schismaticks and therefore have no vote we answer If a minor party and that so partial and corrupt seeking Dominion over the rest may step into the Tribunal and pass sentence against the Catholick Church or the greatest part of it blame not others if on far better grounds they do so by that part And for shame do not any more hereafter use any such self-condemning words as to ask any Sect How dare you condemn the Catholick Church Do you think all the Church is forsaken but you c And let us ask you as you teach your followers to ask us If we must turn from the Universal Church to any Sect why rather to yours then another why not as well to the Anabaptists or other party as to the Papists But your common saying is that the Greeks Protestants and all the rest were once of your Church and departing from it they can have no Tradition but yours for their spring is with you To which we answer 1. The vanity of this your fiction shall by and by be answered by it self 2. You say so and they say otherwise why should we believe you that are a smaller partial and corrupted part 3. Well then let us go to former ages seeing it is not the present Church whose voice you will regard only by the way I pray forget not 1. That you do ill then to call us still to the Judgement of the present Church and dare not stand to it 2. And that you do ill to perswade men that the greater part of the Church cannot err if you sentence the greater part as Schismaticks or Revolters But how shall we know the way and mind of the ages past If by the present age then the greater part giveth us in their sence against you If by the Records of those times we are content to hear the Testimony of these And first when we look into the Antients themselves we find them generally against you and we find in that which is antiquity indeed no footsteps of your usurped Soveraignty but a contrary frame of Government and a consent of antiquity against it 2. When we look into later History we find how by the advantage of Romes temporal greatness and the Emperors residence there your greatness begun and preparation was made to your usurpation and how the translation of the Imperial Seat to Constantinople made them your Competitors yea to begin in the claim of an universal Headship and we find how it being once made a question you got it by a murdering Emperor resolved on your side for his own advantage We find that it was long even till Hildebrands dayes before you could get any great possession for all this sentence It would but be tedious here to recite our Historical Evidence we refer you to what is done already by Goldastus and Bishop Usher de statu success Ecclesiar and in his Answer to the Jesuits Challeng and in his Discourse of the Antient Religion of Ireland c. specially by Blondel in his French Treatise of Primacy and Dr. Field and many others that have already given you the testimony of Antiquity More then you can give a reasonable answer to I have produced in my Book called the safe Religion In plain English instead of Apostolical Tradition for your Soveraignty we find that eight hundred years after the dayes of Christ you had not neer so much of the Catholick Church in your subjection as you have now that at four hundred or five hundred if not till six hundred years after Christ you had no known part of the world that acknowledged your universal Soveraignty but only the Latine Western Church submitted to the Pope as their Patriarch and the Patriarch primae sedis the first in order among the Patriarchs and that before the dayes of Constantine and the Nicene Council he was but a Bishop of the richest and most numerous Church of Christians and we see no proof that of an hundred years after Christ he was any more then the chief Presbyter of a particular Church If all this will not serve we have National Evidences beyond all exception that the Ethiopian Churches of Habassia the Indians Persians c. were never your subjects to this day That England Scotland and Ireland here in your Western Circuits were not only long from under you but resisted you maintaining the Council of Calcedon against you and joyning with the Eastern Churches against you about Easter day c. And that the Eastern Churches and many great Nations as Tendue Nubia c. that now are revolted were never your subjects and some of them had little to do with you And yet if all this will not serve
to penitence that hath found by experience that when he comes there he is naught with them himself Or whether a man may lawfully lie and calumniate to put by a calumny Or speak falsly with mentall reservations Or forbear loving God many years together if not all his life Are these points no whit Material You know that one part of you with a Pope and General Council are for deposing Heretical Kings and murthering and stabbing them and others of you disavow it Is this no whit material And yet you are all of one Church and Religion A hundred more of your differences I could name Argum. 4. From instances of the Fathers that have erred in Material points and yet are taken to be of the same Church and Religion How many Churches differed about Easter day what abundance of errors are in your Clementines and other such writers owned by you Justin Martyr was a Millenarie Numbered divers Infidels with Christians thought that Angels lived by meat and generated with Devils c. Athenagoras thought that second Marriages were comely Adultery and that the Angels fell by the love of women and begot Gyants of them c. Irenaeus hath the like Theophilus Antioch worse Tertullian and Orrigen you will confess had yet worse Clem. Alexand. was for the salvation of Infidels and Heathens against swearing and many such besides those before mentioned Greg. Thaumaturgus hath divers if the confession and other works be his that are ascribed to him Cyprian Firmilian and the whole Council at Carthage were for rebaptizing those baptized by hereticks Against all Wars and Oaths Lactantius with many more was a Millenary and hath too many great errors I have no delight to rake into their faults but if it be necessary I shall quickly prove many and great errors by fourty more of them at the least And yet all these or most are confessed by you to be of one Church and Religion Argum. 5. From your own Confessions Bellarmine lib. 1. de Beat. SS cap. 6. faith that he seeth not how the sentence of Justin Irenaeus c. can be defended from error Of Tertullian he saith There 's no trust to be given to him lib. 4. de Rom. Pont. c. 8. Eusebius he saith was addicted to the Hereticks Cyprian he saith did seem to sin mortally de Rom. Pont. lib. 4. cap 7. Augustine is accused by many Jesuites for going too far from Pelagius Hierom is oft pluckt by you And so are many more of the Fathers And yet you confess some of them at least were of the true Church and Religion Argum. 6. If there be no perfect concord to be expected till we come to the place of perfect knowledge and happiness then it is not perfect concord that is necessary to prove us of the same Church or Religion But the Antecedent is alas too far past doubt Therefore c. Argum. 7. If the godly and learned Doctors of the Church and all men have some alas how many culpable errors in matters of Religion yea of faith if you call that de fide which we are obliged to believe then those that have such errors may be of the same Church and Religion But the Antecedent is so true and evident that I think none but a blind proud Pharisee will deny himself to beg of God daily to pardon and heal his culpable errors So much to prove that men of errors and differing minds if not about the essence of the Church may be of the same Church 2. But why is it that they must all needs explicitely hold the thirty nine Articles 1. I pray you tell us whether all your own Church do explicitely hold and believe all your Articles that is all that Popes and General Councils have defined or declared Dare you say that one of five hundred of five thousand doth explicitely believe all this And why then is it necessary in our case that all must explicitely believe all those Articles 2. Yea with us it is far more unnecessary For we take not those Articles for the Rule of our faith but only the holy Scripture And therefore you may as well tell us that no man is of our Religion that did not write or speak all the same words that Jewell Reignolds Perkins or such other have written in their whole works 3. It s easie to prove for all that that the sense and substance of those Articles have been owned by the Churches in all ages 3. But what if we grant your conclusion that else they cannot be esteemed Protestants what of that As if none but Protestants were of the same Church and Religion with us Sure you think we make a sect of our selves like you and exclude all others from the Church and Salvation as you do The word Protestant is not the first denomination of our Religion from its essence for so we call our selves Christians only But it is a title that accidentally accrewed to our Religion from our Protesting against your innovations and corruptions and our Rejecting the errors contrary to our Religion which you had introduced Now those that were not involved in your errors as our forefathers were but lived at a further distance from you might have no occasion to make such a Protestation and yet be of the same Church and Religion as we are Now to your particular Laws 1. Saith H. T. Let him not name the Waldenses for they held the Real presence that the Apostles were Lay men that all Magistrates fall from their dignity by any mortal sin that it is not lawful to swear c. and Waldo lived but in one thousand one hundred and sixty Answ 1. We have better assurance of the faith of the Waldenses in their own published Confessions then from the mouth of their Adversaries 2. The Lutherans hold the real presence and yet are of the same Religion and Church with us 3. The Apostles were Lay-men in the Jews account and sense as not being Priests or Levites but not in Christians account that believed their mission and thus thought the Waldenses 4. They thought that Magistrates and Ministers do by Mortal sin forfeit all the right and title to their office from which themselves may have comfort and justification in judgement But they never thought that they were not to be obeyed by others or that their actions were not valid for the Churches good 5. Many of the ancientest Fathers thought it unlawfull to swear at all that yet are cited by you as of your Church But the Waldenses are slandered in these points 6. Though Waldo was but about one thousand one hundred and sixty yet the same Religion and Church under other names and before those names were fastned on them was much elder as Raynerius may satisfie you So that for all this the Waldenses and we are of one Church and Religion He adds Let him not name the Hussites for they held Mass Transubstantiation and seven Sacraments that the universal Church consisted only of the
Corrector reciteth the whole Canon thus If any Believer have a wife and a Concubine let him not Communicate But he that hath no Wife and hath a Concubine instead of a Wife may not be put from the Communion only let him be content with one woman either Wife or Concubine which he will He that liveth otherwise let him be cast off till he give over and return to penitence In an English Council at Berghamsted an 697. the seventh Canon is this If a Priest leave his Adultery and do not naughtily defer Baptism nor is given to drunkenness let him keep his Ministry and the priviledge of his habit Spelman pag. 195. King Alured in the Preface to his Laws tells us that except Treason and Desertion of their Lords the Councils of the Clergy did lay but some pecuniary mulct on other sins Spelm. pag. 362. All this shews that the Church then was much more corrupt then ours now in England Yea the best of the Fathers had such blots that I may well make their Confessions another discovery that our Churches are as pure and holy as theirs I will name but few of the chief because I would not rake into their faults needlesly who are pardoned glorified Saints in Heaven St. Augustine whilest he leaned to the Maniches had a bastard and confesseth himself guilty of fornication St. Hierom that was so vehement for Virginity and lived a Monastick life doth yet confess that he was not a Virgin St. Bernard that lived so Contemplative a life in his Serm. de beata virgine post serm 5. de Assumpt confesseth se carere virginitate that he lacked his virginity And though Bellarmine de scriptor Ecccles pag. 224. do from that only reason question whether it be Bernards yet it is in the second Tome among his undoubted writings and this reason is a poor disproof Now if one of our ordinary Ministers should be but guilty of such a sin though but once and that before Conversion no doubt but it would lye heavye on their Consciences and I am sure it would leave such a blot on their names that were never likely to be worn off while they live When we tell the Papists of their Licensing Whore-houses at Rome Bononia c. they commonly fly to the words of Austin lib. de Ordine saying Aufer Meretrices de rebus humanis turbaveris omnia libidinibus i. e. Take away Whores from among men and you will disturb all things with lusts Though this was written when Austin was but a young convert and it seems that he after changed his mind yet this shews that our times are far from the abominations of those and our Pastors are far more strict then Austin then was 4. As for the Holiness of their Church by Ceremonies as Holy Water Holy Oil Relicks Altars and an hundred such things I think it not worth the speaking of all things are sanctified to us by the word and prayer We devote our selves and all that we have to God and then to the Pure all things are Pure We neglect no Ordinance of God that we can know of and enjoy He is a spirit and seeketh such as will worship him in spirit and truth This is the Holiness that we look after But for numbring of Beads and Ave Maries and going pilgrimages and such inventions of arrogant men we place no Holiness in them as knowing that God desireth not a Mimical or Histrionical worship and that none knows what will please him so well as himself CHAP. XXXV Detect 26. ANother of their Deceits is by calling us to tell them when every one of their Errors did first begin and what Pope did bring them in or else they will not believe but they are from the Apostles To this Bishop Usher and abundance of our writers have answered them at large I shall therefore speak but these few but satisfactory words 1. It belongs to you to prove the continuance of your Opinions or Practices more then to us to prove the Beginning 2. It sufficeth that we prove that there was a time when your errors were not in the Church and that we can do from the Scriptures and the Fathers and oft have done 3. You know your selves of abundance of changes which you know not who did first introduce Who first administred the Lords Supper in one kind only dare you say that this was from the beginning Who first laid by the standing on the Lords day and used kneeling forbidden Can. 20. Concil Nicen. 1. and in other General Councils Alvarus Pelagius de planct Eccles li. 2. art 2 fol. 104. saith The Church bewaileth the sins of the people but specially of the Clergy as greater then the sin of Sodom For we see that faith and Justice have forsaken the earth The Holy Scripture and sacred Canons are accounted as fables He 's now a man of no knowledge that inventeth not Novelties You see that then Novelties were brought in The same Vincentius Lirinensis complaineth of And not only complaineth of but giveth Direction what to do in case that Novella aliqua contagio non jam portiunculam tantum sed totam Pariter Ecclesiam commaculare conetur If any novell contagion shall endeavour to stain not only a part of the Church but the whole Church alike And then his advise is to appeal from Novelty to Antiquity and not to the Pope or the present Church And withall he addeth that This Direction is but for new heresies at their first rising before they falsifie the rules of ancient faith that is before they corrupt antient Writers or can pretend to Antiquity and before by the large spreading of the venome they endeavour to corrupt the volumes of our ancestors But dilated and inveterate Heresies are not to be set upon this way because by the long tract of time they have had a long occasion of stealing Truth and therefore we must convince such antient heresies and schisms by no means but by the only Authority of the Scripture if there be need or avoid them Lirinens cap. 4 c. Were there not abundance of Novelties introduced when Augustine ad Januarium said that They load our Religion with servile burdens which God in mercy would have to be free with a very few and most manifest Sacraments of Celebration so that the condition of the Jews was more tolerable that were subject to Legall Sacraments and not to the presumptions of men These words of Austin your own Joh. Gerson reciting de vita spirit animae lect 2. par 3. addeth of his own Si tuo tempore c. If in thy dayes thou didst thus mourn Oh wise Augustine what wouldst thou have said in our time where according to the variety and motion of heads there is incredible variety and dissonant multiplicity of such servile burdens and as thou callest them of humane presumptions Among which as so many snares of souls and entangling nets there 's scarce any man that walks secure and is not
the fact without the Scripture The Scripture is sufficient to its own use to be Rule of Obedience and Judgement but it is not sufficient to every other use which it was never made for The Law said to Cain Thou shalt not murder But it said not to him Thou hast killed thy brother therefore thou shalt die It was the Judges part to deliver this 3. By this trick they would give a man leave to vent any Blasphemy or do any villany changing but the name But they shall find that the Law intended not bare words but by words to signifie things And if they do the things prohibited or hold the opinions condemned what ever names or words they cloath them with they shall feel the punishment 4. By this they would leave almost nothing provable by the Scripture seeing a Papist or Heretick may put the same into other terms and then call for the Proof of that For example they may ask where God commandeth or instituteth any one of the Sacraments in Scripture And when we tell them where Baptism and the Lords Supper were instituted they may reply that there is no mention of Sacraments and so turn real Controversies into verbal 5. Yea it seems by this they would make all Translations to be of little use And a man might lawfully sin in English because God for bad it only in Hebrew and Greek 6. If this be the way of it let us remember that they must in Reason stand to their own Rules Let them tell us then what Scripture saith that Peter was the Vicar of Christ or the Head of the Catholick Church or the Bishop of Rome or that the Pope is his Successor or that the Pope is the Vice-christ or Universal Bishop Where is there express Scripture for any of this Yea so much as Bellarmines Literal sense 7. And why do not these blind and partial men see that the same course also must be taken with their own Laws And that all their Decretals and Canons are insufficient according to these Rules It 's easie for any Heretick to form up his Error into other words then those condemned by Pope or Council And if you go again to the Pope and get him to condemn those new expressions the men in Mexico may use them long to the detriment of the souls of men before the damnatory sentence be brought to them And when it comes they can again word their Heresie anew The Jansenists in France shew how well the Popes decision of wordy Controversies is understood and doth avail But really if they will hold that no part of the Popes Laws oblige but in the literal sense or that none offend that violate not the Letter they will make a great alteration in their affairs And perphaps any of their subjects may Blaspheme the Pope himself in French Dutch Irish English Slavonian c. because he forbids it only in Latine For if Translations be not Gods Word then they are not the Popes word neither A pretty crochet for a Jesuite It is mendacium and not a Lye that the Pope forbids It is said that a Traytor or Murderer may be hang'd but it is not said that such or such a man shall be hang'd or that he was a traytor or murderer Their common instance is The Scripture no where calls it self the whole word of God nor no where tells us which be Canonical Books c. and yet these are Articles of Faith Answ 1. The Scripture doth call it self the Word of God and signifie its own sufficiency and several Books have particular testimonies to be Canonical 2. Though secondarily so far as Scripture affirmeth its own Divinity it be to be beleived yet Primarily that this is Gods Word and that these are the Books and that they are not corrupted and that they are all c. are points of knowledge antecedent in order of nature to Divine Belief of them There are two great Foundations antecedent to the Matter of Divine Faith The one is Gods veracity that God cannot lie The other is His Revelations that This is Gods Word The first is the Formal Object of Faith The second is a Necessary Medium between the formal object and the subject sine quo non without which there is no possibility of Believing The Material object called the Articles of Faith presuppose both these as points of Knowledge proved to us by their proper evidence And that this is All the Word of God is a meer Consequence from the actual Tradition of this much and no more To give you an undenyable illustration by instance Let us enquire which be the Administring Laws of this Common-wealth And we shall find that 1. The Authority of the Law-givers is none of them for that is in the Constitution before the Administration and it is the formale objectum of every Law which is more noble then the Material object 2. And the Promulgation of these Laws is not it self a Law but a necessary Medium sine quo non to the actual obligation of the Law 3. And that there is no other Laws but these is not a Law but a point known by the non-promulgation of more 4. And that all these Laws are the same that they pretend to be and that they are not changed or depraved since this is not a Law neither but a Truth to be proved by Common Reason from the Evidences that may be brought from Records Practise and abundance more So is it in our Case 1. That God is True and the Soveraign Rector is first a point to be known by evidence the one being the formal object of Faith and the other the formal object of obedience and easily proved by Natural Light before we come to Scripture 2. And that this is Gods Revelation or Promulgation of his Law is a point also first to be proved by Reason not before we see the Book or hear the Word but out of the Book or Doctrine it self propria luce together with the full Historical Evidence and many other reasons which in order of Nature lie before our Obligation fide divina to believe So that this is not Primarily an Article of Faith but somewhat higher as being the Necessary Medium of our believing 3. And that there is no other Law or Faith is not Primarily a Law or Article of Faith but a Truth proved by the Non-Revelation or Promulgation of any other to the world He that will prove us obliged to believe more must prove the valid Promulgation or Revelation of more 4. And that these Books are the same and not corrupted is not directly and primarily an Article of Faith but an Historical verity to be proved as abovesaid And yet secondarily Scripture is a witness to all or most of these and so they are de fide But of this I refer the Reader for fuller satisfaction to my Preface before my second Part of the Saints Rest And thus it is manifest that it is an unreasonable demand of
head or Soveraigns of the Church The Major is of unquestionable verity in Politicks Legislation is the first and chief work of Soveraignty The Minor is proved 1. Ad hominem by the confession of the chief Opponents Grotius de Imperio summar potest doth purposely maintain it and so do others See of this Lud. Molinaeus new Book supposed against the Presbyterians his Paraenesis 2. It is the high Prerogative of Christ the true King and Soveraign of the Church which none must arrogate He was faithfull in all his house as was Moses His Law is perfect It is sufficient to make the man of God perfect even a sufficient rule of faith and life No man must add thereto nor take ought therefrom but do whatsoever he hath commanded Deut. 12. 32. To the Law and to the Testimony if they speak not according to these it is because there is no light in them Isa 8. 20. Object But men may make By-laws under Christ and his Laws Answ True but as those are in this case no proper Laws so no man or men may make them for the Unversal Church For the business of those Laws is only to determine of circumstances which God hath made necessary in genere and left to the determination of men in specie And we may well know that there was some special reason why Christ did not determine of these himself And the reason is plain even because that they depend so much on the several states capacities customs c. of men that they are to be varied accordingly in several times and places If one standing Law would have fitted all the world or all ages in these matters Christ would have made it himself For if you say he makes some Laws and neglect others that are of the like kind and might as well have been done by himself you make him imperfect and insufficient to his work And if it be not fit that one Universal Law be made for the world then a Council must not make it And as the sufficiency of Christs law so the nature of the things declare it that these matters must not be determined of by an universal Law Should there be an universal Law to determine what day of the week or what hour of the day every Lecture or occasional Sermon shall be on Or what place every Congregation shall meet in Or where the Minister shall stand to preach Or what Chapters he should read each day Or what Text he should preach on or how long Whether by an hour-glass or without in what habit of apparrel particularly when many a poor man must wear such as he can get yea or what gestures or postures of body to use when that gesture in one Countrey signifieth reverence which in another rather signifieth neglect with abundance the like And the same is plain from the nature of the Pastoral office Every Bishop or Pastor is made by Christ the Ruler of the flock in such cases and they are bound to obey him Heb. 13. 17. And therefore a General Council must leave them their work to do which Christ hath put upon them and not take it out of their hands especially when being in the place and seeing the variety of circumstances they are more competent judges then a General Council at such distance The plain truth is Christ hath left them none of that work to do which belongeth to a Head or Soveraign but they make work for themselves that there may seem to be a Necessity of a power to do it The Church needeth none of their Laws Let us have but the Holy Scriptures and the Law of Nature and the civil Laws of men and the guidance of particular Pastors pro tempore and the fraternal Consultations and Agreements of Councils not to make any more work but to do this foresaid work unanimously and the Church can bear no more there is nothing left for Legislators Ecclesiastical to do We can spare their Laws and therefore their power and work Their business is but to make snares and burdens for us and therefore we can live without them and cannot believe that the felicity or unity or essence of the Church consisteth in them Argum. 7. All the inferior officers do derive their power from the supream All the other officers of the Catholick Church do not derive their power from the Pope or a General Council therefore a Pope or General Council are not the supream The Major is an unquestioned Maxime in Politicks It s essential to the Sovereaign to be the fountain of power to all under him Yea if it be but a deputed derived Soveraignty secundum quid so called as the Viceroy of Mexico Naples c. yet so far he must be the fountain of all inferiour power The Minor is maintained by most Christians in the world Every Bishop or Presbyter hath his power immediately from Jesus Christ as the Efficient cause though man must be an occasion or causa sine qua non or per accidens The Italian Bishops in the Council of Trent could not carry it against the Spaniards that the Pope only as Head was immediately jure divino and the rest but mediante Papa Moreover it is easie to prove out of Scripture that God never set up any Soveraign power in his Church personal or collective to be the fountain of all other Church power nor sendeth us to have recourse to any such for it Nor can they prove such a power on whom it is incumbent And lastly its most easie to prove de facto that the Bishops or Presbyters now in the several Churches in the world did not receive and do not hold their power from any such visible Head whether Pope or Council Though the Popelings do yet so do not all the rest of the Christian world Who are not therefore no Ministers or no Church of Christ whatever these bare affirmers and pretenders may imagine Nor are all the Ministerial actions in the world null which are not done by a power from him And even the Papists themselves will few of them pretend to receive their several powers of Priesthood from a General Council This therefore is not the Soveraign power or head of the Church Argum. 8. The Head or Soveraign Power hath the finally decisive Judgement and in great causes all must or may appeal to them A General Council hath not the finally decisive judgement nor may all men in great causes appeal to them Therefore a General Council is not the Head or Soveraign power The Major is undenyable The Minor is proved 1. In that it is not known nor hath the world any rule or way to know in what cases we must appeal to a General Council and what not and what is their proper work 2. In that an appeal to them is an absolute evasion of the guilty and in vain to the innocent because of the rarity of such Councils or rather the nullity 3. Because the prosecuting of such an Appeal
strongest and last dying sin in all and giveth strength to all the rest What hope then of Unity while every man hath a numerically different Center Principle End and so few forsake it and devote themselves to God the common Center and End of the Saints and those few so Imperfectly permitting self to live and do so much within them And though the Papists have devised a way to make this sand into a rope or cement innumerable selves together by finding out such a Carnal Head and Center where every man may find his own Carnal Interest involved in the Interest of that Head and his body and so may have a carnal unity of a multitude of carnal ones to glory in Yet Christ is another kind of Head and Center condemning and destroying carnal self and commanding all his followers upon pain of damnation to deny it though to nature it be the dearest thing in the world No wonder therefore if the number of his Adherents be few and the unity of those that center in him be less conspicuous and glorious in the world With strong Desires therefore but Low Expectations I propound these terms of Unity to the Church as knowing how many thousand of the Dark and selfish will not only neglect them and reject them but rise up against them if they come into their hands with no small self-conceited confidence and scorn But the Church is the Lords who hath purchased it by his blood his Interest in it is more then mine it is infinitely dearer to him then to me his wisdom is fittest to dispose of the success of our endeavours to determine of the season and measures of its cure He is the Physitian and hath undertaken the work and in the fittest way and time will perfect it and be the finisher as well as the Author of our faith The eye of the chief Shepheard is even now upon all his scattered flock and of those that are given him to be saved he will lose none he is neither insufficient for them nor careless of them but will gather into one the Elect that are dispersed and present them all pure unblamable and spotless to his Father at the last and as much as they seem now to us to be uncurably divided we shall then see them perfectly healed and united and made up One Glorified Body of our Head For that blessed Marriage day of the Lamb and the Glory of the New Jerusalem we therefore Pray and Hope and Wait in our passage through this sinful and distracted world THere are three common sayings in which I am much delighted that conduce to the Illustration of what I have said 1. Servanda in Necessariis Unitas In non-necessariis libertas in utrisque charitas Vulg. 2. Contra Rationem nemo sobrius Contra Scripturam nemo Christianus Contra Ecclesiam nemo pacificus August Scripture is the test of Christianity and must shew us sound in the faith though the Church may shew us Peacable 3. Vnitatem Querit Homo Socialis Invenit Catholicus Speculativus Possidet Sanctus Charitativus  Vetitatem  Philosophia  Theologia  Religio  Felicitatem  Natura  Fides Historica  Charitas Therefore to seek for Unity Verity or Felicity by the loss or destruction of Sanctity Religion Charity is really to renounce oppose and lose them Satisfaction to certain CALUMNIATORS I Am informed from London and several parts of the Land that some of my Books having lately been sold at excessive rates by the Booksellers it is somewhat commonly reported that it is caused by my excessive gain which say they is at least three or four hundred pounds a year I thank the Lord that doth not only employ me in his service but also vouchsafe me the honor and benefit of being evil-spoken of for doing him the best service that I can Mat. 5. 11 12. 1 Pet. 4. 13 14 15 16. Blessed Augustine was put to vindicate himself by an oath from the infamy of a covetous design which was raised by one godly woman upon a disorderly action of other men and to that end he wrote his 225. Epistle I find no call to use his oath but yet I judge it my duty to imitate him in patience and in rescuing the slanderers from their sin that they abuse not their souls by uncharitable surmises nor their tongues by false reports To which end I give them this true information The two first Books I printed I left to the Booksellers Will for all the rest I agreed with them for the fifteenth Book to give to some few of my friends hearing that some others agreed for the tenth Sometime my fifteenth Book coming not to an hundred and sometime but to few more when of Practical Books I needed sometime 800. to give away Because I was scarce rich enough to buy so many I agreed with the Bookseller my Neighbour to allow 18. d. a Ream which is not a penny a quire out of his own gain towards the buying of Bibles and some of the practical Books which he printed for the poor Covenanting with him that he should sell my Controversal Writings as cheap and my Practical Writings somewhat cheaper then books are ordinarily sold To this hour I never received for my self one penny of mony from them for any of my Writings to the best of my remembrance but if it fell out that my part came to more than I gave my friends I exchanged them for other Books My accounts and memory tell me not of â—â—li that ever was returned for me on these accounts which was on literary occasions so that my many hundreds a year is come to never a penny in all but as abovesaid in some exchange of Books And the price I set on my Books which I exchanged for theirs at the dearest rates is as followeth Treat of Conversion 2. s. Treat of Crucifying the World 2. s. Disput of Justificat 2. s. 4. d. The Call to the Unconverted 8. d. Disput of saving Faith 5. d. Of the Grotian Religion 6. d. Directions for sound Conversion 1. s. 8. d. Disput of Right to Sacraments Edit secund 2. s. 4. d. These are all my bargains and my gains And I chose the honestest Booksellers that I could meet with according to my small measure of wit and acquaintance who told me they still made good their Promises And now censorious Slanderer tell me what thou wouldst have had me to have done more If I had got Food and Rayment out of my own hard labors had it been unlawful or dishonourable when Booksellers get so many hundred pounds by one Book that never studied nor spent their time and cost for it as I have done And yet dost thou reproach me that receive not a groat But because I will not oblige my self to the same course for the future and that thou mayst know at what rates I serve thee let me tell thee that in these labors early and late my body is wasted my precious time laid out and somewhat of my Estate and somewhat of the labor of my friends I cannot have twenty quire of my writing well transcribed under fifty pounds And who shall pay for this or maintain me in thy service I have troubled a Neighbour-Minister in the tedious work of transcribing my Characters for some books for which neither he nor I had ever one penny These personal matters are unsavory to me and I take it for a great injury that thou puttest upon me a necessity of mentioning them But I have yielded this once to thy unrighteous importunity that thou mayest hereafter learn what to believe and utter and make more conscience of thy censures and reports And that thou mayst have the utmost relief that I can procure thee for the time to come I shall agree with my Booksellers to sell all that I publish at three farthings a sheet and to print the price of every book at the bottom of the Title page October 11. 1658. Farewell Richard Baxter * The Right Honourable the Earl of Lauderdaile a person whose eminent Godliness and Learning occasioneth the sorrow of his Countrey that is deprived of him in such days as these when Piety is so much esteemed Dr. Hammond on 1 Tim. 3. e. saith And such all the particular Churches of the whole world considered together under the supream Head Christ Jesus disspensing them all by himself administring them severally not by any one oeconomus but by the several Bishops as inferiour Heads of Unity to the several bodies so constituted by the several Apostles in their plantations each of them having an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a several distinct Commission from Christ immediately and subordinate to none but the supream donor or plenipotentiary It was one of the Reasons of the Council of Carthage to P. Celestine to prove the invalidity of the Papal judgements up on appeals from other Countries because the witness necessary to a just decision could not go far The Papists confess that Pope and Council cannot make new Articles of faith in se but quoad nos only And they say they have received by Tradition the doctrines which they teach