see a necessary connexion with the deliver'd Faith if you say so you desert your vertue of prophesying and come over to our School which you so abominate as rational and faithless yet this experience teaches us is the way that Popes and Councils use to take If you say their consulting must not hold till they see it by reason then tell me what Oedipus or Geometrician can guess or fix the terminating line of counsell prerequisite These points a Scholar would have setled You distinguish nothing but jumble all your Bells together into a confused noise and deafen more then instruct your Hearers Now 't is to much purpose to talk of the force of the word Anathema whilest you have not settled a matter in which the Church hath a power to impose it What an inconsiderate manner of arguing is this You say Catholiks require no other assurance of their Faith then upon this firm foundation that our holy Mother the Church is their infallible directress The proposition is the very Tenet we mainly advance and stick to Go but consequently to this and we shall have no quarrell You add another ground that the Councils her mouth are the unerring deliverers of truth This also is very true and never deny'd by us But there rises a great question whether Councils be perpetually and in all cases the mouth of the Church look upon Cariolanus his abridgment of the Councils and read his division of General Councils into approbata and reprobata and ex parte approbata and ex parte improbata and see how ignorantly you go to work even in the grounds of your own eminent learned men who will oppose you peradventure more then I and yet you preach Christian Religion is a mockery if this be taken away I desire not to look into particulars unless you force me to it For I cannot discover even your Errours without discovering too the vanity of that School which you nickname the Church and confidently take upon you to be one of her Masters I doubt not if you attentively consider your eminent Scholars you will find many of them speak indeed gloriously of Councils but unless I be strangely deceiv'd they give them less of inward and reall Authority then I while they make them in effect but Cyphers to the Pope without whom they signify nothing though added perhaps to him they increase his signification yet surely not very much since in many of those Masters opinion he alone is infallible and I think in every ones opinion all together are not much more Whereas the Doctrin I follow gives them an absolute Inerrancy in testifying receiv'd truths which is clearly sufficient to conserve and propagate the Faith of the Church I beleeve you mistake the meaning of that grave and worthy Person whom without any ground at all for your conceit you call my Scholar since he seriously protests he never gave his mind that way nor ever read over any considerable part of my Books nor particularly this of the Middle State his true meaning I conceive is we may know when Councils and Consistory's apply themselves right by examining not Tradition it self for that's evident in the sence of the Faithfull but their proceedings by Tradition whether they be conformable to it Which is not onely a maintainable but excellent truth And by this method the Divines of those dayes examin'd the Doctrin of John 22. For Tradition is the Law of Christ planted in the hearts of all Christians not to be examin'd it being to be read fair written there by their externall words and conversations Now if a Pope or Council be supposed to delver Doctrin against this 't is past darkness and examining since all the Christian world cannot choose but resent it and know it to be against their Faith and Judgment So that you plainly misunderstand the meaning of Tradition which is no hidden thing but the publick and settled belief of the Christian world You will say 't is impossible a Pope or Council should proceed so grosly I wish there were no examples of it But the truth is if instead of a Pope consider'd onely personally you take him as presiding in his Church and Seat and joyn'd with it which is a kind of more then a Provinciall Council but much more if you take a General Council without extraordinary violence without or within both mainly visible this cannot happen and so they have infallibility in attesting the received Doctrins most absolutely sufficient to secure the Church against being mis-led by them By the same Errour you look to determin Faith by Inquest not knowing it cannot be unknown in a Catholick Country to them that live there See the story of Luther Were men doubtfull of their Faith before he and his fellows in iniquity set themselves to snarl at it Therefore Inquest may be made how to answer their Argumments but not to understand what the Church held before opposition rose How much mistaken is all your discourse about the proceeding to higher Tribunals after so great diligence of scrutiny There is no such thing as scrutiny necessary to find out Faith nor ever was the Church to seek her Faith Since she once receiv'd it from Jesus Christ she never lost it and so is to look into it not for it If any thing be to be look for it is not faith it may be some Theologicall Verity not faith Your discourse therefore is wholly out of the way No wonder then you find your self at a loss and cry out like a blind man for a hand to guide you since instead of Christs faith you look for a new faith One would have it an Article of our Christian faith that his Order is a true Religious Order Another that one hang'd for treason is a true Martyr others seek some private revelation that brings in profit to be canoniz'd for faith and other such fine questions to be put in the Creeds of the Church and if it be not yeelded there 's a power in the Church to impose such beliefs upon men presently the denying Doctrin is an Exterminating School and pulls up by the roots all the foundations of Christian Religion Nor will there want some to say that though these things be true they are not to be published but Catholicks are to be left in ignorance of such tender points But will not the mischief by degrees grow intolerable if once it should come to that height that the People by a preoccupated credence be apt to be stirr'd seditiously against their naturall and lawfull Governour by any surreptitious Rescript fetch't from beyond Sea freshly seal'd with the new stamp of faith and to believe all Christianity is rain'd if such a Rescript nay the Interpretation of the procurers be any way doubted of O strange unhappy times You press farther that according to me the Church hath de facto erred in the Bull and Council so long treated of What a strange boldness is this you bring an Interpretation
prudently foyl'd you in every encounter in this Question that he hath left nothing for me but to discover your falshood in such by-questions as you thrust in to stuff out your Volume FOURTH DIVISION Containing an Answer to his seventeenth Section The Authours Doctrin of Councils explicated This new opinion of Purgatory in likelihood later than Saint Gregory IN your seventeenth Section you first put upon me that I am arm'd against the Authority of Popes and Councils and then you run headlong on with declamatory invectives upon that supposition But as the world is curious I conceive some will light on my defence as well as on your calumny to whom I thus explicate the true state of the question It is known to all Christians that Christ and his Apostles taught the world the Christian faith It is known to all Catholicks that this same faith has continued in the Catholick Church now fifteen ages It is known to the same that the means of continuing this faith hath been by Pastours and Fathers teaching their Children what themselves had learn'd by the same way It is likewise known that in divers ages there arose up divers Hereticks who endeavour'd to bring in Doctrins contrary to the received Faith and that Bishops sometimes in particular especially the Bishop of Rome sometimes in Collections or Councils with-stood and confounded such Hereticks confirming the old belief and rejecting all new inventions It is evident that to do this it fuffices to have veracity enough to attest what the old Doctrin was and power enough to suppress all such as stir against it Thus far all goes well Of late Ages among our curious School-men some have been so subtle that the Old faith would not serve them but they thought it necessary to bring in new points of Faith and because what was not of Faith could not become of Faith without a new revelation they look't about for a new revelation and finding the two supreme Courts of Christian discipline seated in General Councils and the Pope they quickly resolv'd to attribute the power of encreasing Christian Faith to these two Springs of Christianity Now the first difference betwixt the two parties engag'd in the present controversy is whether the Faith deliver'd by the Apostles be sufficient to govern the Church by or there be necessary fresh Additions of such points as cannot be known without a new revelation In which they whom I follow hold the negative they whom I suppose you follow the affirmative Out of this question springs a second whether in the Councils and in the Pope is to be acknowledg'd a Prophetical kind of Spirit by which towards the ordinary government of the Church they have a gift to reveal some things not before revealed nor deducible out of things already revealed by the natural power of discourse which God has left to mankind to govern it self by In which point also I follow them that deny you and your eminent learned men stand up for the Affirmative I hope by this any ingenious Reader will perceive that if the Faith deliver'd by Jesus Christ joyn'd with the natural power of discoursing be sufficient to govern the Church of God then those who give power to Councils and Popes sufficient to govern by this way give them as much as is necessary for the Church But if new Articles be necessary to the government of the Church then and onely then they fall short So that no understanding person reading these lines can doubt but the true question is this whether the Faith deliver'd by Christ be sufficient for the government of the Church or that we must expect new additions to our Faith every age or when occasion presents it self Whence it will easily appear that all the great noyse you make and furious Rhetorick you use of my denying the Authority of Councils my being arm'd against them and such like angry stuff are but uncharitable uncivil and highly injurious clamours without any true cause or ground at all But we shall hear more of these hereafter Now any prudent Christian that shall with moderate attention have read but so far will judge the question already decided For who dare maintain Christ's Doctrin was imperfect And indeed all that have any little modesty on your side will not say new Articles of Faith are necessary but that whatsoever the Church defines was before revealed though when they come to declare themselves they demand really new Articles onely calling them Explications of the former or Deductions from them And if they would justify that they were but such Deductions as natural reason can deduce there would remain no controversy which in very deed the Churches practise shews to be the truth In the first Council it being recorded that there was Conquisitio magna and all Councils and Popes ever since proceeding in the same style But here I must remember you what you said in the beginning concerning Pargatory that the reason why you write against my opinion was because it was translated into English And so I now protest that you are the cause why I write of this subject in English My books generally are to debate what I think in the points I write of with learned men whose care it is to divulge truths to the people dispensing to every one the quantity he is capable of not to raise any new thoughts in ignorant heads Your crying out against me forces me to a necessary defence before the people wherefore if any disputings concerning this matter displease any person of Judgment let it light upon your head who are the provoker and compeller of me into this new task which both age and other thoughts make me slowly and unwillingly undertake But I must not be mine own chuser but follow God As to what you say against this Doctrin first you desire your Reader to consider that if these grounds to wit that the Pope and the Council can err without distinguishing in what either matter or manner of proceeding Christian Faith is a meer mockery I confess the proposition grave in words but in sence not worthy a School-boy For first I ask you whether you mean in necessary points or unnecessary ones If you say in both I doubt your whole School will desert you For who is there that hath an ounce of brains who will give authority to the Church to determin all the subtle quirks of the School But if you say onely necessary ones then before you went farther against me you should have prov'd that the verities come by inheritance from Jesus Christ are not all that are necessary which question you never think on and so brandish your Logick against the apparitions in the clouds Secondly I ask you whether without counsel or with it If you say without it again your School will desert you If you say with it I ask you how much counsell and to what period In all which you will be at a loss Must it hold till by reason they
you put in the Edition of the Bull of Benedictus and the Council of Florence For before that even the consorts of your Tenet held it no otherwise then for the common opinion of Divines LAST DIVISION Containing an Answer from Section the eighteenth to Section the two and twentieth The Catholick Rule of Faith defended The Vindicators weakness in making the unlearned Judges of Controversy His frequently mis-representing my Doctrin and manifold failings in his new attempts from the Bull and Council YOur eighteenth Section you begin with saying my Doctrin which is a close adhering to Tradition is the way to make fools stray You follow still the same truantly humour of using words without looking into the sence For if Tradition signify the delivery of the Doctrin preach't and taught by our forefathers your proposition signifies that to follow what we are taught by our forefathers is the way to make fools go astray Neither do I deny but that you speak consequently if first you make the Popes veracity the veracity of the whole Church and that all the Church but he can err and consequently he may correct the Doctrin which was believ'd by the Church in the age immediatly going before him then 't is true that to prefer the Belief of the former age before the Popes word will lead fools astray But for my part I desire to be one of those fools and to go so astray You run on in a full careere and tell us of the Authority of the Church and Councils in common and that things settled by them must not be brought in question not seeing because you will not that what the Church believ'd in the last Age is more the Church's decree then what she speaks either by Pope or Council unless she speaks the same that she believed the last Age and so you continue your discoursing with words not taking their meaning along with you In your nineteenth Section you come so home as to judge and condemn me by mine own Doctrin a great shame to me I confess if you make it good You argue therefore what have we seen but Masses Dirges Almes c. so far is almost true but why did you not put in by which in express terms we pray'd for the welfare of the Souls at the day of the General Judgment but you had reason to leave that out for it would have set a shrewd puzzell in your Argument We have heard constantly say you that Souls are deliver'd out of Purgatory by these powerfull helps before the day of Judgment In this part you have mended your former fault for there you sayd too little to serve your purpose if you had prov'd all you said and here you say more then can be prov'd to serve your purpose do you mean that your way was preach't constantly that is as a certain and establisht Doctrin of faith or that for a long time they preacht it as a probable truth or without engaging at all into the degree of its assuredness but perhaps you proceed more nicely since you onely said you heard it constantly not that it was preach'd constantly For to say a thing constantly imports that the speaker teaches it to be certain and it is not enough if for a long time he tells you it is likely to be so Now so far as concerns the delivery of Souls from Purgatory by the potent means you speak of was ever constantly taught but that the delivery should be made before the day of Judgment was taught but as a pious opinion if the Preacher understood the sence of the Doctours of the Schools themselves who add no such qualification because their principles being either Authority or Reason they find in Authority neither Fathers nor Councils nor Popes express in the point and Reasons much less favourable and to say the truth though they are apt enough to dispute whether there be a God a Trinity an Incarnation c. Yet I do not remember to have heard of any one who hath treated of his proposition so directly as to dispute it pro and con Which being so what certainty can we expect a Preacher should fix upon this Doctrin But to declare what I think those whom you appeal to will answer I beleeve it is that they never reflected to make any difference of the things the Preachers deliver'd them and much less upon the degrees of assent they gave to this or that point and as far as they can tell they gave the same assent to any place of Scripture the Preacher explicated as they did to this point unless some particular occasion put them in mind to qualify one and not the other But as they found by experience in other things that if any rub came to make them doubt of any thing a Preacher sayd then first they began to consider on what grounds they were bound to believe the point proposed so they have done in this and of those who have spent any competent time in examining both sides many have discover'd your grounds unsafe to build any certainty on and some confest them too weak to sustain even so much as a probability What the Gentleman whose letter you cite and with some imprudent circumstances will say why he was carryed away with your Arguments I know not but had he read my Books as much as I esteem his learning and vertue he would surely have met with full answers to your very objections which they who read yours cannot do nor so much as hear of the Arguments I use to maintain my opinion you on set purpose concealing them and proposing in their stead as my whole grounds a discourse made to a meer Philosopher or Heathen where the method of a regular writer oblig'd me to abstract from Revelation But that this answer I set down is for the greatest part of those that follow this opinion a true one is not onely manifest to all that reflect upon what passeth within them on the like occasions but experience hath taught me it in every country where I have conversed since the publishing this Doctrin In all which I have found divers who upon hearing of it acknowledg'd that before they had in their hearts a certain dislike of your opinion but they knew not why it having a kind of an uncouth semblance yet they could not pitch upon any thing to say solidly against it One passage I will intreat your patience to let me tell you Before I printed it I communicated this point to one of the greatest Divines of Christendome and confest to be so He presently reply'd it was against the Council of Florence and went immediately to his Chamber and fetcht down the Council when we had a little debated the text and he saw it did not reach home he shut up the Book with these words Look to it you will draw all the Regulars upon your back meaning all such of them as found great profit by perswading the people they should procure a sudden
study My imperfection is such I cannot And if eating my meat with a good stomach gives me health and strength to study and pray I think I do well to put vineger or some other sauce to my meat which may make me eat what is fitting to perform those Actions strongly and perfectly Neither do I understand that this is either against Saint Paul or the Doctrin of Mortification prescrib'd according to Saint Paul who tells us he chastis'd his body and kept in slavery in order to attaining Heaven lest saith he I become a reprobate to which end all that use mortification discreetly employ it I confess this Doctrin is against them who think God is pleas'd with a kind of sacrificing their bodies to his honour without any commensuration to their own salvation but meerly because they apprehend they make God beholding to them for the great honour they did him as heathen Priests were anciently and are yet us'd to do in some Countries You say this Doctrine befits only Epicurus his School and the life of Hogs For Epicurus the Eloquent Gassendus hath taken a great deal of pains to perswade the World you are in an Errour And for the life of Hogs unless you be better acquainted with it then a chast religious man should I think you no fit Judg of the Comparison But whatever way you go I le tell you mine which is to think we feel or as I may so speak see no acts of our own immediately but corporeal ones therefore those sensible pleasures heats violences of charity which we read of in many Saints lives are corporeal ones as appears by the very narrations telling us of bones broken those that were neer them warm'd those that they preach'd to materially set on fire and the like Now I say there being such variety of corporeal pleasures the understanding man chuses amongst them what are fittest to breed in him those thoughts and desires which are the most efficacious dispositions of the Soul to Heaven And these I hold the best and noblest and which make a mans life the pleasantest Of these speaking in abstract are generally those that follow or accompany Charity and Science but in practise those which be the Instruments to increase solid Charity proportion'd to the pitch of the Soul to be govern'd which possibly is not capable as yet of so great acts as the Saints we spoke of But there is none so low but if diligence and industry be not wanting hath higher and greater pleasures then the Hogs which were your instructers to know what corporea pleasure is And I cannot but marvell much on what your thoughts were wandring that whereas you cannot but have read in the lives of Saints and eminent Contemplators of the excessive and ravishing delight which they felt that is which was even in their body too and affected it so as they have judg'd it to be inexpressible and above all contents and delights this world could afford yet forgetting all these your thoughts could onely pitch on those which Hogs feel as the perfectest Do you think a virtuous man has not a more solid lasting and true corporeal pleasure in the calmness of his fancy and the undisturb'd temper of his passions than a vitious man who for a dram of delight which his mad phrenzy of passion gave him and scarce left him understanding enough to know he had it has whole pounds of bitterest gall of discontent attending it both in the perpetuall fight of his fancy and appetite against reason and the distemperature of other naturall parts which vice must needs disorder Nay why should we not think the Saints who liv'd mortify'd lives felt not as much corporeal pleasure taking the whole extent of their lives as those enormous livers who cloy'd their senses with the surfet of them We experience so high a difference in our pleasure taken in meat when we are heartily hungry in a warm fire when we are extremely pincht with cold that we have good ground to think their deprivement of the degrees of the thing is recompenc't by the degrees of the perfect sence they have of what they admit of which is by the rarity of it commended and receiv'd with as great a welcome as a necessity both naturall and rationall that is those powers uncheck't in that action could give it All which amounts but to this that a virtuous life is in all respects the pleasantest to the whole man If this satisfy you not what think you of Health and Sickness Is not the former full of corporeall pleasure the other of corporeal displeasure or pain Can any thing be so agreeable to the Body as that more disagreeable or unpleasant than this Yet I beleeve neither your self nor any understanding Christian had a scruple he was in health but gave God thanks for it as a great benefit This being so laid out what have you to except why the pleasantest life is not the fittest to attain Heaven You add you have a Scruple to translate this Doctrin and you justly may to do it so raw and imperfectly as to make a quite wrong apprehension in your Auditory of its being from what it is But as you have a confidence of your Readers vertue to abhor the Doctrin as you set it down so have I that any hath heard of me will give no credit to your shameless calumny You begin your twenty eighth Section with my frivolous concluding that corporall affections remain in the Soul after Separation And you seem to bring two Arguments to shew it First that all these desires rise from the body which being taken away they remain no longer in the Soul you may as wisely perswade a man not to seal his Letter because the impression coming from the seal as soon as he puts that in his pocket there would remain no more print in the Wax No sweet Sir Our foul hath certain Prints of efficacious judgements which though they begin from the flesh yet sink into her and become as it were Limbs of her For as beasts work by Legs and Arms and Teeth so our soul by her Judgments Your second Argument presses that as it will not concern the soul to see or hear so neither to have corporeal pleasures when she hath all fulness of knowledge so that you would make the unpurg'd souls follow reason and desire nothing but what is fit for them that is to be totally purged and by consequence go immediately to Heaven and all to be Saints and that their works follow them not At least you think a Schollar could endure no punishment who had no other irregular desires but of knowledge Qui est hic laudabimus eum but putting the case how impossible soever in the judgment of Christians who hold grace necessary we must remember he that hath much science hath a better knowledge of his last end how great it is and seeing himself deprived of that hath a larger share in the high part of