not to heed any thing that may hinder your flourishes But Sir if you were kept up in a chamber with a learned Jew without bread water and fire till you had satisfied him in that objection I am still well enough assured for all your aery vaunts that if you do not make use of your Credo which here you contemn you might there stay till hunger and cold had made an end of you But I beleev you love not such dry blows however you may be delighted with pen encounters at a distance where after your suppositum has been well inspired with the warm spirits blown hither out of the fortunate islands you may cavil revile and threaten at your pleasure and knock down the shadow of your adversary which your own spirits have raised up and presented to you in your chamber 10 ch from page 213 to 228. Your tenth chapter runs over two of my paragraffs which speak the plea of Independents Presbyterians and Protestants That you esteem idle the other sensles the last insufficient And to make this last good you endeavour to disable both what I have set down to make against the Prelate Protestant and also what I have said for him I said in Fiat Lux that it made not a little against our Protestants that after the prelate Protestancy was settled in England they were forced for their own preservation against Puritans to take up som of those principles again which former Protestants had sast down for Popish as is the autority of a visible Church efficacy of ordination difference between clergy and laiety c. Here first you deny that those principles are popish But Sir ther be som Jews even at this day who will deny any such man as Pontius Pilate to have ever been in Jury I have other things to do than to fill volums with useles texts which here I might easily do out of the books both of the first reformers and catholik divines and councels Then secondly you challenge me to prove that those principles were ever dented by our prelate Protestants And this you do wittily and like your self You therfor bid me prove that those principles were ever denied by our prelate Protestants becaus I say that our prelate Protestants here in England as soon as they became such took up again those forenamed principles which Protestants their forefathers both here in England and beyond the seas before our prelacy was set up had still rejected When I say then that out prelate Protestant affirmed and asserted those principles which former Protestants denied you bid me prove that our prelate Protestant ever denied them Thus you contradict what I say is pleaded against our prelate Protestant And again you do as stiffly gain-say what I plead for him my self You laugh at me even with head and shoulders and tell me that the prelate-Protestant has far better arguments for themselvs then either mine is or any I can bring nor do they need the help of such a weak logician as my self in this their caus Sir give me leav to tell you here once for all that I thought it sufficient for my design to set down either for Papist or Protestant when occasion required such reasons as appeared plausible to my self and to say all for them that can be said was neither the work of my small ability nor any purpos of my design And it is enough to me that I know no better But let us see what my argument is and how you crush it The Church say I must have a byshop or otherwise she will not have such a visible head as she had at first c. This that you may evacuate you tell me that the Church hath still the same head she had which is Christ who is present with his Church by his Spirit and laws and is man-God still as much as ever he was and ever the same will be and if I would have any other visible bishop to be that head then it seems I would not have the same head and so would have the same and yet not the same Thus you speak But Sir I cannot in any reason be thought to speak otherwise if we would use true logick of the identity of the head than I do of the identity of the body of the Church This body is not numerically the same for the men of the first age are long ago gone out of the world and another generation com who yet are a body of Christians of the same kind becaus they adhere to the same principles of faith And as the body is of the same kind though not numerically the same so do I require that since Jesus Christ as man the head immediate of other beleeving men is departed hence to the glory of his Father that the Church should still have a head of the same kind as visibly now present as she had in the beginning or els say I she cannot be completely the same body or a body of the same kind she was But this she hath not this she is not except she have a visible byshop as she had in the beginning present with her guiding and ruling under God Christ our Lord is indeed still man-God but this man-hood is now separate nor is he visibly now present as man which immediately headed his beleevers under God on whose influence that natur depended His Godhead is still the same in all things not only in it self but in order also to his Church as it was before equally invisible and in the like manner beleeved but the natur delegate under God and once ruling visibly amongst us by words and examples is now utterly withdrawn And if a natur of the same kind be not now delegate with a power of exteriour government as at the first ther was then hath not the Church the same head now which she had then nor is she the same polity or body she was before Qui habet aures audiendi audiat And here by the way we may take notice what a sincere English Protestant you are who labour so stoutly to evacuate my argument for episcopacy and leav none of your own behind you nor acquaint the world with any although you know far better but would make us beleev notwithstanding those far better reasons for prelacy that Christ himself as he is the immediate and only head of the invisible influence so is he likewise the only and immediate head of visible direction and government among us without the interposition of any person delegate in his stead to oversee and rule under him in his Church on earth which is against the tenour both of sacred gospel and S. Pauls epistles and all antiquity and the present ecclesiastick polity of England and is the doctrin not of any English Protestant but of the Presbyterian Independent and Quaker Christ then in your way is immediate head not only of subministration and influence but of exterior direction and government to his Church Pray tell me is
every Christian king a Joshua And as it is a content and support to Aaron to have a Joshua with him to fight Gods battles and keep the people in awe so is it not a little comfort to Joshua to have an Aaron by him with whom he may consult And indeed no kingdom can have a perfect accomplishment without the presence of these two swords civil and spiritual Ecce duo gladij hic satis est And although Christians even at this day when any heresy or novelty arises have still recours unto the same head of their religion for a decision of the doubt whom they consulted before for as the channel of Christianity is and must be still the same so must the spring-head be the same also yet when the thing is once decided they have none but kings and governours under him to see the direction executed as the only overseers with coactive power to do it And thus you see in brief how the Pope is head of the Church and the King head likewise and both immediately under God but with this difference that the king only governs Christianity established in his own royalty by law the Pope without further law rules and guides all the streams and rivulets of religion where ever it flows He is head of primary direction the king of sovereign execution he of guidance and spiritual autority only the king of civil and natural power invested in his place and dignity from God above to maintain any laws as well purely Christian as civil which himself shall accept establish and promulgate The Pope perswades but the King commands and although the Pope should formally command yet vertually and in effect such a command amounts only to a perswasion and he that obeys not feels no smart for it except the king be pleased to espous his caus and punish the contumacious which if he justly do then have kings a just autority in those affairs if otherwise then hath the Pope no means of help or defence in this world any more after the conversion of kings than before it and help himself he cannot any other way than only by putting people out of his communion who care not for it The Pope is obeyed for conscience and love only to his religion the King for wrath and conscience too the Pope delivers the rule but in general only and blunt on one side the King particularises it and gives it an edg the Popes headship is exercised in Ought and Should be the Kings is Will and shall be the Pope directs but the King compells the Pope secludes the contumacious from heaven which he that beleevs not feels not the King over and above that cuts off malefactors from the face of the earth too and they shall be made by feeling to beleev it And these two defend and secure one another and keep both Christians and their faith inviolate And while Christians themselvs do both tenderly love their Pape and chief pastour and spring-head of their religion which is beleeved beyond him to flow invisibly from God the great ocean of truth and withall do honor fear and observ their King and princely governour who only bears the sword of justice and not in vain to take revenge upon all those whom the love of religion and spiritual sword of their pastour will not keep in awe they do their duty as they ought and shall finde happines therein I must make haste and can say no more at present to this busines which as I have told you is somewhat besides my purpos Only one thing I must needs tell you before I pass on Although a King is in a good and proper sence stiled head as well of Church as State within his own dominions as for all coersive power therein yet head of the Church absolutely or head of primary direction in faith is so proper to the chief Prelate that no man upon earth besides himself hath ever so much as pretended to it and that for five reasons First becaus head of the Church absolutely intimates an universal right over the guidance of religion not in one kingdom only but all where ever that religion is And the King of France for example neither did nor can pretend to be head of the Church of England much less of Hungary Spain Africk Italy Greece Asia c. Yet such a head there must needs be to the end the Church may be one mystick body at unity in it self And that head must be unlimited to time and place as the Church it self is ever permanent and universally spread nor must the government alter as governments of particular kingdoms do Secondly head of the Church absolutely involves a primacy both of conveighing and interpreting faith and all princes in Europe received their faith at first from priests who sent for that end from their spiritual superiour converted their kingdoms but they never gave faith either to them or their pastour Thirdly he that is head of the Church absolutely must be of the same connatural condition with the whole hierarchy to confirm baptise ordain preach attone the almighty by sacrifice impose hands segregate men from their worldly state unto his own spiritual one and in a special manner to exercise those priestly functions unto which he segregates them Fourthly head of the Church absolutely is to be indifferent unto kingdoms and all sorts of government as the religion also is and keep it like it self in all places unaltered in its nature however in its general dictates it may concur to the direction and good of all people and governments And therefor he cannot be confined to one place or government but must be as it were separate and in a condition indifferent to all as a general by shop whose sole care is to heed those eradiations of faith spread up and down the world may be and is when princes heed but their own particular kingdoms and care not how religion goes in another any more then their wealth or polity Thus the sun-beams though they fall upon several soils diversly affected yet they keep their own nature unaltered by vertue of one general fountain-head of light which is indifferent to every kingdom and dispenses distributes and keeps the raies unchanged The ends and wayes of religion are quite of another nature from all worldly businesses and therfor require a particular superintendent set apart for them as indeed they ever have had since the time of religions first master who as he did educate his in order to a life eternal in a government apart being himself a man distinct from Caesar so used he to speak of religious duties as separate and differing from others Reddite saith he quae Caesaris sunt Caesari quae Dei Deo In very truth the Church and Christianity as it is a thing accidental to all worldly states so is it superinduced upon them as an influence of another rank and order unto a particular end of future bliss whereas all states do
by little and little according as themselvs increas all the whole frame of ancient religion Secondly it may be gathered by this that Christ our Lord instituted a monarchical government of his Church ruled so long as he lived by one and therfor must that government ever remain He set it up to remain For surely he did not set it up to be pulled down again Thirdly becaus there is no power on earth to change it What God has constituted man cannot undo lawfully I mean he cannot Now we have no such body of Christians in England that remain under one who is general pastour over all the Christian flock in the world or do so much as pretend it save only the few Roman Catholiks that are yet here left alive by the strange providence of that God unto whose universal Church they have still adhered notwithstanding the greatest trials that ever poor Christians were put to Neither Quaker Anabaptist or Independent Presbyterian or Prelate-Protestant do so much as pretend to any such thing but they all oppose it And as they do not pretend to belong to any general body that hath a visible head overseeing the whole flock of Christ throughout the world so neither is any of their Church-governments monarchical in their respective place if we may beleev themselvs I know our English Protestant Church was first appointed in the dayes of King Edward and Queen Elizabeth to be respectively monarchical that is to say within the precincts of this Kingdom the hierarchy ending in the Kings majesty who is doubtles the supream head and governour both of the Protestant Church and the temporal or civil state in all these his three Kingdoms But indeed and truth none of them acknowledg it For they do not any of them expect as they ought all of them to do a full decisive sentence from the Kings Majesties lips in all their controversies or doubts of faith nor will they acquiesce in his judgment which is a strange mad refractorines in our nation and contrary to our own principles The Independents last tribunal is in the light of his own breast The Presbyterian will not look beyond his Presbyteral Consistory And the Prelate-Protestant writer which I most marvel at ends all in the byshops allowing no autority power or jurisdiction to their Archbyshops but only an order and decent precedency for manners sake which in effect is wholly to dissolve the constituted frame of Church-government in this land They speak not indeed of the Kings majesty for fear I suppose of the rod God hath put into his hands But it is not hard to gather both by their words and actions what they think Whitby of late wrote a book against Dean Cressy and there he sayes expesly that an Arch-byshop hath a decent precedency but no authority and that his Grace of Canterbury hath no jurisdiction and that the Kings Majesty is not the root of Episcopal jurisdiction here in England And yet he was approved and praised even by our Protestant byshops Do they not see that à pari nay à fortiori the same be affirmed of our byshops that they have no autority and that they have but a decent precedeney over Presbyters and that they are not the root of ecclesiastical jurisdiction With what a strange blindnes are our eyes possest Nay this great Disswader an eminent man among Prelate-Protestants here teaches publickly that byshops are all supream under Christ So that this our Church-government by byshops can be no other but Aristocracy the Presbyterians a Democracy and the rest a plain Anarchy every man thinking and acting what is good in his own eyes And none of these who are all fallen from the general flock and general pastour heed unto effect any one thing that may restrain them either statutes canons laws constitutions or ought els But God blesses his true Church with a true obedience Thus I have given you Sir my reason why I think ther is and must be one general pastour over all the whole flock of Christians Pray ponder it well Brief I am in it becaus it is beyond my general design which is only to shew that Doctour Taylors Disswasive from Popery is insignificant I am now come to the testimonies your Disswader cites for himself which I told you before are above half of them impertinent and the rest if he had not fraudulently maimed them flatly against himself As for the first sort your Disswader imagining in his head that the Apostles had no superiour which is the grand falsity on which all his whole discours runs brings all those authors who either say that byshops are the successours of the Apostles or that they had received the keyes of heaven or that they are not to be contemned and the like for witnesses of his opinion as Irenaeus Cyprian Ambrose Anacletus Clemens Hieronimus Gregorius and various others All this is impertinent But the other autorities had they not been curtaild and perverted by him had openly and plainly spoken that Catholik truth which he here opposes namely that the Apostles had a superiour and that all the whole Christian flock have and ought to have one general pastour and that he ever hitherto hath sate since S. Peters death in the Roman See I know it would be worth my labour to set down all those testimonies by him here cited at large as they lye in those Catholik Fathers and Divines as apt at one and the same time to convince this his whole section of falsity and the Catholik doctrin to be no novelty as he sayes it is But becaus this is already done by the above-named Catholik Gentlemen who with a greater patience than I am master of turned over those many ancient authours I will content my self with only the first of them In the whole new testament saith your Disswader ther is no act or sign of superiority or that one apostle exercised power over another but to them whom Christ sent he in common intrusted the Church of God according to that excellent saying of S. Cyprian the other apostles are the same that S. Peter was indowed with an equal fellowship of honour and power c. This then is the excellent saying of S. Cyprian The other apostles are the same that St. Peter was indowed with an equal fellowship of honour and power And he cites it out of his epistle de unit Ecclesiae ad Novatian But did S. Cyprian either say or mean by that saying so much of it as is S. Cyprians that ther was no superiority among the apostles or that the Church of God was intrusted to them in common Nay does not S Cyprian use those words in a discours wherin he endeavours industriously to declare that there was a superiority among the Apostles in which as in a cone of unity they were all united although they were all alike in power and commission of administring Sacraments If it be so what shall we think of this Disswader and of his
much swerved from the ancient primitive practice of former Christians For Protestants have neither priests nor altars nor offerings nor sacrifice nor satisfactions nor expiations for the dead which those authorities speak of Ch. 11. from page 188. to 203. The real presence under the elements of the Eucharist Mr. Whitby here will not by any means endure And he hath one shield of a word which consists of almost as many syllables as Ajax his buckler of bulls hides to repell all autorities that may witness it Representatively that is the word Thou seest saith St. Chrisostom upon the altar the very body which the wise-men saw and worshipped Representatively saith Whitby Again The most precious thing in heaven I will shew thee upon earth saith the same father It is shewed representatively saith Whitby it is seen representatively I dare not adore the earth saith St. Augustin and yet I have learned how the earth is to be adored becaus flesh is of the earth and our Lord gave us his flesh to eat which no man eats except he first adore It is Christ saith Whitby who is adored representatively And if any words will not bear that distinction then are they all spurious Nay if any should say expresly that not only Christ in heaven but his very Sacrament is worshipped this man will tells us presently who hath as many shifts in readiness where one will not serv his turn as Achelous had to slip out of the hands of Hercules that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and adoro have other significations But he has poor man no very good memory For after he had in this one chapter spent many of his pages to show that the real presence was not the former faith of Christians and that they never adored the Eucharist he lets fall a word by chance in the very close which spoils all by giving us to understand that this was so universal a beleef and practis among Christians that it came even to the notice of Infidels and that it was withall of so great concernment amongst beleevers that it expressed their whole religion as the abridgment of their faith and great capital work of their devotion Quandoquidem Christiani adorant quod comedunt sit anima mea cum Philosophis It was the speech of Avicen saith Whitby although I think it was Averroes who well enough understood both of them the natur of Christian religion not only by what they saw themselves but what they had read from more ancient writers both Christian pagan and Mahometan up and down the world concerning the religion of Christians Since the Christians worship that which they eat saith that Infidel let my sould be with Philosophers Ch. 12. from page 203. to 218. Labours much for the general use of the Cup in all Communions But neither does Mr. Whitby nor can he distinguish as appears by his discours wherein he sayes that otherwise ther would not be a representation of Christs death which is the wisest word he speaks in all this whole chapter I say he knows not and cannot distinguish that ther is in that one Eucharistian liturgy a double action the one of sanctifying and offering to God the other of giving or communicating to the people In the sanctifying and offering of the sacred simbols does only the sacrifice which is a representation of Christs death consist But the communicating of these symbols to the people is only a consequent of the former and no formal representation of our Lords death at all But he does not know and you need not heed what he sayes The concomitance of our Lords body and blood where ever it be in any one or other of the species or symbols which may enough justifie communion in one kinde he tells you very roundly it is a figment But if he had heeded the very practis of his own Church which indeed he never does he would have forborn those words For when the Protestant minister gives the people first the bread and sayes Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee and feed upon him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving Do not the ministers words there imply a concomitance before the cup come even as perfect a concomitance as you Sir can plead for I think they do For surely they intend not to feed only upon one half of him Chap. 13. from page 218 to 230. Declares that alms-deeds and preaching of the Gospel is a sacrifice But the Eucharist he will not allow to be any true sacrifice at all Although to put by your arguments and solid reasonings for it he grants it may be called a Symbolical sacrifice And so he has caught hold of another distinction which runs quite through this matter or rather put the same distinction into other characters And if any ancient writers as ther are enough do give testimony that our Lords body and blood in the Eucharist is offered immolated and sacrificed on Christian altars by the priest for our attonement It is to be understood saith Whitby to be offered symbolically immolated symbolically sacrificed symbolically figuratively significatively representatively And though you beat his head never so much with your autorities and reasons so long as symbolically remains there you do but beat the air But where are any altars in our English Churches or any sacrifices offered or immolated theron And how comes it to pass that all these hundred years of our separation from Roman unity our people have never been told that they have priests still amongst them and altars and sacrifice although they be but symbolical ones symbolical sacrifice symbolical altars and symbolical priests For sacrifice is the very form and essence of all religion And they that know so much would have been much satisfied to hear that they have yet a sacrifice at least a symbolical sacrifice amongst them I will be bold to say that not one man of a million has ever heard of any such thing in an English pulpit or ever read it in a catechism The minister of the word and word of the minister that is all we ever hear of But it is thought perhaps that symbolical Priest would make but a jarring sound like two voices in a defective octave which have a semblance and shadow of a perfect concord but coming short of it produce the harshest and worst of discords in our ear That our Lords death upon the Cross was a true and real sacrifice to God for mankinde all Catholiks know well enough and our Ministers need not put them in minde of that which already they beleev But as the sacrifices of the old law were instituted by almighty God to be often iterated before the passion of the great Messias for a continual exercise of religion in order to his future death So did the same Lord for the very same purpos of religious exercise institute another to be iterated after his death unto which once past it was to have reference as the former had a