said not they decreed so because Laicks were not lawful judges in the controversies of Clerks but quod ipse se indignum fraterno consortio iudicat cui cum possit per Ecclesiastices judicari de universa Ecclesia male senâ—iendâ— de judicio seculari poscit auxilium because he renders himself unworthy of fraternal society who whereas he might be judged or have his case determined by Ecclesiastical judges men of his own fraternity entertains an ill opinion of the whole Church when he desires help of the secular judges I say therefore it is clear enough these Fathers believed that the secular Magistrate or judge might without sin and for what concern'd himself or his own person lawfully determine of the causes of Clerks whereas condemning Clerks who leaving their Bishop go to the lay Court or Bench they do not therefore or at all for any other reason condemn the secular judg himself admitting such Clerks nor condemn the Clerks themselves upon account of having recourse ad judices nonsuos to judges that were not their judges but on this other account onely that whereas they might be judg'd by Ecclesiasticks yet would not they did thereby render themselves unworthy of Ecclesiastical Society For it was by the laws in the power of a Clerk in controversy with an other Clerk to sue him before the Bishop or before the judg which was it these words of this canon did mean Cui enim ad eligendos judices undique patet authoritas c. And Clerks might be convented before the judg Ecclesiastical but yet so as a Laick Plaintiff was not bound to make use of the Court Ecclesiastical Which is it we read enacted also by Martianus the most Catholick Emperour some few years after the date of this Carthage Council in his law Cum Clericis 25. Cod. de Episcop Cleric where it is said that if the Actor will not convent a Clerk before the Bishop he may convent him before the Prefect of the Praetorium And yet the Fathers of Carthage had reasons enough to forbid Clerks to choose spontaneously this way of secular Iudicatories videlicet that they should not be thereby made rocks of scandal to seculars who as the manner is would from the pleas and contestations of Clerks take occasion often to fall into vile detraction of the very order of Clerks and that such as should be exemplars of charity to others should not fall into such contentions as they would not suffer to be taken up or composed amicably or peaceably and without noyse by their own Ecclesiastical brothers or superiours Which were the very genuine reasons moved the Apostle when he either commanded or advised the Corinthians 1. Cor. 6. to forbear sueing one an other in the publick Iudicatories of Heathens In imitation of which these Carthaginian Fathers themselves declare they made this canon Cum say they privatorum Christianorum causas Apostolus ad Ecclesiam deferri atque ibi determinari praecipiat But it is very certain the Apostle did not forbid the Corinthians to appear in publick Courts and before the lay Heathen Imperial Judges when summond by these judges or called before them by any other nor did either command or advise the Christians not to obey the sentence of these very Heathen judges in any temporal cause whatsoever civil or criminal Which not onely St. Thomas and Lyranus do expresly teach in their Commentaries on that passage to the Corinthians but our most eminent Cardinal himself is forced also expresly to confess in his foresaid Book against Barclay cap. 20. Therefore neither do the Fathers of Carthage forbid Clerks when so called upon to appear before and stand to the sentence of the lay Judges albeit they forbid Clerks to go of themselves freely or spontaneously to secular Iudicatories or to sue one an other in such Courts But let us examine yet more particularly what the Cardinal objects He sayes first that these Fathers openly condemn the recourse of Clerks to the judgments of secular Magistrats They do indeed but then onely when a Clerk may without any such recourse have his cause decided by an Ecclesiastijudg And in such case they condemn the contumacy of such a Clerk in relinquishing and contemning also thereby all his own brethren collegues and Fathers but in no case condemn the lay Plaintiff or Actor that draws a Clerk to the forum seculare or lay Court nor in any case at all condemn the lay Magistrat or Judg that pronounceth judgment either against or for a Clerk As for the sin or fault which Bellarmine desires to know what it should be committed by a Clerk who relinquishing his own Bishop goes freely of himself to the secular President for Justice if the President be a lawful judg of the Clerk or of his cause I have already said it was the sin of contempt of the Church and of scandal to others c. That I may pass over in silence the sin of disobedience and contumacy against this very Council whom other Clerks should observe as their Fathers and consequently their canons too as the most religious commands of their Fathers In the second place he sayes The Fathers rescind the sentence of a secular judg pronounced against or in the cause of a Clerk Nothing less But onely punish Clerks transgressing their canon and punish them onely too in wayes or by means or penalties sutable to their own jurisdiction For it is proper to the jurisdiction Ecclesiastical to judg whether a Clerk be worthy of that place he holdeth in the Church This canon therefore punisheth the disobedient Clerks but rescinds no sentence of the secular Judg. For it sayes onely thus Si pro ipso fuerit prolata sententia locum suum amittat hoc in criminali judicio If he have the sentence for him let him loose his place and this in a criminal judgment Behold how they call not in question the sentence of the Iudge nor command that it should be retracted or revised or that it should be discussed again in the Court Ecclesiastical whether the crime was justly charged or no after it was determined by the secular Court But only depose the Clerk that in contempt of this Canon made choice to be tryed and purged rather in the secular Court then in the Ecclesiastical In civili vero perdat quod evicerit si locum suum obtinere voluerit But if it be a civil action let him loose what he hath wâ—n by such a sentence if he will hold his place Is this to rescind the sentence of the secular Iudge Certainly even the most privat lay person may to his gifts or legacies add the like conditions as for example that the Legatee or Heir shall not sue before a Iudg for the legacy or inheritance Can such a private man therefore be said to have rescinded the sentence of the judg¿ If to private men it be lawful to bereave such as they think fit of the benefit of their own free
bounty how much more in reason must we not deny the Church a power to deprive such of her own favours as will not perform the conditions enjoyn'd by her for the continuance of such favours Thirdly against that which is said by Barclay and which I too have said above that this canon was made by the Fathers to restrain the giddiness and rashness of such Clergiemen as would appeal from the Church to a secular Judge after the cause had been begun to be discussed in the Church against this I say of a provision made here for such a case only of a judgment already begun in the Court Ecclesiastical and nevertheless before any judgement given transferr'd by a caprichious Clerk Bellarmine argues by objecting the Council of Milevi Concilium Melevitanum and it must be the second of Milevi under Arcadius and Honorius where it is prohibited in the ninth canon not that Clerks transfer to secular Courts a cause begun already in the Church but absolutely prohibited that by no means they go to the Emperour to demand of him secular Judges But the answer is obvious 1. That divers canons may be made by divers Councils And that it is most evident that whatever the Fathers of Milevi ordained in the case those of Carthage ordained no other then what William Barclay said and what I too have after him said without any kind of interpretation or paraprase of the Council but in the very words of the Council or Canon it self For these are the words precisely of that Canon Cum in Ecclesia ei crimen fuerit intentatum vel civilis causa fuerit commâ—ta Let any one say now for Bellarmine that ought else is decreed by the Canon then what is against such Clerks as transfer a cause already begun in the Church 2. That for that Council of Milevi albeit the Fathers prohibit in the Canon cited out of it that Clerks desire no secular judgment of the Emperour yet they prohibit not the Emperour himself to assign lay Judges to a Clerk if his Imperial Wisdom think it fit to assign such Nor even prohibit Clerks to answer if called upon by such lay Judges and obey their sentence as binding them So that both Councils that of Carthage and this of Milevi say the very same thing in this matter without any other difference but only that this of Milevi extends the prohibition further that is not only to the transferring of causes already begun before or in the presence of an Ecclesiastical Judge but even to causes not so begun For it simply or absolutely prohibits Clerks to transferr as much as in them lyes any civil or criminal cause whatsoever whether so begun or not so begun to secular Judges Where yet it is apparent there is nothing at all for the Immunity of Clerks from secular Judges being the command is only to Clerks not to demand such lay judges and no command to no restriction at all of the lay Judges to proceed ex offiâ—iâ— when the causes of Clerks are brought before them The second Council that prescribed any thing in this matter was that truly Oecumenical or General of Chalcedon for the former of Carthage though of very great authority was but a National Council of Affrick however canonized after by approbation of truly General Councils held in the year 451 under Martianus the Emperour and Pulcheria the Empress who were both present and often sate in it Wherein the ninth canon made for discipline and regulation of Church affairs or those of Clergymen was this Si quis Clericus adversus Clericum habeat negotium non derelinquat preprium Episcopum ad secularia judicia non concurrat sed prius negotium agitetur apud proprium Episcâ—pum vel certe si fuerit negotium ipsius Episcopi apud arbitros ex utraque parte electos audiatur negotium Si quis vero contra ipsius Provinciae Metropolitanum Episcopum Episcopus sive Clericus habeat controversiam pergant ad ipsius Diaecesis Primatem aut certeâ—ad Constantinopolitanae Regiae civitatis sedem ut eorum ibi negotium terminetur If any Clerk have a controversie with another Clerk let him not leave his proper Bishop nor run to secular Iudicatories But first let the matter be agitated before his proper Bishop or certainly if the controversie be with this Bishop himself let it be heard by arbiters chosen by both sides But if any Bishop or Clerk have a controversie with or against the Metrapolitan of the Province let them go to the Primate of the Diocess or certainly to the See of the Constantinopolitan Royal City that the business may be ended there And this is all this canon sayes Where it is plain enough 1. That the Fathers direct their speech to Clergiemen only prescribe a rule to them only but none at all to lay Magistrats or Iudges not even to the subordinat inferiour Iudges so little do they meddle with or ever as much as thought to meddle with the supream That although they bid Clerks not to go first to secular Iudgments yet they do not bid them not to go at last or in the next or second instance to such if they cannot agree That even to the Clerks themselves they prescribe only in such cases as a Clerk have a controversie with another Clerk but not in case a Clerk have a quarrel with a Laick or a Laick to him 2. That they declare not here enjoyn or prescribe that it was not is not of shall not be in the power of a lay Judge to determine of the causes of Clerks one against another or of that of a Clerk against a Lay-man or of a Lay-man against a Clerk when either voluntarily and by the parties themselves brought before him or when by his own authority or by due course of law or by summons from him to either or both parties they appear in his Court. So that this Canon meddles not at all with the power authority or jurisdiction of the lay Magistrates or Judges but only prescribes a rule to the Clerks themselves that themselves should not freely or voluntarily sue one another at least in prima instantia in secular Judicatories and as we may justly presume upon the same grounds and for the same ends we have before noted the Fathers of Affrick did in imitation of St. Paul or of his advice or command as you please to all Christians in general to abstain from suing one another in heathen Judicatories least otherwise they would questionless betray their religion and belye it before the haters and persecutors of it 3. That in case there were as there is not any word or matter in this canon of Chalcedon restraining any way the Jurisdiction of even inferiour lay Magistrates or Judges yet it would be to no more purpose alledged against me or against any thing I have said before in this Section concerning even the very same inferiour lay Magistrates and their Jurisdiction over Clerks in politick or temporal
multis aliis reclamabant dicentes ad Papam non pertinere Imperatorem instituero vel destituere Out of all which I think I may conclude that the Objectors themselves will if they lay aside prejudice and passion and compare all I have answered here to their objection of the opinion of two General Councils that of Lateran and that of Lyons will I say confess this allegation of theirs not only vain but absolutely false XXXI Thirdly they will find their allegations false where they say That General Councils are undervalued by some that believe only the diffusive Church is infallible I say they will particularly find this transient animadversion of theirs to be very false if they mean here the Procurator as they do undoubtedly but withal either stupidly or maliciously grounding themselves on what he hath in The Mare Ample Account pag. 60. Where indeed there is no ground at all for this calumny nor any man but a meer blockhead will say there is whatever may be said upon serious consideration of the controversie in it self about the fallibility or infallibility of General Councils debated throughly of purpose For his discourse there is no other then this That in case of such a metaphisical or morally impossible contingency as was caprichiously proposed to him by Father Bonaventure Brudin a little before one of those Franciscan Professors of Divinity at Prague in Bohemia and insisted on mightily and by way of interrogation What would the Subscribers do or think of their Remonstrance if a general Representative of the Church or a General Council truly such did hereafter condemn it His discourse I say upon this occasion as in answer to this wilde interrogatory was That in such case should it happen which yet the Procurator seemed clearly there to hold it was impossible it should happen the Subscribers would either have recourse to the diffusive Church or which is very probable suffer themselves to be mislead it being very possible said he that out of one impossibility another should follow as Logitians tell us it is certain Where it is evident he is so farr from undervaluing General Councils That according to at least some very learned Catholick Divines he rather overvalues them in seeming here to hold it absolutely impossible they should erre against any doctrine of Faith once delivered plainly in Scripture and by Tradition For that he seems to say so here if he say any thing at all of the question of either side or of the fallibility or infallibility of General Councils is most clear and manifest by or in that reason he giveth for his said disjunctive answer and for either the first or second or both parts of it it being very possible that out of one impossibility another should follow c. Where any rational man will confess he holds it impossible That a General Council truly such should define the contrary And why so but because he supposed two things 1. That the doctrine of the Remonstrance was and is a doctrine of Catholick Faith clearly delivered as such by Scripture and by Tradition 2. That it was and is impossible That a General Council truly such should define against any such doctrine or any doctrine so delivered And is not this as much as in plain terms to hold absolutely That a General Council truly such is infallible in all definitions of Faith or at least so infallible as never to define against Faith and consequently rather to overvalue than undervalue the authority of General Councils if I say we regard what some other eminent Catholick Writers teach or what in particular may be read in Franciscus à Sancta Clara's learned work of Councils that I mean which he calls Systema And any rational man will further confess That that disjunctive resolution of the Subscribers and only for such a case expressed so by the Procurator was purely conditional and the condition such too as for any thing known there of the Procurators judgment was and is absolutely impossible considering the special providence of God his promises to the Church but possible only in the fond imagination of the Proposer or of such a case which wil never be nor can ever be according to all that may be gathered out of that book or passage of the Procurators opinion For what else can his reason signifie which he gives for that disjunctive conditional answer or what these words it being very possible that out of one impossibility another should follow as Logicians tell us it is certain Which is that one impossibility that must be here the antecedent which is it I say if not this That a General Council should define the doctrine of the Remonstrance to be false and which is the other impossibility that must be the consequent if not the recourse of the Subscribers to the diffusive Church or suffering themselves to be mislead c Now therefore it is clear first that he holds both that Antecedent and this Consequent to be impossibilities for so he sayes expresly they are And next it is no less clear that he holds the Antecedent absolutely impossible upon this ground only that he also holds the doctrine of the Remonstrance to be delivered plainly by Scripture and by Tradition and withal holds it an absolute moral impossibility that a general Council truly such should define any thing against plain Scripture or Tradition For otherwise how could he call that imaginary supposition or case an impossibility or as he speaks there one impossibility There is no man of reason would say deliberatly it were impossible that a General Council should define against any controverted doctrine unless he held as well and as firmly that a General Council might not erre as he holds well and firmly either part of that controverted doctrine it self Which is so plain that it needs no further illustration being there is no other ground imaginable for maintaining or asserting an impossibility of a General Councils defining so No other ground therefore is given here by the Procurator for being taxed with undervaluing the authority of General Councils but only this conditional proposition which he confesses implied virtually in his discourse If a General Council shall define the contrary doctrine to be true such General Council will erre But that this conditional proposition which yet was forced from him by that chimaerical Interrogation doth not amount unto an assertion of any real true moral possibility of a General Councils erring himself hath further demonstrated by several unanswerable arguments in the prosecution of his said discourse or answer pag. 62. as by that of St. Paul to the Galathians chap. 1. ver 8. Though we or an Angel from heaven preach any other Gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you let him be accursed And by that of our Saviour Christ himself to the mis-believing Jews Ioh. 8.55 If I shall say that I do not know him meaning his Father I shall be like unto you a lyar 'T
answer that Affrican Synod where those Fathers reprove the injustice of Celestine's demand of such transmarine judgments in the case of Apiarius requiring it to be transmitted out of Affrick to Rome and reprove I say that injustice in these very words which you may read in the now mentiond Synodical Epistle a few lines after the former words Or how can that kind of transmarine judgment be rational or legal whereunto the persons of necessary witnesses cannot be brought because either of their sex or infirmities of old age or of many other intervening impediments But that neither within the limits of the same Province nor even where the crossing of the Sea is unnecessary the parties accused be drawn too farre from their dwelling places and so molested too much by the Judges on pretence of a judicatory Innocent the Third has enacted even in a Councel Oecomenical of the whole earth cap. Nâ—nnulli Extra de Rescriptis But all this and very many other passages to this purpose I pass over at present as I have said before I pass over likewise that exception which the Canons allow against the unsafety of the place to which the summons are the unsafety of it I say if the nature of the controversy and present circumstances be considered Especially if we call to mind what several Religious men and of several Orders too that to clear themselves from calumnies in a Controversy not altogether unlike this and being not even summond in that or any other cause whatsoever nor convicted of any kind of crime the Judges themselves confessing both did venture hence to goe and appear at Rome or Madrit have suffered in our own days in our own late memory and suffered too without so much as any kind of even the very external formality of law or canons observed towards them and suffered so too most plainly against all the laws of God and nature And if we call moreover to mind those inhumane plots contrived in forraign Countries against the very lives of some even of our secular Nobility that having been formerly engaged with us in the same controversy were after in the ruine forced to shift abroad plots layd by some of those very men that now again endeavour to embroyle all anew commixe heaven and earth put all things out of frame the second time into the most horrid confusion they can of purpose partly to asperse and be revenged of us In fine I pass over the greatest exception of all The quarrel against us and the controversy in all parts to be such as concerns the temporal rights of all supream lawful Magistrates or Governours Kings and States Kingdoms and Common-wealths that acknowledge no dependency in temporals but from God alone whether they be Christians or Pagans Orthodox or Heterodox believers And consequently such whereof the Minister general or Commissary National of St. Francis's Order is so farre wide from being judge I mean as to any effect of being able and I speake onely here of ability in point of conscience to oblige their Inferiours to determine in any part against the right of Princes or silence the truth of the Gospel of Christ in this matter chiefly where the declaration of such truth is needful amongst Sectaries that are partly for want of such declaration made to them by Catholicks known to continue their separation walke in darkness and have a most strange aversion from the Church of Rome that neither is the great and most blessed Pontiff himself alone reputed a competent much less infallible Judge in this controversy not I say reputed so even by most celebrious and most excellent Catholick Divines though earnest renowned Champions for the Roman Faith in all its tenets and latitude Which manifestly abundantly appears not onely out of the late Decree of the Theological Faculty of Paris of the 8. of May this present year 1663. and many other decisions not of that Faculty of Paris alone but of all other Vniversities of the Kingdom of France and of the Gallicane Church too in general since the horrid murthers of Henry the Third and Fourth even of National Councels of the Bishops of the same Church against the several attempts of Boniface the Eight and Julius the Second but also out of the carriadge books actions of the Divines and Prelats of the Venetian Republick and Church against Paul the Fift in the year 1606. out of the sense and sentence of the Archbishops Bishops and Abbots of the Catholick Church of England in the Raigns of Edward the Third and Richard the Second above 300. years since Gregory the Eleventh and Martin the Fift strugling to the contrary but to no purpose as you may read even in Polydore Virgil in his life of Edward the Third out of the German Italian and other Churches truly Orthodox of several Nations of Europe their Prelats and Clergie who adhered to the Roman Emperours where the temporal rights were concernd against Gregory the Seventh and some other great Bishops of the Roman Sea lastly and yet more particularly our of our own William Occam in the cause of Lewis of Bauier and out of Iâ—â—nnes Parisiensis Gerson Major Almain Cardinal Cusan c. most famous writers and Doctors too both Catholick and Classick nay if any credit be given to Aventinus in his Seventh book of his Boiarian Annals where he relates the Decree of the foresaid Emperour Lewis of Bauier out of that General and celebrated Chapter of the whole very Order of St. Francis held at Perusia in Italy or out I mean of the famous Appeal they all that is their General Provincials and Doctors of Divinity made therein from Iohn the two and twentieth Pope of that name to a future Oecumenical Council of Christendom although I do not deny but the most immediate occasion of their appearing so as is related in that History against the Pope and appealing from him was his condemning the Franciscans for teaching That neither Christ nor his Apostles had any temporal right or property in earthly goods but onely simplicem usum facti Whom therefore in shew but really for an other cause that is for their siding against him with the Emperour and maintaining by their pens and Sermons the Emperours temporal rights he tearmed foolish animals pernicious foxes that by a seeming strictness of religion and hypocrisy abused the world and seduced the people having first set forth those Extravagants which you may read in the Canon law against the Order it self All which I say and very much more of this kind I pass over at present Nor least I exceed the measure of an epistle do I at this time alledge either those other arguments derived from the intrinsick nature or as they speak commonly from the very bowels of the cause it self or those which may be brought from or out of Canonical Scriptures or the monuments of holy Fathers who in a continual succession for nine hundred years compleat nay till the eleventh age of Christianity delivered
justice or such dispensation may be given without manifest injury to a third and besides where it is not repugnant to the law of God positive or natural And all this binding and loosing power in the Pope even in the whole Execution of it according to the Canons of the Vniversal Church and as farre as these Canons allow it as it is and will be religiously acknowledged and observed still by the Subscribers in all occasions so it is left wholly untouch'd unspoken of unmedled with but supposed still by the Remonstrance as a most Sacred Right not to be controverted much less denyed the Pope by any Catholick nor even to other Bishops of the Church for the portion belonging to them by the self same Canons But what hath this to do with the Lovain pretence of a power in the Pope to bind people by the Popes own peculiar laws Canons precepts or censures by Bulls or otherwise to do that which according to plain Scriptures practise of the primitive Church and Churches following for XI entire ages and according to the interpretation or sense delivered by Holy Fathers of those very Scriptures and according to the very first and clearest reflections also of natural reason must be vitious wicked and even most enormously wicked transgressions of those laws of God wherein neither Pope nor Vniversal Church have any power to dispense what to do with a pretended power in any to absolve from Subjection or command the Rebellion of Subjects against Soveraign Princes who are accountable to none for their temporals but to God Or what to do with binding or loosing to the prejudice and manifest injury not of one third person alone but of so many millions of third persons as there are people in a Kingdom or State This loosing is not of sin or of the penalties of sin but of virtue of Christian duties and divine injunctions Nor is such binding a binding to Holy righteousness but to Horrible depravedness And therefore both such binding and such loosing must be from no true power Divine or Humane from no Gospel of Jesus Christ or Canons of the Catholick Church nor from those Holy Keyes of knowledge or jurisdiction given St. Peter to open Heaven to penitents or shut it to impenitents nor from any Keyes at all but very false and errant Keyes if not right or true Keyes in this sense and to this purpose only that they set open the Gates of Hell first to receive all such unhappy Soules as make use of them and then to lock them in for ever Yet now that the Pope is and while he is or shall be continued a Soveraign temporal Prince in some part of Italy for the time hath been for many ages of Christianity even since Christian Religion was by law established when the Pope had no such not only Soveraign or supream but not even any inferiour subordinate temporal Princely power and may be so again for ought any man knows the Subscribers will freely grant the Lovain Divines That upon just grounds when truely such are or shall be the Pope may in the capacity of a temporal Prince but not of a Christian Bishop and may I say without any breach of the law of God declare and make Warr against the King of England always provided that he observe in all particulars what the law of God Nations and Nature require from him in the declaration or prosecution thereof And may do so with as much right as any other Soveraign Prince meerly temporal can but with no more certainly And further that the grounds of warr may possibly or in some extraordinary case be such on the Popes side as not only in the unerrable judgement of God but in the opinion of all men that shall know the grounds of both sides truely and sincerely stated the Warr may be just on the Popes side and unjust on the Kings The Subscribers do freely grant the Lovain Divines all this and all the advantages they can derive hence But what then must it follow that the subscribers have therefore sacrilegiously or against the sincerity of Catholick Religion declared in general or promised in their Remonstrance that they are ready to stand by the King and loose their lives in defence of his Person Rights or Crown or of his Kingdom State and people against all invaders whatsoever Papal or Princely spiritual or temporal c. forraign or domestick Or must this follow albeit we grant also the said promise or Declaration of standing so by the King to extend it self to or comprehend that very extraordinary case or contingency of our certain evident knowledg of the injustice of the Warr on the Kings side and clear Justice on the Popes Certainly neither the one nor other follows For albeit the case or supposition be rather metaphysically then morally possible that the generality of Subjects of either of the Princes or States in Warr together may evidently know or certainly assure themselves of the cleer Justice of the affailants fide at least so as to have no such kind of probability of any Justice on the defendants part and forasmuch as he is a Defendant yet admitting the case were morally possible who knows not that natural reason tells us and Divines and Lawyers teach that however the Prince both rashly and unjustly brings a Warr on himself and people yet both he and they are bound to hazard their lives each for others mutual defence that is for the defence of the Crown Kingdom State and Republick and for the lives liberties goods and fortunes of all that compose it though not for defence of any rashness or injustice So that although it be granted that both Prince and people are to quit all kind of unjust pretences yet their own natural defence or that of their goods lives and liberties as it comes not under that notion so it is unseparable from their taking armes in their own mutual defence in a meere defensive Warr or even that which happens after to be offensive before a good or Just peace can be obtained and is so I mean unseparable notwithstanding any injustice whatsoever done at first by Prince or people that brought the Warr upon themselves Be it therefore so that the Pope in such temporal capacity would make Warr on the King of England and be it granted for the present what otherwise in it self is very doubtful at least if not manifestly false That for the only unjust laws or only unjust execution of such or only other misgovernment or oppressions whatsoever of one King or Prince of his own proper natural undoubted Subjects without any injury done thereby to forraigners or any other forraign Kings Subjects or Prince or State such forraign Monarch or Common-wealth may justly declare and make Warr against him as for example the French or Spanish King and by the same reason the Pope also in his said temporal capacity against the King of England and be it clear and evident likewise that the
or body at pleasure according to the end this rational commandress hath prefixed to her self and on the other side we see that the flesh hath no empire no command over the spirit nor can direct or judge or restrain it in any thing Ergo sayes Bellarmine a paritate it must follow or be That in the same wise the Ecclesiastical power which is spiritual and therefore naturally superiour to the secular may when it is necessary direct judge and restrain or use coercion towards the civil power but never be it self directed judged or restrained by the secular Third argument thus As well in holy Scripture and other writings of holy Fathers as by the common custom of Christians Priests are adorned with the names or titles of Fathers and Pastors But nature teacheth that children are bound to obey their parents and willingly abide correction from them but never to think that they on the other side may themselves command correct or judge their parents And much more doth the same nature teach that sheep are directed and govern'd by their Pastours and when they straye are by the whistle or stick of their Pastors reduced again into their right way and pasture Which is so true that it would be plainly against nature that a sheep should direct or govern her Pastour Fourth argument thus Ecclesiastical persons are the Ministers of God consecrated for his onely service and for this very purpose offered by all the people to God Whence it is that they are called Clerici or Clerks from the greek word Cleros that signifies a lot as if by that name of theirs it were given us to understand that they belong specially to the lot of our Lord Which St. Hierom teacheth in his Epistle to Nepotianus But certainly in such things as are offered and consecrated to God and so in some wise made as if they were the property or peculiar of God no secular Princes can have any right Which both the light of reason doth shew and God himself delivers not obscurely in holy Scripture where he sayes in the last of Leviticus Quicquid semel Deo fuerit consecratum sanctum sanctorum erit Domino Fift and last argument thus God hath not seldom punished miraculously the prophaners of Churches and such as presumed to violate the immunities or privileges granted to sacred places Whereof much may be read with Tilmannus Bredenbachius l. 5. sacrarum collationum But that is a very notable testimony which is read of Basilius Porphyrogenitus Emperour of the Greek apud Balsamonem in Nomōca-none Photij in commentario canonis primi Synodi Constantinopolitanae primae secundae quam nos Latini Octavam appellamus For the said Basilius attributs the cause of the calamities of those days to a certain law made by his predecessour Nicephoras Phocas against the liberty of the Church Ex quo inquit lex ista robur habuit nihil boni penitus in hodiernum usque diem vitae nostrae contigit sed potius ê contrario nullum omninò genus calamitatis defuit From the time sayes Basilius that law of Nicepherus was observed no kind of good fortune happened in our life but rather on the contrary no sort of calamity was wanting And therefore this Emperour Basilius did with much reason abrogat wholly that law And these are the five arguments of Bellarmine The first grounded on his pretended custom of all Nations second on his similitude betwixt the Ecclesiastical power and lay and that of the soul and body third on the titles or names of Father and children and sheepheards and sheep fourth on the title or name of Clerks derived from the greek word Cleros and on the signification thereof and the fift on signs and prodigies as he speaks or calamities which pursued the infringers of Ecclesiastical Immunity liberty or Exemption And these arguments I have given all of them as neer as I could in his own words and form that the Reader may the more clearly judge of my answers and of the controversy in it self for what concerns my present purpose in this Section which is onely as I have often advertised the Exemption or not exemption rather by the law divine natural or law of nations of the persons of Clergiemen from the supream lay civil and coercive power in criminal causes And consequently also judge whether I wrong this most eminent Cardinal if I say as I do say That he hath by his doctrine here or in and as to this particular of such exemption and of such laws extreamly abused his Readers and not his Readers onely but his Religion and reason and Layety and Clergie and Church and State and even all mankind And that for this he pretends a custom of all Nations which never hath been yet of as much as any one Nation in the world both holy and prophane Scriptures neither of which have one word to the purpose a similitude that is lame titles or names latin and greek that to conclude his purpose are no less vain and finally the justice of God and saying of an Emperour that never executed nor this at all pronounced in our present case or dispute LXVII For and for what concerns his first argument and I mean still as he intends it to conclude not some kind of exemption Immunity or priviledge either local or personal given to Churches or Churchmen but even that plenary Exemption of his own or which he pretends of all their lands goods houses and persons too and in all kind of causes spiritual and temporal civil criminal mixt and this also not from the inferiour lay or civil Judges onely but also from all the very supreamest civil both directive and coercive powers on earth it is plain enough That his Assumption or Antecedent is false because he hath not yet nor any other can for him hereafter instance as much as any one single Nation in the world wherein they ever yet had or have at present such Exemption That for all those nations known to us we see dayly the quite contrary both taught and practised amongst them in relation to the supream civil power and as well to the persons of Clergiemen in some cases for what concerns judgement and punishment as to their goods and lands for that of taxes when the Commonwealth is necessitated to laye taxes on them That not one of those places he quotes either out of holy Scripture or other books or Histories prove that Antecedent of his or his Allegation of the custom of all nations in the point or even which is less of any one nation Though if he did or could prove it for some one nation yet he could not therefore be thought to have said any thing for the proof of that antecedent or of his grand position unless he did withal instance it generally That therefore likely it was that he onely quoted the books and chapters without giving the words or contents of those books or chapters whereby the Reader might be
there by Theodâ—sius and Valentinian signifie no more but an unlawfulness of or by their own human civil Emperial laws and where or in such cases onely as by these laws it was unlawful to subject Ecclesiasticks to the judgment of temporal powers And that these other words temporalium pâ—testatum arbitri as there and as per materiam subjectam restrained have relation solely to and onely import or signifie such temporal powers as all inferiour Magistrats are but in no wise the supream of the Emperours themselves Being so that those Emperours themselves Theodosius and Valentinian by this or any other law nor any other Emperour before them had ever granted such a priviledg to any Clerk or Church as to be wholy exempt from their own proper supream civil and imperial power Nay how farre Clerks were under the Empire of this very Valentinian from such an imaginary priviledg or Exemption from the supream imperial power may be learned out of his welfth law eod tit Novel Valentiniani De Episcopali Judicio diversorum saepe cansatio est Ne ulterius quaerela procedat necesse est praesenti lege sanari Itaque cum inter Clericos jurgium vertitur ipsis litigatoribus convenit habeat Episcapus licentiam judicaâ—di praeeunte tamen uinculo compromissi Quod laicis si consentiant authoritas nostra permittit Aliter eos Iudices esse non patimur nifi â—â—â—â—tas juâ—gantium interposita sicut dictum est conditione praecedat Quoniam constat Episcopos praesbyteâ—os fâ—rum legibus non habere nec de aliis causis secundum Arcadii Honorii Divalia constituta quae Theodosianum Corpus ostendit praeter Religionem posse cognoscere Si ambo ejusdem officii litigatores nolint vel alteruter agant publicis legibus jure communi Sin vero Petitor laicus seu in civili seu criminali causa cujuslibet loci Clericum adversarium suum si id magis eligat per authoritatem legitimam in publico judicio respondere compellat Quam formam etiam circa Episcoporum personam observari oportere censemus c. Where it is plain this Emperour acknowledges no judicial power in Bishops not even over their own very Clerks at variance amongst themselves either in criminal or civil causes nor as much as permits licences or suffers any such judicial power in the Bishop over Clerks but onely when it shall please the Clerks themselves to fix on him and besides shall make a compromise to stand to his judgment quâ—niam constat Episcopos Praesbyteros forum legibus non habere c because sayes that law sayes Valentinian who made that law it is manifest that by the laws Bishops and Priests have no judicatory nor according to the divine constitutions of Arcadius and Honrius can take cognizance of any other causes but of those of Religion And therefore decrees that if the parties at variance being both of the same profession refuse Episcopal audience that is the Bishops judgment or if either of them refuse it they are in such case to try their quarrel by the publick and common laws And further decrees that if the Plantiff being a lay person whatever the cause be against a Clerk civil or criminal shall rather choose this way of publick judgment acccording to the laws that then such Clerk be forced by lawful authority to answer And yet further particularly decrees the same form or method to be observed concerning the persons of Bishops To this law of Valentinian may be added an other long after of those other no less Orthodox Emperours Leo and Anthemius L. omnes 33. c. de Episc Cleric omnes qui ubique sunt vel posthae fuerint Orthodoxae Fidei sacerdotes Clerici cujus cumque gradus fint Monachi quoque in causis civilibus ex nullius penitus majoris minorisve sententia Iudicis commonitoria ad extranea judicia pertrahantur aut Provinciam aut locum aut Regionem quam habitant exire cagantur nullus eorum Ecclesias vel Monasteria propria quae Religionis intuitu habitant relinquere miserabili necessitate jubeatur sed apud suos Iudices ordinarios id est Provinciarum Rectores in quibus locis degunt Ecâ—lesiarum ministeriis obsecundent omniumque contra se agentium excipiant actiones Let not any whoever at present are or hereafter shall be Priests of the Orthodox Faith or Clerks of whatever degree or even Monks be at the pleasure or by a monitory sentence of any greater or lesser Iudg drawn to forraign Iudicatories or forced out of the Province place or Region where they dwell Let none of them be commanded by miserable necessity to relinquish the Churches or Monasteries which for Religions sake they inhabit but in such places as they inhabit in the Ministery of Churches let them before their own ordinary Iudges that is the Rectours of Provinces receive the actions of all such as act against them See Clerks of all degrees whatsoever not subjected to Emperours onely but to the Rectors of Provinces who also are in this law said to be their ordinary Iudges Now whereas the priviledges of Clerks are not read to have been any way lessened or recalled by any laws of former pious Emperours from the times of Theodosius and Valentinian until that of this very Leo and Anthemius but rather by little and little daily enlarged by new indulgences or exemptions given to the Church and notwithstanding such daily enlargement the Rectors of the Provinces were yet under the same Leo and Anthemius the ordinary Iudges of Clerks it is sufficiently evicted that those words before in the foresaid law of Theodosius and Valentinian fas enim non est ut divini muneris Ministri temporalium potestatum subdantur arbitrio were spoke or writ in that same sense we have said already whereas I say the Emperors then held it fas or lawful for themselves to encrease the priviledges of Clerks and also at their own pleasure or when they held it fit to leave them to the common law And who sees not further yet that Bellarmine concludes out of Iustinians 83. Novel quite contrary to the express letter of that very Novel Iustinian there expresly orders That as to such Clerks as should be convened in criminal causes at Constantinople where himself lived and the Imperial Court was then the Iudges there should determine the matter but as to other Clerks that lived in the Provinces abroad the President or Judges of those Provinces Si de criminibus conveniantur siquidem civilibus that is if the crimes of Clerks were civil or lay crimes crimina laica and not pure crimes of Religion or Faith hic quidem nempe Constantinopâ—li competentes Iudices in Provinciis autem earum praesides sive Iudices How then may Bellarmine conclude out of this Novel that Politick or lay and meerly civil even subordinate Judges such as questionless the Presidents and Judges of Provinces were under Iustinian could not Judge Clerks in
ancient and where according to our own very common doctrine in Schools they give no sufficient ground at all to derive such unreasonable conclusions from their decrees nor ever I am confident as much as once imagined any would be so extravagant as to derive such Fourthly That although we admitted as we neither do nor can that the Fathers of Agde in the second part of this canon and by these words sed si pulsatus fuerit non respondeat nec proponat nec audeat criminale negotium in judicio seculari proponere were intended absolutely and generally to forbid their own Clerks in any case to answer in the publick lay Courts and in criminal causes notwithstanding the Judges themselves should expresly and particularly summon and command them to appear and answer yet nothing could be concluded hence against either of my above affirmations First nothing to prove as I will presently shew that which indeed is the only thing to be proved against my main or rather only purpose that is nothing to prove that the Fathers therefore intended that Clerks should not appear and answer if by the supream secular Judge himself or by a warrant come immediatly from the King himself or from his special Delegate in such a matter they were commanded to appear and answer before him Secondly nor any thing to prove that by the pure and sole authority of the Church or of any Councils or Bishops Cergiemen were warranted as much as in point of conscience not to appear and answer even before the subordinat inferiour lay Judges Nor thirdly yet any thing at all to prove that these Fathers of Agde or other Council declared by that other canon that Clerks were generally in all Countreys and in all causes or all matters even the most criminal and horrid soever at that time which was indeed before Iustinians time exempt as much as by the civil authority of Emperours or even of other Kings from all inferiour lay Judicatories and so exempt that if in any case these inferiour Judges themselves did ex officio proceed against them yet they were not bound to answer or obey or observe their judgement or that if those same inferiour Judges gave sentence for or against them in any temporal cause whatsoever or in any cause not purely spiritual such sentence would not hold when pronounc'd according to the civil or municipal either Imperial or Royal Laws inforce in the respective Countreys Such forbidding of their own Clerks might have been grounded on a particular custom introduced by the people in that Province of Guien and by the consent or permission or connivence or tacit approbation of the former civil Magistrats themselves or of King Alaricus himself or his Predecessors And in such case the Bishops there might have justly forbid their own Clerks to appear even at the summons of inferiour lay Iudges because the peculiar civil custom of that place not any spiritual power or canons of their own did so priviledg them albeit in all the rest of the world where the imperial written laws were still in force and strict observance no law or custom did so priviledge them or other Clerks at that time which was before Iustinians time and his law Novel 83. not to appear before the subordinat Magistrats or civil Iudges when summoned by them in a criminal cause nor priviledge the Bishops at all for holding coercive Courts either in civil or criminal causes but only by consent of both parties in difference And that it was introduced so or that such custom had been so in Guien and that only pursuant to the humane civil right or priviledge or exemption derived only from such custom and to maintain it until it had been legally revoked again by the supream civil power the Fathers of Agde made that canon or second part of it we have all the reasons to perswade us which perswade us also and clearly convince us that Ecclesiasticks are by the law of God as well as Laicks under the coercion of the lawful supream lay Magistrate and of his inferiour lay Iudges too if not or where not particularly exempted by him and those reasons besides which tell us we must have that reverence to all such Catholick ancient Fathers and especially in Council together as those of Agde are confessed to have been St. Cesarius the Archbishop of Arles and Primate of all France having been their President and so venerable an opinion of them as not to fix or give such a sense or interpretation to any of their canons however only canons of Discipline as would argue the canon-makers of ignorance or rashness or of any perversness at all or even such their canons of containing any thing either formally virtually or consequentially against the only infallible divine canons of the law of God and I mean still not to give or fix such interpretation to such canons where we can choose that is where the words are not so specifical and particular as to require it Now it is plain enough the words above-rehearsed are not so specifical or so particular as to require a contrary interpretation to that of them I have given here And yet that it was so or that in pursuance and by virtue of such a peculiar custom only of that Province or that little Kingdom there of Guien and of the supream civil Magistrats pleasure permission approbation and consent the Fathers of Agde made this canon or second part of it forbidding Clerks to answer in a criminal cause before lay Judges to wit before inferiour lay Judges we have secondly a sufficient other argument out of the first part of the same canon or out of the sense and natural consequences of it if compared with the practice of the Christian world in all other parts both at that time and at this For the first part being that no Clerk shall presume to sue a lay man before a lay Iudge without the Bishops licence and this importing as much as that an Ecclesiastical Plaintiff shall not without his Bishops leave conveâ—e a lay Defendent before his own proper lay Judge even I say in a meer lay cause or crime and this consequently being against the general rule Quâ—d Actor sequitur Forum Dei it is plain enough that if any will maintain those Fathers intended else here then only to prescribe to Clerks the first peaceable way they should take for righting themselves by letting the Bishop know the wrong done them to the end he might call the lay pretended injurer and try whether he could induce him fairly or by fatherly admonitions if first he had found a real injury done by him to the Clerk which also was christianly ordained as a rule by the Council of Tribur can 20. a German Council of two and twenty Bishops held in the year 895 under Arnulphus the Emperour and indistinctly ordained by this Council for lay men also to observe in case they pretended injuries done themselves by any Clerks I say it
tale aliquid sive ex scripto sive ex non scripto praesumpserit imperare post cinguli privationem XX. librarum auri poenam exolvere jubemus Ecclesiae cujus Episcopus produci aut exhiberi jussus est executorem similiter post cinguli privationem verberibus subdendum et in exilium deportandum Item post multa si autem a Clerico aut Laico quccumque aditio contra Episcopum fiat propter quamlibet causam apud sanctissimum ejus metropolitanum secundum sanctas regulas et nostras leges causa judicetur Et si quis judicatis contradixerit ad beatissimum Archiepiscopum Patriarcham Diocesees illius referatur causa et ille secundam canones leges huic praebeat finem Finally but yet moreover after quoting the law of Gratianus Valentinianus and Theodosius out of the Code l. VII titu XLVII constit III. in the point of nullity of a sentence when pronounced a non suo Iudice and the laws of Arcadius Honorius C. l. IX titu I. censtit XX. in the point of accusation made by Servants or Slaves except only the case of treason or crime against Majesty and the judgment of Modestinus the Lawyer ad legem Iuliam Majestatis l. Famosi lib. Pandectarum XLVIII in the point of credit not to be given to such accusers even in such a crime if the life or esteem of the accused was not such before as might render him suspected and another Novel Constitution as he calls it which is Authent de testib Parag. Et hic vero in the point of not condemning any by or for testmonies of witnesses to near which he was not called and of not receiving the testimonies of vile persons sine corporali discussione as he begun with and proceeded all along only out of the civil laws so he concludes at last that whole epistle out of the same civil laws tit XLIV lib. Câ—diâ—is in the point of giving sentence in writing quia scriptis debuit judicaâ—i Nam ibi inter alia dicitur atque praecipitur ut sententia quae sine scripto dicta fuerit ne nomen quidem sententiae mereatur sayes Gregory putting a final perclose to this 54 epistle ad Joan. Defensor l. XI Registri And this being the whole tenour as to the substance of that letter of St. Gregory and not as much as any one Canon at all as much as related unto by him therein from the first word to the last but only those canons in general which concern the order of Appeals in a Bishops cause not in that of other Clerks from the Metrapolitan to the Patriarch and yet these Canons too related unto here not by Gregory but by Leo Augustus himself and this also according to former civil laws of other Emperours and with so many exceptions still particularly for the cases of treason against Majesty and of a special warrant from the Prince himself to a lay subordinat Judge who sees not that Bellarmine had no kind of ground in this Epistle to abuse his Reader with quoting it as containing some argument to prove that although the civil law or Novels of Iustinian did not generally exempt Clerks in criminal causes from all publick or civil Judicatories yet the canon law did exempt them so or in such causes from all such Tribunals even the very supream But as for that other proposition which to compleat his second argument he assumes as a maxime That the civil law must yield to the canon law and for that also which to prove this maxime he further sayes That the Pope may command the Emperour especially in such matters as concern the Church which say at present of each a part and both together and of this manner of arguing is that in all I see nothing alledged or proved I mean to his purpose here but ignotum per ignotius and that my following Sections will further shew that in his sense or as applyed to his purpose or at least is necessarily inferring his Thesis or grand proposition or assertion of his Ecclesiastial Immunity both maxime and proof are absolutely false and yet and moreover consequently that his ratiocination or discourse composed of both is nothing else too but falsum per falsius However because neither the truth or probability as neither the untruth or improbability of any thing before said by me in this present Section depends of the truth or falsity of either that maxime or that other proposition assumed to make good that maxime being the dispute hitherto hath not been whether the Church could heretofore make or hereafter can make such canons as Bellarmine would have for such exemption or consequently whether in such case the civil laws being contrary must and ought to yield and be corrected by the canons or whether in such case too that maxime and proposition assumed to prove it might not be alledged and ought not to be admitted as out of controversie but the dispute hitherto in this Section having only been of the fact of the Church not of the power that is having been whether indeed she hath either justly or unjustly right or wrong validly or invalidly made at any time already or heretofore until this very present any such canon and because I perswade my self that I have sufficiently enough and very clearly too solved all that ever Bellarmine alledg'd either in his great work of Controversies and even in the very last edition of that great work or in his little book writ after of purpose by him De Potestate Temporali Papae adversus Gulielmum Barclaium for any such canon hitherto made I will now finally conclude that wherewith I begun this Section which is that neither by the Canons of the Church there hath ever been yet any such exemption as Bellarmine pretends or his Schollars in this the Divines of Lovaine of any Clerks whatsoever Priests Bishops Archbishops Patriarchs c. from the supream civil temporal or lay power or Magistrats under which or whom they live And I conclude also my two several Affirmations immediatly following that Assertion and given or made there so immediatly as further illustrations of my meaning And to this conclusion add only here That I have taken so much pains in examining the canons alledg'd by our great Cardinal not indeed out of any purpose desire or inclination to exagitat the priviledges of Clergiemen or that I do at all or would envy them such priviledges or endeavour to lessen the reverence or esteem due or the honours or favours done or bestowed on their sacred functions and persons which any one may easily believe that knows me to be one of them my self through Gods mercy and favour to me how otherwise undeservedly soever But that next to that of speaking all necessary truths as it becomes a man of my profession in defence also of this so certain and christian truth of Clergiemens not being exempt from the supream secular civil Power as likewise of so many
against his will that he was as yet then a Novice in the Faith and that he â—â—mitted the matter to the Roman Pontiff I say this excuse is wholly vain For first who could constrain him next he was no late Convert and the matter of usurping jurisdiction over the Church was so great notable extraordinary among Christians and of such important consequence too that t is impossible he should not be instructed in it and especially in such an instance of it though he had till then been a meer Novice or even Catechumen And in the last place who sees not it is one thing to acknowledge himself an incompetent Judge and remit the parties to their own proper Judges and an other to assign and delegat Judges to the parties which Constantine did Nor was he reprehended herein or instructed either by those three French Bishops or by Melchiades himself not even although it was known that he was most pious and most ready both to heare and obey all divine instructions Nay so farre were these French Bishops was Melchiades himself from any such exception that in pursuance of this Commission or delegation from and by Constantine a Council was gathered together at Rome to the end this troublesome cause of Caecilian and the Donatist Bishops might be the more throughly and fully discussed Optatus l. 1. wherein yet onely they did sit as Judges who were so delegated by Constantine Melchiades Maternus Rhetitius and Marinus who also the matter having been heard and examined from first to last absolved Caecilianus and condemned the Donatists Augustinus in Brevic. coll di 3. c. 22. Nay Augustine insinuats no less then that the sole judgement of Melchiades had he undertaken any such himself alone in this controversie as it was then had been usurped or had been so if he had without the Emperour 's special delegation presumed to determine it but together with those other his French Collegues For Augustine treating of the pertinacy of the Donatists in their refusing to yeeld to so many former Judgements which absolved Caecilian and labouring to clear those former judgements from all opposition he objects to himself in behalf of the Donatists epist 162. thus An forte non debuit Romanae Ecclesiae Melchiades Episcopus cum collegis transmarinis Episcopis illud sibi usurpare juditium quod ab Afris septuaginta ubi primus Tifigitanus praesedit fuerat terminatum To this what doth Augustine answer Certainly he does not denye that such judgement of Melchiades might be justly thought in the case to be usurped but excuses the judgement of Melchiades which really de facto was not that which onely might be falsely supposed or bruted to have been and defends it that so was truly by saying again thus Quid quod nec ipse usurpavit Rogatus quippe Imperator judices misit Episcopos qui cum eo viderent de tota illa causa quod justum videretur statuerent Hoc probamus Donatistarum precibus verbis ipsius Imperatoris So c. So Augustine above or in the foresaid epistle The appeall of the Donatists to the Emperour himself doth follow upon and against the foresaid judgement of the Bishops at Rome Optatus l. 1. cont Parm. And what doth Constantine then t is true he breaks out into this no less just then admiring exclamation O rabida furoris audacia sicut in causis Gentilium fieri solet appellationem interposuerant Yet this imports not signifies not by any means that Constantine abominats the ignorance of the Appellants for having or as if they had against any divine or humane rule or canon had recourse to a laye tribunal For had it been so or had this been the motive of his exclamation he had dismissed them and remitted them back again to their own proper Episcopal Judges which yet he did not but admitted their appeal Therefore this exclamation of Constantine imports no more but his great wonder at the too great obstinacy of these Donatist Appellants and their too much want of Christian humility resignation simplicity and even of their too much want also of either peace or charity that they in professing themselves to be Christian Priests and Bishops would never leave of persecuting an other Bishop not acquiesce at all in such manifold Judgements of even stranger Bishops who sate so numerously on the cause both in Affrick and Europe but would rather as contentiously as even the meerest Gentils in the world by all the most odious and tedious advantages of secular laws and in so improbable a cause and even by such an appeal from the Emperours such Delegats continue then inveterat malice against an other Christian Bishop But however this be or whatever moved Constantine to this exclamation the matter of fact which followed cannot be denyed For sure enough it is that Constantine admitted this Appeal and not onely admitted it but would have it and had it discussed in an other Council of Bishops which he summond and convened at Orleance in France wherein too himself would be and was present to heare and see this cause again discussed and the late judgement thereupon of Melchiades the Roman Bishop and of the other three Delegats reviewed Euseb l. x. c. 5. Aug. epist 68. This admission of the appeal and this reexamination by Constantine and by his Councel of Orleance seems very harsh to Baronius tom 3. an 314. n. 35. And therefore sayes that Constantine was drawn against his will to admit so unjust an Appeal from the judgement or sentence of the great Pontiff But to that of being drawn against his will we have said before enough or that there was none could force him And for the fact in it self that is for his admission I am sure Augustine never once reprehends it how reprehensible soever the Appeal was in it self or on the behalf of the Appellants Nor did any other of the Bishops of those times reprehend Constantine's said admission of it But if Constantine however against his own will or rather inclination did so any way tyrannically or by usurpation extend his imperial power to Ecclesiastical matters or to such matters of the Church as by the law of God were out or beyond the proper sphere of his lay or civil power why were the Roman Pontiff silent Why did not Caecilianus except and not obey as he did Why so many other Bishops of greatest name and fame gathered together and celebrating great Councils and sitting as Judges to obey the command of Constantine Therefore it must follow that all the Bishops then were meer stupid brutes or certainly that Constantine was so a most cruel raging tyrant and trampler underâ—oot of all the liberties of the Church that they dared not gainsay him And whereas neither can be said that we allow Constantine to be a competent Judge of those affairs which are properly and strictly Ecclesiastical that is spiritual at least in such as are meer questions of right or of the spiritual doctrine
opinion or rather certain and true judgment of such a power in the Emperour as properly and essentially belonging to his Imperial office it was that the orthodox Bishops of Syria writ also to the same Emperour Leo for punishing by his own Imperial power according to the laws of the civil Commonwealth Timotheus Elucus Bishop or Patriarch of Alexandria as by the same laws and against both the same laws and Princes too being guilty of various crimes but in particular of adultery and murder De delictis autem say they post Câ—ncil Chalced. praesumptionibus quas nefandê commisit Reipublicae legibus corum praesulibus judicio competenti subdetur Where you see a meer secular judgment called or said to be a competent judgment of criminal Bishops And indeed that the banishment of the said Timotheus which soon after followed by the decree of this Emperour Liberat. Brevi c. 13. proceeded onely from his own proper Imperial power not from any Church power or from any commission or delegation from the Church we may gather sufficiently out of the 100. epist of the above S. Leo the Pope wherein he writes thus to Gennadius Dilectio tua eniti elaborare debit ne redeundi integram capiat libertatem de quo jam Edictis suis Princeps Christianissimus judicavit Finally pursuant to the same knowledg of the Imperial power and authority from God for judging and sentencing the criminal causes and inflicting corporal punishments in such criminal causes and on such Clergymen as were found guilty Pope Simplicius epist 9. 11. beseecheth the Emperour Zeno Vt quod per nos sayes he Ecclesia seriò postulat imô quod ipsi specialiùs supplicamus Petrum Alexandrinae Ecclesiae pervasorem ad exteriora transferri piissima praeceptione jubeatis But to leave this judgment of Popes or other Bishops of the power and authority Royal in the case which Judgment as such of the power is not the proper and primary subject of this section or at least of this part of it and to return to matter of fact onely and this of the Princes themselves acting by particular Instances The next Prince I offer to the Readers consideration is Theodoricus King of Italy For this Prince albeit an Arrian as to his beleef of the Trinity of persons or Divinity of Jesus Christ yet in all other points of Christian religion and in his veneration and observance of the Church and Churchmen and of their priviledges and exemptions in general and this without any distinction of Arrians or not Arrians he was precise wary and strict enough nor is there any reprehension or complaint of him in History as not being so And yet he is recorded to have admitted of and discussed the accusations drawn and presented to him by the very Catholicks themselves both Layety and Clergye against Pope Symmachus Of which matter Anastasius Bibliothecarius writes thus in Symmacho Post annos vero quattuor aliqui ex clero zelo ducti aliqui ex Senatu maximè Festus Prâ—binus insimulaverunt Symmachum subornarunt falsos testes quos miserunt Ravennam ad Regem Theodoricum accusantes beatum Symmachum occultè revocarunt Laurentium post libellum Romae factum fecerunt Schysma divisus est iterum Clerus nam alij communicaverunt Symmacho alij Laurentio Tunc Festus Probinus Senatores miserunt relationem Regi caeperunt agere ut visitatorem daret Rex Sedi Apostolieae quod canones prohibent And albeit upon debate this King at last remitted this cause of Symmachus to a Council of Bishops and that by the same King's licence several Councils of Bishops convened at Rome to sift it throughly which Councils I have amongst others and upon an other occasion quoted in the marginal note of my introduction to this first Treatise pag. 1. yet no man can deny that he admitted the accusations and thereupon and as judg of them and of the whole cause exercised several judiciary acts as having a legal power or Christian authority to do so Nor did Symmachus except or resist nor did any for him or in his behalf or in behalf of the Church or of Ecclesiastical Immunity reprehend Theodorick for doing so Nay we have seen before in this Treatise Sec ... this very Symmachus himself openly professing that he himself would yield to God in the Emperour's person to wit by obeying him in humane things as we saw him desiring on the other side that the Emperour should likewise revere God in the person of the Pontiff doubtless for what concern'd spiritual or divine matters The Catholick Emperour Justinus proceeded yet more imperially in the criminal cause of Dorotheus Bishop of Thessalonica For this Bishop being accused of sedition and of several murders too and particularly of the murder of Iohn who was one of the Legats of the See Apostolick and the rest of the Apostolick Legats being his accusers before the Emperour and being so also by express command from Hormisda the Pope whose Legats they were and he too that was murdered and this Pope himself pressing hard that the said Bishop Dorotheus the supposed murderer of his Legat should either be deposed by the Emperour from his Bishoprick and sent to banishment farr from his place or See and Church or certainly be sent to Rome with all fit prosecution of his cause Iustin indeed proceeded to a judicial tryal and sentence of the criminal Bishop but with so much regard of his own imperial power in the case that he neither did the one nor the other which Hormisda so earnestly pressed for Of all which the Suggestions amongst and after the epistles of Hormisda and these epistles themselves particularly the Suggestion which is after the 56. epist and the second Suggestion after the 64. epist and the 57. epistle in it self may be read Promittit say the Legats writing to the Pope Sancta Clementia for so they stile the Emperour vindicare citare Dorotheum quia nos contestati sumus pietatem ejus c. And Hormisda himself the Pope epist 57. writing to the said Legats Nam eumdem Dorotheum sayes he Constantinopolim jussu Principis didicimus evocatum adversus quem Domino filio nostro Clementissimo Principi debetis insistere ne ad eamdem civitatem denuo revertâ—tur sed Episcopatus quem numquam bene gessit honore deposito ab eodem loco ac Ecclesia longius relegetur vel certè huc ad urbem sub prosecutione congrua dirigatur But wherefore doth not this Pope command his Legats to insist upon the delivering of such a criminal a criminal Bishop into their own proper custody hands and power to proceed against him to judg and punish him as they shall find cause being they alone and not the Emperour were his competent Judges in the case if we believe our Bellarminians and Baronius wherefore do not these Legats wherefore doth not this Pope himself being denied what he desired fulminat excommunications against Iustine
their own civil power both executed and decreed such corporal or civil punishment and consequently who were the sole authoritative Judges of both Priests Bishops and Popes I mean as to inflict or not inflict such corporal or civil punishments on them be the crime whatsoever you please Lay or Ecclesiastical But if you would see yet some instance or some example in particular fact of the continued possession of that authority in Princes even after I mean the tenth century of Christian Religion was compleat You may reflect on Conradus the Emperour who in presence of Benedict the ninth Roman Pontiff of that name sharply arose against and roughly laid hands that is with his own hands seized on Heribertus Archbishop of Millan as guilty of treasonable practices against the Empire albeit this Heribeâ—t saved himself after by flight and in the presence too of the same Pope Benedict in his hearing and seeing all was done decreed banishment from their Sees against three other Bishops and effectually cast them to exile the Bishop of Cremona Vercellis and Placentia Hermannus in Chron. an 1037. and Baronius eod an tom 11. Where this great Annalist Baronius divines after his own manner that surely Conradus did not this or that without consulting first and obtaining the good leave of the Roman Pontiff dreaming so what the Historians of that age were ignorant of did wholy pass over in silence without question because there was no such consultation held with the Pope no such leave asked from him for it is not likely that if any such had been they had given us no kind of hint of it And so too this prophetical or conjectural Annalist gives us his own very vain imagination for a record where he sayes that a suddain pestilence followed to revenge this fact or this usurpation of Conradus But if Conradus with licence of the Pope proceeded so against these criminal Bishops wherefore doth Baronius invent this revenge of an usurpation that was not in the case if his dream be true So little is our great interpreter of God's judgments and scourges consistent or constant to himself And if any should say for him that he meaned not that God reveng'd by such a plague any usurpation of Conrade being the Pope gave his consent also but only mean'd that God thereby reveng'd some other injustice in the proceedings albeit authorized by the Imperial and Papal powers joyntly or both together then I say that such meaning or interpretation of Baronius were it infallibly true in such meaning is nothing to his purpose here or against mine at all as the judicious Reader may himself easily see without any further illustration or observation by me And you may also reflect on Henry King of the Romans afterwards Emperour and the second of this name who continuing and persevering in the possession of the right or authority of coercing and punishing Clergiemen in imitation of his Predecessors wel-nigh a thousand years deprived of his dignity Widgerus Archbishop of Ravenna nay and the Pope himself of his Papacy Gregory the Fifth of that name Hermannus in Chron. Of other Henry's Emperours of Rome I say nothing Because in their time and by the occasion of the too great abuse by Clergiemen of the reverence to and patience of Princes with the Roman See in particular and Ecclesiastical Order in general nay and peradventure also by the occasion of the neglect and sluggishness of the Princes themselves that I may not here enlarge on or give other most certainly true causes as likewise by occasion of the many great priviledges formerly granted by Emperours and other Kings to all Priests and Bishops albeit amongst all such priviledges there was never any such to them in general as an exemption in temporal matters from the supream civil power and moreover by occasion of some special priviledges granted to the Roman See alone and to the Bishops thereof and finally by occasion of the vast both spiritual and temporal Revenues which these Roman Pontiffs were in the dayes of the other Henries possessors of they I mean the Roman Pontiffs were then arrived to such a height of worldly greatness and strength that seeing the former and indeed formidable power of the Roman Empire divided and subdivided in to so many different unsubordinate Kingdoms and seeing themselves could hardly ever want some one or other Prince amongst all to embrace their Papal quarrel against any other either Prince King or Emperour and considering also the great ignorance or blind zeal of many then who as their affections lead them or as their Preachers told them in some or many Provinces of Europe took all the Dictates of Roman Pontiffs for so many infallible or divine oracles pursuant to the doctrine hereof also first invented soon after vented by Gregory the VII I say that by these occasions and by their own improvements of them the Popes were in the times of the other succeeding Henries come to such a height of glory and greatness that they dared resist as they did Kings and Emperours in what quarrels soever and particularly in this of the pretended exemption not of themselves only but of all Bishops of the world nay and of all Priests too nay and also of all other Clerks of whatsoever lower degree from all earthly power add in all criminal causes of what nature soever pretending that such persons as being dedicated to God had no other truly proper and supream Governour or Prince on earth but themselves alone the Popes of Rome And therefore being it was then or much about that time this controversie begun which I have disputed on hitherto I have resolved to bring no instances of other Princes or Bishops since that time or of that time but content my self with these of more antiquity as best sorting with my purpose which only is and was along in this Section to shew the former doctrine of the holy Fathers and their Exposition of St. Paul 13. Rom. confirmed by the practice and in so many particular instances of both Ecclesiastical Prelats and Christian Princes in the more ancient Ages of the Church and for so many ages together all along quite contrary to both the doctrine and practice of some few or many if you please Ecclesiasticks in the later and worser and in this by little and little degenerated ages of Christianity And yet I would have my Readers take notice that I could furnish them were it necessary with a cloud of witnesses and a cloud of such particular instances both in the very said time and after the very said time of even the self same other Henries also and even also all along in every age of these very latter and worser until this present wherein we live and in this present year of it 1667. and could furnish them with these witnesses and produce to them these other such particular instances in matter of fact of Bishops and of Princes and of Roman Catholick Princes too for such only
opposite opinion of errour and so convince it that neither Walsh or other Subscribers or Divines who would otherwise except against it could have left them any thing of moment which in their own conscience they judged unsolved In which case nevertheless not to assent would be unlawful not for such Brief or Bull consider'd precisely of it self or in its own nature but because the truth is rendered manifest and the mind convincâ—t by arguments unavoidable which 't is evident are not necessarily requisite in such Letters These things are said according to the sense of those who are Patrons of the Papal Infallibility For otherwise we might recur to other Authors no less Catholick and truly Learned who in this or the like Controversie would without more ado openly reject all definitions of the Pope whatsoever made without the consent of a general Council though declared by Bull directed to all the faithful of Christ in whatever part of the world and who nevertheless were are and in that case too would be most dutiful observant sons of the Bishops of the Roman See as united by the holy band of Religion and the strict tye of whatever other Ecclesiastical communion But because what is said above is abundantly sufficient to answer the objection drawn from the judgment of his Holiness whether only pretended or true makes now no matter as far as it concerns our present case that is the coincidence or identity to use the School terms of some Propositions in our Protestation with those which some mistakingly would have condemnâ—d by Paul the V. in the Allegiance Oath of King James it is not for the present necessary to have any recourse to them Now for what relates to a like conformity suppos'd in the judgment alledged of our Holy Father Alexander betwixt some Propositions of our Protestation with others said to be condemned by Innocent X. of happy memory namely the three Negatives signed as is said by some Fifty English Catholicks of Quality to Cromwel to obtain some liberty for those of the Roman Catholick Faith the answer is much easier partly from what has already been said and partly from what will presently be alledged For Innocent did not publish that judgment of his by any Bull or Brief either to the Catholicks of England or any other so much as one particular man anywhere as far as has been heard to this day so much as by rumour But if any Decree were either made or projected of that matter in a Consistory of Cardinals with the assistance or by the command of Innocent and afterwards sent to Bruxels or Paris to the Nuncio's as there is a report of its being sent to the Nuncio of Paris nothing has been heard more of its publication but remainâ—d suppressed according to that report in the hands of that Nuncio Now whether it were so or no is no great matter nothing to purpose since according to Divines generally and Canonists too such Decrees fram'd in that manner and no otherwise declared do not force consent nor reach faith nor oblige any of the faithful to submission at least out of the Popes temporal State no not in a Controversie of far less moment as where there is no question of faith but only and it may be a just reformation of manners And yet 't were much more proper to attribute the care of such a reformation to the Pope alone I mean without the intervention of a general Council than of declaring the truths of Faith by an infallible judgment and definition such as it were unlawful for any man in any case to contradict Besides 't is a plain case that Cromwel was an Usurper a Traytor and a Tyrant all manner of wayes both in administration and title according to the twofold acception or sense of that word found generally amongst Divines and particularly in Suarez against the King of England And therefore that wise Pope might neither imprudently nor unjustly condemn such Propositions in that conjuncture of things or looking upon the immediate though extrinsecal end then in view namely of observing fidelity to a Tyrant Although we are to judge quite otherwise and according to the common doctrine of Orthodox Divines it be lawful to judge so in case He had not respect to that end but minded only the intrinsecal or even extrinsecal end which is limited by the Law or took the Propositions bare in themselves and abstracting from all bad ends Wherefore it does not appear to the Church of Christ nay to any particular men nor ever did authentically and legitimately that those negative Propositions were any way either by word or writing condemn'd by Innocent the X at least by him as Pope and speaking ex Cathedra Wherefore my Lord since there is no other condemnation of Innocent or Paul the V. to which his Holiness Pope Alexander could relate than those here mentioned and your Lordship objects nothing else and since those old arguments so often brought by Bellarmine Suarez Lessius c. as well under their own as borrowed names from some places and facts of former Popes though in their own cause and some appearances if they be appearances of Councils and scrap't together from false Reason and the Authority whether of some later Doctors or the ancient and holy Scriptures have by other famous men of the Church of Rome long since been weakned answered overthrown there remains to Walsh the same liberty of expostulating which devout men and men no less learned than holy have by their example in all Ages so often taught May your Lordship therefore cease to persecute Caron or Walsh May his Eminence Cardinal Barberin cease May you both cease and I beseech you by our Lord Jesus Christ who will judge both you and me at his terrible judgment Cease I say both of you to seduce the Clergy and People of Ireland You have laboured now these three years to corrupt them both You have endeavoured to tear again in pieces a Kingdom every way miserable You have bestirred your selves to your power to replant a most pernicious Errour but onely amongst either simple or mercenary people onely in one corner of the world with those of discretion and honesty you prevail not a jot In all Europe besides in Italy it self next the very temporal Patrimony of St. Peter which now for some Ages has been annex't to the Popedom onely by Humane not Ecclesiastical or Divine Right that is by the gift of Princes or favour of the People you lose your labour For the mask is now taken off and if I may conjecture of future things will be taken off more and more every day Which your Lordship himself if I be not deceived knows to be so true that you cannot be ignorant that in the rest of the world I mean those parts of it which are in the Catholick communion of the Roman Church this your or our question of the Popes pretended right over the Temporals of Kings whatever name it go
others or if indeed Finachty's judgment ought to be esteemed there would be work enough for Exorcists nay for all the Priests of Ireland though every one of them turn'd special Exorcist being he the said Father Finachty would make simple people believe that all kinds even of the most seeming corporal or natural diseases whatsoever now in Ireland are special effects of the Devils really Possessing or Obsessing the bodies of the sick That such being as to this matter the fanatick judgment of Finachty it ought to be attributed to meer folly or frenzy that now for well nigh Twelve hundred years we heard nothing from Historians of any such Diabolical Power in any Christian Countrey much less in Ireland whence as we read in our Ecclesiastical History our great Apostle St Patrick expelled at once so in truth miraculously yea and visibly too all the otherwise invisible Devils who till then by Possession and Obsession had tormented the old Heathen Inhabitants thereof That especially in a time of a Christian Kingdoms or Nations or Peoples being so grievously afflicted by visible enemies as the Roman-Catholick Irish are at present and nevertheless bearing their afflictions patiently and continuing constantly in their Sacred Religion a man of reason should not once imagine that the mercy and goodness of God would at the same time deliver them over so at least generally even also to invisible Demons as Finachty pretends That every one who pleased to enquire might find he himself the said Finachty was a very illiterate undiscerning person who never had studied not only not any thing to be considered in either natural or rational Philosophy but not one word in Divinity which might enable him to discern or try so much well as his own Spirit And in the last place That such as he himself or they themselves pretended to have been cured by him of any visible disease from what cause soever flowing were observed to have very soon after relapsed into their former evil or rather indeed not to have been at all really cured by him To this purpose and in such company as before I told when Father Melaghlin had at large and very confidently too at several times and in answer also to my Queries made to him discoursed I knew not well what to think much less what to reply And yet I must confess I gave him the more credit i. e. the rather believed he spoke nothing of prejudice envy or malice nor indeed any thing at all other than what either he had heard from the most judicious Ecclesiasticks of his acquaintance and he was throughly acquainted all all over Ireland or knew by his own experience 1. Because I could not understand he ever had or well could have had any or difference or communion with Finachty 2. Because I knew they had both been equally still of the same Nuncio-party in the late differences of the Nation nay and both even by their very names equally lovers of that common Interest concerning which they would equally both desire to know and ask too if they knew of whom as the Apostles did of Christ Domine si in tempore hoc restitutes regum Israel and by consequence were equally wishers even of true Miracles and wonders to obtain or see that restitution they expected 3. Because it could not fall into my Soul that the relator Father Mellaghlin would on that occasion freely and deliberately commit that kind of sin which as being against the Holy Ghost is not forgiven either in this or the other world and that none doubted his sin would be such if he had perversly either maligned or denyed the free grace of God in any man appearing so miraculously as was reported by others it did in Father Finachty However I made no doubt his i. e. Father Melaghlins so confident and positive answers in the case were sufficient to suspend at least my judgment or belief of any kind of true miraculous power in the said James Finachty notwithstanding his being so much cryed up for such a power Which therefore I did accordingly and for that time no more troubled my self with enquiring after him especially the rather that there was scarce any further talk of his wonders until after some four or five years more Then indeed i. e. some two years after the Kings most happy Restauration and the next August after the Triumvirats Persecution of the Irish Papists ceased and when the Duke of Ormond as the Kings Lieutenant had arrived in Ireland Anno 1662 was the second time I heard of the powerful Spirits having seized again Father Finachty and working wonders by him And then also it was that I became much more inquisitive than before of all was reported of him even for these two reasons 1. I was then my self arrived in Ireland about a Moneth after the Duke of Ormond landed where I might have all opportunities and means to learn the truth of all the said Father Finachty's either true or only pretended miraculous gifts and works 2. Immediately upon my landing and presenting my self before the Lord Lieutenant His Grace commanded me amongst other matters to look particularly and singularly after him the same Father Finachty and see he abused the People no longer by going about so like a Mountebanke cheating all the Nation nay and bringing his Countrey-men also into suspition of some bad design amongst them and this neither unjustly nor at all ungroundlesly if his procession about the Kingdom and the Multitudes every where flocking to him be considered together with all other circumstances of time and present conjuncture of publick Affairs This command and these reasons or speech of His Grace the Kings Lieutenant General and General Governour of the Kingdom added much to my own former inclinations to enquire after Father Finachty's proceedings And therefore without delay I conferr'd with the most judicious of all sorts of both Ecclesiasticks and Laicks from all parts of the Kingdom then at Dublin and amongst them with many whereof some were of his own Countrey or Province of Connaught and Countrey of Galway wherein he had his ordinary Residence who knew him very well for many years and others of other parts who had gone of purpose even some of them a long way to see him practise on themselves and others as they did What I learned of them all generally concerning his late peregrination about the Kingdom was 1. That by the mediation of some friends he had the Summer past of that same year 1662 before the Lord Lieutenants Landing procured or at least obtained a Pass from some of the great ones in Authority to go freely where he pleased about Ireland and accordingly had gone from Province to Province and consequently also had met and drawn after him many hundreds in some places in other many thousands of people some expecting to be healed by him of their infirmities others who were incomparably the greater number to be satisfied in their curiosity 2. That he had also
immediately succeeding Internuntius's of Brussels Hieronimus de Vecchys and Jacobus Rospigliosi determined the case as well in this particular point as in all others of the like nature against the former protestation of 61. and so reserved to themselves a latitude or liberty of telling all others and practising themselves accordingly That indeed although it be not their own particular Doctrine sense or Judgement yet for as much as it is Romes or at least the Courts there and for as much as they owe obedience to that See and must submit their Judgements to and receive commands from it specially whensoever his Holiness shall declare or if he hath so al-ready on the point declared an obligation of Conscience or that it is of necessity or that it is a command to them which cannot be transgressed Salvâ veritate fidei Catholicae or sine dispendio salutis aeternae they must for these reasons obey and conform themselves to the contrary Doctrine and practice flowing from it To pass by at present I say all this and that for these causes or motives besides divers others which I likewise pass over this time they would no way censure the contrary doctrine nor as much as seem to dis-allow it as they do not as much as simply averr what their own judgment on the point is or shall be hereafter at any time Who cannot but see out of all said already that by Subjects in this passage they understand only such as are and must or ought to continue Subjects alwayes De Jure and even De Jure Divino not such as are de facto only Subjects such as are onely Subjects by force or out of prudence onely that is until they see they prudently may in some cases of deposition deprivation Excommunication or without any such sentences in some cases of Apostacy heresy schysme or of publick oppression or tyrannical administration and that the people themselves by virtue of their own pretended inherent Civil and supream right in some cases declare themselves exempt and their king or the person until then their King now devested of that power and themselves freed of all kind of tye of subjection to him For even in such cases or contingencies they will say and may truely say according to their present sense opinion and general negative abstraction here That it is not their Doctrine that Subjects may be discharged absolved or freed from their obligation of performing their duty And yet they will and may say then according to their present meaning and that meaning too which their Remonstrance in the words contexture all other present circumstances affecting it necessarily imports that such as were until then Subjects are no more Subjects And if they be still in fact or by force or out of prudence till they find their time they are not so by right Or if by right of the lawes of the Land yet not by a right derived from the lawes of God nature And therefore that although this proposition of theirs be alwayes true then too shall be according to this their present meaning or explication which understands by Subjects none but such as are and ought by the lawes of God nature to continue such and according as they understand the said lawes yet in the cases or emergencies above such persons owe no more any duty of obedience or allegiance and consequently need no further discharge absolution or freedom by the sentence or declaration of any man or men from such duty which hath not nor can have a being or existence in such cases but they are discharged absolved and freed from any such duty on them by the very nature and contingencie of things and by the very consequent ceasing of the obligation of duty of it self I mean and without any further ceremonie They will also and may truely say without giving cause by this passage or any other in their Remonstrance to be up-braided with untruth herein breach of promise or falsity that however or whatever they or any of them may themselves or shall otherwise peradventure think of this matter or whatever their own private Judgement or Doctrine be or be not yet if the Pope shall declare or hath already unto them his or that of his Courts to be the Doctrine of the Catholick Church and with all command them by his Apostolical authority to follow it they must accordingly practise And that it is therefore they formed this Declaration as all the other several clauses of their remonstrance with so much caution and reservation as withal they framed them so that they might not seem to denie the common principle of Christian faith allowed by both sides as too evident in Holy Scripture though for my own part I believe those other they decline to be no less evident there That Jure Divino or by the law of God Princes are to be obeyed by their Subjects and yet by so many abstractions distinctions and explications render that very principle unsignificant and unbinding if and when they shall think fit Whence the ingenious Reader may also perfectly understand the causes or motives of the subtilty and fineness used in placing the words that compose the Proposition or Declaration immediatly following or which directly relates to and seems to condemn the doctrine of the lawfulness not of deposing or depriving Kings but of murthering or killing them by the hands of their Subjects Wherein it might be expected by vulgar judgments that if in any passage the Assembly would be more clear and ingenuous although to such as are fully versed in the controversie and positions of Suarez Bellarmine and such others whose doctrine as to this point or whole matter the Assembly would not by any means condemn it will not seem strange they be no more since the lawfulness of killing or murthering of Kings even I say by the hands of their own Subjects must be equal to that of a sentence of deposition or deprivation of them by Pope or People or of a Censure of Excommunication or other commanding the people to rebel or take Arms against them or to put any such sentence in execution As indeed Bellarmine in his answer to William Barclay and Suarez in his to King James and all others of that way on this subject plainly confess and averr as a consequence unavoidable So many experiences where and as often as any such attempt of deposition hath been made and the nature of man to preserve himself to his power shewing the moral impossibility or at least the very rare contingency of an effectual deposition of a King by his Subjects but withal he was murthered by them Whence it is necessarily consequent that whoever licences the one must the other And yet these late Remonstrants or Subscribers to this Protestation of 66. would by their dexterity seem but to such only as are not conversant in the dispute or do not strictly examine the placing of their words to condemn a doctrine of so
declaration and meaning to be always with this reserve that whatever this their second proposition or constant doctrine signifie or be intended or conceived by any to signifie or this their resolution so expressed never to recede from it yet all must be with perfect submission to the Pope and so that if it sufficiently appear the Pope hath already declared or shall at any time hereafter declare by Brief Bull or other letters against such doctrine as uncatholick or against such resolution as unsafe they will quit both for these causes I say there can be no rational indifferent person but will be convinced that out of this second proposition as from them there can acrue no more assurance to the King of their future fidelitie than out of the first and consequently than out of their Remonstrance alone without any such additional proposition or propositions That is as I have a little above said just none at all Nor will their third or last Proposition mend the matter They give it indeed as the two former in words specious enough to plain well-meaning men to the simple and ignorant Nay specious enough to very understanding persons but yet such persons only as are not acquainted with their explications borrowed from late School-men and particularly from Bellarmine against Barclay and from other impugners with him of the Oath of Allegiance against the most learned Father Green and Preston of St. Beâ—ns Order as well under Widringtons name at first in several works as their own at last in their Apology to Gregory the Fourteenth and against the rest of the Roman Clergy of England that so learnedly conscientiously modestly nay and patiently too maintain'd that oath in King James's dayes especially the Secular Clergy maâ—gre Cardinal Bellarmines Letter to the Arch-Priest Blackwel and maugre likewise all his other several books under his own or fictitious names and maugre also even that either true or pretended brief of Paul the Fifth in the year 1606. against the said Oath procured by Father Parsons upon the mis-representation and most false suggestion of Cardinal Bellarmine and his seven or eight other fellow Divines to whom joyntly the examination of the said Oath of Allegiance was committed by the same holy Father Paul the Fifth and finally notwithstanding the best and worst endeavours of besides Lessius Gretzer Fitzherbert Becan Parsons himself and several others Franciscus Suarez the Spanish learned Jesuite at the instigation of the English Fathers of the same Society and in pursuance of the said Brief and for the unlawful advancement of his own great Masters no less unlawful interest This third Proposition therefore I say notwithstanding its words or tenor so specious at first to such as are not acquainted with the familiar explication or meaning of the chief proposers a meaning or explication learned from these late Sophisters that writ so ill and so erroneously too against King Iames's said Oath of Allegiance being reviewed being duly pondred as from them or as from those Congregational men will be found to be of as little weight as any of the two former and will be so found I mean as to the resolution justly expected from so venerable so grave and so withal justly suspected an Assembly But not to delay the Reader my longer I repeat again here that Proposition in it self barely or as they have given it in their own words We the undernamed do hereby declare that it is our doctrine that we Subjects oâ—e so natural and just obedience to our King that no power under any pretext soever can either dispense with or free us of the same Now mark the Sophistry In the first place the reduplicative sense must be allowed in these two words We Subjects that is in as much or while we are Subjects Which will be no longer than it shall please the Pope not to denounce the King by name excommunicated or deprived of or deposed from his kingdoms by a judicial process or bull on pretence of his apostasie heresie schisme oppression of the Church or People against that which the Pope shall determine to be justice or faith Next the same reduplication must be allowed to fall on the word King And thirdly at the word power all the former distinctions of fact and of right of humane or temporal and divine or spiritual and of ordinary and extraordinary must be ushered in And in the last place from these general words under any pretext soever there must be alwaies understood an exception of those extraordinary cases or contingencies above so often repeated of destroying the Church or People tyrannically by endeavouring to make them Apostats Hereticks Schismaticks or by tyrannising over them even in their temporal or civil rights alone And the judgment hereof must be the Pope's only or the people's when they please to take it Nor will the Doctrine of the Apostles even in the cases of tyrannical heathen Emperours as of Nero and Domitian much less of the Fathers even in the cases of manifest notorious Apostats and Hereticks as of Iulian Constantius Valens Anastasius c. move the Divines of our congregation any whit at all They say with Bellarmine the Apostles and Fathers and other primitive Christians dissembled in this point because they had not strength enough of men and arms to oppose though besides that this answer is impious it be also most manifestly false in the case of Iulian the Apostat and of the succeeding Heretick Emperours Having thus with all sincerity considered all and every of their three Propositions both nakedly and abstractedly as they are in themselves and also as given by that Congregation and having layd open most sincerely too the meaning or sense these Divines or at least the chief and most leading of them have conceive or intend others should upon fit occasions understand by those Propositions and by their several clauses and words it only now remains that I briefly put in form my third Argument grounded on such abstractions exceptions distinctions reservations and equivocations And I frame it thus Syllogistically because I have to deal with some caprichious Logicians or Sophisters No Propositions are sufficient in this age for giving assurance to the King of the future loyalty of a Roman Catholick people and as from such a Roman Catholick people too whom he hath already by experience and his Father before him found in several publick Instances manifestly disloyal and even perfidious in the highest nature could be but such Propositions as by clear express words from which there can be no exception or evasion and of which there can be no distinction according to the present School-divinity of Bellarmine or Suarez or such others descend to the specifical cases about which the controversie is if the Proposers be expresly desired by the King or the Lieutenant in his Name or by his Authority to descend so in their Remonstrance or Propositions to such cases and if they expresly and obstinatly too refuse to descend so or
causa Barthol Lancello Specul Menoch march Scâ—c plures alii cum communi Doctorum apud August Barbos in coll ad decretal in dictâ— cap. Pastoral n. 2. and as the Canonists commonly maintain Furthermore we say That if His Holiness ex plenitudine potestatis would give or hath given his Lordship a power above the Canon Law and such extraordinary faculties as that he should not be bound to admit even just Appeals yet hereby His Holiness never intended nor could lawfully or conscionably intend to hinder the Appellants from opposing the execution of an unjust sentence given against them much less from opposing a sentence or censures of their own nature invalid when their own Consciences tells them that his Lordship grounds himself upon ill information or that the obeying of the sentence may prove disadvantagious either to the Publick or Particulars against Equity and Right For in this and such like cases the Law of Nature takes place and allows the Appellant or Party aggrieved to preserve his own Right even by force if no other means be at hand against the unjust proceedings of a corrupt ignorant malicious or ill informed Judge specially if this Party aggrieved be a Prince State Council or Commonwealth which hath a Supreme Civil power as our case is Nay if His Holiness who is the Supreme Ecclesiastical Judge on earth and from whom there is no Appeal in matters belonging to his judicature otherwise than from himself to himself did upon ill information or for any other cause whatsoever give judgment or pronounce Censures contrary to justice and conscience or which would be disadvantagious to our Publick cause or destructive of our Commonwealth or of the lives liberties or fortunes of the Confederates or of the Council and that part of the Confederates who adhere to them and to the Cessation being incomparably the greater part of the Kingdom there is no Catholick Divine in the World but must confess it would be lawful to resist and oppose His Holiness in this case and to hinder the execution of such a sentence yea that such as are in Publick Authority would be bound in Conscience and under pain of a most grievous mortal sin to use their uttermost endeavours for opposing the said execution even vi armis if it were necessary and no other means left of reconciliation or for preservation of the Publick Yet certainly we do not fear that any such evil shall ever come immediately from the Sacred Throne of our most Blessed Father Innocentius Lastly What is objected by some out of cap. Ad nostram and cap. Reprehensibilis de Appellat That no Appeal is allowed from a sentence given in a controversie of Faith and consequently that your Honours Appeal is against the Law since the adhering to the Cessation to be unlawful is an Article of Faith and the sentence of Excommunication and other Censures were pronounced by the Nuncio to make the Confederates religiously observe the said Article that is not to adhere to or observe the said Cessation We say all and every branch of what 's here objected is so false and so absurd as it cannot be sufficiently admired with what face can any broach such ignorant Positions What is more clearly and without controversie decreed in Sacred Canons than that all weighty causes and questions happening about Articles of Faith which are the most weighty of all causes are to be referred unto the See Apostolick and even frivolous Appeals in such Controversies be admitted that is though the causes of appealing in these matters appear not to be so just or reasonable as are required by the Canons to be in Appeals interposed from grievances in other matters See this expresly defined in the Canons placed in the Margent (s) Alexander III. in cap. majores de Baptismo majores Ecclesiae causas praesertim articulâ—s fidei contingentes ad Petri sedem referendas intelliget qui eum quaerenti domino quem discipuli dicerent ipsum esse respondisse nâ—tabit Tu es Christus filius dei vivi pro eo dominum exorasse ne deficiat fides ejus c. See cap. Ut debitus § ultim juncta Gloss in verb. causis de appellat cap. Translationem de officio Legatâ— Bellarm. l. 4 de Rom. Pont. c. â— See Bellarm. l. 4. de Rom. Pont. l. â— de Concil authorit where he teacheth and with him the Catholick Doctors commonly that only His Holiness is infallible in definâ—ng or declaring matters of Faith and that even General Councils much more National are of no such infallibility but may err until or before His Holiness confirm them Nay some Catholick Doctors as Bellarm l. 2. de Concil cap. 5. hath affirm that National Synods though so confirmed are not infallible and so constantly taught by Canonists as our opposites cannot produce one Author for themselves And what is more out of all doubt with both Heretick and Catholick Divines than that even His Holiness as Pope and Vicar of Christ yea and together with his Consistory of Cardinals and which is more sitting in a General Synod of the Universal Church on earth might err in Controversies of Fact which principally depend on informations and testimonies of men Read Bellarmine 4. de Romano Pontifice cap. 2. And consequently what is more certain and evident than that it is impossible the adhering to the Cessation concluded with Inchiquyn to be unlawful can be a matter or article of Faith or as such declared by any power on earth not to speak of the Lord Nuncio who hath no power no not together with his National Synod to define or declare such Articles even in capable matters or in questionibus juris otherwise then as a particular Doctor since it is plain that the question of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of it is a meer question of Fact and principally depending on the informations and testimonies of men Finally What is more plain to any knowing Reader of the two Chapters alledged against us out of the Canons by some of our opposites than that neither of them hath a word to that purpose or which by a Scholar may be understood in the sense they are produced against us For cap. ad nostram speaks only of just corrections of persons who are by profession Regulars as if a Religious man transgresseth manifestly his Rule or Institutions of his Order in this case and very justly no Appeal is admitted nisi tamen modus excedatur sayes Gloss ibid. verb. minus if a certain punishment be prescribed by the Canons for such a transgression and no other inflicted for if the punishment be arbitrary then according to Panormitan even a Regular might appeal in case of correction yea though his crime were notorious And as for cap. Reprehensibilis it makes the same sense though it be not restrained solely to the correction of Regulars but is more generally understood de disciplina Ecclesiastica of the correction of all Ecclesiasticks
Navigation the great support of Ireland quite beaten down his Excellency disheartning the Adventurers Vndertakers and Owners as Captain Antonio and others favouring Hollanders and other Aliens by reversing Judgments legally given and indefinitely concluded before his coming to Authority By which depressing of maritime affairs and not providing for an orderly and good Tribunal of Admiralty we have hardly a Bottom left to transmit a Letter to His Majesty or any other Prince ANSWER Here again VVe are charged in general with disheartning Adventurers Undertakers and Owners and no man named but Captain Antonio nor the particular wherein he was disheartned set down We are further charged with reversing of Judgments legally given and definitively concluded before Our coming to Authority but no particular Judgment so reversed is or indeed can be instanced So that all VVe can answer to this part is That it is not true and for what remains That VVe placed the power of Admiralty in this Kingdom according to the Assemblies instance and from time to time gave Commissions to such persons as the Commissioners desired in several parts to hear and determine maritime causes Sixth Article of the Declaration The Church of Cloine in our possession at the time of making the Peace violently taken from Vs by the Lord Inchiquin contrary to the Articles of Peace no Justice or Redress was made upon Application or Complaint ANSWER For Answer to this VVe refer you to Our Answer to the first Article of the pretended Grievances which Article and Answer are as followeth Article viz. The first of those called the Grievances First They have not been suffered to enjoy the Churches and Church-livings which in the time of the perfection of the Articles of Peace they possessed but were after the said Articles made and perfected put forth expelled and still kept out of possession of divers Parish-Churches and their Tythes and Livings and even of some of the Cathedral Churches and many of the Prelates and Pastors hindred from exercising of their respective Jurisdictions and Functions amongst their Flocks and Grants made of some of their Bishopricks and their Livings which sithence the War or the greatest part of it hath been and yet is in the possession of the Catholick Bishops to Protestant Bishops and notwithstanding the Prelates and Clergy in the Counties of Cork and Waterford where chiefly those Grievances happened have made suit for remedy yet have they obtained no redress in their suits nor have they say the Commissioners of Trust in whom the last General Assembly of the Confederate Catholicks of this Nation which concluded the said Peace put their confidence for procuring an effectual compliance with the said Articles and seeing in no point they should be violated or broken in this so important a point concerning the Church given effectual furtherance for recovering their right to the said Prelates and Clergy Answer viz. To that first Article of those called the Grievances First We deny that they if thereby be meant the Roman-Catholick Clergy were not suffered to enjoy the Churches and Church-livings which at the time of perfecting the Articles of Peace they possessed or that by the Articles of Peace they ought to possess And as to the instances made in the Margent the composers of this Article do very well know That their possession of those Churches and Church-livings were flatly denied by the Protestant Clergy And it is very well known to the Commissioners who followed that business with diligence and earnestness enough That We never refused nor delayed to afford them any just means of bringing that Controversie to a final end till at length by Treachery and the Rebels power the Things controverted were lost to both Parties Nor was there any Complaint made unto Us since the conclusion of the Peace till now that the Romish Prelates or Pastors or any of them have been hindred from exercising their respective Jurisdictions and Functions amongst their Flocks except one Complaint made of the Governour of Dungarvan wherein We were ready to have given such Redress upon hearing all Parties as should have been found fit if the said Complaint had been prosecuted We know of no Grant made by His Majesty of any Bishoprick whatsoever since the conclusion of the Peace nor can We find any Article of the Peace that restrains His Majesty from making such Grants so the Roman-Catholick Bishops be not thereby dispossessed of what they were possessed of upon conclusion of the Peace until His Majesty declare His pleasure in a Free Parliament in this Kingdom And whatever His Majesty might intend to declare the making of Protestant Bishops could be no anticipation thereof to the prejudice of the Roman-Catholicks since Bishops are held essentially necessary to the exercise of the Religion of the Church of England Seventh Article of the Declaration That Oblations Book-monies Interments and other Obventions in the Counties of Cork Waterford and Kerry were taken from the Roman-Catholick Priests and Pastors by the Ministers without any redress or restitution ANSWER For this We answer That it was conceived by the Ministers herein mentioned that where they had possession of the Church-livings the Obventions here mentioned were also due to them But whether it were or not sure We are there was never any Complaint made to Us in this particular till Our coming to Tecroghan after the loss of Droghedagh and that within a very little time after before the truth of the Allegation could be examined the Towns of Munster revolted and the business was so decided at least if any difference of this kind continued in the County of Kerry which was longer held We never after Our being at Tecroghan heard of it that We remember Eighth Article of the Declaration That the Catholick Subjects of Munster lived in a slavery under the Presidency of the Lord Inchiquin those being their Judges that before were their Enemies and none of the Catholicks Nobility or Gentry admitted to that Tribunal ANSWER To this VVe answer That no complaint of any such slavery imposed by the said Lord President or Presidency was made to Us but on the contrary That upon his Lordships instance VVe directed Our Letters to him to swear and admit of the Council of that Province the Lord Viscount Roch of Fermoy the Lord Viscount Muskery Major General Patrick Purcell Lieutenant Colonel Gerard fitz Morrice and others all which were written unto by the Lord President to come to him to be sworn accordingly whereof the Lord Muskery Major General Patrick Purcell and Lieutenant Colonel Fitz Morrice were sworn but the rest not coming according to the Letters could not be sworn Ninth Article of the Declaration The conduct of the Army was improvident and unfortunate nothing happened in the Christianity more shameful than the disaster at Rathmines near Dublin where his Excellency as it seemed to ancient Travellers and men of Experience who view'd all kept rather a Mart of Wares a Tribunal of Pleadings or a great Inne of