in them and after the Se◠Apostolique But as ve◠quivocally use the term Episcopacy as signifying your nothing so I must deny it and connumerate it with your errours Again you strike upon Tradition for your Episcopacy wherein you commit a great soloecism in Divinity If it had been for Episcopacy in it self without restriction to your Idol you had come home indeed but as it was presented in your pide-coloured tincture it was never amongst the Ancient except Colythus and his complices might be admitted into the head of your list from whom you have an Jschyrian generation of Priests which S. Athanasius and as he assures us the generall Councell and I am sure the whole Church ever since condemned for spurious But in good earnest it is strange to see with what modesty you esteem a meer pretences for as much as concerns your Episcopacy of fifteen hundred years possession to be an invincible plea in this point and a reall and clear prescription for so many ages shall not hold for all others as most undoubtedly there was not any considerable opposition against Masse till Calvins time Luther was not so impudent as to take it away and how he fared in the sense of the whole Church we all know and so for many more high Articles of which I speak afterward wherein you are fallen All men carefull of their souls will sadly consider this It was truly and usually said of an eminent Bishop of your Order that he was Puritanus tantùm non in Episcopatu The same is as truly said of these pretenders to Episcopacy that they condemn Antiquity in all things except Episcopacy If novelty be not lawfull in this why in all other doctrines which you relinquisht against Antiquity It 's not Antiquity but fancy and ambition you follow els a true Syllogism in the same form will always conclude You put me in mind of the Asse who wresting Orpheus his sharp out of Apollo's hand played so ill-favouredly that the very dogs barked at him I will not be thought to apply this to you yet I must needs say that you begin to wrest our divine Arguments out of our hands and ye handle them so unhandsomly and jarringly from all our and your principles that all sorts of men will see whence and how injuriously you take them You go on 1. Would give such advantage to the Papists who usually object against us and our Religion the contempt of antiquity and the love of novelty that we should not be able to wipe off the aspersion 2. Would so diminish the just authority due to the consentient judgment and practise of the universall Church the best Interpreter of Scriptures in things not clearly exprest Reader observe what necessity there is for all sorts of Christians to recurre to Tradition for Lex currit cum praxi that without it we should be at a loss in sundry points both of faith and manners at this day firmly believed and securely practised by us when by the Socinians Anabaptists and other Sectaries we should be called upon for our proofs As namely sundry Orthodoxall explications concerning the Trinity and Coequality of the persons in the Godhead against the Arians and other Heretiques the number use and efficacy of Sacraments the Baptizing of Infants National Churches the observation of the Lords day and even the Canon of Scripture it selfe 3. In respect of our selves we are not satisfied how it can stand with the Principles of Justice Ingenuity and Humanity to require the extirpation of Episcopall Government unlesse it had been first clearly demonstrated to be unlawfull to be sincerely and really endeavoured by us To the first Indeed you cannot wipe off the aspersion no more then a Blackmore his colour You have given us a strange advantage and in this one passage put an affront upon all your former abettors An eminent person of your order being urged with the antiquity of our tenets replied that if things were to be salved by antiquity then sin would challenge great pre-eminency Thus far hath this plea been derided by you I could fill and foul many sheets in giving a syllable of your Authors for this Yet all antient Fathers and Councells esteemed this an infallible Plea and therefore the Nicene Fathers as appears in Athan. his Epistle of the Nicene Decrees cryed Ecce nos demonstramus istiusmodi sententiam à patribus ad patres quasi per manus traditam esse They esteemed it enough to shew a constant descent of their faith and this is our challenge against you To the second I see you forget that your 6.20.21 Articles exclude all orall Traditions it hath been the maine pretended cause of scandall and as ye have judg'd it most fundamentall that Catholiques plead a necessity of Apostolicall I raditions with the divine Scriptures Have not all the books of your Writers to this day been filled in proofe of the sufficiency of Scriptures and yet now even in the highest points of Christian Doctrine you acknowledge a necessity to have recourse to Tradition what man could have read this your second reason and not have conceived that this Praelatike slip had been again inserted into the old incorruptible Trunk or Body of the Catholique Church but the truth is that self-interest compells you to speak truth against your old Doctrines this blow hath struck you under the fifth rib and like the poor Pilgrime of Hiericho layed you wholly on your backs as objects of pity You specifie here many of the highest mysteries and to omit the rest you acknowledge that the Orthodox explication of the B. Trinity cannot be had from the Scripture alone without the Church Have not we then reason to confesse the Scripture alone not sufficient If you did stand to this truth there had not been such subdivisions of sects who deny the B. Trinity amongst you I have not indeed heard of many who embrace Arrius his Tenet that is that the Son is God but not co-eternall with the Father nor equall to him as Athanasius shews that he held but there are under the latitude of the Praelatique party who with Paulus Samosatenus Corpocras c. call in question his Deity and restraine him to his humanity and hence some eminent persons taking scandall left you and are joyn'd to the Catholike Church Nay you are not ashamed to run though vainly to Traditions for the chiefest grounds of your own Praelative Sect herein confessing that Scripture cannot reach them But to leave this to your selves let me instance more of our Doctrines which you most calumniate What more universal Tradition was extant then Masse that is the propitiatory Sacrifice of the Body and Bloud of Christ offered daily and perpetually for the living and the dead Read Mr. Perkins his Problemes he tells you that it was universally believed that Christ gave his true Body and Bloud at his last Supper Ask all the Liturgies since Christ In like manner read them for Jnvocation of Saints and Prayers
THE LATE ACT OF THE CONVOCATION AT OXFORD Examined OR The OBIT of Prelatique PROTESTANCY Occasioning the Conversion of W.R. Sometimes of EXETER Colledge in OXFORD to Catholique UNION PSAL. 118.59 Cogitavi vias meas converti pedes meos in Testimonia tua St. Ambr. Ep. 31. ad Valent. Erubeseat senectus quae se emendare non potest nullus pudor est ad meliora transire Printed at Roven 1652. A NARRATIVE Of the Motives and Effects of this Treatise Learned READER IT hath beene a no lesse famous then celebrated Custome amongst the Ancients for Converts to write Apologies or some kinde of Literary Expressions of their Inductives to Matriculation into the Wombe of Christs Church as St. Justin Martyr Arnobius and the rest who of Heathens became Christians Great Origen and St. Augustine who from siding with Herctiques became Catholiques Hence I esteeme it my duty to addresse some Reason to the World why I left that Body of Christians where I had beene Baptiz'd and Educated and now incorporate my selfe to the Roman Catholique Church from which our Nation had this last age divided it selfe After my younger Studies in the University of Oxford I endeavoured to season my selfe in our greatest Authours as Bishop Juell Bishop Morton the last Archbishop of Canterbury Bishop Usher with Field White and the rest whose Apothegmes I received as Oracles without dispute and by the poursuite of them I began much to admire our Doctrines and no lesse to disesteeme the Roman Catholique But upon further growth in yeares with Themistocles I attempted to reach higher and entring though with great tendernesse to examine our Tenets and Proofes very speciously alleadged out of antiquity I found so many adulterated Texts of holy Fathers especially in Bishop Iewell and Bishop Morton so many to speake modestly misinterpreted in the rest of which I may opportunely give a list that I could not but blush to finde our main Pillers so stramineous in their very foundations Hence what curiosity had first invited now Conscience enforc'd mee earnestly to a serious and deeper search wherein I resolved with Cato not to be ashamed to Learne as hee Greeke So I Latine not according to the vulgar stile but the old pure Roman Language expressed in St. Hierome St. Augustine and the rest of those Professours of Christian Rhetorique neither did I omit with old Plato to peragrate Greece Aegypt and the Easterne parts to finde any holy Gymnosophists who could embowell not nature but the Sacred Mysteries of Christianity which I found not sufficiently dived into at home In my returne from this Sedentary Pilgrimage wholy settled by the re-searches of Antiquity in the truth of the Roman Church and her Tenets I fell upon this Act of the Convocation-House the Discussion whereof I present to all understandings not bias'd with the Praejudice of Customes Education or Ambition that they may judge out of this Summary what might be said if I should expatiate upon this subject I blush not to publish the impulsive cause of my actuall Conjunction to our old Roman Mother Church to be from this Act of the Convocation for though I was before fully satisfied of those old Tenets in a Speculative sense yet in reduceing my selfe to the Practicall part or profession of them I found many Phanatique Bug-beares till hapning upon this Act composed by a great Body of our most learned men and evidently seeing the inconsistency of the Doctrine here asserted especially concerning the necessity of Traditions with our former Tenets and Positions against Catholiques I was inavoidably compelled to an actuall and humble Submission of my will as well as of my judgement to the obedience of the Church And in this my voluntary retirement from the World I found unâ—xpectedly in these Forraine parts diverse of both our Universities to have taken the rise of their Conversions from the same ground and to have prevented mee in their Resolutions herein which made mee more thankfully to admire the Divine Providence in the secret conduct of Soules culled out for himselfe Master Gregory a very learned person and my contemporary in Oxford in his Preface to his Opuscula page 17. hath this ingenuous acknowledgement I am sorry sayes hee I have so much to accuse my Natition of that ever since the Times of Henry the eighth they should goe about in a Maze of Reformation and not know yet how to get either us or themselves out And truly who ever does well consider this Act of Convocation and the sad consequences of it will conclude with mee that there is but one way to get out of this Maze and that is by an humble returne to our Mother the Catholique Church which the dazled Eyes and selfe-bias'd Judgements of the contrivers of that Act could not then discerne But this short Examination of it may I hope contribute something towards their illumination From Paris this 1. of July 1652. Stilo loci W. R. The OBIT of Prelatique Protestancy OR The last dying words of Episcopacy faintly delivered in the Convocation house at Oxford 1. of June 1641. Conteining their reasons against the Scottish Covenant and Presbytery CHymists amongst Physitians desire so far to reforme the Doctrine and Discipline of the Galenists that they neither observe the same Method nor druggs in their Cures as appeares in Paracelsus Crollius Helmontius and others nay they would willingly so far be thought to differ from them as that out of that respect they assume another name and therefore commonly style themselves Phylosophos per ignem Fiery that is hot spirited Phylosophers And truly when I looke upon this Consult and Result of the Convocation house Consisting of Masters Schollars and other Officers Members of the Vniversity as you profess I conceive you have endeavoured so far to reforme the Doctrine and manners of all others that you neither agree with them who would be esteemed reformed Churches nor with their and your Mother Church of Rome either in Doctrine or Disscipline Nay ye have gone so far with the Chymists that ye will not retaine the common name of all the Moderne Reformers as your later Masters professe in which all your Progenitors vaunted namely under the Notion of Pretestants but ye style your selves here Christians or Protestants with this distinctive appellative of the Church of England Others deny the name wholy as in our daily congresses we experience so that the more Unigenious name is Puritan which is also more uniforme to the Chymists hot spirited Phylosophy As therefore ye are seperate in place so in nature and name from all who rightly or falfly acknowledge Christ whence at the most according to your owne principles ye are but Anologically I feare I might better say equivocally Christians as it signifies a body of people uniformly professing Christ with the Universall Church So that what Celsus improperates in Origens third booke would surely come home to you Nec jam quicquam preter nomen eis commune superesse si tamen
vel hoc prae pudore relinquitur Let us proceed to particulars Your first Paragraph is of the first Article of the Covenant 1. Wherein first we are not satisfied how we can with Judgement sweare to endeavour to preserve the Religion of another Kingdome whereof as it doth not concerne us to have very much so we professe to have very little understanding 2. Which so far as the occurrents of these unhappy times have brought it to our knowledge and we are able to judge as in three of the foure specified particulars viz. Worship Discipline and Government much worse and in the fourth that of Doctrine not at all better then our own which we are in the next passage of the Article required to reforme Blessed Saint Paul was much of another spirit he earnestly professeth a most hearty sence of the welfare of all Churches he hath a Sollicitous care of all he cryes out Who is weake and I not weake who is offended and I burne not 2 Cor. 11.28 He is highly sensible not onely of all Churches but persons See him 1 Cor. 1.10 how carefull he is to have all speak the same thing and that there be no division amongst them but that they be perfectly joyned together in the same minde and in the same judgement Reade him in all his Epistles see how he and his fellow labourers even anxiously esteemed themselves concerned in all the Churches progresse in true Doctrine and practise See what he sayes to the Romans Chap. 12. the aime of his Doctrine is that we must rejoyce with the joyfull weep with the sad we must mutually feele each others passions we must be deeply concerned in our Brethrens spirituall affaires chiefly but ye contrariwise professe not to be so much concerned in preserving the Religion of your Neighbour Church Solomon would have judg'd your title surreptitious with the pretended Mothers who was contented to have the Child quartered so that she might rob the true Mother of her infant ye caused indeed the breach in Scotland from their Mother of Rome having done that you professe your selves now not much concern'd to preserve her in any Religion Ye could not have used any Arguments more forcible to prove your selves not true lively Members of Christs great Spirituall body since it is cleare by your profession here that you are not vegitated with the common spirit of it for ye are not concerned c. Contrary to Saint Pauls teaching 1 Cor. 14.33 where he professeth to teach peace of Doctrine in all Churches Ye professe also that you differ from them in Worship Discipline and Government The Philosophers at Athens however different in their Schooles touching their opinions of the Deity Providence c. as appeares in the tenents of the Platonists Stoiques and Peripatetiques yet in their Temple touching Worship Discipline and Government did far more agree then you meeting quietly at their common oblations to God which ye professe not to be amongst you Have ye not in this undeniably abolished one Article of the Creed which is Communion of Saints and consequently taken away your very pretence to a Church Externall Communion consists in uniformity of Worship Discipline and Government most especially indeed in Worship and in this as you are seperated from Rome and their whole Communion so ye are as you professe from your neighbouring Churches whence it followes you are not a true Church of Christ I speak not this as if I were at all scandalized at your breaches Aristotle treating of Beasts calls a Wolfe though a Pestilent creature animal generosum because it will not be made tame I can say no lesse of you it is generous not to degenerate all your predecessours disagreed with each other as Luther Zuinglius Calvin and the rest Tertullian not far from the end of his treatise of Praescriptions will rub you hard upon the gills Mentior si non etiam à regulis suis variant inter se dum unusquisque proinde suo arbitrio modulatur quae accepit quemadmodum de arbitrio ea composuit illi quae tradidit c. It hath beene alwaies the custome from the beginning that you thus vary from one another and yet Tertullian speaks of it as a thing most ridiculous I lye saith he if it be not true that they differ from their owne rules c. he was afraid that future ages would not beleeve so prodigious a thing but succeeding ages make it appeare even to children Ye have therefore just title not onely to the Wolfe in this point of generosity but to the Foxes under Sampson in biting each other with all virulency and yet agree in your tailes by firing all behinde you which is Gods Church It 's Cato's aphorisme opertet mendacem esse memorem You have been also observed to have been in divers tales At the first under Henry the 8. your rule was to adhere to holy Scriptures determination of the Primitive Church or Generall Councells held before the last 600. yeares as appears in the Articles of union betwixt you and the Germans In B. Jewells time you confined your selves to the first 600. yeares After in Perkins time to the first 400. yeares and now in D'allie to the Apostles only And so by degrees you creep to your invisibility where every one is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Son without a Father For the Doctrine you adde as followes Wherein if hereafter we shall find any thing as upon farther understanding thereof it is not impossible we may that may seeme to us savouring of Popery Superstition Heresie or Schisme or contrary to sound Doctrine or the Power of Godlinesse We shall be bound by the next Article to endeavour the extirpation after we have bound our selves by this first Article to the preservation thereof Wherein we already finde some things to our thinking so far tending to superstition in accounting Bishops Anti Christian and indifferent Ceremonies unlawfull and Schismes in making their Discipline and Government a marke of the true Church and the setting up thereof the erecting of the Church of Christ that it seemeth to us more reasonable that we should call upon them to reforme the same then that they should call upon us to preserve it Here you have toucht the matter againe more deeply to the quick your quarrels in Doctrine are of no lesse nature then of Superstition and Schisme Thus Presbytery and Prelacy are at open wars We heard of the Heralds at armes menacing mutuall defiance at the Scotts first entring our Countrey yet there were hopes of an attonement but this Covenant hath rendred them irreconcileable Tertullian in his book of Prayer propounds a question worth your knowing Quale sacrificium est à quo sine pace receditur No peace no Sacrifice He indeed insinuates an old and constant custome of the Catholick Church in a religious embrace of each other in time of Masse which he here calls Sacrifice signifying the charity which should be amongst Christians but you have professedly
sadly upon it how many have lost their Lives others their Estates for not conforming to your unsound Doctrines which all your Brethren and almost the whole Country are weary of and therefore urge for change in your Doctrine and Worship as not agreeable to the Word of God Julian was more visibly punished by God then many Heathen persecuting Emperours by reason of his Apostacy the crime seemed greater in him I doubt you will bee the like examples of Gods Justice and confesse with him when it is too late Vicisti Galilaee When wee are first entred into Aristotles Schoole we are taught to proceede in due forme lest an acute adversary should reduce us ad impossibile that is to some inevitable absurdity Truly you have argued so preposterously that though your Adversary would not yee have intricated your selves in a sad labyrinth It was accustomarily given out that Catholiques were not in time of your Reigne punished for Religion but for non-conformity in points of State But here yee have taken away that Vizard in holding forth to all the World that the Lawes were made and the punishments in order to those Lawes inflicted for refusing to joyne in your forme of Worship You see into what a Dilemma you are unadvisedly plung'd me-thinkes you might have made provision in your Convocation Acts against cornuted Arguments The truth is your proceeding against Catholiques argued the whole Roman Church in your judgements to bee 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a City of Rogues not civitas sancta Gods Church and therefore wee were in all things used like and numbred with rogues and thieves The Cynicks that they might be like to Hercules fighting against the Lyons assumed for their Dresse a Staffe instead of his Club and an old cloake Hence the Donatists and their off-spring the Circumcellians in Afrique used just the same you have beene indeed very formall and more Ecclesiastique-like then your neighbouring Scots in your Canonicall cloakes but you agreed in your club-law in persecution of Catholiques and all others who could not conforme their consciences to your Ganons and behaved your selves very cynically towards us all unhappily following your old Friends the Donatists though Lactantius saith that nothing is so voluntary as Religion which without the wills consent is nothing It was therefore esteemed high gallantry in the Roman Emperours to impose onely such commands upon the Jewes as were consistent with their Religion as Vlpian Records None of you are ignorant how much and how long wee have suffred under the heavy imputation of the Gunpowder Treason a crime so highly opposite to our Tenets that to assert it lawfull were heresy with us Nero when he had set Rome on fire could not easier turne the horrour of it upon any and free himselfe then to lay it upon us as hee did according to the testimony of all the Roman Historians though they themselves discover his falsnesse in it Even thus when the Plot was layd for that horride attempt of the Gunpowder it was easily cast upon us and to that end a few young desperate persons over-reached and drawne into it that under that colour wee might all be traduced whereas the very memory of it is odious to all Catholiques but time discovers the most secret machinations and will cleare all calumnies Yet you adventure to goe on 1. Without manifest wrong unto our selves our Consciences Reputation and Estates in bearing false witnesse against our selves and sundry other wayes by swearing to endeavour to reforme that as corrupt and vicious Which wee have formerly by our personall Subscription approved as agreeable to Gods word and have not beene since either condemned by our owne Hearts for so doing or convinced in our Judgments by any of our Brethren that therein we did amisse 2. Which in our Consciences wee are perswaded not to be in any of the foure specified particulars as it standeth established much lesse in the whole foure against the Word of God 3. Which wee verily believe and as wee thinke upon good grounds to be in sundry respects much better and more agreeable to the Word of God and the practise of the Catholique Church then that which wee should by the former words of this Article sweare to preserve 4. Whereunto the Lawes Stat. 13. Eliz. 12. yet in force require of all such Clerks as shall bee admitted to any Benefice the signification of their hearty assent to bee attested openly in the time of Divine Service before the whole Congregation there present within a limitted time and that under paine upon default made of the losse of every such Benefice 5. Without manifest danger of perjury this Branch of the Article to our best understanding seeming directly contrary 1. To our former Solemne Protestation which wee have bound our selves neither for Hope Feare or other respect ever to relinquish Wherein the Doctrine which wee have vowed to maintaine by the name of the true Protestant Religion expressed in the Doctrine of the Church of England We take to be the same which now we are required to endeavour to Reforme and Alter 2. To the Oath of Supremacy by us also taken according to the Lawes of the Realme and the Statutes of our Vniversity in that behalfe wherein having first testified and declared in our Consciences that the Kings Highnesse is the onely Supreme Governour of this Realme wee do after Sweare to our power to assist and defend all Jurisdictions Priviledges Preheminences and Authorities granted or belonging to the Kings Highnesse his Haires and Successours or united and annexed to the Imperiall Crowne of this Realme One of which Priviledges and Preheminences by an expresse Statute so annexed and that ever In terminis in the selfe same words in a manner with those used in the Oath is the whole power of Spirituall or Ecclesiasticall Jurisdiction for the Correction and Reformation of all manner of Errours and Abuses in matters Ecclesiasticall such Jurisdictions Priviledges Superiorities and Preheminences Spirituall and Ecclesiasticall as by any c. for the Visitation of the Ecclesiasticall State and Persons and for Reformation Order and Correction of the same and of all manner of Errors Hevesies Schismes Abuses Offences Contempts and Enormities shall for ever by Authority of this present Parliament be united and annexed to the Imperiall Crowne of this Realme as by the words of the said Statute more at large appeareth The Oath affording the Proposition and the Statute the Assumption wee finde no way how to avoyd the Conclusion The Statute is entituled An Act Restoring to the Crowne the ancient Jurisdiction c. 1. Eliz. 1. To these in briefe thus I doubt not but many of your weaker Proselites esteeme this Discourse so harmonious as to have power to make Stones dance as they followed Amphion to the Theban Walls or to tosse the lofty Offa and Banchaia and take us all off our Legs as of old at the hearing the Odrysian Harpe But wee 'l ponder your Musick 1. If it be not lawfull for
for the Dead Nay that you may be assured ask a Heathen Historian Ammianus Marcellinus he will secure you that Christian Religion teacheth Cultum Sanctorum and to make addresses to them as he writes to Valentinian If you bad yet rather have a Schismatique of your owne stamp ask Lucilla a Patroness of the Donatists in lib. 1. of Optatus Millevitan As for prayers for the dead in order to remission of debts after this life before that great day of generall goal-delivery or last fiery purgation it was as I conceive practised always according to the sense of the Church universall by the East and West and judged very profitable by them all To omit particular Greek and Latine Fathers it seemeth in the Councell of Florence to be the sense of the Greek and Latine Church as appears in the narration of the whole dispute printed at Leiden in Holland and the definition of the Councell it self seems to come exceeding home where in defining what souls come to heaven before the day of Iudgment for that is the question there decided the Fathers spake thus Illorum etiam animas qui post baptismum susceptum nullam omnino peccati maculam incurrerunt illas etiam quae post contractam peccati maculam vel in suis corperibus vel eisdem exuti corporibus prout dictum est superius sunt purgatae in coelum mox recipi c. Here they suppose some souls to be purged before the last day els the discourse is not consequent nor to the purpose Which also is cleare in Pope Benedict XI his Extravagant which begins Benedictus Dens c. where defining the same truth agitated under John 22. his words are Si tum erit aliquod purgabile in eisdem lamen post mortem suam purgabunt c. etiam ante resumptionem suorum corporum judicium generale c. erunt in coelo c. He defines that some will be purged before the retaking of their bodies and the generall judgment and will go to heaven This definition opens fully the sense of the definition of Florence which is made in conformity to this and almost in the very same words so that I do not easily see what can be desired more The sense of the old Church S. Augustine declares in his Enchyridion to Laurence where speaking of such souls he saith quanto magis minúsve bona pereuntia dilexerunt tanto tardiùs citiusque salvari This clears all It s true he leaves the fire of Purgatory somewhat disputable which is not yet desined but he clears the meaning of Christians in their durance there and indeed tells us what the old Fathers and Liturgies and Councells signified in their degrees and practises of helping the dead by suffrages which was that answerably to their demerits they might tardiùs citiusve salvari There were many Foundations in this Nation made piously by your and our Predecessouis for the dead which you perverted to prophane uses as maintaining wives and children with manifest neglect and even professed contempt of praying for the dead as holding it unprofitable and uselesse contrary to all antiquity wherein you committed theft and sacriledge according to the Canons Concilii Vasensis Amico quippiam rapere furtum est ecclesiaâ— fraudare sacrilegium and the Canon spea â—s of this very matter largely And the fourth Councel of Carthage c. 95. saith Qui oblationes defunctorum aut negant ecclesiis aut cum difficultate reddunt tanquam egentium necatores excommunicentur They are excommunicated as murtherers Other Synods are as severe which I omit these signifying sufficiently the sense of the old Church See your friends of Magdeburg for these and for the rest of the Doctrines wherein you differ from us whether antiquity did not ackdowledge them Ask B. Vsher and the rest who have any ingenuity amongst you whether the Popes Supremacy was not acknowledg'd Read the history of the famous Dionisius Bishop of Corinth in Eusebius and S. Hierome who lived under Antoninus Verus you know how neere this was to the Apostles you will conclude of how great authority the Popes of Rome were in those first daies when their commands signified in their Epistles were even amongst the Greeks published in the Churches in time of Divine Service by the Bishops and S. Epiphanius in Panar heresi 30. against the Ebions witnesseth that S. Clement his Encycles were solemnly read in Churches which was an act of high reverence far from your scorn of that Supreme Seat See for this and all other points even all true Generall Councells to this day they will let you see clearly Ask Perkins and your most eminent Writers whether almost all the Tenents for which you separte from us were not held above 1300. years If Traditions prove Episcopacy they will as well prove the rest Truly this sole Paragraph destroyes all your Praelatique Protestancy and renders you to your first condition of invisibility where ye lay for 1500. years hidden not in Abrahams bosome But if you can faine any existence it must be in some occult receptacles or crany holes of your own fancies Plato's Ideas though fanatique enough never reacht you but Luther being in drink and his fancy weakned first began to dream of you though confusedly I know many of you are well acquainted with Gyges his Ring which renders you invisible at pleasure but you have not the perfect use of it els you could as well make your selves visible to all the world Your old friend B. White and B. Vsher laboured much to get this art but unsuccessefully I must needs touch this main point a little farther I more commend Monsieur D'ally Chillingworth and all his schools ingenuity who though they enervate the grounds of Christianity yet they far more consequently deny the Fathers to have that authority which Catholiques and the General Councells universally give them in clearing points of faith as in the first four where they were alledged examined and accordingly Faith declared by their authorities and so in every Councell hitherto in point of Christian Doctrine then you who play fast and loose Here you pretend necessity and high authority for Tradition which must needs be conveighed by them to us and in all your works as I have noted and as all know you have cryed out against it as not being necessary Thus you fight and contradict each other and your selves in these fundamentalls I remember Plato in his Timaeo tells of an Aegyptian Priest who thus spoke to Solon O Solon Solon vos quidem Graeci pueri semper estis senex autem Graecorum nemo nulla est enim apud vos disciplina quae senio incanuerit Will not this come home to you if your years are to be numbred with the continuance of your doctrines surely you will never be very aged Since you have toucht this point of the Fathers let me put in one observation whereby any ignorant person may judge whether the Fathers of how great or
and imbecility that they cannot do these things this the divine providence hath brought to passe by the predictions of the Prophets by the humanity and Doctrine of Christ by the voyages of the Apostles by the Contumelies crosses bloud and death of Martyrs by the laudable and excellent lives of Saints and by miracles done at convenient times in all those things worthy of so great matters and vertues When therefore we see so great help and assistance from God and so great fruit and increase thereby shall we make any doubt or question at all of retyring into the bosome of that Church which even to the confession and acknowledgement of mankind from the See Apostolique by succession of Bishops hath obtained the soveraignty and principall authority Heretikes in vain barking round about it and being condemned partly by the judgement of the people themselves partly by the gravity of Councells partly also by the majesty and splendor of miracles unto which not to grant the chief place and preheminence is either indeed an extream impiety or a very rash and dangerous arrogancy for if there be no certain way for the minds of men to wisdome and salvation but when faith prepareth and disposeth them to reason what is it els to be ungratefull unto the divine Majesty for his aid and assistance but to have a will to resist an authority which was gained and purchased with such labour and pains and if every art and trade though but base and easie reqires a teacher or Master that it be learned and understood what greater expression can there be of rash arrogancy and pride then both to have no mind to learn the booke of the Divine mysteries from their Interpreters and yet to have a mind to condemn the unknown Thus far this glorious Saint Here we see how highly necessary blessed S. Augustine judged it for all Christians to adhere to the Catholique Church in all points of belief which he declares here to be the Roman Church that is to say that universall multitude of Christians which acknowledgeth Rome for their head whose authority as he saith is confirmed by consent of Nations Councells and Majesty of Miracles Was ever your fictitious Church thus adjusted Here great S. Augustine puls down sails and of a Master glories to become a Scholler Whence we learn that if an Origen the crums of whose plenty rendred Clemens Alexandrinus rich in the esteem of all or an Apollinarius with his conquests against Porphyry and other enemies of Gods Church or any other prodigious Comets of wit and learning or whatsoever posteriour Masters who can be but pedants to the former should presume to teach the Church or to question her Magisteriall Dictates or Conciliary Decrees we must say with Vinc. Lyr. ca. 10. that with the Church we ought to receive Doctors and not with Doctors to forsake the faith of the Church Could we attaine to S. Paulins contempt of our selves we should not at so high a rate as to the prejudice of Gods Church and his divine truths sell our raw conceits S. Hierome and S. Augustine made high esteem of his learned and pious Epistles and S. Amand kept them as Diadems in his Storehouse whereof he sent to S. Paulin a fardle to which he replies Legimus in tergo epistolae annotationem epistolarum quas meas esse indicatis nam verè prope earum omniumimmomor eram ut meas esse non recognoscerem nisi vestris literis credidissem unde majus accepi documentum charitatis vestrae quia plus me vobis quà m mihi notum esse perspexi If he had been tickled with our vanity he would have kept a better bed-roale of his writings in his memory then to borrow and even unwillingly from S. Amand a knowledge of his own works Here is no danger of recalcitration in order to the holy Churches great treasury opportunely dispensed and humbly received by her learned children S. Paul our Grand Master puts all Doctrine and Doctors to the test thus If any preach unto you otherwise then you have received be he accursed It 's high time therefore to leave Pope Celestine his golden rule celebrated in Lirinensis let novelty cease to molest antiquity for whosoever he is or of whatsoever eminency for learning or sanctity he seems to be if he introduceth novelty alienus est prophanus est hostis est he is a wolfe in a sheeps cloathing What greater expression can there be of rash Arrogancy and pride c. as S. Augustine hath taught us FINIS A cursory Animadversion upon Henry Fernes Treatise of the Division between the English and Romish Church upon the Reformation IF I had not seen the two Capitall letters D. D. in the title page of his Treatise I should have esteem'd 〈◊〉 not worthy taking more notice â—f then of a scurrilous Pamphlet neither dare I play the Cabalist to â—ive the divers significations of those Hieroglyphicks but reading them without notes they import Doctor of Divinity the Preface a Country Sermon which ever must have a fling at the Papists neither that nor the ensuing discourse is ad Clerum els they would more savour of the Doctor according to the antientstle of the University In his said preface to take notice first of some of his calumnies there he falls into these expressions All the Christian world sees how long the poor distressed Eâ—stern Church has lain under that heavy condition unpitied by them of the Romish Communion and how they have stood affected to us since our Reformation has sufficiently appeared by their several practises against us what hand they had in our present troubles is not unknown to some what joy they now take in them let their own hearts tell them c. His chiefe ayme in the book is to shew that the arguments which they use to condemn the Independents are not retortable upon themselves by us and what greater use of reason they grant to their Proselites then we All which he labours for in the seventh and the ensuing Sections till the thirteenth wherein verily he is so unhappy that any child may return his arguments with great advantage His result being this that private judgement or judgement of discretion which he allows to private men must submit to the publique els the power of Jurisdiction must proceed to judge censure and cast out the disobedient and therefore he exacts even in case of errour all externall peaceable subjection Did ever the Roman Church go thus far was there ever challenged any higher captivation of understanding then that every one should submit to the publique Was ever externall subjection exacted in point of error which this D. D. wil have in his Church Further the Independents whom he involves with Sacrilegists he wil have inexcuseable in their breach from them because it was not warranted by a Nationall Synod as theirs which how untrue it is all know for all the Bishops of this Nation were excluded and imprisoned when the Doctors