differences 1. By the Church they mean not the People but the Prelates and Councils headed by their great President 2. They suppose these to be God's Proxies and that God doth what they do and they so oblige God to stand to it and men to take it as God's act 3. They suppose these Prelates and their President alike impowered by God as the Apostles were and therefore God by his Proxies now may undo what he did by his Proxies then Do you now wonder if Pope and Council by Canons have power from God to make new Canonical Scriptures and new Universal Laws for the Church yea and for the World And if these may undo the Scripture Laws and Institutions and make other Sacraments and Worship in their stead But Protestants have long ago proved 1. That there is no Vice-God and that God hath no Proxies or proper Representatives with whom he hath entrusted his Power so as that their word must lead and he will follow But only Embassadors whose Message is prescribed them by God and they are to speak and do only what he bids them and he will own it and not that which they add of their own or which they do against his Word 2. That the present Pastors have not the same power as the Apostles had who were commissioned to deliver Christ's Commands to the World and enabled for it by the Spirit of Infallibility and Miracles Even as the Jewish Priests had not the Power of Moses nor could change a tittle of the Law but only keep it teach it and apply it VII That he and his followers are for a Supreme Governing Visible Humane Power over the Universal Church is a thing that I need not cite their words further to prove Mr. Thorndike Bishop Bromhall Bishop Gunning Bishop Sparrow Dr. Saywell and the rest of that mind are not ashamed of it And it is a General Council that by some of them is supposed to be this Supreme Power And when I have proved against Johnson that there never was a General Council of the Christian World but of the Empire I can get none of them to answer me save that when the Empire was broken some of the pieces came together for a Job at Florence c. But it is the Pope's right saith Bishop Bromhall to be President and Patriarch of the West which Thorndike and others largelier insist on as the necessary Principium Vnitatis which turned poor Grotius to them for Unity But I confess I thought Mr. Dodwell had been more for a Councils Power than I find he is The Protestants believe no Supreme Governor of the whole Church but Christ. Dr. Iz. Barrow of the Unity of the Church hath fully overthrown the fiction of a human Supreme Aristocracy as well as of a Monarchy But an Union of all the parts in one Head Christ we all believe and consequently a Communion among themselves VIII But what Mr. Dodwell's Judgment is of the Power of the Council and whether the Supremacy be in it or in the President I will tell you only in his own words supposing the Reader to know that the Papists so far differ among themselves that 1. Some are for the Pope's Supremacy alone the Council being but his Counsellors as some are for the Kings the Parliament being but his Counsellors 2. Some are for the Councils Superiority over the Pope as some say Parliaments are greater than the King and urge his old Oath to pass such Laws quas Vulgus elegerit so say they the Pope must own those that the Council passeth yea that they may depose him if he deserve it 3. Some say that Universal Legislation belongs only to the Pope and Council agreeing the Pope being to Call and Approve them And this is the prevailing Opinion among them so that the Controversie is much like that which men have raised about Kings and Parliaments Now saith Mr. Dodwell Ch. 24. Pag. 509 c. Even by the Principles of Aristocratical Government no Power can be given validly but to persons who are are at least in conjunction with those from whom they receive their Power Subordinate Authority must be derived from the Supreme No act can be presumed to be the act of the whole Body but what has passed them in their Publick Assemblies in which Body is the Right of Government so it have the prevailing Vote Nay though that prevailing Vote be not the greater part of the Society so it be the greater part present at such Assemblies God himself cannot be supposed to have made a Government even of his own Institution practicable till he have setled these Rules of Administring it As nothing but the Society it self can in justice make a valid Conveyance of its Right so it is not conceivable how the Society it self can do it by any thing but its own act If this be so 1. Mark that this man disclaimeth any other Divine Institution than by the Society 2. The People that have no Power being the greater part of the Society or Church give the Bishop and Pope and Council their Power 3. If the Clergy were all the Church the Presbyters give that Power to the Bishops and Pope which they had not themselves 4. All runs on the false Antimonarchical and Anarchical Principle which I have confuted in Hooker that the Body makes Power by giving up their own Right 5. Then the General Councils and Pope have no Power For the Body of the Universal Church never gave it them but the Emperors save as to Teaching and Arbitrations 6. Then in those Countries where the Body of Clergy and People put down Bishops there Bishops are put down by such as had Power to do it For 1. If man may set up Diocesans Popes and Councils man may take them down Yet the Proteus changeth his face and presently supposeth that the whole Right of these Assemblies could not have proceeded from the bare consent of the Society but from the actual Establishment of God No Assemblies can dispose of the Rights of such Societies but such as are lawful ones according to the Constitutions of that Society As out of Assemblies they have no power to act who might act in them how many soever of the Suffrages and how freely soever they had been gotten so all those Meetings how numerous soever for acts of Government if they be not Legal they add nothing of advantage to the power of particulars singly considered They are not in the Eye of the Law Assemblies but Routs and their concurrence not Consent but Confederacy And as it were Rebellion in particular persons to attempt any thing of that nature concerning the Government without the consent of their present Established Governours so is there nothing in such a Meeting that can give them any Power as united more than they had as singly considered that may excuse them from Rebellion Nay rather by the Principles of all Societies that which had not been Rebellion if done
Apostolick power which was to teach whatever Christ commanded them He is with them to the end of the World 1. In blessing the Word delivered and recorded by them 2. In blessing those that teach it But not those that add to it the supplement of their own Universal Laws And which is the Church that in all Ages thâ—se thousand years have had this power Three parts of the Christian World say It is not the Roman The Roman Church say It is not the Greeks Both say It is not they in Abassiâ— Egypt Mesopotamia Armenia Georgia c. The Protestants confess it is not they And is obedience to an unknowable Power necessary to Concord and Salvation (a) Paul saith I was not sent to Baptize but to Preach the Gospel of Christ Mat. 28. And Paul to Timothy tell us of other parts as Essential They can include or exclude none but those that include and exclude themselves which shall be effectual whatever the Priest say or do He is but a Minister Invester and Declarer of it (b) Then a Moscovian Priest may serve or such as Optandus Bishop of Geneva was illiterate and one may be taken from any Shop or Cart that understands the Dealings of the World But how much more requireth Paul to Timothy and Chrysostom c. 2. And yet I and all of my Degree yea all the Ministers or the Reformed Churches that disown his Leviathan are uncapable of Ministry or Christian Communion by our ignorance 3. But is the Nature of the Covenant-Benefits Duties c. so easily known as he talks And yet must we Perish for not knowing them (c) Note here that tho' his Priesthood have the Power of saving or damning Men yet he confesseth the very office in Specie is not of God's making For if it be not stated in Scripture it is not in the meer Law of Nature And our Church-Changers are no Prophets And if God made not the office then the arrogated Power is not his Gift (d) Note that he speaketh of God's Church in the singular Number and not of national Churches which are many (e) He hath constituted a Species of visible Governors over the several Parts but no one Personal or Collective over the whole (f) Is it no Obedience unless it be absolute Is none due to God above Man Must not his Law be undorstood * Or Papal say others * And the Papal * Representing his Person is a high word But he never enabled them to change his Laws or Church-Offices but only as Servants to deliver that same Power by way of Investiture which he had instituted and described in his Law and was in their Commission As the Londoners may not change the Lord Mayor's Office but put him in that which the Charter maketh (a) Yes If the Bishops had been Makers of the Office and Donors with absolute Power and not only Servants entrusted to deliver their Masters Gifts and Offices * I am wholly of your Mind specially as to the Pope and his Bishops But I 'll judge of their Power by the Will of God * The Church is the Bishops and Council the Pope being President * That is in Scripture times Dr. Hammond confesseth the same And yet we are all no Ministers and have no Sacraments nor right to Salvation if we have not uninterrupted successive Episcopal Ordination from those times * What an happy advantage hath the Pope that can get forty Italians together at Trent seven years before he can send to and they come from Mexico Abassia Armenia and all the World There is an Art in all things and men live by their wits †Sir God will not learn of you But God hath made no such Government at all Monarchy or Aristocracy * A General Council meeting without the Call of the Pope their Established Governour are Rebels * 1. Hath the King no power but as a Representative If yea why not others 2. Who made Pope or Prelates the Representatives of those that never consented to them * Now we know what Councils have Authority Only those appointed by the President * The Mass Book * The Mass Book
Spiritual or Ecclesiastical Things or Causes as Temporal And that No Forreign Prince Person Prelate State or Potentate hath or ought to have ANY JURISDICTION Power Superiority Preheminence or Authority Ecclesiastical or Spiritual within this Realm And therefore I do utterly renounce and forsake all Forreign Jurisdiction Priviledges Preheminence and Authorities granted or belonging to the Kings Highness his Heirs and Successors or united or annexed to the Imperial Crown of this Realm Here all the Kingdom swears That none have or ought to have any Jurisdiction here who is Forreign Yet some Papists have been encouraged to take this Oath by this Evasion Obj. No Jurisdiction is here disclaimed of Forreigners but what belongs to the King But Spiritual Jurisdiction called the Power of the Keys belongs not to the King Ergo. Ans. For securing the King's Jurisdiction All Forreign Jurisdiction is renounced signifying that there is no such thing as a Jurisdiction over this Realm but the King 's and his Officers The Power of the Keys or Spiritual Power is not properly a Jurisdiction as that word includeth Legislation but only a Preaching of Christ's Laws and administring his Sacraments and judging of mens capacity for Communion according to those Laws of Christ And this under the Coercive Government of the King Much like that of a Tutor in a Colledge or a Physician in his Hospital What can be more expresly said than this here that No Forreign Prince Person Prelate State or Potentate have or ought to have any Jurisdiction Power Superiority Preheminence or Authority Ecclesiastical or Spiritual within this Realm Is that of Pope or Councils neither Ecclesiastical nor Spiritual Is not the word Prelate purposely put in to exclude that Power hence which Prelates claim Though the King claim not the Power of the Keys he knew that by the claim of that Power the Pope and Councils of Forreigners had been the disturbers of his Government And therefore all theirs here is excluded as a necessary means to secure his own 1. Popes and Councils have claimed a Legislative Power over us and all the Church But the Laws of this Land know no such but in Christ over all and in King and Parliament under him over this Land And therefore the Oath excludeth the Power claimed by Popes and Councils 2. As to Judicial Power these Forreigners claim a Power of Judging who in England shall be taken for a true Bishop and Minister who shall have Tythes Church-Lands and Temples whether the Kings Lords and all Subjects shall be judged capable of Church-Communion or be Excommunicate And our Laws declaring that all this Forreign Claim is Usurpation fully proveth that it was the sense of the Oath to exclude them They claim also a Power of Judging who shall pass here for Orthodox and who for Hereticks And in their Laws the consequence is who shall be burned for a Heretick or be exterminated or after Excommunication deposed from their Dominions and their Subjects absolved from their Allegiance But certainly the Oath excludeth them from all this The most of the Papists claim no Power directly due to their Pope but that which they call Ecclesiastical or Spiritual the rest is but by consequence and in ordine ad Spiritualia But if this be not excluded in the Oath then they intended not to exclude the Papacy And then what was the Oath made for or what sense hath it or what use And who can believe this If the meaning of the Oath be not to exclude the Pope's Ecclesiastical Power then they that take it may yet hold that the Pope is Head of all the Churches on Earth and hath the Authority to call and dissolve and approve or reprobate General Councils and may Ordain Bishops for England and his Ordinations and his Missionaries be here received and Appeals made to him and Obedience sworn to him his Excommunications Indulgences imposed Penances Silencings Absolutions Prohibitions here received All which our Statutes Articles Canons c. shew notoriously to be false It is evident therefore that this Oath renounceth all Forreign Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction II. The second proof is from many Acts of Parliament Those which prohibit all that receive Orders beyond Sea from the Pope or any Papists to come into England on pain of death Those that forbid the Doctrine Worship and Discipline both of Popes and Councils The words of 25 H. 8. c. 21. are these Whereas this Realm recognizing no Superiour under God but the King hath been and is free from Subjection to any man's Laws but only such as have been devised made and ordained within this Realm for the wealth thereof or to such other as the People of this Realm have taken at their free liberty by their own consent to be used among them and have bound themselves by long use and custom to the observance of the same not to the observance of the Laws of any Forreign Prince Potentate or Prelate but as to the accustomed and antient Laws of this Realm originally Established as Laws of the same by the said sufferance consent and custom and none otherwise It standeth therefore with natural equity and good reason c. that they may abrogate them c. Moreover the Laws of England determine that no Canons are here obligatory or are Laws unless made such by King and Parliament And if it be true which Heylin and some others say that the Pope's Canon-Laws are all here in force still except those that are contrary to some Laws of the Realm that is but as the Roman Civil Law is in force not as a Law of the Pope or old Romans but as made Laws to us by King and Parliament The Roman Senate and Emperor give us the Matter of the Civil Law and the Pope and Councils of the Canon-Law but the Soveraign Power here giveth them the Form of a Law as the King coineth Forreign Silver III. The Articles of Religion prove the same 1. The twenty first Article saith General Councils may not be gathered together without the Commandment and Will of Princes And when they be gathered together forasmuch as they be an Assembly of Men whereof all be not governed by the Spirit and Word of God they may err and sometime have erred even in things pertaining to God Wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to Salvation have neither strength nor Authority unless it may be declared that they are taken out of the Holy Scriptures Here note 1. That General Councils so called in the Empire had no power to meet much less to Rule without the Commandment of Princes And so those called by the Emperor had no power over the Subjects of other Princes 2. And true Universal Councils will never be Lawfully called till either all the Earth have One Humane Monarch or all the Heathen Infidel Mahometan Papist Heretical and Protestant Princes agree to call them For one hath not Power over the Dominions of all the rest And so the Aristocratical Party put the
have no right to Salvation presently on their Baptism then it is not lawful to say that the contrary is undoubtedly certain by the Word of God But I confess Mr. D's Proposition is false as I have formerly proved to him And perhaps necessity will force himself to deny it as to Baptism though it overthrow his assertion about Ordination Specially if he be for Laymen and Womens Baptizing as the Papists are in case of danger But the Name of the Church will warrant such Lords to prove all such Declarations Subscriptions Oaths not only sinless but necessary to Order Peace Obedience Ministry and I think to Salvation For they make Schism Damning and such Obedience necessary to escape Schism But he hath one cleanly shift Though the Corporation Declaration be that there is no Obligation from the Covenant on me or any other person and a Man think that some are obliged by it against Schism Popery and Prophaneness and to repent of Sin He saith no Man is forced to take these Declarations Vestry Oaths c. For he may chuse and none constraineth him to be in Corporation trust or a Vestry-man and so a Minister so the Act was to appropriate this sweet Morsel of so Swearing declaring c. to themselves And to themselves let it be appropriated for me And yet when all the Corporations Vestries and Ministry are constituted as they are this is the necessary Unity But Obedience to the Church solveth all I once askt a Convocation man what were the Words of God by which this Article was proved and past in the Convocation and he could not name me any Text that perswaded the Convocation to pass it but told me Dr. P. Guning urged it so hard that they yielded to him without much contradiction I was not willing to believe that the Church of England would pass an Article of Faith against their Judgments to avoid striving with one man when in imposing it they must strive against and silence thousands and condemn most of the Reformed Churches but rather that really they contradicted him not because they thought as he And yet I was loth to think them so uncharitable as to put all Ministers to declare such a thing to be in the Word of God and never tell them where to find it Between both what to think I know not But if really Dr. G. was the Church the reverence of his Name Church shall never make me add to the Word of God or corrupt his Ordinance nor subscribe to his Book or to a Foreign Jurisdiction if he Father it on the Church The main strength of all his condemnations of us and justifications of himself is that They are the Church and our lawful Rulers and we must obey and be Sworn never to endeavour any alteration of Church Government not excepting Church depopulation by large Dioceses nor the use of the Keys by Lay Chancellors And if you ask for the proof of all this and that they are not Vsurpers nor Church-destroyers nor Subverters of Episcopacy it self nor grand Schismaticks you must be content with 1. Ipse dixit and 2. Episcopacy is ancient 3. And the people have neither an Electing or necessary Consenting Vote and yet when not only Mr. Clerkson and I but also Dr. Burnet have fully proved that for twelve hundred or thirteen hundred years the peoples Consent was requisite these great dependents on Antiquity and the Church can wash all off with a torrent of words If the Letters in the Caballa and other History be credible how great a hand had G. Duke of Buckingham in making the Church of England in his days Read but what Heylin saith of Bishop Laud's preferment and the Letters of some Bishops to Buckingham in the Caballa and judge what made the Church of England How basely do they sneak and beg of him for Preferment◠e. g. Theophilus Bishop of Landaffe is a most miserable Man if his Grace help him not to a better Bishoprick Mountagues place at Norwich was of little worth since Henry the Eighth stole the Sheep and scarce for God's sake gave the trotters as he saith in his Letter to Laud. And this was the way So the Church of England is Jure Divino made by the Civil Powers But yet a few words can prove just as he proveth all the rest that the Dean and Chapiter chuse the Bishops and not the King As Heathens made Images of the Gods and thought the Gods did actuate them so men make the Images of Bishops and Councils and some Spirits actuate them whatever they be whether those Noble Lords Knights and Gentlemen that at their death lamented that they lived Atheists and Infidels repented that as Patrons they chose Parish Church men I know not But while these Drs know that many Great Councils have decreed the nullity of those Bishops that got in by Secular help and favour and Damned the Seekers and Accepters of it and yet would perswade the Church that all Gods Word is insufficient for Universal Laws without the addition of Soveraign Councils I will regard them as they deserve and not as they expect Why answer they not my late Book of English Nonconformity The True Sum. Popery is I. The turning a National Univerglity or Catholicism of Councils Church Power into a Terrestrial Universality II. Turning Confederacy and Communion into Political Regency III. Deponing Kings and States from their Sacred office of Supream Government and sole forcible Government of the Church or Persons and things Ecclesiastical the Clergy having only the Power of the Keys Word and Sacraments to work on Conscience without corporal face Chap. XV. The first Letter to Bishop Peter Guning upon his sending me Dr. Saywell's Book My Lord I Thankfully received from you by Dr. Crowther Dr. Saywell's Book and a motion for Conference with him which I yet more thankfully accept I read over the Book presently and think it meet to give you this account of the Success I. 1. I perceive that it doth not concern me nor many if any that I converse with For it is Presbyterians Separatists Quakers and Fanaticks that he accuseth and I am conversant with few such 2. And yet the strein of his Book is such as will make Readers undoubtedly think that by Presbyterians and Nonconformists or Conventiclers he meaneth the same Persons and speaketh of the common Case of the present ejected silenced Ministers Of whom I must again and again say 1. That I have had opportunity by Acquaintance and Report of knowing a great part of the silenced Ministers of England and I know but of few of them that are Presbyterians and Judge most of them to be Episcopal Lawyers and Gentlemen indeed incline to place all the Government in the King and Magistrates 2. That in 1661. when we were Commissioned to endeavour Concord with you not only those named in the Commission but all the Ministers of London were invited by Mr. Calamy and Dr. Reinolds and Mr. 〈◊〉 and Dr. Wallis
know such Matter of Fact better by Universal Consent of all Christians and true History than by such a Judicature of all the Bishops of the VVorld 2. But Protestants do so strongly prove that the S. Scripture is the entire Regulating VVord of God without defect or supplement by Unwritten Tradition as that nothing is left out of it which is of Divine Obligation to all the Christian VVorld in all Ages And therefore that all that the Spirit instituted as Universally Necessary in church-Church-Government is there 3. If it were not so this Gap of Unwritten Necessary Supplemental Tradition will let in no Man knoweth what besides church-Church-Power on the like Pretences 4. Tradition hath been oft pretended by General Councils against each other as I undertake to prove 5. All that is not in Scripture of Church-Offices and Government have been so far new or changed up and down as proveth that the Church never took them as Universal Necessary Institutions of Christ delivered by the Apostles I need not instance in Patriarcks and such like nor such difference of Seats as Nazianzen and Isidore Pelusiota wish levelled when if General Councils themselves had been this Necessary Church-Government the Church had not been Three Hundred Years without them yea and to this Day indeed 6. As the King by his Laws and by his Officers Judges and Justices Lawyers c. without another Vicarious Soveraign or vice-Vice-King doth tell the Subjects what is the Constituted Government of the Kingdom and all Official Powers which they must obey so doth Christ by his Written Law and by his Ministers teaching us in their several places tell us what is his Church-Government without an Universal Vicarious Soveraign 7. When Leo the First called himself Caput Ecclesiae Vniversalis and Boniface was called Vniversal Bishop much more long after for many Hundred Years so great a part of the Empire judged the Roman Bishop to be the prime in the Empire and in Councils and Principium Vnitatis as Archbishop Bromhal speaketh as that it seemeth then to have been the Major part of the Bishops of the whole World the Empire being then the far greatest part of the Universal Church And even Salmasius liberally granteth that the Pope was not a meer Patriarch but the Heads of the Patriarchs and Church Universal in the Empire de Eccles. Suburbicar prope fin And I understand not how he is Principium Vnitatis in a Governed Society as such who is not Principium Regens But it followeth not that it was so from the Apostles nor that it must continue so when the Empire is overthrown or the Emperor will change it If most of the Church be in one Empire and the Prince think he should form the Government to that of the State as the Chalcedon Council that magnified Leo yet witnesseth doth this make one of his Subjects Ruler of all other Christian Kings or subject the World to Foreigners Yea and that when the Empire and its Laws are overthrown and most of the Church is without the Empire enlarged more over other Lands Must we turn Papists if they can but prove that once a General Council or the Major part of Bishops was for them by Corruption or Secular Advantage What Changes have the Majority oft made § IV. Your fourth VVork of Universal Supremacy is To declare what Ordinances were received from the Apostles as Imposition of Hands to give the Holy Ghost and such others 1. I acknowledge that Baptism and the Eucharist were known by practice before the New Testament was written and the continued practice hath been as sure a Tradition of the substance of them as the Scripture it self hath had But it is all Christians Lay and Clergy that assure us of this yea Hereticks and Enemies with them by Universal Historical Concord and not the Authority of a Supreme Universal Judicature And yet it was all recorded in the Scripture that without those sure sufficient Records the Tradition might not as Oral or practical only be continued So that all that is Universally Necessary is now in Gods written Law And if it had not been so the Papists changes of the Eucharist which yet Holden with others pleadeth Current Tradition for tell us how little security we should have had of them If there be more Sacraments than two in the Scripture we will receive them Or if more could be proved instituted by Christ and delivered from the Apostles than the Scripture mentioneth we should not refuse them But we are perswaded there is no such proof The Papists plead Scripture for all their seven Sacraments and we quarrel not at the Name but expect better proof of all that is Obligatory to the whole Church on Earth than an unproved Universal Judicature VVhat Confirmation is I now pass by § V. Your fifth VVork for the Soveraign Power is Judicial Sentencing not Individuals ordinarily but by Description such as are to be cast out by Excommunication 1. This is not part of Judicial Government but Legislative To say He that is impenitent in Drunkenness or Heresie shall be cast out is the Penal part of the Law And Gods Law hath already told us who shall be cast out There are Sins enough enumerated to this use 2. If all the Necessary Doctrine and Practice be expressed in Scripture then so is the Necessary Cause of Excommunication For that Cause is bringing other Doctrine or Impenitence in breaking Gods Law But the Antecedent is true Ergo. 3. How happy had it been for the Church if there had been no Hereticating or Anathematizing but for violating Scripture Doctrine and Law impenitently Alas what Work have Hereticators and Anathematizers made in the Church 4. How know we what Curses are valid when General Councils have cursed per Vices almost all the Christian World And the same Bishops in one Council cursed one party and in the next the contrary and cursed their own Councils 5. As there needeth no Vicarious Monarch of the whole World no nor of one Kingdom under the King to tell who shall be Fined or Hanged but the Kings Law as the Rule and the Judges and Justices in their several Limits to pass Sentence in particular Cases so there needs no Church-Vicarious-Judicature of all the Earth to judge who shall be cursed and cast out Christs Laws and the Pastors respectively in the several Churches are enough And in doubtful Cases and for Concord Neighbor-Bishops in Synods must Consult § VI. Your sixth Use of an Universal Supremacy is to make mutable Church-Laws 1. God is the only Lawgiver to all the World Christ to all the Church We deny any such Church on Earth as hath an Universal Soveraign under Christ and can make Laws for all the Christian World 2. How is Gods Law sufficient in sâ—o Genere if it leave out that which is to be commanded to all the World of Christians How is Mans Universal Legislative Power proved any more than an Universal Civil Soveraignty Or how differeth it from
Italian Papists 2. Nor with the moderate Papists that are for the Councils of Constance and Basil For he takes them for Papists with whom he hath no Communion 3. Nor with the Church of France because they have Communion with Papists Though many of them are no Papists in their Principles 4. He hath no Communion with any Protestant Churches that have not Bishops 5. Nor with any Protestants that have Bishops not Ordained by Canonical uninterrupted Succession from the Apostles at lest presumptively 6. With none of the Greek Church that have Communion with the Church of Rome or with any Schismaticks or that want such Succession or refuse the Laws of the Church which is all 7. With none of the remote Nations called Jacobites Nestorians c. Because they are judged Hereticks or Schismaticks or Communicate with such or have a notorious interruption of Succession 8. Not with the Maronites or any Sect that Communicate with Papists 9. Not with the Nonconformists of the Church of England whom he endeavoureth to prove Damnable Schismaticks 10. Not with the true and old Church of England who professed to hold Communion with those Foreign Protestants whom he calleth Schismaticks Nor with any of the present Bishops and Conformists who profess the same Communion For his Rule is that they are Schismaticks who Communicate with Schismaticks Who then hath he Communion with It seems none but those few new Men in England of his own Mind who perhaps may call themselves the Church of England 11. Nay not with those among them who profess Communion with the Church of Rome except with the Jesuited part 12. And with those of them who are for one Supreme Universal Aristocracy or Legislative College Council and Judicature over the Universal Church And now can you tell which is the Church that he is of Or is there a more notorious Separatist or Schismatick than he § 6. And now can any Man tell which is that Church which he speaketh such wonderful things of as the One Body Politick of Christ with one visible human Government Which be the Bishops and Church that have all that Leviathan-like Power of Heaven and Hell which he describeth and asserteth Is it only the uncertain relicts of all these § 7. Mr. D. hopeth justly that none or few of his friendly Readers will read what I write against him and therefore when I detect his Fraud and putid Errors he puts it off with saying I do but put many new Questions and answer nothing accurately But for the sake of them that will read I will ask him 1. Whether his little invisible Church be a Body meet for the Glorious Elogies which he giveth the Church of Christ I profess I know not one Bishop that is of his professed Principles Archbishop Laud was not that took a General Council to be a Court of Pretorian Power to be externally obeyed by all the Church Bishop Guning is not as the foresaid Evidence sheweth 2. And I would ask him whether his Church have all the Power of Heaven and Hell which he describeth over those that are without the Church or only over those within Paul saith What have we to do to judge them that are without And if so how narrow is the Power of his magnified little Church Let their own Subjects escape their Damning Power how they can it seems none of all the people on Earth whom he counteth Schismaticks or Hereticks are within their reach For these with him are all without If it be said They were within when they were Baptized I answer 1. What they were and what they are is not all one 2. But he saith that the Sacraments are but Sacrilegious Acts and Nullities that are done by such And if so they were never Baptized and so never in the Church § 8. But let us come to his new Book and Method And first I will tell him once more what our different Church Principles are that he may not accuse he knows not what 1. Christ is the only Head Prophet Priest and King to the whole Church on Earth both of Influence and Government Constitutive Specifying and Unifying and hath no Deputy or Vicar under him Aristocratical or Monarchical that hath any such Capacity Power or Obligation 2. Therefore the Church though Compaginated in all its parts is only one Politick Body of Christ and not of Man and hath no other Soveraign 3. Therefore neither Pope Council or College of Bishops have any Legislative or Judicial Power over the whole Church Collective but only the several Pastors are such to their several Churches 4. Yet are they obliged to keep the Unity of the Spirit in the Bond of Peace and Love and to do all in Concordant Observation of Christs Laws And all Churches and Christians to help others to their Power 5. And when they afford such Counsel or help for Concord to other Churches they do it not as Lay-men but as Pastors in the Universal Church though not as Pastors to other Mens Flocks As Physicians of several Hospitals and Judges of several Courts or Mayors of several Corporations or Kings of several Kingdoms may advise for Concord without Usurping each others Government 6. As God only by Moses made the Jewish Law and the Priests were not to make more but only to Rule by it it being a Prophetical and Mediatorial Work So Christ only by himself and his Spirit of Infallibility and Miracles in the Apostles made the Christian Universal Law and no Men are to make more such but to Rule by that so made 7. As Gerson truely told the Pope Christs own Law is sufficient for the Government of the Church Universal else Christ had not been a perfect Law-giver And they that pretend by Supplements or Emendations to add or do better are not his Ministers but Accusers 8. Therefore those Popes and Councils that have presumed to make Laws for the whole Church have Usurped Christs Prerogative and are false Prophets or Traytors against Christ. 9. Therefore none should own them as such nor is it Schism but Duty so far to disown them 10. Nor should any own these Bishops as such who own this their Usurpation As no Soldiers of the Kings Army should follow those Captains who subject themselves to and take Commissions from an Enemy Usurper or Foreign Princes 11. The Power of Bishops under Christ as to Laws is only to keep and teach Christs Laws and Rule by them and determine themselves of undetermined circumstances or accidents which vary as time and emergent occasions vary and are unfit for Universal Obligation and this Power they have only over their single Flocks though by contract they may join in such things with others for Concords sake 12. When the case of many Churches is alike and their common good requireth Concord in any such accidents all are bound to observe such Concordant Agreements by virtue of Christs command for Concord 13. But if on this pretence Pastors will turn Agreements for Concord
of a more speedy way of Success So that he resolved to put it to a speedy upshot and would have all or none which brought the Changes which we have since seen § 8. But is the Church of England yet delivered from all the Inclination to a Foreign Jurisdiction and the French Government The Oath of Supremacy made it seem hard to perjure the whole Land that had renounced all foreign Jurisdiction But many devised an Expository Evasion that only a Civil Jurisdiction was meant though the Ecclesiastick also was named Should there be but a new attempt by such as the former Rulers probably made is it not like that Men of the French or Grotian Principles will promote it yea and be glad of French assistance I doubt they that would Perjure the Kingdom by a foreign Jurisdiction will debate this odd Question Qu. Whether all that Profess or Swear that it is Vnlawful on any Pretence whatever to resist the King or any Commissioned by him in the Execution of that Commission may resist a French Army if they Invade the Land by K. J 's Commission Or will they turn Nonconformists Chap. XXIII Postscript to the Reverend Dr. Beveridge SIR § 1. THough you were Bishop Guning's Witness with Dr. Saywell his Chaplain when he conferred with me I was not willing to believe that you were of his mind for a Foreign Jurisdiction either Aristocratical or Democratical or Monarchical but to my grief am now convinced of it by your published Convocation Sermon Having too copiously here and elsewhere confuted it specially in my two Books against William Johnson alias Terret the Papist I shall go on the supposition that you will there take notice of it Especially of these two Reasons against it 1. That the Kingdom and Church is sworn against it 2. That a pretended Universal Humane Soveraignty or Legislative and Judicial Power over the whole Church on Earth is the Grand Usurpation of Christs Prerogative which no Mortal Men are capable of And if this be not Popery there is no such thing as Popery And if the Pope be justly called Antichrist or at least a Trayterous Usurper against the Right of Christ and Kings it is by this And if such a Power be really given to any the Pope cannot be excluded at least from the Universal Primacy § 2. I doubt not but the Love of Unity and the sense of the woful case of the Church by Sects and sad Dissentions engaged Bishop Guning and you in the Opinions you took up And no doubt but the Consciencious part of the Learned and Religious Papists are fixed by the same Motives in their way I may say fixed and very confident or else they durst not carry it on as they have done in France and all other Popish Countreys And I can say that I have not fixed on the denial of a Humane Universal Jurisdiction without thinking seriously Forty years of what I could find said for it as well as against it nor out of an inclination to any contrary extreme Could I have found but any Humane capacity in One or Many for such a Soveraignty Legislative and Judicial and but a possibility of such a thing and any probability that it was of Christs Institution the Love of Unity and Hatred of Unruliness and Divisions and their Effects had long ago made me a hot defender of it But the contrary Truth had contrary Effects § 3. That you may not think that I differ from you more than I do I here premise I. That I doubt not but that the Universal Church visible is One Body or Society of professed Christians As the Universal Church as Regenerate and Spiritual is One Body of sincere Christians II. That the Unity and Concord of it as Professors and as sincere must be maintained to the utmost of our power by all due lawful means III. That a wise Correspondency between all those Churches which by nearness are capable of Acquaintance and Communication is a due means to preserve their Love and Concord IV. That seasonable and duly chosen Synods of many conjunct that live within the reach of such Acquaintance and Communication may in case of true need be a fit means of such Concord V. That where such Synods cannot be had with due equality Letters and Messengers from the several Nations or Provinces or Churches may be used to that end VI. That the General Law of Christ commanding Love Concord and Edification maketh it a sin for any to affect causless singularity and to chuse any way which tendeth to Division And that where there is an Equality and no Regent power yet just Contracts for Concord ought to be observed VII That if in National Churches that is Christian Kingdoms or Commonwealths the Soveraign Power give one Seat or Bishop a Primacy or peculiar Priviledge in the Circa Sacra the Circumstantials of Sacred Offices which are within the Magistrates Power it ought to be obeyed VIII If I had lived in the Christian Empire when it sometime gave the Bishop of Rome and sometime the Bishop of Constantinople this preheminence of degree and the other Patriarchs of Alexandria Antioch and Jerusalem their several Priviledges and Powers not contrary to the Word of God I would have obeyed that which the Emperor by his Law preferred IX The Roman Empire was so great a part of the known Civilized World and so Potent that I quarrel not with the Titles of Orbis Romanus and Ecclesia Vniversalis given to that Dominion and Church which was meerly National or Imperial so be it we understand the true meaning X. Had the Empire continued one Polity and had made the Bishop of Rome the Primate as to his Seat in Councils and the said Bishop had been a capable Person and had not Challenged the Government or Primacy in order of Regiment over the whole Christian World but in the Empire only as the Archbishop of Canterbury doth in England I would have been none of his opposers All this I grant you § 4. But premising for the Explication of Terms that we take the words Regiment Laws Authority c. in the proper political sense and not equivocally for meer advice or consent I add as followeth 1. That as the Universal Church on Earth hath but one Soveraign Jesus Christ so it is one Body Politick in relation to no one Vnifying Head but Christ and hath no one Substitute Vicarious Christ or Substitute Soveraign Government Monarchical Aristocratical Democratical or Mixt. II. The Soveraignty of one Christian King Emperor or Senate in Aristocracy over an United or Confederate Christian Clergy and Laity as Subjects each keeping to their own Place and Work is the Unifying Headship of a National Church which is nothing but such a Christian Kingdom or Republick And that Christ hath owned such National Church Power and hath instituted and owned no Power of Humane Government over it on Earth And therefore as pretending to Universal Jurisdiction is Treason against Christ so the claim
of Foreign Jurisdiction is Hostility against Kings and States III. That Foreign Councils of Bishops and Dyets of Soveraign Princes are Authorized for Communion for mutual Counsel and Concord by Contract and Agreement and have no just Jurisdiction or Political Regiment over particular Soveraigns or their subject Congregations Though in Councils they retain their proper Power at home IV. The Foreign Councils agreeing on things profitable to the common benefit of all Gods own Law of Love Unity Concord Edification and publick Regard and Peace forbiddeth the particular Bishops and Churches causlesly to dissent and affect singularity But if they agree on things hurtful and dangerous to any of the particulars they are not to be obeyed nor yet if they claim Jurisdiction instead of Communion and Contract But every Prince and Pastor must Rule their own As Kings will not own a Foreign King or Council of Kings who shall Usurp a Soveraignty over them much more if over all V. That all Forcing Power that the Clergy can claim by Canons or Mandates in Christian Kingdoms is only from the Prince or State as they are authorized by him as his Officers who only hath the power of the Sword and not at all any part of their Pastoral Office And therefore as Grotius in that excellent Book de Imperio sum Potest circa Sacra hath shewed Clergy-Canons are no Laws but directing Agreements VI. The Canons of the Greatest Councils called General were Laws to none without the Empire unless Foreign Princes or Pastors made them so Nor to any within the Empire but by the Soveraigns Act as they are forcing and the particular Pastors as Directing VII Before the Division and Ruine of the Empire the Name of a General Council signified but an Imperial or National Council They being called by the Emperors who had no further power and only out of the Imperial Provinces unless any odd Person came voluntarily in for help and advantage which was rare This I have at large proved in my two Books against W. Johnson alias Terret And Ecclesia Vniversalis usually signified no more than Vniversal National or Imperial Leo meant no more when he called himself Caput Ecclesiae Universalis nor Phocas when he gave Boniface the Title of Universal Bishop And when the Empire was divided it was the Treasonable Erection of Popery to feign that Orbis Romanus was Orbis Universalis and that Concilia Generalia and Ecclesia Vniversalis meant extra Imperial and Vniversal Over-foreigners and all the World And this is still as the Foundation of Popery so the common Cheat that pleadeth for Foreign Jurisdiction VIII Though Rome was a meet Seat for Imperial Church Primacy while Emperors would have it so as it hath no just pretence to the Government of Foreigners so it is of all others most unfit for a Primacy or Presidentship in the Councils of Foreign Confederate Princes and Churches because it claimeth so much more even Foreign and Universal Regiment Nor are Councils of such Bishops or Princes to be trusted with General Contracts who claim such Jurisdiction A Primacy in Lawful Councils of Confederates would strengthen their claim of an Universal Jurisdiction till they openly renounce it And so would the use of a Senate or Council that pretendeth to the like power IX Patriarchs and Metropolitans and Provincials or Diocesans in one Empire or Kingdom can for Number Seat or Precedency justly claim no power of Governing Foreigners nor subject Bishops of that Nation but from the Soveraign X. Legislation is the first Essential power of Regiment Therefore none can be an Universal Legislator that is not an Universal Rector XI As an Universal Monarch Ecclesiastical or Civil is the absurd claim of an Impossible thing and open Hostility to all Christian Kings and Churches so an Universal Aristocracy in Councils or Patriarchs and Bishops is yet more absurd as claiming a more notorious Impossibility than the Pope doth XII An Universal power of Expounding or Judging of Christs Laws by Regent Authority or of being such Keepers of unwritten Laws seemeth the most Eminent part of Legislation it being more to be Judge what is Law and to make or determine of the sence than to make the bare words And so the Bishops should have a higher Regency than Christ Official Judges Expound the Laws only in their limited Provinces and for the deciding of particular Cases but not to be the Universal Determiners of the sence to all others None but the Law-makers can make an Universally obliging Exposition XIII The instance of the Apostles power will not prove an Institution of a stated Universal Legislative Aristocracy or Monarchy For 1. It is evident that Christ first chose and instituted them as his National Ministers by the number of Twelve related to the Twelve Tribes and by the keeping up just that number after the coming down of the Holy Ghost And by his special Mission of Paul Barnabas and others to the Gentiles distinguishing their Apostleship from Peter's and the rest to the Jews 2. When Persecution and the fall of the Jewish state made the Apostles Office more Extensive it was rather Indefinite than Universal They were to go as far as they were sent and were able 3. The Church was then in so narrow Bounds as made that Extent easie when now an Universal Humane Regiment is of Natural Impossibility and so past rational Controversie 4. Their power was not any further Legislative than as they were Promulgators of Christs Laws and Determiners of mutable undetermined Circumstances or Accidents 5. They have no Successors in those extraordinary parts of their Office which looketh like any part of Legislative power Which parts are 1. Being Eye and Ear-witnesses of what Christ did and said committed to their Testifying and Predicating Trust. 2. Having a special Commission to teach all Nations his Laws or what he commanded as the prime Promulgators 3. As having the promise of the Spirit to Teach them all things and bring all to their remembrance 4. And having the Miraculous Gifts of the Holy Ghost to attest their Witness As Moses had Successors in Executive Regency but not as a Mediatorial Deliverer of Gods Law which Aaron Samuel David and Solomon must obey and rule by but had no power to alter words or sence nor add any thing but undetermined Circumstances Yet as the Laws of Christ promulgate by the Apostles bind all Nations to whom they are revealed so we grant that the same Laws of Christ declared by Councils or Preached by any single Minister bind all to whom they come And that every Minister and Christian being a Member of the Church Universal his Doctrine tendeth to Universal Benefit which yet giveth him no Universal Regent Jurisdiction As I remember I have said all this before in my Letters to Bishop Guning when you were his Second or Witness of our Conference But the Invitation of your Discourse which I shall now give you my thoughts of maketh me think that this
and Monarchical Popery Ch. XII A humble Expostulation to the Zealous Antipapists Conformists and Nonconformists whether they have been innocent as to promoting Popery Ch. XIII VVhat is the Duty of all other Christians towards the Papists in order to the discharge of the Fundamental Duties of Love Concord and Peace and the promoting the common Interest of Christianity VVritten to keep Protestants from sinful Extreams and while we cannot come so near them as Cassander Erasmus Grotius and those that are for a Foreign Jurisdiction we may keep and use a Christian Zeal for the better way of Concord of Christs prescribing avoiding all injury to Papists and all others NB. To prevent misunderstanding Citations note That both some Episcopal Drs and some Presbyterians say That the Government of the Church is Aristocratical meaning only 1. Per partes as England is Governed by Justices and 2. Meeting in such Councils as they can for Concord But not as the summa potestas of the Universal Church which is una persona politica in pluribus naturalibus unifying the Body and so Ruling it They speak not properly in the Language of Politicks Chap. I. The true State and just Resolutions of the Controversies about a Foreign Jurisdiction in Sixty Evident or Proved Propositions § 1. HOW great advantage Satan maketh of the deceivableness of ignorant men and of the deceitfulness of the Crafty and of the aptitude of ambiguous or false or artificially-contrived Names and Words to deceive the sad Experience of the deceived World and corrupted and divided Churches openly declare and yet alas how few observe it and escape the snare § 2. If all Men were judicious and stablished Christians when serious Faith and Godliness is made a scorn by the false names of Hereticks Schismaticks Puritans Fanaticks Sectaries or any sensless jears it would no more turn them from the holy performance of their Baptismal Vow and Obedience to Christ than the raving of a Drunkard or a Bedlam or the crying of a Child But ignorant unresolved Persons that never yet know what the bearing of the Cross was nor have learned self-denial are stopt in their convictions good purposes and hopeful dispositions when they hear serious Piety made a common scorn and that by those that were themselves Baptized and profess Christianity Some of them think sure all this reproach is not laid on them for nothing and others that think it but the stinking breath of ulcerated malignant minds yet cannot bear it but draw back and shrink Therefore Christ pronounceth a dreadful Sentence against those that offend that is by such stumbling-blocks turn back and discourage even the least of these childish beginners It were better for that man that a Milstone were hanged about his Neck and he were cast into the Sea § 3. But no scandal or snare is so dangerous as those which are made by Rulers or Great Men or by Pastors and Teachers on the pretences of Religion and Divine Authority abusing the holy Name of Christ. § 4. And the same Artifice that Satan useth against Godliness in general he useth against particular Truths Duties and Persons And one of the most dangerous that I now perceive the Protestant Religion assaulted with is putting the Name of Nonconformists and Puritans and Schismaticks on Protestants as Protestants and the Name of Catholick the Church the Church of England the Clergy yea of the Reformed Church and of Protestants on the Papal Roman Sect. The Church of England King Parliament Archbishops Bishops and the rest were sixty years ago and less against that as Popery which now is obtruded on us as the sense of the Church of England against Popery Such Wonders can bare Names do with the ignorant And they go on without any great resistance § 5. Whereas there are great differences among the Papists about the degree of the personal Power of the Pope the Cheat is this To confine the Name of Papists to the one party and to own the Opinions of the other Party and to call them Presbyterians or Nonconformists that are against both and will be no Papists 1. The Italians are for the Popes Sole Supremacy and Councils being but his Counsellors 2. The French Lawyers are for the Councils Supremacy above the Pope as to Legislation and Judgment when they sit 3. The middle greater part are for the Supremacy in Pope and Council agreeing and the Popes Executive power in the intervals not absolute but according to the Church Laws or Canons But all for a visible Universal Supremacy and for the Papal Presidency in General Councils and his prime Patriarchship in the West If in England some be for the Kings Sole Legislative Power and Absoluteness and Parliaments being but his Counsellors and others for the Conjunction of King and Parliament in Legislation and the limiting of the Kings Executive Power by the Laws doth it follow that only the first sort are the Kings Subjects The Controversie is the same Yet the same men that are for Absolute Civil Monarchy take on them to be for Ecclesiastical Aristocracy § 6. Men love not to be tired with tedious Volumes nor can I find time to write more such therefore I shall here lay down what the Reader must necessarily know in some Theses or Aphorisms with so short but sound a proof as is necessary to capable willing Readers instead of puting them into distinct Chapters with numerous proofs to urge the unwilling I. The World is the Kingdom of God who is Eminently the King and all Reasonable Creatures his Subjects under Moral Government as all natural Agents are under Natural Potential Government No man will deny this but the Atheist whom I leave to be disputed with by Sun and Moon and Stars Heaven and Earth and common Reason II. God only is the Unifying as well as Specifying Governor of this Universal Kingdom and tho' all men be of one Nature Species Mould Interest c. yet it is only by their Relation to one God that they are one Kingdom III. God hath made no Universal Supreme Monarch or Aristocracy under him in the World But only appointed to each Soveraign his particular Province or Republick For 1. No Man or Senate is naturally capable of it They do not so much as know the Terra incognita nor can send to the Antipodes and all the Earth as Regiment requireth He would be thought as mad that should attempt it as he that claimed a Kingdom in the Moon 2. No Man or Senate had ever yet the madness to claim it IV. He that should Claim an Universal Supremacy must thereby make all Kings and States and all the World to be his Subjects V. He that doth so proclaimeth himself to be publicus hostis the publick Enemy of all Kings and States while he will make them his Subjects against their wills And therefore all Kings and States are allowed to resist and use him as their common Enemy VI. The whole World is now the rightful Dominion of
Catholick Church and makes that the Body of the Pope which should be but the Body of Christ. 17. It is a certain means of Schism while thereby they separate that humane Society of the Usurper from all the Church that will own no Head but Christ. 18. This Idol Head or Vice-Christ in plain Pride setting up himself as the Governour of the World and setting the World together by the Ears about his Title by Usurping the Government over them must needs make it a hard question at least to Christians whether this Idol be not the Antichrist that is the Pro-Christ while he makes himself the Vice-Christ And especially when it 's considered what men abundance of the Popes have been and how much they have done against the Doctrine Worship Discipline and faithful Servants of Christ. 19. They have no way to give the World any satisfactory certainty who is Pope and who not How then can the World be ruled by him 1. They cannot tell whether the Electors or Consecrators be they that necessarily give him his Power or make him Pope 2. If it be the Electors they cannot tell us who those must be If any will serve the Turk may make a Pope And then ten sort of Electors may make ten Popes If it be tied to any one sort of Men the Papacy hath long been extinct for in some Ages the People of Rome chose with the City Clergy In some Ages the Neighbour Bishops and People chose In some the Emperors In some Cardinals And sometimes General Councils If God had appointed one Vnifying Head to his Church he would have determined who should choose him and told us how to know him If it be Consecration that maketh him Pope God would have authorized some to Consecrate him If any will serve some may Consecrate one and some another and some a third Every one may have three Bishops If it must be both a just Election and Consecration the uncertainty will be the greater when neither of them is certain And none can give Power but they that have it to give But Electors and Consecraters being Inferiors have none to give If they say that God only giveth the Power and the Electors do but choose the Receiver and the Consecrators invest him I answer It is so indeed in the true Colâ—ation of Church-offices and Power Whether Mr. Dodwell and such others will or not But that 's here all one as to our uncertainty Who is the Man 2. And this is no feigned case when in such a multitude of Schisms there have been two or three Popes at once and once six alive at once that were or had been Popes And these made Bishops and Cardinals and those Bishops made Priests and no man yet knows which of them if either had the right 3. And is it the Name of a Roman Bishop or the Thing that is necessary to the being of an Universal Pastor If the Name a Hundred may be so called And bare Names give not so great Power If the Thing how were those Bishops of Rome that divers Score Years did dwell in France and never did any Bishop's Work at Rome nor had Rome's Consent Might not one in Armenia have been as truly called the Bishop of Rome But if it be Possession that gives validity to the claim then the strongest hath the best title And they that have by turns driven out each other were all true Popes And who was Possessor when one was at Rome and another that carried it at last at Avignion or in Germany 20. Tying an Unifying Head of all the Church on Earth to Rome doth leave it in the Power of any Infidel or Arian that can get Rome to set a Head of the Christian Religion on the Church that is To un-church it destroy it or corrupt it For all that know the World know how ordinarily the Present Powers can prevail with their Subjects to Elect whom they please As Theodoricus and other Arians at Rome have done And if the Turk should conquer Rome how easily could he keep them from having any Bishop at all and so the Church were dead as headless 21. Yea Rome hath long been without any true Bishop And the Church is no Church without it's Constitutive Head In divers times of Wars Desolations and Persecutions yea long by the Disagreement of the Electors and many ages by the nullity of uncapable Popes some set up by Whores and Tyrants and some deposed by General Councils as Hereticks and yet continuing as Eugen. 4. And long much of Italy it self deposed the Roman Bishop and set up a Patriarch at Aquileia and took him for their Head 22. Yea it is certain by their Doctrine of necessary uninterrupted Succession that there is now no Pope nor ever can be For when so many false Elections Incapacities by Simony Heresie Schism Infidelity Councils Depositions have interrupted the Succession it can never by their way be restored 23. By all the Canons every City should choose their own Bishop And so Rome oft a Nest of Wickedness would be made the Mistriss or Head of all the World when as Cosmography is not so necessary to Christianity that all the World should be bound ever to know that there is such a place as Rome in the World And it were a strange thing that God should make it necessary to Salvation for them at the Antipodes and all the Earth to obey one City and him that they elect Was it ignorance or craft in Pope Zachary to Excommunicate one for saying there were Antipodes If he knew of no Men on the other side of the Earth he was unlike to Govern them If he perswaded Men that one half of the Earth was uninhabited that he might not be known to be no Governor of them it was vain Craft But it 's liker it was Ignorance He that would have more Proof may find enough in Dr. Barrow XXVIII The Pope by this Claim of Universal Government claimeth so much Power unjustly from and over all Princes on Earth as obligeth them all to take him for a Publick Enemy as one would do that should claim an Universal Monarchy and tell them on pain of Deposition they must be all his Subjects as the Pope doth on pain of Excommunication Deposition and Damnation None ever had the madness to dream of an Universal Schoolmaster or Physicion Gregory long ago made the claim of Universal Bishop to be a mark of Antichrist XXIX Christ bindeth all Christians to live in Communion as Saints as making up one Body Politick of a transcendent Species of which Christ is the Supreme Governor or Head This therefore is none of the Controversie between us All Christians are agreed that as many Members of different shape use and honour make up one Natural Body so do Christians that differ in Gifts Office and Grace make up one Body of Christ. And as every Member contributeth to the good of the whole Body so must every Christian to the good of
Charges from next to the Antipodes or from Abassia Mexico c. Must they be old Men fit for Council or Boys fit for Travel when the age of a Man will scarce serve for their coming together their business and their return and execution And what 's all this to do Is it to make new Universal Laws Hath not Christ in Nature and Scripture given us enow for the Practice of Christianity without all this ado of Congregating Bishops for Legislation all over the World Oh that these Law-makers would keep Christ's Laws And if it be for mutable Circumstances is not every Church or Countrey sufficient for such variable Determinations Must men come from the Antipodes Ethiopia or Turky to tell me here what Cloaths I must wear or what place or time I shall Preach in or what Tune to Sing in c. But if they must not meet what Messengers must be sent to them all over the World to gather their Votes How shall we be sure that they truly state all the Cases to them And that they truly bring us back their Judgments And that those Judgments were truly past without hearing what could be said against them And is every single Bishop infallible or the Majority only and how shall it be known what the Majority said And whither shall all their collected Votes be carried and to whom Is it to every Christian or to every Bishop And how many Ages will this require And if it be not for Legislation but Judgment if the Question be whether A. B. be a Heretick or C. D. be a Fornicator c. who shall bear the Messengers Charges that must go through the World to all the Bishops to decide it And shall the Cause be tryed without witnesses or hearing the defence of the accused And must the accused and witnesses go through all the World Reader is it not a shame to confute such Dreams Had not I tryed in with the Leading Men I should have taken him for a Slanderer that had said that any English Dr. and Bishop should maintain that the Collegium Pastorum through the World is that summa Potestas under Christ which hath the Chief Government of the Vniversal Church in Vnity per literas formatas and that our Concord lyeth only in obeying this Power and it's Schism not to unite in such Obedience § 3. II. Moreover the former Church of England and Parliaments thought that the Oath of Supremacy which excluded a Foreign Jurisdiction did mean as well the Foreign Jurisdiction of the Pope as President of a Council and that Council with him and of the Pope as Patriarch and Principium Vnitatis and of the Bishops of Italy Spain France Poland Mexico Turky c. as of a Pope above Councils And they were not willing again to Subject the King and Kingdom to Foreign Priests nor to be cheated into Slavery by the bare Name of the Catholick Church and the Ecclesiastical Government § 4. III. And they indeed took the Pope to be the Antichrist specially for his Usurping an Universal Kingdom or Governing Power proper to Christ And therefore were angry with Archbishop Laud and his Chaplains for leaving out all such words from the Liturgy to avoid the Pope's displeasure of which Dr. Heylin ubi sup giveth you an account See but Bishop Downame's large Latine Book to prove the Pope Antichrist who yet hath written the strongliest for Diocesan Bishops of any man in my Judgment that ever I read § 5. IV. And they thought that the Doctrinal differences were very many and very great and in divers Points I believe they thought them greater than they are see the huge Catalogue gathered by Bishop Downame in the End of the foresaid Book Morton White Whitaker Abbot Field Sutliffe Chaloner Bernard Crakenthorpe and abundance more chief Drs. of the old Church of England have opened them at large But how small the new Drs. made them to be Dr. Heylin fully tells you And Archbishop Bromhall saith ubi sup p. 72 73. when all these empty Names and Titles of Controversies are wiped out of the Roll the true Controversies between us may be quickly Mustered c. See the rest § 6. V. But none doubted but the Differences about Worship were unreconcileable till one Party much changed their Forms of Worship Their great Mass of superstitious Inventions if not Idolatry as the Church of England thought and Dr. Stillingfleet even of late hath charged on them Protestants could never be reconciled to But of A Bishop Laud's reconciling attempts in Worship See Heylin Vbi supra in his Life And Archbishop Bromhall saith P. 141. Speaking against Chillingworth's true way of Concord That Form which the Protestants would allow the Romanists cry out on as defective in Necessary Duties and particularly wanting five of their Sacraments Nay certainly to call the whole frame of the Liturgy into Dispute offers too large a Field for Contention and is nothing so likely a way for Peace as either for us to accept of their Form abating some such Parts of it as are Confessed to have been added since the Primitive times and are acknowledged not to be simply necessary but such as charitable Christians ought to give up and Sacrifice to an Vniversal Peace and would do it readily enough if it were not for mutual Animosities of both Parties and particular Interests of some Persons § 7. VI. And they thought it as unlawful to obey the Pope as Patriarch of the West or as President with his Council if he imposed on us the Mass or the Worship of Angels Dead Men or Images or any new Sacraments or unlawful things as if he did it as above General Councils § 8. VII And they made no doubt but if the Pope and his Foreign Councils and all his attendant Trumpery were once received as Principium Vnitatis Vniversalis and the President of Councils he would soon come in in the same Capacity that other Popish Countries do receive him § 9. VIII For they knew that it is that same Man that is more absolute in Popish Kingdoms who would submit to some restraint in this And that by Possession Agents and that foreign help he would easilier reduce this to the Case of others than the Case of any others to this § 10. IX They had not lost the Remembrance of the Spanish Invasion the Gunpowder Plot and the many Treasons of late by such committed and it made them fear both the Power and the Company of such a sort of men § 11. X. They remembred the heavy Taxes Oppressions and the Rebellions and Wars that had been in the times of Popery in England And they had felt the ease and sweetness of Deliverance and were loth to return to that Captivity again 12 XI They had not forgotten Queen Maries Days Fox's Book of Martyrs was in the hands of many Nor had they forgot the French Massacre or the greater Murders formerly committed by Wolves in Sheep-skins who were known by
of the Vnity of the Catholick Church As if it were Vnified by One Humane Political Soveraignty Monarchical or Aristocratical Pope or Universal Council which hath Power of Governing all Christians on Earth by Universal Legislation and Judicature and not only by Christ who indeed is its only Universal Governour II. By extolling Monarchy as the best means of Unity and so inferring the Papal Monarchy so did Carolus Boverius to our late King Charles in Spain As if Princes were so weak as not to distinguish a National and a Vniversal Monarchy Let them try this Argument with any Papist King on Earth Monarchy is the best Government Ergo there should be One Monarch of all the Earth whose Subject you and all other Kings must be and see whether they will be so fooled into Subjection III. By dreaming of such a difference between Civil Government and Church Government that though no man in his wits pleads for one Humane King or Senate to Govern the whole Earth by the Sword yet it is our Religion to be for and under One Soveraign Church Governour Pope or Senate of all the Earth whereas he is unfit to Govern one Church who knoweth not that It is more impossible for the whole Earth to be Governed by One Church Soveraign Pope or Council than by one King or Parliament by the Sword IV. By confounding the Universal Roman Empire and Church and the Vniversal World and dreaming that what is said of the first was said of the last and when the Church is called Catholick or Universal and Councils General only as to the Roman Empire they would perswade men that it 's meant of all the World V. By pleading that Possession which Pope and Patriarchs and Councils had in the Empire as if it obliged the same Countries to them when they are fallen under other Princes And by pleading to the same Ends all the Possession which Popes or Patriarchs or Councils have got by deceiving any Nations of the World VI. By mistaking the Nature and Extent of the Pastoral Office because as every Christian so every Pastor is related to the Universal Church therefore they gather that there is one College or Council consisting of all Bishops in the World the Pope being President who as an Aristocracy must soveraignly Govern all the Christian World by Legislation and Judgment As if because Physicions are Licensed to Practice any where in the Land as they are called therefore they might gather into a General Council and Command all the Land to obey them as Law givers in all Matters of Health and Physick and might invade the Hospitals at their pleasure And so all the Churches and Church Affairs on Earth must be governed by Priests of Foreign Lands VII By first mistaking and then falsly claiming Apostolical Power Because Christ chose a few whom he first personally taught his Will and then endowed with the Gift of Infallibility by his Spirit to Preach first and Record after his Doctrine and Laws to oblige all the World therefore they pretend that ordinary Bishops who had no such Spirit Office or Commission may also make Laws to bind all the World And when every single Apostle had this Office Power and Spirit but they yet a while lived together at Jerusalem till their dispersion they pretend that at Jerusalem they were a General Council and that all Bishops therefore may Govern as a General Council whereas the Apostles Mission was Indefinite and not Universal else they had sinned in not going into all the World And it was easie to Guide the Universal Church while it was almost all at Jerusalem or near them And their Office as to Legislation differeth from common Pastors as Moses the Legislator's did from the Priests who were but to govern by his Laws and not to make more VIII By pretending a necessity of Judging and Ending Controversies and therefore of having one deciding Judge or Judicature for all the World As if any would be so mad as ever to expect that all Controversies about the Mysteries of Supernatural Revelation and the unseen World should be ended in this Life As if Ignorance would be without Errour And is he a Man that knoweth not how little it is that the wisest know and how much Ignorance all Mankind is guilty of Have these Pretenders yet ended Controversies Are there not many Horse-Loads of Volumes of Controversies among themselves Have they yet written any Infallible or Determining Commentary on the Bible Did not St. Paul write Rom. 14. 15 c. for bearing with tolerable Differences Is it not the Great Wisdom and Mercy of God to lay mens Salvation upon a few plain things though a multitude besides remain as Controversies Christ will decide them all at the Great approaching Judgment And is there any on Earth that can decide them all that hath either so great Knowledge or so Universal a decisive Power Why is the Christian World these Thousand or Twelve hundred Years divided into Greeks Armenians Nestorians Jacobites Papists Protestants c. if there be a Humane Judicature to End all Controversies And are such Popes as reigned from a Thousand to Fifteen hundred and such Bishops as made up their Councils Men of Ignorance and Vice fit to end all Controversies on Earth IX In order to these Ends they make a great cry of the Sects and Divisions which are among Protestants to draw men that love Unity to come for it to the Church of Rome And first they impudently falsifie the History of the Matter of Fact and perswade Men that the Differences among Protestants are ten times greater than they are They have thus pleaded it to my face when I had a Pastoral Charge at Kidderminster where we were all of one Religion and lived in love and Peace and had not one separating Assembly in a great Town and Parish And where to this day they live in Piety Love and Peace and I hear not of one person that for any difference breaketh this bond of brotherly love and liveth in any opposition to the rest Yet Strangers are told that we are mad in religious Sects and Strife Indeed zealous people that account all the Matters of the World but trifles in Comparison of things everlasting do make a greater Matter of them than men of no Religion do If among them one or two turn to any dangerous Sect or Course it stirs up much censure and opposition when in undisciplined Churches corrupted like the common World multitudes in a Parish may abstain from Sacraments and in Coffee-Houses or at Visits familiarly talk against the Immortality of the Soul and against the Scripture and all serious Religion and it maketh no great noise An Act of Fornication once in many Years among chast religious persons is a Scandal scarce ever to be expiated when among known Stews it 's little talkt of Weeds are not suffered in a Garden But in the Commons who pulls them up And what wonder if they strive most about
Fellow that the Foreign Soveraign will make his Chancellor or Legate VI. VVho knoweth not how much the Government and Peace of the State will depend on the Government of such an Universal Church Governor VVhen they have Excommunicated the King will not the Subjects the more dishonour him if they take the Excommunicators Power to be Supreme What work hath the Pope made by Excommunications Kingdoms have been engaged in War by it against each other Yea Subiects against their Kings Yea Sons have deposed their Fathers as the Emperor Henry's Case acquaints us Yea when the Pope hath not medled Bishops Councils have basely deposed the best of Kings as Ludov. Pius Case tells us and the Empress Maud's in England c. In ad ordine Spiritualia all will fall into the Foreign Soveraigns hands They must be the Soul and Kings but the Body VII It will unavoidably follow that Kings and Kingdoms must be subjected to Foreign Princes by this pretence of a Foreign Church Jurisdiction For he knoweth little of the World that knoweth not that to be true which Dr. Peter Heylin on the Creed of the Cath. Church citeth out of Socrates that since Emperors were Christians all things depended on their beck or will Will not they chuse Bishops or Rule in the choice Will not they over-rule the choice of such as are to be sent to General Councils as King James chose the Six that went hence to Dort Is it not known that it is the Excellency and Merit of our Clergy to be obedient to the Kings Will And is it not so in the rest of the VVorld Therefore those Princes that can command the greatest number of Bishops will be Governors of all the rest of the VVorld both over their Souls and Bodies VIII I desire it may be well considered whether the Government of all Kings for Soul and Body will not fall into the hands of Mahometans and Infidels or at least the contest prove hard between them and the Papists For it is no small number of Bishops that are in the Mahometans Dominions Turks Moors Persians Indians c. And if they know once the advantage of numbers they can make more when they will Even one to every Christian Congregation And as Ludolphus tells us of the Patriarch of Alexandria that any ignorant sorry Fellow gets the place that can purchase it by Favour and Money of the Turks so it is at Constantinople as to the over-ruling of the Choice But that 's not the worst But by our Subjecters Principles the five Patriarchs have such a Power in Councils that it 's no Council without them or the greater part of them And four of the five Patriarchs are Subjects of the Turk and the Pope is the fifth or first And will not the Turk then choose them and so be Master of our Religion and of all the Christian World Or if the Pope get the greater Number of Bishops the Matter will not be well amended as the Trent Council hath assured us And when the Empire was over the West the Emperor had a chief hand in choosing Popes And who knows how soon it may be so again and the new way of Cardinals be cast by And so we shall be the Emperor's Subjects IX We know already that the far greatest part of the Bishops of the World are lamentably Ignorant and Erroneous Men and keep up Error and Divisions in their several Countries viz. in Greece Moscovie Armenia Syria Abassia c. and in Italy Spain Poland Hungary Germany c. And are we bound to obey them because they are the greater number In Council or out of Council they are the same men What Nation under Heaven hath Bishops just of the Mind of these with us in England or so sound and judicious as ours have been and some yet are And must our English Bishops give up their Judgments to an erroneous Majority abroad Is that our thankfulness to God X. How little difference is it to us whether e. g. Image-worship Transubstantiation or any Sin be commanded us by a Council or by the Pope or by him as Absolute or as Patriarch of the West and Principium Vnitatis XI What can a Principium Unitatis signifie in the Universal Church but some Governing Power and Unifying Prerogative Who but the King can be Principium Vnitatis in the Kingdom The Question will not be whether the Pope shall be the Universal Monarch but only whether this Monarch's Power be Absolute and Total or Limited and Partial with his Council And Church-Monarchs that have these Thousand Years conquered Church-Parliaments already may do so still XII If the Pope have not the Universal Supreme Government in the Intervals of Councils there will be none And if there have been none these Thousand Years which must follow their Opinion that end it as the Sixth Council why should it be new made now XIII We know already that Grotius and his Party are for the Popes Government in chief in the Intervals of Councils but not Arbitrarily but by the Canons And I have after named you a multitude of Canons already which we cannot lawfully obey XIV It will make an endless Controversie in the World what Councils shall be approved and obeyed and which not XV. If the Pope must preside he will have it near him He will not Travel to Syria or Armenia c. but they must come to him And where-ever the Council is called the nearest Bishops will carry it by numbers against the remote who will be few XVI None can expect that the Pope as Patriarch and Principium Vnitatis will do his part for nothing And the riches of this Kingdom is little enough for the King Clergy and People We cannot spare that which Foreigners will expect and have done in this Land XVII While the same Man that is here owned as Patriarch and Principium Vnitatis is owned as of greater Power in Italy Spain Germany and other Lands he will be strengthened to bring us to Conformity with the rest and in time to obtain all his claim XVIII Are Strangers like to be fitter Judges of the Matters of England Armenia Habassia c. than the Rulers Clergy of the several Kingdoms who know the Persons they must Judge and can hear both sides speak and examine Witnesses c. XIX The old and famous General Councils were not called to Govern Foreigners and all the World but only the Empire that called them And why should the Church Government now be any other than Collateral with the Civil XX. I again and again say that we are Sworn by the Oath of Supremacy against all Foreign Jurisdiction And by the Corporation Act the Vestry Act the Act of Uniformity the Militia Act and the Oxford Oath the Church and Kingdom is most solemnly bound never to endeavour any Alteration of Government in Church or State And if subjecting King Kingdom and Church to a Foreign Jurisdiction of such as pretend to an Universal Supreme
bounds of Civil jurisdiction The many Councils which have been for Arians Eutychians Nestorians Monothelites Adoration of Images Papal tyranny c. and the many that have contradicted and condemned them tell us that the Right of Councils must have a better proof than their own affirmation And the far greater number of Christians that have approved or received the Erroneous tell us that they need a better proof than the reception of the greater part How great a part received Greg. 7th dictates and the Councils that Hereticated Royalists as Henricians But that proved not that these things were just Pope Vrbans Letter to King Lewis 13th of France 1629. in the 2d part of the Cab. p. 213. saith Your Ancestors have ever born as much respect to the exhortations of Popes as to the Commandment of God But do these words prove that this is true No more doth it that Leo the first was Caput Ecclesiae Vniversalis because he so called himself The Grand Signiour in his Defiance of Maximilian the Emperor ibid. p. 12. calls himself God in Earth Great and High Emperor of all the World the Great Helper of God King of Kings the only Victorious and Triumphant Lord of the World and of all Circuits and Provinces thereof And more Persons are Mahometans than Christians and more Heathens than either or both and yet none of this proveth Truth and Right § 10. I have marvelled that Carol. Boverius should think it a fit Argument to move our late King Charles 2d in Spain to turn Papist that Monarchy is the best Government in the State Ergo the Papal Monarchy in the Church Did he think the King so dull that he could not distinguish Particular Kingdoms and Monarchs from Vniversal How would the King have taken it if he had said Sir an Vniversal Monarchy is the best humane Government therefore you must subject your self and Kingdom to one Vniversal Monarch But the pretence of an Universal Democracy Aristocracy or Church-Parliament is more absurd and worse as I have proved § 11. Do our Changers of Government think that it is a small matter of which King and People will take no notice but be decoyed into by degrees in the dark to make King Lords Bishops and all the Kingdom the Subjects of a Foreigner and of a Parliament of Prelates who are themselves the Subjects of a Multitude of Foreign Princes Mahometans Heathens Greeks Papists c. As the Child said My Mother ruleth my Father and I rule my Mother and my Father ruleth the City Therefore I rule the City So we may then say the King ruleth England and a Council of Foreign Prelates rule the King and Heathen Mahometan Moscovian Armenian Papist c. Princes rule most of the Bishops in Council Ergo these Princes rule the King Do they know what it is for Pope or Prelates abroad to be made Judges Ecclesiastical of all persons and causes here and to have Power to Excommunicate King and Lords and depose Bishops and silence Ministers and Hereticate Dissenters and Interdict the Kingdom c. Again and again I say that I wonder if those men that have promoted so many Oaths and Promises in the Acts of Corporations Uniformity Vestries Confinement Conventicles Militia never to endeavour any alteration of Government in Church or State can possibly blind the Nation to think it no alteration to Subject King Church and Kingdom to a Foreign pretended Universal Ecclesiastick Jurisdiction Whether it be Perjury or Treason is no debate for me but I am sure that in ordine ad Spiritualia great temporal power will follow and Excommunicating and Anathematizing Kings and People hath not hitherto been a Toothless thing But quos perdere vult Jupiter hos dementat § 12. And what if they had found Ancient Councils Excommunicate some men without the Empire What pitty is it that any where Lords yea Bishops and Clergy men should be bred up in such Ignorance as to think that all Excommunicating is an act of Government I said before any Neighbour Prince Nation or People any number of Bishops when they hear another Nation turned notorious Hereticks may renounce Communion with them and declare the reason of it because they have made themselves uncapable Governing Excommunication per judicium publicum id est per personam publicam seu Rectorem is one thing and a declared renunciation and refusal of Communion per judicium privatum that is by an equal or private person is another thing I am not bound to stay till Turk or Pope is Excommunicated by their Governours before I renounce Christian Communion with them Paul's charge 1 Cor. 5. With such a one no not to eat and Tit. 3.10 A Man that is an Heretick after the first and second admonition avoid and St. John's Bid him not good speed c. may bind equals that have but judicium privatum discretionis when no Superior Ruler Excommunicateth the Sinner Chap. X. Some Questions about General Councils to be resolved before all the World can subject Kings Kingdoms Souls and Scripture to their Government or Decrees and take them for the Vnifying ruling-Ruling-Power over the Vniversal Church NOthing can be more necessary to all Christians Learned and Unlearned than to be sure of the truth of that which must be the foundation of all our obedience and our hopes And therefore if it be the General Councils Actual or Virtual in the chief Patriarchs and Metropolitans or supposed College of Bishops which is the Unifying or Constitutive Regent part of the Universal Church and on whose credit we must take the Scripture to be God's Word and from whose Judgment we must not appeal to Scripture or to God it 's the primum necessarium that we be sure of the Authority and Infallibility or Credit of such Councils And first we are to consider the matter of their Determining Power 1. There are Things 2. Words 3. The signification of words to be judged of 2. There are Truths of Natural and of Supernatural Revelation to be judged of 3. There are the Essentials of Christianity the Integrals and the Accidents to be judged of 4. And the Judgment is 1. Witnessing 2. Teaching 3. Or judicially Deciding We must first know who are the Judges 2. What is their work 3. How certain they are Qu. 1. Did not Apostles and other Preachers singly convert men even thousands before there was any General Council and that by such evidence as the single Preacher brought Or was it by the Argument of Universal Consent that every one then was converted e. g. the Eunuch Act. 8. The Jailor and Lydia Act. 16. Cornelius and his house Act. 10. The three thousand Act. 2.37 c. Q. 2. Did none that St. Paul wrote his Epistles to believe them till they were told that all the Teachers and Bishops of the Churches gave them their Authority Were the Gospels written by Matthew Mark Luke and John received only by the Argument of the Councils or Colleges Authority Q.
c. But what are the particular Quarrels § IV. Departing from the only Center and Test of Universal Concord and devising an Vniversal Humane Soveraignty hath set the World into mortal Discord on pretence of being the only way to Concord Christ only is the Head the King and Law-giver and Judge of the whole World The Law of Nature and sacred inspired Apostolical Scriptures are his only Universal Law Pastors by the Word and Princes by the Sword conjoyned where it may be rule under him only in their several Provinces God made the largeness of the Roman Empire a Receptive Means of the happy propagation of Christianity Mans nature is prone to selfishness and ambition By degrees those humours and the Wisdom of the World conformed the Episcopal Government to the Civil and made those Bishops highest who dwelt in the Cities where the Secular Rulers were highest The Churches had before used to serve God in Concord and to Assemble for Consultation when Concord required it The Emperors therefore exalted the great Bishops not to Govern alone but to preside in these Assemblies The first General Council had been called as a rational means to cure the shameful threatning Discords of the Churches without the formality of any President save the Emperor and a temporary Moderator But three Patriarchs were soon set up and after made five and other Bishops in different degrees of grandeur The great and shaking dangers bred by Religious Factions were ordered to be decided by Assemblies of Bishops when changes were made in the Cities of the Empire the Rule of conforming the Church to the Civil Government bred a competition between Rome and Constantinople because of the translating of the Imperial Seat They grew higher and higher and whenever any Emperor of Constantinople fell out with his own Patriarch he either put him out or favoured the preheminence of the Bishop of Rome to curb him But usually his own Bishop being at his command he favoured his Interest against the Roman And it being the Law of their Councils called General that the five Patriarchs must be there by themselves or their Delegates and the Emperors calling the Councils upon great occasions they called them in some Eastern City for the most part and the main Body of the Councils were the Greek Bishops very few of the Western being there nor the Pope himself nor at C. P. Conc. 1. so much as any Legate When the Patriarch of Alexandria who was the third fell out with him of Constantinople he would extol the Roman Preheminence to strengthen himself And when the East had Arian persecuting Emperors and Bishops the Orthodox would fly for countenance to the Orthodox Emperor and Bishop in the West But usually the other four Patriarchs in Councils concurred and the Roman Clergy were a small part of their Councils But these Councils dolefully disagreeing became a Church Militant and on pretence of agreeing the Churches tore them all to pieces and all upon two occasions 1. WHO SHOULD BE GREATEST or please the greatest for worldly Interest 2. WHO SHOULD PASS FOR ORTHODOX when after the Arian and Macedonian Heresies much of the strife was about ambiguous words Till at last the Division of the Churches the Degeneracy of the Clergy the Badness of Emperors and the Rebellion of Generals and Mutinies of Souldiers delivered up the Empire to the Infidels And the Bishop of Rome became the Chief Rebel and set up the French in the Western Empire against his Lawful Prince and furthered the Division of the Empire to its Ruine But this Division occasioned an Universal Claim § V. In all the old Contests it never came into the mind of the Emperors or the Councils to set up a Government over all the World but only in the Empire They never Summoned the Bishops of all the World but only of the Empire and not most of them As I have oft said The Subscriptions yet tell us that it was the Bishops of the Roman Provinces But the Empire being large they used sometime the swelling phrase of totius Orbis meaning Orbis Romani And the Greek Patriarchs never dreamed of a Jus Divinum or Establishment by Christ or his Apostles much less of an Universal Power For they all knew that Constantinople had no such pretence being a new Erected Seat And they were not so impudent as to profess to set a Humane Law against a Divine And the Roman Bishop long went no higher nor ever used that Argument against Constantinople My Power is of God and yours but of Men which had been most obvious and unresistible and therefore would have been used had it been true and then believed But at last from the Name of Saint Peter's Successor the Pope began a double new Claim 1. TO A DIVINE RIGHT 2. TO THE GOVERNMENT OF ALL THE WORLD of Christians at least And the breaking of the Empire necessitated him to this pretence which his ambition had obscurely before begun For else 1. His old power had died when he was no Member of the Empire and so from under the ancient Government and Laws And all must have been built on a new uncertain Foundation 2. And when all the old Eastern Empire was gone his Power and Primacy would have been confined to a narrow compass VVherefore he served his present interest 1. By setting up the French Empire and 2. By pretending to a right of Universal Soveraignty over the VVorld as the Successor of St. Peter For a General hath no strength without his Army who must have their Part in the Fight the Victory and the Prey Popes always ruled but in and by these Councils These therefore must as Church Parliaments have their Power in the Universal Soveraignty and the Pope as Universal Monarch must Rule not absolutely but in and by these Law-makers and their Laws How this Land was brought to Popery by degrees and how much the most Religious Men did towards it I must not tell Historically lest I be too long He that readeth but Beda and Malmesbury and Huntington and Hoveden and Matthew Paris may see how the Roman Grandeur drew on the change and how good people took the advancement of the Bishops in Wealth and Power and the Number and Endowments of Monasteries to be the chief strength of the Christian Church while Princes were hardly restrained from Rapacity Sacriledge and from the Crimes that commonly breed in worldly Power Wealth and Pleasure The wickedness of some Princes made the Power of the Prelates seem necessary to bridle them And then better Princes took it for their Chief Piety to advance them who were all taken for sacred Persons Men of God And after the Saxons overthrow of the Brittains the Countrey being Heathens and long in Converting it must needs be that ignorance must be predominant for a long time And the Cure of it was greatly hindered by the continual Wars of the Saxon Kings among themselves and after by the Danish Wars and Conquest And under the
what was to be done for Councils and Popular Humours would never know where to stop but would break down all the Churches strength and glory 2. Luther's Party after their riper thoughts were for such a Reformation as consisted in a nullifying of the Papal Church and Separation from it as no True Church but the Seat of Antichrist 3. A moderate sort of Papists were for reforming of many things in the Roman Church but not for nullifying it They were for reconciling the two Parties and for submissive Conformity but not for Separation Such were Julius Pslug Sidonius and Agricola who drew up the Interim and also Erasmus Cassander Ar. Baldwin Wicelius c. And in France the great Chancellor Michael Hospitalias Thuanus and many of their most excellent Lawyers and Parliament-men and some Bishops and Divines These men being offended at the Separating part of the Reformation were taken with the notion of Unity and Government but understood not the true state of the Controversie and were of two minds among themselves 1. Some had long had an untryed notion by Tradition that the Church throughout the World was One Body Politick under one Humane Government 2. Others never thought of that but having seen a submission of all the Western Churches to the Pope thought a Separation unlawful § X. But the case of the Separation which they understood not who blamed it was this The Reformers took the Universal Church in all the Earth to have no Head King or Soveraign Governour but Christ none else having the least shew of true capacity or right and therefore that none had an Universal Legislative Judicial or Executive Power And a Church-Soveraignty was a more irrational conceit than a Civil Soveraignty over all the Earth And an Aristocracy of Bishops more irrational than a Papal Monarchy Therefore they professed not to separate from Papists as Christians or from any of their Societies as parts of Christ's Church but to renounce deny and separate from their new Vsurped Church-Species or Form as it is feigned to be an Vniversal Humane Soveraign with his Subjects Had they never corrupted other Doctrine or Worship this Church-Species of Universal Soveraignty is to be separated from 2. And with all the Reformers found that though they could have submitted to Patriarchs as a Humane Power set up by Princes had they Governed according to the Laws of Christ yet 1. It being but a Humane Power 2. And one Prince having no right to set up a Patriarch over another Princes Subjects 3. And the Roman Patriarch claiming also the Universal Soveraignty or part of it in Councils 4. And having corrupted Doctrine Worship and Discipline they took it to be their duty to renounce also the Pope's Patriarchal Government and for all Christians to obey Christ's Universal Laws alone and the Local Laws circa sacra left to man's Legislation of the particular Princes and States where they live And not to place Universal Unity or Concord in any Usurping Humane Soveraign or their Laws or mutable circumstances And had those excellent moderate Papists before-named well studied this point of Universal Soveraignty it 's like they had forsaken Rome § XI When the Pope thought to satisfie the World and confound the Reformation by the Council of Trent the Cardinal of Lorain and the French consented not to much that they there did but stuck to the Councils of Constance and Basil lest they should lose the Liberties of the Gallican Church So that it was long e're that Nation seemed to own the Council of Trent and never did it heartily and universally but continued at some further distance from the Absoluteness of the Pope than Italy or Spain And to this day they continue to maintain 1. That the Pope hath no Power over the King in Temporals 2. That he hath no Power to Depose Kings 3. That General Councils are so far above him as to reform him and his disorders 4. That he is not Infallible alone but in conjunction with the Church or Councils And though some have spoken and written against the first and second Barclay and many others have confuted them and the Parliaments have burnt their Books And this is the Moderate Popery of France Well may I call them Papists still for 1. They renounce not a Humane Universal Church Soveraignty 2. They allow the Pope to call Councils and Preside and to be the principium Vnitatis and Patriarch of the West 3. They know that when no Church-Parliaments are in being the Universal Executive Power must be continued or the Universal Policy be dissolved Therefore they allow the Pope a Right of Universal Government according to the Canons but not Arbitrary and therefore not above Councils So that if those that are for the King Ruling by Law and making Laws only in and by Parliaments be yet for Monarchy then Concil Constan. Basil and the French are yet for Popery As to our Reformation it is so fully recorded by many and newly by that excellent and moderate Historian Dr. Burnet that for the time he writes I shall only transcribe a few Notes out of his Abridgment Page 87. The Oaths which the Bishops swore to the Pope and the King were found so inconsistent as it appeared both could not be kept which caused the Popes to be dismist Page 113. An Act was made for Election and Consecration of Bishops in short The King to name one and the Dean and Chapter in twelve days to return an Election of the person named by the King Page 138. Cranmer Tonstall Clark and Goodrik Bishops being called to give their Opinion of the Emperors Power to call Councils said That though ancient Councils were called by the Roman Emperors yet that was done by reason of the extent of their Monarchy that was now ceased But since other Princes had an entire Monarchy within their Dominions Yet if one or more of those Princes should agree to call a Council to a good intent and desire the concurrence of the rest they were bound by the rule of CHARITY to agree to it Page 139. Cranmer said that this Authority of General Councils flowed not from the Number of Bishops but from the Matter of their decisions which were received with an Universal Consent for there were many more Bishops at Arimini than at Nice or Constantinople c. Christ had named no Head of the whole Church as God had named no Head of the World In Queen Elizabeth's Reign 1559. the Divines appointed to dispute against the Papist Bishops in their second paper maintain That every Church had power to reform it self This they founded on the Epistles of Paul to the particular Churches and St. John to the Angels of the Seven Churches In the first three Ages there were no General Councils but every Bishop in his Diocess or such few Bishops as could assemble together condemned Heresies determined Matters that were contested so did also the Orthodox after Arrianisme had so overspread the World that even
the See of Rome was defiled with it Page 358. A Bill that came to nothing was for empowering thirty two Persons to revise the Ecclesiastical Laws But as this last was then let fall so to the great prejudice of this Church it hath slept ever since For before this p. 129 130. l. 2. In King Edward's Reign Bucer's Opinion was asked about the review of the Common Prayer Book He wished there might not be only a denunciation against scandalous Persons that came to the Sacrament but a Discipline to exclude them That the Habits might be laid aside c. At the same time he understood that the King expected a New Years Gift from him of a Book written particularly for his own use So he made a Book for him concerning the Kingdom of Christ He prest much the setting up a strict Discipline the Sanctification of the Lords day the appointing many days of Fasting and that Pluralities and Non-residence might be effectually condemned that Children might be Catechized that the reverence due to Churches might be preserved that the Pastoral Function might be restored to what it ought to be that Bishops might throw off Secular Affairs and take care of their Diocesses and Govern them by the advice of their Presbyters that there might be Rural Bishops over twenty or thirty Parishes and that Provincial Councils might meet twice a year that Church Lands be restored and a fourth part assigned to the poor that care be taken for Education of Youth and for repressing Luxury that the Law be reformed and no Office sold but given to the most deserving that none be put in Prison upon slight offences The young King was much pleased with these advices And upon that began himself to form a Scheme for amending many things c. It appears by it that he intended to set up a Church Discipline and settle a Method for breeding Youth Page 361 362 li. 4. To return to Queen Elizabeth the Changes are recited and he addeth The liberty given to explain in what sence the Oath of Supremacy was taken gave a great evidence of the Moderation of the Queens Government that she would not lay snares for her people which is always a sign of a Wicked and Tyrannical Prince But the Queen reckoned that if such comprehensive Methods could be found out as would once bring her people under any Vnion though perhaps there might remain a great diversity of Opinion that would wear off with the present Age and in the next Generation all would be of one mind Page 363. The Empowering Lay men to deprive Church-men or Excommunicate could not be easily excused but was as justifiable as the Commissions to Lay-Chancellors for those things were There are 9400 Benefices in England but of all these the Number of those viz. Papists who chose to resign rather than take the Oath was very inconsiderable Fourteen Bishops Six Abbots Twelve Deans Twelve Archdeacons Fifteen Heads of Colledges Fifty Prebendaries and Eighty Rectors was the whole number of those that were turned out But it was believed that the greatest part complied against their Consciences and would have been ready for another turn if the Queen had died while that Race of Incumbents lived and the next Successor had been of another Religion Read what he saith of Mr. Parker's great unwillingness to be A. Bishop and the threatning else to Imprison him p. 363 364 c. I conclude with that honest Note p. 369. There was one thing yet wanting to compleat the Reformation of this Church which was the restoring a Primitive Discipline against scandalous Persons the stablishing the Government of the Church in Ecclesiastical hands and taking it out of Lay hands who have so long profaned it So that the dreadfullest of all Censures is now become most scorned and despised See the rest The Papists in Queen Elizabeth's days sometime strove by Treasons the recovery of their Power and secretly strove by Policy to divide the Protestants and to root out those that were most against them The Ministers unhappily fell into these Parties 1. Some were for the Grandeur of the Bishops and for strict observance of Liturgy and Ceremonies and against Parochial Discipline and these prevailed with the Queen 2. Some were against Diocesan Bishops and Ceremonies and some things in the Liturgy and were for Parish Discipline And these were called Nonconformists and Puritans 3. Melancthon and Bucer had prevailed with some others who were indifferent as to Bishops and most of the Ceremonies and Forms but Zealous for Parish Discipline and a godly Life and for using things indifferent only indifferently to Edification and not to the hinderance of the Ministry of refusers And Bucer's Scripta Anglicana written for K. Edward which urged this Parish Discipline with great Zeal and Judgment prevailed with a great part of the Queens Council and of the Protestant Nobility and Gentry but most of the Clergy were of the two first mentioned Opinions called Extreams by others § 4. All the Parliaments that were called in Queen Elizabeth's time were still suspicious that Popery would keep too much strength by the peoples Ignorance and Impiety for want of good Preaching and godly Living in the Ministry And therefore were usually complaining of the Bishops especially Whitguift for silencing so many Nonconforming Preachers and keeping up so many Pluralists and so many meer Readers And they were oft attempting a Reformation of this and to have restored the Nonconformists and united the godly Protestants But by the Bishops Counsel the Queen still restrained them and charged them not to meddle with Ecclesiastical Matters as belonging to her In Sir Simond Dewes Journals you may see the many attempts and her constant prohibition and restraint And Parliaments were loth to offend her or make any breach remembering how great a deliverance they had by her from Queen Mary's Persecutions Though they grudged at the Imprisonment of Mr. Strickland and others that had spoke earnestly for Reformation of Bishops Affairs and the Ministry yet they bore it patiently because of what they did enjoy One of their strongest attempts you may read in their Petition of Sixteen Articles in Sir Sim. Dewes An. 1584 and 1585. page 357. which is well worth the reading But it was not endured But she long endured the Popish Bishops in their Seats though in Parliament the A Bishop of York the Bishop of London the Bishops of Worcester Landaff Coventree Oxford Chester the Abbot of Westminster were against the Bill for the Supremacy and abolishing Popery See Sir S. Dewes p. 28. and p. 23. also the Bishops of Winchester Carlile Exceter Which patience of hers mentioned put Sir S. D. the Historian on the recital of so large a Catalogue of Records for the Kings Power against the Pope and Usurping Bishops as is worth the reading page 24. § 5. Also for many years the Papists came to our Temples till the Pope forbad them But the Parliament men much differed about this Some would
the King to be a Heretick But Protestants deny that any Council hath a Judicial Power so to judge him though all Men have a Discerning Power to judge with whom they should hold Communion But if our Defenders of a Forreign Power say true then the Universal Judge Pope or Prelates may Judge and Excommunicate Kings who they think deserve it And if so not only Justice but Humanity requireth that such Kings be first heard speak for themselves and answer their Accusers Face to Face And this can seldom be well done by proxy as the Prelates will not Excommunicate the Proxies or Advocates only And must all Emperors and Kings travel no Man knows whither or how far to answer every such accusation and that at the Bar of a Priest that 's Subject to another Prince perhaps his Enemy And if it be at an Universal Council the King of England may be Summoned to America or Constantinople at nearest if they must be indifferently called together XVIII The Church of England is not for Popery but against it But the Doctrine of an Universal Church Soveraign under Christ is Popery by the Confession of Protestants and Papists I. Protestants ordinarily rank the Papists into these sorts differing from each other 1. Those that place the Universal Supream Power in the Pope alone which are most of the Italians that dwell near him 2. Those that place it in a Pope and General Council agreeing which are the greatest number 3. Those that place it in a General Council as above the Pope especially if they disagree 4. Those that place it in the Universal Church real or diffusive See Dr. Challoner in his Crede Ecclesiam Catholicam describing these four sorts of Papists II. And the Papists themselves number all the same differences as you may see in Bellarmine at large Of the first Opinion is Valentia in Thom. To. 3. Disp. 1. p. 7. § 45. and divers others both Jesuits Friars and Seculars And Albert. Pighius hath written an unanswerable Book against the Supremacy of Councils But Bellarmine himself saith of this way Vsque ad hanc diem quaestio superest etiam inter Catholicos Lib. 2. de Concil c. 13. And they that have different Soveraigns have different Churches Of the second Opinion are the greatest number of their Doctors Of the third Opinion for a Councils Supremacy above and against the Pope in case of disagreement were the Councils of Constance and Basil And saith Bellarmine Joh. Gerson Petr. de Alliaco Card. Cameracensis Jacobus Almanius Card. Nicol Cusanus Card. Florentinus Panormitanus Toslatus Abulensis and multitudes more with Oviedo Okam c. and the Parisians and French Church And the Pope and Jesuits will not say that all these are Protestants or none of the Roman Church And the Church of England never took them for any other than Papists XIX The small Book called Deus Rex which is approved by the Church of England may give the Reader satisfaction herein XX. The common strain of the most approved Doctors of the Church in their Licensed Books against the Papists disclaimeth all Forreign Jurisdiction of Pope or Prelates 1. Bishop Jewel I before cited 2. Bishop Bilson is too large to be recited Of Christian Subj p. 229. To Councils saith he such as the Church of Christ was wont by the help of her Religious Princes to call we owe Communion and brotherly Concord so long as they make no breach in Faith and Christian Charity Subjection and Servitude we owe them none See more p. 270 271 272 273 c. of the Errours and Contradictions of General Councils and how the major Vote obligeth us not to follow them And pag. 233. The Title and Authority of A. Bishops and Patriarchs was not ordained by the Commandment of Christ or his Apostles but the Bishops long after when the Church began to be troubled with Dissentions were contented to link themselves together in every Province to suffer one to assemble the rest Pag. 261. The Bishops speaking the Word of God Princes as well as others must yield Obedience But if Bishops pass their Commission and speak beside the Word of God what they list both Prince and People may despise them 3. Dr. Fulke on Eph. 1. § 5. sheweth that the Church hath no Head but Christ and no man can be so much as a Ministerial Head 4. Dr. Reynolds against Hart proveth that none but Christ can be the Head of Government any more than the Head of Influence 5. Dr. Whitaker against Stapleton de sacra Script pag. 128. He sheweth his Ignorance as worthy to sit among the Catechumens that instead of Believing that there is a Catholick Church puts believing what the Catholick saith and believeth sic tu ut novam tuam fidem defendas nâ—vos articulos condis etiam non haeresis sed perfidiae Magisteres I believe that there is a holy Catholick Church but that I must believe all that it believeth and teacheth I believe not Augustine appealed from the Nicene Council to the Scripture We receive not the Baptism of Infants from the Authority of the Church but from the Scripture And pag. 103. he sheweth that Councils have erred and corrected one another and are more uncertain than the Scripture And pag. 50. The Peace of the Church is better secured by referring all to the Scripture than to the Church Pag. 501. The Catholick Church in the Creed is invisible and known only by Faith 6. See Bishop Hall's No Peace with Rome and his Letter to Laud. It is tedious to cite all in Willet Slater Prideaux Abbot Marton Crakenthorp Challoner White and the rest to this purpose It is most notorious that the Church of England was against all Forreign Jurisdiction of Pope or Prelates as over this Land To cite a multitude of such Testimonies would but needlesly swell the Book and weary the Reader Chap. II. The whole Kingdom and Church is sworn against all Forreign Jurisdiction and all alteration of Government in Church and State And ought not to be stigmatized with PERJURY § 1. THat the whole Church and Kingdom is under such Oaths is visible I. The Oath of Supremacy before cited against All Forreign Jurisdiction is put upon all the Land II. The Oath called Et caetera 1640. is against Change of Government and was taken by many III. The Act of Uniformity obligeth the whole Ministry to subscribe against all endeavours to alter the Government IV. The Oxford Act of Confinement sweareth all Nonconformists and more never to endeavour any Alteration of Government in Church or State V. The Vestry Act sweareth all the Parish Vestries to the same VI. The Corporation Act sweareth all the Cities and Corporations of England to the same that is All in Power and Trust as to Government VII The Militia Act sweareth all the Souldiers of the Land to the same So that it is undeniable that all the Kingdom is sworn never to endeavour any Alteration of Government in Church or
animo supplex veneror ut illi spiritum suum mentemque meliorem det And in another Epistle to Salmasius p. 196. he saith being ask'd his Judgment of his last Books Tantum abest ut omnia probem ut vix aliquid in co reperiocui sine conditione calculum apponam meum Verissimè dixit ille qui dixit Grotium papizare Vix tamen in isto scripto aliquid legi quod mirarer quodve 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 occurreret Nunquid enim omnes istiusmodi authoris lucubrationes erga Papistarum errores perpetuam 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 erga Jesuitas amorem erga nos plusquam vatinianum odium produnt clamant In voto quod ejus nomen praeferebat an veritus est haec 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 profiteri And how far he was familiar with Grotius he â—ells us p. 248. Ad Vincent Fabrit Cum eo nempe Communicaveram vel solebam mea fere omnia c. And what Salmasius thought of him these words of Saravius ad Salmas intimate Ex quo à vera orbita in religionis negotio deflexit captasti occasionem toto biennio antequam sato fungeretur eum illudendi certe irritandi I have formerly said that worthy Mr. Ereskin yet living since dead told me that Petavius told him that Grotius was resolved to have declared himself for the Church of Rome and joyned with them if he had returned safe from the Journey he died in Henr. Valesius in his Funeral Oration on Petavius saith p. 684. Batesâ—i Collect. Quid non praestitit ut clarissimum Virum Hugonem Grotium ad Catholicaâ— Communionem adduceret Erat ille quidem minimè à nobis alienus poene noster quippe qui doctrinan Tridentim Concilii in omnibus sese amplecti palam profiteretur Id unum supererat ut Ecclesiae Sacrariâ—m ingressus Communionem nostram Sociaretur Quod ille nescio quas ob causas dum ad Catholicae fidei umtatem plurimos secum sperat adducere Consultò differebat But I make no other mens but his own words the Index of his Faith Chap. VII Of the several sorts of Conciliators or Peace-makers about our Controversies with the Papists § 1. IF any shall think that I who have spent so much time and labour for the Churches peace am now against it or would raise dishonourable suspicions on any just endeavours to that end they will utterly mistake me There are divers sorts of Endeavours for peace with the Papists by real Protestants § 2. I. The old Conformists that prevailed against the Dissenters in Queen Elizabeth's days were for going no further from the Papists than they needs must lest they gave them occasion of accusation II. Since then many Men have taken notice that many of our Doctrinal Controversies consist more in ambiguous words and misunderstanding of each other than most on either side imagine And they have endeavoured the lessening of such Controversies by better Explications and stating of the Case In this kind Spalatensis and Bishop W. Forbes have done very Learnedly but in some things yielded a great deal too far Camero Amiraldus Capellus Testardus the Theses Salmurienses and Sedâ—nenses have done much But no Man so much as Lude Le Blank in his Theses which he sent me his desire here to publish To these I adjoin my self as among many other Writings in my Catholick Theology and Methodus Theologiae I have openly and largely shewed the World And no Censures have deterred me from this honest and necessary way of pacification III. But there are others that would on pretence of Peace take in many of their Errors in Doctrine Government and Worship But yet are for no Foreign Jurisdiction IV. But those that I now write against go further and some under the Name of a Prince Patriarch and the Principium Vnitatis Catholicae would come under the Pope some by pretence of the power of General Councils or an Universal Colledge of all Bishops and some by these and Patriarchs conjunct would bring us under a Foreign Jurisdiction and contrive an Union on some French terms And would to this end let in abundance of corruptions in Discipline and Worship on pretence of Obedience to the Canons of Councils Yea some condemn those as Schismaticks yea as in a state of Damnation who are not in these matters of their mind It is these that I am against § 3. While I oppose these I still own my foresaid reconciling Books and no reproach of those that run into a contrary extream shall ever drive me from the true terms of Peace nor to desire any cruelty against them or any of their Sufferings but what necessary defence of Soul and Body require And though my Exposition of the Revelation have offended many upon far closer study of it since I am not less but more perswaded that Pagan Rome was Babylon and that John Fox Martyrol Vol. I. p. III. who took his Oath of a Divine Revelation to him which brought him to take the Pagan Empire for the Beast with Seven Heads and Ten Horns and to expound the Times and Thousand years accordingly is much to be regarded But if I be uncertain of such points I will rather suspend my Judgment than in uncertainty venture on any thing that is against Christian Love and Peace I hold Communion with the Romans in Christianity though not in Popery I take all true Christians among them for Part of the Catholick Church of Christ though I take their pretended Catholick Church as Headed by the Pope for no Church of Christ at all nor as Headed by any Usurping Humane Head whatsoever Chap. VIII The Doctrine of Archbishop Bromhall in defence of Grotius in his Book called His Vindication of himself and the Episcopal Clergy from the Presbyterian Charge of Popery as managed by Mr. Baxter in his Treatise of the Grotian Religion I fiercely Prefaced by a Dignitary of the Church Parker § 1. I mean to give you his own words and pass by his mistakes against my self Only saying That it was not fairly done to affirm that I numbered him with the Papists or those that designed to bring in Popery when I had no such words yea and praising him excepted him from that number only dissenting from his too near approach But whether he except himself his words will best shew § 2. Page 20 21. he saith I will endeavour to give some light what was the Religion of Grotius He was in affection a Friend and in desire a true Son of the Church of England And on his Death bed recomended that Church as it was Legally Established to his Wife and such other of his Family as were then about him obliging them by his Authority to adhere firmly to it so far as they had opportunity Page 81. I know no Member of the Greek Church that give them the Popes either more or less than I do Page 82. To wave their last four hundred years
Recusants of the Church of Rome p. 234. The Recusants being for the most part of the Good Families of the Nation will take it for a part of their Nobility freely to profess themselves in their Religion if they understand themselves Whereas the Sectaries being people of mean quality for the most part cannot be presumed to stand on their reputation so much In his Book called The Forbearance of Penalties c. 3. p. 12 13. he makes the foundation of all Union to be the Government and Laws of the Church as visibly Catholick which Laws must be one and the same the violating whereof is the forfeiture of the same Communion And here I crave leave to call All Canons All Customs of the Church whether concerning the Rites of God's Service or other Observations by one and the same name of Laws of the Church P. 23. As for the Canons of the Church it was never necessary to the maintenance of Commumunion that the same Customs should be held in all parts of the Church It was only necessary the several Customs should be held by the same Authority That the same Authority instituted several Customs for so they might be changed by the same Authority and yet Unity remain Whereas questioning the Authority by questioning whether the acts of it be agreeable to ☞ God 's Law or not how should Unity be maintained It is manifest that they the Fathers could not have agreed in the Laws of the Church if any had excepted against any thing used in any part of the Church as if God's Law had been infringed by it It followeth of necessity that nothing can be disowned by this Church as contrary to God's Law which holdeth by the Primitive Church Page 27. He saith as Mr. Dodwell It is agreed on by the whole Church that Baptism in Heresie or Schism that is when a man gives up himself to the Communion of Hereticks or Schismaticks by receiving Baptism from them though it may be true Baptism and not to be repeated yet it is not available to Salvation making him accessory to Heresie or Schism that is so Baptized Pag. 28. The promise of Baptism is not available unless it be deposited with the true Church nor to him that continueth not in the true Church that may exact the promise deposited with it Page 33. It is out of love to the Reformation that I insist on such a Principle as may serve to reunite us with the Church of Rome being well assured that we can never be well reunited with our selves otherwise Yet not only the Reformation but the common Christianity must needs be lost in the divisions which will never have an end otherwise Pag. 111. If it be said that it is not visible where those Usurpations took place I shall allow all the time which the Code of the Canons contains which Pope Adrian sent to Charles the Great pag. 128. which I would have this Church to own In Mr. Thorndike's large folio Book there is yet much more for his Universal Legislative Aristocracy mixt with Regular Papacy The sum of all is The Pope Governing at least in the West by the Canons in the intervals of General Councils that is alwaies and as the chief Member with Councils making Laws for all the World Thus the French and Italian Papists differ whether the Pope shall Govern the World as the King of Poland doth his Land or say some as the Duke of Venice or rather as the King of France But Protestants know no such thing as an Universal Legislative Church nor owns any Universal Laws but Gods unless you mean Nationally Vniversal as in the Empire Councils and Laws were called I refer you again to Dr. Barrows Confutation of the rest of Mr. Thorndikes Chap. XII The Judgment of Dr. Sparrow Bishop of Norwich and divers others BIshop Sparrow Pref. to Collect. As my Father sent me so send I you Here committing the Government of the Church to his Apostles our Lord Commissions them with the same Power that was committed to him for that purpose when he was on Earth with the same necessary standing Power that he had exercised as Man for the good of the Church Less cannot in reason be thought to be granted than all Power necessary for the well and peaceable Government of the Church And such a power is this of Making Laws This is a Commission in general for making Laws Then in particular for making Articles and Decisions of Doctrines controverted the power is more explicite and express Mat. 28. All power is given me Go therefore and teach all Nations that is with authority and by virtue of the power given me And what is it to teach the Truth with authority but to command and oblige all people to receive the Truth so taught And this power was not given to the Apostles persons only for Christ then promised to be with them in that Office to the end of the World that is to them and their Successors in the Pastoral Office To the Apostles or Bishops that should succeed them to the end of the World To this One holy Church our Lord committed in trust the most holy Faith c. commanding under penalties and censures all her Children to receive that sence and to profess it in such expressive words and forms as may directly determine the doubt Thus she did in the great Nicene Council This authority in determining Doubts and Controversies the Church hath practised in ALL AGES and her constant practice is the best Interpreter of her right I shall not tire the Reader with the needless recitation of many more late Divines that lived since 1630. enough are known Those that have defended Grotius of late I pass no judgment on you may read their own Books and judge as you see cause viz. Dr. Thomas Pierce now Dean of Salisbury and the famous Preface to Archbishop Bromhall's Book against me c. I fear all this History is needless Men now laugh at me for proving by Mens writings their endeavours to subject the King and Kingdom to a Foreign Jurisdiction when they say it is more sensibly and dreadfully proving it self Chap. XIII Dr. Parker's Judgment since Bishop of Oxford THE last mentioned Author Dr. Sam. Parker besides what he hath said against me in his large Preface before Archbishop Bromhall's Book hath since gone so far beyond all his Fellows that finding himself unable to answer this Argument otherwise The World must not have one Universal Humane Civil Governor King or Aristocracy ergo It must not have one Humane Priest or Church Governor desperately denieth the Antecedent and saith that though de facto the Kings of the Earth have not one Soveraign over them all that is meer Man they ought to have Audite Reges I cannot conjecture who he meaneth unless it be the Pope and he be of Cardinal Bertrand's mind that God had not been wise if he had not made one Man
a Vice-God or his Deputy to Rule all the World For sure he never dreamed that all Kings and States on Earth would meet or voluntarily agree to chuse one Universal King over them I met newly with an extraordinary Wit who saith that after the Conflagration in the Millennium of the New Heaven and Earth Christ or his Vice-Roy will triumphantly Rule c. But 1. I never read before of a Vice-Roy after the Conflagration which he saith will first consume Antichrist 2. I know not how much of the New World he assigns to this Vice-Roy's Government for if Gog and Magog after cover the Earth and the New Generation be numerous which he thinks the Earth will bring forth like lower Animals it may be the New Jerusalem may be so small that one Vice-Roy may Rule it 3. But sure that holy Generation will make Government and Obedience far easier things than now they are Chap. XIV Dr. Saywell's Arguments for a Foreign Jurisdiction considered § 1. THis Dr. who I may well suppose speaketh his Lord and Masters sence is so open as to let us know 1. That it is the Popes Power above General Councilâ— which they call Popery 2. And that they join with the conciliar Party in point of Church Government and so take not them for Papists who hold not that Soveraignty of the Pope but only his Primacy 3. That it is but the Jesuited Party of the Church of Rome which they renounce 4. That they also renounce all Nonconforming Protestants as a Jesuited Party So that he would tempt us to believe what some affirm that their design hath long been to subdue the Jesuits and Reformed Churches or rather destroy these and to strike up a Union with the French and maintain that they are no Papists as to Government But though the Power of old Protestants in England were never so much subdued to them methinks the Jesuits Interest in France should resist them unless the Jesuits themselves be as some vainly think faln out with the Pope and then it will be the Jesuited Party which these Men will own § 2. But to his Arguments Page 342. Mr. B. saith I have earnestly desired and searched to know tâ—e proof of such a Legislative Vniversal Power and I cannot find it But if Mr. B. would seriously consider these Texts he might find that obedience is due to the Church Mat. 18. If he neglect to hear the Church let him be to thee as an Heathen Man and a Publican Now as one private Man may neâ—lect to hear the Episcopal Church to which he belongs so the Episcopal Provincial and National Church may also prove Heretical and neglect to hear the Catholick Church but the Vniversal Church can never faâ—l for the Gates of Hell shall never prevail against it And if more Persons or particular Churches give offence by Heresie Schism c. the Church Vniversal or the rest of the Bishops may reprove them for it and then there is no reason why one Man should be censured and many go frâ—e and consequently our Saviour hath established the Authority of his Church over all Christians as well particular Churches as private Men. Ans. 1. Let us try this Argument by the like God hath commanded obedience to Kings and said He that will not hear the King and Judge shall be put to death But Kings and their Kingdoms may be Criminal And if private men must obey Authority or be put to death so must Kings and Kingdoms Why should they escape Therefore all Kings and Kingdoms must obey One Universal Humane King or Kingdom under Christ. Do you think this is true No There is no such Universal Humane Empire Monarchical or Aristocratical No Mortal Men are capable of it any more than of Ruling the World in the Moon or the Fish in the Sea but of a part only So there is no such Universal Church Power but particular there is As to your reason I answer God is the Universal King and he only is the punisher of all Soveraign Powers whether Monarchs Aristocracies or Mixt. which I have ever asserted though the Lying Spirit hath feigned the contrary God hath several ways to Rule and Judge them here and his final Judgment is at hand And the case is like with National Churches save that their own Princes may punish offending Clergy-men 2. One Person or Nation may renounce Communion with another as Heretical without any Ruling Power over them And the other may do the same by them deserving it Am I a Governor or Legislator over every one that I may refuse to eat or pray with as a Brother 3. That there is no Humane Universal Church which hath power to Govern a National Church as the Bishops may their Flocks is proved 1. They cannot have the Authority who have not so much as a Natural Capacity But none have a Natural Capacity to Govern all the Christian World Ergo none have such Authority 2. They have not the Authority who have not the Obligation to use it in such Government For an Office containeth Authority and Obligation But none are obliged to Govern all the Christian World Ergo c. For the Minor 1. None are obliged to Impossibilities But c. 2. None are obliged without some obliging Law But there is no Law obliging any to Govern all the Christian World Ergo. 3. If they are obliged they are condemned if they do it not But none do Rule all the Christian World He confesseth none have done it since the sixth General Council that is these thousand years and more by one And doth he not Damn the Bishops of all the World then for neglecting their great Duty a thousand years together If he say that Others made Canons enough before I answer 1. If they have had no such work to do these thousand years then there was no Office or Obligation or Power to do it 2. It was then only those that made the Laws that had that Soveraignty The Dead are no Rulers and so the Church hath had no Soveraign since 2. If he say They since Ruled by the old Laws I answer 1. That was not by Legislation but Execution 2. They never Ruled the Universal Church as one Soveraign Power by the old Laws but only per partes in their several Provinces as Justices and Mayors Rule the Kingdom without Soveraignty Arg. 3 That which never was claimed till the Papal Usurpation was not instituted by God But a Soveraign Government of the Univeâ—sal Church on Earth was never claimed till the Papal Usurpation Ergo. That Councils were only General as to one Empire and called only in one Empire and pretended to Govern that Empire and not all the World I have fully proved against Johnson Arg. 4. Those that must Rule all the Christian World must teach them For the Pastoral Government is by the Word But no one Person or Aristocracy are the Teachers of all the World Who have pretended to it but the Papacy Arg.
Nice 1. Const. 1. Eph. 1. Chalced. Const. 2. de tribus Capitulis Const. 3. against the Monothelites III. You say that These six things are the Governing Acts of this Chief Power 1. To judge which are the true Books of Scripture and the true Copies and Readings 2. To judge what is the sence of the Fundamentals Baptism Creed whose words misunderstood will not save any 3. To judge and declare what is the true Church Government instituted by Christ and his Apostles or delivered by them 4. To judge and declare what are the instituted Ordinances e. g. Confirmation as it is a giving of the Holy Ghost by Imposition of Hands and not only an owning of our Baptismal Covenant which we do in every Sacrament and so of other Ordinances 5. A Judicial Power not of all individual Cases but that those e. g. that hold or do this or that be Excommunicate 6. A Legislative Power to make alterable Canons or Orders of the Church Vniversal This is the sum of all your Explicatory Discourses To which I answer § I. To your proofs that such a Universal Governing Church there is instituted 1. To Isai. 60.12 I say 1. It is not safe stretching dark Prophetical Texts farther than we can prove they are intended The New Testament plainlier tells us the Church State and Power than the Old 2. The Universal Church hath not expounded the Text whether it speak of the state of the Jews after the Captivity or of the State of the Catholick Church now or of the more Blessed State of it at the last when it is more perfected Therefore how are you sure that you have the true sence of it without the Churches Exposition 3. The words indeed are nothing for a Vicarious Soveraign Power Every Political Body is essentiated by the Pars imperans and the Pars subdita Christ is the only essentiating Pars imperans in Supream Power Christ then is the Prime part of the Church The word Church then is not put for Christ alone but for the Society consisting of King and Subjects and sometimes for the Subjects alone It 's oft said that many Nations served the Israelites we say many Countreys were subject to the Romans the Medes Persians Greeks Turks and we do not mean that either the Turkish Roman Persian c. Common Subjects did govern all these Nations nor that their Bashaws Judges Magistrates c. as one Persona Politica in summa potestate ruled them by a Major Vote If the King will say that all the Corporations in Middlesex shall be under London or obey or serve it Who would feign such a sense of it as to say that there must be therefore some Power to rule them by a Vicarious Supremacy beside the ordinary Government or that all the City must Govern by a Major Vote The sense is plain As we all 1. Obey the King as the Universal Constitutive Head 2. And the Judges Justices Mayors as ruling under him per partes in their several Places 3. And we serve all the Kingdom as we serve its common good which is the finis regiminis So other Countries served the Romans Greeks Turks c. And so all Kingdoms should serve the Church or Kingdom of Christ that is 1. Christ as the only Head and Universal Governour 2. All his Officers as particular Governours in their several Limits and Places but none as Rulers of the whole 3. And the bonum Commune or all the Church as the End of Government And how can we feign another sence § 2. To your second Proof I answer 1. The 70 Disciples were Christ's constant Attendants as his Family with whom he was to Eat the Passover 2. We all grant that none have Power to Celebrate the Eucharist or Govern the Church but the Apostles and those to whom the Spirit of Christ in them did Communicate it But we say that they Communicated it to the Order of Presbyters as I thought all had Confessed as some Councils do 3. The Apostles were not appointed as one Supream ruling College to give the Sacrament by their Votes to all the World but each one had Power to do it in his place Nor did they Ordain only as a College by such Vote as Vna persona Politica but each one had Power to do it alone Nor did they write the Scriptures as one Collective Person by Vote but each one had the Spirit and Power to do it as Paul did c. nor did they sit on one Throne or had the promise so to do to Judge the Tribes of Israel as one College by Vote but to sit on twelve Thrones Judging the twelve Tribes as under Christ the only Universal Head and Governour § 3. To your third I answer 1. I answered to that Act. 15. in my last to you 2. Paul and Barnabas had the same Infallible Spirit and had before said the same against the keeping of Moses Law But 1. Recipitur ad modum recipientis No wonder if among those that quarrelled with Paul the Consent of those that had received Christ's Mind from his own Mouth and Spirit did better satisfie the doubtful than one Man's word alone 2. And Christ's Work was to be done in Unity § 4. II. As to the Seat of this Power I answer 1. All the true Bishops of the World Govern the particular Churches as Kings Govern all the Kingdoms of the World under God one Universal Monarch But there is neither one Universal Monarchical Aristocratical or Democratical Soveraign Civil or Ecclesiastical under Christ But each hath his own part § 5. 2. I have shewed the impossibility of our judging of the Major Votes at our distances in most controverted Cases § 6. 3. And I have where I told you proved that there never were must or will be true Universal Councils much less are such the standing Governours of the Church But in Cases of need such as can well do it should come to help each other by Council and Concord without pretending to Universal Governing Power § 7. 4. 1. Who called them to Nice Ephesus Chalcedon Constantinople c. out of the Extra-Imperial Countries 2. Who shall call them now out of the Empire of the Turk Abassia the Mogul Tartary and the rest 3. If calling Men make the Council Universal though they come not is it a Council if none come or how many must it be to ascertain us that it is Universal Hath the Pope the Calling Power or who is it and how proved that they that obey it not may be unexcuseable § 8. 5. I have told you how unable I am to know what the Major part of all Christians or Bishops in the World receive save only by uncertain fame saving that while I know otherwise what is necessary truth I know that they are not the Church that receive it not whoever they be I am a Stranger to Abassia Armenia Georgia India Russia Mexico c. And what if I never knew that there are such
Gods 3. Mutable Things are not of Universal Need or Use These By-Laws like those of Corporations are only the Work of particular Churches or Countries E. g. One Translation of Scripture one Metre or Tune of Psalms c. will not fit all the World that have several Languages c. Upon the whole I am more confirmed by longer Considerations 1. That to assert a Soveraign Vicarious Church-Power over all the Christian World is to make a Church which Christ never made 2. And Treasonably to set up an Usurpation of his Prerogative 3. And to plead for that which de facto never was in being 4. And to lay the Ground of heinous Schism and Persecution by prosecuting impossible Terms of Concord and Communion 5. And to make this the necessary Medium of our believing in Christ or knowing his Word and Will is to subvert the Christian Faith and Scripture 6. And as one Pope cannot possibly through Natural Incapacity Govern all the Earth in Religion one Collective and Aristocratical Soveraign of all the Bishops on Earth is so incomparably more uncapable that I wonder that any Considerate Man can believe it Pighius well tells us of the Novelty and Vanity of Heading all the Churches by General Councils 7. And if the French and the Councils of Constance and Basil and Cassander and Grotius and such Papists as set Councils over the Pope had not taken in the Pope as the ordinary Governing Executive Head to Rule by the Councils Laws they had been far more gross and incredible than the Italian Papists who prefer the Pope 8. And that Civil Government may so much easier be exercised by Officials than the Spiritual that a Civil Monarch of all the Earth is far more congruous and possible than a Humane Visible Church-Head under Christ Personal or Collective 9. That if this was the Principle from which you disputed at the Savoy and in the Convocation and from which our late Changes and the silencing of Two Thousand Ministers have been made it 's no wonder that the Effects were such But if ever we be healed it must be by other Terms and Hands R. B. Jan. 12. 1679. This Feb. 13. Being with the Bishop again he disclaimeth the Names of Supreme Summa Potestas Vicaria as Invidious and chuseth the Name of a Ruling Collegium Pastorum Ministerialium who are the Church which is the Mother which all must receive their Faith from and obey and so must know their Consent Chap. XVIII The Fourth Letter to Bishop Guning To the Lord Bishop of Ely Dr. Guning My Lord THough I intended to trouble you no more by Writing yet observing how apt you are to mistake me and because time streightened our Discourse Lest I be mistaken and consequently mis-reported I thus send you the sum of what I said to your last as far as it concerned me I. Whereas you are offended at my Applicatory Conclusion I must still say it that ☞ If these were the Principles upon which our Changes were made by your Endeavour 1661 and 1662. it is no wonder that Two thousand Ministers were Silenced and Cast out And is it more offence to you to hear what you did towards it than to them and their Flocks to suffer it Is this impartiality II. My naming Holden as saying what you say was not invidiously to intimate that you differ not from him in any thing else but to tell you that these thoughts are not new to me and that even a Papist pleading rather Historical Natural-Evidence in Vniversal Tradition than judicial Authority in this is further from the common Papists than you III. You are offended at my comparing Bishops to Kings only in this respect that they both govern only their proper Provinces and neither are Rulers of all the World And your reason is because it intimateth that Bishops rule like Kings Who can Dispute on these terms Did I not in the stating of our Question agree that it is not the Power of the Sword but only Ecclesiastical Power of the Word and Keys that we Dispute of Did I not still profess to you to speak only of this And doth comparing Princes Coactive Government with it only in the extent neither of them being over all the World contradict this or wrong you by unjust intimations IV. You take the words Aristocratical-Supream Vicarious under Christ Legislative to be invidious and you disown them 1. Because they intimate a forcing Power like Princes 2. Because Christ only is Supream But 1. It is not de nomine that we dispute but de re and I understand all this while that we had no other question to debate 2. I desired still nothing more than that you would state your assertion in your own words that I might use no other You tell me your own words are Collegium Pastorum I tell you again that nameth only the subject Matter of the Power where our question is de formâ what is their Power which we must obey You next tell me It is a College of Pastors having a Ministerial Ruling Judicial Power over the Vniversal Church I take up with your own words Only remember that before you asserted a Legislative Power of mutable Laws and now it is but judicial If so then we owe no Obedience to their Laws but to their Sentence according to Christ's Law How then is obeying them the only way of Concord But say you It is but mutable Laws that they make Answ. And are mutable Laws no Laws And is he no Legislator that maketh but mutable Laws Neither King nor Parliament will believe this But you say Canons are not Laws I thank you for that Concession So saith Grotius de Imp. sum Potest If so then they are but either Counsels or Agreements Contracts It is not de nomine that we contend A Law saith Grotius is Regula actionum Moralium More fully A Law is the signification of a Ruler's Will making the Subjects Duty If a Canon be none then Literae formatae are none And where there is no Law there is no Transgression Then no Obedience is due to the Laws of the College of Bishops And then obeying them is not the only way of Concord Authoritas imperantis est objectum formale Obedientiae you disown also the word Pars imperans I take your own Pars Regens which to me is of the same Signification as to Ecclesiastical Power Jus regendi is that which I mean by Authority and Debitum Obediendi by Subjection But I think that indeed authorized Pastors may make proper Laws e. g. At what Places and Hours to meet what Translations Version Metre and such Orders to use but only to their proper Subjects and not to all the Christian World V. You Copiously blame us for denying that Obedience to the Universal Church which we give to every single Pastor and thought that I owned no Power but Parochial I tell you still 1. I maintain that there were in the first Age and perhaps
Word and Sword 4. And serve the good of the whole as the end of Government Stretch the words on any Rack that is not against reason and besides these four you can never prove one Universal ruling College XI You say God is not the visible Head of the World and Men have access to Kings but not to Christ. Answ. God is the King or Supream Governor of all the World and you have no more visible access to the Father than to the Son And particular Pastors are as accessible as Kings And Church Government which like a Physitian or Tutor depends on personal Skill may much less be performed by absent Men at the Antipodes than Civil Government XII But it 's said It is the whole Churches reception of Canons though Councils be not properly Vniversal tha◠maketh the Obligation Vniversal Answ. If they bind not by the Imposers Power they were not received as binding Universally If Reception be the Obligatory Act Subjection is Government and Lay Men and Women govern by receiving And I have proved how mutable and how uncertain Reception is They say all the Church was against Adoration by genuflexion on the Lord's Day and for Milk and Honey and the white Garment in Baptism And yet particular Churches laid them down before any Universal Judicature allowed it XIII Qu. If you know that all the Bishops of the World receive any Doctrine or Practice as needful or good will not you do so too and do you not so receive the Creed and Bible Answ. 1. I receive the Laws of the Land only as authorized by the Law-givers But I know them to be the same Laws that the King and Parliament made by the concurrent Testimony and Use of all Judges Lawyers and People of the Land and Proclamation by the Proclaimers But I know them not by my obeying all these Judges Justices and People as one authorized College that is under the King to Govern the whole Land So here I know the Writings of Homer Virgil Cicero to be theirs the more confidently by Universal Tradition But not because I believe that all the Witnesses in the World that have so received them are Commissioned to be Rulers or a Judicature to the World I receive Divine Truths as Delivered in the Creed and Scriptures as from Christ and his Apostles especially Commissioned and qualified to teach all Men whatever he commanded them and this by the hand of my Parents and Pastors and since I understood History common consent puts me the more out of doubt of the Matter of Fact that these are their true Writings and Doctrines But not from the Bishops as one College Commissioned to rule all the World or Church on Earth And alas how few are so well verst in History as to know much of this To know what is received now ab omnibus ubique is too hard But to know the semper is much harder especially when the Filioque and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and many such like have had more for them in one Prince's Reign and more against them in another and so off and on and to know which had most was impossible to most Christians How few know at this day whether the Filioque have more for it or against it Not I nor any Traveller that I have spoke with XIV But you would not for a World be guilty of saying what I have written of Councils 1. As if they were to be abhorred for their Faults 2. You say How great Matters the Articles of two Natures and Wills and of one Person are and no small nor wordy difference Answ. 1. I can mention Mens Faults without abhorring them I honour them for their good and am for the use of needful modest Councils of good Men. 2. I doubt not but the Matters determined were weighty But how far Persons wronged and misunderstood one another and strove about words when they meant the same thing I have not nakedly said but proved to you When Theodosius forced by threatning Cyril and Johannes Antioch and Theodoret to agree did they not confess that they had wrongfully anathematized each other and were of one Mind and did not know it Have I not proved to you that Nestorius denied two Persons and that Cyril oft asserteth but one Nature after the Union Do you indeed think that One and Two are words that have but one signification Have I not proved the Ambiguity and the Misunderstanding of each other in too many But O how hard it is to be Impartial and to Repent when Contentious Bishops in Councils have notoriously torn the Churches drawn streams of Blood Cursed and Reproached one another and Cursed that Cursing it self and their Party the next change and have overthrown the Empire and set up the Pope by striving about Jurisdiction and hard words who shall be greatest and wisest must not this which cannot be hid be lamented If Cyril were but half as bad as Joh. Antioch Theodoret Isidore Pelusiota Socrates and Sozomen c. make him how partial were his Admirers But I see it is as hard for Bishops to repent as other Men when their Self-esteem and Dignity seemeth to themselves to entitle them to the reputation of Sanctity and Innocency And if they divide the Christian World as wofully as the West and East and the Abassines Copties Jacobites Nestorians Armenians Protestants c. are divided at this day or should they Silence Thousands of Faithful Ministers of Christ for not Sinning or for Nothing and bring thereby Confusion and Schisms among serious Christians to the hardening of the Prophane and Hereticks it will seem to some a more heinous Sin to name their Sin and call them to Repentance than in them to commit it And yet one may name the Sins of a Thief or Drunkard and call him to Repentance without blame But have I said half so ill by them as they said by one another They anathematized each other but so do not I by them What say I worse of the first and best of your Six Councils than Eusebius and Constantine said of them when he burnt their accusing Libels against each other 2. What say I worse of the first Council at Constantinople than Greg. Nazianzen saith I do but recite his words and the History Did they not set him up in the beginning and pull him down at the end and for what 3. What say I of the first Ephes. Council but what the recorded Acts do tell us How they divided into two Parts and each Excommunicated the Leaders of the other and the Orthodox Part fought with the other notwithstanding the Endeavours of the Emperor's Lieutenant to have kept the Peace and yet when they had done found that they had been of one Mind and knew it not except Nestorius And how much hand a Woman had in it against him the History tells us 4. Have I said so much against that at Chalcedon as the many Councils that anathematized them did or more than they
High Priest It is his School and we are his Disciples I suppose that God the Father and Christ is the only Rightful Universal Civil and Church-Monarch and none else can give Laws or exercise Judgment over the whole Earth but that Magistrates and Pastors are Commissioned by God to their several Provinces Governing the whole only per partes between them and God as the Monarch maketh them such Universal Laws as they must Rule and be Ruled by And that there is no more proof of one Ecclesiastick Humane Judicature to Rule all the World than of one Civil one and less probability But that Princes and Pastors must do all by the best Advantages of Unity Love and Concord and keep such Synods and Correspondencies as are necessary to that end I suppose that every Kingdom hath its own King and Inferiour Magistrates Ruling by their several Courts and Circuits and by the Kings Laws but not Ruling all the Kingdom as one College of a Voting Synod of Judges Justices and Majors If Senates have any where a Supremacy it is from the peculiar Constitution of that Commonwealth and there is no Institution of a College of Kings or one Monarch to Rule all the Earth But their Unity is centred in God that is one I suppose that the King hath ordained that all Free-Schools in England Scotland and Ireland shall have each their proper Schoolmasters one to a small School and to a great one a Chief Master with under Schoolmasters and he hath made an Order that they shall teach E. g. Lilly's Grammar and faithfully perform their Trust or be put out by them that have the Power And if any School-Difficulty occur they may do well to consult for their Mutual Help But you seem to add g. d. as if 1. All the World is one Humane School though under several Kings 2. None is a Member of this School that is not under the College of Schoolmasters that dwell all over the World and never know one another and that doth not live in Obedience to that College 3. All these Schoolmasters of the whole World must meet by themselves or Delegates in General Councils 4. All Schools must receive Canons from these Councils and be judged by them and bring their Accusation at least Appeals to them from all Nations of the Earth 5. All the Schoolmasters of the several Kingdoms must hold National Assemblies in those Kingdoms or Provinces as a College of Governors to the whole Land 6. A Thousand or many Hundred or Scores Local particular Schools must be Schools but equivocally so called and have all but one proper Schoolmaster who alone must have the Keys of them and judge of each Scholar that is 1. admitted 2. corrected 3. or put out 7. All these Schools under this Diocesan Schoolmaster shall have his Ushers and no proper Schoolmasters who shall have Power to teach those that will learn and to tell the proper Schoolmaster perhaps One Hundred Eighty or Twenty Miles off of every Boy that deserveth to be corrected or put out But none of these Ushers shall have Power 1. To judge whom to take or refuse or what Boys to correct nor to correct them till commanded by the Diocesan Master 3. Nor to put out any till he bids him 4. Nor to forbear correcting or casting out any when commanded though he know them to be the best I think this 1. Deposeth all the Inferiour Schools and robs them of proper Schoolmasters which are their due 2. And deposeth the Ushers that should be mostly Schoolmasters 3. And maketh School-Government an impossible thing while one only in a Diocess is to use that which he cannot do 4. And thereby overthroweth Learning and introduceth Barbarousness 5. And bringeth in a new sort of Diocesan Schoolmasters who will undo the Scholars and themselves by undertaking Impossibilities But I disallow not 1. A Chief Schoolmaster in each School 2. Nor needful Overseers or Visitors to see that all Schoolmasters do their Duty 3. Nor that the King and Justices keep them all to their Duty and make Laws that they truly teach the Sacred Scriptures and correct those Schoolmasters who by their Insufficiency or Unfaithfulness deserve it Again I tell you 1. Make us no Universal Governor but Christ. 2. And restore the Power of necessary Discipline to the Parish-Churches or at least make Christs Church-Discipline a possible practicable thing and you will reconcile many Nonconformists to you But to say only one Schoolmaster with meer Teaching-Ushers shall Govern many Hundred Schools or one Bishop many Hundred Churches or rather Oratories and Chappels that are made but parts of one true Church infimae specici this is in English to say that there shall be no considerable Government of such Schools or Churches at all and to put it down on pretence of having the Power to do it And yet by the Charity and Justice of many that now Write and Preach against us we are all unruly intolerable rebellious Schismaticks and against Bishops for desiring more Bishops at least one to every 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Corporation that Discipline might be a possible thing I have in many Years of Liberty tryed without Rigour so much as all Church-Canons agree to be necessary in a Congregation that had not Three Thousand Souls and was unable for it with the assistance of Three Presbyters when one Parish about London hath Thirty Thousand and Forty Thousand if not Sixty Thousand Souls and most or many far less Governable XVII The Essentials of the Sacred Office are 1. Power or Right 2. Obligation to 3. The Work 1. The Work you say is to Rule the Church Universal on all the Earth not only separately per partes but as Vnum Collegium which is Vna Persona Politica 2. The Power is Jus Regendi 3. The Obligation maketh it their Duty The Apostles were sent first to Preach the Gospel to every Creature or all Mankind and make them Christians and after to Teach them all Christs Doctrine and Law and to Rule them by Pastoral Guidance thereby 2. If the College of Bishops be their Successors are they bound to that Work in uno Collegio which the Apostles did each one apart That is deliver Christs Commands and guide the Churches If yea are they not bound in uno Collegio to Preach to all the Heathen World And then are they not guilty of the Damnation of most of the World for not so Preaching to them 3. If you say that it is only a Regiment that they must do in uno Collegio or per Literas formatas do you not make the whole Pastoral Church guilty of perfidious Negligence as a Pastor would be that never guided his Flock for not at all performing any such Government What one Act of Government hath the College performed in our Age or in the Age foregoing or in any Age according to your self since Constant. Pogonatus his sixth or seventh Council And was it only the Church of those Ages
that was bound to Govern Then it was they only that were Authorized or had the Office and Power For Obligation to the Work though not ad hic nunc is Essential to the Office as well as Authority Or will the Performance of the Bishops of the Fourth and Fifth Centuries excuse all that succeed them to the end of the World from any Performance Why then not from all Pastoral Guidance And are they not then degraded XVIII We are against Singularity in Matters of Faith We believe that all Christs Church shall never err from any one Essential of Christianity or Communion else it would thereby cease to be a Church But we believe General Councils such as the Empire had have erred so far as to condemn each other of Heresie We perswade all Men to believe as the Church believeth that is to receive that from the Apostles quod ab omnibus ubique semper receptum fuit which the Church received and delivered as from them with known common Consent and to suspect odd Opinions Novelties and Singularities But Protestants against Papists commonly use these Distinctions 1. Authority of a Governor by Legislation and Judgment or either is one thing 2. Doctoral Authority like a Philosopher in a School of Consenters is another 3. The Authority of Witnesses which is their Obliging Credibility is another 4. The Authority of a Steward or Keeper of Records is another 5. The Authority of a Herald or Cryer or Messenger to publish Laws is another 6. And the Authority of Contractors in Mutual Self-Obligation is another Accordingly they hold 1. That there is no one Universal Head Governour or Summa Potestas Ecclesiastica to Rule the whole by Legislation or Judgment Personal or Collective but Christ. 2. That there is no one Person Natural or Political that is bound or authorized to be the Teacher of the whole World or Church but that all Pastors must Teach and Guide in their several Provinces 3. That the larger and more uncontrouled the Testimony is the greater is the Credibility and Authority of the Witnesses And therefore if all the Churches in the World as far as we can learn agree de facto that these are the Books Doctrines and practised Ordinances which they received and especially when Hereticks or Infidels and Enemies that would gainsay it cannot with any probability we thus receive the said Books and Practices as Baptism c. ex Authoritate Testium and not ex Authoritate Judicis Regentis or else Lay-Men such as Origen when he was a more credible Witness of the Text than an Hundred unlearned Bishops and such as Hierom that was no Bishop of whom I say the same yea and Women yea Hereticks and Infidels such as Pliny c. would be Church-Rulers 4. All Pastors being by Office to Preach Christ's Word and Ministerially Officiate accordingly are thereby especially intrusted with the keeping of these Sacred Records as Lawyers while they daily use them are with the Laws and the Universal Testimony of such Officers is the most credible part of the Witnesses Work or if not Universal the more the better 5. Every Pastor is as a Cryer to proclaim Christ's Laws 6. And in Circumstances left to Mutable Humane Determination the more common Consent Caeteris paribus the better And this is the use of Councils this is enough But the Protestants that I have known and read do make it our first Controversie with the Papists Whether Christ ever Instituted any one Head or Ruling Power over all the Church under himself And 2. Whether Pope or Council be such Both which they deny XIX If you have not read it I intreat you read in the Cabal-Supplement King Henry the VIII's Letter to the Archbishop and Clergy of the Province of York where you will find ☞ 1. Your cited seeming Contradictions of Scripture answered by use of Speech and Reason without any Universal Judicature 2. That Dic Ecclesiae cannot be meant of the Church Universal 3. That the Universal Church hath no Head or Governor but Christ but the Clergy subserve him as Ministers by whom he giveth Spiritual Grace and quae Spiritu aguntur libera sunt nulla Lege astringuntur and if the Teachers do their Office with scandal Magistrates must punish them and that it is the Ecclesia quae non Constat ex bonis malis which the King is not the Head of But that in Spirituals as the word signifieth Spiritual Persons and their Goods and Works and the enforcing the Observances of Gods Laws the King is Head And the reason of the word Head notably vindicated with much more XX. I crave your Pardon both for the Prolixity and Boldness while I add this Question not as accusing you of Popery Perjury or Disloyalty How can I be cleared from the guilt of Perjury and Disloyalty if having taken the ☞ Oath of Supremacy and subscribed according to the Canons c. I shall plead for the subjecting of the King and all Subjects to a Foreign Power in Spirituals when the Oath disclaimeth it and the Can. 1. saith That all Vsurped and Foreign Power hath no Establishment or Ground by the Law of God and is for most just Causes taken away and abolished and therefore no manner of Obedience or Subjection within His Majesties Realms and Dominions is due to ANY SVCH Foreign Power And all Ministers subscribe Can. 36. against all Foreign Power as well in all Spiritual or Ecclesiastical Things or Causes as Temporal And Articl 21. General Councils may not be gathered together without the Commandment and Will of Princes And when will all Princes Orthodox Heretical Mahometan Heathen Enemies in VVar c. agree to gather them out of all the VVorld And when they be gathered together for as much as they be an Assembly of Men whereof all be not Governed with the Spirit and Word of God they may err and sometime have erred even in things pertaining to God wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to Salvation have no Strength nor Authority unless it may be declared that they be taken out of the Holy Scriptures And doth Church-Unity Concord and Salvation lie on things not necessary to Salvation If you say that none of this speaketh against Foreign Ecclesiastical Power such as the Apostles had I answer 1. Not against a Foreigners Preaching and Baptizing and Celebrating the Lord's Supper if he be where we are and there he is no Foreigner But against all Foreigners proper Government of Men as their Subjects The Apostles Commission in that was extraordinary and yet they Ruled Doctorally none but Voluntary Consenters 2. The Law Oath Canon and Articles disclaim such Power as the Pope claimeth here But the Pope claimeth proper Ecclesiastical Government and most English and French Papists and half the rest I think claim for him only the power of the Word and Keys and not any forcing Power by the Sword XXI As hence I wonder not that Mr. Thorndike threateneth
specially Universal in a College or a Council or a Pope or a Council and College under the Pope as President their Subscription to our Articles and their usage of Oaths would be no invitation to Dissenters to imitate them or Conform Chap. XIX Mr. Henry Dodwell's Leviathan further Anatomized § 1. I Have already elsewhere in two Books detected the Schismatical and Tyrannical Doctrine of Mr. Dodwell in his tedious voluminous Accusation of the Reformed Churches as damnable Schismaticks that Sin against the Holy Ghost and have No right to Salvation by Christ. I recite now a few Passages that shew the Constitution of the Church he Pleads for Pag. 73. The Essential work of the Ministry according to my Principles is to transact between God and Man to Seal Covenants on behalf of God and to accept of those which are made by Men and to oblige them to perform their part of the Covenant by otherwise authoritatively excluding them from God's part Hence results the whole Power of Ecclesiastical Government And for this No great Gifts and Abilities are Essential All the Skill that is requisite essentially is only in general to know the Benefits to be performed on God's part and the Duties to be performed on Mans and the Nature and Obligation of Covenants in general and the particular Solemnities of Ecclesiastical Covenants And of this how any Man can be uncapable who is but capable of understanding the common Dealings of the World Pag. 72. He sheweth that Immoralities of Life are not sufficient to deprive them of this High Power And of the Power it self he saith Pag. 80 81. It is not stated in Scripture but to be measured by the Intention of the Ordainers and that the Hypothesis of God's setling in Scripture is irreconcileable with Government in this Life by permitting Men to appeal to Writings against all the visible Authority of this Life On the contrary saith he Our Hypothesis obliging inferiour Governours to prove their Title to their office and the extent of it from the intention of their Superiour Governours doth oblige all to a strict dependance on the Supreme visible Power so as to leave no place for Appeals concerning the Practice of such Government which as it lasts only for this life so it ought not to admit of Disputes more lasting than its Practice from them and that upon rational and consciencious Principles for how fallible soever they may be conceived to be in expounding Scripture yet none can deny them to be the most certain as well as the most competent Judges of their own Intentions As certainly therefore as God made his Church a visible Society and constituted a visible Government in it so certain their Hypothesis is false P. 83. How can Subjects preserve their due Subordination to their Superiours if they practice differently They may possibly do it notwithstanding Practices of Humane Infirmity and disavowed by themselves But how can they do it while they defend their Practices and pretend Divine Authority for it Yea and pretend to Authority and Offices unaccountable to them which must justifie a whole course of different Practices P. 84. If their Authority be immediately received from God and the Rule of their Practices be taken from the Scriptures as understood by themselves what reason can there be of subjection to any humane Superiours I Must intreat the Reader that he will not call any of these men Papists till they are willing to be so called You are not their Godfathers Do not then make Names for them But I must confess that once I thought the stablished French Religion had been Popery and I see no reason to recant it But if Brierwood's Epistles mis-describe them not Mr. Dodwell is not so much of their Mind for the Supremacy of a General Council as I thought he had been Will you know my Evidence It shall be only in his own words I. Separation of Churches c. Pag. 102. The Church with whom this Covenant is made is a Body Politick as formerly though not a Civil one and God hath designed all Persons to enter into this Society Pag. 98. Faith and Repentance themselves on which they so much insist are not available to Salvation at least not pleadable in a Legal way without our being of the Church And the Church of which we are obliged to be is an external Body Politick So that it 's clear it is the Universal Church and a visible Humane Politie which he meaneth Pag. 107. The design of God in erecting the Church a Body Politick thus to oblige men to enter into it and to submit to its Rules of Discipline however the secular State should stand affected It is more easie for the vulgar Capacity whatsoever to prove their interest in a visible Church than in in an invisible one consisting only of elect Persons In these and many places of both his Books he tells us that the Catholick Church is One Body Politick and hath on Earth a Supreme humane Government which I have noted in his words in my Answer to him II. Pag. 488. Only the Supreme Power is that which can never be presumed to have been confined Of which more in his words which I have confuted III. That the Intention of the Ordainers is the true measure of the Power of the Ordained he copiously urgeth and proveth as much as the Ringing a Bell will prove it by loudness and length Pag. 542. Therefore the Power actually received by them must not be measured by the true sence of the Scripture but that wherein the Ordainers understood them Now the Ordainers of the first Protestants never intended them Power to abrogate the Mass or Latin Service or Image-worship or to renounce the Pope or gave them any Power but what was in Subordination to the Pope but bound them to him and his Canons and to the Mass and the other parts of Popery To prove this he saith Pag. 489. It is very notorious that at least a little before the Reformation Aerius and the Waldenses and Marsilius of Padua and Wickliff were Condemned for Hereticks for asserting the Parity of Bishops and Presbyters And it is as notorious that every Bishop was then obliged to Condemn all Heresies that is all those Doctrines which were then censured for Heretical by that Church by which they were Ordained to be Bishops Our Protestants themselves do not pretend to any Succession in these Western Parts where themselves received their Orders but what was conveyed to them even by such Bishops as these were And Pag. 484 485 486. he sheweth at large That All the Authority which can be pretended in any Communion at the present must be derived from the Episcopal especially of that Age wherein the several Parties began Within less than Two Hundred Years since there was no Church in the World wherein a Visible Succession was maintained from the Apostles which was not Episcopally Governed And the first Inventers of the several
singly is counted so if it be done in unlawful Assemblies And sure none can think it reasonable to ratifie the acts of Rebells And if the Society be not represented by unlawful Assemblies how can it in justice be obliged by them How can any of its Rights be disposed of by them who are not its Legal Representatives P. 513. The most natural way is by abrogating the acts of such Assemblies Therefore the Jurisdiction of the Assembly by the President is a right consequent of the Office of a President as a President and a circumstance requisite to make the Assembly it self lawful specially where no certain places or periods of times are agreed on for the keeping of any There must be some who have the power of Assembling them when they judge it convenient for the publick and who may be allowed for competent Judges of that convenience Every one is not permitted to judge of the occasion But there is none concerning whom this Power can so probably be presumed None to whom all undisposed Power does by the common Rules of all Societies so naturally Escheat as the President of the Assemblies Even in the Assemblies a Veneration is due to him for his Office above all other Members but much more so out of the Assemblies where none is in a likely way to be able to oppose him He who calls an Assembly must have some advantage over all the Members called by him that he may oblige them to convene and it is necessary to the Publick that they be obliged to meet when they are so called that is when the IVDGE of Circumstances thinks it necessary c. But there is none who can pretend to this advantage I do not say of Jurisdiction but even of Authority and Reverence above his fellow Members besides the President Besides the Power of such Assemblies expires with the Assemblies themselves so that in the intervals of Assemblies there remains no more of that Power c. But the Convening of Assemblies is an act of Authority in that very interval and therefore cannot agree to any but the President whose Authority alone can be antecedent to the meeting of the Assemblies so that if it be the right of any it must be his because none besides him is capable of it Answ. 1. Did Hosius of Corduba or Eustathius Antiochenus or Cyril Alexandr Anatolius Const. c. call the Councils of Nice Ephesus c. or had an Antecedent right to it 2. Hath no King or Parliament a right to call a Convocation in England 3. Have not K. James Jewel Crakenthorpe Buckeridge Bilson Carlton Abbot Field Andrews and other English Bishops and Divines and Chamier Sadeel Chemnisius and the rest abroad fully proved that the Emperors called the General Councils as did the Spanish and French Kings and the Emperor Provincial ones 4. Doth not every Conformist Subscribe to the Articles of Religion which say that General Councils may not be called but by the Will of Princes Though Mr. Dodwell have the plain Honesty not to be Ordained or Subscribe these English Articles Mr. Thorndike Bishop Bromhall Bishop Guning Dr. Saywell Dr. Parker c. I suppose did But let us hear him further And this is more certainly true of him who has a right to preside in Assemblies when they are convened by Virtue of his General Right to preside over the whole Society as well when Assemblies are not Convened as when they are than of him who is chosen by the particular Assemblies for their particular Occasions And he who has his Precedency not by virtue of any particular Election but for term of Life must have such a Presidency as I am speaking of Not only the Assemblies convened by him are in this regard lawful but also no Assemblies are lawful but what are called by him because there is no other way of making them lawful but the lawfulness of their Call nor any Power to Call them distinct from that of such a President Do you wonder that this Man Conformeth not Or do you not wonder that those Subscribe and are called Protestants that are of his Mind If they can answer the Articles the King and Parliament that say the King hath Power to call Synods what do they make of their Readers that obtrude such Baronian fictions on us without once attempting to answer Protestants who with all credible Historians prove it past all modest Contradiction that Emperors were the ordinary Callers of the General Councils and not the Presidents or Pope Pag. 516 517. He goeth on asserting Assemblies called without the President to be unlawful nullities and by the highest common interest to be punished so far must we think the Councils of Nice Ephesus c. to be from binding us and saith Indeed the Bishops could not renounce this Power without dissolving the Society by making the Exercise of Government unpracticable or without changing the whole frame of Government For who must have it If none had had it how could the Society be secured that Assemblies should meet if none had Power to oblige particular Members to be present at them when called If at any time no meeting were ascertained the Government would be dissolved Ans. 1. Did this reading Man never hear of the Claim of Princes to call Councils in their Dominions Did he not know where he lived Did he never read the late Act of Parliament in Scotland that asserts all church-Church-Power in Exteriors to be in the King Nor any of the Protestants Confessions or Divines Should I think he had quite forgotten all this or that he had the craft to take no notice of it as that which was too hot to handle 2. And was it not a piece of Wit to take it for granted that such Assemblies as he calleth the Councils are so Essential to the Church that the Government and Society is dissolved without them or without a Ruling Presidents Power to call them And the Pope must have a Power to oblige all particulars to come when he calleth them And no wonder when unless Men be Cheaters the whole Power Escheateth into the Presidents hands when the Council is dissolved which is when ever his Holiness please And long enough may you Petition him for these Church Parliaments when to call them is to surrender part of his Power Answ. 3. But what if all these Church Councils as such have no Governing Power at all over any of the particular Bishops any more than a Synod of Schoolmasters have over each others Persons and Schools but meet only by Christ's general Obligation to do all their work with greatest Prudence for Mutual Help and Concord He hath been told on both Ears oft enough that this is not only his Adversaries Judgment but such great Bishops as I have oft named yea and of Grotius his Friend when he wrote de Imp. sum Potest And where do you find this Disputant once attempt in all this begging presuming Volume to prove any
Regent Power in such Councils but what the Magistrate giveth them Monstra mihi inquit Hieron quisnam Imperatorum celebrari id Concilium jusserit saith Grotius ib. P. 168. Non ideo convocari Synodum quod in ea pars sit Imperii satis jam demonstratum arbitror Finis ergo ut Episcopus Wintoniensis recte notat hic est ut ad veritatis Pietatis amplificationem Consilium Principi praebeant hoc est Praeeant ipsi judicio directivo ut per Synodum stabiliâ—i testataque fieri possit Consensio Ecclesiae Omnium autem horum finium nullus est necessarius simpliciter Neque Synodus simpliciter ad illos fines necessaria This he goeth on to prove and more than so that Synods are oft hurtful as well as unnecessary Cum potius saith August rarissimae inveniantur haereses propter quas damnandas necessitas talis exstiterit I will not repeat saith Grotius the Complaint of almost all Ages that the chief Diseases were brought into the Church à Sacerdotibus citing Nazianzen he addeth Neque agit de Arianis duntaxat Synodis sed de omnibus suorum temporum praecipue quibus ipse interfuit Mr. Morrice might easily know this Nec pauca referri possunt si opus sit infoeliciorum conciliorum exempla quale fuit sub Constantino Antiochenum Caesariense Tyrium cujus conventus Episcopis scribens Constantinus nihil ait ab illis fieri nisi quod ad odia dissensiones serendas ad perniciem denique humani generis faciat Zanchy's way cited by him is oft better than Councils that the Magistrate command Ministers in Controversies 1. Vti non suis sed Scripturae vocibus 2. Et à publicâ damnatione abstinere And Pag. 209. saith Grotius The Church hath no Legislative Power by Divine Right What was written in Synods before Christian Emperors for Order and Ornament are not called Laws but Canons and have either only the force of advice as in things which rather belong to singular persons than to all or they oblige by way of Agreement c. But some Legislative Power may be given by humane Laws But perhaps some will say that Mr. Dodwell speaketh only of National or Provincial or Diocesane Councils and not of General ones and therefore by the fixed President meaneth not the Pope Answ. 1. I would he were willing and able to tell what he meaneth But he felt what a fine advantage he had under the Name of Bishops Presidency to please a Party and say more than every one of them shall at first perceive But he expresly maintaineth that the Universal Church is one Political Society and hath a visible Supreme humane Government that is Absolute and from which there is no appeal And that this Society hath Legislative Power and is bound but by the Laws made in its own Assemblies And that these Assemblies are Rebels and punishable if not called by the President And though Mr. D. had the Prudence to use the word President rather than Pope if ever he speak intelligibly it 's here And Mr. Thorndike whom he valueth as a sound Protestant Archbishop Bromhall and the rest of the Tribe do openly assert the due Presidence of the Pope as Principium Vnitatis and first Patriarch Saith Mr. Dodwell further Pag. 522 523. Supposing those Presbyters that chose the President had invested him in his Office by Prayer and Imposition of hands and no Bishops had any more to do in his Consecration than Kings have in the Inauguration of our ordinary Kings it will not follow that those Presbyters who chose and consecrated him must have any more Power over him Nor is it only true that this way may be so but indeed it must be so whenever the Person so invested is supposed to be invested in the Supreme Power and whenever the Society over which he is placed is also Independent on other Societies As the Universal Church is Such a Person can never be placed in his Power if not by them who must after be his Subjects unless by his Predecessor which no Society can safely depend on for a constant rule of Succession And doth any but the Pope pretend to this Soveraign place In his own Society he can have none of his own Order that can perform the Ceremony to him because we suppose Him to be Supreme and there cannot be two such in one Society True And you make it your fundamental that the Catholick Church is one such Society and so must have such a Supreme And it 's worth the noting which he adds And therefore I for my part am so little solicitous for any consequence that may be hence inferred to the prejudice of my Cause as that I am apt to think that this must have been the way at first in the making of Bishops how Absolute soever I conceive them to have been when they were once made Ans. Are we not beholden to the Universal Presidentship for this concession I forced Johnson alias Terret to the same And yet both these men cry down a Power resulting from God's Law or Charter to the person duly receptive when yet the Instance of the Papacy constraineth them to make it their foundation Why then must Presbyterian Ordination be Nullity if Inferiors only chuse and Consecrate the Pope and Presbyters only at first chose and Consecrated Bishops Obj. The difference is that such Inferiors are but Electors and Investing Ministers and not Donors of the Power but Popes and Prelates are Donors Ans. 1. Then no Prelate could be such but by the Popes or Councils donation 2. Doth not Mr. D. oft say that the Body is the seat of Power and so giveth it 3. But why should he think that we must take his word for this difference and the Prelatical Donation instead of Ministry Do not the Papists themselves more commonly hold that the Presbyters or Priests Office is of fixed Divine Institution and more unalterable than that the Bishops is The latter is disputed the former undisputable It may be Mr. D. will thus prove that he is no Papist But I had rather he be one than worse Nay what will you say if after all he be half an Independent P. 523. saith he This seems best to agree with the Absoluteness of Particular Churches before they had by compact united themselves under Metropolitanes and Exarchs into Provincial and Diocesan Churches And this seems to have been fitted for the frequent Persecutions of those earlier Ages when every Church was able to secure its own Suecession by its own power withoue depending on the certain opportunities of the meeting of the Bishops of the whole Province And the alteration of this practice the giving the Bishops of the Province an interest in the Choice of every particular Colleague seems not to have been so much for want of power in the particular Churches to do it as for the security of Compacts that they might be certain of such a Colleague as would observe
them And he thinks it probable that it was in imitation of the Philosophers Successions that these Ecclesiastical Successions were framed And when the Philosophers failed to nominate their own Successors then the Election was in the Schools Ans. What could be said more gently by such a man 1. Then the first Churches were like Philosophers Schools very good not many score or hundred Schools as the first and least Order 2. The Government of Churches was much like that of Philosophers in their Schools 3. Bishops and much more Presbyters might be made then without Bishops by the Election and Consecration of Presbyters 4. This was the old way in time of Persecution 5. This alteration was not for want of Power in the Particular Churches c. 6. But it was made to secure Observance in the Colleagues 7. And Church Successions framed in imitation of Philosophers We shall in due time enquire whether we are all bound to stand to these changes on pain of all the scorn and sufferings that the followers of them will lay upon us Will you know more of this Self-confutation In his Preface he saith P. 4. I suppose all Churches Originally equal and that they have since submitted to prudential Compacts But are not all we poor nothings then obliged on pain of damnation to stand to all that our Fore-fathers did And must we not take the Imperial Subjects of Asia Africa and Europe we know not who for our Fore-fathers in Brittain and be of that Heathens mind that drew back from Baptism when he heard his Fore-fathers were in Hell and said that he would be where they were No this moderate man tells you Though they may oblige them as long as the reason of these Compacts lasts and as far as the equity of those Compacts may hold as to the true design of those that made them and as far as those Compacts have meddled with the alienable Rights of Particular Churches yet where any of these Conditions fail there the Particular Churches are at liberty to resume their Antient Rights Obj. Yea but who shall judge when any of of these Conditions fail He answers next And I suppose the power of judging when these Conditions fail to be an unalienable Right of Particular Churches and not only to judge with the Judgment of private discretion but such a Judgment as may be an authentick measure of her own practice We thank you Sir that you give us so fair quarter But if you had not had we known where we should have commenced a Suit for our Native and Christian Birth-right and put you to prove quo jure John Thomas Peter c. meeting a thousand years ago we know not why nor when nor by what Authority did give away the Birth-right and the Souls of an hundred millions not then in being that never consented or heard of their names nor were bound to know that there was such a City as Rome Nice c. or such men as Leo Tharasius c. in the World And if you had answered us according to the Roman genius with Gaols or Fire and Faggot we would have appealed to God whether you and all such will or not and when God judgeth do your worâ—t But would you think what a stress this Humane Catholick layeth on innovating Prelates Compacts He adds after all this P. 6. Whoever they were that nominated the persons whether the People the Clergy or the Prince or the Pope yet still they were the Bishops that performed the Office of Consecration which was that which was then thought immediately to confer the Power Ans. You were not then in being and therefore did not then think it And you know mens thoughts so long before you were born no better than others Oportet fuisse memorem Had you not memory enough to make your Preface meet with your Book where you say that Presbyters did Consecrate Bishops and yet did not give them the Power and say that as to the Supreme President we know his name it must still be otherwise Yet this fundamental Humanist concludeth p. 11. They must be guilty of disobedience to the Divine Government Guilty of giving or abetting a Divine Authority in Men to whom God has never given such Authority nay in opposition to all the Authority he has really established among men They must be guilty of forging Covenants in Gods Name and counterfeiting the great Seals of Heaven in ratification of them And what can be more Treasonable by all the Principles of Government What is more provoking and more difficultly pardonable They must be guilty of sinning against the Holy Ghost and unto Death and of the sins described in the passages of the Epistle to the Hebrews with which none do terrifie the Consciences of ignorant unskilful persons more than they do They must be guilty of such sins which as they need pardon more than others so do they in the nature of the things themselves more effectually cut off the offender from all hopes of pardon in an ordinary way By being disunited from the Church he loses his Union with Christ and all the Mystical benefits consequent to that Vnion He has therefore no Title to the Sufferings or Merits or Intercession of Christ or any of those other blessings which were purchased by those Merits or which may be expected from those Intercessions He has no Title to pardon of sin to the gifts and assistants of the blessed Spirit or to any Promises of future Rewards though he should perform ALL OTHER PARTS OF HIS DVTY besides this of uniting himself again to Christ's Mystical Body in a VISIBLE COMMVNION Till then there are no promises of acceptance of any Prayers which either he may offer for himself or others may offer for him And how disconsolate must the condition of such a person be And pag. 20. Suppose I were mistaken why should they take it ill to be warned of a danger Ans. 10. What harm was it for those Act. 15. to say Except ye be circumcised and keep the Law of Moses ye cannot be saved And yet did Paul rail when he said Beware of evil-workers beware of Dogs beware of the Concision What Sect cannot easily without a Doctors degree thus dispute You are all damned that be not of our mind or Sect. But the Devil hurts those most whom he least affrighteth Ans. 2. What if we put this to wise men to tell us 1. How he can prove that all the Christian World agreed to the Compacts that bring us under these hellish consequences I provoke him again to answer my proof against Terret that they were the Compacts but of one Empire 2. How proveth he that we Brittains are under such Compacts when our Ancestors and the Scots renounced Communion with the Romanists 3. If our Ancestors after turned to Popery or Church-Tyranny how proveth he that we are any more bound to sin as they did than if they had turned to Arianism or Turcism when Ezek. 18. 33.
is Christ the Bishop or Pastor confers them only as his Instruments So others As all Power is of God and must be obeyed so Usurpation is of Satan and the higher the worse and the word Antichrist is supposed by many to signifie one that is a Vsurping Christ that is a Usurper of Vniversal Soveraignty which none but Christ is capable of Mr. Jos. Glanviles Character of Devils or Evil Spirits in his Sadducâ—ismus Triumphatus is considerable p. 33. and 42. Edit 2. The meanest and basest in the Kingdom of darkness having none to Rule and Tyrannize over within the Circle of their own Nature and Government they affect a proud Empire over us the desire of Dominion and Authority being largely spread through the whole circumference of degenerated Nature especially among those whose Pride was their Original Transgression Every one of these desireth to get him Vassals to pay him Homage The good Angels have no such ends to prosecute as the gaining any Vassals to serve them they being Ministring Spirits for our good and no self-designers for a proud and insolent Dominion over us But I think no Devil but Beelzebub the Prince aspireth so high as to be Ruler of all the World or Church And when Cardinal Bertrand told Philip King of France that God had not been Wise if he had not set up one as his Vicegerent visibly to Rule all the World I do not find that he set up that Vice-god so far above God himself as to forbid obeying him before his Viceroy or to deny Gods Universal Laws to be above Mans and to deny all Appeals to God and his Word or to say that the President of Counsels must be obeyed without excepting If Gods Laws and his be inconsistent Since the Writing of all foregoing Mr. Dodwell hath Published the Second Part of his Leviathan called A Discourse of one Altar and one Priesthood as against us whom he calleth Schismaticks and me in particular It is much of the Complexion of the First Part His Schismatical Book being a Chain of many linked Propositions of which many are false and many falsly shaped and applied But put off with a confident Affirmation that he hath proved them true And his former Method is defended by as confident an Affirmation that all that is said against them invalidates not his proof The shortest way I confess of defending himself and answering others and saveth the labour of much Writing and Reading And I think if the tedious Discourses of his two Volumes had been just so abbreviated it had been a Kindness to his Readers § 2. Whether he reserve his Answer to my last Book against him to another Treatise or mean to overpass it by saying it is contemptible I know not nor much desire to know I find him here in his Preface doing that which may serve his turn much better than an answer viz. 1. Many angry Charges that I slander him 2. An attempt to prove it agreeable to his Method 3. Confident Affirmation that I write not accurately nor answer his Proofs And to those that read his Books and not mine this is enough § 3. His Proof of my Slander is mostly by way of question Where did I say this or that Where 1. Those things that I spake of others he feigneth me to say of him Joyning divers late Writers together I mention what is said among them some one part and some another and he takes all to himself 2. When I mention the clear Consequences of his Doctrine 3. And when in my Letters I recite his Verbal Discourse with me he asks Where have I said it Did I not find him a designed Hider I would not suspect designed Fraud but should be very glad that he so much as intimateth in his Questions a denial of so many Errors But who can choose but suspect his Sincerity in such seeming Denials who findeth some of them unsincere E. g. He asketh Pref. Where did I once call Thomas Aquinas a Saint This startleth me Many times have my Ears heard him call him Saint Thomas and never once heard him call him otherwise And doth he now seem to deny it I never said that he so wrote but so called him Had I not reason to believe that when he oft calls the Church of Christ in the singular Number One Political Body under One humane Government which all must obey and not question whether it's Laws be agreeable to the Law of God that he meant the Church Catholick and not a Diocess There are Thousands of Diocesses but the Church that he spake of is but One. Had I any reason to believe that when he talkt of the sole right of the President to call Councils or Assemblies to make Church Canons that he meant only Diocesans When as a Diocesane hath no Bishops under him to Convocate And whether it be not Convocate Bishops to whom he appropriateth this Legislation let the Reader judge as he seeth cause § 4. But I abhor making any Man thought to own what he disowneth And I gladly receive his intimated Denyals in these Questions and tender them to the Consideration of all that are for a foreign Jurisdiction 1. Mr. Dodwell denieth by intimation all humane Vniversal Church Supremacy and consequently all humane Power of Legislation or Judgment over the whole Church He denieth the Government of the Catholick Church Collectively ought to be either Monarchical or Aristocratical in Pope or Council 2. He denieth the Pope to have any Primacy or Presidentship in General Councils or that it belongs to him to call them It was but a Diocesans Power to Convocate his Presbyters that he meant 3. He taketh the French Church for Papists while they own the Popish Communion though many are not so in their Principles But it is Mens Principles that I spake of and not their Communion 4. He denieth Communion with any part of the Roman Church Doth Dr. Saywell do so 5. He taketh the Councils of Constance and Basil for Papists and hath no Communion with those that own them as being Papists 6. He proveth the French Church guilty of the Hildebrandine Doctrine of deposing Princes and Aquinas too 7. He disowneth the terms of Cassander and Grotius as not sufficient to a lasting Peace 8. He odly dreamed that when I deny a Governing College of Bishops I thought the Lord Bishop of Ely had meant such as our University Colleges cohabiting this is no Slander in him yet he declareth that by such a College he means but Bishops ejusdem Speciei governing the Church by parts and not any One Numerical Soveraign Company But that they should hold all due Communion which he may see I still grant And he falsly fancies that I am against Cyprian's naming of Colleagues or his sence § 5. But if Mr. Dodwell be sincere he makes himself one of the greatest Separatists in the World Consider how narrow his Communion is and the Church which he owneth 1. He hath no Communion with the rigid
the Papists or Greeks or Moscovites that cannot Preach at all O how happy a Church do you Dream of VII And it is yet more incredible that this popular Majority should be so right in such small Matters as Rites and Ceremonies and Discipline as that their Practice should be a Law to all the rest of the Christian World And that the Unity or Concord of the Universal Church must be built on such Sand as cannot so much as be gathered into one Heap And all must be Schismaticks and so far separate from the Church that obey them not I remember when Dr. Hammond proceeded Dr. I heard Dr. Prideaux in the Chair argue against the Churches Infallibility that John and Thomas and so every Individual was fallible Ergo a company of fallibles were not infallible Especially in such Matters as a Ceremony Those that Paul wrote to Rom. 14. 15. were not taken for infallible or Legislators by him VIII And you no where prove that Paul meaneth by the Churches have no such Customs that none in the World had any other nor must have any other but only that what Garb and Habit the Custom of all those Countries had placed Decency in the general Rule of Decency would oblige all to in the solemn Assemblies as it obligeth us to be uncovered You must needs know that by your Exposition and Inference you Condemn your own Church that hath the contrary Custom Especially your noble Patrons that wear Periwigs IX And how impossible a work do you set us all as a Law to know what these Ceremonies are without which we separate as Schismaticks 1. Must all good Christians be so great Historians as to know what Ceremonies have been used in all Ages by the Major part 2. Must they be so Skill'd in Cosmography as to know what Countries make the Major part 3. Must they have so good intelligence of former Affairs as to know who have now the greater Vote in Councils and out of them 4. But you say It must be of such Rites as ab omnibus ubique semper have been used we like Vincentius Liri's rule well as to things necessary that may aliunde be so proved But how shall any man know that ab omnibus ubique without more Knowledge of the World than Drake or Candish had or any Traveller Except Negatively that we must not affect causeless Singularity from the most of the Godly as far as we can know them And how shall we understand the semper Must it respect all time to come Then none can know his Duty till the End of the World If it be only as to time past then how knew they that lived in the first Age how long their Customs would continue And then all the after Changes which were many were Schismatical X. Do you not too hardly censure the Church of England as Schismatical You know Epiphanius hath a peculiar Treatise to tell us what then were the Customs and Ceremonies of the Universal Church And how many of these are forsaken by us yea and by almost all the Churches Do you now clothe the Baptized anew in White Do you dip them over head in Water Do you anoint them as they did and cross them with the Ointment Do you give them to taste Milk and Honey Do you exorcise them Do your Bishops only make that Chrysme Do all here and in other Churches worship only versus Orientem Do you all forbear and forbid Adoration Kneeling on any Lord's Day or any Week Day between Easter and Whitsunday What! when you cast out of the Church those that will not Kneel at the Sacrament You know that the Council of Nice and that at Trull and the Fathers commonly make this a Rite of the Universal Church And Dr. Heylin saith that Rome it self kept it for a Thousand Years and it was never reversed by any other General Council Do you keep the Memorial of Martyrs at their Graves as then they did Do you use their Bones and relicts as they did Twenty more you may see in Epiphanius and others O condemn not the Church of England as separated from the Universal Church And our Reformers too XI What a case would you bring this Church and Kingdom to by your Law of the Custom of the Major part Must we have all the Opinions Rites or Ceremonies which the Greeks Moscovites Armenians and Papists have many Hundred Years in their Ignorance and Superstition agreed in as to the Major part Must we be able to confute their pretensions of Antiquity and Custom as to all these He that readeth the Description of their Customs methinks should be loth that we should be such XII And your Doctrine of Traditions as certainly received from the Apostles when the Majority use them is so much against the Church of England's Judgment and so copiously confuted by the whole stream of Protestant Bishops and Drs. and foreign Divines that I will not stay now to repeat that work were all the Traditions forementioned since laid by received from the Apostles About Genuflexions Milk and Honey Chrysme the white Garment You instance in Synods meeting and making Laws To meet for worship or necessary consultation and Concord is no unwritten ceremonial Tradition but the obeying of Christ's written Law which requireth such mutual help and that we do all to Edification Concord and Peace But Communion of many Nations is one thing and a Government over all is another thing It was the Emperor's Commission and Power that made Canons to be Laws And do you not here write against the King's Commission by which you sit which declareth from that Act of H. 8. that your Canons are no Laws till King and Parliament make them so Ask the Lawyers Were not the Canons of 1640. cast out even by your own long Parliament XIII But the worst is that while you set us a new Universal Church Legislative and Judicial Soveraignty you deny the sufficiency of Scripture if not the Soveraignty of Christ himself while you feign unwritten Universal Laws as part of Christ's Law a supplement to the Scripture give Christ's Prerogative to a Usurping Soveraignty utterly uncapable of that Office Scripture we know where to find but where to find your Universal Additional Laws and your Church Senate or College they must know more than I that know But so much is written against the Papists as aforesaid for Scripture sufficiency that I refer you thither and to the Articles Homilies and Ordination Books which this Church subscribeth to Alas Sir is not the whole Bible big enough to make us a Religion XIV As to your definition of the Church P. 12. It is tolerable if you make no Head but Christ and set up no Vicarious Head Monarchical or Aristocratical and instead of Provincial parts put National and Congregational or confess that you describe but the Imperial-National Church which was made up of Roman Provinces And gratifie not the Fanaticks by making the Holy Ghost
Bromhal saith that God doth it by the Law of Nature enabling Men to do it and to deny this is to overthrow all Government I answer 1. We know of no such Law of Nature nor that he is a Credible Expositor of it We take the Law of Nature on the Reasons before and after mentioned to be plainly against the very being of such Councils and especially against such trusting our Religion with them and supposing them to be the Governors of all the Christian Princes and People on Earth 2. What Men be they that have given these Patriarchs this Power If Men dead 1300. years ago they have no Authority now Dead Men have no ruling Power The Laws of the Land bind us not now by any power that the Dead Kings and Parliaments have over us But though made by them they bind us now only as the Laws of our present Governours By the Constitution the Successive Kings are still by consent to make them Their Laws till by consent of King and Parliament they are Dissolved Unless some present power over us make them Their Laws no old Church Canons can bind us 3. If they say that God binds us to stand to what our Ancestors did I want the proof of that If we will have the benefit of our Ancestors Contract we must stand to them else we may choose A Father cannot bind his Child to his hurt but only to his Benefit Let them prove the Obligation 4. But we deny that any made those Patriarchs who would have had any power over us had we been then alive The Subjects of one Prince made them in his Empire and he Confirmed them But neither that Prince nor his Subjects were our Rulers here what if the King or Convocation make Canterbury and York Metropolitans Doth it follow that they have Church-power over other Lands 5. These Patriarchs had never the Government of any given them by the old Councils but within the Empire And after of some Volunteers that for Advantage chose it 6. Who be these Patriarchs they talk of Are they not all turned into Names and Shadows Condemning one another and must these five fighting Shadows Represent and Rule the Christian World 7. To return to the twelve Apostles is Impertinent The Apostles were prime Ministers and more Represented Christ than the Church The Church chose them not Christ made them Foundations Bases and Pillars in his Church but not Representatives of it And if he had they chose none to Succeed them as Apostles But as ordinary Ministers all Ministers Succeed them and as Superior Ministers some say Bishops Bellarmine confesseth and proveth that the Apostles as such have no Successors and that the Pope Succeedeth not Peter as an Apostle but as he Dreams as an ordinary Supream Pastor Had the Apostles setled twelve or thirteen Successors or appointed any Churches to be Rulers of the rest we must have obeyed these Rulers But who have called them a General Council None but Rome Antioch and Alexandria claimed Succession from the Apostles and all these claimed it but from one Apostle Peter Rome and Antioch as his pretended Seats and Alexandria that he set St. Mark over them sure the Apostles rose not from the dead to make Constantinople and Jerusalem Patriarchates And if they had four of the five Patriarchs are all now Subjects to the Turk And experience telling us what Power Princes have in the Choice and Ruling of the Clergy All this doth but say that the Turk is the Chief Governour of the Religion and Consciences of all the Christian World If they plead for new Power to make Patriarchs let them prove who hath that Power over all the World and how they came by it and how they now use it Will all the Christian World who fear the guilt of obeying Usurpers and disobeying Christians ever unite in the obedience of Patriarchs who cannot be known by the wisest much less by all to have any Authority to command them LII The Pope hath done much of his mischiefs to the Church and World by the Councils of Bishops They have been his Army and he their General Without them he could have done little or nothing By them the most of Church Corruptions have been made Laws By them Emperors have been deposed Rebellions maintained the Pope enabled to give away their Kingdoms absolve Subjects from their Oaths to make it a Heresie called Henrician to be Loyal to dig dead Bishops out of their graves as Hereticks that were for Loyalty Yea the Councils of Bishops without if not against the Pope deposed the good Ludovicus Pius and have done much to the corruption and confusion of the Churches as I have elsewhere proved LIII General Councils are not the authorized or lawful Supreme Government of the Universal Church nor have an Universal Legislative or Judiciary Power This many Protestants and after all Dr. Barrow have unanswerably proved Arg. 1. If there never was nor must be nor can be a true Universal Council then such a Council is not the Churches Supreme Governour But the antecedent I have before proved Arg. 2. That Government which the Church was without for three hundred years is not the just Supreme Government of the Universal Church For the Church is not the Church without its Supreme Government But the Church was without a General Council at least for three hundred years Arg. 3. That Government which rarely existeth and hath not existed near an hundred years or as some of our Adversaries say a thousand is not the Supreme Government of the Church For then the Church would be dead and no Church in all that time of vacancy for the Species depends on the Supreme Government But the Church hath so rarely had that which our present Adversaries themselves take for a true General Council If the Council of Trent were any they have had none since Yea Bishop Guning owneth but the six first Councils called General And if there were none since then the Church hath had no Supreme Council just a thousand years And was it this thousand years no Church or of another Species Or can the Church be a thousand years without its Supreme Government Arg. 4. If General Councils be the Supreme Legislative Power then the Church hath had no such Councils-Laws for all the foresaid vacancies 300 years first and since 601 a thousand years after But the Adversaries will not allow the consequent that all the Canons of General Councils were no Laws so long But the antecedent is proved from the definition of Laws which are the signification of the Soveraigns Will to be the Rule of the Subjects Right actions and dues There is no Law which is not the Rulers Law and if the Ruler be dead the Law is dead For a dead man hath neither Authority nor Will. Obj. Our Laws die not with the King nor at the dissolution of Parliaments Ans. 1. The Law saith Rex non moritur As soon as he is dead the next Heir
unlimited Monarch we will speak according to common use and let them speak as their Interest dictates to them but remember that the Controversie is but about the Name and not the Thing We take the French Church for Papists If they will call them Protestants they are free But if we are agreed what a Pope is the case is plain as followeth I. Mr. Dodwell their most Learned defender if number of words or greatest self-conceit be the chief strength tells you that if the Council be not lawfully called it obligeth you rather to bring them to Punishment as a Rout or Rebels than to obey them And that none but the President hath Power to call them And remember yet that this good Man is no Papist And indeed who else but the Pope should call Universal Councils The King in Scotland may call a Scotch General Assembly and in England a Convocation and Parliaâ—ent And 1. The Emperor of Rome or Constantinople might call such Councils in the Empire as were then called General and did so But who now shall call one out of France Spain Portugal Italy Germany Britain Denmark Sweden Poland Moscovie the Turkish Empire Armenia Georgia Mengrelia Tartary Abassia Mexico Peru China c. We are awake and therefore cannot Dream of Princes doing it by Agreement We are yet out of Bedlam and cannot conclude that all the Bishops in the World will come together by common consent or as the Atomists say the World was made by a fortuitous concourse of Atomes 2. How shall lawful Councils be known from unlawful if none have Authority to call approve and difference them If only ex factis by their good or bad Deeds half the World will Judge as they have done and do one Council to be spurious which another obeyeth 3. What order shall be kept among them if none have Authority to appoint the Place the Time to Preside and Moderate and to dissolve them and who pretends to this but the Pope 4. When Councils Contradict Condemn and Curse each other who shall tell us which of them to receive believe and obey II. And if we must have a visible Supreme Power we must have one that successively existeth that the Church be not dissolved And none pretendeth to this but the Pope III. And if all National Patriarchal Churches be but Parts of a visible Catholick Church with a Humane Supremacy then there must be some Power still existent to give Patriarchs and Metropolitans their Power Mr. Dodwell saith it overthrows all Government to appeal to Scripture as a Charter or Law of Christ None hath more than the Giver intended him None can give that which he hath not to give The Inferior hath not Power to give to the Superior Who then but a Pope can give Patriarchs and Metropolitans their Power If for want of Authoritative Collation of Power all the Presbyterian Ordinations Sacraments and Covenant-hopes of Salvation are Nullities and Sins against the Holy Ghost as Mr. Dodwell and his Tribe say what better are all the Bishops and Archbishops for want of a Superior conferring Power which none pretendeth to but the Pope IV. And who else shall judge Patriarchs Metropolitans and National Churches when they prove Hereticks or Schismaticks Their Heresie and Schism is far more heinous and dangerous than single Persons or Congregations And Councils are not extant And we cannot send all over the Earth to gather Bishops Votes against them unheard It must be a Pope or no body on Earth that must by Governing Authority Judge them V. And who else shall be the stated Judge of new started Controversies You say such there must be shall they be undecided till the World have a true general Council VI. And who shall an injured Person appeal to from a Tyrannical Metropolitan or National Church but to the Pope Many more clear Necessities there will be of a Pope on their Principles I blamed the Author of the Divine Hierarchy for naming such without an Antidote lest it should make men Papists But I understand he is a worthy Protestant But verily there is no avoiding a Pope by any that assert an Vniversal humane Church Supremacy VII And indeed I must not suppose them so immodest as to deny it For it is but the Pope's Absolute Power above the Councils and their Laws and not Simple Popery or the Pope's limited Power that they deny 1. They confess that they hold Rome for the Mistriss Church as Grotius calls it 2. And that the Pope is Patriarch of the West and the prime Patriarch 3. And that he is Principium Vnitatis to all the Church on Earth And if so they are out of the Church which is One that deny this 4. That he is authorized to call General Councils 5. And to be their President 6. And to be the chief Governor when there are no General Councils and that is indeed always 7. And that they are all Schismaticks that do not thus far submit to him And how much more Mr. Dodwell giveth the President I have shewed you in his own words VIII As Mr. Thorndike threateneth England with God's Judgments if they do not amend the Oath of Supremacy by making it acceptable to the Papists that renounce not a foreign Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction so others labour to prove that the meaning of it is only to renounce the Pope's Jurisdiction here in Temporals which belongs to the King and not a Papal and Foreign Jurisdiction properly Ecclesiastical by the Keys As you may see partly in Mr. Hutchinson's alias Berry's Book who on that Supposition took the Oath as many do and publickly profest himself of the Church of England IX In the Description of the Reconciliation with the Pope endeavoured by Archbishop Laud in Heylin's History of his Life Pag. 414 415 c. All that the Pope was to abate was 1. That the Oaths of Supremacy and Fidelity may be taken I told you in what sense 2. And that the Pope's Jurisdiction here but no where else be declared to be of Humane Right that is say ours by the Fathers in General Councils not without the Apostles by whose Church-Laws we are all bound 3. That all should be really performed to the King so far as other Catholick Princes usually enjoy and expect as their due and so far as the Bishops were to be independent both from King and Pope but not from subjection to either This saith he no man of Learning and Sobriety would have grudged to grant him 4. Marriage permitted to Priests 5. The Communion in both kinds 6. The Liturgy in English I ask any sober man now Qu. 1. Whether the Pope did himself think that by this bargain he ceased to be Pope and all Papists to be Papists 2. Whether if the King had been thus far equalled with other Catholick Princes the Pope would not have supposed him and his Bishops and Church to be of the same Roman Catholick Church as they 3. Whether in all this here be any
Faith one Baptismal-Covenant with Christ one Spirit one Hope of Grace and Glory and must keep the Unity of the Spirit in the Bond of Peace And that all Subjects must obey their Rulers and Pastors in all lawful things belonging to their Office to command and teach And that as Particular Churches must be held for the Personal Communion of Saints so all these Churches must by Messengers Letters and Synods hold such correspondency as the common good of the Universal Church and their own strength and edification by the means of mutual COVNSEL and CONCORD do require II. Accordingly we make not Regent Senates or Courts of such Councils to make Laws for the Christian World But they are like the Assemblies of pious Christian Princes who study the Peace of the whole Christian World Princes are bound so to do as well as Pastors That they do not proveth not that they ought not Their Kingdoms are but parts of the Kingdom of Christ. If they should hold an Assembly in Europe for the suppressing of such a Heresie as threatneth the whole or such a Tyrant as the Pope or such an Enemy as the Turk it were well done and had the same reasons and power as a Council of Bishops Bishops may not undertake Jurisdiction in other mens Bishopricks nor Kings in other mens Kingdoms Bishops are bound to prefer the universal good and so are Kings III. And therefore the measure of such Communion by Consultation by Messengers Letters or Councils is 1. The publick good 2. And the capacity of the Communicants We have Communion with all Christians in Abassia Armenia and all the Earth in Faith Hope Love and all the Essentials of Christianity But if John or Joan here commit Adultery and be excommunicated as impenitent we are not bound to send Messengers to the Antipodes or all the World to tell them of it no nor if a Bishop or his Chaplain turn Heretick Nor are they bound to send hither to enquire or examine it And if the Excommunicate come to Armenia and desire Communion they are justifiable for receiving him and being ignorant of our Excommunication But Neighbour Christians and Churches live so near that they are capable of converse And therefore Synods and Communicatory Letters are there of great use And so far as an Excommunicate man is like to intrude into the Communion of other Churches it is meet that his Excommunication be published and that other Churches receive him not without just satisfaction And so Councils are useful as far as propinquity maketh men capable of visible Communion Especially to Pastors and Churches in one Kingdom where the Unity of the Civil Government giveth them more capacity and necessity of such Correspondency than with Foreigners And therefore the Councils in the same Roman Empire had great reason for their Decrees to avoid those Excommunicate by each other And yet many Councils even under the Papacy decreed that he that is unjustly Excommunicate by one Bishop may be received by another But that supposeth his tryal and proof of the Injury Therefore we come not so near the Universal Soveraignty of Councils as Dr. Stillingfleet in the Defence of A. Bishop Laud tells us Laud whom he defended doth Who will have the old Councils confessed truly General notwithstanding the absence of the Extra-Imperial Bishops 2. And will have such Councils to have been received the Four first by all the Christian World when it 's known how many rejected that at Chalcedon 3. And will have such Councils to be externally obeyed by patient submission when they notoriously err by all Christians till another Council as General and Free reverse their Decrees 4. And will have them have such Obedience as all other Courts For meer Councils of Bishops of several Kingdoms are no Courts and have no proper Jurisdiction Chap. II. Why Parliaments and Archbishop Abbot and the Church of England Antecedent to A. Bishop Laud were against the Design of Coalition with Rome § 1. IT was not because they were Enemies to Christian Concord or did not desire it on lawful possible terms with Papists and all others Nor was it because they were maliciously bent to be cruel to the Papists by denying them the common Love which is due to Mankind or any Benefits or Peace which was consistent with the Nations Peace and Safety But it was on such Reasons as these following § 2. I. They took the design to be a real restoring of Popery under the Name of Reconciliation and Peace And they had an excuseable Opinion that if Popery were set up it was not laying by the Name and calling it Reformation or the Church of England that would deliver us from the Sin or Suffering They were not of the new Opinion that none are Papists but those that would have the Pope Absolute above General Councils and Govern Arbitrarily against the Canons They took the foundation of Popery to be the Heresie that the whole Church on Earth must have one Soveraign or Supream Government with Universal Legislative and Judicial and Executive Power under Christ in which it must be Vnited or made One Church This they took to be Antichristian the intolerable Treasonable Usurpation of an Impossible thing tending to the Confusion of Mankind But whether this Traiterous Soveraignty should be Monarchical or Aristocratical in Pope or Councils feigned to be General or in both Conjunct and when Conjunct whether the Pope should be above the Council or the Council above the Pope or each have a Negative Voice or he have but the Calling and Presiding Power They took these to be but several sorts of Popery or differences among the Papists themselves And they took it for a ridiculous absurdity that a Council of men dead an Hundred or a Thousand Years ago and that only of men of one Empire called by their own Prince should be taken for the Vnifying Constitutive Soveraign Power of the Universal Church which now existeth and that the Body can live many Hundred Years after the Head is dead and yet be a Church of the same Species And for them that say the Bishops of all the Earth have a Jus Conveniendi and are a Virtual Council It is but to say could they prove it that they are a Virtual Head and not an Actual and so that we have no Actual Universal Church but a Virtual And as for the new Dream that they are Actually the Supreme Unifying Power and Actually Govern the whole Christian World per literas format as it 's a sad case with Christians when such deliration needs a confutation and sadder if such a Land or Clergy as ours must remedilesly Perish by believing or following such a Dream Shall all the Bishops of Asia Africa Europe and America out of the Dominions of the Turks Persians Tartarians Indians Papists Protestants Abassines c. meet in despite of their involuntary forbidding Princes How and by whose Call and where and when in how long time and who shall bear their
Who knoweth how many must come to make it a General Council § 9. Against what I have proved against Johnson alias Terret that Councils were General but as to the Orbis Romanus as National I never heard but one Objection regardable and that is out of Tâ—rrians or Pisanus Arabick Canons of the Council of Nice which place Ethiopia under Alexandria But 1. Dr. Beveridge and many others have told us how little credit is to be given to those Canons lately vended by ignorant unlearned Men. And is it credible that all the Eastern and Western Churches should be ignorant of them 2. Ludolphus in his new Ethiopick History labours to prove that the first planting of Religion in Habassia was by Frumentius and Edesius and that the old Writers mistook Habassia for India And if so Habassia could haâ—â— no Bishop at Nice and certainly had none there nor any to be subject to Alexandria save Frumentius whom Athanasius ordained and so by a voluntary Submission depended on him as a Child on his Father But whereas Ludolphus thinks Christianity was not in Habassia till Frumentius days because they had no Bishops or Pastors before I answer 1. His Conjecture that it was Habassia that Frumentius went to and is called India is uncertain 2. He confesseth the Ethiopick Tradition is that Christianity was there before 3. And it is not improbable that both agree viz. That the Eunuch Act. 8. brought Christianity thither but being a Lay man ordained no Pastors and so they had none before Frumentius 4. But whoever well considers the whole History of the Southern and Eastern Churches may easily discern that Habassia was never subject before to the Imperial Alexandria but began their subjection voluntarily to Dioscorus who had been Patriarch of Alexandria after he was Banished § 10. It is a dreadful Judgment of God that the Understandings of Learned men should be so far forsaken as to make the Major part of the Christian World not only the Pattern but the Law-givers to the rest renouncing hereby the common Experience of Mankind It is God's great Mercy that all Christians agree in the Essentials of Christianity else they were not Christians In Christianity we are united to them all But 1. Even among the Heathens few were Philosophers And among the Philosophers few sound and few of one Mind And others as well as Seneca said A wise man must be content with few Approvers The Multitude will not understaâ—â— 2. Even Nature maketh but few Men of strong Wits 3. Education giveth few Men the advantage of sound teaching and great helps and leisure 4. Few Men have patience to hold on in hard Studies till they digest the truth 5. Few Men escape the snares of Temptations to byass them to some corrupt opinions or way 6. Few Men escape the fleshly worldly inclination which ever followeth worldly interest 7. He would be thought no Wise Man himself who would refer a Controversie about the Translation of a Hebrew or Greek Text or a difficulty in Divinity Philosophy Astronomy Criticism c. to the Major Vote of the University or Ministers of England or Drs. either K. James had more wit than to make the Majority of the Clergy the Judges of his Translation of the Bible 8. We see among Godly Persons what various degrees of Knowledge and Virtue and consequently different Opinions there be 9. It 's actually known that most of the Churches and Clergy in the World are very ignorant and erroneous The Abassines Copthies Syrians Armenians Georgians Circassians Mengrelians Greeks Moscovites generally unlearned Ignorant men The multitude of the Parish Priests among the Papists are so And too many among the Protestants If King James had not chosen Six extraordinary men for the Synod of Dort there had been worse work there than was And must we condemn God's Law of Insufficiency to be the Universal Law that we may come under the Universal Legislation of such men as these Should we not rather pity and pray for the Ignorant erroneous Majority of Churches and study how the few that are wiser may help them into a clearer light And how should it be otherwise who chooseth the Clergy In a great Part of the Churches the Turk who is their Enemy chooseth them or as bad He receiveth into the Patriarchates of Constantinople Alexandria Antioch and Jerusalem unlearned Fellows that give most Money and they dare not displease him And all the Bishops of his Dominions in the entrance and exercise of their Office accordingly are liable to corruption by servile dependance on the Infidels In Moscovy and other Countries ignorant and barbarous or tyrannical Rulers choose them Among Papists and Protestants the Pope and Princes choose the Bishops and Lay-Patrons choose the Priests for the most part § 11. To Unite in Sin as the necessary terms of Universal Concord is foolish and sinful But to Unite in all that is held by the greater part of Christians is to Unite in much Sin Ergo § 12. It is only Vniversal Laws which are the Rule of necessary Vniversal Concord But it is only Christ's own Laws Proclaimed and Recorded by the Spirit in his Apostles and Evangelists which are Vniversal Laws Ergo it is only Christs own Laws which are the Rule of necessary Vniversal Concord I challenge all the Church Usurpers in the World to answer this Argument better than by deceiving words The Major is grounded on the natural Notice of Mankind It is Duty only which we speak of Duty is made Duty by a Law or Command of Authority Universal Duty must be made such by an Universal Law The Minor is thus proved No Universal Law can be made but by a rightful Vniversal Law-maker But there is no rightful Vniversal Law-maker but Christ Ergo no Vniversal Law can be made but by Christ. The Major is undeniable The Minor is thus proved 1. None can be a rightful Universal Law-maker but such as hath a rightful Vniversal Power of Government and that in Soveraignty For Legislation is the first and chief part of Soveraignty But none but Christ hath a rightful Universal Power of Government or Soveraignty Ergo Minor None can be a rightful Universal Governor or Law-maker to whom God never gave such Power But God never gave such Power to any but Christ Ergo c. None can be a rightful Universal Law-giver and Governor who is naturally uncapable of it But all on Earth are naturally uncapable of it Ergo c. If there be any rightful Universal Governor on Earth it is either a Pope or some Patriarchs or a General Council or the Pastors of all the Church on Earth diffused But it 's none of these Four as I have oft proved and am ashamed to repeat Chap. 4. The Deceits that are Pleaded for an Vniversal Humane Soveraignty § 1. THE great means by which the Popish Clergy have been themselves deceived and then deceived much of the Christian World are especially these following I. By a false Notion
our Concord it comes all to one in point of Obligation Ans. 1. If it come all to one in the effect why do you contend for so much more in the Cause 2. God bindeth Princes and States as much to Concord and yet their voluntary Treaties and Dyets and a Supreme Government over them do not come all to one 3. God doth not bind all Churches or Christians to agree in more than he himself hath commanded them And therefore hath given power to none on Earth to determine what more all shall agree in 4. The Greater the Councils are caeteris paribus the more all Protestants reverence them because they signifie the Concord of many But 1. We know that there are none of them Universal as to the World nor ever are like to be 2. We know that the Greater part are usually the worst and that at this day the far greater number of Christians on Earth Papists Greeks Armenians Nestorians Jacobites c. are lamentably degenerate ignorant and corrupt 3. And we know that as God hath not made the greater number the Governors of the lesser so neither doth he bind or allow the less to consent to them to their hurt 4. And when Councils for meer Agreement will degenerate and Usurp a Regiment over Dissenters they change their Species and bind us not to obey them but oppose them as Usurpers XI The last deceit that I shall here name is Their pretence of the mischief of letting Sinful or Heretical Kingdoms go unpunished when singular Persons must not escape Therefore there must be a Supreme Power on Earth to correct or punish National Churches or Kingdoms You may find the Argument in Dr. Sawell Bishop Guning's Chaplain and Master of a College in Cambridge and many others This is so plain dealing that one would think all Kings and Kingdoms should easily understand it But I answer it 1. Why will this pretended necessity of correcting Kings and Kingdoms infer One Universal Church Soveraign any more than one King or Senate over all the Earth Perhaps you 'le say The Church is one but Kingdoms are many I answer The whole World on Earth is One Kingdom of God but particular Churches are many 2. Kings and whole Kingdoms shall be punished as well as singular Persons But only by God the Universal King or by permitted Enemies but not by any Humane Superior Governors Kings are under the Laws of God and they shall be judged by those Laws If you lived in the due expectation of Death and Judgment you would not think them insignificant words that the Just Universal Judge is as at the Door who only can Judge Kings 3. The Ministers of Christ who know them and live under them have sufficient Authority to admonish Kings and Kingdoms and exercise Pastoral Care of their Souls by Preaching and Applying the Word of God as their own Physicians are fittest to take care of their Health without sending to Rome or over all the Earth for a Council of Physicians What work these Universal Rulers have made by Excommunicating Kings and Interdicting Kingdoms History acquainteth us It hath not been such as should make any Man long for an Universal Church Governour of Kings and Kingdoms 4. Those Foreigners that think Kings and Kingdoms Heretical and prove it may renounce Communion with them without pretending to be their Governors I have thought meet here briefly to repeat our Controversie with the Reasons and Deceits of the Usurpers our own Judgment is for true Catholicism even one Catholick Head Jesus Christ one Catholick Church having no other Head or Soveraign One Spirit One Faith One Baptism One Hope of Glory and One God and Father of all And that all Christians should live in Love to others as themselves and in their several Churches under the just conduct of their several Pastors keep the Vnity of the Spirit in the bond of peace Eph. 4.3 That they should all know those that labour among them and are over them in the Lord and highly esteem them in love for their work sake and be at peace among themselves 1 Thes. 5.12 13. That the Kingdom of God is not Meat and Drink but Righteousness and Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost And he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God and approved of men who judge as God would have them judge Rom. 14.17 But if God be forsaking the West as far as he hath done the East and dementation prognosticate perdition the Kingdom above shall never be forsaken And we look for a new Heaven and a new Earth wherein dwelleth Righteousness And seeing all these things shall be dissolved what manner of Persons ought we to be in all holy Conversation and Godliness looking for and hasting to the Coming of the day of God 2 Pet. 3.11 12. Chap. V. What a Foreign Jurisdiction by Councils or the College of Bishops is the Mask being taken off MEthinks Princes and States and Churches should not be cheated into a state of Subjection without ever considering or examining what it is And methinks no honest Bishops should be unwilling that it be truely understood I. Consider what an Universal Legislative Power includeth It plainly implyeth the insufficiency of Gods Words and Laws to those Ends for which this power is pretended Whereas this is the very point of the Protestant Cause as differenced from Popery that God being the only Ruler of the whole World none else can make Laws for the whole but only such By Laws for their particular Provinces as Corporations do under the King for undetermined Circumstances in which Kingdoms and Churches may freely differ II. By this the Peace of the Christian World will be laid on these variable Circumstances As if all the World were bound to wear such Garments as France or England wear c. III. By this the Legislative Power of every Kingdom is taken away in all matters of Religion which are our greatest things For it is the summa potestas only that hath the Legislative Power At least no Inferior hath any but from and under the Supreme nor may contradict them VVhereas even the Decrees of our National Clergy are no Laws with us till the King shall make them Laws IV. By this no Man can tell what degree of Power these Foreigners will assume As the Popes Ecclesiastical Power is now extended to Testaments Matrimony Adulteries Church Lands c. Among Christians to whom all things are sanctified they may challenge almost all And when it becomes a Controversie who shall judge Certainly the Supreme Power is the Supreme Judge of their own Rights V. I think it will oblige Kings Lords and all when Summoned to Travel out of their own Kingdoms as Malefactors to answer what accusations are brought against them For certainly a Supreme Judicature must have its Forum where men must be heard before they are Judged and where all that are Summoned must answer Or else Kings and Kingdoms must become poor Subjects to any
that those Popes were true Popes and continued the valid succession and were Governours of all Christian Souls whom General and Provincial Councils condemned as Simonists Hereticks Infidels Atheists or Devils Incarnate and yet that Councils are to be believed as the Proposers of our Faith § 23. VVe must believe that General Councils have Universal Jurisdiction when there are none such nor ever can be nor ever were § 24. VVe must stay for the ending of our controversies till we know that which cannot be known viz. what the Major Vote of all the Bishops on Earth Judge of them or till such Councils end them as caused them their continuance § 25. When we have such Infallible Proof of the Scripture History as we have of the former Kings and Laws of the Land by evidence of Natural certainty we must exchange it for the uncertain determination of Popes and Councils depending on their Authority Knowledge and Honesty And the Infallibility of these who in all their lives else do shew much fallibility And were either Pope or Council Infallible no man that is not Infallible himself in judging of their Infallibility and also in knowing what it is that they propose as de fide is ever the nearer an Infallible Faith § 26. They must make it necessary to us to know that the Greeks the Armenians and all oâ—her Christians who are twice as many as the Papists have some way forfeited their Authority and Credit or else how shall we know that they being the Majority are not to be believed before the Pope and his VVestern Councils § 27. They make more Cosmography and History necessary to Salvation than God made or Vulgar Heads are capable of The name of Rome is not in the Creed It is not necessary to Salvation to know that there is such a place as Rome in the World Much less to know all Countreys on Earth where Christians dwell and which of them are of this Opinion or that and which part hath the major Vote of Bishops and is to be believed If you say They are Nestorians Jacobites Greeks c. the People be not bound to know what any of these names signifie Chap. XII A humble Expostulation to the zealous Antipapists Conformists and Nonconformists whether they are innocent as to promoting Popery THIS is not written to cast on you any contempt or reproach I acknowledge that I take you for the best Ministry that any Nation on earth enjoyeth But it is to try if it may be to promote our common Repentance and to Reform the Nominal mistaken Reformation of those that have sinned by extreams which by the assumed name of Reformation have wronged God and Truth and mens Souls with the greater advantage and success But especially if it may be yet to stop such from a sinful progress that they may not ignorantly set up Popery by crying down the name and persons § I. We have not sufficiently considered how the Popes came to the Greatness that they have attained and how and by whom it is kept up I mean how much the zealous Godly Christians did and do contribute thereto 1. It was the great shame of other Churches by multitudes of Heresies Sects and Contentions that made Rome seem as a Post for those to hold by that had by turning round become so giddy that they could not stand 2. When the best Pastors were persecuted by proud Courtiers erroneous Councils factious Bishops and Arrian Hereticks because Rome had more Concord Quietness and Power they used to seek help from the Bishop of Rome in their necessity and he was ready to take the advantage by helping them to get the reputation of Supremacy So did he by Athanasius and Chrysostom and the Eastern Bishops under Valens and Constantius though Basil complaineth of the Western Bishops for minding them no more The Popes owning of Augustine and Prosper was a great help to him against Pelagius 3. When the Bishops under the Pagans had endured Martyrdom and Torments and Banishments for Christ their godly Flocks when Christianity had conquered thought none so fit for honour and power to govern and protect them as the tryed survivers And who could then be so fit And so it was first the most pious Christians that advanced the Bishops and over-advanced them And specially the Roman Bishops because very many of their Predecessors had been Martyrs and Confessors Tho' we had many able Lay-Magistrates here which Constantine had not quickly yet those that put down Bishops were glad that the Power of Institution and Induction and of Universities and Church Maintenance should be in the hands of Dr. John Owen Dr. T. Goodwin Mr. P. Nye Mr. Bridge Mr. Sydrach Sympson and such other And if the disposing of such advantages for Religion were now committed to Dissenters whom would they sooner chuse for Power therein than their most esteemed Pastors 3. When Emperors Kings and Lords did pill and oppress the poor Commons as in England in the Reign of William the Conqueror W. Rufus c. the Bishops were the only men that by the Power of the Pope were able to controul them and for the honour of their Office oft attempted it And therefore the innocent oppressed People were glad of the Pope's help and theirs to ease their yoke 4. It was the Godly People to promote Christianity and honour the memory of the Martyrs and Saints that bring in the Praying at their Graves and building Altars first and Churches after to retain the honour of their names and that carried and kept their bones and cloaths as honourable Relicts and recited their names in their Service and kept and honoured their Pictures and after prayed to them Much of that Superstition that is now most decried by us was brought by the most religious sort 5. Almost all the Societies of Fryers and Nuns Benedictines Franciscans Dominicans Carthusians Jesuits Oratorians c. have been set up by the most zealously Religious when any fancied a peculiar way of strictness the Bishops being against it they made friends to the Pope to give them his Licence to serve God in their own devised way and to have Government in their own Society without the Bishops controul And the Pope craftily granted it that they might all be his own and maintain his Power which they were necessitated to depend on So Dr. Goodwin and Dr. Owen told King Charles 2. that they desired of him but what the Religious Orders had of the Pope To serve God according to their judgment and hold their Liberty from the King and not to be under the Bishops or Presbytery More such instances I might produce to shew you by what sort of men much of Popery came in but Pride and Worldliness did most § II. I humbly desire it may be thought on whether some have not ignorantly given up the whole Cause to a Foreign Jurisdiction by their Prophetical Exposition of Christ's Epistles to the seven Asian Churches Rev. 2. 3. while they
dissolved (h) And Men taught to be Perjured by taking in Foreign Ecclesiastical Power (i) And yet Obey his Councils Canons (k) Christ hath given us a sufficient Law for the Government of the Church else saith Gerson he were not a perfect Lawgiver Must we be beholden to the Pope for leaving us a little of that which Christ gave us Who gave him Power to take any of it from us Would our Conciliators have magnified the Men that for the Peace of England would have agreed with Cromwell to allow the King the Isle of Wight or Wâ—les Or to have made a Law that every Highway Robber shall reâ—urn â—ne half to the Owner And with what Conscience could the Subjects of Christ have obeyed all the rest of the Usurpers sinful Canons (a) Confusion 1. The form denominateth The Church of Rome which we separate from is a pretended Soveraignty over all Christians This is no true Church of Christ. 2. But we separate not from them in point of Christianity But 1. From their Usurpation 2. And other Sins (b) And having before made the Church of England Schismaticks he makes all Schismaticks that Communicate with it (c) Here is 1. An Universal Legislative Power over all the Church on Earth 2. This Power is in Councils of which the Pope is the chief Member and the only reasonable means of the Union of so great a Body is his Regular Power as distinct from Infinite Power 3. All the Canons Rites and Customs are these Laws of the Church 4. All Kings and Kingdoms are bound to obey them 5. No man must question whether these Laws or Customs or any of them are contrary to God's Law 6. The men that must have this Absolute Power over all the Kings and Kingdoms on Earth that will be Christian are themselves the Subjects of the Turks the Moore the Emperor of Abassia the Persian the Emperor of Indastan called the Mogal the Kings of Poland Hungary Spain France England Denmark Sweden the Emperor of Germany and abundance more when it 's known that few Bishops are chosen in any of these Countreys Mahometans or Papists but such as the Princes like and that they dare not go against their wills in any great matter 7. Their minds are known already and consequently what they would do in Councils if all these Princes would agree to call an Universal Council The Major Vote if it were called in Mesopotamia or that way would be such as Rome calleth Hereticks If called in Greece it would be Greeks If in Italy or Germany or France they would be Papists no where Protestants Few would travel above a thousand miles to the Council 8. Tho' one would think that this platform of Governing the whole Earth could be believed by no man in his wits yet you see Learned men are so far deceived And it is by judging of the World by the Old Roman Empire There indeed Councils were Nationally General They were Courts They had Legislative Power and Pretorian Command None might appeal from them for Relief in Foro Humano Emperors gave them this Power It was but rational over their own Subjects What Power had they over others The Convocation in England or the General Assembly in Scotland may be made and called a Court by the King But France or Spain were never Governed by them nor took them to be over them unquestionable Legislators Yea I believe King and Parliament at home are not so subject to their Laws (d) And are not these unmerciful men that will let men take up with a damning Baptism and will not rebaptize them that they may have a saving Baptism which yet they hold necessary to Salvation They fear Anabaptism it seems more than mens Damnation (e) The true Church that is an Usurped Power of Universal Legislation is here made by him and Mr. Dodwell as necessary to Salvation as Christ and more than the holy Scriptures But what will now become of all the Papists that by dispensation come in to Protestant Churches They also are all damned as Schismaticks for communicating with them unless he forgot to except them that the Pope dispenseth with (f) How much wiser are these men than Christ and St. Paul who made it the duty of all that were baptized Christians to live as one Body of Christ in Love Him that is weak in the faith receive but not to doubtful disputations Rom. 14.1 The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost He that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God and approved of men (g) This yet is some mercy to us But is it as your grant 1. How will this stand with all that you have written for the continued Universal Legislative Church Did it cease at Charles the Great 's time and yet are all damned that are not subject to it 2. How shall we be sure that the Canons bind us till Adrian's time and not since 3. But Sir we take him for a Papist that is for all the Canons and Customs till Charles the Great And there are many things before that which we cannot Conform to without renouncing the Laws and sufficient Government of Christ which we cannot do upon such pitiful reasonings as yours (a) The standing Power of the Head or Soveraign and that of Official Ministers much differ (b) All necessary power since Christ by his Apostles published his Universal Laws is but that all Ministers in their several Churches guide the Flocks by these Laws of Christ and teach them the people and determine of incidental Circumstances pro loco tempore and not to make new Universal Laws (c) Christ expresly limiteth the Apostles to teach the Churches what he had commanded them and promiseth to give them the Spirit to bring all to their remembrance and lead them to all Truth (d) When the King sendâ— out Judges and Justices he doth not make them Kings or Legislators The Apostles had the Spirit for promulgating and recording Christs Laws Others have it only to preserve and teach them and rule by them and not to make more such as if they were insufficient and Christian Religion were still to be changed by new additions and were half Divine and half Humane Gods Word and the Bishops in medley (e) The three first Ages had no General Councils The three next had National or Imperial General Councils The thousand years last past which you include in All Ages had such Councils and practices as prove not her right Else why do not you now practise accordingly Bishop Guning owneth but six General Councils which were all but in three Ages And others but four and none that I know of but eight who do not openly profess Popery Hath Christ given any new commands since those which he sent the Apostles to deliver Have you any more of his commands to give us than the Apostles delivered in their times If you may make new ones you have more than
5. If any Soveraign may Rule England and all other Churches as a Bishop ruleth his Flock then that Soveraign Power may when they judge it deserved Excommunicate the King and all the Kingdom and silence all the Bishops and Ministers and forbid all Church Communion as Popes and their Councils have done But the consequence is false Ergo Arg. 6. If any have such power they must be such as people may have access to to decide their Causes and may hear their Accusations Defences Witnesses But so cannot the Universal Church of Bishops They confess these thousand years they met not in Council and whither else should we carry our Witnesses and where else should we expect their sentence Paul's charge was 1 Thes. 5.12 13. Know them that labour among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you and esteem them very highly in Love for their work sake But we cannot know all the Bishops over the Earth that never were among us An unknown Judge cannot be obeyed That is One whom we cannot know to be indeed our Judge But it 's impossible for us now to know what number of Bishops and who must be called the Universal Judge And an unknown sentence cannot be obeyed but it 's impossible for us to know the sentence of the Majority of the Bishops on Earth about any case to be judged by them these thousand years But enough is said of this already And Dr. Barrow hath utterly confounded your pleas for Foreign Jurisdiction Pastors and Churches may Reprove one another who Govern not one another And do you think we are so sottish as not to see that your Colledge and Council must have some to call them together or to gather Votes and preside and approve And that the question will be only of the Degree of the Popes power and whether the French sort of Popery be best § 2. Dr. S. addeth p. 343. So the Scripture plainly tells us elsewhere that Churches of Kingdoms and Nations have a Soveraignty over them to which they must yield Obedience Isa. 60 12. where the Prophet speaking of the Christian Church saith The Nation and Kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish yea those Nations shall be utterly wasted If Nations and Kingdoms must serve the Church then she hath Authority to Command their Obedience in things that belong to Peace and Holiness Ans. I confess Campanella de Reâ—no Dei doth thus make the Papacy the Fifth Monarchy and confidently brings many such Texts for their Clergies Universal power But 1. Is it the King of the Church or the People that must be obeyed The people have no Ruling Power And if it be the Soveraign the question is Who that is Protestants say It is only Christ And the Text plainly meaneth The Nation that will not serve Christ the Head of the Church for the good of his Body shall perish But the Italians say It is the Pope and Council and the French That it is the Council and Pope as President and Prime Patriarch that is here meant 2. This may be discerned by considering Who it iâ— that is to destroy such Nations It is Christ as the second Psalm sheweth If it were the Pope and Council you threaten all Nations as terribly as Bellarmine doth 3. And what is the perishing and wasting here meant No doubt their Souls that rebel against Christ shall perish and he will also punish Bodies and Kingdoms as such Put doth any of all this belong to the Bishops None of it 1. Excommunicating is their destroying work But the Heathen and Infidel Nations are not to be Excommunicated What have you to do to judge them that are without Will you cast them out that never were in 2. And destruction by the Sword is no Bishop's Work 4. And when is it that all Nations that obey not shall utterly perish We see that 19 parts in 30 saith Brierwood of the World are Heathens and Mahometans and yet prosper Ever since Abraham's days till now the Church is a small part of the World And it is not by any Power of the Church Governours that the Souls of Infidels perish but by themselves And their Kingdoms are unlikely to be destroyed till Christ's second coming And if it be his destroying them at his Judgment that is meant that proveth no Power in the Church against them But I confess you tell us what to fear and whence it is that the French Protestants suffer They must utterly perish that obey not a Governing Universal Soveraignty Nay not only French Subjects by their Lawful King but Protestants States and Kingdoms that thought they had no Soveraign but their own proper one and Christ But this is in Ordine ad Spiritualia Yet O you intend no Cruelty § 3. Pag 344. He tells us of the Churches Power to decide Controversies and of the Council Act. 15. Answ. A multitude of Protestant Writers have long ago answered all this 1. The word Church is ambiguous When Christ and his twelve Apostles were on Earth they were the Church as to Rule And then the Vniversal Church met in a House together celebrated the Sacrament together c. Must they do so now It was no General Council that met Act. 15. unless you will say that there dwelt a General Council at Jerusalem as long as the Apostles dwelt there None of the Bishops of the Churches planted by Paul Barnabas and others about the World are said to be there nor any at all but the Inhabitants of Jerusalem save Paul and Barnabas who were sent as Messengers and were not the Men sent to And you now say that none but Bishops have decisive Votes 2. And there are more ways of deciding Controversies than one We doubt not but every Pastor may decide them by Evidence of Scripture and Reason And many assembled may contribute their Reasons and be helpful to each other and may see more than one if they be meet Men. And Pastors thus by Teaching Evidence do that as Authorized Officers as Tutors and Schoolmasters which Private Men do but as Private Men and not as Officers so that even theiâ— Teaching Decision is an act of Authority as well as of Skill And so far as Humane authority must go the concurrent Judgment of a multitude of Divines as of Physitians Lawyers c. Cateris paribus deserveth more reverence than a singular opinion But for all that 1. An Assembly of Lay Men have no Authority but from their Evidence and Parts 2. An Assembly of Bishops have no deciding Authority but by an office by which they are entrusted as fallible Men to teach others what they know themselves by the same Evidence which convinced them and to guide their particular Congregations in mutable Circumstances 3. But an Assembly of Apostles had Power to say It seemeth good to the Hâ—ly Ghost Obj. 1. There were the Brethren also 2. Single Apostles had the Holy Ghost yet they did it in an Assembly Answ. 1. The Inspiration
Legislative and Judicial Power be not an Alteration of the Government of Church and State I know not what is Nor what is National Perjury if the National Endeavour or Consent to such Subjection be not such Add to all this the unavoidable effects of this Opinion of the Universal Soveraignty viz. 1. It engageth the Owners of it to condemn all the Protestant Churches because they own no Universal Soveraign nor the Pope as Patriarch or Principium Unitatis yea and to disown almost all the Churches of the World besides the Papists as Schismatical 2. They must Condemn all the Protestant Martyrs who rejected the Pope absolutely as dying for Rebellion 3. They must needs censure their own Princes and States as Rebels who subject not themselves to this Usurped Soveraignty 4. They will pervert all the Scriptures for Unity and Peace and Obedience and interpret it as meaning this Usurpation 5. They will think it their Duty to use their best Endeavour to subject all Men to the Usurpers 6. They will lose their due Charity to all that Consent not to this Subjection taking them for Enemies to the Churches Unity and Peace and Rebels against this Soveraign Power 7. No wonder if such become grievous Persecutors and stir up Princes and Rulers against such Christians as Schismaticks and Enemies of Peace And as Dr. Saywell and Bishop Guning tell the World that the meeting of such in worshipping God are the Conventicles of Schismaticks and the Cause of all our Plots and Divisions And if Obedience to this Vniversal Soveraignty be as they say the only Cure of Schism they must hold all our Parish Assemblies too to be Schismatical Conventicles whose Pastors own not the Usurpation 8. Thus as the Pope hath been the grand Divider of the Christian World by setting up a false Head of Union so will these Men destroy all Unity quantum in se by setting up a Usurped Soveraignty and a false Principium Vnitatis and will be the grand Schismaticks to cure Schism 9. They will by a false uncertain Universal Law-making not only make Christ's Laws insufficient but make Christianity a mutable growing uncertain thing when no man shall be able to know which are the Church Laws and when the Volumes of them will be perfected and no more added 10. When the Churches are thus Divided and Persecuted and sound Preachers Silenced the Persecutors will be hardened in impenitency fathering all their Mischiefs on Christ which they do against him and making Christian Fidelity odious as Rebellion and Schism And they will never be able in their way so much as to satisfie impartial men how true Bishops may be known and who ad esse must be the Choosers of them much less prove their Universal Soveraignty Chap. VI. The Grand Consequential Case Whether it be lawful for the Presbyters to swear Obedience to those Bishops who profess Subjection to the Foreign Jurisdiction of a Vniversal Soveraignty or for the People to live in Obedience and Communion with the Presbyters that do so § 1. I Wish this Case about such Subjection and Communion may never make the second breach between Conformists and Nonconformists much wider than the first is made I. Suppose the French Bishops will abate Idolatry Owning Transubstantiation Adoration of the Host and of Saints and Images Latin Service will allow the Cup in the Sacrament Priests Marriage leave indifferent all other things that are not above Four hundred Years old Qu. Whether is it lawful for the Protestant Ministers and all the rest to Swear Obedience to these Bishops and to the Protestant Laity and all others to joyn in their Communion II. Suppose Archbishop Bromhall profess subjection to General Councils called and moderated by the Pope as President and to the Pope as Principium unitatis Vniversalis and Patriarch of the West Or the Bishop of Eli profess subjection to a Foreign Universal Jurisdiction Is it lawful for the Bishops to Swear Obedience to that Archbishop or the Presbyters to such a Bishop and for the People to be subject to such Presbyters in Communion III. Suppose such Bishops would abate the Presbyters a while till they are strengthened the Oath or Promise of Obedience is it lawful to receive Ordination from such Bishops and live in subjection to them and Communion § 2. The Case is of great moment and very tenderly and warily to be handled I. On one side If no Promise or Oath be required nor any practice in it self unlawful many will think it hard that they must separate from a whole Nation or Diocess for another man's Sin which they consent not to specially if it will cast them out of their Ministry and Maintenance They will think his guilt lyeth only on himself Else one man may over-turn the Liberties of a whole Diocess or Land by his own proper sin II. Yea if the Oath or Promise be put on them for Obedience but in licitis honestis they will think the case doth little differ as long as they consent not to a Forreign Jurisdiction § 3. On the other side If all men must or may obey them that profess Obedience to a Foreign Universal Jurisdiction may not one or two or a few Bishops subject the Kingdom to Foreigners at their pleasure And that the more dangerously because without any noise or notable alteration and so without resistance It is but the Primate or Archbishops or Bishops professing subjection to the Pope or Foreign Soveraign and the thing is done The Bishops being subject to the Pope or other Usurpers and the Priests to the Bishops and the People to the Priests are they not all then subject to the Foreign Usurper If the Kings Army in the days of H. 5. or Ed. 3. in France were to be hired over to the King of France what need he more than that the General or Field Officers Swear fidelity to him And that the Captains be subject to the Colonels and the common Soldiers to them When the Kingdom was in continual War between King Stephen and Maud the Empress and between the Houses of York and Lancaster the people were not usually Sworn on either side But the Bishops and the Barons did Swear and Unswear and Forswear and Change sides as their Interests led them and this was the misery of the Land § 4. And yet the Case would be much easier if only the King e. g. of France should subject himself to Foreigners and forbid all to preach and publickly Worship God that will not Swear Allegiance to him and obey him as their King § 5. In these dreadful cases we must distinguish 1. Between such a Bishop as is a Member of a Protestant Nation and who turneth against the Law of the Land and the Consent of other Churches and such as would draw the whole Land with him or is but one in a common Revolt 2. Between a Minister who was Ordained and subject to the Bishop before he revolted and one that is Ordained and subjected