succession of the Catholick Church for the defection of Henry the eighth who forcibly separated himself and his people from the communion of Christians which was promoted by Edward the sixth and Elizabeth who being pertinaceous and impenitent in the same Rebellion and Usurpation therefore the Pope incited by the continual perswasions of many and by the suppliant prayers of the English men themselves N. B. hath dealt with diverse Princes and specially the most potent King of Spain to depose that woman and punish her pernicious adherents in that Kingdom Read the rest there for though wicked its worth the reading The Pope there saith that Pope Sixtus before him prescribed the Queen and took from her all her Dignities Titles and Rights to the Kingdom of England and Ireland absolving her subjects from the Oath of fidelity and obedience He chargeth all men on pain of the wrath of God that they offord her no favour help or aid but use all their strength to bring her to punishment and that all the English join with the Spaniard as soon as he is landed offering rewards and pardon of sins to them that will lay hands on the Queen and so shewing on what Conditions he gave the Kingdom to Philip of Spain This and more you may see in Thuanus And yet some of our Juglers that say they are no Papists perswade the world that Papists hold not the deposing of Princes nor absolving their subjects from the Oaths of fidelity and that the Spanish invasion was meerly on Civil accounts and that they expected not any English Papists to assist them with other such impudent assertions Even Dominicus Bannes one of the best of them in Thom. 22. qu. 12. art 2. saith that Quando adest evidens notitia c. i. e. When there is evident knowledge of the crime subjects may lawfully exempt themselves from the Power of their Princes before any declaratory sentence of a judge so they have but strength to do it Adding to excuse the English Papists for being no worse that Hence it follows that the faithfull Papists of England and Saxony are to be excused that do not free themselves from the power of their Superiors nor make war against them because commonly they are not strong enough to manage these wars and great dangers hang over them Princes may see now how far the Papists are to be trusted Even as far as they are sufficiently disabled And their August Triumphus saith de Potest Eccles qu. 46. art 2. Dubium non est quin Papa possit omnes Reges cum subest causa rationabilis deponere i. e. There is no doubt but the Pope may depose all Kings when there is reasonable cause for it Is not this a Vice christ and a Vice-god with a witness Add but to this that the Pope is Judge when the cause is Reasonable for no doubt but he must judge if he must execute and then you have a Pope in his colours even in his Universal Soveraignty Spiritual and Temporall And as I said before from Suarez and others when the Pope hath deposed a King any man may kill him I will not trouble you with Mariana's directions for poysoning him or secretly dispatching him de Reg. instit lib. 1. cap. 7. Suarez his moderate conclusion is enough Defens fid Cathol li. 6 c. 4. sect 14. Post sententiam c. After sentence past he is altogether deprived of his Kingdom so that he cannot by just title possess it therefore from thence forward he may be handled as a meer tyrant and consequently any private man may kill him O Learned Suarez No wonder if you and your Profession be dear to Princes and if Henry the fourth of France took down the Pillar of your infamy and received you into his Kingdom and Heart again No wonder if the Venetians at last have re-admitted you to procure some aid against the Turk I will conclude with one Testimony of a Roman Rabbi cited by Bishop Usher who knew his name but would not do him the honour to name him It is B. P. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Epistol J. R. impresan 1609. Who hath excused the Powder-Plot from the Imputation of cruelty because both Seeds and Root of an evil herb must be destroyed and doth add a derision of the simplicity of the King in imposing on them the oath of Allegiance in these most memorable expressions worthy to be engraven on a Marble Pillar Sed vide in tanta astutia quanta sit simplicitas c. But see what simplcity here is in so great craft When he had placed all his security in that Oath ho thought he had framed such a manner of oath with so many circumstances which no man could any way dissolve with a safe conscience But he could not see that if the Pope dissolve the Oath all its knots whether of being faithfull to the King or of admitting no Dispensation are accordingly dissolved Yea I will say a thing more admirable You know I believe that an unjust Oath if it be evidently known to be such or openly declared such obligeth no man That the Kings oath is unjust is sufficiently declared by the Pastor of the Church himself You see now that the Obligation of it is vanished into smoak and that the bond which so many wise men thought was made of iron is less then straw These are the words of Papists themselves From their published writings we tell you their Religion I know they will here again tell us abundance of false accusations of the Protestants such as the Image of both Churches heapeth up and they will tell us of our war and killing the King in England But of this I have given them their answer before To which I add 1. The Protestant doctrine expressed in the Confessions of all their Churches and in the constant stream of their writers is for obedience to the Soveraign Powers and against resisting them upon any pretenses of Heresie or Excommunication or such like 2. The wars in England were raised between a King and Parliament that joyned together did constitute the Highest Power and upon the lamentable division occasioned by the Papists the people were many of them uncertain which part was the Higher and of greatest Authority some thought the King and others thought the Parliament as being the Representative body of the people in whom Polititians say is the Majestas Realis and the Highest Judicature and having the chief part in Legislation and Declaration what is just or unjust what is Law and what is against Law Had we all been resolved in England which side was by Law the Higher Power here had been no war So that here was no avowed resisting of the Higher Powers None but a Parliament could have drawn an Army of Protestants here under their banner 3. And withall that very Parliament consisting of Nobles Knights Gentlemen and Lawyers who all declared to the people that by Law they were bound to obey and assist them
at least be at a greater distance from them then before For such a war will never out of his mind nor will he think himself safe till he hath disabled them from doing the like again But if one part conquer it will be the King or the Puritans for so the Protestants must now be caled If the King prevail then will the Puritans be totally trod down and we by whose help the victory was got shall certainly be incomparably better then we are if not have presently all our will For our fidelity will be predicated the Rebells will be odious So that their very names will be a scorn and there will be no great resistance of us For saith Mr. Middleton in his Letter to the A. B. of Canterb. in Prins Introduct p. 142 143. The Jesuite at Florence lately returned from England who pretends to have made a strict discovery of the state of England as it stands for Religion saith that the Puritans are shrewd fellows but those which are counted good Protestants are fair conditioned honest men and think they may be saved in any Religion But if the Puritans get the day which is a most unlikely thing yet shall we make great advantage of it For 1. They will be unsettled and all in pieces and not know how to settle the Government And saith the Jesuites Letter found in the A. B. of Cant. Study in Prins Introduct pag. 89 90. Our foundation must be Mutation this will cause a Relaxation which serves as so many violent diseases as the Stone Gout c. to the speedy destruction c. 2. We shall necessitate the Puritan Protestants to keep the King as a Prisoner or else to put him to death If they keep him as a Prisoner his diligence and friends and their own divisions will either work his deliverance and give him the day again by our help or at least will keep the State in a continual unsettledness and will be an Odium on them If they cut him off which we will rather promote lest they should make use of his extremities to any advantage then 1. We shall procure the Odium of King-killing to fall upon them which they are wont to cast upon us and so shall be able to disburden our selves 2. And we shall have them all to pieces in distractions For 3. Either they will then set up a new King or the Parliament will keep the power changing the Government into a Democracy The first cannot be done without great concussions and new wars and we shall have opportunity to have a hand in all And if it be done it may be much to our advantage The second will apparently by factions and distractions give us footing for continual attempts But to make all sure we will secretly have our party among the Puritans also that we may be sure to maintain our Interest which way ever the world go The event with common reason and many full discoveries shew that this was the frame of the Papists plot And what power and interest they had in the Kings Armies and Counsels in the wars is a thing that needs no further discovery But had they any Interest in the Councils and Forces of the Parliament Answ It will be expected that he that asserteth any thing in matters of this moment should prove it by more then moral evidence of greatest probabilities and therefore I shall be sparing in my Assertions but yet I shall say in general that though the business would be troublesome chargeable and tedious to call together the Witnesses that are necessary yet Witnesses and Evidences may be had to prove that the Papists have had more to do in our affairs then most men are aware of without any positive Assertions therefore I desire them that can see a cause in its effects but to follow these streams till they find the Fountain 1. Whence came those motions against the Ministry and Churches into our Councils Whence was it that so many men of note did call the friends of the Ministry Priest ridden fellows and the Ministers Iack Presbyters to teach the Nation to bring them into scorn I well know that all this came from Hell But whether by the way of Rome I leave to your inquiry Yea whence was it that motions have been made to pull down all the Ministry at once Was this by Protestants 2. Whence came the doctrine contended for by Sir H. V. and others against the Power of the Magistrate in matters of Religion and for Universal Liberty in Religion I know the Papists are not for such liberty in Spain or any where where they can hinder it but with all I know that it is one of their fundamentals that such matters belong only to the Pope and Prelates and Magistrates must but be their Executioners and I know that its truly the Magistrates Power for which the usurping Pope contendeth and I know that the Papists are most Zealous for Liberty of Conscience in England though deadly enemies to it elsewhere 3. And whence came the Hiders Body of Divinity that hath infected so many high and low How come so many called Seekers to seem to be at a loss whether there be any Scripture Church or Ministry or which be they 4. How came we contrived into a war with Scotland and Holland when we could keep Peace with Spain with them or us or both there was some sorry cause 5. How came our Armies so corrupted with principles of impiety Licentiousness and Anarchy that so many turned Levellers to say nothing of all the rest and rose up against their Commanders and were fain to be subdued by force and some of them shot to death and many cashiered c. 6. How came it to pass that Papists have been discovered in our Armies and in the several parties in the Land 7. And where are the swarms of the English Jesuites and Fryars that are known to have emptyed themselves upon us from their Colledges beyond Sea 8. How came it to pass that the Petitions of the Protestant Presbyters of London and of other Protestants for the Life of the King could not be heard but that the Levelling party carryed on their work till they had set the forreign and domestick Papists on reproaching the Protestants as King-killers and had though very falsely turned the odium of that horrid kind of crime upon the innocent Protestants which the Papists are known to be most deeply guilty of And now in all Nations they make the ignorant people believe that the death of that King was the work of the Protestants or Presbyterians and the blot of their Religion 9. Whence came it to pass that Levelling went on with continued success till the House of Lords with the Regal Office was taken down and an engagement put on all those ductile souls that would take it to be True to the Common-wealth as established without a King or House of Lords 10. Whence came it that the Weekly News Books contained the
after many years blood and desolations judicially take away his life as guilty of all this blood and not to be trusted any more with Government and all this they do not as private men but as the remaining Soveraign Power and say they do it according to the Laws undoubtedly this case doth very much differ from the Powder-plot or Papists murdering of Kings and teaching that its lawful for a private hand to do it if he be but an Heretick or be but deposed yea or excommunicated by the Pope A war and a treacherous murder are not all one Nor is a part of the Soveraign Power all one with a private hand or forreign Prelate pretending to a Dominion over the lives and states of Princes and over the Kingdoms of the world and that the Vice-christ and Vice-God on earth It is a grievous case that the Senate or Body of a Nation should think themselves necessitated to defend themselves and the Church and State against their Prince or any that act by his commands It will strongly tempt them to think that the end is to be preferred before the Means and that it ceaseth to be a Means which is against and destructive to the End and that it is essentiall to a Governing Power to be for the common good and therefore that it is no Authority which is used against it It will tempt them also to think that God never gave power to any against himself or above his Laws or against the Ends of Government And a Senate or the Body of a Nation will be apt to think themselves fit to discern when the publick safety is dangerously assaulted and will hardly be brought to trust any One to be the final Judge of their Necessity as thinking such a publike Necessity proves it self and needs no judge but sence and reason to discern it And if they also think that the fundamental Constitution of the Government doth make the Senate the highest Judge of the safety or danger of the Republick and so that the Law is on their side and that it is Treason against the Common-wealth and as Politicians say against the Majestas Realis to rise against them the temptation then is much the stronger And where the Legislative power and highest Judiciall power is by the Constitution of the Government divided between the Prince and Senate and so the Soveraignty divided many will be ready to think with Grotius de jure Belli lib. 1. § 13. p. 91. that the Prince invading the Senates right may justly be resisted and may lose his right Quod locum saith Grotius habere censeo etiamsi dictum sit belli potestatem penes Regem fore Id exim de bello externo intelligendum est cum alioqui quisquis Imperii summi jus partem habeat non possit non jus habere eam partem tuendi Quod ubi fit potest Rex etiam suam Imperii partem belli jure amittere And indeed when a war is once begun the difficulty of re-uniting is exceeding great If a Prince engage either hired strangers or fugitives or home-bred delinquents or others to rise up against the Senate or people either its lawfull to Defend themselves by Arms or not If not especially if they have a share in the Soveraignty then is his power absolute and unlimited and neither Laws nor any thing below are any security against his will to the common safety The contrary whereto our late King declared in his notable Answer to the nineteen Propositions But if their Defence be lawfull then if their Souldiers must know before hand that if they do purchase a victory by their blood when they have all done they must be all Governed by him whom they have conquered and lye at his Mercy they would hardly ever have an Army to defend them For who will do the utmost that is possible to exasperate him that he knows must rule him when all is done I speak not this by way of Justification or any way deciding such cases as these but leaving that as a controversie that I am not here to decide to the judgement of others I only shew the world again that there 's a great deal of difference between such a war and conquest of a Prince by the Senate and Body of the people and their allowing Popes to depose them and alienate their Dominions and private men to rebell and to murder them if the Pope consent or excommunicate them Whether they were in the right or wrong I am not the judge but surely it was the judgement of the Parliament that upon the Division the power was in them to defend themselves and the Commonwealth and suppress all subjects that were in Arms against them and that those that did resist them did resist the higher powers set over them by God and therefore were guilty of the damnation of resisters And this they assured the people was the Truth And the forecited concessions of the King against the nineteen Propositions acknowledging their part in the Legislative power and defence of the people which is known to be the highest part of Soveraignty did much incline many to believe the Parliament Especially knowing that they had so long exercised the said Legislative power and that we were all governed by Laws of their making So that those that did obey the Parliament did verily think that they obeyed the highest power that upon the division was left in the Common-wealth and that they had the Laws on their side and did adhere to the Common good which is the end of Government And as they have thus caused our wars and miseries and scandals so have they continued to multiply sects among us of all sorts so that there is scarce a sect but is a spawn of the Jesuites and Fryars and scarce an honest party but they creep in among them to work their ends And here I shall briefly mention some of the parties with whom they have insinuated to work their ends and then some of the sects that they have bred or animated 1. As for the old English Bishops and conformable Ministers who were of the faith and doctrine publikely here professed I confess I find but little evidence that ever the Papists had much to do with them save only to instigate them against the Puritans and draw some of them to a complyance with such as did out-go them Yet in their times Bishop Goodman of Glocester was suspected to be a Papist and so professed himself by his last Testament at his death since the wars 2. As for the Presbyterians I do not see any reason to think that ever the Papists had any interest in them of any men there being none that they more hate then these two sorts the old sound Episcopal men and the Presbyterians But yet both in France and Scotland they have cunningly wrought upon them ab extra alarming them into disturbances by the wild-fire which they have cast in 3. As for the new Episcopal party
did yet profess to take up offensive Arms only against Delinquents or rather even but defensive against those men that had got an Army to secure them from Justice And they still professed and vowed fidelity to the King which as I have shewed they manifested to the last of their power till they were imprisoned and secluded Read Mr. Irins Speech for Agreement with the King and read the writing of the London Ministers presented to the General and published against the Kings death and Read the Vindication of the secluded members and read the Passages of the war with Scotland and of the Imprisonment of many London Ministers and of the death of Mr. Love and others and tell me whether you can do men greater wrong then to defame them for being causers of that which they disowned though it cost them the loss of Liberty Estate or Life 4. And really if you take either Vanists or Levellers who were the chief agents in this for Protestants you may as well say that Papists are Protestants The world knows that the Prayers the Petitions Protestations and other endeavours of the Protestants even the Presbyterians was for the preventing the death of that King how ever many of them disliked his course and joyned with the Parliament against his adherents This is the very truth which they that have been eye witnesses all along have good reason to know whatever any Papist say to the contrary 5. And what Protestants be they that give power to any man on earth to depose Princes and give their Kingdoms to others or to disoblige all their subjects and warrant them to kill them and dispense with oaths and turn them all into smoak and straw as yours do Renounce your treacherous Principles and we will cease to charge you with them Let a General Council and Pope but Decree the contrary to what the forecited Pope and General Council have Decreed or else do you all declare that you think this Pope and Councill erred and then we will shake hands with you for then you will either cease to be true Papists or at least become tolerable members of humane societies Why doth not the Pope himself at least condemn these doctrines if really he disown them The case is too plain CHAP. XLIX Detect 40. THeir last course when all other fail is To turn from Fraud to Force and open Violence stirring up Princes to wars and bloodshed that they may destroy the professors of the Reformed Religion as far as they are able and do that by flames and sword by halters and hatches which they cannot do by Argument Hence have proceeded the bloody butcheries of the poor Waldenses and Albigenses formerly and now again of late and the wars in Bohemia the League and wars and Massacres in France the desolating wars of Germany the plots invasions and wars in England Most of the flames in Christendom of late ages have been kindled for the Pope by his Agents that he might warm him by that fire that others are consumed by Hence his own pretenses to the Temporal Sword and so many volumes written to justifie it and so many Tragedies acted in the execution And yet these men cry up Antiquity and Tradition I wonder what Bishop in all the world for above three hundred years after Christ did ever claim or exercise the temporal sword as much as to be a Justice of Peace nay it was their judgement that it did not belong to them Neither the Pope nor any Bishop on earth as such hath any thing to do with the coercive power of the sword nor may not inflict the smallest penalty on body or purse but only guide men by the Word of God and the utmost penalty they can inflict is to excommunicate them And they have nothing to do to destroy men when they have excommunicated them nor to cause the Magistrate to do it but rather should still endeavour their Conversion Synesius Epistol 57. against Andronicus saith as followeth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. To join together secular government with the Priesthood is to tye together things that are incoherent or such as cannot be tyed together The old times made the same men Priests and Judges For the Aegyptians and Hebrems did long make use of the Government of Priests But afterward as seems to me when Gods work began to be done in an humane manner God separated the two sorts of life and one of them was made sacred and the other appointed for Rule and Command For some he turned to these Materiall or common secular things and some he associated with himself The former were appointed for secular business the later for prayer But from both doth God require that which is honest or Good Why then dost thou revoke this Why wilt thou conjoin what God hath separated who wouldst not have us indeed to do the work of secular Rulers but by doing it to deprave or marr it then which what can be more unhappy Dost thou need a Ruler or Patron Go to him that manageth the Laws of the Commonwealth Dost thou need God in any thing Go to the Bishop or Priest of the City not that thou shalt be sure there to have all that thou desirest but that I will afford thee the best assistance that I can or will do my best in it So far Synesius Which I wonder how Petavius could pass over without some distorting observation considering how low it treads the Roman Kingdom But Baronius had the cunning as to extract even from hence some advantage to his cause even to shew the Power that Pastors have to excommunicate Rulers ad An. 411. as Synesius with the Council did Andronicus But 1. He went not out of his own circuit to play the Bishop in other mens Diocess 2. Much less did he take up the Temporal Sword against him but disclaimeth and detesteth any such thing Why doth not the Pope when he hath past his Excommunications content himself that he hath done his part but he must excite Princes yea force them to execute his rage and fall upon the Lives and Dominions of such Princes as he will call Heretical He knows how small account would be made of his brutish thunderbolts if he had not a secular Arm to follow them Nay why is he and many of his Cardinals and Bishops secular Princes themselves Why joyneth he those Functions of Magistracie and Priesthood which Synesius here tells us God hath separated and made incoherent in one and the same person Let the Pope usurp what Ecclesiastical power he please he would not so much disturb the Church by it if he did not second it by another power It is violence that he trusteth too He knows if it were not for Arms and Violence he would soon be spewed out by the Christian world And yet many of his followers that seem more moderate confess he hath nothing to do as Pope with any but the Spiritual Sword which works no further then Conscience doth
do so by the Scriptures 2. And can any Learned Papists be so ignorant as not to know that the Arrians pretended the Authority of General Councils and so do many other Hereticks and that the Authority of Pope and Councils are frequently pretended for contrary opinions among them and may be pretended by many an Heretick And will they therefore grant that the Decrees of Popes and Councils are no sufficient discovery of their Faith If Hereticks pretending to your Test of Faith disprove not that to be your Faith then Hereticks pretending to our Rule and Test of Faith which is the Holy Scripture is no proof that it is not our Rule of Faith I do therefore conclude that the Proof of a Succession of such Churches as have received the Holy Scriptures is a valid proof of a succession of Churches of our Religion seeing we have no Religion doctrinally but the Holy Scriptures And this as far as modesty will permit I challenge all the Jesuites on Earth to confute with any solid Reasons yet adding that we do ex superabundanti prove a succession also of Churches that never owned Popery even the greatest part of the Christian world But let these men themselves but prove to us a succession of their Church even such as they require of us Let them prove that from the Apostles days the Catholick Church or any one Congregation of twenty men did hold all that now their Councils and Popes have Decreed and are esteemed Articles of their Faith and I am contented to be their bondslave for ever or to bear a fagot or be used by them as cruelly as their malice can invent or flames or their strappado's execute Let my Head be at their Mercy if they can but prove that Succession of Popery as they require us to do of Protestancy or as I have produced of our Churches and Religion In the 15th and 16th Detection I have more largely spoken to them of this point to which I refer the Reader In the very principal point of their Papal Soveraignty they have nothing but this gross deceit to cheat the world with The Roman Emperors divers ages after Christ did give the Bishop of Rome a Primacy in their Empire and hence these men would perswade us that even from Christ they have had a Soveraignty over all the Christian world Wink but at these small mistakes and they have won the Cause 1. Suppose but Christs Institution to stand in stead of the Emperors 2. Suppose divers hundred years after Christ to have been in the Apostles days 3. Suppose Primacy to be Soveraignty or Universal Government 4. But especially grant them that the Roman Empire was all the Christian world and then they have made good that part of their Cause That there were many Nations without the reach of the Roman Empire that had received the Christian Faith is past doubt Socrates lib. 1. c. 15. saith that Thomas chose Parthia Bartholomew chose India Matthew Ethiopia to plant the Gospel in but the middle India was not converted till Constantines days by Frumentius and Edesius and Iberia by a Maid So Euseb l. 3. c. 3. tells us of Thomas his Preaching to the Parthians and Andrew to the Scythians Et in vit Const l. 4. c. 8. that there were many Churches in Persia cap. 91. how Constantine wrote for them to the King Godignus and others of them maintain that the Abassines did receive the Gospel from the beginning Besides Scotland and many other Countries that were not under the Roman Power And none of these were Governed by the Pope These three Arguments against the Papal Cause I shall here premise to more that follow 1. If all that part of the Christian world that was out of the reach of the Roman Empire did never submit to the Soveraignty of the Pope then hath he not been successively or at any time the actual Head of the Universal Church But the Antecedent is most certain therefore so is the Consequent How an old woman the Emperors Mother of Habassia did baffle their Jesuites by asking them How it came to pass if obedience to the Pope be necessary to salvation that they never had heard from him till now I have told you after from themselves If Primacy were Soveraignty and Emperors and Councils were Gods yet the Indians Abassines Persians and many more in the East and the Scots and Irish and Danes and Sweeds and Poles and Muscovites and most of Germany in the West and North should be no subjects of the Pope 2. If the Rule and Test of the Faith of Papists never had a Real Being or no succession from the Apostles then their Faith and Church hath either no Real Being or no such Succession But the Antecedent is true as I prove It is either General Councils or Popes or the Church Essential as they use to call it that is the Whole Body that is the Rule of their Faith If it be General Councils 1. They had no being from the Apostles till the Council of Nice therefore the Rule of the Papists Faith was then unborn 2. Yea they never had a being in the world There was never any thing like a General Council since the days of the Apostles to this day The first at Nice had none save one John of Persia who its like was some persecuted Bishop that was fled or if one or two more its not material but the Bishops of the Empire and out of the Western parts so few as was next to none The following Councils as Constantinop 1. c. were only out of one piece of the Empire The Council of Trent I disdain to reckon among the modester pretenders to an Universality 2. And if it be not General Councils but the Pope that is the Rule of their Faith then 1. Their Faith hath been interrupted yea and turned to Heresie and to Infidelity when the Pope hath so turned 2. And why then do they tell our people that they take not the Pope for the Rule of their Faith 3. If it be the Major part of the Universal Church 1. It 's known that two to one are against them or at least the Greater part therefore by that Rule their Faith in the Papal Soveraignty is false 2. And yet it would be hard if a man must be of no Belief till he have brought the world to the pole for it Argum. 3. If all the stir that the Papists make in the world for the Papal Government be but to rob Christian Princes and Magistrates of their Power then are they but a seditious Sect But the Antecedent is apparent For there are but two sorts of Government in the Church The one is by the Word applyed unto the Conscience which worketh only on the willing either by General exhortations as in Preaching or by personal application as in Sacraments Excommunication and Absolution And this is the work of the present Pastors and cannot be performed by the Pope Nor would he be
being false Popes who are not to be written in the Catalogue of the Roman Popes but only for the marking out of such times And what kind of Cardinals Priests and Deacons think you we must imagine that these monsters did choose when nothing is so rooted in nature as for every one to beget his like And Genebrard that spleenish Papist li. 4. Sec. 10. saith In this one thing that age was unhappy that for neer one hundred and fifty years about fifty Popes did wholly fall away from the virtue of their ancestors being rather irregular and Apostatical then Apostolical So that the Church of Rome had not then either a Holy or Apostolical Head And Pope Adrian the sixth himself writeth De Sacram. Confir Art 4. that there have many Popes of Rome been Hereticks And two or three several General Councils did condemn Pope Honorius for an Heretick And if I should tell you but what their own writers say of the wickedness of the Roman Clergy in many ages and of the wickedness of the Roman people of the large summs of money that the Pope hath yearly for the licensed or tolerated Whore-houses in Rome you would think that the body of the particular Roman Church were neer kin to the Head and therefore not the Holy Mistris of all Churches But perhaps some will say that the Pope was holy because his Office was Holy though his person vicious Ans 1. If this be the Holiness of the Catholick Church mentioned in the Creed then the Institution of offices is it that makes it Holy and while the office continueth the Holiness cannot be lost 2. Then let them prove their Holiness by Saints no more 3. Let them not then delude the people but speak out and tell them that they mean such Holiness as is consistent with Heathenism or Infidelity Murders Sodomie and may be in an incarnate Devil Is this the Holiness of the Catholick Church Object But you may have unholy persons among you also that yet say you are of the true Church Answ But they are no Essential part of the Catholick Church which we believe and therefore it may be a Holy Church though they be unholy But the Pope is an Essential part of the Roman Church which they believe in and therefore it can not be Holy if he be unholy Object By this means you leave no room for the Church of Rome or any Papist in the Catholick Church which is truly Holy Answ Not as Papists so they can be no members of it But if with any of them Christianity be predominant and prevail against the infection of Popery so that it practically extinguish not Christianity then as Christians they may be members of the Church and be saved too but not as Papists CHAP. VII Argum. 5. THE true Catholick Church of Christ is but One The pretended Roman Catholick Church is more than One Therefore the pretended Roman-Catholick Church is not the true Catholick Church of Christ The Major is confessed The Minor I prove thus 1. Where there are two Heads or Soveraign Powers specifically distinct there are two Societies or Churches But those called Papists or the Roman Catholick Church have two Heads or Soveraign Powers specifically distinct Therefore they are two Churches The Major is granted by all Politicians who do without contradiction specifie Common-wealths and other Political Societies from the Soveraign Powers and so the Monarchical Aristocratical and Democratical are several Species The Belgian Common-wealth and the French be not specifically the same The Minor hath two standing proofs so visible that he must be blind indeed that cannot see them First there are the many Volumes that are written by both sides for their several forms Bellarmine Gretsor and the rest of the Italian faction proving that the Pope is the chief Power and above a General Council and the seat of Infallibility and not to be judged by any being himself the Judge of the whole world And the other party proving that a General Council is above the Pope and that he is to be judged by them and may be deposed by them If any say that they are but few and no true Catholicks of this Opinion I answer then a General Council are but few and no true Catholicks which yet is said by them to represent the whole Catholick Church For the General Council of Constance and of Basil have peremptorily asserted it and repeat it over and over yea the Council of Basil say Ses ultim that Not one of the skilfull did ever doubt but that the Pope was subject to the Judgement of a General Council in things that concern faith And that he cannot without their consent dissolve or remove a General Council yea and that this is an Article of faith which without destruction of salvation cannot be denyed and that the Council is above the Pope defide and that it cannot be removed without their own consent and that he is an heretick that is against these things See Binnius page 43. 79. 96. And Pope Eugenius owned this Council ibid. page 42. And for the Council of Constance Martin the fifth was chosen by it and present in it and personally confirmed it in these words Quodomnia singula determinata conclusa decreta in materiis fidei per praesens concilium conciliariter tenere inviolabiliter observare volebat nunquam contraire quoquo modo Ipsaque sic conciliariter facta approbat ratificat non aliter nec alio modo that is what they did as a Council and not what private members did you see then even General Councils representing the Catholick Church do not only say that a Council is above the Pope but make it an Article of faith and damn those that deny it What then is become of Bellarmine and the rest of their champions But perhaps you 'l say they are but few on the other side I answer yes Not only most Popes and the Italian Clergy and the predominant party of Papists but another General Council even that at the Lateran under Julius 2. and Leo 10. expresly determine on the contrary that the Pope is above a General Council So that here is not only an undenyable proof that General Councils are fallible by their contradicting each other and that there is a Necessity of rejecting some of them and consequently that the Foundation of Popery is rotten but also here is one Representative Catholick Church against another Representative Catholick Church and one Council for one Species of Soveraignty and another for another Species of Soveraignty So that undoubtedly it is not the same Church that had two heads of several sorts 2. And the Nations that are on both sides to this day are a proof beyond denyall of their division The French on one side and the Italians on the other and other nations divided between both So that the thing which they call by one name is two indeed But so is not the true Catholick Church Object
which is all that this will prove even in some that otherwise might be good men We deny not but that Zosimus would fain have extorted a confession of his usurped power and a submission to it from Aurelius Augustine and the rest of the Africane Council But yet he could not do it We confess that Leo the first and Gregory the first and others were very busie for the extending of their power And that the Romane Bishops were long endeavouring to have put the halter on the Africanes heads yea and long about the French before they got them under And shall these partial ambitious men be the witnesses And because they would have had more power doth it follow that it was their due 2. Again if they find that any distressed Churches or Bishops have but sent to Rome for help they presently gather thence that they took the Pope to be Christs Vicar General As when Chrysostome sent to Innocent and Basil and the rest in the East did send so oft for help into the West when as the reasons were but such as these 1. Because Rome during the Emperors residence there was the place where life or death was last pronounced on every mans cause by the secular power and therefore the Bishop of Rome had the greater opportunity to befriend other Churches 2. And afterward Rome had a great secular influence on the Empire 3. And because in the divisions of the East about Arrianisme they thought the countenance of the Orthodox in the West might have done somewhat to turn the scales 4. Because the Bishop of Rome being taken for the Patriarch of the first place his voice might do much against an adversary I will delay you now which no more instances then those of Basils time from the East Eusebius Meletius Basil and the rest of the Orthodox being both pestered with the Arrians and all to pieces also among themselves do send for help to the West Basil Epist 69. But to whom and for what Not to the Bishop of Rome only nor by name but equally to the Bishops of Italy and France without any mention of the Romane power And it was not that the Pope might decide all by his soveraign power which certainly was so neer a way to their relief that no wise man can imagine them so mad as to forget it if it had been a thing then known and approved of But only they desire that some may be sent to help them to be the stronger party in a Synod or at least some one to comfort them and put some countenance on their cause And Epist 70. Basil writeth himself in the name of the rest but to whom To the Bishops of France and Italy and France before Italy without taking notice of an universal Head of the Church at Rome And what doth he so importune them for not that the Pope would decide the controversie but that they would acquaint the Emperour with their state because the West had an Orthodox Emperor and the East an Arrian or send some to them to see how it stood with them so that it was but either help from the Emperor or countenance from the number of Bishops because they were over voted quite at home that they desired So Epist 74. Basil again writes to the Bishops of the West and so no more to the Romane Bishop then the rest and he giveth these as his Reasons For saith he what we here speak is suspected as if we spoke through private contention But for you the further you are remote from them by habitation so much credit you have with the people whereto is added that the grace of God helpeth you to relieve the oppressed And if Many of you unanimously decree the same things it is manifest that the multitude will produce a certain reception of your opinion Wonderfull if there were then a Vicar General of Christ at Rome that it never came into their mind to crave his decision or help as such O but say the Papists that was because they had to do only with the Arrians that cared for no authority that was against them Answ 1. But would these Arrians have so much regarded the votes of the French and Italian Bishops yea or a few men sent from them and yet not regard the Head of the Church The Arrians sure had heard of this Headship if any had And would not the Orthodox desire so much as a word from Rome for this advantage 2. But it is false that they were only the Arrians that they called for help against They expresly say that it was also because they were divided among themselves by personal quarrels How importunately doth Gregory Nyssen afterward call for help from others and telleth Flavianus in his Epist to him of their misery as if all were lost And the only sad instance was that Helladius counted a good Bishop had proudly neglected him and made him stand at his door when he went to visit him a great while before he was let in and then did not bid him sit down and then did not speak to him first but two or three strange angry words This was the great business But to proceed with Basil Epist 77. he falls to chiding the Western Bishops for not sending to them nor regarding them and their communion and to touch their pride he addeth We have one Lord one faith one hope Whether you think your selves the Head of the universal Church the head cannot say to the feet I have no need of you or if you place your selves in the order of other Church-members you cannot say to us we need you not And would you here believe that the Papists have the faces to cite this passage of Basil for their Headship because here is the word Head When as its plain 1. That Basil by the Head means but the chiefest part and not the soveraign power 2. That he speaks to all the Bishops of the West and not only to the Romane Bishop 3. That he doth it as a smart reproof of their arrogancy and not in any approbation at all But any thing will serve them More from Basil I shall have occasion to mention anon 3. Nore also that when the Papists find but any Heresie condemned by the Bishop of Rome they cite this as a testimony of their Soveraignty As if other Patriarch and Bishops condemned them not as well as they Or as if we knew no that the Church desired the most general vote against Hereticks and therefore would be loth to leave so great a Bishop out 4. And when they find the Pope excommunicating forreign Bishops they cry up this as a Testimony of his Headship As if we did not know 1. That to refuse Communion with another Church or Bishop is no act of Jurisdiction over them 2. That other Bishops have made bold also to excommunicate the Pope I 'le now but recite those words of Nicephorus lib. 17. cap. 26. which you use to glory in as many do
Vice-christ and we will not presume to say that he hath dishonoured himself 2. Thought it should not dishonour Christ it is such a transcendent honour to man as we will not believe that any man hath that proveth not his claim It was no dishonour to the Godhead to be united to the manhood of Christ in Personal union but if the Pope say that the Godhead is thus united to his manhood verily I will not believe him 3. Though we should not have presumed to question Christ if he had done it yet we must presume to tell the Pope that he is guilty of dishonouring Christ by his usurpation 1. Because he sets up himself as Vice christ without his Commission and takes that to himself that is Christs Prerogative God saith This is my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased Hear him And the Papists say of the Pope This is the Vice-christ Hear him 2. Because the Power of a King is more communicable then the Power of Christ it being such as is fit for one meer man as well as for another But the Power of Christ is such as no meer man is fit for The capacity of the Subject is Considerable as Necessary to the reception of the form of Power He that is God as well as Man is fit for an Universal Monarchy when he that is meer man is not From whence we argue thus If there was never such a thing by Gods institution as a meer man to be the Christ or Universal Head of the Church then there is no such thing to be imagined now But there never was such a thing Therefore there is no such Christ that was the visible Head was God and Man when the Pope is so we will believe in him as his Successor 4. It would ruine the Church to have built on so sandy a foundation and to have laid so much work on one that is so unable to perform it Doubtless common reason tells us that if God made any one man the Monarch of the whole world especially leaving his Commission as obscure as the Popes is were it any and should not give him a divine or supra-humane strength to execute it it would be the confusion of the world I am not well acquainted with the Power of Angels but I hope without dishonouring them I may suspect that the due managing of such an Universal Monarchy is above their abilities At least I am confident it is an honour that their Modesty and Reverence of Christ will not permit them to own as the Pope doth If this Vice-christ be not a false Christ he may apply that of Heb. 1. Being made so much better then Angels as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name then they For unto which of the Angels said he at any time thou art the Successor of Christ thou art the Universal Head of the Church Whether the Pope will be called the Vice-son of God the Vice-saviour and say Let all the Angels worship him sit thou on my right hand c. I leave to his modesty to consider But I must profess here to the Reader that though my modesty and consciousness of my weakness hath made me so suspicious lest I understand not the Apocalips as to suspend my judgement whether the Pope be the Antichrist the Beast c. yet the reading of their serious immodest arguings to prove the Pope to be the Vice-christ on Earth doth exceedingly more increase my suspicion that he is The Antichrist For to be Peters Successor as a first Apostle is a contemptible thing in these men eyes This is not it that they plead for Bellarmine ubi supr expresly tells us that the Pope succeeds not Peter as an Apostle No it is as a Vice-christ to the whole Church as Boverius here professedly maintaineth And this they make the Foundation of their Catholick Church and the acknowledgement of it Essential to every member of it Which I even tremble to read and think of Next Boverius comes to his proofs from the New-Testament And those are the same that I have answered as Bellarmines in my Safe Religion and are an hundred times answered by our writers and therefore the Reader may excuse me if I put him to no long trouble about them The first is the old Tues Petrus in hanc Petram c. Answ 1. He doth not say Thou art Christ or the Vice-christ or my Successor or the Universal Monarch of the Church No such words as these 2. It is Christ himself her that is called the Rock and not Peter q. d. Thy name is Peter who confessest me in allusion to which I tell thee that I whom thou hast confessed am Petra the Rock upon which I will build me a Church which the gates of Hell shall not prevail against As the Apostle saith of the spiritual Rock 1 Cor. 10. That Rock was Christ So may I of this 3. But if it had been spoken of Peter it had been no more then is spoken of the other Apostles on whom as on a Foundation the Church is said to be built Jesus Christ himself being the head corner stone Eph. 2. 20. But what need we more if we put not out our eyes then to find in all the New Testament that Peter was never called or taken for a Vice-christ by the Apostles unless Secundum quid as every Embassador of Christ is that speaks his message in his stead 2 Cor. 5. 19 20. and that he never is said to exercise any Universal Government over the rest of the Apostles nor so much as give them a Law or Convent them before him or send them out or do any more in Ruling them then they in Ruling him nor so much as Paul did in rebuking him to his face for disorderly walking c. Gal. 2. Yea when Paul calls them carnall that sided with Peter though but in the same over-valuing way as others did of Apollos and Paul saying I am of Paul and I am of Apollo and I am of Cephas 1 Cor. 1. 12. He saith to them that said I am of Christ Is Christ divided as shewing that he was the common Universal Head and Master of them all But when he mentioneth meer men he hath no such word He saith not Is Peter divided But implying all in one he saith Was Paul crucified for you or were yee baptized into the name of Paul And Who then is Paul and who is Apollo implying also Who is Peter but Ministers by whom ye believed as the Lord gave to every man 1 Cor. 3. 5. See 1 Cor. 4 6. Pag. 144. Boverius playes his game with Metaphors and Similitudes and saith The Church is Christs Kingdom an Army a Sheepfold a House a Ship or Noahs Ark and what 's a Kingdom without a visible King or an Army without a Visible General or a Flock without a visible Shepheard or a House without a Housholder or a Ship without a Pilot Answ 1. The whole earth is Gods Kingdom And
consent and yield And yet his Kingdom standeth on those legs which the doctrine of these more moderate men do disown The same doctrine also Bernard taught the Pope himself Ad Eugen. P. R. de Considerat l. 2. Saying Quid tibi dimisit S. Apostolus c. What did the holy Apostle leave thee Such as I have saith he that give I to thee And what was that One thing I am sure of it was not gold nor silver when he said himself Silver and gold have I none If thou canst claim this by any other title so let it be but not by Apostolical right For he could not give thee that which he had not such as he had he gave a care of the Churches but did he give thee a domination Hear himself Not as Lords or Ruling as Lords saith he in the Clergy or heritage but as examples of the flock And less thou think that he spoke it only in humility and not in verity it is the voice of the Lord himself in the Gospel The Kings of the Gentiles rule over them and they that have power over them as called Benefactors or Bounteous and he inferreth Butlyou shall not be so It is plain that Domination is forbidden the Apostles Go thou therefore and usurp if thou darest either Apostleship whilest thou Rulest as a Lord or a Lordly Rule or Domination while thou art Apostolick Plainly thou art forbidden one of the two If thou wilt have both alike thou losest both So far Bernard By whose verdict the Pope and his Bishops are deprived of both by grasping at both long ago Nay the Pope makes himself a Temporal Prince in every Princes Dominion on earth where he is able to do it and takes all the Clergy out of their Government into his own So that actually he hath dispossessed them of part of their Dominion already by taking so considerable a part of their subjects from under their power yea and those that have so great an influence upon all the rest What by publick Preaching and Church-governing and secret Confessing and dependance on them for the Sacraments one would think it should be no hard matter for a Romish allowed numerous Clergy to be Masters of any Kingdom where they are And thus Princes are more then half conquered already without a war If any believe not that the Pope doth not thus exempt his Clergy from the secular power it is because he knows not their most notorious principles and practises Nay even in England in King Charles his Articles for the Spanish match the Pope had the confidence to demand this Prerogative and therefore himself added to the sixteenth Article which freed them from Laws about Religion Ecclesiastici verò nullis legibus subjaceant nisi suorum superiorum Ecclesiasticorum that is Ecclesiastick persons shall be under no Law but of their Superiour Ecclesiasticks or Church-men Is not this plain English See Prins Introduct p. 6. So that no Church-man must be under any Law of the Land or Government of Secular Princes And when they have such a strength in our own Garrisons a forreign Enemy is easily let in To the exciting of whom they will never be wanting having their Agents in one garb or other at the ears of the Princes and States in Christendom and of most of the Great and Noble persons that are deeply interessed in the Government Yea and with Infidel Princes sometimes as Cyril the Patriarck of Constantinople proved to the loss of his life for being so much against the Papists And the more cause have all Christian Princes and States to be vigilant against these incendiaries 1. Because they trust to War and Violence and build their Kingdom on it and therefore study it day and night 2. And because they have such a frie of politick Jesuites all abroad continually upon the design whose contrivances and endeavours are day and night to bring Princes and Nations to their will and to kindle divisions and wars among them to attain their Ends. They make a trade of this imployment And expert prepared men that follow a business all their days are like enough to make something of it at last especially while others sleep or silently look on and let them alone to play their game If the Papists can but get into the Saddle either by deceiving the Rulers or Commanders or by bringing forreign force against us they will give us leave to dispute and write and preach against them and laugh at us that will stand talking only while they are working And when the Sword is in their hand they will soon answer all our Arguments with a fagot a hatchet or halter Smithfield confuted the Protestants that both the Universities could not confute Their Inquisition is a School where they dispute more advantagiously then in Academies Though all the Learned men in the world could not confute the poor Albigenses Waldenses and Bohemians yet by these Iron Arguments they had men that presently stopt the mouths of many thousands if not hundred thousands of them Even as the Mahometans confute the Christians A Strappado is a knotty Argument In how few days did they confute thirty thousand Protestants in and about Paris till they left them not on earth a word to say In how few weeks space did the ignorant Irish thus stop the mouths of many thousand Protestants Even in Ulster alone as is strongly conjectured by testimony on Oath about an hundred and fifty thousand men were mortally silenced Alas we now find that the poor Irish commonly know but little more of Christ but that he is a better man of the two then Saint Patrick And therefore how long might they have been before they could have silenced so many Protestants any other way There 's nothing like stone-dead with a Papist They love not to tire themselves with Disputes when the business may be sooner and more successfully dispatcht Well seeing this is the way that they are resolved on and no peaceable motions will serve for the preventing it all men that have care of the Church and Cause of Jesus Christ and the happiness of their posterity have cause to stand on watch and guard Not to be cruel to them leave that to themselves but to be secured from their cruelty I should be abundantly more earnest then I am to press all men to such a patience and submission in Causes of Religion as leaves all to God alone but that we all see how the Papists are still at the dore with the Swords in their hands and watching for an opportunity to break in And if in modesty we stand still and let them alone they will give us free leave when they have the day to call them Traytors or perfidious or what we please Let loosers talk Let them have the Rule and then make the best you can of your Arguments If they can once get England and other Protestant Countries into the case of Spain and Italy their Treachery shall not be cast
the Soveraign or chief Governour of it self or the Church Representative of the Church reall as they use to call them As to them that Head it with the Pope I have said enough already and others much more especially Blondell unanswerably Yet I shall partly take them also in my way though I deal principally with the other And these brief Arguments may serve to confute the Vice-christship or Soveraignty of the Pope 1. There is no such Head Instituted by Christ The Scripture pretenses for it I have before confuted and they are so poor that they vanish of themselves 2. The Popes Soveraignty is against the Judgement of the Ancient Fathers and practise of the Primitive Church as I have proved in this and a former Book 3. It is against Tradition as brought down to us by the greatest part of the Church on earth by far as is before proved 4. It is against the Judgement of the far greatest part of the present Catholick Church as is proved 5. It is the the meer effect of pride and tyranny a plain design to set up one man over all the world for his greatness and their hurt 6. The pretense of this Soveraignty is the consequent only of Romes greatness and the will of Emperours that to conform the Ecclesiastical state to the civil did give a Primacy to the Bishop of Rome within the Empire 7. It is a meer impossibility for one man to be the Soveraign of all the Churches in the world and do the work of a Soveraign for them He had need of many millions and millions of Treasure to defray the charge which Peter had not While he pretends to govern all the world he doth but leave them ungoverned or not by him How can he govern all those Churches in the Dominions of Infidels that will not endure his Government There are more then all the Papists in the world now from under his Government voluntarily that could not be governed by him if they would 8. There are yet visible many great Churches that were planted by the Apostles or in their dayes and never were under Romes Soveraignty to this day as the Aetheopians Persians Indians and most that were without the verge of the Roman Empire 9. There is no use for such an Head as I shall shew anon of Councils 10. There is not so much Reason for it or possibility of it as that One man must be King or Monarch of all the world Considering that spiritual Government requireth residency and can less be done by Deputies then temporal And that Princes are truly Church-Governours also in their kind and way 11. It is an intolerable usurpation of the Power of all Christian Princes and Pastors who conjunctly in their several wayes are intrusted by God with the Government of the Churches under them 12. To make such a Soveraign is to make a new Catholick Church that Christ never made 13. And it s the most notorious schism dividing themselves from all the Catholick Church that are not their subjects 14. And inhumane cruelty to damn all as much as Heathens at least that believe not in the Pope be they never so holy 15. To set up a Vice-god as Pope Julius paraphrastically called himself and a Vice christ on earth over all the Church as the Papist commonly do maintaining that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ is to set up an Idoll and a name of Blasphemy against Jesus Christ whose prerogative it is to be the sole Universal Head And therefore he must needs be an Antichrist whether he be The Antichrist or not This much to the Pope Thes The Catholick Church of Christ is not one Visible Political body as joyned to one Universal Visible Head or Soveraign save only Christ And consequently it is not the way to heal the Churches divisions to draw all into such a body or endeavour such an Union This I make good by these following Arguments which reach both the Italian Papists that would have the Pope to be the Head or Soveraign and the French and Cassandrian who would have a General Council to be the Head and the Pope only to be the chief Patriarch and the Principium Unitatis For if I prove that the Body is not one as Headed by any except Christ I shall say enough against both these opinions But yet as is said it is principally against the later who are for the Headship of a Council that I shall direct my Arguments because they are the busie Reconcilers and because the rest are so largely confuted already on both sides Argument 1. That which is the true form of the Catholick Church of Christ it retaineth de facto at this day But it retaineth not a Political Union under a Visible Terrestrial Universal Head therefore this is not the true form of the Catholick Church Or what the Catholick Church is quoad essentiam that it is also quoad existentiam But it is not such a Body quoad existentiam therefore not quoad essentiam If any will grant the conclusion quoad essentiam vel formam and say that this Policy Head and Union are not essential to the Church but separable accidents tending only ad melius esse he will give away his cause For the Pars Imperans and pars subdita are the two essential parts of a body Politick or Republick whether Civil or Ecclesiastical as a soul and body are the parts of man and if it want either part the essence is destroyed It hath lost its Political form But I need not stand on this because the case is past controversie and I know not of any that make the objection or will go on such terms I am sure those do not that I have now to deal with Another thing there may be that is called a Church without this Form or Head but not this same thing or body that now we speak of The Major proposition I prove thus The Church of Christ is a true Church at this day or retaineth its essential parts therefore it retaineth its form If its essentials were not in existence the Church were extinct or did not exist But that the Church is not extinct or nulled the opponents will easily grant and the promise of Christ will easily prove The gates of Hell shall not prevail against it The Minor I prove thus If the Catholick Church be now Headed with one Visible Head beside Christ then it is either the Pope or a General Council But it is neither of these That it is not the Pope the French will grant And 1. It s proved at large by many a volume of Protestant writers and 2. By the present visible state of the Church The greatest part of the Church on Earth and all those in Heaven disown the Universall Soveraignty or Headship of the Pope The Greeks Abassines Armenians Protestants c. That it is not a General Council appeareth in that there is no such thing in Natural or Moral Existence Not in
Natural existence For where is it when called how long have they sate But this none will affirm Not in Moral existence For there is no such thing pretended nor possible I confess the Common wealth is not dissolved at the death of the Prince because a Successor being determined of by Law as in hereditary Government there is one hath presently right to the place though he want solemn admittance or if elective yet Rex non moritur both because the successor hath an Intentional Moral being in the Fundamental Law and the Intention of the Electors conjunctly and they presently make an actual choice or else the power so far as is necessary for execution falls in the mean time into the hands of some Trustees of the Republick while they are electing and the soveraign is in fieri Or if it be in some dissolvable body whose actual Session is intermitted yet they are still in Moral being and ready to assemble and the Soveraignty for so much as is of ordinary exercise even over the Universal body is in the mean time in the hands of some other Assembly who therefore may be said to partake of the Soveraignty But none of this is so in the present case Here is no General Council ordinarily in natural being and therefore in the vacancy not in Moral being There is none that pretendeth to be in Moral being For the Council of Trent which was the last pretended General Council is dissolved and the Pope would not take it well if any shall call another without him and no time is appointed for it The Decennial Council determined of at Constance is an empty name and that Decree did but serve to prove that really General Councils are not the Supream Governors of the Church For no one obeyeth them in that And whether ever the Pope or any one else will call a General Council again we cannot tell So that now there is none nor we know not whether there ever will be But further Argum. 2. That which is the Head or form of the Catholick Church or any way Necessary to its Being or Unity hath ever been found in it or at least within this thousand years or at least in the primitive purer ages or sometime at least But a true General Council is not always in being nor ever was within this thousand years no nor in the purer ages nor ever at all therefore it is no Head of the Church nor necessary to its unity The Major will not be denyed The proof of any branch of the Minor may serve turn much more of all 1. That a General Council hath not been this forty years in being all men will confess If the Church have been Headless forty years or wanted any thing Necessary to its Being or Unity then was it so long no Church or many Catholick Churches which are known untruths 2. If the Church have had any General Council within this thousand years it was either that of Trent that of Canstance Basil Florence the Laterane c. But none of these were such For 1. there were no Bishops from the most of the Christian world I have told you before how few at Trent did the most egregious parts of their work few more then forty The Churches of Syria Armenia Ethiopia and the most of the Christian world were never so much as fairly invited to be there If at Florence the Patriarch of Constantinople and two or three Greeks more were present what 's that to all the Churches of the Greek Profession through the world besides all others The ancient Councils called General contained All the Bishops that could and would come For all were to be there and not one Bishop chosen by two hundred or by a Prince instead of two hundred But at these later Councils were neither all nor so much as any Delegates though but chosen by hundreds to represent them from most of the Churches of the world Besides the packing and fore-resolutions of the Popes that ruled all and many other Arguments that nullifie these pretended General Councils I say not that all of them were useless but none of them were any more like to Oecumenical or Universal then Italy and its few servants are like to all the Christian world And that the Ancient Councils were not General I mean the four first or any like them I easily prove 1. From the Original of them and the Mandates and the Presidents and Ratifications and Executions It was the Roman Emperors that called them and that sent their Mandates to the Lieutenants and other secular Officers to see to the execution and to the Bishops to be there It was the Roman Emperors that by themselves or their Lieutenants were present to Rule them all according to the proportion of secular interest It was the same Powers that Ratified them and what they ratified went for currant and their Ratification was sought by the Bishops to that end It was the same Power that banished them that obeyed not and compelled men to submit to them Now let any man of Reason tell me what Power Constantine Theodosius Martian or any Roman Emperor had to summon the Bishops that were subjects in the Dominions of all other Princes through the world What Authority had they out of their own Dominion 2. Yea de facto the case is known 1. That they did not summon the Bishops of other Princes Dominions 2. That those Bishops at least no considerable number were there What Mandates or Invitations were sent to all the Churches of India Ethiopia Persia or the parts of Parthia Armenia Ireland Scotland c. that were out of the Roman Power Whoever those one or two were that Eusebius calls Bishops of Persis Parthia Armenia it 's a plain case that there were no due Representatives of all or any of these Churches there that were without the verge of the Empire No Brittish Irish that is then Scottish Bishops were there nor any from abundance other Churches And the other Councils after that at Nice make less pretense to such a thing So that it is most evident that General Councils then were but of the Bishops of the Empire or the Roman world unless a Bishop or two sometime might drop in that lived next them And was the Church no wider then the Empire Let Baronius himself be judge that tells you of the Churches planted by the primitive Preachers in India Persia and many other parts of the world Let Godignus be judge that confesseth the Ethiopians had the Gospel since the Apostles days and I pray in what age were they Papists Let Raynerius be judge that saith the Churches of Armenia and others planted by the Apostles were not subject to the Church of Rome Let the Antiquities of Brittain and Ireland be evidence But the case is undenyable All this noyse then of General Councils comes but from a supposition that the Roman world was the whole Christian world A small mistake We home-bred Rusticks may shortly be
Councils are unjust because there can be no just satisfaction given by men that live at so vast a distance that this great number that come thither are truly Bishops yea or Presbyters either It s not possible under many years time so much as to take any satisfactory account of their ordination and abiding in that office and the truth of their deputations or elections And when in their elected Representative Councils there will be perpetual controversies between several parties as there is in Parliaments whether it be this man or that which is truly elected in how many years will all these be decided before they begin their work So that I may well conclude laying all these seven considerations together the distance of places the age and state of the Bishops the state of the Civil Governments which they live under their necessary labours at home and the ruine that will befall their Churches by so much absence the diversity of their languages the multitude of the Bishops and the difficulty of knowing the Ordination and Qualifications of persons so remote to prove their capacity I say all these together do plainly shew that such General Councils are impossible and unjust and therefore not the standing Government or form of the Church or the center of its Unity Argum. 4. As the Synod it self is impossible needless and unjust so it is Impossible that they should do the work of a Head or Soveraign Power if they could Assemble therefore they are not appointed thereunto The Antecedent is partly manifest by what is said from their different languages and other considerations Moreover 1. The persons that will have appeals to them and causes to be judged if really they will do the work of a Soveraign Power and Judge will be so many millions that there will be no room for them about their doors nor any leisure in many years to hear their causes If you say It was not so in former Councils I answer that is because they were not truly General or were called in such times when the Church did lie in a narrow compass and not in such remote parts of the world and because they were assembled indeed but occasionally to advise upon and determine some one particular mans case or few and never took upon them to be the Soveraign power or head of the Church or its essential form or Center of Unity 2. These millions of persons that have so many causes will have so far to travail that it will put them to great cost and labour to come and attend and bring all their witnesses And if they be not sounder bodyed then our English Souldiers the poor people of Mexico and other parts of those Indies to look no further will be a great part of them dead by the way before they can reach the General Council e. g. if it should be in the midst of Europe 3. And the Council will not be competent Judges of so many causes which by distance must needs be much unknown in many weighty Circumstances whose cognisance is necessary 4. And lastly such Councils will sit so seldom that the work will be undone Argum. 5. If God had intended that such a Council should have been the form of his Church or the necessary Governour of it he would have acquainted us with his will concerning some certain Power to summon them or would have authorized some or other to call such a Council But he hath not acquainted us with his will herein nor authorized any to call such a Council therefore it was not his intent that it should be the form or necessary Governour of his Church Either this Council must meet by an Authoritative call or by consent If by such a call who must call them The Popes pretense to this Authority is voluminously and unanswerà bly confuted long ago and it s well known what ever Baronius say that the ancient Councils were called by the Emperors and many since have been called by Emperours and Cardinals And if you say that it belongs to the Emperour I answer what hath he to do to summon the subjects of the French Spaniards Turks Aethiopian c And by this it appears that we never had true Universal Councils They were but General as to the Roman world or Empire For who ever precided it is certain that the Emperours called them And what had Constantine Martian Theodosius or any Roman Emperour to do to call the subjects in India Aethiopia Persia c. to a Council Nor de facto was there any such thing done Is it not a wonderfull thing that the Pope and all his followers should be or seem so blinded to this day as to take the Empire for the whole earth or the Roman world for all the Christian world yet this is their all If you say that it must be done by the consent of Princes then either of Christian Princes or of all If of the Christian only you must exclude the Bishops that are under Mahometan and Heathen Princes and then it will be no General Council especially if it be now as it was in the time of Jacob à Vitriaco the Popes Legate in the East who saith that the Christians of the Easterly parts of Asia alone exceeded in number the Christians both of the Greek and Latine Churches And whether it be all Princes or only Christian Princes that should consent who can tell whether ever it will be God hath not promised to lead them to such a consent And they are unlikely of themselves as being many and distant and of different interests and apprehensions and usually in wars with one another so that if an age should be spent in treating of a General Council among them it s ten to one that the treaty will be in vain and its next to an impossibility that all should consent Besides no man can shew a Commission from God to enable them and only them to such a work But if you say that it must be done by the consent of the Bishops themselves the Impossibility moral is apparent who will be found that will be at the cost and pains to agitate the business among them No one can appoint the time and place but by consent of the rest Who doth it belong to to travail to the Indies Aethiopia Aegypt Palestine and all the rest of the world to treate with the Bishops about the time and place of a Council And how many lives must he have that shall do it And when he findeth them of a hundred minds what course shall he take and how many more journies about the world must he make to bring them to an agreement But I am ashamed to bestow more words on so evident a case Argum. 6. The Head or Soveraign of the Church as of every body Politick hath the Legislative Power over the whole The Pope or a General Council have not the Legislative Power over the whole Therefore the Pope or General Council are not the
head or Soveraigns of the Church The Major is of unquestionable verity in Politicks Legislation is the first and chief work of Soveraignty The Minor is proved 1. Ad hominem by the confession of the chief Opponents Grotius de Imperio summar potest doth purposely maintain it and so do others See of this Lud. Molinaeus new Book supposed against the Presbyterians his Paraenesis 2. It is the high Prerogative of Christ the true King and Soveraign of the Church which none must arrogate He was faithfull in all his house as was Moses His Law is perfect It is sufficient to make the man of God perfect even a sufficient rule of faith and life No man must add thereto nor take ought therefrom but do whatsoever he hath commanded Deut. 12. 32. To the Law and to the Testimony if they speak not according to these it is because there is no light in them Isa 8. 20. Object But men may make By-laws under Christ and his Laws Answ True but as those are in this case no proper Laws so no man or men may make them for the Unversal Church For the business of those Laws is only to determine of circumstances which God hath made necessary in genere and left to the determination of men in specie And we may well know that there was some special reason why Christ did not determine of these himself And the reason is plain even because that they depend so much on the several states capacities customs c. of men that they are to be varied accordingly in several times and places If one standing Law would have fitted all the world or all ages in these matters Christ would have made it himself For if you say he makes some Laws and neglect others that are of the like kind and might as well have been done by himself you make him imperfect and insufficient to his work And if it be not fit that one Universal Law be made for the world then a Council must not make it And as the sufficiency of Christs law so the nature of the things declare it that these matters must not be determined of by an universal Law Should there be an universal Law to determine what day of the week or what hour of the day every Lecture or occasional Sermon shall be on Or what place every Congregation shall meet in Or where the Minister shall stand to preach Or what Chapters he should read each day Or what Text he should preach on or how long Whether by an hour-glass or without in what habit of apparrel particularly when many a poor man must wear such as he can get yea or what gestures or postures of body to use when that gesture in one Countrey signifieth reverence which in another rather signifieth neglect with abundance the like And the same is plain from the nature of the Pastoral office Every Bishop or Pastor is made by Christ the Ruler of the flock in such cases and they are bound to obey him Heb. 13. 17. And therefore a General Council must leave them their work to do which Christ hath put upon them and not take it out of their hands especially when being in the place and seeing the variety of circumstances they are more competent judges then a General Council at such distance The plain truth is Christ hath left them none of that work to do which belongeth to a Head or Soveraign but they make work for themselves that there may seem to be a Necessity of a power to do it The Church needeth none of their Laws Let us have but the Holy Scriptures and the Law of Nature and the civil Laws of men and the guidance of particular Pastors pro tempore and the fraternal Consultations and Agreements of Councils not to make any more work but to do this foresaid work unanimously and the Church can bear no more there is nothing left for Legislators Ecclesiastical to do We can spare their Laws and therefore their power and work Their business is but to make snares and burdens for us and therefore we can live without them and cannot believe that the felicity or unity or essence of the Church consisteth in them Argum. 7. All the inferior officers do derive their power from the supream All the other officers of the Catholick Church do not derive their power from the Pope or a General Council therefore a Pope or General Council are not the supream The Major is an unquestioned Maxime in Politicks It s essential to the Sovereaign to be the fountain of power to all under him Yea if it be but a deputed derived Soveraignty secundum quid so called as the Viceroy of Mexico Naples c. yet so far he must be the fountain of all inferiour power The Minor is maintained by most Christians in the world Every Bishop or Presbyter hath his power immediately from Jesus Christ as the Efficient cause though man must be an occasion or causa sine qua non or per accidens The Italian Bishops in the Council of Trent could not carry it against the Spaniards that the Pope only as Head was immediately jure divino and the rest but mediante Papa Moreover it is easie to prove out of Scripture that God never set up any Soveraign power in his Church personal or collective to be the fountain of all other Church power nor sendeth us to have recourse to any such for it Nor can they prove such a power on whom it is incumbent And lastly its most easie to prove de facto that the Bishops or Presbyters now in the several Churches in the world did not receive and do not hold their power from any such visible Head whether Pope or Council Though the Popelings do yet so do not all the rest of the Christian world Who are not therefore no Ministers or no Church of Christ whatever these bare affirmers and pretenders may imagine Nor are all the Ministerial actions in the world null which are not done by a power from him And even the Papists themselves will few of them pretend to receive their several powers of Priesthood from a General Council This therefore is not the Soveraign power or head of the Church Argum. 8. The Head or Soveraign Power hath the finally decisive Judgement and in great causes all must or may appeal to them A General Council hath not the finally decisive judgement nor may all men in great causes appeal to them Therefore a General Council is not the Head or Soveraign power The Major is undenyable The Minor is proved 1. In that it is not known nor hath the world any rule or way to know in what cases we must appeal to a General Council and what not and what is their proper work 2. In that an appeal to them is an absolute evasion of the guilty and in vain to the innocent because of the rarity of such Councils or rather the nullity 3. Because the prosecuting of such an Appeal
the said Headship of the Pope or Council 2. Because else most of the Christians of the world at this day are Apostates and unchristened Or if that seem a tolerable conclusion to the Romanists Yet 3. Because then Christ had no Church for some hundreds of years which I know they will not think so tolerable a conclusion For to dream that the ancient Christians did know any Head of the Church but Christ or were engaged in loyalty to the Pope or Council is a disease that few are lyable to except such as are strangers to the writings of those times or such as read them with Roman spectacles resolved what to find in them before hand Argum. 14. All Christians are bound to study or labor to be acquainted with the Laws of the Soveraign power of the Church All Christians are not bound to study or labor to be acquainted with the Laws of Popes and Councils Therefore the laws of Popes and Councils are not the Laws of the Soveraign power of the Church The Major is proved in that all subjects must obey the Laws of the Soveraign power But they cannot obey them unless they know them Therefore they are bound to endeavour to know them The Minor is proved 1. In that they being written in Latine and Greek which a very small part of the Christians of the world do understand and their Teachers not sufficiently expounding them and they being more copious and voluminous more obscure and uncertain of which next then for all private Christians to understand the people cannot learn these having enough to do to learn Gods Word 2. The Papists that deny the use of the Holy Scriptures to the people in a known tongue and deny the necessity of understanding them will sure say the same of their Decretals and Canons unless they mean to set them up above the Scripture as well as equal them thereto Argum. 15. The Soveraign Head of the visible Church and Center of our unity must be evident that all the Christian world may know it The Pope and General Council are not such Therefore neither of them are the Head of the Visible Church The Major is confessed by the Opponents and it 's plain because men cannot obey an unknown power The Minor is known by common experience For many a year together by Bellarmines confession learned and wise men could not tell which was the true Pope yea their Councils could not tell Most of the Christian world to this day cannot discern his Commission for that power which he pretendeth to A true General Council now no man can know because it is a non ens Their pretended General Councils are so ravelled in confusion that they are not agreed among themselves which are indeed such and which not but many are rejected and many suspected of which Bellarmine giveth us a list and those that one receiveth another rejecteth and the most by far are rejected by most of the Christian world And when some would take up with the four first and some with six and some with eight the Papists deridingly ask them whether the Church hath not as much authority now as it had then And how shall the Christian world know whether it were a true General Council or not Of which see the difficulties first to be resolved which I have recited in my Disputations against Popery Argum. 16. The Laws of the Soveraign Power of the Church must be certain or else how shall we know what to obey The Laws of Popes and General Councils are not certain Therefore c. The Minor is proved by experience The Popes Decretals are many unknown and many proved forgeries by Blondell ubi sup and many others beyond all question and none of them proved Laws to the Church The Canons of the first Council of Nice are not agreed on among the Papists Many others are proved forged Many are flatly contrary to each other as I have shewed ubi sup and how then shall Christians know what to obey The ancient Canons condemned the gesture of kneeling on the Lords day and consequently then at the Lords Supper the reading of the Heathens Books and many such things which are now taken for lawful The later Councils that contradict the former do seem to most of more questionable authority then they And what Councils are to be received and what rejected they are not agreed among themselves nor have any certain Rule to know by on which they are agreed Nor will their Popes or Councils yet resolve them this great question So that Christians are at a loss concerning these Laws and know not which of them they are obliged by and which not Argum. 17. If the Pope or Council be the Head of the Church then must their Laws be preached to the people by their Teachers But the Laws of Popes and Councils need not be preached to the people by their Teachers Therefore c. The reason of the Major is because the Laws that they must obey in matters spiritual in order to salvation the Ministers must preach to them But these are pretended to be such Therefore c. As to the Minor 1. It would be but an unhansome thing in their own hearing for Preachers to take their Texts out of the Canons or Decretals and preach these day after day to the people which yet they have need to do many a year if the obedience of them be our necessary duty 2. Ministers are commanded to preach only the Gospel and it is said to be sufficient or able to make us perfect and build us up to salvation Therefore we need not preach the Canons or Decretals Argum. 18. While a Visible Head cannot be agreed on even by those that would have the Church united in suoh a Head it is all one to them as if there were no such Head and the union still is unattainable by them But even among the Papists themselves a Visible Head is not cannot be agreed on Therefore c. What good will it do to say we must center some where and know not where and obey some body and know not who The Italians and Spanish make the Pope the Infallible Head and say a General Council without him may err and is but the body The French make the Council the Head and say the Pope may err and that the infallibility such as they plead for is in the Council It is not a Head but this Head in specie that is the form of the Church if any such be And therefore they must needs according to their own principles be of divers Churches while they place the Soveraignty in several sorts and persons Till they better agree among themselves in their Fundamentals and Essentials of the Church we have small encouragement to think of uniting on any of their grounds Argum. 19. The Soveraign Power or Headship over the Church is a thing undoubtedly revealeed in the Holy Scripture For we cannot imagine that the Scripture should be silent in so
any of his power I say that not a word of this should be mentioned by Christ or his Apostles even when there was so great occasion when Peter was among them when there was striving for supremacy when the Churches were lamentably contending about the preheminence of their teachers and some were for one and some for another and some for Cephas himself and when so many heresies arose and hazzarded the Churches as among the Corinthians Galathians and others there did This is a thing so hard to be believed by one that believeth the wisdom and love of Christ that I must say for my part it surpasseth my belief Especially as is said when also so much is said against the Supremacy contended for All this I speak of any earthly Head whether Pope or Council Object But say the Papists you can allow Princes to be the Heads of the Church why then not a Pope Answ We acknowledge Princes and Pastors over parts of the Church but not over the Church Universal Every Corporation may call the Major or Bayliff a subordinate Head of that Corporation but not of the Kingdom Object There may be a Prorex a Viceking and why not then a Vicarious Head of the Catholick Church Answ 1. Because a Kingdom is not so big as all the world or all that is and may be Christian 2. Because a King having Dominion hath power of doing all that by others that he cannot do himself But a Pastor being a Minister hath no such power given him but must do his work himself 3. Because the work of the Ministry requires far more labour and attendance So that it is an utter Imopssibility that any man should be able to do the work of a supream Ruler of all the Christian world yea or the hundreth part of it as it must be done 4. And lastly because Christ hath made no such Prorex or Vice-head and none can have it without his commission Object But the Civil power hath been exercised by an Emperour over more then all the Christian world And why then may not the Ecclesiastical Answ 1. It s notoriously false that ever Emperour had so extensive a Dominion 2. The Gospel must be preached over all the world and therefore we must consider the possible future extent of the Church and not only the present existent state 3. There are many millions of Christians mixt in the Dominions of Infidel Princes among other Religions which makes the Government of them the more difficult 4. I shewed before from the nature of the work many other difficulties which make a difference Object Monarchy is the best Government therefore the Church must have it Answ The Monarchy of God is best but among men it is according to the state of the Rulers and subject One way is better in some cases and another in others 2. For one man to be Monarch of all the Christian world is not best when by taking a thousand times more upon him then he can do he will ruine instead of ruling well 3. You may as well say An Universal Civil Monarch over all the world is best therefore so it must be but when will you prove that But if I mistake not in my conjecture it is the thing that the Jesuites have lately got into their heads that the Pope must have the Universal Soveraignty Ecclesiastical and Civil that so an Universal peace may be in the world Obj. There was but One High Priest before Christ Answ 1. No more there was but one Temple Will you therefore have no more Nor but one civil Monarch in that Church Would you have no more I partly believe it 2. It was easie for one to Rule so small a Nation as Judaea in comparison of all the world 3. Prove you the Institution of your Supremacy as we can prove the Institution of Aarons Priesthood and the taking of it down again and we will yield all 4. That Priesthood was a Type of Christ the Eternal Priest and is ended in him as the Epistle to the Hebrews shews at large Object There is a Monarchy among Angels and Devils Answ 1. It s a hard shift when you must go to another world for your pattern But for your Argument fetcht from Hell I will leave it with you but for that from Heaven I say there 's no proof of it And if there were till you can prove that our work and fitness for it is the same as Angels and that the Lord hath appointed the same form here you have said nothing But because this Question is largely handled by abundance of our Learned Writers I shall say no more to it here but conclude that by this which is already said in brief it is manifest that The Catholick Church of Christ is not one Visible Political Body as joined to any One Universal Visible Head or Soveraign besides Christ If any being driven from this hold shall say that yet there are several Patriarcks that Govern the several Provinces of the Christian world though there be no head but Christ I answer 1. If there be no earthly Head and Center of unity then I have the main cause These Patriarcks may and do at this day unreconcilably disagree among themselves This therefore will not serve for a unity 2. When as is aforesaid you have well proved the Institution of these Patriarcks and how many they be and who and the power of Princes to make new ones and not to forbear it and to pull down the old ones and when you have answered the foregoing Arguments as many of them as extend to Patriarchal power also as well as Unversal Headship then we shall take this further into consideration In the mean time I supersede as having done that which I think necessary to take off men from inclining to Rome and reproaching of Churches upon the erroneous Conceit of the Nature and unity of the Catholick Church as if it were One as under One Earthly Visible Head CHAP. IV. Opening the true Grounds on which the Churches Unity and Peace must be sought and the means that must be used to attain so much as is here to be expected Quest BUT if this be not the way of the Churches Unity which is and what should we desire and endeavour for the attaining it For the distractions of the Church are so great through our divisions that it makes us still apt to suspect that we are out of the way Though it be a great work to answer this question rightly and a hundred a thousand times greater to answer it satisfactorily that is to satisfie prejudiced incapable men with a right answer yet I shall attempt it by casting in my thoughts or to speak more confidently by declaring so much as I am certain is the will of God concerning this weighty thing And here I shall first lay down those grounds upon which we must proceed if we will do our duty for the union of the Church 2. I shall tell you what
against the Papists such as Dr. Fields Crakenthorps Ushers Chillingworths Jewels Rivets Chamiers Ames Reignolds whittakers and such like beginning with Sir Humfrey Linds Via Devia via Tuta du Plessis of the Church and his Mysterie of Iniquity and Dr. John White c. 3. That you will not hearken to Papists secretly nor masked nor coming to you by indirect and Jugling ways but open their perswasions and call to some able studyed Divines to deal with them in your hearing if needs you will hear them that so you may hear one side as well as the other 4. That you take heed what Retainers Servants or Familiars are about you For some that pretend to be acquainted with these men are much mistaken if they be not more frequent at your elbows and in your Bed-chambers then many do imagine If they cannot be of your Councils and your neer attendants they will rather be your Porters or the Grooms of your Stables then they will be kept out We fear not any thing that they can do in an open way in comparison of their secret whispers and deceits when there is no body to gainsay them Had they the Truth we should be glad to entertain it with them It is not therefore Truth in their mouths that we are afraid of But seeing the Nations and our Posterity have so much dependance on your Integrity we call for so much Justice at your hands as that you will not cast open your ears to each deceiver especially in secret or on unequal tearms Let not all our peace and safety be hazarded by the self-conceitedness or imprudence of you that are our Rulers Seeing it is you that must give us Laws or set the Vulgar the pattern which they are so much addicted to imitate We adjure you in the Name of the most High God that you be not too forward and facile in hearkening to Seducers and corrupting those Intellects which the whole Nation hath so great an Interest in and that you be not henceforth as children tost to and fro and carryed about with every wind of doctrine by the the sleight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive Eph. 4. 14. But we beseech you mark them which cause Divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which you have learned and avoid them For they that are such serve not the Lord Jesus Christ but their own belly and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple Rom. 16. 17 18. Hearken not to every one that saith Lo here is Christ or Lo there is Christ here is the Catholick Church or there is the Catholick Church As if Christ were divided or the Catholick Church were more then One Or it were confined to a Sect or Party whether Papal or any other and did not contain all Christians through the world All parts of this Church are not equally pure but all are Parts Be you of the purest part but do not therefore take that part for the whole much less the polluted part Have compassion on the diseased and tumified part but do not therefore so far doat as to love the tumor or disease and say that none is the Church but this We are willing to be as Charitable to that Proud Throne of Rome and usurping Vice-christ as will stand with the safety of our souls and of the Church But God forbid that we should therefore be so blind as to run into their Pest-house and drink the poyson by which they are thus tumified intoxictaed Look on their Principles and see what an aspect they have on Christ on the Catholick Church and upon Princes Look back on their Practises and see what their Principles proved in the fruits Yea what need we go further for a warning then to remind you of that which one would think should be deep and fresh in your minds even what they have brought upon Kings Queens Lords Prelates and this whole Land But this leads me to the next Detection CHAP. XLVIII Detect 39. THE last of their Practical frauds at home and the most desperate is Their Treasons against the lives of Princes and the Peace of Nations and their dissolving the bonds of Oaths and Covenants and making Perjury and Rebellion to seem to be Duties and Meritorious works It would be a voluminous task to relate the Histories of the Papal Tresons How the Roman Vice-christ having laid a claim to both Swords Spiritual and Temporal hath plaid the Traytor against the Greek Emperors dispossessing them of the West and against the Emporors of Germany stirring up their own subjects and the Christian Princes and States against them setting his foot on the neck of one and making another wait barefoot long at the Roman gates and keeping many of them in wars It was this Horrid Treason and Tyrannical usurpation over all the Christians Princes that caused all those Treatises on that subject wrote against him in the Defense of Princes and their Rightt which Mich. Goldastus hath preserves and conjoyned in divers Volumes It was this that caused England Denmark Sweden and so many other Princes to be the readier to shake off his yoke Kings are not Kings where the Pope is fully Pope except only the House of Austria whom he is forced to gratifie as the only prop of all his tyrannie France that hath so much stood for its Liberties hath felt the fruits of the Roman Principles and League and two of their most renowned Kings successively have been basely and inhumanely butchered by them And to this day the numerous swarm of the Popes dependant Clergy doth not only devour as is thought about a third part of the Lands but also aws and swaies the Princes Even in Ireland before our wars a Bishop Bedle in his Letter to Laud in Prins Introduct pag. 102. doth open the Power of the Clergie and their insolencies as such that he concludes His Majesty is now with the greatest part of this Countrey as to their hearts and consciences King but at the Popes descretion And in another Letter to the said Archbishop ibid. pag. 112. he saith I that know that in this Kingdom of his Majesty the Pope hath another Kingdom far greater in number and as I have heretofore signified to the Lords Justices and Council which since is justified by themselves in print constantly guided and directed by the order of the new Congregation de propaganda fide lately erected at Rome see the rest Do I need to tell England of the many treacheries since the Reformation against our Princes Or who it was that would have deposed as well as Excommunicated Queen Elizabeth and exposed her Kingdoms to the will of others Or who it was that wrote against King James his Title to the Crown Or who were the Actors of the Hellish Powder-plot Or who it is that hath been still blowing the fire and casting all into disturbances for their ends Do I need to mention their approving of
the Murdering of Princes and the pretence of power to dispense with oaths of Allegiance and fidelity and who hath actually so oft pretended to disoblige the subjects and expose Princes and their Dominions to the first occupant I know that many of the seculars in England disowned this doctrine But 1. So never did the Pope but hath owned and practised it 2. By disowning it they disown Popery it self if they know what they do For it is an Article of their Faith and so Essential to their Religion as explicitly held and is determined by a Pope and an approved General Council even 12. the fourth at Lateran under Innocent the third as I before recited the words at large in the third Argument against them here I know some of the Papists would perswade the world that it was none but Mariana the Jesuite that wrote for King killing and that it was first condemned by themselves But the Parliament of Paris tells another story of them as it is recited by Thuanus who was President and then present Hist lib. 130. ad an 1604. And Rivet names them Guignardus that wrote in praise of the murder of Henry the third and of Ode Pichenatus Barterius suborned by Varada c. And Albineus the Jesuite did hear the Murderer of Henry the fourth confess before he did the fact and put off the examiners with this answer that God had given him that special gift to forget when once he had absolved a sinner whatsoever was confessed by him And why was it that France did expel the Jesuites and set up a Pillar of Remembrance of their villanies till Henry the fourth would needs gratifie the Pope by calling them in again and told the Parliament that the peril of it should be on him and so it was for it cost him his life And why did the same Parliament of Paris Novemb. 1610. condemn Bellarmines book against Barclay as an engine of treason and rebellion And the Theological faculty of Paris April 4. 1626. condemned Santarellus Book as guilty of the same villany stirring up people to Rebellion and King-killing And May 12. the University confirmed it And March 13. the Parliament condemned the Book to be burnt And it 's worth the reading which Rivet recites of the Answers of the Jesuites in Paris when the Parliament askt them their judgement of that Book viz. Seeing their General had approved the Book and judged the things that are there written to be certain whether they were of the same mind They answered that Living at Rome he could not but approve what was there approved of But say the Parliament What think you Say the Jesuites the clean contrary Say the Examiners But what would you do if you were at Rome Say the Jesuites That which they do that are at Rome At which said some of the Parliament What! have they one Conscience at Rome and another at Paris God bless us from such confessors as these But yet some of the Papists will seem so honest as to say that private men may not kill a King till he be deposed Very true But withall it is their currant doctrine that if once he be excommunicate he is then no King yea or if he be an Heretick and so being no King they may kill the man and not kill the King This is the jugling of these seeming Loyall subjects You may see it in their own writings Suarez advers Sect. Anglic. lib. 6. cap. 4. Sect. 14. cap. 6. Sect. 22 24. Azorius Jesuita Instit Moral part 1. l. 8. c. 13. He that would see more of their mind in this let him read the Mysterium Patrum Jesuitarum and the Jansenians mysterie of Jesuitism and Bishop Rob. Abbots Antilogia ad Apolog. Eudaemojohan But what need we more then the Decrees of a Pope and General Council and the practice of the Church of Rome for so many ages And for the Popes power to absolve them from all oaths of Allegiance and fidelity the foresaid Pope Innocent and his approved General Council have told the world enough of their mind to put us out of doubt of it But leaving abundance of forreign instances I shall mention but one or two at home The Papists have lately had the confidence to affirm that the Powder-plot and the Spanish invasion in one thousand five hundred eighty eight were not upon a quarrell of Religion nor owned by the Pope King James hath said already so much against them in these points that I think it needless to say any more especially also after Bishop Abbots Antilogia but only here to produce one Testimony of their own concerning the Spanish Invasion Cardinal Ossatus in his 87. Epist ad D. de Ville-roy tels us that Pope Clement the eighth one of the best of all the late ones did press for the King of France to join with Spain in the Invasion of England and the Cardinal answered that the King was tied by an Oath to the Queen of England to which the Pope replyed that The Oath was made to an Heretick but he was bound in another Oath to God and the Pope adding withall that Kings and other Princes do permit themselves all things or tolerate themselves in all things which make for their commodity and that the matter is gone so far that it is not or should not be imputed to them or taken for their fault and he alledged the saying of Franciscus Mariae Duke of Urbine that indeed every one doth blame a Noble man or Great man that is no Soveraign if he keep not his Covenants or fidelity and they account him infamous but supream Princes may without any danger of their reputation make Covenants and break them lye betray and perpetrate other such like things This was good Pope Clement the eighth And can we look for better from the rest You see what Oaths and Covenants are with them And that the design was still carried on against the Queen upon account of Religion and the Realm to have been invaded by the Spaniard on that account and that the principal point of the Plot was to prepare a party within the Realm that might adhere to the invaders all this with much more Sir Francis Walsingham that well knew hath testified to Monsieur Critoy in his Letter Cabal part 2. pag. 39. Thuanus a Moderate Papist and a most knowing and impartial Historian tells you lib. 89. p. 248 249. ad an 1588. that the Spaniards pretended to undertake the expedition only for Religion sake and therefore took with them Martin Alarco Vicar general of the Holy Inquisition with abundance of Capuchins and Jesuites and that they had with them the Popes Bull which they were to publish as soon as they landed and that Cardinal Allan was appointed as the Popes Legate to land at the same time and with full power to see to the restoring of Religion And that the said Bull had these expressions that the Pope by the Power given from God by lawfull
weighty a point without intolerable accusation of it The Soveraign Power or Headship of Pope or Council is not revealed in the Holy Scripture Therefore c. They have not yet produced a Text to prove either of them Those produced by the Italians for the Popes Headship are disclaimed by the French as meaning no such thing and our Writers have largely manifested their abusing of the Text. So have they done of those that are brought for the Headship of Councils These texts are spoke to so fully by Chamier Whitaker Amesius and abundance more that I think it in vain to do it here again That of 1 Tim. 3. 15. that the Church is the pillar and ground of Truth doth not speak a word of a General Council nor a word of Headship The whole Church united in Christ is the Pillar and Ground that is the certain Receptacle and retainer of the Truth the Law of Christ being written in their hearts None seems more to favour their concecit then Ephes 4. 15 16. which Grotius fastens on But even that is against them and not for them For 1. It is Christ and only Christ that is here said to be the head and all other parts contradistinguished and excluded from Headship and the Body is not said to be united in them 2. And it is by association and mutual communication of their several gifts that the parts are compacted together and edifie the whole and not by meeting in any one and deriving from it Object But were not the Apostles General Officers and so the Church united in General officers Answ This is little to the Question For 1. the Apostles had one among them to be the Soveraign or Head of the rest but were of equal power 2. Nor did a major part of their whole number make such a Head for the Church to unite in nor do we read that ever a Major vote carryed it among them against a Minor for they were all guided by the Spirit Yet its true that they met ofter together then a General Council can 2. The Apostles as extraordinarily qualified and as the Secretaries of the Spirit have no successors But the Apostles as ambulatory unfixed Ministers had even then many companions For Barnabas Luke Apollo and abundance more did then go up and down preaching as well as the Apostles yet had not any one of them a special charge of Governing all the Churches nor yet all of them united in a body For the Apostles called not the Evangelists and other fellow workers to consult in Councils about the Government of the whole But both they and their helpers did severally what they could to teach and settle the Churches 3. Who be they now that are the Apostles successors If all the Bishops in the world the case is as we left it If any small number of Primates or Patriarcks how shall we know which and how many If they be not twelve why should one Apostle have a successor and not others But there are no twelve only that lay claim to the succession And if you go further who can limit and say who and how many they be and how far the number may be increased or decreased and by whom In Cyprians dayes he and his fellows in the Council at Carthage declare that all Bishops were equal and none had power over other And so thought others in those times Nor was there then any number of Bishops that claimed to be the sole successors of the Apostles to rule all the rest And if they had when the Church increaseth the Rulers must increase But this is not to the main point Argum. 20. The Scripture doth appropriate the Universal Headship to Christ only and deny it to all others therefore neither Pope nor Council are the Universal Head Eph. 5. 23. It is the peculiar Title of Christ to be Head of the Church to whom it must be subject 1 Cor. 11. 3. The Apostle would have us know that the Head of every man is Christ and the head of the woman is the man and the Head of Christ is God So that there is a particular Head over some parcell of the body below Christ but to be the Universal Head of every man is the proper Title of Christ In 1 Cor. 12. the unity of the body and diversity of the members is more largely expressed then any where else in Scripture and there when the said unity of the body had been so fully mentioned the Apostle comes to name the Head of that Unity Vers 27. which is only Christ Now ye are the body of Christ and members in particular The Church is never called the body of the Pope or of a Council but the body of Christ yea as was even now said in the next words the Apostles Prophets and Teachers are enumerated to the particular members contradistinct from the Head so far are all or any one of them from being the head themselves And in Col. 2. 10 17 19. it is Christ only that is called the Head and the body is said to be of Christ and he only is mentioned as the Center of its Unity And not holding the Head from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministred and knit together increaseth with the increase of God And Col. 1. 18. And he is the Head of the body the Church If any say that you cannot hence argue Negatively that therefore no one else is the Head I answer They may as well say when it is affirmed that the Lord he is God you cannot thence conclude that Baal is not God The Apostle plainly speaks this of Christ as his peculiar honour And he spoke to men that knew well enough that natural bodies have but one Head unless they be Monsters And he would not so oft insist on this Metaphor intending so great a disparity in the similitude and never discover any such intention So in Ephes 1. 22. He gave him to be Head over all things to the Church which is his Body the fulness of him that filleth all in all And in Ephes 4. the Apostle purposely exhorteth us to the observation of this unity and purposely telleth us by a large enumeration wherein it doth consist but in all he never mentioneth the Pope or a Council yea he plainly excludeth them Vers 3 4. c. Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace There is one body and one spirit even as you are called in one hope of your calling One Lord One Faith One Baptism One God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in you all But unto every one of us is given Grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ He gave some Apostles and some Prophets and some Evangelists and some Pastors and Teachers for the perfecting of the Saints for the work of the Ministry for the Edifying of the body of Christ till we all come in the unity of the