of Athanasius therefore all things defined by the Church are eo nomine necessary to Salvation Other particulars concerning that Creed as to its Antiquity and Authority we may have occasion afterwards more at large to discuss it sufficeth now that nothing is thence produced pertinent to the present Controversie His Lordship in the progress of this Discourse takes away that slight and poor evasion That the Declaration of the Church makes any thing Fundamental quoad nos because that no respect to us can vary the Foundation And that the Churches Declaration can bind us only to peace and external obedience where there is not express letter of Scripture and sense agreed on but it cannot make any thing Fundamental to us that is not so in its own nature For saith he if the Church can so add that it can by a Declaration make a thing to be Fundamental in the Faith that was not then it can take a thing away from the Foundation and make it by declaring not to be Fundamental which all men grant no power of the Church can do For the power of adding any thing contrary and of detracting any thing necessary are alike forbidden and alike denyed Now you say That all this is satisfied by the foresaid distinction of material and formal Object and you desire the Reader to carry along with him this distinction of objectum materiale formale materia attestata authoritas attestantis and he will easily discover the fallacies of his Lordship's Discourse in this main Point of Controversie and solve all his difficulties supported by them No doubt an excellent Amulet to preserve from the infection of reason But it is your great mishap that where you commend it so much it doth you so little service For let your distinction of formal and material Object be supposed as sound and good as I have shewed it in your sense to be false and fallacious yet it doth not reach that part of his Lordship's Discourse which you apply it to For still his reason is conclusive though the necessity only be supposed to arise from the Churches Authority yet if it be in the power of the Church to make any thing necessary which was not why may it not be equally in her power to make something not necessary which was For either the grounds of the necessity of things to Salvation doth depend on the Doctrine of the Gospel as at first declared to the world or it doth not If it doth then it is not in the Churches Power to make any thing necessary which was not made necessary by it if it doth not then the Church may as well pretend to a power to make something not necessary which was as to make something necessary which was not So that your distinction of Formal and Material Object signifies nothing at all here only this is observable that you make the Churches Definition to be the Formal Object of Faith here which you very solemnly contradict afterwards Chap. 5. § 4. And can any thing be more evident from this Discourse of yours than that you make the last resolution of Faith as to the necessity of things to be believed into the Churches Definition as its Formal Object But this distinction with the grounds of it being removed in our former Discourse I shall ease my self and the Reader of any further labour in examining what follows in this Chapter which depends wholly upon it or else run out into the Churches Infallibility the infallible Assent requisite to Faith the Canon of Scripture and our certainty of it or the Authority of General Councils all which shall be fully and particularly examined in their proper places There being nothing said here but what either hath been answered already or will be more at large in a more convenient place The only things remaining then in this Chapter which deserve a further discussion here are the testimonies of Scotus and S. Austin and the Discourses which depend thereon For our better clearing the testimony of Scotus in which you charge his Lordship with falsification we must consider on what account and for what purposes that testimony is produced His Lordship had said before That Fundamentals are a Rock immovable and can never be varied therefore what is Fundamental after the Church hath defined it was Fundamental before the definition and no Decrees of Councils how general soever can alter immovable Verities wherefore if the Church in a Council define any thing the thing defined is not fundamental because the Church hath defined it nor can be made so by the definition of the Church if it be not so in it self For if the Church hath this power she might make a New Article of Faith which the learned among themselves deny For the Articles of Faith cannot increase in substance but only in explication For which he appeals to Bellarmin Nor saith he Is this hard to be further proved out of your own School For Scotus professeth it in this very particular of the Greek Church If there be saith he a true real difference between the Greeks and Latins about the Point of the Procession of the Holy Ghost then either they or we be vere haeretici truly and indeed Hereticks Which he speaks of the old Greeks long before any decision of the Church in this Controversie For he instances in S. Basil and Greg. Nazianzen on one side and S. Jerome Augustine and Ambrose on the other And who dares call any of these Hereticks is his challenge That then which his Lordship proves by this testimony is that the nature of Heresie doth not depend on the Churches Definition but on the Nature of the things for according to Scotus antecedently to the Churches Definition if there had been any real difference between the Greeks and Latins one side of them had been Hereticks To this you answer That hence it follows not that Scotus thought they could be Hereticks unless they denyed or doubted of that which they had reason to believe was revealed by God But it only follows that if they knew this as those learned Greeks had sufficient reason to know it they might well be esteemed Hereticks before any special Declaration of the Church although it be more clear that he is an Heretick who denies to believe that Doctrine after he confesses that it is defined by the Church From which answer of yours several things are to our purpose observable 1. That the Formal Reason of Heresie is denying something supposed to be of Divine Revelation 2. That none can reasonably be accused of Heresie but such as have sufficient reason to believe that which they deny is revealed by God 3. That none can be guilty of Heresie for denying any thing declared by the Church unless they have sufficient reason to believe that whatever is declared by the Church is revealed by God Which unavoidably follows from the former and therefore the Churches Definition cannot
Doctrine is meant the adhering to that Doctrine which God hath revealed as necessary in his Word but by the Definitions of the teaching Church you understand a Power to make more things necessary to the Salvation of all than Christ hath made so that joyn these two together the Consequence is this If the Pastors of the Church may and ought to keep men from believing any other Doctrine then they have power to impose another Doctrine which things are so contradictious to each other that none but one of your faculty would have ventured to have set one to prove the other Therefore when you would prove any thing by this Argument your Medium must be this That the Pastors of the Church are a Foundation of constancy in Doctrine by laying New Foundations of Doctrines by her Definitions which is just as if you would prove That the best way to keep a House entire without any additions is to build another house adjoyning to it But say you further Were not the Apostles in their times who were Ecclesia docens by their Doctrine and Decrees a Foundation to the Church which was taught by them Doth not S. Paul expresly affirm it superaedificati supra Fundamentum Apostolorum c. To which I answer 1. That the Apostles were not therefore said to be the Foundation on which they were built who believed on that Doctrine because by virtue of their Power they could define or decree any thing to be necessary to Salvation which was not so before but because they were the Instruments whereby the things which were necessary to Salvation were conveyed to them And because their Authority by virtue of their Mission and the Power accompanying it was the means whereby they were brought to believe the Doctrin of the Gospel as in it self true But there is a great deal of difference between teaching what is necessary to Salvation and making any thing necessary to Salvation which was before meerly because it is taught by them 2. I grant that those things did become necessary to be believed which the Apostles taught but it was either because the things were in themselves necessary in order to the end declared viz. Man's Salvation or else it was on the account of that evidence which the Apostles gave that they were persons immediately imployed by God to deliver those Doctrines to them But still here is nothing becoming necessary by virtue of a Decree or Definition but by virtue of a Testimony that what they delivered came from God 3. When the Apostles delivered these things the Doctrine of the Gospel was not made known to the world but they were chosen by God and infallibly assisted for that end that they might reveal it to the world And this is certainly a very different case from that when the Doctrine of Salvation is fully revealed and delivered down to us in unquestionable records And therefore if you will prove any thing to your purpose you must prove as great and as divine assistance of the Spirit in the Church representative of all Ages as was in the Apostles in the first Age of the Christian Church 4. When you say from hence That the Apostles as the teaching Church laid the Foundation of the Church taught that can only be understood of those Christians who became a Church by the Apostles preaching the Doctrine of the Gospel to them but this is quite a different thing from laying the Foundation of a Church already in being as your Church taught and diffusive is supposed to be Can you tell us where the Apostles are said to lay further Foundations for Churches already constituted that they made or declared more things necessary to Salvation than were so antecedently to their being a Church But this is your case you pretend a power in your Church representative to make more things necessary to Salvation than were before to a Church already in Being and therefore supposed to believe all things necessary to Salvation You see therefore what a vast disparity there is in the case and how far the Apostles declaring the Doctrine of Christ and thereby founding Churches is from being an Argument that the representative Church may lay the Foundation of the Church diffusive which being a Church already must have its Foundation laid before all new Decrees and Definitions of the teaching Church So that still it unavoidably follows upon your principles That the Church must lay her own Foundation and then the Church must have been in absolute and perfect Being before so much as her Foundation is laid Your weak endeavour of retorting this upon the Bishop because of the Apostles teaching the Church of their Age only shews that you have a good will to say something in behalf of so bad a cause but that you want ability to do it as appears by the Answers already given as to the difference of the Apostles case and yours The subsequent Section which is spent in a weak defence of A. C's words hath the less cause to be particularly examined and besides its whole strength lyes on things sufficiently discussed already viz. the sufficient Proposition of matters of Faith and the Material and Formal Object of it That which follows pretending to something New and which looks like Argumentation must be more distinctly considered Cs. words are That if one may deny or doubtfully dispute against any one Determination of the Church then he may against another and another and so against all since all are made firm to us by one and the same Divine Revelation sufficiently applied by one and the same full Authority of the Church which being weakned in any one cannot be firm in any other To which his Lordship answers 1. That this is understood only of Catholick Maxims which are properly Fundamental by Vincentius Lirinensis from whom this Argument is derived 2. He denies that all Determinations of the Church are made firm to us by one and the same Divine Revelation 3. He denies that all Determinations of the Church are sufficiently applied by one and the same full Authority of the Church Of each of these he gives his reasons the examination and defence of which is all that remains of this Chapter To the first you answer three things for I must digest your Answers for you 1. That there is no evidence that A. C. borrowed this from Vincentius and you give an excellent reason for it because good wits may both hit on the same thing or at least come near it which had it been said of your self had been more unquestionable but to let that pass 2. You tell us That the Doctrine is true whosoever said it For which you give this reason For the same reason which permits not our questioning or denying the prime Maxims of Faith permits not our questioning or denying any other Doctrine declared by the Church because it is not the greatness or smalness of the matter that moves us to give firm Assent
a revelation for what he did And the answer to this had been only pertinent and satisfactory So that he might have no reason to question it although he did not believe any thing more then common fidelity in his Fathers testimony For God never when revelations were most common thought it necessary to multiply revelations so far as to make one necessary to attest another but that revelation which was communicated to one was obligatory to all concerned in it though they could have nothing but Moral certainty for it By this it appears that when we now speak of the resolution of Faith though the utmost reason of our assent is that Infallibility which is supposed in Divine Testimony yet the nearest and most proper resolution of it is into the grounds inducing us to believe that such a Testimony is truly Divine and the resolution of this cannot be into any Divine Testimony without a process in infinitum 2. That when we speak of the resolution of Faith by Faith we understand a rational and discursive act of the mind For Faith being an assent upon evidence or reason inducing the mind to assent it must be a rational and discursive act and such a one that one may be able to give an account of to another And this account which men are able to give why they do believe or on what ground they do it is that which we call resolving Faith And by this it appears that whatever resolves Faith into its efficient cause which some improperly call the Testimony of the spirit though it may be true yet comes not home to the question For if by the Testimony of the spirit be meant that operation of the spirit whereby saving Faith is wrought in us then it gives no account from the thing to be believed why we assent to it but only shews how Faith is wrought in us by way of efficiency which is rather resolving the question about the necessity of Grace than the grounds of Faith Our question is not then concerning the necessity of infused habits of Grace but of those rational inducements which do incline the mind to a firm assent For Faith in us however it is wrought being a perswasion of the mind it is not conceivable how there should be any discursive act of the mind without some reason causing the mind to assent to what is propounded to it For without this Faith would be an unaccountable thing and the spirit of revelation would not be the spirit of wisdom and Religion would be exposed to the contempt of all unbelievers if we were able to give no other account of Faith then that it is wrought in us by the Spirit of God When we speak therefore of the resolving Faith we mean what are the rational inducements to believe or what evidence there is in the object propounded to make us firmly assent to it 3. According to the different acts of Faith there must be assigned a different resolution of Faith For every act being rational and discursive must have its proper grounds belonging to it unless we suppose that act elicited without any reason for it which is incongruous with the nature of the humane understanding There are then in the question of resolution of Faith these three questions to be resolved First Why I believe those things to be true which are contained in the Book called the Scripture 2. Why I believe the Doctrine contained in that Book to be Divine 3. Why I believe the Books themselves to be of Divine revelation Now every one of these questions admits of a different way of resolution as will appear by the handling each of them distinctly 1. If I be asked On what grounds I believe the things to be true which are contained in Scripture my answer must be From the greatest evidence of truth which things of that nature are capable of If therefore the persons who are supposed to have writ these things were such who were fully acquainted with what they writ of if they were such persons who cannot be suspected of any design to deceive men by their writings and if I be certain that these which go under the name of their writings are undoubtedly theirs I must have sufficient grounds to believe the truth of them Now that the writers of these things cannot be suspected of ignorance appears by the time and age they writ in when the story of these things was new and such multitudes were willing enough to have contradicted it if any thing had beeen amiss besides some of the writers had been intimately conversant with the person and actions of him whom they writ most of That they could have no intent to deceive appears from the simplicity and candour both of their actions and writings from their contempt of the world and exposing themselves to the greatest hazards to bear witness to them That these are the very same writings appears by all the evidence can be desired For we have as great if not much greater reason to believe them to be the Authors of the Books under their Names than any other writers of any Books whatsoever both because the matters are of greater moment and therefore men might be supposed more inquisitive about them and that they have been unanimously received for 〈◊〉 from the very time of their being first written except some very few which upon strict examination were admitted too and we find these very Books cited by the learned Christians under these Names in that time when it had been no difficulty to have found out several of the Original Copy's themselves When therefore they were universally received by Christians never doubted of by Jews or Heathen Philosophers we have as great evidence for this first act of Faith as it is capable of And he is unreasonable who desires more 2. If I be asked why I believe the Doctrine contained in these Books to be Divine I must give in two things for answer 1. That in the Age when the Doctrine was delivered there was sufficient reason to believe it Divine 2. That if there was sufficient reason then we have sufficient reason now 1. That in the Age when the Doctrine was delivered there was sufficient reason to believe it Divine Supposing then that we already believe upon the former answer that all the matters of fact be true I answer that if Christ did such unparalleâ—d miracles and rose from the dead they who heard his Doctrine had reason to believe it to be of God and this I suppose the greatest Infidel would not deny if himself had been one of the witnesses of his actions and resurection 2. That if they had reason then we have so now because tradition to us doth only supply the want of our senses as to what Christ did and spake i. e. That tradition is a kind of derivative and perpetuated sensation to us it being of the same use to us now which our eyes and ears had been if we had been
Scriptures do convey to them We own therefore the Apostles as Gods immediate Embassadours whose miracles did attest their commission from Heaven to all they came to and no persons could pretend ignorance that this is Gods hand and Seal but all other Pastors of the Church we look on only as Agents settled to hold correspondency between God and Vs but no extraordinary Embassadours who must be looked on as immediately transacting by the Infallible Commission of Heaven When therefore the Pastor or Pastors of your Church shall bring new Credentials from Heaven attested with the same Broad-seal of Heaven which the Apostles had viz. Miracles we shall then receive them in the same capacity as Apostles viz. acting by an Infallible Commission but not till then By which I have given a sufficient Answer to what follows concerning the credit which is given to Christ's Legats as to himself for hereby it appears they are to have no greater authority than their Commission gives them Produce therefore an Infallible Commission for your Pastors Infallibility either apart or conjunctly and we shall receive it but not else Whether A.C. in the words following doth in terms attribute Divine and Infallible authority to the Church supposing it infallibly assisted by the Holy Ghost is very little material for Whether he owns it or no it is sufficient that it necessarily follows from his Doctrine of Infallibility For How can the Church be infallible by virtue of those Promises wherein Divine Infallibility you say is promised and by virtue of which the Apostles had Divine Infallibility and yet the Church not to be divinely Infallible The remainder of this Chapter which concerns the sense of the Fathers in this Controversie will particularly be considered in the next which is purposely designed for it CHAP. IX The Sense of the Fathers in this Controversie The Judgement of Antiquity enquired into especially of the three first Centuries and the reasons for it The several Testimonies of Justin Martyr Athenagoras Tatianus Irenaeus Clemens Alexandrinus and all the Fathers who writ in vindication of Christian Religion manifested to concurr fully with our way of resolving Faith C's Answers to Vincentius Lyrinensis à Gandavo and the Fathers produced by his Lordship pitifully weak The particulars of his 9th Chapter examined S. Augustine's Testimony vindicated C's nauseous Repetitions sent as Vagrants to their several homes His Lordships Considerations found too heavy for C's Answers In what sense the Scripture may be called a Praecognitum What way the Jews resolved their Faith This Controversie and the first Part concluded HAving thus largely considered whatever you could pretend to for the advantage of your own cause or the prejudice of ours from Reason and Scripture nothing can be supposed to remain considerable but the judgement of the Primitive Church in this present Controversie And next to Scripture and Reason I attribute so much to the sense of the Christian Church in the ages next succeeding the Apostles that it is no mean confirmation to me of the truth of the Protestant Way of resolving Faith and of the falsity of yours that I see the one so exactly concurring and the other so apparently contrary to the unanimous Consent of Antiquity For though you love to make a great noise with Antiquity among persons meanly conversant in it yet those who do seriously and impartially enquire into the sense of the Primitive Church and not guess at it by the shreds of Citations to your hands in your own writers which is generally your way will scarce in any thing more palpably discern your jugling and impostures then in your pretence to Antiquity I shall not here enquire into the corruptions crept into your Church under that disguise but as occasion is ministred to me in the following discourse shall endeavour to pluck it off but shall keep close to the matter in question Three things then I design in this Chapter 1. To shew the concurrence of Antiquity with us in the resolution of Faith 2. Examine what you produce from thence either to assert your own way or enervate ours 3. Consider what remains of this Controversie in your Book 1. For the manifesting the concurrence of Antiquity with us I shall confine my present discourse to the most pure and genuine Antiquity keeping within the compass of the three first Centuries or at least of those who have purposely writ in vindication of the Christian Faith Not that I do in the least distrust the consent of the succeeding Writers of the Primitive Church but upon these Reasons 1. Because it would be too large a task at present to undertake since no necessity from what you object but only my desire to clear the Truth and rectifie the mistakes of such who are led blindfold under the pretence of Antiquity hath led me to this discourse 2. Because in reason they could not but understand best the waies and methods used by the Apostles for the perswading men to the Christian Faith and if they had mentioned any such thing as an Infallibility alwaies to continue in the Charch those Pastors certainly who received the care of the Church from the Apostles hands could not but have heard of it And were strangely to blame if they did not discover and make use of it Whatever therefore of truly Apostolical Tradition is to be relyed on in such cases must be conveyed to us from those persons who were the Apostles immediate Successors and if it can be made manifest that they heard not of any such thing in that when occasion was offered they are so far from mentioning it that they take such different waies of satisfying men which do manifestly suppose that they did not believe it I know some of the greatest Patrons of the Church of Rome and such who know best how to manage things with best advantage for the interest of that Church have made little account of the three first ages and confined themselves within the compass of the four first Councils upon this pretence because the Books and Writers are so rare before and that those persons who lived then had no occasion to write of the matters in Controversie between them and us But if the ground why those other things which are not determined in Scripture are to be believed by us and practised as necessary be that they were Apostolical Traditions Who can be more competent Judges what was so and what not then those who lived nearest the Apostolical times and those certainly if they writ of any thing could not write of any thing of more concernment to the Christian world than the knowledge of such things would be or at least we cannot imagine but that we should find express intimations of them where so many so wise and learned persons do industriously give an account of themselves and their solemn actions to their Heathen persecutors But however silent they may be in other things which they neither heard nor thought of as in the
one of these three Answers 1. That it is a Principle to be supposed for though it be supposed as to the particular debate depending on Scripture yet it is fond and absurd to say It must be supposed when it is the thing in question 2. That it is known meerly by its own Light for the person I have to deal with supposing himself equally capable to judge of Reason and Evidence as my self it doth but betray the weakness of my cause or my inability to manage it to pretend that to be evident which it is much more evident that he doth not think so and it is only to tell him my Vnderstanding must rule his and that whatever appears to me to have Light in it self ought likewise so appear to him 3. It is as absurd as either of the other two to say That you will prove to a rational Enquirer the Scripture to be Gods Word by an unwritten Word of God For 1. His Enquiry is Whether there be any Word of God or no you prove there is because there is for that is all you prove by your unwritten Word He denies or at least questions Whether there be any and particularly instanceth in Scripture you think to end the Question by telling him He must believe it to be so because there is another Word of God which attests it which instead of ending the first Question begets a great many more For 2. He will be more to seek concerning this unwritten Word than before because he might use his Reason in judging concerning the written Word but cannot as to this unwritten it being only told him There is such a thing but he knows not what it is how far it extends who must deliver it what evidence this hath beyond the other that it comes from God that it must be used as an argument to prove it with If you send him to the Infallibility of the Church you must either presume him of a very weak Vnderstanding or else he would easily discern your perfect jugling in this the veins of which I have discovered throughout this discourse There remains nothing then but Reason a Principle common to us both by which I must prove that the Scriptures are from God which Reason partly makes use of the Churches Tradition not in any notion of Infallibility but meerly as built on Principles common to humane nature and partly uses those other arguments which prove by the greatest rational evidence that the Doctrine contained in Scripture was from God and if this were all the meaning of saying The Scriptures are a Principle supposed because of a different way of proving them from particular objects of Faith you can have no reason to deny it The next thing his Lordship insists on is That the Jews never had nor can have any other proof that the Old Testament is the Word of God than we have of the New In your Answer to which I grant that which you contend for That the Tradition of Scriptures among them was by their immediate Ancestors as well as others I grant That their Faith was not a Scientifical Knowledge but a firm perfect assurance only but understand not what you mean by saying That otherwise it would not be meritorious but am as far to seek as ever for any Infallibility in the Jewish Church which should in every age be the ground of believing the Books of the Old Testament to be divinely inspired And if you will prove a constant succession of Prophets from Moses till our Saviour's appearing which you seem willing to believe you would do something towards it but for your permanent Infallible Authority in the High Priest and his Clergy I have already shewed it to be a groundless if not a wilful mistake What remains concerning the nature of Infallibility which at last his Lordship makes to be no more than that which excludes all possibility of doubting and therefore grants that an Infallible Assurance may be had by Ecclesiastical and Humane proof and how far that is requisite to Faith concerning moral Certainty and what Assurance may be had by it concerning the Canon of Scripture Apostolical Tradition the unwritten Word S. Austin 's Testimony about the Church they are all points so fully discussed before that out of pity to the Reader I must referr him to their several places which when he hath throughly considered I will give him leave to summ up the several victories you have obtained in the management of it which will be much more honourable for you than for your self to do it as you do most triumphantly in the end of this Controversie concerning the Resolution of Faith And although I have not been much surprized with your attempts yet I shall heartily conclude this great Debate with your last words in it The Consequence I leave to the serious consideration of the Judicious Reader I beseech God he may make benefit of it to his eternal felicity PART II. Of Schism CHAP. I. Of the Universal Church The Question of Schism explained The nature of it enquired into Several general Principles laid down for clearing the present Controversie Three grounds of the charge of Schism on Protestant Churches by our Authour The first of the Roman Churches being the Catholick Church entered upon How far the Roman Church may be said to be a true Church The distinction of a Church morally and metaphysically true justified The grounds of the Vnity of the Catholick Church as to Doctrine and Government Cardinal Perron's distinction of the formal causal and participative Catholick Church examined The true sense of the Catholick Church in Antiquity manifested from St. Cyprian and several cases happening in his time as the Schism of Novatianus at Rome the case of Felicissimus and Fortunatus Several other Instances out of Antiquity to the same purpose by all which it is manifest that the unity of the Catholick Church had no dependance on the Church of Rome The several testimonies to the contrary of St. Ambrose St. Hierome John Patriarch of Constantinople St. Augustine Optatus c. particularly examined and all found short of proving that the Roman Church is the Catholick Church The several Answers of his Lordship to the testimonies of St. Cyprian St. Hierom St. Greg. Nazianzene St. Cyril and Ruffinus about the infallibility of the Church of Rome justified From all which it appears that the making the Roman-Church to be the Catholick is a great Novelty and perfect Jesuitism SInce so great and considerable parts of the Christian Church have in these last ages been divided in communion from each other the great contest and enquiry hath been which party stands guilty of the cause of the present distance and separation For both sides retain still so much of their common Christianity as to acknowledge that no Religion doth so strictly oblige the owners of it to peace and unity as the Christian Religion doth and yet notwithstanding this we finde these
necessary to be amended afterwards by some other Council which can pretend to no higher assistance than the other had before But your critical judgement is not extraordinary if you will have the signification of words taken from the conjectural Etymologies of them such as this of Scaliger is in the place where he corrects Varro's Etymologies at the end of his Conjectanea but besides that all attempts of that nature are but Conjectural Essayes it is but an ill way to judge of the use of a word by the Etymology of it for What multitudes of words are carried further in their sense than their Originals would bear His Lordship therefore takes a far surer way to know S. Austin's meaning than running to Martinius for the signification of the word menda which is by producing a parallel place in S. Austin where it is taken for to correct and supposes an evident fault aliud quod praecipere jubemur aliud quod emendare praecipimur where emendare is plainly to amend something amiss not to supply something defective So that Stapleton's sense of amending by explication of something not fully known and not by correction of something erroneous cannot here have place For as his Lordship well observes the National Council which S. Austin did in this dispute speak most of was not guilty meerly of not fully explaining it self but of a positive errour viz. that under S. Cyprian determining that Baptism of Hereticks was no Baptism And therefore when S. Austin speaks of amendment it is such an amendment as doth suppose errour and not barely defect And so the words used before of reprehension and yielding do both imply more than a bare explanation and those which follow after evince it fully where S. Austin layes down the cautions whereby such amendments should be made without sacrilegious pride or swelling arrogancy without contention of envy and in holy humility in Catholick peace in Christian Charity All which words were very needless if he meant only an explanation of something not fully declared before but are very necessary supposing it to be the amendment of some former errour All the Answer you have is That these last words relate not in particular to General Councils by no means although they follow them at the heels but to the other several subjects viz. private Bishops Provincial and National Councils which are subject to pride arrogancy and contention in their emendations But Was not S. Austin an unhappy man then at expressing himself that he must needs set those Caveats after he had spoken of General Councils which referr to the particulars that went before without any reference to the immediate antecedents For if they do at all respect the proceedings of General Councils as doubtless they do and that most immediately as appears to any one who reads them then they imply still that this amendment of General Councils must be done without pride arrogance and envy and with the greatest humility and peace and charity which it is hard to conceive why S. Austin should add unless he supposed some errours to be amended in them Nothing remains further for the clearing this place but only that his Lordship mentions that which he calls The poorest shift of all in Bellarmin viz. that he speaks of unlawful Councils and it is a sign it is so indeed when you have nothing more to say for it but only that it was given ex superabundanti and with a Peradventure When his Lordship concludes that the Popes Confirmation to make Councils Infallible is a meer trick and unknown to the ancient Church you have nothing more to prove it to be grounded on the practice of Councils of the Church and of Reason but to referr the Reader back to what you have said about the Popes Supremacy and therefore I must do so too for an Answer to what you have said on that subject The next thing which belongs to this Question is contained in his Lordships sixth Consideration which is If the definition of a General Council be Infallible then the Infallibility of it is either in the conclusion and in the means that prove it or in the conclusion not the means or in the means not the conclusion But it is Infallible in none of these Not in the first for there are divers deliberations in General Councils where the conclusion is Catholick but the means by which they prove it not Infallible Not in the second for the conclusion must alwaies follow the nature of the premises or principles out of which it is deduced therefore if those which the Council uses be sometimes uncertain the conclusion cannot be Infallible Not in the third for the conclusion cannot but be true and necessary if the means be so Your Answer is That it is Infallible in the conclusion that is in the Doctrine defined though it be not Infallible in the means or arguments upon which it proceeded to the definition And your reason is because one is necessary for the Government of the Church but the other is not for Deus non deficit in necessariis nec redundat in superfluis You mean it is necessary for you to assert it whether it hath any foundation in reason or no for you have not yet proved that the Infallibility of General Councils is necessary for the Churches Government and therefore cannot thence inferr so great an absurdity as this that where all the premises are fallible and uncertain yet the conclusion may be prophetical and Infallible But so involved and obscure are your discourses on this subject that while you pretend a General Council is seeing Visions one might easily believe you were dreaming dreams For I pray speak out and tell us what you mean by Councils being fallible in the use of means and yet Infallible in the conclusion drawn from those premises which she was fallible in the deducing the conclusion from For the deducing the conclusion is in the use of the means therefore how is it possible that the Council should be Infallible in the conclusion when it was fallible in making that Conclusion But it may be I do not yet fully apprehend what you would have neither I doubt do you For you would fain be Infallible in the conclusion too without so much as truth in the premises But I shall attempt to make you speak intelligibly it must be one of these two things you mean when you say Councils are Infallible in the conclusion either that they are Infallible in deducing the Conclusion or in assenting to the Conclusion If Infallible in the deducing the Conclusion then it must be Infallible in the use of the means for unless it doth infallibly discern the connexion of the premises it is impossible it should be Infallible in drawing the Conclusion from them So that it is non-sense and a contradiction to say That a Council is Infallible in the drawing a Conclusion and not Infallible in the use of the means for
as his reason but the departing from the Institution of Christ and this is done by one as well as the other But he adds That there was a precept for that Do this And so say we was there as plain for the other Drink ye all of this So that the parity of reason is evident for the one as well as the other Upon the same ground doth Pope Julius afterwards condemn the using milk instead of wine because contrary to Christs Institution and so he doth the dipping the bread in the Chalice From whence we inferr that they looked on Christs Example and Institution in the administration to be unalterable But most express is the Testimony of Pope Gelasius who finding some from the remainders of Manichaism did abstain from the Cup gives express order That they who were infected with this odde superstition either should receive the whole Sacrament or abstain wholly from it because the dividing one and the same mystery cannot be done without great sacriledge To this Bellarmin tells us two Answers are commonly given one That these words are meant of Priests another That they relate only to those superstitious persons but both of them are sufficiently taken off by the reason assigned which is not fetched either from their Priesthood or Superstition but only from the Institution of Christ that it would be sacriledge to part those things which Christ by his Institution had joyned together Thus we see the sense of the Church is clear not only for the practice but the command too and the sinfulness of the violation of it Although to you one would think it were wholly needless to prove any more than the Vniversal Practice since the Tradition of the Church is equal with you with an unwritten word but that is when it makes for your purpose and not otherwise For in this case though the Institution be express the universal practice of the Church for at least a thousand years unquestionable yet because it contradicts the present sense and practice of your Church all this signifies nothing at all with you So true is it that it is neither Scripture nor Antiquity which you really regard but Interest and the Present Church And what Cusanus like a downright man spake out in this case is that you must all at last take sanctuary in That the Scriptures must be interpreted according to the current practice of the Church and therefore it is no wonder if they be interpreted at one time one way and another time another way And though this seem a very great absurdity yet it is no more than is necessary to be said by such who maintain things so contrary to Scripture and the practice of former ages of the Church But you are so far from thinking this contrary to the practice of the Church in former ages that you say Not only in S. Thomas his time but in all times of the Church it was both publickly allowed and commonly by some practised even in Churches to receive under one kind only A bold Assertion and which is confidently denied by very many of your own Communion For not only Cassander often confesses that for above a thousand years after Christ no instance can be produced of publick Communion in one kind But Father Barns acknowledges not only that Communion in both kinds is much more agreeable to Scripture Fathers and the Vniversal Church but that per se loquendo jure divino praescribitur taking it in it self it is commanded by a Divine Law But I know these men are too honest for you to own them but as to the universal practice of the Church it is confessed by Ruardus Alphonsus à Castro Lindanus and many others But we need no more than your S. Thomas himself even in that very place where you say He rather makes for you than against you for when he saies that Providè in quibusdam Ecclesiis observatur ut populo sanguis non detur It was a custom providently observed in some Churches not to give the Sacrament in the form of wine to the Laity He thereby shews indeed that in his time about A. D. 1260. this custom did in some places obtain but yet so that the universal practice had been to the contrary for so much is confessed by him in his Commentaries on S. John where his words are secundum antiquam in Ecclesiâ consuetudinem omnes sicut communicabant corpori ita communicabant sanguini quod etiam adhuc in quibusdam Ecclesiis servatur According to the anceint custom of the Church all did communicate in both kinds which as yet is observed in some Churches Now Whether the universal practice of the Church in former times or the practice of some Churches in his time were more agreeable to the Divine Institution we may appeal to Aquinas himself who elsewhere gives this account Why the elements of bread and wine were made use of and delivered severally That they might denote a complete refection and fully represent the death and passion of our Saviour On the same accounts Bonaventure and Alensis make both kinds necessary to the Integrity of the Sacrament And the latter who was Master to the two former saies expresly That whole Christ is not contained sacramentally under either kinds but his flesh under that of bread and his blood under that of wine Than which nothing can be more destructive to the Doctrine of Concomitancy And it is learnedly proved by Pet. Picherellus that the bread was appointed to represent not the body in its compleat substance but the meer flesh when the blood is out of it according to the division of the Sacrifices into flesh and blood from whence it appears that the Sacrifice of Christs death cannot be represented meerly by one kind and that whole Christ is not contained under one in the administration of it And therefore Alensis rightly determines that the res Sacramenti cannot be perfectly represented by one kind and thence sayes He that receives but in one kind doth not receive the Sacrament perfectly No wonder therefore that he tells us That some religious persons in his time when the contrary custom through the superstition of people had somewhat prevailed did earnestly desire that the Sacrament might again be received in both kinds Thus we see when this custom did begin reason and argument was still against it and nothing pleaded for it but only some superstitious fears of some accidental effusions of the blood of Christ. But you are the man who would still perswade us That Communion in one kind was not only publickly allowed but by some practised even in Churches in all times of the Church And therefore in reason we must give attendance to your impregnable demonstrations of it For otherwise say you How is it possible that the Manichees should find liberty and opportunity to communicate amongst Catholicks in Catholick Churches without being perceived since they never drank
he ever speak so concerning the Trinity or the Incarnation of Christ which you parallel with Purgatory What would men have thought of him if he had said of either of those Articles It is not incredible they may be true and it may be enquired into whether they be or no Whatever then St. Austins private opinion was we see he delivers it modestly and doubtfully not obtruding it as an Article of Faith or Apostolical Tradition if any be And the very same he repeats in his Answer to the first Question of Dulcitius so that this was all that ever he asserted as to this Controversie What you offer to the contrary from other places of St. Austin shall be considered in its due place 4. Where any of the Fathers build any Doctrine upon the sense of doubtful places of Scripture we have no further reason to believe that Doctrine then we have to believe that it is the meaning of those places So that in this case the enquiry is taken off from the judgement of the Fathers and fixed upon the sense of the Scriptures which they and we both rely upon For since they pretend themselves to no greater evidence of the truth of the Doctrine then such places do afford it is the greatest reason that the argument to perswade us be not the testimony of the Father but the evidence of the place it self Unless it be evident some other way that there was an universal Tradition in the Church from the Apostles times concerning it and that the only design of the Father was to apply some particular place to it But then such a Tradition must be cleared from something else besides the sense of some ambiguous places of Scripture and that Tradition manifested to be Vniversal both as to time and place These things being premised I now come particularly to examine the evidence you bring That all the Fathers both Greek and Latin did constantly teach Purgatory from the Apostles times and consequently that it must be held for an Apostolical Tradition or nothing can be And as you follow Bellarmin in your way of proving it so must I follow you and he divides his proofs you say into two ranks First Such who affirm prayer for the dead 2. Such who in the successive ages of the Church did expresly affirm Purgatory First with those who affirm prayer for the dead Which you say doth necessarily infer Purgatory whatever the Bishop vainly insinuates to the contrary The Question then between us is Whether that prayer for the dead which was used in the ancient Church doth necessarily inferr that Purgatory was then acknowledged This you affirm for say you If there were no other place or condition of being for departed souls but either Heaven or Hell surely it were a vain thing to pray for the dead especially to pray for the remission of their sins or for their refreshment ease rest relaxation of their pains as Ancients most frequently do From whence you add that Purgatory is so undenyably proved that the Relator finding nothing himself sufficient to Answer was forced to put us off to the late Primate of Armagh 's Answer to the Jesuits Challenge Which you say You have perused and find only there that the Authour proves that which none of you deny viz. That the prayers and commemorations used for the dead had reference to more souls than those in Purgatory But you attempt to prove That the nature and kind of those prayers do imply that they were intended for other ends than meerly that the body might be glorified as well as the soul and to praise God for the final happy end of the deceased Whereas that Answerer of the Jesuite would you say by his allegations insinuate to the Reader a conceit that it was used only for those two reasons and no other Which you say you must needs avouch to be most loudly untrue and so manifestly contrary to the Doctrine and practise of the Fathers as nothing can be more A high charge against two most Reverend and learned Primates together against the one as not being able to Answer and therefore turning it off to the other against the other for publishing most loud untruths instead of giving a true account of the grounds of the Churches practise It seems you thought it not honour enough to overcome one unless you led the other in triumph also but you do neither of them but only in your own fancy and imagination And never had you less cause to give out such big words then here unless it were to amuse the spectatours that they might not see how you fall before them For it was not the least distrust of his sufficiency to Answer which made his Lordship to put it oft to the Primate of Armagh but because he was prevented in it by him Who as he truly saith had very learnedly and at large set down other reasons which the Ancients gave for prayer for the dead without any intention to free them from Purgatory Which are not only different from but inconsistent with the belief of Purgatory for the clearing of which and vindicating my Lord Primate from your calumnies rather then answers it will be necessary to give a brief account of his Discourse on that subject He tells us therefore at first That we are here prudently to distinguish the Original institution of the Church from the private opinions of particular Doctors which waded further herein then the general intendment of the Church did give them warrant Now he evidently proves that the memorials oblations and prayers made for the dead at the beginning had reference to such as rested from their labours and not unto any souls which were thought to be tormented in that Vtopian Purgatory whereof there was no news stirring in those dayes This he gathers first by the practise of the ancient Christians laid down by the Authour of the Commentaries on Job who saith The memorials of the Saints were observed as a memorial of rest to the souls departed and that they therein rejoyced for their refreshing St. Cyprian saith they offered Sacrifices for them whom he acknowledgeth to have received of the Lord Palms and Crowns and in the Authour of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy the party deceased is described by him to have departed this life replenished with Divine joy as now not fearing any change to worse being come unto the end of all his labours and publickly pronounced to be a happy man and admitted into the society of the Saints and yet the Bishop prayes that God would forgive him all his sins he had committed through humane infirmity and bring him into the light and band of the living into the bosoms of Abraham Isaac and Jacob into the place from whence pain and sorrow and sighing flyeth And Saint Chrysostom shews that the funeral Ordinances of the Church were appointed to admonish the living that the parties deceased were in a state of joy and not of grief and
Lordship rebukes Mr. Fisher for citing King James so boldly for but two wayes it may be taken he adds 1. To lose such assistance as preserves from all errour 2. Or else from all fundamental errour this therefore his Lordship truely saith is an errour of the first sort and not of the latter Passing by therefore his Lordships expressions of his modesty which if an errour is one you are like to be secured from and his cautious expressions concerning the Greek Church which he highly shewed his wisdome in we come to consider how you prove the Greek Church guilty of fundamental errour You say You pass by his trifling and make way for truth I wonder not to see you reflect on his Lordship for his modesty considering how little of it you shew towards him let us then make way too but it is to see you and Truth combat together It is to be considered say you that now for many hundred years the whole Latine Church hath decreed and believed it to be flat Heresie in the Greeks and they decreed the contrary to be an Heresie in the Latin Church and both together condemned the opinion of the Grecians as Heretical in a General Council in Florentino how then bears it any shew of probability what some few of yesterday forced to it by an impossibility of otherwise avoiding the strength of Catholick arguments against them affirm that the matter of this Controversie was so small and inconsiderable that it is not sufficient to produce an Heresie on either side Is not this to make all the Churches of Christendome for many hundred years quite blind and themselves only clear and sharp-sighted which swelling presumption what spirit it argues and whence it proceeds all those who have learn'd from St. Augustin that Pride is the mother of Heresie will easily collect I grant this speech of St. Augustin to be true only let it be added that Pride is likewise the Mother of making Heresies as will appear in this present Controversie and whether we who vindicate the Greek Church from Heresie or you who would find the Bill against her to keep her from any rivalship with your Church be more guilty of Pride will be soon discovered but sure you believe us not only to be men of yesterday but to know nothing who should sentence the Greek Church for Heresie upon such feeble pretences as these are I know not what presumption that can be to say Men may be too forward on both sides in calling each other Hereticks and it may be not so much their Blindness as Pride and Passion which may make them do it But if they will condemn that for Heresie which is not so made appear to be upon any evidence from Scripture and Reason they were not so blind in defining it as we should be in following their judgement without further examination But this was for many hundred years The more to blame they for continuing in so rash judgements so long if it appear so But it is well still you tell us that as the Latin Church condemned the Greek for Heresie the Greek condemned the Latin for it too And so by your own rule the one was as blind as the other But the Latin Church had the right to determine Heresie and the Greek had not This is the question Which Church must be relyed on for judgement and if they mutually condemn each other we must have a higher rule to judge of both by But still Is it not an Argument that it is a Heresie of one side or the other because each party condemns the other of Heresie Just as much as if two men fall out and call each other Knaves it must be granted that if both be not yet at least the one of them is so Heresie being grown the scolding word in Religion and no two parties can differ but they seek to fasten this reproach on each other If one should bring greater evidence than the other of his Knavery he ought to be more accounted so No otherwise can it be here if sufficient proof be brought of Heresie on the one side and not the other that party may be looked on as more guilty but still remembring that the more confident affirmation the pretence to greater honesty and power be not taken for the only evidences of it As I doubt it will appear in our present case But still suppose that of two men who have so reproached each other the one of them being fallen into distress and poverty and not hoping for relief but from the other person and he denying it unless he be content by joynt-consent to be proclaimed Knave which he through his necessity yeilding to but assoon as that is over declaring on what account they agreed Must this man be more pittied for his Necessity or condemned for his Knavery Just such I shall make it appear that which you call condemning the Grecians as Heretical in a General Council at Florence to have been and no otherwise But I come to a closer examination of this Subject to see with what Justice you charge the Greek Church either with Heresie or Schism For both these you accuse it of in this Chapter Two things were the most in dispute between the Greek and Latin Churches the one was the Doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Ghost from Father and Son the other was concerning the addition of the Filióque to the Creed And although the Greeks in the debates at Ferrara would not meddle with the Doctrine before the Latins could clear themselves concerning the addition which they said was the main cause of the Contest between them yet I am content to follow your method and handle the other first Your discourse concerning the first consists of two parts Proofs and Answers Proofs of their Heresie and Answers to his Lordships Arguments against it The Proofs are double the one from Authority the other from Theological reason Through every of these particulars I shall follow you and from them I doubt not to evince that the Greeks are not guilty of the faults you lay to their charge We have already seen what your Proofs from Authority are their condemning one another for Hereticks and the Greeks being condemned by a General Council If I can therefore prove that the Greeks opinion was not accounted an Heresie before the Council of Florence and that it did not become a Heresie by the Council of Florence I shall sufficiently discover the weakness of your Arguments from authority 1. That it was not accounted a Heresie before the Council of Florence I mean not that there were no hot-brain'd persons in all the time of the difference who did not brand the Greek Church with Heresie but that it was never accounted a Heresie by any of those whom your selves account the only competent Judges of Heresie and those are either the Fathers or Popes or Councils which I prove in their order 1. That it was not
which the Emperour was fain to take a new course and exclude those from the Councils who were of greatest authority in obstructing his designs but Marcus Ephesius still continued in so great opposition that he publickly charged the Latins opinion with Heresie Notwithstanding all which when it was put to Suffrage Whether the Spirit did proceed from the Son for ten who affirmed it there were seventeen who denyed it which put them yet to more disquietment and new Councils At first the Emperour would vote himself which when the Patriarch kept him from some advised him to remove more of the Dissenters but instead of that they used a more plausible and effectual way the Emperour and Patriarch sent for them severally and some they upbraided with ingratitude others they caressed with all expressions of kindness both by themselves and their Instruments Yet at the last they could get but thirteen Bishops to affirm the Procession from the Son all others being excluded the power of giving Suffrage who were accustomed formerly to give it such as the great Officers of the Church of Constantinople the Coenobiarchs and others but to fill up the number all the Courtiers were called in who made no dispute but did presently what the Emperour would have them do Having dispatched this after this manner the other Controversies concerning the Addition to the Creed unleavened bread in the Eucharist Purgatory Pope's Supremacy the Emperour agreed them privately never so much as communicating them to the Greek Synod Among the Emperours Instruments the Bishop of Mitylene went roundly to work saying openly Let the Pope give me so many Florens to be distributed to whom I think fit and I make no question but to bring them in very readily to subscribe the Vnion which he accordingly effected and the same way was taken with several others by which and other means most of those who were excluded from the Suffrages were at last perswaded to Subscribe This is the short account of the management of those affairs at Florence which are more particularly and largely prosecuted by the Author wherein we see what Clandestine Arts what menaces and insinuations what threats and promises were used to bring the poor Greeks to consent to this pretended Vnion For it afterwards appeared to be no more than pretended for the infinitely greater number of Bishops at home refused it and these very Bishops themselves when they saw what arts were used in it fell ofâ— from it again and the Emperour found himself at last deceived in his great expectations of help from the Latins Must we then acknowledge this for a free and General Council which hath a promise of Infallibility annexed to the definitions of it Shall we from hence pronounce the Greeks Doctrine to be Heretical when for all these proceedings yet at last no more was agreed on than that they did both believe the Procession from the Son without condemning the other opinion as Heretical as you pretend which the Greeks would never have consented to or Anathematizing the persons who denyed it as was usual in former General Councils who did suppose it not enough to have it virtually done by the positive definition but did expresly and formally do it For when this Anathematizing dissenters was propounded among the Greeks by Bessarion of Nice and Isidore of Russia who for their great service to the Pope in this business were made Cardinals it was refused by the rest who were zealous promoters of the Vnion Thus I have at large more out of a design to vindicate the Greek Church than being necessitated to it by any thing you produce shewed that there is no reason from Authority either before or after the Council of Florence to charge the Greek Church with Heresie I now come to the examination of your Theological Reason by which you think you have so evidently proved the Greeks Opinion to be Heresie that you introduce it with confidence in abundance But say you though this perswasion had not been attested by such clouds of witnesses Theological Reason is so strong a Foundation to confirm it that I wonder how rational men could ever be induced to question the truth of it Still you so unadvisedly place your expressions that the sharpest which you use against your adversaries return with more force upon your self For it being so fully cleared that these clouds of witnesses are Fathers Councils and Popes against you What do you else by this expression but exclude them from the number of Rational men because forsooth not acquainted with the depth of your Theological Reason But Is not this to make all the Churches of Christendom for many hundred years quite blind and your self only clear and sharp-sighted Which swelling presumption what Spirit it argues c. You see wee need no other weapons against you but your immediate preceding words What pitty it is that the Fathers and Councils had not been made acquainted with this grand Secret of your Theological Reason but happy we that have it at so cheap a rate but it may be that is it which makes us esteem it no more But such as it is it being Reason and Theological too it deserves the greatest respect that may be if it makes good its title His Lordship had said That since the Greeks notwithstanding this opinion of theirs deny not the equality or Consubstantiality of the Persons in the Trinity he dares not deny them to be a true Church for this opinion though he grants them erronious in it So this you reply Is it think you enough to assert the Divinity and Consubstantiality and personal Distinction of the Holy Ghost as the Bishop sayes to save from Heresie the denyal of his Procession from the Father and the Son as from one Principle But why is it not enough your Theological Reason is that we want to convince us of the contrary That therefore follows Would not he that should affirm the Son to be a distinct person from and Consubstantial to the Father but denyed his eternal Generation from him be an Heretick Or he who held the Holy Ghost distinct from and Consubstantial to them both but affirmed his Procession to be from the Son only and not from the Father be guilty of Heresie It is then most evident that not only an errour against the Consubstantiality and Distinction but against the Origination Generation and Procession of the Divine Persons is sufficient matter of Heresie Your faculty at Clinching your Arguments is much better than of Driving them in For your Conclusion is most evident when your Premises have nothing like evidence in them For 1. He that doth acknowledge the Son to be Consubstantial with the Father and yet a distinct person from him must needs therein acknowledge his Eternal Generation for how he should be the Son of the same nature with God and yet having a distinct Personality as a Son without Eternal Generation is so hard to
things before mentioned concerning the Father and the Son where he useth dicimus non dicimus as well as here And therefore Aquinas was much wiser who plainly condemns Damascen for a Nestorian in this licet à quibusdam dicatur c. Although it be said by some that in these words he neither affirms or denys it wherein I am much mistaken if he reflects not on Bonaventure Vasquez Petavius and several others think to bring Damascen off by the distinctions of à filio and per filium much to your purpose but in the great dispute at the Council at Florence between Bessarion and Marcus Ephesius about the importance of the Articles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Marcus Ephesius produceth the words of Damascen expresly that the Spirit doth not proceed from the Son but by the Son whereby it is plain that he understood per filium in opposition to à filio And Bessarion had nothing else to return in answer to it but that he could produce but one out of Antiquity who said so Thus we see if Theophylact and Damascen as well as Theodoret and Photius be Ancient Greeks your distinction comes to nothing But besides this it appears by the disputations of Hugo Etherianus against the Greeks who lived saith Bellarmin A. D. 1160. still extant in the Bibliotheca Patrum that the Greeks held the very same then that they do now And so in the Synod of Bar in Apulia when Anselm disputed so stoutly against the Greeks that Pope Vrban said he was alterius orbis Papa as the story is related by Eadmerus and Wilhelmus Malmesburiensis it appears they denyed the Procession of the Spirit absolutely from the Son and this was A. D. 1096. as is evident from the Letter of Hildebertus to him about the publishing his Disputation and from the Book of Anselm still extant on that subject We find not therefore any ground for this distinction of yours concerning the Ancient and Modern Greeks and therefore they who said that there was no real difference in any matter of Faith between the Ancient Greeks and Latins must be understood as well of the Modern Greeks as them Their words being no more capable of such a tolerable interpretation as you speak of than the words of any of the Modern Greeks are His Lordship was proving that the point was not fundamental that the Greeks and Latins differed in from that acknowledgement of Peter Lombard and the Schoolmen that is to say The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of the Father and the Son and that he is or proceeds from the Father and the Son is not to speak different things but the same sense in different words Now in this cause saith he where the words differ but the sentence of Faith is the same penitùs eadem even altogether the same can the point be fundamental But say you he was to prove that such as were in grievous errour in Divinity erred not fundamentally and for proof of this he alledges such as have no real errour at all in Divinity But do you not herein wilfully mistake his Lordships meaning For in the Paragraph foregoing his Lordship first declares his own judgement concerning the denying the Procession of the Holy Ghost viz. That he did acknowledge it to be a grievous errour in Divinity but yet he could not judge the Greeks guilty of a fundamental errour which he proves by a double medium 1. Because they did not thereby deny the Equality and Consubstantiality of the persons 2. Because divers learned men were of opinion that à filio per filium in the sense of the Greek Church was but a question in modo loquendi and therefore not fundamental now for this he produceth those testimonies Now I pray do you put no difference between the making the denyal of a Proposition to be an errour and the saying that such persons are guilty of the denyal of that Proposition His Lordship grants the denyal of the Procession to be a grievous errour in Divinity but he questioned as the Greeks expressed themselves for those very words he inserts whether they were guilty of denying that Proposition as appears by the authorities of the Schoolmen and therefore certainly much less guilty of a fundamental errour Thus you see his Lordship fully proves what he intends for if they agreed in sense they were much less guilty of a fundamental errour than if they had plainly denyed the Procession which he supposeth from those Authorities that they did not And therefore when you Sarcastically ask Is not this strong Logick The only answer I shall give you is That if you apprehend it not to be so it is because of the weakness of your Theological Reason And therefore you put his Lordships Defender on a strange task to prove from those Authorities that those Greeks who erre grievously in Divinity erre not fundamentally When the only design of his Lordship in producing those Authorities was to shew that according to their opinion the Greeks were so far from erring fundamentally that they did not erre grievously in Divinity And to this purpose the citation of Peter Lombard was pertinent who saith That because the Greeks acknowledge that the Holy Ghost is the Spirit of the Son though he doth not proceed from him therefore the difference between the Greeks and Latins is in words and not in sense but you say He speaks only of such as differed in words and not in substance as though he put a difference between the Greeks that some differed in words and others really which is quite beside his meaning for he takes not the least notice of any such difference among themselves but saith The difference it self concerning the Procession the Greeks acknowledging the Holy Ghost to be the Spirit of the Son is more verbal than real And that the present Greeks say full as much is evident for they acknowledge the same things in express words The testimony of Bonaventure hath been already considered as far as concerns Damascen as for the rest it was sufficient for his Lordships purpose to produce such a Confession from so bitter an enemy of the Greeks as Bonaventure was so his Lordship in his Marginal Citation sayes truly of him licèt Graecis infensissimus c. that he doth not deny but that salvation might be had without the article of Filioque but whether on that supposition there were sufficient reason to add it to the Creed will be considered afterwards Though Bonaventure held the Greeks to be Hereticks and Schismaticks I hope you do not think that is Argument enough to perswade us that they were so That any thing without which salvation might have been had before may by the definition of your Church become so necessary that men cannot be saved without the belief of it had need be more than barely asserted either by Bonaventure or you and we must wait for the proof of it for any thing here said
But the Greeks say this answer is unsatisfactory on these accounts 1. Because there is no reason to say that Decree doth not forbid the inserting Declarations into the Creed 2. That if it did not forbid that yet there is as little reason to say this was a meer Declaration 1. Because there is no reason to say that the Council did not forbid the inserting Declarations into the Creed For as Bessarion well observes it never was lawful to add new and distinct Articles of Faith from those which are contained in Scripture but the Church only undertook the explication and declaration of the things therein contained and this was only lawful Therefore the Ancient Fathers had full liberty of explaining Articles of Faith and using those explications as they judged most expedient and to place them where they thought good so it were not in Scripture thence they might insert them into the Creed or elsewhere But afterwards i. e. after this decree of the Ephesine Council this liberty was partly taken away and partly continued For it never was or will be unlawful to explain or declare Articles of Faith but to insert those explications into the Creed is now unlawful because forbidden by the decree of a General Council For saith he the Fathers of the third Council observing what great inconveniencies had followed in the Church upon the inlargement of Creeds and that no injury could at all come by the prohibition of any further Additions to be inserted for by that means they should only be bound to believe no more than what those Holy Fathers believed and who dare charge their Faith with imperfection and they did therefore wisely forbid all other expositions of Faith to be inserted into the Creed as he there at large proves And in the progress of that discourse takes off that which Bellarmin looked on as the only satisfactory answer viz. That the prohibition concerned only private persons For saith he It cannot be conceived that the Council should take care about the Declarations of the Creed made by particular persons whereas it alwaies was and is lawful for such to declare their Faith more particularly as appears by the Creed of Charisius received in this Council but this they looked after that the Creed which was commonly received in the Christian Churches and into which men are baptized should receive no alteration at all And to shew what their meaning was though their Council was purposely assembled against Nestorius yet they would not insert 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into the Creed And the same decree was observed in the 4 5 6 7. Councils which by their actions did declare this to be the meaning of the Ephesine Council that no Declarations whatsoever should hereafter be inserted into the Creed For if they were meer Declarations there was much less necessity of inferting them into the Creed which was supposed to be a Systeme of the necessary Articles of Faith 2. There was as little reason to say that this Article was a meer Declaration For the Latins pretended that the Article of Filioque was only a further explication of that ex Patre For if so then whosoever doth believe the Procession from the Father doth believe all that is necessary to be believed And therefore certainly it can be no Heresie not to believe the Procession from the Son because that is only supposed to be a Declaration of that from the Father And since you are so ready to charge the Greek Church with Heresie I pray tell us whether this Article be a Declaration or not If not then the Latins were all deceived who pleaded the lawfulness of inserting Filioque on that account and consequently it must be a prohibited Addition If it be then shew us what Heresie lyes in not acknowledging a meer explication when all that is supposed necessary is believed in the substance of the Article Moreover Bessarion rightly distinguisheth between an explication 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and therefore grants that the Filioque might be said to be an explication of something contained in the Creed but not out of any thing contained in the Creed and therefore the Medium being extrinsecal it could not be said to be a meer Declaration For there can be no necessary Argument drawn from the Procession from the Father to inferr the Procession from the Son but it must be proved from some extrinsecal distinct Argument 2. Suppose this to be no prohibited Addition yet what right had the Pope and his Council without the consent of the Eastern Churches to make this Addition to the Creed For the Greeks said whatever authority the Church of Rome had it received by the Canons and its authority was therefore less then that of an Oecumenical Council wherefore it could not justly repeal or act contrary to the decree of a General Council as it did apparently in this case By which means the Latins were driven off from those which they looked on as slighter velitations and took Sanctuary in the Plenitude of the Pope's Power that therefore no Council could prescribe to him there could be no necessity of his calling the Eastern Churches to debate this Addition for he could do it of himself by virtue of his own authority in and over the Church Here Anselm and Bonaventure think to secure themselves and hither they are all driven at last So that we plainly see whatever else is pretended the Pope's usurped Power was that which truly gave occasion to the Schism For it was not the Latins believing the Procession from the Son which made the separation between the Eastern and Western Churches but the Pope's pretending a Power to impose an Article of Faith in the Creed against the decree of a former and without the consent of a present Oecumenical Council If you pretend that there hath been since an Oecumenical Council at Florence which hath declared it by that very answer you justifie the Greeks before that Council and so lay the guilt of the Schism wholly on the Pope who did insert and impose this Article before an Oecumenical Council Thus still it appears the cause of the Schism began at Rome and by the same Argument with which you charge them with Heresie viz. the Council at Florence you vindicate the Greek Church from Schism in all the actions of it before that Council And this might suffice to shew that it was not the levity vanity or ambition of the Greeks which gave the great occasion of the Schism but the Pride Incroachments and Vsurpations of the Church of Rome as might largely be manifested from the history of those times when the Schism began The rise of which ought to be derived from the times of the Constantinopolitan and Chalcedon Councils the second and fourth Oecumenical For the Canons of those Councils decreeing equal Priviledges to Constantinople with those of Rome made the Popes have a continual jealousie upon the Greek Church and watch
absolute Command can by any means whatsoever afterwards become necessary 3. Whether the Church hath power by any Proposition or Definition to make any thing become necessary to Salvation and to be believed as such which was not so before These three I suppose you cannot deny but will take in all that is considerable in this Controversie Which I shall with the more care examine because nothing tends more to the peace of the Christian World than a through and clear discussion of it and nothing causeth more the Schisms and Divisions of it than the want of a right and due conception of it 1. What the Grounds are on which any thing doth become necessary to Salvation For our better understanding of which we must consider two things 1. What things are necessary to the Salvation of men as such or considered in their single and private capacities 2. What things are necessary to be owned in order to Salvation by Christian Societies or as the bonds and conditions of Ecclesiastical Communion The want of understanding this distinction of the necessity of things hath caused most of the perplexities and confusion in this Controversie of Fundamentals 1. What those things are which are necessary to the Salvation of particular persons But that we make all as clear as possible in a matter of so great intricacy two things again must be inquired into 1. What the Ground is why any thing becomes necessary to be believed in order to Salvation 2. What the Measure and Extent is of those things which are to be believed by particular persons as necessary to Salvation 1. What the Ground or Foundation is on which things become necessary to be believed by particular persons And that which is the true ground of the necessity why any thing is to be believed is the proper ratio of a Fundamental Article For I suppose it a much clearer notion of Fundamentals to understand them not as Principles from whence Deductions may be drawn of Theological Truths but in regard of that immediate respect which they have to mens Salvation Those things therefore which are necessary to be explicitly believed by particular persons are Fundamentals in order to their Salvation Now all belief in this case supposing Divine Revelation nothing can be imagined to be necessary to be believed but what may be certainly known to be of Divine Revelation But when we consider that besides the general reason of believing what God hath revealed we must either suppose that all things are of equal necessity which are revealed in order to the general end of this Revelation or that some things therein contained are expresly necessary to the end and other things to be believed on the general account of Faith so far as they are known to be of Divine Revelation Now from hence ariseth a twofold necessity of things to be believed the first more general and large the second more particular and absolute The first depends upon the formal reason of Faith the second on the particular end of Divine Revelation That which depends on the formal reason of that Assent we call Faith is that which supposeth Divine Veracity or the impossibility of Gods deceiving us in any thing revealed by Him now this extends to all things whatsoever which are supposed by men to be of Divine Revelation For though men may mistake in the matter yet the reason of Assent holding under that mistake they are bound necessarily to believe whatever is supposed by them to be Divine Revelation Here lyes no difficulty in the ground of Faith but all the care is to be used in the search into the matters which are to be believed on the account of this Revelation But here we are to consider that the only thing which is in general and absolutely necessary to Salvation is the general act of Faith viz. Believing whatever God reveals to be true else God's Veracity would be call'd in question but particular objects cannot be said on this account to be absolutely and universally necessary but only so far as there are sufficient convictions that those particulars are of Divine Revelation And the more general and extensive the means of conviction are the more large and universal is the obligation to Faith As that the Scriptures contain in them the Word of God is a matter of more universal obligation than particular things therein revealed because the belief of the one depends upon the acknowledgement of the other And withall supposing it believed that the matters contained in Scripture are of Divine Revelation yet all things are not equally clear to all capacities that they are therein contained Which is a sufficient ground for us to say It was not God's intention that all things contained in his Word should be believed with the same degree of necessity by all persons And therefore though the general reason of Faith depends on Gods Veracity yet the particular obligation to the belief of particular things as revealed by God depends on the means whereby we may be assured that such things are revealed by him which means admitting of so great Variety as to the circumstances and capacities of particular persons there can be no general Rule set down what things are necessary to be believed by all particular persons For those who have greater means of knowledge a larger capacity and clearer proposal are bound to believe more things explicitly than those who want all these or have a lower degree of them In which case it is an unreasonable thing to say that such a one who dis-believes any thing propounded to him as a matter of Faith doth presently call in question God's Veracity for he may as firmly believe that as any in general and yet may have ground to question whether God's Veracity be at all concerned in that which is propounded to him as a matter of Faith because he sees no reason to believe that this was ever revealed by God And by this a clear answer is given to that Question which you propose Whether all those Truths which are sufficiently proposed to any Christian as defined by the Church for matter of Faith can be dis-believed by such a Christian without mortal and damnable sin which unrepented destroyes Salvation To which the answer is easie upon the grounds here assigned for this question concerning particular persons and particular objects of Faith the resolution of it doth depend upon the sufficiency of the means to convince such a person that whatever is propounded as Defined by the Church for a matter of Faith is certainly and truly so For to instance in any one of those new Articles of Faith Transubstantiation or the Pope's Supremacy c. you tell me These are necessary to be believed or at least cannot be dis-believed without sin which is all one in this case supposing clear conviction for then what cannot be dis-believed without sin must be explicitly believed I desire to know the grounds why they may not you tell me These
none of your own proposing but yet your very calling it a pertinent Question renders it liable to suspicion and upon examination it will be found both unreasonable and impertinent The Question was What Points the Bishop would account Fundamental and that you may shew how necessary this Question was you add For if he will have some Fundamental which we are bound to believe under pain of damnation and others not Fundamental which we may without sin question or deny it behoves us much to know what they are I have ever desired say you a satisfactory Answer from Protestants to this Question but could never yet have it in the sense demanded An unhappy man you are who it seems have in your time propounded more foolish Questions than a great many wise men were never able to answer But is it not every jot as reasonable That since your Church pretends to the power of making things necessary to the Salvation of all which were not so before we should have from you an exact Catalogue of all your Churches Definitions If for that you referr us to the Confession of Faith at the end of the Council of Trent so may not we with far greater reason send you back to the Apostolical Creed there being no objection which will hold against this being a Catalogue of our Fundamentals but will hold against that Being a Catalogue of yours Nay you assert such things your self concerning the necessity of believing things defined by the Church as make it impossible for you to assign the definite number of such things as are necessary for all persons and therefore it is very unreasonable to demand it of us For still when you speak that the things defined by the Church are necessary to the Salvation of all you add Where they are sufficiently propounded so that the measure of Fundamentals depends on the sufficiency of the Proposition Now will you undertake to assign what number of things are sufficiently propounded to the belief of all persons Can you set down the exact bounds as to all individuals when their ignorance is inexcusable and when not Can you tell what the measure of their capacity was what allowance God makes for the prejudices of Education where there is a mind desirous of instruction Will you say God accounts all those things sufficiently proposed to mens belief which you judge to be so or that all men are bound to think those things necessary to Salvation which you think so by what means shall the Churches Power of defining matters of Faith be sufficiently proposed to men as an Article of Faith Either by its own Definition or without If by its the thing is proposed to be believed which is supposed to be believed already before that Proposition or else the Enquiry returns with as great force Why should I believe that Definition more than any other if without it then the sufficiency of Proposition and the necessity of believing depends not on the Churches Definition These Questions I am apt to think as pertinent and necessary as yours was and now you know my sense and are so discontented you could never meet with a satisfactory Answer from Protestants prevent the same dissatisfaction in me by giving a punctual Answer to such necessary Questions But if you think the demands unreasonable because they depend on such things which none can know but God himself I pray accept of that as a satisfactory Answer to your own very pertinent Question But if the Question be propounded not concerning what things are Fundamental and necessary to particular persons which on the reasons formerly given it is impossible to give a Catalogue of but of such things which are necessary to be owned for Christian Communion as I have shewed this Question of Fundamentals ought only to be taken here then his Lordship's Answer was more pertinent than the Question viz. That all the Points of the Creed were such For saith he Since the Fathers make the Creed the Rule of Faith since the agreeing sense of Scripture with those Articles are the two Regular Precepts by which a Divine is governed about the Faith since your own Council of Trent decrees That it is that principle of Faith in which all that profess Christ do necessarily agree Fundamentum firmum unicum not the firm only but the only Foundation since it is Excommunication ipso jure for any man to contradict the Articles contained in that Creed since the whole body of Faith is so contained in the Creed as that the substance of it was believed even before the coming of Christ though not so expresly as since in the number of the Articles Since Bellarlarmin confesses That all things simply necessary for all mens Salvation are in the Creed and Decalogue What reason can you have to except Thus far his Lordship though from hence it appears what little reason you have to except yet because of that I expect your Exceptions the sooner and therefore very fairly passing by the sense of the Fathers you ask concerning the Council of Trent What if that call the Creed the only Foundation Are you come to a What if with the Council of Trent But I suppose it is not from disputing its Authority but its meaning for you would seem to understand it only of prime Articles of Faith and not of such as all are bound upon sufficient Proposition expresly to believe for that is all the sense I can make of your words But whoever was so silly as to say That all such things which are to be believed on sufficient Proposition that they are revealed by God are contained in the Creed When you seem to imply That this was the sense the Question was propounded in it is a sign you little attend to the Consequence of things when it is most evident that the Question was started concerning the Greek Church and therefore must referr only to such Fundamentals as are necessary to be owned in order to the Being of a true Church And when you can prove that any other Articles are necessary to that besides those contained in the Creed you will do something to purpose but not before But you suppose them to take the Creed in a very large sense who would lap up in the folds of it all particular Points of Faith whatever and I am sure this is not the sense it is to be taken in here nor that in which his Lordship took it He saith indeed That if he had said that those Articles only which are expressed in the Creed are Fundamental it would have been hard to have excluded the Scripture upon which the Creed it self in every Point is grounded For nothing is supposed to shut out its own Foundation And this is built on very good reason For the things contained in the Creed are proposed as matters to be believed all Faith must suppose a Divine Testimony revealing those things to us as the ground on which we
believed as Fundamental when once the Church hath determined them 5. The Church of England prescribes only to her own Children and by those Articles provides but for her own peaceable consent in those Doctrines of Truth But the Church of Rome severely imposes her Doctrine upon the whole world under pain of damnation To all these very considerable Instances of our Churches Moderation your Answer is The Question is not Whether the English Congregation or the Roman Church be more severe but Whether the English Protestants Severity be not unreasonable supposing she be subject to errour in defining those Articles For after many words to the same i. e. little purpose the reason you give for it is That every just Excommunication inflicted for opposing of Doctrine must necessarily suppose the Doctrine opposed to be infallibly true and absolutely exempt from errour otherwise the Sentence it self would be unreasonable and unjust as wanting sufficient ground From whence you charge Protestants with greater Tyranny and Injustice towards their people than they can with any colour or pretence of reason charge upon the Roman Church which excommunicates no man but for denying such Doctrine as is both infallibly True and also Fundamental at least as to its formal Object This is the strength of all you say which will be reduced to this short Question Whether the proceedings of that Church be more unreasonable which excommunicates such as openly oppose her Doctrine supposing her Fallible or of that Church which excommunicates all who will not believe whatever she defines to be Infallibly true This is the true State of the Controversie which must be judged by the resolving another Question Whether it be not a more unreasonable Vsurpation to bind men upon pain of damnation hereafter and excommunication here to believe every thing Infallible which a Church defines or to bind men to peace to a Churches Determinations reserving to men the liberty of their judgements on pain of Excommunication if they violate that peace For it is plain on the one side where a Church pretends Infallibility the Excommunication is directed against the persons for refusing to give Internal Assent to what she defines But where a Church doth not pretend to that the Excommunication respects wholly that Overt Act whereby the Churches Peace is broken And if a Church be bound to look to her own Peace no doubt she hath power to excommunicate such as openly violate the bonds of it which is only an Act of Caution in a Church to preserve her self in Vnity but where it is given out that the Church is Infallible the Excommunication must be so much the more unreasonable because it is against those Internal Acts of the mind over which the Church as such hath no direct power And thus I hope you see how much more just and reasonable the proceedings of our Church are then of yours and that eo nomine because she pretends to be infallible and ours doth not His Lordship shews further in Vindication of the Church of England and her grounds of Faith that the Church of England grounded her Positive Articles upon Scripture and her Negative do refute there where the thing affirmed by them is not affirmed by Scripture nor directly to be concluded out of it And this he saith is the main principle of all Protestants that Scripture is sufficient to Salvation and contains in it all things necessary to it The Fathers are plain the Schoolmen not strangers in it And Stapleton himself confesses as much Nay and you dare not deny it as to all material Objects of Faith and your formal here signifies nothing And when A. C. saith That the Church of England grounded her Positive Articles upon Scripture if themselves may be Judges in their own cause His Lordship answers We are contented to be judged by the joynt and constant belief of the Fathers which lived within the first four or five hundred years after Christ when the Church was at the best and by the Councils held within those times and to submit to them in all those Points of Doctrine This Offer you grant to be very fair and you do for your selves promise the same and say You will make it good upon all occasions Which we shall have tryal of before the end of this Book To what his Lordship saith concerning the Negative Articles That they refute where the thing affirmed by them is either not affirmed in Scripture or not directly to be concluded out of it A. C. replies That the Baptism of Infants is not expresly at least not evidently affirmed in Scripture nor directly at least not demonstratively concluded out of it Here two things his Lordship answers 1. To the Expression 2. To the thing 1. To the Expression That he is no way satisfied with A. C. his addition not expresly at least not evidently for saith he What means he If he speak of the lâ—tter of Scripture then whatsoever is expresly is evidently in the Scripture and so his addition is in vain If he speak of the meaning of Scripture then his addition is cunning For many things are expresly in Scripture which yet in their meaning are not evidently there And as little satisfied his Lordship declares himself with that other nor directly at least not demonstratively because many things are directly concluded which are not demonstratively To the first you answer That a Point may be exprest yet not evidently exprest otherwise there could be no doubt concerning what were exprest in Scripture since men never question things that are evident Now say you the Baptism of Infants must not only â—e exprest but evidently exprest to prove it sufficiently i. e. undeniably by Scripture alone But the Question being concerning matters of Doctrine and not meer words those things are expresly affirmed which are evidently and no other For it is one thing for words to be expresly in Scripture and another for Doctrines to be so For these latter are no further expresly affirmed there than as there is evidence that the meaning of such words doth contain such a Doctiine in them As to take your own Instance This is my Body we grant the words to be express but we deny that which he had then in his hands was his real Body for his hands were part of his real Body Now we do not say That the Doctrine of Transubstantiation is expresly but not evidently contained here for we say The Doctrine is not there at all but only that those are the express words This is my Body as it is in other figurative expressions in Scripture But that which causeth this litigation about words is That you look upon that which is evident and undeniable to be all one whereas there may be sufficient evidence where all men are not perswaded by it And so you would put his Lordship to prove out of Scripture Infant-Baptism evidently and demonstratively i. e. undeniably whereas his Lordship supposeth it
whether an Infallible Assent to the Infallibility of your Church can be grounded on those Motives of Credibility If you affirm it then there can be no imaginable necessity to make the Testimony of your Church infallible in order to Divine Faith for you will not I hope deny but that there are at least equal Motives of Credibility to prove the Divine Authority of the Scriptures as the Infallibility of your Church and if so why may not an Infallible Assent be given to the Scriptures upon those Motives of Credibility as well as to your Churches Infallibility If you deny the Assent built upon the Motives of Credibility to be Infallible how can you make the Assent to your Churches Testimony to be infallible when that Infallibility is attempted to be proved only by the Motives of Credibility And therefore it necessarily follows That notwithstanding your bearing it so high under the pretence of Infallibility you leave mens minds much more wavering in their Assent than before in that as shall afterwards appear these very Motives of Credibility do not at all prove the Infallibility of your Church which undoubtedly prove the Truth and Certainty of Christian Religion Thus while by this device you seek to avoid the Circle you destroy the Foundation of your Discourse That there must be an Infallible Assent to the truth of that Proposition That the Scriptures are the Word of God which you call Divine Faith which how can it be infallible when that Infallibility at the highest by your own confession is but evidently credible and so I suppose the Authority of the Scriptures is without your Churches Infallibility And thus you run into the same Absurdities which you would seem to avoid which is the second thing to manifest the unreasonableness of this way for whatever Absurdity you charge us with for believing the Doctrine of Christ upon the Motives of Credibility unavoidably falls upon your selves for believing the Churches Infallibility on the same grounds for if we leave the Foundation of Faith uncertain you do so too if we build a Divine Faith upon Motives of Credibility so do you if we make every ones reason the Judge in the choice of his Religion so must you be forced to do if you understand the consequence of your own principles 1. It is impossible for you to give a better account of Faith by the Infallibility of your Church than we can do without it for if Divine Faith cannot be built upon the Motives proving the Doctrine of Christ what sense or reason is there that it should be built on those Motives which prove your Churches Infallibility so that if we leave the Foundation of Faith uncertain you much more and that I prove by a Rule of much Authority with you by which you use to pervert the weak judgements of such who in your case do not discern the Sophistry of it Which is when you come to deal with persons whom you hope to Proselyte you urge them with this great Principle That Prudence is to be our Guide in the choice of our Religion and that Prudence directs us to chuse the safest way and that it is much safer to make choice of that way which both sides agree Salvation is to be obtained in than of that which the other side utterly denies men can be saved in How far this Rule will hold in the choice of Religion will be examined afterwads but if we take your word that it is a sure Rule I know nothing will be more certainly advantagious to us in on present case For both sides I hope are agreed that there are sufficient Motives of Credibility as to the belief of the Scriptures but we utterly deny that there are any such Motives as to the Infallibility of your Church it then certainly follows That our way is the more eligible and certain and that we lay a surer Foundation for Faith than you do upon your principles for resolving Faith 2. Either you must deny any such thing as that you call Divine Faith or you must assert that it may have no other Foundation than the Motives of Credibility which yet is that you would seem most to avoid by introducing the Infallibility of your Church that the Foundation of Faith may not be uncertain whereas supposing what you desire you must of necessity do that you would seem most fearful of which is making a Divine Faith to rest upon prudential Motives Which I thus prove It is an undoubted Axiom among the great men of your side That whatever is a Foundation for a Divine Faith must itself be believed with a firm certain and infallible Assent Now according to your principles the Infallibility of the Church is the Foundation for Divine Faith and therefore that must be believed with an Assent Infallible It is apparent then an Assent Infallible is required which is that which in other terms you call Divine Faith now when you make it your business to prove the Churches Infallibility upon your prudential Motives I suppose your design is by those proofs to induce men to believe it and if men then do believe it upon those Motives do you not found an Assent Infallible or a Divine Faith upon the Motives of Credibility And by the same reason that you urge against us the necessity of believing the Scriptures to be the Word of God by Divine Faith because it is the ground why we believe the things contained in the Scripture we press on your side the necessity of believing the Infallibility of the Church by a Faith equally Divine because that is to you the only sufficient Foundation of believing the Scriptures or any thing contained in them 3. You make by this way of resolving Faith every man's Reason the only Judge in the choice of his Religion which you are pleased to charge on us as a great Absurdity yet you who have deserved so very ill of Reason are fain to call in her best assistance in a case of the greatest moment viz. On what ground we must believe the Scriptures to be the Word of God You say Because the Church is infallible which delivers them to us but how should we come to know that she is infallible you tell us By the Motives of Credibility very good But must not every ones reason judge whether these Motives be credible or no and whether they belong peculiarly to your Church so as to prove the Infallibility of it as it is distinct from all other societies of Christians in the world You tell us indeed That these Motives make it evidently credible but must we believe it to be so because you say so If so then the ground of believing is not the Credibility of the Motives but of your Testimony and therefore you ought to make it evidently true that whatever you speak is undoubtedly true which whosoever reads your Book will hardly be perswaded to So that of necessity every mans reason must be Judge whether your Church
their own Infallibility certainly they thought the one afforded not a good foundation for Faith though the other after believing it might highly advance it And therefore I suggest not these things in the least to question the Infallibility of the Apostles but to let us see that even at that time when there was a certainly infallible Testimony yet that is not urged as the only Foundation for Faith but Rational Evidence produced even by those persons who were thus infallible If we descend lower in the Christian Church or walk abroad to view the several Plantations of the Churches at that time Where do we read or meet with the least intimation of an infallible Testimony of the Catholick Church so call'd from its Communion with that of Rome What infallible Testimony of that Church had the poor Brittains to believe on or those Barbarians mentioned in Irenaeus who yet believed without a written word What mention do we meet with in all the ancient Apologeticks of Christians wherein they give so large an account of the grounds of Christian Faith of the modern method for resolving Faith Nay what one ancient Father or Council give the least countenance to this pretended Infallibility much less make it the only sure Foundation of Faith as you do Nay how very few are there among your selves who believe it and yet think themselves never the worse Christians for it If then your Doctrine be true what becomes of the Faith of all these persons mentioned Upon your principles their Faith could not be a true and Divine Faith that is Let them all think they believed the Doctrine of Christ never so heartily and obeyed it never so conscientiously yet because they did not believe it on the Infallibility of your Church their Faith was but a kind of guilded and splendid Infidelity and none of them Christians because not Jesuits And doth not this principle then fairly advance Christianity in the world when the belief of it comes to be setled on Foundations never heard of in the best and purest times of it nay such Foundations as for want of their believing them their Faith must be all in vain and Christ dyed in vain for them 2. You assert such things upon the pretence of Infallibility which destroy all the rational evidence of Christian Religion And what greater disservice could you possibly do to it than by taking away all the proper grounds of certainty of it And instead of building it super hanc Petram upon the Rock of Infallibility you do it only upon a Quick-sand which swallows up the Edifice and sucks in the Foundations of it You would have men to believe the Infallibility of your Church that their Faith might stand upon sure grounds and yet if men believe this Infallibility of your Church you require such things to be believed upon it which destroy all kind of certainty in Religion And that I prove by some of those principles which are received among you upon the account of the Churches Infallibility 1. That the judgement of Sense is not to be relyed on in matters of Faith This is the great Principle upon which the Doctrine of Transubstantiation stands in your Church and this is all the most considerative men among you have to say when all those Contradictions are offered to them which that Doctrine is so big of both to the judgement of sense and reason viz. That though it seem so contradictory yet because the Church which is infallible delivers it they are bound not to question it If this Principle then be true That the judgement of sense is not to be relyed on in matters which sense is capable of judging of it will be impossible for any one to give any satisfactory account of the grand Foundations of Christian Faith For if we carefully examine the grounds of Certainty in Christian Religion we find the great appeal made to the judgement of Sense That which we have seen and heard and handled If then the judgement of Sense must not be taken in a proper object at due distance and in such a thing wherein all mens Senses are equally Judges I pray tell me what assurance the Apostles could have or any from them of any miracles which Christ wrought of any Doctrine which he preached especially because in his miracles there was something above nature in which case men are more apt to suspect Impostures than in things which are the continual Objects of Sense as in the case of Transubstantiation Wherein if men are not bound to rely on the judgement of Sense you must say that our Faculties are so made that they may be imposed upon in the proper Objects of them and if so farewell all Certainty not only in Religion but in all things else in the world For what assurance can I have of the knowledge of any thing if I find that my Faculties not only may be but I am bound to believe that they actually are deceived in a thing that is as proper an Object of sense as any in the world And if a thing which the judgement of all mankind those excepted who have given away their sense and reason in this present case doth unanimously concurr in may be false What evidence can we have when any thing is true For if a thing so plain and evident to our Senses may be false viz. That what I and all other men see is bread what ground of certainty can we have but that which my Senses and all other mens judge to be false may be true For by this means you take away the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 both of Sense and Reason in things and consequently all things are equally true and false to us and thence it follows That Truth and Falshood are but Fancies that our Faculties have no means to difference the one from the other that in things we all agree in as proper objects of Sense we not only may be but are deceived and then farewell Sense Reason and Religion together For I pray Tell me what Assurance could the Apostles have of the Resurrection of Christ's Individual Body from the grave but the Judgement of Sense What waies did he use to convince them that he was not a Spectre or Apparition but by an appeal to their Senses by what means did he reclaim Thomas from his Infidelity but by bidding him make use of his Senses If Thomas had believed Transubstantiation he would easily have answered our Saviours Argument and told him If there were not a productive yet there might be an Adductive Transmutation of some other person into him And the Disciples might all have said It was true there were the accidents of Christ's Body the external shape and figure of it but for all they could discern there might be some Invisible Spirit under those external accidents of shape and therefore they must desire to be excused from believing it to be his Body for Hoc est corpus meum had told them already
the liberty it indulgeth them in sin here and yet the hopes it gives them of heaven hereafter Our doctrine requires indispensable obedience to all the precepts of Christ Yours tells them those which are the most strict and severe are not precepts but counsels of perfection Ours That there is no hope of Salvation without hearty amendment of life Yours That Pennance is requisite and external satisfaction to the Church and for internals that Contrition is very commendable but if there be not that Attrition will serve the turn Ours Charges men to look to their Salvation in this life because when life is ended their estate is irrecoverable Yours That though men dye in their sins yet they may be relieved by the prayers of the living and that there is hope they may get through Purgatory to Heaven at last So that supposing any persons to own Christianity to be true it is hard to conceive there should be more Artifices imagined to reconcile the Love of the pleasures of sin here with the hopes of Heaven at last than are used by those of your Profession So that if I should suppose my self a Heathen Philosopher and any of your Profession should come and tell me These were the Precepts and these the Promises of Christian Religion but I could believe none of them but by the Infallible proposition of your Church and that I was to know your Church Infallible by that Sanctity of life which was in it when I had throughly considered not only the impieties committed by the great ones of your Religion even in Rome in the first place but the Artifices used to enervate all the Precepts of real Sanctity and so plainly to see what interest and design is carried on under all these disguises I should be insuperably assaulted with the thoughts that those of your Religion who were the Authours of these things were so far from believing your Church Infallible that they really believed neither Christian nor any other Religion in the world So much for that Sanctity of life which is in your Chuch As for your other motives of Vnity Succession Antiquity and the name of Catholick c. they have so little affinity with any pretence of Infallibility and do equally agree to those Churches as the Greek and Abyssine which you are so far from acknowledging Infallible that you will not grant them to be true Churches notwithstanding these Motives that I cannot easily imagine to what end you produced them unless to let us see you had the gift of saying something though nothing to the purpose When you have thus apparently failed in producing any shadow of proof for your Churches Infallibility by these motives of credibility we now come to see how good you are at the defensive part who have been so unhappy in your Attempts Therefore we must consider what arts you use in putting by the force of those arguments which are produced against you by his Lordship After he had urged that question against you How it may appear that your Church is infallibly governed by the Holy Ghost to which we have seen how impossible it is for you to give any satisfactory answer he proceeds to another Argument which lies in these words Besides this is an inviolable ground of reason That the principles of any conclusion must be of more credit then the conclusion it self Therefore if the Articles of Faith the Trinity the Resurrection and the rest be the conclusions and the Principles by which they are proved be only Ecclesiastical Tradition it must needs follow that the tradition of the Church is more infallible then the Articles of Faith if the Faith which we have of the Articles should be finally resolved into the veracity of the Churches Testimony To this your Answer is very considerable 1. You tell us That the ground of all this discourse is the authority of Aristotle cited in the Margent which you repeat after him But I pray Whence learn'd you that this was all the ground of his discourse For his Lordship doth not say that Aristotle saith so and therefore it is so but saies That it is an inviolable ground of reason which words you prudently left out that there might appear some shadow for such a cavil and cites only the concurrent testimony of Aristotle with that evidence of reason which is in it And will you deny this to be an undoubted principle in reason that That which is assumed as the ground and reason why I assent to any thing must be more certain and evident then that is which I assent to on that ground Certainly you must have an art above all other men to make the superstructure stronger then the foundation the particular Problems in Mathematicks more evident then the Postulata the conclusion surer then the Premisses But you think to come off this absurdity 2. By distinguishing between Science and Faith or as you express it between the proceeding of the understanding when it works naturally and necessarily by and from the evidence and clearness of its object and when it works supernaturally and produceth supernatural and free acts meerly or at least principally from the impulse and inclination of the will for in such cases the Maxim holds not viz. That the principles of a Conclusion must be of more credit then the conclusion it self Now the act of believing is such an act that is which the understanding elicites rather by a voluntary and free inclination and consent of the will then from any evident certainty in the object whereto it assents A most judicious and profound discourse to which I know not whether ever I can perswade my will but I am sure I never shall my understanding Lest you should think it is only some impulse of my will which hinders my assent I shall fairly lay down the Reasons which keep me from it 1. That all assent of the understanding is grounded upon evidence 2. That however that evidence proceeds yet the Foundation of assent must be more evident then the thing assented to And these two I suppose will fully reach the scope of your Answer by shewing that your distinction of acts natural and supernatural is both untrue and impertinent 1. That all assent is grounded upon evidence i. e. that no man can assent to any thing meerly because he will but there must be sufficient reason inducing and perswading to that assent You acknowledge this to be true in acts of Knowledge but not of Faith but What do you make to be the genus in your definition of Faith I suppose you will say it is an assent of the mind If it be so the mind cannot be supposed to elicite an act of the same nature in so repugnant a manner to it self that it should assent to any thing without evidence I know what discourses those of your party have concerning the obscurity which is necessary to Faith If you mean obscurity as to the object believed i. e.
the proper actings of my Faculties I may judge such things to have connexions and depâ—ndencies one upon another which really have nothing so And therefore so far your distinction concerning Science and Faith will not hold But 2. If the meaning of this distinction be only this That there is a different proceeding in a demonstration from what there is in an act of Faith I deny it not but suppose it nothing to your purpose For though the evidence be discovered in a different way yet there is in both proportionable evidence to the nature of the Assent When I assent because I know that the thing is true the evidence of the thing it self is the ground of that Assent but when I assent upon the Authority of any person the Credibility of his Testimony is the evidence on which that Assent is grounded Though this latter evidence be of another kind yet it is sufficient for that act of the mind which is built upon it and that Testimony which I establish a firm Assent upon must be as evident in its kind i. e. of Credibility as the evidence of a thing demonstrable in the nature of a Demonstration 3. The main strength of your Answer seems to lye in this That in such an Assent as is built upon Authority as in the case of Faith when we do not immediately hear God speaking but it is conveyed to us by the Testimony of others it is necessary that this Testimony be infallible But good Sir this is not our present Question Whether it be necessary that this Testimony be infallibly conveyed to us but supposing such an infallible Conveyance Whether that infallible Testimony must not be more credible than the matters which are believed upon it But as though never any such thing had been started You give us a long discourse of the different proceeding of Science and Faith but never offer to apply it to the business in hand I must therefore ingenuously commend you for an excellent Art of gliding insensibly away from a business you cannot answer and casting out a great many words not to the purpose that you may seem to touch the matter when you are far enough from it And therefore I say Secondly That however the evidence proceeds in matters of Faith yet whatever is the Foundation of Assent must be more evident than the thing assented to Especially where you suppose the Assent to be infallible and the Testimony infallible which must ascertain it to us This will be plainer by an instance If I ask you Why you believe the Resurrection of the dead your Answer is because of the Authority of him that reveals it The next Question then is Why you believe that God hath revealed it your Answer is Because the Testimony of the Church is infallible which delivers it Whereby it is plain That though your first Answer be from God's Authority yet the last resolution of your Faith is the Infallibility of your Churches Testimony and that being the last resolution that Infallibility must be the Principle on which the belief of the rest depends For according to your Principles though God had revealed it yet if this Revelation were not attested by the infallible Testimony of your Church we should not have sufficient ground to believe it And if without that we can have no sufficient ground to believe then this Principle The Church is infallible must be more credible than the Resurrection of the dead Which was the Absurdity his Lordship charged upon you and you are far from being able to quit your self of The next thing which you busie your self much in answering of is That according to these Principles of resolution of Faith you make the Churches Testimony the formal Object of Faith which you acknowledge your self to be a great Absurdity and therefore make use of many shifts to avoid I shall reduce the substance of your verbose and immethodical Answer into as narrow a compass as I can without defalking any thing of the strength of it You tell us then That our Faith is resolved into God's Revelations whether written or unwritten as its Formal Object and our Infallible Assurance that the things we believe as God's Revelations are revealed from him is resolved into the Infallibility of the Churches Definitions teaching us that they are his Revelations And that the Formal Cause of our Assent in Divine Faith is God's Revelation delivered to the Church without writing but because that is as it were at distance from us it is approximated or immediately applied to us by the infallible Declaration of the present Church Hence it appears our Faith rests only upon God's Revelation as its Formal Object though the Churches Voice be a condition so necessary for its resting thereon that it can never attain that Formal Object without it And lastly you tell us The Churches Authority then being more known to us than the Scriptures may well be some reason of our admitting them yet the Scriptures still retain their prerogative above the Church and thence you distinguish of the certainty of the Object and Subject from all which you conclude That the Churches Definition is not the Formal Object of Faith but that our Faith relyes upon it as an Infallible Witness both of the written and unwritten Word of God which is the Formal Object This is the substance in your long Answer of what hath the face of reason and pertinency Which I come to a close and particular examination of And that you may not say I pass over this important Controversie without a through discussion of it I shall first prove that it necessarily follows from your Principles That the Churches Infallible Testimony must be the Formal Object of Faith And 2. That the Answers you give are far from being satisfactory that it is not 1. That it necessarily follows from your Principles That the Churches Infallible Testimony must be the Formal Object of Faith In order to which we must consider what the scope and design of this Discourse is concerning the Resolution of Faith The Question started by Mr. Fisher in the Conference was How his Lordship knew Scripture to be Scripture or How the Divine Authority of the Scriptures was to be proved To this his Lordship returns a large Answer to which you attempt a Reply in this Chapter and mention this to be the main Question How Scriptures may be known to be the Word of God To this you tell us No satisfactory Answer can be given but from the infallible Testimony of the Church and the great reason given by you in all your discourse is this That this is an Article to be believed with Divine Faith and Divine Faith must be built on an Infallible Testimony The Question then resulting hence is Whether on these Principles you do not make the Infallible Testimony of the Church the Formal Object of Faith You deny and we affirm it but before I come to the particular Evidences of the Cause
you believe the Revelation made by Christ to be Divine Your Answer must be either that your Churches Testimony gives you infallible Assurance of it and then the former Argument returns or else that Christ manifested his Testimony to be infallible and therefore his Revelation Divine because of the Motives of Credibility which accompanied his preaching If this be your Answer as it must be by your former discourse then by the same reason I prove your Churches Testimony to be the Formal Object of Faith because you have endeavoured to prove the Churches Infallibility by the same Motives of Credibility that Moses and Christ proved theirs Either therefore retract all your former discourse or else confess that by the same reason that the Divine Revelation made by Christ is the Formal Object of Faith the infallible Testimony of your Church must be so too For according to your own supposition there are equal Motives of Credibility and therefore equal obligation to believe the Infallibility of one as of the other 3. If the only reason which makes any thing be the Formal Object agrees to the Testimony of your Church then that Testimony must be the Formal Object of Faith to them that believe it Now that which is the only reason which makes any thing to be the Formal Object of Faith is the Supposition that it is infallible For why do you resolve your Faith finally into Divine Revelation Is it not because you suppose God to be infallible in all Revelations of himself and therefore if your Church be infallible as you say it is by the same reason that must be the Formal Object of Faith as if it were by the revelation of God himself But here you think to obviate this objection by some strange distinctions concerning your Infallibility You tell us therefore The Churches Infallibility is not absolutely and simply Divine or that God speaks immediately by her Definitions but only that she is supernaturally infallible by the assistance of the Holy Ghost preserving her from all errour in defining any thing as a point of Christian Faith that is as a Truth revealed from God which is not truly and really so revealed A rare Distinction this You say afterwards The Churches Definition is absolutely infallible but yet this Infallibility is not absolutely and simply Divine I pray tell us What is it then You say It is Supernatural but not Divine and this Supernatural Infallibility by the Assistance of the Holy Ghost securing from all errour but yet not absolutely and precisely Divine I pray tell us What kind of Infallibility that was which the Apostles had in delivering the Doctrine of Christ was that any more than such a Supernatural Infallibility as you fondly arrogate to your Church viz. such a one as might secure them from all errour in defining any thing as a point of Christian Faith which was not so that is as a Truth revealed from God which was not truly and really so revealed And yet I suppose you will not deny but those who lived in the Apostles times might resolve their Faith into that Infallibility which they had as its Formal Object and therefore why not as well into your Churches Infallibility since you pretend to as great Infallibility in your Church as ever was in the Apostles Thus I hope I have shewn it impossible for you not to make the Churches Testimony the Formal Object of Faith since you make it infallible as you do 2. We come now to consider the little evasions and distinctions whereby you hope to get out of this Labyrinth But having so manifestly proved that it follows from your Principles That the Churches Testimony is the Formal Object of Faith all your distinctions fall of themselves for thereby it appears that your Churches Testimony is not meerly a necessary Condition of believing but is the Formal Cause and Reason of it therefore your instance of approximation in natural Causes is nothing to the purpose No more is that of a Commonwealth's practising the same Laws being an Argument that those were its primitive Laws Unless you suppose it impossible 1. That a Common-wealth should ever alter its Laws Or 2. That it should practise contrary to its primitive Laws Or 3. That it should be supernaturally Infallible in judging which are primitive Laws and which not without these Suppositions I say That Instance signifies nothing to the business in hand and when you have proved these true I will give you a further Answer Your Answer to Aristotles Text or rather to that undoubted Maxim of Reason with which the citation of Aristotle concurred hath been considered already Your Answer to the Testimony of Canus is like the rest of your discourse trivial and not to the purpose for Canus doth not only deny the Churches Testimony to be the Formal Object of Faith but the necessity of believing its Testimony to be infallible Non intelligitur necessariò quod credo docenti Ecclesiae tanquam testi infallibili are the very words of the Testimony cited in the Margin of his Lordships Books Your next Section affords us some more words but not one drachm more of reason For How do you prove that the Churches Authority is more known to us than the Scriptures or How can you make it appear that there is any Authority but what is relative to us and therefore the distinction is in it self silly of Authority in se quoad nos For whatever hath Authority hath thereby a respect to some it hath its Authority over And Can any thing be a ground of Faith simply and in it self which is not so towards us For the Formal Object of Faith is that for whose sake we believe and therefore if Divine Revelation be as you say the Formal Object of Faith then it must be more known to us than the Testimony of the Church For that must be more known to us which is the main cause of Believing But if all your meaning be that we must first know what the Church delivers for Scripture before we can judge whether it were divinely revealed or no I grant it to be true but what is this to your Infallibility Will you prove the Infallibility of your Church to be more known to us than that of the Scriptures and on supposition that were true can you then prove that the Scriptures should still retain their prerogative above the Church What your Authors distinguish concerning objective and subjective Certainty pertains not to this place for the worth and dignity of the Scriptures may exceed that of Tradition yet when the knowledge of that worth relyes on that Tradition your esteem of the one must be according to your esteem of the other I will not here enquire Whether the adhesion of the Will can exceed the clearness of the Vnderstanding nor Whether Aristotle was unacquainted with subjective Certainty nor Whether our adhesion to Articles of Faith be stronger than to any Principles evident to natural
which supposing it never so great is not shewed to the Councils but to your Church For the reason of that Reverence cannot be resolved into the Councils but into that Church for whose sake you reverence them And thus it evidently appears That the cunning of this device is wholly your own and notwithstanding these miserable shifts you do finally resolve all Authorities of the Fathers Councils and Scriptures into the Authority of the present Roman-Church which was the thing to be proved The first Absurdity consequent from hence which the Arch-Bishop chargeth your party with is That by this means they ascribe as great Authority if not greater to a part of the Catholick Church as to the whole which we believe in our Creed and which is the Societie of all Christians And this is full of Absurdity in nature in reason in all things that any part should be of equal worth power credit or authority with the whole Here you deny the Consequence which you say depends upon his Lordships wilfully mistaken Notion of the Catholick Church which he saith Is the Church we believe in our Creed and is the Society of all Christians which you call a most desperate extension of the Church because thereby forsooth it will appear that a part is not so great as the whole viz. that the Roman-Church in her full latitude is but a piece or parcel of the Catholick Church believed in our Creed Is this all the desperate Absurdity which follows from his Lordships Answer I pray shew it to have any thing tending to an Absurdity in it And though you confidently tell us That the Roman-Church taken as comprizing all Christians that are in her Communion is the sole and whole Catholick Church yet I will contentedly put the whole issue of the cause upon the proof of this one Proposition that the Roman-Church in its largest sense is the sole and whole Catholick Church or that the present Roman-Church is a sound member of the Catholick Church Your evidence from Ecclesiastical History is such as I fear not to follow you in but I beseech you have a care of treading too near the Apostles heels That any were accounted Catholicks meerly for their Communion with the Roman-Church or that any were condemned for Heresie or Schism purely for their dissent from it prove it when you please I shall be ready God willing to attend your Motions But it is alwaies your faculty when a thing needs proving most to tell us what you could have done This you say You would have proved at large if his Lordship had any more than supposed the contrary But your Readers will think that his Supposition being grounded on such a Maxim of Reason as that mentioned by him it had been your present business to have proved it but I commend your prudence in adjourning it and I suppose you will do it as the Court of Areopagus used to do hard causes in diem longissimum It is apparent the Bishop speaks not of a part of the Church by representation of the whole which is an objection no body but your self would here have fancied and therefore your Instance of a Parliament is nothing to the purpose unless you will suppose that Councils in the Church do represent in such a manner as Parliaments in England do and that their decision is obligatory in the same way as Acts of Parliament are if you believe this to be good Doctrine I will be content to take the Objecters place and make the Application The next Absurdity laid to your charge is as you summe it up That in your Doctrine concerning the Infallibility of your Church your proceeding is most unreasonable in regard you will not have recourse to Texts of Scripture exposition of Fathers propriety of Language Conference of Places Antecedents and Consequents c. but argue that the Doctrine of the present Church of Rome is true and Catholick because she professeth it to be such which saith he is to prove idem per idem To this you answer That as to all those helps you use them with much more candour than Protestants do And why so Because of their manifold wrestings of Scriptures and Fathers Let the handling the Controversies of this Book be the evidence between us in this case and any indifferent Reader be the Judge You tell us You use all these helps but to what purpose do you use them Do you by them prove the Infallibility of your Church If not the same Absurdity lyes at your door still of proving idem per idem No that you do not you say But how doth it appear Thanks to these mute persons the good Motives of Credibility which come in again at a dead lift but do no more service than before I pray cure the wounds they have received already before you rally them again or else I assure you what strength they have left they will employ it against your selves You suppose no doubt your Coleworts good you give them us so often over but I neither like proving nor eating idem per idem But yet we have two Auxiliaries more in the field call'd Instances The design of your first Instance is to shew That if your Church be guilty of proving idem per idem the Apostolical Church was so too For you tell us That a Sectary might in the Apostles times have argued against the Apostolical Church by the very same method his Lordship here uses against the present Catholick Church For if you ask the Christians then Why they believe the whole Doctrine of the Apostles to be the sole true Catholick Faith their Answer is Because it is agreeable to the Doctrine of Christ. If you ask them How they know it to be so they will produce the words sentences and works of Christ who taught it But if you ask a third time By what means they are assured that those Testimonies do indeed make for them or their cause or are really the Testimonies and Doctrine of Christ they will not then have recourse to those Testimonies or Doctrine but their Answer is They know it to be so because the present Apostolick Church doth witness it And so by consequence prove idem per idem Thus the Sectary I know not whether your faculty be better at framing Questions or Answers to them I am sure it is extraordinary at both Is it not enough to be in a Circle your selves but you must needs bring the Apostles into it too at least if you may have the management of their Doctrine you would do it The short Answer to all this is That the ground why the Christians did assent to the Apostles Doctrine as true was because God gave sufficient evidence that their Testimony was infallible in such things where such Infallibility was requisite For you had told us before That the Apostles did confirm their words with signs that followed by which signs all their hearers were bound to submit themselves unto
of Christians in opposition to others is the true Church for resolving this question that we look on it as a great argument of the Credibility as well as Vniversality of this Tradition that all these differing Societies consent in it And not only they but the greatest opposers of Christianity Jews or Philosophers could never see any reason to call in question such a Tradition His Lordship the better to represent the use of Tradition in the last resolution of Faith makes use of this illustration That as the knowledge of Grammer and Logick is necessary in order to the making a Demonstration yet the knowledge of the Conclusion is not resolved into Grammer or Logick but into the immediate principles out of which it is deduced So a mans first preparative to Faith is the Churches Tradition but his full and last assent is resolved into the internal arguments of Scripture This you quarrel with and tell us There is not the same Analogy between Logick and Church Tradition your meaning I suppose is because Logick doth Physically by inlarging the understanding fit men for demonstrations but Church-Tradition cannot enable men to understand the Scripture But cannot you easily discern that Analogy which his Lordship brought this illustration for which is that some things may be necessary preparatives for knowledge which that knowledge is not resolved into Is not this plain in Logick and is it not as plain between Tradition and Scripture For though Tradition doth not open our eyes to see this light yet it presents the object to us to be seen and that in an unquestionable manner But for all this say you a man must either receive it on the sole authority of Church-Tradition or be as much in the dark as ever Why so Is there any repugnancy in the thing that Scripture should be received first upon the account of Tradition and yet afterwards men resolve their Faith into the Scripture it self May not a man very probably believe that a Diamond is sent him from a Friend upon the testimony of the Messenger who brings it and yet be firmly perswaded of it by discerning the Sparklings of it But say you further The Scriptures themselves appear no more to be the Word of God then the Stars to be of a certain determinate number or the distinction of colours to a blind man If this approach not to the highest blasphemy against the Scripture I know not what doth He that shall compare this saying of yours with that in the precedent Chapter That if Christ had not left the Church Infallible he might be accounted an Impostor and Deceiver may easily guess how much of Religion you believe in your heart when on so small occasions you do so openly disparage both Christ and the Scriptures It is well yet your Churches Infallibility can stand on no better terms than these are which will be sufficient to keep any who have any true sense of the truth and excellency of Christ and the Scriptures from hearkening to it But are you in good earnest when you say that Scriptures themselves appear no more to be the Word of God than the distinction of colours to a blind man which is as much as nothing at all Is there nothing at all in the excellency of the Doctrine and Precepts contained in the Scriptures nothing in those clear discoveries of God and our selves nothing in all those transactions between God and men nothing in that Covenant of Redemption between God and man through Christ nothing in the clear accomplishment and fulfilling of Prophesies nothing in that admirable strain and style which is in the writings nothing in that harmonious consent which is discovered in writers of several ages interests places and conditions nothing in that admirable efficacy which the Doctrine of it hath upon the souls of men to perswade them to renounce sin the world and themselves for the sake of it is there nothing more I say in all these which makes the Scripture appear to be the Word of God than the distinction of colours to a blind man Could you assoon think to account the starrs as discern any thing of Divinity from these things in the Scriptures If your eyes were as blind as your understanding could you assoon distinguish white from black as the Scripture from the Alcoran if they were both presented to you to read and judge of them according to the evidence you found in them Is it possible a man that owns himself a Christian should utter such opprobrious language of the Scripture You had been before speaking what honour you give to the Scripture notwithstanding you pretend your Church Infallible and I had mentioned some of those passages which occurr in your writers in disparagement of them but I must needs say they all fall short of this the Nose of Wax the Inky Divinity the Lesbian rule are Courtlike expressions to this of yours for this puts no difference in the world between the Scripture and the Alcoran if your Church should propound the one as well as the other For you could not possibly say worse of the Alcoran then that of it self it appeared no more to be the Word of God than distinction of colours to a blind man I might here send you to be chastised for this insolent Atheistical expression to the Primitive Fathers who speak so much in admiration of the excellency of Scriptures who did vindicate them from all assaults of the Heathen Philosophers I might send you to those of your own party who if they have any love or tenderness for Christian Religion will not suffer such passages to pass without the most severe rebukes I might sufficiently prove the contrary from the arguments used against Atheists by Bellarmine and others but I shall content my self with that noble and Christian confession of your Gregory de Valentiâ from whom you might learn more piety and modesty towards the Sacred Scriptures There being many things in the Doctrine of Christianity it self which of themselves may conciliate belief and authority yet that seems the greatest to me as hath been observed by Clement of Alexandria Lactantius and others that I know not with what admirable force but most divine it affects the hearts of men and stirs them up to vertue It is written with great simplicity and without almost any artifice or ornament of speech which is an argument that its authority is not humane but Divine for no humane writing hath any power on the minds of men without a great deal of art and eloquence How many things are there in this ingenuous and pious confession of this learned Jesuite which might if you have any shame left make you sensible of the Blasphemy of your former expression For 1. He saith there are many things in the doctrine of Christianity which for themselves may conciliate our belief and manifest their authority If for themselves then certainly the Scriptures of themselves have a great deal more evidence
Customs controverted between the Papists and us which no doubt is the true reason why the three first ages are declined by Cardinal Perrone yet there is not the least shadow of pretence why they should be silent in this present Controversie since the great business of their writings was to vindicate the Christian Faith to perswade the Heathens to believe it and to manifest the grounds on which they were induced to believe themselves If therefore in this they do unanimously concurr with that resolution of Faith I have already laid down nothing can be desired more for the evidence and confirmation of the truth of our way than that it is not only most consonant to Scripture but built on the truest Reason and was the very same which the Primitive Christians used when they gave an account of their Faith Which I shall do not by some mangled citations but deducing it from the scope and design of their writings and drawing it successively down from the first after the Apostles who appeared in Vindication of the Christian Faith I begin with Justin Martyr who as Photius saith of him was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not far from the Apostles either in time or virtue and who being a professed Philosopher before he became a Christian we may in reason think that he was more inquisitive into the grounds of Christian Faith before he believed and the more able to give an account of them when he did Whether therefore we consider those arguments which first induced him to believe or those whereby he endeavours to perswade others to it we shall find how consonant and agreeable he is to our grounds of Faith how far from any imagination of the Churches Infallibility In the beginning of his excellent Dialogue with Trypho where if I may conjecture he represents the manner of his conversion in a Platonical way introducing a solemn conference between himself and an ancient person of great gravity and a venerable aspect in a solitary place whither he was retired for his meditations Pet. Halloix is much troubled who this person should be Whether an Angel in humane shape or a man immediately conveyed by an Angel to discover Christianity to him which when he had done he was as suddenly carried back again Scultetus I suppose from this story asserts Justin Martyr to be converted by Divine Revelation But if I be not much mistaken this whole Conference is no more than the setting forth the grounds of his becoming a Christian in the Platonical mode by way of Dialogue and probably the whole Disputation with Trypho may be nothing else but however that be it is apparent Trypho looked on him as a Platonist by his Pallium and Justin Martyr owns himself to have been so and therefore it was very congruous for him to discourse after the Academick manner In which discourse when Justin Martyr had stood up in vindication of the Platonick Philosophy and the other Person endeavours to convince him of the impossibility of attaining true happiness by any Philosophy For when Justin had said That by Philosophy he came to the Knowledge of God the other person demanded How they could know God who had never seen him nor heard him He replied That the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God was only intelligible by our minds as Plato said He again asks Whether there were such a faculty in the minds of men as to be able to see God without a Divine Power and Spirit assisting it Justin answers that according to Plato the eye of the understanding was sufficient to discover that there is such a Being which is the cause of all things but the nature of it is ineffable and incomprehensible Upon which he proceeds to enquire What relation there was between God and the Souls of men and what means to come to the participation of him after a great deal of discourse on which subject between them Justin comes at last to enquire if there were no truth and certainty in Philosophy By whose instruction or by what means he should come to it To which that person returns this excellent Answer That there had been a long time since several persons much elder than the reputed Philosophers blessed men just and lovers of God speaking by the inspiration of the Divine Spirit foretelling things which have come to pass since whom they call Prophets These only saw the Truth and declared it to men neither flattering nor fearing any nor conquered with the love of honour But they only spake the things which they heard and saw being filled with the Holy Spirit Whose Books are still extant which whosoever reads and assents to will find himself much improved in the principles and ends of things and whatever becomes a Philosopher to know For they write not by way of argument or demonstration but that which is above it they are most faithful witnesses of Truth For the things which have and do come to pass do enforce men to believe the Truth of what they spake And not only so but they are most worthy to be believed for the Miracles which they wrought Moreover they extol the Maker of the World God and the Father and declare to the World his Son Christ which the false Prophets who are acted by a seducing and impure spirit neither have done nor yet do do but they attempt to shew some tricks for the amazement of men and cry up the evil and deceiving spirits But do thou above all things pray that the gates of light may be opened to thee For these things are not seen nor understood by all but only by them to whom God and Christ shall grant the knowledge of them A most signal and remarkable Testimony as any is extant in all Antiquity for acquainting us with the true grounds and reasons of Faith which therefore I have at large produced The very reading of which is sufficient to tell us How true a Protestant this whether Angel or Man was When Justin asked him What Teachers he should have to lead him to Truth He tells him There had been long before Philosophers excellent persons in the world called Prophets men every way good who did nothing for fear or favour or love of themselves But Justin might further ask How he should come to be instructed by them He tells him Their Writings were still extant wherein were contained such things as might hugely satisfie a Philosophical mind concerning the Origine and Principles of things He might still enquire Whether those things were demonstrated or no in them No he replies but they deserve assent as much if not beyond any demonstration because they manifest themselves to be from God by two things the exact accomplishment of the Prophecies made by them and the unparalleld Miracles which were wrought by them But might not the evil spirits work such things No For although their false Prophetsâ—ay â—ay do several things to amaze men yet they can do no
of all his goods And when he speaks of the Doctrine it self of Christianity he saies It is suitable to whatever was rational among the Platonists or other Philosophers but far more agreeable to it self and containing much more excellent things than ever they could attain to the knowledge of In his second Apology for the Christians to the Emperour Antoninus Pius he insists much on the excellency of the Doâ—trine of Christianity from the Precepts of it chastity love of enemies liberality submission to authority worship of God c. Afterwards he proves the truth and certainty of all we believe concerning Christ from the exact accomplishment of the Prophecies made concerning him in the Old Testament which discourse he ends with this saying So many and so great things being seen are sufficient to perswade men to believe the truth of them who are lovers of truth and not seekers of applause and under the command of passions Thus we see in all his discourses where he had the most occasion administred to him to discover the most certain grounds of Christian Faith he resolves all into the rational evidence of the truth excellency and divinity of the Doctrine which was contained in the Scriptures For in his second Oration to the Greeks after he had spoken highly in commendation of the Scripture calling it The best expeller of all turbulent passions and the surest extinguisher of those preternatural heats in the souls of men which saith he makes men not Poets nor Philosophers nor Orators but it makes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dying men immortal and mortals become gods and transferrs them from the earth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to such places whose confines are far above Olympus therefore O ye Greeks come and be instructed be ye as I am for I was as you are And these were the things which prevailed with me the divine power and efficacy of the Doctrine What was it then I pray that Justin Martyr of a Philosopher becoming a Christian resolved his Faith into If we may believe himself it was into the evidence of the Doctrine of Christianity and not into the Infallibility of any Church The Testimony of this person I have the more largely insisted on both because he was so great a Philosopher as well as Christian and lived so near the Apostolical times Next him we produce Athenagoras as a Philosopher too as well as Christian who flourished under Antoninus and Commodus to whom he made his Apology in behalf of the Christians in which he first undertakes to manifest the reasonableness of the Doctrine which they owned the Foundation of it being the same with that which the best Philosophers acknowledged the existence and unity of the Deity But saith he if we had nothing but such reasons as he had produced our perswasion could only be humane but the words of the Prophets are they which establish our minds who being carried beyond themselves by the impulse of the Divine Spirit spake that which they were moved to when the Spirit used them as Instruments through which he spake Is not here a plain resolution of Faith into that Divine Authority by which the Prophets spake and that not as testified by any Infallible Church but as it was discernable by those persons he spake to for he appeals to the Emperours themselves concerning it which had been a fond and absurd thing for him to do if the knowledge of that Divine Inspiration did depend meerly on the testimony of Christians as such and were not to be discovered by some common Principles to them and others Much to the same purpose Tatianus speaks in that eloquent Oration of his against the Greeks who was Justin Martyrs Scholar and we shall see how agreeably he speaks to him in the account he gives how he became a Christian. After saith he he had abundantly discovered the vanity of the Theology and Superstitions of the Greeks he fell to the reading some strange Books much elder and more Divine than the Writings of the Greek Philosophers And to these saith he I yielded up my Faith for the great simplicity and plainness of the style and the freedom from affectation which was in the writers and that evidence and perspicuity which was in all they writ and because they foretold things to come made excellent promises and manifestly declared the Monarchy of the World What Protestant could speak higher of the Scripture and of those internal arguments which are the grounds of Faith than Tatianus in these words doth Yet we see these were the arguments which made him relinquish the Greek learning of which he was a Professor at Rome and betake himself to the profession of Christianity though he was sure to undergo not only contempt from the world but to be in continual hazard of his life by it That innate simplicity of the writings of the Scripture joyned with the perspicuity of it if at least those words be rightly translated 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by sermo nusquam obscurus and it doth not rather relate to the account of the worlds creation which I conjecture it may do but however the certainty of the predictions the excellency of the promises and the reasonableness of the Doctrine were the things which by the reading of the Books he was perswaded to believe them by But all this while we hear no news of any Churches Infallibility in order to Faith We come therefore to Irenaeus who was omnium doctrinarum curioâ—â—ssimus explorator as Tertullian speaks of him a great searcher into all kind of learning and therefore surely not to seek as to the true account of his Faith Whose judgement herein although we have had occasion to enquire into before yet we have testimonies enough beside to manifest his consent with them And although Irenaeus of all the ancient Fathers be looked on as the most favourable to Tradition and is most cited to that purpose in these disputes yet I doubt not but to make it appear that where he speaks most concerning Tradition he makes the resolution of Faith to be wholly and entirely into the Scripture and they who apprehend otherwise do either take the citations out of him upon trust or else only search him for the words of those citations and never take the pains to enquire into the scope and design of his discourse For clearing which we must consider what the subject was which he writ of what the plea's of the adverse party were what way Irenaeus takes to confute them and to establish the Faith of Christians as to the matter which was in Controversie The matter in dispute was this Valentinus and his Scholars not being contented with the simplicity of the Doctrine of the Gospel and in probability the better to suit their opinions to the Heathen Mythology had invented a strange Pedigree of Gods the better as they pretended to give an account of the production of things and the various dispensations
for being weak and mortal he cannot speak as he ought of a Being infinite and immortal nor he that is the work of him who made it besides he that cannot speak truth concerning Himself how much less is he to be believed concerning God For as much as man wants of Divine power so much must his speech fall short of God when he discourseth of him For mans speech is naturally weak and unable to express God not only as to his essence but as to his power and works thence he concludes a necessity that God by his Spirit must discover himself to men which revelation he proves to be only extant among Christians because of the many Divine testimonies that Christ was the Son of God because the knowledge that came by him was so remarkably dispersed abroad in the world and did prevail notwithstanding all opposition and persecution For saith he the Greek Philosophy if any ordinary Magistrate forbid it did presently sink but our doctrine hath been forbid from its first publishing by the Kings and Potentates of the earth who have used their utmost industry to destroy both us and that together but still it flourisheth and the more for its being persecuted for it dyes not like a humane doctrine nor perisheth like a weak gift Thus we see that he insists on rational evidence as the great and sufficient testimony into which our Faith is resolved as to the being of a Divine Revelation In his next Book he answers some objections of the Heathens against believing Christianity of which the chiefest was the dissension among the Christians wherein if ever he had an opportunity to declare what the certain rule of Faith is and what power God hath left his Church for determining matters to be believed by us But for want of understanding this necessary foundation of Faith viz. the Churches infallibility he is fain to answer this objection just as a Protestant would do 1. If this were an argument against truth the objectors had none themselves for both Jews and Greeks had heresies among them 2. The very coming of heresies was an argument of the truth of Scripture because that had expresly foretold them 3. This argument doth not hold any where else therefore it should not in reason here viz. where there is any dissent there can be no certainty for though Physitians differ much from one another yet Patients are not thereby discouraged from seeking to them for cure 4. This should only make men use more care and diligence in the search and enquiry after truth for they will find abundant recompence for their search in the pleasure of finding truth Would any one say because two apples are offered to him the one a real fruit the other made of wax that therefore he will meddle with neither but rather that he ought to use more care to distinguish the one from the other If there be but one high way and many by-paths which lead to precipices rivers or the Sea Will he not go in the highway because there are such false ones but rather go in it with the more care and get the exactest knowledge of it he can Doth a Gardener cast off the care of his Garden because weeds grow up with his herbs or rather doth he not use the more diligence to distinguish one from the other So ought we to do in discerning truth 5. That all those who seriously enquire after truth may receive satisfaction For either mans mind is capable of evidence or it is not if not it is to no purpose to trouble ourselves with any thing of knowledge at all if it be then we must descend to particular questions by which we may demonstratively learn from the Scriptures how the heresies fell off from them and that the most exact knowledge is preserved in truth alone and the ancient Church If then Heresies must be demonstratively confuted out of Scriptures what then doth he make to be the rule to judge of Controversies but only them For what he speaks of the ancient Church he speaks of it as in conjunction with truth and in opposition to those novel Heresies of the Basilidians and Valentinians For that he doth not at all appeal to the judgement of any Church much less the present as having any infallibility whereon men ought to rely in matters of Faith appears likewise by his following words But those saith he who are willing to imploy themselves in the most excellent things will never give over the search of truth till they have received a demonstration of it from the Scriptures themselves Here we see the last resolution of Assent is into the Scriptures themselves without any the least mention or intimation of any Infallibility in the Church either to deliver or interpret those Scriptures to us And after gives the true account of Heresies viz. mens not adhering to the Scriptures For saith he they must necessarily be deceived in the greatest things who undertake them unless they hold fast the Rule of Truth which they received from Truth it self And in this following discourse he goes as high as any Protestants whatever even such who suppose the Scripture to be principium indemonstrabile by any thing but it self for he makes the Doctrine delivered by Christ to be the Principle of our Faith and we make use of it saith he to be our 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to find out other things by But whatever is judged is not believed till it be judged therefore that can be no Principle which stands in need of being judged Justly therefore when we have by Faith received that indemonstrable Principle and from the Principle it self used demonstrations concerning it self we are by the voice of our Lord instructed in the knowledge of Truth Nothing can be more plain in what he saith than that if there were a higher 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 than Scripture as there must be if we are to receive it on the account of the Churches Infallible Testimony the Scripture could not be call'd the Principle of our Faith but when we receive the Scripture the evidence we have that it is our Principle must be fetched from it self and therefore he does here in terms as express as may be resolve the belief of Scripture into internal arguments and makes it as much a Principle supposed as ever his Lordship doth And immediately after when he proposeth that very Question How this should be proved to others We expect not saith he any proof from men but we prove the thing sought for by the Word of God which is more worthy belief than any demonstration or rather which is the only demonstration by the knowledge of which those who have tasted of the Scripture alone become believers Can any one who reads these words ever imagine that this man speaks like one that said That the Scriptures of themselves appear no more to be Gods Word than distinction of colours to a blind
c. Can any thing be more plain and obvious to any one who looks into that discourse of Vincentius than that he makes it not his business to give an account of the general Foundations of Faith as to the Scriptures being Gods Word but of the particular Doctrines of Faith in opposition to the Heresies which arise in the Church So that all that he speaks concerning Scripture is not about the authority but the sense and interpretation of it If therefore I should grant you that he speaks of Christian and Divine Faith What is this to your purpose unless you could prove that he speaks of that Divine Faith whereby we believe the Scripture to be the Word of God But yet your argument is very good to prove that he speaks not of any humane fallible perswasion but true Christian Divine Faith for he opposes it to Heresie and calls it sound Faith and his Faith It seems then whatever Faith is sound for the matter of it is presently Christian Divine and Infallible and so whosoever believes any thing which is materially true in opposition to Heresies needs never fear as long as he doth so for according to you he hath Christian and Infallible Faith but what if the Devils Faith be as sound as any Catholicks ' Must it therefore be Divine Faith No it may be you will answer because he wants the formal object of Faith and doth not believe on the account of your Churches Infallibility I verily believe you for he knows the jugglings of it too much to believe it infallible But take Vincentius in what sense you please that is evident in him which his Lordship produced him for that for the preserving Faith entire he places authority of Scripture first and then Tradition unless you will serve his Testimony as you do his Lordships because it makes for your purpose say He mentions Tradition first and then Scripture but say you He sayes Tradition doth as truly confirm Divine Faith as Scripture though Scripture doth it in a higher manner If you did but consider either what kind of Tradition or what kind of Faith Vincentius insists on you could not possibly think his words any thing to your purpose For he speaks not of any Tradition infallibly attested to us without which you pretend there can be no Divine Faith but of such an Vniversal Tradition which depends wholly upon Antiquity Vniversality and Consent and never so much as mentions much less pretends to any thing of Infallibility So that if you grant such a kind of Tradition doth as truly confirm Faith as the Scripture then you must grant no necessity of an Infallible Testimony to assure us of that Tradition for Vincentius speaks of such a kind of Tradition as hath no connexion with Infallibility For if Vincentius had ever in the least thought of any such thing so great and zealous an opposer of Heresies would not have left out that which had been more to his purpose than all that he had said For wise men who have throughly considered of Vincentius his way though in general they cannot but approve of it so far as to think it highly improbable that there should be Antiquity Vniversality and Consent against the true and genuine sense of Scripture yet when they consider this way of Vincentius with all those cautions restrictions and limitations set down by him ◠1. c. 39. they are apt to think that he hath put men to a wild-goose-chase to finde out any thing according to his Rules and that S. Augustine spake a great deal more to the purpose when he spake concerning all the Writers of the Church That although they had never so much learning and sanctity he did not think it true because they thought so but because they perswaded him to believe it true either from the Authority of Scripture or some probable Reason If therefore S. Austin's Authority be not sunk so low as that of the Monk of Lerins we have very little reason to think that Tradition can as truly confirm Faith to us as the Scriptures supposing that to have been the meaning of Vincentius Which yet is not reasonable to imagine since Vincentius himself grants that in case of inveterate Heresie or Schism either the sole Authority of Scripture is to be used or at most the determinations of General Councils nay and in all cases doth suppose that the Canon of Scripture is perfect and is abundantly sufficient of it self for all things Can you yet therefore suppose that Vincentius did think that Tradition did as truly confirm our Faith as the Scripture Which is your assertion and the only thing whereby you pretend that the Bishop hath misconstrued Vincentius but whether be more guilty of it I leave to impartial judgement The next Testimony you consider is that of Henricus à Gandavo For his Lordship had said That the School had confessed this was the way ever For which he cites the Testimony of that Schoolman That daily with them that are without Christ enters by the woman i. e. the Church and they believe by that fame which she gives alluding to the story of the woman of Samaria But when they come to hear Christ himself they believe His words before the words of the woman For when they have once found Christ they do more believe his words in Scripture than they do the Church which testifies of him because then propter illam for the Scripture they believe the Church And if the Church should speak contrary to the Scripture they would not believe it Thus saith his Lordship the School taught then No that did it not say you But let us see how rarely you prove it For you say he speaks all this of a supernatural and Divine Faith to be given both to the Scriptures and the Church Gandavensis certainly is much obliged to you who venture to speak such great Absurdities for his sake for if he be understood in both places of Divine and Infallible Faith these rare consequences follow 1. That the first beginning of Faith is equal to the highest degree of it for when he speaks of the Church he speaks of Christs entring by that which can be meant of nothing else but the first step to Faith as is plain in the parallel case of the woman of Samaria but if this were Divine and Infallible it must be equal to the highest degree for that I suppose can be but Divine and Infallible unless you can find out degrees in Infallibility By this Rule you make him that is but over the threshold as much in the house as he that is sate down to the Table a plant at its first peeping out of the earth to be as tall as at its full growth and the Samaritans as firmly to believe in Christ at the first mention of him by the Woman as when they saw and heard him 2. By this you make an Infallible Faith to be built on a Fallible
in the safe-conduct he had granted Thus we see how on all hands it appears from Husse's fears and desires the Emperours power the nature of safe-conducts the Emperours own sense of it and the Councils decree that this first Answer hath no ground at all viz. that the safe conduct was granted jure communi and that it was only to hinder unjust violence and not the execution of Justice But besides you say John Husse was justly burnt for two reasons The first is For being obstinate in his Heresie the second For having fled which the Emperour had prohibited in his safe-conduct under pain of death I answer It is not Whether a man obstinate in Heresie may be burnt which is now the Question although that may justly bear a dispute too But Whether one suspected for Heresie and coming to a Council with safe-conduct for coming and returning may be burnt without violation of Faith your first reason then is nothing to the purpose and your second as little First Because there is no certain evidence at all of Husse's flying it not being objected against him by the Emperour who only upbraided him with his obstinacy in his Heresie as the cause of his execution and withall if Husse had fled and had suffered death for that as you say he ought to have done he would not have suffered the death proper to Heresie and not to flying nor been accounted as by all your own Authours he is a sufferer on the account of Heresie But this being a groundless Calumny it needs no further confutation But before we come to your second Answer the case of Hierom of Prague must be discussed so far as it is distinct from that of John Husse who it seems was trepanned by a pretended safe-conduct granted him by the Council and not by the Emperour wherein you tell us that express clause of salvâ semper justitiâ was inserted which is another argument that the safe-conduct of the Emperour to Husse was of another nature because it ran in general terms without any such clause but poor Hierom who it seems was not acquainted with the arts and subtilties of his enemies but thought them as honest as himself ventures to Constance upon this safe-conduct but when he came thither and began to understand the jugglings of his enemies he thought to shift for himself by flight but being taken was burnt So that Hierom suffered through his honest simplicity and credulity not considering what that salvâ justitiâ would mean in his case which as they interpreted it was such another safe-conduct as known Malefactors have to the place of Justice but to call it a safe-conduct in the sense which Hierom apprehended it in is as proper as to say A man that is to be executed shall have a Salvo for his life This was therefore intended as appears by the event as a meer trick to bring him within their power and so all such safe-conducts granted with those clauses by such persons who are to interpret them themselves are and nothing else For they are the sole Judges what this Justice shall be Neither can you say then That Faith was kept with Hierom of Prague for no such thing as a safe-conduct truly so called was intended him and when the Emperour was sollicited to grant him one he utterly denied it because of the bad success he had in that of John Husse and some of the Council being then present with the Emperour offered to give him a safe-conduct but they very honestly explained themselves that it was a safe-conduct for coming thither but not for going thence again And so it proved So that Faith was well given to Hierom of Prague and as well kept to John Husse But say you Had the Protestants gone to the Council of Trent upon the safe-conduct granted them by that Council jure speciali in the second manner they could not at all have been punished under any pretence of Heresie without manifest breach of Faith which all Catholicks hold to be unlawful The like may be said of the safe-conduct offered them for going to Rome But you must better satisfie us that you look upon this as a breach of Faith than as yet you have done For so are your ambiguities in your expressions of this nature that men who know your arts can hardly tell when they have your right meaning For you may look on all breach of Faith as unlawful and yet not look on your acting contrary to your express words in safe-conducts offered to Hereticks to be a breach of Faith For you may say Faith is there only broken where men are bound to keep it but you are not bound to keep it with Hereticks and that because your obligation to the Church is greater than it can be to Hereticks when therefore you have Hereticks in your power it is an easie matter for you to say that were it in any thing else but in a matter so nearly concerning the Interest of your Holy Mother the Church you could not but observe it but your obligation to that is so great as destroies all other which are contrary to it and the obligation being destroyed there is no breach of Faith at all and therefore you may hold all breach of Faith unlawful and yet you may proceed against those whom you account Hereticks contrary to all engagements whatsoever and then say This is no breach of Faith And the truth is by your Doctrines of aequivocations and mental reservations you have made all manner of converse in the world so lubricous and uncertain that he who hath to deal with you especially in matters where the interest of your Church is concerned had need be wary and remember to distrust or else he may repent it afterwards If you therefore account the Protestants crafty Foxes in not coming to Rome or the Council of Trent it was because they would not venture too near the Lions Den but if you will not account them wise men for refusing so fair an offer you will give us leave to think them so till they see better reason to trust your offers And the Council of Trent did very well to tell them in their form of safe-conduct they would not do by them as the Council of Constance did for therein they shew how much the Faith of Councils was sunk by that so that if that were not particularly excepted no trust would ever be given to them more But supposing the safe-conduct of the Council of Trent to have been never so free from suspicion the Protestants had sufficient reasons not to appear there as will be manifested afterwards We come therefore now to your second Answer in vindication of the Council of Constance which is this That by that decree the Council declares that no Secular Power how soveraign soever can hinder the proceedings of the Ecclesiastical Tribunal in causes of Heresie for which there is great reason and consequently if the Emperour or any other Secular Prince
not from hence that Heresie was supposed to dissolve that obligation to obedience which otherwise men lay under And if it doth destroy that Faith which men owe to their Soveraigns in case of Heresie Will it not equally destroy that Faith which Princes promise to their subjects in case of Heresie too For what reason can be given for the one which will not hold for the other also And who were they I pray but those loyal persons the Jesuits who broached fomented and propagated that Doctrine Was not Father Creswell a Jesuit who under the name of Andreas Philopator delivers this excellent Doctrine That the whole School of Divines teach and it is a thing certain and of Faith that any Christian Prince if he manifestly falls off from the Religion of the Catholick Roman Church and endeavours to draw others from it doth by Law of God and man fall from all power and authority and that before the sentence of the Pope and Judge delivered against him and that all his subjects are free from the obligation of any Oath to him of obedience and loyalty and that they may and ought cast such a one out of his power as an Apostate and a Heretick lest he infect others I might mention many more who write after the same nature but I spare you only this one may serve instead of many for he delivers it not only as his own judgement but the consent of the School and as a thing most certain as being of Faith And will you still say That no Jesuits own such principles as That Faith is not to be kept with Hereticks For if Heresie doth thus destroy all obligation to obedience in subjects to Heretical Princes Will it not much more in Princes toward heretical subjects because certainly Princes have a greater power and right to command over subjects than subjects over them even in your own case of Heresie Since this therefore is the avowed Doctrine of the Jesuitical School perswade whom you can to believe that you look on an obligation to Faith remaining in a case of Heresie Certainly none who understand your principles and practices will have much cause to rely on your Faith in this particular So much at present of the Jesuits Integrity as to this principle of keeping Faith with Hereticks What you add further about the Council of Constance and John Husse and Hierom of Prague is only serving up the very same matter in somewhat different words for there is nothing contained in them but what hath been sufficiently disproved already for it all depends on the nature of the safe-conduct and the difference of the Secular and Ecclesiastical Power His Lordship very pertinently asks supposing men might go safely to Rome To what purpose is it to go to a General Council thither and use freedom of speech since the Church of Rome is resolved to alter nothing and you very pertinently answer That they were invited thither to be better instructed and reclaimed from their errours But Will no place serve to reclaim them but Rome Can they not be as well instructed elsewhere and by other means than by being summoned to a General Council We had thought the intention of General Councils had been to have had free debates concerning the matters which divide the Church But it seems the Protestants must have been summoned as guilty persons i. e. Hereticks and their Adversaries must have sate as their proper Judges and such who were accused as the great Innovators must have believed themselves Infallible and by your own saying If an Angel from Heaven had come as a Protestant thither he would not have been believed nay it had been well he had escaped so if your power were as great over spirits as over our grosser bodies So I suppose John Husse and Hierom of Prague were invited to Constance to be better instructed and it is well we know by their example what you mean by your good instructions and out of a desire to avoid them care not how little we appear where our Adversaries not only intend to be Judges but resolve beforehand to condemn us whatsoever we say For so you tell us That Rome and the Fathers of Trent were resolved to stick to their own Doctrine which they call Catholick notwithstanding any pretended difficulties or objections brought against it either by Bishops or any other person Your kind invitations then of the Protestants were wonderful expressions of your Churches civility towards them that they might be present to hear themselves condemned and then escape how they could themselves The offer of a publick Disputation his Lordship truly tells you signifies nothing without an indifferent arbitration and the impossibility of agreeing on that renders the other useless and only becomes such Thrasonical persons as Campian was who yet had as little reason as any man to boast of his Atchievements in his disputations When you therefore say His Lordship would have some Atheist Turk or Jew to fit as indifferent persons you shew only your Scurrility and want of understanding For his Lordship only insists on the necessity of that to shew the uselesness of publick Disputations where such cannot be agreed on as in this case And he truly saith This is a good Answer to all such offers that the Kings and Church of England had no reason to admit of a publick Dispute with the English Romish Clergy till they shall be able to shew it under the Seal or Powers of Rome that that Church will submit to a Third who may be an indifferent Judge between us and them or to such a General Council as is after mentioned not such a one as you would have wherein the Pope should sit as Head of the Church for that is to make the greatest Criminal Judge in his own cause And this saith he is an honest and I think a full Answer And without this all Disputation must end in Clamour and therefore the more publick the worse Because as the Clamour is the greater so perhaps will be the Schism too CHAP. IV. The Reformation of the Church of England justified The Church of Rome guilty of Schism by unjustly casting Protestants out of Communion The Communion of the Catholick and particular Churches distinguished No separation of Protestants from the Catholick Church The Devotions of the Church of England and Rome compared Particular Churches Power to reform themselves in case of general Corruption proved The Instance from the Church of Judah vindicated The Church of Rome paralleld with the ten Tribes General Corruptions make Reformation the more necessary Whether those things we condemn as errours were Catholick Tenets at the time of the Reformation The contrary shewed and the difference of the Church of Rome before and since the Reformation When things may be said to be received as Catholick Doctrines How far particular Churches Power to reform themselves extends His Lordships Instances for the Power of Provincial Councils in matters of
any such can be found then I say and 't is most true Reformation especially in cases of Religion is so difficult a work and subject to so many Pretensions that 't is almost impossible but the Reformers should step too far or fall too short in some smaller things or other which in regard of the far greater benefit coming by the Reformation it self may well be passed over and born withall But if there have been any wilfull and gross errours not so much in opinion as in Fact Sacriledge too often pretending to Reform Superstition that 's the crime of the Reformers not of the Reformation and they are long since gone to God to answer it to whom I leave them This is his Lordships full and just account of the proceedings of the Reformation in the Church of England to which we must consider what Answer you return To his Lordships Question Why may not a National Council of the Church of England do the like you give this answer Truly I know no reason why it may not provided it be a true National Council and a true Church of England as those recited were true Churches and Councils and provided also that it do no more We are contended to put the issue of this business upon these three things viz. That our Church is a true Church That the power which reformed it was sufficient for that purpose and That no more was done by them then was in their power to do But for the first you tell us That seeing by the Church of England he means the present Protestant Church there you must crave leave of his Lordship to deny his supposition and tell him the Church of England in that sense signifies no true Church Were it not an easie matter to requite you by telling you It is impossible we should be guilty of Schism in any separation from your Communion because we must crave leave of you to say that the Church of Rome is no true Church and where there is Schism that must be a true Church which men are guilty of it in separating from Not as though I sought only to return a blow on you which I could not defend our Church from but to let you see that by whatever way you would prove your Church to be true by the same we may prove ours to be so too If you own and believe the Christian Doctrine to be the way to salvation so do we If you embrace the ancient Creeds so do we If you acknowledge the Scriptures to be Gods Word so do we If you joyn together in participation of the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lords Supper so do we If you have a constant succession of Bishops so have we Name then What it is which is Fundamental to the Being of a Church which our Protestant Church doth want You grant the Church of England was a true Church before the Reformation Wherein was it altered from it self by it that it ceased to be a true Church Was it in denying the Pope's Supremacy in eighth's time That cannot be for you very remarkably grant afterwards That the Bishops and the King too left the Pope in possession of all that he could rightly challenge Which is a concession we shall make more use of afterwards Surely then this could not unchurch them Or Was it the proceedings of the Reformation in Elizabeth's time The Supremacy could not be it neither now for that was asserted under a more moderate title in her time than in her Fathers Was it the Vse of the Liturgy in the English tongue Surely not when Pius the fourth offered to confirm it as is credibly reported from Vincentius Parpalia whom that Pope imployed on a Message to Queen Elizabeth with terms of Accommodation But What was it which did unchurch us Were they the Articles of Religion agreed on in the Convocation 1562 If they were these Were they either the positive or negative Articles If the positive Were they the asserting the Articles contained in the three Creeds the sufficiency of Scriptures the necessity of Divine Grace or What else If the negative Was it the denying Purgatory Invocation of Saints Vnlawfulness of Priests Marriage Communion in one kind or Which of them else was it which made the Protestant Church to be no true Church Or Is it lastly the asserting That as the Church of Jerusalem Alexandria and Antioch have erred so also the Church of Rome hath erred not only in their livings and manner of Ceremonies but also in matters of Faith Is this it which hath done us all the mischief to unchurch us viz. the denying your Churches Infallibility If this be it it is our comfort yet that our Church will remain a true Church till yours be proved to be Infallible which I dare say will be long enough But as though it were in your absolute power to church and unchurch whom and when you please you offer at no proof at all of this assertion but only very fairly crave his Lordships leave to call the Protestant Church no true Church Which indeed is a more civil way of begging the Question And if it will not be granted you cannot help it for you have done your utmost in craving his leave for it and you have no more to say to it But you seem to say much more to the second That the Reformation was not managed by a lawful power nor carried on in a due manner for you offer to prove that the National Synod 1562. was no lawful Synod in these words For is it not notorious that pretended Synod A. D. 1562. were all manifest usurpers Is it not manifest that they all by force intruded themselves both into the Sees of other lawful Bishops and into the cures of other lawful Pastors quietly and Canonically possessed of them before the said intrusion Can those be accounted a lawful National Council of England or lawfully to represent the English Church who never had any lawful that is Canonical and just Vocation Mission or Jurisdiction given them to and over the English Nation Two things you object as the great reasons why those persons who sate in the Convocation A. 1562. could make no lawful Synod and those are Intrusion and want of a lawful Mission which shall be particularly examined The first charge is of Intrusion which you would seem to aggravate by several circumstances that they intruded themselves and that by force and not some but all and that into the Sees of other lawful Bishops and cures of lawful Pastors But how true these circumstances are must appear by a true account of the matters of fact relating to these things in the beginning of Elizabeth's Reign How false that is That all intruded themselves is notorious to any one who understands any thing of those times For this Convocation was held in the fifth year of Queen Elizabeth and in the fifth of her Reign Of 26 Cathedral Churches there were but fourteen
the sad complaints of the usurpations and abuses which were in it and these abundantly delivered by Classical Authors of both the present and precedent times and to use more of your own words all Ecclesiastical Monuments are full of them so that this is no false calumny or bitter Pasquil as you call it but a very plain and evident truth But that there was likewise a great deal of art subtilty and fraud used in the getting keeping and managing the Popes power he hath but a small measure of wit who doth not understand and they as little of honesty who dare not confess it CHAP. V. Of the Roman Churches Authority The Question concerning the Church of Rome's Authority entred upon How far our Church in reforming her self condemns the Church of Rome The Pope's equality with other Patriarchs asserted The Arabick Canons of the Nicene Council proved to be supposititious The Polity of the Ancient Church discovered from the sixth Canon of the Council of Nice The Rights of Primates and Metropolitans settled by it The suitableness of the Ecclesiastical to the Civil Government That the Bishop of Rome had then a limited Jurisdiction within the suburbicary Churches as Primate of the Roman Diocese Of the Cyprian Priviledge that it was not peculiar but common to all Primates of Dioceses Of the Pope's Primacy according to the Canons how far pertinent to our dispute How far the Pope's Confirmation requisite to new elected Patriarchs Of the Synodical and Communicatory Letters The testimonies of Petrus de Marcâ concerning the Pope's Power of confirming and deposing Bishops The Instances brought for it considered The case of Athanasius being restored by Julius truly stated The proceedings of Constantine in the case of the Donatists cleared and the evidence thence against the Pope's Supremacy Of the Appeals of Bishops to Rome how far allowed by the Canons of the Church The great case of Appeals between the Roman and African Bishops discussed That the Appeals of Bishops were prohibited as well as those of the inferiour Clergy C's fraud in citing the Epistle of the African Bishops for acknowledging Appeals to Rome The contrary manifested from the same Epistle to Boniface and the other to Coelestine The exemption of the Ancient Britannick Church from any subjection to the See of Rome asserted The case of Wilfrids Appeal answered The Primacy of England not derived from Gregory's Grant to Augustine the Monk The Ancient Primacy of the Britannick Church not lost upon the Saxon Conversion Of the state of the African Churches after their denying Appeals to Rome The rise of the Pope's Greatness under Christian Emperours Of the Decree of the Sardican Synod in case of Appeals Whether ever received by the Church No evidence thence of the Pope's Supremacy Zosimus his forgery in sending the Sardican Canons instead of the Nicene The weakness of the pleas for it manifested THat which now remains to be discussed in the Question of Schism is concerning the Authority of the Church and Bishop of Rome Whether that be so large and extensive as to bind us to an universal submission so that by renouncing of it we violate the Vnity of the Church and are thereby guilty of Schism But before we come to a particular discussion of that we must cast our eyes back on the precedent Chapter in which the title promiseth us That Protestants should be further convinced of Schism but upon examination of it there appears not so much as the shadow of any new matter but it wholly depends upon principles already refuted and so contains a bare repetition of what hath been abundantly answered in the first part So your first Section hath no more of strength than what lyes in your Churches Infallibility For when you would plead That though the Church of Rome be the accused party yet she may judge in her own cause you do it upon this ground That you had already proved the Roman Church to be infallible and therefore your Church might as well condemn her accusers as the Apostles theirs and that Protestants not pretending Infallibility cannot rationally be permitted to be Accusers and Witnesses against the Roman Church Now What doth all this come to in case your Church be not infallible as we have evidently proved she is not in the first part and that she is so far from it that she hath most grosly erred as we shall prove in the third part Your second Section supposes the matter of fact evident That Protestants did contradict the publick Doctrine and belief of all Christians generally throughout the world which we have lately proved to be an egregious falsity and shall do more afterwards The cause of the Separatists and the Church of England is vastly different Whether wee look on the authority cause or manner of their proceedings and in your other Instances you still beg the Question That your Church is our Mother-Church and therefore we are bound to submit to her judgement though she be the accused party But as to this whole business of Quô Judice nothing can be spoken with more solidity and satisfaction than what his Lordship saith If it be a cause common to both as certain it is here between the Protestant and Roman Church then neither part alone may be Judge if neither alone may judge then either they must be judged by a third which stands indifferent to both and that is the Scripture or if there be a jealousie or a doubt of the sense of the Scripture they must either both repair to the Exposition of the Primitive Church and submit to that or both call and submit to a General Council which shall be lawfully called and fairly and freely held with indifferency to all parties and that must judge the Difference according to Scripture which must be their Rule as well as private mens When you either attempt to shew the unreasonableness of this or substitute any thing more reasonable instead of it you may expect a further Answer to the Question Quô Judice as far as it concerns the difference between your Church or ours The remainder of this whole Chapter is only a repetition of somewhat concerning Fundamentals and a further expatiating in words without the addition of any more strength from reason or authority upon the Churches Infallibility being proved from Scripture which having been throughly considered already and an account given not only of the meaning of those places one excepted which we shall meet with again but of the reason Why the sense of them as to Infallibility should be restrained to the Apostles I find no sufficient motive inducing me to follow you in distrusting the Readers memory and trespassing on his patience so much as to inculcate the same things over and over as you do Passing by therefore the things already handled and leaving the rest if any such thing appear to a more convenient place where these very places of Scripture are again brought upon
sufficiently detected by the African Bishops And it is the worst of all excuses to lay the blame of it as you do on the Pope's Secretary for Do you think Pope Zosimus was so careless of his business as not to look over the Commonitorium which Faustinus carried with him Do you think Faustinus would not have corrected the fault when the African Bishops boggled so at it What made him so unwilling that they should send into the East to examine the Nicene Canons but intreated them to leave the business wholly with the Pope if he were not conscious of some forgery in the business But you say as a further plea in Zosimus his excuse That the Council of Sardica was an Appendix to the Nicene Council rather than otherwise An excellent Appendix made at two and twenty years distance from the other and called by other Emperours consisting of many other persons and assembled upon a quite different occasion If this had been an Appendix to the Nicene Council How comes that to have but twenty Canons How came Atticus and Cyrillus not to send these with the other How come all the Copies of Councils and Canons to distinguish them How came they not to be contained in the Code of Canons produced in the Council of Chalcedon in the cause of Bassianus and Stephanus If this were the same Council because some of the same things were determined How comes that in Trullo not to be the same with the 6. Oecumenical How comes the Council of Antioch not to be an Appendix to the Council of Nice if this was when it was celebrated before this and the Canons of it inserted in the Code of Canons owned by the Council of Chalcedon So that by all the shifts and arts you can use you cannot excuse Zosimus from Imposture in sending these Sardican under the name of the Nicene Canons And on what account the Pope satisfied the Canons then is apparent enough viz. for the advancing the Interess of his See and this the African Fathers did as easily discern afterwards as we do now But by this we see What good Foundations the Pope's claim of Supremacy had then and what arts not to say frauds they were beholding to for setting it up even as great as they have since made use of to maintain it CHAP. VI. Of the Title of Universal Bishop In what sense the Title of Vniversal Bishop was taken in Antiquity A threefold acceptation of it as importing 1. A general care over the Christian Churches which is attributed to other Catholick Bishops by Antiquity besides the Bishop of Rome as is largely proved 2. A peculiar dignity over the Churches within the Roman Empire This accounted then Oecumenical thence the Bishops of the seat of the Empire called Oecumenical Bishops and sometimes of other Patriarchal Churches 3. Nothing Vniversal Jurisdiction over the whole Church as Head of it so never given in Antiquity to the Bishop of Rome The ground of the Contest about this Title between the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople Of the proceedings of the Council of Chalcedon about the Popes Supremacy Of the Grammatical and Metaphorical sense of this Title Many arguments to prove it impossible that S. Gregory should understand it in the Grammatical sense The great absurdities consequent upon it S. Gregory's Reasons proved to hold against that sense of it which is admitted in the Church of Rome Of Irenaeus his opposition to Victor's excommunicating the Asian Bishops argues no authority he had over them What the more powerful principality in Irenaeus is Ruffinus his Interpretation of the 6. Nicene Canon vindicated The Suburbicary Churches cannot be understood of all the Churches in the Roman Empire The Pope no Infallible successor of S. Peter nor so acknowledged to be by Epiphanius S. Peter had no Supremacy of Power over the Apostles HIs Lordship having undertaken to give an account How the Popes rose by degrees to their Greatness under the Christian Emperours in prosecution of that necessarily falls upon the Title of Vniversal Bishop affected by John the Patriarch of Constantinople and condemned by Pelagius 1. and Gregory 2. This you call a trite and beaten way because I suppose the truth is so plain and evident in it but withall you tell us This Objection hath been satisfied a hundred times over if you had said the same Answer had been repeated so often over you had said true but if you say that it hath been satisfied once you say more than you are able to defend as will evidently appear by your very unsatisfactory Answer which at last you give to it So that if none of your party have been any wiser than your self in this matter I am so far from being satisfied with what they say that I can only pitty those persons whose interest swayes their understandings so much or at least their expressions as to make them say any thing that seems to be for their purpose though in it self never so senseless or unreasonable And I can scarce hold my self from saying with the Oratour when a like Objection to this was offered him because multitudes had said so Quasi verò quidquam sit tam valdè quà m nihil sapere vulgare That truth and reason are the greatest Novelties in the world For seriously Were it possible for men of common understanding to rest satisfied with such pitiful shifts as you are fain to make if they would but use any freedom in enquiring and any liberty of judging when they had done But when once men have given not to say sold away the exercise of their free reason by addicting themselves to a particular interest there can scarce any thing be imagined so absurd but it passeth currently from one to another because they are bound to receive all blindfold and in the same manner to deliver it to others By which means it is an easie matter for the greatest nonsense and contradictions to be said a hundred times over And Whether it be not so in the present case is that we are now to enquire into And for the same ends which you propose to your self viz. that all obscurity may be taken away and the truth clearly appear I shall in the first place set down What his Lordship saith and then distinctly examine What you reply in Answer to it Thus then his Lordship proceeds About this time brake out the ambition of John Patriarch of Constantinople affecting to be Vniversal Bishop He was countenanced in this by Mauricius the Emperour but sowrely opposed by Pelagius and S. Gregory Insomuch that S. Gregory plainly sayes That this Pride of his shews that the times of Antichrist were near So as yet and this was near upon the point of six hundred years after Christ there was no Vniversal Bishop no one Monarch over the whole Militant Church But Mauricius being deposed and murthered by Phocas Phocas conferred upon Boniface the third that very Honour which two of his predecessors had
and Gregory yield shrewd matter of suspicion what the main ground of their quarrel against the Patriarchs of Constantinople was For before the Emperours stood up for the honour of Constantinople as being the seat of their Empire and Rome began to sink the Empire decaying there but now there was a fit time to do something for the honour of the Roman See Cyriacus was in disgrace with the Tyrant Phocas and no such time as now to fall in with him and caresse him and we see Gregory did it prety well for a Saint but he lived not to enjoy the benefit of it but Boniface did however After the Patriarchate of Constantinople was erected the Popes had a double game to play to advance themselves and depress that which it was very hard for them to do because all the Eastern Bishops as well as the Emperour favoured it But after equal priviledges were decreed to the Patriarch of Constantinople with the Bishop of Rome by the Council of Constantinople they could no longer dissemble their choler but had no such occasion ministred to them to express it as after the Canon of the Council of Chalcedon wherein were present 630 Bishops which confirmed the former For then Leo fumes and frets and writes to Martianus and Pulcheria to Anatolius and the Bishops of the East but still pretends that he stood up for the priviledges of the other Patriarchs and the Nicene Canons and what not but one might easily discern what it was that pinched him viz. the equalling the Patriarch of Constantinople with himself Which it is apparent he suspected before by the instructions he gave his Legats Paschasinus and Lucentius to be sure to oppose whatever was proposed in the Council concerning the Primacy of that See And accordingly they did and complained that the Canon was surreptitiously made Which they were hugely overseen in doing while the Council sat for upon this the whole matter is reviewed the Judges scan the business the Bishops protest there were no practises used that they all voluntarily consented to it and all this in the presence of the Roman Legats How comes it then to pass that this should not be a regular and Conciliar action Were not the Bishops at age to understand their own priviledges Did not the Bishop of Antioch know his own interest as well as Pope Leo Must he be supposed more able to understand the Nicene Canons then these 630 Bishops Why then was not this Canon as regular as any other Why forsooth The Pope did not consent to it So true is that sharp censure of Ludovicus Vives that those are accounted lawful Canons and Councils which make for their interest but others are no more esteemed then a company of tattling Gossips But what made the Pope so angry at this Canon of the Council of Chalcedon He pretends the honour of the Nicene Canons the preserving the priviledges of other Patriarchs But Binius hath told us the true reason of it because they say that the Primacy of Rome came by its being the seat of the Empire and therefore not by Divine right and since Constantinople was become the seat of the Empire too therefore the Patriarch there should enjoy equal priviledges with the Bishop of Rome If Rome had continued still the sole seat of the Empire this reason would not have been quarrelled at but now Rome sinking and Constantinople rising this must not be endured but all the arts and devices possible must be used to keep it under And this is the true account of the pique which the Bishops of Rome had to the Patriarchs of Constantinople From whence we may easily guess how probable it is that this Council of Chalcedon did acknowledge the Pope Oecumenical Bishop in any other sense then they contended the Patriarch of Constantinople was so too And the same answer will serve for all your following Instances For as you pretend that the Council of Constantinople sub Menna did call Pope Agapetus Oecumenical Patriarch so it is most certain that it call'd Mennas the Patriarch of Constantinople so too And which is more Adrian 1. in his Epistle to Tharasius of Constantinople in the second Nicene Council calls him Vniversal Bishop If therefore the Greek Emperours and Balsamon call the Pope so they import nothing peculiar to him in it because it is most evident they call'd their own Patriarch so likewise So that you find little advantage to your cause from this first thing which you premise viz. that the Pope was anciently call'd Vniversal Bishop But you say further 2. That the Bishops of Constantinople never intended to deny by this usurped title the Popes Vniversal Authority even over themselves This is ambiguous unless it be further explained what you mean by Vniversal Authority for it may either note some kind of prae-eminence and dignity which the Bishop of Rome had as the chief Patriarch and who on that account had great Authority in the Church and this your instances prove that the Patriarchs of Constantinople did acknowledge to belong to the Pope but if by Vniversal Authority be meant Vniversal Jurisdiction over the Church as appointed the head of it by Christ then not one of your instances comes near the shadow of a proof for it Thus having considered what you premise we come to your Answer it self For which you tell us We are to take notice that the term Vniversal Bishop is capable of two senses the one Grammatical the other Metaphorical In the Grammatical sense it signifies Bishop of the Vniversal Church and of all Churches in particular even to the exclusion of all others from being properly Bishops and consequently displaceable at his pleasure as being only his not Christs officers and receiving authority from him and not from Christ. In the Metaphorical sense it signifies only so high and eminent a dignity above all other Bishops throughout the whole Church that though he who is stiled Vniversal Bishop hath a true and real Superintendency Jurisdiction and Authority over all other Bishops yet that they be as truly and properly Bishops in their respective Provinces and Dioceses as he himself This being clear'd say you 't is evident that St. Gregory when he inveighs against the title of Vniversal Bishop takes it in the literal and Grammatical sense which you very faintly endeavour to prove out of him as I shall make it presently appear This being then the substance of that Answer which you say hath been given a hundred times over must now once for all pass a strict and severe examination Which it shall receive in these two Enquiries 1. Whether it be possible to conceive that St. Gregory should take Vniversal Bishop in the literal and Grammatical sense 2. Whether all the Arguments which he useth against that title do not hold against that Vniversal Jurisdiction which you attribute to the Pope as Head of the Church 1. Whether it be possible to conceive that St. Gregory
Authority and Jurisdiction given by Christ to one Bishop above another St. Hierom was not so sensless as not to see that the Bishops of Rome Constantinople and Alexandria had greater Authority and larger Jurisdiction in the Church then the petty Bishops of Eugubium Rhegium and Tanis but all this he knew well enough came by the custom of the Church that one Bishop should have larger power in the Church then another But saith he if you come to urge us with what ought to be practised in the Church then saith he Orbis major est urbe it is no one City as that of Rome which he particularly instanceth in which can prescribe to the whole world For saith he all Bishops are of equal merit and the same Priesthood wheresoever they are whether at Rome or elsewhere So that it is plain to all but such as wilfully blind themselves that St. Hierom speaks not of that which you call the Character of Bishops but of the Authority of them for that very word he useth immediately before Si authoritas quaeritur orbis major est urbe And where do you ever find merit applyed to the Bishops Character They who say It is understood of the merit of good life make St. Hierom speak non-sense For are all Bishops of the same merit of good life But we need not go out of Rome for the proper importance of merit here For in the third Roman Synod under Symmachus that very word is used concerning Authority and Principality in the Church ejus sedi primum Petri Apostoli meritum sive principatus deinde Conciliorum venerandorum authoritas c. where Binius confesseth an account is given of the Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome the first ground of which St. Peters merit or principality apply now but this sense to S. Hierom and he may be very easily understood All Bishops are ejusdem meriti sive principatus of the same merit Dignity or Authority in the Church But you say he speaks not of the Pope as he is Pope good reason for it for St. Hierom knew no such Supremacy in the Pope as he now challengeth And can you think if St. Hierom had believed such an authority in the Pope as you do he would ever have used such words as these are to compare him with the poor Bishop of Agobio in Merit and Priesthood I cannot perswade my self you can think so only something must be said for the cause you have undertaken to defend And since Bellarmine and such great men had gone before you you could not believe there were any absurdity in saying as they did Still you say He doth not speak of that Authority which belongs to the Bishop of Rome as S. Peter 's Successor But if you would but read a little further you might see that S. Hierom speaks of all Bishops whether at Rome or Eugubium c. as equally the Apostles Successors For it is neither saith he riches or poverty which makes Bishops higher or lower Caeterùm omnes Apostolorum successores sunt but they are all the Apostles Successors therefore he speaks of them with relation to that Authority which they derived from the Apostles And never had there been greater necessity for him to speak of the Popes succeeding S. Peter in the Supremacy over the Church than here if he had known any such thing but he must be excused he was ignorant of it No that he could not be say you again for he speaks of it elsewhere and therefore he must be so understood there as that he neither contradict nor condemn himself But if the Epistle to Damasus be all your evidence for it a sufficient account hath been given of that already therefore you add more and bid us go find them out to see Whether they make for the purpose or no. I am sure your first doth not out of his Commentary on the 13. Psalm because it only speaks of S. Peters being Head of the Church and not of the the Popes and that may import only dignity and preheminence without authority and jurisdiction besides that Commentary on the Psalms is rejected as spurious by Erasmus Sixtus Senensis and many others among your selves Your second ad Demetriadem Virginem is much less to your purpose for that only speaks of Innocentius coming after Anastasius at Rome qui Apostolicae Cathedrae supradicti viri successor filius est Who succeeded him in the Apostolical Chair But Do you not know that there were many Apostolical Chairs besides that of Rome and had every one of them supreme authority over the Church of God What that should be on the 16. of S. Matthew I cannot imagine unless it be that S. Peter is called Princeps Apostolorum which honour we deny him not or that he saith Aedificabo Ecâ—lesiam meam super te But how these things concern the Popes Authority unless you had further enlightened us I cannot understand That ep 54. ad Marcellam is of the same nature with the last for the words which I suppose you mean are Petrus super quem Dominus fundaâ—it Ecclesiam and if you see what Erasmus saith upon that place you will have little cause to boast much of it Your last place is l. 1. Cont. Lucifer which I suppose to be that commonly cited thence Ecclesiae salus in summi Sacerdotis dignitate pendet but there even Marianus Victorius will tell you it is understood of every ordinary Bishop Thus I have taken the pains to search those places you nakedly refer us to in S. Hierom and find him far enough from the least danger of contradicting or condemning himself as to any thing which is here spoken by him So that we see S. Hierom remains a sufficient testimony against the Popes Monarchical Government of the Church His Lordship further argues against this Monarchy in the Church from the great and undoubted Rule given by Optatus that wheresoever there is a Church there the Church is in the Common-wealth and not the Common-wealth in the Church And so also the Church was in the Roman Empire Now from this ground saith his Lordship I argue thus If the Church be within the Empire or other Kingdom 't is impossible the Government of the Church should be Monarchical For no Emperour or King will endure another King within his Dominion that shall be greater than himself since the very enduring it makes him that endures it upon the matter no Monarch Your answer to this is That these two Kingdoms are of different natures the one spiritual the other temporal the one exercised only in such things as concern the worship of God and the Eternal Salvation of souls the other in affairs that concern this world only Surely you would perswade us we had never heard of much less read Bellarmin's first Book de Pontifice about the Popes Temporal Power which was fain to get license for the other four to pass at Rome and although he minces
Civil Power hath a right to meddle in Ecclesiastical matters And though you express never so much honour to civil authority yet still you limit it to the administration meerly of civil affairs and how far that is is well enough known You tell us plainly That it doth not belong to the Emperour to order the affairs of the Church But why do you not answer the Reasons and Instances which his Lordship brings to the contrary Yet you yield That in case of notorious and gross abuses manifestly contrary to Religion and connived at by the Pastors of the Church Christian Princes may lawfully and piously use their Authority in procuring the said abuses to be effectually redressed by the said Pastors as the examples of Ezekias and Josias prove But in case the High-Priest would not have yielded to such a reformation Might not those Princes by the assistance of other Priests have effected it This is the case you were to speak to For whereas you fly out and say That Princes may not take the Priests office upon them Whom do you dispute against in that Not his Lordship certainly nor any of the Church of England who never said they might though they have been most injuriously calumniated as though they did That which we assert is That Princes may enact Laws concerning Religion and reform abuses in Divine Worship but we do not say they may take the Pastoral office upon them and therefore you say no more in that than we do our selves But when you say They may not reform Religion in the substance of it I cannot well tell How to understand you If you mean not so reform Religion as to take away any of the substance that is a Reformation to purpose but if you bring it ad hypothesin we utterly deny that any of the substance of Religion was taken away upon our Churches Reformation If you mean not reform abuses which go under the name of the substance of Religion that will be to make the most unsufferable abuses the most incurable But when you add That nothing must be enacted pertaining to Religion by their own Authority without or contrary to the Priests consent the High-Priest I suppose you mean shew us Where the Kings of Israel were bound not to reform in case the High-Priest did not consent and if you could do this you must prove such a High-Priest now and that Princes are bound to wait his leisure for reforming abuses in Religion when his pretended Authority is upheld by maintaining them As for your commendations of Pope Hildebrand and Innocent the Third for very prudent men and worthy Champions of your Church we see What prudence is with you and what a worthy Church you have But it is still an excellent evasion That they never endeavoured to subject the Emperour to themselves in temporal matters no nor Alexander the Third neither when he trod upon the Emperours neck But the proceedings of these Popes with the Emperours as likewise Adrian 4. Lucius 3. and others are so gross that it had been more for your Interest with Christian Princes to disown them than to go about to palliate them with such frivolous distinctions that his Vnderstanding must be as blind as his Obedience that doth not see thorough them You are much concerned that his Lordship should seem to give a lash to those mortified self-denying men the Jesuits in bidding them leave their practising to advance the greatness of the Pope and Emperour for Who could believe they should deprive themselves of the riches and pleasures of the world upon such designs Undoubtedly you are one of the number for I never heard that any other Order among you did ever give them half so good words but condemned them as much for their practising as we do our selves And What holy men they are and what excellent Casuistical Divinity about both the riches and pleasures of the world if we did not otherwise know the Mysteries of Jesuitism would sufficiently discover To what his Lordship saith further That there is no necessity of one Supreme Living Judge to keep the Church in peace and unity but that the several Bishops under their Soveraign Princes are sufficient in order to it you only say That he quotes Occham for it But Doth he nothing else but quote Occham Why do you not answer to the thing and not barely to Occham You have very good reason for it for you have little to say to the thing it self but for Occham you have enough to tell him in his ear 1. That he is in the Index of forbidden Books a good testimony for the man's honesty 2. That he sided with the Emperour a crime beyond an Index Expurgatorius at Rome 3. That if there were such a Government as Occham supposes all those Governours must be Infallible or else there would be meer Anarchy in the Church And Why not as well in the State without Infallibility there You say For want of this Infallibility those Countries where it is not acknowledged are in Schisms And we say The pretence of this Infallibity hath caused the greatest of them 4. You say Occham speaks only de possibili of what might have been if our Saviour had pleased but Occhamsayes There is no necessity there should be one chief Governour under Christ and we say You can never prove that Christ hath appointed that there shall be one and therefore this is more than disputing a bare possibility But now as though all your beggings the Question had been arguments all your sayings proofs and all your proofs demonstrations with as much authority as if you were in Cathedrâ you conculde Remain it therefore a settled Catholick Principle that the Pope hath power over the whole Church of God But you leave out something which should be at the end of it among all those who can believe things as strongly without reason as with it And for the greater solemnity of the Sentence you give it in the words of the Oecumenical Council at Florence And I must needs say You have fitted them very well for that was just as much an Oecumenical Council as the Pope is Oecumenical Pastor but that neither the one nor the other is so I have sufficiently proved already CHAP. VIII Of the Council of Trent The Illegality of it manifested first from the insufficiency of the Rule it proceeded by different from that of the first General Councils and from the Popes Presidency in it The matter of Right concerning it discussed In what Cases Superiours may be excepted against as Parties The Pope justly excepted against as a Party and therefore ought not to be Judge The Necessity of a Reformation in the Court of Rome acknowledged by Roman Catholicks The matter of fact enquired into as to the Popes Presidency in General Councils Hosius did not preside in the Nicene Council as the Popes Legat. The Pope had nothing to do in the second General Council Two Councils held at Constantinople
yet the best your cause would bear And the greater you say the number of Bishopricks is in Italy the more friends I hope the Pope must make by disposing them and Could they do the Pope better service than to help him in this grand business at Trent wherein they sought to outvy each other by promoting the Popes Interest But not only the Protestants complained of this but the Emperour and other Princes and all impartial men in Germany France nay and in some part of Italy too But here his Lordship encounters an Objection of Bellarmine viz. that in the Council of Nice there were as few Bishops of the West present as were of the East at Trent and manifestly shews the great disparity between the the two Councils 1. Because it is not a meer disparity in number which he insists on but with it the Popes carriage to be sure of a major part but neither the Greek Church in general nor any Patriarch of the East had any private interest to look to in the Council at Nice 2. It was not so much a disparity between the Eastern and Western Bishops but that there were so many more Italians and Bishops obnoxious to the Popes Power than of all Germany France Spain and of all other parts of the West besides 3. Even in the comparison of those two Councils as to Eastern and Western Bishops there is this remarkable difference that Pope Sylvester with 275. Bishops confirmed the Council at Nice but the Council at Trent was never confirmed by any Council of Eastern Bishops To the two first of these you Answer with your best property silence Only you would fain perswade some silly people if there be any so weak in the world that enquire into such things That the Pope had no private interest at Trent but what was common to him with other Bishops You should have done well to have commended the excellency of an implicite Faith before you had uttered a thing so contrary to the sense of the whole Christian World To the third you confess It is some disparity but nothing to the purpose because if the Pope himself had ratified them the Council would have had as much Authority as by that accessory Assembly The more to blame was the Pope a great deal for putting so many Bishops to so needless a trouble But you say further This Council was not held just at the same time But Binius tells you it was held assoon as might be after the notice of what was done at Nice shew us the like of the Eastern Bishops at any time and we will not quarrel with you because it was not at the same time Though these Answers may pass for want of better they come not near your last which is a prodigious one the sense of it being That the Doctrine of Faith defined by the Council of Trent was more universally received in the Church then that of the Council of Nice For that of Trent you say was universally received by the whole Catholick Church and hath been more constantly held ever since whereas many Provinces either in whole or in part deserted the Faith defined at Nice and embraced the Arrian Heresie It seems then the twelve good Articles of Trent have been more generally received by the Catholick Church then the eternal existence of the Son of God and consequently that you are more bound to believe the Doctrine of Purgatory or Transubstantiation then that the Son is of the same substance with the Father For your grounds of Faith being resolved into the Churches Infallibility you cannot believe that which hath been so much questioned in the Church so firmly as that which hath been universally believed and constantly held But the universal reception of the Doctrine of the Council of Trent by the whole Catholick Church is so intolerable a falshood that you would scarce have vented it unless it were your design to write for the Whetstone To C's objection That neither French nor Spanish nor Schismatical Greeks did agree with the Protestants in those points which were defined by the Council his Lordship Answers That there can be no certainty who did agree and who not or who might have agreed before the Council ended because they were not admitted to a fair and free dispute And it may be too some Decrees would have been more favourable to them had not the care of the Popes Interest made them sowrer Here you complain of his Lordships falling again to his Surmizes of the Bishops being over-awed by the Popes Authority in the Council which you call an empty and injurious suspicion an unworthy accusation and arguing the want of Christian charity But usually when you storm the most you are the most guilty For if you call this an empty suspicion c. you charge many more with it besides his Lordship and those the greatest of your own Communion what meant else the frequent Protestations of the French and Spanish Ambassadours in which they often declared that as things were managed the Council was not Free What meant those words of the Emperour Ferdinand in his Letters to the Legats and the Pope That the Liberty of the Council was impeached chiefly by three causes one because every thing was first consulted of at Rome another because the Legats had assumed to themselves only the liberty of proposing which ought to be common to all the third because of the practises which some Prelats interested in the Greatness of the Court of Rome did make The French Ambassadour Monsieur de Lansac writ to the King his Master That the Pope was so much Master of this Council that his Pensioners whatsoever the Emperours or we do remonstrate to them will do but what they list Several of the like nature might easily be produced so that it is not his Lordship only is guilty of this want of charity as you call it but all impartial persons who were most acquainted with the Affairs of that Council Whose judgement is certainly much more to be taken then such who have sworn to defend it But you have an excellent Argument to prove the Council Free because the Bishops of the Council continued in the Faith and Doctrine of it as long as they lived And had they not good reason so to do when they were sworn before hand to defend the Pope and having secured him from danger of reformation by the Council and subscribed the Decrees of it they were as much bound to defend their own acts And although it is well enough known what practises were used to bring off the French and Spanish Bishops yet when they were brought off what a shame would it have been for them to have revolted from their own Subscriptions But what is this to that General freedom which was desired by the Roman Catholick Princes for Reformation of the Court of Rome and by Protestants both of the Court and Church Was the Council any thing
as immediate a revelation as the first discovery of it As is clear in the Council of the Apostles for I hope you will not deny but the non-obligation of the ceremonial Law was in some manner revealed to them before and yet I hope you will not say but the Apostles had an immediate revelation as to what they decreed in that Council It is very plain therefore that when you say General Councils neither have erred nor can err in their definitions they usurp as great a priviledge thereby as ever the Apostles had and in order to it must have as immediate an inspiration For never was there any such Infallibility either in the Prophets or Apostles as did suppose an absolute impossibility of errour but it was wholly hypothetical in case of Divine assistance which hindred them from any capacity of erring so long as that continued with them and no longer For inspiration was no permanent habit but a transient act in them and that being removed they were lyable to errours as well as others from whence it follows that where revelations were most immediate they did no more then what you assume to your Church viz. preserve them from actual errour in declaring Gods will So that nothing can be more evident then that you challenge as great an Infallibility and as immediate assistance of Gods Spirit in Councils as ever the Prophets and Apostles had And therefore that Divine was in the right of whom Canus speaks who asserted That since General Councils were Infallible their definitions ought to be equalled with the Scriptures themselves And although Canus and others dislike this it is rather because of the odium which would follow it than for any just reason they give why it should not follow For they not only suppose as great a Certainty or Infallibility in the Decrees of both but an equal obligation to internal assent in those to whom they are declared Which doth further prove that the revelation must be immediate for if by vertue of those definitions we are obliged to assent to the Doctrines contained in them as Infallibly true there must be an immediate Divine Authority which must command our Assent For nothing short of that can oblige us to believe any thing as of Divine revelation now Councils require that we must believe their definitions to be Divine truths though men were not obliged to believe them to be so before those definitions For that is your express Doctrine That though the matters decreed in Councils were in some manner revealed before yet not so as to oblige all men with an explicite assent to believe them but after the definitions of Councils they are bound to do it So that though there be not an object newly revealed yet there ariseth a new obligation to internal assent which obligation cannot come but from immediate Divine Authority If you say The obligation comes not simply by vertue of the Councils definitions but by a command extant in Scripture whereby all are bound to give this assent to the decrees of Councils I then say we must be excused from it till you have discharged this new obligation upon your self by producing some express testimony of Scripture to that purpose which is I think sufficient to keep our minds at liberty from this internal assent to the definitions of General Councils by vertue of any Infallibility in them And thus having more at large considered the nature of this Infallibility which you challenge to General Councils and having shewed that it implyes as immediate a revelation as the Apostles had the second thing is sufficiently demonstrated That this Infallibility cannot suppose discursiveness with fallibility in the use of the means because these two are repugnant to each other The next thing to be considered is Stapletons argument why Councils must be Prophetical in the conclusion because that which is determined by the Church is matter of Faith and not of knowledge and the assent required else would not be an assent of Faith but an habit of knowledge To which his Lordship Answers That he sees no inconvenience in it if it be granted for one and the same conclusion may be Faith to the believer that cannot prove and knowledge to the learned that can Which he further explains thus Some supernatural principles which reason cannot demonstrate simply must be supposed in order to Faith but these principles being owned reason being thereby inlightned that may serve to convert or convince Philosophers and the great men of reason in the very point of Faith where it is at the highest This he brings down to the business of Councils as to which he saith that the first immediate fundamental points of Faith as they cannot be proved simply by reason so neither need they be determined by any Council nor ever were they attempted they are so plain set down in Scripture If about the sense and true meaning of these or necessary deduction out of the prime Articles of Faith General Councils determine any thing as they have done at Nice and the rest there is no inconvenience that one and the same Canon of the Council should be believed as it reflects upon the Articles and grounds indemonstrable and yet known to the learned by the means and proof by which that deduction is vouched and made good And again the conclusion of a Council suppose that in Nice about the consubstantiality of Christ with the Father in it self considered is indemonstrable by reason there saith he I believe and assent in Faith but the same conclusion if you give me the ground of Scripture and the Creed for somewhat must be supposed in all whether Faith or knowledge is demonstrable by natural reason against any Arrian in the world So that he concludes The weaker sort of Christians may assent by Faith where the more learned may build it on reason the principles of Faith being supposed This is the substance of his Lordships Discourse In Answer to which you tell us That the Bishop seems to broach a new Doctrine that the assent of Faith may be an habit of knowledge But surely say you Divine Faith is according to the Apostle Heb. 11. an Argument of things which do not appear viz. by the same means by which we give this assent of Faith otherwise our Faith would not be free and meritorious An Answer I must needs say hugely suitable to your principles who are most concerned of all men to set reason at a distance from Faith and so you do sufficiently in this Discourse of it For it is no easie matter to understand what you mean but that is not to be wondered at since you make obscurity so necessary to Faith Divine Faith is you say an Argument of things which do not appear viz. by the same means by which we give this assent of Faith Do you mean that the objects of Faith do not appear or that the reason of believing doth not If only the former
assemblies was taken up and hath for its pattern the example of the Apostles Act. 15. yet surely there is little doubt to be made but the Apostles had both direction and precept too for doing it so often as just occasion required from Christ himself The whole force of which Answer lyes in those well placed words Surely there is little doubt to be made for as to any thing of reason you never offer at it Just such another of Bellarmins Sine dubio's comes after Though a General Council be the Church representative and do not meet or assemble together hic nunc but by order and deputation from man yet it follows not but the power and authority by which they act when they are met may be from God as doubtless it is Can any man have the face to question Whether the Authority of General Councils be of Divine Institution or no when you say Yes surely there is no doubt to be made of it doubtless it is We do not question as you would seem to imply afterwards Whether the people or the Pastours have right to send to General Councils but what ground you have to assert that General Councils are an immediate Divine Institution But I must needs say I never saw any thing affirmed oftener and offered to be proved less then that is here and yet as though you had done it invincibly you triumphantly proceed General Councils then are a principal and necessary part of that Ecclesiastical Hierarchy which Christ instituted for the Government of his Church and not an humane Expedient only taken up by the Church her self meerly upon prudential considerations as the Bishop will needs conceive It strangely puzzles me to find out any thing that Particle then relates to and after all my search can find nothing but surely without doubt and doubtless I pray Sir think not so meanly of us that we should take these for Arguments or Demonstrations Deal fairly with us and if we fall by the force of reason we yield our selves up to you But you are very much deceived if you think these things are taken for proofs with us we can easily discern the weakness of your cause through the most confident affirmations If you had brought any Law of Christ appointing that General Councils should be in the Church any Apostolical precept prescribing or giving directions concerning them you had done something but not so much as to offer at a proof and yet conclude it as confidently as if it were impossible to resist the force of your Demonstrations is an evidence that either you know your cause to be weak or suppose us to be so Much such another discourse is that which follows wherein you pretend to give a reason Why what is defined by one Council in point of Doctrine cannot be reversed by another Which is because the true Christian Faith is ex natura rei unchangeable that it admits not of yea and nay but only yea that it is alwayes the same that it must stand without alteration for ever nay that it is to be invariable and admit no change All these expressions we have in one Paragraph and for all that I see are the greatest strength of it But what is it you mean by all this Do you think we could not understand what you meant by the unchangeableness of Christian Faith without so many diversified expressions of it And what follows now from all this That one Council cannot repeal the Decrees of another How so was not the Faith of Christ as unchangeable in the time of the Arrian Councils as it is now and yet then one Council repealed the Decrees of others in point of Doctrine and yet by that nothing was derogated from the Institution or honour of Christ by such a reversing those Decrees Though the Faith i. e. The Doctrine of Christ be alwayes the same Doth it thence follow then men shall alwayes believe all this unalterable Doctrine If so how came Arrianism to overspread the Church How came six hundred Bishops at the Council of Ariminum to be deceived in a Doctrine of Faith by your own confession It is therefore a profound mistake to infer from the fallibility of General Councils the alteration of the Faith of Christ. The Faith of Christ is founded on a surer bottom then the Decrees of Councils though all men are lyars God is true and Christ the same yesterday to day and for ever But of this more afterwards You would seem to argue more pertinently in the following pages against his Lordships opinion for you say He sayes and unsayes the same and what he seems to attribute to General Councils in one proposition he takes away in another That which his Lordship sayes is That the definitions of a General Council are binding to all particulars and it self but yet so that they cannot bind the whole Church from calling again and in the after-calls upon just cause to order and if need be to abrogate former acts And after adds And because the whole Church can meet no other way the Council shall remain the Supream external living temporary Ecclesiastical Judge of all Controversies Only the whole Church and she alone hath power when Scripture or Demonstration is found and peaceably tendered to her to represent her self again in a new Council and in it to order what was amiss Now we must consider what we find contradictious and repugnant to themselves in these words Three things if I mistake not the main of this charge may be reduced to 1. That men should be bound to that which Scripture and Demonstration be against But this is very easily answered for his Lordship doth not say Men are bound to believe it but not so to oppose it as to break the peace of the Church by it 2. That another Council cannot be call'd without opposition to the other this his Lordship prevented by supposing that the just reasons against the decrees of the former Council ought to be peaceably tendred to the Church but no boisterous opposition to be made against it 3. To what purpose should another Council be call'd if the whole Church be satisfied that there is Scripture and Demonstration against the decrees of the former But 1. His Lordship supposes there may Scripture and Demonstration be where the whole Church is not satisfied and therefore there may be necessity of calling another Council 2. That the Council may free all those who may suppose themselves still bound not to oppose the former errour 3. That no erroneous Decree of a Council may remain unrepealed in the Church that so no erroneous person may challenge such a Decree of a Council as a ground for his opposition to the Doctrine of the Church And where now lyes any such appearance of contradiction in his Lordships words 3. The last thing his Lordship chargeth your way with unreasonableness in is That you do not only make the definition of a General Council
Yes and a very charitable man he would be in it too if without any signification by circumstances he could save the soul of a dying Infant But I should think his meer intention were sufficient and well as the chief Priest would supply the rest as the Schools determine in a like case For they put a very hard Question to themselves If the intention of a Priest be necessary to the validity of a Sacrament then What becomes of the soul of an Infant which dyes being baptized without the Priest's intention To which they answer It may very piously be believed that in that case summus Sacerdos supplebit the High Priest will supply that defect and what they say of intention is much more true of Baptism it self for in case it be not done out of contempt I say that summus Sacerdos supplebit it is not the meer want of Baptism will damn the soul of the Infant as you suppose when you make it so necessary to use such shifts as you speak of to save the soul of a dying Infant But Do you think seriously that is the way to do it for a Priest under a Physical pretence to sprinkle water on the Childs face often and once among the rest to say softly or by way of discourse Ego te baptizo c. with intention to conferr the Sacrament But you ask however Whether the Child be not really baptized by this although none took notice of what the Priest did I answer though we should grant it yet it proves not that the Priests inward intention was it which made it a Sacrament but the observation of the institution of Christ in the external actions and so far as that is observed in this odd kind of baptizing so far it is Baptism and no more There are two things therefore to be observed in Sacramental actions 1. The differencing of them from other common or ordinary actions and this we say is done by the circumstances attending them 2. The validity of them as Sacraments and this depends wholly and only on the observation of Christs Institution For as it is Institution which makes a Sacrament so it is the observation of it which makes this a Sacramental action and not another But in neither case is the Priests intention necessary to the essence of a Sacrament for it may have its full force in all respects it was appointed for whatever the Priests inward intention be So that neither of your Instances as to the Sacraments of Baptism or the Eucharist do at all imply the necessity of the Priests intention in order to the essence of a Sacrament in either of them As for the inconvenience which you say the Bishop pretends would follow out of this Doctrine viz. that no man can rest secure that he hath been really made partaker of any Sacrament no not of Baptism it self You answer 1. That as to the far greater part of Christians the inconvenience follows as much out of the Bishops principles as yours that they cannot be absolutely certain that they are baptized because the Priest may vitiate something pertaining to the essentials of Baptism 2. You answer That moral Assurance is sufficient in such cases i. e. such as is liable to no just cause of doubting and suspecting the contrary We accept of this latter Answer in reference to your retortion of the inconvenience upon us as to which we say That where is no sufficient cause of doubting a man ought to rest satisfied But I shall now shew you that this moral Assurance cannot be sufficient in your case and that for these Reasons 1. Because you build a main principle of Faith upon it and you say That moral Assurance cannot be a sufficient foundation for Faith for then all your discourse of the resolution of Faith comes to nothing which runs upon this principle That nothing short of Infallibility can be a sufficient foundation for Faith Now that you build a principle of Faith upon it is evident as I have proved already even all that Infallibility you pretend to in Church Pope and Council for all depends upon this that you certainly know that such persons in your Church have had the Sacrament of Baptism truly administred which cannot be without knowing the Priests intention 2. Because you acknowledged before that there must be such a certainty as is sufficient to ground an Infallible belief for this you placed in his Lordships Objection and this you pretended to satisfie by saying That the Pope and Council implicitly define themselves to be Infallible and therefore you fall much beneath your self now when you say Moral Assurance is sufficient 3. Because we have far greater ground for moral Assurance than you for we make no more requisite to the essence of a Sacrament than what all men are competent judges of and our Church allows no such Baptisms wherein none but the Priest is present therefore if he vitiates any thing essential to Baptism it may easily be discovered but in your case you have no positive Assurance at all of the Priests intention the utmost you can pretend to is your having no ground to suspect it which in many cases there may be So that you cannot have properly a moral Certainty which hath some evidence to build it self upon but in your case there can be no evidence at all of the Priests intention and therefore the knowledge of it is uncertain and conjectural So that there is a vast difference between that moral Assurance which we may have from the external action and that which you can possibly have from the Priests intention 4. The danger is far greater in not having this Assurance upon your principles than upon ours and yet we have far greater Assurance than you can possibly pretend to Your danger is manifestly greater as appears by this evident demonstration of it viz. that in case the Priests intention be wanting you must by your own confession be guilty of gross Idolatry and yet you cannot certainly know what the Priests intention was This is plain in the case of the Eucharist whose adoration you profess to be lawful because you suppose Christ to be present there Now this depends upon a thing impossible for you certainly to know and that is the Priests intention in the Consecration For if the Priest wanted that inward intention which you make necessary to the essence of a Sacrament then for all his pronouncing the words of Consecration Hoc est corpus meum Christs body may not be there and in case it be not there you are by your own confession guilty of Idolatry for you do not then worship Christ but meerly the Bread Therefore supposing adoration of the Eucharist upon your principle of Transubstantiation were not Idolatry yet since that depends upon a thing impossible to be known Who can with a good conscience do that which he cannot be certain but in the doing it he may commit the greatest Idolatry Wherefore
am sure you are hard put to it to return any satisfactory Answer to it For you distinguish of the Popes joynt-consent and of his actual Confirmation in case say you the Pope either in person or by his Legats concurr with the Council then the definition is unquestionably Infallible but in case he doth not then the actual Confirmation is necessary but in case the Council erre the Pope ought not and it is impossible he should confirm it but if he doth not erre you grant it is true before the Pope confirms it but his Confirmation makes us infallibly certain that it is true This is the full force of your Answer which by no means takes off the difficulty as will appear 1. That by reason of the Pope's rare appearance in General Councils never in any that are unquestioned by the Greek and Latin Churches that of his joynt-consent cannot serve you neither doth the presence of his Legats suffice for it is determined by Bellarmin and proved by many reasons that though the Pope's Legats consent yet if they have not the express sentence of the Pope the Council may erre notwithstanding So that still the Popes actual Confirmation is supposed necessary and that after the definitions of the Council are passed And this is the case which his Lordship speaks to and for your answer to that I say 2. That in plain terms you assert the Popes personal Infallibility which you disowned the defence of before for you say In case the Council erre not only the Pope ought not to confirm it but that it is impossible he should Which What is it other than to assert that the Pope shall never erre though the Council may Neither is it sufficient to say That he shall never erre in confirming the Decrees of a Council for in this case the Council is supposed actually to erre already so that nothing of Infallibility can be at all supposed in the Council and if the Pope be not considered in his personal capacity he might erre as well as the Council From whence it follows since you suppose that a Council may erre but not the Pope that you really judge the Council not to be Infallible but the Pope only 3. When you say That if the Council erred not the Popes Confirmation doth not make the definition true but makes us infallibly certain that it is true I enquire further Whereon this Infallible Certainty depends on a promise made to the Council or to the Pope not to the Council for that you grant may erre but it is impossible the Pope should confirm it therefore still it is some promise of the Popes Infallibility which makes men Infallibly certain of the truth of what the Council decrees 4. To what purpose then are all those promises and proofs of Scripture which you produced concerning the Councils Infallibility if notwithstanding them a General Council may err Only the Pope shall never confirm it and although it do not err yet we cannot be Infallibly certain of it but by the Popes confirmation And let any reasonable man judge whether a promise of the Popes Infallibility though there be none at all concerning Councils be not sufficient for all this So that upon these principles you take away the least degree of necessity of any Infallibility in Councils and resolve all into the Popes Infallibility For to what purpose are they Infallible if we cannot be certain that any thing which they decree is true but by the Popes confirmation But that the Popes confirmation cannot make the Decrees of those you account General Councils Infallible nor us Infallibly Certain of the truth of them his Lordship proves by another evidence in matter of fact viz. That the Pope hath erred by teaching in and by the Council of Lateran confirmed by Innocent 3. that Christ is present in the Sacrament by way of Transubstantiation Which his Lordship saith was never heard of in the Primitive Church nor till the Council of Lateran nor can it be proved out of Scripture and taken properly cannot stand with the grounds of Christian Religion This you call a strange kind of proceeding to assert a point of so great importance without solving or so much as taking notice of the pregnant proofs your Authours bring both out of Scripture and Fathers to the contrary of what he mainly affirms How pregnant those proofs are we must examine afterwards but his Lordship might justly leave it to those who assert so strange a Doctrine to produce their evidence for it Especially since it is confessed by so many among your selves That it could not be sufficiently proved either from Scripture or Fathers to bind men to the belief of it till the Church had defined it in the Council of Lateran Since the more moderate and learned men among your selves Bishop Tonstall for one have looked on that definition as a rash and inconsiderate action Since the English Jesuits confessed that the Fathers did not meddle with the Doctrine of Transubstantiation Since Suarez confesseth that the names used by the Fathers are more accommodated to an accidental change Since Father Barns acknowledgeth that Transubstantiation is not the Faith of the Church and that Scripture and Fathers may be sufficiently expounded of a Supernatural presence of the body of Christ without any change in the substance of the Elements For which he produces a large Catalogue of Fathers and others Since therefore we have such confessions of your own side What need his Lordship in a Controversie so throughly sifted as this hath been bring all the Testimonies of both sides which had been so often and so punctually examin'd by others At least you say he should have cleared how Transubstantiation may be taken improperly whereas of all the words which the Church useth there is none methinks less apt to a Metaphorical and figurative sense then this of Transubstantiation By which I see you are a man who would really seem to believe Transubstantiation and are afraid of nothing but that it should not be impossible enough for you to believe it For his Lordship was only afraid that though the word it self were gross enough yet some of the more refined and subtle wits might transubstantiate the word it self and leave only the accidents of it behind by taking it in a spiritual sense as Bellarmin confesses those words of St. Bernard In Sacramento exhiberi nobis veram carnis substantiam sed spiritualitèr non carnalitèr have a true sense but adds that the word spiritualitèr must not be too often used and the Council of Trent would seem to provide an evasion by Sacramentaliter and his Lordship not well knowing what they would have by such expressions therefore he saith properly taken it cannot stand with the grounds of Christian Religion And for all those expressions Bellarmin as well as the Council take it in as gross a manner as you can desire and I think the Physitian who wanted impossibilities
disproves even in that very sentence from whence those words are cited if you had given them us at large For saith he that common bread being chang'd into flesh and blood procures life and increase to our bodies and therefore from the usual effect of things the weakness of our Faith is helped being taught by a sensible argument that the effect of eternal life is in the visible Sacraments and that we are not united to Christ so much by a Corporal as Spiritual union In which words he compares the sign and the thing signified together that as the bread being Sacramentally changed into the flesh and blood of Christ doth yet really give life and nourishment to our bodies which certainly is far enough from that substantial change into the body of Christ which you assert so by that effect of the sign it self upon our bodies our Faith is helped the better to understand the efficacy of the thing signified upon our souls in order to eternal life there being as real though spiritual union between Christ and Believers as there is between the bread and our bodies And that this is the plain and unsophisticated meaning of this Authour in these words I dare appeal to the impartial judgement of any intelligent Reader By which we see Those first words of the change of the bread into the flesh and blood of Christ must be understood of a sacramental and not a substantial change But your other is the great and as Bellarmin thinks unanswerable place which you thus render The bread which our Lord gave to his Disciples being changed not in its outward form and semblance but in its inward nature and substance by the omnipotency of the word is made flesh As to which place I must tell you first that there are very shrewd suspicions of some unhandsome dealings with it for some great Criticks have assured us that the place is corrupted and that the ancient MSS. read it quite otherwise non effigie nec naturâ mutatus which is so far from your purpose that it is directly against it and this seems far more consonant to the following words For saith he as in the person of Christ the humanity was seen but the divinity lay hid so in the visible Sacrament the divine essence doth infuse it self after an unexpressible manner In which it is considerable how he doth parallel these two together for as the humane nature of Christ did substantially remain notwithstanding the presence of the divine nature so to make good the parallel the substance of Bread and Wine must remain too and that because he doth not say That the body of Christ is present which might exclude the substance of the elements but the divine essence which only imports a spiritual and real presence And when he saith That the Bread is neither changed in its form or nature when by the Omnipotency of God it is made flesh i. e. as to the real communion which believers have of the body of Christ which is an act of divine power as well as goodness he saith no more than Theodoret Ephraim and Gelasius do expresly speak For saith Theodoret The mystical symbols after Consecration go not out of their own nature but remain in their former substance figure and shape and are visible and tangible as they were before Which words considering the occasion and importance of them are so express as nothing can be more And in his former Dialogue he gives an account Why the external symbols are called by the names of the body and blood of Christ not by changing their natures but by superadding Grace to nature which is the same with that our Authour saith here Though neither figure nor nature be changed yet by Gods Omnipotency it is made flesh that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Theodoret and this omnipotentia Dei here importing the same thing To the same purpose Ephraim the famous Patriarch of Antioch speaks in Photius For saith he the body of Christ which is received by believers doth not lose its sensible substance and yet is inseparable from spiritual Grace And so Gelasius as plainly as either of the foregoing asserts That the Sacraments of the body and blood of Christ which we receive are a divine thing through and by which we are made partakers of the divine nature which answers to the Omnipotency of God by which it is made flesh in our Authour and yet it doth not cease to be the substance or nature of Bread and Wine which is the same with the former clause That the Bread is not changed in figure or nature So that the ancient reading of this place is not only consonant to the other parts of his discourse but asserts no more than is in express terms said by genuine and unquestionable Authours who plainly overthrew your Doctrine of Transubstantiation For these testimonies being so express for the remaining of the substance of Bread and Wine after Consecration are of far greater force against it than the highest expressions concerning the change of the elements can make for it For in these they speak their judgements clearly and punctually against Hereticks and speak that which is absolutely inconsistent with Transubstantiation but in their other they speak mystically and sacramentally and their most lofty expressions must be understood by the nature and design of their discourse which is to represent symbolical things in the most lively and affecting manner But when our Adversaries are urged with the former testimonies they then tell us That substance and nature are not alwaies taken properly but sometimes at large for the accidents or use of things but although this can never be applied to the places of the foregoing Authours in their disputations with the Eutychian Hereticks yet from thence we are furnished by themselves with a further answer to this place So that although we admit of the present reading non effigie sed naturâ mutatus yet since by their own confession nature doth not alwaies import the substance of a thing they cannot in any justice or reason from hence inferr a substantial change Let them then take their choice Whether are the words of substance and nature in the Fathers alwaies to be taken properly or no If they must be taken so we have three unquestionable testimonies of ancient Fathers directly against Transubstantiation and we only lose the testimony of an uncertain Authour built upon an uncertain reading and contrary to other expressions in the same book If they be not then from the change of nature here expressed no such thing as a substantial change can be inferred but only accidental upon consecration in regard of the sacramental use and effect of it Which that it is nothing strange in Antiquity might be easily proved but that our Adversaries confession saves me the labour of it The second Testimony is of Gregory Nyssen out of whose Catechetical Oration you produce these words With good reason do
act of the Will which results from an apprehension of infinite excellency which is only in the Supreme Being very few if any of the more intelligent Heathens were ever guilty of it But if the formal reason of their Idolatry lay in offering up those devotions to that which was not God which only belong to an Infinite Being I see not but the same charge will hold on the same grounds against those who Invocate Saints with those external acts of devotion which are confessed to be the same with those wherewith we call on God But nothing can be more unreasonable than that Bellarmin should except Sacrifices and things belonging thereto from being common to the first and second sort of Adoration and not except Invocation For Is it possible to conceive any act which doth more express our sense of an Infinite Excellency and the profession of our subjection to it than Invocation doth which doth it far more than Sacrifice doth for that being a meer external act is consistent with the greatest mockery of God but solemn Invocation implies in its own nature our dependence upon God and an acknowledgement of his Infinite Knowledge and Power For Invocation lyes chiefly in the internal acts and denotes primarily the inward desire of obtaining something from a Being above our own So that though I should grant the meer external acts of bowing and kneeling to be common to Adoration given to infinite and finite perfections yet I utterly deny that these acts are common to both when the circumstances do determine the end and design of them As no man by the meer bowing of Abraham to the Children of Heth could tell whether it were civil or divine Adoration which he meant but none who understood all the circumstances of it would have any reason to question it But suppose it had been declared before that these men expected a more than civil Adoration and that all the rites of solemn Invocation which Abraham at any time used to God must be used to them too then the same external acts must have received a new denomination So that though the meer external acts be common to civil and religious Worship yet as those acts are considered with their several circumstances they are appropriated to one or the other of them Thus though a man may use the same form of words to an Emperour on his Throne and the same external posture which he doth use after his death in a Temple consecrated to him yet in the one they are meerly signs of Civil Worship but in the other they become Testimonies of Religious Adoration So although in the Invocation of Saints no other words were used but such as denote them to be Creatures still yet if they be used with all the rites of solemn Invocation in places appropriate to Divine Worship and in Sacred Offices they thereby declare the Adoration intended to be greater than any meer creature is capable of For we must consider that as God is owned to be Infinite in himself and to have incommunicable perfections so by reason of them there ought to be some appropriated acts or signs of Worship to declare our subjection to him which being determined for this end either by the Law of God or the consent of people the attributing of them to any else but him is a publick violation of his honour Although in so doing men profess that they intend them only as expressions of a lower kind of Worship than is due to the Supreme Being But in such cases the protestation avails not where the fact is evident to the contrary For when men in the most solemn manner in publick places of devotion and in sacred offices do invocate Saints and yet think they dishonour not God by it because they say they do not worship them as God it is just as if a man should upon all occasions in the Presence-Chamber address himself to one of the King's subjects as to the King himself and being questioned for it should only say he did not dishonour the King by it because he meant it not to him as a King but as a Subject But by so much is the dishonour greater because the Soveraignity of the King doth require that the rights of Majesty should not be given to any Subject whatsoever So that it is but a vain pretence when men use all the expressions whereby we declare our sense of the Infinite Perfections which are in God to any Creatures to say They give them not that Worship which belongs to God meerly because they do believe they are Creatures still But Is it possible for men to give the honour which is due to God to the Creatures or no acknowledging them to be Creatures still or Is it not If not then none of the Heathens could be guilty of Idolatry in worshipping Daemons Heroes and Deified Emperours if it be possible then the acknowledging the Saints not to be God cannot excuse men from the same kind of Idolatry in the Invocation of them And it is as frivolous a plea which is made for those forms of Invocation which are made to the Saints in plain terms not to intercede with God for them but to bestow upon them both temporal and spiritual Blessings of which multitudes have been produced by our Writers viz. That though the form of words be the same that is used to God yet the sense is wholly that they would pray to God to bestow them For How should any other sense be understood when these forms are allowed in Invocation For although the Scripture may sometimes attribute the effect to the subordinate Instrument as when S. Paul is said to save some yet certainly the Scripture is far from allowing such a liberty in solemn Invocation For upon this ground it might have been lawful for men to have fallen down upon their knees to St. Paul and have intreated him to save them Do you think St. Paul would have approved such phrases in Invocation So that it is not the meer phrase but as it is joyned with all rites of Invocation which makes it look so like the most gross Idolatry When you pray to the Virgin Mary to protect you from your enemies and receive you in the hour of death and to the Apostles to heal your spiritual maladies which forms are acknowledged by Bellarmin Can any reasonable man think that the meaning of them only is that they would pray to God to do these things for them If one should bring his Petition to a Courtier for his Pardon and in plain terms beg that of him which the King only can grant What man that had his wits about him would ever imagine that he only meant by it that he would entreat the King to do it for him But God is more jealous of his honour than to be put off by such Mockeries as these are Nay when your great men at the end of their most elaborate works conclude with a Laus Deo beatissimae
Virgini What can be meant by it but the attributing an honour of the same kind to the one as the other And when prayers are made to Saints that through their merits they would do such things for them it is hard conceiving the meaning should only be that they would pray to God for them Nay some have expresly said That God hath communicated that which of right belonged to him because of his divinity and omnipotency to the blessed Virgin the Saints and that which is more wonderful to their Images too So Gulielmus Fabricius in his appropriation of Lipsius his Diva Virgo Hallensis which it is thought by some that Lipsius only writ in imitation of some Heathen Goddess which may be a very probable account of that otherwise very unhappy undertaking of that learned Man And as one said of the Pen he offered to the Virgin Nothing could be lighter unless it were the Book he wrote with it But that professed Critick understood well enough the exactness of the parallel of the Worship of the Virgin Mary with that of the Heathen Goddesses and therefore very suitably calls her Tutelaris Diva by which his meaning might be guessed at as Plato's was by his using the name of God or Gods But however that be we are sure the parallel is so great between the worship of Saints in the Church of Rome and that of Heroes and Daemons amongst the Heathens that if one be justified the other cannot be condemned and if one be condemned the other cannot be justified So that from hence it follows that the arguments used by the Primitive Christians against that Worship will hold against Invocation of Saints because the Heathens pleaded not for an absolute and soveraign Worship of them but only such a kind of relative and subordinate Worship as you profess to be due to Saints Thus much may suffice to clear the notion of Worship in the Primitive Church and to shew how far that was from approving your Doctrine of the Invocation of Saints The next Argument I intended to have insisted on should have been the proving the Divinity of Christ from the Invocation of him as Athanasius and several others do which could signifie nothing if Invocation were then allowed to Saints But this hath been so amply managed by others and the sense of the Church having been sufficiently discovered by our precedent discourse I shall not need to insist any more on those foregoing times but now come to that age of the Church wherein the honour of the Martyrs seems to be advanced higher upon the ceasing of persecution But still his Lordship saith That the Church then admitted not of the Invocation of Saints but only of the Commemoration of the Martyrs as appears clearly in S. Augustine who saith Although they be at the Sacrifice named in their order non tamen à Sacerdote qui sacrificat invocantur they are not invoked by the Priest who sacrifices Now to this you answer The Father's meaning is that the Saints departed are not invocated or call'd upon by way of Sacrifice i. e. as persons to whom the Sacrifice is offered which you say is a work of Religion due to God only and this you prove was all that S. Austin meant because in other places of his works where he teaches that not only Commemoration is made of the Saints departed in time of Sacrifice but that it is done to this particular intent and purpose viz. that they would pray for us which doubtless amounts to a virtual Invocation of them And for this you produce several passages out of his works Two things therefore must be enquired into 1. What the meaning of S. Austin is when he saith That the Saints are not invocated at the sacrifice 2. What his meaning is in those places wherein he allows of that you call Virtual Invocation viz. that the Saints would pray for us 1. We are to enquire What S. Austin's meaning is when he saith That the Saints are not invocated at the Sacrifice meaning no other say you but the Sacrifice of the Mass which you hope the Reader will mark for S. Austin's sake wherein you betray most egregious ignorance or fraud if you either suppose the Christians called nothing else a Sacrifice at that time but what you now call the Mass or that they did it in the same respect that you do now A Sacrifice of Prayer and Praise indeed they had and a Commemoration of Christs Sacrifice in the Lords Supper but no such thing as a propitiatory Sacrifice for the living and the dead and I pray mark this for your own sake But for our better understanding S. Austin's meaning we must consider that he is there comparing the honours which the Heathens gave to their Heroes with those which the Christians give to the Martyrs They saith he to those Gods of theirs build Temples erect Altars appoint Priests and offer Sacrifices but we do not build any Temples to the Martyrs as to gods but raise Sepulchres as to dead men whose spirits live with God neither do we build Altars at which we may sacrifice to the Martyrs but we offer up a Sacrifice only to the God of the Martyrs and of us at which Sacrifice saith he as holy men of God who through their confession of him have overcome the world they are named in their place and order but are not invocated by the Priest who offers up the Sacrifice Two things may here be understood by the Sacrifice either the anniversary Sacrifice of praise to God on the day of their Natalitia or Martyrdoms or else the celebration of the Eucharist which was wont to be done at the memoriae Martyrum chiefly upon that anniversary day Now there are many reasons to incline me to think that S. Austin doth not speak of any ordinary celebration of the Eucharist but of that anniversary solemnity which was wont to be kept at the tombs of the Martyrs on the day of their sufferings Chiefly because S. Austin is here paralleling the honours of the Martyrs with those of the Heathen Heroes and therefore it was reason he should speak of the greatest solemnities which were used for them Now it is certain that there were such anniversary dayes then kept by many passages of those times and somewhat before them especially in the African Churches and at these they offered up solemn prayers and praises to God Both which are clear from this passage of S. Cyprian Sacrificia pro iis semper ut meministis offerimus quoties Martyrum passiones dies anniversariâ Commemoratione celebramus Where we find an anniversary Commemoration and Sacrifices offered at them What these Sacrifices were Rigaltius in his Observations on that place tells us Christiani saith he sacris anniversariis laudes Deo dicunt commemoratis eorum nominibus qui pro fide Christo dicta Martyrium fortiter obierunt So that the Sacrifice was a Sacrifice of praise