called upon them to speak something against your religion from Scripture or right reason or Universal Tradition you had been secure as a Tortoise in her shell a Cart pressed with sheaves could not have oppressed your cause or person though you had confessed you understood nothing of the mysteries of succession doctrinal or personal For if we can make it appear that our religion was that which Christ and his Apostles taught let the truth suffer what eclipses or prejudices can be supposed let it be hid like the holy fire in the captivity yet what Christ and his Apostles taught us is eternally true and shall by some means or other be conveyed to us even the enemies of truth have been conservators of that truth by which we can confute their errors But if you still ask where it was before Luther I answer it was there where it was after even in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament and I know no warrant for any other religion and if you will expect I should shew any society of Men who professed all the doctrines which are now expressed in the confession of the Church of England I shall tell you it is unreasonable because some of our truths are now brought into our publick confessions that they might be oppos'd against your errors before the occasion of which there was no need of any such confessions till you made many things necessary to be professed which are not lawful to be believed For if we believe your superinduc'd follies we shall do unreasonably unconscionably and wickedly but the questions themselves are so useless abstracting from the accidental necessity which your follies have brought upon us that it had been happy if we had never heard of them more than the Saints and Martyrs did in the first ages of the Church but because your Clergy have invaded the liberty of the Church and multiplied the dangers of damnation and pretend new necessities and have introduc'd new articles and affright the simple upon new pretensions and slight the very institution and the Commands of Christ and of the Apostles and invent new Sacramentals constituting Ceremonies of their own head and promise grace along with the use of them as if they were not Ministers but Lords of the Spirit and teach for doctrines the commandments of men and make void the Commandment of God by their tradition and have made a strange body of Divinity therefore it is necessary that we should immure our Faith by the refusal of such vain and superstitious dreams but our faith was completed at first it is no other than that which was delivered to the Saints and can be no more for ever So that it is a foolish demand to require that we should shew before Luther a systeme of Articles declaring our sense in these questions It was long before they were questions at all and when they were made questions they remained so a long time and when by their several pieces they were determined this part of the Church was oppressed with a violent power and when God gave opportunity then the yoke was broken and this is the whole progress of this affair But if you will still insist upon it then let the matter be put into equal ballances and let them shew any Church whose confession of Faith was such as was obtruded upon you at Trent and if your Religion be Pius Quartus his Creed at Trent then we also have a question to ask and that is Where was your Religion before Trent The Council of Trent determined that the souls departed before the Day of Judgment enjoy the Beatifical Vison It is certain this Article could not be shewn in the Confession of any of the ancient Churches for most of the Fathers were of another opinion But that which is the greatest offence of Christendom is not only that these doctrines which we say are false were yet affirmed but that those things which the Church of God did always reject or held as uncertain should be made Articles of Faith and so become parts of your religion and of these it is that I again ask the question which none of your side shall ever be able to answer for you Where was your Religion before Trent I could instance in many particulars but I shall name one to you which because the thing of it self is of no great consequence it will appear the more unreasonable and intolerable that your Church should adopt it into the things of necessary belief especially since it was only a matter of fact and they took the false part too For in the 21. Sess. Chap. 4. it is affirmed That although the holy Fathers did give the Sacrament of the Eucharist to Infants yet they did it without any necessity of salvation that is they did not believe it necessary to their salvation which is notoriously false and the contrary is marked out with the black-lead of every man almost that reads their Works and yet your Council says this is fine controversiâ credendum to be believed without all controversie and all Christians forbidden to believe or teach otherwise So that here it is made an Article of Faith amongst you that a man shall neither believe his reason nor his eyes and who can shew any confession of Faith in which all the Trent doctrine was professed and enjoyned under pain of damnation and before the Council of Constance the Doctrine touching the Popes power was so new so decried that as Gerson says he hardly should have escaped the note of Heresie that would have said so much as was there defined so that in that Article which now makes a great part of your belief where was your Religion before the Council of Constance and it is notorious that your Council of Constance determined the doctrine of the half-communion with a Non obstante to Christ's institution that is with a defiance to it or a noted observed neglect of it and with a profession it was otherwise in the Primitive Church Where then was your Religion before John Hus and Hierom of Prague's time against whom that Council was convened But by this instance it appears most certainly that your Church cannot shew her confessions immediately after Christ and therefore if we could not shew ours immediately before Luther it were not half so much for since you receded from Christ's Doctrine we might well recede from yours and it matters not who or how many or how long they professed your doctrine if neither Christ nor his Apostles did teach it so that if these Articles constitute your Church your Church was invisible at the first and if ours was invisible afterwards it matters not For yours was invisible in the days of light and ours was invisible in the days of darkness For our Church was always visible in the reflections of Scripture and he that had his eyes of faith and reason might easily have seen these truths all the way which constitute our Church But
many intrigues and Labyrinths of Question and is like a long line so impossible to be perfectly straight and to have no declination in it when it is held by such a hand as yours that unless it be by material enquiries into the Articles of the Religion you can never hope to have just grounds of confidence In the mean time you can consider this if the Roman Church were the Catholick that is so as to exclude all that are not of her communion then the Greek Churches had as good turn Turks as remain damned Christians and all that are in the communion of all the other Patriarchal Churches in Christendom must also perish like Heathens which thing before any Man can believe he must have put off all reason and all modesty and all charity And who can with any probability think that the Communion of Saints in the Creed is nothing but the Communion of Roman Subjets and the Article of the Catholick Church was made up to dispark the inclosures of Jerusalem but to turn them into the pale of Rome and the Church is as limited as ever it was save only that the Synagogue is translated to Rome which I think you will easily believe was a Proposition the Apostles understood not But though it be hard to trust to it it is also so hard to prove it that you shall be able to understand the measures of that question and therefore your salvation can never depend upon it For no good or wise person can believe that God hath tied our Salvation to impossible measures or bound us to an Article that is not by us cognoscible or intends to have us conducted by that which we cannot understand and when you shall know that Learned men even of the Roman party are not agreed concerning the Catholick Church that is infallibly to guide you some saying that it is the virtual Church that is the Pope some that it is the representative Church that is a Council Some that it is the Pope and the Council the virtual Church and the representative Church together Some that neither of these nor both together are infallible but only the essential Church or the diffusive Church is the Catholick from whom we must at no hand dissent you will quickly find your self in a wood and uncertain whether you have more than a word in exchange for your soul when you are told you are in the Catholick Church But I will tell you what you may understand and see and feel something that your self can tell whether I say true or no concerning it You are now gone to a Church that protects it self by arts of subtilty and arms by violence and persecuting all that are not of their minds to a Church in which you are to be a Subject of the King so long as it pleases the Pope In which you may be absolved from your Vows made to God your Oaths to the King your Promises to Men your duty to your Parents in some cases A Church in which Men pray to God and to Saints in the same Form of words in which they pray to God as you may see in the Offices of Saints and particularly of our Lady a Church in which Men are taught by most of the principal Leaders to worship Images with the same worship with which they worship God and Christ or him or her whose Image it is and in which they usually picture God the Father and the holy Trinity to the great dishonour of that sacred mystery against the doctrine and practice of the Primitive Church against the express doctrine of Scripture against the honour of a Divine Attribute I mean the immensity and spirituality of the Divine Nature You are gone to a Church that pretends to be Infallible and yet is infinitely deceived in many particulars and yet endures no contradiction and is impatient her children should enquire into any thing her Priests obtrude You are gone from receiving the whole Sacrament to receive it but half from Christ's Institution to a humane invention from Scripture to uncertain Traditions and from ancient Traditions to new pretences from prayers which ye understood to prayers which ye understand not from confidence in God to rely upon creatures from intire dependence upon inward acts to a dangerous temptation of resting too much in outward ministeries in the external work of Sacraments and of Sacramentals You are gone from a Church whose worshipping is simple Christian and Apostolical to a Church where Mens consciences are loaden with a burden of Ceremonies greater than that in the days of the Jewish Religion for the Ceremonial of the Church of Rome is a great Book in Folio greater I say than all the Ceremonies of the Jews contained in Leviticus c. You are gone from a Church where you were exhorted to read the Word of God the holy Scriptures from whence you found instruction institution comfort reproof a treasure of all excellencies to a Church that seals up that fountain from you and gives you drink by drops out of such Cisterns as they first make and then stain and then reach out and if it be told you that some Men abuse Scripture it is true for if your Priests had not abused Scripture they could not thus have abused you but there is no necessity they should and you need not unless you list any more than you need to abuse the Sacraments or decrees of the Church or the messages of your friend or the Letters you receive or the Laws of the Land all which are liable to be abused by evil persons but not by good people and modest understandings It is now become a part of your Religion to be ignorant to walk in blindness to believe the Man that hears your Confessions to hear none but him not to hear God speaking but by him and so you are liable to be abused by him as he please without remedy You are gone from us where you were only taught to worship God through Jesus Christ and now you are taught to worship Saints and Angels with a worship at least dangerous and in some things proper to God for your Church worships the Virgin Mary with burning incense and candles to her and you give her presents which by the consent of all Nations used to be esteemed a worship peculiar to God and it is the same thing which was condemned for Heresie in the Collyridians who offered a Cake to the Virgin Mary A Candle and a Cake make no difference in the worship and your joyning God and the Saints in your worship and devotions is like the device of them that fought for King and Parliament the latter destroys the former I will trouble you with no more particulars because if these move you not to consider better nothing can But yet I have two things more to add of another nature one of which at least may prevail upon you whom I suppose to have a tender and a religious Conscience The first is That
I add yet farther that our Church before Luther was there where your Church was in the same place and in the same persons for divers of the errors which have been amongst us reformed were not the constituent Articles of your Church before Luther's time for before the last Councils of your Church a man might have been of your Communion upon easier terms and Indulgences were indeed a practice but no Article of Faith before your men made it so and that very lately and so were many other things besides So that although your men cozen the credulous and the simple by calling yours The old Religion yet the difference is vast between Truth and their affirmative even as much as between old Errors and new Articles For although Ignorance and Superstition had prepared the ore yet the Councils of Constance and Basil and Trent especially were the sorges and the mint Lastly if your men had not by all the vile and violent arts of the World stopped the mouths of dissenters the question would quickly have been answered or our Articles would have been so confessed so owned and so publick that the question could never have been asked but in despite of all opposition there were great numbers of professors who did protest and profess and practise our doctrines contrary to your Articles as it is demonstrated by the Divines of Germany in Illyricus his Catalogus testium veritatis and in Bishop Mortons appeal But with your next objection you are better pleased and your Men make most noise with it For you pretend that by our confession salvation may be had in your Church but your men deny it to us and therefore by the confession of both sides you may be safe and there is no question concerning you but of us there is great question for none but our selves say that we can be saved I answer 1. That salvation may be had in your Church is it ever the truer because we say it If it be not it can add no confidence to you for the proposition gets no strength by your affirmative But if it be then our authority is good or else our reason and if either be then we have more reason to be believed speaking of our selves because we are concerned to see that our selves may be in a state of hope and therefore we would not venture on this side if we had not greater reason to believe well of our selves than of you And therefore believe us when it is more likely that we have greater reason because we have greater concernments and therefore greater considerations 2. As much charity as your Men pretend us to speak of you yet it is a clear case our hope of your salvation is so little that we dare not venture our selves on your side The Burger of Oldwater being to pass a River in his Journey to Daventry had his Man try the Ford telling him he hoped he should not be drowned for though he was afraid the River was too deep yet he thought his Horse would carry him out or at least the Boats would fetch him off Such a confidence we may have of you but you will find that but little warranty if you remember how great an interest it is that you venture 3. It would be remembred that though the best ground of your hope is not the goodness of your own faith but the greatness of our charity yet we that charitably hope well of you have a fulness of assurance of the truth and certainty of our own way and however you can please your selves with Images of things as having no firm footing for your trifling confidence yet you can never with your tricks out face us of just and firm adherencies and if you were not empty of supports and greedy of bulrushes snatching at any thing to support your sinking cause you would with fear and trembling consider the direct dangers which we demonstrate to you to be in your religion rather than flatter your selves with collateral weak and deceitful hopes of accidental possibilities that some of you may escape 4. If we be more charitable to you than you are to us acknowledge in us the beauty and essential form of Christian Religion be sure you love as well as make use of our charity but if you make our charity an argument against us remember that you render us evil in exchange for good and let it be no brag to you that you have not that charity to us for therefore the Donatists were condemned for Hereticks and Schismaticks because they damn'd all the World and afforded no charity to any that was not of their Communion 5. But that our charity may be such indeed that is that it may do you a real benefit and not turn into Wormwood and Colloquintida I pray take notice in what sense it is that we allow salvation may possibly be had in your Church We warrant it not to any we only hope it for some we allow it to them as to the Sadducees in the Law and to the Corinthians in the Gospel who denied the resurrection that is till they were sufficiently instructed and competently convinced and had time and powers to out-wear their prejudices and the impresses of their education and long perswasion But to them amongst you who can and do consider and yet determine for error and interest we have a greater charity even so much as to labour and pray for their conversion but not so much fondness as to flatter them into boldness and pertinacious adherencies to matters of so great danger 6. But in all this afrair though your men are very bold with God and leap into his Judgment-seat before him and give wild sentences concerning the salvation of your own party and the damnation of all that disagree yet that which is our charity to you is indeed the fear of God and the reverence of his judgments we do not say that all Papists are certainly damn'd we wish and desire vehemently that none of you may perish but then this charity of judgment relates not to you nor is derived from any probability which we see in your doctrines that differ from ours but because we know not what rate and value God puts upon the article It concerns neither you nor us to say this or that man shall be damn'd for his opinion for besides that this is a bold intrusion into that secret of God which shall not be opened till the Day of Judgment and besides that we know not what allays and abatements are to be made by the good meaning and the ignorance of the man all that can concern us is to tell you that you are in error that you depart from Scripture that you exercise tyranny over souls that you leave the Divine institution and prevaricate Gods Commandment that you divide the Church without truth and without necessity that you tie Men to believe things under pain of damnation which cannot be made very probable much less certain and
follies to the Church of England 7. Trouble your self with no controversies willingly but how you may best please God by a strict and severe conversation 8. If any Protestant live loosely remember that he dishonours an excellent Religion and that it may be no more laid upon the charge of our Church than the ill lives of most Christians may upon the whole Religion 9. Let no Man or Woman affright you with declamations and scaring words of Heretick and Damnation and Changeable for these words may be spoken against them that return to light as well as to those that go to darkness and that which Men of all sides can say it can be of effect to no side upon its own strength or pretension THE END POST-SCRIPT Madam IF You shall think it fit that these Papers pass further than Your own eye and Closet I desire they may be consign'd into the hands of my worthy friend Dr. Wedderburne For I do not only expose all my sickness to his cure but I submit my weaknesses to his censure being as confident to find of him charity for what is pardonable as remedy for what is curable but indeed Madam I look upon that worthy Man as an Idea of friendship and if I had no other notices of Friendship or conversation to instruct me than his it were sufficient For whatsoever I can say of Friendship I can say of his and as all that know him reckon him amongst the best Physicians so I know him worthy to be reckoned amongst the best friends The III. Letter Written to a Gentleman that was tempted to the Communion of the Romish Church SIR YOU needed not to make the Preface of an excuse for writing so friendly and so necessary a Letter of Inquiry It was your kindness to my person which directed your addresses hither and your duty which ingag'd you to inquire somewhere I do not doubt but you and very many other ingenious and conscientious persons do every day meet with the Tempters of the Roman Church who like the Pharisees compass Sea and Land to get a Proselyte at this I wonder not for as Demetrius said by this craft they get their living but I wonder that any ingenious person and such as I perceive you to be can be shaken by their weak assaults for their batteries are made up with impossible propositions and weak and violent prejudices respectively and when they talk of their own infallibility they prove it with false Mediums say we with fallible Mediums as themselves confess and when they argue us of an Uncertain faith because we pretend to no infallibility they are themselves much more Uncertain because they build their pretence of infallibility upon that which not only can but will deceive them and since they can pretend no higher for their infallibility than prudential motives they break in pieces the staff upon which they lean and with which they strike us But Sir you are pleased to ask two Questions 1. Whether the Apostles of our Blessed Lord did not Orally deliver many things necessary to Salvation which were not committed to writing To which you add this assumentum in which because you desire to be answered I suppose you meant it for another Question viz. whether in those things which the Church of Rome retains and we take no notice of She be an Innovator or a conserver of Tradition and whether any thing which she so retains was or was not esteemed necessary The answer to the first part will conclude the second I therefore answer that whatsoever the Apostles did deliver as necessary to Salvation all that was written in the Scriptures and that to them who believe the Scriptures to be the Word of God there needs no other Magazine of Divine truths but the Scripture And this the Fathers of the first and divers succeeding Ages do Unanimously affirm I will set down two or three so plain that either you must conclude them to be deceivers or that you will need no more but their testimony The words of S. Basil are these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Every word and every thing ought to be made credible or believ'd by the testimony of the Divinely-inspired Scripture both for the confirmation of good things and also for the reproof of the evil S. Cyril of Jerusalem catech 12. illuminat saith Attend not to my inventions for you may possibly be deceiv'd but trust no word unless thou dost learn it from the Divine Scriptures and in Catech. 4. illum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. For it behoves us not to deliver so much as the least thing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Divine and holy mysteries of Faith without the Divine Scriptures nor to be moved with probable discourses Neither give credit to me speaking unless what is spoken be demonstrated by the Holy Scriptures For that is the security of our Faith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is derived not from witty inventions but from the demonstration of Divine Scriptures Omne quod loquimur debemus affirmare de Scripturis Sanctis so S. Hierom in Psal. 89. And again Hoc quia de Scripturis authoritatem non habet eadem facilitate contemnitur quâ probatur in Matth. 23. Si quid dicitur absque Scripturâ auditorum cogitatio claudicat So S. Chrysostom in Psal. 95. homil Theodoret dial 1. cap. 6. brings in the Orthodox Christian saying to Eranistes bring not to me your Logismes and Syllogismes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I rely only upon Scriptures I could reckon very very many more both elder and later and if there be any Universal Tradition consigned to us by the Universal Testimony of Antiquity it is this that the Scriptures are a perfect repository of all the Will of God of all the Faith of Christ and this I will engage my self to make very apparent to you and certain against any opposer Upon the supposition of which it follows that whatever the Church of Rome obtrudes as necessary to Salvation and an Article of Faith that is not in Scripture is an Innovation in matter of Faith and a Tyranny over Consciences which whosoever submits to prevaricates the rule of the Apostle commanding us that we stand fast in the liberty with which Christ hath set us free To the other Questions Whether an Ecclesiastical Tradition be of equal authority with Divine I answer Negatively And I believe I shall have no adversary in it except peradventure some of the Jesuited Bigots An Ecclesiastical Tradition viz. a positive constitution of the Church delivered from hand to hand is in the power of the Church to alter but a Divine is not Ecclesiastical Traditions in matters of Faith there are none but what are also Divine as for Rituals Ecclesiastical descending by Tradition they are confessedly alterable but till they be altered by abrogation or desuetude or contrary custome or a contrary reason or the like they do oblige by vertue of that Authority whatsoever it is that hath power
over you I know not what D. P. G. did say but I am confident they who reported it of him were mistaken He could not say or mean what is charged upon him I have but two things more to speak to One is you desire me to recite what else might impede your compliance with the Roman Church I answer Truth and Piety hinder you For you must profess the belief of many false propositions and certainly believe many Uncertain things and be uncharitable to all the World but your own party and make Christianity a faction and you must yield your reason a servant to man and you must plainly prevaricate an institution of Christ and you must make an apparent departure from the Church in which you received your Baptism and the Spirit of God if you go over to Rome But Sir I refer you to the two Letters I have lately published at the end of my discourse of Friendship and I desire you to read my Treatise of the Real presence and if you can believe the doctrine of Transubstantiation you can put off your reason and your sense and your religion and all the instruments of Credibility when you please and these are not little things In these you may perish an error in these things is practical but our way is safe as being upon the defence and intirely resting upon Scripture and the Apostolical Churches The other thing I am to speak to is the report you have heard of my inclinations to go over to Rome Sir that party which needs such lying stories for the support of their Cause proclaim their Cause to be very weak or themselves to be very evil Advocates Sir be confident they dare not tempt me to do so and it is not the first time they have endeavoured to serve their ends by saying such things of me But I bless God for it it is perfectly a Slander and it shall I hope for ever prove so Sir if I may speak with you I shall say very many things more for your confirmation Pray to God to guide you and make no change suddenly For if their way be true to day it will be so to morrow and you need not make hast to undo your self Sir I wish you a setled mind and a holy Conscience and that I could serve you in the capacity of Your very Loving Friend and Servant in our Blessed Lord JER TAYLOR The IV. LETTER To the same Person SIR I Perceive that You are very much troubled and I see also that you are in great danger but that also troubles me because I see they are little things and very weak and fallacious that move you You propound many things in your Letter in the same disorder as they are in your Conscience to all which I can best give answers when I speak with you to which because you desire I invite you and promise you a hearty endeavour to give you satisfaction in all your material inquiries Sir I desire you to make no hast to change in case you be so miserable as to have it in your thoughts for to go over to the Church of Rome is like death there is no recovery from thence without a Miracle because Unwary souls such are they who change from us to them are with all the arts of wit and violence strangely entangled and ensur'd when they once get the prey Sir I thank you for the Paper you inclosed The men are at a loss they would fain say something against that Book but know not what Sir I will endeavour if you come to me to restore you to peace and quiet and if I cannot effect it yet I will pray for it and I am sure God can To his Mercy I commend you and rest Your very affectionate Friend in our Blessed Lord JER TAYLOR The V. LETTER To the same Person SIR THE first Letter which you mention in this latter of the 10 th of March I received not I had not else failed to give you an answer I was so wholly unknowing of it that I did not understand your Servant's meaning when he came to require an answer But to your Question which you now propound I answer Quest. Whether without all danger of Superstition or Idolatry we may not render Divine worship to our Blessed Saviour as present in the Blessed Sacrament or Host according to his Humane Nature in that Host Answ. We may not render Divine worship to him as present in the Blessed Sacrament according to his Humane Nature without danger of Idolatry Because he is not there according to his Humane Nature and therefore you give Divine worship to a Non Ens which must needs be Idolatry For Idolum nihil est in mundo saith S. Paul and Christ as presenâ— by his Humane Nature in the Sacrament is a Non Ens for it is not true there is no such thing He is present there by his Divine power and his Divine Blessing and the fruits of his Body the real effective consequents of his Passion but for any other Presence it is Idolum it is nothing in the world Adore Christ in Heaven for the Heavens must contain him till the time of restitution of all things And if you in the reception of the Holy Sacrament worship him whom you know to be in Heaven you cannot be concerned in duty to worship him in the Host as you call it any more than to worship him in the Host at Nostre Dame when you are at S. Peters in Rome for you see him no more in one place than another and if to believe him to be there in the Host at Nostre Dame be sufficient to cause you to worship him there then you are to do so to him at Rome though you be not present for you believe him there you know as much of Him by Faith in both places and as little by sense in either But however this is a thing of infinite danger God is a jealous God He spake it in the matter of external worship and of idolatry and therefore do nothing that is like worshipping a meer creature nothing that is like worshipping that which you are not sure it is God and if you can believe the Bread when it is blessed by the Priest is God Almighty you can if you please believe any thing else To the other parts of your Question viz. Whether the same body be present really and Substantially because we believe it to be there or whether we do believe it to be there because God hath manifestly revealed it to be so and therefore we revere and adore it accordingly I answer 1. I do not know whether or no you do believe Him to be there really and Substantially 2. If you do believe it so I do not know what you mean by really and Substantially 3. Whatsoever you do mean by it if you do believe it to be there really and Substantially in any sense I cannot tell why you believe it to be so you best know
all the points of difference between us and your Church are such as do evidently serve the ends of Covetousness and ambition of power and riches and so stand vehemently suspected of design and art rather than truth of the Article and designs upon Heaven I instance in the Pope's power over Princes and all the World his power of dispensation The exemption of the Clergy from jurisdiction of Princes The Doctrine of Purgatory and Indulgences which was once made means to raise a portion for a Lady the Neece of Pope Leo the Tenth The Priests power advanced beyond authority of any warrant from Scripture a doctrine apt to bring absolute obedience to the Papacy but because this is possibly too nice for you to suspect or consider that which I am sure ought to move you is this That you are gone to a Religion in which though through God's grace prevailing over the follies of men there are I hope and charitably suppose many pious Men that love God and live good lives yet there are very many doctrines taught by your Men which are very ill Friends to a good life I instance in your Indulgences and pardons in which vitious men put a great confidence and rely greatly upon them The doctrine of Purgatory which gives countenance to a sort of Christians who live half to God and half to the World and for them this doctrine hath found out a way that they may go to Hell and to Heaven too The Doctrine that the Priests absolution can turn a trifling repentance into a perfect and a good and that suddenly too and at any time even on our Death-bed or the minute before your death is a dangerous heap of falshoods and gives licence to wicked people and teaches men to reconcile a wicked debauched life with the hopes of Heaven And then for penances and temporal satisfaction which might seem to be as a plank after the shipwrack of the duty of Repentance to keep men in awe and to preserve them from sinking in an Ocean of Impiety it comes to just nothing by your doctrine for there are so many easie ways of Indulgences and getting Pardons so many con-fraternities stations priviledg'd Altars little Offices Agnus Dei's amulets hallowed devices swords roses hats Church-yards and the fountain of these annexed indulgences the Pope himself and his power of granting what and when and to whom he list that he is a very unfortunate man that needs to smart with penances and after all he may choose to suffer any at all for he may pay them in Purgatory if he please and he may come out of Purgatory upon reasonable terms in case he should think it fit to go thither So that all the whole duty of Repentance seems to be destroyed with devices of Men that seek power and gain and find errour and folly insomuch that if I had a mind to live an evil Life and yet hope for Heaven at last I would be of your religion above any in the World But I forget I am writing a Letter I shall therefore desire you to consider upon the premises which is the safer way For surely it is lawful for a Man to serve God without Images but that to worship Images is lawful is not so sure It is lawful to pray to God alone to confess him to be true and every Man a liar to call no man Master upon Earth but to rely upon God teaching us But it is at least hugely disputable and not at all certain that any Man or society of Men can be infallible that we may put our trust in Saints in certain extraordinary Images or burn Incense and offer consumptive oblations to the Virgin Mary or make vows to persons of whose state or place or capacities or condition we have no certain revelation we are sure we do well when in the holy Communion we worship God and Jesus Christ our Saviour but they who also worship what seems to be bread are put to strange shifts to make themselves believe it to be lawful It is certainly lawful to believe what we see and feel but it is an unnatural thing upon pretence of faith to disbelieve our eyes when our sense and our faith can better be reconciled as it is in the question of the Real presence as it is taught by the Church of England So that unless you mean to prefer a danger before safety temptation to unholiness before a severe and a holy religion unless you mean to lose the benefit of your prayers by praying what you perceive not and the benefit of the Sacrament in great degrees by falling from Christ's institution and taking half instead of all unless you desire to provoke God to jealousie by Images and Man to jealousie in professing a Religion in which you may in many cases have leave to forfeit your faith and lawful trust unless you will still continue to give scandal to those good people with whom you have lived in a common Religion and weaken the hearts of Gods afflicted ones unless you will choose a Catechism without the second Commandment and a Faith that grows bigger or less as men please and a Hope that in many degrees relyes on men and vain confidences and a Charity that damns all the World but your selves unless you will do all this that is suffer an abuse in your Prayers in the Sacrament in the Commandments in Faith in Hope in Charity in the Communion of Saints and your duty to your Supreme you must return to the bosom of your Mother the Church of England from whence you have fallen rather weakly than maliciously and I doubt not but you will find the Comfort of it all your Life and in the Day of your Death and in the Day of Judgment If you will not yet I have freed mine own soul and done an act of Duty and Charity which at least you are bound to take kindly if you will not entertain it obediently Now let me add this that although most of these objections are such things which are the open and avowed doctrines or practices of your Church and need not to be proved as being either notorious or confessed yet if any of your Guides shall seem to question any thing of it I will bind my self to verifie it to a tittle and in that too which I intend them that is so as to be an objection obliging you to return under the pain of folly or heresie or disobedience according to the subject matter And though I have propounded these things now to your consideration yet if it be desired I shall represent them to your eye so that even your self shall be able to give sentence in the behalf of truth In the mean time give me leave to tell you of how much folly you are guilty in being moved by such mock-arguments as your men use when they meet with women and tender consciences and weaker understanding The first is where was your Church before Luther Now if you had
prevail against his Church which Prophecie is made good thus long till this day and is as a continual argument to justifie the Divinity of the Author The continuance of the Religion helps to continue it for it proves that it came from God who foretold that it should continue and therefore it must continue because it came from God and therefore it came from God because it does and shall for ever continue according to the word of the holy Jesus But after our blessed Lord was entred into glory the disciples also were Prophets Agabus foretold the dearth that was to be in the Roman Empire in the days of Claudius Caesar and that S. Paul should be bound at Jerusalem S. Paul foretold the entring in of Hereticks into Asia after his departure and he and S. Peter and S. Jude and generally the rest of the Apostles had two great predictions which they used not only as a verification of the doctrine of Jesus but as a means to strengthen the hearts of the Disciples who were so broken with persecution The one was that there should arise a Sect of vile men who should be enemies to Religion and Government and cause a great Apostasie which happened notoriously in the Sect of the Gnosticks which those three Apostles and S. John notoriously and plainly do describe And the other was that although the Jewish Nation did mightily oppose the Religion it should be but for a while for they should be destroyed in a short time and their Nation made extremely miserable but for the Christians if they would fly from Jerusalem and go to Pella there should not a hair of their head perish the verification of this Prophecy the Christians extremely long'd for and wondred it staid so long and began to be troubled at the delay and suspected all was not well when the great proof of their Religion was not verified and while they were in thoughts of heart concerning it the sad Catalysis did come and swept away 1100000. of the Nation and from that day forward the Nation was broken in pieces with intolerable calamities they are scattered over the face of the earth and are a vagabond Nation but yet like oyl in a vessel of wine broken into bubbles but kept in their own circles and they shall never be an united people till they are servants of the holy Jesus but shall remain without Priest or Temple without Altar or Sacrifice without City or Country without the Land of Promise or the promise of a blessing till our Jesus is their high Priest and the Shepherd to gather them into his fold And this very thing is a mighty demonstration against the Jews by their own Prophets for when Isaiah and Jeremiah and Malachi had Prophesied the rejection of the Jews and the calling of the Gentiles and the change of the old Law and the introduction of a new by the Messias that this was he was therefore certain because he taught the World a new Law and presently after the publication of this the old was abrogate and not only went into desuetude but into a total abolition among all the World and for those of the remnant of the scattered Jews who obstinately blaspheme the Law is become impossible to them and they placed in such circumstances that they need not dispute concerning its obligation for it being external and corporal ritual and at last made also local when the circumstances are impossible the Law that was wholly ceremonial and circumstantial must needs pass away and when they have lost their Priesthood they cannot retain the Law as no man takes care to have his beard shaved when his head is off And it is a wonder to consider how the anger of God is gone out upon that miserable people and that so great a blindness is fallen upon them it being evident and notorious that the old Testament was nothing but a shadow and umbrage of the new that the Prophecies of that are plainly verified in this that all the predictions of the Messias are most undeniably accomplished in the person of Jesus Christ so that they cannot with any plausibleness or colour be turned any other way and be applied to any other person although the Jews make illiterate allegations and prodigious dreams by which they have fool'd themselves for 1600. years together and still hope without reason and are confident without revelation and pursue a shadow while they quit the glorious body while in the mean time the Christian prays for his conversion and is at rest in the truth of Jesus and hath certain unexpressible confidencies and internal lights clarities of the holy Spirit of God and loves to the holy Jesus produc'd in his soul that he will die when he cannot dispute and is satisfied and he knows not how and is sure by comforts and comforted by the excellency of his belief which speaks nothing but holiness and light and reason and peace and satisfactions infinite because he is sure that all the World can be happy if they would live by the Religion of Jesus and that neither societies of Men nor single persons can have felicity but by this and that therefore God who so decrees to make Men happy hath also decreed that it shall for ever be upon the face of the earth till the earth it self shall be no more Amen Now if against this vast heap of things any Man shall but confront the pretences of any other Religion and see how they fail both of reason and holiness of wonder and Divinity how they enter by force and are kept up by humane interests how ignorant and unholy how unlearned and pitiful are their pretences the darknesses of these must add great eminency to the brightness of that For the Jews Religion which came from Heaven is therefore not now to be practised because it did come from Heaven and was to expire into the Christian it being nothing but the image of this perfection and the Jews needed no other argument but this that God hath made theirs impossible now to be done for he that ties to Ceremonies and outward usages Temples and Altars Sacrifices and Priests troublesome and expensive rites and figures of future signification means that there should be an abode and fixt dwelling for these are not to be done by an ambulatory people and therefore since God hath scattered the People into atomes and crumbs of society without Temple or Priest without Sacrifice or Altar without Vrim or Thummim without Prophet or Vision even communicating with them no way but by ordinary providence it is but too evident that God hath nothing to do with them in the matter of that Religion but that it is expired and no way obligatory to them or pleasing to him which is become impossible to be acted whereas the Christian Religion is as eternal as the soul of a Man and can no more cease than our spirits can die and can worship upon Mountains and Caves in Fields and Churches in
peace and war in solitude and society in persecution and in Sun-shine by night and by day and be solemnized by Clergy and Laity in the essential parts of it and is the perfection of the soul and the highest reason of Man and the glorification of God But for the Heathen religions ir is evidently to be seen that they are nothing but an abuse of the natural inclination which all Men have to worship a God whom because they know not they guess at in the dark for that they know there is and ought to be something that hath the care and providence of their affairs But the body of their Religion is nothing but little arts of Governments and stratagems of Princes and devices to secure the Government of new Usurpers or to make obedience to the Laws sure by being sacred and to make the yoke that was not natural pleasant by something that is But yet for the whole body of it who sees not that their worshippings could not be sacred because they were done by something that is impure they appeased their gods with adulteries and impure mixtures by such things which Cato was ashamed to see by gluttonous eatings of flesh and impious drinkings and they did litarein humano sanguine they sacrificed Men and Women and Children to their Damons as is notorious in the rites of Bacchus Omesta amongst the Greeks and of Jupiter to whom a Greek and a Greekess a Galatian and a Galatess were yearly offered in the answers of the Oracles to Caichas as appears in Homer and Virgil who sees not that crimes were warranted by the example of their immortal gods and that what did dishonor themselves they sang to the honor of their gods whom they affirmed to be passionate and proud jealous and revengeful amorous and lustful fearful and impatient drunken and sleepy weary and wounded that the Religions were made lasting by policy and force by ignorance and the force of custom by the preferring an inveterate error and loving of a quiet and prosperous evil by the arguments of pleasure and the correspondencies of sensuality by the fraud of Oracles and the patronage of vices and because they feared every change as an Earthquake as supposing overturnings of their old error to be the eversion of their well established Governments and it had been ordinarily impossible that ever Christianity should have entered if the nature and excellency of it had not been such as to enter like rain into a fleece of wool or the Sun into a window without noise or violence without emotion and disordering the political constitution without causing trouble to any man but what his own ignorance or peevishness was pleased to spin out of his own bowels but did establish Governments secure obedience made the Laws firm and the persons of Princes to be sacred it did not oppose force by force nor strike Princes for Justice it defended it self against enemies by patience and overcame them by kindness it was the great instrument of God to demonstrate his power in our weaknesses and to do good to Mankind by the imitation of his excellent goodness Lastly he that considers concerning the Religion and person of Mahomet that he was a vicious person lustful and tyrannical that he propounded incredible and ridiculous propositions to his Disciples that it entred by the sword by blood and violence by murder and robbery that it propounds sensual rewards and allures to compliance by bribing our basest lusts that it conserves it self by the same means it entred that it is unlearned and foolish against reason and the discourses of all wise Men that it did no miracles and made false Prophecies in short that in the person that founded it in the article it perswades in the manner of prevailing in the reward it offers it is unholy and foolish and rude it must needs appear to be void of all pretence and that no Man of reason can ever be fairly perswaded by arguments that it is the daughter of God and came down from Heaven Since therefore there is nothing to be said for any other Religion and so very much for Christianity every one of whose pretences can be proved as well as the things themselves do require and as all the World expects such things should be proved it follows that the holy Jesus is the Son of God that his Religion is commanded by God and is that way by which he will be worshipped and honoured and that there is no other name under heaven by which we can be saved but only by the name of the Lord Jesus He that puts his soul upon this cannot perish neither can he be reproved who hath so much reason and argument for his Religion Sit anima mea cum Christianis I pray God my soul may be numbred amongst the Christians THE END Martial l. 8. ep 18. Prov. 27.10 * Vt praestem Pyladen aliquis mihi praestet Oresten Hoc non fit verbis Marce ut ameris ama Mar. l .6 ep 11. * Extra fortunim est quicquid donatur amicis Quas dederis solas semper babchis opes Mart. l 5. ep 43. Et tamen hoc vitium sed non leve sit licet unum Quod colit ingratas pauper amicitias Quis largitur opes veteri fidoque sodali ep 19. ‖ Non bellè quoedam faciunt duo sufficit unus Huic operi si vis ut loquà r ipse tace Crede mibi quamvis ingentia Posthume dones Author is pereunt garralitate sui ep 53. De potest Eccles. cons. 12. Ethic. definit 26. Euseb. lib. 5. c. 1. praep Evang.