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A34067
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Friendly and seasonable advice to the Roman Catholicks of England by a charitable hand.
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Comber, Thomas, 1645-1699.
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1677
(1677)
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Wing C5468; ESTC R1768
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62,503
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180
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own Liberty and men of an un-inslaved Understanding SECTION VII Advice to the English Catholicks to forsake the Opinions of Rome and embrace the Religion of the Church of England TO Conclude as my pity to see you so miserably imposed on hath moved me to endeavour by these plain and Cogent Arguments to rescue you from that yoke which neither we nor our Fathers were able to bear So my desire of your perfect Freedom and my unfeigned wishes for your Temporal Spiritual and Eternal welfare do prompt me to advise you to comply with the Religion of the Church of England and this Advice is not only grounded upon the foregoing considerations but may be further pressed upon these motives 1. If you consider the excellent method of our Reformation which was so necessary at that time that for some Ages before the wisest and best men of the Roman Church had not only confessed there was great need of it but had complained for want thereof and pressed the Pope earnestly thereunto witness the Judicious Epistle of Rob. Grosthead that pious Bish of Lincoln to Pope Innocent the Fourth yet to be seen in our Historians the publick complaint of the English Church in the Council of Lyons the private Writings of John Gerson Nich. Clemangis Aeneas Sylvius afterwards Pope and many others And at least One Hundred Years before Luthers time a Reformation was urged for in the Pisane Council and that so strongly that before the Election of a Pope the Cardinals solemnly promised Who ever of them should be chosen Pope that he would before the dissolution of that Council Reform the Catholick Church as well in the Head as the Members And when Alexander the Fifth was chosen He promised to take Care of a General Reformation and that pious and Learned Men should be chosen in every Nation to treat with the Cardinals about it But after all neither he nor his Successors would ever Reform either their Doctrines or Practices being more intent upon their private advantage than the general good and more moved with Cardinal Scombergs Counsel than by all the former complaints who told the Pope That by the Reformation it would be confessed that the things provided against were deservedly reproved by the Lutherans which would be a great abetting to their whole Doctrine Hist Counc Trent l. 1. p. 83. which is to resolve to Err always rather than to be thought to have once erred and herein the Roman Church is of the same humour with those Gentiles to whom Arnobius speaks What you have once done without reason ye defend lest you should seem formerly to have been ignorant and you account it better not to be overcome than to yield to plain and confessed Truth Wherefore since Rome resolved not to Reform England having first restored her King to his Ancient and just Supremacy resolved to reform it self without the Popes leave or consent knowing full well they had Authority sufficient among themselves to order the Affairs of Religion which had been Regulated many Hundred years in this Land by the King and his own Bishops without any dependence on the Pope at all Thus the Kings of Judah reformed their Kingdoms of Old Thus the King of Spain with Leander Bishop of Sevil reformed that Kingdom from Arianism without the Pope and thus King Edgar intended to proceed in the Reformation of the English Church of Old when he told his own Clergy I have Constantines Sword in my hands and you have Peters in yours That is we need no further Authority or power to reform Than what we have within our selves The Kings of this Nation with the advice and consent of their Bishops Barons and Commons had been always wont to order Ecclesiastical affairs as they thought meet not heeding whether the Pope were pleased or displeased thereat And accordingly this happy Reformation was made by the Supreme Power of this Kingdom upon mature deliberation in a Regular Orderly and Legal way and it was managed with so much moderation and prudence that the Romanists of England said little against it but Communicated with this Church after the Reformation till the Pope for his own ends forbid them so to do but I hope his Prohibition without any just reason shall not outweigh the Supreme Authority of your own Nation with you who profess your selves to be Loyal Subjects and for the interest of England and since there was such need of Reformation such obstinacy in Rome such Authority here and so orderly proceedings in this Reformation I think all Good Christians and sober men being Natives of this Land ought to submit unto it II. You will be further perswaded hereunto by considering the Doctrine of this Church which agrees with Primitive Christianity in that it obliges you to believe nothing as of necessity to Salvation but what may be plainly proved our of Holy Scripture and for this reason you must still hold the three Creeds of the Apostles of Nice and of Saint Athanasius all which the Church of England intirely believes And he only is a Heretick which follows not this Holy Rule say the Constitutions of Theodosius and Gratian but they are Catholicks that embrace it In this Church we give as much honour to and obey more Canons of the first Four General Councils than they of Rome do we approve of that Exposition of Scripture which hath the consent of the Fathers of the first three or four Centuries yea we hold all that the Church of Rome it self held as necessary to Salvation for Five or Six hundred Years together and it is very remarkable that a Romanist may turn Protestant without adding any one Article to his Faith but a Protestant cannot turn to Rome unless he embrace many new Articles for our Doctrines are generally confessed by both sides to be true but those of the Roman Church are rejected by our Reformers as Novel Additions and such as have no good foundation in Scripture nor Genuine Antiquity And therefore the Protestant Doctrines are the surer and safer as in which both sides agree For Example we and they both hold there are two States after this life Heaven and Hell but they add a third which is Purgatory and this we deny We and they both say that sins are to be remitted by the merits of Christs death but they add the merits of the Saints and their own satisfactions with the merit of their own good works which we deny to be Expiatory or such as can merit Remission for us We hold there be two Sacraments Baptism and the Eucharist these they confess are the Chief but add Five more to which we affirm the name of Sacraments doth not properly belong We say that God alone is to be worshipped they confess he is chiefly to be worshipped but then they say the Blessed Virgin Mary Angels and Saints are to be worshipped also which Additions we deny We say Christ is our only Mediator and Advocate
to receive Appeals in a famous Council of Carthage An. 419. which Canons they pretended were made in the aforesaid Nicene Council but these Canons wholly differed from all the best Manuscripts of that Council then extant particularly from two eminent ones which the African Fathers sent for from Constantinople and Alexandria nor do they agree with those genuine Editions of the Nicene Council now extant and indeed the Council of Carthage received not these pretended Canons of Nice but esteemed them to have been corrupted as we do at this day Not long after to abet the Roman Supremacy Pope Leo writing to Theodosius the Emperor cites a Canon of a particular and dubious Council at Sardiâ—a of later Date and less Authority affirming it to be a Canon of the general Council at Nice The Edition of the Councils put out by Dionysius Exiguus about An. 520. being for a long time the sole approved Copy extant in these parts of the World doth in favour of the Popes Supremacy leave out divers Canons even of General Councils which seem to make against it though the said Canons are recorded in Zonaras and Balsamon and in this Age confessed to have been made in those Councils by the Romanists themselves but in the Time when the Supremacy was in hatching it was not thought expedient those Canons should be known It were endless to reckon up all the Additions Diminutions and Alterations which all the Roman Editions of the Councils since are guilty of and because an ingenious Essay hath been made that way by a late Author I shall refer my Reader thither and out of infinite Examples conclude with one Evident piece of Falsification The xxxv Canon of the Council of Laodicea Forbids the faithful to call on the name of Angels which being a condemnation of the Doctrine and Practice of Rome in Praying to Angels The Later Editions of this Council have impudently put in Angulos Angles or Corners instead of Angelos Angels though all the Greek Copies and Fathers read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and all the old Latin Exemplars have Angelos Yea Pope Adrian himself before this worship of Angels came up read it Angelos in that Epitome of Canons which he sent to Charles the Great An. 773. Thus they corrupt the Councils to suit them to their own Opinions Nor have single Fathers and Ancient Authors fared better S. Cyprian put out by Pamelius is altered in many places contrary to the Ancient Copies for Example where the Father saith the Church is founded Super Petram Pamelius changes it into Super Petrum upon Peter instead of upon a Rock And Ludovicus Vives a Romanist assures us that there are Ten or Twelve lines positively asserting Purgatory put into the Printed Copies of S. Aug. de Civitate Dei lib. 21. cap. 24. contrary to the Ancient Manuscripts Fulbertus Carnotensis quotes S. August saying of the Sacramental bread This then is a figure the Roman Editions put in As a Heretick will say when indeed S. Augustine says so and speaks his own sense Aimonius speaking of the Eighth Council saith They determined about Images otherwise than the Orthodox Fathers had Decreed and so Baronius reads But the Modern Printed Copies quite contrary put in according as the Orthodox Fathers had Decreed But why do I stand upon particular Instances This wickedness which all other men account the same Villany with suborning false Witnesses stopping the mouths of the True and counterfeiting Hands and Seals is owned by the present Church of Rome And Sixtus Senensis doth highly extol Pope Pius 5 th for his most holy Decree to burn all Books which were accounted Heretical To purge and cleanse all Catholick Authors and especially the Writings of the Fathers Now in what manner they effect this most holy work the Belâ—ick Inquisitors appointed by the Roman See shall tell you We strike out say they many Errors in other of the Ancients we extenuate and excuse them or by feigning a Commentitious gloss either deny or fix a commodious sense to their words Thus they served S. Ambrose his works cancelling and altering whole pages together contrary to all the Old Manuscripts as appeared by the Original Papers which Savarius the Stationer shewed to Francis Junius according to which the Inquisitors had ordered him to Print that Edition Lugdun An. 1559. Thus they left the story of Pope Joan out of the Copies of Anastasius Biblioth though the Manuscripts had the said story in them as Marquar Freherus testified who lent them the said Manuscripts And I might fill a Volume with Instances of like unjust dealings but I will only add the memorable account which Boxhornius one of your Divinity Professors at Lovain gives of himself viz. That he having been employed by the Inquisitors to strike out at least six hundred places of the Ancients which seemed to make against the Roman Doctrines was so troubled in mind upon it that it was an occasion of his turning Protestant and made him resolve to quit that Religion which could not defend it self without such manifest Impostures And I wish the consideration thereof might have the same effect upon you for the matter of Fact is so evident that the Index Expurgatorius the Book which directs these Falsifications is now come into Protestant hands to the eternal Infamy of the Roman Church whose people cannot rationally trust to any Author which comes through their Priests dishonest hands And since false Books are invented true and genuine Writers altered and corrupted or else wholly prohibited if they seem to make against them for which cause Clement 8 th puts the Bible into his Index of prohibited Books and all Editions but their own condemned and burnt by the Roman Church the people must needs be deluded into a perswasion that all these New Doctrines are Primitive Truths when indeed this abominable Forging evidently shews that the Pope and his Conclave think that both Scripture and Antiquity do make against these Innovations and would discover the Imposture if they were suffered to speak out to whom I may justly apply the words of Arnobius To intercept what is written and to design to smother published Records is not to defend the Gods but to fear the Testimony of the Truth And because Good men as S. Augustine saith will not deceive but neither good nor evil men would willingly be deceived I may suppose that the most Devoted Romanists cannot but discern how unsafe he is in believing as those men teach him who make no Conscience to invent impose and pretend things never so false provided they may thereby advance their Churches Interest or their own private ends They who dare write Lies will not be afraid to speak them and they who corrupt the Remains of the Holy Saints deceased are not to be trusted with the Souls of the living And whoever gives himself up to such Guides unnaturally