A LETTER TO THE Superiours Whether Bishops or Priests Which Approve or License the Popish Books IN ENGLAND Particularly To those of the Jesuits Order CONCERNING LEWIS SABRAN a Jesuit Imprimatur hic Libellus cui Titulus A Letter to the Superiours c. Jo. Battely June 7. 1688. LONDON Printed for William Rogers at the Sun over against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleetstreet 1688. A LETTER to the Romish Superiours In ENGLAND Reverend Sirs YOU will not wonder at my making this Address to your selves since you were so lately pleas'd to allow Mr. Sabran to set me an Example of it and cannot therefore disallow that in me which was so commendable in him When I wrote my last Letter to Mr. Sabran I was so weary of such an Adversary that I promised him never to answer him more if he pursued the methods of his Challenge defended This I will believe was the reason why it was thought expedient to trouble the Reverend Mr. Needham with the Controversie who hath a much better Employment upon his hands than to answer every Caviller that would be drawing him off from his better Services to our Church I have not forgot my Promise of troubling my self no more with Mr. Sabran and yet cannot be just to my own self if I do not take some care to purge my self from some Wrongs he has done me in that Letter to Mr. Needham you were pleased to allow of those Abuses to the Press and therefore must give me leave not only to make my Complaints to you but to expect that you will do me all the Right herein that one Christian ought to do to another I need not inform you how I came engaged with Mr. Sabran that it was concerning a Sermon de Sanctis which Mr. Sabran had quoted in his Pulpit as St. Austin's and I denied it to be his Some of you were pleased not only to allow that Sermon with that Passage in it to the Press but to approve of all the unlearned Arguments and Fetches which he afterwards used in defence of himself What Services you did your Cause or your Church by that business your selves by this time I presume are able to tell I am very well satisfied with all I wrote against him upon that account and am so fully perswaded that I was perfectly in the right in that Affair that I am confident there is not one Learned Bishop Priest or Deacom in your own Church beyond Seas that is not of the same mind with me about that Sermon I will not appeal to any of you in England because you have made your selves Parties to his Quarrel by Licensing his Papers and Learning may be a different thing in England from what it is beyond Seas I will not presume any more to think that any of you did violence to your own Judgments in Licensing of Mr. Sabran's Papers far be it from me to have so uncharitable a thought of Persons of your Characters and Station However to convince you that what he wrote and you approved about that 35 Sermon de Sanctis was contrary to the Judgments of all men of Learning in the World your selves only excepted here in England I do here offer and undertake to refer the Determination of that Controversie betwixt Mr. Sabran and me to any Learned Persons or Societies beyond the Seas I will refer it if you please to the Benedictines Congregationis St. Mauri at Paris concerning whom you Gentlemen of the Jesuits Order must pardon me that I think them to be as far before your Order in Learning and Knowledge in Antiquity as their Order was before you in standing But if Exceptions be made against them as Parties on my side which I cannot deny them to be that have already determined against Mr. Sabran and those that allowed his Papers to the Press I am as willing to refer it to those learnedest men now in France Father Mabillon Monsieur Baluze and Monsieur Bigot or any two of them and do here make you Reverend Sirs this Proposal That what hath been written on both sides shall be faithfully communicated to them and that if you can procure a Letter from them that they are satisfied with Mr. Sabran's Arguments that that 35 Sermon de Sanctis was St. Austin's I do here engage my Reputation to you and the World that I will not only beg Mr. Sabran's Pardon but make my Recantation as publick to the World as this Challenge is You cannot but think Reverend Sirs that I have very good grounds for all I wrote against Mr. Sabran that dare put this matter to such an issue before men of your own Perswasion before men that look upon me as a downright Heretick and therefore cannot be suspected of shewing me the least favour herein I am convinced to a demonstration that what I wrote in that Controversie was the very Truth and that what you allowed to the Press could not be so I will not be so bold as to call upon you to do St. Austin and me right in retracting what you have done for Mr. Sabran herein but I cannot but entreat you that for your own sake for Truths sake and for the Worlds sake you would not allow for the future such things to the Press because against us which are condemned not only by us but by all the men of Learning of your Church beyond Sea who cannot but be ashamed of any Violences done to Truth Learning or Ingenuity This Controversie with Mr. Sabran about St. Austin is that which gave occasion to our Second Controversie about Invocation of Saints and the Management of the first did prepare me to expect all the outragious and indecent Usage I have had from your Champion in the second I have been treated by him with your leave with such Language as I could not have expected from a Scholar or a Christian I have too great a respect for you as well as for my Reader to foul this Address to you with any of it and I cannot think any among you can be willing to be entertained with such stuff excepting those who allowed the Letter to Mr. Needham to the Press if such Language pleases them I must intreat them to take up the Letter itself which they Licensed and there they will find entertainment enough As for the rest of you Reverend Sirs I must entertain you with Complaints and Requests instead of bad Language I will not trouble you or my self so far as to run over again what I have written and urged out of Antiquity against your Invocation of Saints I am sure I have demonstrated it through the First Second Third Fourth and part of the Fifth Ages of the Church of God that Invocation of Saints was so far from being the Practice that it was expresly against the Doctrine of the Martyrs and Fathers of those Ages Mr. Sabran had the courage to venture upon one Page of that large Historical Account of the Fathers and to make his
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Virgin 's Womb and is connected relatively to it I will hope that the sight of these things will not only acquit me in your Consciences from the Accusation of a gross Cheat which M. S. had laid to my charge but that you who Licensed that Letter to Mr. Needham to the Press will not for the future suffer Mr. Sabran to lay such very false and groundless Accusations either unto mine or any of our Writers charge If you do notwithstanding this discovery of him and his strange practices suffer him to go on in his way we shall for the future be obliged to lay any such Slanders at your doors Reverend Sirs who License them Another Accusation as heavy as either of these he does advance against me about the Words of the Council of Chalcedon He tells Mr. Needham in that his obliging Letter to him That I having made way for a Forgery falsify that Council's words I have got it seems of late a very unlucky hand or a very unjust Adversary but you Reverend Sirs shall determine whether it is I hope I need not tell you the History of Stephen and Bassianus nor remind how it was upon the mention that Flavianus had communicated with Bassianus the rejected Bishop of Ephesus that the Bishops which belonged to Constantinople rose up and cryed out This is the Truth we all say the same the Memory of Flavian is eternal behold the Truth Flavian lives after death the Martyr shall intreat you for us Flavian is here Flavian judges with us My crime here is that I have Translated the words of the Council different from him but why so many hard words upon it He Translates the words Flavianus lives after death that the Martyr pray for as but I with my Forgery The Martyr shall intreat you for us I will put down the Text it self 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I do not intreat you Gentlemen to trouble your selves to end this doughty terrible Quarrel betwixt Mr. Sabran and me I hope some of Mr. Pulton's Scholars at the Savoy are so much Proficients as to tell what Mood and Tense 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is of If they be I will e'en leave it to them and trust the Lads with it who will certainly be Degraded if they be not on my side I will trouble your Reverences no further with Mr. Sabran's Accusations of me I hope these I send you may have so much success as to discover the Man to you which is the utmost of my Intentions in this Letter against him for I am very certain that such a knowledge and insight into the Jesuit and his Behaviour will procure him a Quietus from you who cannot love to have your Cause defended by such disingenuous and unaccountable ways as this Mr. Sabran is got into However the least I can hope for at your hands is that when this Mr. Sabran sets up for Writer again you would lay your Commands upon him to leave out such defamatory Language and to have a care of Forgeries and Falsifications and that you would let him know withal that if he does not leave off such Practices you cannot in Honour or Conscience give your License or Allowance to his Books since he has been not only accused but proved before your own faces to have been guilty of such behaviour as is not only dishonourable to your Religion but Christianity itself But after all I am not of such a temper as to believe that Mr. Sabran or any of your other Authors are of such a Nature as to love these unaccountable Practices for their own sakes or to calumniate others for Calumnies sake no I profess my belief to be that what any of them have been guilty of herein is matter of necessity and not their own choice that it is the very great badness of your Cause and not their own Inclinations that puts them upon such dangerous things and this gives me occasion to address my self to your selves Reverend Sirs and to beg of you that you would so far lay by all prejudices and partial interests as to admit a serious consideration of this one thing into your minds that that cannot be either a good a true or a safe Religion that is forc'd to make use of such Arts and Arguments in the defence of her as are a blemish to our common Christianity I have the charity to believe that were your Church of Rome as pure now as it was in the Apostles time or as pure as our Church of England blessed be God for it is and our Church as corrupt as we know yours to be that you would have the same tenderness for our immortal Souls as we have for yours and that you would with all the earnestness and concern imaginable call upon us and exhort us and beseech us to come out of the Church of England and forsake all dangerous and unlawful Doctrines and Practices Give me leave therefore Reverend Sirs who have this very care and concern for all your Salvations to be as earnest with you as such a thing and your condition doth require at our hands That your Condition as Members of the Church of Rome is most dangerous and unsafe to your Souls I need not tell you now especially since all that care and pains and unwearied diligence hath been taken by the Church of England to convince you of the Errors and Dangers of your Ways They have left you now unexcusable if you do not betake your selves as bound in conscience into the Bosom of your most tender but neglected Mother the Church of England by having proved it so plainly and so fully that your Religion is not the true Religion of Christ They have proved that your Romish Religion hath no Foundation nor Countenance in the Word of God and where I beseech you should the Christian Religion be found if not in the Holy Scriptures does it want that advantage the Jewish hath of being visible in the Old Law The Clergy of this City have almost gone through all your Romish Doctrines and Practices and made it apparent that those very few Texts of Scripture which you lay claim to in defence of your Religion are most directly against it As they have shewn that the Holy Scriptures are not for you so they have proved that your Religion had no being till Christianity had been above three hundred years in the World your selves cannot be ignorant of the Truth of this you cannot deny that when your Writers are challenged to produce the Examples of the three first and purest Ages of the Christian Church that they dare not undertake it I will instance in your Representer who wrote the Nubes Testium and in Mr. Sabran himself who hath not given one word of answer to my challenge to shew me that your Invocation of Saints was taught and practised in the three first Ages of the Church This is a mighty and unanswerable Prejudice against your Romish Religion for where in God's
Name should we look for sincere Christianity and where should we expect to find it if not in the Records of the Sacred Scriptures and in the Practices of the first and purest Ages of the Christian Church I will not descend to the particular Controversies betwixt you and us it is too tedious for the end of a Letter but will beg of you that your Religion and ours may be tried by this evident and plain Principle That that Religion ought to be preferr'd to any other which doth most tend to the promoting and propagating the Glory of God and of our blessed Saviour and securing the Edification of the People of their Communion Now in the fear of God and with his assistance let us impartially examine both Churches by this Rule you your selves shall be Judges here as to the first whether that Church doth not more promote the Glory of God that is for dedicating and attributing all Religious Worship to God alone than that Church which doth divide it betwixt God and his Creatures betwixt God and Stocks and Stones and the Bones of Dead Men if the more we worship God the more we honour him that Church must honour him most of all which worships him most of all and that the Church certainly does which makes all Religious Worship whatever peculiar to his Infinite Majesty alone And for the Glory of our blessed Saviour does not that Church honour him most that makes him the Sole Mediator that offers up all her Prayers in his Name and for his Honour does not she honour him far more than that Church which makes Saints and Angels Joynt-Mediators with him and worships them for that which is to be done by him alone and for which all that worship ought to have been paid to him The greatest Honour we can do our blessed Saviour certainly is to rely wholly upon his Mediation and to place our whole confidence in him And for the Edification of the People does that Church consult it so much as hath its Prayers in a Language the People do not understand as that Church which puts up such Prayers as all the People can understand and joyn with This is so evident against the Church of Rome that we need neither Scripture nor Fathers to urge against you since the very Light of Nature doth so absolutely condemn such dumb unintelligible Service It were easie for me to urge these things further upon all your Consciences but I can only now intreat you that as you love your own Souls you would give way to such further Reflections upon these three points as will be apt to suggest themselves if you be resolved to lay aside all Prejudices from Education Station or Interest It will be more glory for any one of you to embrace the true Faith and Protestant Religion now than at any other time since this will convince the World that it was the pure Dictates of your Consciences and the concern for your immortal Souls that made you leave the dangerous Communion of the Church of Rome and renounce all her Errors and corrupt Doctrines Do not despise Reverend Sirs the Concern I discover for your eternal Interest you will joyn your Prayers to mine that after the proving of all things you may have the Grace to hold that which is good and then I am certain you cannot continue in the Communion of the Church of Rome In the mean time I have this further Charity for you to believe that if the Church of England be a true Church of Christ and her Doctrines pure and her Worship holy as I am certain it is and ready to seal my Belief with my Bloud that you will joyn your Prayers with mine for the Prosperity of this Church of England that God would abate the Pride and asswage the Malice of all its Enemies and that he would confound the Devices of all and every Society or Party of Enemies against this most Holy and Apostolick Church of England In the Confidence of this your Christian Charity I cannot but subscribe my self Reverend Sirs Your most hearty Well-wisher and humble Servant in Christ E. G.