the substance and nature of Bread and Wine The Schoolmen confess Transubstantiation is not Ancient And two of the most famous of them plainly deny it The Administring the Sacrament in One kind is no older than the Council of Constance as was noted before the practice of the whole Church and of Rome it self being otherwise till then Finally many things were never decreed and imposed as necessary to be believed till the late Council of Trent such as the equalling Apocryphal books and Traditions to the undoubted Canon of Scripture Justification by the merit of Good works c. Which Council of Trent was never fully owned by the Catholicks of France Nor was it ever received as a lawful Council by this English Nation It would be too tedious to run over all the rest of those Points wherein the Roman differs from the English Church or else it might be shewed that the Appeals to Rome and the Pope's Vniversal claim Veneration of Relicks Invocation of the Blessed Virgin Pilgrimages c. were wholly unknown to the three first Centuries as the ingenuous Romanists will confess and our Writers have largely proved By all which it appears that the Old Religion of Rome for the first three hundred years had no formal Invocation of Saints nor Angels no Purgatory nor Prayers to be delivered thence no Images no Transubstantiation no half Communion no Jubilees no Indulgences ' no constrained Coelibate no Prayers in an unknown Tongue no customary Auricular Confession no Apocrypha in her Canon of Scripture nor the rest Now if you strip your Church of these Doctrines she retains scarce any thing but the Protestant Articles of the Church of England But if you take Rome with these Additions her Religion is not so Old by far as the Religion of this Church Perhaps it will be pretended Though these Decrees were made in later Ages yet the Determinations were made by vertue of Apostolical Traditions preserved in the Roman Church from the very beginning and upon this Pretence your Late Writers of Controversie have generally laid aside all Arguments from Scripture and Ancient Fathers and resolve all into Oral Tradition and the Infallibility of the Roman Church But what is this but to confess that the Scriptures the Ancient Fathers and all written Records which are Impartial witnesses do make against them only these unknown Traditions which are only in their own keeping and may be of their own devising these they say bear witness for them which is to make themselves Judges in their own Cause and may justly occasion your enquiry whether the former Popes knew of these Traditions or no if not how then came the later Popes to the knowledge of them If they knew of them of old why did they let them sleep so long and suffer the Church to erre for so many years for want of them Did they discharge their Vniversal Headship well in this Concealment But in very truth it is Evident the first Popes knew of no such Traditions and the later Popes have invented them to support their New designs which appears by the Ancient Popes declaring directly contrary to these pretended Apostolical Traditions of which take a few Examples Pope Gaius writes That the Righteousness of the Saints avails nothing to our Pardon or Justification Pope Gelasius denies Transubstantiation as was noted just now The famous Gregory the Great saith He himself was the Emperors Servant and owed him obedience and declares That God had given the Emperor power over Priests as well as others The same Pope disowns the Title of Vniversal Bishop as unfit for him or any other He also determines that it is lawful for Priests who cannot contain to marry And he allows Images for History and Memory only A later than he also in the Canon Law Decrees that in such Diocess where there be people of Divers Languages The Bishop shall provide fit men to celebrate Divine offices and Minister the Sacraments of the Church according to the diversity of Rites and variety of their Languages Decretal Greg. l. 1. Tit. 31. cap. 14. The aforesaid Pope Gregory the First affirms that the Book of Maccabees is not Canonical And as well the Ordinary Gloss as the Old Editions of the Bibles which were allowed by the Roman Bishops and used in that Church before the Council of Trent do all distinguish between the Canonical Books and those which the Protestant Church now call Apocrypha Yet the contrary to all these hath been afterwards decreed upon pretence of being Apostolical Traditions By which account you may see if your Prejudices hinder not that the present Roman Church as it differs from the Church of England retains neither the Old Religion of the Scriptures nor that of the Primitive Church in general nay nor that of the Ancient Church of Rome for they have omitted some Points added others and altered so many that though Rome keep the Old Name it doth not keep the Old Faith We may now seek Rome in the midst of Rome as Juvencus Vitalis said Nor can it be denied saith Another but the Roman Church is not a little different from its Ancient beauty and splendor There is not the Faith the Manners nor the Worship of the Primitive Roman Church and therefore according to S. Ambrose They that have not Peter ' s Faith cannot succeed to Peter ' s Inheritance and as S. Hierome observes They are not the Sons of the Saints who possess their places but they which follow their Works And That only saith Lactantius is the Catholick Church which retains the true Worship of God You might have seen and heard in Rome of Old a Bishop without a Triple Crown or the Title of Vniversal Churches without Images Priests under no Vows of Single life Litanies without any names of Saints or Ora pro nobis the Mass celebrated in a known Tongue Bibles calling divers books Apocrypha which are now reckoned Canonical Scripture People not enslaved by Auricular Confession not debarred of the Cup not frighted with Purgatory nor impoverished with purchasing Prayers and Indulgences to save them from thence c. To conclude therefore Why may you not justly desert them who have in so many things departed from the Old Religion taught by Christ and his Apostles believed by the Ancient Fathers and received by the first and best Bishops of that same Church If you desire to be really of the Old Religion nay if you would hold the Faith of the Primitive Roman Church you may come much nearer to it by embracing the Religion of your own Country than by retaining the Opinions of the Modern Church of Rome which are most of them meer Innovations And though you have reverenced them while you supposed them Ancient and Apostolical yet we hope you will now renounce them when they are evidently discovered to be Gibeonites disguised on purpose to deceive and
Old Religion which God revealed at first and which Christ and his Apostles taught That is truest which was the first saith Tertullian and that was first which was from the beginning So S. Cyprian We ought not to regard so much what some others before us have thought fit as what Christ himself who was before all hath done Now if that be the Old Religion which is taught in the Holy Scripture and the Creed herein the Religion of Rome cannot pretend to be Older than the Religion of this Church because we hold all these Articles as well as they yea if the case be rightly stated the Church of Englands Faith is the Old Religion and not that of Rome for she professeth To believe nothing as an Article of Faith but what is read in Holy Scripture or may be proved thereby Artic vi But the Roman Church declares They receive Traditions with the same veneration that they do the Scriptures Concil Trident. Sess 4. So that we hold all the Principles of the Old Religion and no other but they under the pretence of Traditions have invented and added many points to the Old Religion which are not mentioned in the Bible and Decreed other Articles contrary to the Old Religion recorded in Scripture and all these are a New Religion and yet these are the Doctrines in which we differ In all the Principles which are truly the Old Religion we and they generally do agree but if you take the Religion of the Roman Church for the Doctrines in which they differ from us it may be justly said they are of the New Religion and we of the Old since our Religion was recorded in Scripture sixteen hundred years ago as our Adversaries seem to confess when they call us Scriptuarii Scripture-men Prateol whereas all that which is properly their Religion is of much later Date And that I may not be thought to invent this Charge or to accuse the Roman Church wrongfully I will instance in the most principal of the Doctrines wherein we differ and bring in your own Doctors as Witnesses of this Truth 1. That Prayers to the Saints are not mentioned by Christ nor his Apostles is confessed by Salmeron Lindan and Bannes Etherianus saith as much of Prayers for the Dead Indulgences are not to be found in Scripture nor in the Ancient Doctors say Durandus Major Cajetan and Antoninus Transubstantiation it self cannot be proved by Scripture if you will take three Cardinals words for it And if our designed brevity would allow it the like might be proved of all the rest But we must proceed to shew there are some New things in the Romish Religion directly contrary to the Scripture The taking the Cup from the Laity is contrary to our Saviours Institution as that very Council of Constance confesseth which first enjoyned it for they say the Sacrament shall be given in one kind only to the people Non obstante c. notwithstanding our Lord did appoint it in both Concil Constant Sess 13. And your own Authentick Vulgar Translation as if this Innovation had been foreseen where the Greek only hath We are all partakers of one bread adds de uno Calice and of one Cup 1 Cor. 10. 17. The Veneration which you give to Images seems to all impartial eyes directly contrary to the Second Commandement and though your Priests will not directly confess it yet their general leaving out the Second Commandement in your Catechisms and cutting the Tenth in Two to keep up the number and conceal the omission from the Vulgar is a fair Evidence they themselves suspected that this Commandement made against them and feared others would apprehend it so To these you may add Praying in an unknown Tongue which S. Paul condemns in one whole Chapter 1 Corinth xiv as some of your own Commentators on the place confess As also the making Saints and Angels your Mediators to God when the same Apostle positively saith There is but one Mediator viz. Christ Jesus 1 Tim. ii 5. All these therefore cannot rightly be accounted any part of the Old Religion properly so called But if we shall descend lower these and many other Points of your Religion are so far from being the Old Religion that the Writers of the Roman Church do acknowledge they were not known to the Primitive Fathers yea they record the very time when most of them were imposed The Doctrine of Purgatory was first built upon the Credit of those fabulous Dialogues attributed to Gregory the First or if they were his which many doubt this was six hundred years after Christ and it was not generally believed in the Church five hundred years after as we learn from an Old Historian Otto Frising Chronic. An. 1146. And as for the Prayers made to deliver Souls from thence that gainful Article of your Church we are told by your own Authors that the first who caused them to be appointed by your Church was Odilo Abbot of Clugny An. 1000. The worshipping of God by Images was not allowed by the Ancient Fathers say your own Authors Clemangis Polyd. Virgil and Peresius Aiala And all men know this kind of use of Images can be derived no higher as to its being Decreed than that despicable Council in the Eighth Century but both the Doctrine and the Council also was rejected for many years after by the French English and German Churches Indulgences are not Ancient as Bishop Fisher confesses Nor is there any good proof in your own Authors for them before the time of Pope Alexander 3. A. 1160 or the Council of Clermont however An. 1096 And the first who made Mony of them was Boniface 9 th An. 1390. as Platina and Polydore Virgil tell us And the first Jubilee the great Market for them was not an hundred years before The forcing all Priests to vow Single Life and renounce their Wives was first obtruded upon the Church by Pope Hildebrand Without any Precedent saith an Old Historian and as many thought of an indiscreet Zeal contrary to the Holy Fathers Opinion And yet he was not obeyed here in England in this for above a hundred years after for our Ancient Records say All these Decrees availed nothing for the Priests by the Kings consent still had their Wives as formerly Auricular Confession to a Priest was never imposed as necessary until the Lateran Council It being little above fifty years before that we are informed by the famous Master of the Sentences and by Gratian your great compiler of the Decrees that it was in our choice whether we would confess to God only or to the Priest also and T. Aquinas confesseth this was the Opinion then Transubstantiation the discriminating Doctrine of your present Church was not held by the Fathers as your own Doctors acknowledge and one of the Infallible Heads of your Church affirms That the Elements cease not to be of
Master and the Servants the same in all outward expressions only differing in a nice School-distinction must needs be an affront to the King of Saints If you have any tenderness or zeal for the honour of Jesus it cannot but be offensive to you to observe how your Legends tell of greater miracles wrought by some of their fabulous Saints than ever Jesus wrought To hear one of your Church say That Christ did nothing which S. Francis did not do yea that he did more than Christ himself What is more injurious to the honour of the Divine Majesty than your S. Bonaventure's putting in the name of the Virgin Mary into Davids Psalms instead of the name of God To have her adored by the Heathenish Title of the Queen of Heaven and invocated by the impious name of Mother of the whole Trinity These things are rather Blasphemy than Devotion and as dishonourable to God as they are Dissonant from Antiquity Let none saith Epiphanius adore Mary but why do I mention a Woman nay not any Man this Reverence is due only to God nor are the Angels capable of such glorification Fifthly The supposing a necessity of superadding the Saints Merits and the daily Sacrifice of the Mass to the Merit of that one Offering for sin which Jesus made on the Cross Heb. ix 28. is an evident lessening the value and sufficiency of the Death of Christ Sixthly The calling of the Holy Scripture a Nose of Wax a Leaden Rule and an Inky Gospel The putting in the Apocryphal books wherein are some things wicked and others notoriously false into an equal rank with the Word of God indited by the Spirit own Traditions to be equal in value to it are palpable dishonours to God who writ the Holy Scripture These things my Friends can hardly be reckoned matters tending to the honour of God unless you can suppose the cancelling his Laws disparaging his Nature undervaluing the Merits the Mercies and the Miracles of Jesus by cheap and odious Comparisons the diminution of his worship and making him sharer with his Servants therein and the vilifying of his Divine word be no dishonour to him you pretend to serve Secondly Let us examine whether these Doctrines do assist you in the Devout worshipping of God It is very suspicious that Church doth not teach a right way of serving God which deceives you in the first Principle of Religion viz. That God alone is to be worshipped a Sentence so odious to the Roman Doctors that the Index Expurgatorius blots it out of the indices of S. Athanasius and S. Augustines Works and if they could do it undiscovered they would blot it out of the Bible also Matth. iv 10. But there it shall stand for ever to reprove those who divide Religious worship between God and his Creatures thereby diminishing that Devotion which intirely belongs to the Divine Majesty since affections are most vigorous when placed upon one Object and if they be dispersed among many grow weak and trifling whence we may conclude the Protestant who worships none but God is the greater lover of him and worships with a more united and servent Devotion As for your Publick worship it is attended with so many Ceremonies as must needs disturb the Devotion as well of the Priests as the People there is such frequent bowing crossing prostration sprinkling with Holy water beating the breast smoaking with Incense c. that the mind is taken off from a steady intention upon the inward and main part of the Duty while it is entertained with such variety of outward Rites For our mind saith Quintilian cannot sincerely intend its whole self upon many things at once whatever new object it looks upon it gives over the thoughts of that which it first propounded to it self And this is most evident where the Objects are so different as sensible and intellectual things are For where the Senses and their perceptions are vigorously employed there the Intellectual Powers cease to act as a great Philosopher observes So that it is your Passions and your Fancies that are wrought upon not your Mind nor the higher faculties of your Soul by these numerous Ceremonies and therefore that which you think Devotion I doubt is but a fantastical and false fire not kindled by the love of God nor warming your nobler Powers at all and those steady rational and spiritual desires which flow from an undisturbed contemplation of the Divine Goodness and are the very life of Prayer I fear you are strangers to being so often taken off and diverted by variety of sensible Representations Again the making all your Publick prayers in an Vnknown Tongue destroys all true Devotion in the People S. Clemens of Alex. tells us of some Heathens who thought those Prayers most effectual which were uttered in a barbarous Language But Christians know that Prayer is the desiring something of God and if the Mind be not exercised in this desire it avails nothing but where the words are not understood the mind cannot desire the things mentioned so that none can properly pray in an Vnknown Tongue nor so much as rationally say Amen 1 Cor. xiv 16. By this absurd Practice therefore you who are unlearned spend the time of the Publick offices in admiring and gazing not in joyning with the Priest or Praying And because the people have no employment while the Mass lasteth they spend the whole time usually in talking and laughing privately as those who Travel in Catholick Countries do inform us And it may occasion your wonder why the Roman Church should so obstinately refuse to reform so irrational a Custom which S. Paul hath written a whole Chapter to condemn 1 Cor. xiv The force of whose Arguments and Authority hath made your wisest Doctors declare against it By S. Paul ' s Doctrine saith Card. Cajetan it is better for the edifying of the Church that Publick prayers were made in the Vulgar Tongue than in Latin To the same purpose Lyra And your Rhemish Annotators say When a man prayeth in a strange Tongue which himself understandeth not it is not so fruitful for Instruction to him as if he knew particularly what he prayed Gabriel Biel also gives several Reasons why Prayers should be in a known Tongue saying It is better 1. For stirring up Devotion 2. for enlightning the Mind 3. for retaining the things in memory 4. for keeping the thoughts from wandring Yet your admired Church will oppose Reason and Scripture and deprive all the Common people that are of her Communion of the exercise of their Devotion in her Offices rather than so far seem to confess a fault as to amend it chusing rather to let you lose the benefit of worshipping God than to reform the most unjust Customes which she hath once espoused but if you be wise if that Church will not pray in such a Language as you can
they confess he is principally so but add that Saints and Angels are so in an inferiour manner which we utterly deny We say Christ is really present in the Sacrament of the Altar this they confess but add he is corporally there by the Transsubstantiation of the Bread c. and this we deny We say the Scriptures are the Rule of Faith and they will not absolutely deny it but add their own Traditions which we reject We say there are XXII Books of the Old Testament Canonical and they confess these all to be so but they add divers and call them Canonical which we affirm to be Apocryphal I could give more instances but these may suffice to shew that the Protestant Doctrines look most like the Ancientest as being received by both Parties but the Roman Opinions are Novel Enlargements of Old Catholick Truths so that a Protestant becoming a Romanist must take up many Articles barely upon the credit of that Church and begin to believe many things anew questioned by the bigger part of Christendom but a Romanist turning Protestant retains all the Old Essentials of his former Faith and doth only become a Primitive Roman Catholick III. The Discipline and Government of the Church of England are more agreeable to Primitive patterns than those of the present Roman Church are Our King hath the same Power that the Religious Kings of Judah had the same which the great Constantine and the succeeding Emperors for many years enjoyed the same power which the Ancient Kings of this Nation exercised viz. A power to convene his Clergy and advise with them about affairs of the Church A power to ratifie that which the Bishops and Clergy agree upon and give it the force of a Law A power to chuse fit persons to Govern the Church A power to correct all Offenders against Faith or Manners be they Clergy or Lay-men And finally A power to determine all Causes and Controversies Ecclesiastical and Civil among his own Subjects by the advice of fit Counsellors so as there lies no Appeal from his Determination and this is that we mean when we call him Supreme Governour of this Church which our King must needs be or else he cannot keep his Kingdoms in peace Besides for Spiritual Jurisdiction and sacred Administrations we have a Patriarch of our own The Arch-Bishop of Canterbury Primate of all England whom Vrban the Second call'd the Pope of the other World And his See was usually styled The Chair of the English Patriarch and is reckoned among the Patriarchates by a Forreign Writer And now his Priviledges and Liberties are restored by Law and his Title and Authority confirmed so that there lies no Appeal from him but to the King we have also Right Reverend Bishops together with other inferiour Priests and Deacons the only Primitive and proper Orders of the Clergy who can prove their Ordination to be as goodas any of the Romish Priests can do And are now Consecrated and Ordained by a more excellent Form and more agreeing to the eldest times than Rome it self can shew and if you will Judge impartially it must be confessed that the Clergy of England are altogether as Learned and generally more painful and pious than in any Catholick Country whatsoever Our Canons for Ecclesiastical Government are all founded on the Canons of Ancient Councils as I could shew by particular induction if time would permit and for the Exercise of our Discipline it is managed with more moderation and ease to the People than that of the Roman Church is IIII. You may consider our Divine Service and Sacred Administrations which as far as ever God made necessary to Salvation may be had in this Church We have the Holy Scriptures plainly translated Learnedly interpreted and practically Preached We have daily Prayers by a Form so Grave and so Agreable to the undoubted parts of Ancient Liturgies that it may challenge all Christendom to produce any thing so consonant to the purest Primitive Devotions A Form which hath all those parts of the Roman Offices which were known and used in the first three Centuries but wants all the Innovations and Corruptions of the present Mass And is used in English for the benefit of the meanest Christian in our Assemblies We have also those two Sacraments which Christ ordained and many of the Elder and Later Doctors own no more As for the other five Rites falsly called Sacraments viz. Confirmation Matrimony Holy Orders visiting of the Sick Repentance and Satisfaction for wrongs done we retain these but not by the name of Sacraments keeping the Primitive and main part of them only attended with fewer Ceremonies We press and practice also Charity and good works as much as the Roman Church doth and it may be demonstrated that more and greater gifts have been given in England to pious uses by private persons since the Reformation than in two Centuries before And though we dare not say we shall merit Eternal life by them because that is the gift of God yet we believe none can come to Heaven without good works In a word the Church of England worships God as he hath prescribed in Holy Scripture She commands all that he enjoyns and forbids all that he prohibits and therefore wanteth nothing that is necessary to Salvation V. You may look upon our Ceremonies which are few and easie Ancient and Significant and though we do not place so much Religion in Externals as the Church of Rome doth yet here is prescribed all that is needful for decency and order viz. That the Clergy always wear Grave and distinct habits and have peculiar Garments in Divine Administrations that Churches be adorned and neat that the People be Reverent in Gods House that the memory of our Saviours chief Acts and the Festivals of the Holy Apostles be religiously observed That Lent with the Vigils of great Feasts the Ember weeks and all the Fridays in the Year be kept as days of Fasting or Abstinence and if some Protestants do not observe them yet others do and are commended for it and you may follow the best not the most you will have more liberty by turning to the English Church as to Circumstantials and greater helps as to the Essentials of Religion So that it is upon all accounts your wisest and safest course to embrace this so true so Primitive so Pious and so rational a Religion Let me therefore shut up my Charitable and Friendly Advice by Requesting you to consider all these things without prejudice or passion and then I hope you will perceive how much the Religion of this Church excells that of Rome in Antiquity Integrity and Usefulness and no longer suffer your selves to be so sadly imposed on and so miserably made to serve the ends of Avarice and Ambition And if you have taken such prudent and pious Resolutions you shall not only be freed from the inconveniences you complain of here but also have