and the various apprehensions and prejudices of men not like ever to be fully and satisfactorily decided and which indeed are but niceties and trifling subtilties in comparison while they put a greater value upon them than the nature and matter of them will bear and whilst they Sacrifice Unity and the Peace of the Church and the grand and real concerns of Religion to Passion and Humour 3. Much less are doubtful Consequences and Philosophical Opinions to be admitted and reckoned in the number of Fundamentals At first certainly and for several Ages together there was no great subtilty required in order to be a good Christian. The Institutions of Christianity were not Laborious and perplext Nothing was required but a firm assent of the mind to a few Propositions whose matter indeed was Mysterious but what had the highest ground of Credibility to make the assent to them just and rational but when once a bold Curiosity and an unlawful and an over-affected subtilty made men depart from the simplicity of Faith and Religion instead of being the Rule of Life and Discipline became an Art of Disputing and Scripture and Antiquity no longer made the Judges of Controversies but every mans particular Reason though never so much byassed and perverted by the prepossessions of fancy and by the heat and influence of his Passions then Articles of Faith began to multiply and every nicety and far-fetch'd consequence was called by that name and Magisterially imposed and the Philosophy of Aristotle and Plato was brought in to their assistance till the substance of Christianity was even lost in the Quarrel and the very Foundations of it undermined and Faith swallowed up in wantonness of Wit and Peace shut out of the World by Faction and Schism The result was that they were the worse Christians more talkative and curious perhaps but less strict and Religious and Charitable nay less knowing than they were before they let loose the Reins to their fancy and leapt over those boundaries which God and the Church had set 4. Whatsoever was not Fundamental in the Apostles time cannot be so now If it be a true way of defining an Article of Faith that it was revealed by Christ to the Apostles and as such imposed by them upon their Proselytes without the embracing of which they could not be Christians and that it is to be found in the writings which they left behind them either expresly or by necessary consequence Then the contrary also that is whatsoever is not found in their writings either directly or by just and necessary consequence and was not proposed to the first Believers cannot be Fundamental and consequently no one is bound to believe any Doctrine but what was then revealed and afterward acknowledged by the Catholick Church and what-ever proposal is made by the Church is no farther to be believed than as it is consonant to the Scripture and the Doctrine of the Apostles this declaration not being of it self sufficient to make an Article of Faith but as it is founded upon Scripture and Apostolical Authority How had the Peace of Christendom been still preserved if these Rules had been followed and kept in after-ages That is if new Opinions whereof some are very dangerous to which the Christian Church was a stranger for several Centuries of Years and all uncertain at the best if meer fancies to which Superstition and Ignorance have given Birth and if the niceties and subtilties of the Schools and things impossible to be throughly known and matters of meer speculation that tend to the disservice of Religion and do not slow in the least from its Principles had not been adopted Articles and Points of Faith all which we justly object to the Church of Rome and made necessary conditions of Communion How might we have adorsed before the same Altars and gone together to the House of God as Friends and have been partakers of the Mysteries of the Body and blood of our Saviour if they had not determined the manner of the presence of Christ in the Sacrament and brought in a new Doctrine which contradicts the whole circle of Sciences and the sense and experience of all mankind and tyed all others to believe an unnatural sense of the words of the Institution making the differences irreconcileable by their Trent Canons and shutting out all possible hope of Peace till God shall open the eyes of the Christian Princes of that Communion to see the fallacies and cheats of the Court and the errors and corruptions of the Church of Rome to call a free and truly General Council to debate the differences which are now on foot to the great scandal of Christianity upon the Principles of Scripture Primitive Antiquity and genuine Apostolical Tradition and which considerations of Worldly Interest and Grandeur keep up this being the only way left to restore Unity to the divided Catholick Church 'T is the glory as well as happiness of the Church of England that the Rites she uses in her Religious Worship are decent and Solemn and every way serving the purposes of Religion that her Goverment is Apostolical that her established Liturgy is according to the Primitive Standard and which no wise and good man can justly be offended at unless perchance he thinks this a just reason because it is a set form that she holds nothing as necessary and essential to Faith but what was held so in the first Ages of the Church and can be proved out of the Scriptures that she rejects no Tradition that can prove it self to be Apostolical that she receives the Articles of the Catholick Faith held Anciently for such in their received sense and as they are laid down in the three Creeds and admits all who receive them into her Communion that her determinations of Opinions in her Articles are modest and far from the high-flown pretence of Infallibility and designed as an Instrument of Union that she is willing to communicate with Christians of what denomination soever where the terms of the Communion are Lawful so as it may be done without sin without prejudice to truth and the Fundamentals of Church Government confirmed by universal Practise and Canons of Councils and without violating the Rights and Priviledges of the Catholick Church as well as her own in particular Let the Romanists single out any one of her professed Tenents which she holds as essential to Faith and necessary to Salvation which is not exactly agreeable to the first Antiquity They cannot deny that she holds nothing amiss herein only they pretend that she does not hold enough That is that we reject Transubstantiation and the Sacrifice of the Mass Invocation of Saints and Angels Worshipping of Images that we do not admit the Pope to be the visible Head and Monarch of the Church and the Vicar of Christ and that it is necessary to Salvation to be Subject to him and the like All which are meer Fancies and Usurpations But if the Primitive Christians were
Apostle St. Paul says if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead thou shalt be saved Rom. 8. 9. Where this Article of the Resurrection of Christ from the dead supposes the rest and is here expresly mentioned as the confirmation of the truth of Christ's Mission and Doctrine 2. That it is a very grievous Error to fancy that it is a matter of meer indifference what our belief is in particular and that it is enough that we believe that Christ is the Son of God without obliging our selves to believe all the just and necessary consequences of that Proposition meerly because that one single Act of Faith qualified the first Converts for Baptism when that only is mentioned as the Foundation and Basis of all the rest and does Necessarily include all the other Doctrinal Points that depend upon it 3. That we are obliged to profess our belief of the whole Doctrine of Christianity as it lyes in the writings of the New Testament which is the Rule of Faith and as out of them it is briefly summed up in the Creeds the explication which the Catholick Church has made of that Rule So that as on the one hand after this acknowledgment it is unjust to demand a more particular and distinct account or catalogue of the Fundamental Articles of the Christian Faith necessary to be believed in order to Salvation that being sufficient for the Catholick Church in all Ages which was so in the first so on the other hand to believe less and to reject any part of the Christian Doctrine and teach the contrary is justly chargeable with the guilt of Heresie and is not the effect of wariness but of pride and obstinacy The command of God to believe the Testimony that he has given of his Son and the revelations of his will and the Divine Authority on which they are founded are sufficient Arguments to move us to assent to the truth of them though the matter of them be so far above our comprehension They are Mysteries and necessarily must be such and therefore are to be adored and submitted to with that humility that befits Creatures conscious of their own weaknesses and faileurs and of the infinite and incomprehensible Majesty and perfection of God And if this troubles them they may as well murmur and quarrel and find fault with the dispensations of Providence as obscure and un-intelligible There is enough to satisfie all who will be content with just Proofs of it though not to take away all possible doubt and by this means they must side with the followers of Epicurus in their idle and foolish and impious attempts to raze the very notions of a Deity out of the minds of Men and extinguish and destroy all Religion out of the World This is not imposing upon them or doing violence to their Reason as they object only upon this pretence because the Mysteries of Religion are not as evident and clear to their understanding as visible objects are to the Eye in a clear and full light For then they would cease to be matters of Faith and lose their name and fall under the comprehension of Science And indeed so long as they retain this unreasonable Principle that all the Mysteries of Christian Religion are to be tryed and judged by the narrow Rules of Philosophy and natural Reason which can be no proper medium of proving things only knowable by Revelation they may well pretend that 't is not in their own power to change their Opinions and that 't is not possible for them to bring their understandings to admit them But can they hope that this should justifie their pertinaciousness and excuse them at God's Tribunal Is it not to be feared that the unjust prejudices which they entertain arise from a perverse will and from obstinacy and pride and peevishness and not from any dissatisfactoriness at the inevidence and incertainty of the grounds and motives of their Credibility It is only God who can convince such men by the mighty influences of his Grace and remove these prejudices which obstruct the reception of his truth to whose Mercy we leave them For us let us hold fast our Profession of Faith without wavering for God is faithful who hath called us to the knowledge of his Truth If you understand aright the Principles of the Christian Religion and the Principles of the Protestant Religion it is impossible for you to be debauched and perverted either by Socinian or Jesuit or Sectary All their pretended demonstrations for error and delusion are usually very bold and confident are meer Sophisms and Arguments of deceit tricks and artifices of Wit without any foundation of true Reason in the one or of Scripture or Apostolical Tradition in the other If as I said before the Primitive Christians went to Heaven you may be assured of the same hope of Salvation in the Communion of the Church of England if you add to a sound Faith the practises of a Vertuous and Holy and truly Christian Life and if you perform the Vows you made at your Baptism and renew every time you receive the most blessed Sacrament and so adorn the Primitive Faith with Primitive Purity and Holiness Appendix concerning the Apostles Creed THis form of Faith is called by Irenaeus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the invariable Rule of Faith received and openly profess'd and acknowledged by the new Convert at his Baptism 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And so in several other places he refers not only to the Christian Faith in general but to a fixt and known rule of it As lib. 1. cap. 19. Cùm teneamus autem nos regulam veritatis And lib. 2. cap. 43. Nusquam transferentes regulam neque errantes ab artifice neque abjicientes fidem This rule of Faith is called somewhere by him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or little body or System of Articles containing the sum and substance of the Christian Religion Tertullian does also often mention the regula fidei as a thing every where known and acknowledged as in his Book against Hermogenes in the beginning de praescript cap. 13. Apol. cap. 47. And in his Book de velandis Virginibus in the beginning Regula quidem fidei una omnino est soia immobilis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 irreformabilis and is the same with what he calls soon after Lex fidei or the unalterable Law of Faith which admits of no change whereas the Church has a Power in matters of Ecclesiastical Discipline and external behaviour to make what alteration shall be judged most suitable to the rules of Piety Prudence Decency and to variety of Circumstances of places and times and other accidents Hâc lege fidei manente caetera jam disciplinae conversationis admittunt novitatem corrections operante scilicet persiciente usque in finem gratiâ Dei Thus in general there was an explicite rule of Faith
Constantinople under Theodosius the Emperor by which enlargement all good Christian People were to be establish'd in the belief of the Catholick Doctrine declared so to be according to Scripture and Universal Tradition By these mighty Arguments they convinced the Hereticks and justly subjected them to the Punishment which their refractoriness and guilt deserved They settled the Peace of the Church and secured the Faith from the like assaults in after-times Their Creed was the Test by which they discerned Truth from Heresie and it was received and acknowledged as such by all the Orthodox Christians in the Churches of Greece the lesser Asia Syria and Egypt and taught the Catechumeni as a necessary qualification of their admission into the number of the Faithful which is the true reason that the other short form which had been in use hitherto the sum and substance of it with all its necessary deductions being transfused into this began to be dis-used and in process of time wholly omitted and left out of their Liturgies Whereas at Rome and in the other Churches of the West where those Controversies about matters of Faith which had exercised the Wits and Curiosities of the Orientals whose prying and restless Genius drove them upon those subtilties never were admitted or made no considerable progress among them they continued constant and steddy in the profession of the Ancient Faith and therefore stuck to and retained the old form of words as they are summ'd up in the Creed which we call the Apostles with some little addition and needed not a larger explication 2. It follows from this that the Doctrine of Faith must necessarily be one and the same every where according to the assertion of the Text It was the common Faith Tit. 1. 4. not appropriated to any particular Sect but it lay in common and open to all The whole Faith that is so much as was necessary to denominate them true Believers was received by all without any difference in the main points of it For how could it be otherwise while they adhered so close to the Doctrine of the Apostles who all Preach'd the same Faith in the most distant parts of the World between which there could not possibly be as the times stood then that is before the Polarity or directive vertue of the Load-stone was known any communication or intercourse There was a perfect agreement and harmony of Confessions among all who had embraced the Doctrine of Christianity The Christians here in Britain believed no otherwise than those at Jerusalem and those in India whom St. Thomas Converted and all who lived in the intermediate spaces between those two vastly distant extreams which were the boundaries of the then known World exactly agreeing with both Though they differed in Language Customs Laws Behaviour and way of Living and were under different Governments yet they all held the same thing Which Argument is excellently handled by Irenoeus in his 1st Book 3d. Chap. adv Hoereses There cannot be a more convictive Argument of the truth of the sense of the Articles of Faith which the Hereticks reject than the profession of them in all Churches of the World For how came this universal Consent establish'd but from the soundness of the Doctrine and the Authority of its first Publishers Among that great variety of Opinions which prevailed every where there were certain essential points of Faith wherein they were all unanimous and so long as they were held and maintained a liberty of Judgment and Opinion was allowed in lesser matters witness those Ancient forms before-mentioned long before the Civil Power took the Christian Religion into its protection which whosoever admitted and processed was received into their Communion So that from this Unity of Faith which was received every where by the whole number of Christians except some obstinate Heretical Dissenters who were a small and inconsiderable Party at first in comparison of the rest the Christian Church was styled Catholick or Universal just as the great Ocean is one and the same though it receives particular denominations from the several shores which it washes as the Brittish Cantabrian Atlantick and the like and not from any pretended subjection to one Sovereign Pastor And the word Catholick became another name for Orthodox and the Bishops afterwards subscribed themselves Bishops of the Catholick Church of such a place as founded on the Doctrine of Christ and his Apostles Universally received throughout the World and by vertue of the same Faith in Communion with all Christians Upon these two Suppositions I shall lay down these following Propositions That 1. Diversity of Opinions in matters of Religion of less moment does not interrupt and dissolve the Unity of Faith Opinions arise either from want of Evidence in the things themselves which causes a fluctuation and unsettlement in the mind as not knowing where to fix and rest to which we yield a wavering kind of assent more or less according to greater or lesser degrees of Probabilities or else from the weakness of the understanding which not being able to take a comprehensive view of things and resolve them into their first Principles and Original Causes or for want of a sure Foundation whether of Nature or Reason or Authority or Revelation takes up with Arguments and motives of assent which fall short of certainty and which cannot quiet the mind and secure it from all suspicion and fear of the contrary And indeed considering the great variety of mens tempers and complexions Education and Interests and the greater or lesser degrees of Knowledge Industry Curiosity and the like there is a Moral impossibility that Opinions should be one and the same And where God has left a liberty no Power upon Earth can oblige the Conscience and Understanding to admit them any otherwise than as Opinions That is either as true in their kind but far from the Infallibility of Divine Revelations or as piè credibilia Or as means and instruments of Agreement and Uniformity in Judgment to prevent Schism and Confusion so as yet no one particular Church shall prescribe to another but leave each to its liberty of securing their peace and quiet by what Confessions they judge best for that end and nothing be imposed as a matter of Doctrine which thwarts the Ancient Christian Doctrine and the Catholick Tradition of the Church 2. All truths are not fundamental and necessary to be believed with the same firmness of assent For several Propositions may be true and useful and yet not necessary and essential to the Faith the ignorance or dis-belief of which does not throw a man out of the Communion of the Church The neglect of this distinction has been one great cause of the troubles and turmoils of Christendom whilst fierce and eager Disputants have been engaged in the defence of several tenents which have no necessary dependance on the Doctrine of Faith and which are not determined in the Scriptures and by reason of their difficulty
a Doctrine proposed to us as a Matter of Faith Is it any where to be found in the Discourses of our Blessed Saviour preserved in the History of the Gospels Did the Apostles teach it their first Converts Is it agreeable to or founded upon true Apostolick Tradition Is this Tradition un-interrupted and derived down pure from the first Ages of the Church Was it received universally by the whole number of Christians in their time Is it any where to be met with in their Writings either in express terms or by a just and clear and necessary consequence For though the Doctrine of the Christian Religion was Preach'd and received before any word of the New Testament was Penned yet to say the Apostles taught many Points of Doctrine which they did not put down in Writing and much more such Points as consequentially overthrow and destroy the plain sense and letter of the Text is a very groundless and scandalous Supposition And besides the injury done to the Scriptures which contain in them all Points necessary to be believed is confuted by the Authors of it who pretend to fetch Proofs of their fansied tenents out of them There having been that great Veneration shewn to the Inspired Writings in all Ages that Hereticks and other kind of Innovators have chosen rather to bend and warp the Scripture and pervert its true sense and meaning in favour of their tenents than not seem to have the Countenance of its Authority 2. That since the times of the Apostles and the Sealing up of the Canon of Scripture no New Doctrine can or ought to be added as Essential to the Christian Religion For all which is Essential to the Faith was delivered by the Apostles to the Church at first otherwise the Rule of Faith had been imperfect and would have had something wanting to its completion to be supplyed in after-times which is to cast a slur and a blemish upon those first Ages of Christianity which were fully Instructed in all things fit and necessary for Christians to know and believe by the Apostles themselves without the stamp of whose Authority no Doctrine could be Authentick For what ever was believed as necessary derived only from them as the Instruments which Christ made use of to convey his Doctrine to the World which they did fully and carefully and successfully by the mighty aids of his Spirit according to the trust reposed in them They establish'd the belief of the Christian Religion in the hearts of the Faithful They concealed nothing of the mind and will of God Churches were formed and modelled according to their direction and command and Episcopal Government with the inferiour and subordinate Orders settled for the better preservation of Unity and Communion The Faith of Christ was professed and acknowledged as they taught and delivered it Their Writings were among them exactly agreeing in all things with what they had Preach'd and were to be the standing Monuments of the will of Christ Registred by their Pens to direct all succeeding Generations of Christians in their belief and in their practise After their Decease no new Revelation was to be expected only a delivering down of the same Apostolical Doctrine to after-ages in which the Faith nay the Curiosity of all Christians ought to acquiesce 3. That it is not in the Power of the Church in general much less of any particular Church of what denomination soever to lay down any Doctrine as necessary to be believed in order to Salvation but what is expresly revealed or clearly deduced out of the writings of the New Testament and was acknowledged in the first Ages of Christianity For if so they must pretend to the same Authority and produce clear and convictive Evidences of such Revelations to make them credible and lay an Obligation upon the Consciences of all Christians to receive their Propositions under the grievous penalty of otherwise disobeying the voice and will of God This dotage indeed Montanus and such kind of Enthusiasts have been guilty of But their pretensions were rejected as dreams of folly arising from mis-interpretations of Scripture as if there were to be new Revelations made in after-times by way of super-addition and supplement into which errors they were led by their pride and conceitedness and an ill habit and temper of body and the Authority of the Scriptures and the Praescription of the precedent Ages were justly objected against them All that the Church can pretend to is only this not to define and make a new Article of Faith but only to declare what before was revealed and acknowledged though not so clearly understood till the iniquity of the times made it necessary for the Church in a general Council to interpose her Authority in the determination of Controversies of Faith And where this pretence is true her Authority ought to be submitted to and her Proposals embraced That is if the Doctrine proposed be the just and natural result of an Article of Faith expresly revealed in the Scripture and understood in that manner and acknowledged as such by the first Christians Contemporaries and Successors of the Apostles and constantly received from that time downward by the generality of Christians For the opposition of a few after the first and general reception of a necessary truth is not considerable who through prejudice or out of design to raise troubles in the Church or out of Ambition to be the Chiefs of a Faction or through a pretended dissatisfaction at the Mysteriousness of it or through wantonness of Wit and Humour have been so obstinate as not only to refuse to make the same acknowledgment but to maintain the contrary with violence To all which that is to Scripture Apostolick Tradition and universal consent the Fathers Assembled in the four first General Councils had regard in their determinations against the Hereticks of their time They only fixt what was Catholick Doctrine and what was believed in the Ages before they were born They founded their Declarations upon Scripture and universal Tradition And to silence all Disputes and to prevent Schism and to direct their own and after-times in the belief and understanding of the great Mysteries of Faith they reduced the Doctrine of it as it lyes scattered in several parts of Scripture into a form of plain and intelligible words and enlarged themselves in the explication of it as we shall see anon It being the very same Faith which the Apostles Preach'd and which the Scriptures hold out to us All the Anathema's are founded upon that of St. Paul Gal. 1. 8 9. Though we or an Angel from Heaven Preach any other Gospel unto you then what we have Preached unto you let him be accursed If any Man Preach any other Gospel unto you than that you have received let him be accursed And if there cannot be another Gospel there cannot be another Faith The Gospel being the Revelation of God by Christ and that Revelation full and made but once in