be believed for necessity of Salvation After this manner the Church of England asserteth her own Authority and she runs not into any extream about the Authority of Councils or the Catholick Church We make Confession of the Ancient Faith expressed in the Apostolical Nicene or Constantinopolitan and Athanasian Creeds The Canons of forty reject the Heresie of Socinus as contrary to the first four general Councils Our very Statute-Book hath respect to them in the adjudging of Heresie Yet our Church still teacheth concerning them that things by them ordained have neither Strength nor Authority unless it may be declared that they be taken out of Holy Scripture When Controversies arise especially when the doubts concern not so much the Article of Faith it self as the Modes of it we grant to such venerable Assemblies a Potiority of Judgment Or if we assent not yet for Peace sake we are humbly silent We do not altogether refuse their Umpirage We think their Definitions good Arguments against unquiet Men who are chiefly moved by Authority We believe them very useful in the Controversies betwixt us and the Church of Rome and as often as they appeal to Primitive Fathers and Councils to Fathers and Councils we are willing to go with them and to be tryed by those who were nigher to the Apostles in the Quality of Witnesses rather than Judges We believe that in matters of Truth of which we are already well perswaded there may be added by the Suffrages of Councils and Fathers a degree of Corroboration to our Assent In sum we say with S. Austâ—ne that there is of Councils in the Church of God a most wholesome though not an infallible Authority And if S. Gregory Nazâ—anzen never saw as he saith a happy effect of any Synod this came not to pass from the Nature of the means as not conducive to that end but from the looseness of Government and the depraved manners of the Age in which he lived For such were the times of Valens the Emperour It is true there are some among us though not of us who with disdainful insolence contemn all Authority even that of the Sacred Scripture it self These pretend to an infallible Light of immediate and personal Revelation It hath hapned according to the Proverb every Man of them hath a Pope within him Henry Nicholas puffed up many vain ignorant people with this Proud Imagination Hetherington a Mechanick about the end of the Reign of King James advanced this notion of Personal Infallibility His followers believed they could not err in giving deliberate Sentence in Religion And this was the principle of Wynstanley and the first Quakers though the Leaders since they were embodied have in part forsaken it But these Enthusiasts have intituled the Holy Spirit of God to their own Dreams They have pretended to Revelations which are contrary to one another They can be Guides to themselves only because they cannot by any supernatural sign prove to others that they are inspired And such Enthusiasm is not otherwise favoured in the Church of England then by Christian pity in consideration of the infirmity of Humane Nature but in the Church of Rome it hath been favoured to that Degree that it hath founded many Orders and Religious Houses and given Reputation to some Doctrines and canoniz'd not a few Saints amongst them The Inspiration of S. Hildegardis S. Catharine of Siena S. Teresa and many others seemeth to have been vapour making impression on a devout fancy Yet the Church of Rome in a Council under Leo the Tenth hath too much encouraged such distemper as prophesie For private Reason it is the handmaid of Faith we use it and not seperately from the Authority of the Church but as a help in distinguishing true from false Authority And in so plain a case as Heresie if our Church thinketh a private Man may without an infallible Guide on Earth judge aright of it it does but believe as Pope Adrian believed as he professed in a Synod at Rome of which profession report is made in the second Synod of Nice For speaking of the Sentence against Pope Honorius he excuseth it in point of good behaviour because it was given in the case of Heresie For in that case and in that case alone he allowed Inferiors so he was pleased to call the Oriental Bishops to reject the corrupt sense of those who are superior to them I will hasten to the next Proposition after I have added one thing more which relates to the guidance of Ecclesiastical Authority And it is this Those of the Unlearned Laity who are Members of the Church of England have much more of the just guidance of Ecclesiastical Authority than the like order of Men in the Church of Rome For the Authentick Books of that Church being all written in the Latin Tongue the illiterate People resolve their Faith into the ability and honesty of their Confessor or Parish Priest They take it upon his word that this is the Doctrine this the Discipline this the Worship of their Church Whereas each Minister in our Church can direct the People to the Holy Bible to the Books of Homilies Articles Canons Common-Prayer Ordination as set forth in their native Tongue by publick Authority Of this they may be assured by their own Eyes as many as can but competently read They do not only take this from the mouth of a Priest but from the Church it self Where the Laws of the Church and the Statutes of the Civil Government are written in an unknown Tongue there the Unlearned depend more upon private than publick Authority for they receive the Law from particular Priests or Judges Though Ecclesiastical Authority be a help to our Faith yet the Holy Scripture is the only infallible Rule of it and by this Rule and the Ministerial Aids of the Christian Church we have sufficient means without Submission to papal Infallibility to attain to certainty in that Faith which is generally necessary to Salvation I do not mean that by believing the whole Canon of the Scripture in the gross we thereby believe all the necessary Articles of the Faith because they are therein contained That looks too like a fallacy and it giveth countenance to an useless Faith For he that believes on this manner hath as it were swallow'd a Creed in the lump only whereas it is necessary for a Christian to know each particular Article and the general Nature and Tendency of it Otherwise his Faith will not have a distinct influence upon his Christian behaviour to which if it were not useful it were not necessary To believe in general as the Scripture believes is with the Blind and Flexible Faith of a Romanist to believe at adventure He believes as his Church believes but he knows not what is the belief of his Church and therefore is not instructed by that Faith to behave himself as a Member of it The Scripture is
that rule of Faith which giveth us all the particular Articles which are necessary to eternal Life By this rule the Primitive Fathers govern'd themselves and this they commended to the Churches And Clemens Alexandrinus does in terms call the Consent of the Old and New Testament the Ecclesiastical Canon and the Touchstone of true and false I will not multiply Testimonies enough of them are already collected I will rather pursue the Argument before me in these three Assertions First a Protestant without the submission of his Judgment to the Roman Church may be certainly directed to the Canonical Books of Holy Scripture Secondly He may without such submission sufficiently understand the Rule of Faith and find out the Sense of such places in those Canonical Books as is necessary to the belief of a true Christian. Thirdly This rule of Faith is the principal means of Union in Faith in the Christian Church First a Protestant without the submission of his Judgment to the Roman Church may be certainly directed to the Holy Scriptures It is commonly said by Men of the Roman perswasion but injudiciously enough that we may as well receive our Creed from them as we do our Bible The Scribes and Pharisees might have said the like to the People of the Jews But with the good Text they conveighed down to them a very false gloss and misinterpreted the Prophesies as meant of a pompous temporal Messiah But for the Reformed they have received neither Creed nor Bible from the Church of Rome The first enumeration of those Books they find in the Apostolical Canons and in those of the Council of Laodicea no Western writings They have received the Scriptures from the Universal Church of all Ages and Places the Copies of them having been as widely dispersed as the Christians themselves And they receive them not from the infallibility of any particular Church but upon the validity of this sure principle that all the Christian World so widely dispersed could not possibly conspire in the imposing of false Books upon them For particular Churches we may of all others suspect the Roman in reference to the Scriptures For what sincerity of dealing may we hope for from such a Cabal of Men as has forged decrees of Councils and Popes obtruded upon the World Apocryphal Books as Books Canonical purged out of the writings of the Fathers such places as were contrary to their Innovations depressed the Originals under an imperfect Latin Copy and left on purpose in that Copy some places uncorrected for the serving of turns For example sake they have not either in the Bible of Sixtus or in that of Clement both which though in War against each other are made their Canon changed the word She in the third of Genesis for That or He. But contrary to the Hebrew Text to the Translation of the Seventy to the Readings of the Fathers they persist in rendring of it after this manner She shall break thy Head They believe this Reading tendeth most to the Honor of the blessed Virgin whom they are too much inclined to exalt in the Quality of a Mother above her Son The English Translation of Doway hath followed this plain and partial corruption Secondly A Protestant may without Submission of his judgment to the Roman Church find out in the Books of Holy Scripture the necessary Articles of Christian Faith Two things are here supposed and both of them are true First That the Scriptures contain in them all the necessary Articles of our Faith Secondly That the sense of the Words in which these Articles are expressed in Scripture may be found out by a Protestant without the Submission of his judgment to the Papacy First The Scriptures contain in them all the necessary Articles of the Faith This is true if the Scriptures themselves be so For this they Witness St. Paul saith of the Old Testament as expounded of Christ that it was able to make a Man wise unto Salvation Much more may this be affirmed of the entire Canon The Apostles preached the necessaries to Salvation and what they had preached they wrote down concerning the manner of it Eusebius may be consulted For the Primitive Fathers they allowed the Scriptures to be a sufficient Rule Irenaeus said of them they were perfect and of the words of St. Austine this is the sense Among those things which are plainly set down in Scrpture all those things are to be found which comprehend Faith and Good Manners Nay the Romanists themselves attempt to prove their very additional Articles out of the Bible That there are in it the Articles of the Apostolical Creed is evident enough to a common Reader But how the Romish Articles should be found in that Bible which was written some hundreds of years before they were invented is a riddle beyond the skill of Apollo Secondly the sense of the Scriptures in matters necessary to Salvation may be found out by Men of the Reformed Religion without Submission to Roman Infallibility The Learned know the Originals and the true ways of Interpretation And amongst us those of the Episcopal Clergy have obliged the World with such an Edition of the Bible in many Languages as was not before extant in the Roman Church And a Romanist who writes with great mastery in such matters prefers it before the great Bible of Paris For those of the Laity who are Unlearned they have before them a Translation which errs not in the Faith And the phrases are not so obscure but that by study and Ministerial helps they may understand them They have before them a Translation which errs not in the Faith Of this the Italians and French may be convinced by comparing the Translations of James de Voragine and the Divines of Lovain with those of Signior Diodati and Olivetan or Calvin And the English may receive satisfaction in this matter by comparing their Translation with that of Doway In all of them they will find the same Fundamental Doctrines of Faith And were there any such material alteration made in our Bible it would appear by the notorious inconsistence of one part of the Canon with another It would have been long ago detected and exposed to publick shame both by the Romanists and the other Dissenters from our Communion But the former are not able to produce one instance and the latter agree with us in the use and excellence of the Translation though in other things they extreamly differ from us And where they do but dream we err they forbear not to proclaim it In so much that a difference in the Translations of the Psalter which concerns not Faith or Manners and a supposed defect in the Table for keeping Easter have been made by them publick Objections and stumbling blocks in the way to their Conformity It is true there is a Romanist who hath raved against the Bible of the Reformed in these extravagant words The
Sectaries have as many different Bibles in Canon Version and sense as are days in the year The Sectarian Bible is no more the Word of God then the Alcoran Almanack or Aesops Fables Of great corruption he speaks in general but his madness has admitted of so much caution that he forbears the mention of any one particular place The Learned Romanists understand much better and the Ingenuous Will confess it And they are not ignorant that we Translate from the Original Tongues after having compared the Readings of the most Ancient Copies and of the Fathers Whilst they Translate the Bible from the Vulgar Latin which indeed in the New Testament is a tolerable but in the Old a very imperfect Version If our English Bible were turned into any one of the Modern Tongues by a Judicious Romanist who could keep Council it would pass amongst many of that Church for a good Catholick Translation And this is the rather my perswasion because I have read in Father Simon that not unpleasant story concerning the Translation of Mr. René Benoist a Doctor of the Faculty of Paris This Doctor had observed that a new Latin Translation of the Organon of Aristotle performed by a person who understood not the Greek Tongue had been very well received Upon this occasion he was moved to turn the Bible into the French Tongue though he was ignorant of those of the Greek and Hebrew For the accomplishing of this Design he served himself upon the French Translation of Geneva changing only a few words and putting others of the same signification in their room But it seems he was not exact enough in this change of words For he having over-looked some words which were used by the Genevians and not the Romanists a discovery was made by the Divines of Paris and this Edition of the Bible was condemned by them though published under the name of one of their Brethren I do not say that such places of Scripture as contain Matters of Faith are plain to every Man But those who have a competence of capacity who are not prejudiced against the Truth who pray to God for his assistance who attend to what they read who use the Ministerial helps which are offered to them shall find enough in Holy Writ to Guide them to everlasting life In finding out the sense of the Scriptures the Church gives them help but it does not by its Authority obtrude the sense upon them The Guides of it are as Expositors and School-Masters to them And by comparing phrase with phrase and place with place and by other such ways they teach them how to judge of the meaning themselves They give them light into the nature of the Doctrine they do not require them to take it upon trust They endeavour to open their understandings that they may themselves understand the Scriptures And if they cannot themselves understand the Doctrine it will be of little use to them in their lives For they then believe in general that it is a necessary Truth but what Truth it is or for what ends it is necessary they apprehend not A Foolish Master in the Mathematicks may require his Schollars to take it upon his word that a Problem is demonstrated But a wise and useful teacher will give them light into the manner of the demonstration in such sort that they themselves shall at last be able to judge that it is truly performed And till they can do this they are not instructed St. Hierom relates it in praise of Marcella a Roman Lady that she would not receive any thing from him after the Pythagorean manner or upon bare Authority She would with such care examine all things that She seemed to him not so much his Schollar as his Judge It is certain that there are great depths and obscure Mysteries in the Holy Bible But the Doctrines of Christian Faith are to the sincere and industrious and such as wait on God in the way of the Reformed Church sufficiently plain But to the Idle the prejudiced the captious Light it self is Darkness The Romanists affright with this pretence of obscurity and profoundness as if we must not adventure into any part of the Waters because in some places we may go beyond our depth If there are hard and difficult places which the Vnstable wrest who required their meanness to make a judgment of that for which they might perceive themselves to be insufficient But whilst St. Peter speaketh of some few places in St. Paul's writings which are obscure he does at the same time suppose many others to be plain enough for the capacities of the Unlearned And if they be evil Men though very Learned they will wrest the plainest places and as some did in St. Hieroms days they will draw violently to their private sense a Text of Scripture which is incongruously and with relectance applied to it It is true all Sects of Christians cite the Scriptures but that does not prove the obscurity of those Sacred writings It rather shews the Partiality Boldness and Sophistry of those who alledge them All Laws are obscure if this Argument hath force in it For every Man in his own case has the Law on his side Men take up their opinions and Heresies from other reasons and then because the name of Scripture is venerable they rake into the several Books of it and they bend and torture places and force them on their side by unnatural construction So do the Socinians producing all the niceties of Grammar and Criticism in a matter of Faith Yet the Guide in Controversies useth it as an Argument against the plainness of this Rule of Faith that the Socinians cite the Holy Scriptures in favour of their Heresie But is not this Argument two-edged And will it not cut as well on the other side and do Execution against the words of Fathers and Councils and the Apostolical Creed it self For the Socinians those especially who are turned Arians since Petavius hath furnished them with Quotations will cite the writings of the Ancients And Slichtingius a mere Socinian hath expounded every Article of the Creed in a sense agreeable to the Heresie of his Master But if the Scriptures were so obscure in necessary matters what remedy would be administred by the Roman Church They cannot offer to us any Ancient infallible exposition What the Antients have said the Reformed generally understand much better then Popes amongst whom there have been some who could scarce read the Holy Gospel in Latin For the Fathers of the earliest Ages they were more busied in writing against Heresies then in explaining of Scriptures Nor to this day hath the Roman Church given any Authentick Collection of Expositions either of the Ancients or of her own And if we must go to any Church for a comment on the Scriptures let the Roman be one of our last Refuges For it is manifest that the Key the Papalins use is the Worldly Polity of that
Church And as they like so they interpret Had not they governed themselves by this art we should not have found in the writings of their Popes and in the very Canon Law it self those words which were spoken to Jeremiah expounded of the Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome I have set thee over Kings to root out to pluck up and to destroy The Donatists found their Church in these words of the Canticles Tell me thou whom my Soul loveth where thou feedest where thou makest thy Flock to rest at noon For they expounded this as it liked them best of the Flock of their party in the Southern Country of Africa Such Expounders of Scripture are those Popish Writers who interpret Feed my Sheep of the Universal Monarchy of the Bishop of Rome and conclude that a Pastor must drive away Wolves or depose Princes hurtful to the Church But the straining of such Metaphorical expressions as an excellent Person saith proves only that they want better proofs And by a like way of interpretation from the same Text it might be concluded that all Christians are Fools because Sheep are silly Creatures No expositions are more besides the sense of the Text or more ridiculous then some of those which may be found in the Authentick Books of the Roman Church And those who composed them appear to have looked asquint on the Scriptures For whilst they looked on them they seem to have looked another way I will instance only in a few of those many absurd expositions with which the Roman Breviary abounds The words of the Angel to the Holy Virgin a Sword shall go through thine own Soul also are interpreted of that word of God which is quick and powerful and sharper then any two-edged Sword And this sense is designed as an evasion of their reasoning who from that Text conclude concerning the blessed Virgin that she died and was not miraculously assumed The Ascension of Elias is thus expounded He was taken up into the aerial not the aetherial Heavens from whence he was dropped in an obscure place on Earth there to remain to the end of the World and then to expire with it They say of Job That when he spake of a Bird and of her path in the Air he by a figure called Christ a Bird and by the motion of it in the Air figured also our Lords Ascension We may perceive by these few Instances what an entrance into the sense of Scripture is like to be given whilst a Pope has the Key of Knowledge in his keeping Thirdly If Men would use the Church as their Ministerial Guide and admit of the Scripture as the only Rule by which all Matters of Faith are to be measured they would agree in the proper means to the blessed end of Unity in the Faith This was the perswasion of St. Austin who thus applieth himself to Maximinus Neither ought I at this time to alledge the Council of Nice nor you that of Ariminum For neither am I bound to the Authority of the one nor you to that of the other Let us both dispute with the Authorities of Scripture which are Witnesses common to both of us Whilst the Romanists ascribe the differences which arise amongst the Reformed to their want of an infallible Guide and to their different interpretations of the Scriptures they unskilfully derive effects from causes which are not the natural Parents of them There is saith St. Austine one Mother of all strifes and she is Pride Neither doth the Scripture divide us nor does the infallibility of their judge unite them Their Union such as it is ariseth from the mighty force of their External Polity and they speak not differently because they dare not and the strength of that Polity arose at first from Rome not as the Chair of St. Peter but as the Seat of the Empire Our divisions like theirs arise as all Wars do be they Ecclesiastical or Civil from the unruly Lusts and Passions of Men. And from these likewise arise generally the misinterpretations of plain Laws and Rules the sense of which must be made to chime according to the Interest of prejudiced Men or else they will not give attention to them If the Lusts and Passions of Men were mortified all Christians agreeing in the certainty of the Scriptures though not of any Living Guide and the words of the one being as intelligible as those of the other All might agree in one Creed and put an end to those unnecessary Controversies which entangle Truth and extinguish Charity FINIS The Question The moment of â—his Question The Temptations to believe the Affirmative part of this Question The true Resolution of the Query Prop. I. * Nisi una est Fides non est L. M.Ser 23. †See Ferrand l. 1. c. 1. Sect. 4. disquis Relig. * Acts 4.19 20. * S. Mat. 28.20 Prop. II. * Joâ— 15.22 24. Prop. III. * To the Reader of the Dis. of Govern of Churchâ—s * R. H. Guide in Controv. in Pref. p. 3. Prop. IV. Consid. I. * Isai. 56.10 Jez 2.8 Ez. 7.26 C. 22.26 †Mâ—l 2.7 8. * Deut. 17.8 to 12. See Levit. 4.13 Consid. II. * S. Mat. 16.18 †S. Mat. 28.20 Revel 3.1 2 3. * S. Luke 10.16 †S. Luke 10.1 9. * Ver. 12. 1 Tim. 3.15 †Ryc of the Greek Ch. p. 44. * Revel 3.12 †In 1 Cor. 9.2 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. * S. Mat. 18.15 16 17. See Deut. 17.6 * Launoy in Epist ad Carol. magistrum ad Jacob. Bevil ad Guil. Voell ad Raim Formentinum in 5. par Epist. Consid. III. * Joh. 20.21 †S. Mat. 9.36 C. 10.6 2. Pet. 5.2 * S. Mat. 28.16 17 18 19. †S. Chrys. in 1 Cor. 9.2 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. †See R. H. Guide in Controv Dis. 1. p. 5. and Socin in Loc. * S. Hil. de Trin. l. 6. dixit Petrus Tu es filius Dei c. super hanc igitur Confessionis Petram Ecclesiae edificatio est v. Launoy in Epist ad Voellum †Revel 21.14 Ephes. 2.20 * Act. 2.14 41 47. IV. Consid. †Euseb. l. 3. vit Const. c. 7. 8. p. 487. Socrat. E. H. l. c. 8. p. 19. * V. Concil Labâ— Tom. 2. p. 50 c. †Socr. Eccl. Hist. l. 1. c. 6. p. 9. * From A. 1545. to A. 1563. †V. Council Const. sess 39. * V. Greg. magn Ep. 6.31 Leo. 1. Ep. 53. Gelas 1. Ep. 13. †Concil Labb Tom. 10. p. 23 379. Pontific Roman (a) A. D. 1542. in Coll. Sorb See Richer H. Conc. general vol. 4. p. 162 163 c. Object * R.H. Annot. on D. Still Answer p. 82 83. †Art 31. Ch. 5. du consistoire si un ou plusieurs c. * Syn. Dord sess 138. Answer (a) See Artic. 20 21 22. (b) Camp Rat. 3. p. 180. Rat. 5. p. 185. * Lib. diurn Pontif. p. 35. etenim hujus Apostolicae
was hortatory and not compulsive It is true he erred not as Head of the Church for such he was not neither as such was he owned But he erred as a publick person and with Heretical obstinacy For Pope Leo as he noteth said concerning him that he had made it his business to betray and subvert the Holy Faith Now this matter of Fact sufficeth for the refuting all the fallacious reasonings of the patrons of Papal infallibility For all must agree that they are not unerring Guides who actually err The Sieur de Balzac mocks at the weakness of one of the Romish Fathers who offered four reasons to prove that the Duke D' Espernon was not returned out of England And offered them to a Gentleman who had seen him since his return There seemeth no sitness in the constituting of such a Guide nor any necessity for it Had it been agreeable to Gods Wisdom his Wisdom would not have been wanting to it self God having made Man a Reasonable Creature would not make void the use of deliberation and the freedom of his judgment There is no vertue in the Assent where the Eye is forced open and the Light held directly to it It is enough that God the rewarder of them who believe hath given Men sufficient faculties and sufficient means And seeing Holiness is as necessary to the pleasing of God and to the peace of the World as Union in Doctrine to which there is too frequently given a lifeless Assent seeing there must be Christian Obedience as long as there is a Church seeing as the Guide in Controversy himself urgeth the Catholick Church and all the parts of it are believed in the Creed to be Holy as well as Orthodox We ask not the Romanists an impertinent Question when we desire them to tell us why a means to infallibility in the judgment rather than irresistibleness in the pious choice of the Will is to be by Heaven provided in the Church Both seem a kind of Destination of equal necessity But though the Reformed especially those of the Church of England see no necessity for an infallible Guide nor believe there is one on the face of the Earth yet they do not reject all Ecclesiastical Guidance but allow it great place in matters of Discipline and Order and some place also though not that of an unerring Judge in Matters of Faith At the beginning of the Reformation the Protestants though they refused the judgment of the Pope their Enemy yet they declined not the determination of a Council And in the Assembly at Ausburgh the Romanists and Protestants agreed in a Council as the Umpire of their publick difference At this the Pope was so alarumed saith the Sieur de Mezeray that he wrote to the Kings of France and England that he would do all they would desire provided they hindred the calling of a Council In the Reformation of the Church of England great regard was had to the Primitive Fathers and Councils And the aforesaid French Historian was as much mistaken in the affairs of Our Church when he said of our Religion that it was a medly of the Opinions of Calvin and Luther as he was afterwards in the affairs of our State when he said King James was elected at the Guild-hall King of England The Romannists represent us very falsly whilst they fix upon us a private Spirit as it stands in opposition to the Authority of the Catholick Church Mr. Alabaster expresseth one motive to his conversion to the Roman Church in these Words Weigh together the Spouse of Christ with Luther Calvin Melancthon Oecumenical Councils with private opinions The Reverend and Learned Fathers with Arius Aetius Vigilantius Men always in their time Burned for Hereticks of which words the former are false reasoning the latter are false History The Bishop of Meaux reasons after the same fallacious manner Supposing a Protestant to be of this perswasion that he can understand the Scriptures better than all the rest of the Church together of which perswasion he saith very truly that it exalteth Pride and removeth Docility The Guide in Controversies puts the Question wrong in these terms Whether a Protestant in refusing the submission of his judgment to the Authority or Infallibility of the Catholick Church in her Councils can have in several Articles of necessary Faith wherein the sense of Scripture is controverted as sure a Foundation of his Faith as he who submits his judgment to the foresaid Authority or also Infallibility Here the Catholick Church is put in place of the Roman Authority and Infallibility are joyned together and it is suggested dishonestly concerning the Reformed that they lay aside the Authority of the Catholick Church in her general Councils Authority may be owned where there is no infallibility for it is not in Parents Natural or Civil Yet both teach and govern us If others reject Church-Authority let them who are guilty of such disorderly irreverence see to it The Christians of the Church of England are of another Spirit Of that Church this is one of the Articles The Church hath power to decree Rites and Ceremonies and Authority in Controversies of Faith There is a Question saith Mr. Selden about that Article concerning the power of the Church whether these words of having power in Controversies of Faith were not stolen in But it 's most certain they were in the Book of Articles that was confirmed though in some Editions they have been left out They were so in Dr. Mocket's but he is to be considered in that Edition as a private Man Now this Article does not make the Church an infallible Guide in the Articles of Faith but a Moderator in the Controversies about Faith The Church doth not assume that Authority to it self in this Article which in the foregoing it denied to the Churches of Jerusalem Alexandria Antioch and Rome When perverse Men will raise such Controversies who is so fit for Peace sake to interpose as that Church where the Flame is kindled There can be no Church without a Creed and each particular Church ought to believe her Creed to be true and by consequence must exercise her Authority in the defence of presumed Truth Otherwise she is not true to her own constitution But still she acts under the caution given by St. Augustine You bind a Man on Earth Take heed they be just bonds in which you retain him For Justice will break such as are unjust in sunder And whilest the Church of England challengeth this Authority she doth not pretend to it from any supernatural gift of infallibility but so far only as she believes she hath sincerely followed an infallible Rule For of this importance are the next words of the Article before remembred It is not Lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to Gods word written And besides the same it ought not to enforce any thing to