particulars As That the Church hath no declarative Power in matters of Faith or supposing any Article obscure to us or inverted and involved by Hereticks so that the matter of it hath not been explicitly acknowledged in all Ages of the Church anteceeding when the present Church gives the true meaning of it according to the tradition of Faith evidencing thereby the Sense of the Article or which is the same the sense of Scripture on which the Article is founded and engages the assent of all Christians thereunto That hereby she creates a new Article of Faith pag. 75 945. as if there were no mean betwixt the Power of the single Church of Rome who resolves all her actings into her own immediate Authority and the true Power of the Catholick Church of God which determines antecedent truths that were tho' less known or misinterpreted from the beginning and when the reason of her decree is not from her own Authority but the Tradition of Faith delivering the sense of the Holy Ghost down unto us That the Church representing and the Church diffusive are all one nothing can make the Church teaching and representative but the belief of what is necessary to Salvation Pag. 86 87. I thought a distant Power by Ordination had constituted the Pastors of the Church You go on at the same confused rate Pag. 251 252. I 'll only write out your words at large and let the Reader judge of them That which being supposed a Church is and being distroyed it ceaseth to be is the formal constitution of it but thus it is as to the Church The belief of Fundamentals makes it a Church and the not believing them makes it cease to be a Christian Church I speak of an essential not an organical Church And I know not who those persons are who out of those places Luk. 10.16 Matth. 28.19 20. Joh. 14.16 do infer the perpetuity of an organical Church nor if they did doth it thence follow they must suppose an infallible assistance beyond an essential 't is strange that nothing should be found betwixt these two in your own sense of them to constitute Pastors of Christ's own sending to make it an organical Church for I cannot imagine what necessity can be supposed of infallibility in order to that which may be sufficiently constituted without it The perpetuity of the Church doth rather argue the infallibility of the promise than of the Church Supposing then that the promises by you insisted on should be so far extended as to imply a perpetuity of a Christian Church what doth that argue but only this that to make it appear that promise is infallibly true there shall always be a Succession of Christians in the World Suppose I grant that the being of a Christian Church doth suppose the assistance of God's Spirit is there no assistance but what is infallible If not no one can be a Christian without infallibility for we speak of no other assistance but what is necessary to make Men Christians for what makes them such severally take them conjunctly makes them a Church But if you besides what assistance is requisite to make Men Christians do suppose somewhat more to make them a Church I pray name what it is And whatever it be it will not be own'd by such who infer a Perpetuity But if in order to that no more be meant as no more can be meant than what is necessary to make Men Christians then infallibility will grow so cheap and common I add and Church-Power and Offices together with it it will not be worth challenging by you for your Church neither will a Ministry be worth challenging by us either But this is agreeable enough with the Title you still give the Archbishop in this Treatise and as if he had no other Prelation but what is derived from his Majesty and is purely Secular you call him his Lordship only I much question Whether it might not have discomposed the Calm that most exemplary Prelate died in upon the Scaffold at Tower-Hill if he could then have been aware that he should have had such a Vindicator I cannot here but repeat it again tho' it be so very Offensive How gladly I should see the Church of Rome opposed and our common Christianity not struck at with the same blow and hand Surely the due Power of God's Church might have been vindicated and Rome's Usurpations rejected without this intermingling all as one both Priest and People as you have done here most Scandalously And at the same rate you dispute also against the Monarchical Government of the Church and an infallible judge Pag. 464. because Christ no where that we read of took care that we should be freed from all kind of Controversies and we no where find such a State of Christian Church described or promised where Men shall be of one mind only that peace and brotherly love continue is all that Christians are bound to and that every Man have the same Vnderstanding Which Arguments conclude as forcibly against any other Government even that of our Saviour himself and his Apostles were they upon Earth again and in the same circumstances as when here before Nay you have used these very Arguments against all manner of Government in your Irenicum And farther Pag. 172. you infer Because it is not in the Power of the Church of Rome judicially and authoritatively to determine what Books belong to the Canon of Scripture and what not Therefore the Church in this case is but a Jury of grand Inquest to search into matters of Fact and not a Judge upon the Bench to determine in point of Law And thereby take away all judicial Power from the Church to oblige her Members or Subjects by for their assent and submission to her Acts and Decrees upon a due search of matter of Fact and full evidence of the Truth and Certainty of those Articles Rules and Canons enjoin'd and commanded And thus you particularly affront the Practice of our own Church she having made it Law that only such a certain number of Books of the Old and New Testament be accounted and received as Canonical and withal requiring Subscription thereunto as a judge upon a Bench to be sure by all that are admitted by her into holy Orders And as you have before concluded That whatever Power can be supposed by Christ to be promised and derived to his Church from Matt. 28.19 20. c. is that which each private Christian partakes of So again Pag. 516. you say That whatever Power can be supposed in a General Council must be first in the Church diffusive and from thence be derived to the Council Which in effect is thus That the Bishops of Christendom who by right are only to sit in Council and such Presbyters as have sat and acted there did it only as their Substitutes and by virtue of their deputation receive their Power either from the Presbyters and Deacons or which is worse from the Laity
Keys delivered unto them and thereby were invested in their Persons with the Ministerial Authority yet upon the same terms it must be farther proved That it was Christ's Intention that the same power should continue in their Successors or it makes no more to the purpose for a settled Ministery than it does for a fixed Episcopacy and this same Argument which overthrows a Superiority of Church-men over one another for want of an Express of Christs intention to continue it always overthrows also the Ministry it self both having the same bottom and alike promises This the Independant and Socinian saw and consider'd full well and upon your own grounds reject them both together with the two Sacraments because there are no express Texts declaring their Perpetuity But this is agreeable enough with the Rector of Sutton who as he makes all Gospel-Laws for Church-Government an Escheat to Westminster-Hall so is he to be supposed to receive none as perpetually obliging except those that are made and conveyed in the Hall-Phrase and by its Precedents with an express Declaration Entailing them upon the Heirs and Successors for ever But because Apostolical practice still presses you hard whose force apart from the Act and Donation of our Saviour seems to infer a divine Right the matter of Fact being apparent and beyond contradiction That the Apostles were invested with a Superiority beyond Bishops and Presbyters and did accordingly execute it Hereupon with a deep design but very Superficial Policy that is easily seen through and baffled you place their juridical consistorial Acts and Practices amongst those other Acts and Practices of theirs that were purely occasional and with regard to the present times and circumstances such as abstaining from Blood and things strangled eating or not eating the order of Widows the Love-Kiss Celibacy St. Paul's working with his own Hands Preaching the Gospel freely Circumcising Timothy c. all which are confessedly mutable and did alter in a very little time both in their Practice and Obligation But your Error is not only in ranging these quite different Practices under the same head and order whose distant natures are so plain and obvious but in that you do not consider that the Lord's Day and Infant-Baptism will for the same reason come under that head of Indifferencies and Practices mutable and therein besides the ill consequences in Religion you plainly contradict your self who tell us at the same time and in the same Section and in doing of it dart your self through with your own Weapon That tho' there be no particular express Revelation for the Lord's Day and Infant-Baptism yet Practice Apostolical or of Persons guided by an Infallible Spirit is sufficient to enact and declare them perpetually obliging For surely Apostolical practice guided by an infallible Spirit is equally manifest son a Superiority in the Ministry as for those two It is far more notorious and frequent but your Plot that was laid against the Immutability of Episcopacy engaged you to take no notice of it vid. Part I. Sect. 3. Part. II. § 20. Farther yet That you may be every ways secure in your design and wholly baffle and defeat all Plea for a divine and immutable Right from Apostolical Practice in the point of Episcopacy you go on in a sure way treading Antiquity under your Foot and impleading the most holy Primitive Bishops and Confessors of Defectiveness Ambiguity Partiality and Repugnancy that hereby you may root out their Order and destroy it from the Face of the Earth and you say in so many words That we cannot have that certainty of Apostolical Practice as to constitute a Divine Right It is not my business to argue points but to collect your particular Opinions or rather to write the History of your Theology otherwise I might here reply by demanding How and by what hands it is that we have any certainty of the Apostolical Writings or know their minds and intentions there The Church hath all along received the Canon and Sense of the Scriptures from the Faith and certainty of Antiquity and the repute and integrity of these holy Bishops Martyrs and Confessors Our Church of England certainly does so and they are her Rule in Reforming as to both and when the Authority of some Books of the New Testament were called in question the Tradition of Faith alone declared them Canonical and they remain such upon that Testimony in the account of the whole Christian World to this day And why then is the same evidence defective and less authoritative concerning their practice and sense in the point of Government But thus you expose the Scriptures their Authority their Sense to every Atheist and Enthusiust to uncertainties and conjectures or at the best to the intemperance of each violent heady and sceptical undertaker And thus it comes to pass that so much work is made for a Nicephorus Calisthus a Simeon Metaphrastes the very Jacobus de Voragine of the Greek Church those Tinkers that think to mend a hole and make three instead of it you taking away hereby the great evidence and muniments of our Christianity both as to the matter of Fact and the intent of it that which is next to the Foundation is cast down and what can the Righteous do Hence so many Whimsies and Forgeries of Mens Brains and monstrous Opinions fill up our Bodies of Divinity and your many forms of Government as by Divine Right are no less portentous than any of them as Geographers do Maps with some fabulous Creatures of their own Inventions Our Church of England I say in her Reformation supposes certainty and sufficiency in the Records of the Primitive Church and that matter of Fact is faithfully transmitted down unto us with the true sense of the Scriptures and Apostolical Practice both in matter of Doctrine and Government and her Reformation is receiv'd by the Civil Power and made Law in the Kingdom upon these terms alone viz. As bottom'd on the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament and what the Catholick Fathers and ancient Bishops have thence collected particularly in the Four first General Councils or any other Council X. Elizabethae Cap. I. Sect. xxxvi And yet upon a Scandalous Interpretation of Eusebius Hist Eccles Lib. 3. Cap. 4. perverting his Sense quite contrary to his plain words and design which is to set forth the Succession of Bishops immediately from the Apostles over the known Parts of Christendom you blast the credit of all Antiquity and that with as much show of rancor and contempt as the scornfullest manner of expressing your self can declare What becomes then with our Rector of Sutton of our unquestionable Line of Succession of Bishops of several Churches and the large Diagram made of Apostolical Churches with every ones name set down in his order as if the Writer had been Clarenceaux to the Apostles themselves Is it come to this at last that we have nothing certain but what we have in the Scriptures And must then
the agreement of it in making the Foundations of its being that is Believing in Christ and walking in him to be the grounds of its Communion From whence it necessarily follows that whatsoever Church imposeth the belief of other things as necessary Articles of Faith and not only agreements for the Churches Peace which were not so antecedently necessary to the being of the Catholick Church doth as much as in it lies break the Vnity of it and those Churches who desire to preserve its Vnity are bound thereby not to have Communion with it so long as it doth so To which you add That nothing ought to be imposed as a necessary Article of Faith to be believed by all but what may be evidently propounded to all persons as a thing which God did require the explicite belief of As also That nothing ought to be required as a necessary Article of Faith but what hath been believed and received for such by the Catholick Church of all Ages All which whoso please may read more at large from Page 48. to Page 57. I having only digested it and put in as narrow a room and with as much perspecuity as I could For since the rule is He that gives must take I venture to be so bold as to tell you It is there all along very roughly and incoherently both as to matter and form even contradictorily put together by you tho' not altogether so unintelligibly but that it is plain and evident that you have quite overthrown the Jesuite For as I said before If all Articles of Faith necessary to Salvation be antecedent to the being of the Church and its Governors the Pastors of it they cannot then how great soever that Power is wherewith they are enstated by Christ be conceived to have created any one of them But the main doubt is How you will answer for those many and palpable injuries our common Christianity suffers thereby and rescue your self from the perverser conclusions which are the immediate result of your Arguing As 1. That a Man may be a Christian and not a Church Member 2. That true Faith and Obedience may be attained out of the Church 3. That the being of the Church is not necessary to Salvation 4. That the Church is a subsequent Combination for Acts of Worship 5. That Church Officers are not of the essence of the Church 6. That the exercise of the Communion of the Catholick Church adds only to her perfection And by consequence 7. That the Church doth not cease to be a Church without it any other ways than a Man ceaseth to be a Man without a Hand or a Foot. 8. That the Union of the Catholick Church depends upon its agreement in the Foundation or in that assent and belief which is antecedaneous unto it Or thus 9. That Schism which is a breach of the Churches Union does not relate to Church Officers in their Church Laws and Canons 10. That all necessary Articles of Faith are antecedent to the Catholick Church and consequently that Article of the Holy Catholick Church in our Creed 11. That the being of a Ministry is not the object of a Christian Man's Faith so as necessarily to be believed by him 12. That that Church which imposeth it as such as much as in it lies breaks the Unity of the Church And other Churches are not bound to have Communion with it so long as it does so 13. That the Church Explanations of Faith are not a necessary object of Faith. 14. That the Church ought not to explicate any one Article of Faith or deliver and recommend it in any other words for the assent of Faith than those we find in Scripture 15. That when any such Explication of Faith is made it must be made evident to all persons that God did command that Explication and require the explicite belief of it 16. That the determinations of Faith made by any Council but more particularly by the Four first General Councils are an Usurpation and Imposition upon Christendom because there is no Declaration of God's will that those higher Articles should be so explained and imposed on Christians as in those Councils they are determined 17. That Athanasius and the Homoousians were the imposers upon the Church of God in that great Controversie betwixt them and the Arians 18. That Universality as to persons time and place is not that which makes a necessary Article of Faith because all necessary Articles of Faith are supposed by you to have been antecedent to the Catholick Church as to persons time and place and consequently you must either say That the Article of the Catholick Church is no necessary Article or object of Faith or those conditions are not necessary to the making such 19. That the placing some Books of the New Testament in the Canon which were not once there for some time of the Church is an imposition 20. That all the Laws and Definitions of the Church concerning the highest Articles of Faith oblige no otherwise than when concerning an ordinary Ceremony 21. That there is no more guilt in denying the Doctrine of one Substance than in not standing up when the Nicene Creed is said supposing that a Rubrick hath injoyned it 22. That the Church of England hath put the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds into her Church service and enjoined them for an instance of her Confession of Faith when she does not require that we believe them or if she do she goes beyond her Authority 23. That she greatly erres not only in imposing the Athanasian Creed for our Confession of Faith which either she does not require us to believe or if she does we ought not to believe but turns out the Apostles Creed upon certain days to bring that in its room 24. That her breach of trust together with the affront is much more unpardonable because the Athanasian Creed is commanded to be said in the room of the Apostles on the highest days and in the highest Offices of our Christian Service and Worship viz. The great Festivals of the Year as Christmas-day Easter-day Ascension-day Whitsunday Trinity-Sunday when a more particular signal Confession of our Faith with the greatest Zeal and Ardency Courage and Resolution is implied to be a Christian Man's Duty And lastly That herein and hereby you give support and countenance to the many Sectaries that are among us as Anabaptists Socinians Independents Quakers who upon these very grounds that you have laid down to oppose the Church of Rome quite fling off the Ministry or Church of God as altogether useless as to its publick Acts of Worship or Decrees and Declarations Or else they to be sure look upon it as that which cannot be supposed absolutely necessary to Salvation And indeed the consequence comes unavoidable upon you for if that which is necessary to the Salvation of all Men be antecedent to Church Society or Ecclesiastical Communion and attainable without it you will find very little left whereby to
Tradition be our rule to interpret Scripture by An excellent way to find out the truth doubtless to bend the Rule to the crooked Stick to make the Judge stand to the Opinion of his Lacquey what Sense he shall pass upon the Cause in question to make Scripture to stand Cap in Hand to Tradition to know whether it may have leave to speak or no. Are all the great out-crys of Apostolical Tradition of personal Succession of unquestionable Records resolved at last into Scripture it self by him from whom these long Pedegrees are fetcht Then let Succession know its place and learn to veil Bonnet to the Scriptures and withal Let Men take heed of over-reaching themselves when they would bring down so large a Catalogue of single Bishops from the first and purest times of the Church For if Eusebius professeth it so hard to find them well might Scaliger then complain that the Interval from the last Chapter of the Acts to the middle of Trajan in which time Quadratus and Ignatius began to flourish was tempus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Varro speaks a meer Chaos of time filled up with rude conceptions of Papias Hermes and others who like Hannibal when they could not find a way through would make one either by force or fraud Rare embellishments of stile and choice Oratory all along When others plead for a Succession of Persons in Apostolical Power out of Irenaeus and Tertullian you shuffle them of and say That those Fathers are to be interpreted of Succession in that Apostolical Doctrine which was so eminent and notorious at Rome Smyrna Corinth Philippi and Ephesus Now you deny the truth of Succession as to Doctrines also but you are in an high strain of Oratory which is a kind of natural Enthusiasm or worse and your indisposition plainly appears in that you give such grave advice to these traditional Doctors that they place not Succession before the Scriptures You can only mean that they deduce it not from Felix or Pontius Pilate Annas and Caiaphas the High-Priests or the Jewish Sanhedrim And have not Scaliger and you finely combined together in giving a Character of the times immediately after the Apostles as filled only with fraud and force And for this reason alone Lest an unquestionable Succession of Bishops from the Apostles should appear and their Divine Right become thereby undeniable vid. Iren. p. 2. c. 6. § 15 16 17. Besides it hence plainly appears what your purpose was in writing this Treatise in that you have sided all along with the foreign Divines and used their Arguments against the Divine Right of Episcopacy It is the common policy when Men design to devest any Person or Order of that superior power which they cannot well bear or rather desire to have enstated on themselves first to set up for a level and the Project works mightily Thus we know the thing aimed at in the beginning of the great Rebellion here in England was That the King Lords and Commons were three equal States And when by this stratagem they had wrested the King's Prerogative out of his hands they then soon made themselves uppermost assumed and appropriated that very power they had so violently contended against as what ought not to be fixed except in the three Estates in conjunction So here your sham is That all forms of Government are equally practicable no one being of Divine Right in that nature as to exclude another but any one may be established as Persons Times and Places accord thereunto But then your Eisotericks or that which you effectually recommend to your particular Friends and Confidents is The perpetual fixation of the Presbyter as by Divine Right unalterable and having hereby lowered the Bishops top-sail in your own expression and removed from him all that which hath been heretofore appropriated to his Order asserting him to be an accidental humane creation only in this Stirrup the Presbyter sets his foot and ascends as the Assembly-men did at Westminster You invest him with the full power of Order and Jurisdiction and accordingly thus determine Part II. c. 4. § 12. That every Presbyter from Christ and perpetually fixed Cap. 2. hath the whole Ministry derived unto him in actu primo habitualiter viz. The Power of Preaching the Word Visiting the Sick Administring the Sacraments of Visiting Churches Taking care that particular Pastors do their duty of Ordination and Church Censures and making Rules for Decency in the Church The severest Asserter of Episcopal Power cannot invest his Bishop in more And the same in effect you say over again That every Presbyter whom you call a fixed Officer in the Church hath a radical intrinsecal Power of Order in himself And further That every one being himself advanced into the Authority of a Church Governor hath an internal Power of conferring the same upon Persons fit for it and accordingly every one did exercise this Power in the Churches first State and Period or In the first Primitive Church before the Jurisdiction of Presbyters was restrain'd by mutual consent by way of accumulation upon one Person of a power more than he had not by a deprivation of themselves of that inherent Power which they enjoy'd It would be very strange that any Officers of a Religious Society should be upon that account Out-lawed of those natural Liberties which are the results and products of the free actings pag. 252. To which you add That whole Churches and Nations were without Bishops for several Years together some of which had only Presbyters at their first Planting and in those Churches where Episcopal Government was setled Ordination by Presbyters was look'd upon as valid notwithstanding which could not be unless their Ordainers had an intrinsecal Power of Ordination or had they not been a fixed Order under no prohibition by Scripture Part II. c. 6. § 13. pag. 273 275. cap. 7. § 6 7. In all which I say whatever you have pretended against the divine perpetual Right of any one individual Government that the Bishop might fall with more gentleness and plausibility You set up a fixed lasting Government in the Church by Presbyters as unalterable as the Ministry it self in whom you place the whole Power of the Ministry never to be alienated or lost by any authority or under any accident they receiving this Power with their Ordination in actu primo habitualiter radicaliter intrinsically and their execution of it is effectual at any time and in any place even to Ordination it self and the Church hath approved and accepted of it as when Paphnutius tho' but a Presbyter Ordain'd Abbot Daniel and Colluthus Ischyras c. pag. 379. And hereby you give to many of the principal Patrons of the Presbyterian Parity as Calvin Beza Chamier Gersom Bucer Du Moulin even Salmasius Blondel and Daillée what they desire and contend for they having all along allowed of our Hierarchy upon your terms And all the advantage the Church of England receives by the Irenicum