made on the Scripture His rejecting 3ly the Authority of the preâ—â—â—â— Church not displeasing to many as yeilding much comfort to great sinners and relaxing strict life the next thing which followed was the throwing off his Obedience to her Authority But this by certain degrees Questioned for his Doctrines and upon this cited to Rome he made friends to have his cause heard in Germany Heard and condemned in Germany by Card. Cajetan for one a moderate and learned Prelate he now appealed to Rome and to the Pope But well perceiving also that his doctrine would be most certainly condemned there as it was he suddenly intercepted this Appeal with another see Adams vit Luth. opera Luth. 1. tom made from the Pope to a Council But perceiving that neither thus the usual former laws of Councils being observed or only this law of all Assemblies that the much major part shall conclude the whole his doctrine could stand as indeed it did not he appeals yet again from Councils to Scripture where now he knew himself safe as any Heresy tho never so absurd would be in chusing that to be the Judge or decider of the Controversie which could never deliver any new sentence on any side and concerning the meaning of whose former sentence is the present Controversy But if he means here an Appeal to the Scriptures i.e. to that which either Christian Princes or the common professors of Christianity in general for such he names for his Judges sometimes shall declare to be the true sense of them here first it seems unreasonable concerning the meaning of God's Word to prefer the judgment of the Laity before that of the Clergy of the Churches subjects before that of their Governours Secondly Thus also his cause is lost for after all his allegations of Scripture produced and divulged in his writings the Princes and the Common people also of Christianity that condemn his doctrine did then and do still very much out-number those who approve it § 15. n. 1 The 4th his dâ—nying the then present to be a true Church or the Clergy thereof a true Ministry affirming â—he Pâ—pe to be Antichrist He stayed not here only in an absolute disobedience not only of non-assent but also of open contradiction to all Church-authority but proceeded so much farther as to deny the present visible Church or that of many former Ages to be a true Church he De judicio Ecclesiae de quavis doctrina making this the only note of the true Church that therein the Gospel be purely and sincerely preached or to have in it any true Clergy or Ministry And again from this defect of a true Clergy he argued that there had bin formerly in celebrating the Eucharist no true Consecration of the Elements for operating the presence of the Body and blood of Christ tho the mean-while he justified his own and his Disciples Consecration to be effectual herein and therefore that the people had continually committed idolatry in worshipping the naked bread as Christ's Body This urged to him as he saith De Missa privata unctione Sacerdot by the Devil to reduce him for many years guilty of such Non-consecrations to despair he assented to and afterwards maintained Next from this he made yet a further discovery of the chief Bishop in the Church the Pope his being Antichrist the Bishops his Apostles and the Universities his Lupanaria or Brothel-houses for the Universities much afflicted him § 15. n. 2 the 5th his rejecting the authority also of the fâ—rmer and ancient Church Councils Fathers Thus having cast off blasted and defied to the uttermost all present church-Church-Authority next sollicited that at least concerning the sense and meaning or right exposition of the Scriptures he would stand to the judgment of the ancient Church and be tryed by it This also he expresly renounced frequently vilifying the doctrine of the Fathers their weak interpretations of Scriptures and accusing them of many errors and contradictions § 16 Some Instances and testimonies 1. Concerning hâ—s rejecting the presâ— t church-â—â—â—hoâ—ity For these things it were easie to produce out of his Writings a multitude of testimonies For the newness of his opinions and his marching alone against the Doctrines of present and former Church he every where acknowledgeth it not to say glorieth in it as a thing arguing his singular illumination and wisdom Nay Erasmus Ep. to Justus Jonas saith it was observed of him That where he agreed in Sense yet he strove to express himself contrary to the former usual doctrine Aiunt Lutherum aliquoties quum eadem doceat quae caeteri tamen verbis ipsis id videri conari ut diversissima videatur adferre as particularly appears in his Expositions of some of his condemned assertions Assertio Articulorum See his book de Captivitate Babylonica in the entrance of his discourse on the Mass where Rem arduam saith he quam forte sit impossibile convelli aggredior ut quae tanto saeculorum usu firmata omniumque consensu probata sic insedorit ut necesse sit majorem partem librorum qui hodie regnant pene universam Ecclesiarum faciem tolli mutari penitusque aliud genus caeremoniarum induci seu potius reduci Sed majori cura verbum Dei oportet observare quam omnium hominum Angelorum intelligentias A hard and perhaps unfeisible task the abolishing that which being ratified by the practice of so many ages and approv'd by general consent is at length so settled that the greatest part of books now in vogue nay almost the whole face of the Church must be taken away and chang'd and quite another kind of ceremonies induc'd or rather reduc'd But the word of God is more to be regarded than all the wit of men or Angels And in his Preface to his book de abroganda Missa privata Quot medicamentis saith he quam potentibus evidentissimis Scripturis meam iâ— sius conscientiam vixdum stabilivi aut auderem unus contradicere Papae credere eum esse Antichristum Episcopos ejus esse Apostolos Academias esse ejus Lupanaria quoties mihi palpitavit tremulum cor reprehendens objecit eorum fortissimum c. With how many powerful remedies and most evident Scriptures and yet all little enough to my wavering conscience did I bring my self at length to dare one single man to contradict the Pope and believe him to be Antichrist the Bishops his Apostles the Universities his Brothel-houses How often have I trembl'd and quak'd for fear and chidingly objected to my self that their strongest and onely argument Are you alone in the right Is all the world besides in the wrong In the Preface to his book Adversus falso nominatum Ordinem Episcoporum he as it were repenting of his former respects thus defies them and withdraws his doctrine from theirs and all humane cognizance and censure Jam ante pronuncio me de câ—tero quandoquidem
may they be so amongst such reformed as have since cast off and renounced many of Luther's more malignant doctrines and especially his Solifidian error Which Reformed methinks should have a great jealousie of the rest that were taught by him whom they have found miscarrying in so fundamental a point and that which was the first stone that he laid of the Reformation See before § 3. c. yet so far may their other errors be rationally conceived to retard and hinder even the very best amongst them as never to equal in sanctity the lives of those holy men that enjoy the light and guidance of the Catholick Faith § 61 The several bad fruits springing from Luther's doctrine that presently appeared and were confessed â—n his own time According to these positions if we examin concerning Luther's Doctrine what fruit it brought forth and that in his own time for it becomes not me to make a scrutiny further when it spread over Kingdoms or to compare and decide the holiness of Nations according to their present various professions of Religion if we enquire I say in his own time what fruit it bare especially in respect of the four main heads thereof in his gross way of delivering of them 1. The Nullity and Antichristianism of the former Ecclesiastical Prelacy and Clergy and the non-obligation of their Constitutions and Laws 2. The inutility of Works of Penance Mortifications c. 3. The Servitude of man's Will and inability to good even in the Regenerate 4. The sole Sufficiency of Faith in us for our Justification and this Faith an assurance that Christ's merits are applied to us in particular and that we in particular are justified by them and that every one by believing he is justified truly becomes so To which may be annexed his holding a parity of future glory to all justified and one in Heaven as great as another without consideration of their own different good works or sufferings in this present life We shall find in the effect as in reason it could not be otherwise That out of the first of these the band of Ecclesiastical Authority being dissolved sprang immediately a multitude of Sects invading one another as well as all of them the Church many gross Heresies and grievous Schisms and Seditions even sober Protestants being the judges here of all which must needs be accompanied with a strange spiritual or intellectual pride in thinking themselves wiser men and better interpreters of the Scriptures than their spiritual Superiours than the Doctors Fathers and Councils of the Church both of the present and many former ages And that out of the three latter people from them discovering no great utility or necessity of our own either penal or pious works grew a great dissoluteness of life on one hand and great worldliness and covetousness and its daughter oppression on the other as not believing that the laying out of their goods here could purchase for them a treasure in another place but rather such works of their own diminish their confidence in Christ's works and so ruin their Justification and cast them our of the Evangelical into the Legal Covenant § 62 For these fruits appearing in his followers see the testimonies alledged before § 7. and amongst the rest the witness of Luther himself the thing he confessed but the cause thereof he made to be the peoples or their Reformed teachers ignorance and mistaking of his Doctrines how truly this latter let the indifferent judg by what hath bin here before produced out of him writings for which review his propositions before § 3. And see Dr. Hammond's description of the natural fruits and effects that must needs grow out of one of his tenents the Solifidian error Of Fundamentals 〈◊〉 13. The summe of which is That such a one by his full assurance as it excludes all fear and doubting of his estate and also asserts the priority of such an assurance and faith before his repentance or amendment of life is fortified and secured by this one deceit from all obligation to superstruct Christian practice or holy living upon such his faith For if assurance of his good estate be the one thing necessary then nothing else that is distinct from it as a good life is affirmed to be is so And if his estate be already safe and if it be not then his believing it so is believing a lye then it needs no supply from a good life at all to make it a safe estate or to give him grounds to believe it such Nor if he be justified before he amends his life can this hinder the continuing of his Justification or intercept his Salvation if he shall never amend it especially when it is said by them that the once justified can never be unjustified Nor will this amendment and good life be necessary tho not to his Justification yet to the approving of it or of his faith to himself or others because his faith being a full assurance includes this approbation of his Justification to himself and the approbation of it to others must needs be a thing extrinsecal and impertinent to his Justification nor can man's disapproving it any way annull it c. See the Author Again For the mustiplying of Sects by throwing off the yoke of Ecclesiastical Government without casting off which Luther could not have made way for his own Sect nor could he find any reason he doing no miracles whereby to stop this gap made by him to all men besides himself Luther acknowledged no less than twenty sprung up in his own days see § 22. One of them concerning the ten Commandements that they ought to be taken out of the Church and indeed all the use of the observance of them that Luther taught was only for signs and testimonies of a true faith Ex operibus te Deus judicabit saith he id est si credideris See before § 3. And another of them concerning a fained faith of which new doctrine he saith that it was pejor omni errore qui ante hoc tempus unquam fuit See before § 7. And by reason of these Sects following his Reformation so close at the heels and in some piece or other thereof supplanting it he often foretold that the true Religion i. e. his should not continue long after his death but if so it cannot be the true Religion for against this we are certain the Gates of Hell shall never prevail or Sects abolish it See his Colloquies c. 44. of Seducers Who would have thought saith he of that mischievous Sect the Antinomians I have out-lived and endured three abominable tempests Munster the Antinomians and the Anabaptists Now seeing they are stilled and gone no such matter others do approach insomuch that there will be no end in writing how should there where no Judg to decide matters I desire no longer to live for there is no more hope of peace Ancient Bernard said well We should preach of four particulars of
have no force in them besides strong calumnies and merciless reprehensions but also out of his citations and perverse using of Scripture that he is not grounded upon any solid foundation For he brings so many weak and absurd sentences to confirm his doctrine that if they were true and infallible all the knowledg we have of God would become obscure all the authority of Scripture would be called in question § 27 3. Concerning the instability of his doctrine Concerning the instability and fluctuation of his doctrine notwithstanding that whatever he held for the present of that he was most certainly assured thus Hospinian Histor Sacram. parte altera fol. 4. Per totam vitam tam varius sibi dissimilis fuit in Articulo de persona Christi praesertim autem de sacra ejus Coena ut minimum quinque sententiae de illa in scriptis ipsiusreperiantur through his whole life he was so various and contrary to himself in that Article concerning the person of Christ especially touching his last Supper that you may see in his writings at least five different opinions about it And so 12. Eadem varietas inconstantia crebra tanquam tempestatum sic sententiarum commutatio in aliis quoque de Sacramento Eucharistiae articulis apud Lutherum in suis scriptis invenitur The same variety and inconstancy and change of doctrines as of the winds may be found in Luther's other writings concerning other articles of the Sacrament of the Eucharist So fol. 8 9. he observes that he persecutes those Expositions of our Lord's words Jo. 6. Caro non prodest quidquam ' the flesh avails nothing and of St. Paul 1 Cor. 10. Panis quem frangimus the bread which we break when these brought against him by his Reformed adversaries Carlostade and Zuinglius which himself formerly gave against the Papists and so he observes fo 12. that when he was in contention with the Sacramentaries tanto impetu ab illis quibus indignabatur deflexit utâ—rursus ad ipsam usque Transubstantiationem quam sub Papatu approbarat postea de ea dubitarat tandem abjecerat tanquam fluctus marinus ad scopulos allisus revolveretur Cum autem urgebatur c. Corporis Christi tum demum potius quam se victum fateretur in mediam paludem ubiquitariam se praecipitem dabat from those he was incensed against he flung away with that violence that he even cast himself again upon Transubstantiation which when a Papist he had approved afterwards called in question and lastly thrown away tossed thus to and fro like the waves of the Sea rolling to and dashed from the rocks And again when he was urged with Christ's body c. rather than seem overcome he would cast himself headlong into the abyss of the Ubiquitarians The same thing Zuinglius complains of in his Preface to his answer to Luther's Confession Contentionis aestu eo se abripi patitur ut ea quae ante pie simul bene tradita ab ipso sunt potius subvertere velit negare quam ab instituto suo vel latum unguem cedere He suffers himself to be so carried away with the spirit of contention that rather than yeild a hairs breadth he would deny and subvert what he had well and piously established before This from § 21. of Luther's great confidence or certainty in his own opinions attempting upon it such bold Reformations and of his violent condemning of all Adversaries and Anti-doctrines whatever and of the small reason which his own fellow-Reformers conceived he had for either of these § 28 9th His fiâ—rce contentious â—rd railing spiriâ— discovered in all his controversy-writings From this Self-presumption of his also is discovered in all his writings that amaritudo ira indignatio clamor mentioned by the Apostle Eph. 4.31 a most strange quarrelsom reviling stile fierce and impatient of any coercion or contradiction not sparing his Spirituâ—l Mother the Church that brought him forth nor his Spiritual Fathers that made him a Christian a Priest He the first that so openly pronounced the present Catholick Church the Whore of Babylon and the Bishop of Rome the prime Patriarch therein Antichrist the Bishops Antichrist's Apostles the Universities Stews See the railings of his Book entitled Contra falso-nominatum Ordinem Episcoporum Not sparing the Supream Civil Magistrates not Kings See the Railings of his book written against Hen. 8th not sparing his younger brethren of the Reformation and his own disciples when they modestly taking that liberty in some things to dissent again from him which himself formerly had taken to dissent from the whole Church-Catholick and excepting their difference in judgment as to some points otherwise by all possible means courting his friendship See the Railings of his Confessio magna and parva written against them Above all not sparing his brethren the Religious into whose bosom and education very pious if we may believe himself he was so charitably received in his youth In whom notwithstanding he censures and every where declames against actions and works externally good as their fastjngs watchings Single life strict obedience to their Superiours commands often reiterated prayers c. as done out of hypocrisy with much inward diffidentia dubitatione pavore odio blasphemia Dei to use his own words and this because they wanted his new faith done with an intention of meriting their salvation by them and not expecting as the Remission of their other sins so of the imperfections of these very works through Christ's passion and merits their Celibacy as lived-in with all uncleanness of spirit tho he confessed his own when a Monk void of any such stain their prayers as said or repeated by rote without any inward attention of mind accompanying them things of which he could have no knowledge and out of charity ought to have judged the contrary or if by some outward circumstances he might discover the intentions of some yet from this could have no sufficient ground to charge all and to inveigh as he doth at a Monastick life in general upon this score that their good works yet were not well or rightly done by them § 29 For this great fault when much reproached by his Enemies and often admonished by his friends instead of amending it sometimes he justified it by the example of our Lord calling the Jews an adulterous generation a generation of vipers children of the Devil and of St. Paul calling his Adversaries Dogs foolish talkers seducers unlearned imo qui saith he Act. 13.9 10. sic invehatur in Pseudoprophetam ut videri possit insanus So sharply enveighs he against the false Prophet Act. 13.9 10. that one would think him mad vid. Melch. Adams vit Luther p. 191. and opera Luth. tom 1. Ep. p. 291. That is a private Presbyter when reproaching all his Superiours and Governours the Bishops and Fathers of the Church justifying it by the Lord of heaven and earth and who seeth