G. D. My Noblest Lord and most honoured Friend MY unsteady abode in the town and frequent suddain excursions out of it of late have cast me so far behinde-hand with your Lordship not onely for what civility requireth of me but for what duty bindeth me unto as I was grown to a belief that I could make no other amends for my long silence but by coming on purpose to Sherburn to you to excuse it And therefore out of an ill bashfulness I forbore acknowledging my fault by Letter referring that till I was in state to repair it by mine own personal attendance But that being not likely to fall out so soon I being to go to morrow to my Mothers and thence to my own house for some weekes and I having lately received a picture from my Lord Russel with command to send it as soon as I could to your Lordship I durst not make that a prisoner till I got liberty my selfe to wait upon you By which means I am engaged without being able to defer it any longer to give you humble thanks for your letter of the second of November and to crave your pardon that I came thus late to doe it So sudden and distracted an houre as I have now to write in would deterre me from offering at any return to so obliging and judicious a Letter till I had a greater freedom both of time and thoughts But I can never be taken unprovided for the first part my sincere affection to your Lordship and sence of your favours ever outweighing any other humane object that may busie my mind for the second of answering your judicious objections I shall confide more for the solution of them in your owne calme and impartiall reflections upon them then in ought I shall be able to reply Therefore had I never so much time I would for this intent imploy it onely in reducing the matters into your remembrance and intreating you to commit the appearances on both sides fairly one against another into the balances and let your owne Reason hold the Scale which I must acknowledge with excesse of joy to be the strongest and most sincere that I know in any man I should begin the performance of this task with complaining to your Lordship in the Fathers behalfe and representing their grievances to your Lordship that you are so rigorous to them as to exclude them from being witnesses in matters of Religion Their humility as well of understanding as of manners will not let them be troubled when they are recused as Judges They never pronounce any thing out of their own breasts unto which they will confine other mens assents But when they tell you plainly what they were taught and what they sinde believed and practised generally throughout the whole Church have they not reason to take it unkindly to be rejected If you will examine their veracity by al those circumstances that are usually considered in taking mens depositions you will find them strong on their side They were right honest men not onely believed but known to be such by all the world They are acknowledged on all hands to be so judicious as would more blemish ones owne judgement then theirs but to cal it in question What they wrote of are matters belonging to their own Art and Trade in which surely they would have great care and attention not to mistake since their own and their posterities eternall salvation depended on it Since then there is will and ability to inform us of truth why should we suspect them What can appeare stronger to us in opposition of what they deliver as witnesses to make us doubt their evidence and consequently to brand them with the imputation of falshood and ignorance flattering our selves that new and clearer lights shine to us and that we know more then they Their private opinions for the establishing of which your Lordship saith you discover too prone a Bias in most of their evidence doe not interest our beliefs in such poynts we are as free as they Nor can I believe so ill of any of them as to make those to passe for currant they would stamp upon them the seale of being taught from hand to hand and of tradition from Christ and his Apostles and of the generall and uncontrouled beliefe and practise of the Church or if they did certainly their numerous adversaries would not have let such foul play scape their note It is true they were ever as your Lordship observes earnest and severe against them who were such as if they had been mild against their Heresies they would never have gained the name of Fathers and Pillars of the Church nor have been reverenced as Saints by succeeding Ages The faction and sectary-passion that your Lordship remarketh even neer the springs of verity belongeth onely to their adversaries their warmth is just and due zeale And for those three Fathers of whom your Lordship sayes that we as well as you may allow them an Expurgator I professe my slender reading never met to my best remembrance with any doctrine of faith in them that I doe not entirely assent unto In the next place my Lord I must cleare what I mean by the infallible Authority from whence the Fathers derived what they were taught which I distinguished against what of themselves they teach Of this later sort are the reflections that they make upon the Scriptures when in their Comments or Sermons they deliver to us what occurred to them in the interpretation of the Texts of it And when they are but barely such I conceive they are to have no more weight with those that have ability to examine them then the reasons wherewith they are accompanied do give them But the other points of Doctrine I take to have been taught by Christ to his Apostles and by them preached through the world and then again delivered to the ensuing age by them that had these points inculcated into their hearts by the Apostles and in this manner with care and every where handed over from age to age which upon particular occasions the Fathers used to sum up and produce against Innovators that would make breaches upon the ancient and generally received Faith of the Church Doctrines thus delivered I conceive to be derived from infallible Authority as well as the Scriptures and withall that it is so safely conveyed to us as we are as deeply obliged to beleeve it as what the Scriptures teach us and in governing the tenor of our Faith to give them much the precedency Because by such Tradition we are fully plainly and practically taught how to understand it and the business and errand of it is to deliver it so unto us whereas the causes of writing the particular Books of Scripture were for other particular ends and not to give us a compleat body of Faith And those Articles of it that they do deliver us are not so plainly expressed that every body can understand them So that if
sence of the Church I must not admit of that marke whilst you are proving the Churches receptions by theirs and therefore if you please let us both agree that for either of us there is no resolving evidence to be taken from the Fathers that are so irresolute themselves when you meet with a passage in any of them that stands not with your belief conceive their judgement not ripe or rotten when they writ it or that their recantations are lost the same liberty shall I take in mine for truly had Saint Austins admirable monument of humble ingenuity as well as high erudition his Retractations perished as Origens which as Saint Ierome saith he had made in an Epistle to Fabian Bishop of Rome Epist 65. ad Pamach et Occan. did before him Saint Austin might perhaps have had a place in some others Catalogue of heretiques as well as Saint Origen in his And truly who can secure us that the like mishap hath not befallen others of the Fathers now taxable with erronious doctrins by the loss perhaps of some after-survey of their own works My Third consideration is of the Fathers variousness and repugnancies to the Government practise and belief of both the Romish Church and ours In which I have prevented the need of examples by many of the instances both of my former Letter and this as that of the equalitie of Bishops Presbyters that of rebaptizing that of Angels that of the Millenaries c. to which I will lonly adde that which so many and most particularly S. Austin delivers of the necessity of childrens partaking of the Eucharist and his rigor against infants unbaptized some of which I take to be beames all more then motes fit to be removed out of their eyes before we can with reason resigne up our own sences to their guidance and manuduction My Fourth concluding reason is the want of ability in many of the Fathers in most of will to determine the points of controversie and this I hope I may safely affirm without wrong either to their abilities or good wills A general and potential ability to resolve difficulties every strong reason includes if in the particulars wherein it should be brought forth unto act there concur upon proposal meanes of informing ones self and a will to use it Such an ability those learned Fathers rich in all the choyce endowments of soule had in most singular eminence and as it were madness to rob them of those so I think it is neither Logicall nor prudential because they were knowing in the general to attribute to them an actual ability to discern such particular questions wherein it is so farr from appearing that they had the means of informing themselves or the will to use them that I see no signes that in their ages they were ever in proposal such and so farr from agitation or controversie the parents that give life and act to particular abilities were as I am perswaded in the primitive times the doctrins of infallibility annexed to a Church of any one denomination of adoring the Eucharist for God of Purgatory with its complements of Indulgences and many other choice points of our controversies All which I profess appear to me as unthought of for the first 500. years after Christ as the Antipodes or the Antartique pole to Lactantius or Justin Martyr that tooke the heavens to be to the earth but as the flat cover of a box In these I take it to be of no more derogation from them to deny their deciding abilities then to say that they were not able to leave to posterity an exact Mapp of America which was not discovered in so many hundred years after so far is it from an injurious detraction that to imagin them studious definitive or active in questions hardly ever moved that had neither profest maintainers or impugners were to imagine them idle and Ayre-beaters No marvail that to decide such they should want wills having neither means nor occasion to actuate their abilities or that they should want abilities having no provocations that might stimulate their wills Those primitive Champions of the Gospel the Fathers of the first 400. years who in this business are most to be consulted with had their time their industry their pens so incessantly exercised against the common enemie of Christ the Jews and Gentiles or else against those heynous heretiques that pretended the name of Christianity but tended to the utter subversion of it as the Ebionites the Samosaterians Gnostiques the Marcionists and divers other blasphemous or Chimerical innovators that they had little leasure to raise to themselves imaginarie enemies to combate with in such slight and trivial points as these we dispute of or if perchance any such were presented little care to subdue them But that I may not be thought to frame a discourse upon two false suppositions The one that our controverted points are of articles of Religion little material the other that in the primitive times there were few of them in agitation or neglected if they were let me tell you what induceth me to think so For the first that they were in themselves little material or at least thought so by the Fathers which is all one for our purpose though now I confess grown highly important by being injoyned many of them under the paine of Anathema's to be believed as essential to salvation I collect out of a survey of all those Antient yea and more modern rolls where it is likely all necessary points of faith or practice would be recorded where finding no newes at all of them I think I may safely conclude them but slight in comparison of what I finde there registred The first and prime inducement to me is that I meet with them no where in Scripture but this is none to you who do not allow that to be the perfect reconditory of all necessary Doctrines The next is that in the Fathers several Catalogues of Hereticks as that of Philastrius Epiphanius and S. Austin I finde none branded with Heresie for not holding those Articles imposed on mens beliefs by the Church of Rome and rejected by ours whose note it is not likely such would have escaped as had impugned any doctrines believed by them necessary to savlation But to this perhaps you will say that the denomination of Heretick was not incurred by the opinions that men held but by their obstinate persisting in such after the Churches manifests against them and that upon this reason divers who beleeved not all things necessary might well miss a place in their denumeration of Hereticks wherefore setting these two aside because though of much force with me yet likely to be invalide with you I onely press upon your consideration my last and I think undeniable reason taken from the non-appearance of such articles in those several pieces wherein the Fathers of set purpose and designe professedly do set down all the essential doctrines of Christianity agreed upon throughout
Faith that you doe not most intirely assent unto For my part I doe not know what you understand by an Article of Faith but I am sure I have cited out of St. Austin of the necessity of Childrens partaking of the Eucharist an Article in this discourse which 't is evident he held as an Article both of necessary faith and practice wherein I believe you will refuse to joyne with him As for Epiphanius his over-sights I referre you onely to the Jesuit Petavius and for Eusebius to Cardinall Perron who casts upon him a trifling aspersion but of Arrianism or if his authority suffice not let Jerome Ep. 65. ad Pamach Oc. be heard who gives him this good testimony Impietatis Arrii apertissimus propugnator est Now to your third and last ground That the traditions of the Church are infallible I say that in part we agree in this point for I am perswaded that no man in his right wits will ever deny the firmest assent he hath about him to traditions of the nature which you Character doctrines taught by Christ to his Apostles and by them preached through the world and then again delivered to the ensuing ages by them that had these points inculcated in their hearts by the Apostles in this manner with care and every where handed over from age to age which upon particular occasions the Fathers used to summe up and produce against innovators that would make breaches upon the ancient and generally received faith of the Church-Traditions of this nature Doctrines thus delivered I say we agree to be derived from infallible Authority as well as the Scriptures and it is indifferent unto me whether I receive the waters of life from the Springs themselves from the originall cisternes and conserves into which they did immediarly flow or else conveyed through Aquiducts at sixteen hundred yeares distance so I be certain of the stanchnesse and purity of the pipes That such traditions and so exactly conveyed there are in the Church and to which is due as to the Scripture from every prudent man how ever a Sophister may cavill the strongest assent of his soule we likewise both agree such are those fore-named grand fundamentals of Christianity we agree further that by tradition we are as you say plainly fully and practifically taught how to understand Scripture I mean in those Fundamentals And much more must I agree with you that the businesse and errand of tradition is to deliver it so unto us since for my part I hold that those dignifying circumstances by which tradition may rightly pretend to be infallible belong onely to such doctrines as are either plainly or by necessary consequences deducibly coucht in Scripture in regard of which deductions we agree further that it cannot be denied but that it is as you say an easier and better rule to guide our understandings in the affairs of religion to use the help of such traditions then to resort for that end unto Scriptures alone as to read a book wherein there are difficulties with a judicious comment is likely to be more profitable then onely to peruse the single Text. And this last I assent unto without admitting of the supposition upon which you inferre it to wit that there can by tradition be had a compleat knowledge of all that Christ taught All this we are of accord in but what can you infer from hence to the advantage of the Romish cause since I peremptorily deny that there is such a qualified tradition really belonging to any Tenent of the Church of Rome disapproved by us or that seale with those quarterings and dignifyings wherewith you blazon it set by any of the primitive Fathers which yet were no sufficient warrant to any doctrine that doth so much as border upon our disputes since then I am sure you directed that part of your Letter to the same purpose that the rest I must answer what I conceive it tends to as well as what directly your words beare And as I have profest wherein we agree so now I must set down in what and why we differ concerning these particulars of Tradition and Scripture There are two principall poynts wherein I dissent from you First that in the generall you conceive all Traditions of the Church whatsoever infallible Secondly that you hold the Scripture to be no compleat body of Faith and therefore that we are to give tradition much the preheminency in governing the tenour of ours For the first namely that all the traditions of the Church are infallible I could by one demand of which is that Church whose traditions are infallible either bring you to our confession that the true Church is to be known meerly by its conformity to Scripture in belief and practice or else into a circle whilst you are forc'd to prove the truth and infallibility of the Church by her constant reception of those true and infallible traditions whose truth and infallibility you are at the same time proving by the Churches constant receiving them But I passe it by because I would not seeme to argue in any wise captiously and also for that Mr. Chillingworth hath already excellently laid open all the intricasies of this labyrinth And therefore taking the present Romish Church for that you mean I proceed to answer your Arguments wherby in your Letter to the Vicountesse of P. to which you referre me you endeavour to prove all doctrines of the Church received or delivered by way of tradition infallible the chiefe that I finde are in the 12 and 13. conclusions as you call them of that treatise where first for proof of your assertions that no false doctrine of Faith whatsoever can be admitted or creep into the Catholick Church you say that whatsoever the present Church beleeveth as a proposition of faith is upon this ground that Christ taught it as such unto the Church he planted himself a special good ground and that will soon end all controversies in this matter if the ground appear to be well grounded and that the Church of Rome which you suppose the present Catholick do never admit any doctrine of Faith but upon that ground But first the ground can never be made good that whatsoever of Faith the Church of Rome teacheth was ab initio so taught by Christ himself And secondly I beleeve that the Church of Rome her self doth not alwayes in all that she teaches for a tradition of Faith suppose that Christ himself did teach the same for this latter part I am better perswaded of the modesty of the Church of Rome then to think that she will so much as pretend it for all her doctrines as for example that of communicating onely in the bread is a tradition for you will not I suppose vouch Scripture for it unless you mean to apply to it Christ's prayer that the Cup might be removed it is a tradition of Faith yea and I think I may say of necessary faith for unless the Communicants
LETTERS BETWEEN The L d GEORGE DIGBY AND Sr KENELM DIGBY kt CONCERNING Religion London Printed for Humphrey Moseley and are to be sold at his Shop at the sign of the Prince's Arms in St Pauls Church-yard 1651. To the Reader IT is no EXCUSE though too often it is made one to tell Thee these LETTERS are now made publick to prevent false Copies for really if you have not these you will be abus'd with others so imperfect and mangled that we may justly pronounce them to be none of the Authors own In Matters of Religion there ought to be greatest care to publish nothing but what is genuine which here without more words thou wilt soon find is faithfully offered thee Farewell LETTERS BETWEEN The L d GEORGE DIGBY AND Sr KENELM DIGBY kt CONCERNING RELIGION My noblest Cousin and dearest friend I Ever thought my self a Rich man in the many testimonies of your favour being perswaded that the authority of your esteeming me may work more upon the World to my advantage then many personall defects of mine own to my prejudice Among my best titles to valuation with Worthy men I treasure up your last Letter expecting to receive thereby as much Credit hereafter as I doe now obligation when those that finde it knowing your eminence and only my name shall happily misconceive my praises there to have bin of your judgement which I must refer meerly to your love and civility Persist I beseech you in the former of these and restrain your self in the excess of the latter permitting and owning me to be your friend without making me mine own flatterer of which I can never come in danger but by your Commendations I think my self as happy to bear the name of your friend and promise to my self as much eternitie by the relation as he who ingraved Sir Philip Sydnie's friendship on his Monument But I must tell you I aspire yet to a farr greater felicity that is to be made worthy of so brave an appellation to which you can best contribute if you please to impart freely to me your own rare abilities and my weaknesses rather then to darken these unto me in exercising but the slightest part that you excell in Courtliness To take you off from this and to engage you in the other give me leave to lay hold on that part of your Letter which concerns my Studies Wherein as your example and advice have ever been my prime directory in the way of them so in the severall judgements of what I read yours must be ever with me of singular Authority Yet in the particular concerning the Fathers I must confess as I came unto them perhaps with different preparations so I have likewise perused many of them with reflections upon their usefulness far differing from those you specifie I am so farr from receiving them as Judges that in many cases I cannot admit them as witnesses Authentick enough whereon to pass a Verdict in Religion I discover methinks too prone a byas in most of their evidence either to the establishing of their own private opinions or to the destruction of their adversaries And this even in the most Primitive of them faction it seems and a kinde of Sectary passion having had as strong though not so various a Current even neer to the very springs of verity as afterward in the remoter Channels as you can much better instance if you please then I out of Eusebius Epiphanius and St Augustin who themselves also as they seem to adhere to the Catholick Church and as the Roman glories in them may well be by both sides allowed an Expurgator For that which you say Secondly that you rely more upon the Fathers for what they tell us they were taught then upon what they teach I profess I should do so too could I be but half so well assured of the first part of your reason namely that the former was derived from an infallible Authority as I am of the other that their own reasons were liable to Error But to tell you true as I can yet finde no reason to make me acknowledge that there is any infallible Authority but only the Scriptures which I conceive is not that you mean so do I finde as little that the Fathers especially those before the first Nicene Councell were perswaded of any such And grant they were I can least of all discern which of the various doctrins they deliver were rightly delivered to them from that unerring authority Since it is apparent methinks that they do teach many uncertainties and errors as Dogmatically and with as solemn confirmations as they do the most authentique truths Hardly shal you find Scripture alledged more frankly by them or the Church tradition proclaimed more lowdly in any point of Faith then by Justin and Tertullian in the rigid censure of the use of Images and in the same Tertullian in affirming Christs descent to free the Patriarks and in these two and divers others the gross assertion of the Angels copulation with women and lastly then in all the Millenaries most confident authorizing of their Judaick doctrine These are perhaps of the slighter instances such as flow easiest into a Letter from a bad memory and yet I pray you resolve me which of them I shall let pass as derived from infallibilitie whether that which our Church approves and the Roman condemns as the first or that which the Roman agrees to and we disallow as the second or the second last which both sides reject I profess I am as yet to distinguish which of them these Fathers meant we should swallow as delivered to them and which chew and consider as onely delivered by them These and many more irreconcileable passages in them have rendred me much alike affected both to what you say they tell us they were taught and to what they teach that is to have my reason as much as I can cleared and enlightened by both but to suffer it to be hoodwinkt and lead implicitly by neither I reverence those holy Fathers as divine establishers of Faith in things where they all concur and where not as happy aides of the understanding and as it were sacred bellowes of the soul whether to make it glow unto contrition and fervor of zeal or to subtilize and exalt it into flames of contemplation It is now high time for me to beg your pardon for having licensed my self so much to your trouble It is an inconvenience drawn upon you by your excess of favour and obligingness that have incouraged me freely to express to your self my ill-digested opinions wherein toward any other I should have been restrained by shame and the consciousness of mine own incapacities but from you I ever promise my self rectifying where from another I might look for contempt All your just censures I am sure will be sweetened instantly by this one consideration that this pennance hath been laid upon you by Noblest Cousin Your faithfull Servant SHERBURN Novemb. 2. 1638.
it be once admitted that by such tradition there can be had in all ages a compleat and true knowledg of what Christ taught it cannot be denied but that it is an easier and better rule to guide our understanding in the affairs of Religion then to resort for that end to the Scripture alone And that such tradition is infallible I have endeavoured to prove in another discourse which your Lordship hath so that I will not trouble you here with any repetitions upon that Subject Now when I wrote to your Lordship my opinion of the use to be made of reading the Fathers relying upon them more for what they were taught then for what they teach it was as taking them for faithful Collectors of the tradition that they found general through the Church in their times and sincere conveyers of them to us And this course you shall finde even among the ancientest of them When St. Austin will establish the doctrine of praying for the dead he telleth that it hath been the practise of the whole Church from the Apostles time The like he doth against the Pelagians and upon several other occasions and directeth us to enquire what faith is professed in the Churches established by the Apostles from whom he reckoneth on the uninterrupted succession of Pastors unto his time And by them he deriveth the present Doctrine from the first preachers who had it immediately from Christ Tertullian when he prescribeth against Heresie giveth you a Catalogue of the Bishops of several Churches from the several Apostles that planted them and with the successions of the persons urgeth the succession in those Churches of the Doctrine he seeketh to establish Irenaeus doth the like and generally all of them which they do not onely when they use those formal positive words that the whole Church hath received from the Apostles and holdeth generally such and such a Doctrine but at other times also when they do but intimate it in their discourses which intimation is such as is easily perceptible to whosoever of judgement shall read them impartially Therefore to summon up as short and as plainly as I can the use as I conceive is to be made of reading the Fathers I say that letting pass what they writ as Commentors upon the Scriptures and as Phliosophers and all which is but as Divines and Schollers we are generally to take hold of what they deliver us as Pastors of the Church which appeareth chiefly by what they writ against those they brand with Heresie which they could not do were not those points which they censure against the known and general tradition of the Church And next when they deliver us dogmatically and professedly any doctrine in such sort as we may reasonably conceive they intended we should take it as matter of faith not giving it as conceptions of their own which they bring onely learned arguments on texts of Scripture to maintain In all which a free good judgement will easily discern by reading them which way to incline which I knowing your Lordship to be do beseech you to apply it a little industriously to collect throughout their sense and by what they say to frame a model of the Government Beleif and practise of the Church wherein they lived and then tell me whether it be like yours or ours It is worth the while Criticks labour to get some knowledge of the manners and customes of Ages long since past by little fragments of antiquity that have hardly scaped into their hands And Lawyers get a knowledge of the Government and frame of the State in Kings raigns long agoe by broken and disjoynted Records that they meet with scattered in several Files And these maimed evidences by chance fallen into their Hands do serve to beget a fairer body of knowledge when they know how to make a right use of them and such as will convince an indifferent and equal hearer much more certainly the Fathers works that handle professedly and at large the affairs of the Church and Religion and whereof we have such plenty will fairly inform a rational and discoursing man of the true state of them in their times and what they conceived and had been taught imported Heaven or Hell in mans belief and practise which I am sure your Lordship will allow to carry a great stroke in ours and from which it is madness if not impiety to depart upon less grounds then a demonstration to convince the contrary Though I have already too much trespassed upon your Lordships patience by my tedious Letter yet I may not conclude it till I have said a word or two to the foure instances your Lordship giveth toward the latter end of yours First for the use of Images I doe not conceive it to be a precept given by Christ but since introduced by the Governors of the Church as a thing convenient to raise devotion in the people Now things of that nature may be convenient at one time and unfit at another When I dolatry was fresh in the memory and practise of the world it was dangerous to admit it therefore in the primitive times Justin and Tertullian might have reason to cry it down But because there was no precept of Christ in that behalfe conserved in the Church you see they urge not the authority of Tradition of the Church to beat down their use but arguments of their own and Texts of Scripture produced by them whereas now in times secured from that danger and a great good appearing in them they being as a Father said the bookes of unlettered persons to beget knowledge and stirre up devotion in them as strong arguments and as pregnant Texts of Scripture are produced for their use and to justifie the Governours of the Church in recommending them to the people Your second instance is of Tertullians affirming Christs descent to free the Patriarkes which I conceive not onely he but all the Fathers that ever spake of that particular deliver it in a matter of faith and so it hath been ever held by the Church which word of Descent I take it is to be understood as we all doe the Article of the Creed He descended into Hell that is by his power and operation at least by which he confounded the damned comforted the soules in Purgatory and brought to the sight of God those in Abrahams bosome that is a place of rest where yet they enjoyed not the beatificall vision For to give other motion and place to a soule is a question in Philosophy and concernes not faith and such was the assertion of the Angels copulation with women for many or rather most of the Fathers were of opinion that they were not pure Spirits but had very subtile immortall bodies the contrary of which was never yet delivered as matter of faith howbeit by force of Argument now the corporiety of Angels is exploded out of the Schools and thus supposing that opinion the way is obvious enough in commenting
some Texts of Scripture to fall into that error which so becommeth an error in Philosophy and in no wise concerning faith And that other of the Millenaries which is the last your Lordship urgeth appeareth plainly to have growne among some of the Fathers with whom the authority of Papias weighed much by literally interpreting a Text of the Apocalyps but never any of them urged the generally received opinion of the Church nor publick Tradition from Christ and the Apostles And besides the Church has never yet to this day condemned as an heresie that part of the Millenaries beliefe which some of the Fathers held which is of the Saints reigning with Christ a thousand yeares upon earth after their resurrection and enjoying onely spirituall delights but only other foule enormities which went under the name of the Millenaries heresies Now by what I have said to those instances in particular and bringing that spirit that I said before was required to the reading of the Fathers I conceive it will be no hard matter to determine which of them as your Lordship sayes we are to swallow as delivered to them and which to chaw and consider as onely delivered by them One thing more I shall adde in generall which is That a large and great soule like yours expresseth it selfe more to its advantage in weighing in the powerfull scale of reason that it hath the main bulk of what it is to judge of rather than to dwell with too scrupulous a diligence upon little quillets and niceties which admit arguments on both sides and in the mean time let slide away unnoted that great deale which is uncontroulable and plaine as though one were but to declame in Schoole to exercise ones wit and therefore he maketh choyce of some ingenious Paradox against a known and received truth and to impugne it can bring but against the skirts of it arguments or rather cavils of wit without being able to grapple with the main body of it and seeks rather to puzzle and embroyle his adversary then weightily to establish the solid truth This is a subject that is deeply to be considered for use the importantest that we can have not argued upon for ostentation and that a wise man ought to seek a settlement in and not aim at the applause of being sharp-sighted by reducing all things to uncertainty Therefore good my Lord apply that great understanding you are so excellently endowed withall to build as well as to pull down and read not the Fathers with a fore-laid designe to enerve their authority but with an indifferency to yeeld your assent to what upon the whole matter you shall judge reasonable for you so to doe And since I know that your judgement must in all things that are controverted before it of this nature tend to a settlement one way or other for only sciolous wits float onely in uncertainty as delighting to make objections and raise a dust which afterward their weak eyes cannot looke through let me recommend to you not onely to examine whether the opinion you meet with in your reading repugnant to what you were formerly imbued with be concludingly demonstrated or no but likewise examine as strictly the reason you have for your own and where the scale weighes heaviest give your assent For since of contradictory propositions one must necessarily be true and the other false a man proceedeth upon safe grounds if he take for a firm truth what is opposite to an assertion that betrayes its own weaknesse whereas if you look onely upon the true you may happily at the instant not finde a full resolution to every objection that may be raised against it which proceedeth not from the weaknesse of the thing but from ours that cannot at the first sight look into the bottome of it You see my Lord how confident I am with you to tell you what upon the present in such shortness and distraction of time occurreth to me upon this subject which your goodnesse hath invited me unto and I begge the continuance of it first in pardoning me and next in imparting to me your reflections upon them which I professe sincerely I value beyond any mans and most of all in loving me as you have ever done which is the happiest condition that can give a blessing unto London Decem. 29. 1638. My Lord your Lordships most humble and most faithfull servant K. D. My deare Lord WHen I wrot my Letter I intended to review and copy it but it held me much longer time then I designed to it It should not have been with my dull head and hand an after-suppers work and after comming home from vain entertainment with some impertinent she-wits that most tyrannically had seized upon me They had tun'd my brains to so crosse a Key as afterward all serious Images came so lamely into my fancy as I may be ashamed to send you this rough draught of them and so slowly halting as I was in good faith three houres about those blotted and interlined sheets For it was an houre past midnight afore I had done which was not one to enter upon so tedious a task as to lick this abortive and mishapen Embrion into form And now this morning my company calls upon me to be gone so that I am in a strait to appeare before your Lordship either extreamly negligent if I deferre till my return to towne the answering of your Letter and the sending my Lord Russels Picture or extreamly indiscreet if I send you so rude and indigested reflections upon your so judicious and strong discourse wherein the instances though your Lordship be pleased to call them slight ones and such as flow easiest into a Letter from a bad memorie yet you must give me leave to believe them the strongest and sharpest that can be urged upon this subject and the flower and Quintessence of what Mr. Chillingworth and the best wits have produced against the tradition of the Church and the authority of the Fathers But I will choose rather to fall into your hands for the latter then under your censure for the first and so asking you a thousand pardons I send you this by which all I can hope is that you will at least discern in me a great willingnes to come out of your debt in this kinde for all other I know impossible though I am but a flow and imperfect paymaster and that you will in some measure guess at what I would say if I had time to digest and range it as it should be I shall here only by way of supplement adde this more concerning the Millenaries because I would not render my Letters more illegible by new interlining it that as I remember Justin Martyr himself saith it is an opinion not generally beleeved in the Church but that many of the Orthodox reject it howbeit he professeth to hold it for true and accordingly endeavoureth to prove it by authority of Scripture all which manifestly declareth that it was no
Authorities in this point it will be sufficient to put you in minde that divers of the more modern Fathers farr enough removed from the vicinity of Paganism after Christianity had taken possession of the world were as peremptory Iconoclasts as those two I pitcht upon And for the variance of practice upon variance of times your reason might hold had they condemned the Religious use of Images onely as inconvenient and not as in its own Nature unlawfull but what 's simply unlawfull at one time cannot be lawfull at another without a precept from God which you say in your first words upon this subject You did not beleeve to have been given herein To your first justification of this Practise I must needs say that for the strong Arguments for it to which I am yet a stranger I should be glad to be acquainted with them but for the Texts of Scripture so pregnant as you speak of truly I should be sorry to meet with them for although where I finde in holy Writt appearing repugnances and difficult intricacies I am as apt as any body having perhaps most reason for it of any to accuse my own ignorance and to preserve all veneration to what I finde there yet I confess it would trouble me much and be of dangerous temptation should I meet with a passage in the sacred volumne as palpably direct for the use of Images as I am sure the second Commandement is against it For your Second Allegation that these times are secure from the danger of Idolatry some proofs would be necessary since I am farr from understanding them to be so were that sinne committed then only when the outward or inward act of veneration accompanied with that belief and reliance which belongs to the Creator is exhibited to and terminated in the creature I should then be of your opinion and pronounce these times in little danger of Idolatry but withall my vote should also go to acquit all ages from the Crime as well as the present For I do not think that the fowlest Idolaters of the Heathen ever arrived to that height of stupidity as to take those low and materiall objects of their devotion for God Almighty Nay the more bestiall their Idolatry was as of the Aegyptians and Romans in worshiping the vilest creatures the lesse probability is there that they conceived the essence of the Deity to dwell under those contemptible forms that they adored as I think the Jewes little guilty of believing that the Calfe which they had made of their ear-rings though seemingly deified by their veneration was the great God that hath wrought his wonders among them but since it is as formal idolatry to frame to ones selfe out of low limited corruptible formes resemblances of the incomprehensible Deity and to impart to them any kinde of divine honour whether you please to call them of adoration of service or of pious religion since to worship the true God after an unfitting manner involves men as well in this sin as the service of a false God since I say these practises as well as the other amount to Idolatry yea such as for my part I believe the Jews Pagans were rarely guilty of any greater amidst their highest abominations I must professe I think the world at present extreamly liable to the sin yea many of the Romish Church deeply plunged therein by the easie abuse if not by the single use of Images in their prayers and this not onely the simpler sort but even the learned Doctors themselves if one may believe them of themselves Thomas of Aquine sayes Summ. part 3. quaest 25. Art 3. and hath many followers in it That the same reverence is to be given to the Image of Christ that is to Christ himselfe and seeing Christ is adored with the adoration of Latria that his Image also is to be adored with the adoration of Latria so farre is that great Doctor and his Sectators transported whom I doe chuse much rather to brand with the imputation of Idolatry then many others of his own side as learned that impugne his doctrine with sacriledge there being as I conceive no medium between those two impieties where one denies adoration of the highest kinde to that unto which another payes it Thirdly for the great good which you say appeares in the use of Images I am perswaded it doth but appeare it is pretended they help the memory and excite devotion in the people If by aids of memory be understood onely in the generall that the lively representation of some holy Historie is likely to call better thoughts into our mindes then a prophaner I like it well by the same reason that the coursest picture of CHRIST crucified ought in a good Christians Cabinet to take the wall of a Venus of Titian the one being apt to mortifie us through the same sense whereby the other may inflame us but if by the help of memory any thing be meant of more particular assistance in the directing of our prayers I think Images doe just as much good in that point as the art of memory would doe to your excellent naturall one that is help to dizzy and distract it Or if by excitement to devotion be meant any particular stimulation and guidance to the rightest way of true devotion or furnishing us with a proper means of addressing it to the right and originall object I conceive them then so far from being of good use in this kinde that I hold their very stimulations to devotion dangerous they excite they warm the zeale of the ignorant 't is true but with those strange fires that caused such combustions in Israel whilst so many as Gul. Pariensis de Legibus cap. 23. confesses not distinguishing between the Image and the thing adore the picture in stead of what it represents wherein farre lesse sinful were a luke-warm piety rightly applied then the ardentest devotion misdirected by how much sins of omission are more pardonable then of act and to worship the true God lesse intensly then to serve a false one zealously Of this danger there cannot be a better witnesse for all his mincing of the matter then Gregory the great in his Epistle to Cirenus Bishop of Marcelles in which that passage is which you cite who there adviseth the Bishop to excuse to his flock the breaking down of Images in the Church by alledging that he was forc'd to that Act by the peoples abusing that to adoration which was erected onely for instruction of the ignorant and illiterate in matter of history The Bishop truly was beholding unto him for furnishing him with such an excuse which might serve to justifie all the fiercest Iconoclasts since all the good that imagination can present in the use of Images throughout the whole Universe cannot amount to recompence the mischiefe of one poore soules betraying to Idolatry For my part I doe conceive that good use might be made of holy pictures but hardly by the vulgar
once take the liberty to except against particular Doctrines or particular Fathers delivering them I may then with out any further proof flatly conclude that nothing can be this way concluded since your adversaries will likewise claim in whatsoever shall thwart them an equal liberty of excepting Now Cousin give me leave to examine a little neerer the three grounds whereon you build the pretended certainty of this Method in resolving your differences out of the Fathers declarations as I collect your sense they are these First That they were faithful Collectors of the general traditions of the Church in their times Secondly that they are sincere conveyers of them to us And Thirdly that the traditions collected and conveyed by them are infallible Should I grant them all to be true it would not follow that they were sufficient till it did appear which I think never will though for the present we will suppose it that there were general traditions preserved in the Church concerning all those points which we dispute of but unless they appear to be true I am sure they cannot pass for sufficient First That they were faithful Collectors of all the traditions of the Church where in faithful I suppose you comprise careful able for in the other single sense of fidelity faithful hath most proper relation to the following condition of Conveyers industry and ability being as fully requisite in this the Collecting part as integrity To this I say that as in one place I have formerly profest how I beleeve them such faithful Collectors of the Churches receptions that is careful and able as well as sincere in many things of greatest importance so in another I think I have said enough whereby to prove it unlikely that in things of less moment such as our controversies the Primitive Fathers did applie their care and abilities to sound the bottome of them whether in this way of collecting the traditions of the Church concerning them or any other Industry requiring alwayes stimulations in the particular businesses where we are to expect it and likewise some leasure remission from other pressing occupations Both which the Primitive Fathers totally wanted by little provocation in our cases and incessant allarms in more weighty ones So that to your first ground I will onely make of new this demand Was the knowledge and Collection of the Churches traditions receptions easie and evident to all careful investigators or hard and difficult If the latter which I beleeve since so many circumstances are requisite to the exact knowledge of the Churches traditions as first certain evidence what is that Church universal whose traditions are so sacred Secondly a clear and unconfus'd delivery of the same unto them lastly not only an exquisite apprehension of the substance of all the doctrines but a perfect intelligence of the degrees and necessities either of belief or practise wherein the Church did hold them if thus hard I say and intricate the Fathers being men and liable as you confess to error how can we be secured that they did not oftentimes mistake them since it is evident that sometimes they did If facill and obvious which is likelyest you take them to be since you prefer them before Scriptures because that you say is difficult how comes it that they disagree having a plain easie and infallible Directory whereby to regulate and conform their judgments And truly Cousin supposing it such I know not how to free divers of them that dissent from one another in matters where tradition is vouched from the imputation of stupidity either in not understanding the common and manifest tenents of the Church or of perversness and malice that knowing them would not own them but by arguing from their variances that they were not all in all matters of Religion careful Collectors of the Churches traditions Which if you once admit we cannot think to conclude any thing from the Fathers till some third authority assure us which of the many for ought appears to us of equal abilities and zeal were the careful Collectors which not and in what particulars they were so and in what not To your second ground that they are sincere Conveyers unto us of the traditions of the Church I say that to the just title of sincere Conveyers two conditions are requisite the one affirmative that they should deliver to us with all their rights that is clearness perspicauity identitie of sense as they received them all the right traditions of the Church And that the Fathers are not likely to have done this may be inferred from what hath been said before of their want of care and industry in collecting the Churches sene concerning our affairs matters being seldome right in the second digestion which were not good in the first The other is negative that they should not deliver any thing for a tradition of the Church universal that was not rightly and evidently such That the Fathers were not Scrupulous in this point my former instances I conceive have sufficiently evinced Wherein it is evident with what confidence to doubtful yea and erroneous doctrines that themselves effected they set this pretended great seal of infallibility Beleeve me Cousin that saying of St. Hierom Ingenium suum facit Ecclesiae Sacramenta belongs not onely unto Origen it may without wrong be extended to most of the Fathers that I have been acquainted with And no marvel that they should sometimes in heat of dispute be transported to vouch for tradition what was not when so often they swerve from what was apparently the universal receptions of the Church as hath been made evident by many examples From which I do not infer that the Fathers had alwayes such erroneous beliefs as their words would many times import but onely that it is likely that they who in heat of dispute or for some ends which they thought very important would recede in their expressions from the confest tradition of the Church in such high constitutive points of Christian Religion would not be scrupulous in the like heats or upon the like ends to misapply the seal of tradition to some points of lesser importance For though it appear a greater falsehood to set a seal surreptitiously where it belongs not yet it is neerer to Rebellion not to conforme to that Authority where the Royal seal is manifestly stamp'd There hath enough been said to maniest that the Fathers that would sometimes thus license themselves be the occasion what it will and the end how pious soever cannot pass for Candid or sincere conveyers of all the Churches receptions unto us and if less punctual in any sure likeliest in our controverted doctrines which rarely had they the occasion to mention but as serving to greater ends there were so many circumstances that might tempt and lead them from the exact punctuallities of a sincere conveyer that I am not much scandalized at their prevarication You shall finde that where Gregory Neoces Ariensis said that
the Father and the Son according to our conceptions were two but but one in Hypostasis St. Basil Ep. 64. p. 849. Tom. 2. excuses him saying that it was spoken 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that being to perswade a Gentile he thought it not necessary to be exact in his expressions and that it may be convenient sometimes to indulge a little to the use and manner of those one would perswade that they may not fly back from what is more necessary and seasonable by which means Gregory saith he may have let slip many expressions that Hereticks perhaps will lay hold of for their advantage likewise where Dionysius Alexandrinus had stiled the Son the workmanship of the Father as the ship to the ship-wright and many other expressions that no Arian could mend Athanasius is ready with an Apologie for him p. 551.552 Tom. 1. de Sent. Dyonis They were saith he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and are not to be taken maliciously If that Thaumaturgus and that other great pillar of the Church Dionysius did license themselves so far as to let their expressions by which we are to judge of them not by what they reserved in their hearts swerve in so notorious a manner from the most eminent tradition of the Church in such a grand fundamental were it not irrational in us to expect from them and the rest a punctual transmission of the Churches traditions in all such petty points as most of ours scarce ever touch'd upon by them but in the way of those important disputes which you see warm'd them even to such great oversights If those two excellent and most zealous of the Fathers Athanasius and Basil were so forward in their excuse allowing them a liberty both for their policy and passion in dispute to dally with a main tradition were it not too unjust a rigour in us to brand them with the imputation of falsehood and ignorance because forsooth they deliver us not with an exact fidelity the tradition of the Church in our questions concerning which it is to be doubted whether there was any general tradition in the Church or no I profess I am as far from laying so heavy an imputation upon them either for their negligence herein or falsity as I am from expecting such a sincere punctuallity as you promise your self from them Furthermore besides the heats the artifice of Disputes and desire of victory which in contestations of great moment might easily through their humane frailty make them strain a Point by the by in some article less dangerous when from it they may draw conclusions of great advantage in the main And besides that as a great * Arch. Bishop of Canterb. Epist dedic Prelate lately made the Observation Men are apt to think that they can never run far enough from what they hate and so by a very naturall motion runne upon the other extreame as a Father that in detestation of Nestorius would confound that heresie by the receptions of the Church might easily overshoot himself so farr as to make the Church speak for Eutiches in aversion from Arianism make the Church speak for Sabellius and in profligation of the Maniches to shake hands with Pelagius and so much more because the danger could hardlier be foreseen they are likely to have tuned the voice of the Church either to the Romish or Protestant Key according as either was at the time most opposite to the Adversarie they combated Besides all these I am perswaded that many of the Fathers held it a pious fraud to gain the subversion of a great error by sowing a little one not foreseeing how process of time might improve that to as considerable a magnitude Yea further I beleeve and Saint Jerome implies little less Ep. 50. ad Pamach Com. 2. p. 136. that in the general the Fathers when they were in the Lists held it no matter of conscience either to affirm for the Churches receptions some things that they did not think to be so yea contrary to their knowledge and to reject others that at another time they would have admitted so it were conducible to their victory And although this be a greater as being a more wilfull unfaithfulness then any other that I have remark'd in them yet neither for this nor the rest dare I brand them with those heavy imputations which you seem Jealouss that I tend to But since I finde that those reverend and holy men do not stick to set the seal of tradition to conceits of their own and other uncurrent doctrines I do not fall presently as you implie one must do of consequence to lay to their charge impiety and profanation of the divinest Averments But rather since they make so bold with that seal to believe that they did not repute it so sacred as you imagine but farr inferior to proofs out of Scripture and to be used freely as a Topick Argument only when they wanted demonstrations from thence and indeed throughout my slender reading I have observed that when they can produce the written word for their opinion they do rarely insist upon prescription as pleading Lawyers fly then to presidents chiefly when they want a text for their cause But whereas you say the foule play would not have scaped their numerous adversaries note had they set the sacred Character to counterfeit Coine I think so too But what are we the wiser if their notes scape ours as needs they must since of the numerous writings of their numerous adversaries this age I think hath scarce a number The Governours of the Church in all times have made it one of their chief cares to smother their impious Libells dictated as Saint Jerome saies by the spirit of the devill And however some do alledge that such suppressions make a cause suspected for my part I think it if not abused both a wise and Religious course since the scandall and weakning of the weakers faith which are so many is much more to be considered and regarded then the satisfying of the curiosity of the learned which are so few it fares with Sabellius with Manicheus with Porphirie and the rest of the Heretiques or enemies of Christ that live only in the works of their Antagonists as with Celsus in Origen and with Arius in Athanasius and others whose confutations we are to thank for all we know of their Arguments our Libraries are just as well furnished with them as you may imagine some good Fraters closet in Spain that hath the Inquisitor for his neighbour is with the workes of Calvin or Luther or as the world is likely to be provided of those passages in the Fathers that make for them some ages hence when time shall have worn out all Editions that are not according to the Index expurgatoricis of which those I mentioned in my former Letter Eusebius Epiphanius and Saint Austin have not mist their gentle wipe though you say you have not met in either of them with any Article of
of man which I doubt much whether it can truly be affirmed of all the Christians of the world I am sure it cannot of the poor number of Doctors and Governors in any one age among them But to let this supposition pass supposing that the present Church understands what is meant by All they of the preceding though I do not and that all the present receives she receives as delivered to her by all those of the preceding age let us examine a little that which you inferr upon it to wit That this being so no false proposition of faith nay as you say afterwards no false doctrine whatsoever can be admitted into the Church in any age unless they of that age do unanimously conspire to deceive their children and youngers in telling them they were taught by their Fathers what indeed they were not That this is not impossible since only the Doctors Pastors of the Church are to be understood by All they hath been already shown But is there no other way say you but this for falshood to creep into the Church Truely me-thinks on the contrary it is with error and necessary truths in the body Ecclesiastick as with life and death in the body natural And as there is onely one way for life to enter at but a thousand gates for death so for necessary truths there is but one ordinary avenne to the Church namely by Scripture read or taught but for error to get in at a thousand passages without supposing such a general conspiracie For though many times when an error hath had a long Current we cannot point directly at the spring yet are we ne're a whit less certain that it had an entrance because we know not at which doore Nilus hath a head though Geographers cannot say directly where it is And lines many times that at first appear parallels to the eie by that time they have been lengthned a great while prove apparently uneven though no man can assigne the point whereat the deflexion began The doctrine of the Chiliasts a doctrine which if any other surely that may well be said to have been a generally received tenent of the Church universal for some ages since in the whole Church for above 250. years after Christ there appears not in that point one dissenting vote till Dionysius of Alexandria oppos'd it An error 't is true and yet I hope you will not be so uncharitable as to accuse all the ancient Fathers of the second Centenary that they complotted to deceive posterity by teaching them a falshood for Apostolique tradition you are more favorable to them then so in the last part of the Letter where you your self discover a way how without conspiracy this error and so another may have overspread the Church by the Authority of one man delivering it for a whisper of the Apostles And truly Cousin what ever else may be said more probable in the particular I am confident 't is most true in the general that the worke is easie from one man of credits Asseveration to possess vast Multitudes with firme perswasions of a falshood and more in matters of Religion then in civil things since in those this pium credere prevailes much and most will rather take upon trust what many affirm and they discern no ill in then put themselves to the oft-times endless troubles of examining Credulity being so easie and natural Disproving so difficult I warrant you the Common Faith of Romulus Ascent into Heaven would have had upon your grounds as rational assertours in the State of Rome as any tradition by us questioned at this day in the sea of Rome See in that politique invention of Julius Proclus what power the imagined pietie of one man hath to make a fiction pass for an Epidemicall veritie which as Tertullian sayes Apol. cap. 8. Ab uno aliquando principe exorta exinde in traduces linguarum aurium serpat ita modici seminis vitium caetera rumoris obscurat ut nemo recogitet num primum illud os mendatium seminaverit The Jewes a much more numerous multitude heretofore and still I think equal in number to any Christian Church of one denomination were the most Religious the most scrupulous conservators of unwritten truths in their Cabala And yet what an error posfesses the whole Nation and did so long before the curse fell upon them concerning their Messias whose coming long before Christ and since they all expected and do expect in a temporal kingdome of which they did derive and do continue to posteritie the hopes by Universal tradition or if you will say that they build the doctrine not upon tradition but Scripture yet I am sure you cannot denie but that they continue the interpretation of Scripture that way by tradition which comes all to one Did you grant the possibility of a Multitudes Conspiracie I am sure you would denie it in this which is confestly the point upon which all of them agree that their supreme felicitie depended It would pass for a very fallacious reasoning to drive up this belief to the Patriarkes and so conclude it infallible because the present age received it for a tradition from the preceding and that from the Antepenultime and so forward Or because the instant where the error was admitted amongst them cannot Digito monstrari dicere hic est For truly Cousin partly through a natural desire in all men that others should think as they do or do what they think convenient from whence there springs an aptness in the teachers to applie to their opinions the strongest Authorities they can devise whether they do justly belong unto them or no and partly through an aptness of the ignorant which are the greatest part of Auditours to swallow more and retain better the words and the outward literal part of what is taught them then either to examine or hold fast the precise and inward sense It may well happen that multitudes may mumble the shell when a few have the kernell and looking superficially only upon the outward stamp toss up and down for currant among them counterfeit oft-times and Adulterate Coine The mistake is ordinary and the propagation of the error easie for instance sake in the doctrine of praying for the dead many of the Doctors of the Church who believed that all the souls of the departed were kept in certain receptacles untill the general resurrection conceiving that prayer for the beatitude of the dead came all to one with praying for the hastening of Christs Kingdome might teach it others thinking it no prophanation of prayer to imploy that holy Act even where we know it cannot availe since Christ himself prayed to have the bitter Cup of his passion removed and all the Doctours generally holding such prayers a convenient testimony of charity in the living whether they were Commemorative Eucharisticall or supplicatorie easily might the practice pass into a common doctrine Now the word Necessarie being often used for
and consequently the insufficiency of your rule of faith tradition hath been made appeare it will be fit to vindicate the sufficiency of that rule which we relie upon In which work the first hinderance that I meet with is this objection of yours That the particular books of Scripture were written for other particular ends and not to give us a compleat body of faith To which I answer that if by particular books of Scripture you understand each book a part severed from its relation to the whole I then agree with you that every particular book was no more intended for a compleat body of Faith then every particular Chapter for a compleat body of the book or then a Window or a Door to be a compleat body of a House but as the one was designed to give entrance the other light to some room or passage of the Edisice so the several books of Scripture were written some to give entrance to Christianity some to illustrate dark places of the whole some to inform us of matters of fact that we might understand in what chiefly to praise God some to discipline us in matters of practice that we might know how aptliest to serve and please him And others to instruct us in matter of belief that we might learn to relie upon him But on the other side if you remit the least of this abstract and Independent consideration of the particular books of Scripture I must then profess that I stedfastly beleeve that they were all designed to this chief and primary end of composing that compleat body of Faith whereon Christs perfect Church should be built as certainly as so many several parts of a building having each a particular end besides of their erection are yet in the general and main intention all destin'd to the making up of one compleat and intire Fabrick yea further without urging the comparison till it halt I am perswaded that as the Master Architect having an Idaea form'd of the whole directs many a part to the perfection of that when the subordinate workman that frames it thinks of nothing farther then of the peice he is in hand with So oftentimes the Almighty Architect when his Ministers perhaps never look'd further then that service in particular wherein they were imployed some perhaps in a Gospel in an Epistle some he by his infinite Wisdom directed each particular to the making up of the whole and compleat body and rule of Faith the written Word which by his admirable providence he hath and will I am consident ever preserve intire and uncorrupt in all parts necessary to its own perfection and harmony and to mans eternal safety and direction Insomuch that I cannot but think it at the best loss of time to be solicitous after any other rule and irreverence if not impiety to question the sufficiency of this But because my opinion is little considerable with one of so far a better Judgment take in this Point the Opinion of the Fathers which you so much relie upon To begin with Tertullian these are the last words of his 22. Chapter against Hermogines Scriptum esse doceat Hermogenis officina If it be not written saith he let him fear the Woe destin'd to such as shall adde or take away Can any thing be inferred more rightly then from this passage the sufficiency of Scripture and the superfluity of any other rule But take yet somewhat more direct from †Oratio ad Gentiles towards the beginning Athanasius The holy and from God inspired Scriptures saith he are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of themselves sufficient to the discovery of truth I appeal to St Basil himself of all the Fathers the greatest attributer to Tradition in all things wherein regard is justly due unto it Hear what he sayes handling a point wherein Scripture I think is as dark as in any necessary one whatsoever I mean that of the Trinity Believe what 's written saith * Hom. 29. advers Calum stan Trin. page 623. he what is not written seek not And in another place It is a manifest falling from the Faith sayes †De vera ac Pia side page 251. he and an argument of Arrogance either to reject any of those things that are written or to introduce any that are not of the written And lastly to sum up all that can be said by a Protestant in one sentence of a Father of greatest Learning and authority Listen but to St. Augustine De doctrina Christian lib. 2. cap. 9. In its quae appertè in Scriptura positasunt inveniuntur illa omnia quae continent fidem moresque vivendi He had need be a confident Sophister that would undertake to evade these Authorities but yet if they may not be admitted let Scripture be heard for it self It is a priviledge and preeminence solely peculiar to that sacred Volume to be Witness Advocate and Judge in its own cause Surely the Spirit spake in St. Paul when he told Timothy That holy Writ was able to make him wise unto salvation 2 Tim. 3. in fine And when numbring up almost all the particular parts that can be required to the compleat Institution of a Christian he concludes that in these by Scripture the man of God is made perfect and fitted to every good work And I am confident by the same Spirit he spake his own minde when he spake ours so directly to the Corinthians Vt dicsatis in nobis supra id quod scriptum est non sapere Epist 1. cap. 4. Where by the way it is to be noted that the Apostle applies this doctrine as an Antidote to that very inconvenience which I have heard some Papists object against the reliance on the search and use of Scripture namely that by it those of greater capacity were lkely to be blown up and to glory in their clearer discerning over weaker whereas the guidance of the Church and Tradition was equaller to all To this I say 't is worth observing what he delivers as it were by way of reason for the contrary Doctrine to wit of confining our selves to Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I profess Consin that these and many other passages of Scripture which for brevities sake I note only in the * Deut. cap. 4. cap. 12. Epist ad Gal. cap. 1. Margent prenounce to me in as clear a sense as may be the sufficiencie of Scripture and supersluity of relying on tradition for a rule of faith And yet I sweare I am none of those of whom St. Basil speaks p. 621. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 How they may sound or what other sense they may bear to you I know not since now adayes Gods Word proves to men of divers opinions as the Apostles language when the devided tongues had sat upon them in Dr. * This was likewise the fantastique opinion of the Authour of the book de Spiritu sancto fathered upon Cyprian Alabasters conceit to severall Nations at one and the same
time Hebrew to the Jew pure Greek to the Athenian and Latin to the Roman Lastly if the Fathers Testimonie may not prevaile they being of an uncertain Authority nor Scripture swey as being of an uncertain sence let common reason be heard in the cause which for as much as I can judge of it is as strong for the sufficiencie of Scripture that is its containing all points necessarie to salvation as any prudent man need require for warrant of his belief It is agreed upon by all sides that Man being ordained to a supernatural end nature is not sufficient to lead him thither but that he must have some meanes above it and proportionate to the end such as may either shew him the way if he can discern or lead him in it if he be blind or which is happiest and surest of all both instruct and conduct him in it This last kinde of guidance it were presumption for man to claim however Gods grace may afford it unto some The second it were stupidity for all to expect however some have little hopes without it And therefore it is the first that belongs to man in generall that is a directory to all those pathes and windings without the knowledge of which he cannot arrive to his primary end And by the knowledge of which he may and is responsible himself if he do not follow the direction which if God should withhold from us although I could not venture with some to apply to his Justice that of Pharaoh's requiring brick where he gives no straw nor to pronounce it a stain to his goodnesse should he condemn us for missing the way when he gave us no Map of the Countrey since to a life actually forfeited as all mans was in Adam the least reprieve is a grace a grace to be let row in the Gallies to him that the Gallowes expected A grace to take out of the ditch a man that put out his own eyes though you leave him to grope out the rest of his journey with perpetuall hazards of falling in againe I say though I dare not in this case pronounce the with-holding a directory from us inconsistent with his justice wisdome or goodnesse yet truly I think you will yeeld the man hath not so fitting a belief of Gods mercy wisdom as he ought who conceives that he would suffer those to perish for want of such a necessary directory for whose sake he gave up his own Son to death Now to suppose such a directory from God and to think it defective is again to fall into undue thoughts either of his mercy or of his power nay it is to destroy what you do suppose since the omission of any thing absolutely necessary in a direction makes the direction none This conclusion then I may safely draw and I doubt not but with your consent that the Supernatural Directorie and rule whereby we are through Gods grace and mercy to be instructed in the way to our supernatural end must needs be compleat and sufficient in all parts absolutely necessary to that end It only remains then to shew which is that rule and directory sufficient and compleat in all necessary parts Now as in a journey directions of the way how sufficient how exact soever will little advance you unless you beleeve them or the knowledge of the way unless you have legs to go or somewhat else to carry you so in our Souls progress to beatitude it must have reliance and its instruments of gradation too which is Faith the strongest vehiculum of Humanity to Divinity Now as I said before that the means must be proportionate to the end so it is certain that the way the Organs by which we move in it must be proportionate one to another or we shall never arrive at our end As that let all other things be never so well fitted yet if our way must be thorow the Air or the Sea good legs or directions will little avail us The Organ then of our motion to Heaven being Faith and that Faith the strongest assent of our souls the ground upon which it must march ought to be no less folid then infallibility since the strongest Assent cannot be given but upon the strongest inducement Forasmuch then as particular Tradition that is the unanimous testimony of any Church of what numerous parts soever hath been already concluded fallible and universal Tradition is as it were coincident with Scripture being only as Clemens sayes Strom. lib. 6. p. 679. as it were an unwritten Transcript of that in mens hearts and gives attestation to no materiall Object of Faith but what is deducible thence It follows That Scripture is the ground proportioned by unquestionable infallibity to Faith as correspondent likewise in all things else both to the goodnes of God that gives the directory to our necessities that are to follow it The sufficiency and perfection of Scripture having been shewed and likewise the defectibility of that kinde of Tradition for whose Authority you labour The preferring of this latter before the first in governing the Tenure of our Faith is of consequence such an error as I am sorry should be countenanced by your continuing in it But because the precedency which you give to the Churches Tradition before Scripture is pretended due upon another ground also which I have yet spoke little unto give me leave to say somewhat to that You lay Obscurity to the charge of Scripture That Articles of Faith are not there so plainly exprest that every body can understand them If it were so truely the Laytie of the Church of Rome is much obliged to it for easing them of the trouble of reading what is unintelligible unto them but little beholding unto S. John for passing for a precept of Christ's Search the Scriptures But how shall they take it now forasmuch as the contrary to your Assertion is a manifest Corollary to the proof of Scriptures sufficiencie and perfection the compleatness of a Rule or Directory consisting as well in its Evidence as its Fulness and must need Interpretation as little as Addition Yet let us grant your supposition a while Scripture is obscure you say What follows Tradition is to be preferred Tradition then is easier Tradition is clear say you to the Vulgar I should rather think Tradition impossible to be learn'd since Man can speak but with a few and millions must make up that unless you bring all lines that can be drawn from the Circumference into a Centrical point the Pope But you are too much a friend to the Doctors of the Sorbon to do that Besides if you do so the difficulty will still remain For here the Rule in Geometry will not hold The lines drawn back from the Centre to the Circumference are not equal Men are not all at an equal distance from him all cannot hear him How shall the Vulgar understand him By their Ghostly Fathers You will not attribute to private men a clearer fuller
and evidenter capacity to instruct then the whole Body of Scripture Or if you do What are Private Instructions of kin to Traditions Thomas of Aquine puts in this kinde the highest complement upon Idiots towards the beginning of his first Book adversus Gentiles by sinking down the learnedst to their level For he teaches us I remember to this effect That the wisest ought not to embrace by Natural Reason and Discourse any Article in Religion were it as manifest as that the Whole is bigger then the Part since there may be one so ignorant as to have no notion of what the Whole is or what the Part. And Religion that imparts all alike must be grounded says he upon some Principle common and equal to all Herein the Doctor I must needs say is rightly Angelique for he walks to me in the clouds If he mean by that Principle Faith I understand not how that can be severed either from Reason and Discourse of which it is the last result or from Grace which is not common If he mean by the Principle that Tradition of the Church which you relie on I know not how that can be an easie guidance to the Ignorant since it is so difficult a matter to the wisest to know which is the right Church whose Traditions are so sacred for unless that appear neither the Ignorant nor the Wise are like to be much satisfied in conscience by governing the tenour of their Faith according unto them If we must judge of the Church by Bellarmine's Marks in what mis-mazes shall the Ignorant be guided whilst we finde the most Knowing involved in such intricacies in the examination of what is meant by Visibility Succession and Conformity with Antiquity and to what Society of Christians those attributes belong If you will have the true Church known by Scripture which is surely the easiest and best course even in the opinion of many learned Papists what is that but to flee back and make Tradition clear and certain by that Rule from which you flee as from what you judge obscure to Tradition that you pretend to be evident And then the Protestants will have reason to take it heavily that they should be condemned for founding each part of their Religion upon the same ground whereon the Papists build all theirs at once Yea great reason shall we have to resent it unless a Patent be produced from God Almighty declaring the Rule of Faith for such a Commodity as may be taken from Scripture in gross but not by retail Now that I have answered your Objections I will not be nice in declaring unto you to the full my sence concerning the Sufficiencie and Perspicuity of Scripture I believe that those Canonical Books which God by his providence hath preserved unto these Times and which are acknowledged by all Christians to have been Divinely dictated do make up a compleat Body of all the material objects of Faith necessary to salvation whether explicitely or implicitely necessary to be believed I further believe that in that blessed Sacrary there is not onely an inclusive sufficiencie to wit a perfect comprisal of all Saving Doctrines absolutely essential to Christianity but an exclusive also that is such a sufficiencie as excludes and forbids any Doctrines should be imposed on Christians for a necessary Article of Faith that is not recorded there Nobis curiositate opus non est post Christum Jesum nec inquisitione post Evangelium cùm credimus nihil desideramus ultra credere hoc enim prius credimus non esse quod ultra credere debemus Tert. de prax advers Haeret. cap. 8. And lastly I believe that all points whatsoever of Christian Religion are there set down as perspicuously and as clearly intelligible to all capacities as they are clearly necessary to be believed by all And that God's mercy in the merits of Christ accepting alike the Faith resultant from the dark mists of the Ignorant and from the clearest intelligence of the Learned The Lamb may wade to his bliss thorow the same water thorow which the Elephant may swim Quicquid est mihi crede in Scripturis illis altum divinum est inest omnino verit as reficiendis instaur andÃsque animis accommodatissima disciplina plane it a modificata ut nemo inde haurire non possit quod tibi satis est si modo ad hauriendum devote pie ut vera Religio poscit accedat Here is the saying of Heraclitus most truely applicable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nor truely do I conceive besides God's equalizing capacities by his own gracious acceptance that there needs more then a very ordinary one to understand the Scripture in all points absolutely necessary to salvation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It may be as well understood of the Word of God as of God the Word to whom Clemens pag. 56. advers Gent. applies the saying Magnifice igitur salubriter Spiritus sanctus ita Scriptur as sanctas modificavit ut locis apertioribus famae occurreret obscurioribus autem fastidia detergeret Nihil enim fere de illis obscuritatibus eruitur quod non planissimè dictum alibi reperiatur Aug. The great difficulties and obscurities which are there found I understand chiefly to be in those less material points wherein mens part-taking subtilties have given to God's Word many various acceptions whilst not seeking the doctrines of Scripture but those that themselves are imbued with in it they use it not as the straight and stedfast Rule to judge of and avoid Obliquity by for which it was ordained but rather as a Lesbian Rule to be bent and deflected according to the several purposes of their own Architecture Verifying of the heavenly food of the soul that fantastick imagination of Israel's heavenly food of the body Manna which was said to have been to all differing palats the morsel that each one would have it and the taste that his mouth was made to Since then I am thus perswaded that God hath lodged within us a Pilot Reason how weak soever yet proportionate to the Vessel and the Voyage and that he hath likewise laid open before us a clear and faithful Card that varies not for any Elevation Scripture you must pardon me Cousin if I chuse rather to steer by that Compass thorow the depths of Religion to our Haven of rest and beatitude then like those ancient Navigators that wanted a true Directory to coast it from Doctors to Fathers from Fathers to Popes from Popes to Councels and from all these to but pretended unerring Tradition Quare oportet in care maxime in qua vitae ratio versatur sibi quemque confidere suóque judicio ac propriis sensibus nati ad investigandam perpendendam Veritatem quà m credentem alienis erroribus decipi tanquam ipsum Rationis expertem Dedit omnibus Deus pro virili portione sapientiam ut inaudita investigare possent audita perpendere nec quia nos illi
temporibus antecesserunt sapientia quoque antecesserunt quae si omnibus aequaliter datur occupari ab antecedentibus non potest sed hoc eos fallit quod majorum nomine posito non putant fieri posse aut ipsi plus sapiant quia minores vocantur aut illi dissipuerint quia majores nominantur Lactan. Divin Institut lib. 1. cap. 8. And now noble Cousin that I have examined your Opinions and discussed your Arguments let me have your patience or your pardon a little further while I give you an account concerning those Directions wherewith you favour me in your Letter and in what state I am to follow some and to excuse my self in others To the first namely The use which you conceive we are to make of reading of the Fathers I willingly conform my self in one part that is in letting pass those things which they write as Divines and Scholars onely allowing them no more weight with me then the reasons wherewith they are accompanied do give them I am likewise very willing to let pass for the most part what they write as Commentors upon the Scripture their interpretations in that kinde being many times if I may so say very Chymerical Although I must tell you that were I perswaded of any third Authority by whose seal the Fathers could transmit unto us in all things of Religion such certain and unquestionable resolutions as you imagine I should not expect their aid more earnestly nor take the omission more unkindly of them in any thing then in point of giving us the right and well-handed interpretation of Scriptures I further obey you in laying hold and relying on what they teach us as Pastors of the Church relying I say upon that chiefly to wit in the great Fundamentals of Christianity but not generally that is not in those Questions which we disagree on wherein they were neither willing nor able to be exact and least of all when they inveigh against Hereticks their passions and transportments being at such times greatest As for such Opinions as they deliver Dogmatically without alleadging texts of Scripture or learned Arguments to maintain them although they appear delivered with never so earnest an intent that they should be taken as matters of Faith you must pardon me if they sink no deeper into my belief then they are driven by such Arguments as my own or others discourse can finde for them either in Reason Scripture or Universal Tradition Your second advice is that I should apply my care to collect thorowout the sence of the Fathers and by what they say to frame to my self a Model of the Practice Government and Belief of the Church in their times and then to tell you whether it be like to yours or ours The Care and Attention you wisht me I brought at first to the studie of the Fathers but I cannot brag of the Model I have framed out of them finding that truely a work hard enough for the best Antiquary And to me 't is an improvement of the difficulty to an impossibility to be put to tell you which of the present Churches hath most resemblance to that of their times I could as easily resolve you which of two men that stood before me were likest to an hundred differing faces For I do not think there is a greater variety of countenances at a Publike Assembly then there are differences in the several Ages wherein the Fathers lived touching those three parts of Religion especially these two of Practice and Government of which Tertullian having summ'd up all the chief particulars of the Creed pronounces Hac lege fidei manente caetera jam disciplinae conversationis admittunt novitatem correctionis Tert. de Virg. Velan cap. 1. For matters of Practice 't is a clear case what libertie was taken to varie them according to several evasions and ends since some of the Apostles themselves you know did not stick to practise Circumcision nor do the several ages appear to me ere a whit the more exquisite in the imitation of their fore-fathers then you will say the Church of Rome is at this day of the Apostles in that and of those that followed after in administring the Eucharist to children and yet 't is she that pretends to be the Pantomime of antiquitie for matters of Government how Camelion-like that hath been how various is as visible as green and he that would reduce the Church now to the form of Government in the most primitive times should not take in my opinion the best nor wisest course I am sure not the safest for he would be found pecking toward the Presbytery of Scotland which for my part I beleeve in point of Government hath a greater resemblance then either yours or ours to the first age of Christs Church and yet is nere a whit the better for it since it was a form not chosen for the best but imposed by adversitie and oppression which in the beginning forc'd the Church from what it wisht to what it might not suffering that dignitie and state Ecclesiasticall which rightly belong'd unto it to manifest it self to the world and which soon afterwards upon the least lucida intervalla shone forth so gloriously in the happier as well as more Monarchicall condition of Episcopacy of which way of Government I am so well perswaded that I think it pittie 't was not made betimes an article of the Scotish Catechism that Bishops are jure divino But as it is a true maxime in nature Corruptio optimi pessima so it holds likewise in Government both civill and Ecclesiasticall The best of all Monarchy festers oft-times and swels into the worst of all Tyrannie To which after the first 500. years Policy having or'etopt Pietie the Church made a hastie progress and of the following ages in this particular I grant the present Church of Rome to be a copy farr exceeding the originall verifying now of the Roman the imputation that Aristides layd by way of reproach on all other Empires 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For matters of belief the salvation of Christians depending chiefly upon them 't is true in the primary and fundamental articles they have been more constant unanimous and exact and in those comparing the Church of their times with yours and ours I think I may pronounce them all three alike to one another but in points less material such as I esteem those wherein we two differ I should contradict my self to undertake the framing out of the Fathers a certain judgement which of the two present Churches were most correspondent to that of their times Notwithstanding if you command me to say for which side in my guess the Fathers do make most I will tell you truely and freely what I think holding then the ballance as even as I can I conceive the Fathers in some few poynts do lean somewhat more to you as in that of Christs descent into hell and also in that of free-wil those excepted that wrote
one partie is sure and firm setled when ever the other falls as certainly as in natural generation the decay of one thing is infallibly the parent of another And therefore in point of wrong and unfitting superstructures such as most of the Romish Tenents are which we lay battery to it may suffice to pull down those being demolisht what 's rightly built will stand fast of it self since both suppose a foundation Now for the second part of your direction namely that I should strictly examin the reason of my own belief I have obeyed you to the full And that you may be able to judg whether they be well weighed or no take here a sum of my belief I believe the unity and Omnipotence of God and an inexplicable Trinity in that unity I beleeve the incarnation of the second person of that Trinity that 's Gods assumption of perfect humanity from the womb of a Virgin And that he humbled himself not onely to manhood but also to mortallity that after he had set our practice an exact pattern by his life and by his words imbued our Theory with all necessary documents he might purge our staines with his blood redeem our forfeitures by the price of his passion and present a plenary satisfaction to his Fathers Justice for all our misdeeds I beleeve further that to make us capable of the effects of his merits Beatitude he illuminates our understanding by the gift of the holy Ghost by whom is created in us that divine faith by which these misteries are to be apprehended I beleeve also that our blessed Saviour gave his Apostles commission to preach to all the world his saving Doctrine who did accordingly and have left to posterity both written records and living ones in successions of the faithfull that shall preserve even to the end of the world these and all other articles necessary to salvation I likewise beleeve that the Apostles established Pastors in several Churches whom we are to hearken unto with reverence and to receive of them the Sacraments of regeneration to Christ and of Communion with him both which by Gods grace have a divine and supernatural effect in the cleansing us from sin I beleeve that heaven shall be the reward of the good and hell of the wicked and lastly in a word to supply whatsoever may have been omitted I firmly beleeve whatsoever is evidently contained in the Creed or Scripture or clearly deduceable from either I am perswaded that you will yeild that the reasons upon which these are built will abide the strictest examination None of these assertions I hope betrayeth its own weakness And yet these are the only opinions which I have been imbued with these are the parts of faith that integrate my Religion in these are comprised al points that I think necessary to be believed And he that believes any thing more if he have but his share of good works is safe in my opinion for he hath faith of supererrogation my firm and resolute settlement in these verities defends me from being at all concerned in those severall imputations which towards the close of your letter you do most judiciously and justly lay upon Sciolous and Sapticall witts that floating in uncertainty would fain reduce every thing to that pass seeking rather to puzle and imbroil an adversary then weightily to establish a solid truth 'T is that solid truth and such as bears no dispute that I wish we might all stick to and let pass those quillets and niceties imposed by the Church of Rome for Articles of importance and which her adherents dwell upon with too scrupulous a diligence such as admit arguments on both sides and are fitter for a declamation then a Catechism in which whilst men vainly busie themselves they let slide away many times unnoted as you say that great deal which is uncontroulable and plain points which can be thought at best but at the skirts none belonging to the main body of religion doctrines for the most part at the least in my judgement so little material that I applaud the Fathers for spending so little time or labour on them such as I am so far from delighting to make objections in that where ever I have touch'd upon particulars it hath been a Contrecoeur and onely to disperse such dust as others raise for I swear there is no man living hath a stronger aversion then my self from all cavils in Religion it being justly to be feared as our great Prelate Arch-Bishop of Cant. in his Epistle to his Majestie sayes that Atheism and irreligion gathers strength while the truth is thus weakned by an unworthy way of contending for it and I am perswaded that moâ—â— men while their thoughts are so busied in chicanes of controverted points grow negligent of those more weighty ones that neerlyer import salvation and so runne out of the most essentiall good of their soules as impertinently as many a peevish freeholder that wasts a solid estate in endless law suits for a trifle as I think these points little important for use so I concur with you in esteeming both these and all other matters of Religion very unfit to be argued on for ostentation or applause which I am sure I am as farr from aiming at in this subject as I shall be farr from attaining it 'T is true the condition of the knowing ignorant is usually quite contrary to the Lords servants in the Gospel there he that had least wrapt up his single talent in a Napkin but amongst men now a-daies that pretend whoever hath least it is he longs most to shew how much he hath and so publishes how little yet thus far they oftentimes both agree that neither improve their store and thus by my ignorance unless you be charitable I confess my self liable to be suspected guilty of the vain appetite of oftentation that usually accompanies it but as my Ignorance exposes me to the suspition so my consciousness of it the sole knowledge that I can brag of frees me from the Ambition suspected and layes upon me a necessity of concluding with a huge Apologie for presuming to give you so much trouble and I fear so little satisfaction I confess I ought to have been restrained from venturing at all upon this Debate the Subject it self being so farr above the pitch of my literature And the Person with whom I presume to argue the difference of Opinion confestly my superiour in all advantages both of Nature and Acquisition beyond all hopes of comparison Considerations either of them able to deterr a much considenter man then my self But Friendship which always findes or makes men equall hath long since licenc't me from the latter and hardened me to impart my conceptions how low so ever as freely to you as I could doe to any inferiour Wit of mine own levell And for the first I have neglected it upon this perswasion that I shall be better able to answer to the Divines a young a Lay and ignorant mans adventuring to treat of their Business then to you and to my self so womanish a wrong as not subscription to the Dictamens of your strong and powerfull Soul without yeelding my reasons for the variance which how light soever they may be found when pondered by your excellent judgment yet being really such as are most convincing to mine they will serve to excuse me to you to justifie me to my self and I hope to make my Errours even pardonable with God who when by St. Peter he bids us be able to give a Reason of the hope that is in us I am confident he expects it no better then proportionable to the capacities that his goodness hath endowed us with Answerable to them is this Discourse weak I confess disjoynted and without Nerves and yet I doubt not but it may be so evictuated by Truth and the goodness of my Cause that I shall not be ashamed to have encountred a GOLIAH with a Sling A Straw kept in a right Line might batter a tower from which right line of truth and reason I may safely protest I have not so much as once voluntary swarved in this Treatise through any partaking passion or forelaid designe neither have I suffered my self herein to be so far wrought upon by civility as to forbear a free and round expression of my sense where ever it differed from yours and truly there was no cause why I should since in our disputes the strongest opposition that I or the best wit for me can possibly make to your opinions will derogate no more from your unquestionable exellency of judgement then it would conclude either of us ill-sighted should you affirm such a Garment to be red and I that it were green the object being a changeable Taffaty and we seated in contrary lights or looking through mediums diversly tincted a like affect upon the soul to these upon the sense hath diversity of education and discrepance of those principles wherewith men are at the first imbued and whereon all our after reasonings are founded Conformity and uniteness of minde as rarely flowing from contrary Educations as the same River from opposite springs sweet happy and I think sole is the self-sameness which arises from pure principles of nature never sophisticated by the artifices of our breeding but little derivation from those Fountaines hath this or that Sect of Religion so no marvel if we agree not therin to be one as we do in the other most true prime Emanation of nature Friendship which on your part to me I am confident must needs spring from thence since my small merit affords no other motive and for mine to you I am sure it is impossible without an intire concurrence of all the forces of Sympathy for any man to reverence admire and love another with that Ardour as I do you dearest Cousin and which you cannot but own in SHERBORN March 30. 1639. Your most faithful and most Affectionate Servant G. D. FINIS
avowed tradition of the Church from Christ it is true Papias seemeth to intimate as though it were in some obscure manner derived from Christ but not as a thing commanded to be preached and taught He telleth it as a mysterie or secret whispered by him to some of the Apostles whom he would oblige more then their fellowes by imparting some thing to them for their knowledge that the rest should be ignorant of But no such by-rivolet though it should come from the true fountain can ever fall into the main and avowed Channell of Ecclesiastical tradition Indeed it is likely that Cerinthus the Heretick to justifie his new device in that particular fathered it on Saint John as whispered to him by Christ in confidence and from him Papias that was an easie and simple man taking it passed by his name and vouched only the Apostles which some believed as a private truth and others denied as is apparent December 26 1638. Your Lordships most humble and faithfull Servant K. D. My Noblest Cousin and best friend I Beg your pardon for making you so slow a return of my humble thanks for your excellent Letter of the 26 of December and I should have needed your pardon much more if your favours in it had been lesser The excesse of them in such variety of obligations justifies me in the leasure I take to taste and enjoy each endearing circumstance apart weighing and comparing with one another the severall delights I ow you whilst every where I finde my self either courted by him I love most or applauded by him I emulate most or instructed by the person whose abilities I admire most and all this by you dear Cousin the prime object of my noblest affections My heart is so much affected with these favours that were this Letter or rather Volumne whose bulk may well affright you with the trouble it threatens filled with nothing but acknowledgments it would fall as short of satisfaction to my self in the thankfull part aâ— I fear it will of giving it you in the rest that it treats of But as in the first it is impossible for me to utter the hundredth part of my thoughts so in the other could I express all and more then ever I can think of I should yet despair of efficacy to convince you by any thing that can flow from a Pen animated with such dull reflections as mine which here notwithstanding I venture to set down chiefly in obedience to your commands in the close of your Letter and partly through fear that I might else in some kinde incurr the tax either of Hypocrisy if I should by silence confess an assent in matters of Religion where I am not convinced or of perversness should I d ssent without shewing cause for it which I shall here endeavour to manifest but still with this protestation that could I admit of such a doctrin that in the affaire of our faith I ought to be swayed by any humane authority either of one or many I should at this instant publish a valediction to my opinions what great wits soever may sustain them as willingly as I do here grant you the preheminence above the highest that I have known And here in the first place I do most heartily wish I could concurr with you in all the rest as I do in the Introduction of your discourse that so I might be united to you in opinion as I am most intirely in affection I joyne with you in full admiration of the Piety Learning and Integrity of those reverend Fathers of the Church whose Lives whose Zeales whose Deaths abundantly merited that title with everlasting celebrations of their memories theit veracity I attribute infinitely unto from a due consideration of all those happy circumstances wherewith your eloquence authorizes it You cannot aggravate their impieties enough who would offer to exclude such sages from being witnesses in the most important matters of Religion If any former slip of my pen can be but wrested to such an injustice let me purge my self by a solemn Recantation But I hope my words imported not any such sense I am sure my sense intended not any such words those of my Letter were as I remember that I could not admit them for witnesses Authentick enough whereon to pass a Verdict in many cases of Religion Wherein by two restrictions I am safely protected from any just imputation of so unjust a negative since the one by the very exception of many cases attributes to their testimony a validity in many the other allows it an inducing power in the very denying it a convincing one and tends no way to an exclusion but only to a qualification of their evidence Many indeed are the cases wherein I hold their Testimonials most sacred and unquestionable such are the grand Fundamentals of Christianity the doctrine of believing in one God of the incarnation the Passion the Resurrection and some other the constitutive Articles of Christian Faith These to use your own terms were matters indeed that concern'd their Art and Trade matters indeed whereon their own and their posterities Salvation undoubtedly depended matters indeed that challenged their whole care and attention both to receive them rightly and transferr them faithfully In these when they tell us as they often do plainly and unanimously what they were taught and what they found believed generally through the whole Church Let their affirmation be as definitive as Pythagoras's to his Disciples in these it is too mild a word to say have they not reason to take it unkindly to be rejected Be it sacrilege but to question their veracity but on the other side many cases too there are wherein I can in no wise venter to give sentence upon their evidence Such are most if not all the now controverted poynts between the Romish Church and ours and as in my former Letter levelling at these I could not admit the Fathers for witnesses authentical enough whereon to pass a Verdict in many cases of Religion so likewise I must again profess in this that I am as farr as ever from allowing them in these such a determining or convincing Authority witnesses of such an over ruling testimony though they bear the name of witnesses are judges in effect and they do give the Law though another pronounce it Now to be Judges I could cite you many passages wherein they themselves do utterly renounce the pretension and you say your self that their modesty will not let them be troubled when they are recused for such Neither will I wrong that vertue of theirs so much as to embrace their testimonies with any closer adherence then it self desires For be they what they will in point of interpreting to us the Doctrins of Church and Scripture I am sure they are the best declarers and limiters of their own both for their proper sense and the degrees of our receiving them Now that I have explained the sense of my former Letter let me tell you the
beleeve their partaking sufficient it must needs make that great Sacrament of the Church ineffectual and yet I do not think that the Church of Rome or scarce any Jesuite for her will have the confidence to pretend that Christ himself taught the mutilation or the belief of one Elements sufficiency since the contrary practise and belief is so evident for many ages after Christ and it is so easie to discover the very drie root it self of the custome to with-hold the cup from the people The like may be said of other doctrines Now for proof of the ground it self that all doctrines of Faith whatsoever admitted in the present Church were so taught by Christ to the Church which he planted himself you Alledge this argument The reason why the present Church beleeveth any proposition to be of Faith is because the immediate preceding Church of the age before delivered it unto her for such and so you may drive it on say you from age to age until you come to the Apostles and Christ an easie progress and which if you remember Mr. White much insisted upon at that time when Mr. Chillingworth did me the favour to give him a meeting for conference at your lodging although I set a great value upon that Gentlemans learning and fair way of disputation yet I confess his argument hath often made me smile it did so bring into my head that gallant consequence of Charles Thynnes wherewith all you once made me very merry by which he undertook to demonstrate that surely in the world there might be a man so disposed as having a good rise and with a convenient career to leap at once from England to Rome for said he Bring me the best Jumper you know and is it not likely that there may be another that you know not so active as to out-jump him a foot let him be brought I hope you will not deny but he may be out-jumpt an Inch so by inches straws-breadths of outleaping one another why not to a thousand miles I dare say that Mr. Hooper was better satisfied of the corruption of times in his pedigree from King Peppin then I was by that logick of the incorruption of times in his deduction of all Romish Doctrines from Christ nor am I yet better satisfied though I confess by your dwelling on the same Argument I see plainly that what may be liable to much slighting proposed by one man may be delivered with such weight and authority from another as though it convince not yet to require a serious pondering and discussion the scope of your reasoning as I understand it is this deduction ad Impossibile If the present Church say you hold a Doctrine of Tradition it is because all they of the precedent so held it and delivered it and the reason of the preceding Churches holding it so is the same relative to all those of the next before and so on till you come to the first Age of the Church Now this being so there cannot be admitted say you unto the avowed channell of the Church any corrupt Rivolet of erroneous Doctrine unless all they of one Age conspire in an untruth to deceive posterity which is impossible This latter Assertion which I must confess to be strangely jarring to my sense is built upon a supposition of the former which is it self of great ambiguity For besides that as I said formerly I doe not think but that the Church of Rome doth receive some unwritten doctrines for which she dares not pretend to so ancient a pedigree as to have been handed down to her from the Primitive Church that Christ himself hath planted I would fain know when the present Church as you say holds a thing for such because all they of the precedent age in Christs Church delivered it to them for such what is understood by Your all they of the Catholick Church in the age precedent by all they cannot be intended here what you say in your eleventh conclusion namely that you mean the whole Congregation of the faithful spread throughout the whole world for it is a far more evident impossibility then what you drive unto that the whole congregation of the faithful throughout the world in one age should confer with and teach the whole congregation of the faithful throughout the world in another If it be understood by all they all the Doctors and Governors of one age to all the faithful throughout the whole world of another I think you will finde that likewise to border upon impossibilitie By All they then as I conceive must be understood all the Doctors and Governors of the Church in one age to all the Doctors and Governors of the Church in another and from them the Doctrines spred among the whole multitudes of the faithful are said to be the traditions of the Catholick Church Now this is so narrow a confinement of universallity to the mouthes of the Doctors or Governors of a present Church that I think it no impossility for all those that have declared themselves in some point in some age to have agreed together on the teaching of somewhat more then was true or at least such a major part of them as the dissentors may well have bin overborn or supprest so that the doctrine may with a succeeding age have past for a tradition generally agreed on and to such a conspiracy methinks they might have been drawn by appearances of good as well as through ill ends As for Example The Doctors conceiving that a great restraint might be laid upon ill-livers by Auricular confession the apprehension of a sensible witnesse being most lively unto them might have complotted to teach the necessity of it to the multitude for an universal tradition which perhaps they knew not to have been such and so in other points as the good or danger might appear more or less to the Governors of the Church so likewise for worse ends in point of the Popes Supremacy it being a Doctrine so essential to the Monarchy of the Church I beleeve it far from impossible that in some age all the Doctors of the Church of Rome that shall be heard may resolve to teach it to their several Congregations for universal tradition since the major part as a Pope Aeneas Sylvius himself confesseth affirms that the Pope is above Councels because he hath so many Bishopricks to bestow the Councels have none besides if your All they of a precedent Church of Christ instructing the present be reduced to so few as the Doctors that are heard deliver their mindes in any one age The natural Argument by which you would prove the impossibility of a conspiracy in an untruth will fall to the ground since that is built upon a supposition that those general traditions which cannot be erroneous because of Humane natures love of truth are delivered by such a multitude of men as contain in them all the variety of dispositions and affections incident to the nature