of the former for it will be very difficult to shew how the Church can exert it's Infallibility so as to be a Guide but either by means of it's Head which you make the Pope or else by the way of a General Council there is no other way whereby those of your Communion can be certain what is the Doctrine and what are the Traditions of your Church but one of these and therefore having considered both of them already I shall proceed to consider the way of Reasoning your Divines commonly make use of to prove that there either is or ought to be such an Infallible Judge As for what they say from Scripture it is commonly urged so coldly and with so much diffidence that we may see they do not lay any great stress upon it But that you may not be amused only with some general Words in truth nothing to the purpose I desire you would consider that there being no Infallibility which can serve to be your Guide but only that of the Pope or a General Council nothing from Scripture can be pertinent but that which proves either the one or the other No Man or Number of Men can be Infallible without a particular Assistance and we cannot be sure they are so without a particular Promise And therefore when you hear any thing alledged from Scripture only ask your selves What does this prove Does it prove the Pope to be Infallible Or does it prove a General Council to be so If it do not prove one of them it proves nothing in this Matter for you are never the nearer your Guide for any thing else Now as to General Councils I have shewed already that there is not the least hint of them in Scripture and as for the Title of the Pope to it I shall consider it presently in examining his Supremacy And in the mean time shall take notice a little what they urge from Reason to prove that there ought to be such a Judge ought to be I say for all the Reason in the World without a Revelation from God can never prove that there is one it being a thing that depends meerly upon the appoinment and good-pleasure of God The Writers of the Romish Church it must be confessed talk Plausibly enough when they expose the weakness of Human understanding and the Infirmities of Human Nature and I must say that in reading of them I could hardly forbear at least to wish that if it had pleased God some effectual Remedy had been provided to secure Men from Error But this did not at all influence me to think that God had done so and that upon these Three Accounts 1. Because we see in fact that neither Mankind in general nor Christians in particular have been secured from Errors that there have been as many Contests and Differences among Christians as we can suppose there would have been taking it for granted that they were left in the State we say they were without any Infallible Guide to direct them and therefore whatever force such a Consideration from the necessity of ending Controversies might have had in the first Times of our Religion the matter of Fact does now in a great measure take it off because in 1700 Years the Church has not been freed from them From whence as I said before we may inferr either that it is not the Will of God that Controversies should be ended or that an Infallible Judge will not end them or that there is no Infallible Judge either of which takes away the force of this Argument 2. Because this whole way of Arguing from the weakness of our Understanding and proness to Error and the like proves nothing in particular and consequently does not bring us at all nearer Satisfaction than we were before The most natural Inference from it is That every Man is to be of the Religion of his Country for that makes through work and excuses us from using our Fallible Reason at all in the Matter whereas in your Way however you may cry out of the uncertainty of our own Reason yet you must use it in a great many material Points and indeed found all the certainty you have upon it you must for instance Judge by your own Reason whether the Christian Religion be true or not whether among all the Professors of Christianity yours be the True Church whether there be any Infallible Judge or no and who he is and what his Determinations are These are things of great weight and of a great latitude and indeed take in the chief Points of Religion and yet these things must be judged of by that Reason which God has given every Man or they cannot be judged of at all whereas your whole way of Arguing from the fallibility of our Understanding either proves that we cannot judge with certainty of these Matters or it proves nothing 3. This whole way of talking is to me a strong prejudice against what you would prove by it For if you had a plain Institution or a Promise of such a Judg to shew there would be no need of this Arguing that would be Sufficient and without that no Man can be Infallible and we may be sure that Men have no such Commission or Promise to shew when they are forced to use so much Cavilling and Dispute about the matter which is indeed nothing to the purpose without the other We do with much more reason inferr that since God has not thought fit to give any such Commission that therefore we must make the best of those other means which he is pleased to allow us to search the Scriptures and endeavour to understand them as well as we can And this is the Method that our Saviour directed Search the Scriptures for in them ye think ye have Eternal Life and they testifie of me From which Words we may plainly infer these following things 1. That the Jews had at that time no Infallible Guide in Matters of Religion for if they had our Saviour would have directed them thither but we see he directs them to the Scripture 2. We may inferr that the Persons our Saviour spoke to had without an Infallible Guide sufficient Abilities to understand the Scriptures and to have true Faith otherwise we may be sure he would not have sent them thither and if they could understand the Old Testament without such a Guide much more may Christians understand the New which is much easier 3. We may inferr that Private Persons for such our Saviour spoke to may have sufficient assurance of Divine Truths from examining the Scriptures tho' they go against the Governors of the Church for our Saviour tells them that they might find in the Scriptures that he was the True Messias tho' the Chief Priests did at that time reject him and were afterwards the Authors of his Crucifixion All which do absolutely overthrow the necessity of an Infallible Judge in order to True Faith And there cannot be one thing said against
Protestants examining the Scriptures now but what would have held as well against the Command of our Saviour here to the Jews unless they can shew us a positive Institution of an Infallible Guide but all the Arguments from Reason and the imperfection of our Understanding are perfectly the same in both Cases The truth is all our Saviour's Preaching did suppose this for it had been a vain thing to Preach to People who had not abilities to understand And if we go further to the Preaching of the Apostles we shall find that they endeavoured to prove the truth of what they said out of the Scriptures by which they appealed to the Understanding of their Hearers and made them proper Judges of what they said as far as their own Salvation was concerned in it We see in Acts 17.11 The Bereans were commended as more noble than those of Thessalonica because they searched the Scriptures daily to see whether the things the Apostles preached were so or not The Apostle St. John commands Christians to try the Spirits that is to examine the pretences that any should make to the Spirit of God which supposes that their Understanding how fallible soever was sufficient to judge in these Matters In a word the Writers and Emissaries of the Church of Rome do themselves when they don't think of it in effect confess this for when they bring Scripture and other Arguments to persuade us to come over to their Church I would ask them are we proper Judges of these things or are we not Will our Faith be a true Faith that is founded upon these Scriptures or these Reasons that you here bring If it be so then we may understand for our selves and there is no necessity in order to true Faith of an Infallible Judge but if it be not so there ought to be then an end of Disputes for it 's in vain to Dispute where it 's supposed that we cannot understand or judge and all offering of Scripture or Reason to prove the truth of their Opinions is only affront and mockery But it may be it will be said Don't we see People differ about the Interpretation of Scripture some go one way and some another and yet all are consident of their own how can we be sure that we are in the right any more than they who are as confident in what they say as we are Now this Objection is founded upon this that we cannot have certainty of what is once Disputed which is contrary to the Common Opinion of Mankind who would have done Disputing if they thought they could not be certain when once Men differed from them This does indeed overthrow all Reason and Religion Some have ventured to Dispute the Being of God and many more the Truth of the Christian Religion and yet I hope we may be very certain of the Truth of both these But I would only urge at present this one Consideration Are all the World agreed about their Infallible Judge If not how can they be certain of that But to press this Matter a little more plainly they say for instance that we can't from Scripture be certain of the Divinity of our Saviour because the Socinian's a small number of Men dispute that Matter But the same Socinians deny their Infallible Judge and therefore that must at least be as uncertain as the other And not only the Socinians but all Protestants deny it which must make it still more uncertain and not only all the Protestants but the Greek Armenian Aethiopian Churches a vast Body of Men which must still add to the uncertainty and not only all these but all that in any Age or Nation have ever differed from the Church of Rome for whoever differs from them must deny their Infallibility and consequently this must have been Disputed not only as much as any one Point but as much as all the rest together This I think is a demonstrative Answer to this whole way of Arguing and shews the manifest Absurdity of it for it makes things uncertain because they are Disputed and yet makes the most Disputed thing in all the World the Foundation of all the certainty they have I have been the longer in examining this Point of the Infallibility of your Church as being that which is the great support of all your other Errors I now proceed to speak something to the particulars I promised and first I shall begin with Transubstantiation which is the first thing Renounced in the Test The Sense of the Church of England in this Matter seems to be this That tho' Believers in the faithful and due receiving of this Holy Sacrament are made Partakers of the Benefits of the Death of Christ that is of the breaking of his Body and the shedding his Blood and so may be properly enough said to be partakers of his Body and Blood yet that which they take into their Mouths is really but Bread and Wine but Bread and Wine set apart for a holy Use to represent the breaking of the Body and the shedding of the Blood of our Blessed Saviour and therefore in a Sacramental sense may be called his Body and Blood tho' in truth and reality they are but Bread and Wine Both Sides do in some Sense own a real Presence of Christ in this Sacrament but this one thing if observed will sufficiently shew the difference That Protestants say that in the devout and holy Use of this Sacrament Christ will be present with his Grace and Assistance to the Souls of good People but that the Things which appear before us which we eat and drink are not Christ but Bread and Wine Those of the Church of Rome on the other side say That the Thing which lies before them which they put into their Mouths tho' before Consecration they are Bread and Wine yet upon pronouncing those Words This is my Body and this is my Blood they lose their own Nature and Substance of Bread and Wine and become very Christ the very same Christ that was Born of the Virgin Mary and that suffered upon the Cross And therefore pay them the same Divine Honour and Worship as if God or Christ did truly and openly appear before them Now the whole ground of this Dispute lies in the Words of the Institution This is my Body and this is my Blood They say that the Words ought to be understood in the plain literal Sense we say they ought to be understood as used by Christ in his Instituting a Sacrament that is appointing one thing to be a representation and a memorial of another and which because it does represent may very well be called by the Name of that Thing which is represented by it which we think to be a very natural easy way of speaking and agreeable as to that present occasion so to other terms of Speech of the same nature which had been in use among those People to whom our Saviour spoke But in particular the time in which
make a different Religion To instance in particular those that own General Councils to be Infallible must take their Decrees as part of the Rule of their Faith but now they that own the Pope for Infallible must besides take in all his solemn Determinations and so have a much larger Rule of their Faith than the other and in many Cases very different and what may be much more different than it is now for if he be indeed Fallible as many of them say that he is he may determine Vice to be Vertue and Vertue to be Vice he may fall into great Errors as other Fallible Men may do and as some of them in fact have done and yet those of that Church who own him to be Infallible must take these things as part of the Rule of their Faith and Manners These I take to be undeniable Consequences from the differences among them about their Infallible Judge and I think from all together I may well inferr that there is no such thing since it so much concerns the World if there be any to be at a certainty about it and yet the greatest part of Christians know nothing at all of the Matter and those who do pretend to know it are in truth as much at a loss about it as those that do not only they agree in a Name which leads them different ways perhaps all wrong and only more Infallibly secures them in Error But I would now speak a word or two to the several Pretences to it The first Pretender is the Pope who seems indeed to have the best Pretence for if God do think sit to appoint such a one a single Person who is always ready to hear and determine Matters seems most proper at least much more proper than a number of Men to be sent from all Parts of the World who can seldom meet and never without a great deal of trouble and this seems to be the most genuine Doctrine of the Church of Rome which makes the Pope the Center of Vnity makes Communion with him necessary and a Mark of a True Church and makes his Church the Mother and Mistress of all Churches which is hardly Sense without Infallibility But as to his Pretence I shall consider it presently when I come to examine his Supremacy for if that fall his Infallibility must fall along with it One thing only I would observe here That it seems apparent from hence that the Primitive Church knew nothing of his Infallibility in that they took to that troublesome and chargeable and tedious way of ending their Disputes by Councils which supposing he be appointed by God to determine them and inabled to do it infallibly were not only useless and impertinent but indeed dangerous and very apt to turn Men from the way by which God had appointed the Church to be Guided A number of Men may be good for Counsel and Assistance of one that is Fallible but must be utterly unnecessary and an incumbrance to one that is Infallible And therefore since the Church has always made use of Councils either General or Provincial to determine Matters of Faith I may certainly conclude they knew nothing of his Infallibility Infallibility of General Councils As to General Councils it is not our present Business to enquire of what use they may be to the Church or what External deference is due to them if we could have those that are truly General but whether they are Infallible or not Now as to this I would only propose this one short Consideration That they are not of the appointment of Jesus Christ but begun 300 Years after Christ by Constantine now whatever Wisdom there may have been in calling so many Bishops together to endeavour by their Authority to Compose the Differences of the Church or to Establish good Discipline yet it was still a Humane Constitution and I know no way to annex Infallibility to what is so If 3 or 400 Men meet together each of which is confessedly Fallible they must altogether be so unless you can shew a Promise from Jesus Christ to secure them from Error Now if there be such a Promise as this we Protestants expect to find it in Scripture but however you your selves cannot pretend to it unless it be in Scripture or comes down to you by Tradition from Christ and his Apostles As to Scripture the very Name and Thing of a General Council is quite unknown to it and as for Tradition that could as little convey down any such Promise for the whole Thing was unknown in the Church for 300 Years not so much as the Name ever heard of As for the Meeting at Jerusalem of which we have an account in the 15 of the Acts of the Apostles it was only a Meeting of those that were then at Jerusalem upon occasion of a Complaint that was brought to them And it was a Meeting of Men most of which were by immediate Inspiration singly Infallible and therefore can be no President for a Meeting of Bishops from all Parts of the World And much less does this which was an accidental Meeting contein an Institution for the future and a Promise to make them Infallible when met in a Body together who singly are but like other Men. If it be said that they must be Infallible because they represent the Vniversal Church which is Infallible the Difficulty will still return for tho' we should grant the Church to be Infallible yet who appointed this Representations did Jesus Christ Has he annexed a Promise of Infallibility to it Without such a Promise as this there may be Infallibility in the Church and yet 3 or 400 Bishops or the Majority of them may be mistaken they may be a Number of Men packed together to serve a Turn they may be guided by Faction or Interest by their own Interest or the Interest of those who send them as in fact it has been more than once or if they are good Men that will not make them Infallible We may contrive as wisely as we please but we can never be certain to annex the Supernatural Assistance of God to our own Schemes To conclude this Head If the Infallibility you boast of be fixed in General Councils there was none in the Church for 300 Years when yet there was the most need of them there having been a greater number of dangerous Heresies in that Time than have been in the Church ever since But what is worse either there was no true Faith and Religion all that while or else it must be granted that we may have it without an Infallible Guide Christians were then at least in this respect in the same Condition that Protestants are now And I hope it will be granted that we need not desire to be in a better than they were The Last refuge for Infallibility is that it is in the diffusive Body of the Church But this I believe must be at last reduced to one or other
Transubstantiation For I would ask Supposing a Man should Consecrate with the Words of St. Luke This Cup is the New Testament in my Blood would that change the Wine not to say the Cup into the very Blood of Christ Certainly it would not do it by force of those Words for they intimate no such thing and it is not unlikely but those were the very Words our Saviour spake for not only St. Luke uses them but St. Paul and that upon a solemn occasion when it concerned him much to give a true Representation of this Sacrament as you may see 1 Cor. Chap. 11. The occasion of his mentioning the Institution of this Sacrament was very great Irreverence which some were guilty of in receiving of it indeed such as it was almost impossible for them to be guilty of had they believed what the Church of Rome now believes about it it was therefore very necessary that the Apostle should speak clearly and plainly out in this matter and we see he does solemnly usher in what he says with the Authority of Christ For I have received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you in c. And then he repeats the Words as St. Luke does and not only so but calls the other part of the Sacrament Bread near Ten times in that Chapter 4. The Last Argument I shall make use of upon this Head is this That the Doctrine of the Church of Rome upon another account does not agree with the Words of our Blessed Saviour The Opinion of that Church is That under each Species as they call it whole Christ is contained Body Blood Soul and Divinity so that both are but just the very same Thing in nothing different but in outward appearance which only deceives our Senses And it is upon this Opinion chiefly that they ground the denyal of the Cup to the People because say they should they have the Cup they would have no more but just the very same thing they had in the other Kind And supposing their Opinion true the Argument may for any thing I know have some force in it but then they ought not to deny us leave to Argue the other way That that Opinion must needs be false which makes our Saviour guilty of a great Absurdity in appointing Two Kinds but both really the same thing and one of them perfectly unnecessary But that which I would chiefly take notice of is That this Doctrine of theirs contradicts the Words of our Saviour for what they make but One Thing he plainly makes Two and calls them by Two different Names The one he calls his Body the other he calls his Blood which supposes them to be Two different Things as plain as Words can express them They say indeed That in the Glorified Body of Christ the Body and Blood cannot be separated and therefore were the Words to be taken in such a sense as to consider them separated they would contain a great Absurdity so that wherever the one is the other by concomitancy must be there too But who told them that the Glorified Body of Christ is in the Sacrament The Words of the Institution intimate no such thing but speak of his Body given and his Blood shed which certainly was separate from his Body But however this is arguing from Reason against the Words and is just the very same thing which they condemn as Heretical in us And if this be once allowed they must throw off the whole Doctrine for we can shew them Ten times as many Absurdities in the Doctrine of Transustantiation as they can in supposing the Body and Blood of Christ to subsist separately In short either we must stick to the very Words of our Blessed Saviour or we must not if we must their Opinion must be false which makes what our Saviour calls Two Things to be but One if we must not stick to the very Words but interpret them according to right Reason and other Places of Scripture they then give up their Cause To conclude this Head What Reason can there be imagined why our Saviour should in a solemn manner at different Times and under different Names give the very same thing call the one his Body and the other his Blood when according to the Nature of the Thing he might as well have inverted the Names and have called that his Blood which he calls his Body and so on the other side There cannot I believe be any Reason thought of but only this That the one Kind the Bread was very proper to represent the breaking of his Body the other the Wine to represent the shedding of his Blood which is the very thing that we would have for then there is a sufficient Reason for these Names without any Bodily Presence at all I have been the longer in considering the Sense of the Scripture in this Matter because your Writers commonly boast more of the Scripture being for you in this Case than in any other Controversies betwixt us And I think I have proved more than I need have done in proving that the Sense your Church puts upon the Words of our Saviour cannot be the true Sense of them It being sufficient in a Matter of this Nature which is loaded with so many Absurdities to have shewed that they did fairly admit of another Interpretation But having so fully Confuted this Doctrine out of the Scriptures I am now more at liberty to shew you the gross Absurdities and the monstrous Contradictions that are involved in it tho' in truth it is so full fraught with Contradictions that it 's a hard matter to know where to begin I shall therefore content my self just to repeat some of them which are ready Collected to my hand by a Great Divine of our own Chilligworth p. 165. That there should be Accidents without a Subject that is That there should be length and nothing long breadth and nothing broad thickness and nothing thick whiteness and nothing white roundness and nothing round weight and nothing heavy sweetness and nothing sweet moisture and nothing moist fluidness and nothing flowing many actions and no agent many passions and no patient that is that there should be a long broad thick white round heavy sweet moist flowing active passive nothing That Bread should be turned into the Substance of Christ and yet not any thing of that Bread become any thing of Christ neither the Matter nor the Form nor the Accidents of Bread be made either the Matter or the Form or the Accidents of Christ That Bread should be turned into nothing and at the same time with the same Action be turned into Christ and yet that Christ should not be nothing That the same thing at the same time should have it's just dimensions and just distance of it's Parts one from another and at the same time should not have it but all its Parts together in the felf-same Point That the Body of Christ which is much greater should
very proper occasion to mention St. Peter's Authority if he had any such as they boast of as you may see 1 Eph. Chap. 1. Now this I say that every one of you saith I am of Paul and I of Apollos and I of Cephas or Peter and I of Christ Is Christ divided or was Paul Crucified for you c. Those People certainly knew nothing of St. Peter's Supremacy nor St. Paul neither otherwise he would hardly have omitted to tell them of such an Infallible Cure for their Divisions In the Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians we have many Arguments against St. Peter's pretended Supremacy St. Paul tells us there that he had no Superior that he had his Authority from none but Christ Ch. 1.17 He compares himself with St. Peter and says that the Ministry of the Vncircumcision was committed to him as the Ministry of the Circumcision was unto Peter Ch. 2. v. 7. He mentions St. Peter as of the same Authority with James and John when James Cephas and John who seemed to be Pillars Verse the 9th And a little further he tells us how he openly withstood Peter to the Face because he was to be blamed All these things might be urged at large but I content my self only tomention them But from all together I think I may well conclude that this Promise of our Saviour did not intend St. Peter any Power over the rest of the Apostles and consequently not any to his Successors if he had any over the Bishops of the Christian Church who are Successors of the Apostles in general tho' we do not deny but St. Peter had a Power over the whole Church but only as the rest of the Apostles had whose Care and consequently Authority was not consined to particular Churches as it was thought fit in order to the better Government of the Church that the Authority of Bishops should be since but was left at large and unconfin'd as to any certain limits either of Person or Places But suppose it should be granted that St. Peter had such Power as they affirm he had yet there is not one Word in Scripture about a Successor or about the vast Privileges of the Church of Rome in this Point And in truth there is as little evidence in the History of the Church for many Ages of this pretended Authority of the Bishop of Rome as there is in the Scriptures Rome was at the time of the Planting the Christian Religion a vast City and the Head of a very great Empire This must of it self give the Bishop of it a great influence in the Affairs of the Church which was almost all within the Roman Empire this made all sort of Communication with him easy by means of the mighty refort that was made from all Parts to the tal City and Greatness of his See did in course of Time bring great Riches to it and if we add to this that it was honoured by the Preaching and Martyrdom of two great Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul we see plain Reasons why the Bishops of Rome were likely to make a great Figure in the Church but as for real Authority such as is now pretended there do not appear any footsteps of it for several Ages As for Speculative Opinions We may not perhaps have so certain an account of them so long after unless of those which by some accident or other came to be Disputed But Government is a Practical thing and there happens every day Occasion to exercise it especially the Government of the whole Church and if the Pope had been from the beginning what he pretends to be and what he now makes himself his Power could have been no more a matter of Controversy than it could be made a Controversy whether there were any Christian Church for the same History that clears the one must at the same time clear the other The Old Body of History of the Christian Church is that of Eusebius which contains an account of the Affairs of it for above 300 Years now if the Pope were Monarch of the Church for those 300 Years we can no more miss to see it in that History than we can read any History of England for such a Number of Years and be uncertain whether we had here any King or no for so long a time No History hardly can be conceived so faulty or imperfect as to leave such a Matter a Secret or uncertain And yet I would Challenge any indifferent Person to read that History over and to shew me but any one thing in it from which it can be probably inferred that the Bishop of Rome was the Governour of the whole Church whereas were it truly so there must have been something of it in almost every Page Because all the business of the Church must in a manner roul upon him He must be the Person appeal'd to in almost all Difficulties we must have found his decrees in all the great Affaires that passed His Decretal Epistles must have been interspersed up and down in the whole Work his Authority must have put an end to all Schisms and Heresies or at least their Rebellion against him must have been reckoned as one great part of their Crime In a word as I said before the thing must have appeared as plain as that there was any King in England for these last 300 Years Next to that History the most likely place to find his Authority if he had any is in the Works of St. Cyprian which contain more of the Ancient Discipline and Government of the Church than is to be found in any other Old Author especially if we add further that a great part of his Works is only Letters to or from Bishops of Rome We could not but see in such a number of Letters whether he wrote to his Sovereign or not we should see it in the Titles which he gives him in his Style in the deference which he pays him In short the whole would some how or other shew that it was his Superior he was writing to but now the contrary to this is true He never speaks to him or of him in his Letters to other People but by the Name of Brother he freely Censures him and his Opinions just as he would do by any other Man and with as little deference or respect and he finally differed from him in a Matter of great consequence that of Re-baptizing Hereticks and called Councils of the Clergy and raised a great Party against him in it and yet was never that I have heard of charged either with Rebellion or Schism or Heresy upon that account but is to this day reputed a Saint in Heaven To conclude this Matter The whole Discipline of the Ancient Universal Church plainly shews that the Government of it was an Aristocracy especially that strict Account that Bishops were to give to their Fellow Bishops up and down the World of their Ordination and their Faith and other Matters in