Doctrine of our Church that there is no necessity of express Scripture for the Constitutions and Practices which she enjoyns in order to the more regular and decent service of God. But before my Adversary ends his Letter I am brought in again as if I had said that we espouse a Tradition which authorises Constitutions and Practices without any Authority of the Written Word but I would fain know where it was that I said this I said the Church taught that there was no necessity of Express Scripture and here it is come to no Scripture at all for that is the place the Representer alludes to I must therefore ask him seriously whether these two be the same and whether there is no difference between not express Scripture and no Scripture at all could this Adversary shew that there is no medium betwixt Express Scripture and no Scripture at all it would have served for some excuse for him but since that is impossible to be shewn all people owning that what is onely implyed or ordered in general terms or may be deduced by rational consequence thence is said to be founded on Scripture and to have the authority thereof as well as that Doctrine which is delivered the most plainly or expresly there I must accuse my Adversary of very great disingenuity here who does so injuriously turn the not requiring express Scripture into the not requiring any Scripture Malice it seems will put men that are set upon revenge on doing the most unlawful things and quite perverting the words of their Adversary and making them say what they never did nor thought on the Representer otherwise could not but have seen how great a wrong he was doing me there and his Conscience must have upbraided him with a deliberate abusing and perverting my words but against that home-enemy he seems to be provided with armour of Proof The next Article of Popery laid to my charge is for asserting That the Tradition of Antiquity is highly useful and necessary for the Interpretation of Points of Faith. I cannot see how this comes to be Popery any more than the last Article that I was charged with my Adversaries business here seems to be only to amuse the Multitude with the word Tradition and therefore my care needs onely be employed for the acquitting of my self to let the world see all that I or others mean by the Tradition mentioned here By Tradition here I meant nothing else than those Interpretations of difficult places of Scriptures and explications of points of Faith which we meet with in the Fathers from the first Century downwards Such Interpretations whether received from those before them or found out by their own industry and comparing of one part of Scripture with another we do embrace as transmitted from them unto us in their Writings and look upon such Interpretations as very good Guides and necessary Assistances to prevent our falling into Error by letting us see how from time to time such a Point of Doctrine or such a Text was taken by the generality or unanimous Consent of Fathers in such a determinate sense We have very great reason to value the Fathers upon this very account because they afford us such evidences against those Doctrines the Church of Rome would obtrude upon us It cannot but be very great pleasure to find that the Texts of Scripture which are alledged by the Romish Writers for some of their particular Doctrines are interpreted generally in a sense quite contrary by the Primitive Fathers I am sure that the Texts of Scripture alledged for that great fundamental Article of Popery the Pope's Supremacy by the Romish Writers are interpreted by the generality and almost unanimous Consent of the Fathers and Ecclesiastical Writers in a sense quite contrary to that which the Romanists urge them for I am very well assured that in very many other Points of Doctrine we are able to shew that the Generality of Fathers did not interpret the Texts of Scripture upon which the Romanists found them in that sense which they contend for and I do believe that we may extend it to all points of Doctrine grounded upon Texts of Scripture which are under debate betwixt the Church of England and the Church of Rome If it be Popery then to value and embrace those Interpretations which are delivered to us from the Fathers and which are the Best Evidences next to the Holy Scriptures themselves of the falshood and unreasonableness of the several Points of Popery and which will assist us to ruin those groundless Doctrines I am content to be a Papist in this Article but am affraid I shall never be looked upon as one jot more a Catholick for it I will pass on to the next charge the Tenth Article of my Popery which in my Adversaries Letter runs thus that He Honours the Saints in observing days in honour of them But how comes it to be here He honours when I said plainly enough that WE that is the Church of England do it If there be any Popery in this charge why is it laid to me as if I were delivering there onely my own Judgment or Practice and not to the Church of England whom I spoke of expresly there But the Man begins to draw low and to be put to all his Shifts to make up a Catalogue of Popery against me that might make some show and therefore since I proved so ill natured in the rest of my Book as to give him no advantage against me He very wisely charges that as my own and an Article of my Popery which is the avowed and most known Practice of the best Reformed Churches in the World. It is very well known that not onely the Church of England but the best Reformed Churches abroad do observe dayes in honour or memory of the Saints departed who do at the same time detest and abhor the putting up of prayers unto them or praying to them for to be made partakers of their Merits He that will take the pains to look into the Liturgy of the Church of England may quickly see what honour it is that our Church payes to the Saints that it is no other nor no more than to Bless God for his manifold Gifts and Graces unto them whereby they were enabled to be glorious Examples of Holiness to the World and strengthened in any Troubles or Fiery Trials to pass through them with a Christian Courage and Resignation and to pray unto him that we may have Grace to direct our Lives after their good Examples This is all that our Church doth practice in her Liturgy and all that she requires in the Sermons on those Festival Days is that the Example of the Servants of God and particularly of that Saint whose memory is celebrated that day may be set forth in the best manner that so the Congregation may be persuaded to direct their Lives also in the same good and holy paths But tho this be all that the Church
Bishops challenge as their Right To let him see how loosely he manages this debate betwixt us I can with putting in two or three necessary words subscribe to all our Compiler says for the Pope and yet be as far from owning the Popes Supremacy as the Church of England is or ever was The Fathers teach says our Compiler (a) Nubes Testium p. 22. that Christ Built his Church upon Peter So say I too if by Fathers here be meant two or three of them and not the Fathers unanimously as he hath it before or generally That the Bishop of Rome is the Successor of Saint Peter is what I can also grant and that that See is the Centre of the Catholick Communion if I may but put in here what is absolutely necessary while possessed by an Orthodox Bishop and that whosoever separates himself from it I add professing the true Faith and possessed by a Catholick Bishop is guilty of Schism I CAN I SAY SUBSCRIBE THOUGH I DO NOT TO ALL This without any Obligation in the least of believing the Popes Supremacy All that our Compiler puts down here reaching no farther than a Primacy of Order does not at all suppose in the Popes any Jurisdiction or Authority over the Catholick Church Having dispatched my Vindication against the Charge of the three first Articles of Popery I come now to examine the fourth which doth charge me with doubting whether there be really any Controversy about Tradition betwixt the Church of Rome and the Church of England Well then are these my expressions in the place quoted Or is this the sense of them there I must profess to the world that had I not already discovered the cheats of the malicious Representer in the former Articles I could not have believed that any person of common sense or learning would have been guilty of such tricks I had the same occasion in my chapter about the Tradition that I had in the former chapter about Supremacy of shewing how loose a Writer our Compiler is and exposing him for putting that down as an account of the Controversy which I could subscribe to if taken in that sense which the words would fairly bear and yet be never the nearer to Popery than I now am or ever intend to be Upon this coming to examine what he had put down at the Head of his Collections about Tradition I have these expressions To state therefore the Controversy about Tradition if there really be any betwixt us he should not have put down that for the account of the debate herein betwixt us which is agreed to by both sides nor should have omitted that wherein WE REALLY DISAGREE and that is about the Scriptures being a certain and Perfect Rule of Faith WITHOUT THE HELP of TRADITION which the Council of Trent hath made to be of Equal Authority with the Scripture One would think such clear expressions as these would have prevented my being accused of doubting whether there really be any Controversie about Tradition betwixt the Church of Rome and the Church of England but no clearness it seems can be protection against the Malice of such an Adversary as is fallen upon me and therefore he puts down those expressions as mine doubting whether there be really any Controversie about Tradition betwixt the Church of Rome and the Church of England when in that very paragraph I say that We meaning the Churches of England and Rome Really Disagree about Tradition's being part of the Rule of Faith. And therefore any other Reader less spiteful than my angry Adversary would easily have seen and observed that the expression in the beginning of the paragraph if there really be any was used and intended for an allusion to that state of the Controversie which had been set down by the Compiler about Tradition and ought not to be wire-drawn to make me doubt that in the beginning of the paragraph the contrary to which I did directly assert within three lines after The fifth Article of the charge against me is that I did say that the Tradition of the Catholick Church is to be received and the sixth is of the same kind that I confessed there That by Tradition we receive the Holy Scriptures and know how to separate the Scriptures from Apocryphal or Suppositious Writings I do freely own that these are my expressions in that place and these I am sure are far from looking like Popery if I that wrote them may be allowed to tell in what sense I did mean and intend them All the service that my Adversary could expect from the citing and insisting upon them was onely to amuse the common Readers with the Word Tradition that they not understanding the Ambiguity of the Word nor in what several senses the Word Tradition was used might be tempted to believe that I was for setting up there that Tradition which they used to hear preached against so much by the Clergy of the Church of England By Tradition here which I said we receive or admit of I did not mean that Tradition which is set up as part of the Rule of Faith in the Church of Rome nor did I any more mean Tradition as it is taken for any Doctrine of the Church of Rome which they say was from the beginning delivered to them All that I meant by Tradition there was no more than the bare means of delivering down to us the Word of God and any Rites or Customs in the Ancient Church When I said therefore that by this Tradition we received the Holy Scriptures and know how to separate the Scriptures from Apocryphal or Supposititious Writings The full and clear meaning of those expressions was that the Canonical Books of the Holy Scriptures or to speak to the meanest capacity that the Bible was delivered down from time to time and from hand to hand in all Ages unto us that we did receive them from our Forefathers in the Church as they had received them from theirs up unto the beginning and that since they delivered down to us onely those Books which the Church of England does believe and admit for the Word of God we do thereby know that no other Books could be part of the Scriptures which were not handed down to us for such This is as much as I need to offer either in Vindication of my self or explication of my words when I spoke of Tradition but because I cannot clear my innocence too much herein I will shew the world that I had very good Vouchers for every word that I said thereabout and will produce the sense of Arch-Bishop Usher who never was thought by any Sort of Protestants to be any ways inclineable to or guilty of Popery This most learned Prelate in his Reply to the Jesuits Challenge hath these words about (b) p. 35. Tradition This must I needs tell you before we begin that you much mistake the matter if you think that Traditions of all sorts promiscuously are struck at
by our Religion We willingly acknowledge that the word of God which by some of the Apostles was set down in writing was both by themselves and others of their fellow-labourers delivered by word of mouth and that the Church in succeeding ages was bound not only to preserve those sacred writings committed to her trust but also to deliver unto her children vivâ voce the form of wholsome words contained therein Traditions therefore of this nature come not within the compass of our controversy the question being betwixt us de ipsâ Doctrinâ traditâ not de tradendi modo touching the substance of the doctrine delivered not of the manner of delivering it Again it must be remembred that here we speak of doctrine delivered as the word of God that is of points of religion revealed unto the Prophets and Apostles for the perpetual information of Gods people not of rites and ceremonies and other ordinances which are left to the disposition of the Church and consequently be not of divine but of positive and humane right Traditions therefore of this kind likewise are not properly brought within the circuit of this question Thus that most learned Man whose Authority is so deservedly great in the world The Seventh Article of Popery is that I said there that I was willing and ready to receive any Doctrine not written that hath as perpetual unanimous and certain a Tradition as the Scripture and that I onely wait for the proving this and then I am ready to embrace all the Doctrines of Popery As for those last words and then he is ready to embrace all the Doctrines of Popery which are maliciously put in the Italick Character that so they might be thought by the Reader to be my own words I have no such expressions there and these are onely the Representer's consequence draw from what I had said there that we onely wait for their proving that any of those Doctrines they would obtrude upon us have been thus universally delivered But his business here was to make the passage look as invidious as he could and therefore he was so very careful to put his own Consequence down in the most odious terms that he could devise The former part of the Accusation about my professed readiness to receive any Doctrine not written that hath as perpetual unanimous and certain a Tradition as the Doctrines written in Scripture have I do readily own and plead guilty unto it since I am very well satisfied that my Religion as a Member of the Church of England is not in danger of being shockt or endangered by it I do still say that I am now ready to receive any such unwritten Doctrines which expressions of mine as well in my Book as here are far from supposing that the Church of England wants any necessary means of Salvation or that there are in any other Church any such unwritten Doctrines so qualified for a Christian's Reception as I there require but they do on the contrary suppose that the Church of Rome is not able to shew for any one point of Religion which they would obtrude upon us such a perpetual unanimous and certain Tradition as I do demand for it I used those words there because I did not onely believe but was fully persuaded that it is impossible for the Church of Rome to prove in that Method any of their Doctrines which are refused by us and if it be impossible I suppose I am in no very great likelihood of ever becoming a Roman Catholick while I make a thing impossible to them the condition of my ever becoming a member of their Church The eighth Article of Popery is my saying that there is no necessity of Express Scripture for the Constitutions and practices which his Church enjoyns in order to the more regular and decent service of God. But how comes this to be an Article of Popery against me And how comes this to be christened Popery Hath it not always been the Doctrine of the Reformed Church of England Is not this a Doctrine common to all persuasions of Christians in the world I cannot but look upon the Representer in great pain and concern to muster up a set of Articles of Popery against me that is forced to make a false muster and to call that Popery which in reality is not His weakness is as visible as his malice in this affair as his malice put him upon making me odious by drawing up a charge of Popish Principles against me so his weakness did in this place betray him into a miscalling that Doctrine Popery which is common to all sorts of Christians The Church of England hath professed this as her sense all along that there is no necessity of Express Scripture for her Constitutions and Orders for the more regular and decent Service of God but that these things are commanded onely in general and the particular determination thereof left to the Governours of the several Churches Nor is the Church of England alone nor the onely Church among the Reformed of this persuasion the Reformed Churches beyond the Seas do altogether concur with Her in this and so do all the Greek Eastern and Southern Churches not one of which doth require express Texts of Scripture for the several Ceremonies and Constitutions in their Churches for the more decent service of God but look upon a general Commission to the Church from the Word of God to enable and empower them to provide and order the particular Modes and Practices Nay our Dissenters themselves notwithstanding their too great rigidness in many things cannot but subscribe the Doctrine I set down above since they do not pretend to shew express Scripture for the several Orders made among them in relation to the Circumstances of Time Place Postures and Gestures used in the Service of God. Since then what I said above and was accused of Popery for it proves to be a Doctrine equally espoused by all Persuasions of Christians as well as by the Church of Rome I would fain know by what Art this is to be made Popery we may as well and with as great reason call the Doctrine of the Incarnation or of the Resurrection of our blessed Saviour Popery as that Doctrine about the no necessity of express Scripture for Ecclesiastical Constitutions since they are no more the general Belief of all Christians than this last mentioned Doctrine is This Charge then ought to have been omitted since what I have said above is so far from being one of my Articles of Popery that it is no Popery at all but a Doctrine assented to by the generality of the Christian World. Before I go on to the next Article I must consider what he hath further to object against me in this Point Here I am accused as if I had spoken onely my own sense and thereby given occasion to my Adversary to post me up as a Papist or Popishly inclined for it whereas I said plainly that it was the
wrought Miracles by them which WE do grant the Fathers of those latter Ages did and might do it too as long as they kept as they said of themselves that they always did from paying Religious Worship unto them But we say withal that what the Christians of those Ages did about these things does no ways defend the present Extravagancies of the Church of Rome the Excesses wherein about Reliques are come to that scandalous height as to make the learned men of their own Church ashamed of them They that will compare this passage with the Representer's Extracts out of it in the 13th Article against me cannot but discover what usage every one must expect that dares to provoke so very angry a man. But that I may also shew my own Judgment about Reliques I will trouble the Reader with the next paragraph wherein if I did not set down exactly as I designed the Opinion of our Mother-Church of England about those things yet I am sure I did that of my own Soul. As to the Practice of the Church of England which inquires not after nor is solicitous about the Reliques of Saints this may be said in her defence that she finds no Practice or Command about any such searching after the bones of the Dead in any part of Scripture of either Testament but that their whole care then was to commit them to their Sepulchres in hopes of a future Resurrection and never to disturb their Ashes and therefore she thinks it must needs be her greatest commendation that she is more careful to imitate what she finds written and practised in the Scriptures themselves than to imitate what the fourth Age of the Church began to practise when the Church of Christ was near four hundred years old The Holy Scriptures themselves are the Rule of her Faith and for any Apostolical Practices she inquires among them who lived with the Apostles or nearest to them among whom finding nothing of any searching for Reliques or any Miracles done by them in those first three hundrid years she is resolved to practise what the Christians of those first and purest Ages did rather than what After-ages did wherein plenty and prosperity let loose the reins to some peoples fancies and made that a part of Religion which was never any before The fourteenth Article of Popery against me is that we freely grant That the Fathers practised praying for the Dead and owned it as advantageous to the Souls departed And that I should say that no body denys That the Fathers in the first Ages us'd Oblations and Prayers for the Dead and that these Prayers were offer'd up also for pardon of sins I am extremely at a loss to find how I am drawn in for Popery here and which way it is proved upon me All that I have done here is to own that the Fathers did practise those things which I could not deny without betraying a greater Ignorance than I must pretend to in those Writers or that I have no conscience at all But must my Ingenuity then be made my crime and must I be made a Papist for granting that which I could not in my Circumstances deny without making my self a bold Lyar I am fallen it seems into very bad hands into the hands of One who is resoved to blacken me without having any regard to Truth or Justice or Conscience I do not say one word there of my approving what those Fathers did I do not in the least hint that I am for such Practises or that I ever use such Prayers or Oblations for the Dead or ever intended to do it So that this terrible Charge depends onely and must rest upon my granting such Practices in former days But is this dealing either just or reasonable at this rate he may make me a defender of any the most contrary things when I grant as every man of conscience must that the generality of Fathers in the first Centuries believed a Millennium am I to be made a Millenary for this when I grant that for many Ages the Communion was given unto Infants must I be concluded to be one that is of opinion that it ought to be so still or must I be represented thereupon to the world as one that does still practise the thing and gives the Communion unto the little Children How ridiculous soever such false and extravagant conclusions appear to the world yet the Usage that I find from the Representer's hands is exactly the same and altogether as groundless as the other As for the Doctrine and Practices of the Church of England her self which I do heartily subscribe to so far is she from either encouraging or practising Prayers for the Dead that whereas in the dawning of the Reformation in King Edwards first Common-Prayer Book there was a direct Praying for the Dead in that Prayer for the whole Estate of Christs Church in the next Review of the Liturgy the Petitions for the Dead were quite left out of that Prayer and out of the whole Service In the Common-Prayer Book printed at London in March 1549 the Prayer for the Dead is to be met with and so it is in another Edition in June following in the same year at London And in a Third Edition of 1551. at Dublin but upon the Review which was made about that time we find it omitted and quite left out of the Common-Prayer Books printed in 1552 and afterwards down to our times not any usage or revival of that Practice among us As to the Reasons for leaving off that Practice which could pretend to so much Antiquity I am not at leasure nor have Room here to set them down I must confess that I am not at all satisfied of it from the best Instances for it I cannot but look upon S. Ambrose's praying for the Soul of the Emperor Theodosius and his resolution not to leave him till by his Tears and Prayers he had brought him unto the Mountain of the Lord where he might enjoy Life for evermore as a Thing that might very well have been spared nay that ought to have been spared since we know by the very same Oration that Saint Ambrose did believe that the Soul of that Emperour was in Bliss was placed in Heaven did enjoy at that time perpetual Light and a never ceasing Tranquillity and was admitted into the Society of the Saints in Glory I have no other defence to make for this extraordinary Action of this Father than to say that all this was done in a Rhetorical Harangue wherein the Custom of all times hath allowed the Orators to speak things that were not strict truths and things which they neither properly speaking believed themselves or were desirous that others should And so in that celebrated Instance of Saint Austins praying for his Mother Monica after her decease that God would not enter into Judgment with her and yet professing in the very next words that he did believe that God had already done for her