all Let not the Weapons of your Warfare be Carnal such as are Massacres Treasons Persecutions and in a word all means either violent or fraudulent These and other things which the Scripture commands you do and then we shall willingly give you such Testimony as you deserve but till you do so to talk of estimation respect and reverence to the Scripture is nothing else but talk 2. For neither is that true which you pretend That we possess the Scripture from you or take it upon the integrity of your Custody but upon Universal Tradition of which you are but a little part Neither If it were true that Protestants acknowledged The integrity of it to have been guarded by your alone Custody were this any argument of your reverence towards them For first you might preserve them entire not for want of Will but of Power to corrupt them as it is a hard thing to Poyson the Sea And then having prevailed so far with men as either not to look at all into them or but only through such spectacles as you should please to make for them and to see nothing in them though as clear as the Sun if it any way made against you you might keep them entire without any thought or care to conform your Doctrine to them or reform it by them which were indeed to reverence the Scriptures but out of a persuasion that you could qualifie them well enough with your glosses and interpretations and make them sufficiently conformable to your present Doctrine at least in their judgment who were prepossessed with this persuasion that your Church was to judge of the sense of Scripture not to be judged by it 3. Whereas you say No cause imaginable could avert your will from giving the function of Supream and sole judge to holy Writ but that the thing is impossible and that by this means controversies are encreased and not ended What indifferent and unprejudiced man may not easily conceive another cause which I do not say does but certainly may prevert your Wills and avert your understandings from submitting your Religion and Church to a Tryal by Scripture I mean the great and apparent and unavoidable danger which by this means you would fall into of losing the Opinion which men have of your Infallibility and consequently your Power and Authority over mens Consciences and all that depends upon it so that though Diana of the Ephesians be cryed up yet it may be feared that with a great many among you though I censure or judge no man the other cause which wrought upon Demetrius and the Craftsmen may have with you also the more effectual though more secret influence and that is that by this craft we have our living by this craft I mean of keeping your Proselytes from an indifferent Tryal of your Religion by Scripture and making them yield up and captivate their judgment unto yours As for the impossibility of Scriptures being the sole Judge of Controversies that is the sole rule for man to judge them by for we mean nothing else you only affirm it without proof as if the thing were evident of it self And therefore I conceiving the contrary to be more evident might well content my self to deny it without refutation Yet I cannot but desire you to tell me If Scripture cannot be the Judge of any Controversie how shall that touching the Church and the Notes of it be determined And if it be the sole Judge of this one why may it not of others Why not of All Those only excepted wherein the Scripture it self is the subject of the Question which cannot be determined but by natural reason the only Principle beside Scripture which is common to Christians 4. Then for the Imputation of increasing contentions and not ending them Scripture is innocent of it as also this Opinion That Controversies are to be decided by Scripture For if men did really and sincerely submit their judgments to Scripture and that only and would require no more of any man but to do so it were impossible but that all Controversies touching things necessary and very profitable should be ended and if others were continued or increased it were no matter 5. In the next Words we have direct Boyes-play a thing given with one hand and taken away with the other an acknowledgment made in one line and retracted in the next We acknowledge say you Scripture to be a perfect rule for as much as a writing can be a Rule only we deny that it excludes unwritten Tradition As if you should have said we acknowledge it to be as perfect a Rule as a writing can be only we deny it to be as perfect a Rule as a writing may be Either therefore you must revoke your acknowledgment or retract your retractation of it for both cannot possibly stand together For if you will stand to what you have granted That Scripture is as perfect a Rule of Faith as a Writing can be you must then grant it both so Compleat that it needs no addition and so evident that it needs no interpretation For both these properties are requisite to a perfect rule and a Writing is capable of both these properties 6. That both these Properties are requisite to a perfect rule it is apparent Because that is not perfect in any kind which wants some parts belonging to its integrity As he is not a perfect man that wants any part appertaining to the Integrity of a Man and therefore that which wants any accession to make it a perfect rule of its self is not a perfect Rule And then the end of a rule is to regulate and direct Now every instrument is more or less perfect in its kind as it is more or less fit to attain the end for which it is ordained But nothing obscure or unevident while it is so is fit to regulate and direct them to whom it is so Therefore it is requisite also to a rule so far as it is a Rule to be evident otherwise indeed it is no rule because it cannot serve for direction I conclude therefore that both these properties are required to a perfect Rule both to be so compleat as to need no Addition and to be so evident as to need no Interpretation 7. Now that a Writing is capable of both these perfections it is so plain that I am even ashamed to prove it For he that denies it must say That something may be spoken which cannot be written For if such a compleat and evident rule of Faith may be delivered by word of mouth as you pretend it may and is and whatsoever is delivered by word of mouth may also be written then such a compleat and evident rule of Faith may also be written If you will have more light added to the Sun answer me then to these Questions Whether your Church can set down in writing all these which she pretends to be Divine unwritten Traditions and add them to the verities already written
it may without any fault at all some go one way and some another and some and those as good men as either of the former suspend their judgments and expect some Elias to solve doubts and reconcile repugnances Now in all such Questions one side or other which soever it is holds that which indeed is opposite to the sense of the Scripture which God intended for it is impossible that God should intend Contradictions But then this intended Sense is not so fully declared but that they which oppose it may verily believe that they indeed maintain it and have great shew of reason to induce them to believe so and therefore are not to be damned as men opposing that which they either know to be a truth delivered in Scripture or have no probable Reason to believe the contrary but rather in Charity to be acquitted and absolved as men who endeavour to find the Truth but fail of it through humane frailty This ground being laid the Answer to your ensuing Interrogatories which you conceive impossible is very obvious and easie 14. To the first Whether it be not in any man a grievous sin to deny any any one Truth contained in holy Writ I answer Yes if he knew it to be so or have no probable Reason to doubt of it otherwise not 15. To the second Whether there be in such denial any distinction between Fundamental and not Fundamental sufficient to excuse from Heresie I answer Yes There is such a distinction But the Reason is because these points either in themselves or by accident are Fundamental which are evidently contained in Scripture to him that knows them to be so Those not Fundamental which are there-hence deducible but probably only not evidently 16. To the third Whether it be not impertinent to alledge the Creed as containing all Fundamental points of Faith as if believing it alone we were at Liberty to deny all other Points of Scripture I answer It was never alledged to any such purpose but only as a sufficient or rather more than a sufficient Summary of those points of Faith which were of necessity to be believed actually and explicitely and that only of such which were meerly and purely Credenda and not Agenda 17. To the fourth drawn as a Corollary from the former Whether this be not to say that of Persons contrary in belief one part only can be saved I answer By no means For they may differ about points not contained in Scripture They may differ about the sense of some ambiguous Texts of Scripture They may differ about some Doctrines for and against which Scriptures may be alledged with so great probability as may justly excuse either Part from Heresie and a self-condemning obstinacy And therefore though D. Potter do not take it ill that you believe your selves may be saved in your Religion yet notwithstanding all that hath yet been pretended to the contrary he may justly condemn you and that out of your own principles of uncharitable presumption for affirming as you do that no man can be saved out of it CHAP. II. The ANSWER to the Second CHAPTER Concerning the means whereby the revealed Truths of God are conveyed to our understanding and which must determine Controversies in Faith and Religion C. M. Of our estimation respect and reverence to holy Scripture even Protestants themselves give Testimony while they possess it from us and take it upon the integrity of our custody c. I HIL Ad § 1. He that would Usurp an absolute Lordship and Tyranny over any People need not put himself to the trouble and difficulty of abrogating and disanulling the Laws made to maintain the Common Liberty for he may frustrate their intent and compass his own design as well if he can get the Power and Authority to interpret them as he pleases and add to them what he pleases and to have his interpretations and additions stand for Laws if he can rule his People by his Laws and his Laws by his Lawyers So the Church of Rome to establish Her Tyranny over mens Consciences needed not either to abolish or corrupt the Holy Scriptures the Pillars and Supporters of Christian Liberty which in regard of the numerous multitude of Copies dispersed through all places Translated into almost all Languages guarded with all sollicitous care and industry had been an impossible attempt But the more expedite way and therefore more likely to be successful was to gain the opinion and esteem of the publick and authorized interpreter of them and the Authority of adding to them what Doctrine she pleased under the Title of Traditions or Definitions For by this means she might both serve her self of all those causes of Scripture which might be drawn to cast a favourable countenance upon Her ambitious pretences which in case the Scripture had been abolished she could not have done and yet be secure enough of having either her Power limitted or her corruptions and abuses reformed by them this being once setled in the minds of men that unwritten Doctrines if proposed by her were to be received with equal reverence to those that were written and that the sense of Scripture was not that which seemed to mens reason and understanding to be so but that which the Church of Rome should declare to be so seemed in never so unreasonable and incongruous The matter being once thus ordered and the holy Scriptures being made in effect not your Directors and Judges no farther than you please but your Servants and Instruments always prest and in readiness to advance your designs and disabled wholly with minds so qualified to prejudice or impeach them it is safe for you to put a Crown on their head and a Reed in their Hands and to bow before them and cry Hail King of the Jews to pretend a great deal of esteem and respect and reverence to them as here you do But to little purpose is verbal reverence without entire submission and sincere obedience and as our Saviour said of some so the Scripture could it speak I believe would say to you Why call ye me Lord Lord and do not that which I command you Cast away the vain and arrogant pretence of Infallibility which makes your Errors incurable Leave Picturing God and Worshiping him by Pictures Teach not for Doctrine the Commandments of men Debar not the Laity of the Testament of Christ's Blood Let your publick Prayers and Psalms and Hymes be in such Language as is for the Edification of the Assistants Take not from the Clergy that Liberty of Marriage which Christ hath left them Do not impose upon men that Humility of Worshiping Angels which S. Paul condemns Teach no more proper Sacrifices of Christ but one Acknowledge them that Die in Christ to be blessed and to rest from their Labours Acknowledge the Sacrament after Consecration to be Bread and Wine as well as Christs Body and Blood Acknowledge the gift of continency without Marriage not to be given to
23. The next § argues thus For many Ages there was no Scripture in the World and for many more there was none in many places of the World yet men wanted not then and there some certain direction what to believe Therefore there was then an Infallible Judge Just as if I should say York is not my way from Oxford to London therefore Bristol is Or a Dog is not a Horse therefore he is a Man As if God had no other ways of revealing himself to men but only by Scripture and an infallible Church * See Chrysost Hom. 1. in Mat. Isidor Pelus l. 3. ep 106. and also Basil in Ps 28. and then you shall confess that by other means besides these God did communicate himself unto men and made them receive and understand his Laws see also to the same purpose Heb. 1.1 S. Chrysostome and Isidorus Pelusiota conceived he might use other means And S. Paul telleth us that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 might be known by his Works and that they had the Law written in their Hearts Either of these ways might make some faithful men without either necessity of Scripture or Church 124. But D. Potter says you say In the Jewish Church there was a living Judge indowed with an absolute infallible direction in cases of moment as all points belonging to Divine Faith are And where was that infallible direction in the Jewish Church when they should have received Christ for their Messias and refused him Or perhaps this was not a case of moment D. Potter indeed might say very well not that the high Priest was infallible for certainly he was not but that his determination was to be of necessity obeyed though for the justice of it there was no necessity that it should be believed Besides it is one thing to say that the living judge in the Jewish Church had an infallible direction another that he was necessitated to follow this direction This is the priviledge which you challenge But it is that not this which the Doctor attributes to the Jews As a man may truly say the Wise men had an infallible direction to Christ without saying or thinking that they were constrained to follow it and could not do otherwise 125. But either the Church retains still her infallibility or it was devested of it upon the receiving of Holy Scripture which is absurd An Argument methinks like this Either you have Horns or you have lost them but you never lost them therefore you have them still If you say you never had Horns so say I for ought appears by your reasons the Church never had infallibility 126. But some Scriptures were received in some places and not in others therefore if Scriptures were the Judge of Controversies some Churches had one Judge and some another And what great inconvenience is there in that that one part of England should have one Judge and another another especially seeing the Books of Scripture which were received by those that received fewest had as much of the Doctrine of Christianity in them as they all had which were received by any all the necessary parts of the Gospel being contained in every one of the four Gospels as I have proved So that they which had all the Books of the New Testament had nothing superfluous For it was not superfluous but profitable that the same thing should be said divers times and be testified by divers witnesses And they that had but one of the four Gospels wanted nothing necessary and therefore it is vainly inferred by you that with Months and Years as new Canonical Scriptures grew to be published the Church altered her rule of Faith and judge of Controversies 127. Heresies you say would arise after the Apostles time and after the writing of Scriptures These cannot be discovered condemned and avoided unless the Church be Infallible Therefore there must be a Church infallible But I pray tell me Why cannot Heresies be sufficiently discovered condemned avoided by them which believe Scripture to be the rule of Faith If Scripture be sufficient to inform us what is the Faith it must of necessity be also sufficient to teach us what is Heresie seeing Heresie is nothing but a manifest deviation from and an opposition to the Faith That which is straight will plainly teach us what is crooked and one contrary cannot but manifest the other If any one should deny that there is a God That this God is omnipotent omniscient good just true merciful a rewarder of them that seek him a punisher of them that obstinately offend him that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Saviour of the World that it is he by obedience to whom men must look to be saved If any man should deny either his Birth or Passion or Resurrection or Ascension or sitting at the right Hand of God his having all Power given him in Heaven and Earth That it is he whom God hath appointed to be Judge of the Quick and the Dead that all men shall Rise again at the last Day That they which believe and repent shall be saved That they which do not believe or repent shall be damned If a man should hold that either the keeping of the Mosaical Law is necessary to Salvation or that good works are not necessary to Salvation In a word if any man should obstinatly contradict the truth of any thing plainly delivered in Scripture who does not see that every one which believes the Scripture hath a sufficient means to discover and condemn and avoid that Heresie without any need of an infallible guide If you say that the obscure places of Scripture contain matters of Faith I answer that it is a matter of Faith to believe that the sense of them whatsoever it is which was intended by God is true for he that does not do so calls Gods Truth into question But to believe this or that to be the true sense of them or to believe the true sense of them and to avoid the false is not necessary either to Faith or Salvation For if God would have had his meaning in these places certainly known how could it stand with his wisdom to be so wanting to his own will and end as to speak obscurely or how can it consist with his Justice to require of men to know certainly the meaning of those words which he himself hath not revealed Suppose there were an absolute Monarch that in his own absense from one of his Kingdoms had written Laws for the Government of it some very plainly and some very ambiguously and obscurely and his Suctjects should keep those that were plainly written with all exactness and for those that were obscure use their best diligence to find his meaning in them and obey them according to the sense of them which they conceived should this King either with justice or wisdom be offended with these Subjects if by reason of the obscurity of them they mistook the sense of them and
or ill Opinion do gather otherwise than they ought For to this Church for a more powerful Principality it is necessary that all Churches resort that is all faithful People undique of what place soever In which Roman Church the Tradition from the Apostles hath always been conserved from those who are undique every where Answ Though at the first hearing the Glorious Attributes here given and that justly to the Church of Rome the confounding Hereticks with her Tradition and saying it is necessary for all Churches to resort to her may sound like Arguments for you yet he that is attentive I hope will easily discover that it might be good and rational in Irenaeus having to do with Hereticks who somewhat like those who would be the only Catholicks declining a tryal by Scripture as not containing the Truth of Christ perfectly and not fit to decide Controversies without recourse to Tradition I say he will easily perceive that it might be rational in Irenaeus to urge them with any Tradition of more credit than their own especially a Tradition consonant to Scripture and even contained in it and yet that it may be irrational in you to urge us who do not decline Scripture but appeal to it as a perfect rule of Faith with a Tradition which we pretend is many ways repugnant to Scripture and repugnant to a Tradition far more general than it self which gives testimony to Scripture and lastly repugnant to it self as giving attestation both to Scripture and to Doctrines plainly contrary to Scripture Secondly that the Authority of the Roman Church was then a far greater Argument of the Truth of her Tradition when it was United with all other Apostolick Churches than now when it is divided from them according to that of Tertullian Had the Churches Erred they would have varied but that which is the same in all cannot be Error but Tradition and therefore though Irenaeus his Argument may be very probable yet yours may be worth nothing Thirdly that fourteen hundred years may have made a great deal of alteration in the Roman Church as Rivers though near the Fountain they may retain their native and unmixt sincerity yet in long Progress cannot but take in much mixture that came not from the Fountain And therefore the Roman Tradition though then pure may now be corrupt and impure and so this Argument being one of those things which are the worse for wearing might in Irenaeus his time be strong and vigorous and after declining and decaying may long since have fallen to nothing Especially considering that Irenaeus plays the Historian only and not the Prophet and says only that the Apostolick Tradition had been always there as in other Apostolick Churches conserved or observed choose you whether but that it should be always so he says not neither had he any warrant He knew well enough that there was foretold a great falling away of the Churches of Christ to Antichrist that the Roman Church in particular was forewarned that she also nay the whole Church of the Gentiles might fall if they look not to their standing and therefore to secure her that she should stand for ever he had no reason nor Authority Fourthly that it appears manifestly out of this Book of Irenaeus quoted by you that the Doctrine of the Chiliasts was in his Judgment Apostolick Tradition as also it was esteemed for ought appears to the contrary by all the Doctors and Saints and Martyrs of or about his time for all that speak of it or whose judgments in the point are any way recorded are for it and Justin Martyr professeth that all good and Orthodox Christians of his time believed it and those that did not he reckons amongst Hereticks Now I demand was this Tradition one of those that was conserved and observed in the Church of Rome or was it not If not had Iraeneus known so much he must have retracted this commendation of that Church If it was then the Tradition of the present Church of Rome contradicts the Ancient and accounts it Heretical and then sure it can be no certain note of Heresie to depart from them who have departed from themselves and prove themselves subject unto error by holding contradictions Fifthly and lastly that out of the Story of the Church it is as manifest as the light at noon that though Iraeneus did esteem the Roman Tradition a great Argument of the Doctrin which he there delivers and defends against the Hereticks of his time viz. that there was one God yet he was very far from thinking that Church was and ever should be a safe keeper and an infallible witness of Tradition in general Inasmuch as in his own life his action proclaimed the contrary For when Victor Bishop of Rome obtruded the Roman Tradition touching the time of Easter upon the Asian Bishops under the pain of Excommunication and damnation Iraeneus and all the other Western Bishops though agreeing with him in his observation yet sharply reprehended him for Excommunicating the Asian Bishops for their disagreeing plainly shewing that they esteemed that not a necessary doctrin and a sufficient ground of excommunication which the Bishop of Rome and his adherents did so account of For otherwise how could they have reprehended him for excommunicating them had they conceived the cause of his excommunication just and sufficient And besides evidently declaring that they esteemed not separation from the Roman Church a certain mark of Heresie seeing they esteemed not them Hereticks though separated and cut off from the Roman Church 31. Obj. S. Austin saith in Psalm cont partem Donati It grieves us to see you so to lie cut off Number the Priests even from the Sea of Peter and consider in that order of Fathers who succeeded to whom she is the Rock which the proud gates of Hell do not overcome Where he seems to say that the Succession in the Sea of Peter was the Rock which our Saviour means when he said upon this Rock will I build my Church Ans I answer First We have no reason to be confident of the truth hereof because S. Austin himself was not but retracts it as uncertain and leaves to the Reader whether he will think that or another more probable Retr l. 1. c. 26. Secondly what he says of the Succession in the Roman Church in this place he says it elsewhere of all the Successions in all other Apostolick Churches Thirdly that as in this place he urgeth the Donatists with separation from the Roman Church as an argument of their Error So elsewhere he presseth them with their Separation from other Apostolick Churches nay more from these than from that because in Rome the Donatists had a Bishop though not a perpetual Succession of them but in other Apostolick Churches they wanted both These scattered men saith he of the Donatists Epist 165. read in the holy Books the Churches to which the Apostles wrote and have no Bishop in them But what is more perverse and
of God also this outward State and Glory being well disposed doth as I have said ingender quicken increase and nourish the inward reverence respect and Devotion which is due to so Sovereign Majesty and Power Which those whom the use thereof cannot persuade unto would easily by the want of it be brought to confess for which cause I crave leave to be excused by them herein if in Zeal to the common Lord of all I choose rather to commend the vertue of an Enemy than to flatter the vice and imbecility of a Friend And so much for this matter 24. Again what if the Names of the Priests and Altars so frequent in the Ancient Fathers though not in the now Popish sense be now resumed and more commonly used in England than of late times they were that so the colourable argument of their conformity which is but nominal with the Ancient Church and our inconformity which the Governors of the Church would not have so much as nominal may be taken away from them and the Church of England may be put in a State in this regard more justifiable against the Roman than formerly it was being hereby enabled to say to Papists whensoever these Names are objected we also use the Names of Priests and Altars and yet believe neither the Corporal Presence nor any Proper and propitiatory Sacrifice 25. What if Protestants be now put in mind that for exposition of Scripture they are bound by a Canon to follow the Ancient Fathers which whosoever doth with sincerity it is utterly impossible he should be a Papist And it is most falsly said by you that you know that to some Protestants I clcarly demonstrated or ever so much as undertook or wentabout to demonstrate the contrary What if the Centurists be censured somewhat roundly by a Protestant Divine for affirming that the keeping of the Lords day was a thing indifferent for two Hundren Years Is there in all this or any part of it any kind of proof of this scandalous Calumny 26. As for the points of Doctrine wherein you pretend that these Divines begin of late to falter and to comply with the Church of Rome upon a due examination of particulars it will presently appear First that part of them always have been and now are held constantly one way by them as the Authority of the Church in determining Controversies of Faith though not the Infallibility of it That there is Inherent Justice though so imperfect that it cannot justifie That there are Traditions though none necessary That Charity is to be preferred before knowledg That good Works are not properly meritorious And lastly that Faith alone justifies though that Faith justifies not which is alone And Secondly for the remainder that they every one of them have been Anciently without breach of Charity disputed among Protestants such for example were the Questions about the Popes being the Antichrist the Lawfulness of some kind of Prayers for the Dead the Estate of the Fathers Souls before Christs Ascension Freewil Predestination Universal Grace the Possibility of keeping Gods Commandments The use of Pictures in the Church Wherein that there hath been anciently diversity of opinion anongst Protestants it is justified to my hand by a witness with you beyond exception even your great Friend M. Brerely whose care exactness and fidelity you say in your Preface is so extraordinary great Consult him therefore Tract 3. Sect. 7. of his Apology And in the 9 10 11. 14. 24. 26. 27. 37. Subdivisions of that Section you shall see as in a mirror your self proved an egregious calumniator for charging Protestants with innovation and inclining to Popery under pretence forsooth that their Doctrine begins of late to be altered in these points Whereas M Brerely will inform you they have been anciently and even from the begininng of the Reformation controverted amongst them though perhaps the Stream and Current of their Doctors run one way and only some Brook or Rivulet of them the other 27. It remains now in the last place that I bring my self fairly off from your foul Aspersions that so my Person may not be any disparagement to the Cause nor any scandal to weak Christians 28. First upon Hearsay you charge me with a great number of false and impious Doctrines which I will not name in particular because I will not assist you so far in the spreading of my own undeserved defamation but whosoever teaches or holds them let him be Anathema The Summ of them all is this Nothing ought or can be certainly believed farther than it may be proved by evidence of Natural Reason where I conceive Natural reason it opposed to supernatural Revelation and whosoever holds so let him be Anathema And moreover to clear my self once for all from all imputations of this nature which charge me injuriously with denial of Supernatural Verities I profess sincerely that I believe all those Books of Scripture which the Church of England accounts Canonical to be the Infallible Word of God I believe all things evidently contained in them all things evidently or even probably deducible from them I acknowledge all that to be Heresie which by the Act of Parliament primo of Q. ELIZ. is declared to be so and only to be so And though in such points which may be held diversly of divers men salvâ Fidei compage I would not take any Mans Liberty from him and humbly beseech all men that they would not take mine from me Yet thus much I can say which I hope will satisfie any man of reason that whatsoever hath been held necessary to Salvation either by the Catholick Church of all ages or by the consent of Fathers measured by Vincentius Lyrinensis his rule or is held necessary either by the Catholick Church of this age or by the consent of Protestants or even by the Church of England that against the Socinians and all others whatsoever I do verily believe and embrace 29. But what are all Personal matters to the business in hand If it could be proved that Cardinal Bellarmine was indeed a Jew or that Cardinal Perron was an Atheist yet I presume you would not accept of this for an Answer to all their writings in defence of your Religion Let then my actions and intentions and opinions be what they will yet I hope truth is nevertheless Truth nor reason ever the less Reason because I speak it And therefore the Christian Reader knowing that his Salvation or Damnation depends upon his impartial and sincere judgment of these things will guard himself I hope from these Impostures and regard not the Person but the cause and the reasons of it not who speaks but what is spoken Which is all the favour I desire of him as knowing that I am desirous not to persuade him unless it be truth whereunto I persuade him 30. The last Accusation is That I answer out of Principles which Protestants themselves will profess to detest whch indeed were to the purpose
Sacramentalibus doct 3. fol. 5. and he shall be fully satisfied that I have done you no injury For many of you hold the Popes Proposal Ex Cathedra to be sufficient and obliging Some a Council without a Pope Some of neither of them severally but only both together Some not this neither in matter of manners which Bellarmine acknowledges and tells us it is all one in effect as if they denyed it sufficient in matter of Faith Some not in matter of Faith neither think this Proposal Infallible without the acceptation of the Church Universal Some deny the Infallibility of the Present Church and only make the Tradition of all Ages the Infallible Propounder Yet if you were agreed what and what only is the Infallible Propounder this would not satisfie us nor yet to say that All is Fundamental which is propounded sufficiently by him For though agreeing in this yet you might still disagree whether such or such a Doctrine were propounded or not or if propounded whether sufficiently or only insufficiently And it is so known a thing that in many points you do so that I assure my self you will not deny it Therefore we constantly urge and require a particular and perfect Inventory of all these Divine Revelations which you say are sufficiently propounded and that such a one to which all of your Church will subscribe as neither redundant nor deficient which when you give in with one hand you shall receive a particular Catalogue of such Points as I call Fundamental with the other Neither may you think me unreasonable in this demand seeing upon such a particular Catalogue of your sufficient Proposals as much depends as upon a particular Catalogue of our Fundamentals As for example Whether or no a man do not Err in some point defined and sufficiently proposed and whether or no those that differ among you differ in Fundamentals which if they do One Heaven by your own Rule cannot receive them All. Perhaps you will here complain that this is not to satisfie your demand but to avoid it and to put you off as the Areopagites did hard Causes ad diem longissimum and bid you come again a Hundred Years hence To deal truly I did so intend it should be Neither can you say my dealing with you is injurious seeing I require nothing of you but that what you require of others you should shew it possible to be done and just and necessary to be required For for my part I have great reason to suspect it is neither the one nor the other For whereas the Verities which are delivered in Scripture may be very fitly divided into such as were written because they were necessary to be believed Of which rank are those only which constitute and make up the Covenant between God and Man in Christ and then such as are necessary to be believed not in themselves but only by accident because they were written Of which rank are many matters of History of Prophecy of Mystery of Policy of Oeconomy and such like which are evidently not intrinsecal to the Covenant Now to sever exactly and punctally these Verities one from the other what is necessary in it self and antecedently to the writing from what is but only profitable in it self and necessary only because written is a business of extream great difficulty and extream little necessity For first he that will go about to distinguish especially in the story of our Saviour what was written because it was profitable from what was written because necessary shall find an intricate peice of business of it and almost impossible that he should be certain he hath done it when he hath done it And then it is apparently unnecessary to go about it seeing he that believes all certainly believes all that is necessary And he that doth not believe all I mean all the undoubted parts of the undoubted Books of Scripture can hardly believe any neither have we reason to believe he doth so So that that Protestants give you not a Catalogue of Fundamentals it is not from Tergiversation as you suspect who for want of Charity to them always suspect the worst but from Wisdom and Necessity For they may very easily Err in doing it because though all which is necessary be plain in Scripture yet all which is plain is not therefore written because it was necessary For what greater necessity was there that I should know S. Paul left his Cloak at Troas than those Worlds of Miracles which our Saviour did which were never written And when they had done it it had been to no purpose There being as matters now stand as great necessity of believing those truths of Scripture which are not Fundamental as those that are You see then what reason we have to decline this hard labour which you a rigid Task-master have here put upon us Yet instead of giving you a Catalogue of Fundamentals with which I dare say you are resolved before it come never to be satisfied I will say that to you which if you please may do you as much service and this it is That it is sufficient for any Mans Salvation that he believe the Scripture That he endeavour to believe it in the true sense of it as far as concerns his Duty And that he conform his Life unto it either by Obedience or Repentance He that does so and all Protestants according to the Doctamen of their Religion should do so may be secure that he cannot Err Fundamentally And they that do so cannot differ in Fundamentals So that notwithstanding their differences and your presumption the same Heaven may receive them All. 28. Ad 20. § Your Tenth and last request is to know distinctly what is the Doctrine of the Protestant English Church in these points and what my private Opinion Which shall be satisfied when the Church of England hath expressed her self in them or when you have told us what is the Doctrine of your Church in the Question of Predetermination or the Immaculate Conception 29. Ad 21. and 22. § These answers I hope in the judgment of indifferent men are satisfactory to your Questions though not to you For I have either answered them or given you a reason why I have not Neither for ought I can see have I flitted from things considered in their own nature to accidental or rare Circumstances But told you my Opinion plainly what I thought of your Errors in themselves and what as they were qualified or malignified with good or bad Circumstances CHAP. I. The ANSWER to the First CHAPTER Shewing that the Adversary grants the Old Question and proposeth a New one And that there is no reason why among Men of different Opinions and Communions one Side only can be saved 1. AD 1. § Protestants are here accused of uncharitableness while they accuse you of it and you make good this charge in this manner Protestants charge the Roman Church with many and great Errors judge reconciliation of their
your self § 16. is this That the Infallible means of determining Controversies is the Visible Church That the distinction of points Fundamental and not Fundamental maketh nothing to the present Question That to say the Creed containeth all Fundamentals is neither pertinent nor true That whosoever persist in Division from the Communion and Faith of the Roman Church are guilty of Schism and Heresie That in regard of the Precept of Charity towards one self Protestants are in state of Sin while they remain divided from the Roman Chruch To all these Assertions I will content my self for the present to oppose this one That not one of them all is true Only I may not omit to tell you that if the first of them were as true as the Pope himself desires it should be yet the Corollary which you deduce from it would be utterly inconsequent That whosoever denys any point proposed by the Church is injurious to Gods Divine Majesty as if he could deceive or be deceived For though your Church were indeed as Infallible a Propounder of Divine Truths as it pretends to be yet if it appeared not to me to be so I might very well believe God most true and your Church most false As though the Gospel of S. Matthew be the Word of God yet if I neither knew it to be so nor believed it I might believe in God and yet think that Gospel a Fable Hereafter therefore I must entreat you to remember that our being guilty of this impiety depends not only upon your being but upon our knowing that you are so Neither must you argue thus The Church of Rome is the Infallible Propounder of Divine Verities therefore he that opposes Her calls Gods Truth in Question But thus rather The Church of Rome is so and Protestants know it to be so therefore in opposing Her they impute to God that either he deceives them or is deceived himself For as I may deny something which you upon your knowledg have affirmed and yet never disparage your honesty if I never knew that you affirmed it So I may be undoubtedly certain of Gods Omniscience and Veracity and yet doubt of something which he hath revealed provided I do not know nor believe that he hath revealed it So that though your Church be the appointed witness of Gods Revelations yet until you know that we know she is so you cannot without foul Calumny impute to us That we charge God blasphemously with deceiving or being deceived You will say perhaps That this is directly consequent from our Doctrine That the Church may Err which is directed by God in all Her proposals True if we knew it to be directed by him otherwise not much less if we believe and know the contrary But then if it were consequent from our Opinion have you so little Charity as to say that men are justly chargeable with all the consequences of their Opinions Such consequences I mean as they do not own but disclaim and if there were a necessity of doing either would much rather forsake their Opinion than embrace these Consequences What Opinion is there that draws after it such a Train of portentous Blasphemies as that of the Dominicans by the judgment of the best Writers of your own Order And will you say now that the Dominicans are justly chargeable with all these Blasphemies If not seeing our case take it at the worst is but the same why should not your judgment of us be the same I appeal to all those Protestants that have gone over to your Side whether when they were most averse from it they did ever deny or doubt of Gods omniscience or veracity whether they did ever believe or were taught that God did deceive them or was deceived himself Nay I provoke to you your self and desire you to deal truly and to tell Us whether you do in your Heart believe that we do indeed not believe the Eternal Veracity of the Eternal Verity And if you judge so strangely of us having no better ground for it than you have or can have we shall not need any farther proof of your uncharitableness towards us this being the extremity of true uncharitableness If not then I hope having no other ground but this which sure is none at all to pronounce us damnable Hereticks you will cease to do so and hereafter as if your ground be true you may do with more truth and Charity Collect thus They only Err damnably who oppose what they know God hath testified But Protestants sure do not oppose what they know God hath testified at least we cannot with Charity say they do Therefore they either do not Err damnably or with Charity we cannot say they do so 13. Ad 17. § Protestants you say according to their own grounds must hold that of Persons contrary in whatsoever point of belief one part only can be saved therefore it is strangely done of them to charge Papists with want of Charity for holding the same The consequence I acknowledg but wonder much what it should be that lays upon Protestants any necessity to do so You tell us it is their holding Scripture the sole Rule of Faith for this you say obligeth them to pronounce them damned that oppose any least point delivered in Scripture This I grant If they oppose it after sufficient declaration so that either they know it to be contained in Scripture or have no just probable Reason and which may move an honest man to doubt whether or no it be there contained For to oppose in the first Case in a man that believes the Scripture to be the Word of God is to give God the Lie To oppose in the second is to be obstinate against Reason and therefore a sin though not so great as the former But then this is nothing to the purpose of the necessity of damning all those that are of contrary belief and that for these Reasons First because the contrary belief may be touching a point not at all mentioned in Scripture and such points though indeed they be not matters of Faith yet by men in variance are often over-valued and esteemed to be so So that though it were damnable to oppose any point contained in Scripture yet Persons of a contrary belief as Victor and Polycrates S. Cyprian and Stephen might both be saved because their contrary belief was not touching any point contained in Scripture Secondly because the contrary belief may be about the sense of some place of Scripture which is ambiguous and with probability capable of diverse Senses and in such Cases it is no marvel and sure no Sin if several men go several ways Thirdly because the contrary belief may be concerning points wherein Scripture may with so great probability be alledged on both sides which is a sure note of a point not necessary that men of honest and upright Hearts true lovers of God and of truth such as desire above all things to know Gods Will and to do
Antichrist are wholly lost and extinguished So unfaithful or negligent hath been this keeper of Divine verities whose eyes like the Keepers of Israel you say have never Slumbred nor Slept Lastly we deny not but a Judge and a Law might well stand together but we deny that there is any such Judge of Gods appointment Had he intended any such Judge he would have named him lest otherwise as now it is our Judge of Controversies should be our greatest Controversie 11. Ad 2 3 4 5 6. § In your second Paragraph you sum up those arguments wherewith you intend to prove that Scripture alone cannot be Judge in Controversies Wherein I profess unto you before hand that you will fight without an Adversary For though Protestants being warranted by some of the Fathers have called Scripture the Judge of Controversies and you in saying here That Scripture alone cannot be Judge imply that it may be called in some sense a Judge though not alone Yet to speak properly as men should speak when they write of Controversies in Religion the Scripture is not a Judge of Controversies but a Rule only and the only Rule for Christians to judge them by Every man is to Judge for himself with the Judgment of Discretion and to choose either his Religion first and then his Church as we say or as you his Church first and then his Religion But by the consent of both sides every man is to judge and choose and the Rule whereby he is to guide his choice if he be a natural man is Reason if he be already a Christian Scripture which we say is the Rule to judge Controversies by Yet not all simply but all the Controversies of Christians of those that are already agreed upon This first Principle that the Scripture is the Word of God But that there is any man or any company of men appointed to be judge for all men that we deny and that I believe you will never prove The very truth is we say no more in this matter than evidence of Truth hath made you confess in plain terms in the beginning of this chap. viz That Scripture is a perfect Rule of Faith for as much as a writing can be a Rule So that all your reasons whereby you labour to dethrone the Scripture from this office of Judging we might let pass as impertinent to the conclusion which we maintain and you have already granted yet out of courtesie we will consider them 12. Your first is this a Judge must be a person fit to end Controversies but the Scripture is not a person nor fit to end Controversies no more than the Law would be without the Judges therefore though it may be a Rule it cannot be a Judge Which conclusion I have already granted Only my request is that you will permit Scripture to have the properties of a Rule that is to be fit to direct every one that will make the best use of it to that end for which it was ordained And that is as much as we need desire For as if I were to go a Journey and had a guide which could not Err I needed not to know my way so on the other side if I know my way or have a plain rule to know it by I shall need no guide Grant therefore Scripture to be such a Rule and it will quickly take away all necessity of having an Infallible guide But without a living Judge it will be no fitter you say to end Controversies than the Law alone to end Suits I answer if the Law were plain and perfect and men honest and desirous to understand aright and obey it he that says it were not fit to end Controversies must either want understanding himself or think the World wants it Now the Scripture we pretend in things necessary is plain and perfect and men we say are obliged under pain of Damnation to seek the true sense of it and not to wrest it to their preconceived Phansies Such a Law therefore to such men cannot but be very fit to end all Controversies necessary to be ended For others that are not so they will end when the World ends and that is time enough 13. Your next encounter is with them who acknowledging the Scripture a Rule only and not a Judge make the Holy Ghost speaking in Scripture the judge of Controversies Which you disprove by saying That the Holy Ghost speaking only in Scripture is no more intelligible to us than the Scripture in which he speaks But by this reason neither the Pope nor a Council can be a Judge neither For first denying the Scriptures the writings of the Holy Ghost to be Judges you will not I hope offer to pretend that their decrees the writings of men are more capable of this function the same exceptions at least if not more and greater lying against them as do against Scripture And then what you Object against the Holy Ghost speaking in Scripture to exclude him from this office The same I return upon them and their decrees to debar them from it that they speaking unto us only in their decrees are no more intelligible than the decrees in which they speak And therefore if the Holy Ghost speaking in Scripture may not be a judge for this reason neither may they speaking in their decrees be Judges for the same Reason If the Popes decrees you will say be obscure he can explain himself and so the Scripture cannot But the Holy Ghost that speaks in Scripture can do so if he please and when he is pleased will do so In the mean time it will be fit for you to wait his leisure and to be content that those things of Scripture which are plain should be so and those which are obscure should remain obscure until he please to declare them Besides he can which you cannot warrant me of the Pope or a Coucil speak at first so plainly that his Words shall need no farther explanation and so in things necessary we believe he has done And if you say the Decrees of Councils touching Controversies though they be not the Judge yet they are the Judges Sentence So I say the Scripture though not the Judge is the Sentence of the Judge When therefore you conclude That to say a Judge is necessary for deciding Controversies about the meaning of Scripture is as much as to say he is necessary to decide what the Holy Ghost speaks in Scripture This I grant is true but I may not grant that a Judge such a one as we dispute of is necessary either to do the one or the other For if the Scripture as it is in things necessary be plain why should it be more necessary to have a judge to interpret them in plain places than to have a judge to interpret the meaning of a Councils decrees and others to interpret their Interpretations and others to interpret theirs and so on for ever And where they are not plain there if we using
by Have you been trained up in Schools of subtilty and cannot you see a great difference between these two We receive the Books of the New Testament as they are commonly received and we receive those that are commonly received because they are so To say this were indeed to make being commonly received a Rule or Reason to know the Canon by But to say the former doth no more make it a Rule than you should make the Church of England the rule of your receiving them if you should say as you may The Books of the New Testament we receive for Canonical as they are received by the Church of England 45. You demand upon what infallible ground we agree with Luther against you in some and with you against Luther in others And I also demand upon what infallible ground you hold your Canon and agree neither with us nor Luther For sure your differing from us both is of it self no more apparently reasonable than our agreeing with you in part and in part with Luther If you say your Churches Infallibility is your ground I demand again some Infallible ground both for the Churches Infallibility and for this that Yours is the Church and shall never cease multiplying demands upon demands until you settle me upon a Rock I mean give such an answer whose Truth is so evident that it needs no further evidence If you say This is Universal Tradition I reply your Churches Infallibility is not built upon it and that the Canon of Scripture as we receive it is For we do not profess our selves so absolutely and undoubtedly certain neither do we urge others to be so of those Books which have been doubted as of those that never have 46. The Conclusion of your Tenth § is That the Divinity of a writing cannot be known from it self alone but by some extrinsecal Authority Which you need not prove for no Wise Man denies it But then this authority is that of Universal Tradition not of your Church For to me it is altogether as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the Gospel of Saint Matthew is the Word of God as that all which your Church says is true 47. That Believers of the Scripture by considering the Divine matter the excellent precepts the glorious promises contained in it may be confirmed in their Faith of the Scriptures Divine Authority and that among other inducements and inforcements hereunto internal arguments have their place and force certainly no man of understandeng can deny For my part I profess if the Doctrine of the Scripture were not as good and as fit to come from the Fountain of goodness as the Miracles by which it was confirmed were great I should want one main pillar of my Faith and for want of it I fear should be much staggered in it Now this and nothing else did the Doctor mean in saying The Believer sees by that glorious beam of Divine light which shines in Scripture and by many internal Arguments that the Scripture is of Divine Authority By this saith he he sees it that is he is moved to and strengthened in his belief of it and by this partly not wholly by this not alone but with the concurrence of other Arguments He that will quarrel with him for saying so must find fault with the Master of the Sentences and all his Scholars for they all say the same 48. In the next Division out of your liberality you will suppose that Scripture like to a corporal light is by it self alone able to determine and move our understanding to assent yet notwithstanding this supposal Faith still you say must go before Scripture because as the light is visible only to those that have eyes so the Scripture only to those that have the Eye of Faith But to my understanding if Scripture do move and determine our Understanding to assent then the Scripture and its moving must be before this assent as the cause must be before its own effect now this very assent is nothing else but Faith and Faith nothing else than the Understandings assent And therefore upon this supposal Faith doth and must originally proceed from Scripture as the effect from its proper cause and the influence and efficacy of Scripture is to be presupposed before the assent of Faith unto which it moves and determines and consequently if this supposition of yours were true there should need no other means precedent to Scripture to beget Faith Scripture it self being able as here you suppose to determine and move the understanding to assent that is to believe them and the Verities contained in them Neither is this to say that the Eyes with which we see are made by the light by which we see For you are mistaken much if you conceive that in this comparison Faith answers to the Eye But if you will not pervert it the Analogy must stand thus Scripture must answer to light The Eye of the Soul that is the Understanding or the faculty of assenting to the bodily Eye And lastly assenting or believing to the Act of seeing As therefore the light determining the Eye to see though it presupposes the Eye which it determines as every Action doth the Object on which it is imployed yet it self is presupposed and antecedent to the Act of seeing as the cause is always to its effect So if you will suppose that Scripture like light moves the understanding to assent The Understanding that 's the Eye and Objection which it works must be before this influence upon it But the Assent that is the belief whereof the Scripture moves and the understanding is moved which answers to the Act of seeing must come after For if it did assent already to what purpose should the Scripture do that which was done before Nay indeed how were it possible it should be so any more than a Father can beget a Son that he hath already Or an Architect build an House that is built already Or than this very world can be made again before it be unmade Transubstantiation indeed is fruitful of such Monsters But they that have not sworn themselves to the defence of Error will easily perceive that Jam factum facere and Factum infectum facere are equally impossible But I digress 49. The close of this Paragraph is a fit cover for such a Dish There you tell us That if there must be some other means precedent to Scripture to beget Faith this can be no other than the Church By the Church we know you do and must understand the Roman Church so that in effect you say no man can have Faith but he must be moved to it by your Churches Authority And that is to say that the King and all other Protestants to whom you write though they verily think they are Christians and believe the Gospel because they assent to the truth of it and would willingly Die for it yet indeed are Infidels and believe nothing The Scripture tells us The Heart of man
câ—stodiri quemadmodam scriptura Canonica tot linguarum literis ordine successione celebrationis Ecclesiasticae custoditur contra quam non defuerunt tamen qui sub nominibus Apostolorum multa confingerent Frustra quidem Quia illa sic commendata sic celebrata sic nota est Verum quid possit adversus literas non Canonica authoritate fundatas etiam hinc demonstrabit impiae conatus audaciae quod adversus eos quae tanta notitiae mole firmatae sunt sese erigere non praetermisit Aug. ep 48. ad Vincent contra Donat Rogat That in his judgment the only preservative of the Scriptures integrity was the Translating it into so many Languages and the general and perpetual use and reading of it in the Church for want whereof the works of particular Doctors were more exposed to danger in this kind but the Canonical Scripture being by this means guarded with Universal care and dilligence was not obnoxious to such attempts And this assurance of the Scriptures incorruption is common to us with him we therefore are as certain hereof as S. Austin was and that I hope was certain enough Yet if this does not satisfie you I say farther We are as certain hereof as your own Pope Sixtus Quintus was He in his Preface to his Bible tells us b In hac Germani textus pervestigatione satis perspicue inter omnes constat nullum argumentum esse certius ac firmius quam antiquorem probatorum codicum latinorum fidem c. sic Sixtus in praefat That in the prevestigation of the true and genuine Text it was perspicuously manifest to all men that there was no Argument more firm and certain to be relied upon than the Faith of Ancient Books Now this ground we have to build upon as well as He had and therefore our certainty is as great and stands upon as certain ground as his did 56. This is not all I have to say in this matter For I will add moreover that we are as certain in what Language the Scripture is uncorrupted as any man in your Church was until Clement the 8th set forth your own approved Edition of your Vulgar Translation For you do not nor cannot without extreme impudence deny that until then there was great variety of Copies currant in divers parts of your Church and those very frequent in various lections all which Copies might possibly be false in some things but more than one sort of them could not possibly be true in all things Neither were it less impudence to pretend that any man in your Church could until Clements's time have any certainty what that one true Copy and reading was if there were any one perfectly true Some indeed that had got Sixtus his Bible might after the Edition of that very likely think themselves cock-sure of a perfect true uncorrupted Translation without being beholden to Clement but how fouly they were abused and deceived that thought so the Edition of Clemens differing from that of Sixtus in a great multitude of places doth sufficiently demonstrate 57. This certainty therefore in what Language the Scripture remains uncorrupted is it necessary to have it or is it not If it be not I hope we may do well enough without it If it be necessary what became of your Church for 1500 Years together All which time you must confess she had no such certainty no one man being able truly and upon good ground to say This or that Copy of the Bible is pure and perfect and uncorrupted in all things And now at this present though some of you are grown to a higher degree of Presumption in this point yet are you as far as ever from any true and real and rational assurance of the absolute purity of your Authentick Translation which I suppose my self to have proved unanswerably in divers places 58. Ad 16. § C. M. Objects to Protestants That their Translations of the Scripture are very different and by each other mutually condemned Luthers Translation by Zwinglius and others That of the Zwinglians by Luther The Translation of Oecolampadius by the Divines of Basil that of Castalio by Beza That of Beza by Castalio That of Calvin by Carolus Molinaeus That of Geneva by M. Parks and King James And lastly one of our Translations by the Puritans 59. I HIL All which might have been as justly objected against that great variety of Translations extant in the Primitive Church and made use of by the Fathers and Doctors of it For which I desire not that my word but S. Austins may be taken They which have Translated the Scriptures out of the Hebrew into Greek may be numbred but the Latine Interpreters are innumerable For whensoever any one in the first times of Christianity met with a Greek Bible and seemed to himself to have some ability in both Languages he presently ventured upon an Interpretation So He in his second Book of Christian Doctrine Cap. 11. Of all these that which was called the Italian Translation was esteemed best so we may learn from the same S. Austin in the 15. Chap. of the same Book Amongst all these Interpretations saith he let the Italian be preferred for it keeps closer to the Letter and is perspicuous in the sense Yet so far was the Church of that time from persuming upon the absolute purity and perfection even of this best Translation that S. Hierome thought it necessary to make a new Translation of the Old Testament out of the Hebrew Fountain which himself testifies in his Book de Viris Illustribus And to correct the vulgar version of the New Testament according to the truth of the Original Greek amending many Errors which had crept into it whether by the mistake of the Author or the negligence of the Transcribers which work he undertook and performed at the request of Damasus Bishop of Rome You constrain me saith he to make a new Work of an old that after the Copies of the Scriptures have been dispersed through the whole World I should sit as it were an Arbitrator amongst them and because they vary among themselves should determine what are those things in them which consent with the Greek verity And after Therefore this present Preface promises the four Gospels only corrected by collation with Greek Copies But that they might not be very dissonant from the Custome of the Latine reading I have so tempered with my stile the Translation of the Ancients that those things amended wich did seem to change the sense other things I have suffered to remain as they were So that in this matter Protestants must either stand or fall with the Primitive Church 62. C. M. But the Faith of Protestants relies upon Scripture alone Scripture is delivered to most of them by Translations Translations depend upon the skill and honesty of Men who certainly may Err because they are Men and certainly do Err at least some of them because their Translations are contrary
Authority of Universal Tradition that we would have them believe Scripture But then as for the Authority which you would have them follow you will let them see reason why they should follow it And is not this to go a little about to leave reason for a short turn and then to come to it again and to do that which you condemn in others It being indeed a plain impossibility for any man to submit his reason but to reason for he that does it to Authority must of necessity think himself to have greater reason to believe that Authority Therefore the confession cited by Brerely you need not think to have been extorted from Luther and the rest It came very freely from them and what they say you practise as much as they 115. And whereas you say that a Protestant admits of Fathers Councils Church as far as they agree with Scripture which upon the matter is himself I say you admit neither of them nor the Scripture it self but only so far as it agrees with your Church and your Church you admit because you think you have reason to do so so that by you as well as by Protestants all is finally resolved into your own reason 116. Nor do Hereticks only but Romish Catholicks also set up as many Judges as there are Men and Women in the Christian World For do not your Men and Women Judge your Religion to be true before they believe it as well as the Men and Women of other Religions Oh but you say They receive it not because they think it agreeable to Scripture but because the Church tells them so But then I hope they believe the Church because their own reason tells them they are to do so So that the difference between a Papist and a Protestant is this not that the one judges and the other does not judge but that the one judges his guide to be infallible the other his way to be manifest This same pernitious Doctrine is taught by Brentius Zanchius Cartwright and others It is so in very deed But it is taught also by some others whom you little think of It is taught by S. Paul where he says Try all things hold fast that which is good It is taught by S. John in these words Believe not every Spirit but try the Spirits whether they be of God or no. It is taught by S. Peter in these Be ye ready to render a reason of the hope that is in you Lastly this very pernitious Doctrine is taught by our Saviour in these words If the Blind lead the Blind both shall fall into the Ditch And why of your selves Judge you not what is right All which speeches if they do not advise men to make use of their Reason for the choice of their Religion I must confess my self to understand nothing Lastly not to be infinite it is taught by M. Knot himself not in one Page only or Chapter of his Book but all his Book over the very writing and publishing whereof supposeth this for certain that the Readers are to be Judges whether his Reasons which he brings be strong and convincing of which sort we have hitherto met with none or else captious or impertinences as indifferent men shall as I suppose have cause to judge them 117. But you demand What good Statesmen would they be who should ideate or fancy such a Commonwealth as these men have framed to themselves a Church Truly if this be all the fault they have that they say Every man is to use his own judgment in the choice of his Religion and not to believe this or that sense of Scripture upon the bare Authority of any Learned man or men when he conceives he has reasons to the contrary which are of more weight than their Authority I know no reason but notwithstanding all this they might be as good Statesmen as any of the Society But what has this to do with Common-wealths where men are bound only to external obedience unto the Laws and Judgments of Courts but not to an internal approbation of them no nor to conceal their Judgment of them if they disapprove them As if I conceived I had reason to mislike the Law of punishing simple Theft with Death as Sir Thomas Moore did I might profess lawfully my judgment and represent my reasons to the King or Common-wealth in a Parliament as Sir Thomas Moore did without committing any fault or fearing any punishment 118. To that place of S. Austin you cite lib. 32. cont Faust You see that you go about to overthrow all Authority of Scripture and that every mans mind may be to himself a Rule what he is to allow or disallow in every Scripture I shall need give no other Reply but only to desire you to speak like an honest man and to say whether it be all one for a man to allow and disallow in every Scripture what he pleases which is either to dash out of Scripture such Texts or such Chapters because they cross his opinion or to say which is worse Though they be Scripture they are not true Whether I say for a man thus to allow and disallow in Scripture what he pleases be all one and no greater fault than to allow that sense of Scripture which he conceives to be true and genuine and deduced out of the words and to disallow the contrary for Gods sake Sir tell me plainly In those Texts of Scripture which you alledge for the infallibility of your Church do not you allow what sense you think true and disallow the contrary And do you not this by the direction of your private reason If you do why do you condemn it in others If you do not I pray you tell me what direction you follow or whether you follow none at all If none at all this is like drawing Lots or throwing the Dice for the choice of a Religion If any other I beseech you tell me what it is Perhaps you will say the Churches Authority and that will be to dance finely in a round thus To believe the Churches Infallible Authority because the Scriptures avouch it and to believe that Scriptures say and mean so because they are so expounded by the Church Is not this for a Father to beget his Son and the Son to beget his Father For a foundation to support the house and the house to support the foundation Would not Campian have cryed out at it Ecce quos gyros quos Maeandros And to what end was this going about when you might as well at first have concluded the Church infallible because she says so as thus to put in Scripture for a meer stale and to say the Church is infallible because the Scripture says so and the Scripture means so because the Church says so which is infallible Is it not most evident therefore to every intelligent man that you are enforced of necessity to do that your self which so Tragically you declaim against in others The
fail of performance by reason of their Error 128. But It is more useful fit you say for the deciding of Controversies to have besides an infallible Rule to go by a living infallible Judge to determine them from hence you conclude that certainly there is such a Judge But why then may not another say that it is yet more useful for many excellent purposes that all the Patriarchs should be infallible than that the Pope only should Another that it would be yet more useful that all the Archbishops of every Province should be so than that the Patriarchs only should be so Another that it would be yet more useful if all the Bishops of every Diocess were so Another that it would be yet more available that all the Parsons of every Parish should be so Another that it would be yet more excellent if all the Fathers of Families were so And lastly another that it were much more to be desired that every Man and every Woman were so just as much as the prevention of Controversies is better than the decision of them and the prevention of Heresies better than the condemnation of them and upon this ground conclude by your own very consequence That not only a general Council nor only the Pope but all the Patriarchs Archbishops Bishops Pastors Fathers nay all the men in the World are infallible If you say now as I am sure you will that this conclusion is most gross and absurd against sense and experience then must also the ground be false from which it evidently and undeniably follows viz. that That course of dealing with men seems always more fit to Divine Providence which seems most fit to humane reason 129. And so likewise That there should men succeed the Apostles which could shew themselves to be their successors by doing of Miracles by speaking all kind of Languages by delivering men to Satan as S. Paul did Hymenaeus and the incestuous Corinthian it is manifest in human reason it were incomparably more fit and useful for the decision of Controversies than that the successour of the Apostles should have none of these gifts and for want of the signs of Apostleship be justly questionable whether he be his successor or no and will you now conclude That the Popes have the gift of doing Miracles as well as the Apostles had 130. It were in all reason very useful and requisite that the Pope should by the assistance of Gods Spirit be freed from the vices and passions of men lest otherwise the Authority given him for the good of the Church he might imploy as divers Popes you well know have done to the disturbance and oppression and mischief of it And will you conclude from hence That Popes are not subject to the sins and passions of other men That there never have been ambitious covetous lustful tyrannous Popes 131. Who sees not that for mens direction it were much more beneficial for the Church that Infallibility should be setled in the Popes Person than in a general Council That so the means of deciding Controversies might be speedy easie and perpetual whereas that of general Councils is not so And will you hence infer that not the Church Representative but the Pope is indeed the infallible Judge of Controversies certainly if you should the Sorbon Doctors would not think this a good conclusion 132. It had been very commodious one would think that seeing either Gods pleasure was the Scripture should be translated or else in his Providence he knew it would be so that he had appointed some men for this business and by his Spirit assisted them in it that so we might have Translations as Authentical as the Original yet you see God did not think fit to do so 133. It had been very commodious one would think that the Scripture should have been at least for all things necessary a Rule plain and perfect And yet you say it is both imperfect and obscure even in things necessary 134. It had been most requisite one would think that the Copies of the Bibles should have been preserved free from variety of Readings which makes men very uncertain in many places which is the Word of God and which is the error or presumption of man and yet we see God hath not thought fit so to provide for us 135. Who can conceive but that an Apostolick Interpretation of all the difficult places of Scripture would have been strangely beneficial to the Church especially there being such danger in mistaking the sense of them as is by you pretended and God in his providence foreseeing that the greatest part of Christians would not accept of the Pope for the Judge of Controversies And yet we see God hath not so ordered the matter 136. Who doth not see that supposing the Bishop of Rome had been appointed Head of the Church and Judge of Controversies that it would have been infinitely beneficial to the Church perhaps as much as all the rest of the Bible that in some Book of Scripture which was to be undoubtedly received this one Proposition had been set down in Terms The Bishops of Rome shall be always Monarchs of the Church and they either alone or with their adherents the Guides of Faith and the Judges of Controversies that shall arise amongst Christians This if you will deal ingenuously you cannot but acknowledge for then all true Christians would have submitted to him as willingly as to Christ himself neither needed you and your fellows have troubled your self to invent so many Sophisms for the proof of it There would have been no more doubt of it among Christians than there is of the Nativity Passion Resurrection or Ascension of Christ You were best now rub your forehead hard and conclude upon us that because this would have been so useful to have been done therefore it is done Or if you be as I know you are too ingenuous to say so then must you acknowledge that the ground of your Argument which is the very ground of all these absurdities is most absurd and that it is our duty to be humbly thankful for those sufficient nay abundant means of Salvation which God hath of his own goodness granted us and not conclude he hath done that which he hath not done because forsooth in our vain judgments it seems convenient he should have done so 137. But you demand what repugnance there is betwixt infallibility in the Church and existence of Scripture that the production of the one must be the destruction of the other Out of which words I can frame no other argument for you than this There is no Repugnance between the Scriptures existence and the Churches infallibility therefore the Church is infallible Which consequence will then be good when you can shew that nothing can be untrue but that only which is impossible that whatsoever may be done that also is done Which if it were true would conclude both you and me to be infallible as well as
Books and not the Authority of the Books and therefore if a man should profess the not believing of these I should have reason to fear he did not believe that But there is not always an equal necessity for the belief of those things for the belief whereof there is an equal reason We have I believe as great reason to believe there was such a man as Henry the VIII King of England as that Jesus Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate yet this is necessary to be believed and that is not so So that if any man should doubt of or disbelieve that it were most unreasonably done of him yet it were no mortal sin nor no sin at all God having no where commanded men under pain of damnation to believe all which reason induceth them to believe Therefore as an Executor that should perform the whole Will of the dead should fully satisfie the Law though he did not believe that Parchment to be his written Will which indeed is so So I believe that he who believes all the particular doctrines which integrate Christianity and lives according to them should be saved though he neither believed nor knew that the Gospels were written by the Evangelists or the Epistles by the Apostles 160. This discourse whether it be rational and concluding or no I submit to better judgment But sure I am that the corollary which you draw from this position that this point is not Fundamental is very inconsequent that is that we are uncertain of the truth of it because we say the whole Church much more particular Churches and private men may err in points not Fundamental A pretty Sophism depending upon this Principle that whosoever possibly may err he cannot be certain that he doth not err And upon this ground what shall hinder me from concluding that seeing you also hold that neither particular Churches nor private men are Infallible even in Fundamentals that even the Fundamentals of Christianity remain to you uncertain A Judge may possibly err in judgment can he therefore never have assurance that he hath judged right A Traveller may possibly mistake his way must I therefore be doubtful whether I am in the right way from my Hall to my Chamber Or can our London Carrier have no certainty in the middle of the day when he is sober and in his wits that he is in the way to London These you see are right worthy consequences and yet they are as like your own as an Egg to an Egg or Milk to Milk 163. Ad § 27. C. M. S. Austin plainly affirms that to oppose the Churches definitions is to resist God himself speaking of the Controversie of Rebaptization de Unit. Eccl. cap. 22. where he saith that Christ bears witness to his Church and whosoever refuseth to follow the practice of the Church doth resist our Saviour himself who by his testimony recommends the Church c. I HIL I Answer First that in many things you will not be tried by S. Augustines judgment nor submit to his authority not concerning Appeals to Rome not concerning Transubstantiation not touching the use and worshiping of Images not concerning the State of Saints souls before the day of judgment not touching the Virgin Maries freedom from actual and original sin not touching the necessity of the Eucharist for Infants not touching the damning Infants to Hell that die without Baptism not touching the knowledge of Saints departed not touching Purgatory not touching the fallibility of Councils even general Councils not touching perfection and perspicuity of Scripture in matters necessary to Salvation not touching Auricular Confession not touching the half Communion not touching Prayers in an unknown tongue In these things I say you will not stand to S. Austines judgment and therefore can with no reason or equity require us to do so in this matter 2. To S. Augustine in heat of disputation against the Donatists and ransacking all places for arguments against them we oppose S. Austine out of this heat delivering the doctrine of Christianity calmly and moderately where he says In iis quae apertè posita sunt in sacris Scriptur is omnia ea reperiuntur quae continent fidem moresque vivendi 3. We say he speaks not of the Roman but the Catholick Church of far greater extent and therefore of far greater credit and authority than the Roman Church 4 He speaks of a point not expressed but yet not contradicted by Scripture whereas the errors we charge you with are contradicted by Scripture 5. He says not that Christ has recommended the Church to us for an Infallible definer of all emergent controversies but for a credible witness of Ancient Tradition Whosoever therefore refuseth to follow the practice of the Church understand of all places and ages though he be thought to resist our Saviour what is that to us who cast off no practiecs of the Church but such as are evidently post-nate to the time of the Apostles and plainly contrary to the practice of former and purer times Lastly it is evident and even to impudence it self undeniable that upon this ground of believing all things taught by the present Church as taught by Christ Error was held for example the necessity of the Eucharist for Infants and that in S. Austines time and that by S. Austine himself and therefore without controversie this is no certain ground for truth which may support falshood as well as truth 164. To the Argument wherewith you conclude I Answer That though the visible Church shall always without fail propose so much of Gods revelation as is sufficient to bring men to Heaven for otherwise it will not be the visible Church yet it may sometimes add to this revelation things superfluous nay hurtful nay in themselves damnable though not unpardonable and sometimes take from it things very expedient and profitable and therefore it is possible without sin to resist in some things the Visible Church of Christ But you press us farther and demand what Visible Church was extant when Luther began whether it were the Roman or Protestant Church As if it must of necessity either be Protestant or Roman or Roman of necessity if it were not Protestant yet this is the most usual fallacy of all your disputers by some specious Arguments to perswade weak men that the Church of Protestants cannot be the true Church and thence to infer that without doubt it must be the Roman But why may not the Roman be content to be a part of it and the Grecian another And if one must be the whole why not the Greek Church as well as the Roman there being not one Note of your Church which agrees not to her as well as to your own unless it be that she is poor and oppressed by the Turk and you are in glory and splendor CHAP. III. The ANSWER to the Third CHAPTER Wherein it is maintained That the distinction of points Fundamental and not Fundamental is in this present Controversie
4.11 he hath given Pastors and Doctors c. lest we should be carried about with every wind of Doctrine To any particular Church of Christians seeing it is a particular Church which is called l 1 Tim. 3.15 The House of God a Pillar and ground of Truth and seeing of any particular Church it is written m Mat. 18.17 He that heareth not the Church let him be unto thee as a Heathen or a Publican We might refer it to any man that prays for Gods Spirit for it is written n Mat. 7.8 Every one that asketh receiveth and again o Jam. 1.5 If any man want Wisdom let him ask of God who giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not Lastly we might refer it to the Jews for without all doubt of them it is written p Isai 59.21 my Spirit that is in thee c. All these means of agreement whereof not any one but hath as much probability from Scripture d Mat. 18.20 as that which you obtrude upon us offer themselves upon a sudden to me happily many more might be thought on if we had time but these are enough to shew that would we make use of voluntary and devised means to determine differences we had them in great abundance And if you say these would fail us and contradict themselves so as we pretend have yours There have been Popes against Popes Councils against Councils Councils confirmed by Popes against Councils confirmed by Popes Lastly the Church of some Ages against the Church of other Ages 9. Lastly whereas you find fault That Protestants upbraided with their discords answer that they differ only in points not Fundamental I desire you tell me whether they do so or do not so If they do so I hope you will not find fault with the Answer If you say they do not so but in points Fundamental also then they are not members of the same Church one with another no more than with you And therefore why should you object to any of them their differences from each other any more than to your selves their more and greater differences from you 10. But they are convinced sometime even by their own confessions that the Ancient Fathers taught divers points of Popery and then they reply those Fathers may nevertheless be saved because those Errors were not Fundamental And may not you also be convinced by the confessions of your own men that the Fathers taught divers points held by Protestants against the Church of Rome and divers against Protestants and the Church of Rome Do not your Purging Indexes clip the Tongues and seal up the Lips of a great many for such confessions And is not the above cited confession of your Doway Divines plain and full to the same purpose And do not you also as freely as we charge the Fathers with Errors and yet say they were saved Now what else do we understand by an unfundamental Error but such a one with which a man may possibly be saved So that still you proceed in condemning others for your own faults and urging arguments against us which return more strongly upon your selves 11. But your will is we should remember that Christ must alwaies have a visible Church Answ Your pleasure shall be obeyed on condition you will not forget that there is a difference between perpetual Visibility and perpetual Purity As for the answer which you make for us true it is we believe the Catholick Church cannot perish yet that she may and did Err in points not Fundamental and that Protestants were obliged to forsake these Errors of the Church as they did though not the Church for her Errors for that they did not but continued still members of the Church For it is not all one though you perpetually confound them to forsake the Errors of the Church and to forsake the Church or to forsake the Church in her Errors and simply to forsake the Church No more than it is for me to renounce my Brothers or my Friends Vices or Errors and to renounce my Brother or my Friend The former then was done by Protestants the latter was not done Nay not only not from the Catholick but not so much as from the Roman did they separate per omnia but only in those practices which they conceived superstitious or impious If you would at this time propose a form of Liturgy which both Sides hold lawful and then they would not joyn with you in this Liturgy you might have some colour then to say they renounce your communion absolutely But as things are now ordered they cannot joyn with you in prayers but they must partake with you in unlawful practices and for this reason they not absolutely but thus far separate from your communion And this I say they were obliged to do under pain of damnation Not as if it were damnable to hold an Error not damnable but because it is damnable outwardly to profess and maintain it and to joyn with others in the practice of it when inwardly they did not hold it Now had they continued in your communion that they must have done vid. have professed to believe and externally practised your Errors whereof they were convinced that they were Errors which though the matters of the Errors had been not necessary but only profitable whether it had not been damnable dissimulation and Hypocrisie I leave it to you to Judge You your self tell us within two pages after this that you are obliged never to speak any one least lie against your knowledge § 2. now what is this but to live in a perpetual lie 12. As for that which in the next place you seem so to wonder at That both Catholicks and Protestants according to the opinion of Protestants may be saved in their several professions because forsooth we both agree in all Fundamental points I Answer this proposition so crudely set down as you have here set it down I know no Protestant will justifie For you seem to make them teach that it is an indifferent thing for the attainment of Salvation whether a man believe the Truth or the Falshood and that they care not in whether of these Religions a man live or die so he die in either of them whereas all that they say is this That those amongst you which want means to find the Truth and so die in Error or use the best means they can with industry and without partiality to find the Truth and yet die in Error these men thus qualified notwithstanding these Errors may be saved Secondly for those that have means to find the Truth and will not use them they conceive though their case be dangerous yet if they die with a general repentance for all their sins known and unknown their Salvation is not desperate The Truths which they hold of Faith in Christ and Repentance being as it were an Antidote against their Errors and their negligence in seeking the Truth Especially seeing by confession of
Tradition of which the testimony of any present Church is but a little part So that here you fall into the Fallacy à dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter For in effect this is the sense of your Argument Unless the Church be infallible we can have no certainty of Scripture from the authority of the Church Therefore unless the Church be infallible we can have no certainty hereof at all As if a man should say If the Vintage of France miscarry we can have no Wine from France Therefore if that Vintage miscarry we can have no Wine at all And for the incorruption of Scripture I know no other rational assurance we can have of it than such as we have of the incorruption of other ancient Books that is the consent of ancient Copies such I mean for the kind though it be far greater for the degree of it And if the Spirit of God give any man any other assurance hereof this is not rational and discursive but supernatural and infused An assurance it may be to himself but no argument to another As for the Infallibility of the Church it is so far from being a proof of the Scriptures incorruption that no proof can be pretended for it but incorrupted places of Scripture which yet are as subject to corruption as any other and more likely to have been corrupted if it had been possible than any other and made to speak as they do for the advantage of those men whose ambition it hath been a long time to bring all under their authority Now then if any man should prove the Scriptures uncorrupted because the Church says so which is infallible I would demand again touching this very thing that there is an infallible Church seeing it is not of it self evident how shall I be assured of it And what can he answer but that the Scripture says so in these and these places Hereupon I would ask him how shall I be assured that the Scriptures are incorrupted in those places seeing it is possible and not altogether improbable that these men which desire to be thought infallible when they had the government of all things in their own hands may have altered them for their purpose If to this he answer again that the Church is infallible and therefore cannot do so I hope it would be apparent that he runs round in a circle and proves the Scriptures incorruption by the Churches infallibility and the Churches infallibility by the Scriptures incorruption and that is in effect the Churches infallibility by the Churches infallibility and the Scriptures incorruption by the Scriptures incorruption 28. Now for your observation that some Books which were not always known to be Canonical have been afterwards received for such But never any book or syllable defined for Canonical was afterwards questioned or rejected for Apocryphal I demand touching the first sort whether they were commended to the Church by the Apostles as Canonical or not If not seeing the whole Faith was preached by the Apostles to the Church and seeing after the Apostles the Church pretends to no new Revelations how can it be an Article of Faith to believe them Canonical And how can you pretend that your Church which makes this an Article of Faith is so assisted as not to propose any thing as a divine Truth which is not revealed by God If they were how then is the Church an infallible keeper of the Canon of Scripture which hath suffered some Books of Canonical Scripture to be lost and others to lose for a long time their being Canonical at least the necessity of being so esteemed and afterwards as it were by the law of Postliminium hath restored their Authority and Canonicalness unto them If this was delivered by the Apostles to the Church the point was sufficiently discussed and therefore your Churches omission to teach it for some ages as an article of faith nay degrading it from the number of articles of faith and putting it among disputable problems was surely not very laudable If it were not revealed by God to the Apostles and by the Apostles to the Church then can it be no Revelation and therefore her presumption in proposing it as such is inexcusable 29. And then for the other part of it that never any book or syllable defined for Canonical was afterwards questioned or rejected for Apocryphal Certainly it is a bold asseveration but extreamly false For I demand The Book of Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom the Epistle of S. James and to the Hebrews were they by the Apostles approved for Canonical or no If not with what face dare you approve them and yet pretend that all your doctrin is Apostolical Especially seeing it is evident that this point is not deducible by rational discourse from any other defined by them If they were approved by them this I hope was a sufficient definition and therefore you were best rub your forehead hard and say that these Books were never questioned But if you do so then I shall be bold to ask you what Books you meant in saying before Some Books which were not always known to be Canonical have been afterwards received Then for the Book of Macchabes I hope you will say it was defined for Canonical before S. Gregories time and yet he lib. 19. Moral c. 13. citing a testimony out of it prefaceth to it after this matter Concerning which matter we do not amiss if we produce a testimony out of Books although not Canonical yet set forth for the edification of the Church For Eleazar in the Book of Machabees c. Which if it be not to reject it from being Canonical is without question at least to question it Moreover because you are so punctual as to talk of words and syllables I would know whether before Sixtus Quintus his time your Church had a defined Canon of Scripture or not If not then was your Church surely a most vigilant keeper of Scripture that for 1500. years had not defined what was Scripture and what was not If it had then I demand was it that set forth by Sixtus or that set forth by Clement or a third different from both If it were that set forth by Sixtus then is it now condemned by Clement if that of Clement it was condemned I say but sure you will say contradicted and questioned by Sixtus If different from both then was it questioned and condemned by both and still lies under the condemnation But then lastly suppose it had been true That both some Book not known to be Canonical had been received and that never any after receiving had been questioned How had this been a sign that the Church is infallibly assisted by the Holy Ghost In what mood or figure would this conclusion follow out of these Premises Certainly your flying to such poor signs as these are is to me a great sign that you labour with penury of better arguments and that thus to catch at shadows and bulrushes
contrary Lastly why it is not sufficient for any mans Salvation to use the best means he can to inform his Conscience and to follow the direction of it To all these demands when you have given fair and ingenious answers you shall hear further from me 55. Ad § 20. At the first entrance into this Parag. from our own Doctrine That the Church cannot Err in Points necessary it is concluded if we are wise we must forsake it in nothing least we should forsake it in something necessary To which I answer First that the supposition as you understand it is falsly imposed upon us and as we understand it will do you no service For when we say that there shall be a Church alwaies somewhere or other unerring in Fundamentals our meaning is but this that there shall be alwaies a Church to the very being whereof it is repugnant that it should Err in Fundamentals for if it should do so it would want the very essence of a Church and therefore cease to be a Church But we never annexed this priviledg to any one Church of any one Denomination as the Greek or the Roman Church which if we had done and set up some setled certain Society of Christians distinguishable from all others by adhering to such a Bishop for our Guide in Fundamentals then indeed and then only might you with some colour though with no certainty have concluded that we could not in Wisdom forsake this Church in any point for fear of forsaking it in a necessary point But now that we say not this of any one determinate Church which alone can perform the Office of Guide or Director but indefinitely of the Church meaning no more but this That there shall be alwaies in some place or other some Church that Errs not in Fundamentals will you conclude from hence that we cannot in Wisdom forsake this or that the Roman or the Greek Church for fear of Erring in Fundamentals 56. Yea but you may say for I will make the best I can of all your Arguments That this Church thus unerring in Fundamentals when Luther arose was by our confession the Roman and therefore we ought not in Wisdom to have departed from it in any thing I answer First that we confess no such thing that the Church of Rome was then this Church but only a Part of it and that the most corrupted and most incorrigible Secondly that if by adhering to the Church we could have been thus far secured this Argument had some shew of reason But seeing we are not warranted thus much by any priviledg of that Church that she cannot Err Fundamentally but only from Scripture which assures us that she doth Err very heinously collect our hope that the Truths she retains and the practice of them may prove an Antidote to her against the Errors which she maintains in such Persons as in simplicity of Heart follow this Absalom we should then do against the light of our Conscience and so sin damnably if we should not abandon the profession of her Errors though not Fundamental Neither can we thus conclude we may safely hold with the Church of Rome in all her points for she cannot Err damnably For this is false she may though perhaps she does not But rather thus These points of Christianity which have in them the nature of Antidotes against the Poyson of all Sins and Errors the Church of Rome though otherwise much corrupted still retains therefore we hope she Errs not Fundamentally but still remains a Part of the Church But this can be no warrant to us to think with her in all things seeing the very same Scripture which puts us in hope she Errs not Fundamentally assures us that in many things and those of great moment she Errs very greviously And these Errors though to them that believe them we hope they will not be pernitious yet the professing of them against Conscience could not but bring us to certain damnation As for the fear of departing from some Fundamental Truths withal while we depart from her Errors Happily it might work upon us if adhering to her might secure us from it and if nothing else could But both these are false For first adhering to her in all things cannot secure us from erring in Fundamentals Because though de facto we hope she does not Err yet we know no priviledges she has but she may Err in them her self and therefore we had need have better security hereof than her bare Authority Then secondly without dependence on her at all we may be secured that we do not Err Fundamentally I mean by believing all those things plainly set down in Scripture wherein all things necessary and most things profitable are plainly delivered Suppose I were Travelling to London and knew two ways thither the one very safe and convenient the other very inconvenient and dangerous but yet a way to London and that I overtook a Passenger on the way who himself believed and would fain perswade me there was no other way but the worse and would perswade me to accompany him in it because I confessed his way though very inconvenient yet a way so that going that way we could not fail of our Journies end by the consent of both Parties but he believed my way to be none at all and therefore I might justly fear lest out of a desire of leaving the worst way I left the true and the only way If now I should not be more secure upon my own knowledge than frighted by this fallacity would you not beg me for a Fool Just so might you think of us if we would be frighted out of our own knowledge by this bugbear For the only and the main reason why we believe you not to Err in Fundamentals is your holding the Doctrines of Faith in Christ and Repentance which knowing we hold as well as you notwithstanding our departure from you we must needs know that we not Err in Fundamentals as well as we know that you do not Err in some Fundamentals and therefore cannot possibly fear the contrary Yet let us be more liberal to you and grant that which can never be proved that God had said in plain terms The Church of Rome shall never destroy the Foundation but withal had said that it might and would lay much Hay and Stubble upon it That you should never hold any Error destructive of Salvation but yet many that were prejudicial to Edification I demand might we have dispensed with our selves in the believing and professing these Errors in regard of the smalness of them Or had it not been a damnable sin to do so though the Errors in themselves were not damnable Had we not had as plain Direction to depart from you in some things profitable as to adhere to you in things necessary In the beginning of your Book when it was for your purpose to have it so the greatness or smalness of the matter was not considerable
It is sufficient that he denies us nothing necessary to Salvation Deus non deficit in necessariis nec redundat in superfluis So D. Stapleton But that the ending of all Controversies or having a certain means of ending them is necessary to Salvation that you have often said and supposed but never proved though it be the main pillar of your whole discourse So little care you take how slight your foundations are so your building make a fair show And as little care how you commit those faults your self which you condem in others For you here charge them with great impiety who imagine that God the lover of Souls hath left no infallible means to determine all differences arising about the interpretation of Scripture or upon any other occasion And yet afterwards being demanded by D. Potter why the Questions between the Jesuits and Dominicans remain undetermined You return him this cross interrogatory Who hath assured you that the point wherein these learned men differ is a revealed Truth or capable of definition or is not rather by plain Scripture indeterminable or by any Rule of Faith So then when you say it were great impiety to imagine that God hath not left infallible means to decide all differences I may answer It seems you do not believe your self For in this controversie which is of as high consequence as any can be you seem to be doubtful whether there be any means to determin it On the other side when you ask D. Potter who assured him that there is any means to determine this Controversie I answer for him that you have in calling it a great impiety to imagine that there is not some infallible means to decide this and all other differences arising about the Interpretation of Scripture or upon any other occasion For what trick you can devise to shew that this difference between the Dominicans and Jesuits which includes a difference about the sense of many Texts of Scripture and many other matters of moment was not included under this and all other differences I cannot imagine Yet if you can find out any thus much at least we shall gain by it that general speeches are not always to be understood generally but sometimes with exceptions and limitations 89. But if there be any infallible means to decide all differences I beseech you name them You say it is to consult and hear Gods Visible Church with submissive acknowledgment of her Infallibility But suppose the difference be as here it is whether your Church be Infallible what shall decide that If you would say as you should do Scripture and Reason then you foresee that you should be forced to grant that these are fit means to decide this Controversie and therefore may be as fit to decide others Therefore to avoid this you run into a most ridiculous absurdity and tell us that this difference also whether the Church be Infallible as well as others must be agreed by a submissive acknowledgment of the Churches Infallibility As if you should have said My Brethren I perceive this is a great contention amongst you whether the Roman Church be Infallible If you will follow my advice I will shew you a ready means to end it you must first agree that the Roman Church is Infallible and then your contention whether the Roman Church be Infallible will quickly be at an end Verily a most excellent advice and most compendious way of ending all Controversies even without troubling the Church to determine them For why may not you say in all other differences as you have done in this Agree that the Pope is supream head of the Church That the substance of Bread and Wine in the Sacrament is turned into the body and blood of Christ That the Communion is to be given to Lay-men but in one kind That Pictures may be worshipped That Saints are to be invocated and so in the rest and then your differences about the Popes Supremacy Transubstantiation and all the rest will speedily be ended If you say the advice is good in this but not in other cases I must request you not to expect always to be believed upon your word but to shew us some reason why any one thing namely the Churches Infallibility is fit to prove it self and any other thing by name the Popes Supremacy or Transubstantiation is not as fit Or if for shame you will at length confess that the Churches Infallibility is not fit to decide this difference whether the Church be infallible then you must confess it is not fit to decide all Unless you will say it may be fit to decide all and yet not fit to decide this or pretend that this is not comprehended under all Besides if you grant that your Churches infallibility cannot possibly be well grounded upon or decided by it self then having professed before that there is no possible means besides this for us to agree hereupon I hope you will give me leave to conclude that it is impossible upon good ground for us to agree that the Roman Church is Infallible For certainly light it self is not more clear than the evidence of this syllogism If there be no other means to make men agree upon your Churches Infallibility but only this and this be no means then it is simply impossible for men upon good grounds to agree that your Church is Infallible But there is as you have granted no other possible means to make men agree hereupon but only a submissive acknowledgment of her Infallibility And this is apparently no means Therefore it is simply impossible for men upon good grounds to agree that your Church is Infallible 90. Lastly to the place of S. Austin wherein we are advised to follow the way of Catholick Discipline which from Christ himself by the Apostles hath come down even to us and from us shall descend to all posterity I answer That the way which S. Austin speaks of and the way which you commend being divers ways and in many things clean contrary we cannot possibly follow them both and therefore for you to apply the same words to them is a vain equivocation Shew us any way and do not say but prove it to have come from Christ and his Apostles down to us and we are ready to follow it Neither do we expect demonstration hereof but such reasons as may make this more probable than the contrary But if you bring in things into your now Catholick Discipline which Christians in S. Austins time held abominable as the Picturing of God and which you must confess to have come into the Church Seven Hundred Years after Christ if you will bring in things as you have done the half Communion with a non obstante notwithstanding Christ Institution and the practice of the Primitive Church were to the contrary If you will do such things as these and yet would have us believe that your whole Religion came from Christ and his Apostles this we conceive a
Scripture which are not contained in the Creed when once we come to know that they are written in Scripture but rather to lay a necessity upon men of believing all things written in Scripture when once they know them to be there written For he that believes not all known Divine Revelations to be true how does he believe in God Unless you will say that the same man at the same time may not believe God and yet believe in him The greater difficulty is how it will not take away the necessity of believing Scripture to be the Word of God But that it will not neither For though the Creed be granted a sufficient summary of Articles of meer Faith yet no man pretends that it contains the Rules of Obedience but for them all men are referred to Scripture Besides he that pretends to believe in God obligeth himself to believe it necessary to obey that which reason assures him to be the Will of God Now reason will assure him that believes the Creed that it is the Will of God he should believe the Scripture even the very same Reason which moves him to believe the Creed Universal and never failing Tradition having given this Testimony both to Creed and Scripture that they both by the works of God were sealed and testified to be the words of God And thus much be spoken in Answer to your first Argument the length whereof will be the more excusable If I oblige my self to say but little to the rest 15. I come then to your second And in Answer to it deny flatly as a thing destructive of it self that any Error can be damnable unless it be repugnant immediatly or mediatly directly or indirectly of it self or by accident to some Truth for the matter of it fundamental And to your example of Pontius Pilat's being Judge of Christ I say the denial of it in him that knows it to be revealed by God is manifestly destructive of this Fundamental truth that all Divine Revelations are true Neither will you find any Error so much as by accident damnable but the rejecting of it will be necessarily laid upon us by a real belief of all Fundamentals and simply necessary Truths And I desire you would reconcile with this that which you have said § 15. Every Fundamental Error must have a contrary Fundamental Truth because of two Contradictory propositions in the same degree the one is false the other must be true c. 16. To the Third I Answer That the certainty I have of the Creed That it was from the Apostles and contains the principles of Faith I ground it not upon Scripture and yet not upon the Infallibility of any present much less of your Church but upon the Authority of the Ancient Church and written Tradition which as D. Potter hath proved gave this constant Testimony unto it Besides I tell you it is guilty of the same fault which D. Potter's Assertion is here accused of having perhaps some colour toward the proving it false but none at all to shew it impertinent 17. To the Fourth I Answer plainly thus That you find fault with D. Potter for his Vertues you are offended with him for not usurping the Authority which he hath not in a word for not playing the Pope Certainly if Protestants be faulty in this matter it is for doing it too much and not too little This presumptuous imposing of the senses of men upon the words of God the special senses of men upon the general words of God and laying them upon mens consciences together under the equal penalty of death and damnation this vain conceit that we can speak of the things of God better than in the word of God This Deifying our own Interpretations and Tyrannous inforcing them upon others This restraining of the word of God from that latitude and generality and the understandings of men from that liberty wherein Christ and the Apostles left them a This perswasion is no singularity of mine but the Doctrin which I have learnt from Divines of great learning and judgment Let the Reader be pleased to peruse the seaventh book of Acontius de Stratag Satanae And Zanchius his last Oration delivered by him after the composing of the discord between him and Amerbachius and he shall confess as much is and hath been the only fountain of all the Schisms of the Church and that which makes them immortal the common incendiary of Christendom and that which as I said before tears into pieces not the coat but the bowels and members of Christ Ridente Turcâ nec dolente Judaeo Take away these Walls of separation and all will quickly be one Take away this Persecuting Burning Cursing Damning of men for not subscribing to the words of Men as the words of God Require of Christians only to believe Christ and to call no man master but him only Let those leave claiming Infallibility that have no title to it and let them that in their words disclaim it disclaim it likewise in their actions In a word take away Tyranny which is the Devils instrument to support errors and superstitions and impieties in the several parts of the World which could not otherwise long withstand the power of Truth I say take away Tyranny and restore Christians to their just and full liberty of captivating their understanding to Scripture only and as Rivers when they have a free passage run all to the Ocean so it may well be hoped by Gods blessing that Universal Liberty thus moderated may quickly reduce Christendom to Truth and Unity These thoughts of peace I am perswaded may come from the God of peace and to his blessing I commend them and proceed 18. Your fifth and last objection stands upon a false and dangerous supposition That new Heresies may arise For an Heresie being in it self nothing else but a Doctrine Repugnant to some Article of the Christian Faith to say that new Heresies may arise is to say that new Articles of Faith may arise and so some great ones among you stick not to profess in plain terms who yet at the same time are not ashamed to pretend that your whole Doctrin is Catholick and Apostolick So Salmeron Non omnibus omnia dedit Deus ut quaelibet aetas suis gaudeat veritatibus quas prior aetas ignoravit God hath not given all things to All So that every age hath its proper Verities which the former age was ignorant of Disp 57. In Ep. ad Rom. And again in the Margent Habet Unumquodque saeculum peculiares Revelationes Divinas Every age hath its peculiar Divine Revelations Where that he speaks of such Revelations as are or may by the Church be made matters of Faith no man can doubt that reads him an example whereof he gives us a little before in these words Unius Augustini doctrina Assumptionis B. Deiparae cultum in Ecclesiam introduxit The Doctrin of Augustin only hath brought in to the Church the Worship of
Transubstantiation as is explained one where or other by your School-men Now I beseech you Sir to try your skill and if you can compose their repugnance and make peace between them Certainly none but you shall be Catholick Moderator But if you cannot do it and that after an intelligible manner then you must give me leave to believe that either you do not believe Transubstantiation or else that it is no contradiction that men should subjugate their understandings to the belief of contradictions 48. Ad § 18. This Paragraph consists of two immodest untruths obtruded upon us without shew or shadow of reason and an evident sophism grounded upon an affected mistake of the sense of the word Fundamental 49. The first untruth is that some Protestants make a Church of men scarcely agreeing in one point of faith of men concurring in some one or few Articles of belief and in the rest holding conceits plainly contradictory agreeing only in this one Article that Christ is our Saviour c. Ans This is a shameless Calumny because even these men to the constituting of the very essence of a Church in the lowest degree require not only Faith in Jesus Christ the Son of God and Saviour of the World but also submission to his Doctrin in mind and will Now I beseech you Sir tell me ingenuously whether the Doctrin of Christ may be called without blasphemy scarcely one point of Faith Or whether it consists only of some-one or few Articles of belief Or whether there be nothing in it but only this Article That Christ is our Saviour Is it not manifest to all the world that Christians of all Professions do agree with one consent in the belief of all those Books of Scripture which were not doubted of in the ancient Church without danger of damnation Nay is it not apparent that no man at this time can without hypocrisie pretend to believe in Christ but of necessity he must do so Seeing he can have no reason to believe in Christ but he must have the same to believe the Scripture I pray then read over the Scripture once more or if that be too much labour the New Testament only and then say whether there be nothing there but scarcely one point of Faith But some one or two Articles of belief Nothing but this Article only that Christ is our Saviour Say whether there be not there an infinite number of Divine Verities Divine precepts Divine promises and those so plainly and undoubtedly delivered that if any sees them not it cannot be because he cannot but because he will not So plainly that whosoever submits sincerely to the Doctrin of Christ in mind and will cannot possibly but submit to these in act and performance And in the rest which it hath pleased God for reasons best known to himself to deliver obscurely or ambiguously yet thus far at least they agree that the sense of them intended by God is certainly true and that they are without passion or prejudice to endeavor to find it out The difference only is which is that true sense which God intended Neither would this long continue if the walls of separation whereby the Divel hopes to make their Divisions eternal were pulled down and Error were not supported against Truth by human advantages But for the present God forbid the matter should be so ill as you make it For whereas you looking upon their points of difference and agreement through I know not what strange glasses have made the first innumerable and the other scarce a number the Truth is clean contrary that those divine Verities Speculative and Practical wherein they universally agree which you will have to be but a few or but one or scarcely one amount to many millions 〈◊〉 if an exact account were taken of them And on the other side the Points in variance are in comparison but few and those not of such a quality but the Error in them may well consist with the belief and obedience of the entire Covenant ratified by Christ between God and man Yet I would not be so mistaken as if I thought the Errors even of some Protestants unconsiderable things and matters of no moment For the truth is I am very fearful that some of their opininions either as they are or as they are apt to be mistaken though not of themselves so damnable but that good and holy men may be saved with them yet are too frequent occasions of our remissness and slackness in running the race of Christian Perfection of our deferring Repentance and conversion to God of our frequent relapses into sin and not seldom of security in sinning and consequently though not certain causes yet too frequent occasions of many mens damnation and such I conceive all these Doctrines which either directly or obliquely put men in hope of Eternal happiness by any other means saving only the narrow way of sincere and Universal obedience grounded upon a true and lively Faith These Errors therefore I do not elevate or extenuate and on condition the ruptures made by them might be composed do heartily wish that the cement were made of my dearest Blood and only not to be an Anathema from Christ Only this I say that neither are their points of agreement so few nor their differences so many as you make them nor so great as to exclude the opposite Parties from being members of one Church Militant and Joynt Heirs of the Glory of the Church Triumphant 50. Your other palpable untruth is that Protestants are far more bold to disagree even in matters of Faith than Catholick Divines you mean your own in Questions meerly Philosophical or not determined by the Church For neither do they differ at all in matters of Faith if you take the word in the highest sense and mean by matters of Faith such Doctrines as are absolutely necessary to Salvation to be believed or not to be disbelieved And then in those wherein they do differ with what colâ—â—r or shadow of Argument can you make good that they are more bold to disagree than you are in Questions meerly Philosophical or not determined by the Church For is there not as great repugnancy between your assent and dissent your affirmation and negation your Est Est Non Non as there is between theirs You follow your Reason in those things which are not determined by your Church and they theirs in things not plainly determined in Scripture And wherein then consists their greater their far greater boldness And what if they in their contradictory opininions pretend both to rely upon the truth of God doth this make their contradictions ever a whit the more repugnant I had always thought that all contradictions had been equally contradictions and equally repugnant because the least of them are as far asunder as Est and Non Est can make them and the greatest are no farther But then you in your differences by name about Predetermination the Immaculate Conception the Popes
is easier for you to declaim as you do than to dispute against it But these men you say must be Hereticks because they separated from the Communion of the Visible Church and therefore also from the Communion of that which they say was invisible In as much as the invisible Church communicated with the visible 35. Ans I might very justly desire some proof of that which so confidently you take for granted That there were no persecuted and oppressed maintainers of the Truth in the days of our Fore-fathers but only such as dissembled their opinions and lived in your Communion And truly if I should say there were many of this condition I suppose I could make my Affirmative much more probable than you can make your Negative We read in Scripture that Elias conceived there was none left besides himself in the whole Kingdom of Israel who had not revolted from God and yet God himself assures us that he was deceived And if such a man a Prophet and one of the greatest erred in his judgment touching his own time and his own Country why may not you who are certainly but a man and subject to the same passions as Elias was mistake in thinking that in former ages in some Countrey or other there were not always some good Christians which did not so much as externally bow their knees to your Baal But this answer I am content you shall take no notice of and think it sufficient to tell you that if it be true that this supposed invisible Church did hypocritically communicate with the visible Church in her corruptions then Protestants had cause nay necessity to forsake their Communion also for otherwise they must have joyned with them in the practice of impieties and seeing they had such cause to separate they presume their separation cannot be Schismatical 36. Yes you reply to forsake the external Communion of them with whom they agree in faith is the most formal and proper sin of Schism Answ Very true but I would fain know wherein I would gladly be informed whether I be bound for fear of Schism to communicate with those that believe as I do only in lawful things or absolutely in every thing whether I am to joyn with them in Superstition and Idolatry and not only in a common profession of the Faith wherein we agree but in a common dissimulation or abjuration of it This is that which you would have them do or else forsooth they must be Schismaticks But hereafter I pray remember that there is no necessity of communicating even with true Believers in wicked actions Nay that there is a necessity herein to separate from them And then I dare say even you being their judge the reasonableness of their cause to separate shall according to my first observation justifie their separation from being Schismatical 37. Arg. But the property of Schism according to D. Potter is to cut off from the hope of salvation the Church from which it separates And these Protestants have this property therefore they are Schismaticks 38. Ans I deny the Syllogism it is no better than this One Smptom of the Plague is a Feaver but such a man hath a Feaver therefore he hath the Plague The true conclusion which issues out of these Premisses should be this Therefore he hath one Symptom of the plague And so likewise in the former therefore they have one property or one quality of Schismaticks And as in the former instance The man that hath one sign of the plague may by reason of the absence of other requisites not have the plague So these Protestants may have something of Schismaticks and yet not be Schismaticks A Tyrant sentencing a man to death for his pleasure and a just judge that condemns a malefactor do both sentence a man to death and so for the matter do both the same thing yet the one does wickedly the other justly What 's the reason because the one hath cause the other hath not In like manner Schismaticks either always or generally denounce damnation to them from whom they separate The same do these Protestants yet are not Schismaticks The Reason because Schismaticks do it and do it without cause and Protestants have cause for what they do The impieties of your Church being generally speaking damnable unless where they are excused by ignorance and expiated at least by a general repentance In fine though perhaps it may be true that all Schismaticks do so yet universal affirmatives are not converted and therefore it follows not by any good Logick that all that do so when there is just cause for it must be Schismaticks The cause in this matter of separation is all in all and that for ought I see you never think of But if these rigid Protestants have just cause to cut off your Church from the hope of salvation How can the milder sort allow hope of salvation to the Members of this Church Ans Distinguish the quality of the Persons censured and this seeming repugnance of their censures will vanish into nothing For your Church may be considered either in regard of those in whom either negligence or pride or worldly fear or hopes or some other voluntary sin is the cause of their ignorance which I fear is the case of the generality of men amongst you or in regard of those who owe their Errors from Truth to want of capacity or default of instruction either in respect of those that might know the truth and will not or of those who would know the truth but all things considered cannot In respect of those that have eyes to see and will not see or those that would gladly see but want eyes or light Consider the former sort of men which your more rigid censures seem especially to reflect upon and the heaviest sentence will not be too heavy Consider the latter and the mildest will not be too mild So that here is no difference but in words only neither are you flattered by the one nor uncharitably censured by the other 39. Your next blow is directed against the milder sort of Protestants who you say involve themselves in the sin of Schism by communicating with those as you call them exterminating Spirits whom you conceive your self to have proved Schismaticks And now load them further with the crime of Heresie For say you if you held your selves obliged under pain of damnation to forsake the Communion of the Roman Church by reason of her Errors which yet you confess were not fundamental shall it not be much more damnable to live in confraternity with these who defend an Error of the failing of the Church which in the Donatists you confess to have been properly Heretical 40. Ans You mistake in thinking that Protestants hold themselves obliged not to communicate with you only or principally by reason of your Errors and Corruption For the true reason according to my third observation is not so much because you maintain Errors and Corruptions
Reformation which yet when you measure it without partiality you 'll find to be far short of infinite nor their symbolizing in the general of forsaking your corruptions prove any thing to the contrary or any way advantage your design or make for your purpose For it is not any sign at all much less an evident sign that they had no setled design but only to forsake the Church of Rome for nothing but malice can deny that their intent at least was to reduce Religion to that original purity from which it was fallen The declination from which some conceiving to have begun though secretly in the Apostles times the mystery of iniquity being then in work and after their departure to have shewed it self more openly others again believing that the Church continued pure for some Ages after the Apostles and then declined And consequently some aiming at an exact conformity with the Apostolick times Others thinking they should do God and men good service could they reduce the Church to the condition of the fourth and fifth ages Some taking their direction in this work of Reformation only from Scripture others from the Writings of Fathers and the Decrees of Councils of the first five Ages certainly it is no great marvel that there was as you say disagreement between them in the particulars of their Reformation nay morally speaking it was impossible it should be otherwise Yet let me tell you the difference between them especially in comparison of your Church and Religion is not the difference between good and bad but between good and better And they did best that followed Scripture interpreted by Catholick written Tradition which rule the Reformers of the Church of England proposed to themselves to follow 83. Ad 30.31 32. D. Potter p. 81.82 of his Book speak thus If a Monastery should reform it self and should reduce into practice ancient good discipline when others would not In this case could it be charged with Schism from others or with Apostacy from its rule and order So in a society of men universally infected with some disease they that should free themselves from it could they be therefore said to separate from the society He presumes they could not and from hence concludes That neither can the Reformed Churches be truly accused for making a Schism that is separating from the Church and making themselves no members of it if all they did was as indeed it was to reform themselves 84. Now instead of these two instances which plainly shewed it possible in other societies and consequently in that of the Church to leave the faults of a Society and not leave being of it you disingenuously foist in two other instances clean cross to the Doctors purpose of men under colour of faults abandoning the Society wherein they lived 85. But that no suspicion of tergiversation may be fastned upon me I am content to deal with you a little at your own weapons Put the case then though not just as you would have it yet with as much favour to you as in reason you can expect That a Monastery did observe her substantial vows and all principal statutes but yet did generally practise and also enjoyn the violation of some lesser yet obliging observances and had done so time out of mind And that some inferiour Monks more conscientious than the rest discovering this abuse should first with all earnestness sollicite their Superiors for a general and orderly reformation of these though small and venial corruptions yet corruptions But finding they hoped and laboured in vain to effect this should reform these faults in themselves and refuse to joyn in the practice of them with the rest of their Confraternity and persisting resolutely in such a refusal should by their Superiors be cast out of their Monastery and being not to be re-admitted without a promise of remitting from their stiffness in these things and of condescending to others in the practice of their small faults should choose rather to continue exiles than to re-enter upon such conditions I would know whether you would condemn such men of Apostacy from the Order Without doubt if you should you would find the stream of your Casuists against you and besides involve S. Paul in the same condemnation who plainly tells that we may not do the least evil that we may do the greatest good Put case again you should be part of a Society universally infected with some disease and discovering a certain remedy for this disease should perswade the whole company to make use of it but find the greatest part of them so far in love with their disease that they were reslved to keep it and besides should make a decree that whosoever would leave it should leave their company Suppose now that your self and some few others should notwithstanding their injunction to the contrary free your selves from this disease and thereupon they should absolutely forsake and reject you I would know in this case who deserves to be condemned whether you of uncharitable desertion of your company or they of a tyrannical peevishness And if in these cases you will as I verily believe you will acquit the inferiors and condemn the superiors absolve the minor part and condemn the major then can you with no reason condemn Protestants for choosing rather to be ejected from the communion of the Roman Church than with her to persist as of necessity they were to do if they would continue in her Communion in the profession of Errors though not destructive of salvation yet hindering edification and in the practice or at least approbatiof many suppose not mortal but venial corruptions 86. Besides you censure too partially the corrupt estate of your Church in comparing it to a Monastery which did confessedly observe their substantial Vows and all principal Statutes of their order and moreover was secured by an infallible assistance for the avoiding of all substantial corruptions for of your Church we confess no such matter but say plainly That she not only might fall into substantial corruptions but did so that she did not only generally violate but of all the members of her Communion either in act or approbation require and exact the violation of many substantial Laws of Christ both Ceremonial and Moral which though we hope it was pardonable in them who had not means to know their error yet of its own nature and to them who did or might have known their error was certainly damnable And that it was not the Tything of Mint and Annise and Cummin the neglect whereof we impute unto you but the neglect of judgment justice and the weightier matters of the Law 87. Again you compare Protestants to such a Company as acknowledge that themselves as soon as they were gone out of the Monastery that deferred to reform must not hope to be free from those or the like Errors and Corruptions for which they left their Brethren Which is very strange seeing this very hope and nothing else moved
will and encounter with human probabilities being backed with the strength of flesh and blood and therefore conclude that it was farther necessary that this supernatural knowledge should be most certain and infallible To this I answer that I do heartily acknowledge and believe the Articles of our Faith be in themselves Truths as certain and infallible as the very common Principles of Geometry and Metaphysicks But that there is required of us a knowledge of them and an adherence to them as certain as that of sense or science that such a certainty is required of us under pain of damnation so that no man can hope to be in the state of salvation but he that finds in himself such a degree of faith such a strength of adherence This I have already demonstrated to be a great error and of dangerous and pernitious consequence And because I am more and more confirmed in my perswasion that the Truth which I there delivered is of great and singular use I will here confirm it with more reasons And to satisfie you that this is no singularity of my own my Margent presents you with a a M. Hooker in his answer to Travers his supplication I have taught that the assurance of things which we believe by the word is not so certain as of that we perceive by sence And is it as certain Yea I taught that the things which God doth promise in his word are surer unto us than any thing we touch handle or see But are we so sure and certain of them If we be why doth God so often prove his promises unto us as he doth by arguments taken from our sensible experience We must be surer of the proof than the thing proved otherwise it is no proof How is it that if ten men do all look upon the Moon every one of them knows it as certainly to be the Moon as another but many believing one and the same promises all have not one and the same fulness of perswasion How falleth it out that men being assured of any thing by sence can be no surer of it than they are whereas the strongest in faith that liveth upon the earth had always need to labour and strive and pray that his assurance concerning heavenly and spiritual things may grow increase and be augmented Protestant Divine of great authority and no way singular in his opinions who hath long since preached and justified the same doctrin 4. I say that every Text of Scripture which makes mention of any that were weak or of any that were strong in faith of any that were of little or any that were of great faith of any that abounded or any that were rich in saith of encreasing growing rooting grounding establishing confirming in faith Every such Text is a demonstrative refutation of this vain fancy proving that faith even true and saving faith is not a thing consisting in such an indivisible point of perfection as you make it but capable of augmentation and diminution Every Prayer you make to God to encrease your faith or if you conceive such a prayer derogatory from the perfection of your faith The Apostles praying to Christ to encrease their Faith is a convincing argument of the same conclusion Moreover if this doctrin of yours were true then seeing not any the least doubting can consist with a most infallible certainty it will follow that every least doubting in any matter of faith though resisted and involuntary is a damnable sin absolutely destructive so long as it lasts of all true and saving faith which you are so far from granting that you make it no sin at all but only an occasion of merit and if you should esteem it a sin then must you acknowledge contrary to your own Principles that there are Actual sins meerly involuntary The same is furthermore invincibly confirmed by every deliberate sin that any Christian commits by any progress in Charity that he makes For seeing as S. John assures us our faith is the victory which overcomes the world certainly if the faith of all true Believers were perfect and if true faith be capable of no imperfection if all faith be a knowledge most certain and infallible all faith must be perfect for the most imperfect that is according to your doctrin if it be true must be most certain and sure the most perfect that is cannot be more than most certain then certainly their victory over the World and therefore over the flesh and therefore over sin must of necessity be perfect and so it should be impossible for any true believer to commit any deliberate sin and therefore he that commits any sin must not think himself a true believer Besides seeing Faith worketh by Charity and Charity is the effect of Faith certainly if the cause were perfect the effect would be perfect and consequently as you make no degrees in Faith so there would be none in Charity and so no man could possibly make any progress in it but all true believers should be equally in Charity as in Faith you make them equal and from thence it would follow unavoidably that whosoever finds in himself any true Faith must presently persuade himself that he is perfect in Charity and whosoever on the other side discovers in his Charity any imperfection must not believe that he hath any true Faith These you see are strange and portentous consequences and yet the deduction of them from your Doctrine is clear and apparent which shews this Doctrine of yours which you would fain have true that there might be some necessity of your Churches Infallibility to be indeed plainly repugnant not only to Truth but even to all Religion and Piety and fit for nothing but to make men negligent of making any Progress in Faith or Charity 5. As for that one single reason which you produce to confirm it it will appear upon examination to be resolved finally into a groundless Assertion of your own contrary to all Truth and experience and that is That no degree of Faith less than a most certain and infallible knowledge can be able sufficiently to overbear our will and encounter with humane probabilities being backt with the strength of Flesh and Blood For who sees not that many Millions in the World forgoe many times their present ease and pleasure undergo great and toilsom labours encounter great difficulties adventure upon great dangers and all this not upon any certain expectation but upon a probable hope of some future gain and commodity and that not infinite and Eternal but finite and temporal Who sees not that many men abstain from many things they exceedingly desire not upon any certain assurance but a probable fear of danger that may come after What man ever was there so madly in love with a present penny but that he would willingly spend it upon any little hope that by doing so he might gain an hundred thousand pound And I would fain know what gay probabilities you could
Council of Trent so accordingly on the other side by the Religion of Protestants I do not understand the Doctrine of Luther or Calvin or Melancthon nor the Confession of Augusta or Geneva nor the Catechism of Heidelburg nor the Articles of the Church of England no nor the Harmony of Protestant Confessions but that wherein they all agree and which they all subscribe with a greater Harmony as a perfect rule of their Faith and Actions that is The Bible The Bible I say The Bible only is the Religion of Protestants Whatsoever else they believe besides it and the plain irrefragable indubitable consequences of it well may they hold it as a matter of Opinion but as matter of Faith and Religion neither can they with coherence to their own grounds believe it themselves nor require the belief of it of others without most high and most Schismatical presumption I for my part after a long and as I verily believe and hope impartial search of the true way to Eternal Happiness do profess plainly that I cannot find any rest for the sole of my Foot but upon this Rock only I see plainly and with mine own eyes that there are Popes against Popes Councils against Councils some Fathers against others the same Fathers against themselves a Consent of Fathers of one Age against a Consent of Fathers of another Age the Church of one Age against the Church of another Age. Traditive interpretations of Scripture are pretended but there are few or none to be found No Tradition but only of Scripture can derive it self from the Fountain but may be plainly proved either to have been brought in in such an Age after Christ or that in such an Age it was not in In a word there is no sufficient certainty but of Scripture only for any considering man to build upon This therefore and this only I have reason to believe This I will profess according to this I will live and for this if there be occasion I will not only willingly but even gladly lose my life though I should be sorry that Christians should take it from me Propose me any thing out of this Book and require whether I believe it or no and seem it never so incomprehensible to humane reason I will subscribe it with Hand and Heart as knowing no demonstration can be stronger than this God hath said so therefore it is true In other things I will take no mans liberty of judgment from him neither shall any man take mine from me I will think no man the worse man nor the worse Christian I will love no man the less for differing in opinion from me And what measure I mete to others I expect from them again I am fully assured that God does not and therefore that men ought not to require any more of any man than this To believe the Scripture to be Gods word to endeavour to find the true sense of it and to live according to it 57. This is the Religion which I have chosen after a long deliberation and I am verily persuaded that I have chosen wisely much more wisely than if I had guided my self according to your Churches authority For the Scripture being all true I am secured by believing nothing else that I shall believe no falshood as matter of Faith And if I mistake the sense of Scripture and so fall into Error yet am I secure from any danger thereby if but your grounds be true because endeavouring to find the true sense of Scripture I cannot but hold my Error without pertinacy and be ready to forsake it when a more true and a more probable sense shall appear unto me And then all necessary truth being as I have proved plainly set down in Scripture I am certain by believing Scripture to believe all necessary Truth And he that does so if his life be answerable to his Faith how is it possible he should fail of Salvation 58. Besides whatsoever may be pretended to gain to your Church the credit of a Guide all that and much more may be said for the Scripture Hath your Church been Ancient The Scripture is more Ancient Is your Church a means to keep men at Unity So is the Scripture to keep those that believe it and will obey it in Unity of belief in matters necessary or very profitable and in Unity of Charity in points unnecessary Is your Church Universal for time or place Certainly the Scripture is more Universal For all the Christians in the World those I mean that in truth deserve this name do now and always have believed the Scripture to be the Word of God whereas only you say that you only are the Church of God and all Christians besides you deny it 59. Thirdly following the Scripture I follow that whereby you prove your Churches infallibility whereof were it not for Scripture what pretence could you have or what notion could we have and by so doing tacitely confess that your selves are surer of the Truth of the Scripture than of your Churches authority For we must be surer of the proof than of the thing proved otherwise it is no proof 60. Fourthly following the Scripture I follow that which must be true if your Church be true for your Church gives attestation to it Whereas if I follow your Church I must follow that which though Scripture be true may be false nay which if Scripture be true must be false because the Scripture testifies against it 61. Fifthly to follow the Scripture I have Gods express warrant and command and no colour of any prohibition But to believe your Church infallible I have no command at all much less an express command Nay I have reason to fear that I am prohibited to do so in these Words call no man Master on Earth They fell by infidelity Thou standest by Faith Be not high minded but fear The Spirit of truth The World cannot receive 62. Following your Church I must hold many things not only above reason but against it if any thing be against it whereas following the Scripture I shall believe many mysteries but no impossibilities many things above reason but nothing against it many things which had they not been revealed reason could never have discovered but nothing which by true reason may be confuted many things which reason cannot comprehend how they can be but nothing which reason can comprehend that it cannot be Nay I shall believe nothing which reason will not convince that I ought to believe it For reason will convince any man unless he be of a perverse mind that the Scripture is the Word of God And then no reason can be greater than this God says so therefore it is true 63. Following your Church I must hold many things which to any mans judgment that will give himself the liberty of judgment will seem much more plainly contradicted by Scripture than the infallibility of your Church appears to be confirmed by it and consequently must be so
and did no more than Papists are bound to justifie what several Popes have said and done c. 5.112 M. They may be members of the Catholick Church that are not united in external Communion c. 5.9 The Protestant Doctrin of Merit explained c. 4.35 36. The Authors Motives to change his Religions with Answers to them Pref. 42.43 The Faith of Papists resolved at last into the Motives of Credibility c. 2.154 The Mischiefs that followed the Reformation not imputable to it c. 5.92 N. What make points necessary to be believed c. 4.4 11. No more is necessary to be believed by us than by the Apostles c. 4.67 70 71 72. Papists make many things necessary to salvation which God never made so c. 7.7 All necessary points of Faith are contained in the Creed c. 4.73 74. Why some points not so necessary were put into the Creed c. 4.75 76. Protestants may agree in necessary points though they may overvalue some things they hold c. 7.34 To impose a necessity of professing known errors and practising known corruptions is a just cause of separation c. 5.31 36 40 50 59 60 68 69. O. A blind obedience is not due to Ecclesiastical decisions though our practise must be determined by the sentence of superiours in doubtful cases c. 5.110 A probable opinion may be followed according to the Roman Doctors though it be not the safest way for avoiding sin c. 7 8. Optatus's saying impertinently urged against Protestants c. 5.99 100. Though we receive Ordination and Scripture from a false Church yet we may be a true Church c. 6.54 P. Whether Papists or Protestants most hazard their souls on probabilities c. 4.57 What we believe concerning the Perpetuity of the Visible Church Ans Pref. 18. Whether 1 Tim. 3.15 The Pillar and ground of Truth belong to Timothy or to the Church c. 3.76 If those words belong to the Church whether they may not signifie her duty and yet that she may err in neglecting it c. 3.77 A possibility of being deceived argues not an uncertainty in all we believe c. 3.26 50 c. 5.107 c. 6.47 By joyning in the Prayers of the Roman Church we must joyn in her unlawful practices c. 3.11 Preaching of the Word and administring the Sacrament how they are inseparable notes of the Church and how they make it visible c. 5.19 Private Spirit how we are to understand it c. 2.110 Private Spirit is not appealed to i. e. to dictates pretending to come from Gods spirit when Controversies are referred to Scripture c. 2.110 Whether one is left to his private spirit reason and discourse by denying the Churches infallibility and the harm of it Pref. 12 13. c. 2.110 A mans private judgment may be opposed to the publick when Reason and Scripture warrant him c. 5.109 A probable opinion according to the Roman Doctors may be followed though it is not the safest way for avoiding sin c. 7.8 It 's hard for Papists to resolve what is a sufficient proposal of the Church c. 3.54 Protestants are on the surer side for avoiding sin and Papists on the more dangerous side to commit sin shewed in instances c. 7.9 R. Every man by Reason must judge both of Scripture and the Church c. 2.111 112 113 118 120 122. Reason and judgment of discretion is not to be reproached for the private spirit c. 2.110 If men must not follow their Reason what they are to follow c. 2.114 115. Some kind of Reformation may be so necessary as to justifie separation from a corrupt Church though every pretence of reformation will not c. 5.53 Nothing is more against Religion than using violence to introduce it c. 5.96 The Religion of Protestants which is the belief of the Bible a wiser and safer way than that of the Roman Church shewed at large c. 6. from 56. to 72. Inclus All Protestants require Repentance to remission of sins and remission of sins to Justification c. 7.31 No Revelations known to be so may be rejected as not Fundamental c. 4.11 A Divine revelation may be ignorantly disbelieved by a Church and yet it may continue a Church c. 3.20 Things equally revealed may not be so to several persons c. 3.24 Papists cannot have Reverence for the Scripture whilst they advance so many things contrary to it c. 2.1 No argument of their reverence to it that they have preserved it intire c. 2.2 The Roman Church when Luther separated was not the visible Church though a visible Church and part of the Catholick c. 5.26 27. The present Roman Church has lost all Authority to recommend what we are to believe in Religion c. 2.101 The properties of a perfect Rule c. 2.5.6 7. Whether the Popish Rule of Fundamentals or ours is the safest c. 4.63 S. Right administration of Sacraments uncertain in the Roman Church c. 2. from 63. to 68. inclusive In what sense Salvation may be had in the Roman Church Ans Pref. 5 7. Salvation depends upon great uncertainties in the Roman Church c. 2. from 63. to 73. inclus Schisms whence they chiefly arise and what continues them c. 4.17 Schism may be a Division of the Church as well as from it c. 5.22 He may be no Schismatick that forsakes a Church for Errors not damnable Ans Pref. 2. No Schism to leave a corrupted Church when otherwise we must communicate in her corruptions c. 5.25 Not every separation from the external Communion of the Church but a causeless one is the sin of Schism c. 5.30 They may not be Schismaticks that continue the separation from Rome though Luther that began it had been a Schismatick c. 5.4 c. 6.14 The Scripture cannot be duly reverenced by Papists c. 2. n. 1. The Scripture how proved to be the word of God c. 4.53 The Divine Authority of the Scripture may be certain though it be not self-evidently certain that it is Gods word c. 6.51 Books of Scripture now held for Canonical which the Roman Church formerly rejected c. 2.90 91. Whether some Books of Scripture defined for Canonical were not afterward rejected c. 3.29 The Scripture in things necessary is intelligible to learned and unlearned c. 2.104 105 106. Some Books of Scripture questioned by the Fathers as well as by Protestants c. 2.34 The Scripture has great Authority from internal Arguments c. 2.47 The Truth of Scripture inspiration depends not on the authority of the Roman Church Pref. 14. c. 6.45 If the Scriptures contain all necessary truths Popery is confuted Pref. 30. to 38. inclusive The true meaning of Scripture not uncertain in necessary points c. 2.84 A determinate sense of obscure places of Scripture is not needful c. 2.127 150. The sense of plain places of Scripture may be known by the same means by which the Papists know the sence of those places that prove the Church c. 2.150 151. God may give means to the Church to know the true sense of Scripture yet it is not necessary it should have that sense c. 2.93 It
ground from their practice to assure himself that certainly they did hold so Nay Justice and Reason and Charity would that he should incline himself to believe that they grounded their practice upon that other opinion which had less impiety in it that is that this worship of Oblations was not proper to God but communicable to Creatures high in his favour My second is Because if Epiphanius had known that these Collyridians held the Blessed Virgin to be a Supream Power and Deity this being a far greater matter than offering a Cake to her should in all probability rather have given them their denomination at least when he sets down what their Heresie was he would have made this part of it that they did believe so But to the contrary in his Anacaephaleosis p. 130. he thus describes them They that offer to the name of the Blessed Virgin Cakes who are called Collyridians And again p. 150. They that offer to the Blessed Virgin Cakes who are called Collyridians So to the 79th Heresie he gives this Title Against the Collyridians who offer to Mary So Haeres 78 and 79. He sets down what he heard of them but no where that they held this opinion of her I conclude therefore that he never conceived this opinion to be a part of their Heresie and they were no further chargeable with it than as a probable consequent upon their practice My third is Because had the Collyridians held her God they would have worshiped her all the year long and not only once a year at a Solemn time as Epiphanius says they did My fourth is Because if Epiphanius had known that they held her God he would questionless have urged them with those Attributes that are given to God in Scripture as Eternity Immortallity Impossibility Omnipotence c. And shewed them that if they believed the Scripture they could not think of her any of those things if they did not they had no reason to think of her any thing more than of an ordinary Woman My fifth is because had their opinion been that the Blessed Virgin was God a great part of Epiphanius's discourse were plainly ridiculous both where he says only without proof she was not a God but a Mortal Creature which to them that held the contrary should not have been said but proved But especially where he speaks to this purpose as he does very frequently that the honour of Oblations was not to be given to Angels or Men much less to Women but only to God for what had that been to the Collyridians if they thought her as is pretended a Sovereign Power and Deity to what purpose was it for Epiphanius to ask Quis prophetam What prophet ever permitted that a Man much less a Woman should be adored though he be yet alive Nor John nor Tecla nor any other Saint For neither shall the Old Superstition have dominion over us that leaving the Living God we should Adore his Creatures To what end I say was all this if they thought her not a Saint nor Creature but God himself and the Lord of all How did this Argument touch them Ne Angelos quidem He suffers not the very Angels to be adored how much less the Daughter of Anna if they thought her not the Daughter of Anna but God Eternal In vain had it been to say to them Not to a Woman no nor to a Man but to God alone is this mistery of Oblation due So that the Angels themselves are not fit Subjects for such an honour Or again Let the Creature be turned to the Creator Let shame at length compel you to worship God alone Or lastly that so often repeated Let Mary be honoured but the Lord only adored For they might have answered all this in a word saying All this discourse sits besides the Cushion and concerns us and our offering nothing at all For we believe the Blessed Virgin to whom we offer neither Man nor Woman nor Angel nor Creature but a Deity A Sixth Reason let it be this If Epiphanius did indeed say of the Collyridians as is pretended That they held the Virgin Mary God and so difference their practice from the Papists Then the Author of this Answer and Petavius in his Translation needed not to have dictated to him what he should say nor make him say so whether he will or no But it is evident they do so as of the Author of this Answer I have already shewn and for Petavius his part I will so present it to your view that if you will not shut your Eyes you shall not choose but see it First then Haeres 78. propè fin he Petavius sets in his Margent quidam Deum Mariam esse crediderunt and to countenance this with a loquuntur of his own putting in makes them speak of her like mad Men i. e. they said she was God whereas in Epiphanius's Greek they say just nothing Secondly To fasten the pretended Opinion on them he translates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Novum dogma presuming it seems 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 would easily be mistaken for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and therefore meanes nothing by it but a vanity or folly Thirdly He translates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Illud and so makes it look backward to that pretended Novum dogma of the Collyridians whereas it signifies there And and looks forward to their practice Fourthly With the help of a Colon he stops the sense at Commentas fuisse whereas in Epiphanius there is but a Comma and the sense goes on without suspension Fifthly With an adeo ut he brings in their action as an effect of their former opinion whereas Epiphanius lays nothing to their charge but their Action only So that whereas Epiphanius his words truly translated run thus Another thing I have received with great astonishment that others being mad concerning the Blessed Virgin have and do go about to bring her in in the place of God being mad I say and besides themselves For they report that certain Women in Arabia have brought this vanity of offering a Cake to her name Petavius makes them thus Not without admiration we have heard another thing that some in these things that concern the most holy Virgin have proceeded to that degree of madness that they would obtrude her upon us for a God and speak of her as madmen For they report that certain Women in Arabia have invented that new Opinion so that to the Virgins name and honour they offer by way of sacrifice a Cake or wreath of Bread Again in the same Haeres 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he translates advantageously per mulieres sacrificia facere Whereas 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is more general than sacrificia facere and signifies sacris operari or sacros ritus peragere Again in the same place whereas Epiphanius says simply and absolutely Let no man offer to her name he makes it Let no man offer sacrifice to her name as if you might lawfully offer any
each to other without having these parts in several places then the distinction is vain But it is impossible that any thing should have several parts one out of another without having these parts in several places Therefore the distinction is vain The Major of this Syllogism he took for granted The Minor he proved thus Whatsoever body is in the proper place of another body must of necessity be in that very body by possessing the demensions of it therefore whatsoever hath several parts one out of the other must of necessity have them one out of the place of the other and consequently in several places For illustration of this Argument he said If my head and belly and thighs and legs be all in the very same place of necessity my head must be in my belly and my belly in my thighs and my thighs in my legs and all of them in my feet and my feet in all of them and therefore if my head be out of my belly it must be out of the place where my belly is and if it be not out of the place where my belly is it is not out of my belly but in it Again to shew that according to the Doctrin of Transubstantiation our Saviours body in the Eucharist hath not the several parts of it out of one another he disputed thus Wheresoever there is a body having several parts one out of the other there must be some middle parts severing the extreme parts But here according to this Doctrin the extreme parts are not severed but altogether in the same point Therefore here our Saviours Body cannot have parts one out of other Mr. Dan. To all this for want of a better Answer gave only this Let all Scholars peruse these After upon better consideration he wrote by the side of the last Syllogism this Quoad entitatem verum est non quoad locum that is according to entity it is true but not according to place And to Let all Scholars peruse these he caused this to be added And weigh whether there is any new matter worth a new Answer Chillingworth Replyed That to say the extreme parts of a body are severed by the middle parts according to their entity but not according to place is ridiculous His reasons are first Because severing of things is nothing else but putting or keeping them in several places as every silly woman knows and therefore to say they are severed but not according to place is as if you should say They are heated but not according to heat they are cooled but not according to cold Indeed is it to say they are severed but not severed VIII An account of what moved the Author to turn a Papist with his own Confutation of the Arguments that perswaded him thereto I Reconciled my self to the Church of Rome because I thought my self to have sufficient reason to believe that there was and must be always in the World some Church that could not err and consequently seeing all other Churches disclaimed this priviledge of not being subject to error the Church of Rome must be that Church which cannot err I was put into doubt of this way which I had chosen by D. Stapleton and others who limit the Churches freedom from Error to things necessary only and such as without which the Church can be a Church no longer but grantted it subject to error in things that were not necessary Hereupon considering that most of the differences between Protestants and Roman Catholicks were not touching things necessary but only profitable or lawful I concluded that I had not sufficient ground to believe the Roman Church either could not or did not err in any thing and therefore no ground to be a Roman Catholick Against this again I was perswaded that it was not sufficient to believe the Church to be an infallible believer of all doctrins necessary but it must also be granted an infallible teacher of what is necessary that is that we must believe not only that the Church teacheth all things necessary but that all is necessary to be believed which the Church teacheth to be so in effect that the Church is our Guide in the way to Heaven Now to believe that the Church was an infallible Guide and to be believed in all things which she requires us to believe I was induced First because there was nothing that could reasonably contest with the Church about this Office but the Scripture and that the Scripture was this Guide I was willing to believe but that I saw not how it could be made good without depending upon the Churches authority 1. That Scripture is the Word of God 2. That the Scripture is a perfect rule of our duty 3. That the Scripture is so plain in those things that concern our duty that whosoever desires and endeavors to find the will of God there shall either find it or at least not dangerously mistake it Secondly I was drawn to this belief because I conceived that it was evident out of the Epistle to the Ephesians that there must be unto the worlds end a Succession of Pastors by adhering to whom men might be kept from wavering in matters of faith and from being carried up and down with every wind of false doctrin That no Succession of Pastors could guard their adherents from danger of error if themselves were subject unto error either in teaching that to be necessary which is not so or denying that to be necessary which is so and therefore That there was and must be some Succession of Pastors which was an infallible guide in the way to Heaven and which should not possibly teach any thing to be necessary which was not so nor any thing not necessary which was so upon this ground I concluded that seeing there must be such a Succession of Pastors as was an infallible guide and there was no other but that of the Church of Rome even by the confession of all other Societies of Pastors in the world that therefore that Succession of Pastors is that infallible Guide of Faith which all men must follow Upon these grounds I thought it necessary for my salvation to believe the Roman Church in all that she thought to be and proposed as necessary Against these Arguments it hath been demonstrated unto me and First against the first That the reason why we are to believe the Scripture to be the word of God neither is nor can be the Authority of the present Church of Rome which cannot make good her Authority any other way but by pretence of Scripture and therefore stands not unto Scripture no not in respect of us in the relation of a Foundation to a building but of a building to a Foundation doth not support Scripture but is supported by it But the general consent of Christians of all Nations and Ages a far greater company than that of the Church of Rome and delivering universally the Scripture for the word of God is the ordinary
unless this may pass for one as perhaps it may where reasons are scarce No proposition which contradicts the common judgment of the Fathers can be probable * I should rather subsume but this does so Therefore not probable But it is de fide that our opinion is probable for the Council of Trent hath made it so by giving liberty to all to hold it Therefore without doubt we must hold that it is not whatsoever it seems against the common judgment of the Fathers This argument saith he doth most illustriously convince the followers of the contrary opinion that they ought not to dare affirm hereafter that their opinion flowes from the common judgment and writings of the ancient Doctors His second answer is That whereas Bandillus and Cajetan c. produce general sayings of Irenaeus Origen Athanasius Theophilus Alexandrinus Greg. Nyssen Basil Greg. Naz. Cyprian Hierom Fulgentius and in a manner of all the ancient Fathers exempting Christ alone from and consequently concluding the Virgin Mary under Original sin which Argument must needs conclude if the Virgin Mary be not Christ His answer I say is These Testimonies have little or no strength for did they conclude we must then let us in Gods name say that the Virgin Mary committed also many venial sins For the Scriptures Fathers and Councils set forth in propositions as Universal That there is no man but Christ who is not often defiled at least with smaller sins and who may not justly say that Petition of our Lords Prayer Demitte nobis debita nostra An answer I confess as fit as a Napkin to stop the mouths of his domestick adversaries though no way fit to satisfie their reason But this man little thought there were Protestants in the world as well as Dominicans who will not much be troubled by thieves falling out to recover more of their goods than they expected and to see a prevaricating Jesuit instead of stopping one breach in their ruinous cause to make two For whereas this man argues from the destruction of the Consequent to the destruction of the Antecedent thus If these testimonies were good and concluding then the Virgin Mary should have been guilty not only of Original but also of actual sin But the Consequent is false and blasphemous Therefore the Antecedent is not true They on the others side argue and sure with much more reason and much more conformity to the Ancient Tradition From the Assertion of the Antecedent to the Assertion of the Consequent thus If these testimonies be good and concluding then the Blessed Virgin was guilty both of Original sin and Actual but the Testimonies are good and concluding therefore she was guilty even of actual sins and therefore much more of Original His Third Answer is That their Church hath or may define many other things against which if their works be not depraved there lies a greater consent of Fathers than against the Immaculate Conception and therefore why not this The Instances he gives are four 1. That the Blessed Virgin committed no actual sin 2. That the Angels were not created before the visible world 3. That Angels are Incorporeal 4. That the Souls of Saints departed are made happy by the Vision of God before the day of Judgment Against the first Opinion he alledges direct places out of Origen which he says admit no exposition though Pamelius upon Tertullian and Sixtus Senensis labour in vain to put a good sense on them Out of Euthymias and Theophylact Out of S. Chrysostom divers pregnant testimonies and S. Thomas his confession touching one of them out of the Author of the Questions of the New and Old Testament in S. Austin cap. 75. Out of S. Hilary upon Psa 118. which words yet says he Tolet has drawn to a good construction yet so much difficulty still remains in them Out of Tertullian de carne Christi cap. 7. which he tells us will not be salved by Pamelius his gloss Out of Athanafius out of Irenaeus III. 18. out of S. Austin lib. 2. de Symbolo ad Catech. cap. 5. Whose words yet because they admit says Poza some exposition I thought fit to suppress though some think they are very hard to be avoided Out of Greg. Nyss out of S. Cyprian in his Sermon on the Passion Whose words says he though they may by some means be eluded yet will always be very difficult if we examin the Antecedents and Consequents out of Anselm Rich. de S. Victor S. Ambrose S. Andrew of Hierusalem and S. Bede and then tells us there are many other Testimonies much resembling these and besides many Fathers and Texts of Scripture which exempt Christ only from actual sin and lastly many suspicious sayings against her Immunity in them who use to say that at the Angels Annunciation she was cleansed and purged and expiated from all faults committed by her freewill which saith he though Canisius and others explicate in a pious sense yet at least they shew that either those alledged against the Imaculate conception are as favourable to be expounded Or we must say that a verity may be defined by the See Apostolick against the judgment of some Fathers From these things says he is drawn an unanswerable reason That for the defining the purity of the conception nothing now is wanting For seeing notwithstanding more and more convincing testimonies of Fathers who either did or did seem to ascribe actual sin to the Blessed Virgin notwithstanding the Universal sayings of Scripture and Councils bringing all except Christ under sin Lastly notwithstanding the silence of the Scriptures and Councils touching her Immunity from actual sin seeing notwithstanding all this the Council of Trent hath either decreed Seff VI. c. 23. de Justifical or hath confirmed it being before decreed by the consent of the faithful that the Blessed Virgin never was guilty of any voluntary no not the least sin It follows certainly that the Apostolick See hath as good nay better ground to enrol amongst her Articles the Virgins Immaculate conception The reason is clear for neither are there so many nor so evident sentences of Fathers which impute any fault or blemish to the Conception of the Mother of God as there are in appearance to charge her with actual offences Neither are there fewer Universal propositions in Scripture by which it may be proved that only Jesus was free from actual sin and therefore that the Virgin Mary fell into it Neither can there at this time be desired a greater consent of the faithful nor a more ardent desire than there now is that this verity should be defined and that the contrary Opinion should be Anathematized for Erroneous and Heretical The words of the Council of Trent on which this reason is grounded are these If any man say That a man all his life long may avoid all even venial sins unless by special priviledge from God as the Church holds of the Blessed Virgin let him be Anathema But if the consent of the Church hath prevailed against more clear Testimonies of ancient Fathers even for that which is favoured with no express authority of Scriptures or Councils And if the Council of Trent upon this consent of the faithful hath either defined this Immunity of the Virgin from all actual sin or declared it to be defined Who then can deny but that the Church hath immediate power to define among the Articles of Faith the pious Opinion of the Immaculate Conception His second Example by which he declares the power of their Church to define Articles against a multitude of Fathers and consequently not only without but against Tradition is the opinion that Angels were not created before the Corporeal world was created which saith he is or may be defined though there were more Testimonies of Fathers against it than against the Immaculate Conception So he says in the Argument of his Fifth Chapter and in the end of the same Chapter The Council of Lateran hath defined this against the express judgment of twenty Fathers of which Nazianzen Basil Chrysostome Cyrill Hierom Ambrose and Hillary are part His third Example to the same purpose is the opinion that Angels are Incorporeal against which saith he in the Argument of his sixth Chapter there are more Testimonies of the Fathers than against the Immaculate Conception and yet it is or at least may be defined by the Church and in the end of the Chapter I have for this Opinion cited twenty three Fathers which as most men think is now condemned in the * Firm de summâ Trinitate Lateran Council or at least as †De Angelis lib. 6. Suarez proves is to be rejected as manifestly temerarious His fourth and last Example to the same purpose is The Opinion that the Souls of Saints departed enjoy the Vision of God before the Resurrection Against which he tells us in the first place was the Judgment of Pope John XXI though not as a Pope but as a private Doctor Then he musters up against it a great multitude of Greek and Latin Fathers touching which he says All these Testimonies when * 1. 2. D. 29. cap. 1. Vasquez has related at length he †cap. 3. answers that they might be so explained as to say nothing against the true and Catholick Doctrin Yet if they could not be so explained their Authority ought not to hinder us from embracing that which the Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The same argument I make says Peâ—â— The Fathers and ancient Doctors which are objected against the pious opinion of the Conception of the Virgin may be commodiously explicated or at least so handled that they shall not hurt Notwithstanding though they cannot be explicated some of them that their Testimonies ought not to hinder but that the Sea Apostolick may define the Blessed Virgins preservation from Original sin In fine for the close of this Argument he adds Nolo per plura I will not run through more Examples These that I have reckoned are sufficient and admonishes learned men to bring together other like proofs whereby they may promote the desired Determination FINIS
say that a whole House is supported by the Foundation and yet never mean to exclude the Foundation from being a part of the House or to say that it is supported by it self Or as you your selves use to say that the Bishop of Rome is head of the whole Church and yet would think us but Captious Sophisters should we infer from hence that either you made him no part of the whole or else made him head of himself Your negative conclusion therefore that these Questions touching Scripture are not decidable by Scripture you needed not have cited any Authorities nor urged any reason to prove it it is evident of it self and I grant it without more ado But your Corollary from it which you would insinuate to your unwary reader that therefore they are to be decided by your or any Visible Church is a meer inconsequence and very like his collection who because Pamphilus was not to have Glycerium for his Wife presently concluded that he must have her as if there had been no more men in the World but Pamphilus and himself For so you as if there were nothing in the World capable of this Office but the Scripture or the present Church having concluded against Scripture you conceive but too hastily that you have concluded for the Church But the truth is neither the one nor the other have any thing to do with this matter For first the Question whether such or such a Book be Canonical Scripture though it may be decided negatively out of Scripture by shewing apparent and irreconcilable contradictions between it and some other Book confessedly Canonical yet affirmatively it cannot but only by the Testimonies of the ancient Churches any Book being to be received as undoubtedly Canonical or to be doubted of as uncertain or rejected as Apocryphal according as it was received or doubted of or rejected by them Then for the Question of various readings which is the true it is inreason evident and confessed by your own Pope that there is no possible determination of it but only by comparison with ancient Copies And lastly for Controversies about different Translations of Scripture the Learned have the same means to satisfie themselves in it as in the Questions which happen about the Translation of any other Author that is skill in the Language of the Original and comparing Translations with it In which way if there be no certainty I would know what certainty you have that your Doway Old and Rhemish New Testament are true Translations And then for the unlearned those on your Side are subject to as much nay the very same uncertainty with those on ours Neither is there any reason imaginable why an ignorant English Protestant may not be as secure of the Translation of our Church that it is free from Error if not absolutely yet in matters of moment as an ignorant English Papist can be of his Rhemish Testament or Doway Bible The best direction I can give them is to compare both together where there is no real difference as in the Translation of controverted places I believe there is very little there to be confident that they are right where they differ therefore to be prudent in the choice of the guides they follow Which way of proceeding if it be subject to some possible Error is it the best that either we or you have and it is not required that we use any better than the best we have 28. You will say Dependance on your Churches infallibility is a better I answer it would be so if we could be infallibly certain that your Church is infallible that is if it were either evident of it self and seen by its own light or could be reduced unto and setled upon some Principle that is so But seeing you your selves do not so much as pretend to enforce us to the belief hereof by any proofs infallible and convincing but only to induce us to it by such as are by your confession only probable and prudential motives certainly it will be to very little purpose to put off your uncertainty for the first turn and to fall upon it at the second to please your selves in building your House upon an imaginary Rock when you your selves see and confess that this very Rock stands it self at the best but upon a frame of Timber I answer secondly that this cannot be a better way because we are infallibly certain that your Church is not infallible and indeed hath not the real prescription of this priviledge but only pleaseth her self with a false imagination and vain presumption of it as I shall hereafter demonstrate by may unanswerable arguments 31. But seeing the belief of the Scripture is a necessary thing and cannot be proved by Scripture how can the Church of England teach as she doth Art 6. That all things necessary are contained in Scripture 32. I have answered this already And here again I say That all but Cavillers will easily understand the meaning of the Article to be That all the Divine Verities which Christ revealed to his Apostles and the Apostles taught the Churches are contained in Scripture That is all the material Objects of our Faith whereof the Scripture is none but only the means of conveying them unto us which we believe not finally and for it self but for the matter contained in it So that if men did believe the Doctrine contained in Scripture it should no way hinder their Salvation not to know whether their were any Scripture or no. Those Barbarous Nations Irenaeus speaks of were in this case and yet no doubt but they might be saved The end that God aims at is the belief of the Gospel the Covenant between God and Man the Scripture he hath provided as a means for this end and this also we are to believe but not as the last Object of our Faith but as the instrument of it When therefore we subscribe to the 6. Art you must understand that by Articles of Faith they mean the final and ultimate Objects of it and not the means and instrumental Objects 33. But Protestants agree not in assigning the Canon of Holy Scripture Luther and Illyricus reject the Epistle of S. James Kemnitius and other Luth. the second of Peter the second and third of John The Epistle to the Heb. the Epistle of James of Jude and the Apocalyps Therefore without the Authority of the Church no certainty can be had what Scripture is Canonical 34. So also the Ancient Fathers and not only Fathers but whole Churches differed about the certainty of the Authority of the very same Books and by their difference shewed they knew no necessity of conforming themselves herein to the judgment of your or any Church For had they done so they must have agreed all with that Church and consequently among themselves Now I pray tell me plainly Had they sufficient certainty what Scripture was Canonical or had they not If they had not it seems there is no
such great harm or danger in not having such a certainty whether some Books be Canonical or no as you require If they had why may not Protestants notwithstanding their differences have sufficient certainty hereof as well as the Ancient Fathers and Churches notwithstanding theirs 35. You proceed And whereas the Protestants of England in the 6. Art have these Words In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those Books of whose Authority was never any doubt in the Church you demand what they mean by them Whether that by the Churches consent they are assured what Scriptures be Canonical I Answer for them Yes they are so And whereas you infer from hence This is to make the Church Judge I have told you already That of this Controversie we make the Church the Judge but not the present Church much less the present Roman Church but the consent and Testimony of the Ancient and Primitive Church Which though it be but a highly probable inducement and no demonstrative enforcement yet methinks you should not deny but it may be a sufficient ground of Faith Whose Faith even of the Foundation of all your Faith your Churches Authority is built lastly and wholly upon Prudential Motives 36. But by this Rule the whole Book of Esther must quit the Canon because it was excluded by some in the Church by Melito Athanasius and Gregory Nazianzen Then for ought I know he that should think he had reason to exclude it now might be still in the Church as well as Melito Athanasius Nazianzen were And while you thus inveigh against Luther and charge him with Luciferian Heresies for doing that which you in this very place confess that Saints in Heaven before him have done are you not partial and a Judge of evil thoughts 37. Luther's censures of Ecclesiastes Job and the Prophets though you make such Tragedies with them I see none of them but is capable of a tolerable construction and far from having in them any Fundamental Heresie He that condemns him for saying the Book of Ecclesiastes is not full That it hath many abrupt things condemns him for ought I can see for speaking truth And the rest of the censure is but a bold and blunt expression of the same thing The Book of Job may be a true History and yet as many true Stories are and have been an Argument of a Fable to set before us an example of Patience And though the Books of the Prophets were not written by themselves but by their Disciples yet it does not follow that they were written casually Though I hope you will not damn all for Hereticks that say some Books of Scripture were written casually Neither is there any reason they should the sooner be called in question for being written by their Disciples seeing being so written they had attestation from themselves Was the Prophesie of Jeremy the less Canonical for being written by Baruch Or because S. Peter the Master dictated the Gospel and S. Mark the Scholar writ it is it the more likely to be called in Question 38. But leaving Luther you return to our English Canon of Scripture And tell us that in the New Testament by the above mentioned rule of whose Authority was never any doubt in the Church divers Books must be discanonized Not so For I may believe even those questioned Books to have been written by the Apostles and to be Canonical but I cannot in Reason believe this of them so undoubtedly as of those Books which were never questioned At least I have no warrant to damn any man that shall doubt of them or deny them now having the example of Saints in Heaven either to justifie or excuse such their doubting or denial 39. You observe in the next place that our sixth Article specifying by name all the Books of the Old Testament shuffles over these of the New with this generality All the Books of the New Testament as they are commonly received we do receive and account them Canonical And in this you fancy to your self a mystery of iniquity But if this be all the shuffling that the Church of England is guilty of I believe the Church as well as the King may give for her Motto Honi soit qui mal y pense For all the Bibles which since the Composing of the Articles have been used and allowed by the Church of England do testifie and even proclaim to the World that by Commonly received they meant received by the Church of Rome and other Churches before the Reformation I pray take the pains to look in them and there you shall find the Books which the Church of England counts Apocryphal marked out and severed from the rest with this Title in the beginning The Books called Apocrypha and with this close or Seal in the End The End of the Apocrypha And having told you by name and in particular what Books only She Esteems Apocryphal I hope you will not put Her to the trouble of telling you that the rest are in Her judgment Canonical 40. But if by Commonly received She meant by the Church of Rome Then by the same reason must She receive divers Books of the Old Testament which She rejects 41. Certainly a very good Consequence The Church of England receives the Books of the New Testament which the Church of Rome receives Therefore she must receive the Books of the Old Testament which she receives As if you should say If you will do as we in one thing you must in all things If you will pray to God with us you must pray to Saints with us If you hold with us when we have reason on our side you must de so when we have no reason 43. But with what Coherence can we say in the former part of the Article That by Scripture we mean those Books that were never doubted of and in the latter say We receive all the Books of the New Testament as they are commonly received whereas of them many were doubted I answer When they say of whose Authority there was never any doubt in the Church They mean not those only of whose Authority there was simply no doubt at all by any man in the Church But such as were not at any time doubted of by the whole Church or by all Churches but had attestation though not Universal yet at least sufficient to make considering men receive them for Canonical In which number they may well reckon those Epistles which were sometimes doubted of by some yet whose number and Authority was not so great as to prevail against the contrary suffrages 44. But if to be commonly received pass for a good Rule to know the Canon of the New Testament by why not of the Old You conclude many times very well but still when you do so it is out of principles which no man grants For who ever told you that to be commonly received is a good Rule to know the Canon of the New Testament
foolish as to believe your Church exempted from Error upon less evidence rather than subject to the common condition of mankind upon greater evidence Now if I take the Scripture only for my Guide I shall not need to do any thing so unreasonable 64. If I will follow your Church I must believe impossibilities and that with an absolute certainty upon motives which are confessed to be but only Prudential and probable That is with a weak Foundation I must firmly support a heavy a monstrous heavy building Now following the Scripture I shall have no necessity to undergo any such difficulties 65. Following your Church I must be servant of Christ and a Subject of the King but only Ad placitum Papae I must be prepared in mind to renounce my allegiance to the King when the Pope shall declare him an Heretick and command me not to obey him And I must be prepared in mind to esteem Vertue Vice and Vice Vertue if the Pope shall so determine Indeed you say it is impossible he should do the latter but that you know is a great question neither is it fit my obedience to God and the King should depend upon a questionable Foundation And howsoever you must grant that if by an impossible supposition the Popes commands should be contrary to the law of Christ that they of your Religion must resolve to obey rather the commands of the Pope than the law of Christ Whereas if I follow the Scripture I may nay I must obey my Sovereign in lawful things though an Heretick though a Tyrant and though I do not say the Pope but the Apostles themselves nay an Angel from Heaven should teach any thing against the Gospel of Christ I may nay I must denounce Anathema to him 66. Following the Scripture I shall believe a Religion which being contrary to Flesh and Blood without any assistance from worldly power wit or policy nay against all the power and policy of the World prevailed and enlarged it self in a very short time all the World over Whereas it is too too apparent that your Church hath got and still maintains her authority over mens Consciences by counterfeiting false miracles forging false stories by obtruding on the World suppositious writings by corrupting the monuments of former times and defacing out of them all which any way makes against you by Wars by persecutions by Massacres by Treasons by Rebellions in short by all manner of Carnal means whether violent or fraudulent 67. Following the Scripture I shall believe a Religion the first Preachers of Professors whereof it is most certain they could have no worldly ends upon the World that they could not project to themselves by it any of the profits or honours or pleasures of this World but rather were to expect the contrary even all the miseries which the World could lay upon them On the other side the Head of your Church the pretended Successor of the Apostles and Guide of Faith it is even palpable that he makes your Religion the instrument of his ambition and by it seeks to entitle himself directly or indirectly to the Monarchy of the World And besides it is evident to any man that has but half an eye that most of those Doctrines which you add to the Scripture do make one way or other for the honour or temporal profit of the Teachers of them 68. Following the Scripture only I shall embrace a Religion of admirable simplicity consisting in a manner wholly in the worship of God in Spirit and Truth Whereas your Church and Doctrine is even loaded with an infinity of weak childish ridiculous unsavoury superstitions and ceremonies and full of that righteousness for which Christ shall Judge the World 69. Following the Scripture I shall believe that which Universal never-failing Tradition assures me that it was by the admirable supernatural Work of God confirmed to be the Word of God whereas never any miracle was wrought never so much as a lame Horse cured in confirmation of your Churches authority and infallibility And if any strange things have been done which may seem to give attestation to some parts of your Doctrine yet this proves nothing but the truth of the Scripture which foretold that Gods providence permitting it and the wickedness of the World deserving it strange signs and wonders should be wrought to confirm false Doctrine that they which love not the Truth may be given over to strange delusions Neither does it seem to me any strange thing that God should permit some true wonders to be done to delude them who have forged so many to deceive the World 70. If I follow the Scripture I must not promise my self Salvation without effectual dereliction and mortification of all Vices and the effectual Practice of all Christian Vertues But your Church opens an easier and a broader way to Heaven and though I continue all my life long in a course of sin and without the Practice of any Vertue yet gives me assurance that I may be let into Heaven at a Postern-gate even by any Act of Attrition at the hour of Death if it be joyned with confession or by an Act of Contrition without confession 71. Admirable are the Precepts of piety and humility of innocence and patience of liberality frugality temperance sobriety justice meekness fortitude constancy and gravity contempt of the World love of God and the love of mankind In a Word of all Vertues and against all vice which the Scriptures impose upon us to be obeyed under pain of damnation The sum whereof is in manner comprised in our Saviours Sermon upon the Mount recorded in the 5 6 and 7. of S. Matthew which if they were generally obeyed could not but make the world generally happy and the goodness of them alone were sufficient to make any wise and good man believe that this Religion rather than any other came from God the fountain of all goodness And that they may be generally obeyed our Saviour hath ratified them all in the close of his Sermon with these universal Sanctions Not every one that saith Lord Lord shall enter into the Kingdom but he that doth the will of my Father which is in Heaven and again whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and doth them not shall be likned unto a foolish man which built his house upon the sand and the rain descended and the flood came and the winds blew and it fell and great was the fall thereof Now your Church notwithstanding all this enervates and in a manner dissolves and abrogates many of these precepts teaching men that they are not Laws for all Christians but Counsels of perfection and matters of Supererrogation that a man shall do well if he do observe them but he shall not sin if he observe them not that they are for them who aim at high places in heaven who aspire with the two sons of Zebede to the right hand or to the left hand of Christ But if a man will be content