of the Languages and of Historical truth to the text of the Scripture And many things more may be cleared by applying the light of reason void of partiality and prejudice to draw the truth so cleared into consequence No part of all this can be said to be held upon any decree of the Church Because no part of the evidence supposes the Church in the nature and quality of a Corporation the constitution whereof inableth some persons to oblige the whole Because there are maters in question concerning our common Christianity and the sense of the Scriptures upon which the great mischief of diviâ—â—on is fallen out in the Church it is thought a plausible plea to say that the decree of the present Church supposing the foundation of the Church in that nature and the power given to every part in behalf of the whole of which no evidence can be made not supposing all that for truth which I have said obligeth all Christians to believe as much as the Scriptures supposing them to be the Word of God can do Which they that affirm do not consider that it must first be evident to all that are to be obliged Both that the Church is so founded and whoâ—e Act it is and how that Act must be done which must oblige it Seeing then that the Scriptures are admitted on all sides to be the Word of God let us see whether it be as evident as the Scriptures that the act of the Pope or of a General Council or both oblige the Church to believe the truth of that which they decree as much as the Scriptures I know there are texts of Scripture alleged First concerning the Apostles and Disciples Mat. X. 14 15 40. Luke IX 5. X. 10 11 16. where those that refuse them are in worse estate than Sodom and Gomorrha And Hee that heareth you heareth mee Hee that neglecteth you neglecteth mee Mat. XXVIII 19 20. Go make all Nations Disciples teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you and behold I am with you to the worlds end 1 Thess II. 13. Yee received the Gospel of us not as the word of man but as it is indeed the word of God Then concerning S. Peter as predecessor of all Popes Mat. XVI 18 19. Vpon this rock will I build my Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it And I will give thee the keyes of the Kingdom of heaven and whatsoever thou bindest on earth shall be bound in heaven whatsoever thou loosest on earth shall be loosed in heaven Luke XXII 32. I have prayed for thee that thy Faith fail not and thou once converted strengthen thy brethren John XXI 15 16 17. Simon son of Jonas lovest thou mee Feed my lambs feed my sheep Again concerning the Church and Councils Mat. XVIII 17-20 If hee heare them not tell the Church If hee hear not the Church let him be to thee as a Heathen or a Publican Verily I say unto you whatsoever yee binde on earth shall be bound in heaven whatsoever yee loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven Again I say unto you If two of you agree on earth upon any thing to ask it it shall be done them from my Father in heaven For where two or three are assembled in my name there am I in the midst of them John XVI 13. The Spirit of truth shall lead you into all truth Acts XV. 28. It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us 1 Tim. III. 15. That thou mayest know now it behoveth to converse in the house of God which is the Churchof God the pillar and establishment of the truth You have further the exhortations of the Apostles 1 Thess V. 12 13. Now I beseech you brethren to know them which labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you And esteem them more than abundantly in love for their works sake Heb. XIII 7 17. Bee obedient and give way to your Rulers for they watch for your souls as those that must give account That they may do it joyfully and not groaning Which is not for your profit And afore Rememeer your Rulers which have spoken to you the Word of God And considering the issue of their conversation imitate their Faith Those that spoke unto them the Word of God are the Apostles or their companions and deputies whom hee commandeth them to obey no otherwise than those who presently watched over them after their death In the Old Testament likewise Deut. XVII 5-12 Hee that obeyeth not the determination of the Court that was to sit before the Ark is adjudged to death Therefore Hag. II. 12. Thus saith the Lord the God of Hosts Ask the Priests concerning the Law Mal. II. 7. The Priests lips shall preserve knowledge and the Law shall they require at his mouth For hee is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts The answers of the Priests resolved into the decrees of the said Court therefore they are unquestionable And this Power established by the Law our Lord acknowledging the Law allowes Mat. XXIII 2. The Scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses chair whatsoever therefore they command you that do But according to their works do not This is that which is alleged out of the Scriptures for that Infallibility which is challenged for the Church If I have left any thing behinde it will prove as ineffectual as the rest In all which there are so many considerations appear why the sense of them should be limited on this side or extended beyond the body of the Church that it is evident they cannot serve for evidence to ground the Infallibility of it For is it not evident that the neglect of the Apostles in questioning their doctrine redounds upon our Lord who by sending them stamps on them the marks of his Fathers authority which hee is trusted with Not so the Church For who can say that God gives any testimony to the lie which it telleth seeing Christianity is supposed the Infallibility thereof remaining questionable Is it not evident that God is with his Chu ch not as a Corporation but as the collection of many good Christians Supposing that those who have power to teach the Church by the constitution thereof teach lies and yet all are not carried away with their doctrine but believe Gods truth so farre as the necessity of their salvation requires If there were any contradiction in this supposition how could it be maintained in the Church of Rome that so it shall be when Antichrist comes as many do maintain Besides is it as evident as Christianity or the Scriptures that this promise is not conditional and to have effect supposing both the teaching and the following of that which our Lord lud taught and nothing else Surely if those that refuse the Gospel be in a worse state than those of Sodom and Gomorrha it followeth not yet that all that refuse to hear the Church without the Gospel are so For the truth of the Gospel
may have an issue which I pretend requires the Tradition of the Church and that the communion and Corporation of the Church as the onely meanes to maintain and propagate Tradition in it This our Independent Congregations cannot allow but must stand upon the other plea of those Hereticks that it came in beside if not against Gods appointment which the Donatists questioned not And therefore you shall finde S. Austine in the place aforenamed allege against them the Scriptures fore-telling the calling of all Nations which hee supposeth fulfilled in the Catholick Church then visible and therefore supposeth the communion to be ordained by God wherein the visibility thereof consisteth Otherwise it had been strange to tell the Donatists that they communicating with the Catholick Bishop of Rome communicated with all the Church that acknowledged him but the Donatists acknowledging the Donatist Bishop whom they had set up at Rome were therefore disowned by all the Church beside I do not deny that those of the Reformation are to give account of those things which the Donatists are charged with Nor do I imagine that their account cannot be sufficient because that of the Donatists was not But I say that the trial must be by the Scriptures which both parts acknowledge And I say further that the rest of the Reformation may and ought to admit the Unity of the Church in visible communion as the Donatists did because otherwise they cannot pretend that others are bound to bâ— what they are But our Independent Congregations cannot because if all were as they there could be no one Church obliged to that communion which makes it visible Now I must here caution that I intend not here to inferre that these Rulers succeeded the Apostles by a title of Divine Right as if it were Gods Law that this succession should alwaies continue For I demand for the present upon the exception of those of the Reformation that succession of Faith and doctrine is of more consequence than succession of persons And therefore that there can be no Law of God whereby the right which men hold by personal succession can or ought to hinder the Reformation of Faith and doctrine of Christianity if it may appear that the succession of persons hath not been effectual to preserve the succession of Faith That which I demand from the premises is this That no man in his right senses can imagine that all Christendome should agree in acknowledging those for lawfull Rulers of the Church in the times next the Apostles that had usurped their places contrary to the will of the Apostles and those Disciples which concurred to the work of the Apostles and those who derived their authority from either of both during the time of the Scriptures which I spoke of afore For those of the Reformation that make this exception by making it do acknowledge that there was such a visible succession of Pastors the correspondence of whom as here I argue maintained the unity of a visible Corporation in the Catholick Church And how many records of historical truth undeniable of all that would not be thought to renounce their common sense do testifie unto us visible acts of the Apostles giving power to them whom they left behinde them as those whom they gave it to have transmitted the like power to their successors But when it once appeares that they were owned by the consent of all Christians communicating with them in that quality which they held in their own Churches it can no more be imagined that they could attain those qualities by deceit or violence contrary to the will of their predecessors than it can be imagined that the common Christianity which wee all acknowledge could prevail over all by imposing upon their belief such motives to believe as never were seen because never done And therefore whatsoever change may have succeeded in those qualities from that which the Apostles instituted from the beginning or by abuse of the same in the Faith which they were trusted to propagate without adding or taking away which changes may be the subject of Reformation in the Church and the belief of it yet that this point is not of that nature That all lawfull authority in the Church is derived from that which was in the Apostles propagated by some visible act of theirs I will presume upon as proved by the premises CHAP. IX The Keyes of the Church given the Apostles and exercised by Excommunication under the Apostles The ground thereof is that profession which all that are baptized are to make That Penance and abatemeut of Penance hath been in force ever since and under the Apostles In particular of excluding Hereticks IN the last place the right of Excommunication consists in the power of remitting and retaining sins given by our Lord to his Church with the Keyes of it First to S. Peter alone our Lord saith Mat. XVI 19. I will give thee the Keyes of the kingdom of heaven and whatsoever thou shalt binde on earth shall be bound in heaven whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed there But afterwards to the Body of his Disciples Mat. XVIII 17 18. If hee heare thee not tell the Church If he hear not the Church let him be unto thee as a Heathen or a Publicane Verily I say unto you Whatsoever yet binde as afore And to the XII breathing upon them John XX. 22 23. Receive yee the Holy Ghost Whose sins soever yee remit they are remitted and whose sins soever yee retaine they are retained By virtue of this Commission S. Peter saith to Simon Magus discovered a counterfeit Christian Acts VIII 20-24 Thy money perish with thee because thou hast thought to purchase the gift of God with money Thou hast neither part nor lot in this Word for thy heart is not right before God Repent thorefore of this thy malice and pray God that if possible this device of thine heart may be forgiven thee For I see thou art in the gall of bitternesse and the bond of unrighteousnesse And Simon answering said Pray you to the Lord for mee that nothing come upon mee of that which you have said Where having excluded him from the benefit of Christianity what hee is to expect hee leaves to the trial of future time But most manifestly S. Paul 1 Cor. V. commandeth them to deliver the incestuous person to Satan adding directions and reasons why they are to abstaine from the conversation of such Christians And pursueth this discourse with a charge of ending the sutes of their Christians within the Church 1 Cor. VI. which either signifies nothing or inforces the power of Excommunication to oblige the parties to stand to the sentence But the case of the incestuous person is made still more manifest by the reason of the sentence in joyned upon his repentance and the sorrow testified by the Church 2 Cor. II. 4-11 VII 8-11 In the Epistle to the Ebrewes VI. 4-8 X. 26-29 the Apostle declaring that they
the Synod of Antiochia mad when they writ the Leter which you may reade in Eusebius VII 30. in the name of the Churches represented by that Synod to the rest of the Churches in Christendome signifying the sentence of deposition pronounced against Samosatenus and requiring them to joyn with it If it be madnesse to think them so mad as to summon the rest of the Churches upon an obligation which they did not acknowledge what shall it be to think that this obligation was but imaginary or at least voluntarily contracted not inacted by the will of our Lord declared by his Apostles The Emperor Aurelian being appealed by the Council to cause Samosatenus to be put our of his Bishops house by force who maintained himself in it by force against the sentence of the Synod decreed that possession should be given to him whom the Christian Bishops of Italy and Rome should acknowledge for Bishop by writing to him under that title Certainly this Heathen Emperor in referring the execution of the Synods decree to the consent of those remarkable parts of the Church whereupon the consent of the rest might reasonably be presumed understood the constitution of the Church by his five senses better than those learned Christians of our time who argue seriously that this Paulus Samosatenus was not excommunicated by the Synod of Antiochia but by the Emperor Aurelian For this is the course by which all the acts of the whole Church ever came in force those parts of the Church which were not present at the doing of them concurring ex postfacto to inact them and the civil power to grant the execution of them by secular power Perhaps it will not be fit here to let passe that which Athanasius relates libro de sontentiâ Dionysii Alexandrini That this Dionysius writing against Sabellius gave occasion to the Bishops of Pentapolis who resorted to the Church of Alexandria as wee see by the VI Canon of Nicaea to suspect him of that which afterwards was the Heresie of Arius And that Dionysius of Rome being made acquainted by them with a mater of that consequence to the whole Church this Dionysius writ him an Apology on purpose to give satisfaction of his Faith wherein S. Athanasius hath great cause to triumph that the Heresie of Arius which arose afterwards is no lesse condemned than that of Sabellius presently on foot Grant wee that it was an office of Christian charity to tender this satisfaction where it was become so requisite The example of Samosatenus shows that their addresse tended to question if not to displace their Bishop by the authority of the rest of the Church ingaging the consent of his own had hee been discovered to harbor the contrary Heresie to that of Sabellius And indeed what was the rise of all those contentions about Arius that succeeded in the Church after the Council of Nicaea but this question whether Arius should be re-admitted one of the Presbyters of the Church at Alexandria or remaine excommunicate And those truly that do not believe there is any Church but a Congregation that assembles together for the service of God must needs think all Christendome stark mad for so many years together as they labored by so many Synods to attain an agreement through the Church in this and in the cause of Athanasius that depended upon it But those who believe the power of the Church to eschere to the State when it declares it selfe Christian must think the Emperors Constantius and Valens mad when they put themselves to that trouble and charâ—e of so many Synods to obtain that consent of the Church which in point of right their own power might have commanded without all that ado In the decrees of divers of those many Synods that were held about this businesse you shall finde that those Churches which the said decrees are sent to are charged not to write to the Bishops whom they depoâ—e That is to say Not to give them the stile of Bishops not to deal with them about any thing concerning the Church but to hold them as cut off from the Church Just as the Emperor Aurelian afore commanded possession to be delivered to him whom the Bishops of Italy and Rome should write to as Bishop This little circumstance expresses the means by which the communion of the Church was maintained To wit by continual intercourse of leters and messengers from Churches to Churches whereby the one understood the proceedings of the other and being satisfied of the reason of them gave force and execution to them within their own Bodies And this course being visibly derived from the practice of the Apostles sufficeth to evidence the Unity of the Church established by the exercise of that communication which maintained it When wee see the Apostles from the Churches upon which they were for the time resident dare Leters to other Churches signifying the Communion of those Churches one with another by the communion of all with the Apostles who taught and brought into force the termes and conditions upon which they were to communicate one with another have wee not the pattern of that intercourse and communion between several Churches by which common sense showeth all them that look into the records of the Church that the Unity and Communion of the whole was continued to after ages The words of Tertullian de praescript haeret cap. XX. must not be omitted here Itaque tot ac tantae Ecclesiae una est illa ab Apostolis prima ex qua omnes Sic omnes prima Apostolicae duâ— unà omnes probant veritatem Dum est illis communicatio pacis appellatio fraternitatis contesseratio hospitalitatis Quae jura non alia ratio regit quam ejusdem Sacramenti una traditio Therefore so many and so great Churches are all that one primitive Church from the Apostles out of which all come So all are the primitive and Apostolical while all agree in proving the truth While they have the communication of peace the title of brotherhood the common mark of hospitality Which rights nothing but the same tradition of the same mystery ruleth It is to be known that among the Greeks and Romans if a man had made acquaintance and friendship in a forrain City the fashion was to leave a mark for a pledge of it with one another which was called tessexa upon recognisance whereof hee that should come to the place where the other dwelt was not onely to be intertained by him whereupon these friends are called hospites signifying both hosts and guests but also assiisted in any businesse which hee might have in that place Such a kinde of right as this Tertullian saith there was between Christians and Christians between Churches and Churches Hee that produced the cognisance of the Church from whence hee came found not onely accesse to the communion of the Church to which hee came but assistance in his necessities and business in the name of a Christian
de Virginibus velandis Wherein hee disputes whether they were priviledged against S. Pauls order I Cor. XI 5-15 of vailing their faces in the Church of the rank of Marryrs and Consessors that is those who had abondones themselves to whatsoever the prosession of Chrissianity should inferre howsoever they escaped I need say nothing The esteem of them being known to have been such that it is no mervail if their desire or their sentence were counted a Prejudice or Prerogative to the Church As thus At the elections of the Romane Magistrates the Century of the Tribe that voted first was counted to have a Prerogative the Vore thereof being a kinde of Prejudice to them that followed to vote the same So that it was found that whose carried this Prerogative commonly carried the whole Vote Such was the effect of that absolution which Consessors in their durance did sometimes grant Penitents in the Primitive Church To wit a confidence grounded upon the esteem of their merit towards Christianity that their act would not be made void by the Body of the Church Whereupon S. Cypr. Epist XII Qui libellos à Martyribus acceperunt eorum Praerogativâ apud Deum adjuvari possunt Those who have received billets from the Martyrs and may finde help before God by their Prerogative The Monks Excommunication proceeded upon the same ground That is to say upon a confidence that whom hee by that sentence declared to have forfeited the Communion of the Church in his judgment those who had his Holinesse in esteem would not communicate with The Emperors proceeding shows it was not for nothing Who being absolved by the Ordinary rested not content till hee had satisfied the Monk The reason because even then it might be evident that the preservation of Unity in the Church obliged to grant the Communion thereof to such as there was no reasonable assurance that Gods pardon did go before it which otherwise the restoring of that Communion ought to suppose Which might move a tender conscience to do more than the Church injoyned him to do But I intend not hereby to justifie maters of fact in the Primitive Church It shall serve my turn to argue that the reason inferred appears not by this practice because another reason doth appear Onely I say further that nothing of primitive institution can be argued from a custome which they that relate it Tertullian and S. Cyprian do mark for an abuse tending either to abate the severity of discipline or to dissolve the unity of the Church And therefore hee that observes all this must not forget to observe the reasons whereby S. Cyprian protests that the courses whereby those of his time went about to force the consent of the Church by the credit of the Martyrs were seditious Ep. IX XXII And also the course that hee takes to referr the mater to the debate and common sentence of other Churches equally concerned in the cause Ep. XVII For to have recourse to the Unity of the Church to cure the distemper of a particular Church had been against common sense for him that had not known that those whom hee had to do with acknowledged the same And that being acknowledged it will be more against common sense to imagine that Martyrs or Confessors of one Church could give Law to the whole as they must do if wee suppose that absolution granted by them in the Church of Carthage was of it self of force and valid which by the same right and title must extend to all that were in the same case But there remains a second reason or plea how a Communion of the Church might be and so a Power to Excommunicate and by consequence other Rights in which it hath been showed that the Society of the Church subsisted before Constantine without any title of divine Right which Princes and States professing Christianity are bound to maintain For it is alleged that Excommunication and Penance which is the abatement of it was in force in the Primitive Church by virtue of the voluntary consent of Christians consederating themselves upon such terms as wee finde to have been in use into a discipline taken up of their own free resolution Which by consequence must be said of the rest of those rights wherein the Communion of the Church and the Unity thereof did consist at that time To which I must except generally in the first place That this plea whether true or false for the present is not receivable so much as into consideration untill it be qualified and limited so that it may be consistent with the former now refuted For no man can pretend to advance such a plea for his cause as consists of two parts whereof the first destroyes the second Now it was pretended afore that there was no Excommunication in use under the Apostles but that which was in force in the Synagogue by virtue of Moses Law and the Power erected by it of introducing such Penalties as the maintenance thereof should require And here it is pretended That Excommunication and other effects of Ecclesiastical Power came in force upon the voluntary agreement of Christians Therefore the whole plea if you will have it hang together must be this That the whole Body of Christians did voluntarily agree among themselvs to receive that Excommunication which was in force by virtue of the Law and by consequence such other Rights already in force by virtue of the Law as they agreed to be no lesse usefull for maintaining the Communion of the Church than they found Excommunication to be And on these termes I admit the two parts of this plea not to be inconsistent For the effect of the whole will be this That there was indeed a Society and Corporation of one visible Church from the beginning of Christianity to Constantine such as I now challenge that there ought to be But not by any order of the Apostles or title of divine right but by the free consent of all Christians which being the consent of subjects and subsisting by sufferance of the Soveraign resolves into his will when hee pleases to seize it into his hands But then I will appeal to the common reason of all men whether it be consistent therewith in two regards The first shall be that which I alleged before out of Irenaeus whether it be consistent with common sense to imagine that neither the Churches planted in the Germane Provinces or Spanish or Ganlish of the Romane Empire nor those in the East nor in Aegypt or Africk nor those that were planted in the middle parts of the world should practice or observe otherwise than the Communion which de facto I have already showed to have been maintained among them did require and all this have no other beginning than their own free and voluntary consent prevented by no obligation at all but the dictate of common reason pronouncing what would be best for the maintenance of that common Christianity to which wee suppose
that wee are at a distance from the Church of Rome and all who communicate with it upon a just cause of refusing the Reformation as all that professe the Reformation suppose And therefore that there remains no visible presumption what is true the ground of visibility being destroyed by the division of the Church I shall be far enough from extenuating the force of this objection or the effect of this division acknowledging that according to my opinion holding both the Reformation and the Catholick Church the Church should be visible but is indeed invisible Not absolutely but as that which is hardly visible may truly be called invisible because every one whom it concerns cannot attain to discern it upon clear grounds For my intent is to aggravate the mischiefs of division to the highest which they who believe not the Catholick Church do not take for any inconvenience And therefore I grant all and do acknowledge that division in the Church necessarily destroyeth that provision which God hath made for the unlearned as well as the learned equally concerned in the common Salvation of Christians to discern by their common sense where to resort for that which is necessary to the Salvation of all and how to improve and husband the same as their proficience in Christianity calls for more at their hands then the Salvation of all requires Whereby it comes to pass that they are put to make their choice in maters whereof it is not possible for ordinary capacities to comprehend the grounds And so must chuse out of fansy education prejudice faction or which is the vilest of all interest of this world which is in one word profit But this being a choice that must be made and though difficult yet possible to be well made hee that without supposing Infallibility on the one side or Reformation on the other side would discern between true and false supposing the Original unity of the Catholick Church must be a madman if hee advise not with the Records of the Catholick Church though out of date as to force of Law on both sides to tell him wherein Reformation infallibly consisteth For by that means though hee shall not be able to restore that unity which is once violated the duty of all but obliging to an effect that cannot take place without the consent of parties yet hee shall be able so to behave himself and that Church which goes by this Rule be it greater or be it lesse shall be so constituted as not to make but to suffer the division which it is charged with But hee who preaches original liberty to all Christians to cast themselves into Presbyteries or into Congregations at their choice bids them sail the main Sea without Ballast and besides departing from the Unity of the Church by becoming Members of arbitrary Societies not parts of the whole by the visible act of visible power in it expose themselves to the shelves and quick sands of positions destructive to the Faith of the Church And I am to demand of this Doctor if the Presbyteries be Churches by association of Congregations and the Congregations Churches without it and those which are neither Presbyteries nor Congregations that is in effect all the Parish Churches of the land be Churches no lesse than either of both because they have one whom the Triers call a godly man sent them to preach whatsoever he can make of the Bible I say I must demand of him what it is that qualifies a man a Member of a Church or a Church a Church and how a man by being such a one becomes a Member of the whole Church which hitherto hath been thought necessary to the Salvation of every Christian For who knoweth not the dispute that remains between the Reformation and the Church of Rome which shall be the true Church Which if every man be at liberty to become a Member of a Congregation with any six more that hee likes who by that means shall be a Church is plainly about nothing And therefore wee are plainly invited to a new Christianity part whereof hath hitherto been to think our selves Members of the Catholick Church by being Members of some particular Church part of the Catholick So certain it is that had not the Creed been first banished out of mens hearts it had not been banished out of the Church But when this Doctor maintaineth further that all men having power in chief to chuse for themselves in mater of Religion the Soveraign hath Power not onely to chuse for it self but to impose penalties upon those which owe no man any account of their choice if they chuse not that which the Soveraign chuseth I confesse I find this toucheth mee and the remnant of the Church of England to the quick edifying the Soveraign to deny protection in the exercise of Religion to them who find themselves bound never to communicate in the change that is made and in making in Religion amongst us But I find withal so much inconsequence and contradiction to his own sense and the sense of all Christians in it that I hope no Secular Power will be so prodigal of a good conscience as to make it self the executioner of a doctrine tending to so unchristian injustice For if as hee saith no man is answerable for the Religion hee chuseth to any but God how shall hee be liable to be punished by man for that wherein hee offendeth him not Or how can any man offend him to whom hee is not countable Nor will it serve the turn to say That by denying protection in the exercise of Religion the Secular Power punisheth no man for the judgement of his conscience For all Christians of what profession soever do generally believe that they are bound to exercise the Religion which they are bound to professe That Baptisme wherein by the positive will of God under the Gospel the profession of Christianity consisteth truly obliging true Christians to assemble themselves for the service of God with his Church according to the Rules of it It cannot therefore be said that it is no penalty no persecution for Religion to deny protection in the exercise of Religion to them who are not punished for the judgment of their conscience For whosoever can be supposed to be a good Christian not onely had rather but surely had better lose his life much more any comfort of it than lose the exercise of his Christianity in the service of God whereupon his Salvation so neerly dependeth Nor will it serve the turn to say as this Doctor saith that in persecuting the Christian Faith much more in denying protection to the exercise of any profession which it inforceth the Heathen Emperors exceeded not their Power but onely abused it having granted afore that a man is free to chuse for himself that is not countable for his Religion to his Soveraign For if it once be said that God granteth all men all freedom in the choice of their Religion it cannot
be said that God granteth the Secular Power any right to punish him for that choice for which hee maketh him unaccountable The ground of my reason lies in that which hath been said against the Infallibility of the Church For if the sentence of the Church be not of force to oblige any man to believe the truth of it much lesse can the sentence of any Christian though never so Soveraign oblige the meanest of his Subjects to believe that Religion to be true which hee commandeth because hee commandeth it And whatsoever penalty the Soveraign inflicteth upon those that concurre not to the exercise of that Religion which hee holdeth forth as when hee denieth them protection in the exercise of their own which as I have showed is no mean one implieth a command of exercising his and is inflicted in consideration of obeying Gods command which the Subject is inabled by God to judge that hee hath against all the world to the contrary So that upon these terms the Secular Power which is inabled to judge for it self upon the same account with the meanest Subject thereof cannot have power to punish any Subject for exercising any Religion which it alloweth not For all Power as I said afore is a moral quality consisting in a Right of obliging another mans will by the act of his will that hath it Therefore if a Subject cannot be obliged by the will of his Soveraign to professe and to exercise that Religion which his Soveraign prescribeth then cannot the Soveraign have power to impose any penalty upon his Subject for professing or exercising that Christianity which hee believeth All Christianity obliging a man to the utmost of his ability to professe and to exercise that Religion which hee believeth to be true And the reason is manifest For Christianity is from God and the Secular Power is from God though by several means Christianity by the coming of Christ and the preaching of his Apostles Secular Power by what means I will not here dispute nor yet suppose any thing that is questionable That which serves my turn is evident to the common reason of all men That by another act of God than that upon which Christianity standeth That Christianity dependeth not upon it That as I argued against the Leviathan by a Law which no Secular Power can abate If therefore God oblige a Christian by his Christianity to serve God otherwise than his Soveraign commandeth hee is bound by the same bond to disobey his Soveraign to obey God which obliged the primitive Christians to suffer death rather than renounce the Faith But I intend not to say that absolutely which I say upon supposition of this Doctors sense Nor do I intend here to dispute that which I have resolved in another place what kind of penalties Secular Power is able to inact that Christianity with which it self professeth The question is now how the Secular Power is able or becomes able to impose penalties in maters of Religion which as a Christian it is not able to oblige the Subject to acknowledge not how far these penalties may extend A question which cannot be answered not supposing the Church A question which is no question supposing it For supposing that God sending Christianity founds for part of it the visible society and corporation of a Church assuring the common sense of all people thereby what is the condition upon which Salvation is to be had by communicating with it What will remain but to conform to the communion of this Church labouring to work out every man his own Salvation by the means which the communion thereof furnisheth Which whoso doth not but pretends to disturbe it will remain punishable by the Secular Power for I have said already that the Church is not inabled to inflict temporal penalties not absolutely because it is Christian but upon supposition that it maintaineth the true Church The acts whereof as Excommunication by the original constitution thereof inforceth So did not the Secular Power inforce that Excommunication it must of necessity become ineffectual when the world is come into the Church and Christianity professed by the State And this is the resolution that I have given in another place that the acts of the Church for the mater of them are limited by the Church that is to say by persons qualified by the Church and in behalf of it but the force that executes them must come from the State For supposing the Church to be founded by God and the power of it resolved into that act wherein this foundation consisteth Whatsoever the Church is by this power inabled to do will belong to the Church by Gods Law to do though the mater of that which it doth be not limited by Gods Law but by the act of men inabled by Gods Law to do it S. Cyprian and others of the Fathers have reason when they argue that the acts of the Church are the acts of God For no man capable of common reason can doubt that what is done by commission from superiour Power is the act of that Power which granted the commission so far as it ownes the execution of it And I have sufficiently limited the Power granted the Church heretofore by the mater of that communion for which it subsisteth and the supposition of the Christianity upon which it subsisteth What is therefore done by virtue of this commission though perhaps ill done for the inward intent with which men do it yet being within the bounds of the Power established by God is to be accepted as his own act without contesting whose act of founding the Church it cannot be infringed Which if it be true so far is the Secular Power from being able to create or constitute a Church by creating that difference of qualities in which the difference between several Members thereof consisteth that it is not able of it self to do any of these acts which the Church that is those who are qualified by and for the Church are thereby qualified to do without committing the sinne of Sacrilege in seizing the Powers which by Gods act are constituted and therefore consecrated and dedicated to his own service into its own hands not supposing the free act of the Church without fraud and violence to the doing of it CHAP. XXI How the Tradition of the Church limits the interpretation of Scriptures How the declaration of the Church becomes a reasonable mark of Heresie That which is not found in the Scriptures may have been delivered by the Apostles Some things delivered by the Apostles and recorded in the Scriptures may not oblige S. Austines Rule of Apostolical Traditions ANd by this means I make account I have gained another principle towards the interpretation of Scripture and resolution of things questioned in Christianity either concerning the Rule of Faith or such Laws and Customs determining the circumstances of Ecclesiastical Communion as I showed afore are understood by the name of Apostolical Traditions Which principle that no
every Instrument of a contract contain every thing that is in force by the said contract Surely it is a thing so difficult to contain in writing every thing that a contract intends that many times if witnesses were not alive other whiles if general Lawes did not determine the intent of words in fine if there were nothing to help the tenor of such Instruments things contracted would hardly sort to effect Consider now what is alleged on the other side how resolutely how generally the Tradition both of the Rule of Faith and of Lawes to the Church is acknowledged even by those witnesses whose sayings are alleged to argue the sufficience perfection and evidence of the Scriptures Is it civil is it reasonable to say that the Writers of the Christian Church make it their businesse to contradict themselves which no Scholar will admit either Infidels Pagans Jewes Mahumetans or Hereticks to do Is it not easie to save them from contradicting themselves by saying that Tradition of Faith containeth nothing that is not in the Scriptures but limits the meaning of that which they contain Tradition of Lawes may contain that which is not in the Scriptures for the species of fact but is derived from the Scripture for the authority from whence it proceeds Or is it possible by any other means reasonably to save them from contradicting themselves These generals premised freely may wee make our approaches to the particulars and by considering the circumstance of the places where they lye make our selves consident to finde some limitation restraining the generality of their words to make them agree as well with my position as with themselves For example Epiphanius Haer. LXXVI Irenaeus II. 46. III. 15. Athanasius Dispcum Ario say all is clear in the Scriptures Meaning that the sense of the Church is clearly the sense of the Scriptures in the points questioned But not to them who exclude that Tradition which themselves include and presuppose Observe again that the perspicuity of the Scriptures is not limited to things necessary to salvation in all that hath been alleged but once in S. Austine Epist III. and observe withall that the knowledg of things necessary proceeds upon supposition of the Rule of Faith acknowledged and received from the Church in the Catechizing of those that were baptized Not determined by every ones sense of the Scriptures It is therefore easily granted that the Scriptures were made for all sorts of people that they might profit by them Alwaies provided that they bring with them the Faith of the Catholick Church for the Rule within the bounds whereof they may profit by reading them otherwise they may and they may not And therefore those sayings which were alleged to prove them obscure convincing that they are not clear to all understandings because they require study and search and digging do necessarily leave him that comes without his Rule not onely in doubt of finding the truth but in danger of taking error for it Upon the like supposition S. Austine affirms de Vtilitate credendi VI. that any man may finde enough in the Old Testament that seeks as he ought For to seek humbly and devoutely is the same thing for him that is no Christian For the Manichees to whom S. Austine recommends the Old Testament in this place were Christians no further than the name as it is for him that is a Christian to seek like a Christian that is having before his eyes the Faith of the Church And this is that which S. Austine means that hee who is no Christian so seeking may finde enough to make him a Christian That is as much as hee is to expect from the Old Testament And this supposition is exprest by Origen contra Celsum VII when hee sayes that the unlearned may study the Scriptures with profit after their entrance made For this entrance is the Rule of Faith which they were taught when they were baptized And the Catechism of that time containing as well the motives as the mater of Faith appears to the unlearned the way into the deep that is the mystical sense of the Scripture Upon the same terms may wee proceed to grant all that is alleged to show that which is not contained in the Scriptures not to be receivable in point of Christian truth For having showed that the Rule of Faith is wholly contained in the Scriptures And nothing contained in the records of Church Writers to be unquestionable but the Rule and Tradition of Faith Whatsoever further intelligence and information can be pretended either tending to establish the same or by consequence of reason to flow from it if it cannot be pretended to come from Tradition because there is no Tradition of the Church concerning that wherein the Church agrees not either it must come from the Scripture or by the like revelation as the Scriptures which no Church Writer pretends to have For as for that which by consequence of reason is derived from those things which the Scripture expresseth Seeing the words of the Scripture is not the word of God but the sense and meaning of them it were a thing very impertinent to question whether or no that be contained in the Scripture which the true sense of the Scripture by due consequence of argument imports But if the question be of Lawes delivered the Church by the Apostles having showed that there may sufficient evidence be made of such though not recorded in the Scriptures there can no presumption be made being not found in the Scriptures that therefore a Law was not first brought into the Church by the Apostles And yet it remains grounded upon the Scriptures in point of righâ— because the authority by which it was brought into the Church is either established or attested by the Scriptures Mater of fact being competently evidenced by other historical truth besides And upon these terms wee may proceed to acknowledg the goodness of an argument drawn negatively from the Scriptures that is to say inferring this is not in the Scriptures therefore not true Doth my position then oblige mee to deny Irenaeus affirming III. that the Apostles writ the same that they preached Or S. Austine in Psalmum XXI de Vnitate Ecclesiae cap. V. and Optatus V. tying the Donatists to be tried by the Scriptures Both parties pretending to be children of God are to be tryed by their Fathers Will that is by the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament But if there shall fall out any difference about the intent of their Fathers Will the meaning of the Old and New Testament shall I think that is said in vain which is alleged on the other side out of the same S. Austine contra Cresconium I. 33. that if a man would not erre in that point hee is to advise with the Church which the Scripture evidenceth For the question being about the rebaptizing of Hereticks that is about a Law of the Church if you will have S. Austine agree with S. Austine
it must be upon the terms of my position the practice of the Church giving bounds to the sense of the Scripture I can therefore safely agree with the Constitutions of the Apostles with S. Cyprian and Leo and whosoever else teaches that it is not safe for the people to assure their consciences upon the credit of their Pastors But it is because I suppose the Unity of the Church provided by God for a ground upon which the people may reasonably presume when they are to adhere to their Pastors when not To wit when they are owned not when they are disowned by the Unity of the Church For though this provision becomes uneffectual when this Unity is dissolved yet ought not that to be an argument that the goodnesse of God never made that provision which the malice of man may defeat But that whosoever concurrs to maintain the division concurrs to defeat that provision which God hath made As safely do I agree with all them who agree that whatsoever is taught in Christianity is to be proved by the Scriptures For if it belong to the Rule of Faith it is intended by the Scriptures though that intent is evidenced by the Tradition of the Church If to the Lawes of the Church the authority of it comes from the Scriptures though the evidence of it may depend upon common sense which the practice of the Church may convince If over and above both it is not receivable if not contained in the Scriptures And in this regard whosoever maintains the whole Scripture to be the Rule of Faith is throughly justified by all those testimonies that have been alleged to that purpose For though it be not necessary to the salvation of all Christians to understand the meaning of all the Scriptures yet what Scripture soever a man attains to understand is as much a Rule to his Faith as that which a man cannot be saved if hee understand not the sense of it whether in and by the Scripture or without it And though a man may be obliged to believe that which is not in the Scripture to have been instituted by the Apostles yet is he not obliged to observe it but upon that reason which the Scripture delivereth And upon these terms is the whole Scripture a Rule of Faith from which as nothing is to be taken away so is nothing to be added to it as the saying of S. Chrysostome in Phil. II. Hom. XII requireth And the saying of S. Basil in Esa II. and Ascet Reg. I. condemning all that is done without Scripture takes place upon no other terms than these Not as Cartwright and our Puritanes after him imagine that a man is to have a text of Scripture specifying every thing which hee doth for his warrant For as it is in it self ridiculous to imagine that all cases which fall out can be ruled by expresse text of Scripture our Christianity being concerned infinite wayes of which it is evident that the Scripture had no occasion to speak So if the words of the Scripture be lodged in a heart where the work of them dwelleth not a thing which wee see too possible to come to passe it is the ready way to make the Word of God a color for all unrighteousnesse not onely to others but to the very heart of him who hath that cloke for it It is therefore enough that the reason of every thing which a Christian doth is to be derived from that doctrine which the Scripture declaeth And where a man proceedeth to do that for which hee hath not such a reason so grounded as reasonable men use to go by then cometh that to passe which S. Basil chargeth Ascet Reg. LXXX That What is not of faith is sin It is true according to that sense which hitherto I have used after many Church Writers the Rule of Faith extendeth not to all the Scriptures but onely to that which it is necessary to salvation to believe and to know Which every man knowes that all the Scripture is not For though it be necessary to salvation to believe that all the Scripture is true yet is it not necessary to salvation to know all that the Scripture containeth And the reason why I use it in this sense is to distinguish those things contained in the Scriptures which Tradition extendeth to from those to which it extendeth not For upon these terms is the sense of them limitable to the common Faith But I quarel not therefore the opinion of them that maintaine the whole Scriptures to be the Rule of Faith acknowledging that whatsoever it containeth is necessarily to be believed by all that come to understand it And whatsoever it containeth not though the Scripture alone obligeth not to believe the truth of it is not necessarily to be observed for any other reason but that which the Scripture declareth As for S. Basil making it apostasy to bring that which is not written into the Faith It is a thing well known that the Arians were charged by the Church for bringing in words that were not in the Scriptures saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There was a time when Christ was not And 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That hee was made of nothing On the other side after the Council of Nicaea the Arians charged the Church for bringing in the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the same substance Where then lay the difference between the Inndelity of the Arians and the Faith of the Church Theodoret showes it Hist Eccles I. 8. out of Athanasius de Actis Concil Niceni 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith hee They were condemned by written words piously understood But how appears this piety For I suppose the Arians would not have granted it Hee addeth that the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 had been used by the Fathers which had it been inconsistent with the sense of the Church could not have been indured in a mater concerning the Rule of Faith whereas their terms were contrary to that which is found in the Scriptures Now S. Basil acknowledgeth that hee had elsewhere dealing with Hereticks used terms not found in the Scriptures to exclude their sense contrary to the Scriptures as you shall finde by the Authors alleged that the Council of Nicaea had done but to those who desired information with a single heart hee resolves to rest content with the Scriptures The terms whereof his meaning is that the Hereticks did not rest content with because they had a minde to depart from the Faith Upon the same terms Tertullian pronounces the Wo that belongs to them which adde to Gods Word upon Hermogenes because his error concerned the Article of our Creed that God made heaven and earth And S. Austine presumes the reason why there is no clear Scripture for the original of the soul to be because hee presumes that it concerns not the substance of Faith Besides these Observations some of those passages which are alleged may concern Christianity rather than the Scriptures
provided a visible Judg infallible in determining Controversies of Faith either because originally his goodnesse requires it or because wee cannot suppose that men can be obliged to imbrace the Gospel upon other terms It is sufficient that having given the Scriptures hee hath over and above provided the Communion of the Church to preserve the Rule of Faith and the Laws of the Church in the sensible knowledg and common practice of all Christians that the means of salvation might be sufficient and yet men remain subject to trial whether they would render them uneffectual or not to themselvs and the rest of mankinde I confess indeed it would be much for the ease of the parties and would shorten their work very much if it might be admitted for a presumption that all things necessary are clear in the Scriptures or that the Church is an infallible Judg in Controversies of Faith For then the superficial sound of the words of Scripture repeated by rote in the Pulpit or out of the Pulpit would serve to knock the greatest question on the head without any advise what difficulties remain behind undecided upon no lesse appearances in Scripture On the other side a decree of the Council of Trent would serve to put the Scripture to silence without any proffer to satisfie the conscience that is moved with the authority thereof equally obliging with our common Christianity with the sense of the Church on the same side to boot Thus much is visible that they whose businesse it is in England to reconcile souls to the Church of Rome finde their work ready done when they have gained this point and men all their lives afore grounded upon contrary reasons in the particulars which are the subject of the breach change their profession without any coutrary resolution in those particulars that is their former grounds remaining in force Surely nothing were more desirable than a ready and short way to the truth in things so concerning But to pretend it upon a ground which if any thing can be demonstrative in this kinde is demonstratively proved that it cannot be true To wit the authority of the Church decreeing without means to derive that which it decreeth from the motives that should evidence it to be revealed by God This I say to pretend is no better than an Imposture And if this be true I remain secure of that which every man will object against the resolution which I advance that whereas the meaning of the Scripture alone is a thing too difficult for the most part of men to compasse I require further that it be assured by the records of the Church which are endlesse and which no mans industry can attain to know So that the meer despair of finding resolution by the means propounded will justifie to God him that followes probabilities as being all one in that case whether there be no truth or whether it cannot appear to those whom it concerns This Objection I say I do not finde so heavy upon mee that I have any cause to mince but rather to aggravate the difficulty of it having showed that the means provided by God to make evidence of the Faith to the consciences of particular Chaistians is not any gift of infallibility vested in any person or persons on behalf of the whole Church but the Unity of the whole Church grounded upon the profession of the same Faith as the condition of it For in all reason what Unity bindes that Division destroyes And whatsoever Unity contributes to the assurance of a Christian that hee is in the way to salvation so long as hee continues in the Unity of the Church that the Division of the Church necessarily derogates from the same assurance in him that cannot continue in that Unity which is once dissolved and yet believing the Scriptures and our common Christianity to be infallibly true cannot believe the parties to be infallible as they are And what hath hee that desireth the Unity of the Church to do but to aggravate that difficulty of attaining salvation which the division thereof produceth I do therefore grant and challenge as for mine own Interest that it is very difficult for unlearned Christians to discern the truth in those Controversies about which a settled division is once formed as now in the Western Church At least upon so true and so clear grounds as may assure them that they make their choice upon no other interest than that of Gods truth But I do not therefore yield to that which this difficulty it seems hath wrung from Vincentius Lerinensis with whom agreeth the Opus imperfectum in Mat. as you have them quoted afore That there is no means but Scripture to convince inveterate Heresies The reason whereof the later of those authors renders Because those Heresies have their Churches their Pastors and the succession of them and their Communion as well as Catholick Christians For hee supposeth Pastors lawfully constituted to have fallen away to those Heresies And truly the case of this difficulty was put when the Arian Faction had possessed so great a part of the Church that S. Gregory Nazianzene in the place afore quoted acknowledges that the true Church could not be judged by numbers With whom S. Hilary libro de Synodis agreeth But if the same Nazianzene scorn them that value the Church by numbers Liberius in the place afore quoted out of Theodoret revies it upon him in saying that the cause of the Faith could not suffer though hee were alone For not onely the Scriptures continue alwaies the same but though the present Church fail it follows not that the Tradition of the Whole Church must fail with it So long as the original sense of the Whole Church may be evident by the agreement thereof with the Scripture wee may discern what is Catholick without the sentence of the present Church And that which is not so to be discerned for Catholick wee may presume that our salvation requires us not to believe it And therefore Vincentius and his fellow are so to be understood that it is difficult indeed to make evidence to private Christians of Tradition contrary to that which they see received by Heresies And therefore that for the convicting of them in the truth recourie is to be had to the Scriptures But Vincentius who as I showed you acknowledges evidence for Tradition from written records of the Church need not have said that there is no means to convince inveterate Heresies but the Scriptures Be this difficulty then the evidence how much it concerns the salvation of all Christians that the Unity of the Church be restored That the choice of private Christians in maters concerning their salvation be not put upon the sentencing of those disputes the reasons whereof they are not able to manage For being restored upon agreement in those things which it is sufficient for all Christians to believe it will neither be easie for private Christians to frame to themselves opinions
that hee hath any end but himself nor that hee doth any thing to any other end than to exercise and declare his own perfections If hee do sundry things which of their nature have necessarily such an end as they attain not it is to be said that Gods end never fails in so much as by failing of the end to which they were made they become the subject of some other part of that providence wherein his perfections are exercised and declared Seeing then that all Controversies concerning the Faith have visibly their original from some passages of Scripture which being presupposed true before the foundation of the Church ought to be acknowledged but cannot be constituted by it And seeing that no man that out of the conscience of a Christian hath imbraced all that is written can deny that which hee may have cause to believe to be the sense of the least part of the Scripture without ground to take away that belief It remains that the way to abate Controversies is to rest content with the means that God hath left us to determine the sense of the Scripture not undertaking to tye men further to it than the applying of those means will inferre And truly to imagine that the authority of the Church or the dictate of Gods Spirit should satisfie doubts of that nature without showing the means by which other records of learning are understood and so resolving those doubts which the Scriptures necessarily raise in all them that believe them to be true and the word of God is more than huge cart-loads of Commentaries upon the Scriptures have have been able to do Which being written upon supposition of certain determinations pretended by the Church or certain positions which tending to reform abuses in the Church were taken for testified by Gods Spirit have produced no effect but an utter despair of coming to resolution or at least acknowledgment of resolution in the sense of the Scriptures Whereas let men capable of understanding and managing the means heretofore mentioned think themselves free as indeed they ought to be of all prejudices which the partialities on foot in the Church may have prepossessed them with and come to determine the meaning thereof by the means so prescribed and within those bounds which the consent of the Church acknowledges They shall no sooner discern how the primitive Christianity which we have from the Apostles becomes propagated to us but they shall no less clearly discern the same in their writings And if God have so great a blessing for Christendom as the grace to look upon what hath been written with this freedom there hath been so much of the meaning of the Scripture already discovered by those that have laid aside such prejudices and so much of it is in the way to be discovered every day if the means be pursued as is well to be hoped will and may make partizans think upon the reason they have to maintain partialities in the Church If God have not this blessing in store for Christendom it remains that without or against all satisfaction of conscience concerning the truth of contrary pretenses men give themselves up to follow and professe that which the protection of secular Power shall show them means to live and thrive by In which condition whether there be more of Atheism or of Christianity I leave to him who alone sees all mens hearts to judge CHAP. XXXIV The Dispute concerning the Canon of Scripture and the translations thereof in two Questions There can be no Tradition for those books that were written since Prophesie ceased Wherein the excellence of them above other books lies The chief objections against them are questionable In those parcels of the New Testament that have been questioned the case is not the same The sense of the Church HAving thus resolved the main point in doubt it cannot be denied notwithstanding that there are some parts or appertenances of the Question that remain as yet undecided For as long as it is onely said that the Scripture interpreted by the consent of the Church is a sufficient mean to determine any thing controverted in mater of Christian truth there is nothing said till it appear what these Scriptures are and in what records they are contained And truly it is plain that there remains a controversie concerning the credit of some part of those writings which have been indifferently copied and printed for the Old Testament commonly marked in our English Bibles by the title of Apocrypha And no lesse concerning the credit of the Copies wherein they are recorded For though it is certain and evident that the Old Testament hath been derived from the Ebrew the New from the Greek in which at first they were delivered to the Church Yet seeing it appeareth not of it self impossible such changes may have succeeded in the Copies that the Copies which the Jews now use of the Old Testament are further from that which was first delivered than the Vulgar Latine as also the Copies of the Greek Testament now extant It is a very plain case that this doubt remaining it is not yet resolved what are the principles what the means to determine the truth in maters questionable concerning Christianity I must further distinguish two questions that may be made in both these points before I go further For it is evidently one thing to demand whether those writings which I said remain questionable are to be counted part of the Old Testament or not Another whether they are to be read by Christians either for particular information or for publick edification at the assemblies of the Church And likewise as concerning the other point it is one thing to demand what Copy is to be held for authentick another thing to dispute how every Copy is to be used and frequented in the Church To wit whether translations in mother languages are to be had and into what credit they are to be received For it is manifest that the one sense of both questions demands what the body of the Church either may do or ought to do in proposing or prohibiting the said writings or Copies to be used by the members thereof for their edification in Christian piety But the other what credit they have in themselves upon such grounds as are in nature and reason more ancient than the authority of the Church and which the being and constitution thereof presupposeth And as manifest as it is that these are two questions so manifest must it needs remain that the one of them to wit that which concerns the authority of the Church and the effect of it does not belong to this place nor come to be decided but upon supposition of all the means God hath given his Church to be resolved of any truth that becomes questionable As for the other part of both questions though it hath been and may be among them that will not understand the difference between principles and conclusions because it is for
to the intrinsecall value of the workes which freewill alone doth but to the promise annexed by God to the works which freewill by the help of Grace purchased by Christ produceth It was no marvaile indeed that they who had overseen the actuall helps of Grace should a scribe the merit of habituall grace so the language of that time spoke to the act of freewill in beginning to believe that is to be a Christian as not depending upon that operation of grace which themselves supposed though they oversaw it But it were ridiculous to think that he who by the preaching of the Gospel and the reasons which it letteth forth why men are to be Christians is effectually moved to become a Christian is not to impute his being so to that grace which preventeth him with those reasons How much more when those reasons are acknowledged to be the instrument whereby the Holy Ghost worketh a mans conversion at the first or his perseverance at the last is it necessary to impute it to the grace of Christ that is to those helps which God in regard to Christs death preventeth us with Surely should grace immediately determin the wil to it the effects that should be imputable to grace would be the same neither the cov of grace nor the experience of common sense remaining the same which wil not allow such a chang in a mans life as becoming a good christian of an enemy to Christs Crosse to succeed without an express change in the wil upon reasons convincing the judgement that this world is to be set behind the world to com It is now to be acknowledged that S. Austine writing against these mens positions as they were revealed to him by the letters of Prosper and Hilary his book now extant de Praedestinatione sanctorum de dono Perseverantiae hath determined the reason why one man is converted and persevereth unto death an other not to consist in nothing that can resolve into any act of mans will but ends in Gods free appointment That Pope Celestinus writing to the Bishops of Gaule upon the sollicitation of the same Prosper and Hilary in recommendation of S. Austines dostrine then so much questioned in those parts determines not onely the sufficience but the efficacy of the meanes of Grace to come from Gods Grace That the second councile of Orange determining the same in divers particulares concerning the conversion of man to become a true Christian concerning his perseverance to the end in that estate hath onely determined that by the helpe and assistance of Christ and the grace received in Baptisme a Christian may if he will faithfully labour fullfill whatsoever his salvation requireth Is there any thing in all this to signifie that a mans will before he determine is determined by God to imbrace Christianity and persevere in it to the end or not That every man is determined to everlasting glory or paine without consideration of those deeds of his for which at the last he shall be sentenced to it and either suffer or injoy it Here I must have recourse againe to Vossius his Collections finding them sufficient and my model not allowing me to say more Whether no helpe of Grace but that which takes effect be sufficient That is whether men refuse Christianity or faile of performing it because they could not imbrace and persevere in it or because they would not when they might let him that shall have perused what he hath collected in the second part of this seventh book say as to the perswasion of the whole Church Whether God would have all men to be saved and hath appointed the death of our Lord Christ to that intent let him that shall have perused the first part of the same Thesi II. III. give sentence what the Church hath allwaies believed No lesse manifest is it by that which he saith there parte II. thesi II. Parte III. thes I. II. that there is no reason to be given why any man sinneth or is damned because God would have it so On the contrary that the reason why a man is not saved to whom the Gospell is tendred is because he refuseth it which God for his part tendreth to all mankind In fine that the Catholike Church from the beginning believed no more then that those who should believe and persevere to the end good Christians were appointed by God to be saved Understanding this to be don by vertue of Gods Grace for which no reason can be rendred from any thing that a man can doe as preventing all his indeavours I acknowledg to appeare by that which he hath said Lib. VI. thes VIII When therefore S. Austine maintainneth as I have acknowledged that he doth mainetaine that the reason why one man is converted and perseveres unto death another not resolves into Gods meere appointment I will not dispute whether this be more then the whole Church delivereth for that which it is necessary to salvation to believe It is enough for me to maintaine that it seemeth to follow by good consequence of the best reasons that I can see from that sense of our Lord and his Apostles doctrine which the Church hath alwaies taught Which will allow me to maintaine as well the predetermination of the will as absolut predestination to glory and paine to be inconsistent as with the Covenant of Grace so with the Tradition of the Church I find that Gennadius being manifestly one of those in Gaule that contradicted some thing of S. Austines doctrine by his commending of Faustus and Cassiane and censuring not onely Prosper who confuted Cassianus but even S. Austine in his booke of Eclesiasticall writers in a certaine addition to that list of heresies which S. Jerom hath made reckoneth them in the list of the Heretickes condemned by the Church who teach absolute Predestination under the name of Predestinatians After him not onely Hincmarus of Rheims condemning Gotescalcus a Monk of his Province for maintayning it being transmitted to him by Rabanus of Ments who in a Synod there had condemned him for the same hath supposed it condemned for an heresy by the ancient Church but also before Hincmarus Arnobius that hath expounded the Psalms called Arnobius the younger by some and a certaine continuation of S. Hieromes Cronicle under the the name of Tiro Prosper the one contradicteth them the later mentions that they had their beginning from S. Austins writings Sirmondus also the learned Jesuite hath published a peece so ancient that pretending to make a list of Heresies it goeth no further then Nestorius reckoning next after him the Predestinatians as those who derived themselves from S. Austines doctrine To which it is well enough knowne what opposition is now made by them who believe not that there ever was any such Heresy but that the adversaries of S. Austine in Gaule do pretend that such a Sect did indeed rise upon misunderstanding his Doctrine And certainely there are properly no Heretickes
impose upon all their Divines a necessity to maintain that there is no trope in the words This is my cup of the New Testament which so many of their Predecessors had granted because it could not be denied Which being granted must needs take place in This is my body by necessary consequence And surely the common principles of Grammar and Rhetorick will inforce it when they inform us that tropes are used as cloaths are either for necessity because there are more things much more conceptions than words to signifie them For thereupon necessity constrains to turn a word to signifie that which it was not at first intended to signifie and that is a trope Or for ornament to expresse a mans mind with more elegance Compare then our ordinary way of expressing the conceptions of the mind by words which is common to all Languages which our ordinary way of expressing the objects thereof to our minds by the said conceptions If a word be diverted to signifie that conception which it was not first imposed to signifie because there was no other at hand imposed to signifie the present conceit Logick and Grammar will make this a Trope though Rhetorick do not because it was not used for ornament but for the necessary clothing of a mans mind in terms intelligible The trial whereof is if the subject you speak of cannot truly be said to be the thing which is attributed to it As the bread and wine which our Lord blessed cannot be said to be his body and bloud For if the subject mater signified by the Scripture elsewhere require that the body and bloud of Christ be thought present then is the property of the terms to be abated so as they may serve to signifie that presence Voiding all dispute concerning the signification of words which those that hold Transubstantiation could never nor never will agree upon among themselves because it stands upon terms of art the use whereof no mans conceit can over-rule that which the necessity of our common Faith requireth being once secured as here For the reason being rendred why the Eucharist was instituted and why it is to be frequented notwithstanding that the Body and Bloud of Christ may always be eaten and drunk by a living Faith to wit because the reviving of our Christianity by receiving the Sacrament reviveth the promise of Christs body and bloud being the means to convay his Spirit it will not concern the purpose thereof that it should be present by Transubstantiation abolishing the nature of the Elements For though it hath been boldly said by those who dispute controversies That the body of Christ is really and substantially resident in and united to our bodies That Grace and Charity cooled by sinne are inflamed in the Soul by the body of Christ immediately touching our bodies That the seed of our resurrection is thereby sowed in our mortal bodies First none of this is true unlesse you understand it with the same abatement That the body of Christ received in the Sacrament by the body of him whose Soul hath living Faith in Christ is the seed of the life of grace and glory both to his soul and body Because otherwise a dead faith should receive the same Secondly none of this would hold if Transubstantiation be true because rendring the body of Christ invisibly present no mans body whatsoever can immediately touch it And therefore it is no marvel that so many excellent School Doctors have acknowledged that setting the sense of the Church aside of which I will say what shall be requisite by and by Transubstantiation cannot be concluded from the Scriptures Whose judgements I carry along with mee for the complement of that prejudice which I advance toward the right understanding of the sense of the Church To wit that whatsoever the present Church may have determined the Catholick Church did never understand that which the Scripture necessarily signifieth not Now let us see what our Lord sayes to his Disciples being scandalized at those things which I showed you that hee taught them in the Synagogue at Capernaum of attaining everlasting life by eating his flesh John VI. 58-63 Is this it which scandalizeth you saith hee What then if you see the Son of man ascend where hee was afore It is the Spirit that quickeneth the flesh profiteth nothing The words that I speak to you are Spirit and Life The spiritual sense in which hee commandeth them to eat and drink his flesh and bloud is grounded upon that difference between the promises of the Law and the Gospel which I settled in the beginning For by virtue thereof that Manna which maintained them in the Desert till they died is the figure of his body and bloud that maintains us not to dye Whereupon S. Paul saith 1 Cor. III. 6. The Spirit quickeneth but the Leter killeth Not onely because the Law covenants nor for the world to come But also because it was no further the means to procure that righteousnesse which giveth life then the Spirit of Christ was intimated and furnished under the dispensation of it Whereupon S. Paul argues that the Jews have as much need of Christ as the Gentiles because the Law is not able to bring corrupt nature to righteousnesse Wherefore the reason why they were scandalized at this doctrine of our Lords was not meerly because it was difficult to understand hee having so plentifully expressed his meaning and inculcated it by often beating the same discourse there and otherwise made the condition of his Gospel intelligible to his Disciples but because it was hard to undergo importing the taking up of his Crosse as I have said For it is evident by common experience in the world how men find or how they plead their minds to be obstructed in the understanding of those spiritual maters which if they should grant their understandings to be convinced of there were no plea left them why they should not conform their lives and conversations to that light which themselves confesse they have received So that the scandal was the same that the rich man in the Gospel took when hee was told that besides keeping Gods Commandments one thing was wanting to part with all hee had and take up Christs Crosse to wit for the observing of his Commandments And this scandal hee intends to take away when hee referres them to his ascension into Heaven because then and from thence they were to expect the Holy Ghost to inable them to do that which the eating and drinking of his flesh and bloud signifieth spiritually And his words hee therefore calleth Spirit and Life because they are the means to bring unto the communion of his Spirit wherein spiritual and everlasting life consisteth So that the flesh of Christ being exalted to the right hand of God and his Spirit which first made it self an habitation in his flesh being sent down to make him an habitation in the hearts of his people those who upon faithful consideration of
Congregations I do indeed acknowledge that there is difficulty in expounding those texts of the Apostles which speak to this purpose so as to agree them with the Originall and universal practice of the Church And therefore it is no marvail if learned men that have handled this point among us where without affectation I may say that it hath been most curiously and ingenuously disputed have gone several wayes upon severall grounds in assigning the reason why the degree of Deacons is mentioned next to the degree of Bishops in so many texts of the Apostles having the order of Priests between both as the original and perpetual custome of the Church required For it is well enough known that there is an opinion published and maintained by many learned observations in the primitive antiquity of the Church that during the time when those texts of the Apostles were written there were but two Orders of Bishops and Deacons established in the Church though Bishops also are called Presbyters the name not being yet appropriated to the midle order while it was not introduced as afterwards it came to be And this opinion allegeth Epiphanius very fitly confuting Aerius the Heretick or Schismatick objecting the same that at the beginning the multitude of believers in less places being so small that one Governour together with some Ministers to attend upon him in executing his Orders might well serve them it is no marvail if there be no mention of any more Orders in so many texts of the Apostles And it may be said that as there were Churches founded and governed by a certain order from the beginning that we read of them in the Apostles so no Bishop Priest or Deacon was appropriated to any particular Church till after that time by degrees they came to be selled to certain Churches by Ecclesiastical Law and Custome So that during the time of the Apostles themselves and their companions whom they associated to themselves for their assistance were in common the Governours of Churches then founded according as they fell out to be present in these Churches to whom they had the most relation by planting and watering the faith planted in them either by virtue of the agreement taken by the Apostles within themselves or by the appointment of some of them if we speak of their companions and assistances But afterwards when the faith came to be setled then as those which had been Governours of Churches in common before became chief Governours of particular Churches to whom by lawful consent they became appropriated so were they provided of Priests and Deacons to assist and attend them in the execution of their office towards the body of Christians then mulplyed in severall Churches I do confess to have declared an opinion something differing from both of these sayings about the reason here demanded As not being perswaded either that the Order of Presbyters was not yet introduced into the Church during the Apostles time or that chief Governours were not appropriated and setled in some Churches during the same though I have no need to undertake that in all they were believing and maintaining that the Apostles themselves in the Churches of their own planting and watering were acknowledged chief Governours in ordering notwithstanding their extraordinary both Power not confined to any one Church and graces and abilities porportionable In which regard and under which limitation visible to the common sense of all men of their own and the next ages I do maintain Bishops to be their successors Whereupon it follows that I allow the name of Bishops in the Apostles writings to comprehend Priests also because of the mater of their function common to both though with a chief Power in the Bishop in Priests so limited as to do nothing that is to say nothing of consequence to his Power over the whole Church without his consent and allowance But this variety of opinion in expounding these Scriptures draweth after it no further consequence to prejudice the primitive Law of Goverment in the Church then this That there are more waies then one to answer the seeming probabilities pretending to make the evidence of Catholick Tradition unreconcileable with the truth of the Scriptures in the agreement whereof the demonstration of this truth consisteth I conceive therefore I might very well referre my self to the Readers free judgement to compare the reasons which I have produced with those that since have been used Notwithstanding I shall not think much briefly according to the model of this design to express the sense I have of the most native meaning of the most texts alleged in this businesse that I may have opportunity to point out again the peremptory exceptions which â—re visible in them either to the imagination of mungrill Prâ—sbyteries compounded of Clergy and People during the time of the Apostles or of the chief Power of any such Presbyteries in their resepective Churches CHAP. XVII The Power given the XII under the Title of Apostles and the LXX Disciples That the VII were Deacons Of the first Presbyters at Jerusalem and the Interest of the People Presbyters appropriated to Churches under the Apostles S. Pauls Deacons no Presbyters No ground for Lay Flders FIrst then as the name of Apostle in the Originall meaning is very general to signifie any commissary Proxy delegate or Ambassador so the use of it in the Apostles writings is larger then to be confined to the twelve For when S. Paul saith That our Lord appeared to the twelve afterwards to all the Apostles 1 Cor. XV. 5. 7. He must needs understand other Apostles besides the twelve perhaps the same that he meant where he reckoned Andronicus and Junias remarkable among the Apostles Rom. XVI 7. And that in another â—ense then Paul and Barnabas are called Apostles Act. XIV 4. 14. For the name of Apostle intimating whose Apostle he is that is called an Apostle we have no reason to count Paul and Barnabas any mans Apostles but our Lord Christs though they were first sent with the blessing of such Doctors and Prophets as the Church of Antiochia then had Acts XIII 1. 2 3. whose authority cannot in any reason be thought to extend so farre as to constitute an Apostle parâ—llel to the Twelve which S. Paul so oft so expresly challenges For since we see their commission is immediately from the Holy Ghost that is from God we are not to value their right by the solemnity which it is visibly conferred upon them with Unlesse you will say that by virtue of that Imposition of Hands they were messengers and Commissaries of that Church and that they then appeared to be no more then so though afterwards God set on them marks of the same authority with the Twelve Truly those whom S. Paul calls false Apostles transferring themselves into the Apostles of Christ 1 Cor. XI 13. must neâ—ds be understood to have pretended commission from our Lord Christ himself For hereupon they stood upon it that they had
which it is ministred under such an unhallowed opinion as that In the meane time neither is the promise of Grace annexed to the solemnity thereof in which there hath succeeded so vast a change as I have signified by Gods choice of any visible creature in which it is exercised as in Baptisme and the Eucharist but by that common reason for which it is a solemnity fit for the Church to execute it with nor is the promise of grace annexed to the office of the Churth any otherwise then as it becomes the meanes to retrive the condition of baptisme qualifying for the promise by the Covenant of Grace In fine the name and notion of a Sacrament as it hath been duly used by the Church and writers allowed by the Church extendeth to all holy actions done by vertue of the Office which God hath trusted his Church with in hope of obtayning the grace which he promiseth Baptisme and the Eucharist are actions appointed by God in certaine creatures utterly impertinent to the effect of Grace setting aside his appointment But apt to signifie all the Grace which the Gospell promiseth by vertue of that correspondence which holds between things visible and sâ—nsible and things intelligible and invisible Both antecedent for their institution to the foundation of the Church the Society whereof subscribeth upon condition of the first and for communion in the second The rest are actions appointed to be solemnized in the Church by the Apostles not alwaies every where precisely with the same ceremonies but such as alwaies may reasonably serve to signifie the graces which it praies for on the behalfe of them who receive them The hope of that Grace being grounded upon Gods generall promise of hearing the prayers of his Church which the constitution thereof involveth Nor am I solicitous to make that construction which may satisfie the decrees of the Councils of Florence and Trent who have first taken upon them to decree under Anathama the conceite of the Schoole in reducing them to the number of seven But seeing the particulars so qualified by ancient writers in the Church and the number agreed upon by the Greeke Church as well as the Latines I have acknowledged that sense of their sayings which the primâ—ive order of the Chatholike Church inforceth For though I count it a great a buse to maintaine simple Christians in an opinion that the outward works of them not supposing the ground upon which the intent to which the disposition with which they are done secures the salvation of them to whom they are ministred Which opinion the formall ministring of them seemeth to maintaine Yet is it a far greater abuse to place the reformation of the Church in abolishing the solemnities rather then in reducing the right understanding of the ground and intent of those offices which they serve to solemnize CHAP. XXX To worship Christ in the Eucharist though believing transubstantiation is not Idolatry Ground for the honour of Saints and Martyrs The Saints and the Angels pray for us Three sorts of prayers to Saints The first agreeable with Christianity The last may be Idolatry The second a step to it Of the Reliques of the Saints Bodies What the second Commandement prohibiteth or alloweth The second Councile of Nicea doth not decree Idolatry And yet there is no decree in the Church for the worshiping of Images ANd now I come to that resolution which I have made way for by premising these conclusions for assumptions to inferr it onely by the way I have resolved against those prayers which the Church of Rome prescribeth to deliver the soules of the dead from Purgatory paines I say then first that the adoration of the Eucharist which the Church of Rome prescribeth is not necessarily Idolatry I say not what it may be accidentally by that intention which some men may conceale and may make it Idolatry as to God I speak upon supposition of that intention which the profession of the Church formeth and which alone is to my present purpose I suppose them to beleive that those creatures of God which are the elements of that sacrament are no more there after the consecration having ceased to be that there might be roome for the body and blood of our Lord to come into theire stead I suppose that the body and blood of Christ may be adored wheresoever they are and must be adored by a good Christian where the custome of the Church which a Christian is obliged to communicate with requires it For that which wee see is enough for to certifie us that peremptorily to refuse any custome of the Church is a step to division and the dissolution of it which is the greatest evill that can befall Christianity next to the peremptory profession of some thing contrary to that truth wherein christianity consists and which the being of the Church presupposeth But I suppose further that the body and blood of Christ is not adored nor to be adored by Christians neither for it self nor for any indowment residing in it which it may have received by being personally united with the God head of Christ But onely in consideration of the said God-head to which it remaines inseparably united wheresoever it becomes For by that meanes whosoever proposeth not to himselfe the consideration of the body and blood of Christ as it is of it selfe and in it self a meer creature which he that doth not on purpose cannot do cannot but consider it as he believs it to be being a Christian And considering it as it is honor it as it is inseperably united to the God-head in which by which it subsisteth in which therefore that honour resteth and to which it tendeth So the God-head of Christ is the thing that is honoured and the reason why it is honoured both The body and blood of Christ though it be necessarily honored because necessarily united to that which is honoured yet is it onely the thing that is honored and not the reason why it is honoured speaking of the honor proper to God alone I suppose further that it is the duty of e-every christian to honour our Lord Christ as God subsisting in humane flesh whether by professing him such or by praying to him as such or by using any bodily gesture which by the custome of them that frequent it may serve to signifie that indeed he takes him for such which gesture is outwardly that worship of the heart which inwardly commandes it This honour then being the duty of an affirmative precept which according to the received rule ties alwaies though it cannot tye a man to doe the duty alwaies because then he should doe nothing else What remaines but a just occasion to make it requisite and presently to take hold and oblige And is not the presence thereof in the Sacrament of the Eucharist a just occasion presently to expresse by the bodily act of adoration that inward honour which we alwaies cary towards our Lord Christ as
the acts of them that teach these prayers the acts of the Church because it tolerates them and maintaines them in it in stead of casting them out it would be hard to free that Church from Idolatrie which whoso admitteth can by no meanes grant it to be a Church the being whereof supposeth the worship of one God exclusive to any thing else But the words of them are capable of the same limitation that I gave to the words of our Lord when I said that they whom Christians do good to here may be said to receive them into everlasting habitations because God does it in consideration of them and of the good done them And so when Irenaeus calls the Virgine Mary the advocate of Eve V. 19. he that considers his words there and III. 33. shall find that he saith it not because she prayed for her but because she believed the Angels message and submitted to Gods will and so became the meanes of saving all though by our Lord Christ who pleadeth even for her as well as for Eve Ground enough there is for such a construction even the belief of one God alone that stands in the head of our Creed which we have no reason to thinke the Church allowes them secretly to renounce whom she alloweth to make these prayers And therefore no ground to construe them so as if the Church by allowing them did renounce the ground of all her Christianity But not ground enough to satisfie a reasonable man that all that make them do hold that infinite distance between God and his saints and Angels of whom they demand the same effects which if they hold not they are Idolaters as the Heathen were who being convinced of one Godhead as the Fathers challenge to their faces divided it into one principall and divers that by his gift are such How shall I presume that simple Christians in the devotions of their hearts understand that distance of God from his creatures which their words signify not which the wisest of their teachres will be much troubled to say by what figure of speech they can allow it Especially if it be considered how little reason or interest in religion there can be to advance the reverence of Christian people towards the Saints or Angels so farre above the reason and ground which ought to be the spring-head of it For so farre are we from any Tradition of the Catholicke Church for this that the admonition of Epiphanius to the Collyridians takes-hold of it Haer. LXXIX For they also would have been Christians being a sort of women in Arabia who in imitation of the Eucharist offered to the Virgine Mary and communicated Therefore Epiphanius reproves them by the Custome of the Church that no such thing was ever done in the Church as well as by the ground of Christianity that Christians worship onely one God This admonition then takes hold though not of the Church yet of the prayers which it alloweth signifying the same with their oblations So doth the admonition of Saint Ambrose in Rom. I. to them who reserve nothing to God that they give not to his servants So doth that of Saint Augustine de vera Rel. Cap. LV. that our religion is not to consist in worshipping the dead And that an Angel forbad S. John to worship him but onely God whose fellow-servants they were So doth the argument of S. Gregory Nyssene contra Eunom IV. and Athanasius contra Arian III. concluding our Lord to be God because he is worshipped which Cornelius was forbid by Saint Peter Saint John by the Angel to do to them saith Athanasius In fine so dangerous is the case that whoso communicateth in it is no way reasonably assured that he communicateth not in the worship of Idols Onely the Church of England having acknowledged the Church of Rome a true Church though corrupt ever since the Reformation I am obliged so to interpret the prayers thereof as to acknowledge the corruption so great that the prayers which it alloweth may be Idolatries if they be made in that sense which they may properly signify But not that they are necessarily Idolatries For if they were necessarily Idolatries then were the Church of Rome necessarily no Church The being of Christianity presupposing the worship of one true God And though to confute the Heretickes the stile of moderne devotions leaves nothing to God which is not attributed to and desired of his Saints Yet it cannot be denied they may be the words of them who believe that God alone can give that which they desire The second sort it is confessed had the beginning in the flourishing times of the Church after Constantine The lights of the Greek and Latine Church Basil Nazianzene Nyssene Ambrose Jerome Augustine Chrysostome Cyrils both Theodoret Fulgentius Gregory the Great Leo more or rather all after that time have all of them spoken to the Saints departed and desired their assistance But neither is this enough to make a Tradition of the Church For the Church had been CCC years before it began Irenaeus is mistaken when he is alledged for it as I said even now Cardinall Bellarmine alleges out of Eusebius de Praeparat XIII 10. Vota ipsis facimus We make our prayers to them But the Greek beares onely We make our prayers to God at their monuments Athanasius de sanctissima deipara whom he quotes is certainly of a later date then Athanasius Out of S. Hillary I see nothing brought nor remember any thing to be brought to that purpose In fine after Constantine when the Festivalls of the Saints being publickly celebrated occasioned the confluence of Gentiles as well as Christians and innumerable things were done which seemed miracles done by God to attest the honour done them and the truth of Christianity which it supposed I acknowledge those great lights did think fit to addresse themselves to them as petitioners but so at the first as those that were no wayes assured by our common Christianity that their petitions arrived at their knowledge You have seen Saint Augustine acknowledge that they must come by such meanes as God is no way tied to furnish Gregory Nazianzene speakes to Gorgonia in his Oration upon her and to Constantius in his first oration against Juliane but under a doubtfull condition if they were sensible of what he spake Enough to distinguish praying to God from any addresse to a creature though religion be the ground of it And when the apparitions about their monuments were held unquestionable yet was it questioned whether the same souâ— could be present at once in places of so much distance or Angels appear like them as you may see in the answer aforesaid pag. 391. 394. Nay Hugo de S. Victore in Cassander Epist XIX hath inabled him to hold that the Litanies do not suppose that the Saints hear them and therefore are expounded by some to signify conditionall desires if God grant them to come to their knowledge But of that I speak
be and was sufficient means under the Law to make them understand their obligation to that spiritual obedience which the Gospel covenanteth for though wee suppose as the truth is that the Law expresly covenanteth onely for the temporal happinesse of the Land of Promise Therefore there was also sufficient meanes to oblige them to expect the coming of the Christ as wee see by the Gospel that they did at the coming of our Lord and as all that will maintain Christianity against the Jewes are bound to maintain And therefore to the objection proposed I answer That though the words of the precept of loving God with all the heart and all the minde and all the soul and all the might may contain all that Christianity requireth to be done in consideration of duty to God and with an intent of his honor and service Yet neverthelesse that sense thereof that depends upon the Covenant of the Law is to be limited to the observation of those precepts which God should confine their civil life to in the service of him alone The intent of the Covenant being to contract with God for temporal happinesse in the Land of Promise they undertaking as a Common-wealth to live by such civil Lawes as hee should give as well as to worship him by such Ceremonies as hee should prescribe And therefore supposing they observed those precepts they were to expect the inheritance of the Land of Promise though wee suppose that they did it out of respect to that reward and not onely to God and to his honor and service Yea though wee grant that for the acknowledging of the true God alone they were bound to indure persecution and death rather than for fear of torment to deny God or sacrifice to Idols or renounce his Law as wee see Daniel and the three Children did under Nebuchadnesar and the zealous Jewes in the Maccabees time under Antiochus Epiphanes For if the Heathen had cause to believe that which is received of all as the ground of civil Society that particular persons are bound to expose their lives for the defense of their Countrey that is to no other end but that they may live and die in the Lawes under which they are bred though they had no promise of God that they should hold their inheritance of this world by maintaining them Cereainly the people that obtained their inheritance by taking upon them Moses Law shall stand bound not onely to maintain it by the sword under the conduct of their Soveraignes but also by suffering for it when they were not to maintain it by force A thing nothing strange to a man that shall consider how desâ—rable life is to him that is forced from the Lawes of his Countrey As for the other part of loving our Neighbor as our selves it is without doubt pregnant with an evident argument of this truth seeing in plain reason the extent of the precept might so argue the intent of it For it is evident by infinite Texts of the Law that a mans neighbor in this precept extends no further than to Israelites whether by birth or by religion that is to say those that are ingraffed into the Covenant by being circumcised For example Let mee ask how the Law could forbid the Israelites to seek the good of the Moabites and Ammonites if it be part of the same Law to love all men under the quality of neighbors as themselves Let mee demand of any man how Mordecai was tied not to do that honor to Haman that his Soveraigne commanded to be done How hee could in conscience disobey his Prince in a mater of indifferent nature of it self had it not been prohibited by the Law of God Whether a Jew that is commanded by the Law to professe hostility against all Amalekites could be dispensed with in this obligation by any act of his Soveraign Whether any just reason can be alleged for Mordecai but this Nay those who are called strangers in the Law That is to say those that had renounced all Idols and professed to worship the true God and thereupon were privileged to dwell in the Land of Promise out of which the Israelites were sufficiently commanded to root all Idolaters those strangers I say by the leter of Moses Law are not comprehended in the precept of loving our neighbor as our selves For hee that asked who is the neighbor that the Law speaks of Lut. X. 27-37 is not convicted by our Lord by any leter of the Law but by a Parable intimating the example of that which hee did for mankinde to be the reason of that which the Gospel requires Forsooth if the love of Christians extend to strangers and enemies because the good Samaritâ—ne which is our Lord Christ extended his so farr then not because Moses Law had convenanted for it Therefore besides this precept of loving our neighbors as our selves it was requisite that the Law should by a particular provision limit that respect and tenderness wherewith they were required to use those strangers as converts to the true God for so the Syriack translation of the Law calls them alwaies to wit in the rank of Widowes and Orphans If this be true the precept of not coveting by the immediate intent of Moses Law stands confined to that sense which the Jewes at this day give it according to the decisions of their Doctors that no man by contrived oppresion or vexation designe to force his neighbor that was by the Law inabled to make a divorce to part with his wife or any thing else that hee called his own Which sense our Lord also in the Gospel manifestly favors Mar. X. 19. where recounting the precepts that those must keep that will inherit life everlasting after thou shalt not bear false witnesse hee inserres thou shalt not take away by fraud or oppression that which is another mans for the sense of the tenth Commandement thou shalt not cover that which is thy neighbors All which extendeth no further than the over act of seeking what is not a mans own And though this be out Lords answer to him that asks what hee is to do to obtaine life everlasting yet it may well seem that our Lord intended first to propound unto him the civil Law of Moses as necessary to salvation and a step towards it because the Gospel saith that our Lord loved him that answered All these things have I kept from my youth up as acknowledging that hee said true For that hee had kept these precepts in that spiritual sense and to the intent and purpose which the Gospel requireth it was not true And by that which followes when hee askes what remained to be done namely that hee leave all to follow Christ hee inferrs in one precept the whole inward and spiritual obedience of God which under the Gospel is expresly required To wit that a man set all the world and himself behinde his back that hee may follow Christ Therefore though they be the obedience
is there just cause to think that thereby advantage is given to the Jewes against Christianity by granting that such passages out of which the New Testament drawes the birth and sufferings of our Lord are reasonably to be understood of his predecessors in Gods ancient people For it is plaine that it despite of the Jewes the works done by our Lord and his Prophesies concerning his Dying and Rising again and the destruction of the Jewes and the preaching of the Gospel to all Nations seconded by his Apostles and that which they did to winn credit that they were the witnesses of the same are the evidence upon which the Gospel obliges The Scriptures of the Old Testament which were no evidence to the Gentiles as much and more concerned in the Gospel than the Jewes were evidence and so to be not of themselves for what need Christ then have done those works But upon supposition that God intended not to rest in giving the Law but to make it the thred to introduce the Gospel by Which supposition as it is powerfully inforced by the nature of the Law and the difference between the inward and the outward obedience of God as it hath been hitherto declared and maintained So is it also first introduced by those works which our Lord declareth to be done for evidence thereof then made good by the perpetual correspondence between the Old and New Testament which any considerable exception interrupts And there reasons so much the more effectual because this difference of literal and mystical sense was then and is at this day acknowledged by the Jewes themselves against whom our Lord and his Apostles imploy it in a considerable number of Scriptures which they themselves interpret of the Messias though they are not able to make good the consequence of the same sense throughout because they acknowledge not the reason of it which concludes the Lord Jesus to be the Messias whom they expect If these things be true neither Origen nor any man else is to be indured when they argue that a mystical sense of the Scripture is to be inquired and allowed even where this ground takes no place For vindicating the honor of God and that it may appeare worthy of his wisedom to declare that which wee admit to be the utmost intent of the Scriptures For if it be for the honor of God to have brought Christianity into the world for the salvation of mankinde and to have declared himself by the Scriptures for that purpose then whatsoever tends to declare this must be concluded worthy of God and his wisedom whatsoever referres not to it cannot be presumed agreeable to his wisdom how much soever it flatter mans eare or fantasie with quaintnesse of conceit or language Now as I maintain this difference between the literal and mystical sense of the Old Testament to be necessary for the maintenance of Christianity as well as for understanding the Scriptures So are there some particular questions arising upon occasion of it which I can well be content to leave to further dispute As for example There is an opinion published which saith That the abomination of desolation which our Lord saith was spoken of by Daniel the Prophet concerning the destruction of Jerusalem Dan. IX 24 Mat. XXIV 15. Mar. XIII 14. was fulfilled in the havock made by Antiochus Epiphanes Which is also plainly called the abominatio of desolation by the same Prophet Daâ— XI 31. XII 10. Whether this opinion can be made good according to historical truth or not this is not the place to dispute Whether or no the difference between the literal and mystical sense of the Scriptures will indure that the same Prophesie be fulfilled twice in the literal sense concerning the temporal state of the Jewes once under Antiochus Epiphanes and once under Titus that is it which I am here content to referre to further debate One thing I affirme that notwithstanding this difference it is no inconvenience to say that some Prophesies are fulfilled but once Namely that of Jacob Gen. XLIX 8-12 that of Daniel IX 24. that of Malacbi III. 1. IV. 5 6. Because the coming of Christ boundeth the times of the literal and mystical sense And therefore there is reason why it should be marked out by Prophesies of the Old Testament referring to nothing else Againe I am content to leave to dispute whether the many Prophesies of the Old Testament which are either manifestly alleged or covertly intimated by the Revelation of S. John must therefore be said to be twice fulfilled once in the sense of their first Authors under the Law and again under the Gospel in S. Johns sense to the Church Or that this second complement of them was not intended by the Spirit of God in the Old Prophets but that it pleased God to signifie to S. John things to befall the Church by Prophetical Visions like those which hee had read in the ancient Prophets whereby God signified to them things to befall his ancient people For of a truth it is the outward rather than the spiritual state of the Church which is signified to S. John under these images A third particular must be the first Chapter of Genesis For in that which followes of Paradise and what fell out to our first Parents there I will make no question that hoth senses are to be admitted the Church having condemned Origen for taking away the historical sense of that portion of Scripture But whether the creation of this sensible world is to be taken for a figure of the renewing of mankinde into a spiritual world by the Gospel of Christ according to that ground of the difference between the literal and mystical sense of the Scripture which hitherto I maintaine This I conceive I may without prejudice leave to further debate But leaving these things to dispute I must insist that those things which the Evangelists affirm to have been fulfilled by such things as our Lord said or did or onely befell him in the flesh have a further meaning according to which they are mystically accomplished in the spiritual estate of his Christian people The chiefe ground hereof I confesse is that of S. Matthew VIII 17. where having related divers of our Lords miracles hee addeth that they were done That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Prophet Esay LIII 4. Hee took our infirmities and â—are away our sicknesses Together with the words of our Lord Luke V. 17-21 where hee telleth them of Nazareth This day are the words of the Prophet Esay LXI 1. The Spirit of the Lord is upon mee because hee hath anointed mee to preach the Gospel to the poor fulfilled in your hearing And his answer to John Baptist grounded upon the same passage Mat. XI 4 5 6. Go and tell John what yee have heard and seen The blinde receive sight the lame walk the lâ—pers are cleansed the deaf heare the dead are raised and the poor have the Gospel preached them For
question that the sayings and doings of our Lord and his Apostles the matter of the Gospels and Acts and the writings of the Apostles contain the same which the man of God that is Timothy is to Preach and Teach Neverthelesse waving so evident a presumption I am ready to stand to all that the words understood of the whole Bible will argue For granting that all Scripture was inspired by God to this purpose That the man of God might be perfectly furnished to every good worke of edifying believers or convincing gain-sayers of instructing the sonnes of the Church or correcting the rebellious it would be neverthelesse in vain to inferre that therefore all things necessary to the salvation of all Christians are clearly expressed to all understandings in the Scriptures because it is evident that the man of God by being first made a Christian or else a man of God might be instructed in all things necessary to the salvation of all Christians or to the discharge of his particular trust which by learning the Scriptures he might afterwards be more plentifully inabled to know For granting that the Scripture is able abundantly to furnish him that hath learned all that is necessary for a Christian or for a man of God to know with all parts belonging to a man of God It followeth not that the Scripture clearly teacheth him that hath not learned the same all that is necessary to the salvation of all Christians Because he that transgresseth not the substance of Christianity may find in the Scriptures sufficient furniture both for the maintaining and for the advancing of that Christianiy which he acknowledgeth And yet he that trusteth his own sense to find out what is the substance of Christianity by the leter of the Scriptures may well miss of that which God never bade him trust his own sense to find by the Scripture Now if it be demanded how the Law can be said to give light or wisedom to the simple being of it selfe not to be understood I will answer from the peculiar consequence of my position concerning the double sense of the Law For it becometh a Christian to believe that the Law is thus highly extolled by the Brophets whom he is obliged to take for the fore-runners of Christ not for the outward and carnal sense of it as it was the condition of holding the Land of promise and the happinesse thereof but for the inward and spirituall sense as the means whereby the Spirit of God then enlightned them to discern the true inward and spirituall righteousnesse of Christians as I said afore And what is the reason that the Psalmist sairh XXV 11. 13. What man is he that feareth the Lord Him shall he teach in the way that he shall chuse The secret of the Lord is among them that fear him and he will shew them his Covenant The Covenant of the Lord being clearly expressed to all Israelites whose Ancestors contracting it with God had undertaken to teach it their children But that there was something more in it than all that were of it understood which God teacheth by the Psalmist all that were of it that he was ready to teach them that should come with his fear in their hearts to learn it The same which our Lord tells the Jews of his time Ioh. VII 17. If any man will do the will of my Father he shall know concerning my doctrine whither it be of God or I speak from my selfe For that which our Lord Christ shews shall be expresly received and acknowledged by those who by the Law had been conducted to be willing to do what God should command in point of inward and spiritual obedience To them that stand so affected nothing remaining to be done but to shew them that Christ was come from God with instructions what he vvould henceforth have them to do that vvould be saved Novv if the Prophets Esay and Ieremy promise that under the Gospel all Christians shall be taught of God If our Lord praiseth the Father for revealing to babes the secret thereof vvhich he had concealed from the great and learned of the world If upon the same account it was not flesh and blood but the Father that had revealed to S. Peter the Christ the Son of God I demand whether we shall imagine their meaning to be that God taught them these things without showing them reason sufficient argument to believe them to be true Or having shewed them such that he taught them by inclining them to follow that which he had showed them sufficient arguments to believe If we say that he taught them immediately without showing them any sufficient reason for the truth of that which he taught them to follow we expose our common Christianity to the scorn of all unbelievers whom by consequence we can show no reason why they should become Christians unlesse God make them so before they know why Nay we can show them no reason why we deal with them to become Christians why the Gospel should be preached at all or any man suffer for preaching or professing it in order to reduce the world to it unlesse we suppose that we can show them reason so sufficient why they should be Christians that it may by Gods grace become effectual to make them no lesse But this is the reason why our Lord Christ protesteth concerning the testimonie of Iohn the Baptist which every man sees how available it was to make him receivable of those who before had admitted Iohn to be sent by God professing himselfe sent expresly to bear witnesse to our Lord Christ I say this is reason enough why he professeth neverthelesse not to receive any witnesse from man For had not God provided afore-hand that the witnesse of Iohn should he accepted for the word of God that being so accepted it might leave no doubt in them that had accepted it so considerable a party that those who refused our Lord Christ durst not provoke it as we see by the Gospels that our Lord was come from God in vain had it been for our Lord to alledge his witnesse Wherefore when he alledgeth him alleadging not him but the Father who had procured him to be accepted well truly though alledging witness of Iohn Baptist be renounced the witnesse of man but professeth to speak those things whereby they might be saved only under the witness of God Neither is it strange that the Prophets Esay and Ieremy and the Apostle S. Iohn should say that those who had been thus taught of God should need no instruction from one another because they know all things already or because they had that within them that should teach them all things I confesse if we look impertinently upon that infinity of disputes that remains in the world either about action or about knowledge if we look upon the multiplying of controversies in Religion the least of which dispute of reason decides not and therefore faction determines it may appear a very
large vvord to make good But if vve look upon the intent of those that spake it and the mater vvhich they had in hand it will appear very unreasonable to extend it to any thing else Now I suppose upon the premises that the Prophets Esay and Ieremy in the first and literal and obvious sense intend to soretell the return of the people of Israel from Captivity and the great change that should be seen in their faithfulnesse to God though figuring thereby that knowledge of God and that fidelity of Christians which the preaching of the Gospel should produce And truly I do challenge all them that are best acquainted with the state of that people from the beginning to show me any greater change in it then that which we see came to passe upon their return from the Captivity To wit that they who formerly before the Captivity had been every day falling away from their own the true God to the worship of imaginary Deities should from thenceforth continue constant to him when tempted with the greatest torments in the world to renounce him for the worship of Idols as we see by the relations of the Maccabees And is it strange then that I should say that this is the change which these Prophesies intend to declare Especially when I say not that this is all they intend because I know that the Apostles have declared them to be intended of the times of the Gospel But that this is that which they intend in the first instance which by the premises must be a figure and step to that which the Gospel intends to declare And yet in regard of the manifold Idolatries which prevailed before the Captivity it shall be most truly and significantly understood that the people of God who after the Captivity never departed from the true God shall not then teach one another to know the true God because that Law the summe of the old Law should be written in their hearts and entrails so that they should have no need to teach one another to know the true God If this be true referring this Prophene to the Gospel of which the Apostle expounds it in the mystical sense Heb. VIII 8 it will be much more evident how those that are baptized upon the profession of the Christian faith who are the new Israel according to the Spirit shall have no need to teach one another to know the true God who both know God and the way to God which is the Law of God which they bear in their hearts if their Christianity be not counterfeit So that when God promiseth to establish this new Covenant he promiseth neither more nor lesse then the conversion of the world to the Christian faith Accordingly S. John truly tells the Christians to whom he writes that they knew all things and had no need that any man should teach them because the unction that was in them taught them the truth because he doth not mean that they knew the secrets of Geometry or the mysteries of nature or whatsoever is or is done in the utmost parts of the world or any thing else impertinent to his present discourse But because they had in them a principle sufficient to condemn those errors which he writes against there to wit those that deny both the Father and the Son by denying Jesus to be the Christ which saith the Apostle is the spirit of Antichrist For surely he that hath unfainedly professed the Christian Faith upon being catechized in it hath in him a principle sufficient to preserve him from such gross infections which the Holy Ghost wherewith he is anointed upon being baptized into this profession out of a good conscience sealeth up in his heart so that such corruptions can have no access to infect it And therefore the Apostle might well call upon them to try such Spirits whither of God or not seeing that the comparing of their pretenses with that which they had once received must needs be sufficient to condemn that which is opposite to it by the judgement of any man that unfainedly adhereth to it So that S. Paul when he bids the Thessalonians try all things but hold that which is good demands no unreasonable thing at their hands if we understand those things which he would have tried to be such as are triâ—ble by the rule of faith common to all Christians Indeed the same Apostle when he writeth to the Corinthians that the spiritual man is judged by no man but himselfe judgeth all things seems to speak more generally not onely of the rule of Faith but of the secret counsel and good pleasure of God in dispensing the revelation thereof one way to the ancient Prophets another way to the Apostles both by the Spirit of God and Christ Which secret counsel those spiritual men that he speaketh of were able to interpret in the Scriptures of the Old Testament by comparing spiritual things with spiritual things That is the revelations granted under the Law with those which the Gospel had brought forth Which though the Apostles could do yet the grace of understanding the Scriptures of the Old Testament by the Holy Ghost was no more common to all Christians at that time then now that the understanding of the Scriptures is to be purchased by humane indeavours it can be common to all Christians to be Divines By all which it appeareth not that the Scriptures con in all things necessary to salvation clearly to all that want it but that Christianity affordeth sufficient means of instruction in all things necessary to the salvaâ—ion of all that learn it And those who to find this instruction turn simple plain meaning Christians to that translation of the Bible which they like to find resolution in the pretenses of the sects which can arise cannot be said either to teach them Christianity or sufficient means to learn it For he who hath not only acknowledged the substance of Christianity but grounded the hope of his salvation upon it will rather deny his own senses then admit any thing contrary to it to be the true meaning of the Scripture whatsoever be the sound of the words of it But he that onely knoweth the Scriptures to be Gods truth and believeth he hath the spirit of God to conduct him in seeking the sense of it not supposing the beliefe of Christianity to be a condition requisite to the having of Gods spirit may easily be seduced by his inbred pride to devise and set up new positions sounding like the Scriptures which the Church acknowledgeth no more then that meaning of the Old Testament which our Lord and his Apostles first declared was acknowledged by the Scribes and Pharisees And thinking he doth it by the same right as they had must needs take himselfe and his followers for our Lord and his Apostles but the Church for the Scribes and Pharisees As for that extravagant conceit of Cartwright I will once more stand amazed at it A man of so much
Earl of Arundels Library appeareth not at all that therefore the whole translation was made then when it saith this leter came Nor that if it were then made it had any relation to or dependance upon their Schism or the sacrilege of it For though Josephus sayes that Onias found Priests and Levites of his minde to serve God there and though hee sayes elsewhere that Onias did this out of contention which hee had with the Jews at Jerusalem having banished him Thinking to draw the multitude from them to the Temple which hee had built de Bello Jud. VII 37. yet these are rather arguments that the Body of the Jews at Alexandria did not submit to his premises whatsoever his credit with the King might oblige them to permit particular men to do And Josephus Ant. XIII 6. immediately after the building of this Temple telleth us of a trial between the Samaritanes and Alexandrian Jews before the same Philometor whether the Temple at Jerusalem or that on Mount Gerizim were according to Gods Law And that those Jews were so zelous in the cause that they consented what side were cast those that pleaded for it to be put to death Which accordingly was executed upon Sabbaeus and Theodosius that pleaded for the Samaritanes Now though Josephus say not that this which hee relateth presently after the building of the Temple came to passe after it in time yet it is utterly incredible that those who had showed such zeal for the Temple at Jerusalem should the next day as it were that is in the same Kings raign run into the same crime whereof they had convicted the Samaritanes Certainly when the addition to Esther saith that the leter which hee had inserted was translated into Greek by Lysimachus son of Ptolomee a Jew of Jerusalem it is no sign that there was any pretense of Schism between the Jews of Jerusalem and those of Alexandria on foot And therefore this aspersion takes away nothing from the credit of the Greek Bible I am further confirmed in this opinion by considering the writings of Philo the Alexandrian Jew though I am not moved by them to think hee was a Christian but onely to conclude that hee cannot be convinced to be no Christian Three things I allege out of him as steps which hee hath made beyond the rest of the Jews towards a Christian The first That hee hath followed the Gospels in reproving the Tradition of the Elders for which they neglected to honor their parents as the Law commandeth The Tradition was this as wee finde by him in his book 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If a man vow that his Father or Mother shall never be the better for any thing that is his it shall not be lavvfull for him to maintain them out of his goods For Korban signifies anathema And hee that said Be it Korban whatsoever thou maiest be the better for of mine In his anger to Father or Mother said in effect Be it anaâ—hema That is be hee accursed that touches it In this point then Philo follovvs the doctrine of Christ against the Tradition of their Elders The second is his exposition of Deut. XXVIII 46. The stranger that is within thee shall get above thee more and more And thou shalt come under him more more in his book 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The stranger truly lifted aloft with good success shall be gazed at as admired and counted happy for two the greatest excellences That having turned to God hee hath received the most proper reward a firm rank in heaven not lawfull to be expressed But the right born imbasing and counterfeiting the coin of his birth shall slide down till hee come to the very depth of darkness That all men seeing these examples may grow sober considering how God accepts that virtue which springs from an enemy stock bidding the root farewell but the shoot welcome that is grown to a stock because by tillage it is changed to bear good fruit For hovv vvould a Christian expound this text against the Jevv in the mystical sense but by making the Christian the stranger vvhom this text prophesieth of that hee shall have the upper hand of the Jevv as Origen more than once if my memory fail mee not out of this place of Philo hath done The third consists of those things vvhich hee hath said in so many places concerning the Word of God agreeable to those passages of the Wisedome of Solomon Ecclesiasticus and Baruch vvhich I compared afore vvith the doctrine of the Apostles concerning that Wisedom of God vvhich is his Word of vvhich you have enovv in Grotius his annotations upon those texts but much more might be produced For vvhosoever compares them together shall finde that he vvho said them vvas not far from the Christian Faith For if it be objected and said that there is no evidence that ever this Philo professed Christianity vvithout vvhich he cannot be counted a Christian It may reasonably be ansvvered that during the time vvhen the Synagogue vvas at a bay vvhether to receive Christianity or not at vvhat time it is plain they did not persecute it nothing can be said vvhy it might not be professed by any Jevv of those Synagogues vvhich stood so affected to it not onely vvithout any mark of apostasie upon him among his fellovvs but even vvith that trust vvhich vvee knovv this Philo had among the Jevvs of Alexandria being deputed by them to Caligula in business concerning their vvhole subsistence For if those vvho vvere baptized by John the Baptist vvere not thought to depart from the Lavv vvhy should those vvho vvere baptized into Christ vvhether the effect of both Baptisms vvere the same or diverse the Lavv continuing in practice long after that time I must therefore professe to allovv the opinion those that vvill have this vvork to have been done by the Jews of Alexandria of which wee know there was a very great Body from the time of the first Ptolomee who having taken up the Greek in stead of their Mother tongue necessarily required that they should have the Scriptures in it It is then agreeable to reason that this translation being made so soon after the study of the Law came in request and so farr from Jerusalem should acknowledg more difference of sense arising from the divers wayes of determining those words that are written without vowels than those that are of a later date when the reading was better determined by custome and practice Which accordingly wee see is come to pass For the translations into the Greek that were made after the time of our Lord by Aquila Symmachus and Theodotion no Christians and the Chaldee of Onkelus and Jonathan who whatsoever time they were made in are later than so though wee cannot say that they do alwaies and in all things agree either with one another or with the Ebrew Copies which wee use yet must wee needs say that there is a great deal more agreement between them visible
Christ how farre it is declared to us by the Scriptures and original Tradition of the Church Knowing neverthelesse that this being resolved the rest of the controversie concerning the holy Trinity necessarily falls to the ground of it self as having nothing whereupon to subsist when the everlasting Godhead of Christ is once maintained afore Now the ready way that I can think of to go through so great a dispute as briefly as is possible is to take in hand first the point of originall sinne in which the dispute between Pelagius and Socinus on the one side and the Church on the other side is grounded For therefore I hope it will appear the shortest way to dispatch the whole dispute because that being decided together with that which dependeth upon it as incident to it concerning the state of our Lord Christ before his coming in the flesh the rest will appear to consist either in controversies of Divines or in mistakes and disputes about words I begin with S. Paul because he it is who having laid forth the necessity of Christianity to the salvation as well of Jewes as of Gentiles in the beginning of his Epistle to the Romanes and in the fourth chapter by the Example of Abraham confirmed the same Or if you please answered the objection concerning the salvation of the Fathers before and under the Law proceeds in the fifth Chapter to lay forth both the ground upon which it is effectuall which is the death of Christ and the ground upon which it was necessary which is the sinne of Adam Thus then saith S. Paul Rom. V. 12 13 14. Therefore as by one man sinne entered into the world and death by sinne and so death passed upon all in whome all sinned For untill the Law sinne was in the world Now sinne is not imputed where there is no Law And yet death raigned from Adam until Moses even upon them that had not sinned after the likenesse of Adams transgression who is the figure of him that is to come It is said that the wordes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are to be translated in asmuch as all had sinned To signifie that Spirituall death came after Adam upon all that had sinned as Adam did inasmuch as they had sinned For as for bodily death they believe not no more then Pelagius that it was the punishment of Adams sinne but the condition of mans birth Onely the troubles the cares the sorrowes by which men come to their graves these as they acknowledge to be consequences as of Adams sinne so of all those sinnes whereby men follow and imitate Adam so they think to be meant by the sentence In the day wherein thou eatest thereof shalt thou die the death But this is no lesse then to deny the literall sense of the Scripture which the Church hath received for one of Origens errors in the interpretation of the beginning of Genesis What is it else to say That Adam was liable to bodily death by nature but to spiritual death by sinne For it is manifest by the premises that through all the Old Testament the second death is no otherwise preached then under the figure of the first death and that by virtue of the ground laid from the beginning that the Covenant of Grace which tendreth life and death everlasting was onely intimated under the Covenant of nature which the Law only received and limited to the happiness of the land of promise as to the Israelits tendring expresly only blessings and mercies of this life to the civil and outward obedience of Gods commandments And can it be imagined that in the very first tender that God made to man of life in consideration of obedience and death of disobedience this life and this death must be understood to be the second when the obedience was onely in abstaining from the forbidden fruit What was then that fruit of the tree of Life by eating whereof they might have preserved themselves from death I aske not what it signified but what it was For all reason will require admitting the premises that it signified that whereby the soul escapes spirituall death But the same reason will inforce that it must be the fruit of a tree which so long as they eat not of the tree of knowledge they were licensed to eat to preserve them from bodily death Neither is there any difficulty in that they aske How all the posterity of Adam should have come by the fruit of that tree that grew no where but in the garden of Eden For I suppose it had been as easie to have planted all parts of the world with the same tree as with the posterity of Adam had he continued in obedience Who being not driven out of Eden as upon his disobedience but sending his posterity to do that in the rest of the world which he did there had made all the world Eden by placing the Paradise of God wheresoever innocence dwelt In this case I see not why any man should take care for the tree of Life that no posterity of Adam might die No more then what should become of that innocent posterity which when it had so planted the World the counsel of God concerning the propagation of man kind may well be thought to have been come to ripenesse The Socinians indeed do alledge Josephus who speaking of the tree of life doth not say that it should have made man immortall but onely that it should have made him live to very great yeares But that is of no consequence In regard that it is not expressed in the Scripture that God would have had man live everlastingly upon the earth had he lived in obedience For supposing that it was a question among the Pharisees to which sect it appeares Josephus inclined most whether so or whether God would translate them to a heavenly life after a time of obedience here which to the Pharisees that acknowledge the resurrection and the world to come must needs seem credible enough it is no marvaile that Josephus should say That by virtue of the tree of life they had lived to a very great age though in case not translated they might as well have lived alwayes by virtue of it But let us hear S. Paul 1 Cor. XV. 21 22. For since by man came death by man also came the resurrection of the dead For as by Adam all died so by Christ shall all be made alive Is there any rising from bodily death but by Christ I say not any rising in the quality of those in whom the Spirit of Christ dwelleth of whom S. Paul saith that He who raised Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortall bodies through his Spirit dwelling in you Rom. VIII 11. But setting aside this quality it is the coming of Christ and his trump that raiseth againe even those that shall rise to judgement And can it for all this be doubted whether that life was lost by Adams fall which the rising of Christ shall
infant should go out of the World unbaptized that is it which the great solicitude of Christians that no such thing should come to passe the provision that a Lay man might baptize in case of necessity which admitted not the solemnity of ministers of the Church the grief and astonishment which followed if at any time it came to passe will inable me not onely to affirm but to inferre both the reason of originall sinne which the baptisme of Infants cureth and the authority of the Apostles which it proclaimeth It may be sayd that Pelagius himself allowed and maintained the Baptisme of Infants to bring them to the kingdom of heaven not to everlasting life But this was but to make his own cause the more desperate For had any intimation of the Scripture any Tradition or custome of the Church justified any ground of difference between the kingdome of heaven and everlasting life he might have escaped by pleading it But being disowned in it he hath left a desperate plea for those that come after him to question the Baptisme of Infants and by consequence original sinne which if he so many hundred years agoe could have found ground for he need not have stood in the list of hereticks The visible ceremonies of Baptisme which are so resolutely pleaded by his adversaries for evidence of the same are effectual to the same purpose For if it was thought requisite on behalf of infants to renounce Satan and all his Pompe and angels and instruments of this world adhering to God Iâ— it were solemn by huffing and exorcizing to use the power which God hath given his Church over unclean Spirits for the chasing of them out of Infants that were baptized Certainly those that did it were so farre from thinking that man as he is born can be capable of that good Spirit which Baptisme promiseth that they thought him to be liable to the contrary To this argument I will adde the matter of that catechizing which the ancient Church prepared those for Baptism who pretended to it as I begun to shew you in the first book for it is in a great part repeated in divers of these ancient forms of celebrating the Eucharist which are yet extant under the names of the Liturgies of Apostles and Fathers which I have named in my book of the publick service of God The ancientest of them is that which is recorded in the Constitutions of the Apostles VIII 11. But you find also there VII 40. the order of Catechizing those that are to be baptized providing that they be instructed in the mercy of God that suffered not mankind being turned from him to perish but in all ages provided meanes to recall them from sinne and error to truth and righteousnesse by the Fathers first and by the Law and Prophets afterwards untill all this proving ineffectuall he spared not at length to send his Sonne And the same is the argument of that Thanksgiving which is premised to the consecration of the Eucharist in the place quoted as also in the same work afore II. 55. and in the Liturgies to which I referre you An evidence in my opinion very considerable to shew this point to belong to the substance of Christianity as the subject mater both of that instruction which is requisite to make a man a Christiane and of both Sacraments wherein the exercise thereof consisteth In the second place I alledge such an evidence for the grace of Christ as no point of Christianity can produce better from the practice of the Church For I alledge the prayers of the Church all over and from the beginning that they have alwaies contained three things The first is of thanksgivings for our Christianity that is for the coming of Christ the preaching of his Gospel and the effect thereof in converting us to be Christians The second of prayers that we may be able to persevere in that to which we are so converted and to perform what we undertake by professing our selves Christians notwithstanding the temptations of our ghostly enemies to depart from it The third and last in that these thanks and prayers are tendered to God in Christ for his sake signifying the acknowledgment of his grace in bringing us to be Christians and the expectation of those helps by which we must persevere from the consideration of his merits and suffering For as for Prayers and thanksgivings in generall it cannot be said that the offering of them can argue either the decay of our nature or the repairing of the same by Christ because those that acknowledge not Christ Jews and Mahumetans must and do use them if they pretend Religion and the service of God yea even Pagans according to their sense But to pray and give thanks to God to make men or because he hath made men Christians or for the helps of salvation which by being Christians that iâ— by Christ we attaine to as by him we attaine to be Christians must needs appear utterly groundlesse unlesse we suppose that there was no other way left for our salvation which cannot be understood by any meanes but by the fall of Adam and the consequences thereof to come to passe In the last place I alledge the decrees of the whole Church against Pelagius together with the consent of those parts of the Church which otherwise cannot be understood to be concluded by those decrees For it is manifest there was no decree of the whole Church against Pelagius as against Arius The Councils of Carthage and of Numidia that of Palestine and in aftertimes that of Orange being but particular Councils not containing the consent of the whole But this consideration in another regard turns to the advantage of the Churches cause For when those parts of the Church which are not obliged by the decrees do voluntarily and freely joyne in giving effect to them as it is manifest they did at that time by the concurrence of the Bishops of Constantinople and Alexandria and the great Council of Ephesus in Vossius Hist Pel. I. 38 39 47. and do since by owning the acts done against them there can be no pretense of faction to sway them to go along with those whom they are loth to offend but all must be imputed to the sense of that Christianity which hitherto they found themselves perswaded of and therefore agreed not to admit to their Communion those who acknowledged it not which is the effect of all such decrees of the Church In the mean time I forget not the records of the Church in writing that is the testimonies of those writers who going before Pelagius and giving testimonie against him cannot be thought to joyne in faction to oppresse any truth which he preached And upon this evidence I challenge both the belief of originall sinne to be necessary to the acknowledgement of the grace of Christ which Christianity professeth and also that the grace of Christ is that which inables us to begin continue and finish the good
work of our Christianity and therefore to every part of it and by consequence that this grace is not given us in consideration of any thing that we are able to do towards the obliging of God to bestow it upon us But I will not take upon me to inflame this abridgment with rehearsal of the testimonies of Church Writers that went afore Pelagius in both these points The testimonies of Fathers that went afore him which S. Augustine hath produced are enough to put those to silence which would have originall sin to be a devise of his But Vossius in his History of the Pelagians having comprised as well these as the rest concerning originall sin libro 11. parte 1. Thes VI. and those which concern the necessity of Grace libro III. parte I. Thes I. II. it will not be to the purpose to do any part of that which hath been sufficiently done already over again To me indeed it seems very considerable that Pelagius acknowledging for Grace first free Will and the Law which teacheth the difference between good and bad after that for the Grace of Christ his doctrine and example first then the illumination of the mind by the Holy Ghost Yet alwaies maintained that man without the help of Grace is able to love God above all to keep his Commandments and resist the greatest temptations to the contrary And in all these points was condemned by the Church as you may see there libro III. parte II. Thes I-VIII For certainly there is a vast difference between the doctrine of Gods Laws absolutely necessary to the doing of his Will even for Adam in the state of innocency and the preaching of the Gospell convincing mankind that they are under Gods wrath by sin tendering pardon to them that imbrace it assuring of everlasting life or death according as they observe the profession of it and shewing the way by our Lords example All which the Scriptures ascribe to the coming of Christ as granted in consideration of it How much more when he granteth the illumination of the Holy Ghost to shew what is to be done must he needs transgress his own position which saith that there is no difference between that state in which we are born and that which Adam was made saving his example but the difference between a man and a Babe For were we born as Adam was made what needed Christ to have purchased by his death the gift of the Holy Ghost to enlighten us inwardly in doing that which without it man is born able to do And having granted the reasons and motives upon which Christians act as Christians to be shewed them both outwardly and inwardly by the Grace of Christ to deny the necessity of the sayd Grace to the acts which proceed from the same can have no excuse but one that Christ came only to evidence the truth of his message leaving the embracing or rejecting of it to every mans choyce Which to maintain if Socinus was fain to make our Lord Christ a meer man that there might be no more in his rising after death then a miracle to assure it Pelagius acknwledging the Trinity will be streightned by S. Pauls consequence If righteousnesse come by the Law then is Christ dead in vain supposing the death of Christ to bring that help of Grace which a miracle by evidencing the truth of the Gospel doth not And seeing God could not be moved by any thing that man could do to give our Lord Christ and the helps which his coming bringeth with it there will be no more left for Pelagius to say But that these helps are not granted of Grace but received by the works which men prevent it with The foundation therefore of the Christian Faith consisting in Gods-sending our Lord Christ of his pure free grace by vertue whereof all the effects of it are works of the same Grace Necessary it was that Pelagius should be condemned for the denying of the necessity of Grace to all acts of Christianity and for affirming that Grace is given according to mans merits as you see there Thesi IX XI that he was Both upon the doctrine of S. Paul premised afore that God was not moved by the works either of Jews or Gentiles to send them those helpes to salvation which the Gospel tendreth Nevertheless the preaching of the Gospel and all the help which it bringeth toward the imbracing of it is no less the Grace of Christ because Pelagius was forced for the better colouring of his Heresie to acknowledge it Onely it is not therefore to be sayd that it is all the help which the Grace of God by Christ furnisheth toward that salvation which Christianity tendreth But to be left to further dispute what further help is granted by God before and without any consideration of mans merit to bring to effect those acts in which the discharge of our Christianity consisteth Excluding therefore the pretense of Pelagius that Moses before the godly Fathers pleased God by the meer strength of nature and that salvation was to be had under the Law by the same Besides the good works of the Gentiles wherewith God was pleased according to Pelagius whom the Church condemned in this Article also as you may see there Thes X. And truly Pelagius acknowledging the Gospel to be no more then the declaration of that Will of God by which man is to be saved after Christ as the Law before Christ utterly overthroweth the plea of the Church derived from the Apostles that the Fathers were saved by faith before and under the Law that the New Testament was in force under the Old by vertue of that commerce which God by his word which afterwards being incarnate was our Lord Christ held with the Fathers His Spirit as naturally planted in the word going along to procure the efficacy of it Whereas Socinus though he acknowledgeth the difference between the literal and mystical sense of the Law yet making our Lord Christ a meer man the vertue of whose death could not extend to the salvation of those who lived afore his coming destroyeth the ground of that which he acknowledgeth This supposition that Christianity is more ancient then Judaâ—sme being necessary to the maintaining of the Church against the Synago ue Which is verified by Gods designing of a Church for the spouse of his Sonne before the Fall figured by the marriage between Adam and Eve according to S. Paul Ephes V. 22-33 But presently after the Fall that Word which being incarnate in our Lord Christ having declared enmity betwen the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent saying It shall break thy head and thou shalt bruise the heel of it The first Adam became the figure of the second according to the same S. Paul Rom. V. 14. Whereupon the Spirit of the second Adam in those Preachers of righteousnesse to whom the Word of God came in that Angel whom the Fathers worshipped for God strove form
Catechising which the Church tendered those who stood for Baptisme the subject of that Thanksgiving which the Eucharist was consecrated with do more effectually evidence the common sense of Christians in the mater of our common Christianity then the sayings of divines being solicitous so to maintaine the grace of God that the free will of man which the interest of our common Christianity equally obligeth us justly to maintaine may suffer no prejudice How much more when it is to be justified that those sayings of divines expounded by other sayings of their owne and principles evidently acknowledged by themselves can create no other sense then the necessity of preventing grace might the Church be able and obliged to proceed to those decrees Though as for the persons whom we do not find involved in any further censure then the mark set upon their writings by the See of Rome as there is cause to think that respect was had to them because their principles did not really ingage them in any contradiction to the faith of the Church So is there cause to think that being better informed in it by the treaty of that Council they surceased for the future all opposition to the decrees of it For the evidence of that which hath been said in the point of fact I remit the reader to my author so oft named with these considerations pointing out the consequence of each particular His ingenuity learning and diligence is such that I have neither found my self obliged to quarrel at any thing that he hath delivered in point of historicall truth nor to seek for more then he hath laid forth And by that which hath been said we presume not that the preaching of the Gospel is not the grace of Christ which Pelagius acknowledged necessary to salvation but that the determination of the will to imbrace that grace which the grace of the gospel tendereth is not effected by the will alone without those helps of grace which are granted in consideration of Christ though depending upon the preaching of the Gospel and the reasons and motives which it tendereth to imbrace it Here then you see I might have made a great book to set forâ—h those things which are commonly alledged by those that write of the great dispute between grace and free will now on foot to show what the Church insisted upon and what reasons it did proceed upon against Pelagius But because there is no question made of all this by those that deny the consequences of it it shall serve my turne to have pointed out the reasons of those consequences and now to take notice of this great dispute which is come in my way so crosse that it is not possible for me to voide the difficulties which I have undertaken concerning the Covenant of Grace without voiding of it For having first shewed that the condition which the Covenant of Grace requires on our part consists in an act of mans free will to imbrace and persevere in Christianity till death And now that man is not able to perform this condition without the help of Gods grace by Christ The question is at the height how the act of free will depends upon Gods free grace and a man becomes intitled to the promise for doing that which without the help of Gods grace he cannot do And this the greater because if the help of grace determine the free will of them that imbrace and persevere in Christianity so to do then it seems the sinne and damnation of those that do not so is to be imputed to the want of those helps and Gods appointment of not giving them to those that have them not CHAP. XX. Wherein Originall sinne consisteth What opinions are on foot That it is not Adams sinne imputed to his posterity Whether man were at the first created to a supernaturall end or not An estate of meer nature but innocent possible Originall sinne is Concupiscence How Baptisme voids it Concerning the late novelty in the Church of England about Originall sinne THIS inquiry must begin with the question about originall sinne wherein it consists because thereupon depends the question of the effect and consequence thereof which is to say what is the estate wherein the Gospel of Christ overtakes the naturall man For it is well enough known that there is a question yet on foot in the Church Whether Originall sinne do consist in Concupiscence or in the want of Originall righteousnesse which having been planted in our first parents their posterity ought to have And whosoever thinks there can be little difficulty in this dispute little considers the difficulty that S. Augustine found in satisfying the Pelagians how Concupiscence can be taken away by Baptisme which all Christians find to remaine in the regenerate Seeing there can be no question made that Originall sin is taken away by Baptisme Christianity pretending to take away all sinne and Baptisme being the solemn execution of Christianity that is the solemn profession of the Christian faith This is evidently the onely difficulty that driveth so many of the Schoole Doctors to have recourse not onely to S. Anselms devise of the want of originall righteousnesse but to another more extravagant speculation of a state of pure nature which God might have created man in had he not thought more fit of his goodnesse to create him in a state of supernaturall grace that is to say indowed with those gifts and graces that might inable him to attaine that happinesse of the world to come which is now promised to Christians This state of pure nature they hold to be liable to concupiscence as the product by consequence of the principles of mans nature compounded of a materiall and spirituall a mortall and immortall substance and originally inclined the one to the sensual good of the body the other to the spiritual good of the soul here which the eternal good of it is consequent to in the world to come The nature of man liable to this condition they say was prevented by supernaturall grace as a bridle to rule and moderate the inclination of nature not to come into effect so long as so over-ruled But so that this grace being forfeited by the rebellion of Adam consequently it came into effect without more adoe and that by consequence originall sinne cannot consist in this opposition between the inclinations to sensuall and spirituall good which man hath but in the want of that grace from whence it proceedeth This controversie Doctor Field in his learned work of the Church counteth to be of such consequence that he maintaineth all the difference which the Reformation hath with the Churche of Rome about Justification free will the merit of good works and the fulfilling of the Law and the like to be grounded upon it so that there can be no cause of difference supposing it to be set aside His reason is because the opinion of Justification by inherent righteousnesse supposes that the reluctation of our sensuall
produceth the other freedome from bondage either to sin or righteousnesse Not that this state of proficience requires actual indifference which supposeth so great an inclination biasse as that of inbred concupiscence Not determining the will to any action or object but the acts thereof to those taints which the want of a due end right reason and therefore of just measure in a mans desire necessarily inferreth But because in passing from the bondage of sin to the love of righteousnesse it is necessary that a man go through an instance of indifference wherein his resolution shall balance betweene the love of true good and that which is counterfeit It is therefore to be acknowledged that in the state of innocence there had needed no other helpe then the knowledge of Gods will to inable men to performe whatsoever he should require Of the spheare of nature supposing Adam instituted and called onely to the uprightnesse and happinesse of this life or supernaturall supposing him instituted and called to the world to come For where no immoderate inclination of the sensuall appetite created any difficulty what should hinder the prosecution of a reason so unquestionable as the will of God is But is not therefore the knowledge of Gods will revealed by the gospell under reasons convincing man of his obligation to doe it upon the account of his utter misery or perfect happinesse the grace of Christ Knowing by the scriptures alleged before that the means of it are purchased by his crosse that where the reason is so convinced there cannot want motives sufficient to incline the will to make choice Not that I think those reasons not being necessary but onely sufficient would take place were they not managed by Gods spirit Whether for the dificulty of supernatural actions or for the contrary biasse of inbred concupiscence But because in the nature of a sufficient helpe they do actually inable a man to make choice though in regard of the difficulties which contrary inclinations create is is most certaine they would prove addle and void of effect were they not conducted by the grace of God which is called effectuall for the event of it Not that the nature of those helps which prevaile is any other then the nature of those which overcome not which I may well affirme if Jansenius though to the prejudice of his opinion can not deny it but because they are by the worke of providence presented in severall circumstances to severall dispositions and inclinations whether of Gods mere will and pleasure as he is Lord of all things or upon reason of reward or punishment in maters wherein he hath declared himself by the Covenant of Grace So that the same reasons and motives which in some prove void and frustrate coming to effect and reaching and attaining to the very doing of the work which they inable a man to doe it cannot â—e said according to this position of mine that God by the grace of Christ onely inableth to do what he requireth the will of man making the difference between him that doth it and him that doth it not but the very act as well as the ability of doing is duely ascribed to the worke of Gods Grace according to the articles agreed by the Church against Pelagius And this not onely under the Gospell but even under the Law For though I showed you in the first book that the law expressely tenders onely the promise of temporall happinesse in holding the land of Canaan for the reward of the outward and carnall observations thereof Yet I showed you also that in the meane time there was an other traffick in driving under hand between God and his people for the happinesse of the world to come upon their obedience to his Law for such reasons and to such an end and with such measures as he requireth Therefore The Law is spirituall according to S. Paul Rom VII 14. and a grace according to S. Iohn I. 16 17. When he saith Of his fulnesse wee have all received and grace for grace For the Law was given by Moses but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ The grace of the Gospell instead of the grace of the Law And S. Paul againe speaketh of the things which are granted us by the Gospell not in wâ—rds taught by mans wisdome but by the Holy Ghost comparing spirituall things with spirituall things 1. Cor. II. 13. Signifying that he taught the Gospell out of the Law comparing the spirituall things of the Gospell as signified by the Law to the same spirituall things as revealed by Christ And againe when he saith Rom. I. 17. The righteousnesse of God is revealed in the Gospell from faith to faith His meaning is proceeding to the faith of Christ from that which was under the Law True iâ— is indeed and I acknowledge that this spirituall sense of the Law was not to be discovered in the Law nor was discovered under it without the revelation of Gods spirit that placed it there to his friends the Prophets and by them to their disciples and followers But the office of those Prophets being to call the people to the spirituall service of God obedience to his Law out of love which was the intent for which his spirit strove with them as with those before the floud Gen. VI. 2. Whereupon Noe is called the preacher of righteousnesse 2. Peter II. 5. it followes of necessity that there was meanes for them to learne to practice true righteousnesse seeing they are charged for resisting the spirit of God calling them to it S Steven in the seventh of the Acts insisteth not in convincing the Jewes of the truth of Christianity supposing it done by that which had passed but inferrs by all that long speech clearely this That as the Israelite refused Moses for a judge between him and the Israelite whom he wronged as the people were rebellious to him in the wildernesse and turned back in their hearts to Egypt so were they to the prophet whom Moses had foretold concluding therefore Ye stifnecked and uncircumcised in hearts and eares ye doe alwaies resisty the Holy Ghost as your fathers so you also Which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute Killing those that foretold of the coming of that righteous one of whom you are now become the traytors and murtherers And our Lord when he telleth them that by honouring the memories of the Prophets and persecuting the Prophets and wise and Scribes Apostles whom he was sending them they owned themselves heires of them that killed the Prophets Mat. XXIII 29 37. showeth that the case was the same with the Prophets of old as with himselfe and his Apostles And whatsoever we read in the old Testament of the grace of God to that people in granting them his spirit or of their ungraciousnesse in resisting the same serves to prove the same purpose It is truly said indeed in rendring the reason why our Lord Christ came not till towards
counted the Sacrifice of Christ crucified mystically and as in a Sacrament represented to feasted upon by his people The Apostle saith that Christ is gone into no holy place made with hands figurative of the true but into heaven it self to be presented before God for us Nor to offer himself many times as the High Priest goes once a year into the Holy places with that bloud which is not his own For then must hee many times have suffered since the foundation of the world But now once in the end of times is hee manifested by the sacrifice of himself to the voiding of sin And as it is appointed for men once to dye and after that judgment So Christ once offered to take away the sins of many shall appear the second time without sin to those that look for him to salvation Ebr. IX 24-28 But have I said any thing to cause any man to imagine that I suppose Christ to be crucified again as often as the Eucharist is celebrated Do I say those that celebrate it are those Jewes that crucified him once Or do I or can I imagine them to be Jewes at all that would have the sacrifice of our Lord Christ upon the Crosse repeated again and again as legal sacrifices are Certainly I will speak freely neither can they that hold Transubstantion be truly said to stand obliged to any such consequence so long as they acknowledg with all Christians that the Covenant of Grace is for once settled by the one Sacrifice of our Lord upon the Crosse Why because though they believe the natural flesh and bloud of Christ as crucified to be there yet not naturally but sacramentally that is in their sense under the accidents of bread and wine which is indeed and in the sense of the Church under the species or kinds which difference is so great an abatement of that common and usual sense in which all Christians understand that Christ was sacrificed upon the Crosse that all that know it to be their profession which all must know that will not speak of they know not what must acknowledg that the repeating of the Sacrifice of Christ crucified by the Eucharist is not the repeating of that Sacrifice by which mankinde was redeemed otherwise than as a Sacrament is said to be that whereof it is a Sacrament What ground and advantage this gives mee and any man of my opinion to argue from those things which themselves acknowledg that there is no cause why they should insist upon the abolishing of the substance of the Elements in the Eucharist I leave to them that shall think fit to consider the premises to judg But for mee who demand no more than this That in as much as the body and bloud of Christ is in the Eucharist in so much it is the Sacrifice of Christ upon the Crosse I cannot foresee what occasion slander can have to pick any such consequence out of my sayings Certainly the Sacrifices of the Old Law ceased not to be Sacrifices because they were figures and Prophesies of that one Sacrifice upon the Crosse which mankinde was redeemed with And why should the commemoration and representation in that sense of this word repraesentation which I determined afore of that one Sacrifice of Christ upon the Crosse which mankinde was redeemed with be lesse properly a Sacrifice in dependance upon denomination from that one which the name of Sacrifice upon the Crosse was first used to signifie For all conceit of legal Sacrifice is quite shut out by supposing that Sacrifice past which the Sacrifice of the Eucharist represents and commemorates Whereas all Sacrifices of the Old Law are essentially at least to Christians figurative of the Sacrifice of Christ to come Indeed by that which I have said concerning the nature of a Sacrifice in the Eucharist as it is intended for Christians to feast upon it is evident that this commeâ—orative and representative Sacrifice is of the nature and kinde of Peace-Offerings which by the Law those that offered were to feast upon I will take the Cup of salvation and call upon the Name of the Lord. I will pay my vowes now in the presence of all his people Right dear in the sight of the Lord is the death of his Saints saith the Psalm CXVI 12 13. And that in answer to the question made What reward shall I give unto the Lord for all the benefits that hee hath done unto mee At feasting upon the parts or remains of Peace-Offerings the Master of the Sacrifice began the Cup of Thanksgiving for deliverance received in consideration whereof hee payes his vowes And the Sacrifices which hee payes are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Sacrifice of Thanks-giving for deliverance received Is not this the â—ame that Christians do in celebrating the Euâ—harist setting aside the difference between Jews and Christians Wherefore I have showed that it is celebrated and is to be celebrated with commemoration of and thanksgiving for the benefits of God especially that of Christ crucified Which thankâ—giving as it tends to the consecrating thereof so in as much as the consecration tends to the receiving of it another thanksgiving at the receiving of it becomes also due as at feasting upon Peace-Offerings And hereupon I have showed that it is called by the Apostle the sacrifice of Praise the fruit of our lips giving thanks to God And that hâ—ving showed that Jewes have no right to it as a Propitiatory Sacrifice that is not to it because not to the Propitiatory Sacrifice which it representeth But therefore that Christiâ—ns have right to feast upon it as the Jews upon their Peace-Offerings But if it be true as I have showed that the celebrâ—tion of the Eucharist is the renewing of the Covenant of Grace which supposeth propitâ—ation made for the sins of mankinde by that one sacrifice which it commemorâ—teth and representeth the celebration thereof being commanded as a condition to be performed on our part to qualifie us for the promise which it tendreth to those that are qualified as it requireth Shall it be a breaâ—h upon Christianity to say also that it is such a Sacrifice whereby wee make God propitious to us and obtain at his hands the blessings of Grace which the Covenant of Grace tendreth This indeed requireth yet further consideration for what reasons the Sacrament of the Eucharist may be accounted and called a Sacrifice that wee may be able to judge in what sense and for what reason it may be accounted Propitiatory and Impetratory without prejudice to Christianity First then let it be remembred that by the institution and ordinance of God those that dedicate themselves to the service of God in the faith of Christ by Baptism are to dedicate their goods to the maintenance of the Communion of the Church in the said service the chief Office whereof is the celebration of the Eucharist proper to Christianity as I showed a little afore Then be it observed that there were two
with virgines and once maried people And shall thy sacrifice freely ascend And among other affections of a good minde wilt thou desire chastity for thee and thy wife I dispute not here how lawfull it is to pray for the dead which Tertullian touches again de Monogamiâ X. de Animâ LVIII This Tertullian supposes that if a Christian have two wives hee must offer that the Eucharist may be celebrated and that at the celebrating of it the Priest may pray for those whom hee mentions as the occasion of celebrating it The birth-dayes of Martyrs that is the Anniversaries of their sufferings was another occasion of celebrating the Eucharist as in Tertullian so in S. Cyprian Epist XXXIV Sacrificium pro eis semper ut meminiâ—â—is offerimus quoties Martyrum passiones dies annuâ commemoratione celebâ—an us Wee alwaies offer sacrifice for them as you remember when wee celebrate the yearly commemoration of the Martyrs suffering dayes Therefore where the â—ame S. Cyprian forbids offering the names of those that had fallen away in persecution and offering for them Epist IX XI hee forbids the receiving of their offerings and by consequence praying for them at the Eucharist Epiphanius Haer. XXX speaking of the Patriarch of the Jewes baptized in private 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The said Patriarâ—â—â—aâ—inâ—â—â— his hand a very considerable summ of gold streâ—ched out his hand and gave it to â—â—e Bishop saying Offer for mee S. Cyril of Jerusalem Catech. Mystag V. Eâ—roe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Then that spiritual sacrifice that unbloudy service being done consecrâ—tâ—â— over that propitiatory sacrifice wee beseech God for the common peace of the Churches for the State of the world for the Kings their armies and allies for the sick c. adding that praying for the departed wee offer to God Christ cruciâ—â—ed â—or our sins to render him propitious to them and to us Of which effect in due place the intent hereby appears For here as hee calls it a Sacrifice upon the Consecration so hee plainly sets down wherein the propitiation which it effecteth consists according to the Catholick Church For to say truth to the purpose in hand I can produce nothing like that which I have said already in my Book of the Service of God at the Assemblies of the Church to which I remit you for the rest pag. 370-382 that in all the Liturgies there is a place where mention is to be made of all States of the Church for whom the Oblations out of which the Eucharist is consecrated are offered And likewise a place where the Eucharist being consecrated prayer is made in behalf of all States in the Church that is to say the Sacrifice of Christ his Crosse there present is offered up to move God to grant them all that is desired by the regular and continual prayers of the Church And among them there is a special place for those that offer at present If any man be moved to imagine that any part hereof is prejudicial to that Reformation which the Church of England professeth for I professe from the beginning not to be sâ—rupulous of offending those that offend it I remit him to that learned Appendix of Dr Field to his third book of the Church the purpose whereof in answer to the question where the Reformed Church was before Luther is to show that in this point as in others there handled the sense of the whole Church of Christ even to the time of Luther and to the Council of Trent was no other than that which the Church of England embraceth and cherisheth Thereby to show that the Reformation thereof never pretended to found a new Church but to preserve that which was by taking away those corruptions which time and the enemies of Christianity had sown in the Lawes and customs of it Which hee doth so evidently perform in this point that I must needs challenge any man that hath a minde to blast any thing here said with the staâ—e calumny of Popery to consider first Whether hee can prove those things which the Authors past exception there quoted declare to be the sense of the Catholick Church at that time to contain any thing prejudicial to the Gospel of Christ and that purity thereof which the Reformation pretendeth And because I know hee cannot do it I rest secure of all blasphemies or slanders that can be forged upon this occasion Openly professing that those who will not acknowledg that condition of the Gospel and the promises thereof which I have demonstrated to be essential to Christianity it is for their interest to defame the sense of the Catholick Church with the slanderous aspersions of Popery that so they might seduce miserable creatures to believe that there is a faith which inâ—itles them to the promises of the Gospel not supposing them converted to the Christianity which it rendereth For seeing that propitiation which the Sacrifice of the Eucharist pretendeth is grounded upon this condition of the Covenant of Grace as I have showed it is no mervail if they who pretend to reconcile the promises of the Gospel to the lusts of the flesh by which this world is injoyed indeavor to slander the purity of Christianity with those aspersions which they have seduced wretched people to count odious In fine it is not that consideration of a Sacrifice in the Sacrament of the Eucharist which the sense and practice of the Catholick Church inforceth but the violent interpretations of it which are made on both sides to both extremities that can give the leass pretense for division in the Church For while on the one side the sacrificing of Christ a new is so construed as if to doubt of the virtue of it in behalf of all that assist in it whether they communicate in it or not whether their devotions concurr to it or not were to doubt of the virtue of Christs Crosse it is no mervail if this create so great offense that the receiving of the Eucharist nay the assisting of it with the devotions of Christian people comes to be a mater of indifference On the other side while the renewing of the Sacrifice of Christ upon the Crosse by that representation thereof which the Eucharist tendreth for the redressing of the Covenant of Grace between God and those which receive is construed as prejudicial to that one Sacrifice whereby our Lord for ever hath perfected those whom hee sanctifieth no mervail if the very celebrating of it come to be a mater of indifference the effect whereof by believing that a man is predestinate or justified is had before and without it The mater of the Sacrifice then being so great a subject for the diviâ—ion upon so litle cause it is time for good Christians to awake and look about them and see that the lesse cause there is the greater good will the parties have to continue at distance In the mean time it is the common interest of Christianity even the means of their salvation by the
VII 47-50 He showeth plainly that the vulgar conceit of the Jewes came farre short of the doctrine of the Prophets in this point and that this was then a great hinderance to the Jewes Christianity which vulgarly publisheth that which onely the worshippers of God in Spirit and truth understood under the Law As Barnabas also in that Epistle which the ancientest of the Fathers have acknowledged and is lately set forth declareth Now for the text of the Judges concerning that which the Jewes call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the Idol of Micah Is it to be considered that there may be and are two opinions concerning the true sense and intent of the second commandment where it saith Thou shalt not make to thy self any 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or carved image the likenesse of any thing For the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the originall of it signifying all carved work it may be thought that God intends by these words to prohibite all use of carved work among his people Not as if the making of a carved image were idolatry but to avoid the occasions of idolatry which as I have said that art though it introduced not yet it increased And therefore it followeth For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God For jealousie forbids as well the meanes of adultery as adultery But if we suppose the signification of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 extended by use beyond the original of it it may import onely such statues as are made to represent a godhead imagined afore And then the letter of the precept forbids no more then to make any carved work for the image of God According to the first sense the making of the Cherubims over the Ark falls within the precept And is to be taken for a dispensation of the Lawgiver in the matter of a positive precept which his own act onely rendered unlawfull But according to the later being not included in the matter of the precept there needs no exception to render it lawfull The same is to be said of the brazen serpent Whether of these opinions is true I need not here dispute Onely as I began to say afore I say further that during the time that high places were licensed it can be no inconvenience to grant that there was the like furniture provided for the service of God there to that which was prescribed in the Tabernacle For upon what ground that People thought it commanded by God there in which there could be no just occasion of idolatry upon the like ground and to the like purpose it might be taken up in the high places Though that reason which had moved God to prohibit high places after the place of his worship should be setled Levit. XVII 5. 7. might alwayes indanger them to go astray as the story of Gideon showes For though so long as they understood the ground upon which and the intent to which they were used they remained secure yet forgetting it by the deceitfullnesse of error they were subject to be seduced The fact of Micah then hath two of these handles which Epictetus his manuall mentions It may be taken as if he meant onely to make an high place for the service of the onely true God according to the Law the carved work which he furnished it with being onely in stead of the furniture of the Tabernacle Which is the case of Gideon as I stated it afore For when the Prophet Osee threatens the ten tribes that they shall dwell a long time without Ephod or Teraphim He does not mean it for a punishment that they should be restrained of the idolatry which they practised to the Calves But he signifieth that the Cherubim of the Temple where they ought to have served God and where it would be the blessing of that promise which the Law tendereth to serve God have the name of Teraphim common to them with the Calves Though those the objects of idolatry these the instruments of Gods service For on the other side the fact of Micah may be so taken as if he intended to set up a carved image of an imaginary Godhead to be worshipped for the onely true God And this intent seems to me the more probable of the two For there stands upon it the mark of a thing done against Gods Law Judg. XVII 6. In that day there was no king in Israel every man did what seemed right in his own eyes Which of the case of Gideon originally could not have been said And besides That Micah could not have any of the Tribe of Levi to minister in this high place but was faine to take his sonne in the mean time till he lighted upon a wandering Levite whose necessity might debauch him to any imployment This also seems an argument that his house of gods which he furnished with Ephod and Teraphim Judg. XVII 5. was erected to false gods For that his mother had consecrated her money to the incommunicable name of God v. 2. is easily answered by the same that hath been said to the cases of Aaron and Jeroboam But my opinion remaines never a whit prejudiced though these arguments seem insufficient and though it be said that the worship of the true God was that which Micah hereby intended For still the same alternative will have recourse which takes place in Jeroboams case Either his intent was the service of the true God and then though we suppose that he sinned against the precept of the Law Levit. XVII 5. yet he sinned not the sinne of idolatry Or his intent was the service of some imaginary Godhead and then he committed idolatry according to my opinion notwitststanding that he used the name of the onely true God in the businesse As for that which is objected that according to this opinion there would be no sufficient reason for that difference which the Scripture maketh between the sinne of Jeroboam which made Israel to sinne and the idolatries of Ahab and of the house of Omri and those wherein Manasses followed the Amorites How much he is deceived that thus reasons may easily appear to him that compares those murders those uncleannesses those horrible vilanies which the devil had seduced the Gentiles to under the pretense of Gods worship and for the discharge of that obligation which the sense of Religion binds all men with That compares these I say with the service of a false God but otherwise according to the same rites and ceremonies which the Law commands the true God to be served with Nor shall I need to say any thing to that which remaines either what interest Jeroboam could have to cary the people to the worship of any other then the true God who was to count his turn served if they went not up to Jerusalem Or how either he or they who conformed to his command could by onely so doing blot out of their mindes that opinion of the true God which they had suckt in with their milke and
his Temple and there were lightnings and thunders and flashes and earthquakes and great haile For if opened then then shut afore neither was the Throne seen which the arke of the Covenant signifyeth And Apoc. XIV 17 18. One Angel comes out of the Temple in Heaven with a sharpe sickle another out of the Court where all this appeares hitherto called there 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the Sanctuary as also Apoc. XI 2. in opposition to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Temple out of which came the seven Angels with the seven viols Apoc. XV. 5. so also XIV 1 17. And you shall see by all this what reason wee have to thinke that those who are described before Gods Throne by this vision are not admitted to see his face And therefore if to know God as we are knowne in S. Paul to see him as he is in S. Iohn be our happinesse there is nothing to show us that it is accomplished before the generall judgement For if S. Iohn when he sayeth we shall know him as he is speakes of the resurrection the same wee must needs think is meant by S. Paul when he sayes we shall see him face to face know him as we are known for S. Paul not expressing whether he speak of the resurrection or of the meane time betweene death and it must needs be limited by S. Iohn speaking of the time when our Lord shall be manifested or when it shall be manifested what wee shal be And therefore though Moses spake with God mouth to mouth though he see him by sight not in a riddle yet is this but the highest degree of propheticall vision which notwithstanding no man shall see Gods face and live and therefore Moses himselfe sees but his back Exod. XXXIII 20-23 And notwithstanding that the Martyrs are before Gods Throne in the third Heaven yet for all this they are but in the inward Court and the Holy of Holies appeared not open to S Iohn but upon occasion of judgements the execution whereof comes from thence where the sentence must be understood to passe So that to knowe God as he is knowne according to S. Paul and to see him as he is according to S. Iohn is that which is reserved for them that shall feast after the resurrection in his presence For seeing S. Iohn sees the Throne of God in vision of Prophesy which the same vision describeth the Martyrs soules in heaven to see It cannot be concluded that the Martyres soules doe see God as he is and know him as they are knowne because they are before Gods Throne or because they see him sitting upon it For Moses also communed with God mouth to mouth that upon his Throne in the Holy of Holies the Arke of the Covenant overshadowed by the Cherubines unto whom God said neverthelesse no man shall see my face and live The Apostle indeed to the Ebrewes XII 23. when he sayes We are come to the assembly and Church of the first borne registred in the heavens and to God the judge of all and to the spirits of just men made perfect seemes to speak of this meane time For though some would have those sprits of just men made perfect to be the soules of living Christians as when S. Peter saith 1. Peter IV. 19. 20. that our Lord Christ being put to death in the flesh was made alive by the spirit in which departing he preached to the spirits in prison Which is necessarily to be understood of the Gentiles whom the spirit of God in the Apostles won to repentance though the same spirit in Noe could not effect it as it followes yet it seemes more consequent to the rest of the text to understand it here of the souls of Christians made perfect upon their departure hence But if just men made perfect may be understood to signifie no more then Christians because our Lord distinguishing that righteousnesse which the Gospel requireth from that which the Law was content with concludes Be yee therefore perfect as your heavenly father is perfect Mat. VI. 48. Certainely the perfection of Christian soules in the meane time between death and the resurrection cannot be concluded to be such as nothing shall be added to because it is said that they are made perfect The same we have from the Apostle 1 John IV. 17. Herein is love perfected in us that we have confidence in the day of Judgement because as he is so are wee in this world For I beseech you how can there be any thing added to his confidence at the day of judgement who hath received his full reward from the day of his death But Saint Paul 2 Thessalonians I. 6-9 Seing it is just with God to render tribulation to them who afflict you and to you that are afflicted rest with us at the revealing of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his Angels in flaming fire rendering vengeance to them who know not God Who shall indure the punishment of everlasting destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his strength when he cometh to be glorified among his Saints at that day Where you see he referreth as well the rest of them who are afflicted as the punishment of everlasting destruction from before the Lord to the last day of the generall judgment when he cometh to be admired among his Saints Who shall then be as well glorified Christians as the Angels and that in heaven according to the spirituall sense of the Old Testament as upon earth according to the literall sense the Prophet Esay saith that after the destruction of Senacherib The Lord of hosts shall raigne in mount Sion and Jerusalem and be glorified in the sight of his Elders Esay XXIV 23. Here then all those scriptures which referre the torments provided for the devil and his angels unto the generall judgement come in to bear witnesse in the same cause For therefore the words of the sentence bear Go ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels Mat. XXV 41. to wit against that time And S. Paul 1 Cor. VI. 2. know ye not that we shall judge the angels to wit the evil angels And the possessed to our Lord Mat. VIII 29. Art thou come to torment us before the time And the Apostle 2 Pet. II. 4. For if God spared not the angels having sinned but delivered them to be kept for judgement in the dungeon with chaines of darknesse And S. Jude 6. And the angels that kept not their originall but left their own habitation he keeps in everlasting chaines under darknesse to the judgement of the great day For though there can be no reason why the devils having rebelled against God should not taste the fruits of their rebellion immediately as there is a reason to be given why man is not to be judged till he be tried Especially the Parable of Dives and Lazarus showing that wicked souls are in torment upon their departure Yet seeing
answer to the Jesuites Challenge Pag. 308-326 that the spoiling of Hell is attributed by the Fathers to the rising of our Lord Christ from the grave whereby the law of death was voided Which if it be true what Tradition can there remaine in the Church that our Lord Christs soule should harrow hell and ransacke it of the soules of the Fathers there detained or in the Verge of it Saint Basil de Sp. S. cap. 15. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 How then do we go down to Hell aright Imitating the buriall of Christ by Baptisme For the bodies of these who are Baptized are as it were buried in the water Saint Chrysostome in 1 ad Cor. Hom XL. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For to be baptized and first to sink then come up againe is an Embleme of going down into Hell and coming up againe And truly if the force of Christs death in voiding the dominion of death stood by the merit of his sufferings Then was the descent of his flesh into the grave of force to that effect without any descent further of his soul into the lower parts thereof And if the death of Christ and his continuing in death for the time that God had appointed was declared by God to be accepted by him to that effect then was his rising from death his triumph over hell and death whereby the title of his rising againe being declared it must needs appear that neither death nor hell nor the devil hath any more interest in Christians Nor is it so strange that the descent of Christ into hell should be mentioned by the Apostles Creed after his buriall if it signify not the descent of his soul as it would be that it should be left out of other Creeds if it did signify that it is necessary to the salvation of all so to believe For neither is it expressed in the Creed of Nicaea or Constantinople nor was it found in that which the Church of Rome or that which the Churches of the East used saith Ruffinus upon the Creed who notwithstanding expoundeth it because the Church of Aquileia which he belonged to used it Which had the signification of it been a distinct truth necessary to the salvation of all to be believed the Churches could by no meanes have connived at one another in not delivering it And truly seeing the dominion of death intimating the second death to which those who belong not to the New Testament are accursed is signified in the Old Testament by going under the earth The signification of going down into Hell in the Creed can by no meanes be thought superfluous though our Lord neither went thither to rescue the Fathers soules nor to triumph over the Powers of darknesse For as thereby the common curse from whence we are redeemed so is also the reason and meanes of our deliverance from it intimated And seeing there is appearance from that which hath been said that the divell himself did not understand the secret of Gods intent to dissolve his interest in mankind by the death of Christ untill it appeared by what right our Lord resumed his body which he had Laid downe this being declared in the other world by his rising again and in signe thereof the soules of the saints that slept rising againe with him and resuming their bodies there is no reason why the mention of his resurrection following immediately upon the descent into Hell in the Creed should not sufficiently expresse that triumph which this declaration importeth Which triumph being effected by the Godhead though in his flesh it will be no marvaile to meet with some sayings of the Fathers that ascribe it to his Godhead Now the common doctrine of the Schoole maketh it no matter of Faith to believe the descent of Christs soule into that Hell where the damned were but onely to the Verge of it where the souls of the Fathers were It is enough with them that the effect of this Power reached to the place of the damned Cardinall Bellarmine when he published his controversies held it probable that the soul of Christ descended to the place of the damned But upon better consideration in the review of them thinks that the other opinion of Thomas and the rest of the Schoole is to be followed And yet it is not possible to distinguish between this Verge and the lowest hell by any Tradition of the Church Nay Durandus goes so farre out of their rode as to maintaine that the soul of Christ went not to hell that is to Lymbus but onely by the effect of it in making the soules of the Fathers happy Which is in my opinion declaring to them the reason of their happinesse And the opinion of Suarez the Jesuite is remarkable That taking an Article of Faith for a truth necessary for the salvation of all Christians to be known the descent of Christ into hell is no Article of Faith For that is not very necessary for single Christians to know And for that cause perhaps it is not in the Nicene Creed which whoso believeth believes enough to save him And that perhaps for this cause some Fathers expounding the Creed to the People make no mention of it In III. Disput XLIII Sect. II. and IV. I may adde for the advantage of my opinion That if it be not necessary for single Christians to believe much lesse is it necessary for the Church as a body to believe it For those things which the Church believeth as a body it imposeth to be believed upon them who are of the body But it cannot be reasonable for the Church as a body to impose upon the members thereof the beliefe of that which it is not necessary to their salvation as single Christians to believe And therefore allowing the conscientiousnesse of S. Augustine who having presumed that he who believes not the descent is no Christiane doubts not that by the descent as many were delivered as Gods secter justice thought fit Epist XCIX And of Saint Jerome in Eph. II. allowing some work of God to be managed by it which we understand no more then what good our Lords death did the good Angels I allow also the reservedness of those of the Confession of Auspurg or of Suisse who acknowledging the literall sense of this Article find not themselves bound to maintaine for what reason it was I am not offended with those in the Church of England that assigne the triumph of our Lord for the reason of it But believing with Saint Gregory Nyssene in Pascha Resurrect Christi Epist ad Eustath that our Lord by the descent of his body into the grave abolished him that had the power of death by his soul made way for the thiefe into Paradise where it self was count this enough for the salvation of all Christians to be believed And therefore that the Church cannot impose upon them as the necessary meanes of their salvation to believe any more I do not intend to say much more
secure them that put away their wives under the law in point of conscience to God And it is certain if that be true which I have setled in the second Book concerning the inward and outward the civill and spirituall obedience of God under Moses law and the difference between them that it could not alwaies do it For could he that knâ—w he put away his wife for â—ust or for wrath or for advantage think that he loved his wife whom all men know they are to love above others being bound to love all Israelites as himselfe But on the contrary he that had lighted upon a wife of crooked conditions and having done his reasonable indeavour to reclaim her had found her incorrigible how should he think he did her wrong using the power that Gods law had given him so moderately in putting her away Had God given them a Law which could in no case be used without sinne For had the nakednesse which the law allowed for a just cause of divorce signified nothing else but that which our Lord by his Gospel allows what question remains whither the conscience be secured by it or not But among Christians covenanting with God upon express promises of the world to come under a 〈◊〉 and more excellent rule of obedience with promise of helps proportionable to go through with it it is marvail if an obligation be acknowledged of bearing with patience the maners of the wife vvhich a man himselfe chuses never giving over the hope of reducing her to reason until she falsifie the trust of wedlock That when the mater is come to that point it should no more be mater of precept but mater of counsail to indure such a wife when the infamy of a mans bed my be saved and hope of reclaiming her may remain So that the question whether the meaning of Moses his words be the meaning of Christs is the same in this particular of mariage vvhich the Christians have generally with the Jews whether our Lord Jesus persiting the Lavv by bringing in the Gospell be the Christ or not The resolution whereof as it necessarily infers the difference between them which I have setled in the second Book so that difference vvill as necessarily inferre this provision of our Lord to be severall from that of Moses Out of Origen in Mat. VII a pleasant conceit is alleged Forsitan audax aliquis Judaicus vir adversus doctrine Salvatoris nostri dicet quoniam Jesus dicens Qui cunque dimi serit uxorem suam exceptâ causâ fornicationis facit â—â—â— machari permiâ—it uxo em dimittere quem ad modum Moyses quâ—m retulit propter duritiem cordiâ— Judâ—orum hoc prâ—cepisse Et hanc ipsam inquiet esse causam fornicationis per quam juste uxâ—r à viro dimittitur secundum quam Moyses praecepit dimitterâ— uxorem si inventa fuerit res turpis in â—â Perhaps some bold Jewish fellow may say crossing our Saviours Doctrine that even Jesus saying Whosoever shall send away his wife but for fornication makes her comâ—â—it adultery hath given leave to put a wife away even as Moses who he relareth did command this for the Jews hard-heartednesse And will say that this is the very same cause of fornication for which a wife is justly put away by a Husband according to which Moses also commands to put away a wife if a foul thirg be found in her Whence it is argued that there were then that expounded our Lords words to the same intent vvith Moses That there were Origen sayes not that there might be I grant But they must be Jews and adversaries to our Saviours Doctrine that should do it For he that should say so must blame our Saviour for pretending to contradict Moses vvhich Origen supposeth no Jevv could deny saying indeed the same thing Othervvise he must contradict the Synagogue for allowing divorce where Moses allowed it not if the soul thing which Moses allows divorce for be onely that fornication for which our Lord allows it Then he that would make use of Origen to prove that the terms of our Lord and of Moses may signifie the same thing must first answer the Argument wherewith he convinces him that thus should blaspheme our Lord. Adultery saith he is no cause of divorce but of death by Moses law therefore that dishonest thing for which the Law allows divorce is not adultery In fine he that examines all that is said or can be said of the diverse significations of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Scriptures will find but two the one proper in the case of man and wife the other by translation to the alliance between God and his people perpetually compared to a mariage all over the Scripture That this signification cannot take place here this may serve to evidence That the cause upon which our Lord allovvs divorce must be something betvveen the Wife and the Husband as it vvas in the Lavv For vvould it not be impertinent to punish transgression of Gods Covenant vvith dissolution of vvedlock The proper signification of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 indeed is larger in the Scriptures then according to the Atrick Greek to signifie all uncleannesse at the mater requires For vvhen S. Paul sayes 1 Cor. V. 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for a man to have his Fathers wife would not have been 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in ordinary Greek But it is no marvail if the Jews that spoke Greek call all that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which their usuall language called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Syriack 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in our Lords words is exactly expounded by Hesychius and the Etymologick turning 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Who being Christians do usually expound that proâ—erty of the Greek which is usuall among Christians out of the Bible And this is demonstrated to be the signification here meant because it is not possible to show that ever there was any opinion rule or practice received in the Church that it is lawfull to divorce but in case of Adultery I do truly conceive that there was anciently a difference of opinion and practice in the Church whither it be lawfull to mary again upon putting away a wife for adultery or whether the bond of mariage remain undissoluble when the parties are separated from bed and bord for adultery But this difference argues consent in the rest that is that excepting the case of Adultery there is no divorce to be among Christians Neither do I now speak of the base times of the Eastern Empire of which I will give you such an account as I find most reasonable when I come to the difficulty that is proposed I say it may appear that the Church originally granted no divorce but for adultery whether the innocent party or whether both were allowed to mary again living the other or not It is acknowledged by our Author that Tertullian cont Marc. IV. 34. de Pudicitiâ— cap.
XVI both expounds our Lords words in this sense and determines against divorces out of them that Origen in Mat. Hâ—â— VII accepts them in the same sense and disputes for it That Clemens Alexandrinus Strom. II. sub finem condemns the divorces vvhich the Roman Lavvs then licensed and mariage upon them That S. Chrysostome in Mat. Hom. XVII and LXIII Libro de Virginitate Serm. I. de debitore X. millium S. Ambrose in Luc. lib. XVII S. Jerome Epist XXX in Mat. XIX S. Basil ad Amphil. Can. IX in Hexaem Hom. VII Asterius Hom. ult S. Austine de adulterinis conjugiis ad Pollentium â—ollovv the the same sense and deliver the same Doctrine vvhich seems to be also S. Gregory Nazianzâ—nes vvhen he calls a Wife 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 An evill which being gâ—â— is not to be lâ—t go The record is yet to seek that may shovv any such opinion in the Church and having escaped so diligent hands I may vvell challenge all the world to produce it For vvhereas it is said p. 155. that Origen ubi supra argues that there are faults no lesse destructive to any society or communion in wedlock then adultery is And therefore that adultery is named but as an instance in a sentence to be extended by reason of equity necessarily inherent in the case to all faults equally destructive to mariage I grant that Origen hath so argued and that Grotius out of whose Annotations upon Mat. V. 31. 32. all this dust hath been raised hath seconded him in it But it is one thing to say that by consequence of reason where the fault is no lesse destructive to mariage then adultery is there ought to be the same liberty of divorce Another thing to say that by the Leter of our Lords words all causes of divorce that Moses Law or the Civil Lawes of Christian Staâ—es allows are allowable in point of Conscience The one leaves the weight of the fault and the equality of it with adultery to be judged by the Church The other takes away the Church and the judgement of it which Origen never meant to do Again I say that those things which are disputed by Origen were never held of such consideration to the Church that either the opinion or much more the practice of the Church should be valued by them It is plain he was allowed so to argue but it is as plain that his arguments took no effect either in the opinion or in the practice of the Church As for S. Augustine who was so much perplexed whither our Saviour might not mean spiritual fornication in those words Retract I. 29. having delivered it for his opinion before in his exposition of the Seâ—mon in the Mount Will any man believe that he who so â—â—ifly holds that it is unlawful to mary after divorce for Adultery as S. Austin in his Books de adulterinis conjugiis ad Pollentium and elsewhere does can allow divorce for any thing but Adultery The truth is he that considers the businesse throughly shall see that it was that supposition that obliged S. Austine to this doubt as on the contrary the improbability of the doubt is that which chiefly renders the supposition improbable Which being a thing not yet observed so farre as I know and there being no means to judge what is in the power of the Church and what is not in matter of divorce otherwise I will go out of the way to debate rather to resolve it before I go forwards CHAP. XIV Scripture alleged to prove the bond of Mariage insoluble in case of adultery uneffectuall S. Paul and our Lord speak both to one purpose according to S. Jerome and S. Austine The contrary opinion more reasonable and more general in the Church Why the Church may restrain the innocent party from marying again The Imperial Lawes could never be of force to void the Power of the Church Evidence for it SOme texts are alleged to prove the bond of Mariage undissoluble which to me I confesse do not seem to create any maner of consequence S. Paul saith Rom. VII 2. The wife that is under a Husband is tied to her Husband living by the Law But if her Husband dye she is clear of her Husband So living her Husband she shall be stiled an aduâ—teress if she become another husbands But if her Husband dye she is free from the Law so as to be no adulteress if she become another Husbands Where say they it is plain that she who maries before her former Husband is dead is an adulteress As also in 1 Cor. VII 39. The wife is tied by the Law as long as her Huband lives but if her Husband fall asleep she is free to mary whom she please onely in the Lord. And yet it is manifest that S. Paul in the first place speaks according to the Law in the second according to Christianity and that there is no question that under the Law mariage might be dissolved Therefore the words of S. Paul are not superficially to be considered when he saith Rom. VII 1 Know ye not brethren For I speak to those that know the Law 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For the meaning cannot be that the Law hath power of a man as long as the man lives that the Law hath power upon but as long as the man lives who hath power over him by the Laâ— As it is evident by the inference For the wife living is tied by the Law to her Husband but if her Husband die she is clear of her Husband And the compariâ—on froâ— which S. Paul argues holds thus As a wife is no longer tied to her Husband by the power which the Law gives him when he is dead so are not Christiâ—ns â—â—ed to God by the Power wâ—â—â—h the Law gives him when it is voided by the death of Christ but by the new bond which the Covenant oâ— Grâ—ce knitteth Now by the Law the bond of Mariage is not to be dissolved but by the will of the Husbâ—nd but if the Husband will it is dissolved by a Bill of divorce And therefore that exception is necessarily to be understood in S. Pauls words Which being understood it will be ridiculous to inferâ—e that therâ—fore the mariage of Christians is indissoluble Though diverse oâ— tâ—â— Fathers it is true hâ—ve thought it a good inference But among Christians when S. Paul sayes the wife is tied by the Law as long as her Husband lives his intent can require no more then that she is free when he is dead to mary again Not that she can no way be free while he is alive Again Eph V. 28-32 He that loveth his wife loveth himselfe For never did any man hate his own flesh but feed and cherish it as our Lord his Church For we are members of his body of his flesh and of his bones Therefore shall a man leave Father and Mother and cleave to his wife and they two shall become one flesh This mystery is