into Laws and make that seem needful to Unity which is against it and hurtful to the Churches no Christians should encourage their Usurpation by Obedience it being contrary to Christs general Laws 14. Whatever maketh true Christians maketh Men Members of Christ and his Church And only the Essentials of Christians go to make true Christians and the Integrals to make compleat Christians 15. The Canons of Bishops are not Essential to Christianity nor the understanding the many Controversies about Diocesans Patriarchs Councils Ordinations Successions nor to know which is the true Bishop 16. Baptism is our Christening and he that is truely Baptized is a Christian and a Member of Christ and hath the pardon of Sin and right to Heaven before he be a Member of a particular Church or Pastor as the Eunuch Acts 8. and many converted without Bishops As the Indians by Edesius and Frumentius and the Iberians by a Maid c. 17. Whosoever truely repenteth and believeth and loveth God as God and is of a Heavenly Mind and Life is pardoned before God before Baptism and Baptism doth but Invest him in it and make him a Christian more fully by Covenant and before the Church and the want of it without contempt will not keep him from Salvation 18. No one shall be saved by being joyned to a right Bishop or receiving the Eucharist who hath not true Repentance Faith Love and the Spirit of Holiness No Sacrament saveth the unqualified 19. Thousands live in ignorance and wickedness in Atheism Sadduceism Carnality Adultery Drunkenness c. that conform to Bishops and receive the Eucharist And to tell such they are in a state of Salvation is opposition to Christ and Damnable deceit of Souls 20. The Levites and Inferior Priests received not their Office from the High-priest but by Gods Law had it by Inheritance to which God chose the Tribe of Levi Nor had the High Priests power to add to or alter the Laws and Office of the Inferior Priests or their own 21. Nor was there a necessity of an uninterrupted regular Succession much was of man's making Christ owned them that were in possession though Usurpers not of Aarons Line but such as bought the place of the Romans 22. Seeing the High Priest was a Type of Christ and the Scripture saith so much of the change of the Law and Priesthood and Christ hath made sufficient Laws for Church Offices it is presumption to Judaize and pretend to any other imitation of the High Priests than Christ hath ordained 23. No one of the Apostles was an High Priest over the rest but had equal Apostolical Power 24. Christ rebuked them for seeking who should be greatest and expresly forbad that which they sought 25. Every Pastor or Church-Presbyter hath an Office subordinate to the Teaching Priestly and Ruling Office of Christ. 26. Every ones Pastoral Office is instituted and described by Christ by his Spirit in the Apostles and this specification is Divine which none may alter nor make any other such 27. Therefore as Papists confess of the Pope all that men have to do is not to be makers or donors of the Office but to determine of the persons that shall receive it from Christ's donative Instrument his Law and ministerially to invest them as men Christen Marry Crown Kings c. 28. No Minister or Priest representeth Christ simpliciter but secundum quid as Embassadors or Justices do the King 29. Christ's Laws are above mans and no man's to be obeyed against them To obey man against God is Idolatry 30. The Priests or Bishops are under Christ's Laws as well as others and by them all their true Power is given and limited And therefore if they go against Christ's Laws they represent him not therein nor are to be obeyed as usurping an unjust Power 31. Therefore every Christian hath a Judgment of discerning whether Bishops Laws agree with Christ's and must be governed as reasonable creatures and not as Infants Idiots or Brutes 32. They that deny this and require absolute obedience in all things set man above God and make it the duty of Subjects to be Atheists Infidels Idolaters Mahometans Murderers Adulterers Hereticks where Kings or Popes or Prelates will command it 33. Multitudes of Church-Canons have been contrary to Christ's Laws as I have with grief proved in my History of Councils 34. Bishops that deposed Emperors and Kings were not to be obeyed therein 35. Almost all the Christian World since the use of General Councils are disagreed who are the true Bishops one Party setting up one whom others reject and condemn so that if it were necessary to Salvation to know who is the true Bishop of the several Churches few Christians could be saved 36. Many Canons nullifie the Office and Power of these Bishops who come in by the Magistrate without the choice or consent of the Clergy and People And I think Mr. Dodwell professeth Communion with few but such and so is by Canons condemned 37. There is no Law of Christ or unchangeable Law of man for appropriating a certain space of ground to one Bishops Jurisdiction Grotius and Dr. Hammond thought that at first most great Cities had two Bishops and Churches one of Jews and one of Gentiles And the Apostles never so appropriated any places to themselves but oft divers in one City were their Teachers 38. Occupation of a space of ground for Priestly Power is no just Title and may be altered And if it were the Primitive Occupation was contrary to Mr. Dodwells Model 39. If each City was to have a Bishop each of our Corporations should have one being all Cities in that antient sense 40. It is not necessary to all to be of any fixed particular Church as I have proved elsewhere of Travellers some Embassadors Merchants Vagrants c. while they are of the Universal Church and own Christ and obey his Law 41. The Electors do more to the making of Bishops than the Ordainers Oft-times Bishops have ordained contrary Competitors some one and some another and are oft forc't to ordain whom Princes and Patrons chuse 42. Cyprian and his Carthage Council prove in the Case of Martial and Basilides that it is the Peoples Duty to forsake those Bishops who are not qualified according to Christ's Law though Canonically ordained and approved And Martin separated from such and Gildas saith he is not eximius Christianus that owned the Brittish Bishops 43. Christ hath left sufficient Directions for the continuation or restoration of the Priestly Office without Canonical successive Ordination uninterrupted As well as God hath done for Kings 44. Seeing Mr. D. saith A Presumptive title may serve he thereby confesseth that it is not real Canonical Succession but the Opinion of it that he makes necessary 45. The Question is Who must be the Presenters When they so greatly differ Grotius presumed that the Chief Minister of a City or a Church was really a Bishop though not so called 46. The Reformed can
Countries in the World 2. I can easily prove what I told you how oft the Major Part hath changed yea the same Bishops upon the change of Princes and cried Omnes Peccavimus And who knoweth by Majority of Votes which Years they were in the right 3. Either the Canons of Councils were obligatory upon the Promulgation before the absent Bishops in all Countries received them or not If yea then it is not Universal Reception that made them so If not then the absent are not bound to receive them 4. How many Years will it be after a Council before we can know whether all or most of the Christian World receive it By all that I can read in History I cannot tell e. g. whether more Bishops were for the Council of Chalcedon or against it for the time of seven or eight Emperors Reign Nor whether more now be for or against the second Nicene Council which the Lutherans so much favour and so of many more And every one cannot know it nor fetch his Faith or Religion from a Catalogue of all the Christian Bishops in the World or a Calculation of their numbred Votes § 9. 6. Frustra est Potentia quae non reducitur nec reducenda est in actum 1. Indeed as the Pope is naturally uncapable of Governing all the Christian World All Bishops on Earth are much more uncapable as one Collective Voting Power but only per partes in their several Limits 2. How can I obey a Power that acteth not § 10. 7. Alas what abundance of Heresies have been Published since the Six Councils which you own yea by Ranters Quakers Familists c. in our times besides Beckman's Catalogue of German Fanaticks And yet what Universal Council or Literae formatae of all the World have given us sufficient notice of their Evil How foolishly have the Papists done about Jansenianisms the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary c. to seek the Pope's Determination if the sense of all the Bishops of the World can be known to decide the Case How many Heresies have been Condemned in Councils since the Sixth Council of which the whole Church hath no otherwise notified their sence as in the Case of Philoponus of Images of Elipandus and Faelix of Abbot Joachims Abeilard of Gilbert Porretane of Wecilo of Berengarius Wickliffe Husse whether it was Heresie or not You say If I broach a Heresie the Vniversal Church will soon tell me where they are by Condemning it When Multitudes have been broached these last Thousand Years of which those in Abassia Syria Egypt Armenia and most of the Christian World have never told us that ever they were Judged or so much as heard Shall no Bishops or Provincial Council condemn new Heresies but leave e. g. Swenkfeldius David George Servâ—tus Pomponatius Vaninus and a hundred such to pass for good Christians till they hear from all the Bishops of the World And what need General Councils be gathered to Condemn such if we can know the sence of all without them § 11. 8. If one that cannot know the sence of all the Bishops on Earth may ordinarily be a good Christian and saved by the Scripture only then why should they be sent to enquire of all the Bishops on Earth when a sure and nearer way is at hand 2. And then such may be of the Church and have Christ's Spirit that obey not such a Vicarious Church Head 3. And if want of Promulgation nullifie the Obligation that is no Governing Vicarious Soveraign to all the Christian World which cannot Promulgate his Laws to all Neither I nor any that ever I knew can tell how to know the Minds of all the Bishops on Earth or gather their Votes so as to rule our Obedience If the Scripture could not be commonly made known it could be no common Rule as it is not to them that have it only in unknown Tongues § 12. 9. What shall satisfie any Man that the Six Councils owned by you are the Acts of a Supream Vicarious Universal Church Power and no other but those 1. If the Pars imperans in Supremacy be as Politicks say a Constitutive Essential part of the Society then since the sixth Council the Church hath been no Church for want of an Essential part if Councils were that part But if it be all the dispersed Bishops the Head hath been in nudâ Potentiâ unactive these Thousand Years as the Socinians say the separated Soul is till the Resurrection or as one in an Apoplexy 2. This favoureth the Seekers who say that the Church this Thousand Years hath been lost in the Wilderness or asleep 3. The same Councils have done and undone That at Const. 1. in the beginning set up Greg. Naz. and in the end forced him to resign going about to depose him which part was obligatory That at Ephes. first was first one and after two and Nestorius Cyril and Memnon were all Condemned and after two of them restored and Joh. Antioch and Cyril by Theodosius threats were brought to confess that they had differed but in Words and did not know it Which part was Obligatory That at Chalcedon consisted of many yea most that had gone contrary in Ephes. 2. and cried Omnes peccavimus and so did many others and most Bishops were oft and long against it after That at Const. de Tribus Capitulis is noted commonly as a meer Cheat and abuse put on Justinian by an Eutychian and condemned three dead Mens Words before at Chalcedon absolved set the World even Italy into a greater Schism If you are sure all these are Universally Obligatory prove it and prove that no other are as much so Divers others were as numerous and called by as good Authority If you say as of Ephes. 2. they were Latrocinia and forced I answer No more than many others At Const. â— Nazianzen tells you they raged like Mad Men At Ephes. 1. they fought it out even before the Emperors Commissioners Theodosius 2d used his over-ruling Power at both Eph. 1. 2. What force was used in that under Philippicus and many others that erred and were more numerous than such as you receive Sola navicula Petri saith Binius scaped Drowning at Eph. 2. so Concordant were they all What have you against even Constance and Basil on your Grounds If you say they erred I grant it and how shall we know that none of the Six did so It was not their Number nor Consent that proved them in the right Tell us how to know the Councils that we must obey from all the rest Is it by other Councils Testimony that is to run in a Vain Circle How know we that the later is right other way than of the former Is it by Scripture or by Reason Tell us how without subverting your own Foundation the Soveraignty of Councils 4. Do you hold all the Six Councils still obligatory as the Rule of our Obedience and Communion E. g. 1. That at Nice 1. and
of Foreign Jurisdiction is Hostility against Kings and States III. That Foreign Councils of Bishops and Dyets of Soveraign Princes are Authorized for Communion for mutual Counsel and Concord by Contract and Agreement and have no just Jurisdiction or Political Regiment over particular Soveraigns or their subject Congregations Though in Councils they retain their proper Power at home IV. The Foreign Councils agreeing on things profitable to the common benefit of all Gods own Law of Love Unity Concord Edification and publick Regard and Peace forbiddeth the particular Bishops and Churches causlesly to dissent and affect singularity But if they agree on things hurtful and dangerous to any of the particulars they are not to be obeyed nor yet if they claim Jurisdiction instead of Communion and Contract But every Prince and Pastor must Rule their own As Kings will not own a Foreign King or Council of Kings who shall Usurp a Soveraignty over them much more if over all V. That all Forcing Power that the Clergy can claim by Canons or Mandates in Christian Kingdoms is only from the Prince or State as they are authorized by him as his Officers who only hath the power of the Sword and not at all any part of their Pastoral Office And therefore as Grotius in that excellent Book de Imperio sum Potest circa Sacra hath shewed Clergy-Canons are no Laws but directing Agreements VI. The Canons of the Greatest Councils called General were Laws to none without the Empire unless Foreign Princes or Pastors made them so Nor to any within the Empire but by the Soveraigns Act as they are forcing and the particular Pastors as Directing VII Before the Division and Ruine of the Empire the Name of a General Council signified but an Imperial or National Council They being called by the Emperors who had no further power and only out of the Imperial Provinces unless any odd Person came voluntarily in for help and advantage which was rare This I have at large proved in my two Books against W. Johnson alias Terret And Ecclesia Vniversalis usually signified no more than Vniversal National or Imperial Leo meant no more when he called himself Caput Ecclesiae Universalis nor Phocas when he gave Boniface the Title of Universal Bishop And when the Empire was divided it was the Treasonable Erection of Popery to feign that Orbis Romanus was Orbis Universalis and that Concilia Generalia and Ecclesia Vniversalis meant extra Imperial and Vniversal Over-foreigners and all the World And this is still as the Foundation of Popery so the common Cheat that pleadeth for Foreign Jurisdiction VIII Though Rome was a meet Seat for Imperial Church Primacy while Emperors would have it so as it hath no just pretence to the Government of Foreigners so it is of all others most unfit for a Primacy or Presidentship in the Councils of Foreign Confederate Princes and Churches because it claimeth so much more even Foreign and Universal Regiment Nor are Councils of such Bishops or Princes to be trusted with General Contracts who claim such Jurisdiction A Primacy in Lawful Councils of Confederates would strengthen their claim of an Universal Jurisdiction till they openly renounce it And so would the use of a Senate or Council that pretendeth to the like power IX Patriarchs and Metropolitans and Provincials or Diocesans in one Empire or Kingdom can for Number Seat or Precedency justly claim no power of Governing Foreigners nor subject Bishops of that Nation but from the Soveraign X. Legislation is the first Essential power of Regiment Therefore none can be an Universal Legislator that is not an Universal Rector XI As an Universal Monarch Ecclesiastical or Civil is the absurd claim of an Impossible thing and open Hostility to all Christian Kings and Churches so an Universal Aristocracy in Councils or Patriarchs and Bishops is yet more absurd as claiming a more notorious Impossibility than the Pope doth XII An Universal power of Expounding or Judging of Christs Laws by Regent Authority or of being such Keepers of unwritten Laws seemeth the most Eminent part of Legislation it being more to be Judge what is Law and to make or determine of the sence than to make the bare words And so the Bishops should have a higher Regency than Christ Official Judges Expound the Laws only in their limited Provinces and for the deciding of particular Cases but not to be the Universal Determiners of the sence to all others None but the Law-makers can make an Universally obliging Exposition XIII The instance of the Apostles power will not prove an Institution of a stated Universal Legislative Aristocracy or Monarchy For 1. It is evident that Christ first chose and instituted them as his National Ministers by the number of Twelve related to the Twelve Tribes and by the keeping up just that number after the coming down of the Holy Ghost And by his special Mission of Paul Barnabas and others to the Gentiles distinguishing their Apostleship from Peter's and the rest to the Jews 2. When Persecution and the fall of the Jewish state made the Apostles Office more Extensive it was rather Indefinite than Universal They were to go as far as they were sent and were able 3. The Church was then in so narrow Bounds as made that Extent easie when now an Universal Humane Regiment is of Natural Impossibility and so past rational Controversie 4. Their power was not any further Legislative than as they were Promulgators of Christs Laws and Determiners of mutable undetermined Circumstances or Accidents 5. They have no Successors in those extraordinary parts of their Office which looketh like any part of Legislative power Which parts are 1. Being Eye and Ear-witnesses of what Christ did and said committed to their Testifying and Predicating Trust. 2. Having a special Commission to teach all Nations his Laws or what he commanded as the prime Promulgators 3. As having the promise of the Spirit to Teach them all things and bring all to their remembrance 4. And having the Miraculous Gifts of the Holy Ghost to attest their Witness As Moses had Successors in Executive Regency but not as a Mediatorial Deliverer of Gods Law which Aaron Samuel David and Solomon must obey and rule by but had no power to alter words or sence nor add any thing but undetermined Circumstances Yet as the Laws of Christ promulgate by the Apostles bind all Nations to whom they are revealed so we grant that the same Laws of Christ declared by Councils or Preached by any single Minister bind all to whom they come And that every Minister and Christian being a Member of the Church Universal his Doctrine tendeth to Universal Benefit which yet giveth him no Universal Regent Jurisdiction As I remember I have said all this before in my Letters to Bishop Guning when you were his Second or Witness of our Conference But the Invitation of your Discourse which I shall now give you my thoughts of maketh me think that this
Religion who value it most Dogs will fight for Bones and Carrion and Swine for Draff But Men will sooner fight for Gold and Pearls while Dogs and Swine like peaceable Creatures pass them by or tread them in the Dirt. All true Christians are agreed in all that God hath made necessary to Christianity and Salvation And no men on Earth were ever so wise as to be agreed of the meaning of every word besides in the Bible Much less in all that Usurping Universal Legislators will obtrude What a dismal noise and dangerous rupture doth the Controversie make now about Conformity in Brittain And what is our difference We are all agreed 1. That there is only one God the Governour of all the World and of his Attributes 2. That Man's Soul is immortal and that he hath another life after this to live and Heaven or Hell must be his end 3. That Jesus Christ God and Man is the only Saviour and Lord of all 4. That the Law of God is the chief indispensible Rule of our Faith and Life by which we must be judged 5. That we must live soberly righteously and godly loving God above all and our neighbours as our selves and doing as we would be done by superiours Ruling for God and inferiours obeying them under God but none having power above him or against him 6. That God only is the final Infallible Universal Judge of Controversies That Magistrates are Judges who shall be punished or protected by the Sword And Pastors are Judges who is fit for Communion in the Churches under their over-sight And every man a discerning rational Judge of his own duty 7. That without holiness righteousness and temperance or mortifying the lusts of the flesh by the Spirit no man can be saved 8. That no man should sin wilfully for any price or to avoid any danger even of death 9. That the Soul should be more cared for than the Body 10. That no man can love God and Holiness too much nor obey him too faithfully 11. That we should delight in the Law of the Lord and his Gospel and meditate in it day and night 12. That serious servent and faithful prayer is our daily ordinary duty 13. That we should live as we would be judged and daily prepare for death that we may be found ready 14. That we should use all worldly temporal things for spiritual everlasting ends knowing that else they are but vanity vexation and dangerous snares 15. That we should fetch our joy from the hopes of Heaven more than from all the possessions pleasures and hopes on Earth These and abundance more we are commonly as to Profession agreed on And though this in sincerity will serve for our acceptance with God and our Salvation it will not serve for our acceptance or toleration with some men nor to avoid the cry of scandalous intolerable Schism Disobedience Obstinacy and what men mind to charge upon us Yea though we are agreed that Rulers in their several places must be obeyed in all things that are not against the Law of God in Nature or Scripture But what now is the difference I will add that if every Conformist and Nonconformist in England were of so unattainable perfect knowledge as to be agreed of the sence of every Syllable in the Bible it would not serve to end our Differences nor keep us from Prisons Silencing and the present heavy Accusations Wonder not at it It 's an evident Truth Our Difference is 1. About the meaning of some Oaths Declarations and subscribed Professions and Promises imposed by Acts of Parliament 2. About the meaning of several Rubricks and other Words in the Liturgy and Book of Ordination 3. About the meaning and practice of several Canons Gods Law hath agreed us all that Lying deliberately is a sin and so is Perjury especially of thousands and so is the wilful depraving of Baptism and other Ordinances of God and so is the unjust Excommunicating of the Faithful and denying them Baptism and the Lords Supper and so is Sacriledge and Renouncing the Sacred Ministry when we are Vowed to it and so is Schismatical Dividing Christs Church by needless and unlawful Snares and Engines All these we are agreed are heinous sins not to be done for any Price But we are utterly disagreed whether to Conform would make us guilty of these sins But what Are Learned men such miserable Casuists as not to know what Lying Perjury Sacriledge Profaning Baptism Sinful Excommunicating c. are We differ about the sence of the Words Imposed and of the Law and Canons And then how should we know who is the Sinner But Qu. Who is it that wresteth them from their usual signification And who is it that dare not do it But the Sacred part of the Imposers cry up the necessity of a Judge of Controversies yea an Universal Judge some of them to Expound the Scriptures when men differ about the sence and will not they procure you an Exposition of a few controverted sentences in the Laws or endeavour it if that be necessary to understand or end your Differences Ans. No whatever cometh of it to Bodies or Souls to Church or Kingdom these Expositors of Scripture and Enders of Controversies will not so much as Petition the Law-makers to explain their words Yea though the Conformists are much disagreed about it among themselves Judges will decide particular Causes by the Law But to know the sence of the Law antecedently as our Rule which is required in one that Sweareth and Subscribeth to it can be by no ones Exposition but the makers of the Law Else the Judges were the only Law-makers For the sence is the Law And he maketh the Law that maketh the sence and not they that make the words alone which other men must put the sence on And if Popes or Councils Prelates or Priests could on pretence of a Judicial Expository Authority be Judges to all the Earth in what sence every word of Scripture must be understood it is they and not God that make the Law For God made but the words if this be true and the Bishops make the sence by pretence of judging of it To give an Universal Antecedent Obligatory Exposition is an Act of Legislation and none but the Law-maker himself can do it But to judge by this Law who shall be received and who shut out of their several Churches the Pastors must do that X. Another great deceit is by confounding Communion and Concord with Government and Subjection And arguing that because all Christians must have Concord and Communion therefore they must be under one Supreme Humane Government As if Christian Princes were not as much bound to Concord as any men on Earth Or as if that Concord must be kept by one Supreme Universal Senate or Monarch and mutual Consultation and voluntary Agreement would not serve Obj. But if God bind us to do all things in Concord and General Councils and Patriarchs determine the matter of
Normans the Bishops were grown so strong by their dependance on the Pope who was then grown to the heighth of his Usurpation as that they were almost in continual Contests with their Kings The Ignorance of the English Clergy was so great that the Kings were put to fetch their chief Bishops from other Lands where they had got more learning than was found at home and so had been trained up in the heighth of Popery And even those that were the most Famous for Learning and such Piety as then prevailed were yet most Zealously addicted to the Pope and learnt of Rome to strive for Grandeur Wilfrid of York who is magnified by Malmesbury and others after Beda was so zealous to be the sole Bishop in that large Northern Countrey when the King and the A. Bishop of Canterbury said there was work enough for four and decreed a division that in resistance of the King and the A. Bishop he appealed to the Pope and went divers times himself to Rome and once at Seventy years of age rather than have his vast Bishoprick divided And when by his better skill in Computation he prevailed against the Holy Scots for the Roman time of Easter the Merit of that and that he was the first that brought in singing by Antiphons and the Benedictine Monkery were good works which he pleaded against diminishing his Bishoprick W. Malmesbury p. 151. The most Learned were placed at Canterbury Viz Odo Dunstane specially Lanfranke Anselme c. whose Miracles by the Monks are magnified beyond belief which tended much to advance their Interest But what the generality of the Bishops were long judge by these words of Malmesbury de gest Pont. li. 1. p. 116. speaking how Stigandus got both the Bishopricks of Winchester and Canterbury and how Sacrilegious and Wicked a Life he lived selling Bishopricks and Abbies of unbounded Ambition and Covetousness adds Sed ego conjicio illum non judicio sed errore peccare quod homo illiteratus sicuti plerique pene omnes tunc temporis Angliae Episcopi nesciret quantum deliquerit rem Ecclesiasticorum negotiorum sicut publicorum actitari existimans that is But I conjecture that he sinned not knowingly but by error That being an Illiterate Man as most and almost all the Bishops of England then were he knew not how much he transgressed thinking that Church matters were to be managed like Publick matters that is secular And this was in good K. Edward's Reign and at the Conquest And is it any wonder if such Bishops brought in Popery And though the Conqueror strove not till he was setled he and his Son after him were fain to be resolute in defending themselves against their own Prelates and the Pope And though Hen. 1. wisely ordered them the Bishops that had Sworn to be true to the Empress his Daughter broke their Oath and after swore to K. Stephen against her and brake that Oath and sware to her again and brake that Oath and again turned to Stephen and his own Brother the Bishop of Winchester led the way And no wonder when they were great enough to Build suddenly the many great Castles Sherburne Salisbury Devises Malmesbury c. which he surprized And when Hen. 2. succeeded Stephen after long bloody VVars with the greatest advantage of a Powerful Government yet was he not able to master his own Bishops strengthened by the Pope VVho feared not openly to tell him as Thomas of Canterbury did Certum esse Reges potestatem suam ab Ecclesia accipere non ipsam ab illis sed à Christo c. Hoveden Hen. 2. p. 285. § VI. But the General and his Army the Universal Church-Monarch and his Church-Parliament could not well agree Many hundred years the Roman Church-Monarch having the Preferments in his power got Councillors to his mind who were as ready to be militant against Princes and Peace as he to command it Till at last the Monarch by a packt bribed Clergy having got possession of a Power like to absolute disgraced it with a succession of such Monsters of wickedness as the most flattering of their Historians declare to be unworthy to be named in the Catalogue And they had so often two Popes at once filling the World with blood while by the Sword they tryed their Cause and at last three Popes and saith Wernerus in Fasc Temp. once six at once that were then and had been Popes some Kingdoms being for one and some for another that the Christian World could no longer bear the mischievous effect France having one Pope and Italy and Germany another expose the Nations to blood and the Christian Religion to decay and scorn Till necessity forced the Emperor of Germany and other Princes first by the Council of Constance and after by that at Basil to overtop depose and correct the Popes § VII But when the Councils were ended though a Decennial Council was decreed and all means used to prevent relapse the chief Executive Power in the intervals being in the Monarch the Pope and it being the Pope and not the Councils that gave Preferments all the Councils Decrees against Absoluteness and for Decennial Councils proved but empty words The worldly Bishops clave to the Pope Eugenius 4. condemned and Deposed as an Heretick Simoniack c. continued in despight of his deposers and their succession is from him to this day The Greeks by necessity were forced a while to countenance a debauched Council at Florence to undo what the other Councils had done who are there pronounced Rebellious Church-Parliaments who would have changed the Universal Monarchy But being cheated they went home and had so sad entertainment by the Greek Church as made them repent and wish they had hearkened to their Marcus Ephesus § VIII Things returning to the old channel of Tyranny and Corruption and their Clergy not reforming Reformers got a double advantage 1. By the sense of the need of Reformation which the two Church Parliaments Constance and Basil after Pisa had left upon the Peoples minds with the general murmur at their frustration 2. The horrid Corruption of the Clergy by gross Ignorance palpable Errours Pride Covetousness and almost all iniquity which made even nature loath them Whereupon the old Bohemian complaints were reassumed and Tecelius's Indulgences provoking Luther he awakened the University of Wittenburg and they the Princes and Learned men of Germany § IX At their first awakening they coming newly out of darkness were sensible of little but the gross sort of corruptions which men of common sense and morality might perceive And few had studied the case of a Pretended Universal Jurisdiction being bred up in the Reverence of that Church Unity for which it was pretended But one Truth let in another till the case became very commonly understood Accordingly men fell into three Parties 1. The worldly Clergy was against Church-Parliaments unless such as would obey the Pope and against Reformation saying The Pope was fittest to do
Spiritual or Ecclesiastical Things or Causes as Temporal And that No Forreign Prince Person Prelate State or Potentate hath or ought to have ANY JURISDICTION Power Superiority Preheminence or Authority Ecclesiastical or Spiritual within this Realm And therefore I do utterly renounce and forsake all Forreign Jurisdiction Priviledges Preheminence and Authorities granted or belonging to the Kings Highness his Heirs and Successors or united or annexed to the Imperial Crown of this Realm Here all the Kingdom swears That none have or ought to have any Jurisdiction here who is Forreign Yet some Papists have been encouraged to take this Oath by this Evasion Obj. No Jurisdiction is here disclaimed of Forreigners but what belongs to the King But Spiritual Jurisdiction called the Power of the Keys belongs not to the King Ergo. Ans. For securing the King's Jurisdiction All Forreign Jurisdiction is renounced signifying that there is no such thing as a Jurisdiction over this Realm but the King 's and his Officers The Power of the Keys or Spiritual Power is not properly a Jurisdiction as that word includeth Legislation but only a Preaching of Christ's Laws and administring his Sacraments and judging of mens capacity for Communion according to those Laws of Christ And this under the Coercive Government of the King Much like that of a Tutor in a Colledge or a Physician in his Hospital What can be more expresly said than this here that No Forreign Prince Person Prelate State or Potentate have or ought to have any Jurisdiction Power Superiority Preheminence or Authority Ecclesiastical or Spiritual within this Realm Is that of Pope or Councils neither Ecclesiastical nor Spiritual Is not the word Prelate purposely put in to exclude that Power hence which Prelates claim Though the King claim not the Power of the Keys he knew that by the claim of that Power the Pope and Councils of Forreigners had been the disturbers of his Government And therefore all theirs here is excluded as a necessary means to secure his own 1. Popes and Councils have claimed a Legislative Power over us and all the Church But the Laws of this Land know no such but in Christ over all and in King and Parliament under him over this Land And therefore the Oath excludeth the Power claimed by Popes and Councils 2. As to Judicial Power these Forreigners claim a Power of Judging who in England shall be taken for a true Bishop and Minister who shall have Tythes Church-Lands and Temples whether the Kings Lords and all Subjects shall be judged capable of Church-Communion or be Excommunicate And our Laws declaring that all this Forreign Claim is Usurpation fully proveth that it was the sense of the Oath to exclude them They claim also a Power of Judging who shall pass here for Orthodox and who for Hereticks And in their Laws the consequence is who shall be burned for a Heretick or be exterminated or after Excommunication deposed from their Dominions and their Subjects absolved from their Allegiance But certainly the Oath excludeth them from all this The most of the Papists claim no Power directly due to their Pope but that which they call Ecclesiastical or Spiritual the rest is but by consequence and in ordine ad Spiritualia But if this be not excluded in the Oath then they intended not to exclude the Papacy And then what was the Oath made for or what sense hath it or what use And who can believe this If the meaning of the Oath be not to exclude the Pope's Ecclesiastical Power then they that take it may yet hold that the Pope is Head of all the Churches on Earth and hath the Authority to call and dissolve and approve or reprobate General Councils and may Ordain Bishops for England and his Ordinations and his Missionaries be here received and Appeals made to him and Obedience sworn to him his Excommunications Indulgences imposed Penances Silencings Absolutions Prohibitions here received All which our Statutes Articles Canons c. shew notoriously to be false It is evident therefore that this Oath renounceth all Forreign Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction II. The second proof is from many Acts of Parliament Those which prohibit all that receive Orders beyond Sea from the Pope or any Papists to come into England on pain of death Those that forbid the Doctrine Worship and Discipline both of Popes and Councils The words of 25 H. 8. c. 21. are these Whereas this Realm recognizing no Superiour under God but the King hath been and is free from Subjection to any man's Laws but only such as have been devised made and ordained within this Realm for the wealth thereof or to such other as the People of this Realm have taken at their free liberty by their own consent to be used among them and have bound themselves by long use and custom to the observance of the same not to the observance of the Laws of any Forreign Prince Potentate or Prelate but as to the accustomed and antient Laws of this Realm originally Established as Laws of the same by the said sufferance consent and custom and none otherwise It standeth therefore with natural equity and good reason c. that they may abrogate them c. Moreover the Laws of England determine that no Canons are here obligatory or are Laws unless made such by King and Parliament And if it be true which Heylin and some others say that the Pope's Canon-Laws are all here in force still except those that are contrary to some Laws of the Realm that is but as the Roman Civil Law is in force not as a Law of the Pope or old Romans but as made Laws to us by King and Parliament The Roman Senate and Emperor give us the Matter of the Civil Law and the Pope and Councils of the Canon-Law but the Soveraign Power here giveth them the Form of a Law as the King coineth Forreign Silver III. The Articles of Religion prove the same 1. The twenty first Article saith General Councils may not be gathered together without the Commandment and Will of Princes And when they be gathered together forasmuch as they be an Assembly of Men whereof all be not governed by the Spirit and Word of God they may err and sometime have erred even in things pertaining to God Wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to Salvation have neither strength nor Authority unless it may be declared that they are taken out of the Holy Scriptures Here note 1. That General Councils so called in the Empire had no power to meet much less to Rule without the Commandment of Princes And so those called by the Emperor had no power over the Subjects of other Princes 2. And true Universal Councils will never be Lawfully called till either all the Earth have One Humane Monarch or all the Heathen Infidel Mahometan Papist Heretical and Protestant Princes agree to call them For one hath not Power over the Dominions of all the rest And so the Aristocratical Party put the
sheweth that Councils have been against Councils and the Arrian Hereticks had more Councils than the Christians and sheweth their uncertainty Pag. 19. As to the Authority of Councils Augustine saith Ipsa plenaria Concilia saepe Priora ◠posterioribus emandantur And of the Succession and Ordination of Bishops he saith Pag. 131. If there were not one of them that turned from Popery or of us left alive yet would not therefore the whole Church of England fly to Lovaine Tertullian saith Nonne Laici sacerdotes sumus Ubi Ecclesiastici Ordinis non est Consessus offert tingit sacerdos qui est solus Sed ubi tres sunt Ecclesia est licet Laici And frequently he saith The Church is found among few as well as among many And he was for Lay Mens Baptizing X. The first Canon commandeth Preachers Four times a Year to declare That All usurped foreign Power forasmuch as the same hath no Establishment nor Ground by the Law of God is for most just Causes taken away and abolished And that therefore No manner of Obedience or Subjection within His Majesties Realms and Dominions is due to any such foreign Power The 12th Canon Excommunicateth ipso facto any that shall affirm That it is lawful for any 〈◊〉 of Ministers to joyn together and make 〈◊〉 Orders or Constitutions in Causes Ecclesiastical without the King's Authority and shall submit themselves to be ruled and governed by them Therefore none may go beyond Sea to Councils without his Authority And the Canons of Foreigners are not to be made a Rule without his Authority And is not other Princes Authority as necessary in their Dominions The Canon which bids Prayer 55th describeth Christ's holy Catholick Church to be the whole Congregation of Christian People dispersed throughout the whole World But such a Church hath no Legislative or Judicial Power XI The Controversie is about an Article of Faith I believe the holy Catholick Church The Humanists say It is an universal Political Society Governed by one humane Supream Monarch Aristocracy or mixt under Christ. Protestants say It hath no universal supream Ruler but Christ. Now the Generality of Protestant English and transmarine who write on the Creed expound this Article accordingly in the Protestant sence as he that will peruse their Books may find which sheweth what is the sence of the Church of England XII Though King Edw. VI. was but a Youth when he wrote his sharp Book against Popery lately printed It sheweth what his Tutors and the Clergy of his time who were called the Church then thought of these Matters XIII If the Parliaments of England all the days of Queen Elizabeth King James and King Charles I. and II. knew what was the Doctrine of the Church of England about a Forreign Jurisdiction it is easie to gather it in their Votes and Acts. Let him that would know whether they were for a Coalition with the French on such terms read Sir Simon Dewes Journals Rushworths Collections or Prins Introduction ad annum 1621. or any other true Historian and he will see how far they were from owning any Forreign Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction But the contrary minded would make the World believe that all these Parliaments were of some Sect differing from the Church of England But what call they the Church of England but that part of the Clergy who conform to the Laws And did not the Law-makers understand the Laws Or if they more regard the sence of the Clergy let them read A. Bishop Abbot's very plain and bold Letter to the King in Prin's Introduct pag. 39 40. and Dr. Hackwell's c. and they may know what was then the sence of the Clergy With whom concurred the Bishops of Ireland Insomuch that Bishop Downame expressing his sense of the Papists there and his contrary desires presumed to add And let all the people say Amen at which the Church rang with the Amen And though he was questioned in England for it he came safe off His Neighbour Bishops also declaring Popery to be Idolatry and the Pope Antichrist XIV The Bishops and chief Writers of England have taken the Pope to be the Antichrist Cranmer Whitguift Parker Grindall Abbot all A. Bishops of Canterbury Vsher Downame Jewel Andrews Bilson Latimer Hooper Farrar Ridley Robert Abbot Hall Allig and abundance more Bishops The Martyrs Sutcliffe Fulke Sharp Whittaker Willet Crakenthorp and most of our Writers against Popery Sure then they were for none of his Jurisdiction here XV. The Prayers have been and are to this day added in the end both to our Bibles and Common Prayer Books which shew how far the Church of England was from desiring a Coalition with the Papists by submitting to any Forreign Jurisdiction They say to God Confound Satan and Antichrist with all Hirelings whom thou hast already cast off into a reprobate sense that they may not by Sects Schisms Heresies and Errors disquiet thy little Flock And because O Lord we be fallen into the latter days and dangerous times wherein Ignorance hath got the upper hand and Satan by his Ministers seeketh by all means to quench the light of thy Gospel we beseech thee to maintain thy Cause against those ravening Wolves and strengthen all thy Servants whom they keep in Prison and Bondage Let not thy long-suffering be an occasion either to increase their tyranny or to discourage thy Children c. Though A. Bishop Laud put out all these Prayers from the Scots new Liturgy we had never had them still bound with ours to this day if the Church of England had not at first approved them There is also a Confession of Faith found with them describing the Catholick Church as we do XVI The Oath called Et Caetera of 1640. saith that The Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England containeth all things necessary to Salvation Therefore Obedience to any Forreign Jurisdiction is not necessary to Salvation And therefore not necessary to the avoiding of Schism or any Damning Sin XVII The Church of England holdeth that no Forreigners Pope or Prelates have Judicial Power to pronounce the King of England a Heretick Or Excommunicate though as Bishop Andrews saith in Tortura Torti even a Deacon may refuse to deliver him the Sacrament if uncapable much more that Pastor whom he chuseth to deliver it him For it 's known by sad experience how dismal the Consequences are exposing the lives of the Excommunicate to danger among them that believe the Pope and his Councils and rendering them dishonoured and contemned by their Subjects We know how many Emperors have been deposed as Excommunicate and what Queen Elizabeth's Excommunication tended to And if our Laws make it Treason to publish such an Excommunication sure the Law-makers believed not that either Pope or Prelates had a Judicial Power to do it In Prin's Introduct p. 121. the Papists that were unwilling to be the Executioners had no better plea than That no Council had yet judged
determinations is implicitely to renounce all the necessary Causes of this great Schism And to rest satisfied with their old Patriarchal Power and Dignity and Primacy of Order which is another part of my Proposition is to quit the Modern Papacy both Name and Thing Page 84. In the first place if the Bishop of Rome were reduced from his Universality of Sovereign Jurisdiction Jure Divino to his Principium Vnitatis and his Court regulated by the Canons of the Fathers which was the sence of the Councils of Constance and Basil and is desired by many Roman Catholicks as well as we 2. If the Creed or necessary Points of Faith were reduced to what they were in the time of the four first Oecumenical Councils according to the Decree of the third General Council admitting no additional Articles but only necessary Explications and those to be made by the Authority of a General Council or one so General as can be Convocated And lastly Supposing that some things from whence offence hath been either given or taken I say in case these three things were accorded whether Christians might not live in an Holy Communion and come in the same publick Worship of God free from all Schismatical Separation of themselves one from another c. We have no Controversie with the Church of Rome about a Primacy of Order but a Supremacy of Power I shall declare my sence in four Conclusions 1. That St. Peter had a fixed Chair at Antioch and after at Rome is a truth which no Man who giveth any credit to the Ancient Fathers and Councils can either deny or well doubt of 2. That St. Peter had a Primacy of Order among the Apostles is the unanimous voice c. 3. Some Fathers and School-men who were no Sworn Vassals to the Roman Bishops affirm that this Primacy of Order is affixed to the Chair of St. Peters Successors for ever c. Page 107. They who made the Bishop of Rome a Patriarch were the Primitive Fathers not excluding the Apostles and Christian Emperors and Oecumenical Councils What Laws they made in this case we are bound to obey for Conscience sake till they be repealed lawfully by virtue of the Law of Christ. Page 104. To my Objection that all Protestants must then pass for Schismaticks that take not the Pope for Principium Vnitatis and Patriarch c. he answereth still weaker and weaker Must a Man quit his just right because some dislike it Their dislike is scandal taken but the quitting of that which is right for their satisfaction should be the scandal given Whether is the worse 1. How are they forced to fall under the reproach of Schismaticks If they be forced any way it is by their own wilful Humours or erroneous Conscience Others force them not 2. I would have him consider which is worse and the more dangerous condition for Christians to fall under the reproach of Schismaticks or to fall into Schism it self Whosoever shall oppose the just Power of a Lawful Patriarch lawfully proceeding is a material Schismatick Reader I forbear confuting these things by the way being now but on the Historical relation of their Judgments You see how great necessity to avoid Schism they place in our subjection to a Forreign Jurisdiction The Confutation you shall have of all together Chap. IX The Judgment of Archbishop Laud as delivered by Dr. Heylin and by himself § 1. IN the Life of Archbishop Laud Pag. 414 415 416 412. Touching the Design of working a Reconciliation betwixt us and Rome I find it charged on him by another Writer Fuller Ch. Hist. lib. 11. p. 217. who holds it as unlawful to be undertaken as it was impossible to be effected Answ. If it be a Crime it 's Novum Crimen of a New stamp never coined before As to the Impossibility many Men of Eminence for Parts and Piety have thought otherwise Spalatensis and Sancta Clara are named as Reconcilers And if without prejudice to the Truth the Controversies might have been composed it is most probable that other Protestant Churches would have sued by their Agents to be included in the Peace If not the Church of England had lost nothing by it as being hated by the Calvinists and not loved by the Lutherans Admitting then that such a Reconciliation was endeavoured betwixt the Agents of both Churches Let us next see what our great Statesmen have discoursed upon that particular on what terms the Agreement was to have been made and how far they proceeded in it And first the Book entituled The Pope's Nuntio affirmed to have been written by the Venetian Embassador at his being in England doth discourse thus As to a Reconciliation saith he between the Churches of England and Rome there were made some general Propositions and Overtures by the Archbishop's Agents they assuring that his Grace was very much disposed thereto and that if it was not accomplished in his Life-time it would prove a work of more difficulty after his Death that in very truth for the last three Years the Archbishop had introduced some Innovations approaching nearer the Rites and Forms of Rome That the Bishop of Chichester a great Confident of his Grace the Lord Treasurer and Eight other Bishops of his Grace's Party did most passionately desire a Reconciliation with the Church of Rome That they did day by day recede from their ancient Tenets to accommodate with the Church of Rome That therefore the Pope on his part ought to make some Steps to meet them and the Court of Rome remit something of its rigour in Doctrine or otherwise no accord would be The Composition on both Sides in so good a forwardness before Pauzani left the Kingdom that the Archbishop and the Bishop of Chichester had often said that there were but two sorts of People like to hinder the Reconciliation the Puritans among the Protestants and the Jesuits among the Catholicks Let us see the Judgment and Relation of another Author in a Gloss or Comment on the former entituled The English Pope Printed at London the same Year 1643. And he will tell us that after Con had undertook the managing of Affairs the Matter began to grow towards some Agreement The King required saith he such a Dispensation from the Pope as his Catholick Subjects might resort to the Protestant Church and take the Oaths of Supremacy and Fidelity and that the Pope's Jurisdiction should be declared to be but of Human Right And so far had the Pope consented that whatsoever did concern the King should have been really performed so far as other Catholick Princes do usually enjoy and expect as their due and so far as the Bishops were to be Independent both from King and Pope There was no fear of breach on the Pope's part So that upon the Point the Pope was to content himself with us in England with a Priority instead of a Superiority over other Bishops and with a Primacy instead of a
Recusants of the Church of Rome p. 234. The Recusants being for the most part of the Good Families of the Nation will take it for a part of their Nobility freely to profess themselves in their Religion if they understand themselves Whereas the Sectaries being people of mean quality for the most part cannot be presumed to stand on their reputation so much In his Book called The Forbearance of Penalties c. 3. p. 12 13. he makes the foundation of all Union to be the Government and Laws of the Church as visibly Catholick which Laws must be one and the same the violating whereof is the forfeiture of the same Communion And here I crave leave to call All Canons All Customs of the Church whether concerning the Rites of God's Service or other Observations by one and the same name of Laws of the Church P. 23. As for the Canons of the Church it was never necessary to the maintenance of Commumunion that the same Customs should be held in all parts of the Church It was only necessary the several Customs should be held by the same Authority That the same Authority instituted several Customs for so they might be changed by the same Authority and yet Unity remain Whereas questioning the Authority by questioning whether the acts of it be agreeable to ☞ God 's Law or not how should Unity be maintained It is manifest that they the Fathers could not have agreed in the Laws of the Church if any had excepted against any thing used in any part of the Church as if God's Law had been infringed by it It followeth of necessity that nothing can be disowned by this Church as contrary to God's Law which holdeth by the Primitive Church Page 27. He saith as Mr. Dodwell It is agreed on by the whole Church that Baptism in Heresie or Schism that is when a man gives up himself to the Communion of Hereticks or Schismaticks by receiving Baptism from them though it may be true Baptism and not to be repeated yet it is not available to Salvation making him accessory to Heresie or Schism that is so Baptized Pag. 28. The promise of Baptism is not available unless it be deposited with the true Church nor to him that continueth not in the true Church that may exact the promise deposited with it Page 33. It is out of love to the Reformation that I insist on such a Principle as may serve to reunite us with the Church of Rome being well assured that we can never be well reunited with our selves otherwise Yet not only the Reformation but the common Christianity must needs be lost in the divisions which will never have an end otherwise Pag. 111. If it be said that it is not visible where those Usurpations took place I shall allow all the time which the Code of the Canons contains which Pope Adrian sent to Charles the Great pag. 128. which I would have this Church to own In Mr. Thorndike's large folio Book there is yet much more for his Universal Legislative Aristocracy mixt with Regular Papacy The sum of all is The Pope Governing at least in the West by the Canons in the intervals of General Councils that is alwaies and as the chief Member with Councils making Laws for all the World Thus the French and Italian Papists differ whether the Pope shall Govern the World as the King of Poland doth his Land or say some as the Duke of Venice or rather as the King of France But Protestants know no such thing as an Universal Legislative Church nor owns any Universal Laws but Gods unless you mean Nationally Vniversal as in the Empire Councils and Laws were called I refer you again to Dr. Barrows Confutation of the rest of Mr. Thorndikes Chap. XII The Judgment of Dr. Sparrow Bishop of Norwich and divers others BIshop Sparrow Pref. to Collect. As my Father sent me so send I you Here committing the Government of the Church to his Apostles our Lord Commissions them with the same Power that was committed to him for that purpose when he was on Earth with the same necessary standing Power that he had exercised as Man for the good of the Church Less cannot in reason be thought to be granted than all Power necessary for the well and peaceable Government of the Church And such a power is this of Making Laws This is a Commission in general for making Laws Then in particular for making Articles and Decisions of Doctrines controverted the power is more explicite and express Mat. 28. All power is given me Go therefore and teach all Nations that is with authority and by virtue of the power given me And what is it to teach the Truth with authority but to command and oblige all people to receive the Truth so taught And this power was not given to the Apostles persons only for Christ then promised to be with them in that Office to the end of the World that is to them and their Successors in the Pastoral Office To the Apostles or Bishops that should succeed them to the end of the World To this One holy Church our Lord committed in trust the most holy Faith c. commanding under penalties and censures all her Children to receive that sence and to profess it in such expressive words and forms as may directly determine the doubt Thus she did in the great Nicene Council This authority in determining Doubts and Controversies the Church hath practised in ALL AGES and her constant practice is the best Interpreter of her right I shall not tire the Reader with the needless recitation of many more late Divines that lived since 1630. enough are known Those that have defended Grotius of late I pass no judgment on you may read their own Books and judge as you see cause viz. Dr. Thomas Pierce now Dean of Salisbury and the famous Preface to Archbishop Bromhall's Book against me c. I fear all this History is needless Men now laugh at me for proving by Mens writings their endeavours to subject the King and Kingdom to a Foreign Jurisdiction when they say it is more sensibly and dreadfully proving it self Chap. XIII Dr. Parker's Judgment since Bishop of Oxford THE last mentioned Author Dr. Sam. Parker besides what he hath said against me in his large Preface before Archbishop Bromhall's Book hath since gone so far beyond all his Fellows that finding himself unable to answer this Argument otherwise The World must not have one Universal Humane Civil Governor King or Aristocracy ergo It must not have one Humane Priest or Church Governor desperately denieth the Antecedent and saith that though de facto the Kings of the Earth have not one Soveraign over them all that is meer Man they ought to have Audite Reges I cannot conjecture who he meaneth unless it be the Pope and he be of Cardinal Bertrand's mind that God had not been wise if he had not made one Man
not too distant may for mutual help and Concord meet in Councils And none should needlesly break their just Agreements because of the general Command of Concord But 1. They hold that these Councils be no representers of all the Christian World 2. Nor have any Universal Jurisdiction 3. Nor any true Governing Power at all over the absent or dissenters but an Agreeing Power 4. And if they pretend any such Power they turn Usurpers 5. And if on pretence of Concord they make Snares or Decree things that are against the Churches Edification Peace or Order or against the Word of God none are bound to stand to such Agreements These being the Judgment of Protestants what do these Men but abuse their words of Reverence to Councils and Submission to their Contracts as if they were for their Universal Soveraign Jurisdiction § 13. And next he saith Whereas Mr. B. doth usher in his Discourse with an intimation that this was only a Doctrine of the Gallican Church he cannot but know that this was the sence of the Church of England in the beginning of Queen Elizabeths Reign Answ. 1. I honour the Gallican Papists above the Italian but I am satisfied that both do erre 2. There is a double untruth in Matter of Fact in your words 1. That I cannot but know that which I cannot know or believe 2. That yours was the sence of the Church of England which I have disproved But what is your proof D. S. For the 20th Article saith The Church hath Power to Decree Rites and Ceremonies and Authority in Controversies of Faith and the next Article doth suppose this Authority in General Councils Answ. The Church of England supposeth that Kingdoms should be Christian and the Magistrates and Pastors Power so twisted as that their Conjunction may best make Religion national as it was with the Jews But it never owned a foreign Jurisdiction or the Governing Power of the Subjects of one Kingdom over the Princes and People of another It followeth not that because the Church in England may Decree some Rites here that therefore foreign Churches may command us to use their Rites Our own Church Teachers no doubt have Authority in Controversies of Faith that is to teach us what is the truth and to keep Peace among Disputers but not to bind us to believe any thing against God's Word and therefore not meerly because it 's their Decree Therefore the Article cautelously calls the Church only a Witness and Keeper of holy Writ which we deny not And that besides Scripture they ought not to enforce any thing to be believed for Necessity to Salvation But you would have us believe the Soveraign Universal Jurisdiction of Councils yea and the lawfulness of all your Oaths and Impositions as necessary to escape damning Schism and is not that as necessary to Salvation 2. And one would think there needed no more than the next Articles to confute you which you cite as for you They knew that there had been Imperial General Councils which being gathered and authorized by the Emperors had the same Power in the Empire that National Councils have with us or in other Nations But there 's not a syllable of any Jurisdiction that they have out of the Empire Yea contrary it 's said 1. That they may not be gathered together without the Commandment and Will of Princes And therefore cannot Govern them without their Will nor have any Conciliar Power being no Council And one King cannot command the Subjects of another Indeed if Princes will make themselves Subjects to a Council or Pope who can hinder them 2. They are here declared to be Men not all governed by the Spirit and Word of God and such as may erre and have erred in things pertaining to God Therefore their meer Contracts and Advice are no further to be obeyed than they are governed by the Spirit and Word of God which we are discerning Judges of And it is concluded that things ordained by them as necessary to Salvation have neither Strength nor Authority unless it may be declared that they be taken out of the Holy Scripture So that even their Expositions of the Articles of Faith which you make their chief Work hath no further Authority than it 's declared to be taken out of the Scripture it self nor yet their decision of the sence of controverted Texts And such proof must be received from a single Man § 14. Such another proof he fetcheth from the Statute 1 Eliz. c. 1. Forbidding to judge any thing Heresie but what hath been so judged by Authority of Canonical Scripture or the first four General Councils or any of them or any other General Councils Answ. As if forbidding private Heretication were the same with the Universal Soveraignty of Councils we are of the same Religion with all true Christians in the World and we are for as much Concord with all as we can attain But is Concord and Subjection all one or Contract and Government § 15. The like Inference he raiseth from a Canon 1571. forbidding any new Doctrine not agreeable to the Scripture and such as the Ancient Fathers and Bishops thence gathered Answ. And what 's this to an Universal Church Soveraignty § 16. The Church of England's Sence is better expounded Reform Leg. Eccles. c. 15. Orthodoxorum Patrum etiam authoritatem minime censemus esse contemnendam sunt enim permulta ab illis praeclare utiliter dicta Ut tamen ex eorum sententia de sacris literis judicetur non admittimus Debent enim sacrae literae nobis omnis Christianae doctrinae Regulae esse Judices Quin ipsi Patres tantum sibi deferri recusarunt saepius admonentes Lectorem ut tantisper suas admittat sententias interpretationes quoad cum sacris literis consentire eas animadverterit § 17. D. S. P. 358. Mr. B. saith The doubt is whom you will take for good Christians into your Communion But this can be no doubt when I except only the Jesuited part of the Roman and other Churches Answ. So you take in the Church of Rome which you cannot do without taking in the pretended Soveraignty Essential to it Was not that Church Papal before there were any Jesuites But hold Dr. It 's France that you are first Uniting with and they say that the Jesuites are there the Predominant part And are you against them there § 18. P. 360. He takes it ill that I suppose him to separate from the Church of England I have fully given him here my proof The Church of England took not it self for a part of an Universal humane Political Church But his Church doth and is thereby of another Political Species as a City differeth from a Kingdom I will not tire the Reader with following him any further Vain Contenders necessitate us to be over tedious § 19. I am loth here to answer the rest of his Book against our Nonconformity 1. Because I would not follow them that
which the Primitive Universal Church was for But such are the Diocesane Party now mentioned Ergo The Major is proved not only from Ignatius who maketh one Altar and one Bishop with his Presbyters and Deacons the noâ—e of Individuation to every Church but a multitude of other proofs which I undertake to give And from the Councils that determined that every City of Christians have a Church till afterward they began to except small Cities The Minor is notorious Matter of Fact every Parish with us hath an Altar and many hundred have but one Bishop Ergo they are no Churches according to the Saying Vbi Episcopus ibi Ecclesia Ecclesia est plebs Episcopo adunata And 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then signified every great Town like our Corporations and Market-Towns And Titus was to set Elders in every such City II. They that render Bishops Odious endeavour to Extirpate Episcopacy But so do I need not name them Ergo The Major is granted The Minor is proved 1. They that use Episcopacy to the Silencing of faithful Ministers of Christ near Two thousand at once than whom no Nation under Heaven out of Britain hath so many better and to render them and all that adhere to them odious and ruined do that which will render Bishops odious But Ergo 2. From Experience when we treated with you 1661. the People would have gladly received Episcopacy as we offered it to you and as the King granted it in his Declaration But when they saw near Two thousand Silenced and that Bishops thought all such as I and the many better Ministers of the Countrey where I lived to be intolerable it hath done an hundred times more to alienate the People from Episcopacy than all the Books and Sermons of the Opposers of Episcopacy ever did e. g. The People that I was over would reverently have received Pious Bishops But though I never saw them nor wrote to them one Letter against Episcopacy these 19 years but have largely written to draw them to Communion in the Parish Church and much prevailed yet they will now rather forsake me as a complier with Persecuters as Martin did the Bishops than they would own our Diocesane Prelacy since they saw me and so many better Men of their Countrey Silenced and cast out and many of themselves laid in Jails with Rogues and ruined for repeating a Sermon together as they were always wont to do He that will teach Men to love Prelacy by Prisons Undoing them and Silencing and ruining the Teachers whom they have found to be most edifying and faithful to them will do more to extirpate Prelacy by making it odious than all its Enemies could do The reason of the thing seconded by full experience are undeniable proofs No Men that I know of have done more against Episcopacy than Bishops and Pardon my free inviting you to Repentance none that I know alive either Sectaries or Bishops more than you two who I unfeignedly wish may have the honour before you die of righting the Church and repairing the honour of true Episcopacy It is a dreadful thing to us Nonconformists to think of appearing before God under the Guilt of Silencing Two Thousand of our selves if it prove our doing If not let them think of it that believe they shall be judged Prov. 26.27 Whoso diggeth a Pit shall fall therein and he that rolleth a Stone it shall return upon him Chap. XVI The Second Letter to Bishop Guning after our first Conference My Lord I Much desire some further help for my Satisfaction in the Three things which we last Discoursed of 1. Whether I mis-recited or misapplied the Case of St. Martin's Separation 2. Whether by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Ignatius be not meant One material Altar or Place of ordinary Communion of one Church 3. What are the true terms of Universal Christian Concord But the last is to me of so much greater Importance than the rest that I will now forbear them lest by diversion from this my expectation should be frustrate And seeing I profess in this to write to you with an unfeigned desire to learn and also to take the Matter to be such as my very Religion and Church relation lyeth on I beseech you either by your self or some other whom you direct to speak your sense to endeavour my better information The only terms or way of Vniversal Christian Concord you say is Obedience to the Vniversal Church and the Pastors are the Church And he is not a true Member of the Church that doth not obey it And this Church to be obeyed is not only a General Council but also a Collegium Pastorum who rule per literas formatas being Successors to the Apostles who had this Power from Christ. This is the Substance of what I understood from you Here I shall first tell you what I hitherto held and next tell you wherein I desire Satisfaction I. I have hitherto thought 1. That only Christ was a Constitutive Head of the Church Universal and had appointed no Vicarious Head or Soveraign either Personal or Collective Monarchical Aristocratical or Democratical 2. Therefore none but Christ had now an Universal Legislative Power nor yet an Universal Judicial and Executive 3. And that this is the first and fundamental difference between us and the Church of Rome 4. But I doubt not but that all the Pastors in the World may be intellectually thought on in an Universal Notion and we may say with Cyprian Episcopatus est unus c. as all the Judges and Justices and other Officers are Universally All the Governing Power of the Kingdom under the King and as all the Individuals are the whole People as Subjects 5. And I doubt not but each Pastor is in his place to be obeyed in all things which he is authorized to Command 6. And these Pastors must endeavour to maintain Concord as extensive as is possible to which end Councils and Communicatory Letters are to be used And that the individual Pastors and People are obliged by the General Law of endeavouring to maintain Love and Concord to observe the Agreements of of such Concordant Councils in all things Lawful belonging to their Determination 7. And I doubt not but while there were but twelve Apostles those twelve had under Christ the Guidance of the whole Christian Church on Earth which for a while might all hear them in one place and were to do their work in Concord and had the Unity of the Spirit thereto by which they infallibly agreed in that which was proper to them and they had no Successors in even though they were never so distant as well as when they were together Act. 15. though in other things Peter and Paul and Paul and Barnabas disagreed And as in the recording of Christ's Works and Doctrine in infallible Scriptures so also they agreed in their Preaching it and in the Practice of all that was necessary either to Salvation or to the forming or
this College of Pastors to Rule while General Councils sit or but in the intervals If sedente Concilio which of them is Supream If only between Councils have they a Legislative Power or only the Judicial and Executive If the former where are their Laws to be found that all the Church may know them And I ask all the Questions before askt of the Laws of Councils How shall we know which be Current and necessary and which are not If not then they are no Supream Rulers that have no Legislative Power 2. Who be these Men that make this College we cannot obey them till we know them Are they all the Bishops in the World or but part If but part which part and who and where shall we find them I know you will not say they are the upstart College of Cardinals nor the Roman Clergy only And I never heard of any others besides Councils that pretended to it viz. To be Universal Governours If it be All the Bishops of the World 1. Do they meet to Consent or do they not If they do and must when where how was there ever such a meeting which was no Council No you say It is per literas formatas 2. Are these Literae formatae Legislative Judicial or Executive If none of these they are no Acts of Government And I asked where shall we find them if they are our Laws If they be Judicial and Executive whither is it that the Accusers Accused and Witnesses must come to be heard speak before the Sentence was passed per literas formatas e. g. Theodoret and the rest de tribus Capitulis when it must be judged 1. Whether they wrote such words 2. What the sence was 3. Whether they were Heretical 4. Whether they repented and must we go to all the Bishops in the World one by one for tryal or be judged without being ever heard 3. I cannot imagine what can be here said unless it be that some Bishops first do the thing and then others do per Literas consent But 1. Do some Bishops first make Laws for all the World and then the rest consent or only for their own Churches By what Authority do they the first 2. Or do some Bishops try and judge a Man e. g. in this or that Country and Parish and then all the rest in the World consent that never hear them or hear of them Every Man nor any is not Excommunicated per Literas formatas by all the Bishops in the World or most 3. But it is not the Executive or Judicial Acts that our Question is concerned in but the Rule of Obedience which is a Law As it was never known that Men must not be taken in by Baptism or cast out by Excommunication till all the Bishops on Earth agree to it so no Universal Laws are extant that were made by such Letters 4. And how can this be the Rule and Test of Christianity or Church-membership or Concord when no Christians much less all can possibly know that all or most Bishops have per Literas consented to such obliging Laws 1. How can we prove that ever any went over all the World to them Drake or Candish did it not 2. And that they opened the Case aright to them 3. And that these Laws had the Major Vote 4. And that they are not forged or corrupted since 5. And that these were true Bishops themselves that did it in America Ethiopia Armenia Greece c. out of our reach 6. Yea What possibility is there of any such known Agreement when it 's known that almost all the Christian World is divided into Parties which disagree and censure one another The English Diocesans and Church differeth from the Roman and the most or many of the Reformed The Lutherans from the Calvinists The Papists from us all and from the Greek and the Greek from them and us and all from the Abassines Copties Syrians called Jacobites Nestorians c. and from the Armenians Georgians Circassians Mengrelians Russians c. How shall I and all the Ministers on Earth yea and all Christians know that all these have per Literas formatas made Laws which all must necessarily obey But if it be only the Sound Part that hath this Universal Government how can I and all Men know which and who that is Hearsay of Adversaries report will not tell us and almost all on Earth are condemned or accused by the rest or most or many And we must hear them that dwell at the Antipodes or Jerusalem c. before we judge them so far as to exclude them from the Sacred Power If it be said That it is not the making of New Laws that is done by this Collegium Pastorum all over the world but their Consent to those that Councils made I answer 1. Are they not Valid upon the Councils making them Then Councils have not Legislative Power 2. If it be left impossible to most to know which were true Councils and which are their Valid Laws when the present Assemblies have best opportunity to signifie Consent how impossible will it be to know which Councils and which Laws and in what sense are approved by all the Bishops in the World or by most And that the Votes were faithfully gathered And by whom And that the Major part are the Rulers of the Minors Will. Johnson saith That it is a General Judicial Sentence De Speciebus and not De Individuis that Councils use E. g. We Anathematize all that hold or do this or that But 1. It 's known that they Anathematized many Individuals 2. No Man can be bound by it till it fall upon Individuals Condemning Arrians proveth no Man to be an Arrian Forbidding us to hear Hereticks obligeth none not to hear him that is not proved a Heretick Judgment must be of Individuals before it can be executed He that must obey the Universal Church must be commanded by the Universal Church and must know that they command him and what they command him which is to me and to most impossible 4. William Johnsons and his Parties last Answer is That the People must Believe their own individual Pastors telling them what the Universal Church commandeth And indeed there is no other way practicable But then 1. This is but a trick to make every Pastor the Lord of our Faith and Souls on pretence of obeying the Universal Church And if this be your sense it will amount to this No man is a Christian that believeth not his Pastor telling him what the Vniversal Church commandeth 2. But I find most Teachers are as ignorant as I am who know not such Universal Authority or Laws 3. Archbishop Vsher and many other Bishops thought that General Councils were not for Regiment but Concord And he that believeth no such Governing Power cannot declare it to his Flock nor obey it 4. By this way most Christians shall be bound on pain of Damnation to believe Untruths and things contrary to what others
must believe e. g. In Abassia Egypt Syria c. they will be bound to believe one thing and at Constantinople another c. Those called now Nestorians are by Travellers said to own none of that Heresie but to Condemn the Council of Chalcedon and Eph. 1. for wronging Nestorius as Innocent did them that condemned Chrysostome Those called Jacobites and Eutychians are said to have no more of the Heresie but to condemn the said Chalcedon Council for wronging Dioscorus and to own the second Ephesine Council some will be bound to be for Images in Churches and some against them some for Constantinople and some for Rome's Supremacy and all in their Countries to be Papists for their Pastors tell them that the Catholick Church is on their side yea in the same Country as in England some must be for Arminianism as it is called and some against it some for the imputation of Christ's righteousness and some against it some for free Prayer in the Pulpit and some against it c. For on both sides their differing Pastors plead the Authority of the Church Few Christians can thus agree in any thing but Christ's plain Laws which I shewed are the terms of Concord If we must appeal from particular Pastors to whom is it If to Councils to whom must we appeal from disagreeing Councils If to the whole Church on Earth how shall we hear from them and know their mind I never saw nor knew any Man that saw any literas formatas subscribed by all Bishops scattered through the Earth 5. You that are Zealous against Popery I presume would not have me be a Papist But I cannot avoid it if I receive your Doctrine that there is a Church-Power in a Council or College of Pastors to Govern the Universal Church and that none are in the Church nor have the Spirit that obey not this Universal Church of Pastors and that to obey them is the only means or terms of Concord For 1. I then yield them the fundamental difference That there is one Universal summa Potestas or Visible Head Collective under Christ. 2. And if so I cannot deny it to be the Pope as the Principium Vnitatis and the Chief Executor of the Laws and the first Bishop in Councils For Councils are rare and the Church is a Church when there are no Councils And the Pope is a known Person and Rome a known Place and accessible and no other pretendeth to this Power that I know of And the Executive Power must be Constant And any other Supream accessible College is unknown to me and all that I can speak with and I can no more obey them than a College of Angels unknown to me If the Church have a visible Vicarious Supream the Pope is likest to be he as to the constant Executive Power and the President of Councils I suppose you take the Councils of Constance and Basil and the French for Papists though they set a Council above the Pope 6. The World hath no Universal Civil Government under God neither a Monarch nor a College or Council of Kings All the World is Governed by Men per partes in their several Dominions as all England is under the King by all the Mayors Bailiffs and Justices But there is no Council of Justices that are One Vniversal Governour Collective Nor is the Dyet of Princes or any Council of Kings one Supream Government of the Earth A Logical universality there is as all Rulers considered notionally rule all the World by Parts but no Political Head or Universal Governour over the whole whom all the Parts must obey I. If now I am in the right and you mistaken then you wrongfully deny the Spirit Church-Membership and consequently Salvation as well as Concord to all Protestants that ever I knew or read who deny a visible Universal Church Head Personal or Collective And I think to most in the World And what Schism that is I need not say II. If I am in the wrong I am no Christian nor Church Member nor can be saved For you say This Body so governed only hath the Spirit And I cannot help it not knowing possibly how to know 1. Who this College is 2. What Councils 3. Or which be the Laws which I must obey 4. Nor with what degree of Obedience 5. Nor that they have such Power How great need have I then earnestly to beg your speedy help for my Information Which will oblige Your Servant Ri. Baxter Decemb. 27. 1679. Chap. XVII The Third Letter to Bishop Guning To the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Ely My Lord THough in Conference I told you the Sense which I had of your words yet judging it my duty to think of them over and over again I also judge it my duty in Writing to leave with you the sum of such a Judgment as I am able to pass on them on my best Consideration leaving it now to your self whether you will by word or writing return any further Answer my hopes of Satisfaction thereby being very low The sum of your Speech which I am concerned in is as followeth I. That certainly a Supream Vicarious Governing Power there is in the Bishops by Christ's Institution 1. Because it is Prophesied Isai. 60.12 That the Nation and Kingdom that will not serve the Church shall perish And the word Church is never put for Christ. 2. And the Apostles only were admitted by Christ to his last Supper and so the Power of Administring that Sacrament till Christ come is given only to them and such as they shall give that Power to 3. And it was not Paul and Barnabas that had the infallible judgment of that Case decided Act. 15. but the College of the Apostles II. That this Supream Vicarious Governing Power over the whole Church on Earth is 1. In all the Christian Bishops of the World 2. And the Major part goeth for the whole 3. And General Councils are their Representatives and so have this Power 4. And that to such Councils it is enough that all be called though all be not there 5. And it is their reception by the Church Vniversal which must prove their Vniversal Power and the Obligation of their Laws 6. And though the Vniversality of Bishops be not always in such a Council they have always that Power which in Councils is to be used as the Judges out of Term time 7. And that if I or any will publish a Heresie we shall know where that Church is by their Censure 8. But as Promulgation is necessary to the Obligation of Laws so many that never can or do hear of the foresaid Vniversal Church-Governing Power or what their Laws are or what is the sence of them may be saved without them by the reading of the Word as many that have not the Scriptures may be saved without them And this you say answers three parts of my last Papers 9 Of these General Councils it is only six that you own as such
Nice 1. Const. 1. Eph. 1. Chalced. Const. 2. de tribus Capitulis Const. 3. against the Monothelites III. You say that These six things are the Governing Acts of this Chief Power 1. To judge which are the true Books of Scripture and the true Copies and Readings 2. To judge what is the sence of the Fundamentals Baptism Creed whose words misunderstood will not save any 3. To judge and declare what is the true Church Government instituted by Christ and his Apostles or delivered by them 4. To judge and declare what are the instituted Ordinances e. g. Confirmation as it is a giving of the Holy Ghost by Imposition of Hands and not only an owning of our Baptismal Covenant which we do in every Sacrament and so of other Ordinances 5. A Judicial Power not of all individual Cases but that those e. g. that hold or do this or that be Excommunicate 6. A Legislative Power to make alterable Canons or Orders of the Church Vniversal This is the sum of all your Explicatory Discourses To which I answer § I. To your proofs that such a Universal Governing Church there is instituted 1. To Isai. 60.12 I say 1. It is not safe stretching dark Prophetical Texts farther than we can prove they are intended The New Testament plainlier tells us the Church State and Power than the Old 2. The Universal Church hath not expounded the Text whether it speak of the state of the Jews after the Captivity or of the State of the Catholick Church now or of the more Blessed State of it at the last when it is more perfected Therefore how are you sure that you have the true sence of it without the Churches Exposition 3. The words indeed are nothing for a Vicarious Soveraign Power Every Political Body is essentiated by the Pars imperans and the Pars subdita Christ is the only essentiating Pars imperans in Supream Power Christ then is the Prime part of the Church The word Church then is not put for Christ alone but for the Society consisting of King and Subjects and sometimes for the Subjects alone It 's oft said that many Nations served the Israelites we say many Countreys were subject to the Romans the Medes Persians Greeks Turks and we do not mean that either the Turkish Roman Persian c. Common Subjects did govern all these Nations nor that their Bashaws Judges Magistrates c. as one Persona Politica in summa potestate ruled them by a Major Vote If the King will say that all the Corporations in Middlesex shall be under London or obey or serve it Who would feign such a sense of it as to say that there must be therefore some Power to rule them by a Vicarious Supremacy beside the ordinary Government or that all the City must Govern by a Major Vote The sense is plain As we all 1. Obey the King as the Universal Constitutive Head 2. And the Judges Justices Mayors as ruling under him per partes in their several Places 3. And we serve all the Kingdom as we serve its common good which is the finis regiminis So other Countries served the Romans Greeks Turks c. And so all Kingdoms should serve the Church or Kingdom of Christ that is 1. Christ as the only Head and Universal Governour 2. All his Officers as particular Governours in their several Limits and Places but none as Rulers of the whole 3. And the bonum Commune or all the Church as the End of Government And how can we feign another sence § 2. To your second Proof I answer 1. The 70 Disciples were Christ's constant Attendants as his Family with whom he was to Eat the Passover 2. We all grant that none have Power to Celebrate the Eucharist or Govern the Church but the Apostles and those to whom the Spirit of Christ in them did Communicate it But we say that they Communicated it to the Order of Presbyters as I thought all had Confessed as some Councils do 3. The Apostles were not appointed as one Supream ruling College to give the Sacrament by their Votes to all the World but each one had Power to do it in his place Nor did they Ordain only as a College by such Vote as Vna persona Politica but each one had Power to do it alone Nor did they write the Scriptures as one Collective Person by Vote but each one had the Spirit and Power to do it as Paul did c. nor did they sit on one Throne or had the promise so to do to Judge the Tribes of Israel as one College by Vote but to sit on twelve Thrones Judging the twelve Tribes as under Christ the only Universal Head and Governour § 3. To your third I answer 1. I answered to that Act. 15. in my last to you 2. Paul and Barnabas had the same Infallible Spirit and had before said the same against the keeping of Moses Law But 1. Recipitur ad modum recipientis No wonder if among those that quarrelled with Paul the Consent of those that had received Christ's Mind from his own Mouth and Spirit did better satisfie the doubtful than one Man's word alone 2. And Christ's Work was to be done in Unity § 4. II. As to the Seat of this Power I answer 1. All the true Bishops of the World Govern the particular Churches as Kings Govern all the Kingdoms of the World under God one Universal Monarch But there is neither one Universal Monarchical Aristocratical or Democratical Soveraign Civil or Ecclesiastical under Christ But each hath his own part § 5. 2. I have shewed the impossibility of our judging of the Major Votes at our distances in most controverted Cases § 6. 3. And I have where I told you proved that there never were must or will be true Universal Councils much less are such the standing Governours of the Church But in Cases of need such as can well do it should come to help each other by Council and Concord without pretending to Universal Governing Power § 7. 4. 1. Who called them to Nice Ephesus Chalcedon Constantinople c. out of the Extra-Imperial Countries 2. Who shall call them now out of the Empire of the Turk Abassia the Mogul Tartary and the rest 3. If calling Men make the Council Universal though they come not is it a Council if none come or how many must it be to ascertain us that it is Universal Hath the Pope the Calling Power or who is it and how proved that they that obey it not may be unexcuseable § 8. 5. I have told you how unable I am to know what the Major part of all Christians or Bishops in the World receive save only by uncertain fame saving that while I know otherwise what is necessary truth I know that they are not the Church that receive it not whoever they be I am a Stranger to Abassia Armenia Georgia India Russia Mexico c. And what if I never knew that there are such
except two Churches for the second Age and more no Bishops distinct from Archbishops but Parochial and I described them at large 2. But though Cyprian and the Carthage Council said Nemo nostrum se dicit Episcopum Episcoporum yet I deny not such as may be called Archbishops Would you but restore Parish Churches or at least make true Discipline a practicable thing I should never quarrel against your Government 3. I still tell you that I am for Councils and that as large when requisite as they can well be made And Pastors there agreeing oblige us to obey their true Authority far before a single Pastor's For it is Authoritas Doctoris and it is Discipuli Obedientia that is due And a Teacher's Authority is founded in his Credibility and that on his Skill Oportet discentem credere And a thousand Historians Philosophers Physitians agreeing oblige me to greater belief than a single one And a Dissenters singularity obligeth me to suspition and suspension of my belief Besides that God bindeth us to do his work in as much Love and Concord as we can And the Canons or Agreements of Councils when Just do determine the Matter of that Concord 4. But that which I still repeat to you is that I deny the being of any such Church as you tell me I must necessarily obey That is one Ruling Ministerial College of Pastors over the whole Christian World I remember no Protestants that own such a thing but you and some such of late Mr. Thorndike and Mr. Dodwell do imply it but they speak not fully out What an unedifying way of Discourse is it for you so Copiously to call out for our Obedience when we only desire you to prove that there is any such Governing College to obey I deny the subject of your Question and you largely prove the Predicate If you would spend many hours to tell me I must obey Gabriel the Angel as the Ruler of this Kingdom I only beg of you to prove that he is such a Ruler and then to tell me how I shall know his Mind will your Exhortation to Obedience profit me VI. Your Copious instances of difficult Texts of Scripture that need a sure Exposition are no Proof to me that Ergo There is a College of all the Bishops on Earth that must be the Expositor I told you the Eunuch Act. 8. was not so resolved of the sence of Isai. 53. It was not the Ancient way A single Teacher may resolve a Doubter by Expository Evidence An agreeing Provincial or National Council may do more without knowing the Mind of all the World And many Texts will be difficult when all the World have done their best VII But you urge that no Scripture is of private Interpretation A. 1. All is not Private Interpretation which is made by Persons Pastors or Councils which are not a College authorized to Rule all the Christian World or Church If it be 1. I confess I never received one Article of my Faith or Exposition of one Text of Scripture aright For I never believed one of them upon the Authoritative-Ruling-Judicial-Vniversal Power of all Bishops on Earth as an authorized College 2. And I know not one Man living then that expoundeth not Scripture by Private Interpretation 3. And I know not that any one these Fifteen hundred Years have not done the same 2. And it is certain that there is no Commentary on the Scripture yet written by the Universal College of Bishops And it 's harder to deliver it down by Memory than by Writing Therefore all Scripture is in this sence of Private Interpretation yea such Councils as are called General have expounded little more than the Articles of the Creed with sad dissention as to their Votes But I confidently think that you follow a wrong Exposition of the Text and that it speaketh not of an Efficient Interpretation but an Objective a Passive and not an Active Q. d. you must not interpret Scripture Prophecies narrowly and privately as if they spake but of such or such a private Person that was but a present typical object of them For holy Men spake as moved by the Spirit which looked farther and meant Christ to come e. g. you know how many Prophecies are meant of David and Solomon proximately and of Christ ultimately And you know what Grotius thinks of the proximate sence of A Virgin shall bring forth a Son And of Isa. 53 c. which yet ultimately by the Holy Ghost is meant of Christ and whether the Prophet himself knew it always many doubt Josias or Jeremy may be meant as types and yet Christ Principal as typified when David saith My God why hast thou forsaken me They pierced my hands and my feet They divided my garments among them and cast lots for my vesture c. and so many Texts cited by St. Matthew these are to have no Private Interpretation as of the private Persons only the first Objects for the Holy Ghost intended them to be Prophecies of Christs when you bring me any Literae formatae from all the Bishops on Earth for another sence the reverence of their Concord will do much to make me forsake this Just so the Papists and too many others distort that 1 Tim. 3.15 which I wonder that I heard not from you when the Text plainly calleth the Church The House of the living God and telleth Timothy how to behave himself in it as a Pillar and Basis of the Truth it is but putting The Pillar for a Pillar and then saying that it is not the title of Timothy but of the Church and so it becometh useful to some mens Opinions Therefore still that which I am more confirmed in by your failing to prove your Affirmative is That there never was instituted and never was existent and is not now existent in the World any one Ecclesiastical Ruling Persona Collectiva Civilis or Governour authorized by Christ to Rule under him all the Christian World that is all the Church by Legislation and Judgment or either of them and to Constitute the Vniversal Church visible as one by relation to that One Governour Especially that all the Bishops on Earth Governing per literas formatas never were nor are such a Power nor yet as Congregate in an Universal Council If such a College of all Bishops on Earth ruling all the Christians on Earth by Consent be the Church which you mean that all must obey that will have Concord I say There is no such Church on Earth nor ever will be before the Day of Judgment After all this sure you cannot mistake the Question 1. It is only of an Ecclesiastical Power by the Word and Keys 2. It is not whether all Bishops ruling by Parts in their several Provinces and keeping Concord in convenient Meetings or Councils may be said to Govern all the Church as all the Magistrates in England Govern all England in Subordination to the King But it is of One Persona Ecclesiastica
said of themselves when they cried Omnes Peccavimus for Voting with Dioscorus and the Eutychians at Council Eph. 2. I would fain know when as the greater Part of the Empire and Church was against this Council in the days of Zeno Basiliscus and Anastasius by what means every Christian should then have known the sence of the Universal Church At Jerusalem the Orthodox rebelliously resisted the Emperor's Lieutenants and put them to â—light in defence of this Council following a Monk that compared the four Councils to the four Evangelists and sent the Emperor word that they would spend their Blood for it And yet even there before the prevailing Part had condemned it At Antioch the Bishop and Monks fought it out to so much Blood that the Monks Carcasses could have no Grave but the River Orontes At Constantinople and Alexandria the Matter oft was little better Are these things indifferent or jesting Matters of small Infirmity 5. And the 5th General Council Const. 2. was thought long by a great Part of the Church to have contradicted the 4th de tribus Capitulis and was so much disowned that even Venice Liguria Istria c. renounced the Pope and Roman Primacy for Owning it and chose a Patriarch at Aquileia to be the Primate instead of Rome which long continued till Sergius reconciled them 6. And that Concil Trullanum called Quino-Sextum which you own as the same with the Fifth is disowned by the Roman Party to this day and accused by them to have been Monothelites Vid. Binnium And yet said to be the same Men who were the Second Const. Council And so they make that Second also to have been Monothelites 6. And the next Const. Third were condemned by the Seventh General at Nice as heinous Sinners for condemning Church Images and even Helvicus with other Lutherans call it Synodum Iconomaâ—hicam quam Oâ—cumenicam dici voluerunt And I think that the Church of Rome disowneth the Doctrine both of it and the Second of Nice which hath agreed that Christ's Body is not flesh in Heaven Now I would know while these Councils thus anathematized each other or lamented their own former Errors as Voting by Fear or Mistake and while most of the Bishops declared against any of them as they oft did and when Heraclius Philippicus or other Emperors were Monothelites and the Major part of the Bishops followed them how common Christians should know whom to Obey XV. I remember that you also pleaded Christ's words Hear the Church But he saith also Tell the Church even the same Church which we must Hear And verily here I am utterly at a loss Christ I know and Paul I know should be heard but who are this one Universally ruling College for me to to hear yea the Pope may be told and heard but how to tell or hear a College that dwell all over the Earth I know not I cannot hope to live long enough to send to or hear from Abassia Armenia Syria Mengrelia Georgia Circassia and all the Greek Churches and to Mexico and perhaps the Antipodes nor do I think our Salvation lyeth so much on our Skill in Geography that we must know that there are any such Countries in the World nor a Rome or a Constantinople c. And I cannot think that most of the World will ever hear that there is such a Man as I in being nor that one of a thousand of the Bishops ever hear the Names or know the Opinions of all the rest or of the one half of them And if I were rich enough to hire a Messenger to go all over the Earth and were so foolish as to hope to live till he returned I must take their Votes on the Credit of the Messengers Word which is a sandy Ground for Church-Communion and Salvation Nay I cannot hope to live to see a General Council much less to see the end of it and to be certain of their Votes and Sentence And if I knew that I had all the Bishops on Earth for one Opinion I am not certain whether most of the Presbyters being an hundred to one be not against them and in England the Presbyters are part of the Convocation which is the Representative Church Had I lived on Earth when the Council of Nice was contradicted at Sirmium Ariminum Tyre Milan and the World groaned to find it self turned Arrian Or when they were Anathematizing each other and fighting at the first Eph. Council Or when the 2d Nicene were condemning the second Const. Or when Vigilius was dragged by a Rope at Const. by Justinian's Command and the Patriarch of Aquileia set up against Rome or when the Trull Canons were made by Men now called Monothelites or when innumerable Monothelite Bishops met under Philippicus c. I could not possibly have told how to know the Governing Judgment of the College of Bishops that live all over the Earth Nay when you own no Council since the Sixth why will no Importunity intreat you to tell me whether for these Thousand Years last the Universal Church was Governed by one College and what Governing Act this Colledge hath so long exercised over all the Christian World And how it was known And whether their Literae formatae are to be found written And where Or are only transmitted to all the World by Memory and by whose Memory and of whom we may all enquire of them with certain Satisfaction Or whether the Church hath been this Thousand Years no Church or Ungoverned You say the Council at Frankford condemned that at Nice How shall I know which the College owned at the time of the sitting of each Council How few Councils were ever so great as that at Basil Can you tell me how to be sure whether the College be more for it or against it at this day Bear with me for telling you that if I had not found that you are a Man of strong Passions full of your self and of undoubting Confidence in your Apprehensions I should wonder how so Studious Learned and Sober a Man could possibly take either Union Communion or Salvation to lie upon Mens Belief of and Obedience to such a College as all the Bishops on Earth And if you take the Creed to mean this as the Holy Catholick Church I shall not wonder if you take me and almost all the Protestants that ever I knew or read for Hereticks and having twice admonished me and not convinced me if you avoid me and should not only Seventeen Years silence me but banish or burn me if you are for such execution upon Hereticks or at least take me and all such as I to be intolerable and use us accordingly XVI I will sum up the Difference between you and me in a Similitude All Power in Heaven and Earth and all Judgment is given to Christ. The Creator's Government by Civil Rulers he changeth not but is now their Soveraign King His Church he Governeth as a Saviour and a Teacher and their Heavenly
Sects were at first Members of these Episcopal Churches and received both their Baptism in them and all the Orders they received There was then no other Communion that could give this Authority Our Adversaries will not deny but that their Orders were received by them were actually received by their Forefathers in the Episcopal Communion They have actually received no more Power from God than they have received from their Ordainers For their Ordainers are they and they alone who have represented Gods Person in dealing with them 2. They have actually received from their Superiors nothing but what their Superiors did actually intend to give them One would think this should be very clear To the Objection that They ought to have given more Power he answers That only proveth that we have no more if they wronged us Where now is all the Reformers Power Did the Pope or his Bishops intend them any against himself IV. But yet he perceived that some might say Particular Ordainers might have singular Intentions And I cannot tell him that as Richardus Armachanus and abundance more thought Bishops and Presbyters to be ejusdem Ordinis so did Jacobus Armachanus of late and Bishop Downame and many other Bishops and declared that Presbyters had Power of Ordination but for Order sake it should not be without the Bishop save in cases of necessity To this he saith That the Ordainers must be presumed to do according to the common sense of the Church and Canons But what if they declare the contrary As Bishop Edw. Reinolds openly declared that he Ordained Presbyters into the same Order with Bishops who were but the prime Presbyters and that he was of Dr. Stillingfleet's Judgment that no Form of Government was Jure Divino necessario Saith he Pag. 487. The Law is alway charitable to presume that every Man intends as becomes him to intend Very good But it 's prudent to presume his actual Intention not from what others do think will become him no nor from what will really become him in the Judgment of God Therefore they must not judge of the Intention of the Bishop by the real Will of God Supposing us to be Proud of the Suffrages of the Schoolmen pag. 492.493 He suspecteth It was rather Picque than Conscience that brought them to it Alas Were not the Schoolmen Prelatical enough Many of them were Bishops and one was a Pope at least And the Council at Basil that allowed Presbyters deciding Votes and St. Jerome and the Reformers all fall under his Censure for the like viz. That Necessity put them on it as a Shift or else the Pope by the Vote of Bishops would have carried it and he justifieth not the Necessities choice but concludeth Pag. 496 497. If it be suspicious whether the Men who then followed these Principles did embrace them out of a sincere sense of their Truth then they cannot be presumed to have been Principles of Conscience Which if they were not this is sufficient to shew that they are not fit Measures of the Power that was actually given by the Bishops of that Age. I confess I had thought that the Papist Bishops Intention had not been the Measure of the Power of Bishops or Presbyters And that Mr. Dodwell had not been so much against the Council of Basil as unjust Conspirators by ill means to overtop the Pope He saith truly Pag. 505. Most certainly they who were of this Opinion the Papists could not intend to follow the Doctrine of the Wicklefists and Waldenses who had been lately censured for maintaining the Equality of Bishops and Presbyters No nor the Doctrine of Luther Cranmer or such as the Church of England hath held V. Yet being forced to confute himself he saith p. 52. It is sufficient for my purpose that Ecclesiastical â—ower be no otherwise from God than that is of every Supreme Civil Mugistrate It is not usual for Kings to be invested in their Offices by other Kings but by their Subjects Yet when they are invested that doth not in the least prejudice the Absoluteness of their Monarchy where the fundamental Constitutions of the respective places allow to them And hath not God's fundamental Law as much Power much less doth it give any Power over them to the persons by whom they are invested If the Power of Episcopacy be Divine and all that men can do in the case be only to determine the Person not to confine his Power c. what kept the man from seeing how great a part of his Book he here confuteth Doth he not confess now that God's Law may give the Power which men may not alter but only determine of the Person to receive it In the case of the Presbyters Office he will have it otherwise because the Bishops are forsooth not only the Investers but the Donors who give just what they please and he proveth it fully by saying it confidently and copiously Because God giveth it not immediately Yes he immediately by his Spirit in the Apostles instituted the species though he do not immediately chuse the Receiver But who giveth the Bishops their Power The Council is above them Do they give them their Power Who giveth them theirs And who giveth the Pope his Power If his may be given by Divine Charter without a Humane Donor but a meer Invester why may not a Presbyters VI. But it is the Vicedeity that is his great foundation Pag. 543. saith he Nor is there any reason for them to oppose God and the Church as they do on this and other occasions If the Churches Authority be received from God then what is done by Her is to be presumed to come from him the same way as what is done by any man's Proxy is presumed to be his own act And as what is done by an Inferior Magistrate by virtue of his Office is presumed to come from the Supreme This is in Answer to an Objection That the Powers united by God are inseparable by any Humane Authority But the Power of Ordination is by God united to the other Rights of Scripture Presbyters c. He answers If our Adversaries mean that those Presbyters who had both those Powers united in them by God could not be deprived of the one without the other nor of any by any Humane Authority this if it should prove true is a case wherein our present Ordinations are not concerned which were not received in those times wherein our Adversaries pretend to prove that these two Powers were inseparably united They may be separated de facto tho' they who separate them be to blame for so doing If they were then united by God because they were united by the men who represented God why are they not disunited by God now when men alike impowered by him have disunited them Why should they not oblige God in one case as well as the other Readers you see here the Core of the Churches disease and chief of our
is Christ the Bishop or Pastor confers them only as his Instruments So others As all Power is of God and must be obeyed so Usurpation is of Satan and the higher the worse and the word Antichrist is supposed by many to signifie one that is a Vsurping Christ that is a Usurper of Vniversal Soveraignty which none but Christ is capable of Mr. Jos. Glanviles Character of Devils or Evil Spirits in his Sadducâ—ismus Triumphatus is considerable p. 33. and 42. Edit 2. The meanest and basest in the Kingdom of darkness having none to Rule and Tyrannize over within the Circle of their own Nature and Government they affect a proud Empire over us the desire of Dominion and Authority being largely spread through the whole circumference of degenerated Nature especially among those whose Pride was their Original Transgression Every one of these desireth to get him Vassals to pay him Homage The good Angels have no such ends to prosecute as the gaining any Vassals to serve them they being Ministring Spirits for our good and no self-designers for a proud and insolent Dominion over us But I think no Devil but Beelzebub the Prince aspireth so high as to be Ruler of all the World or Church And when Cardinal Bertrand told Philip King of France that God had not been Wise if he had not set up one as his Vicegerent visibly to Rule all the World I do not find that he set up that Vice-god so far above God himself as to forbid obeying him before his Viceroy or to deny Gods Universal Laws to be above Mans and to deny all Appeals to God and his Word or to say that the President of Counsels must be obeyed without excepting If Gods Laws and his be inconsistent Since the Writing of all foregoing Mr. Dodwell hath Published the Second Part of his Leviathan called A Discourse of one Altar and one Priesthood as against us whom he calleth Schismaticks and me in particular It is much of the Complexion of the First Part His Schismatical Book being a Chain of many linked Propositions of which many are false and many falsly shaped and applied But put off with a confident Affirmation that he hath proved them true And his former Method is defended by as confident an Affirmation that all that is said against them invalidates not his proof The shortest way I confess of defending himself and answering others and saveth the labour of much Writing and Reading And I think if the tedious Discourses of his two Volumes had been just so abbreviated it had been a Kindness to his Readers § 2. Whether he reserve his Answer to my last Book against him to another Treatise or mean to overpass it by saying it is contemptible I know not nor much desire to know I find him here in his Preface doing that which may serve his turn much better than an answer viz. 1. Many angry Charges that I slander him 2. An attempt to prove it agreeable to his Method 3. Confident Affirmation that I write not accurately nor answer his Proofs And to those that read his Books and not mine this is enough § 3. His Proof of my Slander is mostly by way of question Where did I say this or that Where 1. Those things that I spake of others he feigneth me to say of him Joyning divers late Writers together I mention what is said among them some one part and some another and he takes all to himself 2. When I mention the clear Consequences of his Doctrine 3. And when in my Letters I recite his Verbal Discourse with me he asks Where have I said it Did I not find him a designed Hider I would not suspect designed Fraud but should be very glad that he so much as intimateth in his Questions a denial of so many Errors But who can choose but suspect his Sincerity in such seeming Denials who findeth some of them unsincere E. g. He asketh Pref. Where did I once call Thomas Aquinas a Saint This startleth me Many times have my Ears heard him call him Saint Thomas and never once heard him call him otherwise And doth he now seem to deny it I never said that he so wrote but so called him Had I not reason to believe that when he oft calls the Church of Christ in the singular Number One Political Body under One humane Government which all must obey and not question whether it's Laws be agreeable to the Law of God that he meant the Church Catholick and not a Diocess There are Thousands of Diocesses but the Church that he spake of is but One. Had I any reason to believe that when he talkt of the sole right of the President to call Councils or Assemblies to make Church Canons that he meant only Diocesans When as a Diocesane hath no Bishops under him to Convocate And whether it be not Convocate Bishops to whom he appropriateth this Legislation let the Reader judge as he seeth cause § 4. But I abhor making any Man thought to own what he disowneth And I gladly receive his intimated Denyals in these Questions and tender them to the Consideration of all that are for a foreign Jurisdiction 1. Mr. Dodwell denieth by intimation all humane Vniversal Church Supremacy and consequently all humane Power of Legislation or Judgment over the whole Church He denieth the Government of the Catholick Church Collectively ought to be either Monarchical or Aristocratical in Pope or Council 2. He denieth the Pope to have any Primacy or Presidentship in General Councils or that it belongs to him to call them It was but a Diocesans Power to Convocate his Presbyters that he meant 3. He taketh the French Church for Papists while they own the Popish Communion though many are not so in their Principles But it is Mens Principles that I spake of and not their Communion 4. He denieth Communion with any part of the Roman Church Doth Dr. Saywell do so 5. He taketh the Councils of Constance and Basil for Papists and hath no Communion with those that own them as being Papists 6. He proveth the French Church guilty of the Hildebrandine Doctrine of deposing Princes and Aquinas too 7. He disowneth the terms of Cassander and Grotius as not sufficient to a lasting Peace 8. He odly dreamed that when I deny a Governing College of Bishops I thought the Lord Bishop of Ely had meant such as our University Colleges cohabiting this is no Slander in him yet he declareth that by such a College he means but Bishops ejusdem Speciei governing the Church by parts and not any One Numerical Soveraign Company But that they should hold all due Communion which he may see I still grant And he falsly fancies that I am against Cyprian's naming of Colleagues or his sence § 5. But if Mr. Dodwell be sincere he makes himself one of the greatest Separatists in the World Consider how narrow his Communion is and the Church which he owneth 1. He hath no Communion with the rigid
of a more speedy way of Success So that he resolved to put it to a speedy upshot and would have all or none which brought the Changes which we have since seen § 8. But is the Church of England yet delivered from all the Inclination to a Foreign Jurisdiction and the French Government The Oath of Supremacy made it seem hard to perjure the whole Land that had renounced all foreign Jurisdiction But many devised an Expository Evasion that only a Civil Jurisdiction was meant though the Ecclesiastick also was named Should there be but a new attempt by such as the former Rulers probably made is it not like that Men of the French or Grotian Principles will promote it yea and be glad of French assistance I doubt they that would Perjure the Kingdom by a foreign Jurisdiction will debate this odd Question Qu. Whether all that Profess or Swear that it is Vnlawful on any Pretence whatever to resist the King or any Commissioned by him in the Execution of that Commission may resist a French Army if they Invade the Land by K. J 's Commission Or will they turn Nonconformists Chap. XXIII Postscript to the Reverend Dr. Beveridge SIR § 1. THough you were Bishop Guning's Witness with Dr. Saywell his Chaplain when he conferred with me I was not willing to believe that you were of his mind for a Foreign Jurisdiction either Aristocratical or Democratical or Monarchical but to my grief am now convinced of it by your published Convocation Sermon Having too copiously here and elsewhere confuted it specially in my two Books against William Johnson alias Terret the Papist I shall go on the supposition that you will there take notice of it Especially of these two Reasons against it 1. That the Kingdom and Church is sworn against it 2. That a pretended Universal Humane Soveraignty or Legislative and Judicial Power over the whole Church on Earth is the Grand Usurpation of Christs Prerogative which no Mortal Men are capable of And if this be not Popery there is no such thing as Popery And if the Pope be justly called Antichrist or at least a Trayterous Usurper against the Right of Christ and Kings it is by this And if such a Power be really given to any the Pope cannot be excluded at least from the Universal Primacy § 2. I doubt not but the Love of Unity and the sense of the woful case of the Church by Sects and sad Dissentions engaged Bishop Guning and you in the Opinions you took up And no doubt but the Consciencious part of the Learned and Religious Papists are fixed by the same Motives in their way I may say fixed and very confident or else they durst not carry it on as they have done in France and all other Popish Countreys And I can say that I have not fixed on the denial of a Humane Universal Jurisdiction without thinking seriously Forty years of what I could find said for it as well as against it nor out of an inclination to any contrary extreme Could I have found but any Humane capacity in One or Many for such a Soveraignty Legislative and Judicial and but a possibility of such a thing and any probability that it was of Christs Institution the Love of Unity and Hatred of Unruliness and Divisions and their Effects had long ago made me a hot defender of it But the contrary Truth had contrary Effects § 3. That you may not think that I differ from you more than I do I here premise I. That I doubt not but that the Universal Church visible is One Body or Society of professed Christians As the Universal Church as Regenerate and Spiritual is One Body of sincere Christians II. That the Unity and Concord of it as Professors and as sincere must be maintained to the utmost of our power by all due lawful means III. That a wise Correspondency between all those Churches which by nearness are capable of Acquaintance and Communication is a due means to preserve their Love and Concord IV. That seasonable and duly chosen Synods of many conjunct that live within the reach of such Acquaintance and Communication may in case of true need be a fit means of such Concord V. That where such Synods cannot be had with due equality Letters and Messengers from the several Nations or Provinces or Churches may be used to that end VI. That the General Law of Christ commanding Love Concord and Edification maketh it a sin for any to affect causless singularity and to chuse any way which tendeth to Division And that where there is an Equality and no Regent power yet just Contracts for Concord ought to be observed VII That if in National Churches that is Christian Kingdoms or Commonwealths the Soveraign Power give one Seat or Bishop a Primacy or peculiar Priviledge in the Circa Sacra the Circumstantials of Sacred Offices which are within the Magistrates Power it ought to be obeyed VIII If I had lived in the Christian Empire when it sometime gave the Bishop of Rome and sometime the Bishop of Constantinople this preheminence of degree and the other Patriarchs of Alexandria Antioch and Jerusalem their several Priviledges and Powers not contrary to the Word of God I would have obeyed that which the Emperor by his Law preferred IX The Roman Empire was so great a part of the known Civilized World and so Potent that I quarrel not with the Titles of Orbis Romanus and Ecclesia Vniversalis given to that Dominion and Church which was meerly National or Imperial so be it we understand the true meaning X. Had the Empire continued one Polity and had made the Bishop of Rome the Primate as to his Seat in Councils and the said Bishop had been a capable Person and had not Challenged the Government or Primacy in order of Regiment over the whole Christian World but in the Empire only as the Archbishop of Canterbury doth in England I would have been none of his opposers All this I grant you § 4. But premising for the Explication of Terms that we take the words Regiment Laws Authority c. in the proper political sense and not equivocally for meer advice or consent I add as followeth 1. That as the Universal Church on Earth hath but one Soveraign Jesus Christ so it is one Body Politick in relation to no one Vnifying Head but Christ and hath no one Substitute Vicarious Christ or Substitute Soveraign Government Monarchical Aristocratical Democratical or Mixt. II. The Soveraignty of one Christian King Emperor or Senate in Aristocracy over an United or Confederate Christian Clergy and Laity as Subjects each keeping to their own Place and Work is the Unifying Headship of a National Church which is nothing but such a Christian Kingdom or Republick And that Christ hath owned such National Church Power and hath instituted and owned no Power of Humane Government over it on Earth And therefore as pretending to Universal Jurisdiction is Treason against Christ so the claim
and Monarchical Popery Ch. XII A humble Expostulation to the Zealous Antipapists Conformists and Nonconformists whether they have been innocent as to promoting Popery Ch. XIII VVhat is the Duty of all other Christians towards the Papists in order to the discharge of the Fundamental Duties of Love Concord and Peace and the promoting the common Interest of Christianity VVritten to keep Protestants from sinful Extreams and while we cannot come so near them as Cassander Erasmus Grotius and those that are for a Foreign Jurisdiction we may keep and use a Christian Zeal for the better way of Concord of Christs prescribing avoiding all injury to Papists and all others NB. To prevent misunderstanding Citations note That both some Episcopal Drs and some Presbyterians say That the Government of the Church is Aristocratical meaning only 1. Per partes as England is Governed by Justices and 2. Meeting in such Councils as they can for Concord But not as the summa potestas of the Universal Church which is una persona politica in pluribus naturalibus unifying the Body and so Ruling it They speak not properly in the Language of Politicks Chap. I. The true State and just Resolutions of the Controversies about a Foreign Jurisdiction in Sixty Evident or Proved Propositions § 1. HOW great advantage Satan maketh of the deceivableness of ignorant men and of the deceitfulness of the Crafty and of the aptitude of ambiguous or false or artificially-contrived Names and Words to deceive the sad Experience of the deceived World and corrupted and divided Churches openly declare and yet alas how few observe it and escape the snare § 2. If all Men were judicious and stablished Christians when serious Faith and Godliness is made a scorn by the false names of Hereticks Schismaticks Puritans Fanaticks Sectaries or any sensless jears it would no more turn them from the holy performance of their Baptismal Vow and Obedience to Christ than the raving of a Drunkard or a Bedlam or the crying of a Child But ignorant unresolved Persons that never yet know what the bearing of the Cross was nor have learned self-denial are stopt in their convictions good purposes and hopeful dispositions when they hear serious Piety made a common scorn and that by those that were themselves Baptized and profess Christianity Some of them think sure all this reproach is not laid on them for nothing and others that think it but the stinking breath of ulcerated malignant minds yet cannot bear it but draw back and shrink Therefore Christ pronounceth a dreadful Sentence against those that offend that is by such stumbling-blocks turn back and discourage even the least of these childish beginners It were better for that man that a Milstone were hanged about his Neck and he were cast into the Sea § 3. But no scandal or snare is so dangerous as those which are made by Rulers or Great Men or by Pastors and Teachers on the pretences of Religion and Divine Authority abusing the holy Name of Christ. § 4. And the same Artifice that Satan useth against Godliness in general he useth against particular Truths Duties and Persons And one of the most dangerous that I now perceive the Protestant Religion assaulted with is putting the Name of Nonconformists and Puritans and Schismaticks on Protestants as Protestants and the Name of Catholick the Church the Church of England the Clergy yea of the Reformed Church and of Protestants on the Papal Roman Sect. The Church of England King Parliament Archbishops Bishops and the rest were sixty years ago and less against that as Popery which now is obtruded on us as the sense of the Church of England against Popery Such Wonders can bare Names do with the ignorant And they go on without any great resistance § 5. Whereas there are great differences among the Papists about the degree of the personal Power of the Pope the Cheat is this To confine the Name of Papists to the one party and to own the Opinions of the other Party and to call them Presbyterians or Nonconformists that are against both and will be no Papists 1. The Italians are for the Popes Sole Supremacy and Councils being but his Counsellors 2. The French Lawyers are for the Councils Supremacy above the Pope as to Legislation and Judgment when they sit 3. The middle greater part are for the Supremacy in Pope and Council agreeing and the Popes Executive power in the intervals not absolute but according to the Church Laws or Canons But all for a visible Universal Supremacy and for the Papal Presidency in General Councils and his prime Patriarchship in the West If in England some be for the Kings Sole Legislative Power and Absoluteness and Parliaments being but his Counsellors and others for the Conjunction of King and Parliament in Legislation and the limiting of the Kings Executive Power by the Laws doth it follow that only the first sort are the Kings Subjects The Controversie is the same Yet the same men that are for Absolute Civil Monarchy take on them to be for Ecclesiastical Aristocracy § 6. Men love not to be tired with tedious Volumes nor can I find time to write more such therefore I shall here lay down what the Reader must necessarily know in some Theses or Aphorisms with so short but sound a proof as is necessary to capable willing Readers instead of puting them into distinct Chapters with numerous proofs to urge the unwilling I. The World is the Kingdom of God who is Eminently the King and all Reasonable Creatures his Subjects under Moral Government as all natural Agents are under Natural Potential Government No man will deny this but the Atheist whom I leave to be disputed with by Sun and Moon and Stars Heaven and Earth and common Reason II. God only is the Unifying as well as Specifying Governor of this Universal Kingdom and tho' all men be of one Nature Species Mould Interest c. yet it is only by their Relation to one God that they are one Kingdom III. God hath made no Universal Supreme Monarch or Aristocracy under him in the World But only appointed to each Soveraign his particular Province or Republick For 1. No Man or Senate is naturally capable of it They do not so much as know the Terra incognita nor can send to the Antipodes and all the Earth as Regiment requireth He would be thought as mad that should attempt it as he that claimed a Kingdom in the Moon 2. No Man or Senate had ever yet the madness to claim it IV. He that should Claim an Universal Supremacy must thereby make all Kings and States and all the World to be his Subjects V. He that doth so proclaimeth himself to be publicus hostis the publick Enemy of all Kings and States while he will make them his Subjects against their wills And therefore all Kings and States are allowed to resist and use him as their common Enemy VI. The whole World is now the rightful Dominion of
a Judiciary Executive Power which is ever subsequent to the Subjects actions but it is a part of the antecedent Power If it be but Instructing it is the act of a Teacher If generally obliging it is the act of the Legislator's For it is his Prerogative to be the universally obliging Expositor of the Law who is the Maker of it And it 's more to Give the sence than to endite the bare words So that here is no Universal Legislation or Jurisdiction left for a Soveraign Council Nor any that they are capable of LV. Much less can all the Bishops out of Council living all over the Earth as one College Senate or Aristocracy be the Supreme Governing Power of all the Churches and Christians on Earth having no possible Capacity thereof If our new Church Bishops and Drs. had not fixed on this as the Universal Supremacy I should have expected a sharp censure for judging any so as to own it The same Arguments forementioned confute it Arg. 1. The diffused College of Bishops out of Council never did make Laws for the Church Universal Therefore they are not its Law-makers or Supreme Legislative Rulers Arg. 2. They have never much less always exercised an Vniversal decisive Judiciary Power Therefore they were never appointed to exercise it The Church could not obey that Power that was never used by such as Judges Arg. 3. If God had given them this Power he would somewhere have plainly told us of it and directed them and us how to use it But this he hath not done Arg. 4. The Assertors of this while they would extoll the Clergy cruelly Judge them by Consequence to Damnation for never performing so great a Duty as Universal Legislation and Jurisdiction if God did oblige them to it Arg. 5. For the diffusive Clergy or Bishops of all the Earth out of Council to Govern all Christians on Earth as one College or Senate which all must obey is a thing of such notorious natural Impossibility that I once thought I should never have heard a Man much less a Christian yea a Dr. and Bishop yea many maintain 1. For must they all agree that their acts may be valid in Legislation or Decisive Judgment or must it be a Major Vote No doubt they 'l say the latter And who shall propose and draw up the Laws 2. Who shall carry them all over the World to procure Votes 3. Who shall gather the Votes and Judge of the Majority 4. Shall they Vote and Judge without ever consulting each other and hearing what be said on every side 5. How many Messengers must there be to go into all the World And who shall bear their Charges 6. How shall we be sure when they come home that they have truly taken the Votes Will not all our Faith be resolved into the Credit of these Messengers 7. Must accused Persons and Witnesses travel all over the World to be Judged or must all the Bishops on Earth come to them 8. How many Millions of Criminals will a Bishop have to hear at once or Judge The Case is so gross that I am afraid you will say I feign Reverend Men to be Mad. That which they say is That there is no Concord to be had nor avoiding of Schism but by obeying the Universal Governing Church which is the College of all the Pastors and Bishops on Earth who have as such a Supreme Power under Christ of Legislation and Judgment which they exercise per literas formatas There is no way to excuse this but by feigning that this College of Bishops is to do these great works not by themselves but by a College of Delegates or Representatives viz. Either Cardinals or Patriarchs or else by reducing the whole Church on Earth to the narrow compass of some little Sect and condemning most of the Christian World that they may not seem to need them for Legislation or Judgment And these I have sufficiently confuted before LVI The Universal Supreme Government either of Council or the College of the diffused Clergy is more impossible and unpracticable and much worse than the Soveraignty of the Pope For 1. The Pope is a known Person and it 's possible to find him to send to him to hear from him 2. He is One and it 's possible to know his Mind without gathering Votes or Literas formatas all over the Earth 3. Most may send to him and hear his decision at least in an Age. 4. What he cannot do by himself he can depute others to do 5. He is almost always in being and the Church need not be so many Hundred Years headless or without it's Soveraign Power 6. He hath some Cob-web shadow of right in the Tu es Petrus and Tibi dabo Claves and Pasce oves But as to the said College and Council all this and more is contrary So that I do deliberately profess that if I did believe that there were any Universal Supreme Rector or Ministerial specifying Vnifying Constitutive Head or Governour under Christ I should soon resolve that it is the Pope there being no Competitor so little uncapable as he And all the Papists save a few Flatterers acknowledge that the Popes Power is not absolute and unlimited and that he hath need of Councils as the King hath of Parliaments not for constant Government but partly for Legislation which belongs not to the Pope alone and partly for Medicinal reparation and execution when the Church is diseased So that they that are for the Pope as the stated Supreme are for Councils also and would use Councils better than the Aristocratical that give them the Supreme Government would use them All men know that they are rarely in being Even Bishop Guning saith he receiveth but the first Six General Councils To say the Church hath been headless or without it's Supreme Government just a Thousand Years and is so still is to make it invisible in an Essential Part. Is there now a visible Catholick Church or is there none If none why would they silence and damn us all for not obeying that which is not If there be where and what is the Pars regens the constitutive visible Supremacy If in a Council there is none If in the College of diffused Bishops all over the World they are no Governors they never so made Laws they Govern not as such and so are no such Governors They only Govern per partes in their several Precincts as all the English Justices of the Peace Mayors Bailiffs and Judges do and not as an Aristocracy But if it be a Church now because there is a Pope say so and hide not your opinion We say It is a Church because there is a Christ and Christians and we know no other Matter and Form LVII They that assert a Supremacy in a Council or College of Bishops do unavoidably introduce a Pope If they will call none a Pope but him that is absolute and unlimited and no Man a King but an absolute
Preach meer desperation to all that have not more knowledge than I have who cannot possibly find out a Governing Universal Church nor its Laws though I would willingly find it and obey it Q. 53. Do they not Preach common desperation who say that Schism is a damnable Sin and he is in that guilt who suffers himself to be Excommunicated by Prelates for not obeying them in any unsinful condition of Communion as H. Dodwell speaketh Do not such Carnifices animarum make it necessary to Salvation to know all the unsinful things in the World which a Prelate may impose to be unsinful And is any man on Earth so Skilful How many indifferent things are there which the wisest man may doubt whether they be indifferent Of old it was thought enough to know the few things which God made necessary and now these Tormenting Uniters make it necessary to know the multitude of things indifferent to be such Q. 54. Must we needs know what sense perceiveth by the credit of a General Council or all the Bishops of the World As whether I see the Light or Colours What taste my Meat hath c If not why may I not take Bread to be Bread and Wine to be Wine on the credit of my senses though the Bishops or Council say the contrary Q. 55. Must I have the Authority of a Council or College of Bishops to believe that there is a God and that he is most Great and Wise and Good most Holy Merciful True and Just or to know that there is a Life to come and the Soul Immortal or that men must not hate the Good and love the Evil as such nor live in Murther Theft Adultery Perjury c. Doth not the Law of Nature bind men without a Council of Prelates And can they null that Law by their pretended Soveraignty Q. 56. Must every man have the Sentence of a General Council or College as wide as the Christian World to satisfie him of the truth of Christianity before he is Baptized and made a Christian Q. 57. Must we know what the Council or spacious College saith before we believe the Creed Lord's Prayer and Ten Commandments or did the ancient Christians receive them only on such Authority Did not every Baptizer expect a Profession of the Creed Q. 58. Was not the Bible received before there was a General Council Q. 59. Have not Councils differed about the Canonical Books of Scripture See Bishop Cousins of the Canon Compared with the Council of Trent Q. 60. Must we have new Councils to deliver us again the same Creed and Bible Q. 61. Is it not a reproaching of Christianity to tell the World that after 1691 Years it is not yet fully known what it is but we must have new Councils to tell it us and to make it up Q. 62. Did Councils only receive the old Apostles Creed when they made so many new ones or added so many Articles Q. 63. Was the Primitive Church of the same Species with the present Romish and Imposing Church when he was then a Christian who profest belief of the Creed as the Christian Symbol and to desire according to the Lord's Prayer and Practise according to Christ's Commands And now so many other things are made necessary hereto Q. 64. Do not those men deal falsely who subscribe the 39 Articles of the sufficiency of the Scripture as to all things necessary to Salvation and yet say that it 's necessary to Salvation to obey the Bishop of the place in all unsinful things and consequently to Believe them all to be unsinful Q. 65. Is it by the Divine Authority of a Council or Mundane College of Prelates that we know which are the true Writings of Ignatius Irenaeus Clemens R. Alex. Tertullian Cyprian Hierom Augustin c Or do their Critical Writers send us to the College or Council to know If not why may not the Canon of Scripture be known yea much better by meer Historical Tradition and inherent Evidence Q. 66. Is it not by History and not Church Power that we know what Popes have been at Rome what Councils have been called and what they decreed And may not the same way secure us of the Matter of Fact about the Scripture Q. 67. Hath any Council or College yet Decreed which are the true and current Copies of the Original of the Scripture and which of the various Lections are true If they had agreed but of the vulgar Latin would Sixtus 5th and Clemens 8th have Published Editions so vastly different If they never did it yet when will they do it Q. 68. Did ever Council or College determine which is the truest Translation Q. 69. Did ever Council or College give the Church a Commentary on the Bible Q. 70. Did they ever write a Decision of the multitudes of Controversies about the meaning of several Texts and the multitudes of Doctrines which are yet controverted among Papists themselves and all the World Q. 71. Is it a Satisfaction or a gross Cheat to tell us of a necessary Church Power to Expound Scripture and Judge of Controversies who yet will not do it but leave all unexpounded and undecided Q. 72. Was Gregory Nazianzen a Fool that spake so much of the hurt that Councils do and resolved never to go to more Q. 73. Can I know that Pope or Council have Authority given them by Christ before I believe that Christ is Christ and had Authority himself Q. 74. Can I know that Christ's Promise to Pope Council or Prelate is true before I know that the Promise of Justification Adoption and Salvation are true that is Before I am a Christian Q. 75. Can I believe the Promise of Pardon and Salvation or the Promise made to General Councils or Prelates without knowing the meaning of those Promises And can I believe the Churches Power from God without believing the Promise of it And if I can understand all these Promises without a Council why may I not understand more And how then do I receive all Scripture from a Council Q. 76. Do those that Preach to convert Infidels in Congo China Japan Mexico among Turks c. Preach first the Authority of General Councils or a Mundane College as the Primum credendum upon whose credit Christianity is to be received Hath this been the way to Convert the World Q. 77. If Paul curse an Angel from Heaven if he bring another Gospel and Paul charge Timothy to see that men Preach no other or new Doctrine must there be Councils or a College to make either a new Gospel or a new Doctrine or Universal Law Q. 78. If men were saved without believing the Canons and Decrees of Councils before they were made even by simple Christianity is it not necessary Mercy to let men be so saved still Q. 79. If it be not a new Gospel but mutable Accidents which the Church Laws do determine of what need there an Universal Power or Soveraignty or an Universal Law
for such when divers Churches and Countries may have divers such Accidentals and the same Churches may change them as they see cause Q. 80. If it be not Legislation but Judicature that we must have an Universal Judge or Power for what are the Cases that they must Judge Sure it is not whether John or Thomas shall be judged capable of Baptism or of the Lord's Supper or whether he be an Adulterer a Drunkard and impenitent therein and so to be Excommunicate Must all the World come before all the World Shall Millions of Sinners be unjudged till all the Bishops of the World Judge them If it be Persons accused of Heresie Schism or any Sin that must be judged must they not be heard and their witness heard before they can be judged justly But if they Judge not of Persons but of Doctrines whether they be Heresie or not this will make no Alteration or Reformation till it be judged what persons are guilty of such Errors or Heresies And if particular Pastors on the place must judge all such persons is not the Scripture the Rule of Faith a sufficient Rule to judge of Heresie by Q. 81. If it be whole Churches that are to be judged will not a brotherly power of disowning their Communion serve without a Governing Power Had every one a Governing Power to whom the Apostles commanded with such not to eat nor bid them good speed May not Princes renounce Communion with Neighbour Princes and Nations without being their Governour Q. 82. In conclusion doth it not remain that this pretended Universal Soveraignty Monarchical or Aristocratical is the device of the Prince of Pride a Treasonable Usurpation over all Princes disobedience to Christ Luke 22. and Antichristian Usurpation of his Prerogative and a base Captivating of the Souls and Reason of Mankind to a pretended Power which common sense reason and experience fully proveth to be a natural impossibility or that which in practice no Mortal Man or College is capable of Chap. XI A Breviate of the Papists Faith and Church Doctrine both the Monarchical and Aristocratical sort § 1. WE must believe that Christ hath a Church before we believe that he is Christ the Redeemer § 2. VVe must believe that this Church is Infallible or our Governour before we can believe that Jesus is Christ and our Governour § 3. We must believe that Christ Promised Infallibility or Governing Authority to this Church before we can believe that he is Christ. § 4. We must believe that this Promise is true and shall be fulfilled before we believe the Gospel Promise of Pardon and Salvation that is before we are Christians or believe the Scripture § 5. We must believe that the Pope is Christ's Vicegerent or Vicar General or General Councils at least before we can believe that Christ is Christ. § 6. We must believe that the Words of the Apostles were Intelligible else why did they speak but their Writings are not till a General Council make them so by an Exposition § 7. We must believe that it is intelligible which be true Bishops and Councils and what is the meaning of their Voluminous Decrees but it is not intelligible what is the sense of the Scripture till Councils tell us § 8. We must believe that God is the great Deceiver of the World by sense and things sensible e. g. by sense which takes Bread to be Bread and Wine to be Wine § 9. We must believe that all men are Hereticks who deny not their senses and all that believe sense even of all the sound men in the World shall be Damned That is All that believe God speaking by things sensible § 10. We must believe that God who is the great Deceiver of the World even to and by the senses yet hath given a Spirit of Infallibility to those Popes and Prelates in Council who live in worldliness and wickedness § 11. We must believe that an unlearned Pope and Prelates who never understood the Original Tongue but are ignorant men are by Miracle in Council inspired with the gift of right expounding the Scriptures which they never studied or understood before § 12. We must believe that every Priest how ignorant or wicked soever doth by pronouncing the bare words of Consecration work many Miracles turning Bread into no Bread Wine into no Wine making quantity and other Accidents to exist without Substance c. And that he can work such Miracles every hour of the day and if he can but get into a Bakers Shop or Vintners Celler to say Mass may in malice undo the poor men when he will by turning all their Bread and Wine into none § 13. We must believe that the Roman Empire was all the Christian VVorld or that a Council General as to that Empire was General as to all the VVorld And that the Roman Emperor or the Pope called the Bishops of all the VVorld together And that the humane Primate of one Empire was Governour of all the VVorld § 14. VVe must believe that now that Empire is dissolved the Laws then made bind all the Princes and Churches on Earth viz. that a defunct power still ruleth even those that never owed them obedience § 15. VVe must believe that we in England are rightfully under a Foreign Church Jurisdiction contrary to the Oath of Supremacy § 16. VVe must believe that all Temporal Lords must be sworn to extirpate all Protestants and to perform it if able on pain of Excommunication Deposition and Damnation And that if they do not the Pope may execute this penalty of Excommunicating and Deposing them and giving their Dominion to others and may Absolve their Subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance Concil Later sub Innoc. 3. Can. 1 2 3. § 17. VVe must Swear never to expound the Scripture but according to the Concordant sense of the Ancient Fathers who never expounded much at all much less ever agreed in any Exposition of them all § 18. VVe must believe that God hath given the Church that is the Pope and Councils a Power to Expound hard Scriptures and to end Controversies and that this is a great Blessing to us VVhen yet neither Pope nor Councils will give us a Commentary on the Bible or exposition of hard Texts nor will determine most of the Controversies that now trouble us § 19. VVe must believe that the Governing part of the Church is to be obeyed and Gods VVord received but by their Proposal when yet it is not known who is the Governing part Pope or Council nor which Councils be true and which but false Conventions nor can they assure us how we may ever come to know it § 20. VVe must believe those Councils to be true and credible which contradict and condemn each other and that both are in the right § 21. VVe must believe both that all Gods VVord in the Sacred Scripture is true and that Councils and Popes say Truth when they contradict it § 22. VVe must believe