Antients Pray search the Rolls of Parnassus that we may know whether Apollo have Recorded Bishop Jewel and all the Champions of the Reformation for Fools and Asses for I observe they were all so impertinent as in the controversie with Rome to Appeal very often to the Judgement of the Antient Fathers Learned Chamier in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for antiquity sake I have chosen the Hebrew Title disputing de usu Canonis censures his Romish Adversaries for declining the Judgement of the Antients in that Controversie Dissimulant Adversarii hanc tantam Antiquorum Testimoniorum copiam vehementiam ut solent à solis Radiis oculos avertere quibus lippitudo est incommoda There are two Cases in which we Appeal to the old Catholick Fathers 1. In Controversies of Faith or the great Doctrines of Christian Religion 2. Concerning the Government Custome and Discipline of the Antient Church Now the great Dispute is Whether we may appeal to their judgement in matters of Faith And here I will freely trust you with my Sentiments My Belief of the great Fundamentals and Doctrinals of Christianity is founded upon those Divine Oracles of the Holy Scriptures But my Perswasion is much help'd and establish'd by the universal consent of the old Catholick Church in the same Articles For I consider that the Antients of the first four Centuries liv'd very nigh the time of the first Promulgation of Christianity when the Sense of the Apostolick Age was yet fresh and early And I am hugely confirm'd by observing that the old Greek Fathers and Councils expounded the Creed just as we do for sure they must in reason be suppos'd to understand the Idiom of their own Language and therefore to interpret the Mysteries of the Gospel better than we who are so many Ages remov'd from the first Revelation and are but Forreigners to that Language in which the Gospel was writ There is still a controversie on foot in the Churches to use the Phrase of our Author concerning the eternal Divinity of Jesus the Son of God and the Resurrection of the Flesh is still called in Question Now though my Belief of these two Articles is primarily founded upon the Sacred Scriptures yet that which makes up my Plerophorie is the authority of the Antients For though the Sacred Writings appear very express in those two Articles yet I have seen all those Texts so cunningly evaded by the plausible interpretations of the Socinians that I confess it is great satisfaction to me that the antient Catholick Church did in General Councils maintain those Articles and expound the Holy Text in that sense which we receive I was about to have concluded this with an old sentence of Vincentius Lyrinensis but I consider'd that to prove the authority of the Antients by an antient Author would be false Logick and a gross impertinence and I am very shye of those ill-looking imputations Therefore I will end with the authority of the great Chamier who was but a Modern Divine and of the Reformed Gallican Church and I hope our Appeal to him will be allowed In the controversie De Scripturae interpretatione he discourses of the several helps to a right interpretation of Scripture and among the rest mentions the judgement of the Antients Alter ordo veterum est atque eorum qui nostram aetatem praecesserunt Horum labores nemo pius dubitat Deum extare voluisse ut qui viventes profuerunt Ecclesiae mortus non sint inutiles Juvat ergo valdè quidem juvat sciscitari quid senserint olim boni Patres tum de fidei Articulis tum de singulorum Scripturae locorum interpretatione neque earum Testimonium parvi faciendum multò minus rejiciendum absque graevissimd Ratione etsi non debeant fidei nostrae dominari This learned man was under no temptation as our Author was and therefore expresses his opinion of the Antients with much Reason and Reverence and therefore if I have been guilty of Grossness and Folly in my appeal to Antiquity you see Sir I have very Learned Fools to bear me company 2. Our next Appeal to Antiquity is in the Questions concerning the antient Government and Discipline of the Catholick Church Methinks there should be no dispute concerning the Equity or Reasonableness of our Appeal in this case For all Courts of Justice in a Question concerning an antient custom or practice do constantly pass sentence according to the Testimonies of the most aged men And though we should grant that the antient Fathers were not wise enough to be Judges yet sure their very antiquity makes them the most competent Witnesses of the Government and Practice of the Church in the first Ages of Christianity Sir you see our House of Peers when their Priviledges were questioned by the Commons thought it the most rational Method to determine that controversie by an Appeal to antient Presidents And if our Protesting Lords would be as just to the Church as they are to their own Court and allow the antient Records of the Catholick Church to be as Sacred as the old Rolls of Parliament they would have oblig'd themselves never to alter Episcopal Government For we can shew more numerous and far more antient Monuments to prove the Primitive and continued Jurisdiction of Bishops than their Lordships can produce to assert their peculiar Prerogatives But Sir if you would more clearly understand this necessity or usefulness of appealing to the Antients let me humbly offer this advice I know your Temper is serious and contemplative but I advise you upon this special occasion to compose your mind into an extraordinary Fixation and when you are retired and your eyes shut and your arms folded Then think out of the World all Councils and Fathers Fancy we had no more notice of the Judgement or Practice of the Antients than Origen had of his State of Pre-existence Suppose this present Age of the Church to have no Monument of Christian Antiquity but the Gospels and Epistles in Greek and no skill in that Language but what we learned from Pagan Orators Poets and Philosophers And at my next Visit pray acquaint me with the Result of your thoughts Whether in those considerations you did not fancy a strange Darkness upon the face of Christendome and see a necessity of a New Revelation to interpret the Old Our Author proceeds and tells us He sees no Reason why opinionum varietas opinantium unitas should be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 why we might not differ in opinion and yet communicate in Sacris The honour of God and Religion have so much suffered by our Divisions that I wish with St. Paul Rom. 15. 6. That we might with one mind and with one mouth Glorifie God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ But since our controversies in Religion are so far multiplyed that there is no hope the Christian World should ever unite in one judgement without the force of a Miracle yet
conferring Orders as is evident from St. Paul's Epistles directed to them and though there were many Presbyters in the Dioceses of Ephesus and Crete yet none had Authority to ordain Elders or Priests but only Timothy and Titus Linus by Apostolick Consecration succeeded the Apostles in the Chair of Rome Symeon governed the Church of Jerusalem or the Diocess of Palestine next after St. James Anianus succeeded St. Mark in the Church of Alexandria And this Succession was propagated with so much care and certainty that Irenaeus tells us He could name all the Successors of the Apostles in the several Apostolick Churches unto his dayes Habemus annumerare eos qui ab Apostolis instituti sunt Episcopi in Ecclesiis Successores eorum usque ad nos And this line of Apostolick Succession of Bishops hath continued through all Ages of the Church to our present times So that he who is out of this line of Apostolick Succession and exercises any Ministerial Office without the Commission of Episcopal Ordination is but a Lay-Impostor and a Schismatick from the Catholick Church And all other Societies of Christian people who totally withdraw themselves from the Government of their Bishops who are the Apostles Successors and from the Ministry of those Presbyters lawfully set over them by Episcopal Ordination and Institution and cast themselves into any other Model of Government are guilty of Schism This was the formal Notion of Schism in the sense of the antient Church Irenaeus Bishop of Lugdunum who convers'd with Polycarpus the Disciple of St. John may in reason be allowed to understand the Primitive and Apostolick Notion of Schism better than our Doctor at the distance of sixteen hundred years He in his Book Adversus Hereses exhorts the Christian World to hearken only to those Priests who were in the Communion of the Catholick Church and who those are he there describes Quapropter eis qui in Ecclesia sunt Presbyteris obaudire oported iis qui successionem habent ab Apostolis sicut ostendimus qui cum Episcopatus successione charisma veritatis certum secundum placitum Patris accepêrunt Reliquos vero qui absistunt à principali successione quocunque loco colliguntur suspectos habere vel quasi Haereticos malae sententiae vel quasi scindentes elatos sibi placentes aut rursus ut Hypocritas quaestus gratia vanae gloriae hoc operantes Qui autem scindunt separant unitatem Ecclesiae eandem quam Hieroboam poenam percipiunt à Deo Ignatius the second Bishop of Antioch in succession from St. Peter in his Epistles ad Trallianos ad Smyrnenses and in those to the Philippians Ephesians and Philadelphians frequently charges them to keep themselves in the unity and communion of the Christian Church by a regular obedience to the Bishops and by communication with the Priests who were set over them by the Authority of Episcopal Order and to disobey those Bishops and their Presbyters and to separate from them is in those Epistles charg'd with Schism Athanasius brands Ischyras for a Schismatick and justifies the charge from this reason that Ischyras did usurp a Ministerial Authority without a regular Ordination from the Bishops of the Catholick Church and gathered to himself a distinct Congregation separate from the Jurisdiction of the Bishop of Alexandria in whose Province he lived St. Cyprian in his fortieth Epistle ad populum Carthaginensem de quinque Presbyteris Schismaticis exhorts them to have no communion with those who had divided themselves from their Bishops for he tells them in that Epistle That to be sine Episcopis was to be extra Ecclesiam And in his Book de Unitate he gives us this notion of Schism Contemptis Episcopis derelictis Dei Sacerdotibus constituere aliud Altare or Conventicula diversa constituere That it was Schism to contemn and forsake the Bishops and Priests of God and to set up another Altar or to settle distinct Conventicles And this he accounts so foul a crime that he tells us in the same discourse Talis etiamsi occisi in confessione fuerint Macula ista nec sanguine abluitur inexpiabilis gravis culpa discordiae nec passione purgatur That Martyrdom it self cannot expiate the guilt of Schisim And when Maximus Urbanus Sydonius and Macarius return'd from the Novatian faction into the communion of the Church they express it thus Episcopo nostro pacem fecimus they had reconcil'd themselves to the Bishop and this was enough to assure St. Cyprian they had renounc'd their Schism and were restor'd to the Churches communion I will end this with the assertion of St. Augustine Radix Christianae societatis per sedes Apostolorum successiones Episcoporum certâ per orbem propagatione diffunditur i. e. the root or foundation of unity or communion in the Christian Church is founded in the several Seats of the Apostles and diffused through the Christian World by the certain propagation or succession of Bishops Therefore in the judgement of St. Augustine all those persons or societies that have divided themselves from the Bishops and Priests of the Apostolick succession are but wild plants and no branches of the Catholick stock I could fill many Pages more with Testimonies of the same nature but such numerous Quotations would look like Pedantick impertinence and I doubt not but those Authorities I have already mentioned will perswade you to believe That a total separation from the Orders and Government of Bishops was constantly adjudg'd to be Schism by the concurrent sentiments of the antient Church And now Sir having examined these Testimonies I may proceed to sentence That seeing the Teachers of our Non-conforming Congregations in England were never regularly Ordain'd to any Ministerial Function by the hands of the Bishops deriving their Authority from Apostolick succession and seeing their Leaders and their blind Proselytes have wholly withdrawn themselves from the Conduct Government of Episcopal Authority I shall therefore adventure to pronounce them Schismaticks not only from the Church of England but from the whole Corporation of the Catholick Church Therefore that which the Doctor so Magisterially asserts at the end of his seventeenth Page is no Axiom of Divinity for I have already prov'd that a man may be Schismatick from the whole Catholick Church on earth without Heresie or Apostasie The premises being considered will furnish us with an Answer to that passionate Harangue pag. 21. Do we not own Christ his Gospel the same points of faith the same acts of Worship where is the Separation then This St. Augustine tells us was the same Plea of the Donatists and might have been urged by the Novatians and Schismatick Presbyters of Carthage but it would not acquit them from Schism nor will it vindicate our English Sectaries Corah and his confederate Mutineers were neither Hereticks nor Apostates but men of the same Creed with Moses and Aaron their crime was the violating
that subordination which God had appointed and not submitting themselves to the Superiour Authority of the Priesthood And Sir it may be worth your observation that this Plea of the Doctor and that of the Hebrew Rebels have the same sense for just thus they plead Numb 16. 3. All the Congregation is holy every one of them that is in the Doctor 's phrase Do we not own Moses his Laws the same points of faith the same acts of Worship But this plausible plea would not prevail nor mitigate the provocation for God punished one Schism with another The earth rent and swallowed them up and with open mouth taught the rest of the Church to keep Unity and Order as well as the profession of a true Religion Therefore the Answer is very easie to the Doctor 's ruffling Question Do we not own Christ his Gospel the same points of faith the same acts of Worship where is the separation then Why Sir the separation is in dividing from the communion of all the Bishops and Episcopal Presbyters who in a constant line succeeding the Apostles have only a just and regular Authority to govern and guide the Christian Church The Doctor in the beginning of pag. 34. tells us That a controversie among them of the same communion is the chief if not the only notion of Schism that the Scripture gives us I confess the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Schism in its general notion signifies any manner of separation or division and therefore I do acknowledge that those dissentions that were within the bowels of the Apostolick and Catholick Church were called Schisms both in the Scripture and in the Writings of the antient Fathers but this does not hinder but that the same word may be used to signifie a separation from the Catholick Church for if a wound in the body may be called a Schism sure Amputation or the cutting off from the body is the greatest rent and Schism in the World For though there were indeed divisions in the Church of Corinth where some were for Paul and some for Apollos and some for Cephas this at the worst was but a faction or a breach of charity but it was not properly Schism in the highest sense of the word for they still setled themselves under the Government and Ministry of the Apostles or some Presbyters ordained by the hands of the Apostles But those Conventicles that crept into houses and formed Assemblies distinct from the communion of the Apostolick Church those that heaped to themselves Teachers which as the phrase imports were not set over them by Apostolick Order and Institution those that despised Dominion and sake evil of those Dignities which did superintend the Government of the Church These men St. Jude tell us were those that did separate themselves that is were Schismaticks and just so are their Brethren the Sectaries of England Before I proceed to the next enquiry that concerns the Schism from the Church of England it will be necessary to state the right notion of the Catholick Church according to the sense of the antient Councils and Fathers The Doctor and his Complices are for Comprehension and give us a very wide notion of the Catholick Church for they will have all men that profess the name of Christ though in some things Hereticks and Schismaticks too yet to be included within the boundaries of the Catholick Church But I observe the Antients would not endure this Comprehension for they reckoned none to be in the communion of the Catholick Church but those who confessed the common faith delivered to the Saints and kept themselves under the Orders and Government of the Bishops who were the Apostles Successors and therefore oft-times in Councils and antient Epistles we find this Superscription To the Catholick Church in Antioch To the Catholick Church of Alexandria To the Catholick Church of Rome c. this still being used in contradistinction from the Novatians Arrians and Donatists which the antient Church look'd upon as Schismaticks and extra Ecclesiam Now having advanc'd thus far the way is prepared for the second enquiry Whether our Non-conformists are guilty of Schism from the Church of England And I doubt not but to prove the Affirmative The Church of England adhere to that Creed which was delivered by the Apostles professed by the antient Primitive Church and confirm'd by the first four General Councils it hath preserv'd the Unity of Government by a succession of Bishops in the Apostolick line as appears from the undoubted Archives and Records of England Therefore we are secured that it is in the Unity of the Catholick Church and a most excellent part of it Now as our Christianity obliges us to be members of that body of Christ the Catholick Church So the eternal reasons of Peace and Order bind us to communicate with that part of the Catholick Church in which our lot hath plac'd us except it can manifestly appear that that part is so corrupted that we cannot communicate with it without evident hazard of our salvation It were an unpardonable disorder for a Native of England dwelling in London to contemn the Laws of our Prince and to govern himself by the Placaets of the United Provinces and it were as great a confusion for those who live within the Jurisdiction of the Church of England to submit themselves to the Orders and Government of Rome or Geneva Before the Papal Usurpation of Universal Monarchy the Patriarchs of the Christian Church had their distinct Limits and Jurisdictions The Patriarch of Constantinople had his peculiar Primacy or Regiment and was not to intermeddle with the Province of Alexandria and so the Bishop of Rome had his peculiar Jurisdiction and was allowed no inspection over Constantinople Antioch or Alexandria and these distinct boundaries were fixed by a Canon of the Council of Nice and because it conâ—utes both the Papal Supremacy and Puritanical Anarchy I will give you the copy of that Canon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is Let the antient customs be in force Let the Bishop of Alexandria have the Jurisdiction of Aegypt Libya and Pentapolis as likewise the Bishop of Rome was accustomed to have in his Province and so let the Churches of Antioch and other Provinces keep their peculiar priviledges And so the Christians dwelling under these distinct Patriarchates were obliged to a respective obedience to their peculiar Provincial and to divide themselves from their proper Patriarch or Bishop was accounted Schism in the antient Church Timothy being constituted Bishop of all the Diocess of Ephesus the Christians residing within that Precinct were obliged by the rules of Order to submit themselves to his peculiar inspection and it had been Schism to have disobeyed him or separated themselves from his Jurisdiction St. Ambrose observed this decorum himself as he tells us by St. Augustin in an Epistle of his ad Januarium Cum Romae sum jejuno Sabbato cum hic sum non