follows not only that God had the same concern in the preservation of the purity of that Church as of that of the Latin Church but that he had yet a far greater For above this that Church had external help for the Conversation of its purity far greater than the Latin Church ever had For it was shut up in one only people and in one Country only It had one Language only one only Tabernacle one only Temple but one civil Government but one only Political Law and but one King where the Western Church had all those apart in many places And yet notwithstanding all that it could not be kept from Corruptions not only at one but divers times not only in matters of small Consequence but after a strange manner by a heap of depraved Traditions by false glosses on the Law by open Idolatries and by a multitude of other things wherewith their Prophets reproached them Had they not then very great reason to think that the Latin Church which had no peculiar promises that it should be kept from Corruption in being distinguisht from that of Israel was not more happy then that in the Conservation of its Purity 4. To this example of the Church of Israel our Fathers adjoyn'd that of the Greek and other Eastern Churches which God had at first honour'd with Christianity as well as the Latin and that the times had nevertheless so dissigur'd them that they did not any farther appear to be what they were heretofore Indeed into what errours and superstitions did not those Churches fall And in how many points does not the Church of Rome find it self to differ at this day from them Some of them observe Circumcision with Baptism others keep up the sacrificing of living creatures after the manner of the Jews some solemnly every Year Baptize their Rivers and their Horses others believe that the smoke of Incense takes away their sins others hold that the Prayers of the Faithful deliver from the pains of Damnation those Souls that are then in Hell others give Pass-ports in due Form to the dying to carry them to Paradise and a thousand other such-like impertinencies that are found to be establisht among those People Why might it not be possible that the Latin Church should have degenerated as well as those Churches Is it that their Christianity was from the beginning different from that of the Latin's or is it because the Latin Church had some peculiar priviledges beyond all others No certainly their Vocation was equal on one part and on the other and the nature of things being so if those Nations had corrupted themselves those of Rome might corrupt themselves as well as they 5. Our Fathers who were not ignorant of those Examples could not but represent all to themselves also in my judgment the times past wherein errours and corruption had visibly prevail'd over the Truth even then when those very Churches of the East and West were joyn'd together in one Body They knew that that had past in the Council of Antioch in favour of the Macedonians in the Councils of Sirmium of Milan of Ariminum at Selucia and at Constantinople in favour of the Arrians and in a Council at Ephesus in favour of the Eutychians without thinking of that which they said of those two Councils held at Constantinople in favour of the Iconoclastes or abolishers of Images the one under the Emperour Leo Isaurious the other under Constantine Copronimus That very thing was an evident token to them that the Latin Church might be very likely in their times fallen into other corruptions and that errour had triumpht over truth For it was not at all impossible that that which had hapned frequently in respect of some errours might not yet with greater success and longer duration happen in respect of other errours 6. Moreover They observed that Councils of a great name among the Latins as those of Constance and Basil had been rejected and opposed by other Councils and that in the most weighty points of Religion to wit in the Case of the Supreme Authority that ought to govern the Church upon Earth For some rais'd the Authority of the Councils above that of the Pope and others would have it that the Popes should have an absolute and an independent and perfectly Monarchical Rule over the Church what could our Fathers conclude from so manifest a contest if not that it had a vast confusion in it and that it was exceeding necessary to the quiet setling of their Minds and Consciences to enter on an examination of that which those men taught in the business of Religion 7. Our Fathers were confirmed in that design when they set before their eyes those obscure Ages through which the Latin Church had past For who knows not what the ninth tenth and eleventh Centuries were not to speak of those that followed them As for the ninth Baronius is forc't to conclude the History of it with saying That it was an Age of affliction to the Church in general and chiefly to the Church of Rome as well by reason of the complaints it had against the Princes of the West and East and the Schism of Photius as by reason of intestine and implacable Wars which had began then to be formed within the very Bosom of that Church That this Age was the most deplorable and dismal above all the rest because those who ought to have been watchful in the Government of the Church not only slept profoundly but the very same Persons laboured all they could intirely to drown the Apostolick-Ship For the Tenth as there are very few Persons but will acknowledge that it was buried in darkness more gross then that of Aegypt so it will be needless here to produce the proofs The eleventh was scarce happier and Baronius begins the History of it with a remark of so universal a Corruption of manners cheifly among the Church-men that it had made way says he for the common beleif of the near approach of Antichrist and of the end of the world How could it be possible that during such gloomy times Religion Faith and Worship should be preserved without any alteration Saint Paul has joyn'd together Faith and a good Conscience as two things that mutually sustain one another and has taken notice that those who cast off a good Conscience make Shipwrack of the Faith In effect saith Saint Chrysostome then when men lead corrupted Lives it is impossible they should keep themselves from falling into perverse Doctrines 8. To these considerations we might joyn that of the two sorts of Philosophies which successively had reign'd in the Church to wit that of Plato and the other of Aristotle to whose principles they had strove to accomodate the Christian Religion For it is scarce to be conceiv'd but that mixture of Platonic and Peripatetic Opinions with the Doctrines of Jesus Christ should have defaced the Faith and quite alter'd his true Worship It was for this
against the abuses of the Court of Rome as those of the rest of the Prelats Can they tell us what effect the complaints of Emperors of Kings of Princes and of the People produced who for so long a Time panted after a Reformation It is a hundred and fifty Years said Arnald du Ferrier the Ambassador of France to the Council of Trent since a Reformation of the Church has been all along in vain demanded in divers Councils at Constance at Basil at Ferrara Let them tell us what good change has hapned since St. Bernard wrote That the Dignities of the Church were managed by a most dishonest bartering and with a Trade of darkness That the saving of Souls was no more sought after but the abundance of Riches That it was for this that they took their Orders that they frequented the Churches and Celebrated Masses and sung Psalms Now a days says he they strive without any shame for Bishopricks for Arch-Deaconries and Abbies and other Dignities to the end they may dissipate the revenues of the Church in Superfluity and Vanity What remains but that the Man of sin the Son of Perdition should be Revealed The Demon not only of the day but of the noon day who transforms himself into an Angel of Light and lifts up himself above all that is called God and worshipped What good change could they see since Cardinal Hugo borrowing the words of Saint Bernard had wrote That those words of David could not be more properly applied to any then to the Clergy They are not in Trouble as other men For every order of men has its Labours and its pleasures but I admire says he the wisdom of our Clergy who have chosen all the pleasures for themselves and rejected the Labour They are as proud as Souldiers they have as great a train of Servants as they and of Horses and Birds and they live as merrily as they They are arrayed like women with skins of great value they have rich Bids Baths and all the Allurements of soft delights But they take great heed least they put on a Breast-plate with the Souldiers or pass away the nights in the Field or to expose themselves to Battels and yet they take less heed to keep Modesty and the Laws of Decency which are proper to women and to labour so much as they do At the Resurrection then when men shall arise every one in his own order what place do you imagine those men will find The Souldier will not own them for they took no part with them in their Labours nor in their dangers The Labourers and Dressers of the Vineyard will not any more for the same Reason What then can they look for But to be driven from and accused by all Orders and to go into those places where there is no Order but where Everlasting horrour Dwels Has it been amended since William Bishop of Mande wrote these words Alas the Churches are reduced to that Condition that when they come to be vacant one can hardly find any persons fit to be chosen to succeed And if sometimes which rarely happens there be found some good Man hid as a Lilly among the Thorns the Number of the wicked and uncapable exceeds so much that they will never let a good man be chosen Prelate but crying up such as themselves they chuse men after their own hearts to the Ruin of the Church and the people that are under them Else if the greater part in the Church were good the Elections would be made by the Majority of voices and they would be good and Canonical for those that would chuse for God would be the far greater number then those who should chuse for the Devil But in these days it is quite the contrary It is the Fashion that there must be more wicked then good so that usually the Elections are rather Diabolical then Canonical and not made by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit but by a Conspiracy or Treacherous Machination All these Complaints were to no purpose the evil was too general and too inveterate to be stopt or remedied In the Council of Constance all those Nations who liv'd under the disorders of a long and obstinate Schisme propounded some Articles to Reform as well the Head as the Members and correct the ill manners of the Church But Martin the Fifth who was then Pope eluded that Proposition with saying That that Council had already lasted four years to the great damage of the Bishops and the Churches That it was needful to turn over that business to another Time and that that Affair deserved to be thought on more leisurely because says he according to St. Jerome every Province has its Maxims and its opinions which cannot be changed without stirring up great Troubles As if Justice Piety Holiness and good Discipline were not the same among all people and in every Countrey The Council of Basil assembled some Time after with a design to proceed to a Reformation of the Head and the Members A Declaration was made very Solemnly that there the very beginning and their first Acts should contain no other thing But when they would have meddled with the Court of Rome and the Popes Soveraign Authority every one knows after what manner Eugenius the Fourth exalted himself against them and what endeavours he used to separate them or at least to render their designs unprofitable That produced new Troubles and new disorders and cast the Latin Church into a new schism For that Council declaring its right deposed Pope Eugenius and chose Amadeus Duke of Savoy but all that came to nothing For Eugenius remained Master Amadeus was at length constrained to renounce the Papacy The Council of Basil and all its good designs were brought to nothing and things remained in the same State in which they were before Which made an Author in those Times say That there could not be any thing expected from those who presided in the Councils on the behalf of the Popes unless that when they saw the affairs of the Council ordered against their Masters and against themselves they should oppose their Decrees either by Dissolving the Council or making Divisions spring up in it So that says he matters come to nothing and return into their old Chaos that is to say into Error and Darkness which no man can be ignorant of at least that has any knowledge of things past and the Tragedy that hapned in our Age at the Council of Basil is a most manifest proof of Some Time after that Pope Innocent the Eighth being dead and all preparations made for a new Nomination Lionel Bishop of Concordia made a long and fine Oration to the Cardinals who were to go into the Conclave to perswade them to make a good Election that might answer the desires of the whole Church he represented to them That Christianity was threatned every day by the Power of the Turk that the Hussites were in
necessary to Salvation I will maintain to him that his proposition is impious that it manifestly tends to make Socinians and Arrians to be received into the Church and almost all Hereticks since it bannishes out of the number of the Articles of the Faith all the Tenets which those Hereticks dispute and which they do not see in the Scripture But it is not very difficult to satisfy that demand I speak of such a clearness as will convince a sincere person who does not blind himself either by passion or malice or interest or prejudice but lets his Reason and his Conscience act in good Earnest This is well near the Answer that the Author of the Prejudices would make if we asked him the same Question touching the clearness which he pretends there is in Tradition or in the infallible voice of the Church for his Justice is so great that he does never propose any difficulties of our Principle to us which are not common to the Principle of the Church of Rome and which by consequence he would not be bound to answer himself as well as we Notwithstanding I shall tell him that he grosly deceives himself if he imagins that we will only acknowledge those things for Articles of Faith which are clearly contained in the Scripture It is true that we acknowledging them only for the Articles of Faith which are necessary to the Salvation of the most simple does not hinder but that other things which are contained in the Scripture with less evidence may also be Articles of the Faith although not absolutely necessary for all that which is in the Scripture after what manner soever it be contained there is of Faith He does not less deceive himself if he imagins that although the Articles which the Socinians and Arrians and other Hereticks dispute were of the number of those which are not so clearly contained in the Scripture and the knowledge of which is not absolutely necessary to the Salvation of the simple yet that we ought to receive those Hereticks into the Church There is a great difference between simple persons who do not conceive a Fundamental Truth otherwise then under a general notion and indistinctly without going any farther and those going so far as a distinct Idea of the Truth expresly deny it and substitute a false and deceitful Idea in its place The former may be in a State of Salvation and ought to be received into the Church whereas the second sort ought to be banished as persons infected with a pernitious Error A Peasant may be made to believe in good earnest that Jesus Christ is God and that the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost are but one only God without going any farther because he will not understand the terms of Nature Essence Person Hypostatical Union and others that are made use of upon that subject and he will also be ignorant of the subtil and frivolous distinctions of the Hereticks Who can deny that such a man holds the Truth under a General Idea And who will not yet place a very great difference between him and a Socinian who very well knowing what these Propositions mean Jesus Christ is God by his Essence The Father Son and Holy-Ghost are Three Persons and one only Divine Nature will deny them and substitute in their places these other Propositions Jesus Christ is God only by the dignity of his Office and Glory of his Exaltation The Father the Son and the Holy-Ghost being only so by Denomination It would be a very hard case in my Judgment to exclude the former from the Church but it would be a sin to admit the latter and this shews us by the way the falshood of the reasoning of the Author of the Prejudices But we ought to resume our discourse I say therefore the same thing of the Third condition as of the two Former The things whereof we treat perswade themselves and make themseves to be perceived as true and Divine as well by the weakest as the strongest For although the weaker are not in a condition to render a Reason exactly of their perswasion as a Learned man would do yet notwithstanding we must not doubt but they are rightly perswaded A Tradesman a Peasant a Labourer know not how to explain either the rules of right reasoning or the mediums that Logick affords to discover the faults of Sophistry or false reasoning and yet nevertheless they do yet apprehend a just reasoning and reject a bad It is the same thing of a good Doctrine and a false the weaker sort may receive the one and reject the other when it shall be presented to them and they would make that discernment by the meer Judgment of their Consciences though they should not be capable of Explaining their Reasons well For there are two ways of being perswaded of a Truth and knowing a falshood the one is by a simple apprehension and the other by reflection the first comes from a meer impression of the Objects that make themselves to be discerned by their very nature and the other comes from Meditation and Study through the application of certain Rules I confess that there is more confusion in the first but that has also sometimes more force and more certainty then the Second As for that which regards the Fourth Condition which is That the Faith should be pure and free'd from every damnable Error besides that which I have said that the meer sentiment of Conscience is enough for the weaker sort to make them discern the good from the bad and by Consequence to reject the false Doctrines that shall concern their Salvation besides that I say it is certain that damnable Errors that is to say those which are incompatible with a true and saving Faith have a natural repugnancy with the Truths that are Essential to Religion wherewith the simpler sort are endowed so that those Truths alone are sufficient for the rejection of Errors without any absolute necessity that they should have a greater stock of Learning For Example The principle of the Adoration of one only God in the Souls of the weakes sort in our Communion is sufficient to make them reject a Religious worship paid to Creatures without their lying under a necessity of entring further into the Controversy which we have with the Church of Rome upon that subject The Principle of confidence in God alone is sufficient to make them reject invocation of Saints and Angels and a confidence in their merits The principle of the one only Sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the cross for the Expiation of our sins is sufficient to make them reject humane Satisfactions Purgatory and the Indulgences of the Pope The Principle of the Mediation of one only Jesus Christ is sufficient to make them reject the Intercession of Saints and Angels The Principle of the Truth of the humane nature of Jesus Christ like unto us in all things except sin is sufficient to make them reject the Real Presence
to feed the people with their Superstitions for they were such as enslav'd their Souls where true Piety would have ennobled and freed Men from that yoak which they would have imposed on us Further if any would more particularly see how far the Claims of the Roman See went they need but to read what Augustine Steuchus Library-keeper to the Pope has wrote for he ascribes to the Popes the very same Temporal rights in the same Latitude wherein the Old Roman Empire possest them and he proves from the Register of Gregory the Seventh that Spain Hungary England Denmark Russia Croatia Dalmatia Arragon Portugal Bohemia Swedland Norway Dacia did all heretofore belong to the Popes and that all that Pepin Charlemain Henry and other Emperors gave to the Church brought him not any new rights but only set him in the possession of that which the violence of the Barbarians had wrested from him 15. What could our Fathers say to those unjust Usurpations of the Popes over the whole Body of the Church over which they pretended Soveraignly to reign to have Authority to decide matters of Faith to make new Laws to dispence with the Antient Constitutions to call Councils to transfer them from one place to another to Authorise or to condemn them to Judge all the World without being liable to be judged of any in a word of making all things to depend on their power and binding all Churches to submit themselves to its decisions about matters of Faith and Rules of Discipline not only with a bare external obedience but with a real acquiescence of their Consciences By Reason of which they were accustomed as they practise it even at this present in their Bulls to place in the Front the fulness of their Power and to adjoyn this Clause That no man should dare to be so rash as to infringe or go contrary to their Decrees under penalty of incurring the indignation of God and the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul I know there were some that sometimes did very strongly oppose these pretensions of the Court of Rome that some Councils did labour to repress them and that the Church of France has appeared often enough jealous of its Liberty But besides that those oppositions never had that success which might justly have been hoped for on the part of the Popes who almost always eluded them besides that I say they did but serve to confirm the prejudices of our Fathers by dayly discovering to them more and more of the Corruption of the See of Rome 16. What could they Judge of those Dispensations that the Popes gave in the business of Marriages within prohibited degrees against the express words of the Law of God and in the Case of Vows which they themselves held to be lawful and in divers other matters even against that which they call the general State of the Church What do we think we ought to say at present said Gerson of the easiness whereby Dispensations are given by the Pope and by the Prelats to lawful Oaths to reasonnable Vows to a vast Plurality of Benefices against all the minds or as he speaks even to a universal gainsaying of Councils in priviledges and exemptions that destroy common Equity Who can reckon up all the ways whereof they serve themselves to loosen the force of Ecclesiastical Discipline and to oppose and destroy that of the Gospel Who can read without some Commotion that which Innocent the Third has wrote That by the fulness of his Power he had a lawful power to dispence with that that was beyond all Equity And that that the Glossary has subjoyned That the Pope can dispence against an Apostle against the Canons of the Apostles and against the Old Testament in the Case of Tithes It is added that he cannot dispence against the general State of the Church and yet elsewhere the Gloss on the Decree of Gratian assures us that the Pope may sometimes dispense against the General State of the Church and for that alledges the Example of Innocent the Third in the Council of Lateran 17. What could our Fathers Judge of those vast abuses that were committed in dispencing with the Ecclesiastical Functions given most frequently to persons altogether unworthy and uncapable and sometimes to Children to the great scandal of Christianity which complained of it highly a long time ago They prefer said St. Bernard little School-boys and young Children to Church Dignities because of the Nobility of their Birth So that you may see those that are just got from under the Ferula go to command Priests who were yet more fit to escape the Rod then to be employ'd in Government for they are far more sensible of the pleasure of being freed from their Masters then of that of becoming Masters themselves Those are their first thoughts but afterwards growing more bold they very soon learn the Art of appropriating the Altars to themselves and of emptying the purses of those that are under them without going to any other School then that of their Ambition and their Covetousness How few may one find now a days of those who are raised to the Episcopal Grandure said Nicholas de Clemangis who have either read or know how to read the Holy Scripture otherwise then by first beginning to read They have never touched any other part of the Holy Bible then the Cover although in their Installment they swear that they know it all 18. What could our Fathers say to that Simony which was every where openly exercised in the Church of Rome in all things The Court of Rome says Aeneas Sylvius gives nothing without money It sells the very Imposition of hands and the gifts of the Holy Ghost and will give pardon of Sins to none but such who will part with their Money The Church that Jesus Christ has chosen for his Spouse without spot and blemish says Nicholas de Clemangis is in these days a Warehouse of Ambition and Business of Theft and Rapine The Sacraments and all Orders even to that of the Priests are exposed to Sale For Money they bestow Favours Dispensations Licences Offices Benefices They sell pardons of sins Masses and the very Administration of our Lords Body If any one have a mind to a Bishoprick he needs but to get himself furnished with Money yet not a little Sum but a great one must purchase such a great Title He needs but to empty his Purse to obtain the Dignity that he seeks but he may soon after fill it again with advantage by more ways then one If any one desire to be made a Prebendary or a Priest of any Church or to have any other charge it matters not whether his merits or his Life or his Manners be known but it is very requisite it should be known how much Money he has For according as he has that he must have his hopes succeed Such were the Complaints that honest men made in those days and
Sienna told them that in the blindness wherein they were they placed their glory in that which was truly their shame and that on the contrary they held those things to be a reproach to them whereon their honour and Salvation did depend to wit in humbling themselves under their Head which was God Furthermore they have no love for any but sinners they despise the poor and howsoever the Canons forbid them they keep about their persons Pimps debauchers of Women Flatterers Buffoons Players where they should have had wise and holy men In fine instead of the Law of Truth the Law of Vanity is in the mouths of the Bishops and the lips of the Priests preserve knowledge but it is that of the World and not of the Spirit And a little after At present says he the State and Dignity of the Bishops may be known by their Earthly riches by their affairs and sordid cares of the World by their troublesome Wars and by their Temporal Dominion Alas the Lord Jesus said plainly that his Kingdom was not of this World he retired himself alone into a Mountain when he knew that they went about to make him a King How then is it that he who holds the place of Jesus Christ not only accepts Dominion but seeks it and that he whom Jesus Christ has taught to be meek and lowly in heart should reign in pleasures in luxury in violence in pride in haughtiness in riches and in rapines And yet a little after The Bishops have renounced Hospitality they neglect the poor of Jesus Christ but they make themselves fat and feed their Dogs and other Beasts as if with a formed design they would be in the number of those to whom Christ shall say I was poor and you relieved me not go ye cursed into Eternal fire For Generally almost all the Bishops lie under the evil of Covetousness they are ravishers of others goods and but ill despencers of the Churches turning aside to other uses that which they ought to employ in Divine uses or the feeding of the poor What Bishop is there adds he who does not more love to be a rich Lord and Honoured in the World then to help the poor The whole design of their lives is but for the things of the World They love to array themselves after the Fashion of that and as for the Ecclesiastical Ornaments whether they be Corporal or Spiritual they scarce make any account of them and therefore it was that S. Brigit said That the Bishops took the counsel of the Devil who said to them Behold those honours which I offer you the riches that are in my hand I dispence pleasures the delights of the World are sweet you must enjoy them That same Saint says further that the Covetousness of the Bishops is a bottomless Gulph and that their pride and their luxurious Lives was an unsavoury steam which made them abominable before the Angels of Heaven and before the Friends of God upon Earth As to the other Prelats and the Curats the same Author represents them to us after this manner In these Times says he there are very few Elections that are Cononically made and without under hand canvassings on the contrary the greatest parts of the Prelats and Beneficed men are made by Kings and Princes in an unlawful manner and which is more being brought in by Canvassings and Simony they are confirmed by the Popes against the Priviledges of the Churches and the Statutes of Germany and against all manner of Justice Furthermore the Bishops ordinarily promote to dignities and the Cure of Souls their Cooks their Collectors of their Tribute their Pensionaries the Grooms of their Stables Hence Ubertine said That the Antient Holiness of the Prelats wasted away by degrees and that it began to fall by Canvassings by Pomp and by Simony by unlawful Elections by Covetousness and by the abundance and superfluity of Temporal things by the promotions that the Bishops made of their Creatures by neglecting the Divine-worship and by other perverse works and that by Reason of those ill dispositions the Devil was let loose against the present State of the Church Now none of them who are called to the Pastors Charge and the Cure of Souls inform themselves either of the quality of their Flock or of their manners or their vices Not one Prelate called to the Government of a Monastery will take the pains to Observe either its Rules or the Order of its Ceremonies or the Discipline of the Religious there is not wholly any more mention made of the Salvation and Edification of those that are under them but they only inform themselves very exactly of the plenty of their Revenues and what such a Benefice may bring in Yearly though yet they do not reside there It is these Curates that Vincentius cri'd out upon when he said O what Obduration is there in the Church of God! The Prelats are Proud Vain Sumptuous Simonists Covetous Luxurious Men that regard only this Earth They neglect their Ecclesiastical Duties they are void of Charity Intemperate Lazy For they neither perform Divine Offices nor Preach and do nothing but what creates Scandal They despise the foresight of their Holy Mother the Church which ordains that when the Rectors of Churches shall not be able to Preach they should employ fit persons which should in their stead edify the people by their word and their Example and that they should supply them with all needful things But on the contrary the Prelats and Curates are only careful to put into their places men that are very well skilled not to feed the sheep but to poll them to destroy and flea them He goes on with that vehemency throughout a large Chapter where he relates the many complaints of the Abbot Joachim Saint Catherine of Sienna and of Saint Brigitt Behold this last among the others Those who Rule the Churches commit three sins the one is that they live a beastly and luxurious life the other that they have a Covetousness as insatiable as the Gulphs of the Sea and the third is That they are Prodigal to satisfy their own vanity as the Torrents that pour forth their waters impetuously such horrible sins which they commit ascend up to Heaven before the face of God and hinders the Intercession of Jesus Christ as the black Clouds disturb the purity of the Air The Revenues of the Church are given not to the Servants of God but to those of the Devil to the Debauchers of Women to Adulterers Gamesters Hunters Flatterers and such like men and hence also it is that the house of God is become Tributary to the Devil The Abbot who ought never to be out of his Monastery but to be the head and example to the rest of the Religious is become the head of a whole Troop of leud Women with their Trains of Bastards instead of being an Example to and feeder of the poor he makes himself Master
of their Alms and he may be seen far oftner in the field with the Souldiers then in his Cloister He ought to be the Father and the Instructer of his Brethren but he is their Seducer and their Tyrant For while he enjoys himself and lives in Pomp and Delights those poor miserable Religious pass away all their days in murmurings and afflictions That Author describes in the same Stile the Lives of the Canons Monks and other Ecclesiasticks and that which he has said does not leave us any more room to doubt that there was in the Church in those days as great and as general a disorder as can be conceived He does not spare the Court of Rome but on the contrary he sets forth livelily enough their excess even to say that that Court is the Seat of the Beast that is to say the Church of the wicked that is the Kingdom of darkness That it is a loathsome pit that devours Riches and is filled by Covetousness That the Law is far from the Priest the Visions of the Prophet and the Councel of the old men That the heads of the Church serve themselves by Simony and Ambition and that in a word the sins of those people are such that they cannot be either concealed or denyed since Rome is become a Gulph of Crimes Where the Pope ought to cry with Jesus Christ Come and you shall find rest for your Souls he cries Come and see me in a far greater Pomp and Pride then ever Solomon was in come to my Court empty your purses there and you shall find destruction for your Souls The disorder of that Court and that of the whole Clergy of those times was a thing so little to be contested that Adrian the sixth did not scruple to acknowledge it in the Memoirs that he gave his Nuntio for the Diet of Nuremberg and which Raynaldus Relates For he gave him an express charge to confess That the Troubles of Germany about the matters of Religion had fallen out by Reason of the sins of Men and particularly of the Priests and Prelats of the Church That the Scripture shewed that the sins of the people came from those of their Priests for which Reason it was as Chrysostome says that when our Saviour would heal Jerusalem he entered first into the Temple to correct the sins of the Priests doing like a wise Physitian who goes to the root of the evil That for many years past abominable things had been committed in the holy See that spiritual things had been abused through the excess of its Injunctions and that all things had been perverted there That the evil had spread it self from the Head to the Members from the Popes to the Inferiour Prelats and that as many as they all were that is to say Prelats and Ecclesiasticks they were come to that pass that for a long Time there had not been any that were good no not so much as one We could produce a multitude of other such Testimonies if we did not hope that unbyass'd persons would agree upon it as not long since an Author in these Times has done in a Book Intituled Motives to a Re-union to the Catholick Church The cause of the Separation says he was the open abuse of Indulgences and the Ignorance Covetousness and the Scandalous lives of the Church-men The Superstition of the meaner sort of people who had not been well instructed the immense riches and riotous profuseness of the Prelats their too great care in Externals in their Magnificence Ornaments and increasing of Ceremonies and little Devotion in the Chief-worship of God the indiscreat zeal of some Brethren who seemed to have cast off all honour for the Master to give it to his Servants The Tyranny that Parents exercised over their Children to imprison them in Cloisters the wickedness of those who contrived false Miracles to draw to themselves the concourse of the People Add to that Politick humane Considerations of some Princes and Kings who had not received from the Pope all possible Satisfaction or who took occasion from thence to cast themselves among a Party of persecuted men the better to Establish their affairs in brief all that which Ignorance Superstition and Covetousness could Contribute served for a pretence to those who would separate themselves to Reform those Disorders The Ground was not only specious but it had been in a manner accompanied with Truth if the Church in those days had been throughout in that miserable condition which we have described and principally so in those places wherein that detestable Separation began Those who separated were aided indirectly by the zeal of some good men who cried out loudly against those disorders abuses and corruptions of manners The people who judged no otherwise then by the appearance suffered themselves to be easily carried away with that Torrent seeing that they did not complain but of those things which they knew were but too true and which the better sort of Catholicks granted Behold then in what a condition the Church was in those days and we may from thence methinks ask all rational persons whither they believe in good earnest that our Fathers ought to have expected a Reformation from the hands of a Clergy which on the one side had so many worldly interests that bound them to oppose it and which on the other found it self so deeply sunk into Ignorance Superstition and Corruption But to urge that matter yet further we need but to set down those just complaints which they had made for a long time touching those disorders and the continual demand that all the World made for a good Reformation at least in respect of manners of Discipline and those most gross abuses without ever being able to obtain it I pass by the complaints of the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries which would be but too great if they were compared with those just grounds that all honest men in those days had for them For those two Centuries were famous for wickedness grievous crimes and those who know any thing of History cannot deny it But not to go so far not to say any thing either of the Scandalous Lives of the Popes of that Time or the Wars wherewith they filled all the West or of the Abuses they committed in their Excommunications or of the Baptizing of Bells Wherewith they increased the Ecclesiastical Ceremonies or of the vices which reigned then throughout all the Clergy can they tell us what good effect those smart Censures of Saint Bernard wrought and those of Petrus Cluniensis of Abbot Joachim of Petrus Blesensis of Conrard Abbot of Vrspurg of Honorius of Autun of Bernard Monk of Cluny of Arnoul an English Monk of John Bishop of Salisbury of Matthew Paris of William Durandus Bishop of Mande of Robert Bishop of Lincolne of Francis Petrarch Archdeacon of Parma of John Vitoduram of Dante of Marsilius of Padua and I know not how many others who cried out as loudly
respect to the Pope to the Church of Rome and to the Legat himself in particular But Cajetan without being willing to hear him speak of his justification shut up all with this That it was his pleasure that he should revoke his Errors under pain of incurring the Censures with which he had received Orders to punish him adding That if he would not recant he had nothing to do but to withdraw himself and to come no more before him Luther withdrew from the Legats House and having been advertised some days after that they endeavoured to imprison him notwithstanding the safe Conduct of the Emperour he withdrew himself from Auspurg not being ignorant of what had befell John Hus and Jerome of Prague in the Council of Constance Before his departure he wrote to Cajetan two very submissive Letters in one of which he acknowledged that he had not in treating of that business of the Indulgences preserved all that respect which he ought to have had for the name of the Pope and that howsoever he had been urged by the carriage of his Adversaries he confest that nevertheless he ought to have handled that matter with more modesty humility and respect that if he had any ways displeased him he beg'd his pardon offering to publish it himself and to use civiller Terms for the Future He offered likewise not to speak any more from thence forward of Indulgences provided he imposed silence on the Questors also or obliged them to observe the same measures in their discourses And as to the Recantation which they required of him he protested that he had done it in good earnest if his Conscience had allowed him to have done it but that there was no command nor Counsel nor Consideration of any person in the World that could make him say or do any thing against his Conscience In the second Letter observing all along the same submissive and respectful Stile he declared to him That he had withdrawn himself from Auspurg and beg'd that he would not think the worse of him if he appealed from him to the Pope and at the same Time he sent him his Act of Appeal That Appeal was founded 1. Upon this That he had not determined any thing upon the point of Indulgences but that he had only proposed some Theses to be disputed on according to the Custom of the Schools 2. That the Opinions of the Doctors as well Canonists as Divines being very different and there being nothing defined for certain in the Church upon that subject he had had right to chuse one side to chuse one side to maintain in the dispute much more when he was urg'd to it by the indiscretion of the Questors who under a pretence of those Indulgences had dishonoured the Church of Rome and the power of the Keys by their detestable covetousness and scandalous Conduct seducing the People unto new opinions and selling Justifying Grace for Money 3. That he had not only submitted his Disputation to the Judgment of the Church but even to the Judgment of every man more Learned then himself and in particular to Pope Leo. From whence he concludes that he had had no just Cause to Cite him That nevertheless he had offered to his Legat to refer himself to the judgment of the Church of Rome and of the Universities of Basil of Friburg of Lovain and of Paris which his Legat would not accept That he would not let him see wherein his Error lay but that he had only pressed him meerly to recant threatning him if he did not or if he did not go to Rome he would Excommunicate him and all who adhered to him howsoever that he had always protested that he had not any opinion but what was founded on the Scripture on the Fathers and the Canons That therefore finding himself oppressed by that whole proceeding he appeal'd from the Legat and from all that the Pope through ill Information had done against him to the Pope himself better Informed Notwithstanding he withdrew himself from Auspurg and by his retreat rendred vain and ineffectual all the Conspiracies they had contrived against his person to make him a Prisoner Cajetan having failed of his intent Wrote to Frederick Duke of Saxony against Luther accusing him as guilty of a heinous Crime in that he would not Recant and further exhorted and required that Prince either to send him to Rome or to drive him out of his Territories Luther very solidly justified himself before his Prince and made him see the oppression and most evident Tyranny that they used against him And because that the Cardinal had formally declared in his Letter to Frederick that so weighty and Pestilentious an affair could not remain a long Time in that Condition and that the Cause should be carried on at Rome That menace obliged Luther to make an Act of Appeal from the Pope and from all his proceedings against him to a Council lawfully called At the same Time almost Leo sent a Bull into Germany confirming his Indulgences and the Doctrine upon which they were grounded That Doctrine was That by the Power of the Keys given to Saint Peter and to his Successors The Bishop of Rome had a right to pardon to the Faithful all the guilt and punishments of their Actual Sins to wit the guilt by means of the Sacrament of Penance and the temporal Punishment by means of Indulgences whether in this Life or in Purgatory and that by those Indulgences he could apply to the Living and the Dead the superabundance of the merits of Jesus Christ and the Saints either by way of Absolution or by way of Suffrage so that the Living and the Dead participating of those Indulgences were delivered from the Punishment that the Divine Justice would inslict on them for their actual sins He commanded therein all under pain of Excommunication from which they could not be absolved till the point of Death to believe it also and to the end no person might alledge ignorance he gave Order to all Arch-Bishops and Bishops by vertue of their Holy Obedience to cause his Bull to be published in all their Churches giving nevertheless power to his Legat to proceed against the disobedient and to punish them as he should think fit Behold here the true History of the first Quarrel of Rome with Luther Let them judge now whether our Fathers under whose eyes all that business past could any more hope for a Reformation either from the Popes hand or his Prelats Instead of making a Holy and Christian Reflexion upon the just complaints of this man how mean and contemptible soever he might appear to them they thought of nothing but keeping up that evil which they did then in publishing their Indulgences which they knew had not any Foundation either in the Word of God or in the Practise of the Primitive Church They thought of nothing but how to protect them and indirectly to forbid those scandalous and wicked excesses of their
wrote to Leo with all the respect imaginable and let him see that the Questors and those who had till that time upheld them had dishonoured his See and his Church that as to himself he found himself very unhappy to see that their Calumnies should have prevailed over his Innocence and he further offered to give over that matter of Indulgences and wholly to be silent in it provided that his Adversaries should do the like But whether it was that all that Negotiation of Miltit was but feigned on his part or that in effect his counsel was not approved by those of his Party as Luther himself insinautes it is certain that from the time that that Letter had been drawn from him George Duke of Saxony a Prince that stuck very close to the Interests of the Pope desired that he would make a publick Disputation at Leipsic upon the matters in controversy the dispute was managed the beginning between Eccius and Carolostad concerning Free-will and Grace but they drew in Luther himself upon the subject of Indulgences of Purgatory and the Power of the Pope And they procured almost at the same time from the Universities of Cologn and Lovain a condemnation of divers Articles drawn out of his Books He defended himself against these new Adversaries and made the World see by his publick writings the truth of his Doctrine and the injustice of those Condemnations But within a little after Pope Leo being unwilling to try any thing further published his terrible Bull of Excommunication against him which they call the Bull Exurge There after having earnestly importuned Jesus Christ Saint Peter and Saint Paul with all the Saints in Paradise to come to the succour of the Church of Rome he sets down in particular one and forty Articles of Luthers Doctrine which he declared to be respectively pestilent destructive scandalous false heretical offending pious Ears seducing Souls and contrary to the Catholick Truth and to the Charity to the respect and obedience that was owing to the Church of Rome which is the Mother of all the Faithful and the Mistriss of the Faith and as such severally he condemned them disproved them rejected them and declared that they ought to be rejected by Christians of both Sexes He forbad all Bishops Patriarchs Metropolitans and generally all Church-men and Kings the Emperour the Electors Princes Dukes Marquesses Earls Barons Captains c. and in a word all sorts of men to hold those Articles or to favour them in any manner what soever under the penalty of Excommunication and being deprived of their Lands and of their Goods and treated as infamous Hereticks favourers of Hereticks and guilty of High Treason And as to Luther he complained of him that he would not come to Rome where he would have let him have seen that he had not done so much evil as he believed and he agravated it as a great rashness in him to have appealed to a Council against the Constitutions of Pius the Second and of Julius the Second who would have those punished as Hereticks that made such appeals That therefore he condemned as Hereticks him and all his Adherents if in the space of fifty days they did not renounce all their Errours he forbad all Christians to have any Commerce or Conversation with them or to yeild them any necessary things and gave his Orders to the Emperour to Kings and Princes c. to seize their Persons and to send them to Rome promising great rewards to those who should do so good a work Luther some time after wrote against that Bull and appealed afresh to a Council lawfully called notwithstanding he justified himself with great solidity about all those condemned Articles And it is pertinent to note that among those Articles that the Pope Anathematized as Heretical or Rash or Scandalous and contrary to the Catholick Truth these following Propositions might be found That that Proverb was most true that said That the best Pennance is a good Life that it would be very well if the Church in a Council should ordain that the Laity should receive the Communion in both kinds That the Treasure of the Church from whence the Pope drew his Indulgences is not the Merits of Jesus Christ and the Saints That the Bishop of Rome the Successour of Saint Peter is not the Vicar of Jesus Christ over all the Churches of the world nor that there was any one established by Jesus Christ himself in the Person of Saint Peter That it is not in the power of the Church or of the Pope to make Articles of Faith nor to establish new Laws for Manners or for good Works That tho' the Pope should hold with a great part of the Church an opinion which should not it self be erronious yet it would not be a sin or an heresy to hold a contrary opinion especially in things not necessary to Salvation until a General Council should have disproved the one and approved of the other that the Ecclesiastical Prelats and Secular Princes did not do ill when they abolished the Order of begging Friers That Purgatory could not be proved by the Holy Canonical Scripture These Propositions are declared to be either pestilent or pernicious or scandalous or heretical without specifying any one in particular for the Pope speaks of them only in the whole that they are such So it was that Leo and all his Court managed those matters To affirm that a true amendment of Life a holy and sincere return from Vice to Vertue is the best of all Pennances appeared to be a detestable crime to them To wish that a General Council might establish the Communion of the Eucharist according to the Institution of Jesus Christ and the Custom of the Primitive Church was such an abomination with them as was thought sufficient to deserve the Flames Not to beleive that the Merits of Jesus Christ and of the Saints made up a certain Treasure which neither Faith nor Holiness nor Repentance could give the Faithful any part of but which were to be dispenced only by the way of Indulgences for money pass'd in their Judgments for a Hellish Heresie To hold that our Faith has nothing else but the Word of God for its object and not that of men also and that God alone can impose moral Laws on the Conscience was in their opinion an astonishing wickedness To believe that one may without Herefy hold an opinion contrary to that of the Pope in matters not necessary to Salvation and not determined by any Council was a pestilent errour To give the least blow to the interests of Monks or the Fire of Purgatory was an horrible sacriledge for which there was not any remission After that condemnation the Pope wrote to John Frederick Elector of Saxony earnestly entreating him not to give any more protection to Luther and he sent Hierome Aleander his Nuntio into Germany to cause that condemnation to be executed But Aleander not being able to obtain of
own thoughts of that Negative Separation But howsoever he has carried himself in his Expressions I may say if I am not mistaken without fear of any opposition that that which he has here granted us is not one of those Concessions which are sometimes given to adversaries only to cut off the Dispute but that indeed he has spoken according to his real thoughts For when in a Controversy of this nature a man distinguishes about this general Thesis That one ought to separate from a Church which binds one to profess Error in noting that it may be said in two sences the one That one ought to separate ones self Negatively in not medling with that which would wound the Conscience and the other That one ought to separate positively that is to say that one ought to set up a Society separate from that and to establish a new Ministry That he quitted the former sence in saying only that it was very ill applied to the Catholick Church restrained himself only to the latter that he would say that it was this latter kind of Separation whereof he accused us and about which we ought to justify our selves that our Consciences could not any further hinder us then from taking part in those actions which our Principles should make us look on as Criminal that if we could not without betraying our Consciences render that Honour to Saints and Relicks which they give them we ought to content our selves with not doing it When a man I say speaks as the Author of Prejudices after this manner in the heat of a dispute which he believes to be as weighty as that there is a great likelyhood that it is not a meer condescending to his adversaries but a true and lively expression of that which he finds in himself to be very Just and Reasonable Howsoever it be without informing our selves further about a thing wherein we are little concern'd we will suppose it since he will have it so as a proposition not to be disputed That our Fathers could lawfully seperate from the Church of Rome by a Negative Separation that is to say in not to taking any part in that which would wound their Consciences But that signifies in our stile that they had right to reform themselves since we call nothing else precisely Reformation but that publick Rejection which they made of divers things which they judged to be ill and contrary to Christianity Whether they did ill to go further and to proceed to a Positive Separation that is a Question apart which does not in the least hinder that their Reformation taken only as a Negative Separation might not have been done with Justice and according to that right that Conscience gives to every man But now methinks this point being so well clear'd clears a multitude of others and we may by that concession of the Author of Prejudices very well decide some Questions In the first place They ought no further to set before us that absolute obedience to the Orders and decisions of the Church of Rome in the matters of Faith and Worship to which they would hitherto have all the Faithful indispensably obliged For if those whose Consciences shall tell them that That Church binds them to believe Errors and to practise a false worship may refuse to profess to believe those Errors and to performe that Worship who sees not that that absolute obedience is overthrown Since it will depend on the dictates of the Conscience of every one and that the Conscience of each one will give it its bounds and suspend it in respect of some certain things and actions 2. The Church of Rome can no more treat those as Disobedient and Rebellions who through the dictates of their Consciences refuse to profess to believe that which she decides and to practise that which she ordains nor persecute them as such and whatsoever she should make them suffer upon that pretence of Rebellion and Disobedience would be but an unjust persecution of which she will be bound to give an account to God and men 3. They cannot also any farther demand of us what Call our Fathers had to reform themselves that is to say to reject their Superstitions and the Errors which were to be found in the Church of Rome in their days for they needed nothing else but the motions of their Consciences to give them a Right to refuse to profess them 4. They ought also to acknowledge that the Authority of the Church how great soever it may be is it yet far less then that of the Conscience since it is not only limited but surmounted and that whensoeveer they should be in oppositian a man would have right to leave the Authority of the Church and to follow his Conscience 5. And since even an erronious Conscienes such as the Author of the Prejudices supposes ours and that of our Fathers to be could suspend Acts commanded by the Church it follows necessarily from thence that to reconcile the Church and the Conscience when they should be set in opposition we must come to the Foundation and discuss the things themselves for there is no other way to free the Conscience from Errors And how much more are we obliged to do it when the Church abuses her Authority in teaching those things which are really false or in commanding those actions which are indeed unjust and criminal All then depends on the discussion of those matters by themselves But they will say your Fathers ought to have been contented to have made use of their rights each one in particular they could have kept themselves from making any profession of believing those pretended Errors and not have taken any part in those actions which they disapproved and yet nevertheless have kept silence Wherefore did they disturb the publick peace by their Tumults Why did they divulge by their out-cries the Judgment which they made of the Tenets and Customs of their Church Did they not in that sin against that respect which they owed to their Prelats and that Charity which they owed to their Brethren To answer to this Objection I say That the keeping silence is not always equally just it has its bounds and its measures according to the weight of the things that are treated of and to the Circumstances of Times and Persons If the business had been only about some meer Questions of the School upon points of Speculation or about some unprofitable Ceremonies or some bad order in the Government or even about some popular Superstitions which should not have proceeded so far as to corrupt the saving Efficacy of the Gospel I confess our Fathers had been more obliged to have kept silence then to have encountred their Prelats and raised those troubles through the diversity of their Opinions The Love of Peace respect for Order Christian Charity bidds us to bear things of that nature well which we do not so well approve of our selves and even there to follow the
Fashion as far as we can without wounding our Consciences and if we happen to speak or write of them it ought to be done in a gentle and prudent manner with a regard had to the Times and the dispositions of Men always remembring that the Church of God will never be in a State of compleat perfection upon Earth and that God himself bears with the defects of his Children through his mercy But we ought also to take heed how we stretch the keeping of that silence too far for there are certain Seasons wherein one cannot hold one's peace without betraying of God without weakly abandoning the true interests of the Church and without falling into that detestable Sin which Saint Paul calls holding the Truth in unrighteousness Such was the Time of the Triumph of Arrianism in the fourth Centuey for there the matter being a capital Heresy which had then took hold of the publick Ministry there was not any more place for silence there was a necessity on the contrary of crying out and of crying very loud without any regard had either to the compleasance which they owed to their Brethren or to the Love of peace or the Dignity of the Prelats or the Authority of Councills or to all those false reasons of silence which humane prudence ordinarily suggests Therefore it was that a simple Monk of those Times called Aphraates although he neither had any other Call or Office then that of the concern that every one has for the Conservation of the Truth yet could not contain himself within his Cell nor be hindered from opposing himself with all his might to that Heresy and the Emperor Valens who favoured the Arrians having check't him for that boldness in telling him that he ought to have kept himself in his Cell and to have applied himself only to pray to God according to the Conditions of that Religious Life into which he had entred Aphraates answered him If I were a maid and should keep my Chamber with my Father and if I should see Fire take hold of the House should I not be bound to go out of my Chamber and run on every side to bring water to put out the Fire Meaning by that That when the safety of Christianity was in danger of being destroyed it was a Crime to hold ones peace and sit still in quiet But this is exactly the Case wherein our Fathers found themselves For they beheld the Christian Religion and by consequence The Latin Church ready to be Ship-wrackt as a Vessel that takes in water on every side They saw in that miserable Church Divinity falsified and corrupted by a thousand vain and ridiculous Questions The Schools infected with the Art of Sophistry and Cheats the Pulpits prostituted to Tales Jests and Legends Benefices filled with persons unworthy and uncapable Church Dignities sold to those who bid highest good Learning banisht and persecuted Religion loaded with a rabble of childish Ceremonies the People abused by a thousand Follies Church-Government changed into an intolerable Oppression The Worship of God transferred to Creatures and even to those Creatures that were dead and insensible the saving Truths of the Gospel neglected Errors and Fancies of Mens minds Preached up in stead of them The Study of the Holy Scripture abandoned the Actions of true Piety altered by false Ideas the Commands of God broken his Soveraign Authority usurped his mercy set in partnership with Satisfactions of men his Laws associated with the Laws of men and his Grace with our Free-will the only Sacrifice of his Son multiplied the Vertue of his Intercession communicated to Saints and Angels The Substance of Bread adored as his Divine Body his Soveraign Prophetick and Kingly Offices Transported to the Pope and his Priestly to the Priests his Sacraments altered his clearest words eluded by their Glosses and rash Distinctions and his Ministry changed into a Despotick Empire over mens Consciences In a word they saw nothing that remained intire in that Religion Whether their Sentiments in that regard were just or unjust Reasonable or ill grounded it is what a discussion will justify when they will seriously come to consider it But nevertheless our Fathers were perswaded of all that which I have mentioned and under that perswasion who can doubt that they ought not to have loudly declared themselves and that a deep silence would not have rendred them Criminal before God and men And they were the more Obliged to speak in that as we have shewn in the foregoing Chapter they had nothing more to look for from their Prelats and in that the injust and violent Proceedings of the Court of Rome against Luther made them sufficiently know that the Evil was not to be Remedied on that side and that the Time for each man to Reform himself was already come CHAP. IV. That our Fathers had a Lawful and Sufficient Call to Reform themselves and to Labour to Reform others ALthough this Question about the Call of our Fathers for a Reformation is already sufficiently decided by what I have before Represented since they cannot require a more lawful Call then that which is founded upon the indispensable Obligation of our Salvation I shall not fail notwithstanding to Treat of this matter yet a little further to omit nothing that may serve for our Justification I say then that the chief thing that ought to be done to make a right Judgment of a Call in the business of Religion is to search into what nature those Actions are of about which it is engaged whether they be just or unjust good or ill in themselves for there cannot be the least lawful Call for that which is ill but there is always one naturally for what is good which I shall name a Call of things to distinguish it from that Call of persons whereof I shall speak in the sequel But now upon this Principle which to me seems indisputable we have little else to do then to demand of our Adversaries whether they do not believe that as it is naturally just to embrace and to defend the Truth so also that 't is as just to reject and oppose Errors and to banish them not only out of that Society wherein a man is but even out of the world it self as much as it lies in his power to do We need I say but only to demand of them whether they believe not That a Falshood has not in its own nature any right to be believed or to be taught and that it is for that Reason that she makes use of the Colours of Truth to make her self to be received under another Name then her own because that when she appears in her natural dress it excites or at least it ought to excite the hatred and aversion of men I know very well that all Falshoods do not equally deserve that Aversion and that there are some that may appear indifferent enough in comparison of others but I say that there are also some of which one
can't tell how to pass so favourable a Judgment Errors in Religion have a far different Character from those in Philosophy and in Religion it self those which always when they arrive vitiate the mind and heart are far more odious then those which do not deprave the mind and those which hinder all the saving Essicacy of the Gospel are infinitely more so how much more when they are gathered together to an exceeding great number and mutually uphold and sustain one another not unlike those black Clouds which in the most Stormy days of Winter joyn themselves one to another to make up but one general one and to deprive us of the light of the Sun Hitherto possibly they will not contest any thing But if it be reasonable enough that there should be no quarrel made about those general Propositions they ought not further to make any in this particular Question if the Actions of our Fathers were in their own nature good and just since we suppose not only that those things which they rejected and caused others to reject were Errors but also that they were Capital Errors of that last sort which I spoke of just before which one cannot look on without dread and amazement For it is upon that supposition that we defend our Fathers and if they dispute it with us they ought to quit this dispute about Forms and to enter upon a Discussion of the very Foundation it self They may alleadge that they had a long continued possession in favour of those things which our Reformers opposed since they were found establisht in the Church many Ages ago and that as in a Civil Society the Laws forbid those to be molested who are in a long and Antient possession and to be bound to produce their first Title though at the same time it should be maintained that they are Usurpers So also our Fathers ought not to be heard any further against the Sentiments and Customes which the Times had in some sort consecrated and made venerable But this Answer will be of no Use to them for not to alleadge here That the greatest part of those Opinions and Practises were new enough as has been sufficiently Justified not to say that they had been publickly disputed and by consequence That that possession whereof they speak was not peaceable Who knows not that there can be nothing prescribed in matters of Faith and Worship against the True Religion since that Religion is of God in all its parts and that there is neither any Time nor Custom nor possession that can make a true thing of a false or a Divine institution of a humane Tradition or any Vertue of a Vice In a Civil Society Laws Establish Prescriptions with very good Reason because without them the peace of the Community which is the only end that those Laws propound to themselves cannot be well preserved But in a Religious Society the principal end is the Glory of God and Salvation of the Faithful which are two things that are established on certain Perpetual and Invariable Foundations and by consequence have no respect to any long prepossessions on the contrary side how Antient soever they may have been If Religion were capable of any such Prescriptions Christianity would be bound to let Paganism alone for how long time past has Paganism been seated in the Possession of the Faith of men Saint Paul himself acknowledges it in those very places wherein he exhorts such to be Converted Turn you says he from these Vanities unto the living God who made Heaven and Earth who in Times past suffered all Nations to walk in their own ways and elsewhere God having winked at the Times of Ignorance commands now all men every where to Repent They cannot therefore bring any thing of Prescription against us and it will always remain certain that if that which our Fathers have said concerning the Corruption of the Latin Church in their days be true as we suppose it to be the Reformation was an Action good and just in it self and by Consequence in that respect they can have nothing to say against their Call to it But as it is not enough to establish a Lawful Call to suppose that what is done is good in it self and as it is further necessary that the person that does it should have right to do it it remains yet to be further inquired into whether our Fathers had power to do what they did For how many Actions are there that are just in themselves which it does not belong to all the World to do and which then become unjust and ill when every one thrusts himself in of his own Authority without being lawfully called It is not permitted for Example to all the World to punish the wicked although that punishment might be just it is not permitted to all men to change publick Customs although those changes should be good and advantageous to the Society We ought then to see what Call our Fathers had to Reform themselves and others But this Question would be easily decided if it be considered that in all Societies there are two sorts of Common Actions the one fort of those that are so Common as to belong to all the Body taken Collective as they speak in the School and not to each particular person So in a Parliament to pronounce a Sentance to absolve a man or to condemn him they are the Actions of the whole Body and not of each of those who compose it so to declare War and to make peace are the Acts of him or those who hold all the Rights of the State in their hands But there are other Actions which are so Common in a Society as to belong to each particular person or as they say to all Distributive and not to all Collective So to give ones advice in an Assembly is the Act not of the whole Body but of each particular person who composes it and to live in a Kingdom to contract Alliances to possess one's goods to labour to defend one's self against the incommodities of Life are Actions so Common as to belong to all particular Persons And so the Civilians have very well distinguished in saying that there are some Acts which respect Omnes ut singulos and that there are others which belong ad Omnes ut universos To Apply that Distinction only to our present Subject I say that in Religious Society which is the Church Faith Piety Holiness and by Consequence the Rejecting of Errors of false Worship and of Sins are those common Actions that belong to all private men The Just Lives by his Faith says the Scripture and as it would be ridiculous to demand of any man in a Civil Society what Personal Call he had to live to labour to avoid that which would be hurtful to his Life and to have a care of his own preservation so it is also an Absurdity to demand of our Fathers what call they had to believe aright in
refers to things As to Persons I confess there may be found lively complaints in the writings of the first Reformers against the Abuses of the Court of Rome against the ignorance and negligence of the Prelats against the Scandalous lives of the Clergy against the Tyrannical Government wherewith they ruled the Church I acknowledge also that when they looked upon that Great Body of the Roman Hierarchy its Props its Pretensions its Maxims its Interests its Occupations they could not hinder themselves from speaking of it as an Empire very opposite to that of Jesus Christ but they ought to be so far from laying it to their charge that they said it out of a hatred or an implacable aversion toward the Church of Rome as the Author of the Prejudices does that they ought on the contrary to attribute it to a real compassion which they had for the People of God to see them so ill instructed so ill guided so ill governed and to an ardent desire to procure a good Reformation throughout the whole Body of the Latin Church And the greater their compassion was the more difficult it was to manage that matter without giving some touches to persons in whom the source of all that evil resided and especially in a Time which they saw overspread on all sides with injuries and Calumnies and exposed in diverse places to Rigorous Persecutions 14. Object To that Reproach the Author of the Prejudices adds another which he begins â—o express in these words Although they should have had a right to have drawn away from the bosom of the Church of Rome its Children they had certainly no right to make use of Impostures and Frauds for that purpose and if they did it is a visible conviction that it was the Devil that acted by them and that their pretended Reformation was his work He alleadges in the close a passage of Calvin's wherein he pretends that Calvin calumniated the Church of Rome in laying it to her charge that she had a far greater care of her Traditions then of the Commandments of God and that she reckoned it a lesser sin to be defiled with the debaucheries of the Flesh then not to be confessed or not to have fasted on Friday to have broken all promises then not to have fulfilled a Vow of Pilgrimage and upon this the Author of the Prejudices makes his Exclamation with his usual heat Answ I Answer that Calvin speaks in that Passage not of that which the Roman Church Dogmatically taught but of that which might be seen in the common Practise of his Time and unless they should deny the most clear Truths they cannot deny that the Idea which the Authors themselves of the Church of Rome give us of its deplorable State in the Age of the Reformation does not fully confirm the Testimony of Calvin That which I have set down upon this sad Subject justifies the too little care that the Prelats and other of the Ecclesiasticks took to root out Vices from the midst of their Flocks and settle in their places a True Holiness when they had then a far greater ardour to make mens Traditions to be observed and if we had need to urge this proof further it could be done without doubt with a great deal of ease 15. Object Another kind of Calumny is to lay to the Charge of the Church the Opinions which she either rejects or which she never Authorised as matters of Faith Examples of this may be seen in every Page of the Books of their Ministers as when they reproach the Catholicks with setting up as Articles of Faith the Corruption of the Greek and Hebrew Text the immunity of the Clergy to be of Divine Right the certainty of the Declarations that the Popes make of the Holiness of particular men which they call Canonization the efficacy of Agnus Dei's the Infallibility of the Pope his Temporal Power over Kings his Pre-eminence over Councils the Jurisdiction of the Church over the Souls in Purgatory and many other opinions of that nature that the Church does not prescribe to its Children that she does not insert into the Confession of Faith which she requires of those that return to her and which she never defined by the Voice of her Councils Answ If the Author of the Prejudices would be satisfied about all the Points that he has noted in that Objection he ought to cite those passages of the Ministers against whom he forms his complaints and not to make as he does a Captious heap of divers things wherein he may mix the false and true together Notwithstanding I shall not omit to say by the way something of my own head upon each of those Articles Upon the first I can easily believe that there have been some Ministers who have reproached the Church of Rome with the having Canonized the Corruptions of the Greek and Hebrew Text because that in effect there are a great many such Corruptions in the Vulgar Version which the Council of Trent has Canonized not only in declaring it Authentick and forbidding any to reject upon any pretence whatsoever but also in saying that they ought to be held under the penalty of an Anathema for the Canonical Books of the Bible prout in Ecclesia Catholica legi consueverunt in veteri vulgata Latina editione habentur All the Question therefore may be reduced to this to wit whether we ought to hold under pain of Anathema some ill Translations which are to be found in the Vulgar for the Corruptions of the Greek and Hebrew Text and for us we believe that they cannot rationally contest it As for the Immunity of the Clergy it may be also that some Doctors of the Church of Rome have been reproached for holding it as a matter of Faith because there are some among them that in effect ground it upon the Scripture and every one knows that all that which they hold as out of the Scripture ought to be held as a matter of Faith But they would have said nothing against the Truth when they should have maintained that Pope Leo X. in the Council of Lateran defined That there was none either Divine or humane right that gave the Laity any power over the persons of the Clergy which implies that the Clergy are excepted by Divine right from that general Rule that subjects all the Word to the Higher Powers We all know that our Kings opposed that rash decision but in the end it was a Council that did it which had the Pope for its Head and it belongs to the Author of the Prejudices to tell us whether he believes that that Pope and that Council erred As to the Certainty of Canonizations since there is no body in the Church of Rome that makes any scruple to invocate those Saints which the Pope Canonizes and that moreover they agree in that Maxim of Saint Paul that whatsoever in the matter of Religion is not of Faith
is Sin methinks it is not ill grounded to say either that the Church of Rome Sins when she invocates those Canonized Saints without any certainty of Faith or that she holds it as a matter of Divine Faith that the Pope cannot be deceived The Author of the Prejudices shall chuse which side he pleases if he takes the last he contradicts himself if he takes the former Saint Paul condemns him for he condemns all those who throw away the Acts of their Religion after that manner at all Adventure If the Efficacy of Agnus Dei's has not been established by the Councils that belief may be found at least heretofore so strongly and universally established in the Church of Rome that it may be very well ascribed to her without any fear of mistaking They tell us that Pope Vrban V. sent to John Palcologus the Emperour of the Greeks an Agnus folded up in fine Paper wherein there was written Fine Verses which explained all its properties Those Verses carry with them That the Agnus was made of Balmsanus and Wax with Crisom and that being Consecrated by Mystical words it drove away Thunder and scattered Storms that it gave Women an easy Birth that it prevented one from perishing on the Seas that it took away Sin that it kept back the Devil that it made a man to grow Rich that it secured one against Fire that it hindred one from dying a sudden death that it gave a man Victory over his Enemies and that in Fine a small piece of the Agnus had as much Vertue as the whole As for that which regards the Infallibility of the Popes their Temporal power over Kings and their Pre-eminence over the Councils we do not say that those were Articles of the Faith received throughout the whole Church of Rome There is not one of us that knows not that those pretensions were always opposed by the Sounder part of the French But they cannot deny that they were not at least the Pretences of Rome and that its Popes did not Determine That it was necessary to the Salvation of every Creature to be subject to them They cannot deny that Pope Gregory VII did not decide in a Council That the Church of Rome did never Err and that it would never Err according to the Testimony of the Scripture nor that the opinion of those who believe that the Pope is Infallible in his decisions of Faith is not the more common and general one in the Church of Rome and that those who hold it speak of the other only as an opinion that the Church Tolerates for the present and that they look upon it as an Errour and such a one as approaches even to Heresie for those are the express words of Bellarmine They cannot deny that they generally hold in the Church of Rome that the Pope is by Divine right the Soveraign Monarch of the Church whom all Christians are bound to obey the Soveraign and Universal Vicar of Jesus Christ his Soveraign Pastor to whom Jesus Christ has given a fulness of power which goes not far from ascribing Infalliblity to him They cannot deny that the Popes did not often define that the Church of Rome is the Mother and Mistress of all other Churches and that the Council of Trent has not also declared it in divers places They cannot deny that the Popes did not pretend to be above the Councils that Sixtus IV. did not condemn a certain man called Peter de Osma for having taught that the Pope could not dispence with the Ordinances of the Universal Church nor that Leo X. did not declare in the Council of Lateran with the approbation of the Council That it was evident as well from the Testimony of Scripture as that of the Fathers and of other Bishops of Rome who had gone before and by the Holy Cannons and by the very Confession of the Councils themselves that the Pope alone had a right and power to call Councils together to transfer and dissolve them as having Authority over all Councils They cannot deny that the same Leo did not condemn Luther for having appealed from him the Pope to a Council against the Constitutions says he of Pius II. of Julius II. who ordained that those who made such Appeals should be punished with the same Penalties that were decided against Hereticks nor that the Council of Trent did not submit it self to its Confirmation of the Pope as it may appear by the last Act of that Council And as to the pretences of the Popes over the Temporalties of Kings they cannot deny that Clement V. has not declared in one of his Clemintines as they are called That it ought not not to be Questioned but that he had a Superiority over the Empire and that the Empire being void he sucbeeded in the power of the Emperour nor that Alexander VI. did not give out of his pure Liberality says he of his certain knowledge and fullness of power to the Kings of Castile and Leon all the Lands newly discovered in the Indies as if they had belonged to him nor that Gregory VII did not decide in his Council of Rome That the Pope could depose Emperours and dispence-with the Oaths of Allegiance to their Subjects nor that Innocent III. did not ordain in the Council of Lateran That if any Temporal Prince neglected to purge his Territories of all Heresie the Bishops should Excommunicate him and that if within a Year he gave no Satisfaction they should make it known to the Soveraign Bishop to the end that he should declare his Subjects absolved from their Duty of Fealty and that he should expose his Land to be taken by Catholicks They cannot also deny as to Practice that there are not divers Examples to be found of Popes who undertook effectually to depose Emperours and Kings and to give away their Kingdomes to others In fine as to that which regards their Jurisdiction over Souls in Purgatory no Body is ignorant that the Popes pretended to have Power to draw Souls out of Purgatory at least through the dispensation of the Treasure of the Church which is that which they say is made up of the Super-abundant Satisfactions of Jesus Christ and the Saints It is upon that also that their Indulgences in respect of the Dead are Founded and Leo in his Bull of Excommunication against Luther had wrote That Indulgences were neither necessary nor useful to the Dead Furthermore I cannot forbear taking notice here of the Fallacy that the Author of the Prejudices gives us and which is common to him with a great many other persons He would have us Judge of that Doctrine of the Roman Church but only by that which she has decided in her Councils or by that which is contained in an Act of the Profesion of the Faith which she makes those make who embraue her Communion This I say is a perfect Fallacy 1. Because we ought also to Judge of
her by her common Practice which being open to the Eyes of all the World discovers much more clearly the true Sentiments of that Church when the decisions of the Councils do not and the Act of which the people scarce know any 2. Because the Council of Trent it self and the Act of the Profession of the Faith obliging as they do those who submit themselves to it to receive in general unwritten Traditions and those things which the Church of Rome Observes they engage them by consequence to receive and practise all that which is commonly observed and practised in that Church under a pretence of Tradition and observance although it should not be formally contained either in the decisions of Councils or in that Profession of Faith So that the Conscience of a man who is in that Communion binds him to believe and do all that others believe and do 16. Objection The Third kind of Calumny is not less ordinary in their Ministers nor less unjust in it self It consists in running down as blameable Errors certain Articles of the belief of the Church which not only were no Errors but about which they have been at last constrained to acknowledge that the difference between them and the Church consists more in words then in the thing it self whether they themselves have forsook their first thoughts to take up those of the Catholicks or whether by a blind rashness they had openly condemned them without understanding them To prove this Corruption the Author of the Prejudices lays down the point of Justification which he says the first Reformers took for the chief ground of their Separation and yet nevertheless he adds one of their Professors of Sedan named Ludovicus le Blanc who has made some Theses of Justification after having examined the Doctrine of the Catholicks and that of the Protestants and their principal differences about that matter concludes upon all the Articles that that of the Catholicks is good and that the Protestants are only contrary to them in name Answ I acknowledge that in this Controversy the Church of Rome takes the word Justification in one sence and that we take it in another and I do not deny but that has sometimes produced in that dispute ambiguities and differences or Words This is also that which M. le Blanc had a design to clear in his Theses of Justification which the Author of the Prejudices has abused But besides that in that very thing we have two advantages over the Church of Rome the one that we speak as the Scripture has done and that we take the words after the manner that Jesus Christ that Saint Paul and Saint James have taken them when they have Treated about this Doctrine whereas the Church of Rome gives them another sence and the other that in so taking the words in their true Signification that Idea that we give of Justification is distinct and clear where that of the Church of Rome is embroiled and confused Besides that I say it is certain that we have but too real differences upon that point which no ways consists in words but in the very things themselves and which make very weighty Controversies To Manifest this Truth we need but to cast our Eyes upon the four chief Doctrines that form the Idea of our Justification according as the Scripture has given it us The First is That it is an Act of the Soveraign mercy of God that pardons our sins and which by Vertue of the Satisfaction of Jesus Christ discharges us from the punishment we have deserved by them The Second is That God out of that same mercy in pardoning our sins adopts us for his Children and gives us a right to his Eternal Inheritance by the merit of Jesus Christ his Son The Third That we apply to our selves the satisfaction and merit of Jesus Christ by a lively Faith accompanied with a sincere Repentance and a Holy Recourse to the Divine Mercy and that it is this Faith that puts us into the Communion of our Redeemer And the Fourth That God in pardoning and adopting us imposes this Condition upon us that for the time to come we live Holily according to the Laws which he has given us and that this very thing is a necessary Consequence of that Communion which we have with Jesus Christ as well as of our Faith our Repentance and our Recourse to the Divine mercy There is not any one of these parts of our Justification upon which we have nor very considerable differences with the Church of Rome For in the First we differ 1. Concerning him who Pardons us The Church of Rome would have it not only that it should be God in the Quality of a Soveraign Judge but men also that is to say Priests and Bishops in Quality of inferiour and Subordinate Judges and that their Absolution is a Judiciary Act for so the Council of Trent has defined it to be But we believe that there is none besides God who can pardon our sins under the Quality of a Soveraign Judge and that the Pardon which we receive from the Mouth of his Ministers is a Ministerial Pardon which consists in a Declaration that they make to us of Gods Pardon as the Interpreters of his will revealed in the Gospel 2. We differ about the extent of that Pardon The Church of Rome would have it that God in pardoning the Sin retains the Punishment that is to say that he acquits us from eternal Punishment but that reserves to himself the inflicting of Temporal Punishments and we on the contrary hold that he remits all sorts of Temporal and Eternal punishments and that the Afflictions which he sends us are not the Punishments of his Justice but the Corrections and Chastisements of his Fatherly Discipline 3. From whence there arises a Third difference which consists in this that the Church of Rome believes that those Temporal Punishments wherewith God visits us are true Satisfactions to his Justice for our sins which we deny 4. There arises from thence yet another difference concerning that which they call those penal works which every one imposes upon himself or which their Confessors impose on their Penitents for they would that these should be also satisfactions to the Justice of God which we do not believe 5. The Church of Rome would have it that those satisfactory Punishments should go beyond this Life and it is partly upon this that they ground their Doctrine of Purgatory which we reject 6. It is also upon that very thing that the Indulgences of the Church of Rome are grounded which cannot be taken for meer Relaxations of Canonical Punishments since they extend most frequently very far beyond the life of man and sometimes even unto five and twenty and Thirty thousand Years 7. We may say also that it is a difference which we have with them by which we understand that first Act of the mercy of God that Pardons our sins which comes from the
difference which we have with them concerning the Opinion of the Necessity of Auricular Confession for that Opinion is partly founded upon this that Absolution of the Priests is a Judiciary Act and that in that respect the Church has a true Tribunal before which the Faithful are bound to appear and partly upon the Opinion that the penances which the Priest enjoyns are true Satisfactions to the Divine Justice which they are bound to undergo 8. Lastly it is from the same source that the difference proceeds which we have with them concerning the Super-abundant satisfactions of the Saints of which they will have it that the Faithful may partake and whereof in part they compose the Treasure of the Church Behold here Eight Controversies included in the Explication of the first Act of our Justification Upon the second we differ about the Foundation upon which the right that God gives us to life eternal is established or if you will about the proper and direct cause in consideration of which God gives us that right for we establish it alone upon the merits of Jesus Christ in Vertue of that Comunion which we have with him But the Church of Rome Establishes it upon the merit of our works also for she would have it that after God has given us his Grace by which we do good works we truly inherit not only an increase of Grace but Eternal life and even an increase of Glory and she Anathematizes those who do not believe it 2. We differ also about those to whom God gives that right for we believe that God gives it only to his Elect in whom he preserves it by his Grace and by the gift of perseverance but the Church of Rome believes that he gives it also to divers Reprobates whom his Grace abandons and who finally Perish in their Sins Upon the Third Doctrine we differ concerning the Nature and the Definition of Justifying Faith for as for us we look on it as an Act of the Soul that embraces or accepts the satisfaction and merit of Jesus Christ and which applies the promises of God's mercy made to us in the Gospel and we labour as much as we can to live according to that thought But the Doctors of the Roman Church frame an Idea of that Faith of a very great coldness and negligence for they content themselves to say that it is a consent that we yield in general to all the Truths revealed in the Word of God and there are some that go so far as to say that Faith fails not to Justify us although it should not have the least regard to the particular mercy of God towards us which is a thing that we cannot understand without horrour For the rest when I shall say that the Doctrines of the Imputation of the merit of Jesus Christ and his satisfaction are known but to a very few in the Church of Rome as that also is of the Application that we make of them to our selves by the internal Act of our Souls which receives them when I shall say that these Truths so important and so necessary to the practise of Christianity are almost stifled by that great Multitude of external Exercises with which they busy the People I shall say nothing in my Judgment that the more sincere persons will not acknowledge and of which God grant they may be able hereafter to convince me of a falshood in that respect In fine the last Doctrine that fully makes up the Idea of our Justification according to the Scripture produces of it self a considerable Controversy between the Church of Rome and us For as for us we limit our selves to the good works to which our Justification Obliges us and which God has enjoyned us without going any further But the Church of Rome extends them even to those which she her self Commands for the pretends that her Laws properly and directly bind the Conscience under pain of mortal Sin and therefore it was that Leo X. condemned Luther for having wrote that the Church had no power to make Laws concerning manners or good works All these Controversies that naturally arise from the different Explications which they give of the Tenet of Justification let us sufficiently see that the Author of the Prejudices is mistaken if he thinks that we should have no more upon this matter then differences about words and M. le Blanc is too sincere and too Learned to have pretended to deny any of those things which I have mentioned although he has Judiciously remarked that men may easily Equivocate upon the different Significations of the Terms It is therefore neither a piece of Rashness nor Impertinency that our first Reformers had such a regard to the matter of Justification as being a thing of the greatest importance in Religion and it is on the contrary most Just that having seen that Doctrine of the Salvation of Christians neglected obscured and depraved that they should have Judged it necessary to set themselves upon the re-establishing of it CHAP. VII An Answer to the Objections of the twelfth and thirteenth Chapters of the Prejudices TO understand well what is in the Twelfth Chapter of the Author of the Prejudices we must in the first place take notice of the design he propounds to himself and the means he makes use of to reach it As to his design he Explains himself in the very Title of the Chapter which bears this That the Spirit of a Politician every way Humane that appears in the differences that the Calvinists have had with the Lutherans gives a right to reject them without any further Examination as a sort of men without any Conscience He explains himself yet further in the beginning of his discourse after this manner It has been demanded says he of the Calvinists with good reason how it could come to pass that if Luther Zuinglius and Calvin had received a Mission from God and were the Instruments that he made choice of for the greatest work that ever was which is the Reformation of the Errors of sixteen Centuries they should not avoid being openly divided between themselves to dismember themselves from one another to persecute one another after so outragious a manner and to Treat one another as the declared Enemies of God and his Church He explains himself also in another place where he speaks after this manner The Innocence or the Crimes of Luther equally condemn the Calvinists either for having declaimed against an innocent person or for having given unjust praises to one of the most wicked men that ever was and that monstrous conjunction which they have made in his person of holiness with the most detestable Crimes is an evident proof that they have not the least Idea of Christian Vertue nor of the Spirit of Christianity See yet further how he speaks in the same Chapter If Luther were an instrument of the Devil a wicked person a Schismatick a violent and passionate man what will become of
Scripture we find in the History of the Church of Israel that Jehis King of the Ten Tribes Reformed that Church that he took away the Worship of the False gods which Ahab had introduced that he demolished the Temple of Baal and broke down his Images see here without doubt a good Reformation Notwithstanding it is said that he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam but that he retained the worshipping of the Golden Calves that were at Dan and Bethel It is also related that he accomplisht that Reformation in a very odious manner and very unworthy of a Prince that made profession of the fear of God For having assembled all his People he told them that he would serve Baal much more then Ahab had done he commanded that all his Prophets and Priests should meet together and all the worshippers of that false God to Celebrate a Solemn Feast for him He himself pointed out the day of the Feast and caused a Publication of it to be made But when the Assembly was come into the House of Baal and all those poor People who trusted in his word when they thought of nothing but their Devotions he put them all to Death without letting any one escape Suppose we that we ought to Judge of a Reformation by the persons that make it what may not be said against this here Jehu made use of Hypocrisy and Treachery he broke the publick Faith and his own in the most Scandalous manner in the World and the most contrary to the sincerity of an honest man Besides that he yet remained in the Superstitions of Jeroboam and made the Israelites remain in them too If we would believe the Author of the Prejudices the Reformation that he made would be rather the work of the Devil then that of the Spirit of God Jehu would not have been Extraordinarily chosen by God to reform his Church and purge it from Idolatry But this is not the Sentiment of the Scripture it does not without doubt approve of the Treachery and Hypocrisy of Jehu it condemns the Golden Calves that he kept up but it does not omit the praising of that Reformation in that good which it had and to say that it was well pleasing to God And it is True that Jehu was extraordinarily called to that as it appears by the Anointing that the Prophet Elisha gave him by one of his Disciples We find in that same Scripture the History of divers other Reformations which were made in the Church of Judah but we find also that they were almost wholly different among themselves Some went so far as the abolishing the usage of the high places and the Groves which were Heathenish Superstitions and the incense that was offered to the Serpent of Aaron which was a kind of Idolatry others yet retained all these things Some even of those who made these Reformations committed Actions very unpleasing to God which the Scripture Reflects on It says of Asa who was one of those Reformers that being sick of the disease whereof he died he sought not to God but to the Physitians It says of Jehoshaphat who was another that he aided a wicked King and that he loved those whom God hated because he joyned himself with wicked Ahab It says of Joash who was yet another that he fell in with the people into the Exercise of Idolatry and the use of the Groves and that he cruelly killed a Prophet because he opposed those Superstitions If you Judge of those Reformations by their persons according to the Principle of the Author of the Prejudices you must say not only that those Reformers ought not to be heard but that the Spirit of God was not there For you see their Dissentings since some went further then the others and that some condemn'd what the others retained you see their personal Actions that you cannot excuse since the Scripture it self condemns them But if you Judge according to the Scripture which is more worthy to be followed then the Author of the Prejudices you will give to those Reformations the Praises which they merit in themselves you will approve of the more perfect ones you will distinguish in the imperfect the good from the bad without having respect to the Persons and when at last you would Judge of the Persons you would do it as Justice and Charity would Ordain you to do If the Principle of the Author of the Prejudices were reasonable in regard of the Reformers of the Latin Church it is certain that it would be so further in regard of the Propagators of the Christian Religion and of its Ordinary Teachers I would say that if those of the Church of Rome had reason not to hear the Reformers because they had differences among themselves because they spoke injurious words of one another in the heat of their disputes because they can take notice of some Vices in them or a Conduct that may be suspected to have had too much Worldly Policy it follows from thence by a far greater reason that the Heathens ought not to have heard the Christians as often as they should have seen the same things to have appeared among them But when was it that they might not have seen them appear The Age of the Apostles which we may justly call the Age of innocence and of the peace of the Church in comparison of others was that exempted from Divisions and Vices Those who have read the Epistles of Saint Paul cannot be ignorant that there were divers among the first Preachers of Christianity who would yet have retained Moses with Jesus Christ and the Law with Grace that there were divers who opposed themselves to Saint Paul about divers points of his Doctrine and who laboured to blast the honour of his Ministry that there were some who in Preaching the Gospel discovered themselves to be too much Transported with humane Passions that there were even some who went so far as to deny the Doctrine of the Resurrection Saint Paul does not spare them and the Just Complaints that he frequently makes of them sufficiently note that they had not on their parts all the respect for him which they ought to have had Notwithstanding whatsoever complaints he made of them howsoever vehement he was in his disputes yet we do not see that he Excommunicated them nor that he delivered them over to Satan as he did the incestuous person of Corinth He defends his Apostleship he calls them deceitful workers Ministers of Satan Transformed into the Ministers of Righteousness but he fails not yet in the same Chapter to give them the Title of Ministers of Jesus Christ Are they Ministers of Jesus Christ I speak as a Fool I am more Would the Author of the Prejudices have thought it well done if the Heathens of that Time had followed his Maxim and if without ever Examining the Christian Religion in it self they should have presently prejudged upon the Divisions which
Observation on their Story This Distinction that I have of these two sorts of separation is clearly to be found in the Doctrine of S. Augustine He notes both the one and the other in his third Book against Parmenio where he treats of this matter very largely When any brother sayes he that is to say any Christian among those who are in the Society of the Church falls into so great sins that they judge worthy of an Anathema I would have them proceed to his Excommunication if that may be done without any danger of Schism but yet it ought to be done with that charity that S. Paul recommends to us to wit that we should not treat him as an Enemy but as a Brother for you are not called to pluck up but to correct If he does not acknowledge nor correct his fault by repentance he wilfully goes out of himself from the Church and it will be his own will that separates him from the Christian Vnity Our Lord himself said to his servants when they would pluck up the Tares mixed with the Wheat leave them to grow up together until harvest and he gives the reason to wit lest sayes he that in plucking up the Tares you pluck up the Wheat also See here precisely these two separations whereof I speak the one that deprives one of the communion of the Sacraments and the other which breaks of Christian Unity one which is but to correct and the other which goes as far as to pluck up This Father alledges for the same thing the Example of S. Paul who in the Excommunication of the Incestuous person in Corinth did indeed deliver that miserable person to Satan but only for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus that is to say that he depriv'd him of the communion of the Sacraments but that he did not wholly pluck him up out of the field of the Church He alledges yet further what the same Apostle wrote to the Thessalonians If any man obey not our word by this Epistle note that man and have no company with him that he may be ashamed yet count him not as an enemy but admonish him as a brother He alledges lastly that which S. Paul wrote to the Corinthians touching the same incestuous penitent that they ought to pardon him Lest Satan should get an advantage over us for we are not ignorant of his devices What means the Apostle sayes he by these words lest Satan should get an advantage over us for we are not ignorant of his devices It is that under the appearance of a just severity he sometimes perswades to a violent cruelty desiring nothing more than to break the bond of peace and charity well knowing that while that bond shall be preserved among Christians he cannot hurt them and that his devices and designs would vanish There cannot be a more perfect example of that first separation given than that of the Donatists in respect of the Church for as I have said already they so absolutely separated themselves from it that they did not own it to be any longer Christian in any manner and therefore it was that they re-baptiz'd all those who came over to their party But we cannot also give a better example of the second than that of the Church it self in regard of the Donatists for although they would separate themselves from the Church yet the Church did not fail to look upon them as Christians and in some manner as Brethren The Donatists sayes S. Augustine are impious in going about to re-baptize all the world but as for us who have better sentiments we dare not even disapprove of the Sacraments of God in a Schismatical Communion In respect of the things about which we agree they are yet with us and in respect of the things about which we differ they are separated from us This approach to us and this separation are not ordered by the motions of the body but by those of the mind and as the union of bodies is made by the continuity of the places they fill up so the union of spirits also is made by the consent of wills If those who have forsaken the Vnity of the Church do other things than those that are done in the Church they are in that regard separated from her but if they do that which is done in the Church they remain as yet in that regard in a common union The Donatists are therefore with us in some things and they are separated from us in some others I cannot here avoid taking notice of the Error into which the Author of the Prejudices seems to have fallen about the meaning of these words of S. Augustine in the second Book against Parmenianus praecidendae unitatis nulla est justa necessitas There is no just necessity to break off Vnion For it seems that he thought that this Maxim regarded all manner of separation not considering that it only respects that of the Donatists which consisted in the breaking the general bond of Christianity and not that which consists in refusing our communion to those who corrupt Religion by their pernicious Superstitions and Errors If he had taken the pains to have read ten or twelve lines higher he had found that S. Augustine had strongly establish'd the necessity of separating our selves from Hereticks S. Paul sayes that Father writing to the Galatians manifestly forbids them to hear those who did not preach Iesus Christ but a falshood and a lye If any one should preach another Gospel to you than what you have received let him be Anathema He would that we should pronounce an Anathema against those who preach to us any thing beyond what we have received He would elsewhere that there can be no just necessity of breaking of unity Who sees not that he must make a distinction and that according to him there is a separation that is good just and necessary and another unjust unlawful and schismatical Although this Distinction is unquestionable yet I shall not fail to produce here a Canon that establishes it out of the very Doctrine of S. Augustine as clearly as we can desire it It is in the Decree of Gratian under the name of Pope Vrban in these terms Some men say that when we excommunicate persons who have deserv'd to be excommunicated we go against the Parable of the Gospel where our Lord forbids us to pluck up the tares out of his field They say also that this contrary to S. Augustine who assures us that we ought not to divide its unity and that we must tolerate the wicked and not reject them But first of all we answer that if we ought not to excommunicate the Hereticks and the wicked S. Augustine would have done ill to have joyn'd himself to the Legates of the Holy Church of Rome and to the other Holy Bishops to excommunicate Pelagius and Celestinus and to separate
them from the Church because they brought in a new Heresie into it But why also did the same S. Augustine with the whole Church of God hold the Donatists to be justly excommunicated against whom these things are written and why did not they receive them into their communion but only after signs of repentance and the imposition of hands Jesus Christ who propounded the Parable of the Tares did not he clearly ordain excommunication elsewhere saying that if our brother would not obey the Church correcting him we ought to reckon him as a Heathen and a Publican That which manifestly shews us that it is one thing to excommunicate and another to pluck up the Discipline of the Church excommunicates but it does not pluck up See here precisely that which S. Augustine himself said non estis ad eradicandum sed ad corrigendum From whence the truth of that which I have said appears that according to this Father there is a bad separation and that is schismatical in its own nature and another that is not so and that although it is never permitted us to make the former yet it does not follow that we may not make the latter provided we do it upon just causes and observe the rules of Prudence and Charity in it We must therefore lay it down as a certain truth that S. Augustine thought that we might sometimes break the communion of the Sacraments and Assemblies we are only concerned to know in what case he thought that that separation should be made To make this point clear I shall say in the Sixth place that when S. Augustine considered the Church in the meer mixture with the wicked that is to say in the mixture with those whose manners are vicious and criminal he taught that those who are in office in the Church may proceed to the excommunication of impenitent sinners when those sinners are few in number and when there is ground to believe that they may disturb the peace of the Church but if the crime includes a whole multitude and that the Body in general is infected then he would that the good should content themselves to preserve their own righteousness without partaking of the sins of the wicked he would that they should groan under it and pray to God but he would not that they should separate themselves When the evil sayes he has seized the greater number nothing remains for the good to do but to groan and lament And a little lower If the contagion of sin has invaded the multitude then it is necessary that Discipline should be used with mercy for the counsels of Separation are vain pernicious and sacrilegious But when he considers the Church not only as a mixture of good and wicked but also as a mixture of the truly faithful and Hereticks I maintain that he has formally acknowledg'd the justice and necessity of a separation not only in regard of some particular persons but in regard even of entire Societies provided they go not so far as that which he calls Eradication We have already noted that he would that we should according to S. Paul pronounce an Anathema against those who preach another Gospel than that which he has preached But this very thing gives the faithful a right to reject the communion of Heretical Societies and to separate themselves from their Assemblies In his Book of the True Religion he aggravates it as a very strange thing and very much deserving to be condemn'd that the Heathen Philosophers who had other sentiments concerning Divinity than the people should partake in the worship of the people In their Schools sayes he they had sentiments differing from those of the people and yet notwithstanding they had Temples common with the people The people and their Priests were not ignorant that these Philosophers had opinions contrary to theirs touching the nature of the Gods since every Philosopher was not afraid of publishing his opinions and of labouring at the same time to perswade them and others and yet nevertheless with that diversity of sentiments they did not fail to assist at the publick worship without being hindred by any body A man that speaks after this manner would not think it ill that any should separate themselves from Heretical communions But he yet further explains himself more clearly afterwards For he sayes That if the Christian Religion should do nothing else but correct that vice it would deserve infinite praises And he adds immediately after That it appears by the example of so many Heresies that have deviated from the rule of Christianity that they would not admit to the communion of the Sacraments those who taught concerning God the Father his Wisdom and his Grace otherwise than the truth would allow them and who would perswade men to receive their false Doctrine But that is not only to be found true in regard of the Manichees and of some others who have other Sacraments than we but also in regard of those who having the same Sacraments have sentiments differing from us in other things and errors which they obstinately defend for they are shut out from the Catholick communion and the participation of those same Sacraments which they have common with us From whence comes it to pass therefore you will say that S. Augustine seems sometimes to ascribe to the Orthodox the right only of a passive separation in regard of Heretical Societies that is to say that he would not that we should separate from them even then when they separate themselves For he sayes in some place that though the Traditors should have openly maintain'd in the Church that their Action was good and holy that is to say that they ought to have delivered up their Bibles to the Pagans for them to burn them and that though they should even have wrote on that subject provided they had not set up their Assemblies apart nor separated themselves yet we ought not to have abandoned for them the good wheat which signifies this to us that we ought not to separate our selves from those though their Doctrine whereof he had spoken was detestable contrary to the faith conscience and good manners In effect he speaks almost alwayes of the Heretical Societies of his time as of those who were themselves cut off from the communion of the Church and whom the Church had not rejected I answer that S. Augustine would have us suffer the communion of Hereticks in certain cases but that he would have us also in other cases to separate our selves from them While we are in no danger of partaking with their errors neither in effect nor in appearance but that we may preserve the profession of our faith pure without consenting to impiety or seeming to consent to it and that there should not be on the part of the Hereticks that obstinacy of opinion he would have us suffer their communion For it is the manifest Doctrine of this Father that in the Society of the
Rights of that Society were so inseparably joyned to those who opposed the Reformation that that Society could not subsist without them and that separating themselves out of the motives of an ill-grounded Prejudice or in giving a Just ground to others to separate themselves from them they should have carried away all that Society with them This cannot be said For among all those persons who compose the Body of the Visible Church it is certain that there are none to how high Dignities soever they may be raised and whatsoever number of them there may be that are such Essential Parts as without which the Church cannot subsist while there are two or three remaining who may assemble together in the Name of Jesus Christ For Jesus Christ himself restrained himself to that Number When two or three of you are gathered together in my Name I will be in the midst of you Jesus Christ himself alone his Truth his Gospel his Providence and his Spirit are essential to the Church without which she can never subsist but she may without the Pope without the Court of Rome without the Council of Trent without the Bishops and without the people who follow Rome and in a word without that whole Party which refused the Reformation The Christian Society does not depend on their capricious humours nor on their Temporal Interests They are not the Soul of that Body They will be Members of it while they make profession of the True Faith or at the furthest while they do not oppose it but when they shall obstinately remain in Errors incompatible with the Communion of Jesus Christ and when they shall break by unjust Anathema's the bond of that Society We may very well say that the Body of the Visible Church is Lessened but we can never say that their withdrawing leaves the Faithful under a Dispersion The better to understand this Truth we must know That although that External Society be common to the good and the bad to the truly Faithful to Hereticks and the men of the World in a word to all those who are found to be externally mingled in the Body of the Church yet in effect the Right of that Society will not to speak properly belong to any but the truly Faithful For the wicked the Hereticks and those Worldly men who fill up their Assemblies are only associated here while they remain such in dishonouring God by the Contempt they have of his word and the Indignities they offer in receiving his Sacraments Therefore God said to the wicked in Isaiah When you come to appear-before me who has required this at your hands to tread my Courts And in the Fiftieth Psalm David assures us that God has said to the wicked What hast thou to do to Read my Laws and to take my Covenant into thy Mouth Since thou hast hated instruction and hast cast my Words behind thee It is certain then that the right of the External Society resides in the Faithful only who only are the Church of Jesus Christ his Mystical body for which he dyed the Seed which he sowed with his own hand against his harvest As to the rest they are in that Communion only by Accident and are the seed of Tares which the Enemy rising at night has thrown into the Field of the Son of God and which grows with the Wheat until the Time of the Harvest and it is also only by Accident that they are suffered there to wit because most commonly their wickedness is not known or if it be their Conversion may yet be Charitably hoped for or in fine it may fall out that in going about to pull up the Tares one must also pluck up the Wheat with it But being what they are they have not any part in the rights of that Society and of those Assemblies Therefore Jesus Christ has promised his presence to none but such as shall be assembled together in his Name And Saint Austin expresly Teaches that the Power of the Keys and that of binding and loosing was given to the Church of the Just and true Believers in opposition to the wicked to Hereticks and to the men of the World that are mixt with them And it is said of that Church only so considered in that same opposition what Jesus Christ has said in the Gospel If thy Brother sin against thee tell it to the Church and if he refuse to hear the Church let him be unto thee as a Heathen man and a Publican Which lets us see that he gave only the truly Faithful the Right to be in a Society for there those only have a Right to be in a Religious Society who have the power of binding and loosing and of hearing those private complaints to Judge concerning them But according to him the truly Faithful have only that power and it is only to those that Jesus Christ has given it They are then none but those to speak properly in whom the Right of being in an External Society and of making those Assemblies resides That being so laid down who sees not that when it falls out that the Body of that mixed Church is divided into divers parties about those important matters that respect either Faith or Worship or the General Rules of Manners all the Rights of that Christian Society remain in that Party which retains true Doctrine and Piety because it is on that side that the truly Just and Faithful place themselves There it is that the true Church of Jesus Christ is assembled in his Name to which he has promised his presence for as I have before said Error Superstition and Injustice give none a Right to be in a Society nor by consequence any to make those Assemblies But they will say if the Body of the Pastors be found in the other Party if External Splendor Multitude Extent Succession Authority of Councils are found there can any one forbear acknowledging it to be the Body of the Church There are seen amongst them the Pulpits Schools Churches Bishopricks Benefices Revenues Dignities and in a word all those advantages that mark out the Body of the Visible Church A Party that is in that condition cannot suffer that any should put its Rights in Question its Assemblies pass for lawful throughout all the World and the Assemblies only of the other Party are here Treated of who finding themselves spoiled of those advantages cannot be considered otherwise then as a Sect divided from the Body as a Branch separated from the Tree or as a Ray divided from the Sun according to the comparison of the Fathers I answer That those Divisions that fall out in a mixed Church may be of two sorts for sometimes they are founded only upon personal accusations or points of Discipline or light and less important Questions the Foundation of the Orthodox Doctrine and true Worship remaining intire in both Parties Of this sort were the Divisions of the Novatians the Donatists the Luciferians as it has
Assemblies most lawful For as to that which is said in the Scripture I will smite the Shepheard and the Sheep shall be scattered abroad it would be manifestly to abuse that passage if they would conclude from it an absolute necessity of the Pastors for the subsistence of that Society For that is a Prophecy which notes not that which the Faithful ought to do when they have no Pastors but that which should befal the Disciples of Jesus Christ in the Time of his Passion when the fury of the Jews and the sad Condition wherein they should behold their Divine Master should force them to be scattered which has nothing common to the Question we are now Treating of In the Third place I say that to understand well the true use and the Necessity of the Actions of the Ministry the Church must be considered in two Seasons in her first formation and in her subsistence For in her first formation it is certain that the Actions of the Ministry were necessary for the calling of men to the light of the Gospel whereof as yet they had no knowledge and by Consequence they were necessary to the Establishment of the Christian Communion or Society amongst them which could not be without that knowledge To this end Jesus Christ employed his Apostles and Evangelists Go says he and Teach all Nations baptizing them in the name of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Ghost and it is that to which Saint Paul has a chief regard when he says That Christ has given some Apostles and some Prophets and some Exangelists and some Pastors and Teachers for the gathering together of the Saints for the work of the Ministry for the edifying of the Body of Christ Those glorious Heralds by the efficacy of their word accompanied with the power of Jesus Christ called together the Church if we must so say as the Holy Assembly of God they Established the Christian Religion in the World and so united men among themselves in an External Society by the profession of one and the same Faith of one and the same Hope and Charity which inspired them so that the Acts of their Ministry were absolutely necessary for that first Establishment because their Preaching was the only means that God would make use of to draw men from the Pagan Idolatry or the Jewish Obstinacy and to give them that Faith without which they could never have had a Christian Society In this respect there is Reason to urge the force of the word Church which signifies not a rash and tumultuary Assembly made by chance or Sedition but an Assembly lawfully called for it was God himself who called it by the voice of his Apostle according to the Prophecy of David The mighty Lord the Eternal God hath spoken and called to all the Earth from the rising up of the Son to the going down of the same He has called the Heavens from on high and the Earth to Judge his People saying Gather ye my Saints together In this first Establishment the Apostles and Evangelists did three things On one hand they spread abroad the Faith every where and by this means bound men in an External Communion or Society on the other hand they set together the Christian Truths which are the Objects of Faith in the Cannon of the Scriptures and in fine they established Ordinary Pastors for the upholding and Government of the Church By the first of those things in Establishing the Faith in mens hearts they assembled called them together and put them into a Society by the second they laid as I may so speak the Fountain or the External and perpetual Magazine of the Evangelical Doctrine By the Third they provided for the Ordinary Dispensation of that Fountain setling of Ministers to distribute it by their Preaching the Sacraments and the Exercise of Discipline Of these three things there is none but the first only to which we ought to refer the Convocation of the Church and Establishment of the Christian Society But we must say that all Three serve for its preservation and increase for they are so many ways and means which the Apostles left for the preservation of the Faith and strengthning of it in those who had before received it and to propagate it to their Children and in those who had not as yet received it in which the preservation of a Society consists The first contributes much for as Lights or Torches lighted all together preserve and mutually strengthen their fire and are capable of lighting others So many faithful Christians united together confirm one another in the Faith and Piety and are fit to Communicate that Faith and Piety to those who have not yet received it The Second does not contribute less for the Faithful preserve and increase their light their Faith Piety Sanctity by the immediate Reading of the Holy Scriptures Infidels themselves may be converted this way and those that go astray be brought back to the purity of the Gospel The Third is also of exceeding great Use for the Pastors by their Preaching their Direction and their Writings by their Examples by the Sacraments they Administer and in a word by all the Actions of their Ministry confirm the Faith where it is and propagate it where it is not The Divine Wisdom has so prepared its divers means for the preservation of that Society and the Propagation of his Church That if the Actions of the Ministry do not produce that effect for which they are appointed the other means shall and supply that defect In Effect when the publick Preaching and presence of the Pastors fail the Reading of the Scripture private Exhortation of the simple Christians the writings of their Pastors either dead or absent may come to succour and make the Faith and Charity and Piety subsist and by consequence the External Society of the Church and its Assemblies How then are the Actions of the Ministry necessary They are so first By Necessity of Precept as they speak I mean as it is a means that Jesus Christ has ordained the Use whereof we cannot neglect without sin Those who contemn it resist the Order that God himself has established and make themselves unworthy of his Grace and to this those passages in the Scripture refer which recommend the Pastors to the Faithful He that heareth you heareth me and he that rejecteth you rejecteth me Obey them that have the Rule over you and submit your selves for they watch for your Souls 2. The Actions of the Ministry are necessary to the Churches well being though not absolutely necessary to its being It is not absolutely impossible for a Church to subsist without having actually any Pastors not only because sometimes Faith and Piety may subsist without their heavenly food which is the Word and Sacraments as a Body may subsist sometimes without its nourishments but also because one part of that food may come to us otherwise then from the mouth of the
Consequence it is to that we must refer that Call If I had a mind here to set down all the passages of St. Augustine when he establishes this Truth I should engage my self in an excessive Tediousness It shall suffice to set down some few that may clearly let us see what his Doctrine was upon this matter Judas says he Represented the Body of the wicked and Saint Peter represented the Body of the good the Body of the Church I say The Body of the Church but the Church which consists in the good For if St. Peter had not represented that Church our Lord would not have said to him I give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven For if that had been said but to St. Peter only the Church does not do it But if it be done in the Church to wit that the things that are bound on Earth are bound in Heaven and that those which are loosed on Earth are loosed in Heaven in as much as he which the Church Excommunicates is Excommunicated in Heaven and he to whom the Church is Reconciled is Reconciled in Heaven since that I say is done in the Church it follows that St. Peter receiving the Keys represented the Holy Chvrch. And as the good who are in the Church were represented in the person of St Peter so the wicked who are in the Church were represented in the person of Judas and it is to those that Jesus Christ said Me you have not always And further after having described the Church of the Truly Faithful in these Terms God has sent his Son into the World to the end that those who believe in him should by the laver of Regeneration be loosed from their Sins as well Original as Actual and that being delivered from Everlasting Damnation they should live in Faith Hope and Charity as Pilgrims in this World amidst Temptations and Labours and amidst the Corporal and Spiritual Consolations of God walking in Christ Jesus who is their way But because in that very way in which they walk they are not free from those Sins that arise through the Infirmity of this Life he has appointed them the saving Remedy of Alms to help their prayers which he has commanded them to make Forgive our Trespasses as we forgive them that Trespass against us After I say having described the Church of the Just in that manner he adds This is that which makes the Church blessed in Hope in this miserable life and it is this Church that Saint Peter represented by the primacy of his Apostleship Nam Ecclesiae gerebat figurata generalitate personam If you look upon Saint Peter in himself he was but a man by Nature a Christian by Grace and the first of the Apostles by the super-abundance of Grace But when Jesus Christ said to him I will give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven he Represented the whole Body of the Church that Church I say which in that Age was moved with divers Temptations as by so many Storms Torrents and Tempests and which yet does not fall into ruine because it is founded upon the Rock from which Saint Peter took his Name I say that Saint Peter took his Name from it for as the Name of Christian is derived from Christ and not that of Christ from that of Christian so that of Saint Peter is derived from the Rock and not that of the Rock from the Name of St. Peter and therefore Jesus Christ said to him Thou art Peter and upon this Rock I will build my Church For Saint Peter having made this Confession Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God our Lord told him that he would build his Church upon that Rock which he had confessed For that Rock was Jesus Christ upon which Saint Peter himself is built according to what is said No man can lay other Foundation then what is already laid which is Jesus Christ It is that Church therefore that was founded upon Jesus Christ which received from him in the Person of Saint Peter the Keys of that Kingdom that is to say the Power of binding and loosing In the same sense he says elsewhere That there are some things said to Saint Peter that plainly seem properly to belong to him and which nevertheless cannot be so well understood if they are not referred to the Church that Saint Peter represented and of which he was the Figure by that Primacy which he had among the Disciples as are adds he these words I will give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven Yet elsewhere Jesus Christ has given the Keys to his Church to the end that that which it should bind on Earth should be bound in Heaven and that whatsoever it should loose should be loosed that is to say to the end that he that should not believe that his Sins are pardoned in the Church to him they should not be pardoned and that on the contrary he who being in the bosom of the Church should beleive that his Sins were pardoned and who should be reduced by a holy correction should obtain pardon It is not rashly says he in another place that I make two Orders of men One sort are so much in the House of God that they are themselves that House that is built upon a Rock and that which is called the only Dove the Spouse without Spot and Wrinkle the Inclosed Garden the hidden Fountain the Wells of Living Water the Paradise where the Fruit of Apples is It is this House which has received the Keys and the Power to bind and loose and it is this to which he said That if any would not hearken to it when it Reproved and Corrected that he should be esteemed as a Heathen man and a Publican That House consists in Vessels of Gold and Silver in Precious Stones and Incorruptible Wood and it is to that that Saint Paul says Bear with one another in love keeping the Vnity of the Spirit in the Bond of Peace and again The Temple of God is Holy which Temple ye are It Consists in the good in the Faithful in the Holy Servants of God spread abroad every where joyned together in a spiritual Vnity by the Communion of the same Sacraments whether they know one another by sight or whether they do not But as for the others they are so in the House as not at all to belong to the Structure of the House and they are not in that Society that is Fruitful in Peace and Righteousness They are as the Chaff amidst the good Corn and we cannot deny that they are in the House since the Apostle says that there are in the