points that they could not carry on their side at one time and to pass over to other matters to busie the Prelates with and to have time notwithstanding to advertise the Court of Rome and to gain the chief to the contrary party We ought to place here also the ordinary artifice of the same Legates to put off the Sessions to make many difficulties arise about matters and after divers circuits to cause in the end the Articles to be sent to the Pope which they could not make an end of by reason of the great insisting of the Nations In one word they used in the management of this Assembly all that was most refin'd most forcible and profound in humane policy promises threats secret negotiations canvasings diversions delayes Authority and in General nothing was forborn that could turn and corrupt mens minds there The Pope and his Court had a great many difficulties to overcome and oppositions to surmount which often put them into great troubles and inquietudes and fears but in the end they were so well served and they remained Masters and saw all things succeed according to their desires See here after what manner things went at Trent and by what degrees they tended to make an entire breach of Communion between the Roman and Reformed party Let any now judge if in all this conduct our Fathers had not just and lawful causes for a Separation 1. They saw in the contrary party an invincible resolution to defend and preserve the Errors and Superstitions whose amendment they demanded 2. They saw that resolution go so high as to constrain them to fall back again into those errors against all their knowledge and the motions of their own consciences 3. They saw that this violence which they offered to them had no bounds for it went not only as far as disputes not only so far as the Ordinances and Decrees but even to Excommunications and Anathema's that is to say to a Separation and Schism with a curse 4. They saw that they joyned to all this punishments not in one or two places but in all not by popular heat but in cold blood and in the usual wayes designed for the punishment of the greatest Villains 5. They saw that those punishments came from the perpetual and general inspiration of the Court of Rome which did not cease persecuting of them in all places and which proceeded so far as to search for them in their most hidden retreats 6. They saw that they refused the most equitable and necessary conditions without which they could not proceed to a just examination of Religion nor to a holy and Christian Reformation and that in stead of that the Court of Rome would alwayes remain sole Mistress and Arbitress 7. They saw lastly that instead of returning to the purity of Christianity by taking away out of the field of the Church so many corruptions that defaced it so many false opinions that destroy'd it so many kinds of Worship contrary to true Piety that dishonour'd it and destroyed the salvation of souls these Prelates on the contrary would establish things that custom only and the tradition of some Ages had for the most part introduc'd that they would establish them I say for the future in force of a Law to be incorporated into their Religion as essential and indispensable parts of it to which they would subject the minds and consciences of men which they ordain'd the practice and belief of under penalties of Anathema cutting off and separating from the body of their Society all those who should hold a contrary opinion and practice Let any judge whether our Fathers could yet after that preserve Church Communion with a Party in which they could see nothing either of the Spirit of Truth and Christian Purity and Charity resplendent and whether all hope being taken away of ever reducing them to the right way of the Gospel or even of being able to live with them without wounding their consciences by a detestable hypocrisie in pretending to believe that which they did not believe and to practising a worship which they held unlawful there not remaining any further means for them to remain in that Communion without partaking of their Errors without exposing their Children and without rendring themselves culpable before God let any I say judge whether they did not do well to separate themselves I confess that when a man is joyned with others in one and the same Body he ought not lightly to proceed to a rupture there are measures and behaviour to be observ'd that Prudence and Christian Charity require of us and as long as we have any hope of procuring the amendment and healing of our Brethren or where there is at least any way for us to bewail and to mourn for their sins without losing our own innocency and their constraining us to partake in their crimes we ought not to forsake them But when that hope is lost and when that means of preserving our own purity is taken from us when instead of being able to reduce them we see on the contrary that their Communion does but make us to cast our selves into an unavoidable necessity of corrupting our selves it is certain that we ought to withdraw our selves from them lest in partaking with their sins we should draw the just condemnation of God upon our selves Be not partaker with other mens sins sayes S. Paul but keep thy self pure CHAP. IV. An Examination of the Objection of the Author of the Prejudices taken out of the Dispute of S. Augustine against the Schism of the Donatists IT seems to me that what I have laid down hitherto le ts us clearly enough see that the only way to decide the Question of our Separation to know whether it is just or unjust is to enter into the discussion of the foundation of our Controversies and that it would be the highest injustice to go about to condemn us without ever hearing us Notwithstanding whatsoever we may have to say and how strong soever our Reasons should be the Author of the Prejudices pretends to have found out a certain way to convince us of Schism without entring upon any other examination and for this he employes the Eighth and Ninth Chapters of his Treatise I would sayes he go farther and convince them of Schism without entring upon any discussion of either their Doctrine or their Mission by their separation alone All that he sayes upon that subject may be well near reduc'd to this That there is a Church from which one ought never to separate under any pretence whatsoever and from which all those who separate themselves are Schismaticks and out of the state of salvation That the infallible and perpetual mark to know this Church according to S. Augustine and the other African Fathers is visible extension throughout all Nations because that visible extension according to them contains the Church at all times and that it is a Negative mark that is to say
that every Society which has not that extension is not the Church so that this reasoning is alwayes sound your Society is shut up in a little part of the world Therefore it is not the Church and that it is by this Principle that S. Augustine has disputed against the Donatists and convinced them of Schism This is the summ of his eighth Chapter In the ninth he labours to apply these general Maxims to our Separation and 1. He sayes That our Communion is not spread over all the world any more than that of the Donatists and that not having that visible extension which is the perpetual mark of the True Church it follows that it is not so and by consequence that we are all Schismaticks 2. He sayes We carry the principle of the Donatists much higher than those Schismaticks stretch'd it for as for them they did not say that there ever was a time in which the Church had wholly fell into Apostasic and that they excepted the Communion of Donatus but as for us we will have it that there has been whole Ages in which all the world had generally apostatized and lost the faith and treasure of salvation 3. He labours to shew that the Societies of the Berengarians of the Waldenses and Albigenses c. in whom he sayes we shut up the Church could not be this Catholick Church of which S. Augustine speaks And lastly He concludes from thence that we are Schismaticks and by consequence out of a state of salvation Before we enter upon the particular Examination of the Propositions whereof this Objection is made up it will be good to note that there is nothing new in all that and that it is nothing but that some mark of visible extension that the greatest part of the Controversial Writers of the Roman Communion have been wont to propound when they would give the marks of the True Church There is this only difference to be found in it that the others labour to ground this upon what they produce out of the passages of the Scripture whereas the Author of the Prejudices grounds his argument upon the sole Authority of S. Augustine and some Fathers But when it should be true that S. Augustine and the African Fathers disputing against the Donatists should have prest this visible extension of the Church too much and urged it further than they ought will the Author of the Prejudices believe that he ought to hold all those things that the Fathers have advanc'd in their disputes for infallible and all their reasonings and hypotheses to have been so Does he not know what Theodoret himself who was a Father has noted concerning some of those who were before him That the vehemence of Disputation had made them fall into excesses just as those who would rectifie a crooked Tree turn it too much on the other side from that straightness which it ought to have And is he ignorant of what S. Athanasius said concerning Dionysius of Alexandria whose Authority the Arians objected to him That Dionysius had said so not with design to make a simple exposition of his faith but occasionally having a respect to the times and persons That a Gardiner is not to be found fault with if he cultivate his Trees according to the quality of the soil sowing one planting another pruning this and plucking up that We must sayes S. Jerome distinguish between the different kinds of writing and especially of Polemical and Dogmatical For in the Polemical the dispute is vagous and when they answer to an adversary they propound sometimes one thing and sometimes another they argue as they think fit they say one thing and do another or as the Proverb sayes they offer bread and give one a stone But in the Dogmatical on the contrary they speak openly and ingenuously We may easily apprehend by that that we ought not to hold for Canonical all that the Fathers may have wrote in the heat of their disputes or to take what they have said according to the rigour of the Letter since they themselves acknowledge that having the Pen in their hands they often advance things that on other occasions ought not to be press'd So that though it should be true that S. Augustine and the African Fathers had made that visible extension an inseparable and perpetual mark of the True Church yet we should not fear to say in respect of them what S. Augustine himself has said concerning S. Cyprian whom the Donatists objected to him I do not hold the Writings of Cyprian for Canonical but I examine them by the Canonical Scriptures That which I find in them conformable to the holy Scriptures I receive with praising him and I reject with the respect that I owe to his person what I find in them disagreeing thereto We should make no scruple to apply to them what the same S. Augustine has said on the subject of S. Hilary and some other Fathers whom they alledg'd to him We must throughly distinguish these sorts of writings from the Authority of the Canonical Books For however we should read them yet we cannot draw convincing testimonies from them and it is allow'd us to depart from them when we see that they themselves have departed from the truth It is therefore certain that the Author of the Prejudices has but weakned his proof when instead of labouring to establish it on the Scripture as the rest have done he restrains it to the meer Authority of S. Augustine and some Fathers We have thought that we ought to have freely represented this to the Author of the Prejudices to oblige him a little to moderate his pretensions for he imagin'd that the sole Authority of S. Augustine and some Fathers was enough to convince us I will sayes he convince them we have frequently told him already and shall tell him here again That the Scripture is the only rule of our Faith that we do not acknowledge any other authority able to decide the disputed Points in Religion than that of the Word of God and that if we sometimes dispute by the Fathers it is but by way of condescention to those of the Church of Rome to act upon their own principle and not to submit our consciences to the word of men But because that he may also imagine under a pretence of this declaration that we have no other way to answer his argument I shall undertake to answer here and shew him if I can that he has abused the Authority of S. Augustine and that he has neither comprised or had a mind to comprehend either the true sentiments of that Father or ours This is that which I design to shew him in this Chapter and in the following But before we enter upon this matter it will be necessary to clear in a few words the History of the Donatists and to represent what was the beginning of their quarrel and what their Separation was The Author of the
one might make a large Volum of them if these Antient Disorders were not so publickly known One has publisht not long since a Book of the Rates of the Apostolick Chamber and the Taxes enjoyned for Penances which alone declares more then it will be necessary for us to stay upon for our Edification There not only every dispatch of business but every sin also every crime has its set Price and as there is nothing to be done without Money so there is nothing which Money cannot do 19. I could add to all that I have said a multitude of other things that could not but have been very proper to have raised those prejudices in the minds of our Fathers whereof we have spoken For those unjust ways which Rome has made use of to draw all affairs to it self with all the Riches of the West all the underhand Canvassings and strange Practices it has used in the Elections of Popes the Scandalous Schisms that have sprung from the Divisions of Parties and Differences of Elections The Bloody Wars that the Popes are accused to have divers times kindled among Christian Princes the Intrigues the dishonest ways whereby they are said to have served themselves to engage the Kings and Grandees of the World in their Interests the endeavours they have always used to elude the demands of a Reformation all these things sufficiently discover more of the Spirit of the World then of the Spirit of Jesus Christ and will easily perswade all those who are not wholly deprived of their Reason that there must needs have been latent at the bottom an extream Coruption But we ought to make an end of this Chapter and to leave a matter so ungrateful into which we had not at all entred if we had not been obliged by the necessity of a just defence as I have before declared It only remains that we shut up in the Close of all those things which we have represented by concluding that they cannot at least without renouncing all equity any more condemn our Fathers either of rashness or presumption if they durst perswade themselves that the Church and Religion were fallen into the very worst hands and if they judged from thence that they ought to enter upon a more particular scrutiny of those Doctrines that they taught and of those Laws whereby they would bind their Consciences That Consequence which they drew from thence was but the just effect of a Reason animated by the fear of God and a desire which they had of their own Salvation for what colour or pretence could there be that a Disorder in the Government of the Church so great so antient so general should not be accompanied with a multitude of other Errors contrary to the word of God and prejudicial to the Salvation of men CHAP. III. That the External State of that Religion it self had in the times of our Fathers signs of its Corruption sufficient to afford them just motives to Examine it ALthough these Reflections that I have already set down drawn from the Government of the Church were very weighty and by themselves capable of making the most just impressions on the Minds and Consciences of those who would set themselves to work out their own Salvation according to the Exhortation of the Apostle with fear and trembling yet we ought not to imagine that our Fathers were determined by those considerations alone They yet made others which they had that we may yet be more sensibly touched by them since they had for their object not the outward Form or State of the Ministry nor the persons who possessed the Offices and Dignities of the Church but their Religion it self in that State in which it was in their days For it is most true that it was scarce possible for those who did the least in the World fix their Eyes on that Religion to consider its Draught and its External Form without discovering or at least without discerning infinite Characters of its Corruption And this is that which I design to treat of in this Chapter 1. One of the chief Objects that presented it self to our Fathers was that of the great Number of Ceremonies with which they beheld that Religion either shrowded or overwhelmed It matters little which of the two we affirm for which way soever we take it it was always a true Pourtrait of the old Oeconomy of Moses which seem'd to be reviv'd in the World They took special notice of their external sacrifices their solemn Feasts distinction of Meats of their Altars of their Tapers of their sacred Vessels of their Censings of their set Fasts throughout the Year of their mystical Figures and a multitude of particular things altogether resembling those that were enjoin'd under the Law and in general a great Conformity to that Antient-Worship consisting in such a Love and Excessive usage of Ceremonies This was without doubt a Character very opposite to that of the Gospel of Jesus Christ where the Spirit Rules and not the Letter and which is made free from all that great cumbrance of External Observations St. Paul calls these Observances weak and beggerly Elements a Yoak of bondage the rudiments of the World the shadow of things to come whereof the body is Jesus Christ and St. Peter a Yoak which neither the Jews in his days nor their Fathers were able to bear Jesus Christ himself told the woman of Samaria That the time was come when the true worshippers of his Father should worship him in Spirit and in truth What likelyhood was there that they would have spoke after that manner if the Church of Christ her self should be burthened with as many or more Ceremonies then the Synagogue And if as Tertulian speaks God had not removed the difficulties of the Law to substitute in their places the easy Rules of the Gospel They would have Preached to us the Spirit and Liberty only to have us subjected again to the Letter and to have placed us under a servitude far more insupportable then the Former 2. Moreover as our Fathers saw one part of those Ceremonies taken from the Jews so they preceiv'd a multitude of others that were drawn from or imitated the Heathens by their approving of the same which they either Authorised or practised For we might put into this rank the use of holy water or water Consecrated for sprinkling in the entrance into Churches as well as private Houses and the Funerals of the dead the blessings and the sprinklings the using of Spittle in the Baptism of little Children the Invocation of Saints their Canonization their Patronages and ordering of their Charges and Imployments Their Images and Pictures their Agnus Dei's their Feasts for all the Saints for the deaths of St. John and many others their usage of Processions of Rogations their visiting the Shrines or Reliques of Saints of setting up the sign of the Cross where four ways met of Anniversaries for the dead of swearing by their Reliques and
readily subject Germany to the Council of the Pope and because the Pope used also all his endeavours to stir up new affairs for the Emperour on the side of Italy Moreover a division fell out in the Council for the Pope having transferr'd it from Trent to Bolognia to have it more at his ordering the greatest part of the Bishops yielded to that transferring but many also held themselves firm to Trent and would not obey it which made a great difficulty to arise when the Emperour and the Princes of Germany came to demand as they afterwards did that the Council should be re-established at Trent because those of Bolognia stood upon it as a point of honour not to go back to find those of Trent there King Francis the First dyed in this time and Henry the Eighth King of England being dead also the Reformation was quickly after received in England under the Reign of Edward the Sixth which a little disturb'd the joyes of the Court of Rome They were yet more disturb'd by the Acts of Protestation which the Emperour had made against the Assembly at Bolognia that he had treated it as an unlawful Assembly and a Conventicle insisting that they should return to Trent with threats that if the Pope continued to neglect his duty he would himself out of his own Authority provide for the disorders of the Church They were troubled also at the Interim which the same Emperour published afterwards throughout all Germany This Interim was a certain Formulary of Religion that the Emperour had made to be drawn up to be observed until the holding of a Lawful Council He establish'd therein the whole Body of the Roman Doctrine and allowed only the Marriage of Priests and Communion under both kinds But although this Formulary was neither approved by the one sort nor the other that at Rome the Pope had censured it and the Protestants look'd upon it as the greatest of all their oppressions the Emperour did not fail to use violence to the Protestants to make them receive it And this filled Germany with an infinite number of persecutions such as those that Conquerours when they cruelly abuse their prosperity as Charles the Fifth did are wont to make the vanquished suffer But while he thus satiated himself with these violences and indignities Paul the Third dyed at Rome the tenth of November 1549. The Death of this Pope was follow'd with divers Writings which wounded his Memory in the most bloody manner in the world But letting pass his Manners and the rest of his Government wherein we are not concerned I shall only say that the evils which our Fathers suffered in all places for the Cause of the Reformation during the fifteen years of his Papacy cannot be express'd For under the name of Hereticks or Lutherans they imprisoned them they banished them they deprived them of their Estates they massacred them they burned them and not to speak of our France England Scotland Flanders Holland Brabant Haynalt Artois Spain Savoy Lorrain Poland were as so many Theatres wherein there might be every day seen some of those Tragical Executions and where they spoke of nothing but the extirpation and rooting out of these Hereticks Julius the third succeeded Paul This man freely transferr'd his Council back to Trent to make all opposition between the Emperour and himself cease but in the Bull which he publish'd he declar'd that it belong'd to him to rule and guide the Council that he remitted it to be followed and continued in the same state in which it was when it was broken off and that he would send his Legates thither to preside in his place in case he could not come thither himself in person These clauses netled the Protestants so that seeing themselves press'd by the Emperour to submit themselves to the Council they freely declared to him that they could not do it otherwise than upon these conditions to wit That they should begin to treat of matters all anew without having regard to that which had been already done That their Divines should be received and have a deliberative voice That the Pope should not pretend to preside but that he should submit himself to it and in fine that he should absolve the Bishops from the Oath by which they were ty'd to him and that without that they could not hold that to be a free Council Notwithstanding this Declaration the Emperour made his Decree by which he ordain'd that they should submit themselves to the Council promising on his part that he would give Safe-Conduct to all the World to come thither and to propose there all that they should judge necessary for the good of the Church and salvation of Souls and that he would give order that all things should be treated and determined holily and Christianly according to the holy Scripture and the Doctrine of the Fathers and that the state of the Church should be reformed there and false Doctrines and Errours taken away Thus the Council of Trent was continued whither the Pope sent his Legate and two Nuntio's to preside there in his Name with orders to begin the first Session the first day of May 1555. which was yet nevertheless prorogued to the first of September following The Elector of Saxony and the Duke of Wirtemberg both Protestants with some Imperial Cities resolved to send their Deputies thither and made them demand of the Emperours Embassadour a Letter of Safe-conduct in the same form that the Council of Basil had given it to the Bohemians with an intermission till their Divines should be arrived This demand was not without some difficulty but the Question having been agitated at Rome they thought good to agree that they should have a Safe-conduct in general terms without delaying upon that account the decision of the chief matters and before the expediting of this Safe-conduct they had determined the principal Points touching the Eucharist to wit Transubstantiation the Real Presence the Adoration of the Host the Concomitance the Custom of the Feste Dieu the reservation of the Sacrament and the necessity of Auricular Confession before the Communion They agreed only with the Embassadour of the Emperour that they should delay the decision of these four Questions Whether it was necessary to salvation that all should receive the Sacrament in both kinds Whether he that received in one took less than he that received in both Whether the Church was in an Error when she ordained that the Priests only should receive in both Whether the Eucharist ought also to be given to little children Which was already a meer Fallacy as if the Protestants had nothing to propose but only about those four Questions When the Protestant Deputies were arrived they openly complained of the form of their Safe-conduct and they demanded one in the form of that of Basil to the Bohemians but they refused it They demanded that they might be heard in full Council but they would not and they obtained with great
bad conduct of their Pastors Heaven and Hell would be very miserably dispensed while the time of those disorders lasted For our adversaries themselves are constrained to confess that this quarrell that made so great a noise that produced so many Excommunications so many Separations so many acts of violence and so many banishments and which ended by the dishonour of the Council of Chalcedon was founded upon nothing but a personal animosity sayes Baronius or as Sirmundus sayes upon an indifferent controversie which concerned nothing the doctrine of the faith on which side soever it had been decided If we must therefore judge according to the relation of these two Authors all that we can say is that both the parties were equally Schismatical who violated the peace and unity of the Church without any just reason and who mutually excommunicated one another for nothing and if we add that rigorous judgement against the Schifmatical Societies without any exception or distinction we must say that there was then no longer a true Church upon the Earth nor any hope of salvation But to go yet further If all those who live in the communion of Schismaticks are out of the Church in a state of Damnation I would fain have them satisfie me about some difficulties that I find in the History of the same Vigilius For the two first years of his Papacy it was he that was called a false Pope a Schismatick an Usurper of the Bishoprick of Sylverius whom the Hereticks had banished to set up this man who had promised them to communicate with them And in effect Liberatus and Victor of Tunis relate that after he was in possession of the Papacy he wrote to the Hereticks as having the same faith with them and Bellarmine declares that at this time Vigilius was an Anti-Pope and a Schismatick because that Sylverius the lawful Pope was yet living and there could not be two lawful Popes at the same time Baronius and Petavius say the same thing Notwithstanding it is true that during these two years of Schism Vigilius was peaceably acknowledged to be the Bishop of Rome both by the Church of Rome and by all Christendom No Church refused to live in his communion no Bishop withdrew himself from him as a Schismatick He performed without any opposition all the Functions of his Bishoprick he received the honours and had the profits of it All the Earth was then Schismatical with him and by consequence there was no further either a Church or Salvation in the World if it was only in the person of Sylverius and some Bishops who had subscribed to the Sentence of the Deposition and Anathema that Sylverius being in Exile pronounced against Vigilius and against all those who should adhere to him After this I would fain have them tell me how Vigilius could pass from the state of a Schismatick to that of a true Pope It was say Baronius and Bellarmine by the consent of the Clergy and People of Rome who assembled together and chose him lawfully after the death of Silverius But besides that this new Ordination of Vigilius and this Assembly of the People and Clergy is an effect of the invention of Baronius which is grounded upon nothing but one word of Anastasius the Popes Library-keeper who lived above three hundred years after besides this I say that the People of Rome and that Clergy had not they themselves lost through Schism the form of the true Church how was it restored to them how could they re-establish themselves Who gave that right to a company of Schismaticks cut off from the communion and the covenant of Jesus Christ to make a Rebell a Schismatick an excommunicated person a man that by the sentence of Sylverius could not perform any Sacerdotal Function to make such a one I say a lawful Pope See here already some inconveniencies considerable enough that flow from that rigorous sentiment but if we would go yet further we may find it may be others that are not less severe For what will they say to the Schisms that fell out so frequently in the Latin Church through the concurrence of Anti-Popes Will they dare roundly to pronounce all those people who have lived and dyed under the obedience of those false Popes and who by consequence having been engaged in a true Schism have been totally cut off from the Christian Communion and deprived of salvation Let the Author of the Prejudices who has taken such pains to damn the World without any mercy take the pains if he pleases to examine one matter of fact that I will set before him and which should be enough methinks to decide this Question at least in regard of him It is this that during the great Schism of two Anti-Popes which was ended at the Council of Constance there were Saints that the Church of Rome has canonized and whom it prayes to who lived and dyed under two contrary obediences and who by consequence dyed both the one sort and the others in a true Schism For in the year 1380. S. Catherine of Siena dyed under the obedience of Vrban the Sixth in the year 1381. S. Catharine of Swedeland the Daughter of S. Bridget dyed under the same obedience In the year 1395. S. Margaret of Pisa dyed under the obedience of Boniface the Ninth in the year 1399. S. Dorothy of Prussia dyed under the obedience of the same Pope and in the year 1405. S. William the Hermite of Sicily dyed under the obedience of Innocent the Seventh On the other side in the year 1382. S. Peter of Luxemburg dyed under the obedience of Clement who was the Anti-Pope of Vrban and some time after S. Vincent of Ferrara lived and wrought Miracles in the party of Benoist the Anti-Pope of Gregory the Twelfth Behold here Saints of both sides and yet one or the others must of necessity have been Schismaticks From whence it appears that the Church of Rome her self is concerned to oblige the Author of the Prejudices to moderate his style and not to take as it seems he has done that which the Fathers have said in disputing against the Schismaticks in its utmost latitude But although all that I have said should have no place the holy Scripture distinctly decides this difficulty For if he would but read the History of the Ten Tribes of Israel after they were separated from that of Judah at the instigation of Jeroboam he will find that they were in a real Schism since they had forsaken the Worship at Jerusalem and had built new Altars against the express commandment of God and yet nevertheless that did not hinder God from preserving his truly faithful and elect even in the midst of them For there were those seven thousand who in the time of Elias had not bowed the knee to Baal and whom S. Paul calls the remnant of the Election of Grace were not these Israelites engaged in a bad party Had
them before we go any farther CHAP. II. That the State of the Government of the Latin Church some Ages ago gave to our Fathers Prejudices of its Corruption in Doctrine and Worship sufficient to drive them more nearly to Examine their Religion AS our Fathers did not Reform themselves but by following the Examination which they made of Religion such as it was in their days and as they did not enter upon that Examination but by the Prejudices which they received that its state was extreamly corrupted it is necessary to our judging of their Conduct to consider in the first place of what nature and force those Prejudices were whether they were just or unjust rash or reasonable and whether they justly led our Fathers to make a more particular Reflection upon that which they taught them It shall be then by this Fundamental Question that we will begin and first propose the Prejudices that the corrupted estate of the Ecclesiastical Government gave them some Ages before and afterwards we shall consider those that the same External State of Religion furnisht them with But because this matter will engage us to declare those Truths which it may be will not be agreeable to all the World they ought to remember that we are within the bounds of a just and natural defence having been publickly provoked to it by a Famous Book which is alledged on all occasions with great boasting and that that Book in assaulting us with Prejudices has furnisht us with the very same Example to defend our Ancestours likewise by Prejudices and that it will be a strange injustice if while on the one side they charge us with such foul accusations they will not allow us on the other side to declare those things that are essential to our justification We will declare them then but no otherwise then Historically and upon the proper Testimony of those Authors which the Church of Rome approves with a design rather nakedly to shew them then subtilly to represent or exaggerate them In the first place Our Fathers beheld that instead of having kept that Evangelical simplicity which Jesus Christ and his Apostles had so much recommended by their Sermons and their Examples they had on the contrary framed the Government of the Church according to the Platform and Model of Secular Empires They saw an almost innumerable Company of Dignities elevated by Pompous Titles Canons Honours Preeminencies and Priviledges upheld by the vast Riches and the Splendor of the World and all of them together depending on a Soveraign High-Priest who had lifted himself up above the whole Church as its rightful Monarch yea as a Divine Monarch whose words must be Laws and whose Laws Oracles who pretended to reign not only over the external Actions of men but to Lord it also over their Souls and their Consciences and who left nothing so reserved in the deepest and most inward motions of the Soul of which he did not demand its Subjection It had been very hard if our Fathers had not found in the midst of the Grandeur of this Body so ordered somthing very much alien to the natural Aspect of the Church of Jesus Christ which is much rather a Ministry then an Empire in respect of its External Government Indeed if Jesus Christ had had a design to have established such a Dominion as our Fathers beheld established he had never told his Disciples that which he said to them The Kings of the Gentiles exercise Lordship over them and they that exercise Authority upon them are called Benefactours But it shall not be so with you but he that is great among you let him be as the less and he that is chief as he that doth serve St. Peter would never have said to the Pastors of the Church that which he told them Feed the stock of Jesus Christ which is committed to you not as being Lords over God's Heritage It had then already from thence in that very Dominion a great sign of its Corruption It was an evil but an evil that discover'd divers others For it had this appearance with it that the Spirit of the World had got possession of the Ministers of the Church till it made them forget what they were in their first Institution beyond which it had made them often commit many outrages 2. They had not contented themselves to establish a Spiritual Dominion upon the plat-from of Secular ones unless they joyned the very Temporal one it self to it The greater part of the Bishops were become Lords properly so called and even some of them had got to be Soveraign Princes with the Titles and Preregatives of other Princes and Lords without any difference had not the Popes themselves done far better if they had put themselves in possession of that which they now call the State of the Church under the quality of Temporal Lords and Monarchs I will not mention by piece-meal the Disorders the Complaints the Contentions the Wars that this Spirit of Temporal Dominion has raised This is not my design It is sufficient for me to remark that one can scarce give a more certain Character of the Corruption of a Church then that For where that Spirit reigns it is by that that men will easily bring in Errors and Superstitions at least those that can bring them any advantage and those that have a tendency to adjust the Crown with the Miter and the worldly Grandeur with the Dignities of the Church It is not very easy in such a state to be studiously watchful over the Flock and much less to repel the Doctrines the Customes and the Maximes that can any ways advance or favour that Elevation 3. Covetousness is almost always inseparable from Ambition They are those two things that nourish and mutually sustain one another So our Fathers saw them reigning together through a long tract of time among the Church-men I will not here speak of the complaints which they made many Ages ago of the Avarice of the Court of Rome because I shall mention something about them hereafter in this Discourse I will only say that those Complaints were universally extended to all the Clergy whom they reproacht with an insatiable greediness of heaping up of Riches The vast stocks they had gained the great Cares they took to hinder an Alienation and procure an increase would not possibly be the worst proofs But as that evil spread it self very far so it was lamented for a long time after They feed on the sins of my people said St. Bernard who lived in the twelfth Century that is to say they require money for their sins without making any other account of the Sinuers Who of the Clergy may you not observe far more careful to empty the Purses of those set under them then to destroy their Vices A disorderly Appetite of those Lands that are annexed to the Churches said Cardinal Cusanus dwells at this day in the hearts of the aspiring Bishops
so that we see them do that openly after their promotion which they secretly coveted before All their Care is for the Temporal and nothing for the Spiritual But this was never the mind of the Emperours They did not then think that the Spiritual affairs would be ingulpht in the Temporal when they gave those goods to the Churches So our Fathers were but too well acquainted with that Spirit of Avarice with animated the Governours of the Church in their Days and every one knows that one of the matters that very much Scandalized them and made them deliberately examine the state of Religion was the Traffick of Indulgences In effect what likelyhood was there that a Vice that corrupts all things and which St. Paul calls the root of all evil and elsewhere a kind of Idolatry being as it was for many Ages so universally spread over the Clergy over the Head and the Members even to the Monks themselves what likelyhood I say was there that this Vice which was found to be so much increased by their Superstitions should have left Religion in its natural purity 4. Our Fathers discern'd a prodigious neglect of the Functions of the Ministry joyn'd with that Covetousness For a Preaching Bishop was for a long time so rare that it was altogether unusual The Care of the poor the visiting of the sick the comforting the Afflicted the correcting the Ignorant the studying of the Scriptures and all the other offices belonging to the Pastoral Crosier were if not quite quite abandoned yet at least extremly neglected All was may almost reduc't to saying of the service as one speak and to reading of the Administration of the Sacraments the Formularies of a Liturgy which a very few of the People understood and neither he himself sometimes who read it before them It was this that made Nicholas de Clemangis Archdeacon of Bayeux who flourished in the beginning of the fifteenth Centuary to say that the study of the Holy Scriptures and those who taught them were derided by all and that which is yet more amazing is that it is chiefly the Bishops that scoff at them preferring their own Traditions to the Ordinances of God Now a days the charge of Preaching which is an Office so admirable and so glorious and which heretofore belonged to the Pastours only is now thought so vile by them that there is nothing which they judge more unworthy of their Grandeur and to bring more reproach to their Dignity He adjoyns that they made no difficulty openly to profess that it belonged only to the begging Fryars to Preach and not to them But this Negligence did not spring up in that Age of the Reformation nor in that that immediatly preceded it for since the ninth Century the Pastors of the Church have been extream slack in dressing the Vineyard of our Lord. Which could not but have made way for false Doctrines and Superstitions and have caused a very great alteration in Religion 5. Ignorance was one inevitable Consequence of that carelessness of the Ministers of the Church that is to say that which of all things in the world was the most improper to engage any to have relied on their Conduct and to have rested assured of the sincerity of their instructions This Ignorance was very great and very general in the time of our Fathers and the most prejudiced of our Adversaries will not deny it But it had began a great while before their days as it appears from the Barbarism of the Schools and from the matter and stile of the greatest part of the Books that the preceding Age had produced and from the express Testimony of divers Authours The Church of God saith St. Bernard every day in divers manners finds by sad experience in what great danger she is when the Shepheard knows not where the Pastures are nor the Guide where the right way is and when that very man who should speak for God and on his side is ignorant what is the will of his Master In these days said Marsilius of Padoua in the fourteenth Century in these days wherein the Government of the Church is corrupted the greatest part of the Priests and Bishops are but meanly instructed in the Holy Scriptures and I dare say they are uncapable of deciding the doubts of their Faith For Ambition Covetousness and Canvassings obtain the Temporal Benefices and they purchase in effect by their services or by their prayers by their Gold or by their Favour all the Dignities of the Age. God is my witness and a great number of his faithful also that I remember I have seen many Priests many Abbots and many Prelats so void of knowledge that they have not known how to speak even according to the Rules of Grammar Is it not very natural to conclude that a number of Errors and Superstitions would infallibly accrew from the favouring of this Ignorance and thereby be established in the Church and that that would produce Novelties and that those which formerly were but private opinions or which consisted but in some first dispositions and tendencies to Errors would become general and be changed into habits 6. But might not our Fathers very well conclude the same thing from that dreadful depravation of manners which they and their Fathers had seen reign for so long a time among the Church-men Those who have any knowledge of History are not ignorant of the Lamentations that all honest men made then and the mournful descriptions that they have left of those times in their writings One may read for the twelfth Century only St. Bernard for the thirteenth Cardinal Hugo for the fourteenth William Bishop of Mende for the fifteenth Werner Rollewink a Carthusian Monk of Cologne for they say but too much for the justifying of these Articles and for the sixteenth which was the Age of the Reformation who does not know that it was extremely corrupted One of the matters of which the Ambassadour of the Duke of Bavaria so vehemently complain'd before the Council of Trent on the behalf of his Master and upon which he so much insisted was the wicked lives of the Clergy where he said that he could not describe their horrible wickednesses without offending the chast ears of the Audience He subjoyns That the Prince his Master remonstrated to the Council That the Correction of points in Doctrine would be vain and unprofitable if they did not first correct their manners That the Clergy was defamed by reason of their Luxury That the Civil Magistrate did not suffer any Lay-man to have a Concubine that notwithstanding amongst the Clergy it was so common a thing to have them that amidst a hundred Priests one could not find above three or four who either kept not Whores or were not Married the one secretly and the others publickly It is with shame that I speak of it said the Cardinal of Lorrain in an Oration that he made to the same Council but it is also
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
word mentioned either there or any where else And as to that passage Thou art Peter and upon this Rock will I build my Church c. Whether they understand it of that Confession which Saint Peter had made or whether they refer it to his person I say that no one can understand it of his Successors since there is not any mention made of them either directly or indirectly For when the See of Rome was not when it had never yet been The Church did not fail of being built upon that Confession of Saint Peter comprehended Jesus Christ upon whom the Church is every way built but also because that Confession of Saint Peter or Saint Peter Confessing was as one of the Chief Stones in that mystical Building which is not left alone for Jesus Christ who is not only the Foundation but the Soveraign Architect has added many others in all Ages and will always joyn others to them till the Building be intirely finished that is to say till God fulfilled the Decree of his Election But to go on with our Discourse of the Visibility of the True Church I affirm in the third place that we ought to know very well what a True Church Visible is For we ought not to imagine that all those persons who compose that Visible Society should be that True Church None but those True Believers I would say those who joyn to their external Profession of Christianty a true and sincere Piety are really the Church of Jesus Christ and as for the others that is to say the worldly Prophane and Hypocritical they are but the Church in appearance only and not indeed For having no inward Calling which consists in Faith and Love they do not belong to the Mystical Body of our Saviour nor are they of his Communion Notwithstanding they do not fail to be mixt with the Faithful by reason of that external profession as if they really were in the same Religious Society with them What then is the Visibility of the True Church as to us It is not that we can distinctly and with any certainty affirm Behold these be the Truly faithful of Jesus Christ None but but God alone can know them after that distinct manner and and without a possibility of being deceived But this we may say of that Visible Society that Vnder that Ministry and in that Communion God preserves and raises the truly Faithful Whence we may from this Judgment with Solidity and Truth and I may say also without a possibility of being deceived that there is a True Visible Church In that sence I declare that there has always been some way or other a True Church Visible upon Earth not but that God can make it wholly disappear to the Eyes of men whensoever it shall please him to do so without doing men any wrong or any breach of his promises since he has without doubt extraordinary ways to beget Faith in the hearts of his Children and to keep them on in that course and to lead them in the end unto Salvation without making use either of the publick Assemblies or Ministry but only because we ought not to believe that there ever hapned since the first rise of Christianity an Eclipse so full and intire that one could not some way say There is a Society in which God does keep the truly Faithful I say after some way For as that Judgment depends on two things the one to be able to know a Society and a Ministry and the other to know that under that Ministry and in that Society a Man may work out his own Salvation in respect of the first it is necessary to distinguish between two seasons the one of Liberty and Prosperity where the Church has its Assemblies and exercises its Ministry openly in the face of all the World For then she is much more visible then she would be otherwise that is to say it is far more easy to be known what Society and what Ministry that is Such was the State of the Church under Constantine and other Christian Emperours and it is in such times as those that the promises of Its outward splendour if there are any such in Scripture are accomplished The other season is that of its Afflictions and Persecution such was that of the first Century of the Church under the Pagan Emperours and the Enemies of Christianity For none can deny that then the Church was less discernable by its Assemblies not only because they were more private and less exposed to the publick view but also yet further because the name of Christian had been defamed by a thousand calumnies and charged with a thousand false imputations which made the knowledge of the Church to be far more difficult And it will be to no purpose to say That then the Church was visible and illustrious by the blood of its Martyrs For the blood of its Martyrs did not in the least hinder the accusing of the Christians of most odious crimes that which hindred its being liable to be easily known Those Accusations were as a Cloud before the eyes of the Common people which was necessarily to be discipated before they could come to know what Christianity was So that the True Church is more or less Visible according to the difference of its Seasons As to the second thing which is to know that one may be saved in that Society and under that Ministry it is necessary that we distinguish of the two States or Conditions wherein that Society may be found The one is a more pure State then when the word of God is preached without mixtures of the Doctrines of men when the publick Worship is perform'd without superstitions and the Sacraments plainly administred according to their Primitive Institution and when generally Religion is established taught and observed after the same manner wherein Jesus Christ and his Apostles left it to the World In that Condition it is certain that the True Church in very visible and very discernable for it is easy to behold all the Characters of its Truth which only consist in its Conformity to that lively primitive and natural Image of Christianity which God has left us in his Holy Scriptures But it is not less certain that a Church may fall into a quite contrary Condition that is to say into a State of Corruption then when it adds to divine Truths strange and adulterate Doctrines when it mingles superstitions with the true Worship of God and when in stead of a just Government it exercises an insolent and absolute Dominion over Mens Consciences in one word then when all things appear so confused and in that disorder that one can scarce any more see any traces of that beautiful and glorious Image of Christianity which I have before spoke of to shine forth In that Condition I affirm that True Church is very hard to be known for howsoever it were most Visible in quality of a Church because its Assemblies might be
much frequented it would be nevertheless least of all so in the quality of a True Church in that its natural beauty is so darkned and its Visage so disfigured that in judging according to its Appearances one can but very difficultly say that God does yet preserve some Faithful ones in that Communion and under that Ministry But they will say may not a Church fall into that Condition and yet for all that be a true Church I answer that a Visible Society as I have shewn is not called a true Church but only with respect to those true Believers who are in it and not with respect to the others When then it comes to pass that the party of the Men of the World prevails and fills that Society with its Corruptions all that Society taken in the general does not fail as yet to be called a True Church while their is some appearance how small soever it may be that God does yet keep and hold in it those good men who do not defile their Souls with that Corruption of the wicked But how can say they yet further those good men preserve themselves in the midst of such a Society I answer That they may preserve themselves there after that manner that one may preserve himself in a contagious Air where he draws in the Air because it is necessary to his Life but yet he may keep himself as well as he can from that Contagion by the help of Antidotes There are two things in a Corrupted Church the good and the evil if a Man can separate that good from the evil that is to say if he can take the one and keep himself from the other without falling into Hypocrisy and being bound to do as those who equally take the good and the evil which he knows not how to do without dividing between God and his Conscience he may be saved in a corrupted Communion and there may not be another more pure This evidently appears from the Examples of Zachary and Elizabeth of Simeon of Joseph and the Holy Virgin and divers other persons who liv'd in the Jewish Church when our Saviour came into the World and who preserved their Piety though that Church was fallen into the highest Corruption under the Ministry of the Scribes and Pharisees Jesus Christ himself who reproved the abuses of those wicked men and exhorted his disciples to take heed of their false Doctrines did not fail to live in that Common Society and to be found in the Temple with them and after that he had been Crucified by them his disciples did not wholly withdraw themselves from their Communion during some time and till they had indispensable reasons for it I will shew in the Progress of this Treatise that it does not from thence follow that we may at this day abide in the Roman Communion and that it much less follows that we may return thither by forsaking the Communion of the Protestants under a pretence that we may separate the good from the bad the pure from what is impure since we can no more do that then not become wicked Impostures Hypocritical and Detestable before God and Men. But as this is a point that belongs to another Place it shall suffice me to have clearly shewn in this Chapter in what manner and with what distinctions it may be said that there is always a true Visible Church and to have made it appear that it no ways follows from thence that she must needs be Infallible as the Church of Rome pretends that she is After all this it is not difficult to find out the just and true sence of some passages of Scripture which they abuse in this matter of Visibility For as to that of the Gospel whereof we have spoken Tell it to the Church and if he will not hear the Church let him be unto thee as the Heathens and the Publicans It is clear that particular Churches are treated of there and that the personal differences which we may have one with another and the meaning of it is that the Faithful are bound when they receive any wrong from their brethren to carry their complaints to the Church and to refer themselves to its Judgment Or if it is not to be understood in those Times and in those places where there shall be Churches established to the Judgment of their Guides and Pastors who may end those private Quarrels And if they will infer from thence that then there must be always a Visible Church that may be in a Condition to attend to those Reconciliations this is that that has no colour of Reason For that Command of Jesus Christ obliging the Faithful no further then as it lies in their power it would be but a very bad arguing to say that he has so engaged for that that he will so order it that there shall be perpetually a visible Assembly to hear Complaints and give Judgments It is within a little as if one should say that he was engaged that we should always have wherewithal to Lend and wherewithal to give Alms because he has bid us to Lend without hoping for any thing again and to make our selves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness Or that our Kings were bound never to leave vacant the Office of a Constable or that of the Mayor of the Palace under a pretence that heretofore they order'd their subjects to acknowledge those Dignities and to have recourse to them in certain Affairs Tell it to the Church then does not in the least suppose that the True Church ought to be always in such a State wherein she should have Authority to pass her Judgments for the determining private Quarrels And besides what I have said Experience contradicts it for it is most true that during the hottest Persecutions of the Heathen Emperours where all was laid in desolation that it had in many places nothing like a Visible Tribunal to which men could easily address themseves There are some other Passages that denote the duty of the Pastors and in particular of the Apostles as those where they are called The Salt of the Earth the light of the World a City set upon a Hill a Candle not lighted to be set under a Bushel and the Gentlemen of the Roman Church do not fail to set them down to give some colour to their Pretensions But this is evidently to abuse the Scriptures to make them establish the perpetual Visibility of the Church after that meaning wherein they understand those passages which exhort the Apostles and after them the Ministers of the Gospel to acquit themselves faithfully of their charge without negligence and weariness from the Consideration of their Calling and the end to which God had appointed them For besides that their Office does not bind them to that of a Martyr which does not suppose a very splendid State of the Church Besides that the same does not oblige them to be Martyrs if they were not specially
called to it Jesus Christ having told them That when they should be persecuted in one place they should fly unto another besides that I say there is so great a difference between the duty of the Pastors of these last Ages which are so far behind that of the Apostles and that which those Pastors have actually done that one caunot know how to draw any consequence from the one to the other One cannot also conclude any thing from some Expressions of the Antient Prophets which seem to promise a great Temporal Prosperity to the Church no one is ignorant that the Stile of the Prophets may be full of figures and darkned with Vails that they ought not to be taken Literally unless men would be deceiv'd and imitate the Error of the Jews who take them in that manner For the Prophets are wont to represent Spiritual blessings under the borrowed Images of Temporal things and so also the Spirit of Christianity obliges us to explain that which they said of the Messiah and of his Church and not to delineate its prosperities and worldly Grandeur which have no relation at all to the nature of the Gospel Not that one cannot say that some of those Prophecies have been accomplish'd according to the Letter of them in the Times of Christian Emperours for then Kings were its nursing-Fathers and Queens its nursing-Mothers But that one ought not to draw a necessary consequence from thence either for all Times or for all Places and as men are always prone to abuse Temporal blessings such a worldly Prosperity of the Church would tend but in the end to corrupt it CHAP. VII That the Authority of the Prelats of the Latin Church had not any right to bind our Fathers to yeild a blind obedience to them or to hinder them from examining their Doctrines HItherto we have not opposed in our course the Book of Prejudices not but that the end which he proposes to himself has a great connexion with the things of which I have treated but because that Authour has not beleived it necessary to make us renounce the Reformation to justify the Latin Church from those strange disorders which moved the minds of our Fathers nor to speak of that priviledge which she pretends that God has given her by making of her Infallible We do not pretend says he to prove directly the Authority and Infallibity of the Catholick Chureh For although it would be most profitable to do it and though those among the Catholicks who have taken that method have used a most just and lawful way Yet as the prepossessions wherewith the Calvinists are full keep most of them from entring upon these Principles howsoever solid and true they are Charity obliges us to try other ways also and that which follows here seems one of the most natural It supposes for a Principle nothing but a Maxim of Common Sence to wit That a man who finds himself joyned to the Catholick Church by himself or by his Ancestors ought not to break off from her to joyn himself to any other Communion if he discover in that new Communion any signs of errour which may make him judge with reason that he ought not to follow it and that he cannot reasonably hope that God has established it to lead men into the truth So it is that he has thought himself bound to employ himself wholly in that way to rid himself of a great deal of trouble and that he may in this progress load us with a multitude of injuries Yet he must excuse me if I am not of his mind The way which he takes is neither just nor natural It is not just because it takes for granted and indisputable those things which not only are but are almost only to the matters of our Difference For it supposes that that Party which would not have a Reformation and from which our Fathers broke of was the Catholick Church but that is that very thing which is questioned and our Dispute can never be decided but by deciding the whole controversy If he will take that advantage of us that we to accommodate our selves to the custom of the World sometimes give those of the Church of Rome the Name of Roman-Catholicks he cannot be ignorant that those sorts of Condescentions which only respect words cannot infer any consequence as to things nor that they can give any ground to make those suppositions in this Dispute which may be regulated by more solid Principles Further that way which he would follow supposes that our Fathers in reforming themselves made a new Communion and that is yet that very thing that is in Question and we maintain that it cannot be reasonably called so as it will appear in the Progress of this Treatise I say also that that course is not natural For before we should come to consider whether there were not signs of errour in our Reformation the nature of things would first let us see whether our Fathers had not just reasons taken from the state of the Latin Church to Reform themselves and whether it was not possible for that Church to corrupt it self But that could not be well known but by examining what that State was in the days of our Fathers with that pretence of Infallibility as we have done But though the Author of those Prejudices has beleived that he might spare himself the trouble of proving to us the Infallibility and Authority of those whom he calls the Catholick-Church yet he fails not to require us to submit our selves to those by rendring them an absolute obedience He would have it that we being all so apt to deceive our selves in our Judgments and that the search of true Religion being so difficult that the surest way is for us to see with their Eyes says he to tread in their steps and wholly to strip our selves of our own guidance to give it unto them So also the chief Priests and the Scribes spake among the Jews This People who know not the Law are cursed But Jesus Christ said of these also Let them alone they be blind leaders of the blind and both shall fall into the Ditch If the Maxim of that Authour be good he must affirm that our Fathers were very unhappy for having had their eyes to see those disorders which reigned among the Church-men in their days and that God had highly favoured them had he made them to have been born stupid and blind for he conceivs it would be so far from causing them to fall and be deceived according to the threatning which Jesus Christ gives to those who leave themselves to be so blindly guided that it would be on the contrary the only means to go on with any certainty Howsoever it be we are not bound to be so blind that before we lose the use of our Eyes we must not examine this Question whether we ought to lose them or not Nature and Grace have given them to us they would have
which they pretend ought to be given them IT is an amazing thing to behold a prejudice and a present Interest so far to blind those who set before us this absolute Obedience to the Governours of the Church and who would have the Faithful strip themselves intirely of the care of their Souls to place it in their Pastors hands that they should not have considered that it is the most pernitious Maxim in the World the most contrary to the Glory of God to the Interests of his Justice and his service to the subsistence of his true Church They will themselves I hope be perswaded of it if they will but make with me these following Reflexions 1. The first is That by that Principle they justify the people of the Jews when they adhered to that false worship brought into their Church by the Authority of their Ordinary Pastors or practised with their consent and approbation which fell out very often as we have before noted and as it appears from the History of the Old Testament The people in that Story were not in the least culpable either for sacrificing upon the high places or in the Groves as they had began to do under the Reign of Rehoboam nor for having of Images or as the Scripture speaks carved Idols nor in offering up incense to the Brazen Serpent as they did even down to the reign of Hezekiah since in doing all those things they did but follow their Priests and could say that they referred themselves to them to see for them according to what they were bound They were not to be blamed then when under the reign of Ahaz they offered their oblations on a strange Altar made after the manner of that of the Syrians since it was Vriah the Priest that ordered it and set it up in the place of the Altar of God to the end that the people should there offer up their Devotions They were not in the least to be blamed in those days wherein their Prophets charged their Priests and ordinary Pastors with having sinned against God and prophesied by Baal and saying to a stock Thou art my Father and to a stone Thou art my Mother and by that means to have corrupted the people of God For what could those people do more then follow their Pastors if it were true that we ought to see with their eyes and to tread always in their steps 2. But if by establishing that Principle they justify a People in their Idolatry and Violation of the Law of their God if they acquit them of all fault in that respect it is not less certain that at the same time they condemn God for Injustice in having sent his chastisements upon an innocent people who had done nothing but what they were bound to do in following their guides in that he was not satisfied with punishing only the Authours of those Crimes I mean those Guides who only were culpable For why should he punish those who submitted themselves to their guides whom they could do no otherwise then obey They condemn all the Complaints of the Prophets which they addrest immediately to the People and all the Threatnings and stinging Censures with which their writings are full For to what purpose should they complain censure and threaten with so much Exaggeration and vehemency if the people ought not by themselves to examine the points of Religion and that they ought on the contrary to commit themselves only into their Pastours hands They condemn all those holy men who did not adhere to their Errors and Profanations and they must see themselves reduced to the necessity of condemning them of rashness and presumption for having been willing to make use of their own Eyes and not to refer themselves wholly to the conduct of their Church They condemn all those in that Church who have first spoke of a Reformation and all those who have followed them in it For those who would not see but by the Eyes of the Church would never have a Tongue to speak any thing against its present State nor ears to hear any thing that could be said upon that subject So those good Kings as Hezekiah and Josiah who set up the true worship of God and did pull down Idolatry would have been no other but rash persons who had Executed that which they should not have so much as undertaken What can they answer to that Will they say that all those Reformers wrought miracles to Authorise their Calls But that is not true For neither Hezekiah nor Josiah nor those other Kings who abolished those Superstitions and Errors did any Miracle for that they had recourse to nothing but the Law of God Will they say that they were the Ecclesiasties themselves who laboured in those Reformations I confess it But that alone lets us see that they had done ill in referring themselves meerly to their Authority since they themselves had comdemned what they had before approved of and by their change and their Repentance they acknowledged they had done ill whence it may follow that the people had done ill also in reposing their trust in in them Will they say that the True Worship of God having been of primitive Institution and by consequence the first Church having been pure the people would have done ill if when a change should have happened they had not abode with and stuck to their first Pastors and that by that means of rendring to the Church that submission which they owed to it they would have hindred its Corruption But to assert that is but to affirm well nigh what we would have When the Latin Church began to corrupt it self the people ought to have set themselves in Opposition to it in sticking close inviolably to their first guides and if they had done so they had not needed ever to have spoke of a Reformation Notwithstanding the have not done so and the Jews likewise had not done so they have not failed of walking after that inclination which all men have to do ill The Faithful City became an Harlot its silver was turned into dross and its Wine was mixt with Water as one Prophet reproaches them What ought they to have done in that Misery must they have remained in that State under pretence of no more seeing then by the eyes of the Church of walking only in its Steps and of devesting themselves of their own conduct to rest upon that of the Church No certainly whatsoever the Author of those Prejudices says They ought on the contrary to have re-ascended up to the Primitive Church to the first Institution of their Religion to have ruled themselves by that and to have laboured to save the present Church from that ruin where into its Corrupters would have precipitated her That had been the duty of all good men and a contrary sentiment would have been criminal But all that lets us distinctly see how false and pernitious that Maxime of the Author of the
if you would give to the simpler sort to those Babes for Example whereof Jesus Christ speaks that his Mysteries have been revealed unto them if you give them I say that right and liberty to judge of that important and fundamental Question to wit Whether the Call of a man be Extraordinary and Divine or whether it be not so whether his Miracles are those of a true Minister of God or of a false Prophet whether it be a true Angel of Light or a disguised Angel of darkness and to judge of all those things after the Church and against the Church I see no Reason why they should refuse them the right and liberty of judging also of its Doctrine and the points of Religion whereof the true knowledge is by nothing near so difficult God had forewarned his People that they should not give themselves over to be deceiv'd by the first appearances of Miracles and he had appointed that they should judge of them by the Doctrine they accompanied Whence it follows that the discerning of Miracles and judging of that Doctrine are two inseparable things and that their right belongs to the same persons If there arise saith God among you a Prophet or a dreamer of dreams and giveth thee a sign or a wonder And the sign or the wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee saying Let us go after other Gods which thou hast not known and let us serve them Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that Prophet or that dreamer of dreams For the Lord your God proveth you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart It appears from thence that the way for men to judge well of Miracles is to examine the Doctrine of him that works them So that if they will a gree to give the people a right to discern Miracles they cannot take away from them that of discerning that Doctrine they uphold Jesus Christ supposes the same thing when he says that there shall arise false Christs and false Prophets and that they shall work great signs and wonders to seduce if it were possible the very Elect. For how could they otherwise discern those Miracles of the false Prophets but by examining their words So a famous man of the Roman Communion has not scrupled to write that we are bound to reject Miracles and those men who make use of them then when they are joyned with a Doctrine which the Church has condemned his words are considerable and very well deserve to be transcrib'd The Application says he and direction of a miracle to prove the Truth of a Doctrine is an enterprise so rash and so scandalous that it deserves to be punished There is not any Catholic in the World who knows his Creed and understands it that can be capable of such a persuasion What if the appearance of a Miracle is contrary to the definitions of the Church can any one hesitate or doubt whether it would be better to adhere to the Church supported by the truth of a Miracle or to deny the truth of a Miracle founded upon the Authority of the Church Saint Peter has taught us a great while since what we are to do on that occasion He had been an eye Witness of the Transfiguration of our Saviour and of that glory that lay hid under the Vail of a Suffering and Mortal state and yet nevertheless he trusts more in the obscurity of Prophets than to the clear and manifest experience of his Eyes we have a more sure word of Prophesie The Authority of the Church which is in nothing less than that of the Prophets breaks in pieces all those reasons that oppose it and we ought to take to our selves in regard of the Church that which Saint Peter says with respect to the Prophets To which we do well that we take heed gathering together all our attention to know the true sence of the Church and turning aside from all the Miracles and all those Reasons the men propound to us to make us call into question that which we know the Church to have determined We may see clearly by that passage how far one may carry that Principle of the Authority of the Church in the thoughts of those that admit of it that is to say even to make Miracles themselves submit to it He says that we ought to Collect all our attention to know the true Sentiments of the Church and to turn aside from all those Miracles which would make us call into question that which the Church has determined He says that to go about to make use of Miracles for the proving of a Doctrine that is condemned by the Church is a rash and scandalous enterprise and such as deserves to be punished In effect if they suppose that Maxim that we ought to give to the Church an absolute obedience to see with her Eyes and to rest upon her Conduct those Miracles could not make them be heard whom the Church should have condemned and by which they should have been looked on as false Miracles the Consequence is good and just But because that very thing applied to the times of the first rise of Christianity justifies the Unbeleivers condemns the proceedings of Jesus Christ and his Appostles accuses those of rashness who have believed on their preaching destroys the Gospel and overthrows the Christian Church it is a manifest proof that that Maxim it self is false and rash since those Consequences that arise from it are so detestable that they leave neither to Jesus Christ nor to the Apostles any way to make their Gospel to be heard by men with a good Conscience and the care of their Salvation 8. They must give me leave to speak a little earnestly for the interest of our Lord Jesus Christ The more I consider these inevitable Consequences of that Maxim the more I am astonished If those first Christians who had been Jews could not hear the Doctrine of the Son of God nor receive his Miracles without violating of their Duty toward the Church that had condemned them what scruples might not all that cast into all the Christians that are at this day in the World For in fine we are the Successors of that people our Fathers were not Converted but by their Ministry If then we cannot see clearly that they themselves had a right to be Converted if they laid down on the contrary a Principle which of right ought to have hindered their Conversion where then are all we as many as we are The Reasons that the Author of those Prejudices produces to make us devest our selves of our own guidance in favour of the Church that we should see with her Eyes and tread in her steps had as much place with the Jews as they have with us they could not doubt but that their Church was the Church of God none can dispute with them that eminent Authority which had so many external marks To her belonged the Adoption the
Glory and the Covenants and the giving of the Law and the service of God and the Promises of whom were the Fathers and who had the Oracles of God committed unto them and in whose bosom Christ according to the flesh was born If that Maxim of the Author of Prejudices were good it must necessarily have been good for that Church which had condemned Jesus Christ his Person his Call his Miracles his Doctrine and what right then had his Disciples to hear and follow him We have seen them from Reason and from the Testimony of a very considerable person of our Age and to whom one of the greatest Kings has given the honour of committing the concerns of his Conscience to him that if that Maxim had place that we ought entirely to refer our selves to the Authority of the Church we could not any more regard those Miracles when they were opposite to that Authority Let them tell us then what right the Disciples had to follow Jesus Christ by what right did the first Converts and those who were afterwards Converted by others embrace the Gospel And if they did it without any right and against their duty into what Labyrinths we cast you What would become of the Christian Church what would become of you your selves You form prejudices against us drawn from the faults that have say you appeared in the persons of our first Reformers You tell us of a pretended precipitancy by which the Magistrates of Zurich Reformed themselves you conclude from thence without entring upon the points in dispute that we ought to renounce the Reformation of our Fathers Answer then your selves to the Prejudices that according to your Maxim the Jews may form against the first Disciples of Jesus Christ and to the Consequence that they may draw from thence that without entring any further into a Discussing of the Points of that Religion without examining either the Miracles or the Antient Prophecies or the success of the Preaching of the Gospel or all the other things that we could alledge in our favour we ought to renounce our Christianity You your selves Authorise their Principle by one that is altogether like it which you lay down and which you know not how to make use of against them without overthrowing your selves in a word you draw the same Consequence from it with them shew us then by what secret Art both you and we may get out of that Abyss whereinto you have plunged us If your Fathers say you have Reformed themselves with an ill design you ought without farther examination to renounce their Reformation If the chief Authors of your Religion a Jew will say have adhered to Jesus with an ill design against the obligation which they had to cleave to the Church you ought to renounce their Christianity Answer if you can to those Arguments and set our Consciences in quiet As for us indeed we are not in pain for we know that that Principle which you urge to those unbelievers is false There is not any person who has not right to examine the points of that Religion and to discern by himself the true from the false the good from the bad that which is from God from that which which from men The Authority of the Church never goes so far as to hinder us with any justice from it and so there is nothing to reproach the first Christians 9. But we ought not to give over these reflections without making one upon the state of the Church in the times of the Councils of Sirmium of Milan and of Ariminum whereof I have spoken before There is no person who knows not that the Arrians were then Masters of the Ecclesiastical Ministry which they called the Catholick Church treating the Orthodox as Hereticks and Disturbers of its Peace deposing them and sending them into banishment The Poyson of the Arrians says Vincentius Lirinensis had not only infected one part but almost all the world and almost all the Latin Bishops some by force others by simplicity giving themselves over to be deceived found themselves engaged in the darkness of Error We are in that condition said Phaebadius that if we would be called Catholicks it is necessary that we embrace Heresie and yet nevertheless if we do not reject Heresie we cannot be truly Catholicks God did yet keep to himself notwithstanding some Bishops few in number but great in Courage and that small remnant in the end serv'd for a spark to rekindle the Fire of the Faith in the Church Apply then to them that Maxim which we have before opposed and weigh those Consequences that may be drawn from it against those and against the Faithful who Heard them and Read their Writings The least is that they were Schismaticks and Corruptors of the people who after having themselves broken off that obedience which they owed to the Church sollicited others to do the like They might have very well urged that they had the Scriptures on their side that they had the Council of Nice for them but they would have answered them That it was no longer time to dispute that they ought to submit themselves to and acquiesce in the definitions of the Church Since it was the duty of the Faithful to strip themselves of their own Conduct to rest upon that of the Church Nevertheless they did not fail generously to maintain the Truth to dispute and write for it to address themselves not only to the Bishops but to the people and to defend it against that specious name of a Church which they set before them and the words of Saint Hilary upon this subject are worthy of a particular consideration The Church says he terrified men by Banishments and by Prisons and constrained them to believe what she tells them she that her self had never been believed but by the Exile and Prisons which she suffered She which had been only Consecrated by the Persecution of men Bene a dignatione Communicantium She drives away the Priests forgetting that by the Banishment of her Priests she increased She boasts that she is beloved by the world but she could not belong to Jesus Christ unless the world hated her Haec de comparatione traditae nobis olim Ecclesiae nunc quam de perditae res ipsa que in oculis omnium est at que ore clamavit Can any one be rash enough to maintain that he was bound then to refer himself to the Authority of that Church to see with its Eyes to tread in its Steps and to rest himself upon its Conduct Will any say that that handful of good men who have since re-established Christianity was nothing else but a company of Rebels and of presumptuous minds Will they charge their Writing and their Letters to the people with Forgeries and Subornations Will they justifie their being Deposed their Banishments the Persecutions which they so constantly suffered Will they say that the Faithful that heard them were rash and
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
matter which shall be Treated of in its place In effect there are two sorts of Calls which we ought not to confound That of the Reformation and that of the perpetual Exercise of the Gospel-Ministry And the Author of the Prejudices himself seems to have Judiciously enough distinguished them when he lays down two sorts of Separation the one Negative which consists only in a rejecting of those things that are ill and the other Positive which goes so far as to set up a Body apart with the Exercise of the Ministry We shall therefore speak elsewhere of the Right that our Fathers had to set up a publick Ministry and it shall suffice for the present to have solidly Established their Call to Reform To shut up this Chapter it remains only that we speak a Word to a Question which they here raise about this Call in the same sence in which we here consider it For they demand of us whether it was Ordinary or Extraordinary To which I Answer That it was both the one and the other in different respects It was Ordinary as to its Right since all men have an Ordinary and perpetual Right to reject Errors and Superstitions and to employ themselves in making their Brethren to reject them according to the Common Laws of Piety and Charity The Pastors also have an Ordinary and perpetual Right to do the same Thing and to make use of that Publick Authority which their Function gives them for the guidance of their Flocks It was Ordinary as to the Obligation which lay as well upon the People as the Pastors to do that which they did because it was a Law of Christianity and not a new Law or Commandment that bound them to it their Duty was founded upon the principles of that very Gospel and of the same Christian Religion which Jesus Christ had Founded and whereof they made a Profession But I affirm that it was likewise Extraordinary in two things First of all in respect of that extream and indispensable Necessity which lay upon them to do what they did For although we have always a Right to reject those Errors and that false Worship which may creep into the Church and although we should be always bound to make use of it also if it were so yet it is not always Necessary to come to the practise or the Exercise of that Right and of that Obligation at least to so Publick and Splendid a one as that of our Fathers was because the Church is not always in a State of Confusion and Disorder as she was in their Time Things Ordinarily glide away in a more regulated course the Publick Ministry is more pure and the Gospel more disingaged from the oppression of Traditions or Humane Superstitions Secondly That Call was Extraordinary in respect of those qualities wherewith God invested our first Reformers and those who joyned with them in so great a work for it is not an Ordinary thing to see such eminent gifts and that in so great a Number as those which appeared in the Age of the Reformation accompanied with such an Heroical Spirit as our Fathers had and such a great Love for the purity of the Gospel as the People had who received their Instructions All which constrains us to acknowlede a particular and special Providence of God throughout the whole Conduct of that great Divine Work who raised up Labourers fitted for the Harvest which he had prepared CHAP. V. An Answer to the Objections that are made against the Persons of the Reformers WE have hitherto methinks sufficiently justified the Action of our Fathers in the business of the Reformation It appears that they had but too many Reasons to suspect a great Corruption not only in the Government of the Church but in the Worship and Doctrines of it also and too just motives to engage them to make a more particular Examination It may not less appear by what we have said concerning the Infallibility of the Church of Rome and that absolute Authority which she ascribes to her self over mens Consciences that her pretensions have no Foundation and that all the Faithful have a Right to Judge of the matters of Religion by themselves and to discern what is good from what is ill We have seen nevertheless that our Fathers were not moved so publickly to make use of their Right but by an extream and utmost Necessity and if they will do them Justice they ought freely to acknowledge what the Author of the Prejudices has not dared to deny that they had a sufficient Call to go as far as a Negative Separation and openly to refuse to believe and to Act what their Consciences should not allow them to approve But as that Motion of Conscience was not Universal or common to all those of their Time and as it had encountred the interests of a great Body that was in possession of the Government of the Latin Church they have laboured to render it odious by all sorts of ways and even those who were not able directly to condemn it have not failed to search out divers pretences to cry it down and having nothing to say against their Actions they have taken up something against their persons This is that that the most of our Adversaries endeavour with great Care this is that that their Writers of Controversies and Missionaries who are spread abroad on all sides among us and who make use of all sorts of ways to gain Proselytes do even now all their days and this is that that the Author of the Prejudices in particular has done His Argument may be well nigh reduced to this That there is no likelyhood that God committed the care of Reforming his Church to persons whose Life and Conduct was Disorderly and Scandalous And the Conclusion that he pretends to draw from it is that we ought to reject without any further Examination that Reformation and to put our selves into the Communion of the Church of Rome 1. It will be no difficult matter to shew him that Blessed be God we have as to what concerns us on every side matter of Edification from the manners of those who were first of all made use of in so Holy and so Necessary a Work and this we shall presently make out But before I come to that I am obliged to tell him that his way of Reasoning is the most captious and the most contrary to the interests of the true Religion that can be imagined and that it is contrary even to the Interests of that Church of Rome which it would defend I say in the first place that it is captious For since our Fathers Reformed themselves only out of the motion of their Consciences which dictated to them that they ought to do it for the Glory of God and their own Salvation how can he pretend that we who have followed them out of the same Reason can revoke an Action which we believe to be just and lawful out of meerly
and the Elders of the People Can they deny that the Christian Emperours did not heretofore call Councils to Order the State of Religion and to provide against disorders in the Church Can they deny that our Kings have not often done the same in their Kingdome But the Senate of Zurich would of it self take Cognizance of the matters of Religion I say that that very thing was its Right for if it be the Duty of every Christian for the Interest of his own Salvation to take Cognizance of those things that the Church-men Teach and not blindly to refer themselves to their Word as I have made it appear to be in the first Part it is not less the Duty of Magistrates to do the same to bind the Church-men to acquit themselves faithfully in their Charges and to Teach men nothing that might not be conformable to the Word of God So that if the Ministers of the Church go astray from that Word and if they corrupt their Ministry by Errors and Superstitions it belongs to the Magistrate to Labour to reduce them to their Duty by the mildest and justest methods he can use Thus the Kings of Judah used it heretofore as it appears from the History of Hezechias Josias and of some others who made use of that lawful Authority that God gave them for the Reforming of their Church by the Word of God We all know that the Antient Emperors took Cognizance either by themselves of their Commissioners of Ecclesiastical Affairs and not only of those that respected the Discipline but of those also which related to the Doctrine and the very Essence of Religion it self to that degree that they frequently published under their Names in the Form of Edicts Decisions of Opinions Condemnations of Heresy and the Interpretations of the Faith which they had caused to be disputed in their Presence in Synodal Assemblies We ought not therefore to imagine that Magistrates ought not to interpose in matters of the Faith under a pretence that they are Lay-men for on the contrary they ought to interpose themselves more in those then in those of Discipline because the Faith respects every man where Discipline relates to the Clergy more peculiarly Therefore it was that Pope Nicholas the First told the Emperour Michael who was present in person in a Council where only the Fact of Ignatius Patriarch of Constantinople was treated of whom that Emperour had deposed That he did not find that the Emperours his Predecessours had been present at Synodal Assemblies unless they might possibly have been in those where matters of the Faith were Treated of which is a common Thing relating Generally to all and which belongs not only to the Clergy but the Laity also and universally to all Christians There was nothing therefore in that Action of the Magistrates of Zurich that was not a Right common to all Soveraign Magistrates within the extent of their Jurisdictions But they will say Was it not to break off the Unity of their Church with the rest to go about so to order the State of Religion within their Canton without the Participation of other Churches and were they not Schismaticks in that very thing I answer That when a Prince or a Soveraign Magistrate is in a condition to call a General Council together to deliberate about the Common Faith he would do better to take that way But when he is not as the Senate of Zurich evidently was not ought he to abandon all care of the Churches of his State They will see in the end of this Treatise that the States of Germany seeing the Oppositions that the Popes made to the calling of a general Council often demanded a National one of the Emperour Charles the Fifth They will see also that that Emperour was sometimes resolved to do it and that he Threatned the Popes to cause divers Colloquies or Conferences of Learned men to be held to labour to decide those Articles that were Controverted They will see that our Kings for the same design have sometimes deliberated about assembling a National Council in France And no body is ignorant of the Conference of Poissy under the Reign of Charles the Ninth There was nothing therefore in the Conduct of that business that did not belong to the Right of Soveraigns and nothing which they can charge with Schism in it For when a Prince or a Senate Assembles a Synod to condemn Heresies or Reform Errors and by that means takes Cognizance of matters of Religion provided that in effect that which it condemns be a Heresy or that which it Reforms be an Error he is so far from breaking Christian Unity that on the contrary he confirms it as much as he can in freeing it from a false and wicked Unity which is that of Error which cannot be other then destructive to the whole Body of the Church and which cannot be too soon broken So that we ought to Judge of their Action more by the Foundation then the Form or Manner For the Foundation being good its Action cannot but be approved When a Man is Sick with divers others as it frequently happens in Epidemical Diseases it would be Injustice in him not to provide for his own particular healing but to stay for a general one and it would be a great absurdity to say that if he did do so he violated the Rights of the Civil Society for the Civil Society does not consist in being a Communion of sickness but in being a Communion of Life On the contrary it ought to be said that in healing himself in particular he established as much as in him lay that Civil Society which he had with his diseased Companions because he encouraged them by his Example to heal themselves with him the better to enjoy in common the advantages of Life It is the same case here where a Church sees it self infected with Error and Superstition with divers other Churches she no ways violates Christian Unity in labouring to reform her self particularly for the Christian Unity does not consist in the Communion of Errors and Abuses it consists in the Communion of that True Faith and Piety It establishes therefore on the contrary that Unity because it gives others a good Example and thereby encourages them to reform themselves as it has done All that which a Prince or Soveraign Magistrate ought to observe in those Seasons is on one side to take heed that he makes a just discerning of good and evil I would say that he reforms nothing which would not be in effect an Error or a Superstition or an Abuse and that he does not give any wound to the True Religion under a pretence of Reformation and on the other side to offer no violence to Mens Consciences but to purify the Publick Ministry as much as he can by the general consent of the People that God has committed to him But this is that which not only the Magistrates of Zurich but those also of other places
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
have us that we should be with her For in respect of the Lutherans the business is only about a meer Toleration which we give to those among them who desire it with a Spirit of Charity waiting till it shall please God to dissipate their Error But the Church of Rome that calls it self infallible would have us not only to have a meer Toleration for her but that we should make a profession of believing all that she believes for when she separated her self from us she Anathematised all those who did not believe all that she had decided in her Council of Trent The Matters therefore are not equal between the Roman and the Lutheran Communion in respect of us To put them into an Equality it is necessary that the Roman Church should openly put her self into the state wherein the Lutherans are that she renounce the Invocation of Saints Religious worship of Images humane Satisfactions Indulgences Purgatory the worshipping of Relliques the publick Service in an unknown Tongue the merit of good Works Transubstantiation Adoration of the Sacrament the Sacrifice of the Mess the Papal Monarchy the pretension of Infallibility the blind Obedience that she would have us give to her decisions It is necessary that she should acknowledge the Scriptures to be the only rule of faith and manners that she should carefully recommend the Reading of them to the People that she should confess their sufficiency without the help of tradition that she should believe the Authority of that Scripture independent even in respect of us on that of the Church that she should distinctly lay down the Doctrine of Justification and that of the distinction of the Law and the Gospel that she should form a Just Idea of the Faith and of good works and that she should take care to abolish all the popular Superstitions which we behold among them When she shall have done all that with some other things which the Lutherans have done also although she do retain the point of the Real presence after the same manner that they do we shall not fail to offer her the same Toleration which we yield to the Lutherans and the same conditions which we give to them which is that we should not engage our selves to believe that presence that we should always protest against it as an Error and that they shall do nothing to force us to embrace it When the Church of Rome shall be in that condition which I have set down if we do not make her these offers if we do not even make them with all the ardour imaginable we will be very well contented in that Case that they should accuse us of humane Policy and that they should tell us that we are a sort of men without any Conscience Justice and Charity But 'till then we will take God and men to witness that there is not the least equity in those invectives and that it is to oppress our innocency to ascribe that as the Author of the Prejudices has done to an interested Policy or a capricious humour which is but too well founded upon the things themselves See here what I had to say upon the Twelfth Chapter of the Author of the Prejudices It may now be Judged of what force his Accusations are We should after that pass on to his Thirteenth Chapter But as that Chapter is but a sending us to a Book of Monsieur Arnaud's Intituled The Overthrow of the Morals of Jesus Christ by the Calvinists I shall also content my self with referring my Readers to the Answer which I hope to make him It shall suffice for the present to say That the Doctrine of the Saints Perseverance as the Synod of Dort has laid it down is a Doctrine of the Scripture and that all the pretended Consequences which Monsieur Arnaud would draw from it are of the same nature of those which profane Persons draw from all the Doctrines of Religion when they would abuse them to their Ruin CHAP. VIII That our Fathers in their Design of Reforming themselves were bound to take the Holy Scripture alone for the Rule of their Faith IT it now necessary to Examine by what Principle or upon what Rule our Fathers proceeded in their Reformation But before we go any further we shall do well to weigh what the Author of the Prejudices says who has made an express Chapter upon this matter The Argument of that Chapter is framed in these words That the way which the Calvinists propound to instruct men in the Truth is ridiculous and impossible After having entred upon his subject As the matter is saith he about the promise which they make of discovering divers Truths of the Faith to the Catholicks which are in their Judgments obscured and quite altered in the Church of Rome there will be nothing more Just or more natural then in the first place to inquire into the way which they would take to perform it to the end that we may Judge by the very nature of that way what we may justly expect For if it be found that they would engage us in an infinite way and which could not come to an issue there could not be a more lawful excuse to hinder us from hearkening to them nor a more evident conviction of the rashness of their enterprise Behold here methinks Two Declarations of that Author sufficiently express concerning the means which we propound to instruct men in the Truth the one That it is a ridiculous and impossible way and the other That it is an infinite way c. and which can come to no issue for we may well perceive that that Periphrasis of expression If it be found that they would engage us in an infinite way c. made use of in the beginning of a Disputation means that it will be so found in effect and that it is as much as if it had been positively said they would engage us in an infinite way and which has no end there being no other difference between those two expressions unless that this latter is the more plain and that the other has more of the Air of the Philosophical Method of those Gentlemen After that preamble the Author goes on It is true says he that if we will hear them speak upon this subject without any more deep searehing into that which they say we shall have reason enough to be satisfied For they baldly promise to lead us to the Faith by a short an easy and a clear way without confusion without danger of wandring aside and this way say they is the Examination of the Articles of the Faith by the Scripture which is the only Rule that God has given us for the deciding of the differences of Religion and assuring us of what we ought to believe all others being subject to Error This is the Explication of the way which we propose which is to take the Holy Scripture for the only Rule of our Faith He adds But because in a
how to Read What will become of those who have no understanding nor any readiness of mind How can all those People examine all those Points the Discussion of the least of which notwithstanding is evidently necessary to make them rationally determine It is easy to see that all that heap of Objections and Difficulties which the Author of the Prejudices has proposed against the way of the Scripture tends only to lead men to the Authority of the Church of Rome to the end they should subject themselves to that as a Soveraign and Infallible Rule But as the Doctrine of the Soveraign Authority of that Church is not one of those first Principles which the light of Nature dictates to all men since of Thirty parts of our known World there are at least nine and twenty who do not acknowledge it and as they cannot also say that it is one of the first and common notions of Christianity since of all those who profess themselves to be Christians there are Three parts which reject it The Author may freely give us leave if he pleases that we should first demand of him upon what Foundation he would build that Doctrine to make us receive it as a point of Divine Faith I say of Divine Faith for if we should hold it only as a matter of human Faith he himself would see well that we could not believe the things which the Church of Rome should teach in vertue of its Authority otherwise then with a humane Faith since the things which depend upon a principle cannot make an impression in us different from that which the principle has made To the end therefore that I should believe with a Divine Faith that which the Church of Rome shall teach me by its Authority it is necessary that I should also believe its Authority with a Divine Faith Thus far methinks we should not have any Controversy Let us see therefore upon what Foundations of Divine Faith he would pretend to establish this Proposition The Authority of the Church of Rome is Soveraign and Infallible He can only do it by these Three ways The first is by a new Revelation that God should have made to us of this Truth the Second in shewing that it is one of the Articles that is contained in the Revelation of the Apostles and the Third in shewing us the Characters of Divinity and Infallibility impressed upon the Church of Rome even after the same manner as every thing proves it self by the marks that distinguish it and thus it is that we pretend that the Scripture forces the acknowledgment of its own Divinity The first of these ways is nullified since they agree with us that since Jesus Christ and his Apostles there has been no new Revelation and that there must not be any expected The second would be proper and necessarily supposes a recourse either to Tradition or the Scripture for there are but these two Channels in which we can seek for the Revelation of the Apostles But that of the Scripture is forbidden us by the Author of the Prejudices by reason of the unconquerable difficulties which he discovers there It is says he a way full of obstacles and difficulties and even those who profess to spend all their days in the Study of Divinity ought to judge that Examination to be above all their abilities He must therefore content himself with the way of Tradition But before he can make use of that he must be first assured and that with a certainty of Divine Faith that that which that Tradition contains is come down from the Revelation of Jesus Christ and his Apostles or at least that this particular point of the Authority of the Roman Church in the state wherein it is at present must have proceeded from thence that the Apostles must have Transmitted it viva voce down to their Successours and that their Successours must have received it and Transmitted it down to those who descended from them in the same sence and every whit the same as the Apostles had given it to them If he cannot be assured of that Transmission all that he would build upon it will be uncertain and if he cannot be assured of it with a Divine Faith that which he would build upon it will not be more so But how can he be assur'd of that He has no more that living Voice of the Apostles to represent it to us he must rely upon Testimonyes would it therefore be the Roman Church that must assure us But her Divine and Infallible Authority is as yet in Question and while it shall be questioned it remains suspended it cannot be believed any further then with a humane Faith Shall it be the Scripture that must give Testimony to that Tradition But there are so many Difficulties in that way says the Author of the Prejudices That it is Evident that it is not that which God has chosen to Instruct us in his Truths Must we learn it from that Tradition it self But to decide that point whether that Tradition came from the Apostles or no Tradition it self can be yet no other than a humane Testimony I mean that the Successors of the Apostles declare to us that they have received such and such Doctrines from the Apostles viva voce and that they have receiv'd them in the same sence in which the Apostles gave them to them we cannot at the most have more then a humane Faith for them for they are men as well as others Hitherto therefore there cannot be had a Divine Faith concerning the point of the Sovereign and Infallible Authority of the Roman Church and nothing by Consequence that can assure the Conscience and set the mind of man at rest Let us therefore pass over to the third means which is that of examining the Characters of Divinity and Infallibility that may be seen in the Roman Church It is in my Judgment in the sight of this that they give us certain external Marks and we have already seen that the Author of the Prejudices establishes upon this that Authority about which we dispute The most eminent Authority says he that can be in the world is easily discover'd to be in the Catholick Church because though there are Sects that dispute with it the Truth of its Tenets yet there are none that can with any Colour contend with it for that eminence of Authority which arises from its External Marks But without entring here far into the Controversy touching those Marks I say that he is very far from being able to establish such a certainty upon them as we ought to have of a Principle of Religion And this will appear from these three Reasons The First is That the greatest part of those marks are common to false Societies and even to Schismatical Churches which not only are not Infallible but which are actually in Errour as I have shewn in the first part of this Treatise The Greek Church for example in
to correct them and notwithstanding to enter into its Communion and to live under its Ministry But so far are we from being able to make a supposition of this nature that on the contrary there is nothing more certain than this Truth That as there are Unjust Rash and Schismatical Separations so there may be also not only Just and Lawful ones but Necessary and Indispensable ones also So the Primitive Christians withdrew themselves from the Jewish Church after it had obstinately remained in its unbelief and afterwards the Orthodox in the first Centuries held no Communion with the Valentinians nor with the Manichees nor in general with those Hereticks who disturb'd the Purity of the Gospel with their Errors Nay when the Arians had even made themselves Masters of the Synods and Churches there was an actual Separation made of a very great number of persons as well of the Body of the Clergy as that of the People who would not have any Communion with them and who endur'd upon that account all sorts of persecutions Therefore also it was that S. Hilary Bishop of Poictiers earnestly exhorted the Bishops and the Orthodox people by a publick Letter that he address'd to them The Name of Peace sayes he to them is indeed very specious and the meer appearance of Vnity has something splendid in it But who knows not that the Church and the Gospel acknowledges no other Peace than that which comes from Jesus Christ that which he gave to his Apostles before the glory of his Passion and that which he left in Trust with them by his eternal Command when he was about to leave them It is this peace which we have taken care to seek when it has been lost and to re-establish when it has been disturbed and to preserve after we have found it again But the sins of our Times and the Ministers or Fore-runners of Antichrist will not suffer us to be the Authors of so great a good nor that we should so much as partake of it They have their Peace which they boast of which is nothing else but an Vnity of Impiety while they carry themselves not as the Bishops of Jesus Christ but as the Prelates of Anti-Christ And about the end of his Letter I exhort you sayes he that you take heed of Anti-Christ Be not deceived by a foolish love of Walls nor respect the Church more on Roofs and in Houses nor strive no more on such frivolous considerations for the Name of Peace As for my self I find more certainty in the Mountains in the Forests in the Lakes in Prisons in Gulphs for there it was that the Spirit of God animated the Prophets Separate therefore your selves from Auxentius who is an Angel of Satan an Enemy to Christ an open Persecutor a Violator of the Faith who made a deceitful Profession of the Faith before the Emperour in which he joyn'd Blasphemy to that Deceit Let him assemble as many Synods as he pleases against me let him make me be declared a Heretick as he has often already done let him proscribe me by Publick Authority let him stir up the wrath of the Great Men against me as much as he will he can never be any other to me than a Devil since he is an Arian I shall never have peace but with those who following the Decree of our Nicene Fathers would anathematize the Arians and acknowledge Jesus Christ to be truly God S. Epiphanius also relates that before the Synod of Seleucid wherein Arianism was establish'd many people who found themselves to be under the Jurisdiction of Arian Bishops remained firm in the confession of the True Faith and set up other Bishops themselves And the Histories of Socrates Theodoret and Sozomen may teach us that while the Arians possess'd the Temples and the Sees of the Churches the Orthodox held their Assemblies apart in the Fields as well as in private Houses With the same Judgement S. Ambrose teaches That Jesus Christ alone is he from whom we ought never to separate our selves and to whom we ought to say Lord to whom shall we go thou hast the words of eternal life That above all things the Faith of a Church ought to be regarded that we ought to hold it there if Jesus Christ dwells there but if a people may be found to be there who are Violaters of the Faith or that an Heretical Pastor has polluted that habitation we ought to separate our selves from the Communion of Hereticks and to avoid all commerce with that Synagogue That we ought to separate our selves from every Church that rejects the true Faith and does not preserve the fundamentals of the Apostles Preaching without fear lest its Communion should brand us with some note of Perfidiousness There could not therefore be a more unreasonable thing in the World than to prepossess ones self in general against all manner of Separation for it is manifest that the communion of men is no otherwise desirable than as it can consist with the communion of God and that when that of men shall be found to be directly opposite to the true service of God and our own salvation which is the only End of a Religious Society we ought no longer to hesitate about our Separation But to make out this Truth yet a little more clear we need but to set before their eyes what we have already said in the First Part that the Church may be consider'd either in respect of its Internal State in as much as it is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ the Society of the truly Faithful and the true Elect of God without any mixture of Hypocrites and the worldly pure throughout as she is in Gods sight or in respect of its External State in as much as it is a Society which in the profession of one and the same Religion includes a sufficiently great number of the Hypocrites and worldly who do not belong to the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ nor are of the Church but in appearance only That Distinction is evident enough of it self not to need any proof and our Adversaries themselves will not oppose it But altho' they do not oppose that Distinction yet they never fail of confounding both those respects For when they speak of the Promises that God has made concerning the perpetual subsistence of his Church where it would be just to refer them to the Church only as made up of the Truly Faithful since to speak properly God looks upon them alone as his true Church they refer them to the Church in as much as it is mixt with the worldly and hypocrites And when the Contest is about establishing the Duties to which a Religious Society engages us where it would be just to consider the Church as mingled with the good and the wicked the faithful and the worldly such as it appears to us they consider it as it is pure and without any mixture of Hypocrites such as it is in the
Councils of Ariminum and of Constantinople which included all the East and all the West and if they had had no more but that they ought not to have separated from the body of their actually governing Pastors that they might have cleaved to a Synod which was past and gone It was therefore the importance of the Truth that was contested and that of the Error that was opposite to it which made the Separation and not the meer Authority of the Nicene Fathers and therefore it is that S. Augustine disputing against Maximinus an Arian would that they should set aside as well the Council of Nice as that of Ariminum and that they should only contend about the things themselves Not but that sometimes the Orthodox did set before them the Council of Nice according to the manner of disputes where one will neglect no advantage for its being ever so small but it was as a little help and not as the essential reason of their Separation which was alwayes taken from the thing it self and from the testimonies of the Scripture so that that difference is very frivolous If they say lastly that the point that was controverted then was one of a far greater importance than those upon which our Fathers separated themselves I answer that indeed the Article of the Consubstantiality of the Son is one of the chief and most fundamental Articles of the Christian Religion but that does not hinder that those that are controverted between the Church of Rome and us should not also be of the greatest importance to salvation and sufficient to cause a separation And when they would make the justice or injustice of ours to depend on that they must quit all that vain dispute of prejudices and go on to the discussion of the foundation it self The Author of the Prejudices must not take it ill that in endeavouring to decide the Question concerning the right of the Separation of our Fathers I make use here of his own proper testimony For it is a matter surprising enough that writing in his Eighth and Ninth Chapters in which he would he sayes convince us of Schism without entring upon a discussion either of our Doctrine or our Mission that he should not have remembred what he himself had just before said in the Seventh First of all he there proposes this difficulty as on our side If the visible Church were really fallen into Error as we suppose that it is possible for it to do if it drive away the truly faithful from its bosome if it persecute them must those truly faithful needs be deprived of all external worship in Religion must they needs cleave to the Church to perish with them since we suppose that it resides in them alone Is it not against the Divine Providence that the true worshippers of God the true heirs of Heaven cannot form a Church in the World and that God has not left any means to provide against so strange an inconvenience He answers plainly That indeed that inconvenience is exceeding great but that it is not necessary that God should have provided against it by remedies because he has resolved to hinder it from ever falling out in alwayes preserving the True Ministry in his Church So that it can never be in a necessity of being re-established and that very thing is a certain mark that that inconvenience can never happen in that God has not provided any remedy for it He sayes that so it is that our Ministers ought to conclude and not to conclude as they do in supposing that the visible Church may fall into ruine that there is a necessity of having recourse to the establishment of a new Ministry Since immediately after he adds But if the adhaesion which they have to their sentiments hinders them from coming to agree to this consequence they ought rather to conclude that those pretended truly faithful must remain in that state without Pastors and without any external worship and that they should rather expect that God should raise up some extraordinarily and with visible marks of their mission than to usurp to themselves a right of creating Ministers and Pastors and giving them power to govern the Churches and administer the Sacraments We have already shewn him and we shall yet further shew him in the end that it is not without reason that we suppose that the Ministry may be corrupted in the Church We shall shew him also that the consequence which we draw from it concerning the re-establishing of the Ministry is just and right and that a faithful people have a right in that case to create their Ministers and their Pastors and to give them power to govern their Churches and to administer the Sacraments But as we are only disputing at present about knowing whether we may separate our selves from the body of the ordinary Pastors when they are fallen into errors incompatible with our salvation and when they will force the people to profess the same Errors it shall suffice at present to take notice that the Author of the Prejudices comes to agree that when persons are perswaded that the body of those who possess the Ministry in the Church is fallen into Error and when it drives away from its bosome and persecutes those who maintain the Truth they may remain separated without acknowledging that Body for their Pastors and without assisting in their external worship provided that they do not make other Ministers But who sees not that this is precisely to acknowledge the right of that Separation about which the question at present is Who sees not that it is at least in that respect a discharging our Fathers from the Accusation of Schism and to declare them further innocent of that crime which he would design to lay to their charge at last Our Fathers did not collect that consequence of the Author of the Prejudices they did not conclude that the Ministry must be incorruptible in the Church in that which it had of humane in it This is not a place to dispute whether they adhered too much to their own opinions where because that in effect they judg'd well that manner of reasoning is pernicious Howsoever it were they have concluded quite otherwise they were perswaded that the body of those who possessed the Ordinary Ministry in the Latin Church were fallen not only into an Error but into many and into such as were contrary to mens salvation that it was guilty of opinionativeness in maintaining them that it did impose a necessity upon all to profess them that it drove away from its bosome those who refused that obedience It was upon this that they separated themselves from them not acknowledging them any more for their Pastors and assisting no further in their external worship Thus far the Author of the Prejudices does not condemn them he would only that they should have remained throughout without Pastors and without external worship We shall see in its place whether
hinder but that she may externally deny the faith of Jesus Christ but that she may intirely lose her love and the communion of our Saviour and the quality of the True Church and by consequence that we should not be bound to separate from her while she should be in that state and till it should please God to re-establish her See here of what force those proofs are which they produce to ground this special priviledge of the Church of Rome upon It is not hard to see that a man of good understanding who would satisfie his mind and his conscience upon so weighty a point ought not to remain there but that he ought to pass on to the other way of clearing that doubt which I have noted which is to judge of the pretension of the Church of Rome by the examination of her Doctrines and her Worship For it is there principally that the characters of truth and infallibility ought to be found and by consequence he must come to the foundation and no further amuse himself with Prejudices As to the second Way by which I have said we might clear this Question Whether it be necessary to the salvation of Christians to be joyned to the Church of Rome it consists in examining whether it be true that God has made her the Mistress of all other Churches whether there is any particular order that binds us indispensably to her For if that be so the Separation of our Fathers must be condemned but if it be not so we must judge of that Church as of all other particular Churches and say that we cannot and ought not to separate our selves from her but when we have just and lawful causes so to do There is no person who does not judge that we cannot pass over lightly a point of so great importance which ought to serve for a general and perpetual Rule to all Christians and that if the Church of Rome would so set her self beyond a state of equality above other Churches it is necessary that she should produce some very express and indisputable Order of God for it But instead of that she does nothing but reverberate the same passages which I have mentioned She boasts her self to be the See of S. Peter and under that pretence she applyes to her self all that she can find in the Scripture in favour of that Apostle and particularly the Order that Jesus Christ gave him to feed his sheep as if the Office of the Apostleship in which Jesus Christ re-established him by those words could be communicated to his Successors or as if the foundation that Jesus Christ supposed and upon which he re-established him in saying to him feed my sheep to wit that he should love him more than the rest was not a thing purely personal in S. Peter and whereof it was not in his power to transmit any part to his Successors nor by consequence to invest them with his Office which was restored to him only upon a supposition of that love or lastly as if the office of feeding Christ's sheep included an absolute and indispensable necessity for the sheep to receive their death when they should give it them under the name of their food It must be acknowledg'd that there never was a higher pretension than this of the Church of Rome for what more could she pretend to then to make Heaven it self depend on her communion and to leave no possibility of salvation to any but those who should be in her communion and under her dependance But it must also be acknowledged that there never was any thing worse established than that pretension They alledge in its favour nothing that is clear and distinct and even the consequences which they draw for it are made after a very strange manner This is in my judgement the Reason why our Adversaries when they treat of this matter do not insist much upon Scripture but fly off presently to the Fathers and the usage of the Ancient Church For by this means they hope to prolong the dispute to eternity and that notwithstanding the Church of Rome shall be alwayes in possession of that Despotical Authority which she exercises over the Churches that remain in her communion In effect the life of a man would scarce suffice to read well and throughly examine all the Volumes which have been composed on one side and on the other upon this Question of the place that the Church of Rome and its Bishops have held among the Christian Churches during the first six Centuries and of the Authority which they had then But to say the truth there is too much artifice in that procedure for that the Church of Rome should be the Mistress of all others and that no one could be saved but in her communion that does not depend upon the order of men but only on that of God and when they should find among the Antients a thousand times more complaisance for the See of Rome than they had that may very well establish an ancient possession and make clear the fact but it can never establish the right of it To establish a right of that nature a word of God an express declaration of his will is necessary for it is a right not only above nature but even above the ordinary and common favour that God gives to other Churches and which by consequence depends only upon God And so it is but a wandring from the way to go to search for the grounds of it in the Writings of Men. It is no hard matter to conceive that those Bishops which were raised to Dignities in the Metropolis of the World and engaged in the greatest affairs might mannage matters so as to ascribe to themselves those rights which no wayes belonged to them nor to imagine that their flatterers and Courtiers might not have offered more incense to them than they ought nor that those persecuted ones who had recourse to their protection might not have helped the increase of their Authority nor that the Princes and Emperors who had need of them might not have given them those priviledges which they ought not to have had that which renders to a just title all that which they alledge in their favour suspected and to no purpose at all Notwithstanding there are moreover evident matters of fact that let us clearly see that the Ancient Church did not acknowledge that Universal Episcopacy that the Bishops of Rome pretend to nor that absolute and indispensable necessity to be joyned to their See to be saved nor that their Church should be the Mistress of all the rest 1. Every one knows that the Bishops of Rome were anciently chosen by the suffrages of the people and of the Clergy of that Church without any other Churches taking part in those Elections which is a mark manifest enough that they did not mean that those Bishops should be Universal Bishops nor that they should have a more peculiar interest in their creation than
of a shadow of Reformation that he had propounded which consisted only in most trivial matters he caused them to make a League among them for the defence of the Roman Religion and the destruction of the Lutherans Soon after they saw the effects of this League appear for Ferdinand and the Legat being gone into Austria they condemned to death some persons upon the account of Religion Clement elsewhere took the same cares for all places which they took in Germany to hinder the progress of the Reformation He wrote upon that subject into Switzerland into Bohemia France Poland Swedeland Denmark and he stirr'd up every where the Princes Magistrates and Prelates to overthrow the Reformed Wherefore they beheld soon after under his Pontificate the Inquisitions taken up in that pursuit the Prisons filled with Prisoners and the Scaffolds and the Stakes filled almost generally in all places that owned his Authority It was at this time that Antonius Pratensis Cardinal and Arch-Bishop of Sens held a Provincial Synod at Paris the ninety second Article of which was framed in these terms We intreat the Most Christian King our Prince and Soveraign Lord by the bowels of the mercies of God that according to his singular zeal and incredible devotion for the Christian Religion that he would suddenly banish from the Lands of his Jurisdiction all Hereticks and that he would extirpate that deadly and horrible plague which increases every day more and more The ninety third was framed after this manner Therefore it is that the Orthodox Princes if they would have any care for the Christian Name and would hinder the ruine of Religion ought necessarily to use all their endeavours to extirpate and destroy Hereticks That Arch-Bishop was very much interessed in the preservation of the ancient abuses for we find in the Dialogue of the Two Parishioners of S. Hilary Montanus that he was Cardinal Arch-Bishop of Sens Bishop of Alby Bishop of Valence Bishop of Gap and Abbot of Fleury We ought not to be astonished if he declaimed so much against the Reformation He was in effect one of those who opposed themselves to it in France with the greatest heat and if any would know his character they need but look to that which the Authors of that same Dialogue say of him This Du Prat was he not as great a Prelate as a S. Hilary of Poictiers a S. Martin of Tours a S. German of Auxerre and as a S. Lupus of Troye He had alone full as many Bishopricks as all those admirable Saints had together and moreover the Abby in which is the Body of S. Benorist but he has not done so many Miracles as all those Saints and he never resided in any of those Diocesses nor ever performed any other office of a Bishop than that only Ordinance against Martin Luther Philip Melancthon Oecolampadins Zuinghus for as yet Calvin and Beza were not talked of It is this good Prelate to whom they attribute the taking away of the Pragmatick Sanction that is to say the pure observation of the Ancient Canons of the Church of France and the having made the agreement between King Francis the First and Leo the Tenth which has destroyed all the Apostolical Discipline in France and abolished the Canonical Elections and subjected France to a deplorable servitude The same Spirit that the Cardinal Du Prat had brought into France reigned then in England Scotland Flanders Austria Poland and universally in all places where the Power of the Pope extended it self for there was nothing talked of there but the extream punishments which they inflicted on those pretended Hereticks and their very Judges who touch'd with some compassion did not readily do their duty according to the humour of the Court of Rome did not remain unpunished For it was for this reason that Pope Clement charged Cardinal Campeius his Legate to remove those Inquisitors who were in the Low-Countreys and to put others in their places who should better acquit themselves of so detestable a service as Raynaldus relates But while they acted after this manner the Light of the Reformation did yet spread it self abroad in divers places through an admirable blessing of God who has alwayes made the ashes of his Martyrs the seed of his Church For not only Saxony had receiv'd it but also a great part of Germany a great part of Switzerland Swedeland Denmark Prussia and Livonia also In the month of April in the year 1529. an Assembly of the Princes and other States of Germany was held at Spire whither Clement did not fail to send a Nuntio The first thing they did there was to reject the Assembly at the City of Strasburgh under a pretence that it had abolish'd the use of the Mass without waiting for the Imperial Diet. This violent procedure was quickly after followed by a Decree that Ferdinand Arch-Duke of Austria and some other Princes who took part with the Court of Rome made and whom the Emperour had expresly chosen for his Deputy Commissioners They ordain'd therefore in the first place that those who till then had observ'd the Edict of Wormes that is to say who not only had not receiv'd the Reformation but who had persecuted it with all their might should for the future do the like and force their Subjects to do the same and that as for those in whose Countreys that new Doctrine had been spread abroad provided they could not extirpate it without putting themselves into a manifest danger of stirring up troubles it should be their part at least to hinder any thing more from being innovated till the calling of a Council Secondly They ordained That above all things the Doctrine which opposed the substantial presence of the body of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist should neither be received nor propounded by any in all the compass of Germany and that the Mass should not be abrogated In the third place they decreed That they should not allow Preachers in any place to explain the Gospel otherwise than by the interpretations of the Fathers In fine they ordained grievous penalties against the Printers and Booksellers who should Print or Vend for the future the Books that contained that new Doctrine The other Princes and States of the Empire beholding this manifest oppression thought themselves bound to make an Act of Protestation to the contrary They remonstrated therefore That that new Decree contradicted that that had been passed in the preceding Assembly where every one was to be free in respect of his Religion That they did not pretend to hinder the other Princes and States from enjoying that liberty but that on the contrary they pray'd God that he would give them the knowledge of his Truth That they could not with a good conscience approve of the reason for which they would allow them to retain the Evangelical Doctrine to wit lest they should fall into new troubles for that would be to confess that it would be good to renounce that Doctrine
the bad Fish the Vessels of Gold and Silver and those of Wood and Earth and in this confus'd notion the Church is the Field the Floor the Net and the House that the holy Scripture speaks of But as this mixture which I have spoken of may be understood two wayes either in respect of Manners or in regard of Doctrines we must note in the Third place that this notion of the Mixed Church according to S. Augustine is divided into two for he would have us sometimes conceive of it as a Body wherein the righteous are only mingled with the unrighteous that is to say with the wicked whose manners are vitious and corrupted and sometimes also he would have us conceive it as a Body where the Hereticks are mixed with the truly faithful as well as the righteous with the unrighteous In the former case the mixed Church is a pure communion in respect of Doctrine but corrupted in regard of manners and in the second it is a communion not only corrupted in regard of manners but impure also and corrupted in regard of its Tenets These two sorts of mixture are without doubt in the Hypothesis of S. Augustine the first made all the ground of his dispute against the Donatists and as for the second he often explains himself in his Books and particularly in the Psalms against the Donatists where he sayes That after Jesus Christ had purged his floor by the preaching of the Cross the righteous were as the new seed which he spread abroad over all the Earth to the end they should make another harvest at the end of the world But that this harvest grew up amidst the Tares because there are Heresies every where Haec messis crescit inter zizania quia sunt haereses ubique In that same Psalm and elsewhere in divers places he quotes the Example of the Jewish Church in which he saies that the Saints the Prophets and the righteous were mixed not only with the wicked whose manners were debauched and criminal but also with the superstitious and Idolaters that which leaves no difficulty about it for Idolatry is the greatest of all Heresies We must note in the Fourth place that S. Augustine would have us consider the mixed Church in two different States For as for that which respects mens manners he sayes that sometimes the wicked do not prevail over the righteous either in number or Authority but that sometimes also they prevail in such a manner that the good are often oppress'd under their multitude and this is that which he treats particularly of in his Third Book against Parmenianus And so in regard of Heresies he means that sometimes they grow so powerful as to infect almost all the Body and this is what he expresly shews in a Letter to Vincentius a Donatist Bishop and in that which he wrote to Hesychius Thus it is that S. Augustine has conceiv'd of the Church and according to these different notions and these different states he has spoken differently of separations from it As for that which regards the truly righteous and faithful there is no question but that he thought that we ought to have not only an internal communion of charity with them founded upon the Unity that is between all the members of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ who have all but one and the same faith one and the same piety and the same righteousness but an external communion also which consists in joyning with them in the same Assemblies in partaking of the same Sacraments in approving their faith piety good works and in one word in accounting them their brethren as far as it is possible for them to know them But this is not that which makes the difficulty all the Question is concerning the mixed Church and all the dispute is to know how according to S. Augustine the Corn and the Tares that is to say the truly faithful and the Hereticks ought to remain together in the same communion and in what case they might separate themselves We must therefore note in the Fifth place that in the Doctrine of that Father there is a certain separation that a man can never make under any pretence whatsoever without being a Schismatick and that there is another that he may lawfully make and which it is sometimes necessary that he should He has distinguish'd between two external bonds that should unite us to one another the first is that of the External and General Call to Christianity the second is that of the participation of the same Sacraments and the same Assemblies It is the first bond that S. Augustine would have to be inviolable not only in regard of the faithful between themselves but also in regard of the wicked and Hereticks and not only while we suffer them to be in the publick Assemblies but even then when we excommunicate them and deprive them of the communion of the Sacraments And thus it is that he understands that which Jesus Christ said in his Parable That the Tares ought not to be pluck'd up which the Enemy had sown among the good Wheat in the same field but that he would leave both to grow together until the harvest and it is this kind of Unity whereof he sayes that there is no just necessity of ever breaking praecidendae unitatis nulla est justa necessitas it is the Unity of the same Net that enclos'd both good and bad Fish the Unity of the same Floor that contain'd both the good Seed and the Chaff the Unity of the same Field where the Tares grew up with the Wheat the Unity of the same House where there are Vessels of Wood and Earth with those of Gold and Silver and in a word this Unity that we call the external and general call to Christianity It is therefore first of all in this sense that he means that there is a Church from which we ought never to separate our selves under any pretence whatsoever and from which all those who separate themselves are Schismaticks for he understands it of that mixed Church that Field that Floor that Net that common House out of which we must never go forth nor drive out others howsoever wicked and Heretical they may be there being none but God who can make this separation and who will in effect make it at the end of the world And as it was thus that the Donatists had separated themselves so it was chiefly upon this that he convinced them of Schism for they own'd none for Christians but those of their own Party they rejected the Baptism of all the rest they looked upon them as Pagans who had no more any shadow of Christianity and when Proselytes came over to them they made them pass through all the degrees of the Catechumeni before they would receive them and they began to make them Christians anew as if they had come out of a Society of absolute Infidels as I have noted in my Fourth
the Faith and the True Orthodox Church to be regulated by that extension that he made on the contrary this extension a ground of reproach to the Arians taking that for a mark of Heresie which the Author of the Prejudices would have us take for a mark of Orthodoxy Are you ignorant sayes he that the faith as miserable and forsaken as it is is a thousand times more pretious than impiety in splendor and abundance Is it so that you prefer the multitude of the Canaanites before one only Abraham or all the inhabitants of Sodom before one only Lot or all the Midianites to one only Moses Notwithstanding you know that these Saints were but strangers and foreigners among those people I pray tell me whether the three hundred that lapped the water with Gideon were not more to be esteemed than all those thousands who cowardly forsook him whether the servants of Abraham who were few in number were not to be preferr'd to all those Kings who with their innumerable Armies were overcome But I pray yet farther tell me how you understand that which is said when the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea a remnant only shall be saved and this other passage I have reserv'd to my self seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal The matter will not go as you imagine no without doubt for God takes no pleasure in a multitude As for you you reckon your thousands but God reckons those who work out their salvation you heap up a great pile of dust but I assemble the vessels of election There is nothing so great before God as the pure Doctrine and a soul that is filled and adorned with the Tenets of the Truth S. Athanasius or if you will Theodoret is not less express about the subject of a small number in opposition to that extension and multitude than S. Gregory Nazianzen Shall we not sayes he hearken to Jesus Christ who sayes That many are called and few chosen that straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life and few there be that find that gate or this way What man of good understanding will not rather chuse to be among this small number that enters into life than to be joyned to this multitude that goes to perdition If we had lived in the age of S. Stephen should we not have rather chose his party though it should have been forsaken by all else buried under stones and exposed to all manner of reproaches than the party of that multitude which thought that the faith ought to follow the greatest number One man alone who has the Truth on his side is more to be esteemed than ten thousand rash men and this is what the Scriptures of the Old Testament confirm for when millions of men fell under Gods sword one Phineas alone oppos'd himself in the breach and put a stop to the anger of the Lord. If he had not resisted that torrent which bore down all the others if he had approved that which the multitude did he had never himself been commended above all he had never put a stop to the flood of divine vengeance nor had saved that remnant which was after that the object of Gods mercy It was therefore a thing worthy of praise that one man alone should boldly maintain right and justice against the opinion of the multitude Go if you will and be drowned with the multitude that perished in the deluge but give me leave to save my self in the Ark with that small number Be consumed if you please with the inhabitants of Sodom I shall not fail to go out of it with Lot alone Thus these Fathers spoke concerning the state whereto the Orthodox communion might be sometimes reduced and into which it had been in effect reduced which evidently shews us that this visible extension is not a perpetual mark of the True Church and that it is not so very necessary that this arguing should be always just Your society is not spread every where over the world therefore it is not the Church This Vincentius Lirinensis has also acknowledg'd in his Admonition against Heresies for he acknowledges that it may sometimes fall out that Heresie invades the whole Church and he makes a question what he ought to do in that case What ought we to do sayes he when some new contagion endeavours to infect not one part only but the whole Body of the Church in general Quid si novella aliqua contagio non jam portiunculam sed totam pariter Ecclesiam commaculare conetur What visible extension could the Orthodox communion have throughout all Nations in those unhappy times in which the same Vincentius Lirinensis sayes that the greatest part of the good were put to death or imprisoned or banish'd or condemned to the Mines or hid in Desarts and Caves exposed to savage Beasts to hunger thirst and nakedness Horum pars maxima interdictis urbibus protrusi atque extorres inter deserta speluncas feras saxa nuditate fame siti affecti attriti tabefacti sunt What visible extension could that same Orthodox communion have in the time wherein S. Athanasius cryed out after this manner Who is there among the servants of Jesus Christ that these rebells have not calumniated or whom they have not lain snares for Who is there that the Emperour has not banished upon their false accusations he who has alwayes so readily hearkned to them who has alwayes so constantly refused to hear whatsoever should be said against them and who never refused to believe all that they have said against others Where now a dayes shall we find a Church that worships Jesus Christ with liberty If Churches have any piety they are in danger if they dissemble they are alwayes in fear The Emperour has fill'd all with wickedness and hypocrisie as far as things depend on him I know that there are every where many persons who have piety and a love of Jesus Christ but in what place so ever they are they are forced either to conceal themselves as the Prophets and as the great Elias till they find some faithful Abdias who should hide them in a Cave or to to go dwell in the Desarts For it is most true that these wicked men make use of the same calumnies against the good that Jezebell made use of against Naboth and the Jews against Jesus Christ And the Emperour who stirs up himself to defend Heresie and to overthrow the Truth as Ahab overthrew Naboth 's Vineyard refused nothing to the desires of these Hereticks because these Hereticks also spake to him only according to his desires The Fathers had then no regard to seek for the true Church either in that visible extension or in that temporal glory or splendor or in a word any where else than in the True Faith and there it is that they seek for it in effect The Church sayes the
Augustine had been very well able to have prov'd that they were Schismaticks but that he had not notwithstanding been able to conclude from thence that his Society was the True Church The reason of this is because they had broken the general bond of an External Call that S. Augustine would have them obliged to keep even in regard of Hereticks so that according to him they might very well have been Schismaticks although the Church which they had forsaken had not been the true Church He prov'd therefore that his Society was the true Church only because they acknowledg'd it to be Orthodox and did not lay to its charge either any Error in the Faith or depravation in Worship For in supposing that confession it manifestly appears that that time was a time of the increase of the Church since it cannot be deny'd that the Church does not then encrease when the true Doctrine is spread abroad in all places from whence would follow that the Society that taught that true Doctrine throughout the world was the true Church rather than a small party that were shut up within one only Province So that the Error of the Donatists consisted in this in that they would have restrain'd the Church in their Africa in a time wherein it manifestly increased in all Nations and this increase was manifest by the acknowledgement which they themselves made that the Society that was spread over all the world was Orthodox This is that precisely that Bellarmine would say He would have S. Augustine reason after this manner in a time wherein it manifestly appears that the Church encreases it is an error not to acknowledge that Society that is spread over all the world to be the true Church of Jesus Christ in opposition to a small party But in this time it manifestly appears that the Church increases since by your own confession it is the true Doctrine and not Heresie that multiplies it self Therefore it is an error not to acknowledge at this time the Society that is spread over the world to be the true Church This is in effect the true reasoning of S. Augustine and Bellarmine is no wayes deceiv'd in it But it clearly follows from thence that according to S. Augustine that visible extension may be sometimes a mark of the true Church in opposition to a small party to wit then when the true and pure Doctrine is spread abroad every where because that is the time of the increase of the Church But it does not follow that this mark is perpetual since the time of that increase does not last alwayes From whence it appears that the arguing of S. Augustine can have no place in the question that is between the Church of Rome and us In one word then when we contest the title of the true Church with a Society that does otherwise own us to be Orthodox then visible extension decides the question according to S. Augustine But then when we contest that title with a Society that accuses us with false Doctrine that visible extension decides nothing and the difference cannot be determined but by the discussion of the foundation it self S. Augustine alledg'd it in the former case and the Author of the Prejudices alledges it in the latter What need we to do more to set down this truth in its full evidence and to give the Author of the Prejudices entire satisfaction Do we need to let him see that if they had accused the Society of S. Augustine of false Doctrine that Father had not pretended in this case that that visible extension should have decided the contest but that he would have decided it at the foundation Need we to go yet farther and to shew him that S. Augustine has formally acknowledg'd that there have been in effect times wherein the true Church has had no visible extension If we could shew him these two things he would methinks have some reason to be contented and to leave us in peace about this business of extension Let us therefore endeavour to satisfie him about these two Articles The first will be decided if we here appeal to what I have related of that Father on the occasion of what Cresconius had said to him that he ought to withdraw himself from the Church of the Traditors Is it sayes he that the Traditors have composed Books to shew that we ought to do or imitate their action Is it because they have recommended those Books to posterity Is it because we hold and follow that Doctrine If they had done that and if they would have permitted none to remain in their communion but such as would read those Books and approve that Doctrine I say that they would have separated themselves from the Unity of the Church and if you saw me in their Schism you would then have reason to say that I am in the Church of the Traditors We need no great learning to understand by this discourse 1. That S. Augustine had acknowledg'd that if in effect his Society had determined a false Doctrine if it had framed Books about it and suffered no person its communion who had not approved it it had lost the title of the True Church although that visible extension should have been secured to it 2. That if the Donatists who were but a small party had accused it it would have admitted them to proof without a wrangling with them about that extension For he who sayes Is it because we hold and follow that Doctrine makes us sufficiently see that he would not have refused them liberty to come to a proof if his adversaries had said that they held and followed it indeed And it ought not to be said that S. Augustine makes not that supposition only in regard of the whole of his Society but only in regard of some Traditors For he makes that supposition in regard of that same Society that Cresconius had called the Church of the Traditors and these words Is it because we hold and follow this Doctrine leave no place for that evasion See here the first Article the second is yet more formal in S. Augustine for no one can doubt that he has not acknowledg'd that there have been in effect times wherein the true Church has scarce had any visible extension This is that which he has in his Letter to Hesychius wherein he treats of the state of the Church in those miserable times which Jesus Christ foretold in the four and twentieth of S. Matthew Then the Sun sayes he shall be darkned and the Moon shall not give her light the Stars shall fall from heaven and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken The Church shall not appear because the wicked becoming persecutors shall no more observe any bounds in their cruelties Temporal Prosperity shall accompany them every where so that seeing no occasion of fear they shall say peace and security to themselves Then the Stars shall fall from heaven and the powers of the heavens
the state of grace where the goodness of God had sent the Gospel in declaring to them that they ought to fear being cut off as the Jews from the Covenant of God he addresses himself to the whole body of the Gentiles converted to Jesus Christ Ad totum Gentium corpus adds he And certainly that horrible Apostasy of the whole world which has fallen out since manifestly shews us that this advice of S. Paul was not unprofitable For God having diffused in so great an extension of Countreys almost in a moment the waters of his Grace so that Religion flourished every where within a very little while after the truth of the Gospel was vanished and the treasure of salvation banished out of the Earth But whence could that change come unless from this that the Gentiles were fallen away from their Call and therefore it is that he clearly professes in a Letter to Melancthon that they had separated from all the world Plusquam enim absurdum est postquam discessionem à toto mundo facere coacti sumus alios ab aliis desilire The Author of the Prejudices yet further makes use of an Article of our Confession of Faith to prove the same thing which sayes That we believe that no one ought of his own authority to thrust himself into the government of the Church but that that ought to be done by election while it is possible and while God permits it Which exception we emphatically add to it because it has failed sometimes and even in our time in which the state of the Church was interrupted till God had raised up men after an extraordinary manner to order the Church a new which was in ruine and desolation Grounding himself on these two passages he insults over Monsieur Vigerius the Author of the Discourse in the Book of the Perpetuity of the Faith because he had declared That none of us had ever said that it could be possible that the Church should no longer subsist and that he defied Monsieur Arnaud to shew him one only Author among us who had thought so Before he had expressed such desires sayes the Author of the Prejudices it would have been well to the purpose that he had better informed himself about that which not only some Authors of his Sect have wrote but the Master of all their Authors which is Calvin who sayes a great deal more than that which is contained in that Book of the Perpetuity of the Faith since he looks upon the Church not only as possible to perish but as having effectually done so for many Ages so far as to say that the threatning of S. Paul which he pretends to be spoken to the whole body of the Gentiles had its effect that all the Gentiles had fell from their Call through a general Apostasy that the light of the Gospel had vanished in respect of them and that they had lost the treasure of salvation It is upon this foundation that he builds his Proposition and pretends to make us pass for worse men than the Donatists But all this is nothing else but an effect of the unjust and violent hatred that this Author has conceiv'd against us and Monsieur Vigerius had reason to deny that which he has denyed As the dispute here is only to know what our Hypothesis is upon the point of the perpetual subsistence of the Church it would be sufficient methinks to stop the mouth of the Author of the Prejudices to tell him that he troubles himself to no purpose that we do not believe that intire extinction of the Church throughout all the world which he layes to our charge and that he has mistaken the meaning of Calvin and that of our Confession of Faith for there is no likelihood that he should better know what we believe than our selves nor that he should be a more faithful Interpreter of the sense of Calvin and that of our Confession of Faith than we our selves Notwithstanding to make the Character of the Author of the Prejudices more and more known and what judgement we ought to make of that which he propounds when he speaks with the greatest confidence it will be good to relate here the testimony that Monsieur the Cardinal of Richelieu has given to the Protestant Churches concerning that that they believe and teach upon the subject of the perpetual subsistence of the Church until the end of the world For we might say that he had the Author of the Prejudices in his view and wrote about this matter only to confute him There is not sayes he any point in controversie between our Adversaries and us about which their Confessions of Faith speak so clearly and agree so uniformly as this which I may truly say ought not to be put into the number of the controverted points The Confession of Ausburg which may be said to be as well the Rule as the source and origine of all the other Confessions of Faith of our Adversaries sayes in express terms that the Church ought perpetually to remain one and holy That of Saxony sayes that the Article of the Creed which declares the Church Holy and Catholick was inserted therein only to confirm the faithful against the doubts that they might have of the stability of the Church That of the Switzers does not only affirm this truth but sets down the same reason for it that I my self have made use of here above since God sayes it would from all eternity that men should be saved we must acknowledge this truth that the Church has alwayes been for the time past that she subsists for the present and that she will do so till the end of the world The Scotch holds this Article to be so undoubtedly true that it compares the belief of it to that of the Mysterie of the Trinity saying That as the faithful believe the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost so they also constantly believe the perpetuity of the Church The Flemish professes the same truth and gives the reason altogether founded upon the Regality of Jesus Christ which being perpetual supposes in all times some subjects over whom he must reign The French Confession alone sayes nothing upon this occasion but it is so far from saying nothing of it through the difficulty that they found in this point that on the contrary the certainty which they had of it was in my opinion the cause of their silence She does not therefore it may be speak any thing because she did not think she could doubt of so evident a truth of which her founders have spoke so clearly for her Luther teaches it in terms so express that he makes perpetuity to enter into the definition of the Church as a quality that making a part of its essence is altogether inseparable from it He draws the duration of the Church from an Article of the Creed and the words of Jesus Christ which bind us to believe it saying that it is an
Article of Faith taught in the Creed and founded upon the promise of Jesus Christ who ought alwayes to have a holy Christian Society in this world that should subsist until the consummation of Ages Calvin does not say less and his words are not less express We must sayes he hold it for certain that from the beginning of the world there never was a time wherein the Church of God was not and there never will be till the consummation of Ages in which it shall not be Vpon this foundation refuting Servetus who maintained that the Church had been banished from the world for a certain time he sayes boldly that to say that God had not alwayes preserved some Church in this world would be to accuse him of a lye because he has promised that it shall endure as long as the Sun and Moon shall Beza speaks as the Flemish Confession which acknowledging that the reign of Jesus Christ is perpetual acknowledges also that he ought alwayes to have subjects upon whom to exercise that Kingly Office Du Moulin and Mestresat are not less ingenuous in this point c. Thus it is that Monsieur the Cardinal of Richelieu has justified us against the Author of the Prejudices He could not in my judgement have spoken either more clearly or more strongly In effect they cannot without ignorance or calumny ascribe that opinion of the intire extinction of the Church throughout all the world to us We say indeed and we say it with an extream grief that the Church has been for some Ages in so great an obscurity that we can very hardly see any traces of the natural beauty of Christianity shine forth there Ignorance Error Superstition as most thick Clouds have covered the face of Religion and the Government of the Church has fallen into so strange a disorder that we can see nothing but confusion in all parts so that the Church could not but appear under a very deplorable condition under that Eclipse This is that which Calvin means by that intire defection of the world whereof he speaks in the passage that the Author of the Prejudices has alledged and that which is also represented in our Confession of Faith by that ruine and desolation whereinto we say the Church was fallen But how great soever that ruine should have been we do not believe as the Donatists do that the Church had absolutely perished or that it was intirely extinct through all the world We do not so much as believe that it was restrained to those Societies which the passion of their enemies has laboured to cry down under the names of Sects calling them Berengarians Waldenses Albigenses Petro-busians Henricians Wicklefists Hussites c. and over whom the Author of the Prejudices has insulted so fiercely after his usual manner Those Societies were yet the most illustrious part of the Church because they were the most pure the most enlightned and the most generous but the Church did not wholly and entirely reside in them For not to speak of the little Children that dyed before the Age of discretion and to whom we do not doubt that God was merciful we are perswaded that while Errors and Superstitions might be seen to reign in their Pulpits in their Books in their Schools and in the Councils and that a great number were filled with them that God preserv'd to himself amidst the people a considerable number of the truly faithful who have kept their faith and their conscience pure by reason of their simplicity contenting themselves with the principles of the Christian Religion adoring one only God their Creator and Father putting their confidence in one only Jesus Christ dead and risen again for them and as to the rest living holily and Christianly with embarassing themselves either with the opinions of the School which they did not know or the Superstitions wherewith they beheld Christianity loaded and which the sole instinct of their conscience could make them reject We no wayes doubt that even among the most enlightned persons there has been a great number who have groaned under so many corruptions as they saw the Church afflicted with and who in waiting for better times have kept themselves without bearing a part in them But we say nothing upon this subject but what the Fathers and in particular S. Augustine have said concerning the state of the Church under the domination of the Arians For they have said two most remarkable things First That while the wicked and the Hereticks possessed the Pulpits while they preached their blasphemies there whilst they were Masters of the Councils whilst they had the multitude and the powers of the Age on their side while they persecuted the good to the utmost and while all seemed to stoop under their yoak God preserved in that corrupted Ministry a considerable number of the truly faithful who kept under the veil of their simplicity their faith pure receiving that which they preached of good to them and not being infected with the bad The second thing that they have said is that there were those there who being more enlightned and more strong in the faith than the others opposed themselves to the Heresie of the Arians and would not have any communion with them suffering constantly their banishments and the most cruel punishments for so just a cause To justifie this truth I shall only here set down that which S. Augustine has wrote upon this subject in his Epistle to Vincentius but before I relate his words we must note that the Donatists precisely did that which the Author of the Prejudices has done when he has abused some hyperbolical expressions that Calvin made use of and the words of our Confession of Faith to lay it to our charge that we believe an entire extinction of the Church For the Donatists after the same manner abused some passages of S. Hilary in which that Saint had exaggerated the lamentable state of the Church in his dayes under the domination of the Arians from whence they conclude that S. Hilary had thought that the Church had entirely failed It is therefore to refute this Objection that S. Augustine explains himself after this manner The Church sayes he is sometimes obscured and covered as it were with clouds by the great number of scandals when the wicked take the advantage of the night to shoot against those who are true in heart But even then she is eminent in her most firm defenders and if it be allowed to us to make some distinction in the words that God spake to Abraham Thy posterity shall be as the Stars of Heaven and as the Sand that lyes upon the Sea-shore I mean that we must understand by the Stars some few persons more firm and illustrious than the others and by the Sand the multitude of the weak and carnal which in a time of a calm appears quiet and free but which is sometimes covered with the floods of tribulations and temptations Such
purity of the faith in the Church nor to have extirpated Arianism since that however corrupted and infected the Church was with that Heresie there was yet a way to work out their salvation in her communion and under her Ministry 4. If he sayes to us that our Fathers ought not at least in reforming themselves to have separated themselves from those who were not for a Reformation nor to have forsook their communion and assemblies I will also say to him that after this reckoning the Orthodox in labouring to purge the Church from Arianism ought not at least to have separated it self from those who would retain Arianism but that they ought to have remained with them in one and the same communion and in the same assemblies which nevertheless they did not 5. If he sayes to us that the Berengarians the Waldenses and Albigenses were Schismaticks since they had withdrawn themselves from a communion and a Ministry under which God yet preserves the truly faithful I will likewise say to him that those couragious men of S. Augustine were in this reckoning Schismaticks since they had not less withdrawn themselves from that communion and publick Ministry when that Ministry was in the hands of the Arians as I have shewn by express testimonies 6. If he tells us lastly that since we acknowledge that they could have worked out their salvation under the Ministry of the Roman Church before the Reformation we ought to confess that we may yet at this day be saved in it since things are in the same estate now in which they were before I shall tell him that the Arians could have raised the same objection against the Orthodox after their separation For the Arians did not pretend to have changed any thing in the state of the Ministry under which S. Augustine acknowledged that God had preserved the truly faithful So that all the Objections which he shall make against our Hypothesis will be common to those against that of S. Augustine and the Author of the Prejudices will himself be as much concerned as we to answer them But not to refer our selves wholly to him let us see whether those difficulties are of such a weight as that there is no way left rationally to satisfie us It seems to me therefore that as to the first S. Augustine has said that it is great injustice to demand the names of those particular men who kept themselves pure under an impure Ministry since we do not keep a register of every particular man nor of the state of their consciences and that it is sufficient to know in the general that the promises that Jesus Christ has made alwayes to preserve to himself a Church upon Earth are inviolable that we must not therefore doubt that there has alwayes been good seed in the midst of the Arian tares It is the same answer that we make there needs nothing but to apply it To the second he has answered that the simplicity of many among the people who went not so far as to understand the bad sense of the Arian expressions sheltred them under Heresie that many others of the more enlightned remained in silence through the fear of persecutions contenting themselves to keep their own faith pure without partaking in the wickedness of the wicked and without listing themselves up against it In effect it is a Maxim of Phoebadius That it is sufficient to an humble conscience to keep its own faith without engaging it self to refute the belief of others and it is one of S. Augustine himself That no body can be culpable for the sins of another nor by consequence for the Heresies and Superstitions that infect a Ministry provided he take no part in them and no wayes consent to them either in effect or appearance But this is yet the same answer that we make for as I have already said we do not doubt that there was among the people a very great number of persons whose light went no further than the meer knowing of the chief Articles of Christianity contained in the Creed in the Decalogue and Lords Prayer and who by consequence were hid under those capital Errors with which the publick Ministry was then loaded We no wayes doubt that in the midst of that darkness there were not a great many enlightned persons who through the fear of persecutions remained under the same corrupted Ministry with the others separating the good from the bad discerning the Errors and Superstitions taking no part in them and living as to other things in that hope that they should not be culpable for the sins of others To the third S. Augustine has answered that it is an absurd Objection For it is not more absurd to say that we ought not to take care to heal a Disease under a pretence that as great as the Disease is life yet remains than to say that we ought not to take care to purge the Church and the Ministry from a Heresie that infects it under a pretence that there is yet a way to be saved in her communion and under her Ministry That we must on the contrary labour as much as possibly we can to re-establish Christianity in its whole frame lest the evil should increase and be made incurable through a too great negligence and least that good which remains in the Church should be wholly corrupted by the contagion of the evil But this is also the very same answer that we make Our Fathers ought to have employed all their endeavours to reform the Latin Church by their Exhortations by their Books by their Sermons by their Example because that we ought alwayes as much as possibly we can and as the time and our knowledge call us to it to labour to settle Religion in a state of purity lest in the end Errors and Superstitions render themselves universal and the whole Church should perish through our negligence For although Jesus Christ has promised us that it shall never perish yet notwithstanding this would be to tempt God and to render our selves unworthy of his grace to neglect the means that he gives us for its preservation and that so much the more as according to humane judgements there was no other than that of the Reformation To the fourth S. Augustine has answered That in labouring to purge the Church from Arianism it was necessary that they should separate themselves from the communion of those who obstinately persisted in that Heresie and the fixed resolution that they testified to remain in it was a sufficient cause to make them withdraw themselves from their Assemblies But we answer with greater advantage that our Fathers in labouring for a Reformation ought to have forsaken the Assemblies of those who not only were fixed in the opinion of having nothing reformed and opposed themselves with all their might to hinder a Reformation but who went so far as to impose a new necessity on mens consciences to believe their Opinions and even to
not God his Prophets and his Altars yet among them Lord said Elias they have killed thy Prophets and thrown down thy Altars And the hundred Prophets of God that Obadiah hid in two Caves to withdraw them from the persecution of the Idolatress Jezabel the Altar of God that Elias repaired in Carmel to sacrifice there by the miraculous fire that fell down from Heaven to consume the victim the calling of Elisha and Micaiah and in a word the whole History of those schismatical Ten Tribes does it not evidently note that God looked on them as his true Church in which there was yet a means to be saved We must not therefore abuse that which the Fathers have wrote against Schismaticks in intending to aggravate their crime and to draw them from it nor must we take their expressions in the whole rigour of the letter Their meaning is not that all those generally who are found engaged in a Schismatical Communion even down to Tradesmen and Labourers who remain there with an upright heart and through the prejudice of their consciences are out of the Church and eternally damned but that the Authors and Defenders of Schism who run into it through their personal interests or out of a spirit of fierceness pride and an hatred incompatible with the Spirit of Jesus Christ commit a horrible crime and that while they are in that state they remain deprived of all hopes of salvation That if the Fathers have said any thing more generally and which cannot be thus restrained it is just to understand it in a comparative sense that is to say that setting that Schismatical party of the Church in opposition to that which is not so the hope of salvation appears evidently in this which it does not in the other where it is obscured by that Schism The End of the Third Part. An HISTORICAL DEFENCE OF THE Reformation Against a Book Intituled Just Prejudices against the CALVINISTS THE FOURTH PART Of the Right that our Fathers had to hold a Christian Society among themselves by Publick Assemblies and the Exercise of the Ministry CHAP. I. That our Fathers had a Right to have their Church-Assemblies separate from those of the Church of Rome on the supposition that they were right in the Foundation THE Order of the Matters of this Treatise requires that we now go on to that Separation which the Author of the Prejudices calls Positive and that after having confirmed the Right that our Fathers had to Examine the State of Religion and the Church in their days after our having shewed the indispensable necessity that lay upon them to forsake the Assemblies of the Church of Rome and to live apart from her Communion that we also establish the Right that they had to set up a Christian Society among themselves notwithstanding their going off from the other Party who were not for a Reformation and to make up alone and apart a Body of the Church or an External and visible Communion This is that which I pretend to establish in this Fourth and last Part and to that end I shall here Treat of two things The first shall respect the Right of those Publick Assemblies and the Second shall be concerning that of the Gospel Ministry wherein our Function lies Howsoever these two things have a dependance one upon another it will yet be well to Treat of them with some distinction To make the First clear I shall first lay it down as an indisputable Truth That the Right of Religious Assemblies naturally follows that of Societies I mean That as far as a Religious Society is Just and Lawful so far the Assemblies that are therein made are Just and Lawful and that on the contrary as far as a Society is unjust and wicked so far its Assemblies are so too This Principle is evident to common sence and it is for that Reason that we condemn the Assemblies of the Heathens Jews and Mahometans as Unlawful and Criminal because their Societies are impious and wicked and that having no right to be united to believe and practice those Errors which they believe and practice they have also no right to Assemble themselves together in order to make a Publick Profession It is for the same Reason that we hold on the contrary the Christian Assemblies to be not only Just and Allowable but to be necessary and commanded by Divine Right because the Christian Society that is to say the Church is it self also of Divine Right It is then True that the Right of Assemblies follows that of Societies But we must further suppose as another evident and certain Truth That our Fathers before the Reformation were Latin Christians living in the Communion of the Latin Church in which they made as considerable a party as the rest of the Latins and that from Father to Son throughout a long succession Time out of mind they enjoyed with the others the rights of that Society That they were equally in possession of it with the other common Assemblies of that Religion having a part in the Ministry in the Churches in the Sacraments in the publick Prayers in the Reading and Preaching of the Word and that as far as the communion of the Latin Church was lawful so far the part that our Fathers had in it was lawful also That it was not a company of Strangers or unknown persons come from the utmost parts of America or the Southern Lands nor a sort of People dropt down from the Clouds who were newly joyned together with them in the same Society but Persons and whole Families setled a long time ago who were joyned together with them in the Profession of the Christian Religion many Ages before and who by consequence were in possession of the Rights of that Society Although had they been Strangers Americans and Barbarians on whom God should have suddenly bestowed the Favour of Calling them to the True Faith and the True Holiness of Christanity yet we could believe that by that thing alone they would have been invested in all the Rights of that Society as much as if they had had it by a long possession time out of mind But howsoever it be they were Christians from Father to Son and neither their blood nor their birth did distinguish them from the others We are now concerned only to search out whether that which hapned to our Fathers that is to say their Reformation their Condemnation by the Popes and by their Council of Trent and their Separation from the Church of Rome can be able to spoil them of all their Rights For if it be True that they were fallen off either by their own ill Carriage or by the meer Authority of the Church of Rome we must yield that our Assemblies are Unlawful and Criminal but if on the contrary they were not so fallen off if that which hapned to them did nothing else but confirm their Right and render it more pure more just and more indisputable they ought also
Pastors as I have shewn But they are necessary to the well being of a Church but it is the hand of the Pastors alone that dispences the Sacraments to us and their Preaching is a publick instruction that more strongly sets before our Eyes the Truths of the Gospel that livelily applies its Precepts its Promises its Threatnings and its Exhortations to us and frequently forces us to make those Reflections on our selves which we should not do without their Aid Their Authority restrains us their light inlightens us their Direction guides us their Example excites us and their Labours case ours It is certain that a Flock without a Pastor cannot but be in a very bad condition for howsoever each of the Mystical Sheep who compose it may defend themselves against the assaults of the Wolves yet it is not ordinarily done either with such force or such success as when the defending of them lies in the hands of Faithful Pastors to whom God communicates a greater measure of his Light and Grace and although the External Society among the simple Faithful may not cease to subsist though they have not actually any Pastor since they may be joyned together in Jesus Christ by the profession of one same Faith and the same Piety which assembles them by vertue of the first Convocation that the Apostles made yet that Society as far as it is External would be far better maintained by the Actions of the Ministry of the Pastors then it would be otherwise 3. I shall not fear to say that even the Actions of the Ministry are necessary for the perpetual subsistence of that External Society for however the meer Reading of the Word of God Publick Prayers in Common the mutual Exhortations of the Faithful and the Writings of the Doctors of the Church are without doubt sufficient to preserve the Faith and Piety in the Souls of men not only during some time but even always if they do not neglect their duty yet notwithstanding it must be acknowledged that according to the way that we are made and to speak as they say after the manner of men a Flock cannot abide a long Time without a Shepherd so as not to fall into Negligence and by that Negligence into an Oblivion of its duty and in fine so as the Sheep should not be in a great danger of dispersion See here after what manner Pastors are necessary to the Church but to imagine that it cannot absolutely have any more a Christian Society or lawful Assemblies among the Faithful when their Ordinary Pastors forsake them is that which they can never maintain with any Reason For the Faithful are the Sheep of Jesus Christ and when their Pastors scatter them the Grace and Name of Jesus Christ calls them together They are in a Society by the right of the first Convocation of the Church which is a perpetual right which subsists every where where the True Faith and true Christian Piety are found Common among many persons and it is from that perpetual and immovable Right that that of the actual Assemblies Flowes But what Order can they hold in their Assemblies since they have none to direct them Externally I answer That the same Spirit of Grace which inspired them with Piety and Charity would it self suggest an Order and subject them one to another by a mutual consent for God does not forsake his own Children though men and the Church may always say in the Languague of the Prophet When my Father and Mother forsake me the Lord shall take me up If there be any Magistrate to be found among the Faithful it belongs to him to settle an Order among them for the Civil Society comes in Naturally to the succour of the Religious when the Religious is cast into any Extremity If there be no Magistrate they ought to agree about an Order in private Conferences before they come to Assemble together in a Body to avoid Confusion and every one has a Right to make those private Conferences But what can they do in those Assemblies They may pray to God there they may implore the succours of his Providence and put their Trust in his Promises They must begin by that Afterwards they will search out all possible means to have Pastors called to that Office by the Ordinary ways to receive the Sacraments and Preaching of the Gospel from them but if that is impossible or if they see that that would be evidently to Tempt God and put the Flock in danger of dissipation it is Necessary in that case that the Flock should chuse a Pastor for it self and Consecrate him to God by ardent Prayers in committing to his Trust the Rights of the Ministry that reside in the Body of the Faithful to whom Jesus Christ according to Saint Augustine has given the Power of the Keys For we ought not to imagine that the Body of the Faithful should be stripped of the Right of the Ministry as often as they should be actually without Pastors That Right is inviolable it cannot be either lost or separated from the Body of the Faithful We will in the Close examine whether an Election made after that manner gives a sufficient Call it is sufficient at present to know that neither the Right of a Christian Society nor that of Christian Assemblies is so necessarily tied to the Pastors That when there should be none of them the Faithful could not remain united together externally in a Body of a Visible Church or make those Assemblies lawful The Author of the Prejudices Treating about this matter distinguishes between two sorts of Separations the one Negative the other Positive There is says he a meer Negative Separation which consists more in the denyal of certain Acts of Communion then in positive Actions against that Society from which one separates And there is another Positive Separation which includes the erecting of a Separate Society the Establishment of a new Ministry and the positive Condemnation of the former Society to which he was united He says afterwards That we did not content our selves with the first kind of Separation that we have gone further that we have formed a new Society a new Church that we have set up new Pastors That it is that kind of Separation whereof he accuses us and that it is this also that we ought to Justify our selves about He repeats the same things in the end and concludes That when the Faithful should believe themselves obliged out of a good Conscience to separate themselves Negatively they ought not to form a Society nor have any Pastors But that they ought to remain in that State without any Pastors and without any External Worship in waiting until God extraordinarily raise up some with visible Characters of their Mission I acknowledge that that Distinction of two kinds of Separation is of some Use and I have my self made use of it for the putting of the matters of this Treatise into a more natural Order
are upon For if they mean That the Society or Church of the Protestants is new in respect of the State wherein it was or of that external form which it had immediately before the Reformation we shall voluntarily agree that it is made new in that sence after the same manner that the Scripture calls the Regenerate a new Man or as God promises to give us a new heart or as they call a House repaired and put into its natural State a new House That would speak the Favour God shew'd to our Fathers in re-establishing the Christian Society in that Just and lawful State wherein it ought to be according to its first Establishment and that that State is very much different from that wherein it was immediately before the Reformation This is that which we do not deny and are so far from it that on the contrary we praise and glorify God for it But if they mean that we have made a new Church that is to say one essentially differing from that which Jesus Christ and his Apostles would establish in the World and which has always subsisted even to our days or that in all that which depends on us we have not re-established it in its first and lawful State this is what we deny and in this sence which is the only one that can render the Accusations of our Adversaries just we maintain that we have not in the least made a new Church In a word we say that the Church of Jesus Christ has subsisted down from the Apostles to us inclusively in all that which it has Essentially and that she yet subsists at this day among us but that having changed her State or External Form in the Ages that preceeded the Reformation she was re-established in her just and lawful State by the Reformation of our Fathers which no ways hinders but that she was and might always be the same Church To make this Truth to be the better understood we need only to clear on the one side what that Essence of the Church is that ought always to remain immovable to shew that it may be but one and the same Church by descent and uninturrepted Succession and on the other side what State it is that she has suffered change in and how it could be altered and repaired The Essence of the Church consists in this That it is a Body of divers persons united together in the Commnion of one only True God under one only Jesus Christ their Head and Mediatour and it is Jesus Christ himself that has given us this Idea of it when he says that This is life Eternal to know the only True God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent That Definition which we give of the Church supposes 1. The subject or matter whereof the Church is composed which are divers men divers persons united among themselves and with God 2. It supposes the Necessary means without which that Communion cannot be which are the word of the Gospel and the Holy Spirit 3. It contains not only the True Faith Charity Hope which are the natural bonds of that Communion but all the other Christian Vertues also as Worship Adoration Truth Obedience Thanksgiving Justice Temperance c. which are the the duties to which that Communion engages us 4. It comprehends in it further all the fruits that we gather from that Communion as Remission of Sins Peace and Tranquillity of Soul Consolation in Afflictions Succours in Temptations c. 5. In fine it includes all the Rights that necessarily follow that Communion as that of being joyned together in an External Society that of Publick Assemblies that of the Ministry that of the Sacraments and that of External Government and Discipline See here that which is Essential to the Church for I call that Essential without which the Church cannot subsist and which yet is sufficient to make it subsist that which cannot subsist if that Church fail to subsist and that which cannot be wanting if there be a Church As to the State in respect of which it suffers changes it consists in all that that depends on the different disposition of Times Places and Persons For Example To have the Bodily presence of Jesus Christ to have Apostles and Evangelists for its Pastors to have the Miraculous gifts of healing that of Tongues that of the Descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Faithful by Visible Symbols that of Prophecy and that of an external and infallible direction and instruction is a State wherein the Church was in the Time of its Birth but which was changed in the other Times that followed To have Pastors illustrious for Zeal Learning and Piety as a Saint Augustine a Saint Basil a Saint Chrysostom is a State wherein it was not always nor every where but in some Times and Places only To be flourishing and in Peace without Persecution without Schism without Error is a State wherein it has neither been always nor in all Places nor in respect of all those persons who have composed it but which it has been in in some Times and Places only and with respect to some Persons We ought then to set down in their proper Order those things which belong to the State of the Church and to its Essence and which by Consequence are liable to change as to be extended every where or in the greatest part of the World to have a multitude or the greatest number Temporal Splendor or outward Glory Peace whether in regard of those without or in respect of those within Liberty in External Profession Visibility of Assemblies Purity of the Ministry Holiness of External Worship Form of Government that of Discipline and that of Liturgies an Actual Bond of the Parts of the Church in one Body of External Communion and the Actual Exercise of the Ministry or if you will the Actual Presence of the Pastors All those are things that do not absolutely belong to the Essence of the Church but only to its State or Condition and of which it may be sometimes spoyled either wholly or in Part without being absolutely destroyed It may be restrained to a few places and a few persons and therefore it is called in some places of Scripture a little Flock she may be so in her low State We are says Saint Paul not many wise not many mighty not many noble but God has chosen the weak things of this World to confound the strong She may be in Trouble and in Affliction through the Persecution of Infidels as she was under the Heathen Emperours or in Fighting against Hereticks as she has been almost always she may lose the Visibility of her Assemblies as she did in most places in the Time of Decius and Dioclesian she may find her Ministry corrupted as it hapned in the Time of the Arrians she may see her external Worship sullied by Actions of superstition and Idolatry as it fell out in Judah and Israel in the days of the Prophets As to
the Form of her Government we cannot deny that in that respect she has not under-went divers changes I do not mention the Introduction of the Episcopal Order for that is a Question but I speak of those changes that have befel her through the Usurpations and Contests of the first See's and chiefly by the Usurpations of that of Rome which the greatest part of the World will own to have been very considerable Her Discipline and her Liturgies have also undergone many Changes and they cannot in that regard ascribe any Uniformity to the Church either in respect of Times or Places In fine she has sometimes beheld the Body of her Ordinary Pastors turned against her self she has seen a great part of her true Children scattered and dispersed here and there without being able to perform any Acts of an External Society and she has seen some of her Flocks deprived of their Pastors and forced to set up some among themselves in the room of those who had abandoned them For all that fell out in the days of the Arrians the Councils determined Heresy the greatest part of the Orthodox who opposed themselves to their Impiety were either banished or forced to fly into the Desarts and according to the Testimony of St. Epiphanius divers People who saw that their Bishops were turned Arrians in the Council of Seleucia looked on them as the miserable Desertors of their Ministry and set up themselves other Bishops The greatest part of those Changes that fall out in the Church come from two sources the one That she is mixed with the Worldly and Profane in the band of the same External Profession and the other That the Truly Faithful themselves who only are the Church of Jesus Christ as truly Faithful as they are fail not to have a great many other imperfections their knowledge is obscure their Righteousness is accompanied with its faults their Inclinations are not all right and even their most just Inclinations do not fail to have some farther irregularity These two Fountains produce an heap of evils and disorders the Worldly on their part bring thither Covetousness Ambition Pride Opinionativeness contempt of God his Mysteries and Worship Politick Designs Worldly Interests a Spirit of Grandeur Luxury Superstitions Heresies Love of Dominion Presumption Opinion of Infallibility Forgeries and all other Perversities of the heart of Man The Faithful they bring thither on their side their Ignorance their Negligence their Fearfulness their Simplicity and sometimes their Passions their Personal Interests and Vices From all which a Chaos is made up of darkness and Confusion a Mystery of Iniquity a Spiritual Babylon that perpetually makes war against the Church which reduces her sometimes into very strange Extreamities and which would without doubt destroy her if her Eternal Head did not keep her up above all I acknowledge that the Spirit of God fights against that Babylon on the Churches side and that he presides over that Chaos to expel those Confusions and to hinder the Churches Perishing But it must not be imagined under a pretence of that presence of the Spirit of God that there never happens any disorder in it He indeed always preserves the Essence of the Church but he frequently permits her State to be altered This is the Effect that that heap of Crimes Vices and Imperfections may produce which I have mentioned as well on the side of the Truly Faithful as on that of the Worldly They never go so far as to destroy her intirely but they go so far sometimes as to spoil her of her Ornaments of her External Advantages and even of her very Health if I may so speak and therefore Jesus Christ told his Disciples In the World you shall have Tribulation but be of good cheer I have overcome the World God has always preserved and he will preserve to the end of all Ages a Body of many persons united together in the Communion of his Son Jesus Christ This Body can never perish it can never cease to be nor lose any thing that is absolutely necessary to its subsistence but it may be deprived of its large Extent Temporal Splendor Worldly Glory Peace Rest and Visibility It may see its Ministry Corrupted in as much as it is in the hands of men it may see its External Worship dishonoured and Error and Superstition fill its Pulpits Possess its Schooles and diffuse it self over its Councils its true Members may be hindred from making external Assemblies and a Body of a Visible Communion and it may be abandoned by its Pastors and reduced to a Necessity of Creating others See here what the State of the Church is Upon all these Illustrations it will be no difficult matter to decide the Question concerning the Novelty and Antiquity of our Church For if we have made a Society essentially different from that which Jesus Christ and his Apostles formed at the first and which has all a long subsisted down from his Birth to this present if we cannot justly say That we are a Body of many Persons united together in the Communion of one only true God under one only Jesus Christ our Head and Mediatour if they can with any ground contest with us the Unity of the True Christian Faith Piety and Holiness in one word if we want any thing that is necessary to the Constitution of the Church and its subsistence or if there be any thing in us that hinders that that good which we have does not produce its effect to give us the Form and Nature of a True Church it is certain that we have made a new Church and by a Consequence a false and an Adulterous Church But if we can truly and justly glorify God for all that which makes up the Essence of a True Church if our Faith is sound if our Piety is pure if our Charity is sincere if we can upon good grounds maintain that God preserves and upholds in the External Communion of that Body which we compose the Truly Faithful and Just persons who only as I have said often are the Church it is certain also that there is nothing more unjust then that Accusation of a New Church which they charge us with There never was in the World any other Church of God then that of his truly just and Faithful Ones that Body only is in the Communion of the Father and of his Son Jesus Christ that alone is intrusted with the Truth that alone is animated by the Holy Spirit that alone is God's Inheritance his People his Vine his enclosed Garden his House and Mystical Family as the Scripture calls it that alone in fine has all the Rights of the Ecclesiastical Society the Right of External Assemblies that of the Ministry Sacraments Government and Discipline Let the Author of the Prejudices and his Brethren stir themselves as much as they please let them animate one another let them cry out write Prejudices and invectives never so much against us let
any Relation to that Religion was not of the Essence of the Church but its State the mixture of Errors and Abuses with the sound Doctrine the Corruptions of Worship the Vices of the Ministry the Superstitious Ceremonies the form of Government the Religious as they speak that is to say the divers Orders of Monks the different degrees of the Hierarchy Feasts Processions Fasts and in a Word all that which has been noted in the Objection and in which that Church was then different from the Protestant All that I say belonged to the condition of the Church then and could by consequence be changed without making either the one or the other a new Church That the Faithful found themselves insensibly overpowred by almost an infinite number of the Worldly who mingled themselves with them as Tares with the Wheat That those worldly made themselves Masters of the Pulpits the Ministry the Councils that they brought in Errors Superstitions and Abuses that they changed the form of the Government of the Church and that of the Publick Worship all that does not respect the Essence of the Church which consists only in the True Faith but its Condition so that when our Fathers Reformed those things we may well say they Changed the State of the Church in their days but not that they changed the Church nor that they made a new one and their Church will not cease notwithstanding that Change to be joyned by a true Succession of Times and Persons to that which was before A Town full of Strangers who make themselves more powerful there left desolate by those popular diseases which those Strangers brought thither and filled with those disorders which they caused does not cease to be the same Town by a True Succession of Times and Persons when those Strangers should quit it and its good Citizens be established in their Just and Lawful State as heretofore Rome sackt by the Goths did not cease to be the same Rome when it was freed from them and a River swelling with the Waters of the neighbouring Brooks that make it overflow the Fields and break over its Banks is yet the same River when those Waters go back and retire into their Ordinary Channel CHAP. III. That the Ministry Exercised in the Communion of the Protestants is Lawful and that the Call of their Ministers is so also WE come now to Justify the Right that we have to the Gospel-Ministry and to defend our Call not only against the Ordinary Objections of those of the Church of Rome but also against the Accusations of the Author of the Prejudices in Particular For that Author who thinks it meritorious to go beyond others especially in his Passions is not contented meerly to say that we are Pastors without Mission and Ministers without a Call but by a heat of Zeal obstinately adhering to him he call us Thieves and Robbers Tyrants Rebells false Pastors and Sacrilegious Vsurpers of the Authority of Jesus Christ Nevertheless as those injuries are nothing else but the Effect of his ill humour it will be no hard matter to shew him that all the Conditions that we can rationally require to make a Ministry Just and Lawful are to be found in that of the Protestant Ministers and that Thanks be to God they can reproach them with nothing on that occasion This is that which I design to shew in this Chapter and to this Effect I shall first propound some Observations which I Judge necessary for the unfolding of that Question I say then in the First place That we do not here dispute about the Call that our Fathers had for a Reformation but only of that which they had and which we have after them for the Ordinary Ministry of the Gospel For we ought to take great heed least we confound as the Author of the Prejudices has done those two sorts of Calls that we acknowledge our Fathers to have had and which the Church of Rome disputes with them For That which they had to Reform themselves that is to say to reject that which we call their Errors and Superstitions that were brought into the Latin Church and that which regards the Ordinary Preaching of the word of the Gospel the Administration of the Sacraments and the Exercise of Discipline These two Calls are wholly different The one which is that of the Reformation is of Right common to all Christians there being no one who is not Lawfully called by his Baptism to destroy Errors contrary to the Nature or Purity of the true Faith and to exhort his Neighbours to do the same thing for the Interest of his own Salvation and that of the Glory of God as I have already shewn in my Second part From whence it follows That in that Respect they can have nothing to say against our Fathers and much less against those whom they call the first Reformers since being as they were in publick Offices they had more of a Call for that then was necessary The other which is that which respects the Ordinary Preaching of the Word of the Gospel the Administration of the Sacraments and the exercise of Discipline is not common to every private man On the contrary no one ought on his own head to thrust himself in without being otherwise Lawfully called The Reason of this Difference is that the Reformation consisted in the meer Acts of Faith and Charity which are those Particular Acts that none can dispence with because no one can say that it does not belong to him to be of the true Faith or to be Charitable but the Preaching of the Word the Administration of the Sacraments and the exercise of Discipline are those Acts of Authority that no one can do in his own name but in the name of another that is to say in the Name of God or in the Name of the whole Church so that he ought to be Lawfully Authoriz'd to do them It is then this latter Call that we are concerned about in this Question 2. In the Second place we must note that we do not here any more dispute about that Extraordinary Ministry which Jesus Christ himself immediately Communicated to his Apostles to give men the first Call to the Christian Faith and to Assemble them in a Society For our Fathers did not make any new Convocation nor any new Society nor any new Church as I have shewn in the Two Foregoing Chapters They did not preach a new Testament or a new Covenant differing from that which the Apostles preached They were not qualified either as new Apostles or new Prophets or new Evangelists they did not bring with them any new Revelation to the World but they Purged and Reformed the Corrupted State of Religion and the Church by the same Scriptures that the Apostles left us they laboured to Reduce things into their Antient and Natural State and for the rest they Preached the same Gopel and Administred the same Sacraments that the Apostles left and
which had alwayes Subsisted notwithstanding the Corruptions wherein they were plunged In a word they did not set up any thing new for which they can with any Colour of Reason require an immediate Mission either from God or Jesus Christ his Son We speak therefore here only of the same Ordinary Ministry that the Apostles established in the Christian Church as they called or formed it and which was there appointed to help its Preservation and Purgation This is that Ministry which we do not pretend to have a new but that Antient and perpetual one which Jesus Christ and his Apostles left to the Church when they were Converted to the Christian Faith 3. In the Third Place we must know that to Judge well of the Validity or Invalidity of a Ministry we ought to Consider it in three Respects 1. In Respect of the things themselves that are taught and practised in it 2. In Respect of the Body that is to say the Society where it is exercised 3. In Respect of the Persons who exercise it in that Society In Regard of the first the Ministry of the Jews the Pagans the Mahometans is Wicked and Sacrilegious because the things that are taught there are Impious In the Second the Ministry of the Donatists and Luciferians which was good and Christian in it self because there was taught and practised nothing ill in it yet it was notwithstanding Vitious because it was exercised in Schismatical Societies which had no right to have a Ministry apart and to live in aState of Separation For the Third the Ministry of an Intruder an Usurper a Simoniack howsoever good it be in it self however it be set up in a Lawfull Society that is to say in the true Church yet it is notwithstanding bad and Unlawfull through the Defect of his Personal Call 4. In the Fourth Place we must here before we go any further make Use of the same Distinction upon this Subject of the Ministry that we have used in the Preceding Chapter upon the Subject of the Church I mean that we ought to place a great Difference between that which makes the Essence of the Ministry and that which belongs only to its State For that which is Essential to the Gospel Ministry cannot be changed so as to make another Ministry and by Consequence a False Sacrilegious and Criminal Ministry since there can be but one alone good and Lawful and on the contrary the Essence of a Ministry remaining the same and Intire it must needs be said that it is the same Ministry though as to what Respects its State it should have received a Change The Essence of the Gospel Ministry Consists in the teaching the saving Christian Truth without excluding any Article that is necessary to the Subsistance of the True Faith Piety and Holiness in dispensing the true Sacraments that Jesus Christ has Established in his Church and in guiding the People in such a manner as helps to preserve the Religious Society or which at least does not absolutely destroy it It s State is either good or bad the Good State is then when there is such a Purity in the Ministry that only Christian Truths are taught there and wherein those are taught in all their Force and Natural Beauty with all the Diligence and Care that men assisted by the Grace of God are capable of and when the Sacraments also are purely administred according to the Institution of Jesus Christ without Addition or Diminution and with all the Decency Modesty Simplicity Gravity Circumspection that those Mysteries of the Christian Religion require so that God may be Glorified and his Kingdom more and more established in the Hearts of men and when further the Church is Governed by Just Wise Prudent Charitable and well Executed Laws after a way that does not destroy but Edify In Fine that Good Consists also in this that those who Exercise this Ministry receive it by Just and Lawful waies that are proper to draw the Blessing of God upon them and their Labours and that they behave themselves worthily quitting themselves with a good Conscience in the Charge Committed to them The bad Estate of the Church on the contrary is then when that Ministry is found to be mingled with Errours and Superstitions when the Sacraments are Altered and Corrupted when the Government of it is worldly or unjust or Tyrannical or Confused when those who fill up that Ministry take it by ill scandalous and unlawfull wayes and behave themselves unworthily in it The Good State of the Ministry is a thing that is the most to be wished for in the World and most proper to preserve the Faith Piety Holiness Peace Comfort and Publick Rejoicing in the Church and the bad State is the most to be feared of any thing in the World and that which we ought to Labour the most to Remedy Nevertheless we are not to think that the Ministry may not yet Subsist in that bad State as our Bodily Life does not cease to Subsist in the midst of Languishing and heaps of Diseases 5. In the fifth place we ought Carefully to distinguish the Ministry considered precisely in it self and the same Ministry in as much as it is Occupied or possessed by persons who are Invested in it or if you will we ought to distinguish the Ministry and the Ministers for there is a very great Difference between the one and the other as in a civil Society there is a great difference between the Magistracy and the Magistrate The Magistracy is an Office the Magistrate is a Person who possesses that Office the Office remains allwayes the persons are changed by Death or otherwise This Distinction is not hard to be conceived but it is nevertheless of very great Use in the Matter we are upon For the Ministry Considered in its self is of an immediatly Divine Establishment Whereas the Persons that are raised to it are raised thither by means of men and if their Call be divine as it is in Effect it is no otherwise then mediately so for they are men who call them to it although they do it by the Authority of God It is then certain that when God has established the Ministry he has not only established all that which it ought to have Essential to it but he has also Established it de Jure and de facto in a good State I mean he has not only laid an Obligation upon Ministers faithfully to discharge all the Functions of so great a Charge but that he has even chosen Persons who have most faithfully acquitted themselves of it But it has not been alwayes the same in those who have been called by men for as humane Judgments are so short-sighted that they cannot pierce through the Hearts of men and as they are mixed with a great many Imperfections the Ministry may be Committed to persons who are Insensibly Corrupted either through their Ignorance or through other Inclinations yet more Criminal then Ignorance and it is
whole Body of the Protestants which has all along elsewhere had Pastors called by the Ordinary wayes besides all that I say I have shewn that in a Case of Absolute necessity such as those Flocks were in then the People may Lawfully make use of that Right which God and the Nature of a Christian Society have put into their hands CHAP. IV. An Answer to the Objections of the Author of the Prejudices about the Call of the First Reformers and the Validity of our Baptism THere Remains nothing at present but to give a Satisfactory Answer to some Objections that the Author of the Prejudices has made against the Call of the first Reformers which may all be reduced to this to wit Whether it was Ordinary or Extraordinary or whether it was neither the one nor the other Their Ministers says he are divided upon this point into two different Judgments which some have Vnited together to make up a Third Composed of those two Some distinctly say that the mission of their Ministers is Extraordinary others that it is Ordinary and others that it is Extraordinary and Ordinary both together But as this last Opinion includes the two others so it destroys it self in destroying them So that properly it will be only necessary to examine in particular the two first Opinions It is in the first place very remarkable that the Author of the Prejudices after having raised the Question as he has done whether the first Reformers were Thieves and Robbers Tyrants Rebels False Pastors and Sacrilegious Vsurpers of the Authority of Jesus Christ he has reduced all his proof of it to wrangling about those Qualities of Ordinary or Extraordinary that be given to their Call From those high words it seemed to have lain upon him to have shewn us that that Call was destroyed and annihilated without any Return and that he should at least have brought us what would have wholly overthrown the first and Natural Foundations upon which we establish it But Thanks be to God that is not done and the choller of the Author of the Prejudices is turned upon those Titles that we give to the Call of the first Reformers he does not further concern himself to know directly whether it is good and Lawful but meerly to know whether it is Ordinary or Extraordinary or whether it be neither the one nor the other Moreover it is certain that to decide even this last Question it is very ill done to begin with the setting aside the Sentiment of those who hold that it is Ordinary and Extraordinary both together For as those Terms of Ordinary and Extraordinary are Ambiguous and that by reason of their Ambiguity it may be so that a Call that is Ordinary in one respect shall be Extraordinary in another so to set aside those who would have that of the first Reformers to be Ordinary and Extraordinary both together is to set aside those who would clear that Ambiguity it is designedly to shut up the dispute in Equivocal Propositions to give way to the making a long discourse to no purpose it is in a word to imitate those who propose nothing else to themselves but how to cast dust in the Eyes and to suspend the Judgments of their Readers in removing far from them the clear Knowledge of things It is therefore necessary for the Author of the Prejudices to redress that and because that those two Sentiments one of which carries this with it that that Call is Extraordinary and the other that it was Ordinary do not encounter one another at the bottom it is necessary to shew in what respects both the one and the other may be said To this Effect I shall first say a Word of the Ministry of the first Reformers and then afterwards I shall speak of their Call As to their Ministry it is true that it is not Extraordinary nor newly Instituted but the same that the Apostles established at first for the Preservation and Propagation of the Church which was preserved in the Latin Church down to the Age of our Fathers in respect of all that was absolutely Essential to it and which shall also subsist unto the end of the World as I have explained in the foregoing Chapter We may say notwithstanding that the Reformation in which they were employed was an Extraordinary Function of their Office For however they did not need either a new Right or a new Ministry for that since every Pastor is bound to labour to Reform that which regards his Flock when it is necessary that he should do it yet such a Reformation as they made is not a thing that should be done alwayes So that in that Respect their Ministry had something Extraordinary to wit in as much as their Flocks had an Extraordinary need of their help to drive back those Errors and Superstitions which had got ground as a vessel that is ready to be Shipwrackt has an Extraordinary need of the Assistance of those who Steer it to avoid that intire destruction wherewith it is threatned But besides this we may say also that it had this of Extraordinary in it that though it was yet the same Gospel Ministry which had till then subsisted in the Latin Church in respect of all its Essentials yet they put it into another State then that wherein it was for many Ages before as having purged and freed it from all the Corruptions that disgraced it and as those things are called Extraordinary that are not wont to be seen and which are not so often done that Change of the Form or State that happened to the Ministry after its having for so long a time appeared to the eyes of the people quite otherwise then they saw it then may very well be called Extraordinary As for that which regards their Call it was not Extraordinary if by that Term they mean that it should have come immediately from God as that of Moses and the Antient Prophets or immediately from Jesus Christ as that of the Apostles but it was Ordinary that is to say they received it from God mediately by means of men It is also certain that the manner of receiving their Call as to the greater part was the very same with that that is most Common and usual in the Church which is that they received their Ordination from the hand of those Pastors who were themselves in that Office All that therefore which there was of Extraordinary in their Call in that respect was that they rectified it by freeing it from all the Impurity it had and which came from the Corruption of the men of that Age and in referring it to its true End which should be the Purity of Gods Worship and the Salvation of Souls I acknowledg that in their Administration they went beyond the intention of those who had conferred their Offices on them but they did no more in that then they ought for the Ministry which they had received being Gods and
the Churches and not those private mens who Communicated it they were bound to refer theirs to the greatest Glory of God and the Edification of his Church and not to the Wills and Interests of the Court of Rome and its Prelates altho' ir was through their Channel that they had received it They did well therefore to make use of that which they had of good in their Call to purify that which was bad in it and they also did well to make use of it against the ill intention of those who had given it them for an ill end even as those who have received Baptism from an Heretical or Schismatical Society are bound by that same Baptism which they have received from them to oppose themselves as much as possibly they can to that Heresy or Schism and to make use of their very Baptism for it altho' it should be against the intention of those who gave it to them I acknowledge also that there were some few who received their Call immediately from the Churches hand I would say the Body of the faithful people and we may say of those that their Call was extraordinary in the sense that we call unusual things Extraordinary which happen very rarely and which are done against Custom and ordinary practice For howsoever that those Calls were not unlawfully made and without Right as I have proved in the foregoing Chapter it is notwithstanding True that it is not nor ought to be the Common Practice and that it has no place but in a case of absolute Necessity So also in the Church of Rome the Call of Martin V. may be said to be Extraordinary who was called to the Papacy immediately by the whole Body of the Latin Prelates assembled in the Council of Constance and not by the Colledge of Cardinals as it is ordinarily done As to those Ministers who succeeded them and who received their Ordination from the hands of the first Reformers their Call was without doubt Ordinary and conformable to the practice of the Antient Church according to the Idea that the Scripture gives us of it and all that it can have of Extraordinary consists in this that in the distinction of Bishops and Presbyters they have not followed them and it is the Presbytery and not the Bishop who gives the Ordination but in that very thing they did nothing remote from that which was practised in the Apostolick Church acording to the Idea of it that the Scripture furnishes us with since Saint Paul saith in express terms concerning Timothy That he had received it by the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery I do not here enter upon the Question whether that Distinction is of Divine or only of Humane Right I will say something to that in the close I do not so much as blame those who observe it as a thing very Antient and I would not have it made a matter of difference in those places wherein it is established but I say where that Distinction is not observed as it is not nor can be amongst the Protestants of this Kingdom their Call will not cease to be lawful since besides the Case of absolute necessity which sufficiently dispences with that Form besides that neither the Bishop nor the Presbyter are of themselves any more than Executors of the Will of the Church in that Regard and not the Masters of that Call besides that I say there is a Formal Text of the Apostle that justifies the Right that the Church has to give the Imposition of hands by the Presbytery which alone is sufficient to stop the mouth of all Contradiction whatsoever That being so explained we may easily see what we ought to answer to all those petty Objections of which the Author of the Prejudices has composed his fourth and fifth Chapters Some says he were called to the Ministry and made Pastors only by Lay-men others were ordained by Priests only and those who had been Ordained by Bishops lifted themselves up against their Ordainers and that Church which had given them their Mission I have shewn in the foregoing Chapter that those who were called by Lay-men that is to say by the whole Body of the Church had a sufficient Call That which I have also said concerning those who received their Ordination from the Presbytery does not leave any more difficulty and as to those who resisted their own Ordainers I have shewn that they did nothing in all that whereunto their very Office did not bind them We may see saith he yet further by the thirty first Article of their Confession of Faith that it was upon this supposition of a power given immediately by God to these men Extraordinarily sent to Order the Church a new that all their pretended Reformation is founded That Article of our Confession of Faith says not that the Church had absolutely perished nor that the Ministry was intirely extinguished but that the Church was fallen into Ruine and Desolation and that its State was interrupted which only shews that she as well as the Ministry under which she was were both in the greatest Corruption and this is that which we also hold It says not that God had given an immediate Mission to the Reformers but that God had raised them up after an extraordinary manner to order the Church a new That signifies that God by his Providence gave them Extaordinary Gifts to undertake so great a Work as that of the Reformation was and that he accompanied them with his Blessing All that includes neither a new Revelation nor a new immediate Mission and hinders not that the Right which they had to employ themselves in it should not be annexed to their Charge and that it should not be common not only to all the Pastors but even to all Christians as I have shewn in my Second part Their Discipline adds he Ordains that the Priests of the Roman Church who upon turning of Calvinists should be Elected to the Office of Ministers should receive a new Imposition of hands which shews that they suppose their precedent Mission to be Null and so that that which Luther and Zuinglius Received from the Church of Rome signify'd nothing whence it follows that that which they ascribe to them can be no other than Extraordinary There is a great Difference between the Call which was given before the Reformation and that which is at this day given in the Roman Church since those Two Communions are separated The Former was indeed very much corrupted but yet nevertheless it supposes the consent of the whole Latin Church and it was not given by a Party so confirmed in Errour where the second supposes no other than the consent of a Party so confirmed in those Errours which we believe to be most contrary to the Purity of the Gospel which makes the matter so that our Society can no more look upon it as a Lawfull Call in regard of it and its Service Besides that when
ordinary Ministry was intirely lost and that it was renewed by an extraordinary and immediate Call of God For it is upon that that with great heat to very ill purpose he spends his reasonings throughout his whole fifth Chapter in Allegations of Fathers and Observations to no purpose upon the Rights of that pretended immediate Ministry We Answer him in a Word that he only Combats his own Shadow for we do not hold that the Ordinary Ministry established by the Apostles was absolutely extinct It is a Good that belongs to the Church and as the Church has alwayes subsisted by the special Providence of God though in a different State that same Providence has also made that Good to subsist alwayes It is True that it was very ill dispens'd while it was in the hands of bad Stewards and that where the Inheritage should have been cultivated and have brought forth without doubt much fruit it produced on the contrary abundance of Thorns and Briars But notwithstanding the Inheritance was not lost The Ministry was alwayes preserved not only de Jure in as much as the Church is never lost but de facto also for it alwayes had Ministers ill chosen indeed ill called designed to bad uses called by very confused Calls but called notwithstanding and having a Right sufficient to make them do their Duty if they would and if they were capable So that the good State of the Ministry might be very well altered Corrupted Interrupted overthrown but the Ministry was not absolutely lost I will not be afraid even to go further and to say that when it should be true that the Ministry should be wholly annihilated that which notwithstanding has never hapned and it may please God that it never shall it would not be necessary that God should renew it by an immediate and every-way Supernatural Mission while there should be two or three of the Faithful in the World who would be able to Assemble together in the Name of Jesus Christ For the Right of the Ministry would alwayes remain in those two or three and they might confer a Lawful Call upon one of themselves If it could even happen that there should not be absolutely any more Faith upon the Earth and that Heresy or Paganism or Judaism or Mahumetanism should generally overspread the whole World without leaving any Truly Faithful in it which certainly will never come to pass since we have the promise of Jesus Christ to the contrary I say in that case Provided that the Book of the Holy Scripture remained the young Buds of the Church and that of the Ministry would subsist even there The Apostles who left it to the world would yet further call men from thence a second Time to the true Faith and by that true Faith to the Re-establishing of a Christian Society and by the Re-establishing of that Christian Society to that of the Ministry without any absolute necessity of Gods immediately sending new Apostles One man only who should learn the heavenly Truths contained in that Book might teach them to others and reduce Christianity to its first State if God would Accompany the word of that man with his Ordinary Blessing Those who are acquainted with History are not Ignorant that in the Fourth Century two young men named the one Edesius and the other Frumanius having been taken on the Sea and carried Captive to the King of the Indies converted many persons to the Christian-Faith in that Country and that they might make Assemblies there where they might celebrate the Worship of God This is that which manifestly discovers the Injustice of the Author of the Prejudices and other Writers of Controversy of the Church of Rome when they demanded Miracles to prove the Call of the first Reformers For while the Scripture remains in the midst of men it is not necessary to make new miracles to Authorize Ministers that Scripture sufficiently Authorises the Church immediately by it self to confer a Call when its Pastors forsake it It would sufficiently Authorise one man alone whoever he should be a Lay-man or Clergy-man to communicate the light of his Faith to others if he were the only Faithful Person that was in the World it would Authorise two or three Faithful who should find themselves alone to Assemble together and to provide for the Preservation and Propagation of their Society and Miracles would not be necessary for all that because in all that there would be nothing new there nothing that might not be included in the Revelation of the Scripture or drawn from thence by a just Consequence as it may appear from what I have handled in the foregoing Chapter Miracles are necessary to those who preach new Doctrines and those which are not of antient Revelation and which besides have not in themselves any Character of Truth such as the Sacrifice of the Mass the Corporal Presence of Christ in the Sacrament Transubstantiation Purgatory Invocation of Saints Merit of good Works Adoration of the Host c. are It belongs to those who teach those things to tell us whence they hold them and since they give us them as holding them from Gods hand it belongs to them to prove them by Miracles for they cannot prove them otherwise and when they should even have wrought Miracles or things that should pass for such it would belong to us to examine them since Jesus Christ has given us warnings upon that point which we ought not to neglect See here what I had to say upon the Fifth Chapter of the Author of the Prejudices The sixth wherein he treats further of the same matter contains nothing which I have not already satisfied It pretends that the Call of our First Reformers was not Ordinary under a pretence that some few received their Ministry from the people that others were ordain'd by meer Priests and that those who had been Ordained by Bishops have says he Anathematiz'd that Church from which they received their Ordination But as to the first we have shewn him that the Calls that are made by a Faithful People are Just and Lawful in a case of absolute necessity that naturally dispences with Formalities Besides that those Calls were very few in number that they were not followed that they do not infer any Consequence against the Body of the Pastors and that even when it should have had any Irregularity that Irregularity would have been sufficiently repaired by the hand of Fellowship which the other Pastors have given those who were so called and by the consent that the whole Body of that Society gave to their Calls We ought not for that to leave off holding them for Ordinary although in that Respect they should be remote from the Common Practice no more or less then they in the Church of Rome to leave off holding the Call of Pope Martin V. and that of divers other Popes for Ordinary although they were not made according to the accustomed Forms I demand
to our Children as well as to us it ought to be given not only to us but to our Children So that without going any further I have in that respect all the Certainty that I can reasonably desire As to the second I say that the Word Baptise equally signifying in the Original Tongue to plunge and to wash and being used divers times in this latter sence as it may appear in the Translation of Mons in the seventh of Saint Mark and eleventh of Saint Luke and there being moreover nothing in the Scripture that precisely enjoins Immersion or forbids Aspersion it is my part to believe that in the Thoughts of Jesus Christ those two wayes of Baptizing are indifferent and that so much the more as I know the Spirit of the Gospel is not so nice and punctual about forms or the manners of External Actions which is proper to Superstition So that I have further for that all the Assurance that I ought to have For the third being certain as I am by the Promises of Jesus Christ that God has alwayes Preserved a True Church in the World that is to say the Truly Faithful howsoever mixt they may have been with the Worldly I am assured also that the Baptism which was Administred not only before the Reformation but since in the Latin Church and in other Christian-Societies where the Essence of Baptism remains is good because that being made in the Name of the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost it is the Baptism of the True Church although it be administred by Persons filled with Errors and Superstitions Baptism is not theirs they are only the Ministers of it That Sacrament belongs to God and his Truly Faithful ones in what Quarter of the World soever they be That same Scripture that sayes That the Promise is made to us and to our Children and to all that are a far of even as many as the Lord shall call says by a necessary Consequence that the Seal of that Promise which is Baptism and all the other Rights of the Covenant of Jesus Christ belongs to us and to our Children that is to say to the Truly Faithful The Hereticks who Administer it do not do it as a good that belongs to them under that Quality for in that respect nothing belongs to them but as a good that belongs to the True Church the Dispensation whereof they have by the part which they have yet with her For they Baptise not by that which divides them from the truly Faithful but by that which after some manner Associates and unites them with them It is therefore the Baptism of the True Church which they give and not that of Heresy it is the Church that Baptises by them and in that respect they are yet as I have said the Dispensers of its goods If the Author of the Prejudices desires yet further to see a greater Number ot proofs drawn from the same Scripture that should Establish this Truth he needs but to read what Saint Augustine has wrote in his Treatise against the Epistle of Parmenio and that of Baptism against the Donatists and he will learn there not to make any more Questions of that Nature I know not for the rest whether he as well as the others of his Communion who shall take the pains to read this work will be satisfied But I dare say at least that I have done all that was possible for me to do to set before them without Offence the Truths that are most Important for them to know It belongs to them to make a serious Reflection upon that which I have represented to them and upon the present State of Christianity which the prophaneness Impiety and Debauchery of mens Minds do every day reduce into an Evident danger of ruine if we do not bring a Remedy both on the one and the other side Nevertheless instead of having in view that grand Interest upon which the Glory of God wholly depends and the Salvation of men they apply themselves only to destroy us and their Passion prevails to that height that they do not take heed of making irreparable Breaches in Religion as that is of bringing the Use and Authority of the Holy Scripture to nothing provided they can but do us any Mischief But although they should do whatsoever they pleas'd God would alwayes be a Witness on our Side that in the Foundation of the Cause that upon which we have Separated from them is the Love which we have for the Truth and the Desire that we have to Work out our own Salvation And to let them see that it is not a false Prejudice that Corrupts us let them go through all the Christian Communions that are in the world Let them Judg in cold blood and I am assured that they will come to a serious Agreement that ours is the purest Church nd the most approaching to the Primitive one Our Opinions are the Fundamental Opinions of Religion which are great Solid and Convincing our Worship has nothing that is not Evangelical for it consists in Prayers to God in Thanksgivings in Singing of Psalms in Celebration of Fasts in Humiliation in Acts of Repentance in tears and groans when we are prest with the thoughts of our Sins and the Wrath of God our Morals consist more in Exhortations in Censures in Corrections in Threatnings on Gods side in Representations of the Motives that bind us to do good Works then in unprofitable decisions of Cases of Conscience Our Government is plain remote from the Formalities of the Bar founded as much as can be upon good Reason Justice and Charity but very opposite to the Maximes of Humane Policy and especially to Ambition Covetousness and Vanity which we believe to be the Mortal Enemies of Religion Every one in the World knows that and yet notwithstanding the Author of the Prejudices and all those who with him take false lights have not fail'd to cry out against us not only after a very uncharitable but an unchristian manner As for us we shall alwayes pray to God for those who will not Love us we shall bless them that Curse us but we shall also with Gamaliel give them this Advice Take heed that in Tormenting us you do not fight against God instead of fighting with him Let us pray on both sides that he would give us his Blessing and his Peace and that he would make us to do his Will FINIS A TABLE OF THE CONTENTS of the CHAPTERS The First Part. Wherein it is shewn that our Ancestors were obliged to Examine by themselves the State of Religion and of the Church in their Days CHap. I. General Considerations upon this Controversy The Division of this Treatise Page 1. Chap. II. That the State of the Government of the Latin Church some Ages ago gave to our Fathers Prejudices of its Corruption in Doctrine and Worship sufficient to drive them more nearly to Examine their Religion Page 8. Chap. III. That
shall be shaken because many in whom grace seem'd to be resplendent shall yield to the persecutors and some of the most firm among the faithful shall be troubled The Church sayes he shall not appear Ecclesia non apparebit She will not therefore have then that visible extension which the Author of the Prejudices would have to be her perpetual mark for all Ages He further acknowledges the same thing in his Epistle to Vincentius where he treats of the state of the Church under the Arians There he teaches in express terms That the Church is sometimes obscured and covered with clouds through the great number of offences that she is then only eminent in her most firm defenders while the multitude of the weak and carnal is overwhelmed with the floods of temptation That under the reign of the Arians the simple suffered themselves to be deceiv'd that others yielding through fear dissembled and in appearance consented to Arianism That indeed some of the most firm escaped the snares of those Hereticks but that they were but few in number in comparison of the rest That nevertheless some of them generously suffer'd banishment and some others lay hid here and there throughout the Earth I pray tell me what visible extension could the Orthodox communion have then which subsisted only in a small number of the firm of whom even the greatest part had suffered exile or lay hid here and there throughout all the Earth I confess that History notes that there were yet some small flocks in some places of the East and of the West who set up their Assemblies apart as at Edessa at Nazianzen at Antioch and in some Provinces of France and Germany but what was this in comparison of the Arian communion which had fill'd the Churches and held Councils as we have so often proved We must therefore seriously profess that this visible extension is a vain and deceitful mark when they would make it perpetual to the true Church as the Author of the Prejudices would make it and that no one could abuse with greater injustice the Authority of S. Augustine than he has done We must profess also that a small handful of the Faithful a little party have right to separate themselves from the whole multitude I mean from a communion spread over all the world which has on its side the Ministry the Pulpits the Councils the Schools Titles Dignities and all that retinue of temporal splendour when it has not the true Faith For the rest that which I have handled in this Chapter about the two former Propositions of the Author of the Prejudices already sufficiently lets us see the falseness of his argument For if he would take the pains to read this Chapter with never so little application he will see all these following Propositions well establish'd there 1. That in General this Author has not compris'd the true Hypothesis of S. Augustine nor the state of his dispute against the Donatists 2. That he can draw no advantage from the divers wayes in which that Father conceived the word Church 3. That the separation which that Father judg'd to be fit to be condemned and wicked under what pretence soever it should be made is wholly different from that which is between the Church of Rome and us 4. That there is not any Christian Society from which one may not lawfully separate ones self in a certain case and manner 5. That that which is disputed between the Church of Rome and us being of this number they must consider the causes and circumstances of it rightly to judge of it and not pretend to convince us of Schism without entring upon any other discussion 6. That according to the principles of S. Augustine the Church of Rome is Schismatical in respect of us supposing that she is in error because it is she that has broken Christian Unity and that we are in respect of her in a passive separation 7. That it is absurd to make that visible extension a perpetual mark of the true Church which way soever they take it 8. That this pretended mark is contrary to the experience of our Age and does not properly agree to any one of these Societies that at this day divide Christianity 9. That it is contrary to the experience of the Ages past and to the Doctrine of the Fathers 10. That it is rejected in the sense of the Author of the Prejudices by the famous Doctors of the Roman communion 11. That it has no foundation in the dispute of S. Augustine against the Donatists 12. That it is even directly opposite to the Doctrine of that Father These are the just and natural consequences that are drawn from the things which I have handled in this Chapter I will examine in the following the other Propositions of the Author of the Prejudices CHAP. V. A further Examination of the Reasoning of the Author of the Prejudices upon the subject of our Separation THe Third Proposition of the Author of the Prejudices is already sufficiently confuted by what I have said He sayes that since our Society is not visibly extended throughout all Nations therefore it cannot be the True Church But we have shewn him that we cannot at this day rationally attribute that visible extension throughout all Nations to any of the Societies that divide Christianity and by consequence that it is a chimerical mark by which we may conclude that there is no true Church in the world since there is none which is not visibly excluded from many Nations We have shewn him also that his pretended mark does not agree either with the experience of the Ages past nor with the doctrine of the Fathers nor even with that of the Doctors of the Roman Church and that instead of having any foundation in the Doctrine of S. Augustine it is evidently contrary to him So that we have nothing to do at present but to go on to the Examination of the Fourth and Fifth Proposition They bear this sense That the Calvinists urge the principle of the Donatists far higher than ever those Schismaticks did For as for them they did not say that there was any time wherein the whole Church had fallen into Apostasy and they excepted the Communion of Donatus whereas the Calvinists would have it that there have been whole Ages wherein all the Earth had generally apostatized and lost the faith and treasure of salvation That the Societies of the Berengarians the Waldenses and Albigenses c. in which he sayes that some of us include the Church could not be that Catholick Church whereof S. Augustine speaks To establish that which he layes to our Charge concerning the entire extinction of the Church he first produces the testimony of Calvin This is sayes he that which Calvin has distinctly declared in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans where after having pretended that the threatning that S. Paul uses against those who do not remain in
shalt worship one only God in believing the Sacrifice of the Mass and Transubstantiation they annihilated in effect the Sacrifice of the Cross and they removed as much as in them lay Jesus Christ from the Right hand of his Father But those who took things in a good sence destroyed on the contrary the evil by the good for in adoring one only God they taught others not to pay any Religious Worship to Creatures in placing their confidence in the Death of Jesus Christ for their sakes they taught Learned to reject the Sacrifice of the Mass all humane Satisfactions and in seriously believing that Jesus Christ was in Heaven they were dis-abused about his corporal presence on the Altars In fine they could each in particular very well do what our Fathers did altogether when they Reformed themselves for their Reformation wrought nothing but what the same Doctrine which they had Taught them One only God and one only Jesus Christ made them reject all that they rejected Besides it is certain that the greatest part of those things which we believe contrary to the true Faith were then Taught and received and practised in the Latin Church more by force of Custom then any publick Authority that could impose any necessity on mens Consciences even according to the principles of the Church of Rome at this day which leaves private men liberty enough to reject them And when they should come to be even publickly determined with all the necessary formalities which they have not been yet there would always remain to every private man a natural right to examine and reject them since the Authority of Men how great soever it be can never bind the Consciences of the Faithful We do not therefore Question but that God has always preserved under that Ministry a great number of persons who have made that Separation of the good from the ill and it is in those that the Church may subsist But besides those how many simple people were there whose own simplicity and ignorance hid them from those Errors that then reigned in the Ministry They knew enough to believe in one only God the Father Son and Holy Ghost their Creator and Father and in one only Jesus Christ their Redeemer Born Crucified and raised again for them and to practice without Superstition all the Actions of Christian Piety that those Doctrines inspired into them but they did not know enough to believe the Sacrifice of the Mass Transubstantiation the real presence humane Satisfactions the merit of good Works and a multitude of other things that did not enter into them Their knowledge was bounded with the Articles of the Creed the Lords Prayer and the Ten Commandments which they received with all the submission of their hearts and which they laboured to practise the best that they could and we ought not to doubt that that knowledge alone plain and disintangled from all Error which they had furnished them with a sufficient direction for their Salvation without their being bound to make a more express rejecting of those Doctrines they did not understand But supposing that they had a knowledge of them I say that we ought carefully to distinguish two sorts of Times the one in which the falseness of a Doctrine or Worship is not so palpable discovered and open to mens Eyes that their should be only a voluntary blindness or an ill Prejudice that should hinder us from acknowledging and understanding how that Doctrine and that Worship are contrary to the True Faith and Piety and the other in which that falseness and contrariety are so openly or publickly manifested that one cannot be ignorant of them or not see them without shutting voluntarily ones Eyes For in the second of those Times every one is bound for the integrity of his Faith and Religion and the preservation of his Soul earnestly and publickly to reject those Errors to avoid them with an aversion to withdraw from those Assemblies where they are either taught or practised and not to take part how little soever or if any do they have no excuse for their crime and this is the Time wherein we are at this day But as to the former it is enough not to be corrupted with them without any absolute necessity of testifying publickly that strong aversion In the second Time they ought to look on those kinds of things as they are in Effect because they are fully discovered and they may be seen in all that have them to be opposite to the glory of God and Salvation of men But that Obligation can never be so strong in the first Time because there one has neither the same light nor the same helps nor the same easiness to own them to be such as they are not only meer natural Light dictates this Distinction but Jesus Christ himself has very well established it in the Gospel If I had not come says he and spoken unto them they had not had Sin but now they have no Cloak for their Sin which evidently establishes those two seasons I spoke of the one wherein the Manifestation of good and evil is not yet so throughly made that one can acknowledge them in their greatest Latitude and the other wherein it is so that one cannot without a crime know it confusedly But I say that before the Reformation they were in that first Time in regard of that which we call the Errors and Superstitions of the Church of Rome they were neither so well Examined nor so clearly discovered as they have been since the Faithful then could not openly believe and practise them for that could not be done according to us in any Time without destroying the true Faith and Piety but they could look upon them with a greater indifference bear them with far less Pain nor cease for all that from frequenting their Assemblies from holding their peace and contenting themselves with keeping their own Righteousness See here after what manner we believe that the Essence of the Church was preserved before the Reformation How corrupted soever the Ministry was the Foundation of Christianity remained there and God had yet his remnant there according to the Election of Grace that is to say his Truly Faithful It was those alone in all that great mixt body who were the Church for they only were in Communion with God and his Son they alone enjoyed the benefits of the Gospel Covenant to them only how small a number soever they were pertained all the Rights and advantages of the Church of the External Society of Assemblies of the Ministry of the Holy Scriptures of the Sacraments Government and Discipline according to the inviolable Maxim of Saint Paul All things are yours whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the World or Life or Death or things present or things to come all are yours and ye are Christs and Christ is Gods All the rest then which were without in that mixed Body which they Call the Latin Church and which had
the External State of that Religion it self had in the times of our Fathers Signs of its Corruption sufficient to afford them just Motives to Examine it Page 23. Chap. IV. That such a Corruption of the Latin Church as our Fathers had conceived was no ways an Impossible thing Page 37. Chap. V. More particular Reflections upon that priviledge of Infallibility which they ascribe to the Church and of its Authority Page 45. Chap. VI. An Examination of the Proofs which they produce to Establish the Infallibility of the Church-of Rome Page 54. Chap. VII That the Authority of the Prelates of the Latin Church had not any Right to bind our Fathers to yield a blind Obedience to them or to hinder them from Examining their Doctrines Page 75. Chap. VIII A further Examination of that Authority of the Prelates and that Absolute Obedience which they pretend ought to be given them Page 85. Chap. IX An Examen of those Reasons they Alledge to Establish that Soveraign Authority of the Prelates in the Latin Church Page 109. The Second Part. Of the Justice of the REFORMATION CHap. I. That our Fathers could not expect a Reformation either from the hands of the Popes or from those of the Prelates Page 125. Chap. II. A Confirmation of the same thing from the History of that which passed in the first Quarrels of Luther with the Conrt of Rome concerning Indulgences Page 142. Chap. III. That our Fathers not being able any more to hope for a Reformation on the part of the Pope or his Prelates were indispensably bound to provide for their own Salvation and to Reform themselves Page 156. Chap. IV. That our Fathers had a Lawful and sufficient Call to Reform themselves and to labour to Reform others Page 166. Chap. V. An Answer to the Objections that are made against the Persons of the Reformers Page 177. Chap. VI. A further Justification of the first Reformers against the Objections of the Author of the Prejudices contained in his Tenth and Eleventh Chapters Page 196. Chap. VII An Answer to the Twelfth and Thirteenth Chapters of the Prejudices Page 222. Chap. VIII That our Fathers in their Design of Reforming themselves were bound to take the Holy Scriptures alone for the Rule of their Faith Page 241 Chap. IX An Examination of the Objections which the Author of the Prejudices makes against the Scripture Page 260. The Third Part. Of the Obligation and Necessity that lay-upon our Fathers to separate themselves from the Church of Rome CHap. I. That our Fathers had just sufficient and necessary Causes for their Separation supposing that they had Right at the Bottom in the Controverted Points Page 1. Chap. II. That our Fathers were bound to Separate themselves from the Body of those who possess'd the Ministry in the Church and particularly in the See of Rome supposing that they had a Right at the Foundation Page 15. Chap. III. That the Conduct of the Court of Rome and those of her Party in respect of the Protestants has given them a just cause to separate themselves from them supposing that they had Right at the Foundation Page 53. Chap. IV. An Examination of the Objection of the Author of the Prejudices taken out of the Dispute of Saint Augustine against the Schism of the Donatists Page 79. Chap. V. A further Examination of the Reasoning of the Author of the Prejudices upon the Subject of our Separation Page 113. The Fourth Part. Of the Right that our Fathers had to hold a Christian Society among themselves by Publick Assemblies and the Exercise of the Ministry CHap. 1. That our Fathers had a Right to have their Church-Assemblies separate from those of the Church of Rome on the Supposition that they were right in the Foundation Page 1. Chap. II. That the Society of the Protestants is not a new Cburch Page 28. Chap. III. That the Ministry Exercised in the Communion of the Protestants is Lawful and that the Call of their Ministers is so also Page 48. Chap. IV. An Answer to the Objections of the Author of the Prejudices about the Call of the first Reformers and the Validity of our Baptism P. 84 The End of the CONTENTS of the CHAPTERS Advertisement THere is newly Published a Book Entituled ☞ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a Treatise wherein you have 1. The Divine Auhtority of the Holy Scriptures proved by undeniable Demonstrations and the Cavils of Objectors confuted 2. A Continuation of the Metaphors Allegories and Express Similitudes of the Old and New Testament gradually expounded Parallel wise with short Inferences from each 3. Sacred Phylologie viz. the Schemes and Figures in Sriipture reduced under their proper Heads with a brief Explication of the most obscure 4. A Treatise of the Types Parables and Allegories in the Old and New Testament 5. Plain and Evident Demonstrations that by the Great Whore Mystery Babylon is meant the Papal Hierarchy or present Church of Rome The whole VVork being partly Compiled and partly Translated from the VVorks of many Learned and Orthodox VVriters Ancient and Modern compleating what was intended by the Undertakers in order to explain that difficult part of the Word of God It being encouraged and recommended by divers Worthy Ministers of London as useful for all Students in Sacred Writ Sold by John Hancock at the Three Bibles over against the Royal Exchange in Cornhil and Benj. Alsop at the Angel and Bible in the Poultrey over-against the Compter Cassander Consult art de Eccles Luke 22. 25 26. 1 Pet. 5. Bernard in Cant. Serm. 77. Item Serm. 33. Nicol Cusan lib. 3. de Concord Cath. c. 29. 1 Tim. 6. 10 3. Col. 5. Nicolaus de Clemangis de corrupto Statit Ecclesiae Bernard de verbis Evangel Dixit Simon c. pag. 1000. Marsil de Pad Defens pacis Part 2. cap. 20. History of the Council of Trent Book 6. In the Instructions and Missives of the most Christian King for the Council of Trent In the same Instructions and Missives Distinct. 96. Canon 7. Aug. Steuchus De fals Donat. Constantini Froissard Tom. 3. Fol. 147. Angel Politian Orat. pro Sen. ad Alexand Sextum Raynald ad Ann. 1492. ss 27. Decretal Greg. lib. 1. tit 7. Can. Quanto in Glossa Itinerar Ital. Part 2. de coron Rom. Pontif. Raynald ad Ann. 1162. Baron ad Ann. 1162. Concil Lateran Sess 7. 9. in Orat. Paulus Jovius in Philippo 3. †Renvoy signifies properly a simple dismission granted to one that being appealed or called before a superiour Judg requires to be dismissed to the prosecuting of his suit already begun before the inferiour his Ordinary Judge Platina in vit Sexto Decret tit 2. cap. 1. Sext. Decret Extravag lib. 1. De major obed cap. 1. Baron ad Ann. 1076. Platin. in vit Bonif. 8. Joan. Gerson de Eccles. potest Consid 10. Decretal Gregor lib. 3. tit 8. cap. 4. Decret part 2. Caus 25. Quest 1. Canon 6. ad Gloss Bernard Epist 42.