those who demanded of Pilate his Death by crying against him away with him away with him Crucify him and those in fine who rejected the word of his Apostles and who instead of being converted by them persecuted them would be sufficiently justified in their bold unbeleif and that detestable Parricide which they committed on the Person of the Son of God For what were all those things but just consequences of that Principle They would not hearken to the Censures that Jesus Christ made of the Traditions and Doctrine of the Scribes and Pharisees their Church admitted those Traditions They would not believe that Jesus was the true Messiah their Church had determined that whosoever did believe it should be cast out of their Synagogues They rejected the Proofs that he gave them from the Scripture it was not for them to judge of the true meaning of the Scripture and the Church understood it otherwise They demanded that he might be Crucified the Church had condemned him for a Seducer as an Enemy to Moses and the Law it was not for them to inform themselves any farther They rejected his Miracles the Church did so too and said that he cast out Devils by the power of Beelzebub They would not hearken to his Apostles the Authority of the Church forbad them Hitherto their conduct is within due Rules supposing that the Principle of the Author of prejudices might be just and lawful and those miserable People are very much obliged to him for furnishing them with arms wherewith to defend themselves 4. That Maxim of the Author of those Prejudices draws yet far greater absurdities after it It ministers accusations against Jesus Christ himself against his Apostles and all those who were converted by their Words If the Faithful by those Laws of their submission to the Church ought not to have any other Eyes than hers why did Jesus Christ present himself immediatly to the People when he should first of all have made known his call from Heaven the Glory of his Person and the Dignity of his Office to the Church to have made them own it by proving it to them before he Preach't to the People He was they will say her Lord and the Church her self would have had no Authority but by him that is true But if the People owed the Church an absolute obedience they would have owed it all that time that the Lord would have remained unknown He ought then to have began to make himself known to her and to have opened her Eyes that he might at the same time have opened those of all the People If Jesus Christ had been known to have been indeed what he was there is no doubt to be made but that he would alone have been heard without any dependance on the Church of which he is the Soveraign Lord but as yet he was not and till that knowledge had obtained the People would have been always bound according to the Principle of the Author of Prejudices not to have seen but by the Eyes of the Church to which God had subjected them To speak then home to this Question whether Jesus Christ was the Son of God the promised Messiah or whether he was not the Faithful being bound to believe nothing but what the Church should tell them he could not but have addrest himself to her and not to the Faithful People immediatly Nevertheless it is most true that he addressed himself neither to the Priests nor to the Scribes nor to the Pharisees nor to the Doctors he Preached his Gospel to the simple People out of them he took his Disciples and it was among them that he did almost all his Miracles in fine he himself gives thanks to his Father for that he had hid his Mysteries from the Wise and Prudent and had revealed them unto Babes Whence could such a conduct proceed so contrary to that Soveraign Authority wherewith at this day they would invest the Church that is the Pastors in respect of the Lay-men It is not difficult to understand that it was because Jesus Christ did no ways act from that Principle nor owned it for a good one for if he had owned it he had never suffered the People to have violated it he had made use of another way to make himself known to them and he would have employed the Ministry of the Church for that end 5. One may see the same thing of the Apostles if the People ought entirely to refer themselves to the Church in matters of Faith and Religion Why did the Apostles sollicit the Jews to embrace their Doctrine when they could not so much as hear them without being criminal They will say they had a commandment from their Master to Preach this Gospel I confess it but the Jews lived under a Church that had openly declared it self against their Preaching and they might tell them according to the Maxim of those Gentlemen It is vain that you Preach to us that you work Miracles that you alledge the Scriptures We see by the Eyes of the Church we hear by her Ears we march after her Steps and we devest our selves of our own guidance to rest our selves upon hers This is our Duty and the Law that is imposed on us why do you go about to tempt us to violate it Suppose we that a Jew after having heard one of those Divine and admirable Sermons of Saint Paul should have addrest himself to him and have demanded of him what Authority he pretended to give to that new Christian Church which he took such care to establish whether he did not mean that its Children should render a blind Obedience to it and that they should refer themselves wholly to their Pastors for deciding matters of Faith without intermedling themselves to search out the true sence of the Scripture Suppose yet that that great Apostle should have answered him according to that Maxim of the Author of Prejudices That it was true that the darkness of our understandings and our prejudices might be able to hinder us from seeing in the Scriptures those Truths that are clearly contained in them that a man could not assure himself that he was not of the number of those who deceived themselves That that doubt is terrible but that which yet infinitely heightens that dread which it must needs cause is that men are necessarily bound to chuse their Party and to make so weighty a choice to wit of that Religion that they ought to follow amidst the cumbrances of a thousand cares and a thousand worldly necessities that almost wholly take them up and that will allow them but a very little time to examine the Truths of that Religion That the greatest part of Mankind wanted necessary helps that the half of Christians could not tell how to read that others did not understand any Language but their own that others had so narrow and limited a Capacity that they could but very difficultly conceive the most easie
intention and that nevertheless they were truly Idolaters Vpon this he says that he was seized with such a violent agitation of Spirit accompanied with a general sweat over all the parts of his Body and a confusion wherein he found himself having been made to understand that his defence was not Solid since besides a good intention and obedience to his Superiors he ought to have examined further whether the Action disputed was good in it self and agreeable to God and on that he made a Resolution to renounce all private Masses This was the Discourse of Luther there upon all which I shall make no scruple to profess that that manner of expressing things under the form of a Combat with the Devil appears to me indeed a little remote from common Use and makes that return into my thoughts that Luther himself has said somewhere in his Works Pium Lectorem oro ut ista legat cum Judicio sciat me fuisse aliquando Monachum In effect he could not wholly throw off as he would the Stile of the Convent But I say notwithstanding there is nothing in all that which is remote from the Duty of an honest man nor which may not be intirely innocent whether one take that Narration Literally or as a kind of Figure and Parable He says that the Devil accused him in his heart That signifies that he represented to himself in his Conscience the Accusations that the Devil might one day form against him before the Tribunal of God What crime was there in all that Is not the Devil called in Scripture The Accuser of the Faithful And does not the History of Job introduce him as appearing before the Throne of God to render the Piety of that Holy-man suspected Luther adjoyns that in his first Defences he alleadged his Priesthood his Obedience to his Superiours his good intention and exactness What is there extraordinary in all that It is not very natural that those sorts of pretences should come in to the succours of a burthened Conscience He says in the sequel that these Defences were opposed by the Accuser as insufficient and uncapable to hide him from the sin of Idolatry What is there here that may deserve any blame May not the Devil speak Truths in Accusing us Does not he know how to exaggerate our sins and strongly to oppose our vain Excuses At last Luther says that to render those instances of the Accuser unservicable for the future he resolved within himself to abandon private Masses which served for the ground of that Accusation What is there in all that that may not be the Motion of a good Conscience He would shut the mouth of the Adversary and take away from him any means of accusing him before God as if he had been a wicked person and an Idolater he would snatch away from him those weapons that he made use of to combat and terrify him Let the Author of the Prejudices turn all that as he pleases he can never find it in a bad sence Every Christian is bound to order his conduct so that he may be sheltered from the Attempts of the Devil for he is a Roaring Lion saith Saint Peter who walks daily about us seeking whom he may devour and when to put a stop to the Accusations of that Enemy a man Examines his own Actions with a design to amend them and to forsake the evil of them He had need be a good Detractour and well skilled in Calumniating that can take a pretence from that to say of him That he has taken the Devil for a Master of Truth and that he has given up himself to him to be his Diseiple his Minister and Instrument Would the Author of the Prejudices take it well that we should give those horrible Titles to Dominic one of the greatest Saints of the Church of Rome under a pretence that Antonine has Wrote of him somewhat like that we have seen of Luther He says That Dominic saw the Devil one Night holding in his Iron hands a Paper which he Read to him by the Light of a Lamp and that having asked him what that meant which he Read the Devil answered him That it was a Catalogue of the Sins of his Brethen Vpon which Dominic having commanded him to leave the Paper to him and the Devil doing it accordingly that Saint found therein certain things about which says Antonine he Corrected his Religious See here then according to the Stile of the Author of the Prejudices the Disciple the Minister and the Instrument of the Devil Not only because it was he who taught him the disorders of his Covent but also because the Accusations of the Devil gave him an occasion and a Motive to make new Orders in his Society neither more nor less then those that Luther made use of for the Abolishing of private Masses But as it would be no difficult matter to defend Dominic by saying that he did but make use of that Paper against the Intention of that Accuser and to shut his Mouth for the future So also it is not a difficult thing to justify Luther by saying precisely the same thing since that was in effect against the intention of the Devil that he made use of his Accusation and that he did so only to confound him and to take from him for the future any ground of Accusation I will end this Chapter in desiring the Authour of the Prejudices to Remember that we have seen not a long time since men taken up in defending themselves not only against those common reports that are spread abroad of them amongst the People but also against those publick Writings that charge them with very strange Accusations We have heard their Complaints that they have seen so many Mouths of Calumny opened to tear them So many Enemies conspiring together to destroy their Honour and Reputation and those Enemies vomiting up against them all that Hell can invent of the blackest and foulest Calumnies and violating the Truth by a hundred infamous Lyes even to lay to their charge Crimes against the State We have heard them complain in these Terms That one has broken Charity by Latin Printed Poems where one heaps upon them all the Curses that the most inflamed Choler is capable of conceiving and where one crys down their Solitude as the Hell of the Heathen Poets and as the residence of damned Souls That beyond all that one has yet further violated all Modesty and broke all the bounds that should have restrained persons of the most deplorable Consciences before God and lost honour before men if they had not wholly prostituted themselves to Calumny in forging a Chimerical Assembly at Bourg-fontaine and charging six Divines with abominable designs to destroy the Incarnation of the Son of God the Gospel all the Sacraments and all the other Mysteries of the Christian Religion and to Establish Deism upon the Ruines of Christianity Let him learn then by that Example not
the Reformation that he has established and which serves as a Foundation to that of the Calvinists In fine he explains himself in the 321 Page where he says That our behaviour in respect of the Lutherans is enough to give a ground to conclude that the Heads of the party of the Calvinists have been such as have guided themselves more by Policy then Conscience which being adds he most contrary to the Spirit of God and remote from that which ought to be found in those new Prophets which he would extraordinarily raise up for the reforming of his Church it is not possible for us to take them for men of that kind and we have a most just ground to refuse to hearken to them It results from thence that the Author of the Prejudices had a design to conclude 1. That they ought to reject us without Examining any thing that we say and without so much as hearing us 2. That we are a sort of men without any Conscience who have no Idea of Christian Vertue nor of the Spirit of Christianity and who guide our selves by Worldly Policy 3. That we overthrow the Reformation of Luther which serves nevertheless for the Foundation of our own 4. That our First Reformers had none of their Mission from God and that they were not the Instruments which he made choice of to Reform the Errors of the Church of Rome To establish these propositions he heightens on one side the differences that were between Luther Zuinglius and Calvin and all that the heat of Disputation made them say on one side and on the other and in the end he sets down the esteem that we have always had of Luther notwithstanding those Divisions and the Condescension that we have for him and those of his Party in oposition to the hatred that we have always says he Testified against the Church of Rome All that unjust Reasoning is founded upon divers false Propositions that the Author of the Prejudices has supposed as evident and beyond all doubt and of which notwithstanding he has captiously suppressed one part to give the more Colour to his Invective 1. His Reasoning is founded upon ' this Proposition That we hold our First Reformers to be new Prophets or as he speaks to be the Apostles of a new Gospel But this is a false and calumnious Supposition for we hold on the contrary that our Reformers Preached nothing new they were not under the Quality either of new Prophets or Apostles of a new Gospel they did not boast that they brought a new Revelation into the World but they only opposed humane Errors that had no Foundation in the old Revelation and in that respect I have shewn that they had a more then sufficient Call in the Right that is Common to all Christians and in the Ministry which they themselves exercised in the Latin Church without any necessity that there should be any Extraordinary and immediate Mission of God for that and I have explained in what sence it must be understood that there was something of Extraordinary in their Call 2. That Reasoning supposes That we ought not to hear any Reformers 'till first we have examined the Quality of their persons and if the Quality of their persons do not satisfy us we ought to reject their words and to remain in the State we were in before But there is nothing more pernitious then this Principle to which I oppose a contrary Principle which is That we ought to judge of that which our Reformers said by the word of God and by the proper Characters of Truth or Falshood which are in the things themselves after a manner abstracted from the Judgment that we may make of those persons and that it is a way to Error to Judge by the Qualities of the persons This is that which I have made appear elsewhere and shall not omit to establish it yet further in this place for the greater clearing of this Truth I say then that when it falls out that those who Preach have personal Qualities that do not satisfy us it is indeed a Reason that Obliges us to take the greater heed to their Doctrine But those matters being at the bottom as they are true or false in themselves without the persons that propound them changing their natures they ought to be chiefly considered in themselves if we would assure our selves in a good Conscience that we are in the way of Truth for we cannot have that assurance if we Judge only by the persons since the Faith is immediatly founded upon the word of God and not upon that of men whosoever they be Moreover every one knows that a Judgment concerning persons is oftentime far harder and more subject to Error then that of the things themselves whether it be because ordinarily it depends upon a great number of particular circumstances which one cannot exactly know and which yet one ought to know before a man can be able to Judge or whether it be also because it is open to the Illusions of Hypocrisy which hides real vices under the appearances of Vertue and to those of Calumny which turns the best actions into a bad meaning that suppresses the good and heightens the bad Besides that it is certain that the Judgment which is made of persons ought partly to depend on that of things so far is it from that that what is made of things should depend on that of persons For on the one side how many Founders of Heresy have there been whose life has appeared to have been very exemplary and who were notwithstanding ravenous Wolves how many Pharisees who have boasted of their righteousness while their Doctrine was a Leaven whereof great heed was to be taken There have been some who have even gone so far as to have wrought Miracles and Jesus Christ has foretold that false Christs and false Prophets shall arise who shall work great Signs and Wonders capable of seducing the very Elect if it were possible And on the other side do not sufficiently understand the ways of Divine Providence to be able to conclude without rashness that it never makes use of persons guilty of many crimes either for the Propagation of its Truth or the Reformation of Errors Saint Paul says that God puts his Treasure into Earthen Vessels that the Excellency of his power may be of God and not of man The same Apostle Teaches us that divers in his Time Preached Jesus Christ out of a Spirit of Envy and Contention God heretofore made use of Salomon not only for the building and preservation of his Temple but also to give the Church one part of the Canon of its Scriptures which is much more then the Temple and yet notwithstanding that Prince gave himself over to the love of Women and fell into Idolatry and lastly Jesus Christ made use of a Judas at first that sold him into his Enemies Hands But to decide this Question by Examples drawn out of the
An HISTORICAL DEFENCE OF THE Reformation In Answer to a Book Intituled JUST PREJUDICES AGAINST THE CALVINISTS Written in French by the Reverend and Learned Monsieur CLAVDE Minister of the Reformed Church at Charenton AND NOW Faithfully Translated into English By T. B. M. A. LONDON Printed by G. L. for John Hancock at the Three Bibles over-against the Royal Exchange in Cornhil and Benj. Alsop at the Angel and Bible in the Poultrey 1683. THE PREFACE HOwsoever Men fall into the Misery of being deluded by Errors nothing appears Amiable under that Name and whatsoever carries the name of Reformation is therefore thought Honourable and Glorious because it professes to cast out those The Romanists themselves applaud a Reformation and will therefore own Ours to be no other then Pretended and plead that their Religion is Actually a Reformation that they may more confidently urge the Unnecessariness of another But we cannot be ignorant how the Name has been abused and Experience has shew'd us what Reformation They have made in the Gospel of our Saviour what Truths they have expunged how they have perverted and depraved and indeed made it quite another Gospel then what was at first delivered They have Reformed it only to make it serve their Interests and elevate their God both which it so much opposes and condemns As this raised a Generous Indignation and an Heroick Zeal in those whom God had prepared to discover and overthrow their Abuses so it made them see the high Necessity of another Reformation and to endeavour it with that Success which the Protestant World justly admires and blesses God for at this day Our Fathers have to their Honour and Praise taken care to instil the Principles and the Love of a true Reformation into their Posterity and it has been so strong as to increase with fresh vigour and more largely to diffuse it self in our times But how many are there even among our selves who owe their Religion to little else then their Education and cry up still loudly for the Reformation without being able to give solid Reasons and Grounds of their Profession They have suck'd it in with their Milk and as they took it up without their own foresight so they have thought it needless to take a view of the Justice and the Reasons of it if they did but profess themselves Protestants The most have a Zeal but not according to Knowledge which were highly commendable if it were joyned with it Indeed if we take a view of all who unite under the Name of Protestants and the divers Parties who have little else common between them we must sadly acknowleged our selves like the Ephesians who when they had made an Insurrection in the City and for two hours space cried up their Diana yet 't is hard to define which excelled their Zeal or their Ignorance when a far greater part of them knew not so much as why they were come together Therefore it is high time for us to be instructed in what we so much talk of that we may be sensible Reformation is somewhat more than a Pretence and that our Adversaries are not to be vanquished as some Armies have been by the great Noise and Clamour before the Engagement No there must be solid Argument and well temper'd Truths to assert our Religion and our Reason as well as our Faith must be able to remove those Mountains which the Deluge of Errors in the Church of Rome will be sure to raise in our way as some impute the Origine of Natural Hills to the Universal Flood which caused even the Ararat on which the Ark rested There are Alps to be past before we can enter Italy by way of Conquest and if we would pass them we have no other way to do it but by cutting through them Considerations like these made me first Read and consequently admire this Author whose cause was the same with ours and he maintained it not without success and I expected something extraordinary of Courage and Conduct from a man who had so well defended himself even in the Enemies Country where he had no advantage but his Cause the only Conquest he could pretend to was not to be overcome and he could expect no assistance from men but what our Saviour himself found when he was assaulted with Swords and Staves his Disciples forsook him and fled Yet notwithstanding all these seeming Inconveniences and Discouragements they gave him only greater occasions of setting forth his Makers Glory and purchasing his own for though he came to them fairly in the Name of the Living God and they Armed with Helmets of Brass and Spears like Weavers Beams his smooth Stones taken out of that Current of Living Water strikes down the haughty Gathites and sinks into their Foreheads the certain Fate of all those who defy the Armies of the Living God And we may guess at the compleatness of his Victory by the Grandeur of his Triumph for he put them to their last Reserve their Censure they condemned what they could not Confute and when their School-Divinity failed the Flames as I have heard were called in to their assistance This is the Infallible and Catholick Argument and whatsoever opposeth the Popes Supremacy must expect to feel that of the Faggot And to shew that this way is antient enough the Persians by the same proved the greatness and Universality of their Deities because it consumed all the Images of the other Gods till Canopus his Water Retorted the vain Sophistry upon them and with a more powerful Pitcher quenched their pretensions and their Numen together But Books have Souls as well as men which survive their Martyrdom and are not burnt but crowned by the Flames that encircle them They quickly found that there was nothing Combustible in it but the Paper The Truth flew upward like the Angel from Manoahs Sacrifice untoucht by the fire and unsullied by the Smoak and found a safe Refuge at the Footstool of the God of Truth And sure whatsoever Received so severe a Doom from our Adversaries may challenge from us a kind Reception They have taught us to value what they thought not below their Malice and it will be the greatest Commendation amongst Protestants that the Papists knew it worth the Burning This likewise may supply the place of a Panegyrick upon the Author then whom none has done or suffered more in so glorious a Cause and seeing we give so great a welcome to numbers of French Protestants that daily arrive amongst us let us receive Mr. Claude as one of them and use him no better nor any worse then he deserves It is the Prerogative of a Translator to make him an Englishman to give him all the Immunities our own Authors enjoy and to make him equal in Liberty and Property with the best of our Native Writers And indeed no man can wonder why he has now crossed the Seas and appears in this dress with half the reason I do that he appeared
pretence and bordering on the greatest rashness For the Authority of the Church of Rome and the pretended faults of the Reformation whatsoever they be are not Principles so demonstrative and so evident among Christians that after them they ought to hear nothing more We ought then to yield to this proof its place in our discussion but without any prejudice as to those that may be drawn for or against the very Tenets that are contested which ought to be first examined as the more natural and most decisive That being so I hold that that which they have set before us will be to no purpose at all For if from the Examination that we shall make of those matters in themselves it results that those things are not Errors which we have rejected as such but Christian Truths we have no further need either of the Authority of the Church of Rome or of the prejudices against the Reformation The Reformation is sufficiently overthrown And if on the contrary it results that those are Errors all the Authority of the Church of Rome and all the prejudices in the World shall not be able to perswade men of good understandings that they are Truths and by consequence that the Reformation is not just for it is always just to extirpate Errors It seems to me to appear already that that debate which they have raised against us about the Justice of our Reformation and our separation from the Church of Rome is rather a field wherein they would busy themselves in subtilties and declamations to amuse the People then a just Controversy whence one might justly expect any profit Yet as those subtilties and declamations how vain and false soever they are fail not of finding applause in the World and always making some impressions on the minds of men we acknowledge the too great effect that they have produced which is that the greatest part of those of the Church of Rome look upon us as Schismaticks and think that we have disturbed the peace of the Family of God and violated the right of that Religious Society which had united us with them The Idea which they form of our Religion appears not half so odious to them After what manner they have disguised us the most equitable among them discern and fail not sometimes freely to confess the same that we have all Doctrines that are necessary to mens Salvation that our Worship as plain as it is has nothing which does not tend to nourish in their hearts a true Piety and a solid Vertue and that as to the Form of our Government it has nothing so remote either from prudence or from equity or from the Charity that Jesus Christ has recommended to us But it is a far different Idea which they Form within themselves of our Separation for it becomes insupportable to them when they compare it with the Specious name of a Church that ought to command the Veneration of all Holy men So that this is most ordinarily the matter of their reproaches which they the more exaggerate as a thing about which they imagine we have not the least shew wherewith to defend our selves I dare affirm that as to the far greater part that is the chiefest and almost the only matter that makes them appear so much Exasperated against us It is necessary then that we justify our selves and that we clear to their minds that honour which we have not only to live among them in the same civil Society but also to depend on their lawful Authority in respect of those humane affairs wherein we are engaged Our own Innocence commands it of us not to say that the inheritance which we have received from our Fathers is of a value sufficiently great to merit a defence after what manner soever they attack it We ought then to indeavour to let them see that that which they are made to believe concerning us is nothing but a false imputation that we have an infinitly greater respect for the Church then any of those who oppose themselves to hinder its Reformation that their Maxims tend to the Ruin of the Church where ours tend only to preserve it that our Separation from Rome is nothing else but an effect of that Love and Jealousy that we have for the Church and that it will be most unjust if they shall hate us upon an account that ought on the contrary to draw from them all their esteem and Love toward us It is then about this that we intreat that they would calmly hear us and judge us without passion and without interest in the fear of that God whom we all acknowledge for our Soveraign Judge Those who always act against us with a pride that hurries them away and who have resolved to condemn us and to the uttermost of their power to destroy us what ever we say will not possibly take our request to be just and in that Case we shall content our selves as to them with the Testimony of our Consciences which perswades us not only that God will not condemn us for having been Reformed but also that he certainly will if we do not in that follow the sence of our hearts But there are yet enough persons in the Church of Rome of too much equity to follow the Examples of such a sort of People these equitable persons are those of whom we demand that hearing and that same equity and moderation of which they make such profession and which the importance of the subject treated on challenges them to yield us We shall tell them nothing which shall not be founded either on matters of fact known to all or upon the inviolable principles of Religion or upon the light of Common sence To set down this matter in some order I propose to my self to make evident these four Propositions 1. That our Fathers had both right and obligation to examine the State of Religion and the Latin Church such as it was in their days 2. That the Reformation which they made was just and lawful 3. That in Reforming themselves they had right and were bound to separate themselves from the Church of Rome 4. That in Reforming and Separating themselves they had right and obligation to maintain among themselves a Christian Society by publick Assemblies and the exercise of the Ministry I do not pretend that in Treating of these four Propositions I have exhausted all my subject but yet I hope that there will be few Questions that have some Relation to it which I do not sufficiently touch upon and few Objections which I do not answer I will particularly answer to all those that are contained in that Book of Prejudices as the order of the matters that I Treat of shall present them to me none of which will begin to oppose themselves till the seventh Chapter because that Author having passed by in silence a great many things that belong to the Foundation of this Controversy it will be necessary to touch upon
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
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
of such a Miracle or what promise can we find of it in the Scripture Not to insist here that it very ill agrees with the Doctrine of those among them who make the will of man so much Lord of all his Actions that whatsoever Grace God shall manifest towards it it remains always indifferent and free to follow that Grace or to reject it It is then very certain that hitherto our Fathers could not be very much edified in the point of the Sacraments in general but they were yet far less in the matter of the Sacrament of the Eucharist in particular For if we look only on one side they were plung'd into that perplexity about the intention where they taught one another that the Transubstantiation of the Bread into the Body of Jesus Christ was the effect of that Consecration and that they were bound to Worship the Host after the words of Consecration as being Jesus Christ himself What assurance could they have of so important a change Since it also depended upon so impenetrable a secret as that of the intention of the Priest which could only be known by God alone what assurance could they have that they were not deceived What ground had they to give a supream Worship to an Object of which none could have any certainty of Faith what likelihood they should believe it to be that which it was pretended to be and that it ought to be reckoned an adorable Object What likelihood that God would have given to his Church so doubtful an object to be the object of perpetual adoration Which on one side is so visible and so determinate that one may always say Behold it but of which notwithstanding no one can be assur'd that it is that indeed Is it any ways agreeable to his goodness and his wisdom to leave the Church to be perpetually held in suspence in that inexplicable doubt and exposed to the danger of taking the Bread for the true Son of God and the Wine for his real Blood and reduc'd to the necessity of putting that adoration daily to a hazard upon the credit of one man CHAP. IV. That such a Corruption of the Latin Church as our Fathers had conceived was no ways an impossible thing THese things were well nigh the chief Objects that stroke the minds of our Fathers and cain'd them to a more strict examination of the matters of that Religion Whether those motives were weak or strong just or unjust I leave to the judgment of every rational man to determine But some may say what did your Fathers never call to mind that so ordinary Maxim and so generally receiv'd in their days That the Church could not err at least in matters relating to Faith and the general Rules of manners and if they had so call'd it to mind could they not by that very thing easily have repell'd all those importunate prejudices of corruption which you have set before us It cannot be doubted but our Fathers did often think of it but it cannot likewise be imagined that they would not have endeavoured to search a little more narrowly upon what that Maxim was founded what construction they ought to make of it if in a word that Corruption whereof they saw such great signs had been a thing absolutely impossible 1. I say then in the first place that one of the thoughts that most naturally fell into their minds upon this matter was this That the same thing which has happened almost in all human affairs might very well befall the Christian Religion in the space of about five hundred Years wherein it had been in the hands of the Romans Every one might observe it to be chang'd by the succeeding Age to be rendred so as it could not be known and to become quite another thing than it was at first according as they degenerated from their Original That inclination that men had to alter the first institutions of things to add to them or diminish from them to give to them new Forms and new Customs Reigned at least as much in our Western Parts as among other Nations It Reigned also so universally that there was nothing reserved from its Dominion either in their Languages or their Discipline or their Professions or in the Governments of the People or in their Laws or in the Distribution of Justice or in one word in any of those things that depend in any manner whatsoever on the management of men It had been then a kind of Miracle if Religion had been spared and its Truth its Worship and Customs regarded and kept with so great care that nothing should be altered in that either by additions or diminutions And we cannot say that Religion being so Heavenly and Divine a thing is also above all those accidents For it is most true that it is Divine in it self and consequently inviolable de jure and of right but there is none that sees it not in effect too often violated through the rashness of men and our Fathers were not ignorant that as perfectly holy as it was yet it was found to be as much or more exposed to the passions and disorders of the Soul of man in all other things 2. But besides that general Inclination which never fails to change things from their natural state our Fathers could not but know also that all men did very much lean towards superstitions and errours in the matters of Religion They saw the proofs of this in those Chimaera's wherewith the false Religions had filled the World Chimaera's that were yet so much the more strange as those people who believed and authorised them as the Greeks and Romans did appear as to every thing else to have minds exceedingly inlightened and refin'd which made our Fathers clearly see that blinde love that men always had for errours in the matters of Religion And without doubt that very thing carri'd them out to suspect that that pretention to Infallibility was null and vain and that there might very well be Corruptions in the State of the Church of those times for what likelihood was there that that ill inclination should have had no place among those of the Latin Church that it was wholly extinguish't beyond a possibility of returning or that the Enemy of our Salvation would not make use of it for our destruction or that having made use of it it should remain so long without any effect during the course of so many Ages 3. The example of the Church of Israel whereof the Bible teacheth us the History confirm'd our Fathers in those thoughts That was the very Church of God as well as that of the Christians That Church was purchased by the Blood of Jesus Christ as well as ours altho' that Blood had not yet been shed God not only kept his Chosen and his truly Faithful under that Ministration but he had not any other Church nor any other Ministry in all the World for the Salvation of his Children Whence it
follows not only that God had the same concern in the preservation of the purity of that Church as of that of the Latin Church but that he had yet a far greater For above this that Church had external help for the Conversation of its purity far greater than the Latin Church ever had For it was shut up in one only people and in one Country only It had one Language only one only Tabernacle one only Temple but one civil Government but one only Political Law and but one King where the Western Church had all those apart in many places And yet notwithstanding all that it could not be kept from Corruptions not only at one but divers times not only in matters of small Consequence but after a strange manner by a heap of depraved Traditions by false glosses on the Law by open Idolatries and by a multitude of other things wherewith their Prophets reproached them Had they not then very great reason to think that the Latin Church which had no peculiar promises that it should be kept from Corruption in being distinguisht from that of Israel was not more happy then that in the Conservation of its Purity 4. To this example of the Church of Israel our Fathers adjoyn'd that of the Greek and other Eastern Churches which God had at first honour'd with Christianity as well as the Latin and that the times had nevertheless so dissigur'd them that they did not any farther appear to be what they were heretofore Indeed into what errours and superstitions did not those Churches fall And in how many points does not the Church of Rome find it self to differ at this day from them Some of them observe Circumcision with Baptism others keep up the sacrificing of living creatures after the manner of the Jews some solemnly every Year Baptize their Rivers and their Horses others believe that the smoke of Incense takes away their sins others hold that the Prayers of the Faithful deliver from the pains of Damnation those Souls that are then in Hell others give Pass-ports in due Form to the dying to carry them to Paradise and a thousand other such-like impertinencies that are found to be establisht among those People Why might it not be possible that the Latin Church should have degenerated as well as those Churches Is it that their Christianity was from the beginning different from that of the Latin's or is it because the Latin Church had some peculiar priviledges beyond all others No certainly their Vocation was equal on one part and on the other and the nature of things being so if those Nations had corrupted themselves those of Rome might corrupt themselves as well as they 5. Our Fathers who were not ignorant of those Examples could not but represent all to themselves also in my judgment the times past wherein errours and corruption had visibly prevail'd over the Truth even then when those very Churches of the East and West were joyn'd together in one Body They knew that that had past in the Council of Antioch in favour of the Macedonians in the Councils of Sirmium of Milan of Ariminum at Selucia and at Constantinople in favour of the Arrians and in a Council at Ephesus in favour of the Eutychians without thinking of that which they said of those two Councils held at Constantinople in favour of the Iconoclastes or abolishers of Images the one under the Emperour Leo Isaurious the other under Constantine Copronimus That very thing was an evident token to them that the Latin Church might be very likely in their times fallen into other corruptions and that errour had triumpht over truth For it was not at all impossible that that which had hapned frequently in respect of some errours might not yet with greater success and longer duration happen in respect of other errours 6. Moreover They observed that Councils of a great name among the Latins as those of Constance and Basil had been rejected and opposed by other Councils and that in the most weighty points of Religion to wit in the Case of the Supreme Authority that ought to govern the Church upon Earth For some rais'd the Authority of the Councils above that of the Pope and others would have it that the Popes should have an absolute and an independent and perfectly Monarchical Rule over the Church what could our Fathers conclude from so manifest a contest if not that it had a vast confusion in it and that it was exceeding necessary to the quiet setling of their Minds and Consciences to enter on an examination of that which those men taught in the business of Religion 7. Our Fathers were confirmed in that design when they set before their eyes those obscure Ages through which the Latin Church had past For who knows not what the ninth tenth and eleventh Centuries were not to speak of those that followed them As for the ninth Baronius is forc't to conclude the History of it with saying That it was an Age of affliction to the Church in general and chiefly to the Church of Rome as well by reason of the complaints it had against the Princes of the West and East and the Schism of Photius as by reason of intestine and implacable Wars which had began then to be formed within the very Bosom of that Church That this Age was the most deplorable and dismal above all the rest because those who ought to have been watchful in the Government of the Church not only slept profoundly but the very same Persons laboured all they could intirely to drown the Apostolick-Ship For the Tenth as there are very few Persons but will acknowledge that it was buried in darkness more gross then that of Aegypt so it will be needless here to produce the proofs The eleventh was scarce happier and Baronius begins the History of it with a remark of so universal a Corruption of manners cheifly among the Church-men that it had made way says he for the common beleif of the near approach of Antichrist and of the end of the world How could it be possible that during such gloomy times Religion Faith and Worship should be preserved without any alteration Saint Paul has joyn'd together Faith and a good Conscience as two things that mutually sustain one another and has taken notice that those who cast off a good Conscience make Shipwrack of the Faith In effect saith Saint Chrysostome then when men lead corrupted Lives it is impossible they should keep themselves from falling into perverse Doctrines 8. To these considerations we might joyn that of the two sorts of Philosophies which successively had reign'd in the Church to wit that of Plato and the other of Aristotle to whose principles they had strove to accomodate the Christian Religion For it is scarce to be conceiv'd but that mixture of Platonic and Peripatetic Opinions with the Doctrines of Jesus Christ should have defaced the Faith and quite alter'd his true Worship It was for this
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
Prejudices is Will they say to defend themselves that their is a very great difference between the Jewish Visible Church and the Christian that this has its Rights Priviledges and Promises which the other had not For she has a Soveraign Authority over the Faith of her Children a priviledge that she can never err and promises of a perpetual visibility But to come to that they ought first to renounce all those general proofs upon which they found that Absolute Obedience to the Latin Church They need say no more as the Author of the Prejudices has done that the darkness of our minds our personal Prejudices the uncertainty wherein we are of being deceived in our Judgments the being overwhelmed with a thousand cares and a thousand Temporal necessities which almost wholly take us up and which will not allow us to give more then a very little Time to the Examining the Truths of Religion the want of necessary helps the ignorance narrow and limited understandings of the greatest part of mankind constrain us to refer our selves to the Church All that would be to no purpose if they restrain it to a priviledge of the Christian Church For these very same general reasons had place in the time of the Jewish Church men saw not then more clearly then they do in these days they were not more assured in their Judgments they were not less cumbred with worldly affairs they were not less unprovided of necessary helps for the Examination of the Truths of Religion they were not then less ignorant and their minds less narrow then men are now in these days and yet notwithstanding all that did not make it their duty blindly to follow their Pastors or Ordinary Guides These are then nothing but shadows and frivolous pretences which having been of no force then cannot have any weight now We need not further say as the Author of Prejudices has done That it is certain that God can save men and even the most ignorant and simple That yet he does not offer them any other way to Salvation then that of the True Religion That it is therefore necessary that that should be not only possible but easy to be known that yet notwithstanding it is clear that there is no way more difficult more dangerous and less fitted to all capacities then that of examining all its Tenets One may equally apply all those propositions to the Times of the Old Testament as well as to those of the New God could save men there He made no other way to Salvation then that of the True Religion That ought then to have been easily known and that way of Examination was not less dangerous nor more fitted to all sorts of capacities then it is now Notwithstanding all that had not any force to hinder the Faithful from Examining it They cannot then in these days draw any consequence from what they so propose I affirm the same thing of all those other inconveniences which they invent to take away from every one that right of Examining the State of Religion by the Scripture and not wholly to believe their Pastors as that it would be to introduce a Principle of Schism and Division that every one might make himself a Judge of the Church that every one might make a Religion according to his Fancy that it is a great rashness for private Persons to imagine that they have more Understanding and more Wisdom than the whole Church and other such like things They may see that all those arguings are brought in vainly and to no purpose for if they were good and solid being so general as they are they would serve for all Times and all Places and would have their Force in favour of the Jewish Church as well as they would have them conclude in Favour of the Latin In the second place those Rights Priviledges and Promises which they would ascribe to the Christian Visible Church in exclusion of the Jewish are evidently null if they would make them depend precisely on Christianity For as I have before noted the Greek Church the Armenian the Nestorian and Aethiopian might pretend to them as justly as the Latin and yet the Latin applies them to her self in particular to the prejudice of all the others They ought then either to shew us what reason she has to appropriate those Rights Priviledges and general Promises and to make that that regards the Body of the Universal Church become particular to her or it is necessary they shew us that indeed they are not those Rights Priviledges and Promises that are common to all Christian Societies and that they are peculiar to the Latin Church But they know not how to do either the one or the other For neither Nature nor Grace have given any of those Priviledges or Rights to the Latins in exclusion from all other Christians They are neither more Lords of our Consciences nor more Infallible than others Christianity is Uniform throughout The Scripture also does not contain any one particular promise for them On the contrary Saint Paul says That in Jesus Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek nor Barbarian nor Scythian nor Bond nor Free but Christ is all and in all So that the Latin Church has no reason to draw that to her self which is a common Right nor to pretend any peculiar Priviledges But in the summ of all we have made it appear in the foregoing Chapters that those pretended Priviledges of Infallibility which they ascribe to the Christian Church Visible and those promises of perpetual Visibility in that Sence of Visibility wherein they understand it are Chimaeras which have not any Foundation either in Scripture or Reason And as to that right of Soveraign-Authority it cannot here be alledged but to very ill purpose For it is that which is yet in Dispute and whereof we have shewn the falsity from the example of the Jewish Church But they may draw from that example a consequence against the Latin one because that if that pretence would have been heretofore pernicious and destructive to Religion and the true Church as they may see it would have been it follows that it will be so yet in these days If then they cannot set before us any other difference between those two Terms and those two Churches which hinders my Conclusion the Argument will hold intire for it will not be enough to overthrow it meerly to say that the Christian Church has that Authority and that the Jewish had it not but they ought to give us a reason for it 3. But to proceed with our Reflexions If that Maxim whereof we treat were true that is to say if men were bound to give to their ordinary Pastors a blind obedience in the matters of Religion to see with their Eyes to tread in their Steps and to devest themselves of their own conduct to rest upon theirs the Jews who rejected Jesus Christ and his Doctrine during the time of his Preaching
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
Sacrilegious and that those on the contrary who submitted themselves to the decisions of the Church were those good men who did nothing but their duty and that we our selves at this day who have received our Christianity from the hands of that small number are but the followers of Rebels and Schismaticks Yet all that they must say if they lay down that Principle of absolute Obedience It appears then that that Principle is false and unjust and invented for the ruin of Religion 10. In effect an absolute obedience and an intire resigning of ones self to the Conduct of another as to those matters that regard the Faith and the Conscience is a duty that we can render lawfully to none but God who is the first Truth the first Principle of all Justice A man cannot submit his understanding and his heart to the word of any one so as to believe blindly that which he says without giving him a kind of Adoration for there can be no homage greater than that of an inward blind submission It is an infinite act according as a creature may be said to act infinitely that is to say without bounds without reserve without measure It is then an act that can belong to none but God immediately that we ought not to transfer to the Church if we would not adore the Church and to which by Consequence a Church can never pretend without usurping the just rights of God 11. God himself has so far forborn his right that he does not very often absolutely make use of it but leaves it to our minds to judge of the Truths that he propounds to us For there are often in those things that he teaches us Characters that equally note their Truth and their Divinity so that at all times we may draw these two conclusions from them This Doctrine is true this Doctrine is of God without their depending one upon the other We may say the same of his Commandments they bear most frequently Characters of their Natural Justice as well as those of their Divinity and they give us leave to receive them not only by an Act of Obedience but by an Act of Judgment also As it is from him that we hold that admirable faculty of distinguishing the true from the false the good from the bad by Characters imprest in those things themselves so he would not take a way the use of it in matters of Religion On the contrary it is ordinarily by the using of that that he draws us that he convinces us first of all of the Truth of some Doctrines that he makes us afterwards acknowledg the necessary connexion that they have with others which he has revealed to us the Truth whereof appears not so clearly abstractly considered at first and by that connexion he makes us receive them He shews us the equity of his Precepts the horror of those Vices that are contrary to them and in that manner he gains our Hearts by making use of our own Reason Not that we may lawfully reject any of those things which he teaches us we have no right for that without doubt because where our Understandings are wanting to discover those Characters of Truth or of Equity in those things which he teaches us there he has ordained that his Authority shall help us It is God that says it it is God that commands it but it is not the same with respect to the Church the Church is not God she is but an Interpreter and Servant of God she ought then to shew us in all that she teaches us as matter of Faith or that she commands the Conscience to submit to those Characters of Truth and Equity in the things themselves or else those of their Divinity when she fails in that she cannot supply that defect by her Authority for in that case her Authority is purely no other than Humane and an Humane Authority is not sufficient either for the Faith or for the Conscience so that every man has right to examine that which she teaches and to reject that that is beyond the word of God 12. In fine Let those Gentlemen tell us if they please whether in this same Question concerning the Soveraign Authority of the Latin Church and the Obligation that lies upon every one to hold himself to its decisions they mean that every one should refer himself to the Latin Church and believe also meerly because that she says so without any other examination or whether they would grant that every one may have right to examine of what nature of what extent and of what force that Authority is and how far that Obedience goes which he ought to render to it There is no likelyhood they will say the former for that Authority cannot establish it self when it shall be establisht a man may refer himself to it for other things but while her own establishment is disputed it is requisite it should come from somewhat else and that there should be for that proofs capable of perswading us To what purpose do they tell us of its external marks which makes us says the Author of the Prejudices discover without any difficulty that height of Authority which is in the Catholick Church if they would not leave the Faithful a right to see those external marks and to examine them not any farther by the Eyes of the Church but by their own That being so they may see that they ought always to give men a right of making a Judgment by their own light and to give them in that Question the most important matter of all to wit that of choosing a Rule and a setled Principle for their Guidance and their Faith an Authority upon which their Minds and Consciences may rest and lye down in perfect Peace They must give them that in that Question which it is no ways easie for them to decide For besides that they ought to see those external marks of the Latin Church which say they gain her so great an Authority they ought also to see whether there are not others which they take away more reasonably from her then those that they give her they ought to see whether those marks are not common to other Religious Societies that may by that means dispute with the Latin Church that Authority they ought to see whether those marks when they shall become peculiar to the Latin Church may be capable of giving her so Soveraign an Authority over mens Faith and Consciences which seems naturally to belong to none but God And because in that Question we treat not of the whole Body of the Church but only of the Prelats and those who take up the Ecclesiastical Function they ought to know whether those external marks can hinder them from believing that those Prelats have abused their charges and brought in or suffered to be brought in divers Corruptions into the Church All that is not so easie as the Authour of the Prejudices tells us it is There is some
of the Prelats in the Latin Church TO defend in some manner a Principle that Scripture Reason the Interest of the Antient Jewish Church and the Christians do so loudly condemn they propound some Inconveniences which arise they pretend from that of the Contrary Principle But it is certain that if it were enough to alleadge those Inconveniences to overthrow those Rights which are found to be so solidly established there is nothing in the world sure since there is nothing so just so reasonable or so necessary which the weakness or the malice of men may not abuse It is necessary to yield to men the right of eating and drinking of Cloathing and Marrying themselves of selling and buying of holding Commerce between themselves of building Houses and Towns and to distinguish themselves by their several Arts and Professions And yet how many Inconveniences are there that arise from all those things It is the same in the usage of the most holy and inviolable things as of Religion it self of which a Libertine says in General because of the Abuses that were made of it Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum If all must be abolisht that is subject to Inconveniences one must abolish every thing Gold and Iron Night and Day Fire and Water would be criminal and the very Air it self which makes us live causes sometimes our death They cannot then take a worse way then that of those Inconveniences to cry down a Right founded upon Nature and upon Grace and Authorized by Jesus Christ by the Prophets and Apostles Let us see nevertheless of what nature those Inconveniencies are One of the most Considerable is That if they allow those who are subject to the Church to Examine the matters of Religion there will be no more any way to keep men in the Unity of the Faith that every one will have a Religion by himself and that by this means they should open a way for Extravagancies and Heresies and by consequence for the intire ruin of the Church since the minds of men are so different and confused that that which pleases one will not please another To Answer to that Objection I would demand of those Gentlemen whether they propose to themselves to find out any humane and efficacious way which shall go so far as actually and effectually to hinder those Extravagances and Heresies or whether they would only establish a Maxim which in supposing that it should be followed and that all men would receive it should contain all in the Unity of the Faith Let them take which of those two sides they please they cannot rationally say any thing The first contains a rash and absurd pretence for to go about to seek a humane means that shall actually hinder all Errors and Heresies is to seek for that which they can never be able to find To retain men in the Unity of the Faith and of True Piety two things are necessary the one That they teach all the pure Truths of God and the other That they give them all a right understanding to the end they should follow it Their Pastors might very well do the first but the second which does not depend on them none but God alone can do And that also he does in regard of all his Elect and truly Faithful for whose sake only there is a Church and Pastors in the World For he bestows on all those his Holy Spirit in that measure that shall suffice to unite them in the same Faith and to hinder them from falling into Errours wholly inconsistent with their Salvation As for the others as he has not ordained their Salvation so he would not actually hinder them from casting themselves into Heresies or into Errors On the contrary he has resolved to permit those strayings the better to distinguish them from his True Children There must be also saith St. Paul Heresies among you that they which are approved may be made manifest among you And elsewhere he says That God should send strong delusions to them that perish that they should believe a lye So that God who alone is Lord of the hearts and minds of men not having propounded that end to himself in establishing his Visible Church to hinder any Heresies from being in the World nor that they should not arise within that very Church it self but only that his Elect and truly Faithful ones should not be infected with them it is a great rashness for those men who cannot dispose hearts as he does to extend not only their desires but their pretensions also farther and to search out a way by which there should not be in effect any Heresie I confess that we ought to desire the destruction of all Heresies that we ought to labour for their Extirpation and that as the Elect and true Children of God are not distinctly known the cares that we should take for them ought to be extended indifferently to all But I say that we cannot make use of any thing for so great a work but those external means which are the pure Preaching of the Truth and Confuting the contrary Errors When their Pastors shall acquit themselves well in that duty they may rest assured that God will bless their conduct and their word not to all men but to the persons of his true Children If their Pastors would urge their pretensions from thence and would find a human expedient that might absolutely hinder those Heresies from touching them and from actually and effectually springing up as well among the good as the wicked I affirm that they would be wiser then God that they would encroach upon his rights that they would hunt for a Chimaera and that by that very means they would change the Ministry into a Tyranny for under that pretence of rooting out those Heresies they would come to be Soveraign Lords over mens Souls and Consciences which cannot nor ought to be suffered and which is so far from being a means to avoid them that it would fill the Church with Heresies If they say they intend only to establish a Maxim which supposing that it would be followed and that all men would receive it would contain all in the Unity of the Faith and that Maxim is That they ought to refer themselves absolutely to their Pastors I say in the first place That that Maxim is as proper to contain men in the Unity of Heresie and of Schism as in the Unity of Faith For the Hereticks and Schismaticks have their Church and their Pastors to whom they should absolutely refer themselves So that they could never discern whether they are in Unity of the Faith or in that of Error and wandring from the Truth if they were not before all things assured that they were in the true Church But who shall warrant us that when they would be so assured of the true Church that men would not divide themselves by different sentiments and that that which pleases one should not displease another What
us that we do not deceive our selves in that particular choice that we make of the Authority of the Latin Church to refer our selves to her For we must in that choice rely on our own Reason Who shall secure us that the Lain Church herself does not deceeive her self in the discerning that she makes of the Tenets of Religion That Church is composed of the People and Prelates those people have not more Light than other men and those Prelates are not less subject than the others to that darkness of understanding to Negligence to Prejudices to Passions to a secret Obstinacy in their Opinions and beyond all that they have not a peculiar Interest to favour mens Errors and Superstitions to retain them the more easily in their obedience But those People and those Prelates are a very great number What does that signifie The Heathens and their Guides are yet a far greater number than they and yet they fail not to deceive themselves They are say they rich and powerful and raised in dignity The Heathens and the Mahometans are not less They have external marks but who knows whether those marks are good and whether they do not abuse themselves in the Consequence they pretend to draw from them They assure you that they do not deceive themselves they condemn you if you do not believe that which they believe and they live as to themselves in a perfect peace of mind But the Author of those Prejudices has taught us to answer That all those who compose other Societies appear to have the same assurance with us that they are in the Truth they do not condemn the Latins with less confidence than the Latins condemn them with they are not less exempt from the fear of deceiving themselves they live also in as great a Peace and Tranquillity That assurance also and that confidence that freedom from trouble and fear that Peace and that Tranquillity grounded upon the belief that they are in the right way and that they walk after their Light are marks so ambiguous and so deceitful that they may be found most frequently to be joyned infinitely more frequently with Errour and the way of Hell than with Truth and the way of Salvation These are the very words of the Author of those Prejudices whereof we change only the Application But say they yet farther Do you not believe that the Latin Prelates have a more clear light than you We cannot know any thing by that and they do not know anything themselves from thence since no person can make himself certain by his own light according to the Author of Prejudices They may from thence methinks see of what Nature that Argument is but they will be more apt to be distasted with it if they will but consider that their Principle tends to confound all Religion and to render the very existence of a Deity suspected For if there be nothing of certainty in those Judgments that we make by our own light why do we follow the Christian Religion more than the Pagan or the Mahometan Is it because that the Church has bid us do so This is but a very bad reason for the Church would never tell us that its Religion was bad when it would be so in effect there is no Society whatsoever but would say that its Religion was good and better than all others Is it because our Birth our Education Interest Reputation or the the friendship that we have with some persons or the Laws of the Country wherein we are will not suffer us to embrace any other Religion and such-like motives that engage us These are yet but the very worst Reasons and those who are not Christians but from thence though possibly they may not be a small number may say that they are not at all such for if those very tyes had been applyed to Paganism they would have been Pagans as they are now Christians How then ought we to be Christians It is necessary that we should be so from out of a Love and Approbation of that Religion it self But that Love and that Approbation ought to be the effects of our own Light and not of that of other men and our own light ought to dictate to us what is the Religion of God and to make us approve of and love it under that quality Should we then have nothing of certainty in that matter should we be always in doubt under a pretence that our Light might deceive us and those admirable effects that Religion produces in our souls that confidence quiet joy that tranquillity hope freedom from trouble and from fear would they be nothing but ambiguous and deceitful marks which are most frequently to be found more joyned with error and the way of Hell then with the Truth and way of salvation thither it is that that Principle of the Author of those Prejudices leads us Besides how do we come to believe there is a God Is it because the Church tells us so That would be a very ill reason for we believe on the contrary that there is a Church but by the belief that we have that there is a God we believe it without doubt by the impression of a thousand Characters of the Deity in our minds and on our hearts that appearin the Fabrick of the World in his Government or his ordering the Affairs of it and particularly in man himself and in his most pure and most natural inclinations Our Reason it self is a lively Image of it But that impression is wrought but by our own Eyes which make us see a Deity in things it is not by others Eyes that we see it but by our own Is it necessary then that we should doubt whether there be a God or not Must we never be certain because our Eyes deceive us somtimes and because we are not Infallible The Author of the Prejudices will say without doubt That we urge his Principle too farr that he never pretended to shew that we could not be assured by our own light without the Authority of the Church that there was a God and that the Christian Religion in opposition to that Religion which the Jews now profess or to all those Fantastick Religions that reign in the World and are the meer effects of the impostures and humours of men cannot but be the true Religion That that discernment is not hard to be made the advantage of the Christian Religion above all those others being most clear and manifest Indeed so he has explained himself from the very beginning of his Preface whence it appears that he would not hinder the examination of the matters of Religion but when particular controversies that divide the divers Sects of Christians shall be treated of I may say then if I am not mistaken That there are two parts in his Hypothesis that in the first he yields to every one a liberty to judg by his own Light of the Truth of the Christian Religion
Scriptures And upon another occasion Lord to whom shall we go Thou hast the words of Eternal Life And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ the Son of the living God If those of the Church of Rome were accustomed to the reading of the Holy Scripture they would find the proofs of this Truth in a thousand places but the far greatest part of our Controversies come from the neglect they have of that Divine Book and that neglect it self is one fruit of that excessive confidence they have in their Guides The End of the First Part. An HISTORICAL DEFENCE OF THE Reformation Against a Book Intituled Just Prejudices against the CALVINISTS 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 Prelats WE may now methinks suppose it evident and proved That our Fathers had a right and were bound to examine by themselves the matters of Religion and not to refer themselves absolutely to the Conduct and Authority of their Prelats But from thence it manifestly follows that they had a right to Reform themselves For since they could examine only in order to discern the good from the bad and the true from the false who can doubt that they having a right to make that discernment would not also have had a right to reject that which they should have found to have been contrary to or alienated from Christianity which is precisely that which is called Reformation I acknowledge that it yet remains to be inquired into whether those things which they have rejected are indeed Errors and Superstitons as they are pretended to be and whether they did not deceive themselves in the Judgment that they made But who sees it not necessary for the deciding of that Question to go to the bottom and to enter upon that discussion which our Adversaries would avoid From whence it may appear as I have said in the beginning that all that Controversy which they raise against us about the Call of our Reformers is nothing else but a vain amusement and that to make a good Judgment of that Action of our Fathers and to know whether it be just or unjust we ought always to come to the bottom of the cause and to those things themselves which are Reformed for upon that the Question doth wholly depend whether they did well or ill Notwithstanding to shew that we would forget nothing that may serve for our Justification and that after the desire to please God we have not a greater then that of approving our selves to our Country-men and in general to all men we shall not fail to make yet some particular Reflexions upon the Circumstances of the Reformation which will more and more confirm the right of our Fathers and manifest the Justice of their Conduct and at the same time we shall answer to some Objections of the Author of the Prejudices That shall be the business of this Second Part. Our first Reflexion shall be on that deplorable State of the Latin Church in the days of our Fathers in respect of its Prelats for its Condition was such that there was no more hope of ever seeing a good Reformation to spring up by their Ministry In effect what could be expected from a Body that had almost wholly abandoned the care of Religion and of the Salvation of Souls which was plunged in the intrigues and interests of the World which kept the People in the ignorance of the Mysteries of the Gospel and in the most gross Superstitions and with which the whole body it self did entertain it self and was found to be possest by Ambition by Luxury and by Covetousness and engaged in the vilest manners and living in almost a general opposition to overthrow of all Discipline They will SEE then what a German Bishop says in a Book intituled Onus Ecclesiae who lived and wrote in the year 1519. that is to say near the very time of the Reformation but one who was no ways Luthers friend as it appears by his writings I am afraid says he That the Doctrine of the Apostle touching the Qualifications of a Bishop is but very ill observed in these days or rather that we are fallen into those Times which he noted when he said I know that after my departure ravenous Wolves will come among you not sparing the flock Where may one see a good man chosen to be a Bishop one approved by his works and his Learning and any one who is not either a Child or Worldly or Ignorant of spiritual things The far greater number come to the Prelateship more by underhand canvassings and ill ways then by Election and lawful ways That Disorder which may be seen in the Ecclesiastical Dignities sets the Church in danger of perishing for Solomon says There is one evil which I have seen under the Sun as an Error which proceedeth from the Ruler when a fool is raised to high dignity It is therefore that I said that the Bishops ought to excel in Learning to the end that by their Instructions and their Preaching they might govern others profitably But alas What Bishop have we now a days that Preaches or has any care of the Souls committed to him There are besides that very few who are contented with one Spouse alone that is to say with one only Church and who seek not to appropriate to themselves more Dignities more Prebends and what is yet more to be condemned more Bishopricks Our Bishops are feasting at their own Tables then when they should be at the Altar they are unwise in the things of God but they love the wisdom of the World they are more intent on Temporal Affairs say it may be that I suffer my self to be carried away by my Passion and that all these clamourous Accusations are but the effect of that Engagement in which we all are set against the Church of Rome But to leave no ground for that Suspicion besides what I have set down in general in the second Chapters of my first Part I will further produce here more particular Testimonies of that Truth by applying them to the Ages of our Fathers I will say nothing of my own head I will make their Authors that are not suspected by them to speak whose passages I will faithfully relate which they may see in the Originals if they will take the pains And as I hope that they will not lay to my charge what may appear to be too vehement in their Expressions so also I not do pretend to impute to the Prelats of these days that which those Authors censured in those of the former Times then on the work of Jesus Christ Their Bodies are adorned with Gold and their Souls defiled with filth they are ashamed to meddle with Spiritual things and their glory lies in their Scurrilous humor and carriage Whence it was that Catherine of
Ministers instead of correcting them severely and repressing them They thought of nothing but their own Interest and not to let slip any occasion that might be offered to heap up money without having any regard either of the Honour of the Christian Religion or of the Salvation of Souls They thought of nothing but how to settle more and more the Soveraign and Monarchical Power of the Pope of Rome where they should have wholly applied themselves to make Jesus Christ Reign in the hearts of men They thought of nothing else but putting a stop to the happy breakings out of those first bright Beams of the Truth which came out of Luthers Mouth and Pen where they should have received them and made use of them to obtain from God a further and greater Light They made it a Fundamental matter to get Luther to recant and not being able to compass that they thought of nothing but how to ruin him by all the ways they could use They raised a strife and process about a matter of Faith of Religion and of Conscience and a process that was unjust and that could not be defended in the very Form of it For what kind of proceeding was that openly to cite a man to appear at Rome who had done nothing but only proposed some Theses to dispute of on a matter upon which there had not yet been any thing defined What manner of proceeding was it to give him a party himself to be his Judge and to declare him a Heretick before ever he had heard him as the Pope did in his Letter to Cajetan to stir up Kings Princes and the People against him and to shew it was his mind to begin to Treat of so weighty a matter with his Imprisonment without any regard had either of the Protestations which he made or of the Reasons he alledged or of his respectful Submissions towards the Pope and his Legat Who may not see in all that an inflexible Resolution always to retain the Latin Church in that deplorable condition wherein it was found to be then and even to make its Yoak heavier if it had been possible So far were they from having any design to Reform it and to free it from those Enemies and Superstitions under which it groaned I am not ignorant that some way to excuse so violent a proceeding one has said That almost at the same time wherein Luther had wrote his first Letter to Pope Leo full of respect and submission he had caused to be Printed two little Books against the Epitome of Sylvester Prieras wherein he spake of Rome and its Bishops in terms extreamly injurious that which says one evidently discovered a wicked and deceitful Spirit that should send forth nut of the same mouth sweet and bitter But all that is nothing else but a discourse of a certain Vlemburg full of falshood and calumnies a sworn Enemy of Luther and his Doctrine For it is manifest that the first Letter of Luther to Pope Leo which is that that is treated of was wrote in the beginning of the Year 1518. when he had not as yet any other dispute then with the Questors and Preachers of Indulgences and that those little Books that Vlemburg speaks of which served for an answer to that Epitome of Sylvester were not wrote till the Year 1520. after the Pope and his whole Court had openly declared themselves against Luther after Luther had appealed from the Pope to a Council and after the Pope had made his Doctrine to be condemned as Heretical by the Divines of Lovain and Cologn which evidently appears from that very Epitome of Sylvester which makes mention of that Appeal of Luther to a Council and from the Marginal Notes that Luther made upon that which also make mention of those decisions of Lovain and Cologn It is then a false report of an Enemy of Luther who not being able to find any thing till then blameable in his Conduct has on purpose confounded those times to render him odious and to justify after some manner a proceeding that cannot be defended They know not how to deny that the violence which they used against him was not openly condemned not only by the common people but by the more wise and knowing Persons themselves He complained says Coclaeus that is to say one of his most fiery Enemies that he was unjustly oppressed by his adversaries whom he openly produced and gained to himself in a little time the favours not only of the simple people who easily believed him and who listned after all sorts of Novelties but that also of divers grave and learned men who giving credit to his words through an ingenuous simplicity thought that that Monk had no other end than defending the Truth against the Questors of Indulgences who as Luther accused them appeared to have a greater zeal for the drawing of Money to themselves then for procuring the good of Souls He adds That the Learned men Poets and Orators defended him and charged the Pretats and the Divines with Covetousness Pride Envy Barbarousness and Ignorance saying that they only persecured Luther for his Learning because he appeared to be more Learned than themselves and more free in speaking the Truth against the cheats and impostures of Hypocrites Some time after that Luther had appealed from the Pope to a Council the Emperour Maximilian dyed which obliged Leo to send Charles Miltit into Germany in the Quality of his Nuntio He presented a golden Rose to the Elector of Saxony which the Pope had sent him as a Token of his particular Friendship but that Present was accompanied with Letters which were sent both to the Prince and his Council in which the Pope all along requested them that they would give up Luther into his hands as an Heretick and a Child of the Devil Luther has wrote in some part of his works that Miliet was loaden with sixty six Apostolick Breves to cause them to be stuck up from place to place and by that means to conduct him more securely to Rome in case that Prince Frederick should give him up into his hands But all those Breves and all those Letters were to no purpose for that Prince would not leave Luther to so unjust a Passion This oblig'd Miltit to betake himself to other measures He thought that to make up that business he ought to take a course contrary to that of Violence and Authority He would then have some private conferences with Luther to reconcile him to the Pope he highly blamed the lewd conversations of the Sellers of Indulgences and perswaded Luther to write yet once more to the Pope with respect and submission and yet notwithstanding it was agreed that he should impose silence on both Parties and that the whole business should be committed unto some Bishop of Germany as to him of Treves or to him of Saltzburg Luther performed on his part in good earnest all that was agreed on he
Body of the Church to which those words of Isaiah might be generally applied From the Crown of the head to the sole of the foot there was no soundness in her But if any would have us yet further Examine the other Circumstances they will find that they all concur to establish that Call whereof we Treat I rank in this place all those extraordinary Qualities wherewith it pleased God to inrich those among our Fathers who contributed most of all to the work of the Reformation Who may not perceive in them a lively and penetrating understanding a solid Judgment an exquisite and profound knowledge an indefatigable propension to Labour a wonderful readiness to compose and to deliver an exceeding exact study of the Scripture and the Principles of the Christian Religion a great and resolute Soul an unshaken courage an upright Conscience a sincere love of the Truth an ardent zeal for the Glory of God a solid Piety without Hypocrisie and without Pride a plain and open Carriage an intire disengagement from the things of the World an admirable confidence in God and in his Providence a Cordial Friendship to all good men and the greatest aversion to the Vices Prophanation and Sophistry of others These were the Gifts and Talents wherewith the Divine Favour Honoured the greatest part of them there yet remains the liveliest Characters of them in their Writings and they were as the Seal wherewith God would confirm their Call For when his Wisdom designs persons to any great work it is wont to bestow on them those necessary qualifications to acquit themselves in it and we may say without fear of being charged with derogating from the Truth by those who know History that from the Sixth Age until that of our Fathers that is to say for the space of more then nine hundred Years there could not be found any space of Time so fertile in great men as that of the Reformation was which shews that God had a design to make use of them for that Work as the event has justified Add to all that The Ardent and almost Universal desire among the People to see a good Reformation spring up in the Church for even that is a yet further Seal to the Call of the Reformers in as much as it is a Testimony that God had markt out that Age wherein to purge his floor as the Scripture speaks Who knows not that that desire was such as neither the Artifices nor the Violences nor the Calumnies wherewith they laboured to darken the Reformation could wholly put a stop to The Church was left in Ignorance and in Superstition she panted after the Light of the Gospel which had been for so long a Time hid under a dark vail and that general Disposition wherein she was may let us see that the Time of her Deliverance was come But lastly is it not true that then the greatest part of those who laboured in that Reformation were Ecclesiastical persons whom the Duty of their place obliged more particularly then others to root out Errors from the minds of men to purify Religion and to endeavour that God should be worshipped according to his Will Every one knows that Luther and Zuinglius who appeared the first in that Great Work were not only Priests but ordinary Preachers also the one at Wittenburg and the other at Zurich and that the former was Professour in Divinity And they are not ignorant that those who joyned themselves to them to advance that design were also in Publick Offices in the Church as the whole University of Wittenburg a very great Number of Priests and other Church-men with Bishops and Arch-Bishops in Germany in Swedeland and in Denmark and some even in France and the whole Body of Bishops in England They will say it may be that the Pope Excommunicated them all whence it follows that they had no more either any publick Call or lawful Ministry But that Answer would be fallacious For the Pope having Excommunicated them for nothing else but that business of the Reformation his Excommunication can be considered no otherwise then as null in this Cause without an Obligation to enter upon an Examination of the Validity of his Thunders in general In effect if they did their Duty if they obeyed their Call in Reforming themselves and in reforming their Flocks it ought not to be questioned that those Excommunications which they suffered for so good a Cause did not fall of right upon those who unjustly pronounced them and that not only what our Reformers had done before but also what they did afterward was well and lawfully done Who can deny that an Excommunication contrary to the Glory of God to the good of the Church and to the Salvation of men should not not be Null But if the Reformation was just and the Glory of God the good of the Church and the Salvation of the People called for it as we suppose they did in this Dispute they may very well see that the Thunders of Rome upon this Subject are unjust and by consequence of no consideration They ought not then to propound things so to us nor to deny the first Reformers to be publick persons who had a part in the Ministry of the Church and who for that Reason had a most strict Obligation to Labour in the Re-establishment of its Purity And to declare what we think those Excommunications of the Popes were so far from diminishing the Right and Call of the first Reformers that they did on the contrary confirm them the more and that for two Reasons The one in that they made them see more and more that they could hope for nothing on the part of Rome or the Bishops of its side from whence there arose an indispensable necessity on our Fathers to employ themselves in it and the other in that those pretended Excommunications furnisht them also with a just Subject of laying open more and more to the Eyes of the people the gross and fundamental Errors whose Protection the Popes took up with so great an Ardour To which I add That as much as the Popes and the Prelats of their party opposed themselves to the Reformation so much they lost of that Right which yet remained to them in that publick Ministry which they abused with so great Injustice and that very thing did but strengthen the Right of the other Party and render their Ministry more Publick and more Lawful For in those contests that divide a Body or a Society that which one of the parties loses by its ill Conduct is re-assembled together and reunited in the other But as it is only proper to our present purpose to Treat of the Call that our Fathers had to Reform themselves and to Labour to Reform others that is to say meerly to reject Errors and to excite others to do the same and not to go further to talk of their Right or Call to the publick Ministry We ought not to insist more upon this
difference which we have with them concerning the Opinion of the Necessity of Auricular Confession for that Opinion is partly founded upon this that Absolution of the Priests is a Judiciary Act and that in that respect the Church has a true Tribunal before which the Faithful are bound to appear and partly upon the Opinion that the penances which the Priest enjoyns are true Satisfactions to the Divine Justice which they are bound to undergo 8. Lastly it is from the same source that the difference proceeds which we have with them concerning the Super-abundant satisfactions of the Saints of which they will have it that the Faithful may partake and whereof in part they compose the Treasure of the Church Behold here Eight Controversies included in the Explication of the first Act of our Justification Upon the second we differ about the Foundation upon which the right that God gives us to life eternal is established or if you will about the proper and direct cause in consideration of which God gives us that right for we establish it alone upon the merits of Jesus Christ in Vertue of that Comunion which we have with him But the Church of Rome Establishes it upon the merit of our works also for she would have it that after God has given us his Grace by which we do good works we truly inherit not only an increase of Grace but Eternal life and even an increase of Glory and she Anathematizes those who do not believe it 2. We differ also about those to whom God gives that right for we believe that God gives it only to his Elect in whom he preserves it by his Grace and by the gift of perseverance but the Church of Rome believes that he gives it also to divers Reprobates whom his Grace abandons and who finally Perish in their Sins Upon the Third Doctrine we differ concerning the Nature and the Definition of Justifying Faith for as for us we look on it as an Act of the Soul that embraces or accepts the satisfaction and merit of Jesus Christ and which applies the promises of God's mercy made to us in the Gospel and we labour as much as we can to live according to that thought But the Doctors of the Roman Church frame an Idea of that Faith of a very great coldness and negligence for they content themselves to say that it is a consent that we yield in general to all the Truths revealed in the Word of God and there are some that go so far as to say that Faith fails not to Justify us although it should not have the least regard to the particular mercy of God towards us which is a thing that we cannot understand without horrour For the rest when I shall say that the Doctrines of the Imputation of the merit of Jesus Christ and his satisfaction are known but to a very few in the Church of Rome as that also is of the Application that we make of them to our selves by the internal Act of our Souls which receives them when I shall say that these Truths so important and so necessary to the practise of Christianity are almost stifled by that great Multitude of external Exercises with which they busy the People I shall say nothing in my Judgment that the more sincere persons will not acknowledge and of which God grant they may be able hereafter to convince me of a falshood in that respect In fine the last Doctrine that fully makes up the Idea of our Justification according to the Scripture produces of it self a considerable Controversy between the Church of Rome and us For as for us we limit our selves to the good works to which our Justification Obliges us and which God has enjoyned us without going any further But the Church of Rome extends them even to those which she her self Commands for the pretends that her Laws properly and directly bind the Conscience under pain of mortal Sin and therefore it was that Leo X. condemned Luther for having wrote that the Church had no power to make Laws concerning manners or good works All these Controversies that naturally arise from the different Explications which they give of the Tenet of Justification let us sufficiently see that the Author of the Prejudices is mistaken if he thinks that we should have no more upon this matter then differences about words and M. le Blanc is too sincere and too Learned to have pretended to deny any of those things which I have mentioned although he has Judiciously remarked that men may easily Equivocate upon the different Significations of the Terms It is therefore neither a piece of Rashness nor Impertinency that our first Reformers had such a regard to the matter of Justification as being a thing of the greatest importance in Religion and it is on the contrary most Just that having seen that Doctrine of the Salvation of Christians neglected obscured and depraved that they should have Judged it necessary to set themselves upon the re-establishing of it CHAP. VII An Answer to the Objections of the twelfth and thirteenth Chapters of the Prejudices TO understand well what is in the Twelfth Chapter of the Author of the Prejudices we must in the first place take notice of the design he propounds to himself and the means he makes use of to reach it As to his design he Explains himself in the very Title of the Chapter which bears this That the Spirit of a Politician every way Humane that appears in the differences that the Calvinists have had with the Lutherans gives a right to reject them without any further Examination as a sort of men without any Conscience He explains himself yet further in the beginning of his discourse after this manner It has been demanded says he of the Calvinists with good reason how it could come to pass that if Luther Zuinglius and Calvin had received a Mission from God and were the Instruments that he made choice of for the greatest work that ever was which is the Reformation of the Errors of sixteen Centuries they should not avoid being openly divided between themselves to dismember themselves from one another to persecute one another after so outragious a manner and to Treat one another as the declared Enemies of God and his Church He explains himself also in another place where he speaks after this manner The Innocence or the Crimes of Luther equally condemn the Calvinists either for having declaimed against an innocent person or for having given unjust praises to one of the most wicked men that ever was and that monstrous conjunction which they have made in his person of holiness with the most detestable Crimes is an evident proof that they have not the least Idea of Christian Vertue nor of the Spirit of Christianity See yet further how he speaks in the same Chapter If Luther were an instrument of the Devil a wicked person a Schismatick a violent and passionate man what will become of
some were even contrary to the word of God and the Authority of the Councils They add that a certain Book of their Adversaries was full of Propositions that were Dangerous Seditious Impious Schismatical Blasphemous with some openly Heretical See here what M. Daille has set down immediatly after the Examples of Cyril Saint Jerome Stephen and Saint Cyprian in which it had been well if the Author of the Prejudices would have satisfied us for he cannot be ignorant that we could urge this matter a great deal further then M. Daille has done and that he who would make up a Collection of all the Injuries that these Gentlemen say of one another would make a very strange Vocabulary But he has Judged that he ought to pass over this Article in silence and that it was more fit for his purpose to answer only upon Saint Cyril Saint Jerome Stephen and Saint Cyprian Howsoever it be it seems to be clear to me by what I have said a very ill prejudice in matters of Religion to make the Judgment that we ought to make of a Doctrine to depend upon that that we may make of the Persons instead of Judging it by the Doctrine it self and by the word of God and the Author of the Prejudices may suffer us if he pleases to say to him on the Part of our first Reformers what Saint Augustin said on the Part of the Orthodox to Cresconius Since you are not the Judge of the inward motions of our heart set your selves only to know whether we fight for or against the Truth For if we Teach the Truth if we refute Error when our intentions should not be good and if we should seek either for secular advantages or vain-glory those who have a love for the Truth will not avoid joyning with us since it would be the Truth that would be always declared after what manner soever it were so But besides those two Remarks which I have made I must further take notice in the Third place that the Reasoning of the Author of the Prejudices is founded upon another supposition which is not less unjust nor less rash then those other Two which I have examined For it is founded upon this Principle That we ought to Judge of Persons meerly by that ill which appears in them whereas in order to the making an equitable Judgment we ought at least to consider the good with the ill and after having made an exact discernment of the one and the other to approve of that good that may be seen and to blame that bad that may be found there It was after this manner that Zuinglius and Calvin passed their Judgments on Luther and that we Judge him also we discover a great many Excellent things in him an Heroical Courage a great Love for the Truth an ardent Zeal for the Glory of God a great Trust in his Providence Extraordinary Learning in a dark Age a profound respect of the Holy Scripture an indefatigable Spirit and a great many other high Qualities We see that he was in his Time one of the first who had their Eyes opened to consider the Errors and Abuses that were then currant in the Latin Church that he earnestly applyed himself to it that his Example excited divers others to do the same that he endured upon that Account very great Persecutions under all which his heart never failed and that by his Cares and Learned Labours he recovered divers people out of the Superstition wherein they were buried Under this prospect we cannot but give him the Just praise which we believe he merits and because we know that God is the Author of every perfect gift as Saint James says we attribute all the good that we see in Luther to his Grace and his Holy Spirit and all the happy Successes of his Preaching to the Divine Benediction looking upon him as a servant of God and an instrument which he made use of for the work of the Reformation But because there is no person in the World who has not his Excesses and his Faults amidst that which Luther had of praise worthy we see also a great many things which we know not how to approve We believe that he had not light enough about the matter of the Eucharist we find that he was very much prepossessed about the Real presence we acknowledge that his stile was too impetuous and too violent and we make no scruple to say that he has not well enough distinguished his differing opinions so as to be able to support them without breaking the bond of Communion with those who could not tolerate them which makes him fall into a great piece of injustice in respect of us Thus far methinks we may go without impugning Christian Charity if any one among us have pushed his Judgment further and would needs have Penetrated into the heart of Luther to impute his Actions to the Principles of Jealousy of Pride and Hatred as the Author of the Prejudices says that Hospinian has done it is what we do not approve of For there is nothing in the World wherein we are more easily deceived then in the Judgments which we pass upon the internal Principles of any ones Actions We may say this Action is good this Action is not good but when one Action may proceed from divers differing Principles we ought to Judge with Charity or if there be no place for a Judgment of Charity the surest way is not to Judge at all but to leave it to the knowledge of God If the Author of the Prejudices had followed this Rule he had never attributed as he has done our carriage towards Luther and the Lutherans to a piece of Human Policy he had said on the contrary that it was the effect of a Just Discernment which we could not tell how to hinder our selves from making without being culpable We blame in Luther and in the Lutherans what we Judge to be blamable there we commend that therein which we Judge to be commendable we bear with that which we believe to be tolerable without approving it and if there be any excess either in that Praise or Blame or Toleration we are ready to amend it when they shall make us to perceive it Notwithstanding we chuse rather to incline towards the side of Charity then towards that of Rigor and we would be much rather in a state wherein by the Mediation of the grace of God all sharpness animosity harsh expressions accusations complaints might be for ever banished then that we should banish our Praises and Toleration We will always preserve towards the Church of Rome the same Charity and the same Justice as much as it shall be possible for us to do but in Observing that equality we are grieved to see that we cannot but make very differing Judgments of her and of those of the Confession of Ausburg and which produce contrary effects in us These latter are in difference with us only about
visible and Transfigured into an Angel of light and in the shape of a Preacher in the Chair of Truth and what else would he perswade the Faithful too but that the Faithful ought to take very great heed not to read the Holy Scripture and not to meditate day and night upon the words of life that the Spirit of God has dictated to the Prophets and which God the Father has given to his Son for the Instruction of his Church and to draw it from the Corruption of the world to render it Holy and without Spot to his Father who gave it to him Jesus Christ was the Word uf God and liv'd by that Word and to make his Church live he gave it his word in an Intelligible Tongue out of his own mouth and by his Disciples Search says he and examine carefully the Scriptures for they are they which Testify of me Thus it is that they speak of it sometimes Jesus Christ gave his Scripture to the Faithful with a Commandment to read it to examine it carefully and to hear it It was the Judge of the beleif of the Church and the Difficulties and Questions that arose in the Doctrine of the Faith and Manners The Parishioners made use of them against their Bishops They encountred even their Ordinances by passages out of that Scripture they maintain'd that the use of them belonged to all Christians by a natural right and that to go about to deprive them of them was to do an action of the Devil But now a days they speak no more after that manner for they tell us on the contrary that it is a Ridiculous and Impossible way to Instruct men in the Truth an Infinite way which has no Issue and which is of so excessive a length that whatsoever dilligence we should use we can never arrive to the end and they labour to heap difficulties upon difficulties to drive them back and to make a Labyrinth full of Circles and confus'd ways that so out of a fear of those Confusions the world should take heed of entring into it For my own part I freely acknowledg That I can comprehend nothing in all that For if before one can assure ones self of one only Passage of Scripture whatsoever it be we must needs go through a thousand tedious ways and overcome a thousand Obstacles that arise from the Question about the Canonical Books about the Conformity of the Translations with the Originals about the different manner of reading the Passages and about the difference of Interpretations as the Author of the Prejudices would have it according to his ordinary Exaggeration to what purpose is it to give the publick a Translation which after the manner that it was given and receiv'd in cannot but be subject to the greatest part of those difficulties and yet notwithstanding they put it into all mens hands as well the Ignorant as the Learned as well of the simple as the more Inlightned as well to women as to men The Church of Rome has not declared it Authentick Two Bishops and a Doctor have approved it but two Arch-bishops and a Cardinal have forbidden it and yet one has not failed notwithstanding those Prohibitions to maintain that all the world ought to read them and that that forbidding them is a Violence a Novelty an unexampled Enterprise a bold Attempt upon the Liberty that God has given to the Church ransomed at the price of the Blood of his own Son that it is an usurpation and the Introducing of a Tyrannical Authority that was never excercised in the Church until this day and that every one is bound not only not to obey that Ordinance but even to have an Horror for it and to resist it as much as he can What will then become of those Difficulties and those unconquerable Confufions which hinder them according to the Author of the Prejudices so that they cannot assure themselves of one only Passage of the Scripture through the uncertaitty wherein a man is of the unfaithfulness of the Translations through the Ignorance wherein we are of the different manner of reading those Passages and through the necessity of consulting Interpreters Is it because they would expresly engage the People in an Infinite way and which can come to no Issue and in a ridiculous way and which is Impossible for the Instructing of any in the Truth or is it rather because they did not propound to themselves in that Translation to Instruct men in the Truths of the Faith but only to satisfy their Curiosity and to make them read good French The Author of the Prejudices may acknowledge therefore if he pleases that the heat of Disputation has carried him beyond the bounds of Right and Reason and the respect which he ought to have for the word of God and that in endeavouring to have troubled us he has done it for himself and his Freinds for if that which he has propounded were true they would give us a ground to accuse those who have publish'd the Translation of Mons of Rashness and Imprudence And it will be nothing to the purpose to say that they Publish'd it for those persons who were already Instructed in the Truths which the Church believes that therein they might receive a Confirmation and increase of the Faith by the Conformity which they should find the Doctrines of the Church have with it and that it was necessary for that that they should go through all the difficulties which the Author of the Prejudices has worked since the Sole Conformity of it with the Doctrines of the Church would be sufficient to assure them that it was truly the word of God I say that answer will not satisfy For besides that it is an Injury to the word of God to make the Efficacy that it has in our Souls to depend upon the Conformity which it has with the Doctrine of the Church whereas on the contrary the Efficacy of the Doctrine of the Church ought to depend on its Conformity with the word of God besides that the Author of the Preface says expresly That the Souls of the simpler sort may find that in his Translation which is necessary for their Instruction He says not those who shall be already Instructed in that which the Church teaches but he says the Simpler sort he does not say that they would be Confirmed in the Instruction which they had already but that they would find that which should be necessary for their Instruction And elsewhere he says That the word of God that is to say in his Translation for it is about the Subject of that Translation that he speaks is the Light of the Blind and the Life of the Dead Which signifies that it gives by it self the first Impressions of the Spiritual Life So that it was not in the view of the knowledge that the simple might have of the Doctrine of the Roman Church that he publish'd that Translation if we believe the
without a Case of necessity but only at the Solemn Feasts of Easter and Whitsuntide of giving of Milk and Honey to the Baptized of Administring the Eucharist to little Children after Baptism of Praying standing upon the Lords day and from Easter till Whitsuntide of Celebrating the Communion on the Evening of Fast-days of every ones carrying home with him a piece of the Bread of the Communion of distributing the Cup to all the faithful Communicants of receiving the Communion not on ones Knees but standing of mutually kissing one another before the Communion and divers others which the Latins have Abrogated On the other side how many Latin Traditions are there which the use of the Church of Rome Authorises at this Day of which we cannot find the least Trace in the Primitive Church and which from thence visibly discover themselves to be New and by consequence false and not Apostolical as the Worshipping of Images Invocation of Saints Transubstantiation Adoration of the Host Use of Altars that of Lights or Tapers Masses without any Communion the Divine Service in a Tongue not understood by the People the Soveraign Authority of the Church of Rome over all other Churches Auricular Confession the Number of the seven Sacraments and as many more that the Primitive Church which came nearest to the Apostles never knew as we have often Justified from whence it follows that they are not Apostolical and descending from that only and last Revelation without which there is no word of God There is therefore nothing more improper to be the Rule of Faith then that pretended Tradition which is not established upon any certain Foundation which serves for a pretence to Hereticks which is embraced pro and con which changes according as times and places do and by the favour of which they may defend the greatest absurdiries by meerly saying that they are the Traditions which the Apostles Transmitted from their own Mouths to their Successours In a word if they would have us to believe a Mystery with a Divine Faith if they would that we should practise a Worship with a perswasion that it is agreeable to God they ought to shew us that that Mystery and that Worship proceeds from the Revelation of Jesus Christ and his Apostles for without that all that is in the World is of Men's Invention since after Christ and his Apostles there has been no Revelation as we are both agreed But they can only shew us that by these two ways either by that of the Scripture in shewing us that those Mysteries and that Worship are conformable to it or by that of Transmission viva voce But as to that Transmission viva voce we are so far from being able to have a Divine certainty that we can't have so much as a humane for the Reasons which I have alleadged Which are that from the beginning of Christianity Hereticks have boasted of them and yet they were not believed for them that the Orthodox themselves were deceived in them alleadging them in false and vain things which the following Ages have rejected that the Schismatical Churches alledge them against the Latins and the Latins against the Schismaticks without one sides having any better ground then the other that the Church of Rome sets them before us for those New things which the first Ages never knew It remains therefore that the way of the Conformity to the Scripture upon which we are all agreed is that in which the Divine Revelation is contained CHAP. IX An Examination of the Objections which the Author of the Prejudices makes against the Scripture BUt this way of the Scripture according to the Author of the Prejudices is Infinite Ridiculous Impossible it has such consusions and length that we cannot come to the end of it with all our diligence The Principle of the Calvinists says he includes all these Maxims without which it cannot subsist 1. That the Church is not infallible in its decisions concerning the Faith 2. That Traditions do not make any part of the Rule of the Faith 3. That the Scripture contains in general all the points of Faith and so that whatsoever is not contained in the Scripture cannot be of Faith 4. That it contains them clearly and after a manner that is fitted to the under standing of all the World So that the certainty of that way and the hope that we can rationally conceive of it must depend upon the certainty of these Maxims Upon that we must note that it is not here Questioned whether the Scripture be Divine or not but that supposing that it is so he says only That he must demand of us those formal and decisive passages that prove those four Propositions And that when we do propose any one we must first be assured that it is taken out of a Canonical Book and to that effect we must examine the controversy of the Canonical Books and see by what Rules they may be known 2. We must be certain that that passage is conformable to the Original and to that effect we must consult the Originals 3. We must be certain that there are not different ways of Reading it that may weaken the proof 4. That we must narrowly see into the sence of the passage not to give it too great a Latitude nor to blind our selves with an appearance 5. That we must see whether there are no expressions or contrary passages which force us to take the passage in another sence 6. That we ought to consult the Interpreters of one side and of the other and to know what they say upon that passage 7. That after this we must come to the distinction of Fundamental points and those that are not Fundamental and prove it by Scripture 8. That we must examine the passages which each Sect produces in its Favour 9. That lastly after all this it is necessary that a man should trust his own Eyes and his Memory which failing to go through all the former reasons and preserving only a consused Idea of them will not further allow him to make a Just Judgment of things He concludes from thence that this way is not only interrupted with unconquerable difficulties and obstacles but that it is of a length so little proportioned to mens minds that it is evident that it cannot be that which God has chosen to instruct us in the Truths by which he would lead us to Salvation For says he if they themselves who make a profession of spending all their lives in the Study of Divinity ought to Judge that Examination to be above their abilities what will become of those who are obliged to spend the greatest part of their Time in other Occupations What will become of Judges Magistrates Tradesmen Labourers Souldiers Women Children who have as yet a very weak Judgment What will become of those who do not understand so much as any of the Languages into the which the Bible is Translated What will become of the blind who know not
necessary to Salvation I will maintain to him that his proposition is impious that it manifestly tends to make Socinians and Arrians to be received into the Church and almost all Hereticks since it bannishes out of the number of the Articles of the Faith all the Tenets which those Hereticks dispute and which they do not see in the Scripture But it is not very difficult to satisfy that demand I speak of such a clearness as will convince a sincere person who does not blind himself either by passion or malice or interest or prejudice but lets his Reason and his Conscience act in good Earnest This is well near the Answer that the Author of the Prejudices would make if we asked him the same Question touching the clearness which he pretends there is in Tradition or in the infallible voice of the Church for his Justice is so great that he does never propose any difficulties of our Principle to us which are not common to the Principle of the Church of Rome and which by consequence he would not be bound to answer himself as well as we Notwithstanding I shall tell him that he grosly deceives himself if he imagins that we will only acknowledge those things for Articles of Faith which are clearly contained in the Scripture It is true that we acknowledging them only for the Articles of Faith which are necessary to the Salvation of the most simple does not hinder but that other things which are contained in the Scripture with less evidence may also be Articles of the Faith although not absolutely necessary for all that which is in the Scripture after what manner soever it be contained there is of Faith He does not less deceive himself if he imagins that although the Articles which the Socinians and Arrians and other Hereticks dispute were of the number of those which are not so clearly contained in the Scripture and the knowledge of which is not absolutely necessary to the Salvation of the simple yet that we ought to receive those Hereticks into the Church There is a great difference between simple persons who do not conceive a Fundamental Truth otherwise then under a general notion and indistinctly without going any farther and those going so far as a distinct Idea of the Truth expresly deny it and substitute a false and deceitful Idea in its place The former may be in a State of Salvation and ought to be received into the Church whereas the second sort ought to be banished as persons infected with a pernitious Error A Peasant may be made to believe in good earnest that Jesus Christ is God and that the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost are but one only God without going any farther because he will not understand the terms of Nature Essence Person Hypostatical Union and others that are made use of upon that subject and he will also be ignorant of the subtil and frivolous distinctions of the Hereticks Who can deny that such a man holds the Truth under a General Idea And who will not yet place a very great difference between him and a Socinian who very well knowing what these Propositions mean Jesus Christ is God by his Essence The Father Son and Holy-Ghost are Three Persons and one only Divine Nature will deny them and substitute in their places these other Propositions Jesus Christ is God only by the dignity of his Office and Glory of his Exaltation The Father the Son and the Holy-Ghost being only so by Denomination It would be a very hard case in my Judgment to exclude the former from the Church but it would be a sin to admit the latter and this shews us by the way the falshood of the reasoning of the Author of the Prejudices But we ought to resume our discourse I say therefore the same thing of the Third condition as of the two Former The things whereof we treat perswade themselves and make themseves to be perceived as true and Divine as well by the weakest as the strongest For although the weaker are not in a condition to render a Reason exactly of their perswasion as a Learned man would do yet notwithstanding we must not doubt but they are rightly perswaded A Tradesman a Peasant a Labourer know not how to explain either the rules of right reasoning or the mediums that Logick affords to discover the faults of Sophistry or false reasoning and yet nevertheless they do yet apprehend a just reasoning and reject a bad It is the same thing of a good Doctrine and a false the weaker sort may receive the one and reject the other when it shall be presented to them and they would make that discernment by the meer Judgment of their Consciences though they should not be capable of Explaining their Reasons well For there are two ways of being perswaded of a Truth and knowing a falshood the one is by a simple apprehension and the other by reflection the first comes from a meer impression of the Objects that make themselves to be discerned by their very nature and the other comes from Meditation and Study through the application of certain Rules I confess that there is more confusion in the first but that has also sometimes more force and more certainty then the Second As for that which regards the Fourth Condition which is That the Faith should be pure and free'd from every damnable Error besides that which I have said that the meer sentiment of Conscience is enough for the weaker sort to make them discern the good from the bad and by Consequence to reject the false Doctrines that shall concern their Salvation besides that I say it is certain that damnable Errors that is to say those which are incompatible with a true and saving Faith have a natural repugnancy with the Truths that are Essential to Religion wherewith the simpler sort are endowed so that those Truths alone are sufficient for the rejection of Errors without any absolute necessity that they should have a greater stock of Learning For Example The principle of the Adoration of one only God in the Souls of the weakes sort in our Communion is sufficient to make them reject a Religious worship paid to Creatures without their lying under a necessity of entring further into the Controversy which we have with the Church of Rome upon that subject The Principle of confidence in God alone is sufficient to make them reject invocation of Saints and Angels and a confidence in their merits The principle of the one only Sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the cross for the Expiation of our sins is sufficient to make them reject humane Satisfactions Purgatory and the Indulgences of the Pope The Principle of the Mediation of one only Jesus Christ is sufficient to make them reject the Intercession of Saints and Angels The Principle of the Truth of the humane nature of Jesus Christ like unto us in all things except sin is sufficient to make them reject the Real Presence
to 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
was the time whereof Hilary speaks in his Writings which you artificially make use of to elude so many Divine Testimonies which I have set before you as if the Church had perished throughout all the world You may as well say that there were no more Churches in Galatia when the Apostle said O foolish Galatians who hath bewitched you that after having begun in the Spirit you should end in the flesh for thus it is well nigh that you calumniate the learned Hilary under a pretence that he censured the negligent and the fearful for whom he has as it were so many birth-pangs till Iesus Christ should be formed in them Who is there that knows not that in the time of Arianism divers simple persons deceived by obscure expressions imagined that the Arians believ'd the same thing with themselves that others yielded through fear and dissimulation and consented in appearance to heresie not walking in integrity in the way of the truth of the Gospel you would see you Donatists that he had not pardoned those persons for you are not ignorant of the doctrine of the Scripture upon this subject Read what S. Paul has wrote concerning S. Peter See afterwards what S. Cyprian has thought was to be done on these occasions and you will find that it is to very ill purpose to blame the mildness of the Church which gathers together the members of Iesus Christ when they are dispersed instead of dispersing them when they are gathered together Howsoever it be there have been yet some firm ones who were sufficiently enlightned to know the snares of the Hereticks They were indeed very few in number in comparison of others but yet nevertheless some of them generously suffered banishment for the cause of the faith and others kept themselves concealed here and there throughout the earth Thus it was that the Church which increased in all Nations preserved within her self the good Wheat of our Lord and thus it is that she will preserve her self unto the end till she extend her self over all people and even over the Barbarians themselves The Church therefore consists in the good seed that the Son of Man has sown and of which it is said that it should grow up until the harvest amidst the Tares The field is the world and the harvest is the end of the world See here after what manner S. Augustine declares his opinion concerning the state of the Church and its subsistence under the Arians since coming afterwards to speak of a passage of S. Hilary which they had objected to him he sayes that we must understand that which he had said not in regard of the good Wheat which was yet mingled with the Tares but only in regard of the Tares or if his words had any relation to the good Wheat we must take them as only designing to enflame the zeal of the fearful by such answers And he adds that the holy Scripture it self frequently makes use of this way of expressing it self in general terms which at first seem to belong to the whole body but which notwithstanding regard only a part Habent etiam scripturae canonicae hunc arguendi morem ut tanquam omnibus dicatur ad quosdam verbum perveniat We may now see very clearly that we are so far from being like to the Donatists as the Author of the Prejudices layes it to our charge that we tread on the contrary in the footsteps of St. Augustine For first of all our Hypothesis touching the subsistence and obscurity of the Church is throughout conform to his We say as he does that God has alwayes preserved his truly faithful in the very communion of the corrupted Church We say with him that in the most violent entring in of Error and Superstition God has not left himself without witness since he has raised up not only persons but whole Societies that have openly and couragiously maintained the truth and withdrawn themselves from under the Roman Domination And as to the passages that the Author of the Prejudices objects to us out of Calvin and our Confession of Faith we give the same explication of it that S. Augustine gave to those of S. Hilary which the Donatists objected to him That is to say that that defection of all the world and that ruine and desolation whereinto the Church had fell that Eclipse of the truth and treasure of salvation are expressions that regard properly only the Tares that covered the Field of the Church and not the good Seed which was mingled with those Tares These expressions only regard the greater number of those who followed those Superstitions and Errors and not those who in the midst of that confusion kept their Religion pure and much less those who had the courage to oppose themselves openly to Error and to resist it even unto Persecutions and Martyrdom I know that he has accustomed himself to form some difficulties and Objections against our Hypothesis but we have this satisfaction to know that he can make none that does not equally regard the Hypothesis of S. Augustine and ours and to which by consequence the Author of the Prejudices himself would not be obliged to answer if he would not act the Donatist He confesses himself that S. Augustine had acknowledged that there might have been some Catholicks hid in Heretical communions and besides he cannot deny that the passage which I have set down is express upon that subject 1. If therefore he demands of us who those faithful were who before the Reformation kept their faith pure without infecting themselves with the publick errors and if he urges us to mark them out to him one after another to tell him their names and their Genealogy I will demand of him likewise who were those good seed of S. Augustine who under the Arian Ministry preserved their faith without being infected with Heresie and I will intreat him to mark them out to me by name and to give me their history 2. If he demands of us how we understand those persons could with a good conscience live under a Ministry where they taught Transubstantiation the Adoration of the Eucharist the Sacrifice of the Mass the religious worshipping of Images which we believe to be fundamental errors I will also demand of him how he understands that the good seed of S. Augustine could live under an Arian Ministry where they taught that the Son of God was not consubstantial with his Father and that the Father was not the Father eternally which are errors that the Author of the Prejudices himself judges abominable 3. If he tells us that our Fathers ought not therefore to have undertaken a Reformation but that they ought to have left things in the estate wherein they were since howsoever corrupted the Latin Church was according to us we could yet be saved in her communion I shall tell him that by the same reason the Orthodox ought not to have taken care to have re-established the
receive the Sacraments from their hands They cannot say that the Church would then be dispersed nor that the greater number of the Pastors had carried away with them all the Rights of the Society but they ought on the contrary to say that being obstinate in Error and abandoning the Purity of the Faith they themselves in that respect lost the Right of being in the Society and making up a Body of an External Communion For that Principle remains always unshaken that Error Superstition and falshood do not give the least Right to any men to Assemble and that a Society is Just only in proportion to that that it has of true Doctrine and Evangelical Worship So that the greater number of the Pastors is not a Party absolutely necessary to the Body of the Church for its subsistence and this appears evidently from the Example of the Orthodox in the Time of the Arrians for as I have said before their External Communion did not cease to subsist in divers places separated from the Body of the Pastors they met together they prayed to God in Common they heard his word they received his Sacraments in a word they performed all the actions of Religion under the Ministry of those few persons that remained This is precisely the Case wherein our Fore-Fathers found themselves in the Time of the Reformation as I have before shewn and it will not signify any thing to say that that small number of Pastors that our Fathers followed had themselves according to us corrupted their Ministry by the Errors and Superstitions of the other Pastors and that they received their Call from their hands for I affirm that their return to the true Doctrine rectified their Call and freed it from all the impurity or ill it could have had after the same manner that Felix Bishop of Rome and Meletius Bishop of Antioch who being ordained by the Arrians rectified their Ministry by Preaching the Truth and opposing of Heresy and as Liberius and a great number of the other Bishops who had subscribed to Arrianism purified their Call in returning to the True Faith which they had forsaken It is certain therefore that the greater number of the Pastors is not a party of the Body of the Church absolutely necessary for the subsistence of the External Communion and that it is an Error to imagine that the bond of the Society depends on them or that there can be no Assemblies made of those who shall be separated from them but such as are Unlawful and Schismatical But in the Second place I affirm that it is not even absolutely necessary and in all respects to the making that External Society to subsist among the Faithful that it should have Pastors For as it is nature alone that makes man a Sociable living Creature that is to say that renders him capable of Civil Society and gives him also a right to it so also it is Grace which makes a Christian a sociable man which renders him I would say capable of a Religious Society and gives him a right to it Ten Men that should meet one another hy Chance in an uninhabited Desart would they not have a Right to joyn themselves actually together to assemble and to take all the joynt deliberations in publick that they should Judge necessary for their own preservation And would it not be an extravagance to demand of them what Magistrate had assembled them what publick Authority had called them together who had given them a right to speak among themselves and to consult for their common interests Then when there are lawful Magistrates their intervention is necessary for the calling and Authorising of Civil Assemblies and if any undertake to assemble together without their Authority or without their consent their Assemblies are rash and unlawful but it does not follow from thence that Magistrates should be so absolutely necessary to a Society that when there should be none men could not any more speak or act together nor assemble themselves nor take common Consultations It is the same thing in Religion if Ten Laymen of the Faithful should meet together casually or to speak better if the sole Providence of God should make them meet one another in a Desart Island or in the farthest part of America and engage them all their days in a strange Land and if they should come to acknowledge each other for true Faithful Christians can any believe that 〈◊〉 ought to remain so dispersed that they could never lawâ—â—â—â—â— commune together concerning the Christian Faith and Pieâ—â— nor meet together to provide for the preservation of their Religion This is that which I hold to be not only unable to be maintained but impious For as Nature alone assembles men when they have no Magistrates and cannot have any so Grace alone assembles Christians when they have no Pastors and cannot have any She will not suffer them to remain in an intire dispersion while there remains yet any means to assemble them it is she alone that convokes or calls them together and her instinct forms an unanimous consent in them that consent alone renders their Assembly as lawful as it can be made by the Convocation of Pastors Thus also divers Parties who divided the Latin Church in the Time of the Great Schism of the Anti Popes protested That they met together at the Council of Constance when they no more acknowledged the Pope nor by consequence held any more a Head that could lawfully call them together for they declared that they called one another together and that they assembled themselves sub Capite Christo under Jesus Christ their common Head that is to say by his instinct and under his Authority which suplied the want of a Pope Quatenus say they in illo quiest verus Ecclesiae sponsus congregati in unum simul matrem Ecclesiam divisam uniamus In respect of an Assembly in the Body of a Council each Bishop each Prelate was but a meer private man as much as every Believer is in respect of an Assembly in the Body of the Church and yet notwithstanding they assembled they reunited themselves they deposed a false Pope who troubled them even then and they created another A mutual Convocation then which is nothing else but an unanimous consent is sufficient to make an Assembly lawful when there is no Publick Authority that can call them together This is that which justifies the Conduct of our Fathers in some places of this Kingdom at the beginning of the Reformation for they Assembled sometimes without any Pastors to pray to God together and to Read the Holy Scriptures their Consciences could not any more allow them to be present at the Assemblies of the Roman Communion and not having further any Pastor who might Assemble them after the Ordinary manner the Spirit of Christianity Assembled them under the Soveraign Pastor and Bishop of Souls which is Jesus Christ and their mutual consent without doubt made their Society and their