I have already satisfied in my Answers to the Second and the Fourth and in my Reply ad § 2. toward the end And though you say your repeating must be excused yet I dare not be so confident and therefore forbear it 25. Ad § 17. To the seventh Whether error against any one truth sufficiently propounded as testified by God destroy not the Nature and Unity of faith or at least is not a grievous offence excluding salvation I answer If you suppose as you seem to do the proposition so sufficient that the party to whom it is made is convinced that it is from God so that the denial of it involves also with it the denial of Gods veracity any such Error destroys both faith and salvation But if the Proposal be only so sufficient not that the party to whom it is made is convinced but only that he should and but for his own fault would have been convinced of the Divine Verity of the Doctrin proposed The crime then is not so great for the beliefe of Gods Veracity may well consist with such an Error Yet a fault I confess it is and without Repentance damnable if all circumstances considered the Proposal be sufficient But then I must tell you that the Proposal of the present Roman Church is only pretended to be sufficient for this purpose but is not so especially all the Rayes of the Divinity which they pretend to shine so conspicuously in her Proposals being so darkned and even extinguished with a cloud of contradiction from Scripture Reason and the Ancient Church 26. Ad. § 18. To the Eighth How of disagreeing protestants both parts may hope for salvation seeing some of them must needs err against some Truth testified by God I answer The most disagreeing Protestants that are yet thus far agree 1. That those Books of Scripture which were never doubted of in the Church are the undoubted Word of God and a perfect rule of faith 2. That the sense of them which God intended whatsoever it is is certainly true So that they believe implicitely even those very Truths against which they err and Why an implicite faith in Christ and his Word should not suffice as well as an implicite faith in your Church◠I have desired to be resolved by many of your Side but never could 3. That they are to use their best endevours to believe the Scripture in the true sense and to live according to it This if they perform as I hope many on all Sides do truly and sincerely it is impossible but that they should believe aright in all things necessary to salvation that is in all those things which appertain to the Covenant between God and man in Christ for so much is not only plainly but frequently contained in Scripture And believing aright touching the Covenant if they for their parts perform the condition required of them which is sincere obedience Why should they not expect that God will perform his promise and give them salvation For as for other things which lie without the Covenant and are therefore lesse necessary if by reason of the seeming conflict which is oftentimes between Scripture and Reason and Authority on the one Side and Scripture Reason and Authority on the other if by reason of the variety of tempers abilities educations and unavoidable prejudices whereby mens understandings are variously formed and fashioned they do embrace several Opinions whereof some must be erroneous to say that God will damn them for such Errors who are lovers of Him and lovers of Truth is to rob man of his comfort and God of his goodness it is to make Man desperate and God a Tyrant But they deny Truths testified by God and therefore shall be damned Yes if they knew them to be thus testified by him and yet would deny them that were to give God the lie and questionless damnable But if you should deny a truth which God had testified but only to a man in the Indies as I said before and this testification you had never heard of or at least had no sufficient reason to believe that God had so testified Would not you think it a hard case to be damned for such a denial Yet consider I pray a little more attentively the difference between them and you will presently acknowledge the question between them is not at any time or in any thing Whether God says true or no or Whether he says this or no But supposing he says this and says true Whether he means this or no As for example Between Lutherans Calvinists and Zwinglians it is agreed that Christ spake these words This is my Body and that whatsoever he meant in saying so is true But what he meant and how he is be understood that is the question So that though some of them deny a Truth by God intended yet you can with no Reason or Justice accuse them of denying the truth of Gods Testimony unless you can plainly shew that God hath declared and that plainly and clearly what was his meaning in these words I say plainly and clearly For he that speaks obscurely and ambiguously and no where declares himself plainly sure he hath no reason to be much offended if he be mistaken When therefore you can shew that in this and all other their Controversies God hath interposed his Testimony on one Side or other so that either they do see it and will not or were it not for their own voluntary and avoidable fault might and should see it and do not let all such Errors be as damnable as you please to make them In the mean while if they suffer themselves neither to be betraid into their Errors nor kept in them by any sin of their will if they do their best endevour to free themselves from all Errors and yet fail of it through humane frailty so well am I perswaded of the goodness of God that if in me alone should meet a confluence of all such Errors of all the Protestants in the World that were thus qualified I should not be so much afraid of them all as I should be to ask pardon for them For whereas that which you affright us with of calling Gods Veracity in Question is but a Panick fear a fault that no man thus qualified is or can be guilty of to ask pardon of simple and purely involuntary Errors is tacitely to imply that God is angry with us for them and that were to impute to him the strange tyranny of requiring brick when he gives no straw of expecting to gather where he strewed not to reap where he sowed not of being offended with us for not doing what he knows we cannot do This I say upon a supposition that they do their best endevours to know Gods will and do it which he that denies to be possible knows not what he sayes for he sayes in effect That men cannot do what they can do for to do what a man can do is to do his best
it is apparent Because that is not perfect in any kind which wants some parts belonging to its integrity As he is not a perfect man that wants any part appertaining to the Integrity of a Man and therefore that which wants any accession to make it a perfect Rule of it self is not a perfect Rule And then the end of a Rule is to regulate and direct Now every instrument is more or lesse perfect in its kind as it is more or lesse fit to attain the end for which it is ordained But nothing obscure or unevident while it is so is fit to regulate and direct them to whom it is so Therefore it is requisite also to a Rule so farr as it is a Rule to be evident otherwise indeed it is no Rule because it cannot serve for direction I conclude therefore that both these properties are required to a perfect Rule both to be so compleat as to need no Addition and to be so evident as to need no Interpretation 7. Now that a writing is capable of both these perfections it is so plain that I am even ashamed to prove it For he that denies it must say That something may be spoken which cannot be written For if such a compleat and evident Rule of Faith may be delivered by word of mouth as you pretend it may and is and whatsoever is delivered by word of mouth may also be written then such a compleat and evident Rule of Faith may also be written If you will have more light added to the Sun answer me then to these Questions Whether your Church can set down in writting all these which she pretends to be divine unwritten Traditions and add them to the verities already written And Whether she can set us down such interpretations of all obscurities in the Faith as shall need no farther interpretations If she cannot then she hath not that power which you pretend she hath of being an Infallible Teacher of all divine verities and an infallible Interpreter of obscurities in the Faith for she cannot teach us all divine verities if she cannot write them down neither is that an interpretation which needs again to be interpreted If she can Let her do it and then we shall have a writting not only capable of but actually endowed with both these perfections of being both so compleat as to need no Addition and so evident as to need no Interpretation Lastly whatsoever your Church can do or not do no man can without Blasphemy deny that Christ Jesus if he had pleased could have writ us a Rule of Faith so plain and perfect as that it should have wanted neither any part to make up its integrity nor any cleerness to make it sufficiently intelligible And if Christ could have done this then the thing might have been done a writting there might have been indowed with both these properties Thus therefore I conclude a writing may be so perfect a Rule as to need neither Addition nor Interpretation But the Scripture you acknowledg a perfect Rule for as much as a writing can be a Rule therefore it needs neither Addition nor Interpretation 8. You will say that though a writing be never so perfect a Rule of Faith yet it must be beholding to Tradition to give it this Testimony that it is a Rule of Faith and the Word of God I answer First there is no absolute necessity of this For God might if he thought good give it the attestation of perpetuall miracles Secondly that it is one thing to be a perfect Rule of Faith another to be proved so unto us And this though a writing could not be proved to us to be a perfect rule of Faith by its owne saying so for nothing is proved true by being said or written in a book but only by Tradition which is a thing credible of it self yet it may be so in it self and contain all the material objects all the particular articles of our Faith without any dependance upon Tradition even this also not excepted that this writing doth contain the rule of Faith Now when Protestants affirm against Papists that Scripture is a perfect Rule of Faith their meaning is not that by Scripture all things absolutely may be proved which are to be believed For it can never be proved by Scripture to a gainsayer that there is a God or that the book called Scripture is the word of God For he that will deny these Assertions when they are spoken will believe them never a whit the more because you can shew them written But their meaning is that the Scripture to them which presuppose it Divine and a Rule of Faith as Papists and Protestants do contains all the material objects of Faith is a compleat and total and not onely an imperfect and a partial Rule 9. But every Book and Chapter and Text of Scripture is infallible and wants no due perfection and yet excludes not the Addition of other books of Scripture Therefore the perfection of the whole Scripture excludes not the Addition of unwritten Tradition I answer Every Text of Scripture though it hath the perfection belonging to a Text of Scripture yet it hath not the perfection requisite to a perfect Rule of Faith and that only is the perfection which is the subject of our discourse So that this is to abuse your Reader with the ambiguity of the word Perfect In effect as if you should say A text of Scripture may be a perfect Text though there be others beside it therefore the whole Scripture may be a perfect Rule of Faith though there be other parts of this Rule besides the Scripture and though the Scripture be but a part of it 10. The next Argument to the same purpose is for Sophistry cosen-german to the former When the first books of Scripture were written they did not exclude unwritten Tradition Therefore now also that all the books of Scripture are written Traditions are not excluded The sense of which argument if it have any must be this When only a part of the Scripture was written then a part of the divine doctrine was unwritten Therefore now when all the Scripture is written yet some part of the divine doctrine is yet unwritten If you say your Conclusion is not that it is so but without disparagement to Scripture may be so without disparagement to the truth of Scripture I grant it but without disparagement to the Scripture's being a perfect Rule I deny it And now the Question is not of the Truth but the perfection of it which are very different things though you would fain confound them For Scripture might very well be all true though it contain not all necessary Divine Truth But unlesse it do so it cannot be a perfect Rule of Faith for that which wants any thing is not perfect For I hope you do not imagine that we conceive any antipathy between God's Word written and unwritten but that both might very well stand together All that
by the President of it the Cardinal S. Cruce And yet he hath written that the Councel in this Decree meant to pronounce this Translation free not simply from all Error but only from such Errors out of which any opinion pernitions to faith and manners might be collected This And radius in his defence of that Councel reports of Vega and assents to it himself Driedo in his Book of the Translation of holy Scripture hath these words very pregnant and pertinent to the same purpose The See Apostolike hath approved or accepted Hierom 's Edition not as so wholly consonant to the Original and so entire and pure and restored in all things that it may not be lawful for any man either by comparing it with the Fountain to examine it or in some places to doubt Whether or no Hierom did understand the true sense of the Scripture but only as an Edition to be preferred before all others then extant and no where deviating from the Truth in the rules of faith and good life Mariana even where he is a most earnest Advocate for the Vulgar Edition yet acknowledges the imperfection of it in these words â—â—o Eâ—â—t vulg c. 21. p. 99. The faults of the Vulgar Edition are not approved by the Decree of the Councel of Trent a multitude whereof we did collect from the variety of Copie And again We maintain that the Hebrew and Greek were by no means rejected by the Trent-Fathers And that the Latine Edition is indeed approved yet not so as if they did deny that some places might be translated more plainly some more properly whereof it were easie to produce innumerable examples And this he there professes to have learnt of Laines the then General of the Society who was a great part of that Councel present at all the Actions of it and of very great authority in it 77. To this so great authority he adds a reason of his opinion which with all indifferent men will be of a far greater authority If the Councel saith he had purposed to approve an Edition in all respects and to make it of equal authority and credit with the Fountains certainly they ought with exact care first to have corrected the Errors of the Interpreter which certainly they did not 78. Lastly Bellarmine himself though he will not acknowledge any imperfection in the Vulgar Edition yet he acknowledges that the â—ase may and does oft-times so fall out Bâ—ll de verâ—e Dâ—â—d 2. c. 12. p. 120. that it is impossible to discern which is the true reading of the Vulgar Edition but only by recourse unto the Originals and dependance upon them 79. From all which it may evidently be collected that though some of you flatter your selves with a vain imagination of the certain absolute purity and perfection of your Vulgar Edition yet the matter is not so certain and so resolved but that the best learned men amongst you are often at a stand and very doubtful sometimes whether your Vulgar Translation be true and sometimes whether this or that be your Vulgar Translation and sometimes undoubtedly resolved that your Vulgar Translation is no true Translation nor consonant to the Original as it was at first delivered And what then can be alledged but that out of your own grounds it may be inferred and inforced upon you that not only in your Lay-men but your Clergy-men and Scholars Faith and Truth and Salvation and All depends upon fallible and uncertain grounds And thus by ten several retortions of this one Argument I have endeavoured to shew you How ill you have complyed with your own advice which was to take heed of urging Arguments that might be returned upon you I should now by a direct Answer shew that it presseth not us at all but I have in passing done it already in the end of the second retortion of this Argument and thither I refer the Reader 80. Whereas therefore you exhort them that will have assurance of true Scriptures to fly to your Church for it I desire to know if they should follow your advice how they should be assured that your Church can give them any such assurance which hath been confessedly so negligent as to suffer many whole Books of Scripture to be utterly lost Again in those that remain confessedly so negligent as to suffer the Originals of these that remain to be corrupted And lastly so careless of preserving the integrity of the Copies of her Translation as to suffer infinite variety of Readings to come in to them without keeping any one perfect Copy which might have been as the Standard and Polycletus his Canon to correct the rest by So that which was the true reading and which the false it was utterly undiscernable but only by comparing them with the Originals which also she pretends to be corrupted 81. But Luther himself by unfortunate experience was at length enforced to confess thus much saying If the wordlast longer it will be again necessary to receive the Decrees of Councels by reason of divers interpretations of Scripture which now raign 82. And what if Luther having a Pope in his belly as he was wont to say that most men had and desiring perhaps to have his own interpretations pass without examining spake such words in heat of Argument Do you think it reasonable that we should subscribe to Luther's divinations and angry speeches Will you oblige your self to answer for all the assertions of your private Doctors If not Why do you trouble us with what Luther says and what Calvin says Yet this I say not as if these words of Luther made any thing at all for your present purpose For what if he feared or pretended to fear that the infallibility of Councels being rejected some men would fall into greater Errors than were imposed upon them be the Councels Is this to confess that there is any present visible Church upon whose bare Authority we may infallibly receive the true Scriptures and the true sense of them Let the Reader judge But in my opinion to fear a greater inconvenience may follow from the avoiding of the less is not to confess that the less is none at all 83. For D. Covel's commending your Translation What is it to the business in hand Or how proves it the perfection of it which is here contested any more than S. Augustine's commending the Italian Translation argues the perfection of that or that there was no necessity that S. Hierom should correct it D. Covel commends your Translation and so does the Bishop of Chichester and so does D. James and so do I. But I commend it for a good Translation not for a perfect Good may be good and deserve commendations and yet Better may be better And though he says that the then approved Translation of the Church of England is that which cometh nearest the Vulgar yet he does not say that it agrees exactly with it So that whereas you infer that the Truth of your Translation
be performed but not at all times nor doth it equally bind all sorts of persons in respect of all Objects to be believed For Objects we grant that some are more necessary to be explicitely and severally believed than other either because they are in themselves more great and weighty or else in regard they instruct us in some necessary Christian duty towards God our Selves or our Neighbour For Persons no doubt but some are obliged to know distinctly more than others by reason of their office vocation capacity or the like For Times we are not obliged to be still in act of exercising acts of Faith but according as several occasions permit or require The second kind of Precept called Negative doth according to the nature of all such commands oblige universally all Persons in respect of all Objects and at all Times semper pro semper as Divines speak This general Doctrin will be more clear by Examples I am not obliged to be always helping my Neighbour because the Affirmative Precept of Charity bindeth only in some particular cases But I am always bound by a Negative Precept never to do him any hurt or wrong I am not always bound to utter what I know to be true yet I am obliged never to speak any one least untruth against my knowledge And to come to our present purpose there is no Affirmative Precept commanding us to be at all times actually believing any one or all Articles of Faith But we are obliged never to exercise any act against any one truth known to be revealed All sorts of Persons are not bound explicitely and distinctly to know all things testified by God either in Scripture or otherwise but every one is obliged not to believe the contrary of any one Point known to be testified by God For that were in fact to affirm that God could be deceived or would deceive which were to overthrow the whole certainty of our Faith wherein the thing most principal is not the Point which we believe which Divines call the Material Object but the chiefest is the Motive for which we believe to wit Almighty God's infallible Revelation or Authority which they term the Formal Object of our Faith In two senses therefore and with a double relation Points of Faith may be called Fundamental and necessary to Salvation The one is taken with reference to the Affirmative Precept when the Points are of such quality that there is obligation to know and believe them explicitely and severally In this sense we grant that there is difference betwixt Points of Faith which D. Potter (a) Pag. 209. to no purpose laboureth to prove against his Adversary who in express words doth grant and explicate (b) Charity Mistaken c. 8. pag. 75. it But the Doctor thought good to dissemble the matter and not to say one pertinent word in defence of his distinction as it was impugned by Charity Mistaken and as it is wont to be applyed by Protestants The other sense according to which Points of Faith may be called Fundamental and necessary to Salvation with reference to the Negative Precept of Faith is such that we cannot without grievous sin and forfeiture of Salvation disbelieve any one Point sufficiently propounded as revealed by Almighty God And in this sense we avouch that there is no distinction in Points of Faith as if to reject some must be damnable and to reject others equally proposed as God's Word might stand with Salvation Yea the obligation of the Negative Precept is far more strict than is that of the Affirmative which God freely imposed and may freely release But it is impossible that he can dispense or give leave to disbelieve or deny what he affirmeth and in this sense sin and damnation are more inseparable from Error in Points not Fundamental than from Ignorance in Articles Fundamental All this I shew by an example which I wish to be particularly noted for the present and for divers other occasions hereafter The Creed of the Apostles contains divers Fundamental Points of Faith as the Deity Trinity of Persons Incarnation Passion and Resurrection of our Saviour Christ c. It contains also some Points for their matter and nature in themselves not Fundamental as under what Judge our Saviour suffered that he was buried the circumstance of the time of his Resurrection the third day c. But yet nevertheless whosoever once knows that these Points are contained in the Apostles Creed the denial of them is damnable and is in that sense a Fundamental error and this is the precise Point of the present question 3. And all that hitherto hath been said is so manifestly true that no Protestant or Christian if he do but understand the terms and state of the question can possibly deny it In so much as I am amazed that men who otherwise are indued with excellent wits should so enslave themselves to their Predecessors in Protestantism as still to harp on this distinction and never regard how impertinently and untruly it was â—â—plyed by them at first to make all Protestants seem to be of one Faith because forsooth they agree in Fundamental Points For the difference among Protestants consists not in that some believe some Points of which others are ignorant or not bound expressly to know as the distinction ought to be applyed but that some of them disbelieve and directly wittingly and willingly oppose what others do believe to be testified by the Word of God wherein there is no difference between Points Fundamental and not Fundamental Because till Points Fundamental be sufficiently proposed as revealed by God it is not against Faith to reject them or rather without sufficient proposition it is not possible prudently to believe them and the like is of Points not-Fundamental which as soon as they come to be sufficiently propounded as divine Truths they can no more be denied than Points Fundamental propounded after the same manner Neither will it avail them to their other end that for preservation of the Church in being it is sufficient that she do not err in Points Fundamental For if in the mean time she maintain any one Error against Gods revelation be the thing in it self never so small her Error is damnable and destructive of Salvation 4. But D. Potter forgetting to what purpose Protestants make use of their distinction doth finally overthrow it and yields to as much as we can desire For speaking of that measure (c) Pag. 211. and quantity of Faith without which none can be saved he saith It is enough to believe some things by a vertual Faith or by a general and as it were a negative Faith whereby they are not denied or contradicted Now our question is in case that divine Truths although not Fundamental be denied and contradicted and therefore even according to him all such denial excludes Salvation After he speaks more plainly It is true saith he whatsoever (d) Pag. 212. is revealed in Scripture or
Apocalyps is most truly verified in fictions revelations If any (k) Cap. ult v. 18. shall add to these things God will add unto him the plagues which are written in this Book and D. Potter saith to add (l) Pag. 122. to it speaking of the Creed is high presumption almost as great as to detract from it And therefore to say the Church may add false revelations is to accuse her of high presumption and of pernitious error excluding Salvation 10. Perhaps some will here reply that although the Church may err yet it is nor imputed to her for sin by reason she doth not err upon malice or wittingly but by ignorance or mistake 11. But it is easily demonstrated that this excuse cannot serve For if the Church be assisted only for Points Fundamental she cannot but know that she may err in Points not Fundamental at least she cannot be certain that she cannot err and therefore cannot be excused from headlong and pernitious temerity in proposing Points not Fundamental to be believed by Christians as matters of Faith wherein she can have no certainty yea which always imply a falshood For although the thing might chance to be true and perhaps also revealed yet for the matter she for her part doth always expose her self to danger of falshood and error and in fact doth always err in the manner in which she doth propound any matter not Fundamental because she proposeth it as a Point of Faith certainly true which yet is always uncertain if she in such things may be deceived 12. Besides if the Church may err in Points not Fundamental she may err in proposing some Scripture for Canonical which is not such or else err in nor keeping and conserving from corruptions such Scriptures as are already believed to be Canonical For I will suppose that in such Apocryphal Scripture as she delivers there is no Fundamental Error against Faith or that there is no falshood at all but only want of Divine testification in which case D. Potter must either grant that it is a Fundamental Error to apply Divine revelation to any Point not revealed or else must yield that the Church may err in her Proposition or Custody of the Canon of Scripture and so we cannot be sure whether she hath not been deceived already in Books recommended by her and accepted by Christians And thus we shall have no certainty of Scripture if the Church want certainty in all her definitions And it is worthy to be observed that some Books of Scripture which were not alwayes known to be Canonical have been afterward received for such but never any on Book or syllable defined by the Church to be Canonical was afterward questioned or rejected for Apocryphal A sign that God's Church is infallibly assisted by the holy Ghost never to propose as Divine truth any thing not revealed by God and that Omission to define Points not sufficiently discussed is laudable but Commission in propounding things not revealed inexcusable into which precipitation our Saviour Christ never hath nor never will permit his Church to fall 13. Nay to limit the general promises of our Saviour Christ made to his Church to Points only Fundamental namely that the gates (m) Mat. 16.18 of hell shall not prevail against her and that the holy Ghost (n) Joan. 16.13 shall lead her into all Truth c. is to destroy all Faith For we may be that Doctrin and manner of interpreting the Scripture limit the Infallibility of the Apostles words and preaching only to Points Fundamental and whatsoever general Texts of Scripture shall be alledged for their infallibility they may be D. Potter's example be explicated and restrained to Points Fundamental By the same reason it may be farther affirmed that the Apostles and other Writers of Canonical Scripture were indued with infallibility only in setting down Points Fundamental For if it be urged that all Scripture is divinely inspired that it is the Word of God c. D. Potter hath afforded you a ready answer to say that Scripture is inspired c. only in those parts or parcels wherein it delivereth Fundamental Points In this manner D. Fotherby saith The Apostle (o) In his Sermons Serm. 2. pag. 50. twice in one Chapter professed that this he speaketh and not the Lord He is very well content that where he lacks the warrant of the express Word of God that part of his writings should be esteemed as the word of man D. Potter also speaks very dangerously towards this purpose Sect. 5. where he endeavoureth to prove that the infallibility of the Church is limited to Points Fundamental because as Nature so God is neither defective in (p) Pag. 150. necessaries nor lavish in superfluities Which reason doth likewise prove that the infallibility of Scripture and of the Apostles must be restrained to Points necessary to Salvation that so God be not accused as defective in (p) Pag. 150. necessaries or lavish insuperfluities In the same place he hath a discourse much tending to this purpose where speaking of these words The Spirit shall lead you into all Truth and shall abide with (q) Joan. c. 16.13 c. 14.16 you for ever he saith Though that promise was (r) Pag. 151 152. directly and primarily made to the Apostles who had the Spirit 's guidance in a more high and absolute manner than any since them yet it was made to them for the behoof of the Church and is verified in the Church Universal But all truth is not simply all but all of some kind To be lead into all truths is to know and believe them And who is so simple as to be ignorant that there are many millions of Truths in Nature History Divinity whereof the Church is simply ignorant How many Truths lie unrevealed in the infinite Treasury of God's wisdom wherewith the Church is not acquainted c So then the Truth it self enforceth us to understand by all Truths not simply all not all which God can possibly reveal but all pertaining to the substance of Faith all Truth absolutely necessary to Salvation Mark what he saith That promise The Spirit shall lead you into all Truth was made directly to the Apostles and is verified in the Universal Church but by all Truth is not understood simply all but all appertaining to the substance of Faith and absolutely necessary to Salvation Doth it not hence follow that the promise made to the Apostles of being lead into all Truth is to be understood only of all Truth absolutely necessary to Salvation and consequently their preaching and writing were not infallible in Points not Fundamental or if the Apostles were infallible in all things which they proposed as divine Truth the like must be affirmed of the Church because D. Potter teacheth the said promise to be verified in the Church And as he limits the aforesaid words to Points Fundamental so may he restrain what other Text soever that can be
demonstrated that such a man adheres to you with a fiducial and certain assent in nothing To make this clear because at the first hearing it may seem strange give me leave good Sir to suppose you the man and to propose to you a few questions and to give for you such answers to them as upon this ground you must of necessity give were you present with me First supposing you hold your Church infallible in Fundamentals obnoxious to errour in other things and that you know not what Points are Fundamental I demand C. Why do you believe the Doctrin of Transubstantiation K. Because the Church hath taught it which is infallible C. What Infallible in all things or only in Fundamentals K. In Fundamentals only C. Then in other pointsshe may erre K. She may C. And do you know what Points are Fundamental what not K. No and therefore I believe her in all things lest I should disbelieve her in Fundamentals C. How know you then whether this be a Fundamental Point or no K. I know not C. It may be then for ought you know an unfundamental Point K. Yes it may be so C. And in these you said the Church may err K. Yes I did so C. Then possibly it may erre in this K. It may do so C. Then what certainty have you that it does not erre in it K. None at all but upon this supposition that this is a Fundamental C. And this supposition you are uncertain of K. Yes I told you so before C. And therefore you can have no certainty of that which depends upon this uncertainty saving only a suppositive certainty if it be a Fundamental truth which is in plain English to say you are certain it is true if it be both true and necessary Verily Sir if you have no better Faith than this you are no Catholique K. Good words I pray I am so and God willing will be so C. You mean in outward profession and practise but in belief you are not no more than a Protestant is a Catholique For every Protestant yeelds such a kinde of assent to all the proposals of the Church for surely they believe them true if they be Fundamental truths And therefore you must either believe the Church Infallible in all her proposals be they foundations or be they superstructions or you must believe all Fundamental which she proposes or else you are no Catholique K. But I have been taught that seeing I believed the Church infallible in points necessary in wisdom I was to believe her in every thing C. That was a pretty plausible inducement to bring you hither but now you are here you must go farther and believe her infallible in all things or else you were as good go back again which will be a great disparagement to you and draw upon you both the bitter and implacable hatred of our Part and even with your own the imputation of rashness and levity You see I hope by this time that though a man did believe your Church infallible in Fundamentals yet he hath no reason to do you the curtesie of believing all her Proposals nay if he be ignorant what these Fundamentals are he hath no certain ground to believe her upon her Authority in any thing And whereas you say it can be no imprudence to erre with the Church I say it may be very great imprudence if the question be Whether we should erre with the present Church or hold true with God Almighty 58. But we are under pain of damnation to believe and obey hâ—â— in greater things and therefore cannot in wisdom suspect her credit in mâ—â—â—â—rs of less moment Answ I have told you already that this is falsly to suppose that we grant that in some certain points some certain Church is infallibly assisted and under pain of damnation to be obeyed whereas all that we say is this that in some place or other some Church there shall be which shall retain all necessary Truths Yet if your supposition were true I would not grant your Conclusion but with this Exception unless the matter were past suspition and apparently certain that in these things I cannot believe God â—nd believe the Church For then I hope you will grant that be the thing of never so little moment were it for instance but that S. Paul left his cloak at Troas yet I were not to gratifie the Church so far as for her sake to disbelieve what God himself hath revealed 59 Whereas you say Since we are undoubtedly obliged to believe her in Fundamentals and cannot know precisely what those Fundamentals be we cannot without hazard of our souls leave her in any Point I answer First that this argument proceeds upon the same false ground with the former And then that I have told you formerly that you feare where no fear is And though we know not precisely just how much is Fundamental yet we know that the Scripture containes all Fundamentals and more too and therefore that in believing that we believe all Fundamentals and more too And consequently in departing from you can be in no danger of departing from that which may prove a Fundamental Truth For we are wel assured that certain Errors can never prove Fundamental Truths 60. Whereas you adde That that visible Church which cannot err in Fundamentals propounds all her definitions without distinction to be believed under Anathema's Answ Again you beg the question supposing untruly that there is any that visible Church I mean any Visible Church of one Denomination which cannot erre in Points Fundamental Secondly proposing definitions to be believed under Anathema's is no good Argument that the Propounders conceive themselves infallible but only that they conceive the Doctrin they condemn is evidently damnable A pâ—ain proof hereof is this that particular Councils nay particular Men have been very liberal of their Anathema's which yet were never conceived infallible either by others or themselves If any man should now deny Christ to be the Saviour of the world or deny the Resurrection I should make no great scruple of Anathematizing his doctrin and yet am very far from dreaming of infallibility 61. And for the Visible Churches holding it a Point necessary to Salvation that we believe she cannot erre I know no such tenet unless by the Church you mean the Roman Church which you have as much reason to do as that petty King in Africk hath to think himself King of all the world And therefore your telling us If she speak true what danger is it not to believe her and if false that it is not dangerous to believe her is somewhat like your Pope's setting your Lawyers to dispute whether Constantine's Donation were valid or no whereas the matter of fact was the far greater question whether there were any such Donation or rather when without question there was none such That you may not seem to delude us in like maner make it appear that the visible Church doth hold so
And therefore it was a great fault in you either willingly to conceal these words which evacuate your Objection or else negligently to oversee them Especially seeing your friend to whom you are so much beholding Paulus Veridicus in his scurrilous and sophistical Pamphler against B. Usher's Sermon hath so kindly offered to lead you by the hand to the observation of them in these words To consider of your Coinopista or communiter Credenda Articles as you call them universally believed of all these several Professions of Christianity which have any large spread in the World These Articles for example may be the Unity of the Godhead the Trinity of Persons the immortality of the Soul c. Where you see that your friend whom you so much magnifie hath plainly confessed that notwithstanding the Bishop's words the denial of the Doctrin of the Trinity may exclude Salvation and therefore in approving and applauding his Answer to the Bishop's Sermon you have unawares allowed this Answer of mine to your own greatest Objection 46. Now for the foul contradiction which you say the Doctor might easily have espyed in the Bishop's saying he desires your pardon for his oversight sight for Paulus Veridicus his sake who though he set himself to find faults with the Bishop's Sermon yet it seems this he could not find or else questionless we should have heard of it from him And therefore if D. Potter being the Bishop's friend have not been more sharp-sighted than his enemies this he hopes to indifferent Judges will seem no unpardonable offence Yet this I say not as if there were any contradiction at all much less any foul contradiction in the Bishop's words but as Antipheron's picture which he thought he saw in the air before him was not in the air but in his disturbed phansie so all the contradiction which here you descant upon is not indeed in the Bishop's saying but in your imagination For wherein I pray lies this foul contradiction In supposing say you a man may believe all Truths necessary to salvation and yet superinduce a damnable Heresie I answer It is not certain that his words do suppose this neither if they do doth he contradict himself I say it is not certain that his words import any such matter For ordinarily men use to speak and write so as here he doth when they intend not to limit or restrain but only to repeat and press and illustrate what they have said before And I wonder why with your Eagles eyes you did not espy another foul contradiction in his words as well as this and say that he supposes a man may walk according to the rule of holy obedience and yet vitiate his holy Faith with a lewd and wicked Conversation Certainly a lewd Conversation is altogether as contradictious to holy Obedience as a damnable Heresie to necessary Truth What then was the reason that you espyed not this foul contradiction in his words as well as that Was it because according to the Spirit and Genius of your Church your zeal is greater to that which you conceive true doctrin than holy obedience and think simple error a more capital crime than sins committed against knowledge and conscience Or was it because your Reason told you that herein he meant only to repeat and not to limit what he said before And why then had you not so much candour to conceive that he might have the same meaning in the former part of the disjunction and intend no more but this Whosoever walks according to this rule of believing all necessary Truths and holy Obedience neither poysoning his faith of those Truths which he holds with the mixture of any damnable Heresie nor vitiating it with a wicked life Peace shall be upon him In which words what man of any ingenuity will not presently perceive that the words within the parenthesis are only a repetition of and no exception from those that are without S. Athanasius in his Creed tels us The Catholique Faith is this that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance and why now do you not tell him that he contradicts himself and supposes that we may worship a Trinity of Persons and one God in substance and yet confound the Persons or divide the substance which yet is impossible because Three remaining Three cannot be confounded and One remaining One cannot be divided If a man should say unto you he that keeps all the Commandments of God committing no sin either against the love of God or the love of his neighbour is a perfect man Or thus he that will live in constant health had need be exact in his dyet neither eating too much nor too little Or thus he that will come to London must go on straight forward in such a way and neither turn to the right hand or to the left I verily believe you would not find any contradiction in his words but confess them as coherent and confonant as any in your Book And certainly if you would look upon this saying of the Bishop with any indifference you would easily perceive it to be of the very same kind and capable of the very same construction And therefore one of the grounds of your accusation is uncertain Neither can you assure us that the Bishop supposes any such matter as you pretend Neither if he did suppose this as perhaps he did were this to contradict himself For though there can be no damnable Heresie unless it contradict some necessary Truth yet there is no contradiction but the same man may at once believe this Heresie and this Truth because there is no contradiction that the same man at the same time should believe contradictions For first whatsoever a man believes true that he may and must believe But there have been some who have believed and taught that contradictions might be true against whom Aristotle disputes in the third of his Metaphysicks Therefore it is not impossible that a man may believe Contradictions Secondly they which believe there is no certainty in Reason must believe that contradictions may be true For otherwise there will be certainty in this Reason This contradicts Truth therefore it is false But there be now divers in the world who believe there is no certainty in Reason and whether you be of their mind or no I desire to be informed Therefore there be divers in the world who believe contradictions may be true Thirdly They which do captivate their understandings to the belief of those things which to their understanding seem irreconcileable contradictions may as well believe real contradictions For the difficulty of believing arises not from their being repugnant but from their seeming to be so But you do captivate your understandings to the belief of those things which seem to your understandings irreconcileable contradictions Therefore it is as possible and easie for you to believe those that indeed are so Fourthly some men may
most certain and infallible wherein it surpasseth humane Opinion it must relie upon some motive and ground which may be able to give it certainly and yet not release it from Obscurity For if this motive ground or formal Object of Faith were any thing evidently presented to our understanding and if also we did evidently know that it had a necessary connection with the Articles which we believe our assent to such Articles could not be obscure but evident which as we said is against the nature of our faith If likewise the motive and ground of our faith were obscurely propounded to us but were not in it self infallible it would leave our assent in obscurity but could not endue it with certainty We must therefore for the ground of our faith find out a motive obscure to us but most certain in it self that the act of faith may remain both obscure and certain Such a motive as this can be no other but the divine authority of Almighty God revealing or speaking those truths which our faith believes For it is manifest that God's infallible testimony may transfâ—â—â— Certainty to our faith and yet not draw it out of obscurity because no humane discourse or demonstration can evince that God revealeth any supernatural truth since God hath been no less perfect than he is although hâ—â—â—â— never revealed any of those objects which we now believe 4 Nevertheless because Almighty God out of his infinite wisdom and sweetness doth conour with his Creatures in such sort as may befit the temper and exigence of their natures and because Man is a Creature endued with reason God doth not exact of his Will or Understanding any other then as the Apostle faith rationabile (f) Rom. 12.1 obsequium an Obedience sweetned with good reason which could not so appear if our Understanding were summoned to believe with certainty things no way represented as infallible and certain And therefore Almighty God obliging us under pain of eternal camnation to believe with greatest certainty divers verities not known by the light of natural reason cannot fail to furnish our Understanding with such inducements motives and arguments as may sufficiently perswade any mind which is not partial or passionate that the objects which we believe proceed from an Authority so Wise that it cannot be deceived so Good that it cannot deceive according to the words of David Thy Testimonies are made (g) Psal 92. credible exceedingly These inducements are by Divines called argumenta credibilitatis arguments of credibility which though they cannot make us evidently see what we believe yet they evidently convince that in one wisdom and prudence the objects of faith deserve credit and ought to be accepted as things revealed by God For without such reasons and inducements our judgment of faith could not be conceived prudent holy Scripture telling us that be who soon (h) Eccles 19. â— believes is light of heart By these arguments and inducements our Understanding is both satisfied with evidence of credibility and the objects of faith retain their obsenrity because it is a different thing to be evidently credible and evidently true as those who were present at the Miracles wrought by our blessed Saviour and his Apostles did not evidently see their doctrin to be true for then it had not been Faith but Science and all had been necessitated to believe which we see fell out otherwise but they were evidently convinced that the things confirmed by such Miracles were most credible and worthy to be imbraced as truth revealed by God 5 These evident arguments of Credibility are in great abundance found in the Visible Church of Christ perpetually existing on earth For that there hath been a company of men professing such and such doctrines we have from our next Predecessors and these from theirs upward till we come to the Apostles and our Blessed Saviour which gradation is known by evidence of sense by reading books or hearing what one man delivers to another And it is evident that there was neither cause nor possibility that men so distant in place so different in temper so repugnant in private ends did or could agree to tell one and the self same thing if it had been but a fiction invented by themselves as ancient Tertullian well saith How is it likely that so many (i) Praescript c. 28. and so great Churches should err in one saith Among many events there is not one issue the error of the Churches must needs have varied But that which among many is sound to be One is not mistaken but delivered Dare then any body say that they erred who delivered it With this never-interrupted existence of the Church are joyned the many and great miracles wrought by mâ—n of that Congregation or Church the sanctity of the persons the renowned victories over so many persecutions both of all sorts of men and of the infernal spirits and lastly the perpetual existence of so holy a Church being brought up to the Apostles themselves she comes to partake of the same assurance of truth which They by so many powerful ways did communicate to their Doctrin to the Church of their times together with the divine Certainty which they received from our blessed Saviour himself revealing to Mankind what he heard from his Father and so we conclude with Tertullian We receive it from the Churches the Churches (k) Praese c. 21. 37. from the Apostles the Apostles from Christ Christ from his Father And if we once interrupt this line of succession most certainly made known by means of holy Tradition we cannot conjoyn the present Church and doctrin with the Church and doctrin of the Apostles buâ— must invent some new means and arguments sufficient of themselves to find out and prove a true Church and faith independently of the preaching and writing of the Apostles neither of which can be known but by Tradition as is truly observed by Tertullian saying I will prescribe that (l) Praesc c. 22. there is no means to prove what the Apostles preached but by the same Church which they sounded 6 Thus then we are to proceed By evidence of manifest and incorrupt Tradition I know that there hath always been a never interrupted Succession of men from the Apostles time believing professing and practising such and such doctrines By evident arguments of credibility as Miracles Sanctity Unity c. and by all those ways whereby the Apostles and our Blessed Saviour himself confirmed their doctrin we are assured that what the said never-interrupted Church proposeth doth deserve to be accepted and acknowledged as a divine truth By evidence of Sense we see that the same Church proposeth such and such doctrins as divine truths that is as revealed and testified by Almighty God By this divine Testimony we are infallibly assured of what we believe and so the last period ground motive and formal object of our Faith is the infallible testimony of that supreme Verity which
neither can deceive nor be deceived 7 By this orderly deduction our Faith cometh to be endued with those qualities which we said were requisite thereto namely Certainty Obscurity and Prudence Certainty proceeds from the infallible Testimony of God propounded and conveyed to our understanding by such a mean as is infallible in it self and to us is evidently known that it proposeth this point or that and which can manifestly declare in what sense it proposeth them which means we have proved to be only the visible Church of Christ Obscurity from the manner in which God speaks to Mankind which ordinarily is such that it doth not manifeilly shew the person who speaks nor the truth of the thing spoken Prudence is not wanting because our faith is accompanied with so many arguments of Credibility that every well disposed Understanding may and ought to judge that the doctrins so confirmed deserve to be believed as proceeding from divine Authority 8 And thus from what hath been said we may easily gather the particular nature or definition of Faith For it is a voluntary or free infallible obscure assent to some truth because it is testified by God and is sufficiently propounded to us for such which proposal is ordinarily made by the Visible Church of Christ I say Sufficiently propused by the Church not that I purpose to dispute whether the proposal of the Church enter into the formal Object or Motive of Faith or whether any error be an heresie formally and precisely because it is against the proposition of the Church as if such proposal were the formal Object of Faith which D. Potter to no purpose at all labours so very hard to disprove But I only affirm that when the Church propounds any Truth as revealed by God we are assured that it is such indeed and so it instantly grows to be a fit object for Christian faith which inclines and enables us to believe whatsoever is duly presented as a thing revealed by Almighty God And in the same manner we are sure that whosoever opposeth any doctrin proposed by the Church doth thereby contradict a truth which is testified by God As when any lawful Superiour notifies his will by the means and as it were proposal of some faithful messenger the subject of such a Superiour in performing or neglecting what is delivered by the Messenger is said to obey or disobey his own lawful Superiour And therefore because the testimony of God is notified by the Church we may and we do most truly say that not to believe what the Church proposeth is to deny God's holy word or testimony signified to us by the Church according to that saying of S. Irenaeus We need not go (m) Lib. 3. com Haeres cap. 4. to any other to seck the truth which we may easily receive from the Church 9 From this definition of faith we may also know what Heresie is by taking the contrary terms as Heresie is contrary to Faith and saying Heresie is a voluntary error against that which God hath revealed and the Church hath proposed for such Neither doth it import whether the error concern points in themselves great or small fundamental or not fundamental For more being required to an act of Vertue than of Vice if any truth though never so small may be believed by faith as scon as we know it to be testified by divine revelation much more will it be a formal Heresie to deny any least point sufficiently propounded as a thing witnessed by God 10 This divine Faith is divided into Actual and Habitual Actual faith or faith actuated is when we are in act of consideration and belief of some mysterie of Faith for example that our Saviour Christ is true God and Man c. Habitual faith is that from which we are denominated Faithful or Believers as by Actual faith they are stiled Believing This Habit of faith is a Quality enabling us most firmly to believe Objects above humane discourse and it remaineth permanently in our Soul even when we are sleeping or not thinking of any Mysterie of faith This is the first among the three Theological Vertues For Charity unites us to God as he is infinitely Good in himself Hope ties us to him as he is unspeakably Good to us Faith joyns us to him as he is the Supreme immoveable Verity Charity relies on his Goodness Hope on his Power Faith on his divine Wisdom From hence it followeth that Faith being one of the Vertues which Divines term Infused that is which cannot be acquired by humane wit or industry but are in their Nature and Essence supernatural it hath this property that it is not destroyâ—d by little and little contrarily to the Habits called acquisiti that is gotten by humane endeavour which as they are successively produced so also are they lost successively or by little and little but it must either be conserved entire or wholly destroyed And since it cannot stand entire with any one act which is directly contrary it must be totally overthrown and as it were demolished and razed by every such act Wherefore as Charity or the love of God is expelled from our soul by any one act of Hatred or any other mortal sin against his Divine Majesty and as Hope is destroyed by any one act of voluntary Desperation so Faith must perish by any one act of Heresie because every such act is directly and formally opposite thereunto I know that some sins which as Divines speak are ex genere suo in their kind grievous and moâ—tal may be much lessened and fall to be venial ob levitatem materiae because they may happen to be exercised in a matter of small consideration as for example to steal a penny is venial although Theft in his kind be a deadly sin But it is likewise true that this Rule is not general for all sorts of sins there being some so inexcusably wicked of their own nature that no smalness of matter nor paucity in number can defend them from being deadly sins For to give an instance what blasphemy against God or voluntary false Oath is not a deadly sin Certainly none at all although the salvation of the whole world should depend upon swearing such a falshood The like hapneth in our present case of Heresie the iniquity redounding to the injury of God's supreme wisdom and goodness is always great and enormous They were no precious stones which David (n) 1. Reg. 17. pickt out of the water to encounter Golias yet if a man take from the number but one and say they were but four against the Scripture affirming them to have been five he is instantly guilty of a damnable sin Why Because by this substraction of One he doth deprive God's Word and Testimony of all credit and infallibility For if either he could deceive or be deceived in any one thing it were but wisdom to suspect him in all And seeing every Heresie opposeth some Truth revealed by God it is
of the Apostles the (h) Lib. 28. cont Faust cap. 2. Church hath brought down to our days by a never-interrupted course of times and by undoubted succession of connection Now that the Reformation begun by Luther was interrupted for divers ages before him is manifest our of History and by his endeavouring a Reformation which must presuppose Abuses He cannot therefore pretend a continued Succession of that Doctrin which he sought to revive and reduce to the knowledge and practise of men And they ought not to prove that they have a Succession of doctrin because they agreee with the doctrin of the Apostles but contrarily we must infer that they agree not with the Apostles because they cannot pretend a never-interrupted succession of doctrin from the times of the Apostles till Luther And here it is not amiss to note that although the Waldeases Wickliff c. had agreed with Protestants in all points of doctrin yet they could not brag of Succession from them because their doctrin hath not been free from interruption which necessarily crosseth Succession 25 And as want of Succession of Persons and Doctrin cannot stand with that Universality of Time which is inseparable from the Catholique Church so likewise the disagreeing Sects which are dispersed throughout divers Countries and Nations cannot help towards that Universality of Place wherewith the true Church must be endued but rather such local multiplication doth more and more lay open their division and want of succession in Doctrin For the excellent Observation of S. Augustine doth punctually agree with all modern Heretiques wherein this holy Father having cited these words our of the Prophet Ezechiel (i) Cap. 24. My flocks are dispersed upon the whole face of the Earth he adds this remarkable sentence Not all Heretiques (k) Lib. de Pastorib c. 8. are spread over the face of the Earth and yet there are Heretiques spread over the whole face of the Earth some here some there yet they are wanting in no place they know not one another One Sect for example in Africa another Heresie in the East another in Egypt another in Mesopotania In divers places there are divers one Mother pride hath begot them all as our own Mother the Catholique Church hath brought forth all saithful people dispersed throughout the whole world No wonder then if Pride breed Dissention and Charity Union And in another place applying to Heretiques those words of the Canticles If thou know not (l) Cant. 1. thy self go forth and follow after the steps of the flocks and seed the kids he saith If thou know not thy self go (m) Ep. 48. thou forth I do not cast thee out but go thou out that it may be said of thee They went from us but they were not of us Go thou out in the steps of the flocks not in my steps but in the steps of the flocks nor of one flock but of divers and wandring flocks And feed thy Kids not as Peter to whom is said Feed thy sheep but seed thy kids in the Tabernacle of the Pastors not in the Tabernacle of the Pastor where there is one flock and one Pastor In which words this holy Father doth set down the Marks of Heresie to wit going out from the Church and Want of Unity among themselves which proceed from not acknowledging one supreme Visible Pastor and Head under Christ And so it being Proved that Protestants havâ—â— neither succession of Persons nor Doctrin nor Universality of Time or Place cannot avoid the just note of Heresie 26 Hitherto we have brought arguments to prove that Luther and all Protestants are guilty of Heresie against the Negative Precept of saith which obligeth 〈◊〉 under pain of damnation not to imbrace any one errour contrary to any Truth sufficiently propounded as testified or revealed by Almighty God Which were enough to make good that among Persons who disagree in any one Point of Faith one part only can be saved Yet we will now prove that whosoever erreth in any one point doth also break the Affirmative Precept of Faith whereby we are obliged positively to believe some revealed truth with an infallible and supernatural Faith which is necessary to salvation even necessitate sinis or medii as Divines speak that is so necessary that not any after he is come to the use of Reason was or can be saved without it according to the words of the Apostle Without saith (n) Heb. 11.6 it is impossible to please God 27 In the beginning of this Chapter I shewed that to Christian Catholique faith are required Certainty Obscurity Prudence and Supernaturality All which Conditions we will prove to be wanting in the belief of Protestants even in those points which are true in themselves and to which they yield assent as happeneth in all those particulars wherein they agree with us from whence it will follow that they wanting true Divine saith want means absolutely necessary to salvation The faith of Protestants wanteth Certainty 28 And first that their belief wanteth Certainty I prove because they denying the Universal infallibility of the Church can have no certain ground to know what Objects are revealed or testified by God Holy Scripture is in it self most true and infallible but without the direction and declaration of the Church we can neither have certain means to know what Scâ—ipture is Canonical nor what Translations be faithful nor what is the true meaning of Scripture Every Protestant as I suppose is perswaded that his own opinions be true and that he hath used such means as are wont to be prescribed for understanding the Scripture as Prayer Conferring of divers Texts c. and yet their disagreements shew that some of them are deceived And therefore it is clear that they have no one certain ground whereon to relie for understanding of Scripture And seeing they hold all the Articles of Faith even concerning fundamental points upon the self same ground of Scripture interpreted not by the Churches Authority according to some other Rules which as experience of their contradictions teach do sometimes fail it is clear that the ground of their faith is infallible in no point at all And albeit sometime it chance to hit on the truth yet it is likewise apt to lead them to error As all Arch-heretiques believing some truths and withall divers errors upon the same ground and motive have indeed no true divine infallible faith but only a fallible humane opinion and perswasion For if the ground upon which they rely were certain it could never produce any errour 29 Another cause of uncertainty in the faith of Protestants must rise from their distinction of points fundamental and not fundamental For since they acknowledge that every error in fundamental points destroyeth the substance of faith and yet cannot determine what points be fundamental it followeth that they must remain uncertain whether or no they be not in some fundamental error and so want the substance of faith
Personal Succession and not Succession of Doctrin Is not this to verefie the name of Heresie which signifieth Election or Choice Whereby they cannot avoid that note of Imprudency or as S. Augustine calls it Foolishness set down by him against the Manichees and by me recited before I would not saith he believe (r) Cont. ep Fund c. 5. the Gospel unless the Authority of the Church did move me Those therefore whom I obeyed saying Believe the Gospel why should I not obey the same men saying to me Do not believe Manichaeus Luther Calvin c. Chuse what thou pleasest If thou say Believe the Catholiques they warn me not to believe thee Wherefore if I believe them I cannot believe thee If thou say Do not believe the Catholiques thou shall not do well in forcing me to the saith of Manichaeus because by the Preaching of Catholiques I believed the Gospel it self If thou say you did well to believe them Catholiques commending the Gospel but you did not well to believe them discommending Manichaeus dost thou think me so very FOOLISH that without any reason at all I should believe what thou wilt and not believe what thou wilt not Nay this holy Father is not content to call it Fool shness but meer Madness in these words Why should I not most diligently enquire (f) Lib de util Cred. c. 14. what Christ commanded of those before all others by whose Authority I was moved to believe that Christ commanded any good thing Canst thou better declare to me what he said whom I would not have thought to have been or to be if the Belief thereof had been recommended by thee to me This therefore I believed by fame strengthned with Celebrity Consent Antiquity But every one may see that you so few so turbulent so new can produce nothing which deserves Authority What MADNESS is this Believe them Catholiques that we ought to believe Christ but learn of us what Christ said why I beseech thee Surely if they Catholiques were not at all and could not teach me any thing I would more easily perswade my self that I were not to believe Christ then I should learn any thing concerning him from other than those by whom I believed him Lastly I ask What wisdom it could be to leave all visible Churches and consequently the true Catholique Church of Christ which you confess cannot err in points necessary to salvation and the Roman Church which you grant doth not err in fundamentals and follow private men who may err even in points necessary to salvation Especially if we add that when Luther rose there was no visible true Catholique Church besides that of Rome and them who agreed with her in which sense she was and is the only true Church of Christ and not capable of any Error in faith Nay even Luther who first opposed the Roman Church yet coming to dispute against other Heretiques he is forced to give the Lye both to his own words and deeds in saying We freely confess (t) In epist cont Anab. ad duos Paroches to 2. Germ. Wit fol. 229 230. that in the Papacy there are many good things worthy the name of Christian which have come from them to us Namely we consess that in the Papacy there is true Scripture true Baptism the true Sacrament of the Altar the true keyes for the remission of sins the true office of Preaching true Catechism as our Lords Prayer Ten Commandments Articles of faith c. And afterward I avouch that under the Papacy is true Christianity yea the Kâ—â—nâ—land Marrow of Christianity and many pious and great Saints And again he affirmeth that the Church of Rome hath the true Spirit Gospel Faith Baptism Sacraments the Keyes the Office of Preaching Prayer Holy Scripture and whatsoever Christianity ought to have And a little before I hear and see that they bring in Anabaptism only to this end that they may spight the Pope as men that will receive nothing from Antichrist no otherwise than the Sacramentaries do who therefore believe only Bread and Wine to be in the Sacrament meerly in hatred against the Bishop of Rome and they think that by this means they shall overcome the Papacy Verily these men rely upon a weak ground for by this means they must deny the whole Scripture and the Office of Preaching For we have all these things from the Pope otherwise we must go make a new Scripture O Truth more forcible as S. Austin says to wring out (x) Cont. Donat. past collat c 24. Confession then is any rack or torment And so we may truly say with Moyses Inimici nostri sunt Judices Our very Enemies give (y) Deut. 32.31 Their faith wants Supernaturality sentence for us 33 Lastly since your faith wanteth Certainty and Prudence it is easie to inferr that it wants the fourth Condition Supernaturality For being but an Humane perswasion or Opinion it is not in nature or essence Supernatural And being imprudent and rash it cannot proceed from Divine Motion and grace and therefore it is neither supernatural in it self not in the cause from which it proceedeth 34 Since therefore we have proved that whosoever errs against any one point of faith loseth all divine faith even concerning those other Articles wherein he doth not err and that although he could still retain true faith for some points yet any one errour in whatsoever matter concerning faith is a grievous sin it clearly follows that when two or more hold different doctrins concerning faith and Religion there can be but one Part saved For declaring of which truth if Catholiques be charged with want of Charity and Modesty and be accused of rashness ambition and fury as D. Potter is very free in this kind I desire every one to ponder the whole words of S. Chrysostom who teacheth that every least error overthrows all faith and whosoever is guilty thereof is in the Church like one who in the Common wealth forgeth false coin Let them hear saith this holy Father what S. Paul saith Namely that they who brought in some small error (z) Gal. 1.7 had overthrown the Gospel For to shew how small a thing ill mingled doth corrupt the whole he said that the Gospel was subverted For as he who clips a little of the stamp from the King's money makes the whole piece of no value so whosoever takes away â—he least particle of sound faith is wholly corrupted always going from that beginning to worse things Where then are they who condemn us as contentious persons because we cannot agree with Heretiques and do often say that there is no difference betwixt us and them but that our disagreement proceeds from Ambition to domineer And thus having shewed that Protestants want true Faith it remaineth that according to my first design I examine whether they do not also want Charity as it respects a mans self The ANSWER to the SIXTH CHAPTER That Protestants are not Heretiques
as good be of none at all Nor to trouble you Fourthly with this that a great part of your Doctrine especially in the points contested makes apparently for the temporal ends of the Teachers of it which yet I fear is a great scandal to many Beaux Esprits among you Only I should desire you to consider attentively when you conclude so often from the Differences of Protestants that they have no certainty of any part of their Religion no not of those points wherein they agree Whether you do not that which so Magisterially you direct me not to do that is proceed a destructive way and object arguments against your Adversaries which tend to the overthrow of all Religion And whether as you argue thus Protestants differ in many things therefore they have no certainty of any thing So an Atheist or a Sceptique may not conclude as well Christians and the Professors of all Religions differ in many things therefore they have no certainty in any thing Again I should desire you to tell me ingenuously Whether it be not too probable that your portentous Doctrine of Transubstantiation joyned with your fore-mentioned perswasion of No Papists no Christians hath brought a great many others as well as himself to Averroes his resolution Quandoquidem Christiani adorant quod comedunt sit anima mea cum Philosophis Whether your requiring men upon only probable and prudential Motives to yield a most certain assent unto things in humane reason impossible and telling them as you do too often that they were as good not believe at all as believe with any lower degree of faith be not a likely way to make considering men scorn your Religion and consequently all if they know no other as requiring things contradictory and impossible to be performed Lastly Whether your pretence that there is no good ground to believe Scripture but your Churches infallibility joyned with your pretending no ground for this but some texts of Scripture be not a fair way to make them that understand themselves believe neither Church nor Scripture 9. Your calumnies against Protestants in generall are set down in these words Chap. 2. § 2. The very doctrine of Protestants if it be followed closely and with coherence to it self must of necessity induce Socinianism This I say confidently and evidently prove by instancing in one error which may well be tearmed the Capital and mother-Heresie from which all other must follow at ease I mean their heresie in affirming That the perpetual visible Church of Christ descended by a never interrupted succession from our Saviour to this day is not infallible in all that it proposeth to be believed as revealed truths For if the infallibility of such a publique Authority be once impeached what remains but that every man is given over to his own wit and discourse And talk not here of Holy Scripture For if the true Church may erre in defining what Scriptures be Canonicall or in delivering the sense and meaning thereof we are still devolved either upon the private spirit a foolery now exploded out of England which finally leaving every man to his own conceits ends in Socinianism or else upon natural wit and judgement for examining and determining What Scriptures contain true or false doctrine and in that respect ought to be received or rejected And indeed take away the authority of God's Church no man can be assured that any one Book or parcel of Scripture was written by divine inspiration or that all the contents are infallibly true which are the direct errors of Socinians If it were but for this reason alone no man who regards the eternal salvation of his soul would live or dye in Protestancy from which so vast absurdities as these of the Socinians must inevitably follow And it ought to be an unspeakable comfort to all us Catholiques while we consider that none can deny the infallible authority of our Church but joyntly he must be left to his own wit and wayes and must abandon all infused faith and true Religion if he do but understand himself aright In all which discourse the only true word you speak is This I say confidently As for proving evidently that I believe you reserved for some other opportunity for the present I am sure you have been very sparing of it 10. You say indeed confidently enough that The deny all of the Churches infallibility is the Mother-Heresie from which all other must follow at ease Which is so far from being a necessary truth as you make it that it is indeed a manifest falshood Neither is it possible for the wit of man by any good or so much as probable consequence from the denyal of the Churches Infallibility to deduce any one of the ancient Heresies or any one error of the Socinians which are the Heresies here entreated of For who would not laugh at him that should argue thus Neither the Church of Rome nor any other Church is infallible Ergo The doctrine of Arrius Pelagius Eutyches Nestorius Photinus Manichaeus was true Doctrine On the other side it may be truly said and justified by very good and effectual reason that he that affirms with you the Pope's infallibility puts himself into his hands and power to be led by him at his ease and pleasure into all Heresie and even to Hell it self and cannot with reason say so long as he is constant to his grounds Domine cur ita facis but must believe white to be black and black to be white vertue to be vice and vice to be vertue nay which is a horrible but a most certain truth Christ to be Antichrist and Antichrist to be Christ if it be possible for the Pope to say so Which I say and will maintain howsoever you daub and disguise it is indeed to make men Apostate from Christ to his pretended Vicar but real Enemy For that name and no better if we may speak truth without offence I presume He deserves who under pretence of interpreting the Law of Christ which Authority without any word of express warrant he hath taken upon himself doth in many parts evacuate and dissolve it So dethroning Christ from his dominion over mens consciences and instead of Christ setting up Himself Inasmuch as he that requires that his interpretations of any Law should be obeyed as true and genuine seem they to mens understandings never so dissonant and discordant from it as the Bishop of Rome does requires indeed that his interpretations should be the Lawes and he that is firmly prepared in minde to believe and receive all such interpretations without judging of them and though to his private judgement they seem unreasonable is indeed congruously disposed to hold Adultery a venial sin and Fornication no sin whensoever the Pope and his Adherents shall so declare And whatsoever he may plead yet either wittingly or ignorantly he makes the Law and the Law-maker both stales and obeyes only the Interpreter As if I should pretend that I should
ignorance even of some Fundamental Article of Faith through want of capacity instruction or the like and so not offend either in such ignorance or error and yet we must absolutely say that error in any one Fundamental point is damnable because so it is if we consider things in themselves abstracting from accidental circumstances in particular persons as contrarily if some man judge some act of virtue or some indifferent action to be a sin in him it is a sin indeed by reason of his erroneous conscience and yet we ought not to say absolutely that virtuous or indifferent actions are sins and in all sciences we must distinguish the general Rules from their particular Exceptions And therefore when for example he answers to our Demand Whether he hold that Catholiques may be saved or Whether their pretended errors be Fundamental and Damnable he is not to change the state of the question and have recourse to Ignorance and the like but to answer concerning the errors being considered what they are apt to be in themselves and as they are neither increased nor diminished by accidental circumstances 23. And the like I say of all the other Points to which I once again desire an answer without any of these or the like ambiguous terms in some sort in some sense in some degree which may be explicated afterward as strictly or largely as may best serve his turn but let him tell us roundly and particularly in what sort in what sense in what degree he understands those and the like obscure mincing phrases If he proceed solidly after this manner and not by way of meer words more like a Preacher to a vulgar Auditor than like a learned man with a pen in his hand thy patience shall be the less abused and truth will also receive more right And since we have already laid the grounds of the question much may be said hereafter in few words if as I said he keep close to the real point of every difficulty without wandring into impertinent disputes or multiplying vulgar and thred-bare objections and arguments or labouring to prove what no man denies or making a vain ostentation by citing a number of Schoolmen which every Puny brought up in Schools is able to do and if he cite his Authors with such sincerity as no time need be spent in opening his corruptions and finally if he set himself awork with this consideration that we are to give a most strict account to a most just and impartial Judge of every period line and word that passeth under our pen. For if at the latter day we shall be arraigned for every idle word which is spoken so much more will that be done for every idle word which is written as the deliberation wherewith it passeth makes a man guilty of more malice and as the importance of the matter which is treated of in Books concerning true Faith and Religion without which no Soul can be saved makes a man's Errors more material than they would be if the question were but of toys The Answer to the PREFACE AD 1. 2. § If beginnings be ominous as they say they are D. Potter hath cause to look for great store of uningenuous dealing from you the very first words you speak of him viz. That he hath not so much as once truly and really fallen upon the Point in question being a most unjust and immodest imputation 2. For first The Point in question was not that which you pretend Whether both Papists and Protestants can be saved in their several Professions But Whether you may without uncharitableness affirm that Protestancy unrepented destroys Salvation And that this is the very question is most apparent and unquestionable both from the title of Charity Mistaken and from the Arguments of the three first Chapters of it and from the title of your own Reply And therefore if D. Potter had joyned issue with his Adversary only thus far and not medling at all with Papists but leaving them to stand or fall to their own Master had proved Protestants living and dying so capable of Salvation I cannot see how it could justly be charged upon him that he had not once truly and really fallen upon the Point in Question Neither may it be said that your Question here and mine are in effect the same seeing it is very possible that the true Answer to the one might have been Affirmative and to the other Negative For there is no incongruity but it may be true That You and We cannot both be saved And yet as true That without uncharitableness you cannot pronounce us damned For all ungrounded and unwarrantable sentencing men to Damnation is either in a proriety of speech uncharitable or else which for my purpose is all one it is that which Protestants mean when they say Papists for damning them are uncharitable And therefore though the Author of C. M. had proved as strongly as he hath done weakly that one Heaven could not receive Protestants and Papists both yet certainly it was very hastily and unwarrantably and therefore uncharitably concluded that Protestants were the part that was to be excluded As though Jews and Christians cannot both be saved yet a Jew cannot justly and therefore not charitably pronounce a Christian damned 3. But then secondly to shew your dealing with him very injurious I say he doth speak to this very Question very largely and very effectually as by confronting his Work and Charity M. together will presently appear Charity M. proves you say in general That there is but one Church D. Potter tels him His labour is lost in proving the unity of the Catholique Church whereof there is no doubt or controversie and herein I hope you will grant he answers right and to the purpose C. M. proves you say secondly That all Christians are obliged to hearken to the Church D. Potter answers It is true yet not absolutely in all things but only when she commands those things which God doth not countermand And this also I hope is to his purpose though not to yours C.M. proves you say thirdly That the Church must be ever visible and infallible For her Visibility D. Potter denies it not and as for her Infallibility he grants it in Fundamentals but not in Superstructures C.M. proves you say fourthly That to separate one's self from the Churche's Communion is Schism D. Potter grants it with this exception unless there be necessary cause to do so unless the conditions of her Communion be apparently unlawful C.M. proves you say lastly That to dissent from her Doctrine is Heresie though it be in points never so few and never so small and therefore that the distinction of points fundamental and unfundamental as it is applyed by Protestants is wholly vain This D. P. denies shews the Reasons brought for it weak and unconcluding proves the contrary by Reasons unanswerable and therefore that The distinction of points into fundamental and not-fundamental as it is applyed by
As the doctrine of Indulgences may take away the fear of Purgatory and the doctrine of Purgatory the fear of Hell as you well know it does too frequently So that though a godly man might be saved with these errours yet by means of them many are made vicious and so damned By them I say though not for them No godly Layman who is verily perswaded that there is neither impiety nor superstition in the use of your Latine-service shall be damned I hope for being present at it yet the want of that devotion which the frequent hearing the Offices understood might happily beget in them the want of that instruction and edification which it might afford them may very probably hinder the salvation of many which otherwise might have been saved Besides though the matter of an Errour may be only something profitable not necessary yet the neglect of it may be a damnable sin As not to regard venial sins is in the Doctrine of your Schools mortal Lastly as venial sins you say dispose men to mortal so the erring from some profitable though lesser truth may dispose a man to errour in greater matters As for example The belief of the Pope's infallibility is I hope not unpardonably damnable to every one that holds it yet if it be a falshood as most certainly it is it puts a man into a very congruous disposition to believe Antichrist if he should chance to get into that See 8. Ad § 3. In his Distinction of point fundamental and not fundamental he may seem you say to have touched the point but does not so indeed Because though he says There are some points so fundamental as that all are obliged to believe them explicitely yet he tels you not whether a man may disbelieve any other points of faith which are sufficiently presented to his understanding as Truths revealed by Almighty God Touching which matter of Sufficient Proposal I beseech you to come out of the clouds and tell us roundly and plainly what you mean by Points of faith sufficiently propounded to a man's understanding as Truths revealed by God Perhaps you mean such as the person to whom they are proposed understands sufficiently to be Truths revealed by God But how then can he possibly choose but believe them Or how is it not an apparent contradiction that a man should disbelieve what himself understands to be a Truth o◠any Christian what he understands or but believes to be testified by God Doctor Potter might well think it superfluous to tell you This is damnable because indeed it is impossible And yet one may very well think by your saying as you do hereafter That the impiety of heresie consists in calling God's truth in question that this should be your meaning Or do you esteem all those things sufficiently presented to his understanding as Divine truths which by you or any other man or any Company of men whatsoever are declared to him to be so I hope you will not say so for this were to oblige a man to believe all the Churches and all the men in the world whensoever they pretend to propose Divine Revelations D. Potter I assure you from him would never have told you this neither Or do you mean by sufficiently propounded as Divine Truths all that your Church propounds for such That you may not neither For the Question between us is this Whether your Churches Proposition be a sufficient Proposition And therefore to suppose this is to suppose the Question which you know in Reasoning is always a fault Or lastly do you mean for I know not else what possibly you can mean by sufficiently presented to his understanding as revealed by God that which all things considered is so proposed to him that he might and should and would believe it to be true and revealed by God were it not for some voluntary and avoidable fault of his own that interposeth it self between his understanding and the truth presented to it This is the best construction that I can make of your words and if you speak of truths thus proposed and rejected let it be as damnable as you please to deny or disbelieve them But then I cannot but be amaz'd to hear you say That D. Potter never tells you whether there be any other Points of faith besides those which we are bound to believe explicitely which a man may deny or disbelieve though they be sufficiently presented to his understanding as truths revealed or testified by Almighty God seeing the light it self is not more clear than D. Potter's Declaration of himself for the Negative in this Question p. 245 246 247 249 250. of his Book Where he treats at large of this very Argument beginning his discourse thus It seems fundamental to the faith and for the salvation of every member of the Church that he acknowledge and believe all such points of faith as whereof he may be convinced that they belong to the Doctrine of Jesus Christ To this conviction he requires three things Clear Revelation Sufficient Proposition and Capacity and Understanding in the Hearer For want of clear Revelation he frees the Church before Christ and the Disciples of Christ from any damnable errour though they believed not those things which he that should now deny were no Christian To Sufficient Proposition he requires two things 1. That the points be perspicuously laid open in themselves 2. So forcibly as may serve to remove reasonable doubts to the contrary and to satisfie a teachable mind concerning it against the principles in which he hath been bred to the Contrary This Proposition he says is not limited to the Pope or Church but extended to all means whatsoever by which a man may be convinced in conscience that the matter proposed is divine Revelation which he professes to be done sufficiently not only when his conscience doth expresly bear witness to the truth but when it would do so if it were not choaked and blinded by some unruly and unmortified lust in the will The difference being not great between him that is wilfully blind and him that knowingly gainsayeth the Truth The third thing he requires is Capacity and Ability to apprehend the Proposal and the Reasons of it the want whereof excuseth fools and madmen c. But where there is no such impediment and the will of God is sufficiently propounded there saith he he that opposeth is convinced of errour and he who is thus convinced is an Heretique and heresie is a work of the Flesh which excludeth from salvation he means without Repentance And hence it followeth that it is fundamentall to a Christian's faith and necessary for his salvation that he believe all revealed truths of God whereof he may be convinced that they are from God This is the conclusion of Doctor Potter's discourse many passages whereof you take notice of in your subsequent disputations and make your advantage of them And therefore I cannot but say again that it amazeth me to
hear you say that he declines this Question and never tells you whether or no there be any other points of faith which being sufficiently propounded as divine Revelations may be denied and dis-believed He tells you plainly there are none such and therefore you cannot say that he tells you not whether there be any such Again it is almost as strange to me why you should say this was the only thing in question Whether a man may deny or disbelieve any point of faith sufficiently presented to his understanding as a truth revealed by God For to say that any thing is a thing in question me-thinks at the first hearing of the words imports that it is by some affirmed and denied by others Now you affirm I grant but What Protestant ever denied that it was a sin to give God the lye Which is the first and most obvious sense of these words Or which of them ever doubted that to disbelieve is then a fault when the matter is so proposed to a man that he might and should and were it not for his own fault would believe it Certainly he that questions either of these justly deserves to have his wits called in question Produce any one Protestant that ever did so and I will give you leave to say It is the only thing in question But then I must tell you that your ensuing Argument viz. To deny a truth witnessed by God is damnable But of two that disagree one must of necessity deny some such truth Therefore one only can be saved is built upon a ground clean different from this postulate For though it be always a fault to deny what either I do know or should know to be testified by God yet that which by a cleanly conveyance you put in the place hereof To deny a truth witnessed by God simply without the circumstance of being known or sufficiently proposed is so far from being certainly damnable that it may be many times done without any the least fault at all As if God should testifie something to a man in the Indies I that had no assurance of this testification should not be oblig'd to believe it For in such cases the Rule of the Law hath place Idem est non esse non apparere not to be at all and not to appear to me is to me all one If I had not come and spoken unto you saith our Saviour you had had no sin 10. As little necessity is there for that which follows That of two disagreeing in a matter of faith one must deny some such truth Whether by such you understand Testified at all by God or testified and sufficiently propounded For it is very possible the matter in controversie may be such a thing wherein God hath not at all declared himself or not so fully and clearly as to oblige all men to hold one way and yet be so overvalued by the parties in variance as to be esteemed a matter of faith and one of those things of which our Savior says He that believeth not shall be damn'd Who sees not that it is possible two Churches may excommunicate and damn each other for keeping Christmass ten dayes sooner or later as well as Victor excommunicated the Churches of Asia for differing from him about Easter day And yet I believe you will confess that God had not then declared himself about Easter nor hath now about Christmass Anciently some good Catholique Bishops excommunicated and damned others for holding there were Antipodes and in this question I would fain know on which side was the sufficient proposal The contra-Remonstrants differ from the Remonstrants about the point of Predetermination as a matter of faith I would know in this thing also which way God hath declared himself whether for Predetermination or against it Stephen Bishop of Rome held it as a matter of faith and Apostolique Tradition That Heretiques gave true Baptism Others there were and they as good Catholiques as he that held that this was neither matter of Faith nor matter of Truth Justin Martyr and Irenaeus held the doctrine of the Millenaries as a matter of faith and though Justin Martyr deny it yet you I hope will affirm that some good Christians held the contrary S. Augustine I am sure held the communicating of Infants as much Apostolique tradition as the Baptizing of them whether the Bishop and the Church of Rome of his time held so too or held otherwise I desire you to determine But sure I am the Church of Rome at this present holds the contrary The same S. Austin held it no matter of faith that the Bishops of Rome were Judges of Appeals from all parts of the Church Catholique no not in Major Causes and Major Persons whether the Bishop or Church of Rome did then hold the contrary do you resolve me but now I am resolv'd they do so In all these differences the point in question is esteemed and proposed by one side at least as a matter of faith and by the other rejected as not so and either this is to disagree in matters of faith or you will have no means to shew that we do disagree Now then to shew you how weak and sandy the foundation is on which the whole fabrick both of your Book and Church depends answer me briefly to this Dilemma Either in these oppositions one of the opposite Parts erred damnably and denied God's truth sufficiently propounded or they did not If they did then they which do deny God's truth sufficiently propounded may go to heaven and then you are rash and uncharitable in excluding us though we were guilty of this fault If not then there is no such necessity that of two disagreeing about a matter of faith one should deny God's truth sufficiently propounded And so the Major and Minor of your Argument are proved false Yet though they were as true as Gospel and as evident as Mathematical Principles the Conclusion so impertinent is it to the Premises might still be false For that which naturally issues from these Propositions is not Therefore one only can be saved But Therefore one of them does something that is damnable But with what Logick or what Charity you can inferr either as the immediate production of the former premises or as a Corollary from this Conclusion Therefore one only can be saved I do not understand unless you will pretend that this consequence is good Such a one doth something damnable therefore he shall certainly be damned Which whether it be not to overthrow the Article of our Faith which promises remission of sins upon repentance and consequently to ruine the Gospel of Christ I leave it to the Pope and the Cardinals to determine For if against this it be alleaged that no man can repent of the sin wherein he dies This muce I have already stopped by shewing that if it be a sin of Ignorance this is no way incongruous 11. Ad § 4. You proceed in sleighting and disgracing your
it which we do not nor need not pretend And for men agreeing with Protestants in all points we will then produce them when you shall either prove it necessary to be done which you know we absolutely deny or when you shall produce a perpetual succession of Professors which in all points have agreed with you and disagreed from you in nothing But this my promise to deal plainly with you I conceive and so intended it to be very like his who undertook to drink up the Sea upon condition that he to whom the promise was made should first stop the Rivers from running in For this unreasonable request which you make to us is to your selves so impossible that in the very next Age after the Apostles you will never be able to name a man whom you can prove to have agreed with you in all things nay if you speak of such whose Works are extant and unquestioned whom we cannot prove to have disagreed from you in many things Which I am so certain of that I will venture my credit and my life upon it 20. Ad § 13. To the third Whether seeing there cannot be assigned any visible true Church distinct from the Roman it follows not that she erred not fundamentally I say in our sense of the word Fundamental it does follow For if it be true that there was then no Church distinct from the Roman then it must be either because there was no Church at all which we deny Or because the Roman Church was the whole Church which we also deny Or because she was a Part of the Whole which we grant And if she were a true part of the Church then she retained those truths which were simply necessary to Salvation and held no errours which were inevitably and unpardonably destructive of it For this is precisely necessary to constitute any man or any Church a member of the Church Catholique In our sense therefore of the word Fundamental I hope she erred not fundamentally but in your sense of the word I fear she did that is she held something to be Divine Revelation which was not something not to be which was 21. Ad § 14. To the fourth How it could be damnable to maintain her Errors if they were not fundamental I answer 1. Though it were not damnable yet if it were a fault it was not to be done For a Venial sin with you is not damnable yet you say it is not to be committed for the procuring any good Non est faciendum malum vel minimum ut eveniat bonum vel maximum 2. It is damnable to maintain an error against conscience though the error in it self and to him that believes it be not damnable Nay the profession not only of an error but even of a truth if not believed when you think on it again I believe you will confess to be a mortal sin unless you will say Hypocrisie and Simulation in Religion is not so 3. Though we say the Errors of the Roman Church were not destructive of Salvation but pardonable even to them that died in them upon a general repentance yet we deny not but in themselves they were damnable Nay the very saying they were pardonable implies they needed pardon and therefore in themselves were damnable damnable meritoriously though not effectually As a poyson may be deadly in it self and yet not kill him that together with the Poyson takes an Antidote or as Felony may deserve death and yet not bring it on him that obtains the Kings Pardon 22. Ad § 15. To the fifth How they can be excused from Schism who forsook her Communion upon pretence of Errors which were not damnable I answer All that we forsake in you is only the belief and practice and profession of your Errors Hereupon you cast us out of your Communion And then with a strange and contradictious and ridiculous hypocrisie complain that we forsake it As if a man should thrust his friend out of doors and then be offended at his departure But for us not to forsake the belief of your Errors having discovered them to be Errors was impossible and therefore to do so could not be damnable believing them to be Errors Not to forsake the practice and profession of them had been damnable hypocrisie supposing that which you vainly run away with and take for granted those Errors in themselves were not damnable Now to do so and as matters now stand not to forsake your Communion is apparently contradictious seeing the condition of your Communion is that we must profess to believe all your Doctrins not only to be damnable Errors which wiâ—l not content you but also to be certain and necessary and revealed Truths So that to demand Why we forsake your Communion upon pretence of Errors which were not damnable is in effect to demand why we forsook it upon our forsaking it For to pretend that there are Errors in your Church though not damnable is ipso facto to forsake your Communion and to do that which both in your account and as you think in Gods account puts him that does so out of your Communion So that either you must free your Church from requiring the beliefe of any Error whatsoever damnable and not damnable or whether you will or no you must free us from Schism For Schism there cannot be in leaving your Communion unless we were obliged to continue in it Man cannot be obliged by Man but to what either formally or vertually he is obliged by God for all just power is from God God the Eternal Truth neither can nor will oblige us to believe any the least and the most innocent falshood to be a Divine truth that is to erre nor to profess a known Error which is to lie So that if you require the beliefe of any Error among the conditions of your Communion our Obligation to communicate with you ceaseth and so the imputation of Schism to us vanisheth into nothing but lies heavy upon you for making our separation from you just and necessary by requiring unnecessary and unlawful conditions of your Communion Hereafter therefore I intreat you let not your demand be How could we forsake your Communion without Schism seeing you erred not damnably But How we could do so without Schism seeing you erred not at all which if either you do prove or we cannot disprove it we will I at least will for my part return to your Communion or subscribe my self Schismatique In the mean time 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 23. Yet notwithstanding all your Errors we do not renounce your Communion totally and absolutely but only leave Communicating with you in the practice and profession of your Errors The tryal whereof will be to propose some form of worshipping God taken wholly out of Scripture and herein if we refuse to joyn with you then and not till then may you justly say We have utterly and absolutely abandoned your Communion 24. Ad § 16. Your sixth demand
endevour But because this Supposition though certainly possible is very rare and admirable I say secondly that I am verily perswaded that God will not impute errors to them as sins who use such a measure of industry in finding truth as humane prudence and ordinary discretion their abilities and opportunities their distractions and hinderances and all other things considered shall advise them unto in a matter of such consequence But if herein also we fail then our errors begin to be malignant and justly imputable as offences against God and that love of his truth which he requires in us You will say then that for those erring Protestants which are in this case which evidently are far the greater patt they sin damnably in erring and therefore there is little hope of their Salvation To which I answer that the consequence of this Reason is somewhat strong against a Protestant but much weakned by coming out of the mouth of a Papist For all sins with you are not damnable and therefore Protestants errors might be sins and yet not damnable But yet out of courtesie to you we will remove this rubbe out of your way and for the present suppose them mortal sins and is there then no hope of Salvation for him that commits them Not you will say if he die in them without repentance and such Protestants you speak of Who without repentance die in their Errors Yea but what if they die in their errors with repentance then I hope you will have Charity enough to think they may be saved Charity Mistaken takes it indeed for granted that this supposition is destructive of it self In the place above quoted and that it is impossible and incongruous that a man should repent of those errors wherein he dies or die in those whereof he repents But it was wisely done of Him to take it for granted for most certainly He could not have spoken one word of sense for the confirmation of it For seeing Protestants believe as well as you God's infinite and most admirable perfections in himself more than most worthy of all possible love seeing they believe as well as you his infinite goodness to them in creating them of nothing in creating them according to his own Image in creating all things for their use and benefit in streaming down his favours on them every moment of their lives in designing them if they serve him to infinite and eternal happiness in redeeming them not with corruptible things but the precious blood of his beloved Son seeing they believe as well as you his infinite goodness and patience towards them in expecting their Conversion in wooing alluring leading and by all means which his wisdom can suggest unto him and man's nature is capable of drawing them to Repentance and Salvation Seeing they believe these things as well as you and for ought you know consider them as much as you and if they do not it is not their Religion but They that are too blame what can hinder but that the consideration of God's most infinite goodness to them and their own almost infinite wickedness against him God's Spirit co-operating with them may raise them to a true and sincere and a cordial love of God And seeing sorrow for having injured or offended the person beloved or when we fear we may have offended him is the most natural effect of true love what can hinder but that love which hath oft-times constrained them to lay down their lives for God which our Saviour assures us is the noblest sacrifice we can offer may produce in them an universal sorrow for all their sins both which they know they have committed and which they fear they may have In which number their being negligent or not dispassionate or not unprejudicate enough in seeking the truth and the effect thereof their errors if they be sins cannot but be comprized In a word what should hinder but that that Prayer Delicta sua quis intelligit Who can understand his faults Lord cleanse thou me from my secret sins may be heard and accepted by God as well from a Protestant that dies in some errors as from a Papist that dies in some other sins of Ignorance which perhaps he might more easily have discovered to be sins than a Protestant could his errors to be errors As well from a Protestant that held some error which as he conceived God's word and his reason which is also in some sort God's word lead him unto as from a Dominican who perhaps took up his opinion upon trust not because he had reason to believe it true but because it was the Opinion of his Order for the same man if he had light upon another Order would in all probability have been of the other opinion For what else is the cause that generally all the Dominicans are of one opinion and all the Jesuits of the other I say from a Dominican who took up his opinion upon trust and that such an opinion if we believe the Writers of your Order as if it be granted true it were not a point-matter what opinions any man held or what actions any man did for the best would be as bad as the worst and worst the as good as the best And yet such is the partiality of your Hypocrisie that of disagreing Papists neither shall deny the truth testified by God but both may hope for salvation but of disagreeing Protestants though they differ in the same thing one side must deny God's Testimony and be incapable of salvation That a Dominican through culpable negligence living and dying in his error may repent of it though he knowes it not or be saved though he do not But if a Protestant do the very same thing in the very same point and die in his error his case is desperate The sum of all that hath been said to this Demand is this 1. That no erring Protestant denies any truth testified by God under this formality as testified by him nor which they know or believe to be testified by him And therefore it is an horrible calumny in you to say They call God's Veracity in question For God's undoubted and unquestioned Veracity is to them the ground why they hold all they do hold neither do they hold any opinion so stiffly but they will forgo it rather than this one That all which God says is true 2. God hath not so clearly and plainly declared himself in most of these things which are in Controversie between Protestants but that an honest man whose heart is right to God and one that is a true lover of God and of his truth may by reason of the conflict of contrary Reasons on both sides very easily and therefore excusably mistake and embrace error for truth and reject truth for error 3. If any Protestant or Papist be betrayed into or kept in any Error by any sin of his will as it is to be feared many millions are such Error is as the cause of
to your charge the transgression of your own chief prescription which you say truth exacts at our hands that is to speak clearly or distinctly and not to walk in darkness but that your following words to my understanding declare sufficiently that you speak of both sorts For there you tell us that the Reasons why you damn not any man that dies with the esteem of a Protestant are 1. Because you are not alwayes acquainted with what sufficiency of means he was furnished for instruction You must mean touching the falshood of his own Religion and the truth of yours Which reason is proper to those that are Protestants in truth and not only in estimation 2. Because you do not penetrate his capacity to understand his Catechist which is also peculiar to those who for want of capacity as you conceive remain Protestants indeed and are not only so accounted 3. Because you have no Revelation what light might clear his errors which belongs to those which were esteemed Protestants but indeed were not so 4. Because you have no Revelation what Contrition might have retracted his sins which reason being distinct from the former and divided from it by the disjunctive Particle Or insinuates unto us that though no light did clear the errors of a dying Protestant yet Contrition might for ought you know retract his sins which appropriates this reason also to Protestants truly so esteemed I wish with all my heart that in obedience to your own Prescription you had expressed your self in this matter more fully and plainly Yet that which you say doth plainly enough afford us these Corollaries 1 That whatsoever Protestant wanteth capacity or having it wanteth sufficient means of instruction to convince his Conscience of the falshood of his own and the truth of the Roman Religion by the confession of his most rigid Adversaries may be saved notwithstanding any error in his Religion 2 That nothing hinders but that a Protestant dying a Protestant may die with Contrition for all his sins 3 That if he do die with Contrition he may and shall be saved 4. All these acknowledgements we have from you while you are as you say stating but as I conceive granting the very Point in question which was as I have already proved out of C. M. Whether without uncharitableness you may pronounce that Protestants dying in the belief of their Religion and without particular repentance and dereliction of it cannot possibly be saved Which C. M. affirms universally and without any of your limitations But this presumption of his you thus qualifie by saying that This sentence cannot he pronounced truly and therefore sure not charitably Neither of those Protestants that want means sufficient to instruct and convince them of the truth of your Religion and the falshood of their own Nor of those who though they have negected the means they might have had dyed with Contrittion that is with a sorow for all their sins proceeding from the love of God So that according to your Doctrin it shall remain upon such only as either were or but for their own fault might have been sufficiently convinced of the truth of your Religion and the falshood of their own and yet dye in it without Contrition Which Doctrine if you would stand to and not pull down and pull back with one hand what you give and build with the other this Controversie were ended and I should willingly acknowledge that which follows in your fourth Paragraph That you allow Protestants as much Charity as D. Potter allows you But then I must intreat you to alter the argument of this Chapter and not to go about to give us reasons why amongst men of different Religions one side only can be saved absolutely which your Reasons drive at But you must temper the crudeness of your Assertion by saying One side only can be saved unless want of Conviction or else Repentance excuse the other Besides you must not only abstain from damning any Protestant in particular but from affirming in general that Protestants dying in their Religion cannot be saved for you must always remember to add this Caution unless they were excusably Ignorant of the falshood of it or died with Contrition And then considering that you cannot know whether or no all things considered they were convinced sufficiently of the truth of your Religion and the falshood of their own you are obliged by Charity to judge the best and hope they are not Considering again that notwithstanding their Errors they may die with Contrition and that it is no way improbable that they do so and the contrary you cannot be certain of You are bound in Charity to judge and hope they do so Considering thirdly and lastly that if they die not with Contrition yet it is very probable they may die with Attrition and that this pretence of yours that Contrition will serve without actual Confession but Attrition will not is but a nicety or fancy or rather to give it the true name a Device of your own to serve ends and purposes God having no where declared himself but that wheresoever he will accept of that Repentance which you are pleased to call Contrition he will accept of that which you call Attrition For though he like best the bright flaming holocaust of Love yet he rejects not he quencheth not the smoaking flax of that Repentance if it be true and effectual which proceeds from hope and fear These things I say considered unless you will have the Charity of your Doctrine rise up in judgement against your uncharitable Practice you must not only not be peremptorie in damning Protestants but you must hope well of their Salvation and out of this hope you must do for them as well as others those as you conceive Charitable Offices of Praying giving Alms and offering Sacrifice which usually you do for those of whose Salvation you are well and charitably perswaded for I believe you will never conceive so well of Protestants as to assure your selves they go directly to heaven These things when you do I shall believe you think as charitably as you speak But until then as he said in the Comedie Quid verba audiam cum facta videam so may I say to you Quid verba audiam cum facta non videam To what purpose should you give us charitable words which presently you retract again by denying us your charitable actions And as these things you must do if you will stand to and make good this pretended Charity so must I tell you again and again that one thing you must not do I mean You must not affright poor people out of their Religion with telling them that by the confession of both sides your way is safe but in your judgement ours undoubtedly damnable Seeing neither you deny Salvation to Protestants dying with repentance nor we promise it to you if ye die without it For to deal plainly with you I know no Protestant that hath any other
whosoever persist in Division from the Communion and Faith of the Roman Church are guilty of Schism and Heresie That in regard of the Precept of Charity towards one's self Protestants are in state of sin while they remain divided from the Roman Church To all these Assertions I will content my self for the present to oppose this one That not one of them all is true Only I may not omit to tell you that if the first of them were as true as the Pope himself desires it should be yet the Corollary which you deduce from it would be utterly inconsequent That Whosoever denies any Point proposed by the Church is injurious to God's Divine Majesty as if He could deceive or be deceived For though your Church were indeed as Infallible a Propounder of Divine Truths as it pretends to be yet if it appeared not to me to be so I might very well believe God most true and your Church most false As though the Gospel of S. Matthew be the Word of God yet if I neither knew it to be so nor believed it I might believe in God and yet think that Gospel a Fable Hereafter therefore I must entreat you to remember that our being guilty of this impiety depends not only upon your being but upon our knowing that you are so Neither must you argue thus The Church of Rome is the Infallible Propounder of Divine Verities therefore he that opposeth Her calls God's Truth in Question But thus rather The Church of Rome is so and Protestants know it to be so therefore in opposing her they impute to God that either he deceives them or is deceived himself For as I may deny something which you upon your knowledge have affirmed and yet never disparage your honesty if I never knew that you affirmed it So I may be undoubtedly certain of God's Omniscience and Veracity and yet doubt of something which he hath revealed provided I do not know nor believe that he hath revealed it So that though your Church be the appointed witness of God's Revelations yet until you know that we know she is so you cannot without foul calumny impute to us That we charge God blasphemously with deceiving or being deceived You will say perhaps That this is directly consequent from our Doctrine That the Church may err which is directed by God in all her Proposals True if we knew it to be directed by him otherwise not much less if we believe and know the contrary But then if it were consequent from our Opinion have you so little Charity as to say that men are justly chargeable with all the consequences of their Opinions Such Consequences I mean as they do not own but disclaim and if there were a necessity of doing either would much rather forsake their Opinion than imbrace those Consequences What opinion is there that draws after it such a train of portentous blasphemies as that of the Dominicans by the judgement of the best Writers of your own Order And will you say now that the Dominicans are justly chargeable with all those Blasphemies If not seeing our case take it at the worst is but the same why should not your judgment of us be the same I appeal to all those Protestants that have gone over to your Side whether when they were most averse from it they did ever deny or doubt of God's Omniscience or Veracity whether they did ever believe or were taught that God did deceive them or was deceived himself Nay I provoke to you your self and desire you to deal truly and to tell Us whether you do in your heart believe that we do indeed not believe the eternal Veracity of the eternal Verity And if you judge so strangely of us having no better ground for it than you have or can have we shall not need any farther proof of your uncharitableness towards us this being the extremity of true uncharitableness If not then I hope having no other ground but this which sure is none at all to pronounce us damnable Heretiques you will cease to do so and hereafter as if your ground be true you may do with more Truth and Charity collect thus They only err damnably who oppose what they know God hath testified But Protestants sure do not oppose what they know God hath testified at least we cannot with Charity say they do Therefore they either do not err damnably or with Charity we cannot say they do so 13. Ad. § 17. Protestants you say according to their own grounds must hold that of persons contrary in whatsoever Point of Belief one part only can be saved therefore it is strangely done of them to charge Papists with want of Charity for holding the same The Consequence I acknowledge but wonder much what it should be that lays upon Protestants any necessity to do so You tell us it is their holding Scripture the sole Rule of Faith For this you say obligeth them to pronounce them damned that oppose any least Point delivered in Scripture This I grant If they oppose it after sufficient declaration so that either they know it to be contained in Scripture or have no just probable Reason and which may move an honest man to doubt Whether or no it be there contained For to oppose in the first case in a man that believes the Scripture to be the Word of God is to give God the lye To oppose in the second is to be obstinate against Reason and therefore a sin though not so great as the former But then this is nothing to the purpose of the necessity of damning all those that are of contrary belief and that for these Reasons First because the contrary belief may be touching a Point not at all mentioned in Scripture and such Points though indeed they be not matters of Faith yet by men in variance are often over-valued and esteemed to be so So that though it were damnable to oppose any Point contained in Scripture yet Persons of a contrary belief as Victor and Polycrates S. Cyprian and Stephen might both be saved because their contrary belief was not touching any Point contained in Scripture Secondly because the contrary belief may be about the sense of some place of Scripture which is ambiguous and with probability capable of divers senses and in such cases it is no marvel and sure no sin if several men go several ways Thirdly because the contrary belief may be concerning Points wherein Scripture may with so great probability be alledged on both sides which is a sure note of a Point not-necessary that men of honest and upright hearts true lovers of God and of Truth such as desire above all things to know God's will and to do it may without any fault at all some go one way and some another and some and those as good men as either of the former suspend their judgments and expect some Elias to solve doubts and reconcile repugnancies Now in all such Questions one side or other which
abandon him as he was bold to alter that Canon of Scripture which he found received in God's Church 9. What Books of Scripture the Protestants of England hold for Canonical is not easie to affirm In their sixth Article they say In the name of the holy Scripture we do understand those Canonical Books of the Old and New Testament of whose Authority was never any doubt in the Church What mean they by these words That by the Churches consent they are assured what Scriptures be Canonical This were to make the Church Judge and not Scriptures alone Do they only understand the agreement of the Church to be a probable inducement Probability is no sufficient ground for an infallible assent of Faith By this rule of whose Authority was NEVER any doubt in the Church the whole book of Esther must quit the Canon because some in the Church have excluded it from the Canon as (o) Apud Euseb l. 4. hist c. 26 Melito Asianus (p) In Synop. Athanasius and (q) In carm de genuinis Scrip. Gregory Nazianzen And Luther if Protestants will be content that he be in the Church saith The Jews (r) Li. de serv arb con Eras tom 2. Wit sol 471. place the book of Esther in the Canon which yet if I might be Judge doth rather deserve to be put out of the Canon And of Ecclesiastes he saith This (Å¿) In lat serm conviviali us Franc. in 8. imp Anno 1571. book is not full there are in it many abrupt things he wants boots and spurs that is he hath no perfect sentence he rides upon a tong reed like me when I was in the Monastery And much more is to be read in him who (t) In Ger. colloq Lutheri ab Aurifabro ed. Fran. tit de lib. vet nov Test fol. 379. saith further that the said book was not written by Solomon but by Syrach in the time of the Macchabees and that it is like to the Talmud the Jews Bible out of many books heaped into one work perhaps out of the Library of King Prolomaeus And further he saith that (u) Ib. tit edit Patriar Proph. sol 282. he doth not believe all to have been done as there is set down And he teacheth the (w) Tit. de li. Vet. Nov. Test book of Job to be as it were an argument for a Fable or Comedy to set before us an example of Patience And he (x) Fol. 380. delivers this general censure of the Prophets Books The Sermons of no Prophet were written whole and perfect but their Disciples and Auditors snatched now one sentence and then another and so put them all into one book and by this means the Bible was conserved If this were so the books of the Prophets being not written by themselves but promiscuously and casually by their Disciples will soon be called in question Are not these errors of Luther fundamental and yet if Protestants deny the Infallibility of the Church upon what certain ground can they disprove these Lutherian and Luciferian blasphemies O godly Reformer of the Roman Church But to return to our English Canon of Scripture In the New Testament by the above-mentioned rule of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church divers Books of the New Testament must be dis-canonized to wit all those of which some Ancients have doubted and those which divers Lutherans have of late denied It is worth the observation how the before-mentioned sixth Article doth specifie by name all the Books of the Old Testament which they hold for Canonical but those of the New Testament as they are commonly received we do receive and account them Canonical The Mysterie is easily to be unfolded If they had descended to particulars they must have contradicted some of their chiefest Brethren As they are commonly received c. I ask By whom By the Church of Rome Then by the same reason they must receive divers Books of the Old Testament which they reject By Lutherans Then with Lutherans they may deny some Books of the New Testament If it be the greater or less number of Voices that must cry up or down the Canon of Scripture our Roman Canon will prevail and among Protestants the Certainty of their Faith must be reduced to an Uncertain Controversie of Fact Whether the number of those who reject or of those others who receive such and such Scriptures be greater Their Faith must alter according to years and days When Luther first appeared he and his Disciples were the greater number of that new Church and so this claim Of being commonly received stood for them till Zuinglius or Calvin grew to some equal or greater number than that of the Lutherans and then this rule of Commonly received will canonize their Canon against the Lutherans I would gladly know why in the former part of their Article they say both of the Old and New Testament In the name of the holy Scripture we do understand those Canonical Books of the Old and New Testament of whose Authority was never any doubt in the Church And in the latter part speaking again of the New Testament they give a far different rule saying All the Books of the New Testament as they are commonly received we do receive and account them Canonical This I say is a rule much different from the former of whose Authority was NEVER any doubt in the Church For some Books might be said to be Commonly received although they were sometime doubted of by some If to be Commonly received pass for a good rule to know the Canon of the New Testament why not of the Old Above all we desire to know Upon what infallible ground in some Books they agree with us against Luther and divers principal Lutherans and in others jump with Luther against us But seeing they disagree among themselves it is evident that they have no certain rule to know the Canon of Scripture in assigning whereof some of them must of necessity err because of contradictory Propositions both cannot be true 10. Moreover the letters syllables words phrase or matter contained in holy Scripture have no necessary or natural connection with divine Revelation or Inspiration and therefore by seeing reading or understanding them we cannot inferr that they proceeed from God or be confirmed by divine Authority as because Creatures involve a necessary relation connection and dependance on their Creator Philosophers may by the light of natural reason demonstrate the existence of one prime cause of all things In Holy Writ there are innumerable truths not surpassing the sphear of humane wit which are or may be delivered by Pagan Writers in the self same words and phrase as they are in Scripture And as for some truths peculiar to Christians for example the mysterie of the blessed Trinity c. The only setting them down in Writing is not enough to be assured that such a Writing is the undoubted Word of God otherwise
So likewise if I had a Controversie about the Truth of Christ with a Jew it would be vainly done of me should I press him with the Authority of the New Testament which he believes not until out of some principles common to us both I had perswaded him that it is the Word of God The New Testament therefore while he remains a Jew would not be a fit Rule to decide this Controversie in as much as that which is doubted of it self is not fit to determine other doubts So likewise if there were any that believed Christian Religion and yet believed not the Bible to be the Word of God though they believed the matter of it to be true which is no impossible supposition for I may believe a Book S. Austin's to contain nothing but the Truth of God and yet not to have been inspired by God himself against such men therefore there were no disputing out of the Bible because nothing in question can be a proof to it self When therefore we say Scripture is a sufficient means to determine all Controversies we say not this either to Atheists Jews Turks or such Christians if there be any such as believe not Scripture to be the Word of God But among such men only as are already agreed upon this that the Scripture is the Word of God we say All Controversies that arise about Faith are either not at all decidable and consequently not necessary to be believed one way or other or they may be determined by Scripture In a word That all things necessary to be believed are evidently contained in Scripture and what is not there evidently contained cannot be necessary to be believed And our reason hereof is convincing because nothing can challenge our belief but what hath descended to us from Christ by Original and Universal Tradition Now nothing but Scripture hath thus descended to us Therefore nothing but Scripture can challenge our belief Now then to come up closer to you and to answer to your Question not as you put it but as you should have put it I say That this Position Scripture alone is the Rule whereby they which believe it to be God's Word are to judge all Controversies in Faith is no fundamental point Though not for your Reasons For your first and strongest reason you see is plainly voided and cut off by my stating of the Question as I have done and supposing in it that the parties at variance are agreed about this That the Scripture is the Word of God and consequently that this is none of their Controversies To your second That Controversies cannot be ended without some living Authority We have said already that Necessary Controversies may be and are decided And if they be not ended this is not through defect of the Rule but through the default of Men. And for these that cannot thus be ended it is not necessary they should be ended For if God did require the ending of them he would have provided some certain means for the ending of them And to your Third I say that Your pretence of using these means is but hypocritical for you use them with prejudice and with a setled resolution not to believe any thing which these means happily may suggest into you if it any way cross your pre-conceived perswasion of your Churche's Infallibility You give not your selves liberty of judgment in the use of them nor suffer your selves to be led by them to the Truth to which they would lead you would you but be as willing to believe this Consequence Our Church doth oppose Scripture therefore it doth err therefore it is not infallible as you are resolute to believe this The Church is infallible therefore it doth not err and therefore it doth not oppose Scripture though it seem to do so never so plainly 157. You pray but it is not that God would bring you to the true Religion but that he would confirm you in your own Youconferr places but it is that you may confirm or colour over with plausible disguises your erroneous doctrin not that you may judge of them and forsake them if there be reason for it You consult the Originals but you regard them not when they make against your Doctrin or Translation 158. You add not only the Authority but the Infallibility not of God's Church but of the Roman a very corrupt and degenerous part of it whereof D. Potter never confessed that it cannot err damnably And which being a company made up of particular men can afford you no help but the industry learning and wit of private men and that these helps may not help you out of your errour tell you that you must make use of none of all these to discover any error in the Church but only to maintain her impossibility of erring And lastly D. Potter assures himself that your Doctrine and Practices are damnable enough in themselves Only he hopes and spes est rei inceriae nomen he hopes I say that the Truths which you retain especially the necessity of repentance and faith in Christ will be as an Antidote to you against the errors which you maintain and that your superstruction may burn yet they amongst you qui sequuntur Absalonem in simplicitate cordis may be saved yet so as by fire Yet his thinking so is no reason for you or me to think so unless you suppose him infallible and if you do Why do you write against him 159. Notwithstanding though not for these reasons yet for others I conceive this Doctrine not Fundamental Because if a man should believe Christian Religion wholely and entirely and live according to it such a man though he should not know or not believe the Scripture to be a Rule of Faith no nor to be the Word of God my opinion is he may be saved and my reason is because he performs the entire condition of the new Covenant which is that we believe the matter of the Gospel and not that it is contained in these or these Books So that the Books of Scripture are not so much the Objects of our faith as the instruments of conveying it to our understanding and not so much of the being of the Christian Doctrin as requisite to the wel-being of it Irenaeus tells us as M. K. acknowledgeth of some barbarous Nations that believed the Doctrine of Christ and yet believed not the Scripture to be the Word of God for they never heard of it and Faith comes by hearing But these barbarous people might be saved Therefore men might be saved without believing the Scripture to be the Word of God much more without believing it to be a Rule and a perfect Rule of Faith Neither doubt I but if the Books of Scripture had been proposed to them by the other parts of the Church where they had been before received and had been doubted of or even rejected by those barbarous Nations but still by the bare belief and practice of Christianity
Saviour speaketh clearly The Gates of Hell (e) Mat. 16. shall not prevail against her And I will ask my (f) Joan. 14. Father and he will give you another Paraclete that he may abide with you for ever The Spirit of Truth And But when he the Spirit of (g) Joan. 16. Truth cometh he shall teach you all Truth The Apostle saith that the Church is the Pillar and ground of (h) 1 Tim. c. 3. Truth And He gave some Apostles and some Prophets and othersome Evangelists and othersome Pastors and Doctors to the consummation of the Saints unto the work of the Ministry unto the edifying of the Body of Christ until we meet all into the unity of Faith and knowledge of the Son of God into a perfect man into the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ that now we be not children wavering and carried about with every wind of Doctrin in the wickedness of men in craftiness to the circumvention (i) Ephes 4. of Error All which words seem clearly enough to prove that the Church is universally infallible without which unity of Faith could not be conserved against every wind of Doctrin And yet D Potter (k) Pag. 151 153. limits these promises and priviledges to Fundamental Points in which he grants the Church cannot err I urge the words of Scripture which are universal and do not mention any such restraint I alledge that most reasonable and Received Rule that Scripture is to be understood literally as it soundeth unless some manifest absurdity force us to the contrary But all will not serve to accord our different interpretation In the mean time divers of D. Potter's Brethren step in and reject his limitation as over-large and somewhat tasting of Papistry And therefore they restrain the mentioned Texts either to the Infallibility which the Apostles and other sacred Writers had in penning of Scripture or else to the invisible Church of the Elect and to them not absolutely but with a double restriction that they shall not fall damnably and finally and other men have as much right as these to interpose their opinion and interpretation Behold we are three at debate about the selfesame words of Scripture We confer divers places and Texts We consult the Originals We examine Translations We endeavour to pray heartily We profess to speak sincerely To seek nothing but Truth and Salvation of our own souls and that of our Neighbours and finally we use all those means which by Protestants themselves are prescribed for finding out the true meaning of Scripture Nevertheless we neither do or have any possible means to agree as long as we are left to our selves and when we should chance to be agreed the doubt would still remain whether the thing it self be a Fundamental Point or no And yet it were great impiety to imagine that God the lover of Souls hath left no certain infallible means to decide both this and all other differences arising about the interpretation of Scripture or upon any other occasion Our remedy therefore in these contentions must be to consult and hear Gods Visible Church with submissive acknowledgment of her Power and Infallibility in whatsoever the proposeth as a revealed Truth according to that divine advice of St. Augustine in these words If at length (l) De util cred cap. 8. thou seem to be sufficiently tossed and hast a desire to put an end to thy pains follow the way of the Catholique Discipline which from Christ himself by the Apostles hath come down even to us and from us shall descend to all posterity And though I conceive that the distinction of Points Fundamental and not Fundamental hath now been sufficiently confuted yet that no shadow of difficulty may remain I will particularly refel a common saying of Protestants that it is sufficient for Salvation to believe the Apostles Creed which they hold to be a Summary of all Fundamental Points of Faith The ANSWER to the THIRD CHAPTER Wherein it is maintained That the distinction of Points Fundamental and not Fundamental is in this present Controversie good and pertinent And that the Catholique Church may err in the latter kind of the said Points 1 THis Distinction is imployed by Protestants to many purposes and therefore if it be pertinent and good as they understand and apply it the whole edifice built thereon must be either firme and stable or if it be not it cannot be for any default in this Distinction 2. If you object to them discords in matter of Faith without any means of agreement They will answer you that they want not good and solid means of agreement in matters necessary to Salvation viz. Their beliefe of all those things which are plainly and undoubtedly delivered in Scripture which who so believes must of necessity believe all things necessary to Salvation and their mutual suffering one another to abound in their several sense in matters not plainly and undoubtedly there delivered And for their agreement in all Controversies of Religion either they have means to agree about them or not If you say they have why did you before deny it If they have not means why do you find fault with them for not agreeing 3. You will say that their fault is that by remaining Protestants they exclude themselves from the means of agreement which you have and which by submission to your Church they might have also But if you have means of agreement the more shame for you that you stil disagree For who I pray is more inexcusably guilty for the omission of any duty they that either have no means to do it or else know of none they have which puts them in the same case if as they had none or they which professe to have an easie and expedite means to do it and yet still leave it undone If you had been blind saith our Saviour to the Pharisees you had had no sin but now you say you see therefore your sin remaineth 4. If you say you do agree in matters of Faith I say this is ridiculous for you define matters of Faith to be those wherein you agree So that to say you agree in matters of Faith is to say you agree in those things wherein you do agree And do not Protestants do so likewise Do not they agree in those things wherein they do agree 5. But you are all agreed that only those things wherein you do agree are matters of Faith And Protestants if they were wise would do so too Sure I am they have reason enough to do so seeing all of them agree with explicite Faith in all those things which are plainly and undoubtedly delivered in Scripture that is in all which God hath plainly revealed and with an implicite Faith in that sense of the whole Scripture which God intended whatsoever was Secondly That which you pretend is false for else why do some of you hold it against faith to take or allow the Oath of
Besides how can it be avoided but the Jesuits and Dominicans and Franciscans must upon this ground differ Fundamentally and one of them err damnably seeing the one of them disbelieves and willingly opposes what the others believe to be the Word of God 18. Whereas you say that The difference among Protestants consists not in this that some believe some points of which others are ignorant or not bound expresly to know I would gladly know whether you speak of Protestants differing in profession only or in opinion also If the first why do you say presently after that some disbelieve what others of them believe If they differ in opinion then sure they are ignorant of the truth of each others opinions it being impossible and contradictious that a man should know one thing to be true and believe the contrary or know it and not believe it And if they do not know the truth of each others opinions then I hope you will grant they are ignorant of it If your meaning were they were not ignorant that each other held these Opinions or of the sense of the opinions which they held I answer This is nothing to the convincing of their understandings of the truth of them and these remaining unconvinced of the truth of them they are excusable if they do not believe 19. But ignorance of what we are expresly bound to know is it self a fault and therefore cannot be an excuse and therefore if you could shew that Protestants differ in those points the truth whereof which can be but one they were bound expresly to know I should easily yield that one side must of necessity be in a mortal crime But for want of proof of this you content your self only to say it and therefore I also might be contented only to deny it yet I will not but give a reason for my denyal And my reason is because our Obligation expresly to know any Divine Truth must arise from Gods manifest revealing of it and his revealing unto us that he hath revealed it and that his will is we should believe it Now in the Points controverted among Protestants he hath not so dealt with us therefore he hath not laid any such Obligation upon us The Major of this Syllogism is evident and therefore I will not stand to prove it The Minor also will be evident to him that considers That in all the Controversies of Protestants there is a seeming conflict of Scripture with Scripture Reason with Reason Authority with Authority which how it can consist with the manifest revealing of the truth of either Side I cannot well understand Besides though we grant that Scripture Reason and Authority were all on one side and the appearances of the other side all easily answerable yet if we consider the strange power that Education and Prejudices instilled by it have over even excellent understandings we may well imagine that many truths which in themselves are revealed plainly enough are yet to such or such a man prepossest with contrary opinions not revealed plainly Neither doubt I but God who knows whereof we are made and what passions we are subject unto will compassionate such infirmities and not enter into judgment with us for those things which all things considered were unavoidable 20. But till Fundamentals say you be sufficiently proposed as revealed by God is is not against Faith to reject them or rather it is not possible prudently to believe them And points unfundamental being thus sufficiently proposed as divne Truths may not be denyed Therefore you conclude there is no difference between them Answ A Circumstantial point may by accident become Fundamental because it may be so proposed that the denyal of it will draw after it the denyal of this Fundamental truth That all which God says is true Notwithstanding in themselves there is a main difference between them Points fundamental being those only which are revealed by God and commanded to be preacht to all and believed by all Points Circumstantial being such as though God hath revealed them yet the Pastors of the Church are not bound under pain of damnation particularly to teach them unto all men every where and the people may be securely ignorant of them 21. You say Not erring in points fundamental is not sufficient for the preservation of the Church because any Error maintained by it against Gods Revelation is destructive I answer If you mean against Gods revelation known by the Church to be so it is true but impossible that the Church should should do so for ipso Facto in doing it it were a Church no longer But if you mean against some Revelation which the Church by error thinks to be no Revelation it is false The Church may ignorantly dis-believe such a Revelation and yet continue a Church which thus I prove That the Gospel was to be preached to all Nations was a Truth revealed before our Saviour's Ascension in these words Go and teach all Nations Mat. 28.19 Yet through prejudice or inadvertence or some other cause the Church disbelieved it as it is apparent out of the 11. and 12. Chap. of the Acts until the conversion of Cornelius and yet was still a Church Therefore to disbelieve some divine Revelation not knowing it to be so is not destructive of salvation or of the being of the Church Again it is a plain Revelation of God that (a) 1 Cor. 11.28 the Sacrament of the Eucharist should be administred in both kinds and (b) 1 Cor. 14.15 16 26. that the publique Hymns and Prayers of the Church should be in such a language as is most for edification yet these Revelations the Church of Rome not seeing by reason of the veil before their eye their Churches supposed Infallibility I hope the denial of them shall not be laid to their charge no otherwise than as building hay and stubble on the Foundation not overthrowing the Foundation it self 22. Ad § 2. In the beginning of this Paragraph we have this Argument against this Distinction It is enough by D. Potter 's confession to believe some things negatively i.e. not to deny them Therefore all denial of any divine truth excludes Salvation As if you should say One Horse is enough for a man to go a journey Therefore without a Horse no man can go a journey As if some Divine Truths viz. those which are plainly revealed might not be such as of necessity were not to be denied and others for want of sufficient declaration deniable without danger Indeed if D. Potter had said there had been no divine Truth declared sufficiently or not declared but must upon pain of damnation be believed or at least not denied then might you justly have concluded as you do but now that some may not be denied and that some may be denied without damnation why they may not both stand together I do not yet understand 23. In the remainder you infer out of D. Potter's wórds That all errors are alike
Lord but I deliver my judgment If we will pretend that the Lord did certainly speak what S. Paul spake and that his judgment was God's commandment shall we not plainly contradict S. Paul and that Spirit by which he wrote which moved him to write as in other places divine Revelations which he certainly knew to be such so in this place his own judgment touching some things which God had not particularly revealed unto him And if D. Potter did speak to this purpose that the Apostles were Infallible only in these things which they spake of certain knowledg I cannot see what danger there were in saying so Yet the Truth is you wrong D. Potter It is not he but D. Stapleton in him that speaks the words you cavil at D. Stapleton saith he p. 140. is full and punctual to this purpose then sets down the effect of his discourse l. 8. Princ. Doct. 4. c. 15. and in that the words you cavil at and then p. 150. he shuts up this Paragraph with these words Thus D. Stapleton So that if either the Doctrine or the Reason be not good D. Stapleton not D. Potter is to answer for it 33. Neither do D. Potter's ensuing words limit the Apostle's infallibility to truths absolutely necessary to salvation if you read them with any candor for it is evident he grants the Church infallible in Truths absolutely necessary and as evident that he ascribes to the Apostles the Spirit 's guidance and consequently infallibility in a more high and absolute manner than any since them From whence thus I argue He that grants the Church infallible in Fundamentals and ascribes to the Apostles the infallible guidance of the Spirit in a more high and absolute manner than to any since them limits not the Apostles infallibility to Fundamentals But D. Potter grants to the Church such a limited infallibility and ascribes to the Apostles the Spirit 's infallible guidance in a more high and absolute manner Therefore he limits not the Apostles infallibility to Fundamentals I once knew a man out of courtesie help a lame dog over a stile and he for requital bit him by the fingers Just so you serve D. Potter He out of courtesie grants you that those words The Spirit shall lead you into all Truth and shall abide with you ever though in their high and most absolute sense they agree only to the Apostles yet in a conditional limited moderate secundary sense they may be understood of the Church But says that if they be understood of the Church All must not be simply all No nor so large an All as the Apostles all but all necessary to salvation And you to requite his courtesie in granting you thus much cavil at him as if he had prescribed these bounds to the Apostles also as well as the present Church Whereas he hath explained himself to the contrary both in the clause fore-mentioned The Apostles who had the Spirit 's guidance in a more high and absolute manner than any since them and in these words ensuing whereof the Church is simply ignorant and again wherewith the Church is not acquainted But most clearly in those which being most incompatible to the Apostles you with an c I cannot but fear craftily have concealed How many obscure Texts of Scripture which she understands not How many School-Questions which she hath not happily cannot determine And for matters of fact it is apparent that the Church may err and then concludes That we must understand by All truths not simply All But if you conceive the words as spoken of the Church All Truth absolutely necessary to salvation And yet beyond all this the negative part of his answer agrees very well to the Apostles themselves for that All which they were lead into was not simply All otherwise S. Paul erred in saying we know in part but such an All as was requisite to make them the Churches Foundations Now such they could not be without freedom from errour in all those things which they delivered constantly as certain revealed Truths For if we once suppose they may have erred in some things of this nature it will be utterly undiscernable what they have erred in and what they have not Whereas though we suppose the Church hath erred in some things yet we have means to know what she hath erred in and what she hath not I mean by comparing the Doctrine of the present Church with the Doctrin of the Primitive Church delivered in Scripture But then last of all suppose the Doctor had said which I know he never intended that this promise in this place made to the Apostles was to be understood only of Truths absolutely necessary to salvation Is it consequent that he makes their Preaching and Writing not infallible in Points not Fundamental Do you not blush for shame at this Sophistry The Doctor says no more was promised in this place Therefore he says no more was promised Are there not other places besides this And may not that be promised in other places which is not promised in this 34. But if the Apostles were Infallible in all things proposed by them as Divine Truths the like must be affirmed of the Church because D. Potter teacheth the said promise to be verified in the Church True he doth so but not in so absolute a manner Now what is opposed to Absolute but Limited or restrained To the Apostles then it was made and to them only yet the words are true of the Church And this very promise might have been made to it though here it is not They agree to the Apostles in a higher to the Church in a lower sense to the Apostles in a more absolute to the Church in a more limited sense To the Apostles absolutely for the Churches direction to the Church Conditionally by adherence to that direction and so far as she doth adhere to it In a word the Apostles were lead into all Truths by the Spirit efficaciter The Church is led also into all Truth by the Apostles writings sufficienter So that the Apostles and the Church may be fitly compared to the Star and the Wisemen The Star was directed by the finger of God and could not but go right to the place where Christ was But the Wisemen were led by the Star to Christ led by it I say not efficaciter or irresistibiliter but sufficienter so that if they would they might follow it if they would not they might chuse So was it between the Apostles writing Scriptures and the Church They in their writing were infallibly assisted to propose nothing as a divine Truth but what was so The Church is also led into all Truth but it is by the intervening of the Apostles writings But it is as the Wisemen were led by the Star or as a Traveller is directed by a Mercurial Statue or as a Pilot by his Card and Compass led sufficiently but not irresistibly led as that she may follow not so
Testimonies have I taken as mine heritage for ever And lastly in the Ep. to Philemon He therefore departed from thee for a time that thou shouldst receive him for ever 75. And thus I presume I have shewed sufficiently that this for ever hinders not but that the promise may be appropriated to the Apostles as by many other circumstances I have evinced it must be But what now if the place produced by you as a main pillar of your Churches Infallibility prove upon trial an engine to batter and overthrow it at least which is all one to my purpose to take away all possibility of our assurance of it This will seem strange news to you at first hearing and not far from a prodigy And I confess as you here in this place and generally all your Writers of Controversie by whom this Text is urged order the matter it is very much disabled to do any service against you in this question For with a bold sacriledge and horrible impiety somewhat like Procrustes his cruelty you perpetually cut off the head and foot the beginning and end of it and presenting to your Confidents who usually read no more of the Bible than is alledged by you only these words I will ask my Father and he shall give you another Paraclete that he may abide with you for ever even the Spirit of Truth conceal in the mean time the words before and the words after that so the promise of God's Spirit may seem to be absolute whereas it is indeed most clearly and expresly conditional being doth in the words before restrained to those only that love GOD and keep his Commandments and in the words after flatly denied to all whom the Scriptures stile by the name of the World that is as the very Antithesis gives us plainly to understand to all wicked and wordly men Behold the place entire as it is set down in your own Bible If ye love me keep my Commandments and I will ask my Father and he shall give you another Paraclete that he may abide with you for ever even the Spirit of the Truth whom the world cannot receive Now from the place thus restored and vindicated from your mutilation thus I argue against your pretence We can have no certainty of the Infallibility of your Church but upon this supposition that your Popes are infallible in confirming the Decrees of General Councels we can have no certainty hereof but upon this supposition that the Spirit of Truth is promised to them for their direction in this work And of this again we can have no certainty but upon supposal that they perform the condition whereunto the promise of the Spirit of Truth is expresly limited viz. That they love God and keep his Commandments And of this finally not knowing the Popes heart we can have no certainty at all therefore from the first to the last we can have no certainty at all of your Churches Infallibility This is my first Argument Another follows which will charge you as home as the former If many of the Roman See were such men as could not receive the Spirit of Truth even men of the World that is Wordly Wicked Carnal Diabolical men then the Spirit of Truth is not here promised but flatly denied them and consequently we can have no certainty neither of the Decrees of Councels which these Popes confirm nor of the Churches Infallibility which is guided by these Decrees But many of the Roman See even by the confession of the most zealous Defenders of it were such men Therefore the Spirit of Truth is not here promised but denied them and consequently we can have no certainty neither of the Decrees which they confirm nor of the Churches Infallibility which guides her self by these Decrees 76. You may take as much time as you think fit to answer these Arguments In the mean while I proceed to the consideration of the next Text alledged for this purpose by you out of S. Paul 1 Ep. to Timothy where he saith as you say The Church is the Pillar and Ground of Truth But the truth is you are somewhat too bold with S. Paul For he says not in formal terms what you make him say The Church is the Pillar and Ground of Truth neither is it certain that he means so for it is neither impossible nor improbable that these words the pillar and ground of truth may have reference not to the Church but to Timothy the sense of the place that thou maist know how to behave thy self as a Pillar and Ground of the Truth in the Church of God which is house of the living God which exposition offers no violence at all to the words but only supposes an Ellipsis of the Particle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Greek very ordinary Neither wants it some likelihood that S. Paul comparing the Church to a house should here exhort Timothy to carry himself as a Pillar in that house should do according as he had given other principal men in the Church the name of Pillars rather then having called the Church a House to call it presently a Pillar which may seem somewhat heterogeneous Yet if you will needs have S. Paul refer this not to Timothy but to the Church I will not contend about it any farther then to say Possibly it may be otherwise But then secondly I am to put you in mind that the Church which S. Paul here speaks of was that in which Timothy conversed and that was a Particular Church and not the Roman and such you will not have to be Universally Infallible 77. Thirdly if we grant you out of courtesie for nothing can enforce us to it that he both speaks of the Universal Church and says this of it then I am to remember you that many Attributes in Scripture are not notes of performance but of duty and reach us not what the Thing or Person is of necessity but what it should be Ye are the Salt of the Earth said our Saviour to his Disciples not that this quality was inseparable from their Persons but because it was their Office to be so For if they must have been so of necessity and could not have been otherwise in vain had he put in them fear of that which follows If the Salt hath lost his savour wherewith shall it be salted it is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast forth and to be trodden under foot So the Church may be by duty the pillar and ground that is the Teacher of Truth of all Truth not only necessary but profitable to Salvation and yet she may neglect and violate this duty and be in fact the teacher of some Error 78. Fourthly and lastly if we deal most liberally with you and grant that the Apostle here speaks of the Catholike Church calls it the Pillar and Ground of Truth and that not only because it should but because it always shall and will be so yet after all this you have
points of Faith and to guard us from all pernitious Error 81. If yet you be not satisfied but will still pretend that all these words by you cited seem clearly enough to prove that the Church is Universally Infallible without which Unity of Faith could not be conserved against every wind of Doctrin I answer That to you which will not understand that there can be any means to conserve the Unity of Faith but only that which conserves your Authority over the Faithful it is no marvel that these words seem to prove that the Church nay that your Church is universally infallible But we that have no such end no such desires but are willing to leave all men to their liberty provided they will not improve it to a Tyranny over others we find it no difficulty to discern between dedit and promisit he gave at his Ascension and he promised to the worlds end Besides though you whom it concernes may haply flatter your selves that you have not only Pastors and Doctors but Prophets and Apostles and Evangelists and those distinct from the former still in your Church yet we that are disinteressed persons cannot but smile at these strange imaginations Lastly though you are apt to think your selves such necessary instruments for all good purposes and that nothing can be well done unless you do it that no unity or constancy in Religion can be maintained but inevitably Christendom must fall to ruin and confusion unless you support it yet we that are indifferent and impartial and well content that God should give us his own favours by means of his own appointment not of our choosing can easily collect out of these very words that not the Infallibility of your or of any Church but the Apostles and Prophets and Evangelists c. which Christ gave upon his Ascension were designed by him for the compassing all these excellent purposes by their preaching while they lived and by their writings for ever And if they faile hereof the Reason is not any insufficiency or invalidity in the means but the voluntary perversness of the subjects they have to deal with who if they would be themselves and be content that others should be in the choice of their Religion the servants of God and not of men if they would allow that the way to heaven is no narrower now then Christ left it his yoak no heavier then he made it that the belief of no more difficulties is required now to Salvation than was in the Primitive Church that no error is in it self destructive and exclusive from Salvation now which was not then if instead of being zealous Papists earnest Calvinists rigid Lutherans they would become themselves and be content that others should be plain and honest Christians if all men would believe the Scripture and freeing themselves from prejudice and passion would sincerely endeavour to finde the true sense of it and live according to it and require no more of others but to do so nor denying their Communion to any that do so would so order their publique service of God that all which do so may without scruple or hypocrisie or protestation against any part of it joyn with them in it who doth not see that seeing as we suppose here and shall prove hereafter all necessary truths are plainly and evidently set down Scripture there would of necessity be among all men in all things necessary Unity of Opinion And notwithstanding any other differences that are or could he Unity of Communion and Charity and mutual toleration By which means all Schism and Heresie would be banished the world and those wretched contentions which now read and tear in pieces not the coat but the members and bowels of Christ which mutual pride and Tyrannie and cursing and killing and damning would fain make immortal should speedily receive a most blessed catastrophe But of this hereafter when we shall come to the Question of Schism wherein I perswade my self that I shall plainly shew that the most vehement accusers are the greatest offenders and that they are indeed at this time the greatest Schismatiques who make the way to heaven narrower the yoak of Christ heavier the differences of Faith greater the conditions of Ecclesiasticall Communion harder and stricter then they were made at the beginning by Christ and his Apostles they who talk of Unity but ayme at Tyraunie and will have peace with none but with their slaves and vassals In the mean while though I have shewed how Unity of Faith and Unity of Charity too may be preserved without your Churches Infallibility yet seeing you modestly conclude from hence not that your Church is but only seems to be universally infallible meaning to your self of which you are a better Judge than I Therefore I willingly grant your Conclusion and proceed 83. Whereas you say That D. Potter limits those promises and priviledges to Fundamental points The truth is with some of them he meddles not at all neither doth his adversary give him occasion Not with those out of the Epistle to Timothy and to the Ephesians To the rest he gives other answer besides this 83. But the words of Scripture by you alleadged are Universal and mention no such restraint to Fundamentals as D. Potter applies to them I answer That of the five Texts which you alleadge four are indefinite and only one universal and that you confess is to be restrained and are offended with D. Potter for going about to prove it And Whereas you say they mention no restraint intimating that therefore they are not to be restrained I tell you This is no good consequence for it may appear out of the matter and circumstances that they are to be understood in a restrained sense notwithstanding no restraint be mentioned That place quoted by S. Paul and applyed by him to our Saviour He hath put all things under his feet mentions no exception yet S. Paul tels us not only that it is true or certain but it is manifest that He is excepted which did put all things under him 84. But your interpretation is better than D. Potters because it is literal I answer His is Literal as well as yours and you are mistaken if you think a restrained sense may not be a literal sense for to Restrained Literal is not opposed but unlimited or absolute and to Literal is not oppos'd Restrained but Figurative 85. Wheras you say D. Potters Bretheren rejecting his limitation restrain the mentioned Texts to the Apostles implying hereby a contrariety between them and him I answer So doth D. Potter restrain all of them which he speaks of in the pages by you quoted to the Apostles in the direct and primary sense of the words Though he tels you there the words in a more restrained sense are true being understood of the Church Universal 86. As for your pretence That to find the meaning of those places you confer divers Texts you consult Originals you examine Translations and use all
Miracles how shall I proceed at our meeting Or how shall I know the man on whom I may securely relie Procure will you say to know whether he believe all Fundamental Points of Faith For if he do his faith for point of belief is sufficient for Salvation though he err in an hundred things of less moment But how shall I know whether he hold all Fundamental Points or no For till you tell me this I cannot know whether or no his belief be sound in all Fundamental Points Can you say the Creed Yes and so can many damnable Hereticks But why do you ask me this question Because the Creed contains all fundamental Points of Faith Are you sure of that Not sure I hold it very probable (y) Pag. 241. Shall I hazard my soul on probabilities or even wagers This yeelds a new cause of dispaire But what doth the Creed contain all Points necessary to be believed whether they rest in the understanding or else do further extend to practice No. It was composed to deliver Credenda not Agenda to us Faith not Practice How then shall I know what Points of belief which direct my practice be necessary to Salvation Still you chalk out new paths for Desperation Well are all Articles of the Creed for their nature and matter Fundamental I cannot say so How then shall I know which in particular be and which be not fundamental Read my Answer to a late Popish Pamphlet intituled Charity Mistaken c. there you shall find that fundamental Doctrins are such Catholique Verities as principally and essentially pertain (z) Pag. 211 213 214. to be Faith such as properly constitute a Church and are necessary in ordinary course to be distinctly believed by every Christian that will be saved They are those grand and capital Doctrins which make up our Faith in Christ that is that common Faith which is alike precious in all being one and the same in the highest Apostle and the meanest Believer which the Apostle else-where cals the first Principles of the Oracles of God and the form of sound words But how shall I apply these general definitions or descriptions or to say the truth these only varied words and phrases for I understand the word fundamental as well as the word principal essential grand and capital doctrins c. to the particular Articles of the Creed in such sort as that I may be able precisely exactly particularly to distinguish Fundamental Articles from Points of less moment You labour to tell us what Fundamental Points be but not which they be and yet unless you do this your Doctrin serves only either to make men dispair or else to have recourse to those whome you call Papists and which give one certain Rule that all Points defined by Christs visible Church belong to the foundation of Faith in such sense as that to deny any one cannot stand with Salvation And seeing your self acknowledges that these men do not err in Points Fundamental I cannot but hold it most safe for me to joyn with them for the securing of my soul and the avoiding of desperation into which this your Doctrin must cast all them who understand and believe it For the whole discourse and inferences which here I have made are either your own direct Assertions or evident Consequences cleerly deduced from them 20. But now let us answer some few Objections of D. Potters against that which we have said before to avoid our argument That the Scripture is not so much as mentioned in the Creed he saith The Creed is an abstract of such (a) Pag. 234. necessary Doctrins as are delivered in Scripture or collected out of it and therefore needs not express the Authority of that which it supposes 21. This Answer makes for us For by giving a reason why it was needless that Scripture should be expressed in the Creed you grant as much as we desire namely that the Apostles judged it needless to express all necessary Points of Faith in their Creed Neither doth the Creed suppose or depend on Scripture in such sort as that we can by any probable consequence inferr from the Articles of the Creed that there is any Canonical Scripture at all and much less that such Books in particular be Canonical Yea the Creed might have been the same although holy Scripture had never been written and which is more the Creed even in priority of time was before all the Scripture of the New Testament except the Gospel of S. Mathew And so according to this reason of his the Scripture should not mention Articles contained in the Creed And I note in a word how little connexion D. Potters arguments have while he tels us that The Creed (b) Pag. 234. is an Abstract of such necessary Doctrins as are delivered in Scripture or collected out of it and therefore needs not express the authority of that which it supposes it doth not follow The Articles of the Creed are delivered in Scripture therefore the Creed supposeth Scripture For two distinct writtings may well deliver the same Truths and yet one of them not suppose the other unless D. Potter be of opinion that two Doctors cannot at one time speake the same truth 22. And notwithstanding that D. Potter hath now told us it was needless that the Creed should express Scripture whose Authority it supposes he comes at length to say that the Nicene Fathers in their Creed confessing that the holy Ghost spake by the Prophets doth thereby sufficiently avow the divine Authority of all Canonical Scripture But I would ask him whether the Nicene Creed be not also an Abstract of Doctrins delivered in Scripture as he said of the Apostles Creed and thence did infer that it was needless to express Scripture whose authority it supposes Besides we do not only believe in general that Canonical Scripture is of divine Authority but we are also bound under pain of damnation to believe that such and such particular Books not mentioned in the Nicene Creed are Canonical And lastly D. Potter in this answer grants as much as we desire which is that all Points of Faith are not contained in the Apostles Creed even as it is explained by other Creeds For these words who spake by the Prophets are no waies contained in the Apostles Creed and therefore contain an Addition not an Explanation thereof 23. But how can it be necessary saith D. Potter for any Christian to have more in his Creed than the (c) Pag. 221. Apostles had and the Church of their times I answer You trifle not distinguishing between the Apostles belief and that abridgment of some Articles of Faith which we call the Apostles Creed and withall you beg the question by supposing that the Apostles believed no more than is contained in their Creed which every unlearned person knows and believes and I hope you will not deny but the Apostles were endued with greater knowledg than ordinary persons 24. Your
necessary parts of it omitted had been to speak impertinently and rather to confirm than confute their error It is plain therefore that he must mean as I pretend that all the necessary Doctrine of the Gospel which was preached by S. Peter was written by S. Mark Now you will not deny I presume that S. Peter preached all therefore you must not deny that S. Mark wrote all 42. Our next inquiry let it be touching S. John's intent in writing his Gospel whether it were to deliver so much truth as being believed and obeyed would certainly bring men to eternal life or only part of it and to leave part unwritten A great man there is but much less than the Apostle who saith that writing last he purposed to supply the defects of the other Evangelists that had wrote before him which if it were true would sufficiently justifie what I have undertaken that at least all the four Evangelists have in them all the necessary parts of the Gospel of Christ Neither will I deny but S. John's secondary intent might be to supply the defects of the former three Gospels in some things very profitable But he that pretends that any necessary Doctrine is in S. John which is in none of the other Evangelists hath not so well considered them as he should do before he pronounce sentence of so weighty a matter And for his prime intent in writing his Gospel what that was certainly no Father in the world understood it better than himself Therefore let us hear him speak Many other signs saith he also did Jesus in the sight of his Disciples which are not written in this Book But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God and that believing you may have life in his Name By these are written may be understood either these things are written or these signs are written Take it which way you will this conclusion will certainly follow That either all that which S. John wrote in his Gospel or less then all and therefore all much more was sufficient to make them believe that which being believed with lively faith would certainly bring them to eternal life 43. This which hath been spoken I hope is enough to justifie my undertaking to the full that it is very probable that every one of the four Evangelists hath in his Book the whole substance all the necessary parts of the Gospel of Christ But for S. Luke that he hath written such a perfect Gospel in my judgment it ought to be with them that believe him no manner of question Consider first the introduction to his Gospel where he declares what he intends to write in these words For as much as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed amongst us even as they delivered unto us which from the beginning were eye-witnesses and Ministers of the Word it seemed good to me also having had perfect understanding of things from the first to write to thee in order most excellent Theophilus that thou mightest know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed Add to this place the entrance to his History of the Acts of the Apostles The former Treatise have I made O Theophilus of all that Jesus began both to do and teach until the day in which he was taken up Weigh well these two places and then answer me freely and ingenuously to these demands 1. Whether S. Luke doth not undertake the very same thing which he says many had taken in hand 2. Whether this were not to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed amongst Christians 3. Whether the whole Gospel of Christ and every necessary Doctrine of it were not surely believed among Christians 4. Whether they which were Eye-witnesses and Ministers of the Word from the beginning delivered not the whole Gospel of Christ 5. Whether he doth not undertake to write in order these things whereof he had perfect understanding from the first 6. Whether he had not perfect understanding of the whole Gospel of Christ 7. Whether he doth not undertake to write to Theophilus of all those things wherein he had been instructed 8. And whether he had not been instructed in all the necessary parts of the Gospel of Christ 9 Whether in the other Text All things which Jesus began to do and teach must not at least imply all the Principal and necessary things 10. Whether this be not the very interpretation of your Rhemish Doctors in their Annotation upon this place 11. Whether all these Articles of the Christian Faith without the belief whereof no man can be saved be not the Princicipal and most necessary things which Jesus taught 12. And lastly Whether many things which S. Luke hath wrote in his Gospel be not less principal and less necessary than all and every one of these When you have well considered these proposals I believe you will be very apt to think if S. Luke be of credit with you That all things necessary to salvation are certainly contained in his writings alone And from hence you will not chuse but conclude that seeing all the Christians in the world agree in the belief of what S. Luke hath written and not only so but in all other Books of Canonical Scripture which were never doubted of in and by the Church the Learned Arch-Bishop had very just and certain ground to say That in these Propositions which without Controversie are universally received in the whole Christian world so much truth is contained as being joyned with holy obedience may be sufficient to bring a man to everlasting Salvation and that we have no cause to doubt but that as many as walk according to this rule neither overthrowing that which they have builded by superinducing any damnable Heresie thereupon nor otherwise vitiating their holy Faith with a lewd and wicked conversation peace shall be upon them and upon the Israel of God 44. Against this you object two things The one that by this Rule Seeing the Doctrin of the Trinity is not received universally among Christians the denial of it shall not exclude Salvation The other that the Bishop contradicts himself in supposing a man may believe all necessary Truths and yet superinduce some damnable Heresies 45. To the first I answer what I conceive he would whose words I here justifie that he hath declared plainly in this very place that he meant not an absolute but a limited Universality and speaks not of propositions universally believed by all Professions of Christianity that are but only by all those several Professions of Christianity that have any large spread in any part of the world By which words be excludes from the universality here spoken of the deniers of the Doctrin of the Trinity as being but a handful of men in respect of all nay in respect of any of these Professions which maintain it
relie Do not you cite Scripture or Tradition or both on both sides And do you not pretend that both these are the infallible Truths of Almighty God 51. You close up this Section with a fallacy proving forsooth that we destroy by our confession the Church which is the house of God because we stand only upon Fundamental Articles which cannot make up the whole fabrick of the Faith no more than the foundation of a house alone can be a house 52. But I hope Sir you will not be difficult in granting that that is a house which hath all the necessary parts belonging to a house Now by Fundamental Articles we mean all those which are necessary And you your self in the very leaf after this take notice that D. Potter doth so Where to this Question How shall I know in particular which Points be and which be not Fundamental You scurrilously bring him in making this ridiculous answer Read my Answer to a late Pamphlet intituled Charity Mistaken c. There you shall find that Fundamental Doctrins are such Catholick Verities as principally and essentially pertain to the Faith such as properly constitute a Church and are necessary in ordinary course to be distinctly believed by every Christian that will be saved All which words he used not to tell what Points be Fundamental as you dishonestly impose upon him but to explain what he meant by the word Fundamental May it please you therefore now at last to take notice that by Fundamental we mean all and only that which is necessary and then I hope you will grant that we may safely expect Salvation in a Church which hath all things Fundamental to Salvation Unless you will you say that more is necessary than that which is necessary 53. Ad § 19. This long discourse so full of un-ingenuous dealing with your adversary perhaps would have done reasonably in a Farce or a Comedy and I doubt not but you have made your self and your courteous Readers good sport with it But if D. Potter or I had been by when you wrote it we should have stopt your carere at the first starting and have put you in mind of these old School-Proverbs Ex falso supposito sequitur quodlibet and Uno absurdo dato sequuntur mille For whereas you suppose first that to a man desirous to save his soul and requiring whose direction he might rely upon the Doctors answer would be Upon the truly Catholick Church I suppose upon better reason because I know his mind that he would advise him to call no man Master on Earth but according to Christs command to rely upon the direction of God himself If he should enquire where he should find this direction He would answer him In his Word contained in Scripture If he should enquire what assurance he might have that the Scripture is the Word of God He would answer him that the doctrin it self is very fit and worthy to be thought to come from God nec vox hominem sonat and that they which wrote and delivered it confirmed it to be the Word of God by doing such works as could not be done but by power from God himself For assurance of the Truth hereof he would advise him to rely upon that which all wise men in all matters of belief rely upon and that is the consent of Ancient Records and Universal Tradition And that he might not instruct him as partial in this advice he might farther tell him that a Gentleman that would be nameless that has written a Book against him called Charity maintained by Catholiques though in many things he differ from him yet agrees with him in this that Tradition is such a principle as may be rested in and which requires no other proof As indeed no wise man doubts but there was such a man as Julius Caesar or Cicero that there are such Cities as Rome or Constantinople though he have no other assurance for the one or the other but only the speech of people This tradition therefore he would counsel him to rely upon and to believe that the Book which we call Scripture was confirmed abundantly by the works of God to be the Word of God Believing it the Word of God he must of necessity believe it true and if he believe it true he must believe it contains all necessary direction to eternal happiness because it affirms it self to do so Nay he might tell him that so far is the whole Book from wanting any necessary direction to his eternal Salvation that one only Author that hath writ but too little Books of it S. Luke by name in the beginning of his Gospel and in the beginning of his Story shews plainly that he alone hath written at least so much as is necessary And what they wrote they wrote by Gods direction for the direction of the world not only for the Learned but for all that would do their true endeavour to know the will of God and to do it therefore you cannot but conceive that writing to all and for all they wrote so as that in things necessary they might be understood by all Besides that here he should find that God himself has engaged himself by promise that if he would love him and keep his Commandements and pray earnestly for his Spirit and be willing to be directed by it he should undoubtedly receive it even the Spirit of Truth which shall lead him into all truth that is certainly at least into all necessary Truths and suffer him to fal into no pernicious error The sum of his whole direction to him briefly would be this believe the Scripture to be the Word of God use your true endeavour to find the true sense of it and to live according to it and then you may rest securely that you are in the true way to eternal happiness This is the substance of that Answer which the Doctor would make to any man in this case and this is a way so plain that fools unless they will cannot err from it Because not knowing absolutely all truth nay not all profitable truth and being feee from err our but endeavouring to know the truth and obey it and endeavouring to be free from err our is by this way made the only condition of Salvation As for your supposition That he would advise such a man to rely upon the Catholique Church for the finding out the doctrin of Christ he utterly disclaims it and truly very justly There being no certain way to know that any Company is a true Church but only by their professing the true doctrin of Christ And therefore as it is impossible I should know that such a company of Philosophers are Peripateticks or Stoicks unless I first know what was the doctrin of the Peripateticks and Stoicks so is it impossible that I should certainly know any company to be the Church of Christ before I know what is the doctrin of Christ the Profession whereof constitutes the visible Church the
be between those that are good Christians and those that are not so But instead thereof had delivered this one Proposition which would have been certainly effectual for all the aforesaid good intents and purposes The Roman Church shall be for ever infallible in all things which she proposes as matters of Faith 84. Whereas you say If we will believe we have all in the Creed when we have not all it is not the Apostles fault but our own I tell you plainly if it be a fault I know not whose it should be but theirs For sure it can be no fault in me to follow such Guides whithersoever they lead me Now I say they have led me into this perswasion because they have given me great reason to believe it and none to the contrary The reason they have given me to believe it is because it is apparent and confest they did propose to themselves in composing it some good end or ends As that Christians might have a form by which for matter of Faith they might profess themselves Catholiques So Putean out of Tho. Aquinas That the faithful might know what the Christian people is to believe explicitly So Vincent Filiucius That being separated into divers parts of the World they might preach the same thing And that that might serve as a mark to distinguish true Christians from Infidels So Card Riclieu Now for all these for any other good intent I say it will be plainly uneffectual unless it contain at least all Points of simple Belief which are in ordinary course necessary to be explicitly known by all men So that if it be a fault in me to believe this it must be my fault to believe the Apostles wise and good men which I cannot do if I believe not this And therefore what Richardus de sancto Victore says of God himself I make no scruple at all to apply to the Apostles and to say Si error est quod credo à vobis deceptus sum If it be an error which I believe it is you and my reverend esteem of you and your actions that hath led me into it For as for your suspition That we are led into this perswasion out of a hope that we may the better maintain by it some opinions of our own It is plainly uncharitable I know no opinion I have which I would not as willingly forsake as keep if I could see sufficient reason to enduce me to believe that it is the will of God I should forsake it Neither do I know any opinion I hold against the Church of Rome but I have more evident grounds then this whereupon to build it For let but these Truths be granted That the authority of the Scripture is independent on your Church and dependent only in respect of us upon universal Tradition That Scripture is the only Rule of Faith That all things necessary to Salvation are plainly delivered in Scripture Let I say these most certain and Divine Truths be laid for Foundations and let our superstructions be consequent and coherent to them and I am confident Peace would be restored and Truth maintained against you though the Apostles Creed were not in the World CHAP. V. That Luther Calvin their Associates and all who began or continue the Separation from the external Communion of the Roman Church are guilty of the proper and formal sin of Schism THE Searcher of all Hearts is witness with how unwilling minds we Catholiques are drawn to fasten the denomination of Schismatiques or Heretiques on them for whose souls if they employed their best blood they judge that it could not be better spent If we rejoyce that they are contristated at such titles our joy riseth not from their trouble or grief but as that of the Apostles did from the fountain of Charity because they are contristated to repentance that so after unpartial examination they finding themselves to be what we say may by God's holy grace begin to dislike what themselves are For our part we must remember that our obligation is to keep within the mean betwixt uncharitable bitterness and pernitious flattery not yielding to worldly respects nor offending Christian Modesty but uttering the substance of truth in so Charitable manner that not so much we as Truth and Charity may seem to speak according to the wholesome advice of S. Gregory Nazianzen in these divine words We do not affect peace with (a) Orat. 32. prejudice of the true doctrine that so we may get a name of being geatle and mild and yet we seek to conserve peace fighting in a lawful manner and containing our selves within our compass and the rule of Spirit And of these things my judgment is and for my part I prescribe the same law to all that deal with souls and treat of true Doctrine that neither they exasperate mens minds by harshness nor make them haughty or insolent by submission but that in the cause of Faith they behave themselves prudently and advisedly and do not in either of these things exceed the mean With whom agreeth S. Leo saying it behoveth us in such causes to be (b) Epist 8. most careful that without noise of contentions both Charity be conserved and Truth maintained 2. For better method we will handle these Points in order First we will set down the nature and essence or as I may call it the Quality of Schism In the second place the greatness and grievousness or so to term it the Quantity thereof For the Nature or Quality will tell us who may without injury be judged Schismatiques and by the greatness or quantity such as find themselves guilty thereof will remain acquainted with the true state of their soul and whether they may conceive any hope of Salvation or no. And because Schism will be found to be a division from the Church which could not happen unless there were always a visible Church we will Thirdly prove or rather take it as a Point to be granted by all Christians that in all Ages There hath been such a Visible Congregation of Faithful People Fourthly we will demonstrate that Luther Galvin and the rest did separate themselves from the Communion of that always visible Church of Christ and therefore were guilty of Schism And fifthly we will make it evident that the visible true Church or Christ out of which Luther and his followers departed was no other but the Roman Church and consequently that both they and all others who persist in the same divisions are Schismatiques by reason of their separation from the Church of Rome 1. Point The nature of Schism 3. For the first Point touching the Nature or Quality of Schism As the natural perfection of man consists in his being the Image of God his Creator by the powers of his soul so his supernatural perfection is placed in similitude with God as his last End and Felicity and by having the said spiritual faculties his Understanding and Will is linked to him
were and I suppose you will not go about to persuade us that they forsook themselves or their own communion And if you urge that they joyned themselves to no other part therefore they separated from the whole I say it follows not in as much as themselves were a part of it and still continued so and therefore could no more separate from the whole than from themselves Thus though there were no part of the people of Rome to whom the Plebeians joyned themselves when they made their Secession into the Aventine Hill yet they divided themselves from the Patricians only and not from the whole people because themselves were a part of this people and they divided not from themselves 57. Ad § 18. In the 18. § you prove that which no man denies that Corruption in manners yeelds no sufficient cause to leave the Church yet sure it yields sufficient cause to cast them out of the Church that are after the Churches publique admonition obstinate in notorious impieties Neither doth the cutting off such men from the Church lay any necessary upon us either to go out of the world or out of the Church but rather puts these men out of the Church into the world where we may converse with them freely without scandal to the Church Our blessed Saviour foretold you say that there should be in the Church tares with choise corn Look again I pray and you shall see that the field he speaks of is not the Church but the world and therefore neither do you obey our Saviour's command Let both grow up till the harvest who teach it to be lawfull to root these tares such are Heretiques out of the world neither do Protestants disobey it if they eject manifest Hreretiques and notorious sinners out of the Church 58. Ad § 19. In the 19. you are so curteous as to suppose corruptions in your doctrin and yet undertake to prove that neither could they afford us any sufficient cause or colourable necessity to depart from them Your reason is Because damnable errors there were none in your Church by D. Potters confession neither can it be damnable in respect oferror to remain in any Churches communion whose errors are not damnable For if the error be not damnable the belief thereof cannot Ans D. Potter confesseth no such matter but only that he hopes that your errors though in themselves sufficiently damnable yet by accident did not damn all that held them such he means and saies as were excusably ignorant of the Truth and amongst the number of their unknown sins repented daily of their unknown errors The truth is he thinks as ill of your errors and their desert as you do of ours only he is not so peremptory and presumptuous in judging your persons as you are in judging ours but leaves them to stand or fall to their own Masters who is infinitely merciful and therefore will not damn them for meer errors who desire to find the truth and cannot and withal infinitely just and therefore it is to be feared will not pardon them who might easily have come to the knowledge of the truth and either through Pride or Obstinacie or Negligence would not 59. To your minor also I answer almost in your own words § 42. of this Chap. I thank you for your courteous Supposal that your Church may erre and in recompence thereof will do you a charity by putting you in mind into what Labyrinths you cast your self by supposing that the Church may erre in some of her Proposals and yet denying it lawful for any man though he know this which you suppose to oppose her judgement or leave her communion Will you have such a man dissemble against his conscience or externally deny that which he knows true No that you will not for them that do so you your self have pronouced a damned crew of dissembling Sycophants Or would you have him continue in your Communion and yet profess your Church to erre This you your selves have made to him impossible Or would you have him believe those things true which together profess your Church to erre This you your selves have made to him impossible Or would you have him believe those things true which together with him you have supposed to be Errors This is such a one as is assur'd or perswaded of that which you here suppose that your Church doth erre and such only we say are obliged to forsake your communion is as Schoolmen speak Implicatio in terminis a contradiction so plain that one word destroyeth another as if one should say a living dead man For it is to require that they which believe some part of your Doctrin false should withall believe it all true Seeing therefore for any man to believe your Church in error and profess the contrary is damnable Hypocrisie to believe it and not believe it a manifest repugnancy and thirdly to profess it and to continue in your Communion as matters now stand a plain impossibility what remians but that whosoever is supposed to have just reason to disbelieve any doctrin of your Church must of necessity forsake her Communion Unless you would remit so far from your present rigour as to allow them your Churches communion who publikely profess that they do not believe every article of her established doctrin Indeed if you would do so you might with some coherence suppose your Church in error and yet find fault with men for abandoning her communion because they might continue in it and suppose her in error But to suppose your Church in error and to excommunicate all those that believe your own supposition and then to complain that they continue not in your communion is the most ridiculous incongruity that can be imagined And therefore though your corruptions in doctrin in themselves which yet is false did not yet your obliging us to profess your doctrin uncorrupted against knowledge and conscience may induce an obligation to depart from your communion As if there were any society of Christians that held there were no Antipodes notwithstanding this error I might communicate with them But if I could not do so without professing my self of their belief in this matter then I suppose I should be excus'd from Schism if I should forsake their communion rather than profess my self to believe that which I do not believe Neither is there any contradiction or shadow of contradiction that it may be necessary for my salvation to depart from this Churches communion And that this Church though erring in this matter wants nothing necessary to Salvation And yet this is that manifest contradiction which D. Potter you say will never be able to salve viz. That there might be necessary cause to depart from the Church of Rome in some Doctrins and Practises though she wanted nothing necessary to Salvation 60. And your Reason wherewith you prove that there is in these words such a plâ—in contradiction is very notable For say you if she wanted
nothing necessary to salvation How could it be necessary to salvation to forsake her Truly Sir if this be a good maner of proving it is a very ready way to prove any thing for what is there that may not be proved if it be proof enough to ask How it can be otherwise Me thinks if you would convince D. Potters words of manifest contradiction you should shew that he affirms and denies the same of the same From which fault me thinks he should be very innocent who saies only that that may be damnable to one which is not so to another and that may be necessary for one which is not necessary for another And this is all that D. Potter saies here viz. That the profession of a falsehood to him that believes it may be not damnable and yet damnable to him that believes the contrary Or that not to profess a falsehood in him that knows it to be so is necessary to salvation and yet not so in him that by error conceives it to be a truth The words by you cited and charged with unsalvable contradiction are in the 75. pag. But in the progress of the same particular discourse in the next page but one he gives such evident reason of them which can hardly be done to prove implicancy true that whereas you say he will never be able to salve them from contradiction I believe any indifferent reader having considered the place will be very apt to think that you whatsoever you pretend were very able to have done this curtesie for him if your will had been answerable to your ability I will set down the words and leave the Reader to condemn or absolve them To forsake the errors of that Church and not to joyn with her in those practises which we account erroneous we are inforced by necessity For though in the issue they are not damnable to them which believe as they profess yet for us to profess a vow by oath as the Church of Rome enjoyns what we believe not were without question damnable And they with their errors by the grace of God might go to Heaven when we for our hypocrisie and dissimulation he might have added and perjury should certainly be condemned to Hell 61. Ad § 20. But a Church not erring in Fundamentals though erring in other matters doth what our Saviour exacts at her hands doth as much as lies in her power to do Therefore the communion of such a Church is not upon pretence of Error to be forsaken The consequence is manifest The antecedent is proved because God by D. Potters confession hath promised his assistance no further nor is it in her power to do more than God doth assist her to do Ans The promise of Divine Assistance is two-fold Absolute or Conditional That there shall be by Divine providence preserv'd in the world to the worlds end such a Company of Christians who hold all things precisely and indispensably necessary to salvation and nothing inevitably destructive of it This and no more the Doctor affirms that God hath promised absolutely Yet he neither doubts nor denies but that a farther assistance is conditionally promised us even such an assistance as shall lead us if we be not wanting to it and our selves into all not only necessary but very profitable truth and guard us from all not only destructive but also hurtful Errors This I say he neither denies nor questions And should he have done so he might have been confuted by evident and express Text of Scripture When therefore you say That a Church not erring in Fundamentals doth as much as by God's assistance lies in her power to do This is manifestly untrue For God's assistance is alwaies ready to promote her farther It is ready I say but on condition the Church does implore it on condition that when it is offered in the divine directions of Scripture and Reason the Church be not negligent to follow it If therefore there be any Church which retaining the Foundation builds hay and stubble upon it which believing what is so precisely necessary errs shamefully and dangerously in other things very profitable This by no means argues defect of divine assistance in God but neglect of this assistance in the Church Neither is there any reason why such a Church should please her self too much for retaining fundamental truths while she remains so regardless of others For though the simple defect of some truths profitable only and not simply necessary may consist with salvation yet Who is there that can give her sufficient assurance that the neglect of such truths is not damnable Besides Who is there that can put her in sufficient caution that these Errors about profitable matters may not according to the usual fecundity of error bring forth others of a higher quality such as are pernicious and pestilent and undermine by secret consequences the very foundations of Religion and Piety Lastly Who can say that she hath sufficiently discharged her duty to God man by avoiding only Fundamental Heresies if in the mean time she be negligent of others which though they do not plainly destroy Salvation yet obscure and hinder and only not block up the way to it Which though of themselves and immediatly they damn no man yet are causes and occasions that many men run the race of Christian piety more remisly than they should many deferr their repentance many go on securely in their sins and so at length are damn'd by means and occasion of these Errors though not for them Such Errors as these though those of the Roman Church be much worse even in themselves damnable and by accident only pardonable yet I say such Errors as these if any Church should tolerate dissemble and suffer them to reign and neglect to reform them and not permit them to be freely yet peaceably opposed and impugned Will any wise man say that she hath sufficiently discharged her duty to God and man that she hath with due fidelity dispensed the Gospel of Christ that she hath done what she could and wâ—at she ought What shall we say then if these errors be taught by her and commanded to be taught What if she thunder out her curses against those that will not believe them What if she rave and rage against them and persecute them with fire sword all kinds of most exquisite torments Truly I do much fear that from such a Church though it hold no error absolutely unconsistent with salvation the Candlestick of God either is already removed or will be very shortly and because she is negligent of profitable truths that she will lose those that are Necessary and because she will not be led into all truths that in short time she shall be led into none And although this should not happen yet what mortal man can secure us that not only a probable unaffected ignorance not only a meer neglect of profitable truths but also a retchless supine negligence manifest
3. Church in the house and territory of a Spanish Lady called Lucilla who went flying out of the Catholique Church because she had been justly checked by Caecilianus And the same Saint speaking of the conference he had with Fortunius the Donatist saith Here did he first (x) Ep. 163. attempt to affirm that his Communion was spread over the whole Earth c. but because the thing was evidently false they got out of this discourse by confusion of language whereby nevertheless they sufficiently declared that they did not hold that the true Church ought necessarily to be confined to one place but only by meer necessity were forced to yield that it was so in fact because their Sect which they held to be the only true Church was not spread over the world In which point Fortunius and the rest were more modest than he who should affirm that Luther's reformation in the very beginning was spread over the whole Earth being at that time by many degrees not so far diffused as the Sect of the Donatists I have no desire to prosecure the similitude of Protestanes with Donatists by remembring that the Sect of these men was begun and promoted by the passion of Lucilla and Who is ignorant what influence two women the Mother and Daughter ministred to Protestancy in England Nor will I stand to observe their very likeness of phrase with the Donatists who called the Chair of Rome the Chair of pestilence and the Roman Church an Harlot which is D. Potter's own phrase wherein he is less excusable than they because he maintaineth her to be a true Church of Christ and therefore let him duly ponder these words of S. Augustin against the Donatists If I persecute him justly who detracts (y) Conc. super gest cum Emerit from his Neighbour why should I not presecute him who detracts from the Church of Christ and saith This is not she but this is an Harlot And least of all will I consider whether you may not be well compared to one Ticonius a Dona i st who wrote against Parmenianus likewise a Donatist who blasphemed that the Church of Christ had perished as you do even in this your Book write against some of your Protestant Brethren or as you call them Zelots among you who hold the very same or rather a worse Heresie and yet remained among them even after Parmenianus had excommunicated him as those your Zealous Brethren would proceed against you if it were in their power and yet like Ticonius you remain in their Communion and come nor into that Church which is hath been and shall ever be universal For which very cause S. Augustin complains of Ticonius that although he wrote against the Donatists yet he was of an heart (z) De doctr Christ lib. 3. cap. 30. so extremely absurd as not to forsake them altogether And speaking of the same thing in another place he observes that although Ticonius did manifestly confute them who affirmed that the Church had perished yet he saw not saith this holy Father that which in good consequence (a) Cont. Parm. l. 1. cap. 1. he should have seen that those Christians of Africa belonged to the Church spread over the whole world who remained united not with them who were divided from the communion and unity of the same world but with such as did communicate with the whole world But Parmenianus and the rest of the Donatists saw that consequence and resolved rather to settle their mind in obstinacy against the most manifest truth which Ticonius maintained than by yielding thereto to be overcome by those Churches in Africa which enjoyed the Communion of that Unity which Ticonius defended from which they had divided themselves How firly these words agree to Catholiques in England in respect of the Protestants I desire the Reader to consider But these and the like resemblances of Protestants to the Donatists I willingly let pass and only urge the main point That since Luther's Reformed Church was not in being for divers Centuries before Luther and yet was because so forsooth they will needs have it in the Apostles time they must of necessity affirm heretically with the Donatists that the true and unsported Church of Christ perished and that she which remained on earth was O blasphemy an Harlot Moreover the same heresie follows out of the doctrin of D. Potter and other Protestants that the Church may err in points not fundamental because we have shewed that every errour against any one revealed truth is Heresie and damnable whether the matter be otherwise of it self great or small And how can the Church more truly be said to perish than when she is permitted to maintain a damnable Heresie Besides we will hereafter prove that by any act of Heresie all divine faith is lost and to imagine a true Church of faithful persons without any faith is as much as to fancy a living man without life It is therefore clear that Donatist-like they hold that the Church of Christ perished yea they are worse than the Donatists who said that the Church remained at least in Africa whereas Protestants must of necessity be forced to grant that for a long space before Luther she was no where at all But let us go forward to other reasons 18 The holy Scripture and Ancient Fathers do assign Separation from the Visible Church as a mark of Heresie according to that of S. John They went out (b) 2. Joan. 19. from us And Some who (c) Act. 15.24 went out from us And Out of you shall (d) Act. 20.30 arise men speaking perverse things And accordingly Vincentius Lyrinensis saith Who ever (e) Lib. adversus haer c. 34. began heresies who did not first separate himself from the Universality Antiquity and Consent of the Catholique Church But it is manifest that when Luther appeared there was no visible Church distinct from the Roman out of which she could depart as it is likewise wel known that Luther and his followers departed out of her Therefore she is no way liable to this Mark of Heresie but Protestants cannot possibly avoid it To this purpose S. Prosper hath these pithy words A Christian communicating (f) Dimid temp cap. 5. with the universal Church is a Catholique and he who is divided from her is an Heretique and Antichrist But Luther in his first Reformation could not communicate with the visible Catholique Church of those times because he began his Reformation by opposing the supposed Errors of the then visible Church we must therefore say with S. Prosper that he was an Heretique c. Which likewise is no less clearly proved out of S. Cyprian saying Not we (g) Ep. 57. ad Damas departed from them but they from us and since Heresies and Schisms are bred afterwards while they make to themselves divers Conventicles they have forsaken the head and origin of Truth 19. And that we might not remain doubtful what Separation
that commits any sin must not think himself a true believer Besides seeing faith worketh by Charity and Charity is the effect of faith certainly if the cause were perfect the effect would be perfect and consequently as you make no degrees in Faith so there would be none in Charity and so no man could possibly make any progress in it but all crue believers should be equal in Charity as in faith you make them equal and from thence it would follow unavoidably that whosoever finds in himself any true faith must presently perswade himself that he is perfect in Charity and whosoever on the other side discovers in his charity any imperfection must not believe that he hath any true faith These you see are strange and portentous consequences and yet the deduction of them from your doctrin is clear and apparent which shews this doctrin of yours which you would fain have true that there might be some necessity of your Churches infallibility to be indeed plainly repugnant not only to Truth but even to all Religion and Piety and fit for nothing but to make men negligent of making any progress in Faith or Charity And therefore I must entreat and adjure you either to discover unto me which I take God to witness I cannot perceive some fallacy in my reasons against it or never hereafter to open your mouth in defence of it 5 As for that one single reason which you produce to confirm it it will appear upon examination to be resolved finally into a groundless Assertion of your own contrary to all Truth and experience and that is That no degree of faith less than a most certain and infallible knowledge can be able sufficiently to overbear our will and encounter with humane probabilities being backt with the strength of Flesh and Blood For who sees not that many millions in the world forgo many times their present ease and pleasure undergo great and toilsom labours encounter great difficulties adventure upon great dangers and all this not upon any certain expectation but upon a probable hope of some future gain and commodity and that not infinite and eternal but finite and temporal Who sees not that many men abstain from many things they exceedingly desire not upon any certain assurance but a probable fear of danger that may come after What man ever was there so madly in love with a present penny but that he would willingly spend it upon any little hope that by doing so he might gain an hundred thousand pound And I would fain know what gay probabilities you could devise to disswade him from this Resolution And if you can devise none what reason then or sense is there but that a probable hope of infinite and eternal happiness provided for all those that obey Christ Jesus much more a firm faith though not so certain in some sort as sense or science may be able to sway our will to obedience and encounter with all those temptations which Flesh and Blood can suggest to avert us from it Men may talk their pleasure of an absolute and most infallible certainty but did they generall believe that obedience to Christ were the only way to present and eternal felicity but as firmly and undoubtedly as that there is such a City as Constantinople nay but as much as Caesar's Commentaries or the History of Salust I believe the lives of most men both Papists and Protestants would be better than they are Thus therefore out of your own words I argue against you He that requires to true faith an absolute and infallible certainty for this only Reason because any less degree could not be able to overbear our will c. imports that if a less degree of faith were able to do this then a less degree of faith may be true and divine and saving Faith But experience shews and reason confirms that a firm faith though not so certain as sense or science may be able to encounter and overcome our will and affections And therefore it follows from your own reason that faith which is not a most certain and infallible knowledge may be true and divine and saving faith 6 All these Reasons I have imployed to shew that such a most certain and infallible faith as here you talk of is not so necessary but that without such a high degree of it it is possible to please God And therefore the Doctrins delivered by you § 26 are most presumptuous and uncharitable viz. That such a most certain and infallible faith is necessary to salvation Necessitate Finis or Medii so necessary that after a man is come to the use of reason no man ever was or can be saved without it Wherein you boldly intrude into the judgment-feat of God and damn men for breaking Laws not of God's but your own making But withall you clearly contradict yourself not only where you affirm That your faith depends finally upon the Tradition of Age to Age of Father to Son which cannot be a fit ground but only for a Moral Assurance nor only where you pretend that not alone Hearing and Seeing but also Histories Letters Relations of many which certainly are things not certain and infallible are yet foundations good enough to support your faith Which Doctrin if it were good and allowable Protestants might then hope that their Histories and Letters and Relations might also pass for means sufficient of a sufficient Certainty that they should not be excluded from Salvation for want of such a Certainty But indeed the pressure of the present difficulty compell'd you to speak here what I believe you will not justifie with a pretty tergiversation to shew D. Potter your means of moral certainty whereas the Objection was that you had no means or possibility of infallible certainty for which you are plainly at as great a loss and as far to seek as any of your Adversaries And therefore it concerns you highly not to damn others for want of it lest you involve your selves in the same condemnation according to those terrible words of S. Paul Thou art inexcusable O Man whosoever thou art that judgest For wherein thou judgest another thou condemnest thy self for thou that judgest dost the same things c. In this therefore you plainly contradict your self And lastly most plainly in saying as you do here you contradict and retract your pretence of Charity to Protestants in the beginning of your Book For there you make profession that you have no assurance but that Protestants dying Protestants may possibly die with contrition and be saved And here you are very peremptory that they cannot but want a means absolutely necessary to salvation and wanting that cannot but be damned The third Condition you require to faith is that our assent to divine Truths should not only be unknown and unevident by any humane discourse but that absolutely also it should be obscure in it self and ordinarily speaking be void even of supernatural evidence Which words
though I deny that it is required of us to be certain in the highest degree infallibly certain of the truth of the things which we believe for this were to know and not believe neither is it possible unless our evidence of it be it natural or supernatural were of the highest degree yet I deny not but we ought to be and may be infallibly certain that we are to believe the Religion of Christ For first this is most certain that we are in all things to do according to wisdom and reason rather than against it Secondly this is as certain That wisdom and Reason require that we should believe those things which are by many degrees more credible and probable than the contrary Thirdly this is as certain that to every man who considers impartially what great things may be said for the truth of Christianity and what poor things they are which may be said against it either for any other Religion or for none at all it cannot but appear by many degrees more credible that Christian Religion is true than the contrary And from all these premisses this conclusion evidently follows that it is infallibly certain that we are firmly to believe the truth of Christian Religion 9 Your discourse therefore touching the fourth requisite to faith which is Prudence I admit so far as to grant 1. That if we were required to believe with certainty I mean a Moral certainty things no way represented as infallible and certain I mean morally an unreasonable obedience were required of us And so likewise were it were we required to believe as absolutely certain that which is no way represented to us as absolutely certain 2. That whom God obligeth to believe any thing he will not fail to furnish their understandings with such inducements as are sufficient if they be not negligent or perverse to perswade them to believe 3. That there is an abundance of Arguments exceedingly credible inducing men to believe the Truth of Christianity I say so credible that though they cannot make us evidently see what we believe yet they evidently convince that in true wisdom and prudence the Articles of it deserve credit and ought to be accepted as things revealed by God 4. That without such reasons and inducements our choice even of the true faith is not to be commended as prudent but to be condemned of rashness and levity 10 But then for your making Prudence not only a commendation of a believer and a justification of his faith but also essential to it and part of the definition of it in that questionless you were mistaken and have done as if being to say what a man is you should define him A Reasonable creature that hath skill in Astronomy For as all Astronomers are men but all men are not Astronomers and therefore Astronomy ought not to be put into the definition of Men where nothing should have place but what agrees to all men So though all that are truly wise that is wise for eternity will believe aright yet many may believe aright which are not wise I could wish with all my heart as Moses did that all the Lords people could Prophesie That all that believe the true Religion were able according to S. Peter's injunction to give a reason of the hope that is in them a reason why they hope for eternal happiness by this way rather than any other neither do I think it any great difficulty that men of ordinary capacities if they would give their mind to it might quickly be enabled to do so But should I affirm that all true believers can do so I suppose it would be as much against experience and modesty as it is against Truth and Charity to say as you do that they which cannot do so either are not at all or to no purpose true believers And thus we see that the foundations you build upon are ruinous and deceitful and so unfit to support your Fabrick that they destroy one another I come now to shew that your Arguments to prove Protestants Heretiques are all of the same quality with your former grounds which I will do by opposing clear and satisfying Answers in order to them 11 Ad § 13. To the first then delivered by you § 13. That Protestants must be Heretiques because they opposed divers Truths propounded for divine by the Visible Church I answer It is not heresie to oppose any truth propounded by the Church but only such a Truth as is an essential part of the Gospel of Christ 2. The Doctrins which Protestants opposed were not Truths but plain and impious falshoods Neither thirdly were they propounded as Truths by the Visible Church but only by a Part of it and that a corrupted Part. 12 Ad § 14. The next Argument in the next Particle tell us That every error against any doctrin revealed by God is damnable Heresie Now either Protestants or the Roman Church must err against the word of God But the Roman Church we grant perforce doth not err damnably neither can she because she is the Catholique Church which we you say confess cannot err damnably Therefore Protestants must err against God's word and consequently are guilty of formal Heresie Whereunto I answer plainly that there be in this argument almost as many falshoods as assertions For neither is every error against any Doctrin revealed by God a damnable Heresie unless it be revealed publiquely and plainly with a command that a I should believe it 2. D. Potter no where grants that the Errors of the Roman Church are not in themselves damnable though he hopes by accident they may not actually damn some men amongst you and this you your self confess in divers places of your Book where you tell us that he allows no hope of Salvation to those amongst you whom ignorance cannot exouse 3. You beg the Question twice in taking for granted First That the Roman Church is the truly Catholique Church which without much favour can hardly pass for a part of it And again that the Catholique Church cannot fall into any error of it self damnable for it may do so and still be the Catholique Church if it retain those Truths which may be an antidote against the malignity of this error to those that held it out of a simple un-affected ignorance Lastly though the thing be true yet I might well require some proof of it from you that either Protestants or the Roman Church must err against God's word For if their contradiction be your only reason then also you or the Dominicans must be Heretiques because you contradict one another as much as Protestants and Papists 13 Ad § 15. The third Argument pretends that you have shewed already that the Visible Church is Judge of Controversies and therefore infallible from whence you suppose that it follows that to oppose her is to oppose God To which I answer that you have said only and not shewed that the Visible Church is Judg of Controversies
was to all Christians at that time to set up any Pictures in a Church to worship them as your new fashion is bruited abroad to be done in the Churches of the Catholique Church But what answer doth S. Austin and Optatus make to this Accusation Do they confess and maintain it Do they say as you would now It is true we do set Pictures upon our Altar and that not only for ornament or memory but for worship also but we do well to do so and this ought not to trouble you or affright you from our Communion What other answer your Church could now make to such an objection is very hard to imagine And therefore were your Doctrin the same with the Doctrin of the Fathers in this point they must have answered so likewise But they to the contrary not only deny the crime but abhorr and detest it To little purpose therefore do you hunt after these poor shadows of resemblances between us and the Donatists unless you could shew an exact resemblance between the present Church of Rome and the ancient which seeing by this and many other particulars it is demonstrated to be impossible that Church which was then a Virgin may be now a Harlot and that which was detraction in the Donatists may be in Protestants a just accusation 17 As ill success have you in comparing D. Potter with Tyconius whom as S. Austin finds fault with for continuing in the Donatists separation having forsaken the ground of it the Doctrin of the Churches perishing so you condemn the Doctor for continuing in their communion who hold as you say the very same Heresie But if this were indeed the Doctrin of the Donatists how is it that you say presently after that the Protestants who hold the Church of Christ perished were worse than Donatists who said that the Church remained at least in Africa These things me-thinks hang not well together But to let this pass The truth is this difference for which you would fain raise such a horrible dissention between D. Potter and his Brethren if it be well considered is only in words and the manner of expression They affirming only that the Church perished from its integrity and fell into many corruptions which he denies not And the Doctor denying only that it fell from its essence and became no Church at all which they affirm not 18 These therefore are but velitations and you would seem to make but small account of them But the main point you say is that since Luther 's Reformed Church was not in being for divers Centuries before Luther and yet was in the Apostles time they must of necessity affirm heretically with the Donatists that the true unspotted Church of Christ perished and that she which remained on earth was O Blasphemy an Harlot By which words it seems you are resolute perpetually to confound True and Unspotted and to put no difference between a corrupted Church and none at all But what is this but to make no difference between a diseased and a dead man Nay what is it but to contradict your selves who cannot deny but that sins are as great stains and spots and deformities in the sight of God as errours and confess your Church to be a congregation of men whereof every particular not one excepted and consequently the generality which is nothing but a collection of them is polluted and defiled with sin You proceed 19 But say you The same heresie follows out of D. Potter and other Protestants that the Church may err in points not fundamental because we have shewed that every error against any revealed truth is Heresie and Damnable whether the matter be great or small And how can the Church more truly be said to perish than when she is permitted to maintain damnable Heresie Besides we will hereafter prove that by every act of Heresie all divine faith is lost and to maintain a true Church without any faith is to fancy a living man without life Answ What you have said before hath been answered before and what you shall say hereafter shall be confuted hereafter But if it be such a certain ground that every error against any one revealed truth is a damnable Heresie then I hope I shall have your leave to subsume That the Dominicans in your account must hold a damnable heresie who hold an error against the immaculate Conception which you must needs esteem a revealed truth or otherwise why are you so urgent and importunate to have it defined seeing your rule is Nothing may be defined unless it be first revealed But without your leave I will make bold to conclude that if either that or the contrary assertion be a revealed truth you or they chuse you whether must without contradiction hold a damnable Heresie if this ground be true that every contradiction of a revealed Truth is such And now I dare say for fear of inconvenience you will begin to temper the crudeness of your former assertion and tell us that neither of you are Heretiques because the Truth against which you err though revealed is not sufficiently propounded And so say I Neither is your doctrin which Protestants contradict sufficiently propounded For though it be plain enough that your Church proposeth it yet still me-thinks it is as plain that your Churches proposition is not sufficient and I desire you would not say but prove the contrary Lastly to your Question How can the Church more truly be said to perish than when she is permitted to maintain a damnable Heresie I Answer she may be more truly said to perish when she is not only permitted to do so but de facto doth maintain a damnable Heresie Again she may be more truly said to perish when she falls into an Heresie which is not only damnable in it self and ex natura rei as you speak but such an Heresie the belief of whose contrary Truth is necessary not only necessitate praecepti but medii and therefore the Heresie so absolutely and indispensably destructive of salvation that no ignorance can excuse it nor any general repentance without a dereliction of it can beg a pardon for it Such an heresie if the Church should fall into it might be more truly said to perish then if it fell only into some heresie of its own nature damnable For in that state all the members of it without exception all without mercy must needs perish for ever In this although those that might see the truth and would not cannot upon any good ground hope for salvation yet without question it might send many souls to heaven who would gladly have embrac'd the truth but that they wanted means to discover it Thirdly and lastly she may yet more truly be said to perish when she Apostates from â—hrist absolutely or rejects even those Truths out of which her Heresies may be reformed as if she should directly deny Jesus to be the Christ or the Scripture to be the Word of God Towards which
conserved or observed choose you whether but that it should be alwayes so he sayes not neither had he any warrant He knew well enough that there was foretold a great falling away of the Churches of Christ to Anti-christ that the Roman Church in particular was fore-warned that she also Rom. 11. Nay the whole Church of the Gentiles might fall if they lookt not to their standing and therefore to secure her that she should stand for ever he had no Reason nor Authority Fourthly that it appears manifestly out of this Book of Irenaeus quoted by you that the doctrin of the Chiliasts was in his judgement Apostolique Tradition as also it was esteemed for ought appears to the contrary by all the Doctors and Saints and Martyrs of or about his time for all that speak of it or whose judgements in the point are any way recorded are for it and Justin Martyr professeth that all good and Orthodox Christians of his time believed it and those that did not In Dial. cum Tryphon he reckons amongst Heretiques Now I demand was this Tradition one of those that was conserved and observed in the Church of Rome or was it not If not had Irenaeus known so much he must have retracted this commendation of that Church If it was then the Tradition of the present Church of Rome contradicts the Ancient and accounts it Heretical and then sure it can be no certain note of Heresie to depart from them who have departed from themselves and prove themselves subject unto Errour by holding contradictions Fifthly and lastly that out of the Story of the Church it is as manifest as the light at noon that though Irenaeus did esteem the Roman Tradition a great Argument of the doctrin which he there delivers and defends against the Heretiques of his â—ime viz. That there is one God yet he was very far from thinking that Church was and ever should be a safe keeper and an infallible witness of Tradition in general Inasmuch as in his own life his action proclaim'd the contrary For when Victor Bishop of Rome obtruded the Roman Tradition touching the time of Easter upon Asian Bishops under the pain of Excommunication and damnation Irenaeus and all the other Western Bishops though agreeing with him in his observation yet sharply reprehended him for excommunicating the Asian Bishops for their disagreeing plainly shewing that they esteemed that not a necessary doctrin and a sufficient ground of excommunication which the Bishop of Rome and his adherents did so account of For otherwise how could they have reprehended him for excommunicating them had they conceived the cause of this Excommunication just and sufficient And besides evidently declaring that they esteemed not separation from the Roman Church a certain mark of Heresie seeing they esteemed not them Heretiques though separated and cut off from the Roman Church Cardinal Perron to avoid the stroak of this convincing argument raiseth a cloud of eloquent words Lib. 3. cap. 2. Of his Reply to King Iames. c. 2. sect 32. which because you borrow them of him in your Second part I will here insert and with short censures dispel and let his Idolaters see that Truth is not afraid of Giants His words are these The first instance then that Calvin alleageth against the Popes censures is taken from Eusebius a an Arrian author and from Ruffinus b enemie to the Roman Church his translator who writ c that S. IRENAEUS reprehended Pope Victor for having excommunicated the Churches of Asia for the question of the day of Pasche which they observed according to a particular tradition that S. JOHN had introduced d for a time in their Provinces Calv. ubi supra because of the neighbourhood of the Jews and to bury the Synagogue with honour and not according to the universal Tradition of the Apostles Irenaeus saith Calvin reprehended Pope Victor bitterly because for a light cause he had moved a great and perillous contention in the Church There is this in the Text that Calvin produceth he reprehended him that he had not done well to cut off from the body of unity so many and so great Churches But against whom maketh this Ruffin in vers hist Eccl Eus l. 5 c. 24. but e against those that object it for who sees not that S. IRENAEUS doth not there reprehend the Pope for the f want of power but for the ill use of his power and doth not reproach to the Pope that he could not excommunicate the Asians but admonisheth him that for g so small a cause he should not have cut off so many Provinces from the body of the Church Euseb hist Eccl. l. 5. c. 24. Irenaeus saith Eusebius did fitly exhort Pope Victor that he should not cut off all the Churches of God which â—eld this ancient tradition And Ruffinus translating and envenoming Eusebius saith Ruffin ib. c. 24. Iren l. 3. c. 3.1 Book Ch. 25. He questioned Victor that he had not done well in cutting off from the Body of Unity so many and so great Churches of God And in truth how could S. IRENAEUS have reprehended the Pope for want of power he that cites To the Roman Church because of a more powerful principality that is to say as above appeareth h because of a principality more powerful than the temporal or as we have expounded otherwhere because of a more powerful Original i It is necessary that every Church should agree And k therefore also S. IRENAEUS alleageth not to Pope Victor the example of him and of the other Bishops of the Gauls assembled in a Council holden expresly for this effect who had not excommunicated the Asians Euseb hist Eccl. l. 5. c. 22. nor the example of Narcissus Bishop of Jerusalem and of the Bishops of Palestina assembled in another Council holden expresly for the same effect who had not excommunicated them nor the example of Palmas and of the other Bishops of Pontus assembled in the same manner and for the same cause in the Region of Pontus who had not excommunicated them but only alleadges to him the example of the Popes his predecessors Iren. apud Euseb hist Eccl. 5. c. 26. The Prelates saith he who have presided before Soter in the Church where thou presidest Anisius Pius Hyginus Telesphorus and Sixtus have not observed this custom c. and nevertheless none of those that observed it have been excommunicated And yet O admirable providence of God the l success of the after-ages shewed that even in the use of his power the Popes proceeding was just For after the death of Victor the Councils of Nicea of Constantinople and of Ephesus Conc. Antioch c. 1. Conc. Const c. 7. Conc. Eph. p. 2. act 6. excommunicated again those that held the same custom with the Provinces that the Pope had excommunicated and placed them in the Catalogue of Heretiques under the titles of heretiques Quarto-decumans But to this instance Calvins Sect do annex two
well as the Cardinals do the Pope Whether the King or Queen of England or they that have the government in their hands in the minority of the Prince may not lawfully commend one to them to be consecrated against whom there is no Canonical exception Whether the Doctrin that the King is Supreme Head of the Church of England as the Kings of Judah and the first Christian Emperours were of the Jewish and Christian Church be any new found doctrin Whether it may not be true that Bishops being made Bishops have their authority immediatly from Christ though this or that man be not made Bishop without the King's authority as well as you say the Pope being Pope has authority immediately from Christ and yet this or that man cannot be made Pope without the authority of the Cardinals Whether you do well to suppose that Christian Kings have no more authority in ordering the affairs of the Church than the great Turk or the Pagan Emperors Whether the King may not give authority to a Bishop to exercise his function in some part of his Kingdom and yet not be capable of doing it himself as well as a Bishop may give authority to a Physician to practise Physick in his Diocess which the Bishop cannot do himself Whether if Nero the Emperour would have commanded S. Peter or S. Paul to preach the Gospel of Christ and to exercise the office of a Bishop of Rome whether they would have question'd his Authority to do so Whether there were any Law of God or man that prohibited King JAMES to give Commission to Bishops nay to lay his Injunction upon them to do any thing that is lawful Whether a casual irregularity may not be lawfully dispens'd with Whether the Pope's irregularities if he should chance to incur any be indispensable And if not who is he or who are they whom the Pope is so subject unto that they may dispense with him Whether that be certain which you take for granted That your Ordination imprints a character and ours doth not Whether the power of consecrating and ordaining by imposition of hands may not reside in the Bishops and be derived unto them not from the King but God and yet the King have authority to command them to apply this power to such a fit person whom he shall commend unto them As well as if some Architects only had the faculty of architecture and had it immediatly by infusion from God himself yet if they were the King's subjects he wants not authority to command them to build him a Palace for his use or a Fortress for his service Or as the King of France pretends not to have power to make Priests himself yet I hope you will not deny him power to command any of his subjects that has this power to ordain any fit person Priest whom he shall desire to be ordained Whether it do not follow that whensoever the King commands an house to be built a message to be delivered or a murtherer to be executed that all these things are presently done without intervention of the Archirect messenger or executioner As well as that they are ipso facto ordain'd and consecrated who by the King's authority are commended to the Bishops to be ordained and consecrated Especially seeing the King will not deny but that these Bishops may refuse to do what he requires to be done lawfully if the person be unworthy if worthy unlawfully indeed but yet de facto they may refuse and in case they should do so whether justly or unjustly neither the King himself nor any body else would esteem the person Bishop upon the King's designation Whether many Popes though they were not consecrated Bishops by any temporal Prince yet might not or did not receive authority from the Emperor to exercise their Episcopal function in this or that place And whether the Emperours had not authority upon their desert to deprive them of their jurisdiction by imprisonment or banishment Whether Protestants do indeed pretend that their Reformation is universal Whether in saying the Donatists Sect was confined to Africa you do not forget your self and contradict what you said above in § 17. of this Chapter where you tell us they had some of their Sect residing in Rome Whether it be certain that none can admit of Bishops willingly but those that hold them of divine institution Whether they may not be willing to have them conceiving that way of government the best though not absolutely necessary Whether all those Protestants that conceive the distinction between Priests and Bishops not to be of divine institution be Schismatical and Heretical for thinking so Whether your form of ordaining Bishops and Priests be essential to the constitution of a true Church Whether the forms of the Church of England differ essentially from your forms Whether in saying that the true Church cannot subsist without undoubted true Bishops and Priests you have not overthrown the truth of your own Church wherein I have proved it plainly impossible that any man should be so much as morally certain either of his own Priesthood or any other man Lastly Whether any one kind of these external forms and orders and government be so necessary to the being of a Church but that they may be diverse in diverse places and that a good and peaceable Christian may and ought to submit himself to the Government of the place where he lives whatsoever it be All these questions will be necessary to be discussed for the clearing of the truth of the Minor proposition of your former Syllogism and your proofs of it and I will promise to debate them fairly with you if first you will bring some better proof of the Major That want of Succession is a certain note of Heresie which for the present remains both unprov'd and unprobable 40 Ad § 23. The Fathers you say assign Succession as one mark of the true Church I confess they did urge Tradition as an Argument of the truth of their doctrin and of the falshood of the contrary and thus far they agree with you But now see the difference They urg'd it not against all Heretiques that ever should be but against them who rejected a great part of the Scripture for no other reason but because it was repugnant to their doctrin and corrupted other parts with their additions and detractions and perverted the remainder with divers absurd interpretations So Tertullian not a leaf before the words by you cited Nay they urg'd it against them who when they were confuted out of Scripture fell to accuse the Scriptures themselves as if they were not right and came not from good authority as if they were various one from another and as if truth could not be found out of them by those who know not Tradition for that it was not delivered in writing they did mean wholly but by word of mouth And that thereupon Paul also said we speak wisdom amongst the perfect So Irenaeus
true doctrin this Position of yours thus nakedly set down That any error against any one revealed truth destroies all divine faith For they all require not your self excepted that this truth must not only be revealed but revealed publiquely and all things considered sufficiently propounded to the erring Party to be one of those which God under pain of damnation commands all men to believe And therefore the contradiction of Protestants though this vain doctrin of your Divines were supposed true is but a weak argument That any of them have no divine Faith seeing you neither have nor ever can prove without begging the Question of your Churches infallibility that the truths about which they differ are of this quality and condition But though out of courtesie we may suppose this doctrin true yet we have no reason to grant it nor to think it any thing but a vain and groundless fancie and that this very weak and inartificial argument from the authority of your Divines is the strongest pillar which it hath to support it Two reasons you alleadge for it out of Thomas Aquinas the first whereof vainly supposeth against reason and experience that by the commission of any deadly sinne the habit of Charitie is quite exstirpated And for the second though you cry it up for an Achilles and think like the Gorgons head it will turne us all into stone and in confidence of it insult upon Doctor Potter as if he durst not come neare it yet in very truth having considered it well I finde it a serious grave prolixe and profound nothing I could answer it in a word by telling you that it begges without all proof or colour of proof the main Question between us That the infallibilitie of your Church is either the formal motive or rule or a necessarie condition of faith which you know we flatly deny and therefore all that is built upon it has nothing but wind for a foundation But to this answer I will adde a large consutation of this vain fancie out of one of the most rational and profound Doctors of your own Church I mean Essius who upon the third of the Sent. the 23. dist the 13. § writes thus It is disputed saith he whether in him who believes some of the Articles of our faith and disbelieves others or perhaps some one there be faith properly so called in respect of that which he does believe In which question we must before all carefully distinguish between those who retaining a general readiness to believe whatsoever the Church believes yet erre by ignorance in some Doctrin of faith because it is not as yet sufficiently declared to them that the Church does so believe and those who after sufficient manifestation of the Churches Doctrin do yet choose to dissent from it either by doubting of it or affirming the contrary For of the former the answer is easie but of these that is of Heretiques retaining some part of wholesome Doctrin the question is more difficult and on both sides by the Doctors probably disputed For that there is in them true faith of the Articles wherein they do not erre first experience seems to convince For many at this day denying for example sake Purgatory or Invocation of Saints nevertheless firmly hold as by divine revelation that God is Three and One that the Son of God was incarnate and suffered and other like things As anciently the Novatians excepting their peculiar error of denying reconciliation to those that fell in persecution held other things in common with Catholiques So that they assisted them very much against the Arrians as Socrates relates in his Eccl. Hist Moreover the same is proved by the example of the Apostles who in the time of Christ's passion being scandaliz'd lost their faith in him as also Christ after his resurrection upbraids them with their incredulity and calls Thomas incredulous for denying the Resurrection John 20. Whereupon S. Austin also in his preface upon the 96 Psalme saith That after the Resurrection of Christ the faith of those that fell was restored again And yet we must not say that the Apostles then lost the faith of the Trinity of the Creation of the world of Eternal life and such like other Articles Besides the Jewes before Christs comming held the faith of one God the Creator of Heaven and Earth who although they lost the true faith of the Messias by not receiving Christ yet we cannot say that they lost the faith of one God but still retained this Article as firmely as they did before Add hereunto that neither Jews nor Heretiques seem to lye in saying they believe either the books of the Prophets or the four Gospels it being apparent enough that they acknowledge in them Divine Authority though they hold not the true sense of them to which purpose is that in the Acts chap. 20. Believest thou the Propheis I know that thou believest Lastly it is manifest that many gifts of God are found even in bad men and such as are out of the Church therefore nothing hinders but that Jews and Heretiques though they erre in many things yet in other things may be so divinely illuminated as to believe aright So S. Austine seems to teach in his book De Unico Baptismo contra Petilianum c. 3. in these words When a Jew comes to us to be made a Christian we destroy not in him God's good things but his own ill That he believes One God is to be worshipped that he hopes for eternal life that he doubts not of the Resurrection we approve and commend him we acknowledge that as he did believe these things so he is still to believe them and as he did hold so he is still to hold them Thus he subjoyning more to the same purpose in the next and again in the 26 Chapter and in his third Book De Bapt. contr Donat. cap. ult and upon Psal 64. But now this reason seems to perswade the contrary Because the formal object of faith seems to be the first verity as it is manifested by the Churches Doctrin as the Divine and infallible Rule wherefore whosoever adheres not to this Rule although he assent to some matters of faith yet he embraces them not with faith but with some other kind of assent as if a man assent to a conclusion not knowing the reason by which it is demonstrated he hath not true knowledge but an opinion only of the same conclusion Now that an Heretique adheres not to the rule aforesaid it is manifest Because if he did adhere to it as divine and infallible he would receive all without exception which the Church teacheth and so would not be an Heretique After this manner discourseth Saint Thom. 2.2 q. 5. art 3. From whom yet Durand dissents upon this distinction thinking there may be in an Heretique true faith in respect of the Article in which he doth not erre Others as Scotus and Bonaventure define not the matter plainly but seem to choose
another age Traditive interpretations of Scripture are pretended but there are few or none to be found No Tradition but only of Scripture can derive it self from the Fountain but may be plainly prov'd either to have been brought in in such an age after Christ or that in such an age it was not in In a word there is no sufficient certainty but of Scripture only for any considering man to build upon This therefore and this only I have reason to believe This I will profess according to this I will live and for this if there be occasion I will not only willingly but even gladly lose my life though I should be sorry that Christians should take it from me Propose me any thing out of this Book and require whether I believe or no and seem it never so incomprehensible to human reason I will subscribe it with hand and heart as knowing no Demonstration can bee stronger than this God hath said so therefore it is true In other things I will take no mans Liberty of judgement from him neither shall any man take mine from me I will think no man the worse man nor the worse Christian I will love no man the less for differing in opinion from me And what measure I mete to others I expect from them again I am fully assured that God does not and therefore that men ought not to require any more of any man than this To believe the Scripture to be God's word to endeavour to find the true sense of it and to live according to it 57. This is the Religion which I have chosen after a long deliberation and I am verily perswaded that I have chosen wisely much more wisely than if I had guided my self according to your Churches authority For the Scripture being all true I am secur'd by believing nothing else that I shall believe no falshood as matter of faith And if I mistake the sense of Scripture and so fall into error yet am I secure from any danger thereby if but your grounds be true because endeavouring to finde the true sense of Scripture I cannot but hold my error without pertinacy and be ready to forsake it when a more true and a more probable sense shall appear unto me And then all necessary truth being as I have prov'd plainly set down in Scripture I am certain by believing Scripture to believe all necessary Truth And he that does so if his life be answerable to his faith how is it possible he should said of Salvation 58. Besides whatsoever may be pretended to gain to your Church the credit of a Guide all that and much more may be said for the Scripture Hath your Church been ancient The Scripture is more ancient Is your Church a means to keep men at unity So is the Scripture to keep those that believe it and will obey it in unity of belief in matters necessary or very profitable and in unity of Charity in points unnecessary Is your Church universal for time or place Certainly the Scripture is more universal For all the Christians in the world those I mean that in truth deserve this name do now and alwayes have believed the Scripture to be the word of God so much of it at least as contains all things necessary whereas only you say that you only are the Church of God and all Christians besides you deny it 59. Thirdly following the Scripture I follow that whereby you prove your Churches infallibility whereof were it not for Scripture what pretence could you have or what notion could we have and by so doing tacitely confess that your selves are surer of the truth of the Scripture than of your Churches authority For we must be surer of the proof than of the thing proved otherwise it is no proof 60 Fourthly following the Scripture I follow that which must be true if your Church be true for your Church gives attestation to it Whereas if I follow your Church I must follow that which though Scripture be true may be false nay which if Scripture be true must be false because the Scripture testifies against it 61. Fifthly to follow the Scripture I have God's express warrant and command and no colour of any prohibition But to believe your Church infallible I have no command at all much less an express command Nay I have reason to fear that I am prohibited to do so in these words Call no man Master on earth They fell by infidelity Thou standest by faith Be not high minded but fear The spirit of truth the world cannot receive 62. Following your Church I must hold many things not only above reason but against it if any thing be against it whereas following the Scripture I shall believe many mysteries but no impossibilities many things above reason but nothing against it many things which had they not been reveal'd reason could never have discover'd but nothing which by true reason may be confuted many things which reason cannot comprehend how they can be but nothing which reason can comprehend that it cannot be Nay I shall believe nothing which reason will not convince that I ought to believe it For reason will convince any man unless he be of a perverse mind that the Scripture is the word of God And then no reason can be greater than this God sayes so therefore it is true 63. Following your Church I must hold many things which to any mans judgement that will give himself the liberty of judgement will seem much more plainly contradicted by Scripture than the infalliblity of your Church appears to be confirm'd by it and consequently must be so foolish as to believe your Church exempted from error upon less evidence rather than subject to the common condition of mankind upon greater evidence Now if I take the Scripture only for my Guide I shall not need to do any thing so unreasonable 64. If I will follow your Church I must believe impossibilities and that with an absolute certainty upon motives which are confess'd to be but only Prudential and probable That is with a weak foundation I must firmly support a heavy a monstrous heavy building Now following the Scripture I shall have no necessity to undergoe any such difficulties 65. Following your Church I must be servant of Christ and a subject of the King but only ad placitum Papae I must be prepar'd in mind to renounce my allegiance to the King when the Pope shall declare him an Heretique and command me not to obey him and I must be prepar'd in mind to esteem Vertue Vice and Vice Vertue if the Pope shall so determine Indeed you say it is impossible he should do the later but that you know is a great question neither is it fit my obedience to God and the King should depend upon a questionable foundation And howsoever you must grant that if by an impossible supposition the Pope's commands should be contrary to the law of Christ that they of your Religion
examination the grounds of it prove uncertain or to leave it if they prove apparently false My own experience assures me that in this imputation I do you no injury but it is very apparent to all men from your ranking doubting of any part of your Doctrin among mortal sins For from hence it followes that seeing every man must resolve that he will never commit mortal sin that he must never examin the grounds of it at all for fear he should be mov'd to doubt or if he do he must resolve that no motives be they never so strong shall move him to doubt but that with his will and resolution he will uphold himself in a firm beliefe of your Religion though his reason and his understanding fail him And seeing this is the condition of all those whom you esteem good Catholiques who can deny but you are a Company of men unwilling and afraid to understand lest you should do good That have eyes to see and will not see that have not the love of truth which is only to be known by an indifferent tryall and therefore deserve to be given over to strong delusions men that love darkness more than light in a word that you are the blind leading the blind and what prudence there can be in following such Guides our Saviour hath taught us in saying If the blind lead the blind both shall fall into the ditch 73. There remains unspoken to in this Section some places out of S. Austin and some sayings of Luther wherein he confesses that in the Papacy are many good things But the former I have already considered and return'd the argument grounded on them As for Luther's speeches I told you not long since that we follow no private men and regard not much what he saies either against the Church of Rome or for it but what he proves He was a man of a vehement spirit and very often what he took in hand he did not do it but over-do it He that will justifie all his speeches especially such as he wrote in heat of opposition I believe will have work enough Yet in these sentences though he over-reach in the particulars yet what he saies in general we confess true and confess with him that in the Papacy are many good things which have come from them to us but withal we say there are many bad neither do we think our selves bound in prudence either to reject the good with the bad or to retain the bad with the good but rather conceive it a high point of wisdome to separate between the pretious and the vile to sever the good from the bad and to put the good in vessels to be kept and to cast the bad away to try all things and to hold that which is good 74. Ad § 32. Your next and last argument against the faith of Protestants is because wanting Certainty and Prudence it must also want the fourth condition Supernaturality For that being a humane perswasion it is not in the essence of it supernatural and being imprudent and rash it cannot proceed from Divine motion and so is not supernatural in respect of the cause from which it proceedeth Ans This little discourse stands wholly upon what went before and therefore must fall together with it I have proved the Faith of Protestants as certain and as prudent as the faith of Papists and therefore if these be certain grounds of supernaturality our faith may have it as well as yours I would here furthermore be inform'd how you can assure us that your faith is not your perswasion or opinion for you make them all one that your Churches Doctrin is true Or if you grant it your perswasion why is it not the perswasion of men and in respect of the subject of it an humane perswasion I desire also to know what sense there is in pretending that your perswasion is not in regard of the object only and cause of it but in the nature or essence of it supernatural Lastly whereas you say that being imprudent it cannot come from divine motion certainly by this reason all they that believe your own Religion and cannot give a wise and sufficient reason for it as millions amongst you cannot must be condemn'd to have no supernatural faith or if not then without question nothing can hinder but that the imprudent faith of Protestants may proceed from divine motion as well as the imprudent faith of Papists 75. And thus having weighed your whole discourse and found it altogether lighter than vanity why should I not invert your conclusion and say Seeing you have not proved that whosoever errs against any one point of Faith loseth all divine Faith nor that any error whatsoever concerning that which by the Parties litigant may be esteem'd a matter of faith is a grievous sin it follows not at all that when two men hold different doctrins concerning Religion that but one can be saved Not that I deny but that the sentence of Saint Chrysostome with which you conclude this Chapter may in a good sense be true for oftimes by the faith is meant only that Doctrin which is necessary to Salvation and to say that salvation may be had without any the least thing wich is necessary to salvation implyes a repugnance and destroys it self Besides not to believe all necessary points and to believe none at all is for the purpose of salvation all one and therefore he that does so may justly be said to destroy the Gospel of Christ seeing he makes it uneffectual to the end for which it was intended the Salvation of mens soules But why you should conceive that all differences about Religion are concerning matters of faith in this high notion of the word for that I conceive no reason CHAP. VII In regard of the Precept of Charity towards ones self Protestants are in state of Sin as long as they remain separated from the Roman-Church THAT due Order is to be observed in the Theological Vertue of Charity whereby we are directed to preferre some Objects before others is a truth taught by all Divines and declared in these words of holy Scripture He hath ordered (a) Cant. 2 4 Charity in me The reason whereof is because the infinite Goodness of God which is the formal object or Motive of Charity and for which all other things are loved is differently participated by different Objects and therefore the love we bear to them for Gods sake must accordingly be unequal In the vertue of Faith the case is far otherwise because all the Objects or points which we believe do equally participate the divine Testimony or Revelation for which we believe alike all things propounded for such For it is as impossible for God to speak an untruth in a small as in a great matter And this is the ground for which we have so often affirmed that any least error against Faith is in jurious to God and destructive of Salvation 2. This order in
answer is a great supererogation in point of civility Nevertheless partly that I may the more ingratiate my self with you but especially that I may stop their mouths who will be apt to say that every word of yours which I should omit to speak to is an unanswerable argument I will hold my purpose of answering them more punctally and particularly 19. First then to your little parenthesis which you interline among D. Potter's words § 7. That any small error in faith destroyes all faith To omit what hath been said before I answer here what is proper for this place that S. Austin whose authority is here stood upon thought otherwise He conceived the Donatists to hold some error in faith and yet not to have no faith His words of them to this purpose are most pregnant and evident You are with us saith he to the Donatists Ep. 48. as Baptism in the Creed and the other Sacraments And again Super gestis cum emerit Thou hast proved to me that thou hast Faith prove to me likewise that thou hast Charity Parallel to which words are these of Optatus Amongst us and you is one Ecclesiastical conversation common lessons the same faith the same Sacraments Where by the way we may observe that in the judgement of these Fathers even Donatists though Heretiques and Scismatiques gave true Ordination the true Sacrament of Matrimony true Sacramental Absolution Confirmation the true Sacrament of the Eucharist true Extream Unction or else choose you whether some of these were not then esteem'd Sacraments But for Ordination whether he held it a Sacrament or no certainly he held that it remain'd with them entire for so he saies in express terms in his book against Parmenianus his Epistle Which Doctrin if you can reconcile with the present Doctrin of the Roman Church Eris mihi magnus Apollo 20. Whereas in the beginning of the 8. Sect. You deny that your argument drawn from our confessing the possibility of your Salvation is for simple people alone but for all men I answer Certainly whosoever is moved with it must be so simple as to think this a good and a concluding reason Some ignorant men in the Roman Church may be sav'd by the confession of Protestants which is indeed all that they confess therefore it is safe for me to be of the Roman Church and he that does think so what reason is there why he should not think this as good Ignorant Protestants may be saved by the confession of Papists by name Mr. K. therefore it is safe for me to be of the Protestant Church Whereas you say that this your argument is grounded upon an inevitable necessity for us either to grant Salvation to your Church or to entail certain damnation upon our own because ours can have no being till Luther unless yours be supposed to have been the true Church I answer This cause is no cause For first as Luther had no being before Luther and yet he was when he was though he was not before so there is no repugnance in the terms but that there might be a true Church after Luther though there were none for some ages before as since Columbus his time there have been Christians in America though before there were none for many ages For neither do you shew neither does it appear that the genetation of Churches is univocal that nothing but a Church can possibly beget a Church nor that the present being of a true Church depends necessarily upon the perpetuity of a Church in all ages any more than the present being of Peripateticks or Stoicks depends upon a perpetual pedegree of them For though I at no hand deny the Churches perpetuity yet I see nothing in your book to make me understand that the truth of the present depends upon it nor any thing that can hinder but that a false Church Gods providence over-watching and over-ruling it may preserve the means of confuting their own Heresies and reducing men to truth and so raising a true Church I mean the integrity and the authority of the word of God with men Thus the Jewes preserve means to make men Christians and Papists preserve means to make men Protestants and Protestants which you say are a false Church do as you pretend preserve means to make men Papists that is their own Bibles out of which you pretend to be able to prove that they are to be Papists Secondly you shew not nor does it appear that the perpetuity of the Church depends on the truth of yours For though you talk vainly as if you were the only men in the world before Luther yet the world knows that this is but talk and that there were other Christians besides you which might have perpetuated the Church though you had not been Lastly you shew not neither doth it appear that your being acknowledged in some sense a true Church doth necessarily import that we must grant Salvation to it unless by it you understand the ignorant members of it which is a very unusual Synechdoche 21. Whereas you say that Catholiques never granted that the Donatists had a true Church or might be saved I answ S. Austin himself granted that those among them who sought the Truth being ready when they found it to correct their error were not Heretiques and therefore notwithstanding their error might be saved And this is all the Charity that Protestants allow to Papists 22. Whereas you say that D. Potter having cited out of S. Austin the words of the Catholiques that the Donatists had true Baptism when he comes to the contrary words of the Donatists addes No Church no salvation Ans You wrong D. Potter who pretends not to cite S. Austins formal words but only his sense which in him is compleat and full for that purpose whereto it is alleadged by D. Potter His words are Pertilianus dixit Venite ad Ecclesiam Populi aufugiâ—e Traditores si perire non vultis Petilian saith Come to the Church yee people and flie from the Traditours if yee will not be damn'd for that yee may know that they being guilty esteem very well of our Faith Behold I Baptize these whom they have infected but they receive those whom we have Baptized Where it is plain that Petilian by his words makes the Donatists the Church and excludes the Catholiques from salvation absolutely And therefore no Church no salvation was not D. Potter's addition And whereas you say the Catholiques never yeeld that among the Donatists there was a true Church and hope of Salvation I say it appears by what I have alledged out of S. Austin that they yeelded both these were among the Donatists as much as we yeeld them to be among the Papists As for D. Potter's acknowledgement that They maintained an error in the matter and nature of it Heretical This proves them but Material Heretiques whom you do not exclude from possibility of Salvation So that all things considered this argument must be much more
autem apud omnes unum est non est erratum sed traditum Had the Churches err'd they would have varied What therefore is one and the same amongst all came not sure by error but tradition Thus Tertullian argues very probably from the consent of the Churches of his time not long after the Apostles and that in matter of opinion much more subject to unobserv'd alteration But that in the frame and substance of the necessary Government of the Church a thing alwayes in use and practice there should be so suddain a change as presently after the Apostles times and so universal as received in all the Churches this is clearly impossible SECT VIII For What universal cause can be assigned or faigned of this universal Apostasie You will not imagine that the Apostles all or any of them made any decree for this change when they were living or left order for it in any Will or Testament when they were dying This were to grant the question to wit That the Apostles being to leave the Government of the Churches themselves and either seeing by experience or foreseeing by the Spirit of God the distractions and disorders which would arise from a multitude of equals substituted Episcopal Government instead of their own General Councels to make a Law for a general change for many ages there was none There was no Christian Emperour no coercive power over the Church to enforce it Or if there had been any we know no force was equal to the courage of the Christians of those times Their lives were then at command for they had not then learnt to fight for Christ but their obedience to any thing against his Law was not to be commanded for they had perfectly learn't to die for him Therefore there was no power then to command this change or if there had been any it had been in vain SECT IX What device then shall we study or to what fountain shall we reduce this strange pretended alteration Can it enter into our hearts to think that all the Presbyters and other Christians then being the Apostles Schollers could be generally ignorant of the Will of Christ touching the necessity of a Presbyterial Government Or dare we adventure to think them so strangely wicked all the World over as against knowledge and conscience to conspire against it Imagine the spirit of Diotrephes had entred into some or a great many of the Presbyters and possessed them with an ambitious desire of a forbidden superiority was it possible they should attempt and atchieve it once without any opposition or contradiction and besides that the contagion of this ambition should spread it self and prevail without stop or controul nay without any noise or notice taken of it through all the Churches in the World all the watchmen in the mean time being so fast asleep and all the dogs so dumb that not so much as one should open his mouth against it SECT X. But let us suppose though it be a horrible untruth that the Presbyters and people then were not so good Christians as the Presbyterians are now that they were generally so negligent to retain the government of Christ's Church commanded by Christ which we now are so zealous to restore yet certainly we must not forget nor deny that they were men as we are And if we look upon them but as meer natural men yet knowing by experience how hard a thing it is even for Policy arm'd with Power by many attempts and contrivances and in along time to gain upon the liberty of any one people undoubtedly we shall never entertain so wild an imagination as that among all the Christian Presbyteries in the World neither conscience of duty nor love of liberty nor aversness from pride and usurpation of others over them should prevail so much with any one as to oppose this pretended universal invasion of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ and the liberty of Christians SECT XI When I shall-see therefore all the Fables in the Metamorphosis acted and prove Stories when I shall see all the Democracies and Aristocracies in the World lye down and sleep and awake into Monarchies then will I begin to believe that Presbyterial Government having continued in the Church during the Apostles times should presently after against the Apostles doctrine and the will of Christ be whirl'd about like a scene in a masque and transformed into Episcopacy In the mean time while these things remain thus incredible and in humane reason impossible I hope I shall have leave to conclude thus Episcopal Government is acknowledged to have been universally received in the Church presently after the Apostles times Between the Apostles times and this presently after there was not time enough for nor possibility of so great an alteration And therefore there was no such alteration as is pretended And therefore Episcopacy being confessed to be so Ancient and Catholique must be granted also to be Apostolique Quod erat demonstrandum FINIS NINE SERMONS The First Preached before His MAJESTY King CHARLES the FIRST The other Eight upon special and eminent Occasions BY WILL. CHILLINGWORTH Master of Arts of the UNIVERSITY of OXFORD NOSCE TE IPSVM NE QUID NIMIS LONDON Printed by E. Cotes dwelling in Aldersgate-street Anno Dom. M.DC.LXIV TO THE READER Christian Reader THese Sermons were by the Godly and Learned Author of them fitted to the Congregations to which he was to speak and no doubt intended only for the benefit of Hearers not of Readers Nevertheless it was the desire of many that they might be published upon the hope of good that might be done to the Church of God by them There is need of plain Instructions to incite men to holiness of life as well as accurate Treatises in Points Controverted to discern Truth from Error For which end I dare promise these Sermons will make much where they find an honest and humble Reader It was the Author's greatest care as you may find in the reading of them To handle the Word of God by manifestation of the truth commending himself to every mans conscience in the fight of God as once St. Paul pleaded for himself 2 Cor. 4.2 And if that be the property which they say of an eloquent and good speaker Non ex ore sed ex pectore To speak from his heart rather than his tongue then surely this Author was an excellent Orator one that spake out of sound understanding with true affection How great his parts were and how well improved as may appear by these his Labours so they were fully known and the loss of them sufficiently bewailed by those among whom he lived and conversed Many excellencies there were in him for which his memory remains but this above all was his crown that he unfeignedly sought God's glory and the good of mens souls It remains that these Sermons be read by thee with a care to profit and thanks to God for the benefit thou hast by them sith they are such talents
as in the use of which he requires and expects to be glorified Farewell The First Sermon 2 TIM III. 1 2 3 4 5. This know also that in the last dayes perilous times shall come For men shall be lovers of their own selves covetous boasters proud blasphemers disobedient to Parents unthankful unholy Without natural affection truce-breakers false accusers incontinent fierce despisers of those that are good Traitors heady high-minded lovers of pleasures more then lovers of God Having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof TO a discourse upon these words I cannot think of any fitter Introduction then that wherewith our Saviour sometime began a Sermon of his This day is this Scriture fulfilled And I would to God there were not great occasion to fear that a great part of it may be fulfilled in this place Two things are contained in it First the reall wickedness of the generality of the men of the Latter-times in the four first verses For by men shall be lovers of themselves covetous boasters proud c. I conceive is ment men generally shall be so otherwise this were nothing peculiar to the last but common to all times for in all times some nay many have been lovers of themselves covetous boasters proud c. Secondly we have here the formal and hypocritical godliness of the same times in the last verse Having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof which latter ordinarily and naturally accompanies the former For as the shadows are longest when the Sun is lowest and as vines and other fruit-trees bear the less fruit when they are suffered to luxuriate and spend their sap upon superfluous suckers and aboundance of leaves So commonly we may observe both in Civil conversation where there is great store of formality there is little sincerity and in Religion where there is a decay of true and cordial piety there men entertain and please themselves and vainly hope to please God with external formalities and performances and great store of that righteousness for which Christ shall judge the world It were no difficult matter to shew that the truth of St. Paul's prediction is by experience justified in both parts of it but my purpose is to restrain my self to the latter and to endeavour to clear unto you that that in our times is generally accomplished That almost in all places the power of Godliness is decayed and vanished the form and profession of it only remaining That the spirit and soul and life of Religion is for the most part gone only the outward body or carcass or rather the picture or shadow of it being left behind This is the Doctrin which at this time I shall deliver to you and the Use which I desire most heartily you should make of it is this To take care that you confute so far as it concerns your particulars what I fear I shall prove too true in the general To come then to our business without further complement let us examine our wayes and consider impartially What the Religion of most men is We are baptized in our infancy that is as I conceive dedicated and devoted to God's service by our Parents and the Church as young Samuel was by his Mother Anna and there we take a Solemn Vow To forsake the Devil and all his works the vain pomp and glory of the world with all the covetous desires of it to forsake also all the carnal desires of the flesh and not to follow nor be led by them This vow we take when we be children and understand it not and How many are there who know and consider and regard what they have vowed when they are become men almost as little as they did being children Consider the lives and publique actions of most men of all conditions in Court City and Country and then deny it if you can that those three things which we have renounced in our Baptism the profits honours and pleasures of the World are not the very Gods which divide the world amongst them are not served more devoutly confided in more heartily loved more affectionately then the Father Son and holâ— Ghost in whose name we are baptized deny if you can the dayly and constant imployment of all men to be either a violent prosecution of the vain pomp and glory of the world or of the power riches and contemptible profits of it or of the momentary or unsatisfying pleasures of the flesh or else of the more diabolical humours of pride malice revenge and such like and yet with this empty form we please and satisfie our selves as well as if we were lively born again by the Spirit of God not knowing or not regarding what St. Peter hath taught us That the Baptism which must save us is Not the putting away of the filth of the flesh 1 Pet. 3.21 but the answer of a good conscience unto God When we are come to years capable of instruction many which is lamentable to consider are so little regarded by themselves or others that they continue little better then Pagans in a Common-wealth of Christians and know little more of God or of Christ then if they had been bred in the Indies A lamentable case and which will one day lye heavy upon their account which might have amended it and did not But many I confess are taught to act over this play of Religion and learned to say Our Father which art in Heaven and I believe in God the Father Almighty but Where are the men that live so as if they did believe in earnest that God is their Almighty Father Where are they that fear him and trust him and depend upon him only for their whole happiness and love him and obey him as in reason we ought to do to an Almighty Father Who if he be our Father and we be indeed his children will do for us all the good he can and if he be Almighty can do for us all the good he will and yet how few are there who love him with half that affection as children usually do their Parents or believe him with half that simplicity or serve him with half that diligence And then for the Lords Prayer the plain truth is we lye unto God for the most part clean through it and for want of desiring indeed what in word we pray for tell him to his face as many false tales as we make Petitions For who shews by his endeavours that he desires heartily that God's name should be hallowed that is holily and religiously worshipped and adored by all men That his Kingdom should be advanced and inlarged That his blessed will should be universally obeyed Who shews by his forsaking sin that he desires so much as he should do the forgiveness of it Nay who doth not revenge upon all occasions the affronts contempts and injuries put upon him and so upon the matter curse himself as oft as he sayes Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them
say that all things considered it was absolutely impossible for you to avoid it is flatly to deny it Others there are that think they have done enough if to confession of sin they add some sorrow for it if when the present fit of sin is past and they are returned to themselves the sting remaining breed some remorse of conscience some complaints against their wickedness and folly for having done so and some intentions to forsake it though vanishing and ineffectual These heat-drops this morning dew of sorrow though it presently vanish and they return to their sin again upon the next temptation as a dogg to his vomit when the pang is over yet in the pauses between while they are in their good mood they conceive themselves to have very true and very good repentance so that if they should have the good fortune to be taken away in one of these Intervalla one of these sober moods they should certainly be saved which is just as if a man in a Quartane Ague or the Stone or Gout should think himself rid of his disease as oft as he is out of his fit But if repentance were no more but so how could St. Paul have truly said That godly sorrow worketh repentance 1 Cor. 7.10 Every man knows that nothing can work it self The Architect is not the house which he builds the Father is not the Son which he begets the Tradesman is not the work which he makes and therefore if sorrow godly sorrow worketh repentance certainly sorrow is not repentance the same St. Paul tels us in the same place That the sorrow of the world worketh death and you will give me leave to conclude from hence therefore it is not death and what shall hinder me from concluding thus also Godly sorrow worketh repentance therefore it is not repentance To this purpose it is worth the observing that when the Scripture speaks of that kind of repentance which is only sorrow for something done and wishing it undone it constantly useth the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to which forgiveness of sins is no where promised So it is written of Judas the son of perdition Matth. 27.5 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he repented and went and hanged himself and so constantly in other places But that repentance to which remission of sins and salvation is promised is perpetually expressed by the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifieth a through change of the heart and soul of the life and actions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mat. 3.2 which is rendred in our last translation Repent for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand But much better because freer from ambiguity in the entrance to our Common Prayer Book Amend your lives for the kingdom of heaven is at hand From whence by the way we may observe That in the judgment of those holy and learned Martyrs Repentance and amendment of life are all one And I would to God the same men out of the same care of avoyding mistakes and to take away occasion of cavilling our Liturgy from them that seek it and out of fear of encouraging carnal men to security in sinning had been so provident as to set down in terms the first sentence taken out of the 18 th of Ezekiel and not have put in the place of it an ambiguous and though not in it self yet accidentally by reason of the mistake to which it is subject I fear very often a pernitious paraphrase for whereas thus they make it At what time soever a sinner doth repent him of his sins from the bottom of his heart I will put all his wickedness out of my remembrance saith the Lord The plain truth if you will hear it is the Lord doth not say so these are not the very words of God but the paraphrase of men the words of God are as followeth If the wicked turn from all the sins which he hath committed and keep all my Statutes and do that which is lawful and right he shall surely live he shall not die where I hope you easily observe that there is no such word as At what time soever a sinner doth repent c. and that there is a wide difference between this as the word repent usually sounds in the ears of the people and turning from all sins and keeping all Gods Statutes that indeed having no more in it but sorrow and good purposes may be done easily and certainly at the last gasp and it is very strange that any Christian who dies in his right senses and knows the difference between heaven and hell should fail of the performing it but this work of turning keeping and doing is though not impossible by extraordinary mercy to be performed at last yet ordinarily a work of time a long and laborious work but yet heaven is very well worth it and if you mean to go through with it you had need go about it presently Yet seeing the Composers of our Liturgy thought fit to abreviate Turning from all sin and keeping all God's Statutes and doing that which is lawful and right into this one word Repenting it is easie and obvious to collect from hence as I did before from the other place that by Repentance they understood not only sorrow for sin but conversion from it The same word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mat. 12.42 is used in speaking of the Repentance of the Ninivites And how real hearty and effectual a Conversion that was you may see Jonas 3. from the 5 to the last verse The People of Niniveh believed God and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them for word came to the King of Niniveh and he arose from his Throne and he cast his Robe from him and covered him with sackcloth and sate in ashes and he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Niniveh by the decree of the King and of his Nobles saying Let neither man nor beast heard nor flock taste any thing let them not feed nor drink water but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily unto God yea let every one turn from his evill way and from the violence which is in their hands who can tell if God will turn and repent and turn away his fierce anger that we perish not Which words contain an excellent and lively pattern for all true penitents to follow and whereunto to conform themselves in their humiliation and repentance And truly though there be no Jonas sent expresly from God to cry unto us Yet forty dayes and Niniveh shall be destroyed yet seeing the mouth of Eternal Truth hath taught us that a Kingdom divided is in such danger of ruin and destruction that morally speaking if it continue divided it cannot stand and seeing the strange and miserable condition of our Nation at this time may give any considerable man just cause to fear that as in Rehoboam's case so likewise in ours The thing is of the Lord intending to bring
file there follow adversaries of better fashion there is Life and Death and Angels and Principalities and Powers who are those In truth I know not but be they who they will they can do us no harm No nor things present nor things to come nor heighth nor depth These are adversaries we should scarce have dream'd of And to make all sure in a word There is no other creature shall ever be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 63. Yet for all S. Paul's exactness there remains one enemy behind and that is a sore one of prime note and truly I wonder how the Apostle could miss him And that is Sin I would to God S. Paul had taken notice of him For this one enemy is able to do us more harm than all the rest put together nay but for sin all the rest almost were our very good friends Had we best supply S. Paul's incogitancy and even adventure to put him in the Catalogue too Well let them that have a mind to it do it Truly I dare not And but that I know Martin Luther was a bold-spirited man I should wonder how he durst so confidently have adventured upon it In his Book entituled Captivitatis Babylonicae cap. de Baptismo near the beginning he hath these words Vides quam dives sit homo Christianus sive Baptizatus qui etiam volens non potest perdere suam salutem quantiscunque peccatis nisi nolit credere I will not translate them to you and I would they had never been Englished for by that means it may be some of our loudest preachers would have wanted one point of comfortable false doctrine wherewith they are wont to pleasure their friends and benefactors Only let us do thus much for S. Paul's credit to believe it was not meerly inconsideration in him to leave out Sin in this catalogue that there was some ground of Reason for it For though it may come to pass by the mercy and goodness of God That even Sin it self shall not pluck us out of his hand yet it would be something a strange preposterous Doctrine for a Preacher of the New Covenant to proclaim that we shall undoubtedly obtain the promises of the Covenant though we never so much break the Conditions 64. I do confess my self very guilty and am sorry that I have thus long exercised and wearied your patience And yet for all that have not perform'd that task which I fully resolv'd upon when I adventured upon this subject and that was to spend this time in raising your devotions to the contemplation of the glorious mercies of God expressed to us in Christs Resurrection and exaltation But because other thoughts have carried me away even against my will almost all this while I shall further take leave to wrong and injure your patience with proposing one consideration more which ought by no means to be omitted 65. And that is to take notice of the Person to whom we have been beholding for these unspeakable mercies and that is Christ Christ alone none else mentioned or thought upon If Bellarmine had been to advise S. Paul if he had been privy to the writing of this Epistle it is likely he would not have taken it ill to have had Christs name in the matter of our Salvation But he would not have endured the Apostles utter silence of all helps and aids besides yea though himself acknowlegeth it to be the safest course to put our whole confidence only in the mercy of God yet quia magis honorificum est habere aliquid ex merito because it concerns our credit to put in a little for merit and desert on our side He would not have us so to disparage our selves as to make salvation a meer Alms proceeding meerly out of Courtesie 66. Nay but Oh thou man What art thou that answerest against God What art thou that justifiest thy self before him Nay what art thou that condemnest God making him a lyar all the Scripture over the whole project whereof is this to let us know how unable how sick how dead we are of our selves and therefore ought most necessarily to have recourse to him for our salvation As for us Beloved Christians if we must needs rejoyce let us rejoyce in our infirmities let our glory be our shame and let us lift up our eyes and behold Is 63 1 2. Who is this that cometh from Edom with died garments from Bozrah This that is glorious in his apparel travelling in the greatness of his strength And Christ will say It is I that speak in righteousnesse mighty to save But wherefore Lord art thou red in thine apparel and thy garments like him that treadeth in the wire-fatt He will answer I have trodden the wine-press alone and of the people there was none with me for which reason I am now crown'd with glory and honour and immortality I alone am mighty to save and besides me there is none other 67. And good luck have thou with thine honour Ps 45. Oh Lord ride on because of thy word of truth of meekness and of righteousness and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things Terrible things for the King's enemies for them which would not have thee to rule over them And good luck have we with thine honour O Lord ride on because of thy word of truth of meekness and of righteousness and thy right hand shall teach thee gracious and comfortable things for us thy servants and sheep of thy pasture who dare not exalt a weak arm of flesh against thee Thy right hand shall mightily defend us in the midst of all our enemies Thy right hand shall find us out and gather us up though lost and consum'd in the grave though scattered before the four winds of heaven And thy right hand shall exalt us to glory and immortality for ever with thee in thy heavenly Kingdom where all the daies of our life yea all the daies of thy glorious endless life we shall with Angels and Archangels say Glory and honour and power and immortality be unto him which sitteth on the throne and to the Lamb and to the Holy Spirit for ever and for ever Amen Amen The Sixth Sermon LUKE XVI 9. Make to your selves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness that when ye fail they may receive you into everlasting habitations THE Children of this world saith Christ are wiser in their generation then the Children of Light To make which good our Saviour in somuch of the Chapter as goes before my Text brings in a Story or as they call it a Parable of a cunning Fellow yet no great Projector neither no very subtile Polititian notwithstanding one who being in an extremity turn'd out of his Office for mispending his Masters Goods had found out a shift and that by meer cousenage to procure so much as would serve to keep him indeed not according to the Port and fashion after which before