ΤΩ ΚΑΘΟΛΙΚΩ STILLINGFLEETON OR An account given to a Catholick Friend of Dr. Stillingfleets late book against the Roman Church Together with a short Postil upon his Text In three Letters By I. V. C. All things are not which seem to be Nor do all things seem to be which are Bruges Printed by Luke Kerchove 1672. ΤΩ ΚΑΘΟΛΙΚΩ THE PREFACE SIR MAny learned Treatises have been composed and set forth by the Reverend J. V. C. the worthy Author of FIAT LUX for perswading a right Vnderstanding and Moderation in matters of Religion and for the convincing this our distracted Nation of the Innocency of our Catholick Religion and Practices in order to Church and State which have been received with much benefit and applause But that good esteem wherwith You and Others entertained the First Part of his TO KATHOLIKO did especially engage Him to endeavour the publishing the remaining Pieces therof then fitted for your view in obedience to your command as well as to undeceive Dr. Stilâ—â—'s seduced Readers both concerning his Errours and our Vnblamableness as also to discover the grand Imposture contrived by his Malice or Folly for the subversion of his Catholick Neighbours The whole Work had long since been made publick had it not as the cause it justifies suffred much Persecution almost to its utter suppression The malignity of our Adversaeries conscious of the weakness of the Doctor 's charge against Vs and fearing least the perversness of their hearts in imposing and divulging so evident calumnies should become Visible has constrained this your harmless Postill to a longer Voyage then the timely Vindication of our Churches impeached Honour would have otherwise reasonably allowed Having now escaped many storms it walks alone and ventures to look forth upon you yet had its worthy Author been longer spared with Vs you would have seen it in a fuller and more fashionable dress though even thus it is not beneath your Expectations offring unto your Consideration such sober Reflections as well become the dignity of the Holy and Apostolical Religion of Catholicks and do clearly Vindicate that our Way from the foulest aspersions carnal wisdom could utter against plain Truth and Honesty Were that freedom which the Doctor 's provocations imply allowed Vs for a legal defence of our holy Church which the Law of Nations and our Venerable Courts of Justice afford the most wretched assayled Innocents in Case of fraud and Calumny against the Prevaricators of common peace It would be easy to manifest that as our Catholick Doctrin and Devotions need no other Champion then that Churches perfection and Majesty So her many Doctors neither want skill or will to put by those weak thrusts the Doctor makes at her reputation hitherto preserved without blemish by God's assured providence over her watchful Pastours The Doctor in this his Account of the Idolatry Impiety Fanaticism Divisions and what not of Iniquity of the Roman Church hath summ'd up high Criminations against Vs and then having laid the Foundations of his own Belief concludes the Church of Rome neither to be the Catholick Church nor any sound part or member thereof but whether he designed this his so peremptory a Charge as an Obelisk with GRATITUDO POSUIT to his thereby deluded Benefactours or to be a new Dioclesian Columne with NOMINE CHRISTIANO DELETO for this Age too he knows best who framed it sure it is his fundamentals are such that they subvert all Christian Monarchy and Obedience without which not only Christianity but neither any Church consisting of more then one member can long preserve its self from mouldring into Divisions and Desolation The truth is if ever any Opposer of our Catholick Faith has betray'd his own Cause this Doctor is notably guilty of it for his Imputations upon Vs are so evidently slanderous and the Principles of his own Religion so leakie that they have rendred the whole Reformation suspected of a Notorious Cheat in its growth and progress to all unprejudiced Judgments who by the sober ways of our Religious Worship our many great encouragements to piety our zeal in obseâ—ving Evangelical Counsels and our wonderful Vnity in the groundsills of our Christianity are clearly convinced of the holiness of our Catholick Truths and Maxims of Morality and notwithstanding our Adversaries loud declaimings against Vs even from the Infancy of Christian Religion to this Age when the Reformation was Vshered in by unclean licentiousness much different from the subtil Errours of Primitive Dissenters that neither Wit nor Malice of Man can overthrow the Faith and Moral Precepts of the Roman Church conveyed unto Vs in her sacred Canons whereas her Impugners still like Jonas Gourd wither in their blossom for the counsels of Men shall fail according to the good Gamaliels Rule but God and Truth have their Date everlasting Had the Doctor as carefully perused the large Records of our Church Histories which treasure up and continue to Vs the Body of our Christian Belief and Rules of manners unchanged through all its Ages by the Vigilancy of her Apostolical Governors by whom Primitive Truths have been unanimously conserved and conveyed unto Vs in their Original Purity as he has been in Rakeing over the foul ashes of ambitious Schismaticks Scepticks and Libertines the Cockle that still grows up with Christ's best corn and in frameing his Creed by the Square of his Truth discerning Reason that which Holy Scripture forbids to our utter peril he had discovered our Catholick Doctrin to be the very Image of her Divine Architype who IS and changes not and who has accordingly laid the Foundation of and built up this our Impregnable City of the Pilgrim Saints still guarding It with his own sacred Spirit and assisting her Visible Pastours in the Government of that his Catholick Body that as he hath promised Hell may not prevail against it Nor may the Doctor 's severe Account hope other success herein than the more powerful Swords of Pagan Cesars the Edicts of Senats and the wrath of Flamins of the Old Heathen Rome upon whose Ruins our glorious Lord hath by S. Peter built up this his everlasting Church in Communion wherewith only we can pretend to the Title of Christianity or to the promises which Jesus Christ has thereunto annexed if either Christ's promise or guift to or prayers for S. Peter may be allowed to have either power with God or any credit with Mankind Hence Sir the Doctor 's Book as it has bred admiration at his confidence and contempt of his Malice amongst all Catholicks who are better acquainted with their own Faith and practices then to be instructed in them or misled from them by any prevaricatours sounding brass or tinkling Cymbal so hath it raised up an amazement in some of the more learned Clergy of Protestants at that his boldness and caused them to suspect too their own cause which after so oft plaistring over their breach from Vs with manifold Vntruths at length needs buttressing up
to Saints as Heathens to those dieties Two more falsities Papists do neither of these And the Doctor might be ashamed to talk thus Have not Protestants St. Pauls Church St Peters Church St. Dunstan St. Steven St. Johns Church and the like even as Catholicks have And did ever any Catholick in the world say or write or profess to offer Sacrifice to Saints They use a formal invocation of them One more Formal invocation is only an invocation of the cause who is to give the blessing grace or favour petitioned and from whom all good things do flow and not of him who requests it Popish Hymns and Anthems in honour of Saints are not only Rhetorical Apostrophees used by some of the Greek Fathers or poetical flourishes as those of Damascus Prudentius Paulinus Ambrosius or only general wishes that Saints would pray for us of which are some instances in good Authors or any devout Assemblies at the Monuments of Martyrs which were usual in antient times They are indeed not only this because they are also and principally formal invocations of the most glorious God as any one may perceive who will please to read over our Catholick Hymns for Apostles Martyrs Confessors Virgins in the Breviary as the Doctor more shame for him thus to talk hath done himself St. Austins example when he says Blessed St. Cyprian help us in our Prayers availes not Papists at all for that of St. Austin was but a pâ—ous Apostrophee It availes as much as we need call it Apostrophe or what you please Nor does it availe Papists that Faustus the Manichean Calumniates Catholicks living in St. Austins time with their honouring the memories and shrines of Martyrs and turning the old Idols into Martyrs which those Catholicks worshipped with like Vows for St. Austin's excuse of that fact does not agree with the Papists that are now adayes It so well agrees with them and justifies so punctually all that ever they do in this affair that they need not either to change or add one word to it I will only seâ— down that excuse of St. Austin as Mr. Still has been pleased here in his book to give it us without addition or change of any word All the worship saith St. Austin which we give to Saints is that of love and society which is the same kind with that we give to holy men of this life who are ready to suffer for truth of Gospel Sacrifice is not only refused to Saints and Angels but any other Religious honour which is due to God as the Angel forbad St. John to fall down and worship him The Heathens indeed built Temples erected Altars appointed Priests and offered Sacrifice to their Idols But we erect no Temples to Martyrs as to Gods but memories as to dead men whose Spirits live with God We raise no Altars on which to Sacrifice to our Martyrs but unto our one God only the God of Martyrs as well as ours at which They as men of God who have overcome the world by confessing him are named in their place and order but are not invocated by the Pâ—iest who Sacrifices Whatever Christians do at the memories of Martyrs is for Ornament to those memories and not as any sacred rites and sacrifices belonging to the dead as Gods Nor do we worship our Martyrs with divine honours nor with the faults of men as the Gentiles did their Gods Thus speaks St. Austin to Faustus for the Catholicks then living as Dr. Still himself reports And the Catholicks now alive need no more to be said for them And thus his Idolatry Romance which fill up two of his Chapters is now happily ended And me-thinks Sir that he hath behaved himself herein somwhat like our Country Gypsies who meeting with people in the way under pretence of telling them their Fortunes ask them many odd uncouth Questions about things past not easily to be remembred and speak unintelligable ambiguous words which put them into so deep a muse that the Gypsies get thereby a fair opportunity to pick their pockets ΤΩ ΚΑΘΟΛΙΚΩ THe Doctor pretends Sir in his third Chapter to descend unto some parcels of our morality perswading us that five pieces of our belief and practice are main hindrances of a good life and devotion namely our Doctrine as he calls it of penance of purgatory of prayers in an unknown tongue of the efficacy of sacraments and of our prohibition of scripture His reasons for all this or his cunning leiger ways of perverting all these things his insincerity therein and notable dissimulation you shall hear by and by For perceiving now that after I have set down the sum of his text in gross I am forced to repeat it all again by retail spending thereby both time and paper needlesly I must content my self to give you his text onely in parts with my short comment adjoyned to each parcel as I go But give me leave to tell you Sir thus much in general aforehand that all this his whole Chapter is so palpably uncharitable and unjust that no honest understanding Reader what pleasure soever he took himself in writing it can read it over without disdain and grief What is this world come to and where are we and what strange things do we see and hear daily This one book of Dr. Still is to me such a world of wonders that I shall not hereafter ever marvel any more at any lie or slander that I shall know imposed by any whatever wicked man upon his neighbour Has the fool said in his heart there is no God no providence at all no care or respect to be used towards men Are all things lawful that any one shall lust to do or say against his neighbour no compassion no truth any more God help our innocent Catholicks And sure I am God will help them and justifie their cause in his own good time and preserve them always Hinderances of a good Life and Devotion § 1. Their Sacrament of Penance with contrition saith he is sufficient in the Church of Rome for Salvation without any more ado No mortyfying of passions no forsaking of sin is requisite who would not be of this fine easie way where all the precepts of holiness are insignificant But what one Catholick man upon the face of the earth ever thought or said this which he imposes here upon them all as their religion and faith Holy Gospel and all our spiritual books wherein our substantial religion is contained both those of antient times and of our later writers as Granada Thomas a Kempis S. Bonaventure Parsons Resolutions Bishop Sales Drexellius Stella and others do all of them press and urge this Catholick duty of interiour renovation sanctification and conformity to our Lord Jesus as the main end of his appearance amongst men And Catholicks themselves know that it is their onely care and fear their desire and study so to do such men to live and such to die as our Lord would have us For this
with so palpably incredible calumnies therein inserted His Account indeed seemes chiefly designed for Vulgar Capacities and therfore he mainly endeavours to captivate their attention and belief with much sophistry and many smooth stories of some Doctors amongst Catholicks whose different Opinions about the Moods of Christian Doctrin which they believe simply as it is delivered them plainly though they Vary in their Explications of Divine Mysteries he makes pass for disagreeing in Articles of Faith of others some who schismatically affected speak the stile of their predominant passions not according to the Religion they received from their Catholick Teachers and are therefore censured by the great Overseers of Christiantâ—y whom nevertheless the Doctor makes to speak the pure sense of the Roman Churches Faith and Piety And of some too whose Judgments guided by the compass of their ambitious and unclean affections driving at gâ—eat Names and Places cause division in the outward Hierarchy and Government of the Church for which neither the Canons of our Faith and Manners gives them any authority nor may it be hoped that either the care or power of our chief Pastors may wholly avoid such Wolves since according to Christ's prophesy scandals will still arise though our Catholick Bishops still oppose themselves against them and yet the Doctor will have these either to be our Church Governors or their actions to be destructive of our Catholick Vnity But all these slights of his are to so little purpose that many sober Protestants has been startled at thâ—se his Cantings and Imputations upon so anâ—iâ—nt and grave a Body of Christians whom their former Teachers ever allowed to be members of Christ's Mystical Body and capable of salvation in their own way of Christian observance Whence as the Cruelty of the old Roman Emperours and Presidents against the Primitive Christians moved many Vnbelievers of those times to embrace the Roman Faith so has the severe Accusations of the Doctor against Catholicks moved many of their Adversaries to a more steddy enquiry into our Catholick Truths to confer more reverently with the Dispensers of the Doctrin of that defamed Religion and oft to conclude somewhat more than ordinary of truth and honesty to be found in that Way which being long since banished this Nation by very severe Laws is still so eagerly arraigned so clamorously cryed down in Press and Pulpit and at any Rate exposed to the severity of those whose Interest passion or dulness has ever since engaged them in its suppression The Doctors whole Account amounts to a pulling down and a setting up first he pulls down the Church of Rome then He sets up his Own he makes Vse of four formidable Engins to overturn that our Catholick Church which your TO KATHOLICO amply examines But surely if the Church of Rome falls all Churches which either received their belief from her or now communicate in faith with her must fall too and thus the Catholick Church and the Communion of Saints an entire Article of the Apostles Creed is on a sudden cancelled Indeed it is so proper to all Church Reformers to pull down Churches and such like Monuments of our forefathers Christian piety suckt in with that faith they originally received from their Roman Apostles that our Natiâ—n has cause enough to bewail the power of thâ—â— Sword of Gospellers in whose sense we may confess The Roman Church in some measure to be no sound Church even no Church at all were their Swords as keen as their Pens and Tongues and as close-laid as Nero once wished His to an Imaginary Neck for we are ever bound to believe each one speaks and writes his own thoughts and hearty wishes The Doctor having endeavour'd to level our Roman Church and not finding One principled according to his own Acephalick passion wherewith to close lays the foundation of his Own properly His Stillingfleet Church Not Roman nor Protestant nor indeed any Church at all for where he leaves neither any constant Rule wherby to square our faith or observance in necessaries not clearly revealed in holy Wriâ—t nor any power to oblige to a conformity in Belief and Practices nor any One Visible Head for our Direction and Communion there can be no Church of Christ but a Babel and Confusion that which evidently follows from the Doctors Own Principles whereunto he pretends the faith of Protestants must be reduced as to the only true Test of its being Christian and Catholick And thus after our long reproaching that Church as Vnprincipled the Doctor in a full Council of his own thoughts assembled in Vertue of his all-truth discerning Spirit synodically pronounces his Anathema's against Vs and publishes Canons of faith to all the Churches of England and will prove it to be One Holy Apostolical and Catholick by such Rules as neither Scripture nor Councels nor Fathers nor any Church ever menâ—â—on'd before nor will ever be solemnly canoniz'd by any Synod of our Englâ—sh Pâ—â—lates however he pretends them to be Protestant wherein we may admire at their silence even by those Rules by which aâ—â—â—elief built on them not borrowed from the Roman Church may be contradictory and will be cleerly resolved not to have One Mark of the true Christian Church even to be no Church at all but a pure Stillingfleet an phantosm His design in forging these his Principles was thence to shew the Protestant Church as Protestant or as it is by Schism separated from the great Catholick Body of Christians to be Positive Vniform and Principled whereas by them it is clearly Negative Confusive and Begs the question in the root of all Briefly thus As for the first the Dr aims directly at the subversion of all traditional Revelation and of an external visible and infallible proponent of divine credibles and of all power obligeing to acceptance of them as such and consequently at the overthrow of all Articles by the Church of Rome allowed and Canonized as truths revealed upon those grounds As for the next his Canons for the interpreting Gods written Revelations are of that Latitude that whoever admits them if he please may disagree with the Doctor and all others and with himself too at different times by virtue of a pretended Personal infallible-all-truth discerning-faculty which he allows all in all fundamentals and superstructures depending on the controverted sense of Gods written Word after a sober enquiry and sincere endeavours however necessary those credibles be to salvation or the framing one Church of many truth-discerning members whether this their enquiry be performed by the working of reason only which in supernatural Truths revives Pelagianism or by a pretended personal divine assistance in regard of each Believer to which every one may as legally pretend and appropriate it to himself by pretence of having used his best means to understand Scripture as the Dr. himself or any other Teacher which is to erect an Acephalick Enthusiasm or Fanaticism And as for the last if it be a legal proof that there
Lord must needs then have appeared among us on this our Earth in vain For both himself and all the whole truth he delivered us was in his time and all following ages contradicted round about and opposed and rendred thereby doubtful by Jews and Pagans and no less by those people who Apostatized from that Catholick Society than any other their outward and forrein Adversaries And I suppose the Giantly witts of former ages amongst the Rabbies and Philosophers did with somwhat a more stronger shot from sâ—nce and reason invade our Christian assurance than any is here discharged out of his Elder potgun by our doubt-making Doctor This is uncertain Church is slighted Fathers are otherwise interpreted there are now who deny it c. What news in all this can trouble me who could not but foresee if I did but use my common reason that all these things would happen It is not to be expected that all men should believe at once And he that believes not will both conceive doubtâ— and urge them both hare a believer and persecute him too perhaps to death without any doubt at all These doubts and oppositions and 〈◊〉 raised against Faith can have no other effect in a true believer but to strengthen and spread the roots of it more wide and deeper in his heart There was a notable Propheâ—ie of our Lord uttered by St. Siâ—â—â—on a worthy great Personage at his birth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This Jesus is set both for the fall and rising of many in Israel and for a sign to be contradicted Both Christ and his whole Faith delivered by him is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Signe and eminent Trophy set up in the eyes of the whole world by all grumbling unbelievers to be enviously glanced at malitiously traduced and all possible ways opposed and persecuted O but what if this Faith of Papists should prove to be false saith he then cannot Papists be excused from Idolatry as their own learned men acknowledg This is even wondrous true whether our own learned men who are still brought in by him for the imbellishment of his own Clarkship do acknowledg it or no. And so if Jesus Christ himself should prove not to be what he is believed by Catholicks then would the Doctor also who is ready to worship him upon the account of that our Faith declared and maintained by the Catholick Councel of Nice be an Idolator too A false consequence may easily flow from a false and impossible supposition But wise men are more apt to consider their own danger than other mens And the Doctor if he were indeed in earnest and heeded rather his own Salvation then vain glory should rather ask his own soul I should think what if this Catholick Faith should be true Catholicks have for it clear Gospel universal tradition all Christian Churches in the world believing it and that in all ages the Doctor has nothing but his own sence and John Calvin who fell from that Church to plead for him Were not the Manichees censured as Idolaters for worshiping the Sun in the Firmament believing it to be God They well deserved to be censured For that was a fancy of their own grounded upon that word he hath set his Tabernacle in the Sun drawn unto a fond sence by their private interpretation contrary to the Authority of the Church and Pastors whom they would not obey when they checked and reproved them for it Even as now our present Protestants do put their various fanciful interpretations of signe and figure upon the words of Gospel This is my Body which the whole Church of God out of which they fell ever loved and reverenced as the most clear evidence of a Heavenly Legacy the truest and reallest that was ever made to man and of highest concernment to him Only the Maâ—â—chees judged by their erring surmise that our Lords Body was really there where the Church taught them it was not Protestants think it not really there where the same Church teaches them it is And thus have we passed through those handful of doubts which the Dr. casts before our eyes to perswade us we are not sure where he knows we are immoveable And we may worship our Lord in the Eucharist still as we did before for Stillingfleet § 10. The residue of this Chapter bewraies our third Catholick Idol Saints namely and their invocation There be but three or four words in it of substance if a falshood may be said indeed to subsist at all dilated so by his pretty rhetorick as if he had a mind to teach young Lawyers how to plead in a false cause The Heathens saith he were not blamed by Christian Doctors for their ill choice of worship Venus for example or Vulcan who were wretches but for giving divine honour to any but the true God as Papists do Here are two untruths and both notorious ones For neither do Catholicks give divine honour to Saints their fellow Servants and Domesticks of Faith neither is it true that antient Christian Doctors did not blame the Heathens for their ill choyce of worship as monuments yet extant various and weighty monuments do witness both in St. Austins Civitate Dei and elsewhere Wise Heathens worshiped one God supreme heeding the rest as inferiour powers under him as Papists do their Saints These be two more falshoods as is already declared in part For neither are Saints any inferiour powers to help us from themselves as the Sun Moon or Mercury but friends of God in Heaven and welwishers to their Brethren on Earth ready as Onias Job Abraham and Daniel and all the good Angels both to desire and rejoyce at their conversion and peace Neither did the wise Heathens worship one God supreme as St. Paul expresly testifies in his Epistle to the Christians at Rome where he tells them that even the Pagan Philosophers whom Dr. Stilling fleet calls the wiser Heathens held the truth in injustice that they did not glorifie nor worship the supreme God that they became as vain in their thoughts and deeds as any even the unwiser sort of them that pretending to be wise or wiser Heathens they became starke Noddies that they transformed Gods truth discerned even by his works of Creation into a lye and that they worshiped and served the Creature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and not the Creator I know well enough that Varro with some others of the Heathens about Rome where all sorts of Idols were brought together for the renown and pomp of that conquering City began to plead thus and excuse their Idolatry as the Doctor has learned by him here to do But did St. Austin admit that plea or was there ever any Christian who opposed it not together with all our holy Prophets and Apostles What subordination was there amongst the Egyptian Cyrian and Chaldean Idols or what Country ever was there among the Heathens who looked not upon their own Idol-God as Supreme Papists build Churches to Saints offer Sacrifice