Infallibility in the Parliament so neither can that of the Apostle do it for the Church for Societies do not always follow their natural appointments we see that they often enough depart from them I confess that the Church does not always wander from its end nor in all things yet it cannot also be imagin'd that she never departs For the wicked are mingled with the good in the same Society the Dignities of the Church are sometimes to be found more possessed by the men of the World then by the truly Faithful the very best men themselves are subject to weaknesses and they sometimes commit faults of that importance that may consequently be dilated by continuance and all that cannot but produce Errors and Corruptions which it will be most necessary to reform Behold all those passages of Scripture upon which they seem to me to found that pretension of the Infallibility of the Latin Church To them they joyn some Arguments 1. If say they it be possible for the Church to err why do we call it holy as we do in the Creed I believe the Holy Catholick Church Such an Assembly that is united in the profession of an error is so far unfit to be called Holy That on the contrary it is Impious since it agrees in a Doctrine that is contrary to the Holy Truths revealed by God I answer That if this Argument were good it would follow not only that the Church should be Infallible as to matters of Faith but also that she should be impeccable in respect of manners for she is called Holy as well from that Holiness that regards good works as from that which regards the Faith The Church is Holy but yet after an imperfect manner while she is here upon Earth and she will never be perfectly so but in Heaven Furthermore they ought to remember that the Title of Holy and generally all other Titles of Honour and Glory that are given to the Church belong to it in truth only in respect of the true Believers and not in respect of the Hypocrites and wicked which are mingled with the good in the same visible Society and that it is but only on the same account of the Good that all that visible Body is called the Church For they are none but those whom God has called to his Salvation who only can be the true mystical Body of Jesus Christ When then it shall come to pass that the number of the wicked prevails in that Visible Society they will fill up the Pulpits they will be Masters of Councils and of Decisions of Faith of the Government and Ministry of the Church and will not fail to introduce Errors and a false Worship but when those persons should introduce and authorise them the Church would not cease to be Holy not in respect of those wicked men who waste it and corrupt it as much as it lyes in their power to do but in regard of the Faithful whom God will keep pure by the illuminations of his Holy Spirit and the methods of his Providence The Church of Israel in the midst of its greatest Idolatries did not cease to keep the Titles of a Holy Nation and a Kingdom of Priests which Moses had given her but she kept them not in respect of her Corruptors and those wretched men that would have seduc't her but in respect of those that were Holy For it is certain that God has always done that which he did in the days of Elias where he reserv'd seven thousand men who had not bowed the Knee unto Baal and it is in those that the Church is preserv'd and always kept Holy 2. But yet further say they If the Church may err and particularly the Church Representative that is to say the Body of Pastors why do the Councils pronounce Anathema's against all those who shall not consent to their Decrees Would it not be very unjust to bind men under so great a penalty to consent to things that are uncertain and which may be false I answer that the force of the Anathema's of those Councils depends altogether on their Justice If those Councils have lawfully decided controversies according to the word of God and if with the Truth they have kept Love and Charity according to the Precept of the Apostle their Anathema is very efficacious and all that they bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven But if they have decided any thing against the Truth or against Charity if they have abused their Places their Anathema's are vain and rash and will fall upon none but their Heads who pronounce them For God has never submitted his Righteousness to the Unrighteousness of any Prelats All the force of those Thunderbolts depends on those very things which have been decided We can do nothing says the Apostle against the Truth We ought not then to imagine that those Anathema's must needs be Infallible we ought not also to believe that they could not be rightly used if they had not that Infallibility Saint Hilary did not pretend to be Infallible and yet nevertheless he pronounc'd an Anathema against Liberius who was a Deceiver Saint Paul did not pretend to make us Infallible and yet notwithstanding he commands us to Anathematise even an Angel from Heaven and himself if he should Preach any other Gospel then that which he has preached unto us Cyril of Alexandria did not aspire after Infallibility and yet he thunders out his Anathema's against all the Errours of Nestorius The second Council of Tours never thought of being Infallible and yet nevertheless it Anathematis'd all those who after the third admonition refus'd to restore the goods of the Church In fine every private Person pronounces an Anathema against all Heresies The Anathema's of the Councils are not the Sentences of the Magistrate the force of which depends on the Authority of him who pronounces them they are only the Denuntiations that men make on Gods side as his Interpreters and his Ministers of the severity of his Judgments against the Unbeleivers the Wicked and the Hereticks And provided that those Denuntiations should be founded on the word of God as far as the light of the Pastors of the Church and their good Consciences could perswade them we ought not to doubt but that they would be just altho' they would not be Infallible For howsoever it be that good and lawful Councils assembled in the Name of Jesus Christ would never pretend that their Anathema's should bind any person any farther then their Decisions and their Canons were just and conformable to the Scripture 3. They add yet if it were possible for the Church to err it were possible for it totally to fall away after that manner that there should not be any longer a Church upon the Earth and yet notwithstanding how many promises have we in the Scripture that denote the Perpetuity of the Church God says in Hosea That he would betroth her unto him for ever
to practise it self a Worship contrary to the true service of God or to celebrate the Sacraments that Jesus Christ has not instituted It belongs therefore to the Author of the Prejudices to tell us how he pretends to avoid that Discussion for it is certain that the first Question that must be decided to make the Validity of a Call clear is that of the Justice of the Ministry in it self that is to say in regard of those things that are taught and practised in it when that Justice is in dispute as it is between the Church of Rome and us after which when that point is once decided we must pass over to two other Questions the one whether the body that is to say the Society wherein one is has it self the Right to have Ministers and the other whether the Persons who exercise the Ministry therein are well and duly called as I have shewn in my third Observation That first Point then being supposed to wit that the things that are taught and practised among the Protestants are good and Christian I say that they cannot dispute with them the Right of their Ministry but by accusing them of a Schism like that of the Luciferians or the Donatists But we have so clearly shewn that if we have Reason at the bottom our Separation from the Church of Rome is just and that she her self is guilty of chism that there is no further ground for that unjust Accusation They cannot therefore any further contest our Ministry with us and in effect if we are true Believers and if we are justly Separated from the Church of Rome it is Evident that we are Lawfully United among our selves in a Religious Society as I have shewn in the first Chapter of the Fourth Part. And if we are Lawfully United in a Religious Society it is not less Evident that all the Rights of the Christian Society belong to us and that in all those Rights that of the Ministry is Comprised as it appears from my Sixth and Seventh Observation So that our Right to a Ministry is indisputable supposing that we have Reason in the Foundation and all that which they propound against us will remain null and Fallacious If we have Reason at the bottom we are the true Church of Jesus Christ but the true Church of Jesus Christ can never lose its Rights she is never deprived of them and she cannot so much as deprive her of them none can ravish them from her they are Rights that cannot be Alienated they can neither be lost by the Inundations or Concussions of the World with and by Interruption of Possession or Invasion of Enemies as the Inheritances of the World are and in one word there where the true Faith and Charity is there is the true Church and where there is a true Church there is the Right to a Ministry But say they Is the Ministry which you have that Antient and perpetual Ministry that Jesus Christ has established in his Church or is it a new one For if it be a new one it is a false and Unlawful Ministry and if it be the Antient and perpetual Ministry of the Church whence comes it to pass that we do not see among you any of the degrees of that Hierarchy which was established in the Church before your Reformation I answer that our Ministry is that Antient and perpetual one that Jesus Christ and his Apostles have set up in the Church and if it were a new one we must needs have set up a new Gospel which is a thing so remote from the Truth that our most passionate Adversaries except the Author of the Prejudices would never in my Judgment have us charged with it But I say that we must distinguish of the Essence of a Ministry from its State as I have shewn in my Fourth Observation Before the Reformation we grant that the Ministry was preserved in the Latin Church in regard of all that which was Essential to it and it is in that that our Church has Succeeded it so that in that Respect they are not two Ministries but only one and the same which we have retained We preach the same Truth that they teach yet we Adore one and the same God the Father Son and Holy-Ghost There is among us a Baptism an Eucharist a Government a Discipline as there was then but we have not succeeded it in that bad and Corrupted State whereinto the Ministry was then fallen we have no more either any Sacrificers of the Body of Jesus Christ or a Soveraign Monarch of the Church or Patriarchs or Cardinals or Preachers of Indulgences or Framers of Legends all that was not any thing of the Essence of the Ministry and in having retrenched those kinds of things we have it no more abolish'd then a Town is abolished when its excesses are retrenched or then a House is abolished when it is cleansed and its ruines repaired As to a Personal Call I say that we have that Body of the Church which only upon Earth has a Lawful Right to confer it on us That which our Reformers had they had from the Church in their days which did not consist in that Multitude of Prophane Worldly and Superstitious Persons which swell'd their Assemblies then but in those truly Faithful Persons who as yet preserved themselves pure in the midst of that Corruption in that good Corn which as yet grew amidst the Tares although it was almost Swallowed up by them It was in those that the Right of the Ministry properly and truly resided it was those who made as yet that Society any wayes Lawful and it was from those that the Justice of a Call proceeded I confess that they Communicated it then in a very corrupted State and after a very impure manner but God gave our first Reformers the Grace to purify theirs by the sound Doctrine and to rectify it by a Holy and Lawful Use It is therefore with and by those that the Body of that Society which is Reformed has conferred that Call upon others and that the Propagation of the Ministry has come down even to us after the most Evangelical manner in the World on one side with Instruction Examination Proof Inquiry and Testimony of good manners as exact as could possibly be made and on the other with publick Prayers Exhortation Benediction laying on of hands Mission and a particular Tye to a Flock Behold here what our Call is in Regard of the Body of the Protestants I do not deny that in some places of this Kingdom at the beginning of the Reformation there was not some Calls which were conferred by the People without a Pastor as that of La Riviere was at Paris in the year 1555. Which the Author of the Prejudices has not been wanting to reproach us with But besides that these are particular Cases of a very small number which hath not followed nor produced any setled Custom and by Consequence cannot be imputed to the
did not forbear as yet to abide with the rest in the same Communion And it was certainly from thence that as soon as our first Reformers had began to speak openly against such kind of things their voice was heard and their words receiv'd with the applauses of and being follow'd by a great part of Europe For that was from no other reason but because they found all matters ordered so readily and that for a long time they had vehemently breathed after Reformation There is then nothing more ridiculous then when they would send us back to an Infallibility which could never be found there and of which they can give us no marks or sure characters that may be had there Besides which if the Church is not Infallible but only in those things that are generally believed and approved of without all disputes and if it may err in other matters none can blame our Fathers for having entred on an examination of them since it had formal oppositions to one part of the Church in a great many points as in the opposition of the Berengarians the Waldenses the Albigenses the Wicklefists and the Hussites They will say that these were such Hereticks as the Church had condemned But this answer will be but a meer Fallacy For if then when the Church was divided into two Parties and that which was the weaker should have been condemn'd by the stronger Part they would treat all those as Hereticks who should have been condemn'd to elude under that pretence the weight of their opposition and that they might still attribute Infallibility to the stronger Party in respect of those very things that are contested this is but to deceive our selves to say at the same time That the Church is not Infallible but only in regard of those things that all generally hold without Controversie They ought to change their Principle and to say the same of it that they affirm in the case of that Contestation That their Infallibility follows the stronger side and that those who oppress the other by their Intrigues by their Authority by the force of their Arms or otherwise are the truly Infallible since the opposition of the others ought not to be looked on but as the Insurrection of Hereticks and not as just opposition It will always depend on the most powerful to make themselves Infallible by beating down all that oppose themselves for there will need no more for that purpose than to condemn them and they are presently Hereticks excluded from all right in their oppositions either this is that which I call a Fallacy or there never was any such thing in the world 3. But if they will indeed change their Principle and say that that Infallibility is to be placed in the greater number in the Ruling party any one may convince them of the contrary by the example of the Arrians who had made themselves Masters of the Church under the Successors of Constantine The greater part in the Council were for them the Pulpits were for them the people followed them as they were lead either by their own humours or by Constraint and Force they Persecuted the Orthodox which evidently shews the falsness of this Proposition That the greater number or that side that finds it self the stronger can never err Jesus Christ had never had any Defenders if in the days of his flesh all had been persuaded of the Truth of this Maxim 4. This Experience of the Arrians makes it appear more evidently that Infallibility could not be attributed to that which they call the Church representative that is to say to the whole Body of Pastors or as they speak to all the Clergy For it is but too true that the whole Body of Pastors assembled in a very great number at the Council of Ariminum gave way to the Arrian Infidelity by rejecting the word of Consubstantial which signified that the Son of God was of the same Essence with his Father and declared only That he was like to the Father and that he was not a creature as other creatures were which supposed that he was a creature altho different from others They will say that it was not of their own motion that these Bishops made that Arrian Confession but that they were forced to it by the Emperours Ministers That moreover they were deceived by the Arrians not taking notice that that clause that the Son was not a Creature as other Creatures made him always a Creature and in fine that they rejected the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because they did not throughly understand it But all that is not of any advantage to their Cause for if the whole Body of Pastors assembled in Council to decide matters of Faith did determine of Heresie either out of weakness or through surprise or ignorance since they determine of it in effect what does it signifie in what manner or in what respect they determined it Could they call those men Infallible who were capable of making a Wicked and Infidel Confession in an Article so Fundamental as that of the Eternity of the Person of the Son of God is in such a manner and by such Principles as that came to pass We can never commit any faults but that they must have some cause but what cause soever they have our faults are always faults and certain Arguments that we are not Infallible 5. There are some of them that say that Councils are not Infallible but when they are approved by the Popes But that neither has any solid ground for how can an approbation which ordinarily passes after the separation of a Council possibly confer any Infallibility on it has that any Retroactive vertue and can that change the state of a thing already past They will say that the Pope does not confer any Infallibility on it but only acknowledges it and makes it to be acknowledged by others and that his approbation is as the Seal and Impression that denotes that such a Council ought to be held Infallible But if the Pope himself is not Infallible as the sounder part of the Gallican Church holds that he is not what certainty can his approbation give us May he not err in approving those things which he ought not to approve and in taking for Infallible a Council which was really deceived And let not any one say that I produce the opinion of the Gallican Church to the prejudice of all the others for after what manner soever it be it seems to me that one may very well affirm without offending any person that it is not an Article of the Faith of the Church of Rome to believe that the Pope must needs be Infallible for otherwise the Gallican Church would be guilty of Heresie And from that only it follows that one could have no such assurance as one ought to have to settle the Mind and Conscience in quiet if it were possible for him to err in approving a Council and by Consequence his approbation
Saint Paul calls her the Body of Jesus Christ But the Body of Jesus Christ is Eternal Jesus Christ promises to be with his even unto the end of the World and says that the Comforter shall abide with them for ever and that the Gates of Hell shall never prevail against his Church But it is no need of heaping up these Proofs of a thing which was never contested God will always keep a Church upon Earth that is to say he will always have a number of true Believers whom he will guide by his Word and by his Spirit and they are those that are betroth'd to him for ever and the Mystical Body of his Son to whom he will grant his gratious presence for ever and an assured Victory against the Gates of Hell There is nothing disputed in that point Our business is only to enquire whether all that Body composed of the good and the wicked that Assembly in which the worldly men and Hypocrites are mixt with the truly Faithful and that which they call the Visible Church can never fall into errour after what manner soever it be Whether it is not possible for that party of the men of the World which may be sometimes the stronger to corrupt the publick Ministry and for the same in respect of some errours and superstitions less Fundamental to infect the Good and to draw them tho' not so far from the Truth as to make them wholly lose the true Form of Piety and Communion with God for if that might happen the Church would be brought to nothing yet after such a manner as that their Faith and their Religion could not be said to be altogether pure But this experience justifies For in the Corruptions of the Church of Isral and in those times wherein they had introduc't the Worship of false Gods into the publick Ministry God had reserv'd seven thousand men who had not bowed their knees to Baal and that which is most considerable is that that very Religion of those seven thousand was not pure for they liv'd in that Schism that Jeroboam made and no more went to render that Worship to God which they were bound to pay at Jerusalem but to Bethel It will signify nothing to them to say that the Church then subsisted in the Tribe of Judah for besides that that would not hinder any from seeing clearly by that example of those seven thousand that God can when he pleases preserve his own in a corrupted Communion and that yet the far greater number might fall into errour and that the publick Ministry might be contaminated it will not follow notwithsanding that that Church was wholly extinct which is only that which we say Besides that I say it is yet manifest that those two Churches that of Israel and that of Judah were often found to depart both together sometimes from the true Worship of God as it appears from that which Jeremiah says That God having given a Bill of Divorce to that of Israel for her Idolatries Judah her Sister feared not but that she also had turned aside from his true Worship It appears also by that which Ezekiel said that Samaria had not committed half the sins of Judah who had justifi'd her Sister in multiplying her Abominations The same History of the Kings of Israel and Judah teaches us concerning Joram the Son of Ahab King of Israel that he clave to the sins of Jeroboam by which he had made Israel to sin and that at the same time Joram the Son of Jehoshaphat and his Son Ahaziah Reigned in Judah and walked after the ways of the Kings of Israel in doing that which displeased the Lord. But without going so far is it not true that when Jesus Christ came into the World he did not find a pure Church upon Earth The Schismatical Samaritans had so confused a Religion that Jesus Christ did not scruple to say that Salvation was of the Jews The Jews on their side had defac'd their Religion by a thousand superstitions and by the false Doctrine of the Pharisees and in fine they had crucifi'd the Lord of Life the only Messoas they expected Notwithstanding which we ought not to believe that the Church was perished from the Earth and that God did not preserve his Children in the midst of those Confusions The same thing happened then when the Arrians had made themselves Masters of the Ministry of the Church and when under the Emperour Theodosius the younger the Eutichians prevailed in the second Council of Ephesus For it would be a very absurd thing to imagine that during the time of the Triumph of those Hereticks there were no more any true Believers in those Churches all whose Pulpits they had fill'd and none in all that Communion but those who obeyed the erronious Councils of Milan of Ariminum and of Ephesus At this very day the most zealous among those of the Church of Rome acknowledge that God saves many persons who live under the Schismatical Ministry of the Greeks and the Muscovites although besides that Schism they accuse them of holding a multitude of errours and superstitions For so Possevin sets it down in one of his Relations of Muscovy We ought not then to make the subsistance of the Church to depend absolutely on that Infallibility whereof we dispute We ought yet far less to abuse the promises of God by pretending under that pretext that they can never do that that is ill The true use of the promises is to encourage us to our Duty and in stead of making us presumptious they ought on the contrary to humble us and to shew us the horrour of our sins when it is contrary to that promise For so the Scripture makes use of it in the second Book of the Kings upon the subject of the Idolatries of Manasseh King of Judah for after having reckoned them over particularly it adds that he set up a graven Image of the Grove that he had made in the House of which the Lord had said to David and to Solomon his Son In this House and in Jerusalem which I have chosen out of all the Tribes of Israel will I put my Name for ever See there the promise employed to its right use not to defend Manasseh in what he had done under a pretence that God had promised that his Name should never depart from the Temple which is the Language they speak in these days but to condemn Manasseh of that that as much as it lay in his power he had nullified that promise of God And so also it is that good men ought to speak to the Corrupters of Religion God has promised us that he would betroth his Church to himself for ever and you have laboured to break off that happy Marriage Jesus Christ has promised us that he will be always with us even unto the end of the world and you have endeavoured to deprive us of his presence He has promised us that his Holy
word mentioned either there or any where else And as to that passage Thou art Peter and upon this Rock will I build my Church c. Whether they understand it of that Confession which Saint Peter had made or whether they refer it to his person I say that no one can understand it of his Successors since there is not any mention made of them either directly or indirectly For when the See of Rome was not when it had never yet been The Church did not fail of being built upon that Confession of Saint Peter comprehended Jesus Christ upon whom the Church is every way built but also because that Confession of Saint Peter or Saint Peter Confessing was as one of the Chief Stones in that mystical Building which is not left alone for Jesus Christ who is not only the Foundation but the Soveraign Architect has added many others in all Ages and will always joyn others to them till the Building be intirely finished that is to say till God fulfilled the Decree of his Election But to go on with our Discourse of the Visibility of the True Church I affirm in the third place that we ought to know very well what a True Church Visible is For we ought not to imagine that all those persons who compose that Visible Society should be that True Church None but those True Believers I would say those who joyn to their external Profession of Christianty a true and sincere Piety are really the Church of Jesus Christ and as for the others that is to say the worldly Prophane and Hypocritical they are but the Church in appearance only and not indeed For having no inward Calling which consists in Faith and Love they do not belong to the Mystical Body of our Saviour nor are they of his Communion Notwithstanding they do not fail to be mixt with the Faithful by reason of that external profession as if they really were in the same Religious Society with them What then is the Visibility of the True Church as to us It is not that we can distinctly and with any certainty affirm Behold these be the Truly faithful of Jesus Christ None but but God alone can know them after that distinct manner and and without a possibility of being deceived But this we may say of that Visible Society that Vnder that Ministry and in that Communion God preserves and raises the truly Faithful Whence we may from this Judgment with Solidity and Truth and I may say also without a possibility of being deceived that there is a True Visible Church In that sence I declare that there has always been some way or other a True Church Visible upon Earth not but that God can make it wholly disappear to the Eyes of men whensoever it shall please him to do so without doing men any wrong or any breach of his promises since he has without doubt extraordinary ways to beget Faith in the hearts of his Children and to keep them on in that course and to lead them in the end unto Salvation without making use either of the publick Assemblies or Ministry but only because we ought not to believe that there ever hapned since the first rise of Christianity an Eclipse so full and intire that one could not some way say There is a Society in which God does keep the truly Faithful I say after some way For as that Judgment depends on two things the one to be able to know a Society and a Ministry and the other to know that under that Ministry and in that Society a Man may work out his own Salvation in respect of the first it is necessary to distinguish between two seasons the one of Liberty and Prosperity where the Church has its Assemblies and exercises its Ministry openly in the face of all the World For then she is much more visible then she would be otherwise that is to say it is far more easy to be known what Society and what Ministry that is Such was the State of the Church under Constantine and other Christian Emperours and it is in such times as those that the promises of Its outward splendour if there are any such in Scripture are accomplished The other season is that of its Afflictions and Persecution such was that of the first Century of the Church under the Pagan Emperours and the Enemies of Christianity For none can deny that then the Church was less discernable by its Assemblies not only because they were more private and less exposed to the publick view but also yet further because the name of Christian had been defamed by a thousand calumnies and charged with a thousand false imputations which made the knowledge of the Church to be far more difficult And it will be to no purpose to say That then the Church was visible and illustrious by the blood of its Martyrs For the blood of its Martyrs did not in the least hinder the accusing of the Christians of most odious crimes that which hindred its being liable to be easily known Those Accusations were as a Cloud before the eyes of the Common people which was necessarily to be discipated before they could come to know what Christianity was So that the True Church is more or less Visible according to the difference of its Seasons As to the second thing which is to know that one may be saved in that Society and under that Ministry it is necessary that we distinguish of the two States or Conditions wherein that Society may be found The one is a more pure State then when the word of God is preached without mixtures of the Doctrines of men when the publick Worship is perform'd without superstitions and the Sacraments plainly administred according to their Primitive Institution and when generally Religion is established taught and observed after the same manner wherein Jesus Christ and his Apostles left it to the World In that Condition it is certain that the True Church in very visible and very discernable for it is easy to behold all the Characters of its Truth which only consist in its Conformity to that lively primitive and natural Image of Christianity which God has left us in his Holy Scriptures But it is not less certain that a Church may fall into a quite contrary Condition that is to say into a State of Corruption then when it adds to divine Truths strange and adulterate Doctrines when it mingles superstitions with the true Worship of God and when in stead of a just Government it exercises an insolent and absolute Dominion over Mens Consciences in one word then when all things appear so confused and in that disorder that one can scarce any more see any traces of that beautiful and glorious Image of Christianity which I have before spoke of to shine forth In that Condition I affirm that True Church is very hard to be known for howsoever it were most Visible in quality of a Church because its Assemblies might be
Glory and the Covenants and the giving of the Law and the service of God and the Promises of whom were the Fathers and who had the Oracles of God committed unto them and in whose bosom Christ according to the flesh was born If that Maxim of the Author of Prejudices were good it must necessarily have been good for that Church which had condemned Jesus Christ his Person his Call his Miracles his Doctrine and what right then had his Disciples to hear and follow him We have seen them from Reason and from the Testimony of a very considerable person of our Age and to whom one of the greatest Kings has given the honour of committing the concerns of his Conscience to him that if that Maxim had place that we ought entirely to refer our selves to the Authority of the Church we could not any more regard those Miracles when they were opposite to that Authority Let them tell us then what right the Disciples had to follow Jesus Christ by what right did the first Converts and those who were afterwards Converted by others embrace the Gospel And if they did it without any right and against their duty into what Labyrinths we cast you What would become of the Christian Church what would become of you your selves You form prejudices against us drawn from the faults that have say you appeared in the persons of our first Reformers You tell us of a pretended precipitancy by which the Magistrates of Zurich Reformed themselves you conclude from thence without entring upon the points in dispute that we ought to renounce the Reformation of our Fathers Answer then your selves to the Prejudices that according to your Maxim the Jews may form against the first Disciples of Jesus Christ and to the Consequence that they may draw from thence that without entring any further into a Discussing of the Points of that Religion without examining either the Miracles or the Antient Prophecies or the success of the Preaching of the Gospel or all the other things that we could alledge in our favour we ought to renounce our Christianity You your selves Authorise their Principle by one that is altogether like it which you lay down and which you know not how to make use of against them without overthrowing your selves in a word you draw the same Consequence from it with them shew us then by what secret Art both you and we may get out of that Abyss whereinto you have plunged us If your Fathers say you have Reformed themselves with an ill design you ought without farther examination to renounce their Reformation If the chief Authors of your Religion a Jew will say have adhered to Jesus with an ill design against the obligation which they had to cleave to the Church you ought to renounce their Christianity Answer if you can to those Arguments and set our Consciences in quiet As for us indeed we are not in pain for we know that that Principle which you urge to those unbelievers is false There is not any person who has not right to examine the points of that Religion and to discern by himself the true from the false the good from the bad that which is from God from that which which from men The Authority of the Church never goes so far as to hinder us with any justice from it and so there is nothing to reproach the first Christians 9. But we ought not to give over these reflections without making one upon the state of the Church in the times of the Councils of Sirmium of Milan and of Ariminum whereof I have spoken before There is no person who knows not that the Arrians were then Masters of the Ecclesiastical Ministry which they called the Catholick Church treating the Orthodox as Hereticks and Disturbers of its Peace deposing them and sending them into banishment The Poyson of the Arrians says Vincentius Lirinensis had not only infected one part but almost all the world and almost all the Latin Bishops some by force others by simplicity giving themselves over to be deceived found themselves engaged in the darkness of Error We are in that condition said Phaebadius that if we would be called Catholicks it is necessary that we embrace Heresie and yet nevertheless if we do not reject Heresie we cannot be truly Catholicks God did yet keep to himself notwithstanding some Bishops few in number but great in Courage and that small remnant in the end serv'd for a spark to rekindle the Fire of the Faith in the Church Apply then to them that Maxim which we have before opposed and weigh those Consequences that may be drawn from it against those and against the Faithful who Heard them and Read their Writings The least is that they were Schismaticks and Corruptors of the people who after having themselves broken off that obedience which they owed to the Church sollicited others to do the like They might have very well urged that they had the Scriptures on their side that they had the Council of Nice for them but they would have answered them That it was no longer time to dispute that they ought to submit themselves to and acquiesce in the definitions of the Church Since it was the duty of the Faithful to strip themselves of their own Conduct to rest upon that of the Church Nevertheless they did not fail generously to maintain the Truth to dispute and write for it to address themselves not only to the Bishops but to the people and to defend it against that specious name of a Church which they set before them and the words of Saint Hilary upon this subject are worthy of a particular consideration The Church says he terrified men by Banishments and by Prisons and constrained them to believe what she tells them she that her self had never been believed but by the Exile and Prisons which she suffered She which had been only Consecrated by the Persecution of men Bene a dignatione Communicantium She drives away the Priests forgetting that by the Banishment of her Priests she increased She boasts that she is beloved by the world but she could not belong to Jesus Christ unless the world hated her Haec de comparatione traditae nobis olim Ecclesiae nunc quam de perditae res ipsa que in oculis omnium est at que ore clamavit Can any one be rash enough to maintain that he was bound then to refer himself to the Authority of that Church to see with its Eyes to tread in its Steps and to rest himself upon its Conduct Will any say that that handful of good men who have since re-established Christianity was nothing else but a company of Rebels and of presumptuous minds Will they charge their Writing and their Letters to the people with Forgeries and Subornations Will they justifie their being Deposed their Banishments the Persecutions which they so constantly suffered Will they say that the Faithful that heard them were rash and
difficulty to get thither and yet that belonging of right to the examination of all men the darkness of the understanding the easiness wherewith men may deceive themselves the want of necessary helps the ignorance and simplicity of the greatest part of men would not hinder it Those are then no other than frivolous Reasons which cannot take away from men that right that God and Nature have given them They ought therefore to enjoy it at least in some respect to wit for the deciding of the question whether they ought to lose it or no. 13. But it is certain they can never so enjoy it in that regard nor decide that Question without entring upon an examination of all their Doctrines which lets us see yet more and more the absurdity of our Adversaries Principle For there is not any Principle more absurd than that which destroys it self which cannot be established but by making use of a contrary Principle and which precisely can have no place but there where it cannot be of any use But all that may be said of that Principle of those Gentlemen since it is most true that to establish it one must necessarily proceed to examine their Doctrines and that they can never know whether they ought to refer themselves to the Latin Church or examine that Doctrine by themselves till they have made that examination that is to say till there shall be no farther occasion to refer themselves to that Authority of the Latin Church which makes pleasant sport enough This is that which is evidently manifest if one consider it that before one can acknowledge the Authority of the Latin Church it must be supposed that one is assured that among all the Religious Societies that are in the World the Christian is the only one in which one ought to place himself and that can never be known but by one way only which is that of examining its Doctrine and its Worship In effect there is not any one of those external marks that can make that difference The Jews had their Miracles Antiquity Succession an uninterrupted Duration the Holiness of their Patriarchs the Light of their Prophecies the Majesty of their Ceremonies we do not dispute these marks with them and as to Temporal Prosperity they had it heretofore and we are not assured that we have always had that whereof we make such boasting which nevertheless is not very great The Mahometans glory that they have the same things with the consent of the People and the admirable success of their Arms and as for Antiquity which they fail in they say that as Jesus Christ did but succeed Moses so Mahomet also has succeeded Jesus Christ As for the Heathens they had as I have said their Miracles their Saints their Prophets their Ceremonies their Succession their uninterrupted Duration their Temporal Prosperities and if we strive with them about Antiquity and Multitude the advantage will not lye on our side There is then nothing more deceitful than those external appearances separated from their Doctrines they are as proper to make a Jew remain a Jew a Heathen a Heathen and a Mahometan to remain a Mahometan as to make a Christian to remain a Christian whence it follows that to form well that difference and to be assured that the Christian Communion is the only good one one ought to examine its Worship and its Doctrines Moreover before they could acknowledge the Authority of the Latin Church they must suppose that a man is sure that among all the Christian Sects the Latin only is the true Church and that cannot be known but by the examination of its Doctrines Those external marks can be no ways proper for it The Greeks the Abyssines the Nestorians ascribe to themselves Antiquity Succession Miracles an uninterrupted Duration as well as the Latins They have their Saints their Prophets their Ceremonies and their Multitude which is not less considerable and as to worldly Prosperity the Abyssines may boast of it and the Muscovites also who make a part of the Greek Church and who knows whether that of the Latin Church shall never change It is then manifest that they can conclude nothing from those marks separated from their Doctrine they are so ambiguous and uncertain that they cannot fix any setled Judgment upon them concerning the truth of the Latin Church But supposing that they could by those external marks or by any other ways which they would take be assured that the Latin Church was the true Church I say it must necessarily be understood in this Sence to wit that in that visible Communion God brings up and preserves his truly Faithful ones For it is in those only that that name of the visible Church is verified and not in the prophane the wicked and the worldly who are mingled with them and who are none of that Body that is the Spouse of Jesus Christ They must then be assured before they can know whether they ought to refer themselves absolutely to that Body of Pastors that governs the Latin Church that the prophane and the worldly do not prevail in that Body and that they never have prevailed for if they do prevail or if they ever have prevailed they may introduce errours into the publick Ministry and false Worship or suffer them to come in through their negligence or otherwise or scatter abroad the ill Doctrines of the Schools amongst the People favour ill customs and in a word corrupt that Communion as it appears that that did come to pass in the Jewish Church and sometimes in the Christian But how can any be fully assured that it may not be so at present otherwise then by the examining of her Doctrine They ought then to give up that point of external marks our Fathers have gained their cause without going any farther by the Prejudices of Corruption which I have set down in the second and third Chapters But if you take them only as meer conjectures and if you will reckon them to be nothing it is certain that to be assured that there is nothing corrupted in a Communion where God brings up and preserves his true Faithful people that the publick Ministry is pure in all its Doctrines and in its Worship one must of necessity take that way of examination and that examination must be very exact So that before we can enter only upon that Question whether we ought to give to the Latin Church a Soveraign Authority over our Faith and Consciences the discussing of which they know not how to avoid all must be examined from whence it follows that that Principle which I have opposed is absur'd because it destroys it self and none can ever practise it till it cannot be any more of any use and more absur'd yet in that when it would hinder us from examining it constrains us to make an examination as exact as can be thought of CHAP. IX An Examen of those Reasons they alleadge to Establish that Soveraign Authority
of the Prelats in the Latin Church TO defend in some manner a Principle that Scripture Reason the Interest of the Antient Jewish Church and the Christians do so loudly condemn they propound some Inconveniences which arise they pretend from that of the Contrary Principle But it is certain that if it were enough to alleadge those Inconveniences to overthrow those Rights which are found to be so solidly established there is nothing in the world sure since there is nothing so just so reasonable or so necessary which the weakness or the malice of men may not abuse It is necessary to yield to men the right of eating and drinking of Cloathing and Marrying themselves of selling and buying of holding Commerce between themselves of building Houses and Towns and to distinguish themselves by their several Arts and Professions And yet how many Inconveniences are there that arise from all those things It is the same in the usage of the most holy and inviolable things as of Religion it self of which a Libertine says in General because of the Abuses that were made of it Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum If all must be abolisht that is subject to Inconveniences one must abolish every thing Gold and Iron Night and Day Fire and Water would be criminal and the very Air it self which makes us live causes sometimes our death They cannot then take a worse way then that of those Inconveniences to cry down a Right founded upon Nature and upon Grace and Authorized by Jesus Christ by the Prophets and Apostles Let us see nevertheless of what nature those Inconveniencies are One of the most Considerable is That if they allow those who are subject to the Church to Examine the matters of Religion there will be no more any way to keep men in the Unity of the Faith that every one will have a Religion by himself and that by this means they should open a way for Extravagancies and Heresies and by consequence for the intire ruin of the Church since the minds of men are so different and confused that that which pleases one will not please another To Answer to that Objection I would demand of those Gentlemen whether they propose to themselves to find out any humane and efficacious way which shall go so far as actually and effectually to hinder those Extravagances and Heresies or whether they would only establish a Maxim which in supposing that it should be followed and that all men would receive it should contain all in the Unity of the Faith Let them take which of those two sides they please they cannot rationally say any thing The first contains a rash and absurd pretence for to go about to seek a humane means that shall actually hinder all Errors and Heresies is to seek for that which they can never be able to find To retain men in the Unity of the Faith and of True Piety two things are necessary the one That they teach all the pure Truths of God and the other That they give them all a right understanding to the end they should follow it Their Pastors might very well do the first but the second which does not depend on them none but God alone can do And that also he does in regard of all his Elect and truly Faithful for whose sake only there is a Church and Pastors in the World For he bestows on all those his Holy Spirit in that measure that shall suffice to unite them in the same Faith and to hinder them from falling into Errours wholly inconsistent with their Salvation As for the others as he has not ordained their Salvation so he would not actually hinder them from casting themselves into Heresies or into Errors On the contrary he has resolved to permit those strayings the better to distinguish them from his True Children There must be also saith St. Paul Heresies among you that they which are approved may be made manifest among you And elsewhere he says That God should send strong delusions to them that perish that they should believe a lye So that God who alone is Lord of the hearts and minds of men not having propounded that end to himself in establishing his Visible Church to hinder any Heresies from being in the World nor that they should not arise within that very Church it self but only that his Elect and truly Faithful ones should not be infected with them it is a great rashness for those men who cannot dispose hearts as he does to extend not only their desires but their pretensions also farther and to search out a way by which there should not be in effect any Heresie I confess that we ought to desire the destruction of all Heresies that we ought to labour for their Extirpation and that as the Elect and true Children of God are not distinctly known the cares that we should take for them ought to be extended indifferently to all But I say that we cannot make use of any thing for so great a work but those external means which are the pure Preaching of the Truth and Confuting the contrary Errors When their Pastors shall acquit themselves well in that duty they may rest assured that God will bless their conduct and their word not to all men but to the persons of his true Children If their Pastors would urge their pretensions from thence and would find a human expedient that might absolutely hinder those Heresies from touching them and from actually and effectually springing up as well among the good as the wicked I affirm that they would be wiser then God that they would encroach upon his rights that they would hunt for a Chimaera and that by that very means they would change the Ministry into a Tyranny for under that pretence of rooting out those Heresies they would come to be Soveraign Lords over mens Souls and Consciences which cannot nor ought to be suffered and which is so far from being a means to avoid them that it would fill the Church with Heresies If they say they intend only to establish a Maxim which supposing that it would be followed and that all men would receive it would contain all in the Unity of the Faith and that Maxim is That they ought to refer themselves absolutely to their Pastors I say in the first place That that Maxim is as proper to contain men in the Unity of Heresie and of Schism as in the Unity of Faith For the Hereticks and Schismaticks have their Church and their Pastors to whom they should absolutely refer themselves So that they could never discern whether they are in Unity of the Faith or in that of Error and wandring from the Truth if they were not before all things assured that they were in the true Church But who shall warrant us that when they would be so assured of the true Church that men would not divide themselves by different sentiments and that that which pleases one should not displease another What
efficacy But if they may see their Ministry to become so corrupted that their is an eminent danger of loosing their Salvation who can doubt that they ought not to be lookt on only as the Enemies of God and the Church rather then the Ministers and their Pastors and that they should not fail to take heed of them and their Doctrine as pernitious leaven in stead of blindly following them The Duties are then reciprocal between the Pastors and the People The Pastors ought to guide their Flock well to give them good pasture and the people owe them Respect Obedience Teachableness and Love on supposition that the Pastors well acquit themselves of their duty those who are under them will become guilty before God and Men of the Crimes of Rebellion Profaneness and Ingratitude if they do not acquit themselves of theirs But if the Pastors abuse their charges if they overturn the Gospel or if they do any thing coming near to it if they abuse their Titles their Sees their Dignities their Sacerdotal Ornaments all that will signify nothing they owe them no more in that regard either that Respect or that Obedience The Reason is manifest because they ought to respect nothing but the cause of God and upon the Consideration of its saving Truth when then they may see that they withdraw themselves from God and that Truth that respect also which ought to be given to God and his Truth should be withdrawn from them And as to what they say that private men would become Judges of their Pastors where of right those Pastors ought to Judge of Controversies who are above private men this is nothing but a playing with words How many of our Judges are there who Judge us every day without our finding any inconvenience or ill in it They Judge us with a Judgment of Indictment which is a publick Judgment and they Judge us with a Judgment of Distinction which is a private Judgment For they do not bind us blindly to believe that all that they declare is equitable because they so declare it we have in that respect a full liberty to examine those things as they are in themselves though we fail of always presuming in their favour But say they whatsoever liberty we have to examine their Judgments their Judgments must be executed notwithstanding when we our selves believe them unjust I confess it but it is because their Execution consists only in those things or in those external Actions which leave the thoughts of the mind always free and not in an inward acquiescence And this is that that puts a difference between their Sentences and the decisions of Pastors concerning the matters of Religion for the Execution of these latter consists in an acquiscence of the Soul and the Conscience which cannot but examine them in the end and be decided but by the knowledge we have of the Equity and Truth of those Doctrines The same thing may sometimes happen in the Civil Society where in stead of putting in Execution the Commands of Superiours one shall be bound formally to oppose and resist them as when the Sates of a Province or a Governour shall command things prejudicial to the Obedience that one owes to one's Soveraign and which would engage the people in a Rebellion Then we may not only Judge our Judges by a private Judgment but our private Judgment is a thousand times more general and publick then that of those Judges yea though it shall not be accompanied with any formality For those formalities signify nothing when the fidelity which we owe to our Prince is concerned Then neither respect of Magistrates nor consideration of Order nor the Authority of our Governours ought to turn us aside but they must all give place to that Great and Fundamental Duty It is the same thing in a Religious Society God and our Salvation are to be preferred before all things and if it fall out that the Pastors either in their Pulpits or in their Writings or in their Councils would plunge us into errors and into a worship that dishonours God and corrupts his Christian Religion we may not only judge them by a private judgment but we ought also at the same time to labour to make that private judgment to become publick and as general as it can be made and howsoever we do it we do not in any thing withdraw our selves from that fidelity which we all owe to God The Inconveniences that arise from that Conduct ought to be imputed not to private men who do but what they are obliged to do but to the Pastors who abuse their Charge and pervert the rule and natural design of their Ministry But say they Is not this to introduce a private spirit into the Church where we all ought to have but one same spirit which is that of the Church There is saith St. Paul but one Body and but one Spirit and therefore it is that he himself exhorts us to abide all in the same spirit and to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace I answer that there ought to be in the Church in effect but one and the same Spirit but that that ought to be the Spirit of God the Spirit of Truth the Spirit of Wisdom not the spirit of the World not the spirit of Errour God gives his holy Spirit immediatly to all his truly Faithful ones whether they be Pastors or whether they be Lay-men which is in all but one same Spirit though the measure according to which each receives may be different Grace says the Apostle is given unto every one of us according to the measure of the gift of Christ And in that Description of the State of the Church under the new Testament which is set down by the Prophet Joel God says That he will purer out his Spirit upon all flesh that their Sons and their Daughtes shall Prophecy and that he will give this Spirit to his Servants and to his Handmaids Elsewhere God promises his Children That he will give them a new heart and a new spirit and that he will put his Spirit within them Saint Paul teaches the same thing By one Spirit says he we are all Baptized into one Body whether we be Jews or Gentiles whether we be bond or free and have been all made to drink into one spirit Because ye are Children says he to the Galatians God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts and in the Epistle which he addresses to the Saints and Faithful of Ephesus he tells them That they were sealed with the holy Spirit of promise and desiring that they might receive a more abundant measure of it he prayed God to give them the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation St. Peter tells the faithful of his age who were persecuted for the name of Jesus Christ That the Spirit of Glory and the Spirit of God rested upon them In fine the
wrote to Leo with all the respect imaginable and let him see that the Questors and those who had till that time upheld them had dishonoured his See and his Church that as to himself he found himself very unhappy to see that their Calumnies should have prevailed over his Innocence and he further offered to give over that matter of Indulgences and wholly to be silent in it provided that his Adversaries should do the like But whether it was that all that Negotiation of Miltit was but feigned on his part or that in effect his counsel was not approved by those of his Party as Luther himself insinautes it is certain that from the time that that Letter had been drawn from him George Duke of Saxony a Prince that stuck very close to the Interests of the Pope desired that he would make a publick Disputation at Leipsic upon the matters in controversy the dispute was managed the beginning between Eccius and Carolostad concerning Free-will and Grace but they drew in Luther himself upon the subject of Indulgences of Purgatory and the Power of the Pope And they procured almost at the same time from the Universities of Cologn and Lovain a condemnation of divers Articles drawn out of his Books He defended himself against these new Adversaries and made the World see by his publick writings the truth of his Doctrine and the injustice of those Condemnations But within a little after Pope Leo being unwilling to try any thing further published his terrible Bull of Excommunication against him which they call the Bull Exurge There after having earnestly importuned Jesus Christ Saint Peter and Saint Paul with all the Saints in Paradise to come to the succour of the Church of Rome he sets down in particular one and forty Articles of Luthers Doctrine which he declared to be respectively pestilent destructive scandalous false heretical offending pious Ears seducing Souls and contrary to the Catholick Truth and to the Charity to the respect and obedience that was owing to the Church of Rome which is the Mother of all the Faithful and the Mistriss of the Faith and as such severally he condemned them disproved them rejected them and declared that they ought to be rejected by Christians of both Sexes He forbad all Bishops Patriarchs Metropolitans and generally all Church-men and Kings the Emperour the Electors Princes Dukes Marquesses Earls Barons Captains c. and in a word all sorts of men to hold those Articles or to favour them in any manner what soever under the penalty of Excommunication and being deprived of their Lands and of their Goods and treated as infamous Hereticks favourers of Hereticks and guilty of High Treason And as to Luther he complained of him that he would not come to Rome where he would have let him have seen that he had not done so much evil as he believed and he agravated it as a great rashness in him to have appealed to a Council against the Constitutions of Pius the Second and of Julius the Second who would have those punished as Hereticks that made such appeals That therefore he condemned as Hereticks him and all his Adherents if in the space of fifty days they did not renounce all their Errours he forbad all Christians to have any Commerce or Conversation with them or to yeild them any necessary things and gave his Orders to the Emperour to Kings and Princes c. to seize their Persons and to send them to Rome promising great rewards to those who should do so good a work Luther some time after wrote against that Bull and appealed afresh to a Council lawfully called notwithstanding he justified himself with great solidity about all those condemned Articles And it is pertinent to note that among those Articles that the Pope Anathematized as Heretical or Rash or Scandalous and contrary to the Catholick Truth these following Propositions might be found That that Proverb was most true that said That the best Pennance is a good Life that it would be very well if the Church in a Council should ordain that the Laity should receive the Communion in both kinds That the Treasure of the Church from whence the Pope drew his Indulgences is not the Merits of Jesus Christ and the Saints That the Bishop of Rome the Successour of Saint Peter is not the Vicar of Jesus Christ over all the Churches of the world nor that there was any one established by Jesus Christ himself in the Person of Saint Peter That it is not in the power of the Church or of the Pope to make Articles of Faith nor to establish new Laws for Manners or for good Works That tho' the Pope should hold with a great part of the Church an opinion which should not it self be erronious yet it would not be a sin or an heresy to hold a contrary opinion especially in things not necessary to Salvation until a General Council should have disproved the one and approved of the other that the Ecclesiastical Prelats and Secular Princes did not do ill when they abolished the Order of begging Friers That Purgatory could not be proved by the Holy Canonical Scripture These Propositions are declared to be either pestilent or pernicious or scandalous or heretical without specifying any one in particular for the Pope speaks of them only in the whole that they are such So it was that Leo and all his Court managed those matters To affirm that a true amendment of Life a holy and sincere return from Vice to Vertue is the best of all Pennances appeared to be a detestable crime to them To wish that a General Council might establish the Communion of the Eucharist according to the Institution of Jesus Christ and the Custom of the Primitive Church was such an abomination with them as was thought sufficient to deserve the Flames Not to beleive that the Merits of Jesus Christ and of the Saints made up a certain Treasure which neither Faith nor Holiness nor Repentance could give the Faithful any part of but which were to be dispenced only by the way of Indulgences for money pass'd in their Judgments for a Hellish Heresie To hold that our Faith has nothing else but the Word of God for its object and not that of men also and that God alone can impose moral Laws on the Conscience was in their opinion an astonishing wickedness To believe that one may without Herefy hold an opinion contrary to that of the Pope in matters not necessary to Salvation and not determined by any Council was a pestilent errour To give the least blow to the interests of Monks or the Fire of Purgatory was an horrible sacriledge for which there was not any remission After that condemnation the Pope wrote to John Frederick Elector of Saxony earnestly entreating him not to give any more protection to Luther and he sent Hierome Aleander his Nuntio into Germany to cause that condemnation to be executed But Aleander not being able to obtain of
refers to things As to Persons I confess there may be found lively complaints in the writings of the first Reformers against the Abuses of the Court of Rome against the ignorance and negligence of the Prelats against the Scandalous lives of the Clergy against the Tyrannical Government wherewith they ruled the Church I acknowledge also that when they looked upon that Great Body of the Roman Hierarchy its Props its Pretensions its Maxims its Interests its Occupations they could not hinder themselves from speaking of it as an Empire very opposite to that of Jesus Christ but they ought to be so far from laying it to their charge that they said it out of a hatred or an implacable aversion toward the Church of Rome as the Author of the Prejudices does that they ought on the contrary to attribute it to a real compassion which they had for the People of God to see them so ill instructed so ill guided so ill governed and to an ardent desire to procure a good Reformation throughout the whole Body of the Latin Church And the greater their compassion was the more difficult it was to manage that matter without giving some touches to persons in whom the source of all that evil resided and especially in a Time which they saw overspread on all sides with injuries and Calumnies and exposed in diverse places to Rigorous Persecutions 14. Object To that Reproach the Author of the Prejudices adds another which he begins â—o express in these words Although they should have had a right to have drawn away from the bosom of the Church of Rome its Children they had certainly no right to make use of Impostures and Frauds for that purpose and if they did it is a visible conviction that it was the Devil that acted by them and that their pretended Reformation was his work He alleadges in the close a passage of Calvin's wherein he pretends that Calvin calumniated the Church of Rome in laying it to her charge that she had a far greater care of her Traditions then of the Commandments of God and that she reckoned it a lesser sin to be defiled with the debaucheries of the Flesh then not to be confessed or not to have fasted on Friday to have broken all promises then not to have fulfilled a Vow of Pilgrimage and upon this the Author of the Prejudices makes his Exclamation with his usual heat Answ I Answer that Calvin speaks in that Passage not of that which the Roman Church Dogmatically taught but of that which might be seen in the common Practise of his Time and unless they should deny the most clear Truths they cannot deny that the Idea which the Authors themselves of the Church of Rome give us of its deplorable State in the Age of the Reformation does not fully confirm the Testimony of Calvin That which I have set down upon this sad Subject justifies the too little care that the Prelats and other of the Ecclesiasticks took to root out Vices from the midst of their Flocks and settle in their places a True Holiness when they had then a far greater ardour to make mens Traditions to be observed and if we had need to urge this proof further it could be done without doubt with a great deal of ease 15. Object Another kind of Calumny is to lay to the Charge of the Church the Opinions which she either rejects or which she never Authorised as matters of Faith Examples of this may be seen in every Page of the Books of their Ministers as when they reproach the Catholicks with setting up as Articles of Faith the Corruption of the Greek and Hebrew Text the immunity of the Clergy to be of Divine Right the certainty of the Declarations that the Popes make of the Holiness of particular men which they call Canonization the efficacy of Agnus Dei's the Infallibility of the Pope his Temporal Power over Kings his Pre-eminence over Councils the Jurisdiction of the Church over the Souls in Purgatory and many other opinions of that nature that the Church does not prescribe to its Children that she does not insert into the Confession of Faith which she requires of those that return to her and which she never defined by the Voice of her Councils Answ If the Author of the Prejudices would be satisfied about all the Points that he has noted in that Objection he ought to cite those passages of the Ministers against whom he forms his complaints and not to make as he does a Captious heap of divers things wherein he may mix the false and true together Notwithstanding I shall not omit to say by the way something of my own head upon each of those Articles Upon the first I can easily believe that there have been some Ministers who have reproached the Church of Rome with the having Canonized the Corruptions of the Greek and Hebrew Text because that in effect there are a great many such Corruptions in the Vulgar Version which the Council of Trent has Canonized not only in declaring it Authentick and forbidding any to reject upon any pretence whatsoever but also in saying that they ought to be held under the penalty of an Anathema for the Canonical Books of the Bible prout in Ecclesia Catholica legi consueverunt in veteri vulgata Latina editione habentur All the Question therefore may be reduced to this to wit whether we ought to hold under pain of Anathema some ill Translations which are to be found in the Vulgar for the Corruptions of the Greek and Hebrew Text and for us we believe that they cannot rationally contest it As for the Immunity of the Clergy it may be also that some Doctors of the Church of Rome have been reproached for holding it as a matter of Faith because there are some among them that in effect ground it upon the Scripture and every one knows that all that which they hold as out of the Scripture ought to be held as a matter of Faith But they would have said nothing against the Truth when they should have maintained that Pope Leo X. in the Council of Lateran defined That there was none either Divine or humane right that gave the Laity any power over the persons of the Clergy which implies that the Clergy are excepted by Divine right from that general Rule that subjects all the Word to the Higher Powers We all know that our Kings opposed that rash decision but in the end it was a Council that did it which had the Pope for its Head and it belongs to the Author of the Prejudices to tell us whether he believes that that Pope and that Council erred As to the Certainty of Canonizations since there is no body in the Church of Rome that makes any scruple to invocate those Saints which the Pope Canonizes and that moreover they agree in that Maxim of Saint Paul that whatsoever in the matter of Religion is not of Faith
Prejudices means that that visible extension is a perpetual mark of the Orthodox communion that alwayes distinguishes it from impure or heretical communions so that this Orthodox communion as far as it is visible can never be restrained to a few persons and places it is certain that this was not the opinion of S. Augustine nor that of the other Fathers and it is certain also that the celebrated Authors of the Church of Rome reject the Proposition in this sense as false and absurd and that in effect it is manifestly contrary to experience To set forth the truth of what I propound I will begin with experience and as that of our Age presents it self first to our view I say that if we must act at this day according to the principle That the true Orthodox Church ought to be visibly extended over all Nations we must conclude that there is no true Orthodox Church in the world For it is most true that of all the communions which at this day divide Christianity there is not any one to whom this mark can agree I will not say that there are divers parties in the known world which have not so much as yet heard of Christianity nor that there are others who after having received it have absolutely rejected it to embrace the Mahometan Religion I will not here speak of the Greek communion separated from the Roman nor of the Coptick or Nestorian or of the Jacobites or Armenian which evidently have not that visible extension throughout all Nations I will only speak of the Roman and the Protestant as they are at present He must sayes the Author of the Prejudices be wholly blind that can dare to maintain that the society of Calvinists which is wholly shut out of Italy Spain Flanders a great part of Germany Swedeland Denmark Muscovy Asia Africa of almost all America is that which Jesus Christ has spread over all the world But before he argues after this manner he ought to take heed that we cannot say the same thing of the Roman communion For is it not true that it is at this day excluded from Swedeland Denmark a great part of Germany a part of Switzerland a part of Greece Muscovy Africa Aethiopia Persia Tartary China Japan of the Indies and from the greatest part of America And the Author of the Prejudices ought not to pretend the prevailing of some Colonies of Missionaries whom the Pope sends here and there to gain Proselytes For since he will not have it that we should gain any thing by the Colonies of English and Dutch who have establish'd themselves in all the parts of the world why would he help himself by the Missionaries and Pensionaries that the Congregations de fide propaganda maintain in foreign Countreys Why should they be more reckon'd for any thing than those Colonies of English and Dutch who have the exercises of their Religion as free as those of the Roman Communion They are sayes he such Merchants as are in those Countreys only for the sake of Trade But do not those Merchants pray to God in the form of their Religion in what Countreys and with what design soever they are Is it that those Merchants being so much ty'd as they are to their Trading make no open profession of their Religion or that they have not in the greatest part of those places where they are their ordinary Assemblies with their Ministers as well as the Missionaries He must yield in good earnest that the Christians are now divided and separated from one another about matters of faith and worship in their different Societies or communions of which each one has its seat and bounds apart beyond which we cannot say they are visibly extended if we would speak with any reason and that there is no one that is throughout all Nations in the form of a communion of visible Society From whence it follows that all this dispute of the Author of the Prejudices is but a beating the air and which he can never apply to any real subject The Experience of former Ages is not less contrary to the Proposition of the Author of the Prejudices than that of our Age. For if we consult History we shall find that it has fallen out often that an Heretical communion has spread it self every where while the Orthodox communion was so limited that it did not seem to take up any space If in the time of the Arians they had disputed by this principle by which the Author of the Prejudices would decide our differences I mean if they would have treated that communion as Heretical that was not visibly spread over all the Nations and that as Orthodox which was the Arians had easily overcome The Heresie of the Arians and Eunomians sayes S. Jerom possess'd all the East except Athanasius and Paulinus S. Hilary sayes the same thing The greatest part of the Ten Provinces of Asia excepting Eleusius and some others do not truly know God In those time sayes the Author of the Life of S. Gregory Nazianzen the Church was oppressed by the Arian Heresie many Bishops were banished and vexed by torments and calumnies a thousand wayes many Presbyters and many numerous Flocks were brought down to the utmost misery exposed to the injuries of the weather as no more having any house of prayer where they might meet That Heresie had almost fill'd all the Earth and it triumph'd being upheld by the power of the Emperour so that good men had not so much as the justice of the Laws against the wicked And because the Pastors or to say better the concealed Wolves under the appearance of Pastors had the liberty to drive the Orthodox Bishops out of the Churches who alone were worthy to serve Jesus Christ the Soveraign Bishop it hapned that some overcome with fear others deceived by fair words others gained by money others surprized through their own simplicity embrac'd that Heresie and opened their bosoms and gave their communion to their adversaries This was that that oblig'd the Fathers to elevate the little number and the little flock above extension and multitude Where are those men saith Gregory Nazianzen who reproach us with our poverty and insolently boast themselves of their riches who would define the Church by multitude and contemn the little flock They measure Divinity they weigh the people in the ballance they esteem the illiterate and cover with injuries the lights of the world they heap together the common stones and despise the pretious not remembring that the more the thick darkness surpasses in number the Stars the more the ordinary stones surpass the pretious in quantity the more those Stars and pretious stones surpass the ordinary stones in purity and excellency This Father who had seen in his time the Hereticks masters of the whole Church and their communion spread very wide and far in the East and in the West while the Orthodox durst not appear was so far from having
the Faith and the True Orthodox Church to be regulated by that extension that he made on the contrary this extension a ground of reproach to the Arians taking that for a mark of Heresie which the Author of the Prejudices would have us take for a mark of Orthodoxy Are you ignorant sayes he that the faith as miserable and forsaken as it is is a thousand times more pretious than impiety in splendor and abundance Is it so that you prefer the multitude of the Canaanites before one only Abraham or all the inhabitants of Sodom before one only Lot or all the Midianites to one only Moses Notwithstanding you know that these Saints were but strangers and foreigners among those people I pray tell me whether the three hundred that lapped the water with Gideon were not more to be esteemed than all those thousands who cowardly forsook him whether the servants of Abraham who were few in number were not to be preferr'd to all those Kings who with their innumerable Armies were overcome But I pray yet farther tell me how you understand that which is said when the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea a remnant only shall be saved and this other passage I have reserv'd to my self seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal The matter will not go as you imagine no without doubt for God takes no pleasure in a multitude As for you you reckon your thousands but God reckons those who work out their salvation you heap up a great pile of dust but I assemble the vessels of election There is nothing so great before God as the pure Doctrine and a soul that is filled and adorned with the Tenets of the Truth S. Athanasius or if you will Theodoret is not less express about the subject of a small number in opposition to that extension and multitude than S. Gregory Nazianzen Shall we not sayes he hearken to Jesus Christ who sayes That many are called and few chosen that straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life and few there be that find that gate or this way What man of good understanding will not rather chuse to be among this small number that enters into life than to be joyned to this multitude that goes to perdition If we had lived in the age of S. Stephen should we not have rather chose his party though it should have been forsaken by all else buried under stones and exposed to all manner of reproaches than the party of that multitude which thought that the faith ought to follow the greatest number One man alone who has the Truth on his side is more to be esteemed than ten thousand rash men and this is what the Scriptures of the Old Testament confirm for when millions of men fell under Gods sword one Phineas alone oppos'd himself in the breach and put a stop to the anger of the Lord. If he had not resisted that torrent which bore down all the others if he had approved that which the multitude did he had never himself been commended above all he had never put a stop to the flood of divine vengeance nor had saved that remnant which was after that the object of Gods mercy It was therefore a thing worthy of praise that one man alone should boldly maintain right and justice against the opinion of the multitude Go if you will and be drowned with the multitude that perished in the deluge but give me leave to save my self in the Ark with that small number Be consumed if you please with the inhabitants of Sodom I shall not fail to go out of it with Lot alone Thus these Fathers spoke concerning the state whereto the Orthodox communion might be sometimes reduced and into which it had been in effect reduced which evidently shews us that this visible extension is not a perpetual mark of the True Church and that it is not so very necessary that this arguing should be always just Your society is not spread every where over the world therefore it is not the Church This Vincentius Lirinensis has also acknowledg'd in his Admonition against Heresies for he acknowledges that it may sometimes fall out that Heresie invades the whole Church and he makes a question what he ought to do in that case What ought we to do sayes he when some new contagion endeavours to infect not one part only but the whole Body of the Church in general Quid si novella aliqua contagio non jam portiunculam sed totam pariter Ecclesiam commaculare conetur What visible extension could the Orthodox communion have throughout all Nations in those unhappy times in which the same Vincentius Lirinensis sayes that the greatest part of the good were put to death or imprisoned or banish'd or condemned to the Mines or hid in Desarts and Caves exposed to savage Beasts to hunger thirst and nakedness Horum pars maxima interdictis urbibus protrusi atque extorres inter deserta speluncas feras saxa nuditate fame siti affecti attriti tabefacti sunt What visible extension could that same Orthodox communion have in the time wherein S. Athanasius cryed out after this manner Who is there among the servants of Jesus Christ that these rebells have not calumniated or whom they have not lain snares for Who is there that the Emperour has not banished upon their false accusations he who has alwayes so readily hearkned to them who has alwayes so constantly refused to hear whatsoever should be said against them and who never refused to believe all that they have said against others Where now a dayes shall we find a Church that worships Jesus Christ with liberty If Churches have any piety they are in danger if they dissemble they are alwayes in fear The Emperour has fill'd all with wickedness and hypocrisie as far as things depend on him I know that there are every where many persons who have piety and a love of Jesus Christ but in what place so ever they are they are forced either to conceal themselves as the Prophets and as the great Elias till they find some faithful Abdias who should hide them in a Cave or to to go dwell in the Desarts For it is most true that these wicked men make use of the same calumnies against the good that Jezebell made use of against Naboth and the Jews against Jesus Christ And the Emperour who stirs up himself to defend Heresie and to overthrow the Truth as Ahab overthrew Naboth 's Vineyard refused nothing to the desires of these Hereticks because these Hereticks also spake to him only according to his desires The Fathers had then no regard to seek for the true Church either in that visible extension or in that temporal glory or splendor or in a word any where else than in the True Faith and there it is that they seek for it in effect The Church sayes the
Author of the Commentary on the Psalms attributed to S. Jerom does not consist in her Walls but in the truth of her Tenets She is where the true Faith is For as to the other it is but fifteen or twenty years since the walls of these Churches were in the power of Hereticks They possess'd all these Churches which you see But the Church was where the True Faith was As the Author of the Prejudices has not scrupled sometimes to make use of the Testimonies of our own Authors when he thought he could draw any advantage from them he will not it may be take it ill if I oppose to him also upon the subject about which we now dispute the Testimony of two men famous in the Roman communion and who well deserve to be heard the one is Driedo whom Bellarmine calls a most learned man and the other is Bellarmine himself both very great defenders of the Church of Rome See here therefore what Cardinal Bellarmine hath wrote in the name of both in his Controversies of the Church We must note sayes he according to the Doctrine of Driedo that it is not necessary that the Catholick Church should have that extension in all places all at once or in the same time that is to say that there should be the faithful in all Provinces and that it is enough if that be successively done From whence it follows that when there should remain but one Province alone that should retain the true Faith this Province would not fail to be truly and properly called the Catholick Church provided that we see clearly that it is the same Church which sometimes or at divers times is found spread over all the world Could any one have more clearly contradicted the Author of the Prejudices He would that this visible extension through all Nations should be a perpetual mark of the True Church and these here say that it is sufficient that it is sometimes and even in divers times successively he would that this extension should be the mark of the Church for all following Ages and these here maintain that it is not necessary He would that this reasoning should be alwayes just your society is shut up in a small part of the world Therefore it is not the Church and these here say that when there should remain but one only Province that should retain the true faith this Province would not cease to be properly and truly called the Catholick Church But it may be that Bellarmine had not observed that his opinion and Driedo's favoured the Donatists and that it was contrary to the doctrine of S. Augustine This may be so in effect not only because a man in writing may not have all things in view but because also at the bottom the sentiment of these Doctors is very remote from that of the Donatists and that it does not encounter that of S. Augustine It is yet true that Bellarmine saw that they could make that Objection which he has prevented and answered this I say to the end the Author of the Prejudices may see that this which he has treated of as an Argument and as a convincing Argument for which he has made two Chapters Bellarmine has look'd on as a very trivial objection which he proposes and resolves in a few words They will say sayes he that this is to fall into the Error of Petilianus and the Donatists who maintain'd that in truth the Church had been spread over all the world but that it was afterwards lost in all the Provinces and remain'd no where but in Africa which S. Augustine disputes against I answer that the Error of the Donatists consisted in two things the first that they would have it that the Church should be in Africa only in a time wherein it manifestly increased throughout all the world the second in that they could not connect their Church of Africa with that which had before been spread through all the world for in that Church there they had alwayes good and bad as S. Augustine proves whereas they would compose theirs of the righteous only This Answer of Bellarmine overthrows all the pretensions of the Author of the Prejudices for it establishes these following Propositions 1. That Visible Extension is not a mark of the true Church but in a certain time that is to say when we see it manifestly increase throughout all the world from whence it follows that this mark is vain at other times 2. That the Argument of S. Augustine concludes only for the time then being by reason of that manifest fruitfulness from whence it follows that it is very impertinent that the Author of the Prejudices goes to apply it to these last Ages wherein we maintain the field of the Church has been fruitful only in Errors and Superstitions 3. That if the Donatists had accused all the world to have fallen into Heresie and if they had said by consequence that it was not the time of fruitfulness for the Church it had been in vain for S. Augustine to alledge to them the visible extension of his Church to exempt himself from entring into the discussion of that accusation from whence it follows that it is also in vain that the Author of the Prejudices propounds the visible extension of his since we say that it is fallen into fundamental errors 4. That the Argument of S. Augustine concluded because the Donatists agreed that his communion was Orthodox from whence it follows that that of the Author of the Prejudices concludes nothing since we question that Orthodoxy of his Church 5. That by consequence visible extension is not a mark that can make us know which is the True Church when the dispute is between two Societies contesting that Orthodoxy between themselves but at farthest only when the dispute is between two Societies that mutually own one another to be Orthodox from whence it follows that the Author of the Prejudices makes use of this mark to no purpose since our chief question is to know whether the Church of Rome is Orthodox or no. All these consequences which flow naturally from the answer of Bellarmine contradict the Argument of the Author of the Prejudices and it concerns him to see after what manner he can decline the Authority of this Cardinal But some will say lastly It may be Bellarmine was deceived and that he had not well understood the state of the question which was between S. Augustine and the Donatists nor well comprehended the true Hypothesis of that Father I confess that this may be but it may be also that he did well understand it and that the misconstruing should be on the side of the Author of the Prejudices This is that which must be further cleared and for this effect we must note a thing that the Author of the Prejudices seems not to have comprized which is that if the Donatists had accused the Society of S. Augustine of Heresie S.
the state of grace where the goodness of God had sent the Gospel in declaring to them that they ought to fear being cut off as the Jews from the Covenant of God he addresses himself to the whole body of the Gentiles converted to Jesus Christ Ad totum Gentium corpus adds he And certainly that horrible Apostasy of the whole world which has fallen out since manifestly shews us that this advice of S. Paul was not unprofitable For God having diffused in so great an extension of Countreys almost in a moment the waters of his Grace so that Religion flourished every where within a very little while after the truth of the Gospel was vanished and the treasure of salvation banished out of the Earth But whence could that change come unless from this that the Gentiles were fallen away from their Call and therefore it is that he clearly professes in a Letter to Melancthon that they had separated from all the world Plusquam enim absurdum est postquam discessionem à toto mundo facere coacti sumus alios ab aliis desilire The Author of the Prejudices yet further makes use of an Article of our Confession of Faith to prove the same thing which sayes That we believe that no one ought of his own authority to thrust himself into the government of the Church but that that ought to be done by election while it is possible and while God permits it Which exception we emphatically add to it because it has failed sometimes and even in our time in which the state of the Church was interrupted till God had raised up men after an extraordinary manner to order the Church a new which was in ruine and desolation Grounding himself on these two passages he insults over Monsieur Vigerius the Author of the Discourse in the Book of the Perpetuity of the Faith because he had declared That none of us had ever said that it could be possible that the Church should no longer subsist and that he defied Monsieur Arnaud to shew him one only Author among us who had thought so Before he had expressed such desires sayes the Author of the Prejudices it would have been well to the purpose that he had better informed himself about that which not only some Authors of his Sect have wrote but the Master of all their Authors which is Calvin who sayes a great deal more than that which is contained in that Book of the Perpetuity of the Faith since he looks upon the Church not only as possible to perish but as having effectually done so for many Ages so far as to say that the threatning of S. Paul which he pretends to be spoken to the whole body of the Gentiles had its effect that all the Gentiles had fell from their Call through a general Apostasy that the light of the Gospel had vanished in respect of them and that they had lost the treasure of salvation It is upon this foundation that he builds his Proposition and pretends to make us pass for worse men than the Donatists But all this is nothing else but an effect of the unjust and violent hatred that this Author has conceiv'd against us and Monsieur Vigerius had reason to deny that which he has denyed As the dispute here is only to know what our Hypothesis is upon the point of the perpetual subsistence of the Church it would be sufficient methinks to stop the mouth of the Author of the Prejudices to tell him that he troubles himself to no purpose that we do not believe that intire extinction of the Church throughout all the world which he layes to our charge and that he has mistaken the meaning of Calvin and that of our Confession of Faith for there is no likelihood that he should better know what we believe than our selves nor that he should be a more faithful Interpreter of the sense of Calvin and that of our Confession of Faith than we our selves Notwithstanding to make the Character of the Author of the Prejudices more and more known and what judgement we ought to make of that which he propounds when he speaks with the greatest confidence it will be good to relate here the testimony that Monsieur the Cardinal of Richelieu has given to the Protestant Churches concerning that that they believe and teach upon the subject of the perpetual subsistence of the Church until the end of the world For we might say that he had the Author of the Prejudices in his view and wrote about this matter only to confute him There is not sayes he any point in controversie between our Adversaries and us about which their Confessions of Faith speak so clearly and agree so uniformly as this which I may truly say ought not to be put into the number of the controverted points The Confession of Ausburg which may be said to be as well the Rule as the source and origine of all the other Confessions of Faith of our Adversaries sayes in express terms that the Church ought perpetually to remain one and holy That of Saxony sayes that the Article of the Creed which declares the Church Holy and Catholick was inserted therein only to confirm the faithful against the doubts that they might have of the stability of the Church That of the Switzers does not only affirm this truth but sets down the same reason for it that I my self have made use of here above since God sayes it would from all eternity that men should be saved we must acknowledge this truth that the Church has alwayes been for the time past that she subsists for the present and that she will do so till the end of the world The Scotch holds this Article to be so undoubtedly true that it compares the belief of it to that of the Mysterie of the Trinity saying That as the faithful believe the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost so they also constantly believe the perpetuity of the Church The Flemish professes the same truth and gives the reason altogether founded upon the Regality of Jesus Christ which being perpetual supposes in all times some subjects over whom he must reign The French Confession alone sayes nothing upon this occasion but it is so far from saying nothing of it through the difficulty that they found in this point that on the contrary the certainty which they had of it was in my opinion the cause of their silence She does not therefore it may be speak any thing because she did not think she could doubt of so evident a truth of which her founders have spoke so clearly for her Luther teaches it in terms so express that he makes perpetuity to enter into the definition of the Church as a quality that making a part of its essence is altogether inseparable from it He draws the duration of the Church from an Article of the Creed and the words of Jesus Christ which bind us to believe it saying that it is an
them do all that they please we are firm and fixed upon two Principles against which we are sure they cannot do any thing The one That if our Communion Teaches the True Doctrine if it has the True Worship and the True Rules of Christian Sanctity to a degree sufficient for Salvation and if the Causes for which we separated our selves from the Church of Rome were Just God nourishes and preserves his True Faithful Ones in our Communion whatsoever mixture there may be of Worldly Wicked and Hypocrites in it The other That if God nourishes and preserves his truly Faithful in our Communion we are the True Church of God that which has a Right to be in a Society and to which all the other Rights that follow that of a Society belong of Assemblies Ministry Sacraments Government Discipline and by Consequence we are the Church which succeeds not only de Jure but de Facto the Church of the Apostles that of the Ages following and even that which was immediately before the Reformation These two Propositions are framed in clear and distinct Terms they have neither Ambiguity nor Equivocation but I hold also that they are of a certain and indisputable Truth For there neither is nor ever was there any other True Church then that of the Truly Faithful and there never will be any other The Holy Scripture sets down no other Reason will not suffer us to acknowledge any other The Fathers never owned any other This is the constant and evident Principle of Saint Augustine as may be seen in the Fourth Chapter of the Third Part and it is also the Principle of the other Fathers as may be Justified by almost an infinite Number of passages The Antient Catholick Church says Clemens of Alexandria is but one only Church which assembles in the Vnity of one only Faith by the will of one only God and the Ministry of one only Lord all those who are before Ordained that is to say whom God has predestinated to be Just having known them before the Foundation of the World Where is the place where Jesus Christ should dwell says Origen It is the Mountain of Ephraim which signifies a fruitful Mountain but where are those fruitful Mountains among us where Jesus Christ dwels They are those on whom the fruits of the Spirit Joy Peace Patience Charity and other vertues may be found They are those fruitful Mountains which bring forth fruit to Jesus Christ and which are eminent for knowledge and hope And a little after The Grace of the Holy Spirit has gone over to the People of the Gentile and their Antient Solemnities are come to us because we have with us the True High-Priest after the Order of Melchizedec True Sacrifices are offered up amongst us that is to say the Spiritual Sacrifices and it is among us that he builds with living Stones the Temple of God which is the Church of the living God And elsewhere The Church desires to be united to Jesus Christ but note that the Church is a Society of the Saints And further elsewhere explaining those words Thou art Peter and upon this Rock I will build my Church The Church says he that God builds consists in all those who are perfect and are full of those words thoughts and actions that lead to blessedness and a little lower How ought we to understand those words The Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it For that expression is ambiguous is it the Rock that he speaks of or if it be of the Church is it that the Rock and the Church are but one and the same thing This latter I believe to be True for the Gates of Hell prevail neither against the Rock upon which Jesus Christ has built his Church nor against the Church according to that which is said in the Proverbs That the way of the Serpent is not found upon the Rock If the Gates of Hell do prevail against any there is neither that Rock upon which Jesus Christ builds the Church nor the Church that Jesus Christ builds upon the Rock For that Rock is inaccessible to the Serpent and stronger then the Gates of Hell And as to the Church as it is the Building of Jesus Christ she can never let in the Gates of Hell against her those Gates may very well prevail against every man that is without the Church and separated from that Rock but never against the Church Jesus Christ says Saint Ambrose knows those that are his and as to those who do not belong to him he does not vouschafe even to know them And elsewhere God called his Tabernacle Bethlehem because the Church of the Righteous is his Tabernacle and there is a Mystery in it for Bethlehem is Situate upon the Sea of Galilee on the East side which signifies to us that every Soul that is worthy to be called the Temple of God or the Church may be built upon the waves of this World but can never be drowned it may be encountred but can never be overthrown because it represses and calms the wild impetuousness of sufferings It looks upon the Shipwraecks of others while it self is safe from danger always ready to receive the illumination of Jesus Christ and to rejoyce under his Rays And further elsewhere he says Expresly That as the Saints are the Members of Jesus Christ so the wicked are the Members of the Devil Saint Hierome Teaches the same thing The Church says he which is the Assembly of all the Saints is called in the Scripture the Pillar and ground of Truth because she has in Jesus Christ an eternal firmness And in the Exposition of the Song of Songs he lays down this Maxim That the Church is the Assembly of all the Saints and that she is brought in speaking in the Canticles as if all the Saints were but one person And even the Author of the Commentary on the Psalms ascribed to Saint Hierome Explaining these words of the Prophet I will drive away from the City of the Lord all the workers of Iniquity The City of the Lord says he is the Church of the Saints the Congregation of the Just I do not deny that the Fathers sometimes give a very large extent to the Church when they consider it as mingled with almost an infinite number of the wicked and the Worldly as we have frequently explained it already and it is to this Idea that they refer their comparisons of a Field of the Air and the rest which we have often mentioned But it is certain That when the Question is to be decided which of the two Parties that make up that mixed Body is the Church that they unanimously agree to give that Title to the truly Faithful and to the Righteous only and that they deprive the wicked and the worldly of it and it is for this Reason that Saint Augustine always distinguishes in that extent of the mixt Church two People
noted were not one and the same Church with that of the Apostles If then he can do neither the one nor the other he ought to look to it how he means that his Church should be the True Church of Jesus Christ for it is enough as to us to find our selves conformable to the Church of the Apostles since that being as we are certain that it is the same Body that God has Established upon Earth to which Jesus Christ has promised a perpetual subsistence and without which we should very difficultly know precisely how he has Executed his promise we should no ways doubt that we were the same Church which has subsisted even down to the Time of the Reformation For when we should be ignorant of the manner how it has subsisted when we should not be able to understand that we should be notwithstanding certain that it has subsisted since the word of Jesus Christ is inviolable and none can call it in question without impiety whence it follows that we are not a new Church but the same which has always abode and which was immediately before the Reformation That way which we hold to assure our selves of this Truth is not only good solid and certain but it is yet further the only one that any Communion can or ought to hold if it would be certain with a good Conscience that it was the true Church of Jesus Christ which has always subsisted and which will always subsist I would say it ought to compare it self with the Church of the Apostles to know whether it be conformable to that and as to what respects the following Ages it ought to rest assured upon the word of Jesus Christ who has said that he will be with his until the end of the World for that certainty arises from thence that being one with the Church of the Apostles it is also one with that of all the Ages following But if he will take another way and say that Communion is the same with the Church of the fifteenth or sixteenth Age therefore it is the same with that of the Apostles because that Jesus Christ has promised that his Church shall always subsist it is evidently to expose himself to Error and Illusion and to follow a very false and deceitful way of Reasoning The Reason is evident because by this means one is liable to take that for the Church in the 15 or 16 Age which it may be is not so For in that visible Body which they call the Church mixed there are two Parties the one which is properly the Church and the other which is not the one which is the Wheat that the Son of God has sown and the other which is the Tares sown by the hand of the Enemy the one which is the good seed and the other which is the chaff But it may so fall out that the Tares should exceed the Wheat and that a heap of chaff should cover the good seed and by consequence the conformity which they pretend to have with that Church might be nothing else but a conformity with the Chaff and the Tares and not with the Wheat which would be the greatest of all Illusions But if they took the former way they would be in no danger of falling into that Error because we know that in the Church of the Apostles the Wheat surmounted the Tares the good grain the Chaff and that that which appeared to their Eyes was of Jesus Christ and not of the wicked one whence it follows that they could not be deceived in taking one Unity for another This then is the way that we hold and which by the Grace of God gives us great peace of Conscience those who follow the other ought to take heed that they go not from it See here my first Answer the second is That that which regards the Essence of the Church never ought to be confounded with that which regards only its Condition The Church as I have so often already said consists only in the truly Just and Faithful and not in that confused heap of the worldly who Assemble with them under the same Ministry and who partake of the same Sacraments That therefore which makes the Essence of the Church is the True Faith Piety and Charity and it is most true that those Vertues cannot be without the true Doctrine disintangled from all those Errors which separate us from the Communion of one only God and the Mediation of one only Jesus Christ Whence it follows That the True and pure Doctrine is the Essence of the Church But it is also true that while the Foundation of the True Doctrine remains in a Communion and there is yet left there some liberty to the Minds and Consciences of men for the choice of the Objects of the Faith and Practice of the Actions of Religion how impure soever that Communion may be whatsoever Errors may be Taught there whatsoever false Worship they may practise there how corrupted soever the Publick Ministry may be there is always a means there to separate the good from the bad and to secure one's self from this in holding to the other without falling into Hypocrisy or acting against the Dictates of ones Conscience by false shews But I affirm this to be the Condition of that Visible Communion that we call the Latin Church immediately before the Reformation I acknowledge that Transubstantiation was believed there the Real presence the Sacrifice of the Mass the merit of good Works Purgatory human Satisfactions Indulgences the Monarchy of the Pope that they religiously Worshipped the Images of God there and those of the Saints that in those days they gave a Religious Worship to Reliques that they adored the Eucharist there as being the very person of Jesus Christ that they then Invocated the Saints and in a Word that they then believed and practised all that which they now believe and practise in the Church of Rome But the foundation of Christianity was as yet there and we may truly say that in that good which there was there they had light enough to reject that which was bad That Commandment alone Thou shalt Worship one only God was enough to let a good Soul know that he ought not to adore either Saints or Angels or to call upon them or render any Religious Worship to their Images and Reliques nor to take any Creature for the Object of this Devotion The Doctrine of the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the Cross and that of his sitting on the Right hand of God was sufficient to make them reject those of the Sacrifice of the Mass the Real presence Transubstantiation the Adoration of the Host Haman Satisfactions Indulgences and Purgatory For it is true that the Religion then was composed of two contradictory Parties that overthrew one another those who took things on the wrong side destroyed the good by the bad for in adoring for Example the Saints and Angels they overthrew that good Doctrine Thou
which had alwayes Subsisted notwithstanding the Corruptions wherein they were plunged In a word they did not set up any thing new for which they can with any Colour of Reason require an immediate Mission either from God or Jesus Christ his Son We speak therefore here only of the same Ordinary Ministry that the Apostles established in the Christian Church as they called or formed it and which was there appointed to help its Preservation and Purgation This is that Ministry which we do not pretend to have a new but that Antient and perpetual one which Jesus Christ and his Apostles left to the Church when they were Converted to the Christian Faith 3. In the Third Place we must know that to Judge well of the Validity or Invalidity of a Ministry we ought to Consider it in three Respects 1. In Respect of the things themselves that are taught and practised in it 2. In Respect of the Body that is to say the Society where it is exercised 3. In Respect of the Persons who exercise it in that Society In Regard of the first the Ministry of the Jews the Pagans the Mahometans is Wicked and Sacrilegious because the things that are taught there are Impious In the Second the Ministry of the Donatists and Luciferians which was good and Christian in it self because there was taught and practised nothing ill in it yet it was notwithstanding Vitious because it was exercised in Schismatical Societies which had no right to have a Ministry apart and to live in aState of Separation For the Third the Ministry of an Intruder an Usurper a Simoniack howsoever good it be in it self however it be set up in a Lawfull Society that is to say in the true Church yet it is notwithstanding bad and Unlawfull through the Defect of his Personal Call 4. In the Fourth Place we must here before we go any further make Use of the same Distinction upon this Subject of the Ministry that we have used in the Preceding Chapter upon the Subject of the Church I mean that we ought to place a great Difference between that which makes the Essence of the Ministry and that which belongs only to its State For that which is Essential to the Gospel Ministry cannot be changed so as to make another Ministry and by Consequence a False Sacrilegious and Criminal Ministry since there can be but one alone good and Lawful and on the contrary the Essence of a Ministry remaining the same and Intire it must needs be said that it is the same Ministry though as to what Respects its State it should have received a Change The Essence of the Gospel Ministry Consists in the teaching the saving Christian Truth without excluding any Article that is necessary to the Subsistance of the True Faith Piety and Holiness in dispensing the true Sacraments that Jesus Christ has Established in his Church and in guiding the People in such a manner as helps to preserve the Religious Society or which at least does not absolutely destroy it It s State is either good or bad the Good State is then when there is such a Purity in the Ministry that only Christian Truths are taught there and wherein those are taught in all their Force and Natural Beauty with all the Diligence and Care that men assisted by the Grace of God are capable of and when the Sacraments also are purely administred according to the Institution of Jesus Christ without Addition or Diminution and with all the Decency Modesty Simplicity Gravity Circumspection that those Mysteries of the Christian Religion require so that God may be Glorified and his Kingdom more and more established in the Hearts of men and when further the Church is Governed by Just Wise Prudent Charitable and well Executed Laws after a way that does not destroy but Edify In Fine that Good Consists also in this that those who Exercise this Ministry receive it by Just and Lawful waies that are proper to draw the Blessing of God upon them and their Labours and that they behave themselves worthily quitting themselves with a good Conscience in the Charge Committed to them The bad Estate of the Church on the contrary is then when that Ministry is found to be mingled with Errours and Superstitions when the Sacraments are Altered and Corrupted when the Government of it is worldly or unjust or Tyrannical or Confused when those who fill up that Ministry take it by ill scandalous and unlawfull wayes and behave themselves unworthily in it The Good State of the Ministry is a thing that is the most to be wished for in the World and most proper to preserve the Faith Piety Holiness Peace Comfort and Publick Rejoicing in the Church and the bad State is the most to be feared of any thing in the World and that which we ought to Labour the most to Remedy Nevertheless we are not to think that the Ministry may not yet Subsist in that bad State as our Bodily Life does not cease to Subsist in the midst of Languishing and heaps of Diseases 5. In the fifth place we ought Carefully to distinguish the Ministry considered precisely in it self and the same Ministry in as much as it is Occupied or possessed by persons who are Invested in it or if you will we ought to distinguish the Ministry and the Ministers for there is a very great Difference between the one and the other as in a civil Society there is a great difference between the Magistracy and the Magistrate The Magistracy is an Office the Magistrate is a Person who possesses that Office the Office remains allwayes the persons are changed by Death or otherwise This Distinction is not hard to be conceived but it is nevertheless of very great Use in the Matter we are upon For the Ministry Considered in its self is of an immediatly Divine Establishment Whereas the Persons that are raised to it are raised thither by means of men and if their Call be divine as it is in Effect it is no otherwise then mediately so for they are men who call them to it although they do it by the Authority of God It is then certain that when God has established the Ministry he has not only established all that which it ought to have Essential to it but he has also Established it de Jure and de facto in a good State I mean he has not only laid an Obligation upon Ministers faithfully to discharge all the Functions of so great a Charge but that he has even chosen Persons who have most faithfully acquitted themselves of it But it has not been alwayes the same in those who have been called by men for as humane Judgments are so short-sighted that they cannot pierce through the Hearts of men and as they are mixed with a great many Imperfections the Ministry may be Committed to persons who are Insensibly Corrupted either through their Ignorance or through other Inclinations yet more Criminal then Ignorance and it is
naturally goes before the Ministry it does not depend upon the Ministry but the Ministry on the contrary depends upon it as in the Civil Society the Magistracy depends upon the Society and not the Society upon the Magistracy In the Civil Society the first thing that must be thought on is that Nature made men afterwards we conceive that she Assembled and United them together and lastly that from that Union that could not subsist without Order Mastistracy proceeded It is the same thing in a Religious Society the first thing that Grace did was to produce Faith in the Hearts of men after having made them believe she United them and form'd a mutual Communion between them and because their Communion ought not to be without Order and without Government from thence the Ministry arose So that a Lawful Ministry is after the True Church and depending upon it It is not a Lawful Ministry that makes it to be the True Church for it is so by the Truth of its Faith and it would yet be so when it actually had not any Ministers but it is the True Church that makes the Ministry to be Lawful since it is from the Truth of a Church that the Justice of its Ministry proceeds The Argument therefore of the Author of the Prejudices involves the Dispute in a ridiculous Circle for when he would prove that we are not the True Church because we have not a Lawful Ministry we maintain on the contrary That we have a Lawful Ministry because we are the True Church And he cannot say that we are the cause of the ridiculous Circle because our way of Reasoning follows the Order of Nature and his does not follow it I omit that his first Proposition which is Where there is no Lawful Ministry there is no True Church is Equivocal For either he understands by that Lawful Ministry Ministers actually Established or else he means a Right to Establish them If the former his Proposition is false for the True Church may be without having actually any Ministers that is no ways impossible as I have already shewn And if he means the latter his Proposition is not to his purpose for it would maintain that the Society of the Protestants has a full and entire Right to set up Ministers for its Government supposing that it had the True Faith as it may appear by what I have said and as it will appear yet more clearly by the following Observation 8. I say then in the eighth place That the Body of the Church that is to say Properly and Chiefly the Society of the truly Faithful not only has the Right of the Ministry but that it is also that Body that makes a Call Lawful of persons to that Office This Truth will be confirmed by what I have already shewn without any further need of new Proofs But as the Question concerning the true Fountain whence that Call proceeds is it self alone almost all the difference that is between the Church of Rome and us about this matter and that moreover it is extreamly Important to the Subject we are upon It is necessary for us to examine it a little more carefully They cannot then take it ill that I insist a little more largely upon this Observation then I have done upon the rest To make it as clear as I can possibly I propose to Treat of three Questions The first shall be To know whether naturally a Call belongs to the Pastors only excluding the Laity or whether it belongs to the whole Body of the Church The Second Whether in case it belongs to the whole Body of the Church it can be said that the Church can of it self spoil it self of its right or whether it has lost it any way that it could be supposed to have And the Third Whether the Body of the Church may confer Calls immediately by it self or whether the Church is alwayes bound to confer them by means of its Pastors As to the first of these Questions All the Difficulty it can have comes only from the false Idea of a Call that is ordinarily formed in the Church of Rome For first They make it a Sacrament properly so called and they name it the Sacrament of Orders From whence the thought readily arises that the Body of the People cannot confer a Sacrament They Imagine next That that Sacrament impresses a certain Character which they call an Indelible Character and which they conceive of as a Physical Quality or an Absolute Accident as they speak in the School and as an Inherent Accident in the Soul of the Minister They perswade themselves further that Jesus Christ and his Apostles left that Sacrament and that Physical Quality in trust in the hands of the Bishops to be communicated by none but them With that they mix a great many Ceremonies and External Marks as Unction and the Shaving which they call the Priesty Crown They add to all that Priestly Habits the Stole the Alb the Cope the Cross the Miter the Rochet Hood Pall c. They make Mysterious Allegories upon these Ceremonies and those Ornaments they distinguish those Dignities into divers Orders they frame a Hierarchy set out by the Pompous Titles of Prelats Primates Arch-Bishops Patriarchs Cardinals c. They write great Books upon all these things and the half of their Divinity is taken up in explaining their Rights Authority Priviledges Immunities Apostolick Grants Exceptions c. What ground is here that all good men should not believe that the Church-men are at least men of another kind from all others and that they are no wayes made of the same blood of which Saint Paul says that God has made all Mankind Notwithstanding when we examine well that Call what it is to form a just Idea of it we shall find that properly it is but a Relation that results from the Agreement of three Wills to wit that of God that of the Church and that of the Person called for the consent of these three make all the Essence of that Call and the other things that may be added to it as Examination Election Ordination are Preambulatory Conditions or Signs and External Ceremonies which more respect the Manner of that Call then the Call it self In Effect in a Call we can remark but three Interests that can engage one to it that of God since he that is called ought to speak and Act in his Name that of the Church that ought to be Instructed Served and Governed and that of him who is called who ought to fulfil the Functions of his Charge and to Consecrate his Watchful Diligence Cares and Labours to it from whence it follows That that Call is sufficiently formed when God the Church and the Person called come to agree and we cannot rationally conceive any thing else in it But as to the Will of the called it does not fall into the Question for we all acknowledge that no one can be forced to receive the Office of the
of such a Miracle or what promise can we find of it in the Scripture Not to insist here that it very ill agrees with the Doctrine of those among them who make the will of man so much Lord of all his Actions that whatsoever Grace God shall manifest towards it it remains always indifferent and free to follow that Grace or to reject it It is then very certain that hitherto our Fathers could not be very much edified in the point of the Sacraments in general but they were yet far less in the matter of the Sacrament of the Eucharist in particular For if we look only on one side they were plung'd into that perplexity about the intention where they taught one another that the Transubstantiation of the Bread into the Body of Jesus Christ was the effect of that Consecration and that they were bound to Worship the Host after the words of Consecration as being Jesus Christ himself What assurance could they have of so important a change Since it also depended upon so impenetrable a secret as that of the intention of the Priest which could only be known by God alone what assurance could they have that they were not deceived What ground had they to give a supream Worship to an Object of which none could have any certainty of Faith what likelihood they should believe it to be that which it was pretended to be and that it ought to be reckoned an adorable Object What likelihood that God would have given to his Church so doubtful an object to be the object of perpetual adoration Which on one side is so visible and so determinate that one may always say Behold it but of which notwithstanding no one can be assur'd that it is that indeed Is it any ways agreeable to his goodness and his wisdom to leave the Church to be perpetually held in suspence in that inexplicable doubt and exposed to the danger of taking the Bread for the true Son of God and the Wine for his real Blood and reduc'd to the necessity of putting that adoration daily to a hazard upon the credit of one man CHAP. IV. That such a Corruption of the Latin Church as our Fathers had conceived was no ways an impossible thing THese things were well nigh the chief Objects that stroke the minds of our Fathers and cain'd them to a more strict examination of the matters of that Religion Whether those motives were weak or strong just or unjust I leave to the judgment of every rational man to determine But some may say what did your Fathers never call to mind that so ordinary Maxim and so generally receiv'd in their days That the Church could not err at least in matters relating to Faith and the general Rules of manners and if they had so call'd it to mind could they not by that very thing easily have repell'd all those importunate prejudices of corruption which you have set before us It cannot be doubted but our Fathers did often think of it but it cannot likewise be imagined that they would not have endeavoured to search a little more narrowly upon what that Maxim was founded what construction they ought to make of it if in a word that Corruption whereof they saw such great signs had been a thing absolutely impossible 1. I say then in the first place that one of the thoughts that most naturally fell into their minds upon this matter was this That the same thing which has happened almost in all human affairs might very well befall the Christian Religion in the space of about five hundred Years wherein it had been in the hands of the Romans Every one might observe it to be chang'd by the succeeding Age to be rendred so as it could not be known and to become quite another thing than it was at first according as they degenerated from their Original That inclination that men had to alter the first institutions of things to add to them or diminish from them to give to them new Forms and new Customs Reigned at least as much in our Western Parts as among other Nations It Reigned also so universally that there was nothing reserved from its Dominion either in their Languages or their Discipline or their Professions or in the Governments of the People or in their Laws or in the Distribution of Justice or in one word in any of those things that depend in any manner whatsoever on the management of men It had been then a kind of Miracle if Religion had been spared and its Truth its Worship and Customs regarded and kept with so great care that nothing should be altered in that either by additions or diminutions And we cannot say that Religion being so Heavenly and Divine a thing is also above all those accidents For it is most true that it is Divine in it self and consequently inviolable de jure and of right but there is none that sees it not in effect too often violated through the rashness of men and our Fathers were not ignorant that as perfectly holy as it was yet it was found to be as much or more exposed to the passions and disorders of the Soul of man in all other things 2. But besides that general Inclination which never fails to change things from their natural state our Fathers could not but know also that all men did very much lean towards superstitions and errours in the matters of Religion They saw the proofs of this in those Chimaera's wherewith the false Religions had filled the World Chimaera's that were yet so much the more strange as those people who believed and authorised them as the Greeks and Romans did appear as to every thing else to have minds exceedingly inlightened and refin'd which made our Fathers clearly see that blinde love that men always had for errours in the matters of Religion And without doubt that very thing carri'd them out to suspect that that pretention to Infallibility was null and vain and that there might very well be Corruptions in the State of the Church of those times for what likelihood was there that that ill inclination should have had no place among those of the Latin Church that it was wholly extinguish't beyond a possibility of returning or that the Enemy of our Salvation would not make use of it for our destruction or that having made use of it it should remain so long without any effect during the course of so many Ages 3. The example of the Church of Israel whereof the Bible teacheth us the History confirm'd our Fathers in those thoughts That was the very Church of God as well as that of the Christians That Church was purchased by the Blood of Jesus Christ as well as ours altho' that Blood had not yet been shed God not only kept his Chosen and his truly Faithful under that Ministration but he had not any other Church nor any other Ministry in all the World for the Salvation of his Children Whence it
those who demanded of Pilate his Death by crying against him away with him away with him Crucify him and those in fine who rejected the word of his Apostles and who instead of being converted by them persecuted them would be sufficiently justified in their bold unbeleif and that detestable Parricide which they committed on the Person of the Son of God For what were all those things but just consequences of that Principle They would not hearken to the Censures that Jesus Christ made of the Traditions and Doctrine of the Scribes and Pharisees their Church admitted those Traditions They would not believe that Jesus was the true Messiah their Church had determined that whosoever did believe it should be cast out of their Synagogues They rejected the Proofs that he gave them from the Scripture it was not for them to judge of the true meaning of the Scripture and the Church understood it otherwise They demanded that he might be Crucified the Church had condemned him for a Seducer as an Enemy to Moses and the Law it was not for them to inform themselves any farther They rejected his Miracles the Church did so too and said that he cast out Devils by the power of Beelzebub They would not hearken to his Apostles the Authority of the Church forbad them Hitherto their conduct is within due Rules supposing that the Principle of the Author of prejudices might be just and lawful and those miserable People are very much obliged to him for furnishing them with arms wherewith to defend themselves 4. That Maxim of the Author of those Prejudices draws yet far greater absurdities after it It ministers accusations against Jesus Christ himself against his Apostles and all those who were converted by their Words If the Faithful by those Laws of their submission to the Church ought not to have any other Eyes than hers why did Jesus Christ present himself immediatly to the People when he should first of all have made known his call from Heaven the Glory of his Person and the Dignity of his Office to the Church to have made them own it by proving it to them before he Preach't to the People He was they will say her Lord and the Church her self would have had no Authority but by him that is true But if the People owed the Church an absolute obedience they would have owed it all that time that the Lord would have remained unknown He ought then to have began to make himself known to her and to have opened her Eyes that he might at the same time have opened those of all the People If Jesus Christ had been known to have been indeed what he was there is no doubt to be made but that he would alone have been heard without any dependance on the Church of which he is the Soveraign Lord but as yet he was not and till that knowledge had obtained the People would have been always bound according to the Principle of the Author of Prejudices not to have seen but by the Eyes of the Church to which God had subjected them To speak then home to this Question whether Jesus Christ was the Son of God the promised Messiah or whether he was not the Faithful being bound to believe nothing but what the Church should tell them he could not but have addrest himself to her and not to the Faithful People immediatly Nevertheless it is most true that he addressed himself neither to the Priests nor to the Scribes nor to the Pharisees nor to the Doctors he Preached his Gospel to the simple People out of them he took his Disciples and it was among them that he did almost all his Miracles in fine he himself gives thanks to his Father for that he had hid his Mysteries from the Wise and Prudent and had revealed them unto Babes Whence could such a conduct proceed so contrary to that Soveraign Authority wherewith at this day they would invest the Church that is the Pastors in respect of the Lay-men It is not difficult to understand that it was because Jesus Christ did no ways act from that Principle nor owned it for a good one for if he had owned it he had never suffered the People to have violated it he had made use of another way to make himself known to them and he would have employed the Ministry of the Church for that end 5. One may see the same thing of the Apostles if the People ought entirely to refer themselves to the Church in matters of Faith and Religion Why did the Apostles sollicit the Jews to embrace their Doctrine when they could not so much as hear them without being criminal They will say they had a commandment from their Master to Preach this Gospel I confess it but the Jews lived under a Church that had openly declared it self against their Preaching and they might tell them according to the Maxim of those Gentlemen It is vain that you Preach to us that you work Miracles that you alledge the Scriptures We see by the Eyes of the Church we hear by her Ears we march after her Steps and we devest our selves of our own guidance to rest our selves upon hers This is our Duty and the Law that is imposed on us why do you go about to tempt us to violate it Suppose we that a Jew after having heard one of those Divine and admirable Sermons of Saint Paul should have addrest himself to him and have demanded of him what Authority he pretended to give to that new Christian Church which he took such care to establish whether he did not mean that its Children should render a blind Obedience to it and that they should refer themselves wholly to their Pastors for deciding matters of Faith without intermedling themselves to search out the true sence of the Scripture Suppose yet that that great Apostle should have answered him according to that Maxim of the Author of Prejudices That it was true that the darkness of our understandings and our prejudices might be able to hinder us from seeing in the Scriptures those Truths that are clearly contained in them that a man could not assure himself that he was not of the number of those who deceived themselves That that doubt is terrible but that which yet infinitely heightens that dread which it must needs cause is that men are necessarily bound to chuse their Party and to make so weighty a choice to wit of that Religion that they ought to follow amidst the cumbrances of a thousand cares and a thousand worldly necessities that almost wholly take them up and that will allow them but a very little time to examine the Truths of that Religion That the greatest part of Mankind wanted necessary helps that the half of Christians could not tell how to read that others did not understand any Language but their own that others had so narrow and limited a Capacity that they could but very difficultly conceive the most easie
the cumbrance of a thousand cares will not allow us to give more then a very little time for the examining the Truths of Religion all that hinders us from hearkning to you and makes us to cleave inviolably to the highest Authority that can be in the World and that we discover without any difficulty in our Society because that though there are Sects among us who dispute the Truth of its Tenets yet there is nothing in it that can make that Height of Authority which has so many external marks to be opposed with any colourable pretence In effect setting aside their Opinions their Worship and their Religion it self in the Foundation of it they cannot dispute with that Heathen Society from those external marks upon which they would found that Authority And the Christians would not have been in a condition to have equal'd themselves with them in that regard Would you have the consent of many people They had all the World of their side Would you seek for Antiquity They had been almost throughout all Ages Do you require Temporal Prosperity It was say they their Religion that gave them their Empire Would you have Magnificence Where was there any thing more Magnificent then their Temples and more splendid then their Solemnities Would you have Unity In the Plurality of their Gods and Varieties of their Ceremonies they kept peace among themselves and adopted the Gods of one an other Do you demand Miracles They boasted that they had them and the most Illustrious ones as those Oracles which foretold things to come those Apparitions of their Gods their Recoveries and Resurrections from the dead There was nothing then that could justify the Apostles but the falseness of the Pagan's Religion and the Truth of the Christian But for that they must of necessity enter upon that way of Examination and make those people to set about it whom they desired to convert But this is plainly that which that principle of the Author of those Prejudices would have hindred as we have shewn Whence it follows that it is a pernitious Principle contrary of Jesus Christ to his Apostles and to the true Interests of the Gospel But can they answer nothing to these last Reflexions that I have made It seems to me that they can possibly say but two things the one That those who were converted by the word of the Apostles and the other Preachers of the Gospel were constrained to hear them against that Order by a secret inspiration which dictated to them to make use of it also The other thing is That Jesus Christ and his Apostles proved their Call to be Extraordinary from Heaven and more eminent then that of their ordinary Pastors by Miracles and that in that Case the Faithful are bound to go beyond that Rule and to hear those that shall be so sent to them against that very Authority of the Church As to the first I do not believe that wise persons ought to admit of it For if they take those secret inspirations to be inward motions that form within a man frequent and strong desires to do a thing without suggesting any Reason the Spirit of God does not work so in the Conversion of men It works according to the Testimony of St. Paul as a light that inlightens the understanding to the end we may know what is the hope of our calling Then when those desires and inward motions are contrary to that duty to which we are all naturally engaged they ought rather to pass for Temptations then for Inspirations and a man would be very much bound to repress them under that Quality instead of following and obeying them Those pretended Inspirations then which tended to make the first Preachers of the Gospel be heard would have been so far from having had that effect that on the contrary they would have gone farther against their Consciences because they would have been found to have been contrary to a Duty supposing that intire obedience to the Church in matters of Faith a Duty They would have been troubled to know whether they ought to examine Religion or not That Rule might they say would have me not do it a blind Inspiration which is not supported by any Reason and which cannot have any certain mark of Divinity can never be strong enough to Authorise the breaking of that Rule But it cannot be yet alleadged to serve for an excuse towards that Religious Communion to which they had submitted themselves for if that Communion had a right of Soveraignty over them she would not be bound to strip her self of it when an inspiration should speak to them and we can but very ill defend the cause of the first Christians by that way If they would understand it so as those inward motions should be supported by some Reason that they should not be intirely blind it is necessary that they produce that Reason and not speak any more of Inspiration That Reason then in my Judgment can be no other then those Miracles that Jesus Christ and his Apostles wrought and by which they proved their Call to be divine and extraordinary I confess that if we suppose that all men have a right to make clear the Truth of things by themselves there is nothing more true then to say that Jesus Christ and his Apostles made themselves to be heard by their Miracles and that their Miracles were made use of to prove their Heavenly Call For their Miracles were plainly applied to the minds of men to make them consider that which they taught and in the end joyning their Miracles to their Doctrine they saw that they both mutually upheld one another that neither of them were false and that both the one and the other had the Characters of Divinity they did then conclude from thence that their Call was Divine and Extraordinary But if we suppose that Principle of the Author of Prejudices there is nothing more false then to say that their Miracles bound men to hear them and prov'd their Call to be Extraordinary For that Principle being as it is founded upon the darkness of our understanding upon the uncertainty of our Judgments and the easiness wherewith we are liable to deceive our selves it is manifest that it ought to be extended even unto Miracles because that there are true and false Miracles good and bad and those that false Prophets work as well as they that are sent from God We ought then to make a distinction and a distinction that is not easy to be made the Angels of darkness so disguising themselves into Angels of Light But that Reason of the darkness of the Understanding the uncertainty of our Judgments and that readiness we have to deceive our selves has if you please more place in that Distinction then in that of that Doctrine We may be easily surprized and by consequence we ought to give over that Discerning to the Church and yet follow in that its light and its decisions And
Sacrilegious and that those on the contrary who submitted themselves to the decisions of the Church were those good men who did nothing but their duty and that we our selves at this day who have received our Christianity from the hands of that small number are but the followers of Rebels and Schismaticks Yet all that they must say if they lay down that Principle of absolute Obedience It appears then that that Principle is false and unjust and invented for the ruin of Religion 10. In effect an absolute obedience and an intire resigning of ones self to the Conduct of another as to those matters that regard the Faith and the Conscience is a duty that we can render lawfully to none but God who is the first Truth the first Principle of all Justice A man cannot submit his understanding and his heart to the word of any one so as to believe blindly that which he says without giving him a kind of Adoration for there can be no homage greater than that of an inward blind submission It is an infinite act according as a creature may be said to act infinitely that is to say without bounds without reserve without measure It is then an act that can belong to none but God immediately that we ought not to transfer to the Church if we would not adore the Church and to which by Consequence a Church can never pretend without usurping the just rights of God 11. God himself has so far forborn his right that he does not very often absolutely make use of it but leaves it to our minds to judge of the Truths that he propounds to us For there are often in those things that he teaches us Characters that equally note their Truth and their Divinity so that at all times we may draw these two conclusions from them This Doctrine is true this Doctrine is of God without their depending one upon the other We may say the same of his Commandments they bear most frequently Characters of their Natural Justice as well as those of their Divinity and they give us leave to receive them not only by an Act of Obedience but by an Act of Judgment also As it is from him that we hold that admirable faculty of distinguishing the true from the false the good from the bad by Characters imprest in those things themselves so he would not take a way the use of it in matters of Religion On the contrary it is ordinarily by the using of that that he draws us that he convinces us first of all of the Truth of some Doctrines that he makes us afterwards acknowledg the necessary connexion that they have with others which he has revealed to us the Truth whereof appears not so clearly abstractly considered at first and by that connexion he makes us receive them He shews us the equity of his Precepts the horror of those Vices that are contrary to them and in that manner he gains our Hearts by making use of our own Reason Not that we may lawfully reject any of those things which he teaches us we have no right for that without doubt because where our Understandings are wanting to discover those Characters of Truth or of Equity in those things which he teaches us there he has ordained that his Authority shall help us It is God that says it it is God that commands it but it is not the same with respect to the Church the Church is not God she is but an Interpreter and Servant of God she ought then to shew us in all that she teaches us as matter of Faith or that she commands the Conscience to submit to those Characters of Truth and Equity in the things themselves or else those of their Divinity when she fails in that she cannot supply that defect by her Authority for in that case her Authority is purely no other than Humane and an Humane Authority is not sufficient either for the Faith or for the Conscience so that every man has right to examine that which she teaches and to reject that that is beyond the word of God 12. In fine Let those Gentlemen tell us if they please whether in this same Question concerning the Soveraign Authority of the Latin Church and the Obligation that lies upon every one to hold himself to its decisions they mean that every one should refer himself to the Latin Church and believe also meerly because that she says so without any other examination or whether they would grant that every one may have right to examine of what nature of what extent and of what force that Authority is and how far that Obedience goes which he ought to render to it There is no likelyhood they will say the former for that Authority cannot establish it self when it shall be establisht a man may refer himself to it for other things but while her own establishment is disputed it is requisite it should come from somewhat else and that there should be for that proofs capable of perswading us To what purpose do they tell us of its external marks which makes us says the Author of the Prejudices discover without any difficulty that height of Authority which is in the Catholick Church if they would not leave the Faithful a right to see those external marks and to examine them not any farther by the Eyes of the Church but by their own That being so they may see that they ought always to give men a right of making a Judgment by their own light and to give them in that Question the most important matter of all to wit that of choosing a Rule and a setled Principle for their Guidance and their Faith an Authority upon which their Minds and Consciences may rest and lye down in perfect Peace They must give them that in that Question which it is no ways easie for them to decide For besides that they ought to see those external marks of the Latin Church which say they gain her so great an Authority they ought also to see whether there are not others which they take away more reasonably from her then those that they give her they ought to see whether those marks are not common to other Religious Societies that may by that means dispute with the Latin Church that Authority they ought to see whether those marks when they shall become peculiar to the Latin Church may be capable of giving her so Soveraign an Authority over mens Faith and Consciences which seems naturally to belong to none but God And because in that Question we treat not of the whole Body of the Church but only of the Prelats and those who take up the Ecclesiastical Function they ought to know whether those external marks can hinder them from believing that those Prelats have abused their charges and brought in or suffered to be brought in divers Corruptions into the Church All that is not so easie as the Authour of the Prejudices tells us it is There is some
us that we do not deceive our selves in that particular choice that we make of the Authority of the Latin Church to refer our selves to her For we must in that choice rely on our own Reason Who shall secure us that the Lain Church herself does not deceeive her self in the discerning that she makes of the Tenets of Religion That Church is composed of the People and Prelates those people have not more Light than other men and those Prelates are not less subject than the others to that darkness of understanding to Negligence to Prejudices to Passions to a secret Obstinacy in their Opinions and beyond all that they have not a peculiar Interest to favour mens Errors and Superstitions to retain them the more easily in their obedience But those People and those Prelates are a very great number What does that signifie The Heathens and their Guides are yet a far greater number than they and yet they fail not to deceive themselves They are say they rich and powerful and raised in dignity The Heathens and the Mahometans are not less They have external marks but who knows whether those marks are good and whether they do not abuse themselves in the Consequence they pretend to draw from them They assure you that they do not deceive themselves they condemn you if you do not believe that which they believe and they live as to themselves in a perfect peace of mind But the Author of those Prejudices has taught us to answer That all those who compose other Societies appear to have the same assurance with us that they are in the Truth they do not condemn the Latins with less confidence than the Latins condemn them with they are not less exempt from the fear of deceiving themselves they live also in as great a Peace and Tranquillity That assurance also and that confidence that freedom from trouble and fear that Peace and that Tranquillity grounded upon the belief that they are in the right way and that they walk after their Light are marks so ambiguous and so deceitful that they may be found most frequently to be joyned infinitely more frequently with Errour and the way of Hell than with Truth and the way of Salvation These are the very words of the Author of those Prejudices whereof we change only the Application But say they yet farther Do you not believe that the Latin Prelates have a more clear light than you We cannot know any thing by that and they do not know anything themselves from thence since no person can make himself certain by his own light according to the Author of Prejudices They may from thence methinks see of what Nature that Argument is but they will be more apt to be distasted with it if they will but consider that their Principle tends to confound all Religion and to render the very existence of a Deity suspected For if there be nothing of certainty in those Judgments that we make by our own light why do we follow the Christian Religion more than the Pagan or the Mahometan Is it because that the Church has bid us do so This is but a very bad reason for the Church would never tell us that its Religion was bad when it would be so in effect there is no Society whatsoever but would say that its Religion was good and better than all others Is it because our Birth our Education Interest Reputation or the the friendship that we have with some persons or the Laws of the Country wherein we are will not suffer us to embrace any other Religion and such-like motives that engage us These are yet but the very worst Reasons and those who are not Christians but from thence though possibly they may not be a small number may say that they are not at all such for if those very tyes had been applyed to Paganism they would have been Pagans as they are now Christians How then ought we to be Christians It is necessary that we should be so from out of a Love and Approbation of that Religion it self But that Love and that Approbation ought to be the effects of our own Light and not of that of other men and our own light ought to dictate to us what is the Religion of God and to make us approve of and love it under that quality Should we then have nothing of certainty in that matter should we be always in doubt under a pretence that our Light might deceive us and those admirable effects that Religion produces in our souls that confidence quiet joy that tranquillity hope freedom from trouble and from fear would they be nothing but ambiguous and deceitful marks which are most frequently to be found more joyned with error and the way of Hell then with the Truth and way of salvation thither it is that that Principle of the Author of those Prejudices leads us Besides how do we come to believe there is a God Is it because the Church tells us so That would be a very ill reason for we believe on the contrary that there is a Church but by the belief that we have that there is a God we believe it without doubt by the impression of a thousand Characters of the Deity in our minds and on our hearts that appearin the Fabrick of the World in his Government or his ordering the Affairs of it and particularly in man himself and in his most pure and most natural inclinations Our Reason it self is a lively Image of it But that impression is wrought but by our own Eyes which make us see a Deity in things it is not by others Eyes that we see it but by our own Is it necessary then that we should doubt whether there be a God or not Must we never be certain because our Eyes deceive us somtimes and because we are not Infallible The Author of the Prejudices will say without doubt That we urge his Principle too farr that he never pretended to shew that we could not be assured by our own light without the Authority of the Church that there was a God and that the Christian Religion in opposition to that Religion which the Jews now profess or to all those Fantastick Religions that reign in the World and are the meer effects of the impostures and humours of men cannot but be the true Religion That that discernment is not hard to be made the advantage of the Christian Religion above all those others being most clear and manifest Indeed so he has explained himself from the very beginning of his Preface whence it appears that he would not hinder the examination of the matters of Religion but when particular controversies that divide the divers Sects of Christians shall be treated of I may say then if I am not mistaken That there are two parts in his Hypothesis that in the first he yields to every one a liberty to judg by his own Light of the Truth of the Christian Religion
Fashion as far as we can without wounding our Consciences and if we happen to speak or write of them it ought to be done in a gentle and prudent manner with a regard had to the Times and the dispositions of Men always remembring that the Church of God will never be in a State of compleat perfection upon Earth and that God himself bears with the defects of his Children through his mercy But we ought also to take heed how we stretch the keeping of that silence too far for there are certain Seasons wherein one cannot hold one's peace without betraying of God without weakly abandoning the true interests of the Church and without falling into that detestable Sin which Saint Paul calls holding the Truth in unrighteousness Such was the Time of the Triumph of Arrianism in the fourth Centuey for there the matter being a capital Heresy which had then took hold of the publick Ministry there was not any more place for silence there was a necessity on the contrary of crying out and of crying very loud without any regard had either to the compleasance which they owed to their Brethren or to the Love of peace or the Dignity of the Prelats or the Authority of Councills or to all those false reasons of silence which humane prudence ordinarily suggests Therefore it was that a simple Monk of those Times called Aphraates although he neither had any other Call or Office then that of the concern that every one has for the Conservation of the Truth yet could not contain himself within his Cell nor be hindered from opposing himself with all his might to that Heresy and the Emperor Valens who favoured the Arrians having check't him for that boldness in telling him that he ought to have kept himself in his Cell and to have applied himself only to pray to God according to the Conditions of that Religious Life into which he had entred Aphraates answered him If I were a maid and should keep my Chamber with my Father and if I should see Fire take hold of the House should I not be bound to go out of my Chamber and run on every side to bring water to put out the Fire Meaning by that That when the safety of Christianity was in danger of being destroyed it was a Crime to hold ones peace and sit still in quiet But this is exactly the Case wherein our Fathers found themselves For they beheld the Christian Religion and by consequence The Latin Church ready to be Ship-wrackt as a Vessel that takes in water on every side They saw in that miserable Church Divinity falsified and corrupted by a thousand vain and ridiculous Questions The Schools infected with the Art of Sophistry and Cheats the Pulpits prostituted to Tales Jests and Legends Benefices filled with persons unworthy and uncapable Church Dignities sold to those who bid highest good Learning banisht and persecuted Religion loaded with a rabble of childish Ceremonies the People abused by a thousand Follies Church-Government changed into an intolerable Oppression The Worship of God transferred to Creatures and even to those Creatures that were dead and insensible the saving Truths of the Gospel neglected Errors and Fancies of Mens minds Preached up in stead of them The Study of the Holy Scripture abandoned the Actions of true Piety altered by false Ideas the Commands of God broken his Soveraign Authority usurped his mercy set in partnership with Satisfactions of men his Laws associated with the Laws of men and his Grace with our Free-will the only Sacrifice of his Son multiplied the Vertue of his Intercession communicated to Saints and Angels The Substance of Bread adored as his Divine Body his Soveraign Prophetick and Kingly Offices Transported to the Pope and his Priestly to the Priests his Sacraments altered his clearest words eluded by their Glosses and rash Distinctions and his Ministry changed into a Despotick Empire over mens Consciences In a word they saw nothing that remained intire in that Religion Whether their Sentiments in that regard were just or unjust Reasonable or ill grounded it is what a discussion will justify when they will seriously come to consider it But nevertheless our Fathers were perswaded of all that which I have mentioned and under that perswasion who can doubt that they ought not to have loudly declared themselves and that a deep silence would not have rendred them Criminal before God and men And they were the more Obliged to speak in that as we have shewn in the foregoing Chapter they had nothing more to look for from their Prelats and in that the injust and violent Proceedings of the Court of Rome against Luther made them sufficiently know that the Evil was not to be Remedied on that side and that the Time for each man to Reform himself was already come CHAP. IV. That our Fathers had a Lawful and Sufficient Call to Reform themselves and to Labour to Reform others ALthough this Question about the Call of our Fathers for a Reformation is already sufficiently decided by what I have before Represented since they cannot require a more lawful Call then that which is founded upon the indispensable Obligation of our Salvation I shall not fail notwithstanding to Treat of this matter yet a little further to omit nothing that may serve for our Justification I say then that the chief thing that ought to be done to make a right Judgment of a Call in the business of Religion is to search into what nature those Actions are of about which it is engaged whether they be just or unjust good or ill in themselves for there cannot be the least lawful Call for that which is ill but there is always one naturally for what is good which I shall name a Call of things to distinguish it from that Call of persons whereof I shall speak in the sequel But now upon this Principle which to me seems indisputable we have little else to do then to demand of our Adversaries whether they do not believe that as it is naturally just to embrace and to defend the Truth so also that 't is as just to reject and oppose Errors and to banish them not only out of that Society wherein a man is but even out of the world it self as much as it lies in his power to do We need I say but only to demand of them whether they believe not That a Falshood has not in its own nature any right to be believed or to be taught and that it is for that Reason that she makes use of the Colours of Truth to make her self to be received under another Name then her own because that when she appears in her natural dress it excites or at least it ought to excite the hatred and aversion of men I know very well that all Falshoods do not equally deserve that Aversion and that there are some that may appear indifferent enough in comparison of others but I say that there are also some of which one
lightly to believe the Calumnies wherewith they have laboured to darken our first Reformers and to cease to give himself over to a passionate Spirit that suggests those odious accusations against persons whose lives have appeared pure and intire to a great people who having known and followed them can give a better Testimony of their Conduct then their interested Enemies do Let him Remember what Monsieur Arnaud has wrote to justify some of the Religious of our time whom he accuses to have been Uncommunicants Asacramentarians and foolish Virgins who in all matters affected an Extravagant and Schismatical Singularity That there was a Time in the life of Saint Teresia her self who was the Ornament of these last Times wherein she was decried not only concerning the Faith but concerning manners also That moreover divers have thought her possessed with a Devil and would have her Conjure That after that and toward the end of her life she was Treated as one possessed with a Devil as a Hypocrite and Dissembler and one that had lost all Honour They publickly defamed her in the Pulpits in the Churches and they compared her with one Magdalen de la Craix a Woman filled with a lying Spirit and Famous throughout all Spain for her Forgeries and her Communication with the Devil That they witnessed against her and her Religious things of so foul a nature that they were accused in the Sacred Office and charged with having committed a Thousand Forgeries That the Inquisition was forced to inform against her and her Nuns and that they expected every day when they should be made Prisoners That her Books were seized by the same Inquisition to be censured That her General markt out one of her Monasteries to be a Prison for her That the Popes Nuntio Treated her as a turbulent Woman and a common Whore That he thought to have overturned from top to bottom a new Edifice of the Dechaussez That he used them with the greatest rigour banishing some imprisoning others and generally condemning them as if they had been a People of a new Sect infected with Errors or such an ill life as it was necessary to cut off that course that they might not infect and destroy the whole World This is well nigh the Treatment that they give the first Reformers they have laboured to cover them with reproaches to weaken the efficacy of their Preaching and those very persons themselves that so loudly complain that we load them with Calumnies by so unjust a proceeding are now a days the first that make use of it themselves against us CHAP. VI. A Further Justification of the first Reformers against the Objections of the Author of the Prejudices contained in his Tenth and Eleventh Chapters AS the Book of the Prejudices is nothing else but a confused heap of Objections and unjust Accusations that the Author of that Book has piled up one upon another without Connexion and without Order So I find my self constrained that I may not break off the Connexion of my Subject to break off that of his Chapters Therefore after having answered his third where his Invectives begin against the manners and conduct of the first Reformers I shall dismiss the Examination of his 4th 5th and 6th Chapters where he Treats about the Call of the Ministers of our Communion to my Fourth Part and where he Treats of the Right that we have to a Gospel Ministry and that which he afterwards says in the 7th 8th and 9th Chapters concerning our pretended Schism to my Third Part wherein we shall Treat of our Separation from the Church of Rome and I shall now pass on to the Examination of his 10th 11th 12th and 13th wherein he renews the same personal Invectives against the first Reformers But as those Chapters are composed of almost nothing else but frivolous matters swelled up with Declamatory Exaggerations by Injuries and Passion We shall not think it unfit if setting aside all that in them which is to no purpose or too passionate we set down in a few Words all that that is more Essential in those Objections and that we Answer them also in a few Words 1. Objection is That Andrew Carolostadius Arch-Deacon of Wittenburg whom Melanchton runs down as a brutish Fellow without wit and without Learning who embraced the Fanatical Doctrine of the Anabaptists was the first who had the boldness to assault the Doctrine of the Real presence and to that effect he invented an Extravagant Explication of those words This is my Body saying that by the word This Jesus Christ did not mean that which he held in his hand but that he pointed to his own true Body Answer It is not True that Carolostadius was the first that opposed the Doctrine of the Real presence Bertram Erigenes Rabanus opposed it in the ninth Century when Paschasius spread it abroad Berengarius opposed it in the Eleventh and in the Age of the Reformation it self the Bohemians called Taborites and those of the Valleys of Piemont and Province called Waldenses openly rejected it So that although all they have said of Carolostadius were true yet we have not any particular interest in him and we shall say in respect of him that which Saint Augustine said in respect of Caecilianus Caecilianus is not my Father for Jesus Christ has said call no man Father upon Earth for one is your Father even God but I call Caecelianus my Brother my good Brother if he be a good man but my bad Brother if he be not good Notwithstanding I know not whether that pretended Anabaptism of Carolostadius is not an ill-grounded Accusation into which Mclancthon and Luther himself who did not love Carolostadius might have been surprized as it frequently happens among persons divided in their Opinions at least it is certain that Carolostadius defended himself by publick Writings and that he protested that he was innocent And as to that Explication that he gave of the word This in the words of Jesus Christ it is an Error from the Truth and a false gloss on the Signification of that Word but it is an Error notwithstanding that does not hinder that the ground of his sentiment concerning the Eucharist should not be true and right and how many different interpretations are there of the same word upon which they refute one another amongst the Doctors of the Church of Rome and who almost all say things very remote from common sence 2. Object Zuinglius had already began his Reformation before ever he spoke a word of the Real Presence and Adoration of the Host although he notes in his Works that from that very Time he was perswaded in his heart that Jesus Christ was not really present in the Eucharist But as it is very hard to believe that during all that Time he never said Mass that he never assisted at it and that he never administred the Sacrament that he should not all the while be discovered by those who
the Reformation that he has established and which serves as a Foundation to that of the Calvinists In fine he explains himself in the 321 Page where he says That our behaviour in respect of the Lutherans is enough to give a ground to conclude that the Heads of the party of the Calvinists have been such as have guided themselves more by Policy then Conscience which being adds he most contrary to the Spirit of God and remote from that which ought to be found in those new Prophets which he would extraordinarily raise up for the reforming of his Church it is not possible for us to take them for men of that kind and we have a most just ground to refuse to hearken to them It results from thence that the Author of the Prejudices had a design to conclude 1. That they ought to reject us without Examining any thing that we say and without so much as hearing us 2. That we are a sort of men without any Conscience who have no Idea of Christian Vertue nor of the Spirit of Christianity and who guide our selves by Worldly Policy 3. That we overthrow the Reformation of Luther which serves nevertheless for the Foundation of our own 4. That our First Reformers had none of their Mission from God and that they were not the Instruments which he made choice of to Reform the Errors of the Church of Rome To establish these propositions he heightens on one side the differences that were between Luther Zuinglius and Calvin and all that the heat of Disputation made them say on one side and on the other and in the end he sets down the esteem that we have always had of Luther notwithstanding those Divisions and the Condescension that we have for him and those of his Party in oposition to the hatred that we have always says he Testified against the Church of Rome All that unjust Reasoning is founded upon divers false Propositions that the Author of the Prejudices has supposed as evident and beyond all doubt and of which notwithstanding he has captiously suppressed one part to give the more Colour to his Invective 1. His Reasoning is founded upon ' this Proposition That we hold our First Reformers to be new Prophets or as he speaks to be the Apostles of a new Gospel But this is a false and calumnious Supposition for we hold on the contrary that our Reformers Preached nothing new they were not under the Quality either of new Prophets or Apostles of a new Gospel they did not boast that they brought a new Revelation into the World but they only opposed humane Errors that had no Foundation in the old Revelation and in that respect I have shewn that they had a more then sufficient Call in the Right that is Common to all Christians and in the Ministry which they themselves exercised in the Latin Church without any necessity that there should be any Extraordinary and immediate Mission of God for that and I have explained in what sence it must be understood that there was something of Extraordinary in their Call 2. That Reasoning supposes That we ought not to hear any Reformers 'till first we have examined the Quality of their persons and if the Quality of their persons do not satisfy us we ought to reject their words and to remain in the State we were in before But there is nothing more pernitious then this Principle to which I oppose a contrary Principle which is That we ought to judge of that which our Reformers said by the word of God and by the proper Characters of Truth or Falshood which are in the things themselves after a manner abstracted from the Judgment that we may make of those persons and that it is a way to Error to Judge by the Qualities of the persons This is that which I have made appear elsewhere and shall not omit to establish it yet further in this place for the greater clearing of this Truth I say then that when it falls out that those who Preach have personal Qualities that do not satisfy us it is indeed a Reason that Obliges us to take the greater heed to their Doctrine But those matters being at the bottom as they are true or false in themselves without the persons that propound them changing their natures they ought to be chiefly considered in themselves if we would assure our selves in a good Conscience that we are in the way of Truth for we cannot have that assurance if we Judge only by the persons since the Faith is immediatly founded upon the word of God and not upon that of men whosoever they be Moreover every one knows that a Judgment concerning persons is oftentime far harder and more subject to Error then that of the things themselves whether it be because ordinarily it depends upon a great number of particular circumstances which one cannot exactly know and which yet one ought to know before a man can be able to Judge or whether it be also because it is open to the Illusions of Hypocrisy which hides real vices under the appearances of Vertue and to those of Calumny which turns the best actions into a bad meaning that suppresses the good and heightens the bad Besides that it is certain that the Judgment which is made of persons ought partly to depend on that of things so far is it from that that what is made of things should depend on that of persons For on the one side how many Founders of Heresy have there been whose life has appeared to have been very exemplary and who were notwithstanding ravenous Wolves how many Pharisees who have boasted of their righteousness while their Doctrine was a Leaven whereof great heed was to be taken There have been some who have even gone so far as to have wrought Miracles and Jesus Christ has foretold that false Christs and false Prophets shall arise who shall work great Signs and Wonders capable of seducing the very Elect if it were possible And on the other side do not sufficiently understand the ways of Divine Providence to be able to conclude without rashness that it never makes use of persons guilty of many crimes either for the Propagation of its Truth or the Reformation of Errors Saint Paul says that God puts his Treasure into Earthen Vessels that the Excellency of his power may be of God and not of man The same Apostle Teaches us that divers in his Time Preached Jesus Christ out of a Spirit of Envy and Contention God heretofore made use of Salomon not only for the building and preservation of his Temple but also to give the Church one part of the Canon of its Scriptures which is much more then the Temple and yet notwithstanding that Prince gave himself over to the love of Women and fell into Idolatry and lastly Jesus Christ made use of a Judas at first that sold him into his Enemies Hands But to decide this Question by Examples drawn out of the
them from the Church because they brought in a new Heresie into it But why also did the same S. Augustine with the whole Church of God hold the Donatists to be justly excommunicated against whom these things are written and why did not they receive them into their communion but only after signs of repentance and the imposition of hands Jesus Christ who propounded the Parable of the Tares did not he clearly ordain excommunication elsewhere saying that if our brother would not obey the Church correcting him we ought to reckon him as a Heathen and a Publican That which manifestly shews us that it is one thing to excommunicate and another to pluck up the Discipline of the Church excommunicates but it does not pluck up See here precisely that which S. Augustine himself said non estis ad eradicandum sed ad corrigendum From whence the truth of that which I have said appears that according to this Father there is a bad separation and that is schismatical in its own nature and another that is not so and that although it is never permitted us to make the former yet it does not follow that we may not make the latter provided we do it upon just causes and observe the rules of Prudence and Charity in it We must therefore lay it down as a certain truth that S. Augustine thought that we might sometimes break the communion of the Sacraments and Assemblies we are only concerned to know in what case he thought that that separation should be made To make this point clear I shall say in the Sixth place that when S. Augustine considered the Church in the meer mixture with the wicked that is to say in the mixture with those whose manners are vicious and criminal he taught that those who are in office in the Church may proceed to the excommunication of impenitent sinners when those sinners are few in number and when there is ground to believe that they may disturb the peace of the Church but if the crime includes a whole multitude and that the Body in general is infected then he would that the good should content themselves to preserve their own righteousness without partaking of the sins of the wicked he would that they should groan under it and pray to God but he would not that they should separate themselves When the evil sayes he has seized the greater number nothing remains for the good to do but to groan and lament And a little lower If the contagion of sin has invaded the multitude then it is necessary that Discipline should be used with mercy for the counsels of Separation are vain pernicious and sacrilegious But when he considers the Church not only as a mixture of good and wicked but also as a mixture of the truly faithful and Hereticks I maintain that he has formally acknowledg'd the justice and necessity of a separation not only in regard of some particular persons but in regard even of entire Societies provided they go not so far as that which he calls Eradication We have already noted that he would that we should according to S. Paul pronounce an Anathema against those who preach another Gospel than that which he has preached But this very thing gives the faithful a right to reject the communion of Heretical Societies and to separate themselves from their Assemblies In his Book of the True Religion he aggravates it as a very strange thing and very much deserving to be condemn'd that the Heathen Philosophers who had other sentiments concerning Divinity than the people should partake in the worship of the people In their Schools sayes he they had sentiments differing from those of the people and yet notwithstanding they had Temples common with the people The people and their Priests were not ignorant that these Philosophers had opinions contrary to theirs touching the nature of the Gods since every Philosopher was not afraid of publishing his opinions and of labouring at the same time to perswade them and others and yet nevertheless with that diversity of sentiments they did not fail to assist at the publick worship without being hindred by any body A man that speaks after this manner would not think it ill that any should separate themselves from Heretical communions But he yet further explains himself more clearly afterwards For he sayes That if the Christian Religion should do nothing else but correct that vice it would deserve infinite praises And he adds immediately after That it appears by the example of so many Heresies that have deviated from the rule of Christianity that they would not admit to the communion of the Sacraments those who taught concerning God the Father his Wisdom and his Grace otherwise than the truth would allow them and who would perswade men to receive their false Doctrine But that is not only to be found true in regard of the Manichees and of some others who have other Sacraments than we but also in regard of those who having the same Sacraments have sentiments differing from us in other things and errors which they obstinately defend for they are shut out from the Catholick communion and the participation of those same Sacraments which they have common with us From whence comes it to pass therefore you will say that S. Augustine seems sometimes to ascribe to the Orthodox the right only of a passive separation in regard of Heretical Societies that is to say that he would not that we should separate from them even then when they separate themselves For he sayes in some place that though the Traditors should have openly maintain'd in the Church that their Action was good and holy that is to say that they ought to have delivered up their Bibles to the Pagans for them to burn them and that though they should even have wrote on that subject provided they had not set up their Assemblies apart nor separated themselves yet we ought not to have abandoned for them the good wheat which signifies this to us that we ought not to separate our selves from those though their Doctrine whereof he had spoken was detestable contrary to the faith conscience and good manners In effect he speaks almost alwayes of the Heretical Societies of his time as of those who were themselves cut off from the communion of the Church and whom the Church had not rejected I answer that S. Augustine would have us suffer the communion of Hereticks in certain cases but that he would have us also in other cases to separate our selves from them While we are in no danger of partaking with their errors neither in effect nor in appearance but that we may preserve the profession of our faith pure without consenting to impiety or seeming to consent to it and that there should not be on the part of the Hereticks that obstinacy of opinion he would have us suffer their communion For it is the manifest Doctrine of this Father that in the Society of the
Contested and when we alleadge to you the Body of the Pastors Extension Multitude and the other advantages of the Church of Rome we do not pretend to own that the Doctrine of that Church is false or that its Worship is corrupted or to conclude that those Advantages alone would give it the Quality of a True Church though it should not be Orthodox but we pretend only that setting aside the Discussion of Doctrines we can Convince you of Schism by those Prejudices alone which without any further Examination mark out which of the two Communions is the True Church and by Consequence which is false and Schismatical I have already answered Divers Times this Objection but that it may be reviv'd here further in the Minds of the Readers I shall not fail to shew yet farther the Vanity of it and to discover more and more on which side the Fallacy lies I say then that when I suppose in this Dispute that we have Right at the Bottom my Supposition is just and within the Rules of good Reason for I do not Suppose it either as a thing that I have already proved nor as a thing granted to me but as a Matter which ought to be Examin'd and on the Examination of which that Question of Schism and the True Church ought necessarily to depend We would say they shew you without entring into the Discussion of the Doctrine by meer Prejudices that you are guilty of Schism and that you have no Right to be in a Society nor to gather Assemblies And as for me I pretend to shew that that way is Illusory and Sophistical and that one ought to examine the Doctrines in order to know which of the two Communions is Schismatical and which is the True Church To this effect I prove that though the Protestant Party should be despoiled of all those Advantages treated on Provided it have on its side the True Doctrine and Worship and the Church of Rome have it not it has all the Rights of a Christian Society that its Assemblies are Lawful and that its Separation from the Church of Rome is just from whence it evidently follows that all those Prejudices are to no purpose in the deciding of our Question and that all depends on the Discussion of those Points that are in Controversy between us See here the use of my Supposition The Business at present is not to know whether we have Right in the Foundation or not if that were all the Business I would not suppose it at all I would prove it but the Business is to know whether they can by those meer Prejudices prove that our Separate Assemblies from those of the Church of Rome are unlawful But I shew that they cannot because if we have Reason on our side in the Matters that are Controverted our Assemblies are Lawfull notwithstanding those Prejudices In a word we pretend to maintain our Assemblies no otherwise then by the Right that the Foundation gives us but by that Right alone we pretend to maintain them so that when they Contest it with us we run back to the Foundation and we shew them that the Foundation is sufficient to render our Assemblies Lawfull from whence it necessarily follows that they can't treat us as unjust and Schismaticks otherwise then in coming to the Discussion of the Foundation it self When therefore they tell us that to Convince us of Schism they need but to set aside the Discussion of Doctrines it is as much as if they should say that to shew us that we have no Reason they need but to lay aside that Reason upon which we ground our selves The Author of the Prejudices has found this shift to be so Fine and Ingenuous that he has Judged it worthy to be Consecrated to Posterity by one of his Books In Fine if we were to clear this Truth by Examples we need but to repeat here two things which we have justified in the Third Part and which are clear and certain out of the History of the Antient Church The one That in the Time of the Arrians the Body of the Pastors followed Heresy and the other That a small Number of the Orthodox a small Party separated from the Body of its Pastors and spoiled of all those kinds of Advantages did not fail to set up its Assemblies apart and to hold the best Christian Society that it was possible for them to do Those that were Hereticks filled the Churches and as for the Orthodox they met as they could sometimes in the Fields and sometimes even in the Churches of the Novatians As these Matters of Fact are Indisputable and Justified by History we have nothing else to do but to demand of the Author of the Prejudices Whether he believes that those Orthodox were Schismaticks for having so Separated themselves from the Body of their Pastors not only by a Negative Separation but even by a Positive one Whether he believes that their Assemblies were Unlawfull Whether he believes that they had done better to have remained in the same Communion with Hereticks then in withdrawing from them Whether he thinks that the Arrians could have said to them with any Reason That without Entring upon any Examination of their Doctrine they could Convince them of Schism by that Separation alone Whether he believes that those Orthodox had given a very ill answer in saying That since their Separation was only founded on their Doctrine it was by that that they ought to judge and not by those vain and deceitfull Advantages which sometimes follow the Church but which oftentimes Abandon it also and upon which nothing of Certainty can be established The Author of the Prejudices may answer what he pleases but we are at least assured that he can neither condemn the Arrians without Justifying us nor justify the Orthodox without Condemning himself It is Necessary then that we come to agree in this Truth That the Right to be in an External Society and by Consequence to raise Assemblies belong to the truly Faithful only and that if it falls out that the Body of the Pastors teaches false Doctrine and corrupts the Ministry to that degree that it cannot be allowed to the Faithfull to live in Communion with them The True Faithfull remain yet united among themselves by that External Union out of which their Assemblies proceed and that by Consequence they have a Right to meet together and to make up a Body in a visible Communion But they will say If it falls out that generally all the Pastors forsake those pretended True Faithfull whereof you speak Who is there that shall Assemble them they are all but so many meer private men and what Right have those private men to gather Assemblies besides Religious Assemblies are chiefly Instituted for the Preaching of the Word and Administration of the Sarraments and can any ascribe the Right of Preaching and Administring the Sacraments to meer private men Separated from their Pastors When therefore
receive the Sacraments from their hands They cannot say that the Church would then be dispersed nor that the greater number of the Pastors had carried away with them all the Rights of the Society but they ought on the contrary to say that being obstinate in Error and abandoning the Purity of the Faith they themselves in that respect lost the Right of being in the Society and making up a Body of an External Communion For that Principle remains always unshaken that Error Superstition and falshood do not give the least Right to any men to Assemble and that a Society is Just only in proportion to that that it has of true Doctrine and Evangelical Worship So that the greater number of the Pastors is not a Party absolutely necessary to the Body of the Church for its subsistence and this appears evidently from the Example of the Orthodox in the Time of the Arrians for as I have said before their External Communion did not cease to subsist in divers places separated from the Body of the Pastors they met together they prayed to God in Common they heard his word they received his Sacraments in a word they performed all the actions of Religion under the Ministry of those few persons that remained This is precisely the Case wherein our Fore-Fathers found themselves in the Time of the Reformation as I have before shewn and it will not signify any thing to say that that small number of Pastors that our Fathers followed had themselves according to us corrupted their Ministry by the Errors and Superstitions of the other Pastors and that they received their Call from their hands for I affirm that their return to the true Doctrine rectified their Call and freed it from all the impurity or ill it could have had after the same manner that Felix Bishop of Rome and Meletius Bishop of Antioch who being ordained by the Arrians rectified their Ministry by Preaching the Truth and opposing of Heresy and as Liberius and a great number of the other Bishops who had subscribed to Arrianism purified their Call in returning to the True Faith which they had forsaken It is certain therefore that the greater number of the Pastors is not a party of the Body of the Church absolutely necessary for the subsistence of the External Communion and that it is an Error to imagine that the bond of the Society depends on them or that there can be no Assemblies made of those who shall be separated from them but such as are Unlawful and Schismatical But in the Second place I affirm that it is not even absolutely necessary and in all respects to the making that External Society to subsist among the Faithful that it should have Pastors For as it is nature alone that makes man a Sociable living Creature that is to say that renders him capable of Civil Society and gives him also a right to it so also it is Grace which makes a Christian a sociable man which renders him I would say capable of a Religious Society and gives him a right to it Ten Men that should meet one another hy Chance in an uninhabited Desart would they not have a Right to joyn themselves actually together to assemble and to take all the joynt deliberations in publick that they should Judge necessary for their own preservation And would it not be an extravagance to demand of them what Magistrate had assembled them what publick Authority had called them together who had given them a right to speak among themselves and to consult for their common interests Then when there are lawful Magistrates their intervention is necessary for the calling and Authorising of Civil Assemblies and if any undertake to assemble together without their Authority or without their consent their Assemblies are rash and unlawful but it does not follow from thence that Magistrates should be so absolutely necessary to a Society that when there should be none men could not any more speak or act together nor assemble themselves nor take common Consultations It is the same thing in Religion if Ten Laymen of the Faithful should meet together casually or to speak better if the sole Providence of God should make them meet one another in a Desart Island or in the farthest part of America and engage them all their days in a strange Land and if they should come to acknowledge each other for true Faithful Christians can any believe that 〈◊〉 ought to remain so dispersed that they could never lawâ—â—â—â—â— commune together concerning the Christian Faith and Pieâ—â— nor meet together to provide for the preservation of their Religion This is that which I hold to be not only unable to be maintained but impious For as Nature alone assembles men when they have no Magistrates and cannot have any so Grace alone assembles Christians when they have no Pastors and cannot have any She will not suffer them to remain in an intire dispersion while there remains yet any means to assemble them it is she alone that convokes or calls them together and her instinct forms an unanimous consent in them that consent alone renders their Assembly as lawful as it can be made by the Convocation of Pastors Thus also divers Parties who divided the Latin Church in the Time of the Great Schism of the Anti Popes protested That they met together at the Council of Constance when they no more acknowledged the Pope nor by consequence held any more a Head that could lawfully call them together for they declared that they called one another together and that they assembled themselves sub Capite Christo under Jesus Christ their common Head that is to say by his instinct and under his Authority which suplied the want of a Pope Quatenus say they in illo quiest verus Ecclesiae sponsus congregati in unum simul matrem Ecclesiam divisam uniamus In respect of an Assembly in the Body of a Council each Bishop each Prelate was but a meer private man as much as every Believer is in respect of an Assembly in the Body of the Church and yet notwithstanding they assembled they reunited themselves they deposed a false Pope who troubled them even then and they created another A mutual Convocation then which is nothing else but an unanimous consent is sufficient to make an Assembly lawful when there is no Publick Authority that can call them together This is that which justifies the Conduct of our Fathers in some places of this Kingdom at the beginning of the Reformation for they Assembled sometimes without any Pastors to pray to God together and to Read the Holy Scriptures their Consciences could not any more allow them to be present at the Assemblies of the Roman Communion and not having further any Pastor who might Assemble them after the Ordinary manner the Spirit of Christianity Assembled them under the Soveraign Pastor and Bishop of Souls which is Jesus Christ and their mutual consent without doubt made their Society and their
which renders those Acts valid in vertue of the institution that Jesus Christ has made of that Religious Society with all its Rights From whence it follows that the Body of the Faithful howsoever it be composed all of Lay-men does not cease to have the power Lawfully to confer the Ministry on a Man without its being liable to be said that it confers that on others which it has not it felf for it is certain that the Ministry belongs to it and that a Call consists but in depositing the publick Right into the hands of him who is called to the end it may be reduced into Act in the Name of the whole Society But I say that the Faithful people themselves have a Just and lawful Call to give up that Trust For as I have noted already there is no Call more Lawful then that which is founded not only upon a sufficient Right but upon a Duty also and an indispensable Obligation When the matter is about Societies there is nothing more absurd then to imagin that a whole Body cannot Communicate that which all the parts that compose it have not For if it were so a People could never make a King which is yet notwithstanding done in all Elective Kingdoms and the Church of Rome her self cannot give a reason why she makes her Popes since there is not any Pope present who should make his Successours They are all Created by the Colledge of Cardinals who are not Popes themselves so that they give that which they have not They must therefore needs say That the Papacy is virtually in the Colledge of the Cardinals and that that which each one among them has not they have all together in a Body otherwise they could not Create a Pope with that fulness of Power and that extent of Jurisdiction which is not in meer Bishops As to what regards the manner of conferring those Calls they will agree with me that there are things there that the Body of the People may and ought immediately to do by themselves as proof of the purity of Doctrine Information of manners Fasting and Prayer and I will acknowledge that there are others there that ought not to be done but by the Pastors only when they have them as Examination in respect of Knowledge Exhortation Publick Prayer Benediction and laying on of Hands But in Cases Extraordinary and of absolute Necessity the Church not having any Pastors and notbeing able to have any without a visible danger of dispersion I say that they may and ought to appoint some persons to do those things in their Names And those of the Church of Rome ought not to think that which I propound strange seeing that they would readily in a Case of absolute Necessity have any simple Lay-men or a simple Woman have the power of Administring of Baptism Baptism is a Sacrament it is the publick introduction of a man into the Church of God if therefore according to them a Sacrament so great and august does not fail of being good and valid though Administred by a Lay-man who has no particular Commission from the Church if the Church is esteemed to Baptize by that Lay-man how much more good and available should the Prayer Benediction and laying on of hands conferred in a Case of absolute necessity by a Lay-man be since that not only it is not a Sacrament properly so called but that further that Lay-man does not Act in that Solemnity in the quality of a meer private man but as having received the Office and Commission from the whole Body of the Faithful the whole Body doing it by him and Authorising it by its prefence Tertullian has gone much further then we go upon this matter For he would that where there there should be no Pastors every Lay-man should have the power not only to Baptize but also to Consecrate the Eucharist and to Administer it and his words seem to be grounded upon the very ordinary practice of his Time Where says he there is no company of Church-men you offer and Baptize he speaks to the Lay-men and you your selves are alone Priests to your selves Where there are three persons if they should be Lay-men there is a Church there for each man lives by his Faith and God has no respect of persons I do not pretend to approve of that which he says concerning the Eucharist that he would have a simple Lay-men have the power of Celebrating when there should be no Minister and I acknowledge there is an excess in that Proposition But it may appear from thence at least that the Right of Consecrating a Pastor in a Case of absolute Necessity was not then denyed to the whole Body of the Church These are the General Observations that I had to make upon this matter It will be now no hard thing to apply them to the Ministry of the Protestants and the Personal Call of their Ministers to make a solid Judgment of it First then I say that our Ministry considered in it self that is to say with respect to the things which we Teach and Practise cannot but be most Lawful For we suppose here that our Doctrine is the very same that Jesus Christ and his Apostles Taught we add nothing to it we diminish nothing from it the Sacraments that we dispence are the very same that Jesus Christ has instituted and the Government that he has set up in the midst of us is not remote from that of the Primitive Church according to what it is represented to us in the Scripture If the Author of the Prejudices has any thing to say to us upon that Subject he ought to come to it by way of discussion and not by that of Prescription But before he forces us to give a Reason of our Ministry he would do Justly if he would give us Satisfaction concerning his own which he well knows we desire I would say he would do Justly if he would shew us what Call he himself had at first by the Justification of the things that he Teaches What Right he had to Teach Transubstantiation the Real Presence the Adoration of the Host the Worshipping of Creatures Humane Satisfactions c. and Really to Sacrifice the Body of Jesus Christ If he cannot make it appear that all those things that are in Dispute between the Church of Rome and us are Gospel-Truths he can neither prove his Call nor hinder us from holding it null and unlawfull For he cannot have any Lawful Call to Teach Errors nor to perform those Actions of Religion that Jesus Christ never instituted and by consequence it is from that that he ought to begin when he would inform us of the Truth of a Call In Effect all other Inquiries will signify nothing if that does not go before since Piety Truth Sound Doctrine are the necessary Foundations to every Lawful Call and that on the contrary no Creature can have any Right either to Teach a Lye or make the People practise or