souls are acquainted with the sincerity of it whatever any that know not our hearts may say against it 5. All that are truly Baptized and own their Baptismal Covenant are visible members of the true Catholick Church For it is the very nature and use of Baptisme to enter us into that Church But Greeks Abassines Georgians Armenians c. and Protestants are all truly Baptized and own their Baptismal Covenant therefore we are all of the true Catholick Church What is ordinarily said against this succession of our Church I have answered in my safe Religion I now add an answer to what another viz H. Turbervile in his Manuall saith against us in the present point The easiness of his Arguments and the open vanity of his exceptions will give me leave to be the shorter in confuting them His first Argument pag. 43. is this The true Church of God hath had a continued Succession from Christ But the Protestant Church and so of all other Sectaries hath not a continued Succession from Christ to this time therefore c. Answ 1. I pray thee Reader be an impartial Judge what this man or any Papist ever said with sense and reason to prove that the Eastern and Southern Churches have no true Succession Let them talk what they please of their Schisme the world knows they have had as good a Succession as Rome Are they not now of the same Church and Religion as ever they have been All the change that many of them have made hath been but in the entertaining of some fopperies common to Rome and them And if any of these which you call Sectaries can prove their Succession it destroyes your Argument and Cause Me thinks you should not ask them where their Church was before Luther 2. But how doth this Disputer prove his Minor that we have no Succession Only by a stark falshood forsooth by the Concession of the most Learned Adversaries who freely and unanimously Confess that before Luther made his separation from the Church of Rome for nine hundred or one thousand years together the whole world was Catholick and in obedience to the Pope of Rome Answ O horrid boldness that a man that pleads for the sanctity of his Church dare thus speak so notorious an untruth in the face of the world At this rate of Disputing the man might have saved the labour of writing his Book and have as honestly at once have perswaded his Disciples that his Adversaries unanimously consess that the Papists cause is best What if the fifteen cited by him had said so when I can bring him one thousand five hundred of another mind and cite him fifteen for one of another mind is that the unanimous confession of his Adversaries But unless his Adversaries were quite beside themselves there is not one of them could say as he feigneth them to say For doth not the world know that the Eastern and Southern Churches far exceeding the Romanists in number did deny obedience to the Pope of Rome Would this perswade his poor Disciples that we all confess that there are or were no Christians in the world but Protestants and Papists His first cited Confession is Calvins that all the Western Churches have defended Popery A fair proof Doth this Disputer believe in good sadness that the Western Churches are all the world or a sixth part of the world But this is the Popish arguing What Calvin speaks of the Western Churches that is the prevailing power in each Nation of them he interprets of all the world So he deales with Dr. White who expresly in the words before those which he citeth affirmeth the visibility of the Churches of Greece Ethiope Armenia and Rome but only saith that at all times there hath not been visible distinct companies free from all corruption which one would think every penitent man should grant that knows the corruption of his own heart and life It would be tedious to stand to shew his odious abuse of the rest when they that say most of the word world but as it is used Luk. 2. 1. so much of his first argument His second is this Without a continued number of Bishops Priests Laicks succeeding one another in the profession of the same faith from Christ and his Apostles to this time a continued succession cannot be had But Protestants have no continued number c. Answ And how proves he the Minor No how at all but puts us to disprove it and withall gives us certain Laws which we will obey when they grow up to the honour of being reasonable His first Law is that We must name none but only such as held explicitely the thirty nine Articles all granting and denying the same points that the late Protestants of England granted or denyed for if they differ from them in any one materiall point they cannot be esteemed Protestants Answ A learned Law And what call you a material point You may yet make what you list of it If they differ in any point Essentiall to Christianity we grant your imposition to be necessary But there is not the least Chronologicall or Geographicall or other truth in Scripture but is a Materiall Point though not Essential Must you needs know which these Essentials are In a word Those which the Apostles and the ancient Church pre-required the knowledge and profession of unto Baptism And because all your fond exceptions are grounded on this one point I shall crave your patience while I briefly but sufficiently prove that Men that err and that in points materiall may yet be of the same Church and Religion Argum. 1. If men that err in points material that is precious truths of God which they ought to have believed may yet be true Christians and hold all the Essentials of Christianity then may they be of the same true Church and Religion But the former is true therefore so is the later The Antecedent is proved in that all truths which may be called Materiall are not of the essence of Christianity Argum. 2. The Apostle Thomas erred in a Materiall point which is now an essentiall when he would not believe Christs Resurrection and yet was a member of the true Church therefore c. Argum. 3. The Papists err in material points and yet think themselves of the same true Church therefore they must confess that differing in Material points may be the case of members of the same true Church For proof of the Minor I demand Are none of the points Material that have been so hotly agitated between the Jesuites and Dominicans and Jansenists the Papall party and the Councill party The Thomists Scotists Ockamists c. At least review the Jesuite Casuists cited by the Jansenists Mysterie of Jesuitism and tell us whether it be no whit Material Whether a man may kill another for a Crown or may kill both Judge and witnesses to avoid an unjust sentence Or whether a man should go with good meanings into a Whore-house to perswade them
of Necessity to salvation or not I before cited the words of Albertinus the Jesuite I shall now give you many more and more fully which Frans à Sancta Clara hath gathered to my hands in his Deus Natura Gratia Problem 15. 16. pag. 109 c. And 1. pag. 110. he tells us himself that the Doctors commonly teach that a just and probable ignorance ought to excuse and that it is probable when one hath a probable foundation or ground as a Country-man when he believes that a thing is lawfull drawn by the Testimony of his Parish Priest or Parents or when a man seeing reasons that are probable on both sides doth choose those which seem to him the more probable which yet indeed are against the truth to which he is otherwise well affected in this case he erreth without fault though he err against the truth and so labour of the contrary ignorance Hither is it to be reduced when the Articles of Faith are not propounded in a due manner as by frivolous reasons or by impious men for then to believe were an act of imprudence saith Aquin. 2. 2. q. 1. ar 4. So that if the truth of Scripture be so propounded as to seem most improbable it is no sin to disbelieve it and if such are excused as by a Parent or Parish-Priest are seduced and that have not a due proposal of the Truth then it must follow that the Heathens and Infidels are innocent that never had Christ proposed any way to them and by their Parents have been taught Mahometanism or Paganism But what if I can prove that even the want of a due proposal is a punishment for their sin and that they ought themselves to seek after the truth and that it is long of their own sins that necessary truths do seem improbable to them will sin excuse sin And pag. 111. he telleth us That as to the Ignorance of things necessary as means to salvation the Doctors differ for Soto 4. d. 5. q. 5. l. denatur grat c. 12. And Vega l 6. c. 20. sup Trid. will have no more explicite faith required now in the Law of Grace then in the Law of Nature Yea Vega loco citato and Gab. 2. d. 21. qu. 2. art 3. 3. d. 21. qu. 3. think that in the Law of Nature and in cases in the Law of Grace a man may be saved with only Natural Knowledge and that the habit of faith is not required And Horantius being of the contrary opinion saith that they are men of great name that are against him whose gravity and great and painfull studies moved him not to condemn them of heresie in a doubtfull matter not yet judged O happy Rome that hath a judge that can put an end to all their controversies And yet cannot determine whether it be Necessary to salvation to be a Christian Yea saith S. Clara Alvarez de Auxil disp 56. with others seems to hold that to Justification is not required the knowledge of a supernatural object at all Other say that both to Grace and to Glory an explicite faith in Christ is necessary as Bonavent 3. d. 25. and others Others say that to salvation at least an explicite faith in the Gospel or Christ is required though not to Grace or Justification And this is the commoner in the Schools as Herera declareth and followeth it And for Scotus S. Clara saith I take him to be of that opinion that is not necessary as a Means to Grace or Glory to have an explicite Belief of Christ or the Gospel ut 4. d. 3. q. 4. he seems at large to prove Pag. 113. he adds What is clearer then that at this day the Gospell bindeth not where it is not authentically preached that is that at this day men may be saved without an explicite belief of Christ for in that sence speaks the Doctor concerning the Jews And verily what ever my illustrious Master hold with his Learned Master Herera I think that this was the Opinion of the Doctor Scotus and the common one which also Vega a faithfull Scotist followeth and Faber 4. d. 3. Petigianis 3. d. 25. q. 1. and of the Thomists Bannes 22. q. 2. a. 8. Cano and others And he gathers it to be the mind of the Council of Trent Ses 6. cap. 4. and adds pag. 113. Its effectually proved by the Doctor from Joh. 15. If I had not come and spoke to them they had not had sin I know the Dictors of the contrary opinion answer that such are not cendemned for the sin of Infidelty precisely but for other sins that binder the illumination and special help of God But verily the Doctor there argueth that the Jews might by circumcision be cleansed from Original sin and saved without the Gospel and accordingly he may argue as to all others to whom the Gospel is not authentically promulgate Else his reason would not hold And our most grave Corduba l. 2. qu. Theol. q. 5. subscribes to this opinion saying since the promulgation of the Gospel an Explicite Belief of Christ is necessary except with the invincibly ignorant to whom an implicite sufficeth to the life of grace but whether it suffice to the life of glory is a probleme but it is more probable that here also an implicite sufficeth Page 114. he addeth the consent of Medina re recta in Deum fide lib. 4. cap. ult and of Bradwardine fol. 62. that an Implicite belief of Christ is sufficient to salvation And pag. 115. he saith that this is the way to the end debates of them that think the Article of the Trinity of Christ of the incarnation c. are necessary to salvation though not to Justification and answering them he saith that such are not formally without the Church You see then formally Insidels are in their Church and may be saved in his opinion And pag. 116. after a blow at Vellosillus he citeth also Victoria Relect. 4 de Indis Richard de Med. Villa 3. 25. art 3. qu. 1. and others for this opinion And tells you what his Implicite faith is to believe as the Church believeth And page 118. he answereth from Scotus the Question Whether such persons may hold the contrary error to the truth that they are ignorant of and saith No out of Scotus while it is preached but in some one place till he know it to be believed as a truth by the Church and then he must firmly adhere to it Which the charitable Fryar applieth to England as excusable for not believing some of their Articles And he citeth Petigianis saying If a simple old woman shall hear a false opinion from a false Prophet as that the substance of the bread remains with Christs body in the Eucharist and believe it doth she sin because of this No This were too hard and cruell to affirm Pag. 119. he citeth Angles and agreeth with him that such as have no knowledge of these things to stir them up are
without importunity or constraint And were our Power but answerable to our Desires we would soon put an end to these contentions of the Church without the hurt of any of the Dissenters Yea did there appear but any considerable Hopes of success I should venture to be more large in Proposals to that end But when wiser men of greater interest can do no good and the case appeareth as next to desperate a few words may suffice to satisfie my own conscience and to please my mind with the mention of a Peace and to help some others to right Dispositions and Desires though we have never so little expectation of success And in order to what follows I must first desire every Reader rightly to understand the meaning and design of all that I have hitherto said It is but to be a necessary help to the Discovery of the Truth and the confutation of the contrary errors and the just defence of the doctrine of Christ and of his Churches I solemnly protest that it is none of my design or desire 1. To make any believe that the Difference is wider between us and the Papists then indeed it is Nay I am satisfied that in many doctrinall points it is not so great as commonly it is taken to be by many if not most on both sides as in the points of certainty of Salvation of Pardon of Justification of Works of Faith and in almost all the controversies about Predestination Redemption Free-will the work of Grace c. The Dominicans in sence agree with the Calvinist as they call them and the Jesuites with the Lutherans and Arminians and so in divers other points The divers understanding of words among us and the weakness and passions of Divines and a base fear of the censures of a party hath occasioned may on both sides to feign the differences to be much wider then indeed they are so that when an Alvarez a Bannes a Gibieuf have spoken the same things as the Protestants do they are presently fain to pour out abundance of unworthy slanders against the Protestants for fear of being accounted Protestants themselves And to shew their party how much they differ from us they must feign us to be monsters and to hold that which commonly we abhor And some Protestants are too blame also in some measure in this kind This unchristian dealing will gripe the conscience when once it is awakened Let me be rather numbred with those that are ambitious to seem as Like to all the Churches of Christ and as much to agree with them as honestly and possibly I may what party soever distaste that union and agreement And let my soul abhor the desire of appearing more distant and disagreeing then we are what censures so ever I may incur Our students would not so ordinarily read Aquinas Scotus Ariminensts Durandus c. if there were not in them abundance of precious truth which they esteem How neer doth Dr. Holden come to us in the fundamental point of the Resolution of our faith How neer come to the Scotists to us in sence about the point of Merit and Waldensis and others yet neerer How neer comes Contarenus to us and many more in the point of Justification How neer comes Cardinall Cajetan to us in the Liberty of dissenting from the Fathers in the Exposition of the Scriptures and so doth Waldonate and many another How neer comes Cardinal Cusanus lib. de Concord to us even in the Essential point of difference about the Original and Title that Rome hath to its supremacy How neer comes Gerson to us in the point of Venial and Mortal sin perhaps as neer as we are to our selves How neer come the Dominicans and Jansenians to us in the points of Predestination Grace and Free will For my own part I scarce know a Protestant that my thoughts in these do more concur with then they do with Jansenius that is indeed with Augustine himself There are very few points of the Protestant doctrine which I cannot produce some Papist or other to attest and easily thus be even with Mr. Brerely upon fairer terms then he deals with us 2. I do also protest that it is none of my desire or design to create any unjust Censures of the final state of Papists in any Readers nor to perswade men that they are all damned or that there are no honest godly men among them When I read such writers as Gerson Barbanson Ferus and others I am fully satisfied that there are many among them how many God only knows that truly fear God and are sanctified gracious people with whom I hope to dwell for ever And therefore I think it my Duty not only to forbear unjust Censures of them but also to love them with that entire speciall Christian Love by which Christ would have us known to be his Disciples and to perswade all others to do the like Though still I am constrained to say that in my small acquaintance with them I find no comparison between the English Papists and our Churches in point of Holiness I would they were much better 3. I do also protest that it is not my desire or design to make any innocent Papist to be accounted guilty of the faults of others which he disowns 4. Nor is it any of my desire or design to provoke the Magistrate to any cruelty or injustice towards them nor to lay any penalty on them but what is truly of necessity for the safety of himself and the Common-wealth and a just restraint of them from perverting others and doing mischief to the souls of men as I shall open more at large anon 5. Nor is it any of my desire or design to make the generality of them unjustly more odious with Rulers or People then the measure of their corruptions do deserve Or to hide any of their vertues or deprive them of any honour which is their due This much my conscience witnesseth of my intents though I know the partial will hardly believe it when they feel themselves smart by that Contradiction which they have made necessary for our own defence And this I thought necessary to premise before I lay down the following Proposals that prejudice and passion do not turn away men eyes or cause them to misinterpret them For it is prejudice partiality and faction that hath hitherto frustrated all such Proposals and attempts CHAP. LI. THere are five several Degrees of Peace which lye before us to be attempted between the Roman and Reformed Churches We shall begin with the highest and upon supposition of the failing of our Designs for that come down to the next and so to the Lowest 1. The first Degree of Peace to be Intended and Desired is That we may so far Agree as that we may hold personal Communion in the same Assemblies in the worship of God and live under the same particular Pastors 2. If that cannot be attained the next Degree desirable is That we may hold
whom the care of Religion is committed therefore it belongs to the Pope to judge a King to be deposed or not deposed You see here it is not Lawful for such Christians as the Papists to Tolerate you which may help your judgement in the point of their Toleration Si Christiani saith Bellarib olim non deposuerunt Neronem Valentem Arianum similes id fuit quia deerant vires temporales Christianis You have your Government and we our Lives because the Papists are not strong enough They tell you what to trust to Saith Tollet one of the best of the Jesuites li 1. de Instruct Sacerd. c. 13. They that were bound by the bond of fidelity or Oath shall be freed from such a bond if he fall into Excommunication and during that Debtors are absolved from the obligation of paying to the Creditor that debt that is contracted by words These are no private uneffectual Opinions Saith Pope Pius the 5th himself in his Bull against our Queen Elizabeth Volumus mandamus We will and command that the Subjects take Arms against that Heretical and Excommunicate Queen But their crueltie to mens souls and the Church of Christ doth yet much more declare their uncharitableness It is a point of their Religion to believe that no man can be saved but the Subjects of their Pope as I have after proved and is to be seen in many of their writings as Knot and a late Pamphlet called Questions for Resolution of Unlearned Protestants c. and Bishop Morton hath recited the words of Lindanus Valentia and Vasquez Apol. lib. 2. c. 1. defining is to be of Necessity to Salvation to be subject to the Roman Bishop And would not a man think that for such horrid doctrines as damn the far greatest part of Christians in the world they should produce at least some probable Arguments But what they have to say I have here faithfully detected If we will dispute with them or turn to them the Scripture must be no further Judge then as their Church expoundeth it The Judgement of the Ancient yea or present Church they utterly renounce for the far greatest part is known to be against the Headship of their Pope and therefore they must stand by for Hereticks Tradition it self they dare not stand to except themselves be Judges of it for the greatest part of Christians profess that Tradition is against the Roman Vice-christ The internal sense and experience of Christians they gainsay concluding all besides themselves to be void of charity or saving grace which many a thousand holy souls do find within them that never believed in the Pope Yea when we are content to lay our lives on it that we will shew them the deceit of Popery as certainly and plainly as Bread is known to be Bread when we see it feel and taste it and as Wine is known to be Wine when we see and drink it yet do they refuse even the judgement of sense of all mens senses even their own and others So that we must renounce our honesty our Knowledge of our selves our senses our reason the common experience and senses of all men the Judgement and Tradition of the far greatest part of the present Church or else by the judgement of the Papists we must all be damned Whether such opinions as these should by us be uncontradicted or by you be suffered to be taught your Subjects is easie to discern If they had strength they would little trouble us with Disputing Nothing more common in their Writers scarce then that the Sword or Fire is fitter for Hereticks then Disputes This is hut their after-game Though their Church must rule Princes as the soul ruleth the body yet it must be by Secular Power excommunication doth but give fire it is Lead and Iron that must do the execution And when they are themselves disabled it is their way to strike us by the hands and swords of one another He that saw England Scatland and Ireland a while ago in blood and now sees the lamentable case of so many Protestant Princes and Nations destroying one another and thinks that Papists have no hand in contriving counselling instigating or executing is much a stranger to their Principles and Practices Observing therefore that of all the Sects that we are troubled with there is none but the Papist that disputeth with us with flames and Gun-Powder with Armies and Navies at their backs having so many Princes and so great revenews for their provision I have judged it my duty to God and his Church 1. To Detect the vanity of their cause that their shame may appear to all that are impartial and to do my part of that necessary work for which Vell. Paterculus so much honoured Cicero Hist lib. 2. c. 34. Ne quorum arma viceramus corum ingenio vinceremur And 2. To present with greatest earnestness these following Requests to your Highness on the behalf of the cause and people of the Lord wherein the Papists also shall see that it is not their suffering but only our Necessary Defence that we desire 1. We earnestly request that you will Resolvedly adhere to the cause of Truth and Holiness and afford the Reformed Churches abroad the utmost of your help for their Concord and Defence and never be tempted to own an Interest that crosseth the Interest of Christ How many thousands are studiously contriving the extirpation of the Protestant Churches from the Earth How many Princes are consederate against them The more will be required of you for their aid The serious endeavours of your Renowned Father for the Protestants of Savoy discovered to the world by Mr. Morland in his Letters c. hath won him more esteem in the hearts of many that fear the Lord then all his victories in themselves considered We pray that you may inherit a tender care of the cause of Christ 2. We humbly request that you will faithfully adhere to those that fear the Lord in your Dominions In your eyes let a vile person be contemned but honour them that fear the Lord Psal 15. 4. Know not the wicked but let your eyes be upon the faithfull of the Land Psal 101. 4 6. Compassionate the weak and curable Punish the uncurable restrain the froward but Love and cherish the servants of the Lord. They are under Christ the honour and the strength of the Commonwealth It was a wise and happy King that professed that his Good should extend to the Saints on earth and the excellent in whom was his delight Psal 16. 2 3. This strengthening the vitals is one of the chief means to keep out Popery and all other dangerous diseases We see few understanding Godly people receive the Roman infection but the prophane licentious ignorant or malignant that are prepared for it 3. We earnestly request your utmost care that we may be ruled by Godly Faithfull Magistrates under you and that your Wisdom and Vigilancy may frustrate the subtilty of Masked Papists
end the. p. 288. l. 24. for left r. lest p. 297. l. 17. for them r. the. p. 314. r. Paulus 5. p. 356. l. 31. r. hatchets p. 362. l. 28. r. at last p. 365. l. 8. for may r. many l. 33. r. Maldonate p. 397. l. 30. r. the other of l. 32. for parties r. straw p. 409. l. 32. r. in the. l. 36. blot out none p. 422. l. 13. r. presided p. 426. l. 17. blot out of p. 432. l. 33. for had r. had not p. 434. l. 4. for to r. as p. 435. l. 1. r. members p. 433. l. 29. blot out a. p. 452. l. 20. r. But when the. A Key for Catholicks To open the juglings of the Jesuits and satisfie all that are but truly willing to understand whether the cause of the Romane or the Reformed Churches be of God and to leave the Reader utterly unexcusable if after this he will be a Papist CHAP. I. THE thoughts of the divided state of Christians have brought one of the greatest and constantest sadness to my Soul that ever it was acquainted with especially to remember that while we are quarrelling and plotting and writing and fighting against each other so many parts of the world about five of six remain in the Infidelity of Heathenism Judaism or Mahometanism where millions of poor souls do need our help and if all our strength were joyned together for their Illumination and Salvation it would be too little Oh horrible shame to the face of Christendom that the Nations are quietly serving the Devil and the Turk is in possession of so many Countries that once were the Inheritance of Christ and that his Iron yoak is still upon the necks of the persecuted Greeks and that he stands up at our doors in so formidable a posture still ready to devour the rest of the Christian world and yet that instead of combining to resist him and vindicate the cause and people of the Lord we are greedily sucking the blood of one another and tearing in pieces the body of Christ with furious hands and destroying our selves to save the enemy a labour and spending that wit that treasure that labour and that blood to dash our selves in pieces on one another which might be nobly and honestly and happily spent in the cause of God These thoughts provoked me to many an hours consideration How the wounds of the Church might be yet healed And have made it long a principal part of my daily Prayers that the Reconciling Light might shine from Heaven that might in some good measure take up our differences and that God would at last give healing Principles and dispositions unto men especially to Princes and the Pastors of the Church But the more I studied how it might be done the more difficult if not impossible it appear'd and all because of the Romane Tyranny the Vice-Christ or pretended Head of the Church being with them become an essential part of it and the Subjection to him essential to our Christianity it self So that saith Bellarmine de Eccles l. 3. c. 5. No man though he would can be a Subject of Christ that is not subject to the Pope and this with abundance of intolerable corruptions they have fixed by the fancy of their own Infallibility and built upon this foundation a worldly Kingdom and the temporal Riches and Dignity of a numerous Clergy twisting some Princes also into the Interest so that they cannot possibly yield to us in the very principal points of difference unless they will deny the very Essence of their New Christianity and Church and pluck up the foundations which they have so industriously laid and leave men to a suspicion that they are fallible hereafter if they shall confess themselves mistaken in any thing now and unless they will be so admirably self-denying as to let go the temporal advantages which so many thousands of them are interested in And whether so much light may be hoped for in so dark a generation or so much love to God and self-denyal in millions of men so void of self-denyal is easie to conjecture And we cannot in these greatest matters come over to them unless we will flatly betray our Souls and depart from the Unity of the Catholick Church and from the Center of that Unity to unite with another called the Romane Catholick Church in another Center And if we should thus cast away the Truth and Favour of God and sin against our Knowledge and Conscience and so prove men of no Faith or Religion under pretence of desiring a Unity in Faith and Religion yet all would not do the thing intended but we should certainly miss of these very ends which we seek when we had sold the Truth and our Souls to obtain them For there is nothing more certain then that the Christian World will never unite in the Romane Vice-Christ nor agree with them in their Corruptions against plain Scripture Tradition Consent of the ancient Church against the Reason and common sense of Mankind This is not by any wise man to be expected Never did the universal Church or one half of it center to this day in the Romane Soveraignty And why should they hope for that which never yet was done When they had their Primacy of Place to be the Bishop of the first Seat and first of the Patriarcks it made the Pope no more a Soveraign and a Vice-Christ then the King of France is Soveraign to the Duke of Saxony or Bavaria or then the Senior Justice on the Bench is the Soveraign of the rest and yet even this much he never had but from the Romane Empire What claim did he ever lay in his first Usurpations to any Church without those bounds It was the Empire that raised him and the Empire limited his own Usurpations Saith their own Reinerius or whoever else Cont. Waldens Catal. in Biblioth Patr. To. 4. pag 773. The Churches of the Armenians and Aethiopians and Indians and the rest which the Apostles converted are not under the Church of Rome Yea in Gregories days they found the Churches of Brittain and Ireland both strangers and adversaries to their Soveraignty insomuch as they could not procure them to receive their Government nor change so much as the time of Easter for them no nor to have Communion with them at last Anno 614. Laurentius their Arch-Bishop here wrote this Letter with Mellitus and Justus to the Bishops and Abbots in all Scotland that is Ireland While the Sea Apostolick after its manner directed us to preach to the Pagan Nations in these Western parts as in the whole world and we happened to enter this Island called Brittain before we knew them believing that they walked after the manner of the universal Church we reverenced both the Brittains and the Scots in great Reverence of their Sanctity But when we knew the Brittains we thought the Scots were better But we have learnt by Daganus the Bishop in this forementioned Island and by
Columbanus the Abbot coming into France that the Scots do nothing differ from the Brittains in their Conversation For Bishop Daganus coming to us refused not only to eat with us but even to eat in the same House where we did eat Usher Epist Hibern 7. p. 18. Our most peaceable Bishop Hall was forct to write a Roma irreconciliabilis While we are thinking of Reconciliation they are about our ears with Plots and violence and with swarms of Rome-bred Sects and are day and night industriously undermining us so that by their continual Alarms I am called off to these defensive wars which here I have undertaken yet still resolving that the Desperateness of the Cure shall not make me run from them into a contrary extream nor be out of the way of Peace nor neglect any necessary means how hopeless soever of success The Work that here I have undertaken is 1. To give you briefly those Grounds on which you must go if you will keep your ground against a Papist 2. To give a few invincible Arguments which the weakest may be able to use to overthrow the principal grounds of the Papists 3. To detect their Frauds and give to the younger sort of Ministers sufficient Directions for the Confutation of all the Papists in the world 4. To propound though in vain such terms of Peace as we can yield to CHAP. II. BEfore I mention the Grounds or Cause that you must maintain I must premise this Advice to the Common People 1. Wrong not the Truth and your selves by an unequal conflict Enter not rashly upon Disputes with those that are Learned and of nimble tongues if you be ignorant or of weak capacities your selves Though I shall here shew you that Scripture Church Tradition Reason and Sense are on your side yet experience tels us how the words of Juglers have made millions of men deny belief to their eyes their taste and other senses An ignorant man is soon silenced by a subtile wit and many think that when they cannot answer they must yield though they deny both Sense and Reason by it If any of them secretly entice you desire them to debate the case with some able learned experienced Minister in your hearing It is the office of your Pastors to defend you from the wolves If you once despise them or straggle from them and the Flocks and trust to your own Reason that is unfurnished and unprepared for such work you may take that you get by it if you be undone You need the help of Pastors for your souls as well as of Physicians for your Bodies and Lawyers for your Estates or else God would never have set them over you in his Church Let them but come on equal terms and you shall see what Truth can do In this way we will not avoid a Conference with any of them But alas with ignorant unlearned people what may not such Deceivers do that can perswade so many thousand souls to give no Credit to their own eyes or taste or feeling but to believe a Priest that Bread is not Bread and Wine is not Wine 2. Yet I would have the weakest to endeavour to understand the reasons of their Profession and to be able to repell Deceivers And to that end I shall here give you first some Directions concerning the cause which you must defend And concerning this Observe these things following 1. Understand what the Religion is that you must hold and maintain It is the antient Christian Religion Do not put every Truth among the Essentials of your Religion Our Religion doth not stand or fall with every Controversie that is raised about it That which was the true Religion in the Apostles days is ours now that which all were baptized into the Profession of and the Churches openly held forth as their Belief Reformation brings us not a new Religion but cleanseth the old from the dross of Popery which by innovation they had brought in A man that cannot confute a Papist may yet be a Christian and so hold fast the true Religion It followeth not that our Religion is questionable or unsafe if some point in Controversie between them and us be questionable or hard The Papists would fain bring you to believe that our Religion must lie upon some of these Controversies but it s no such matter Perhaps you will say That then it is not about Religion that we differ from them I answer yes it is about the Essentials of their Religion but it is but for the preserving the Integrity of ours against the Consequences and additions of theirs They have made them a New Religion which we call Popery and joined this to the Old Religion which we call Christianity Now we stick to the old Religion alone and therefore there is more essential to their Religion then is to ours so that our own Religion even the ancient Christianity is out of Controversie between us The Papists do confess that the Creed the Lords Prayer the ten Commandments are true yea that all the Scripture is the word of God and certainly true so that our Religion is granted us as past dispute And therefore it is only the Papists Religion that is in question between us and not ours If you will make those lower Truths to be of the Essence of your Religion which are not you will give the Papists the advantage which they desire 2. If the Papists call for a Rule or Test of your Religion and ask you where they may find it assign them to the Holy Scriptures and not to any Confessions of Churches further then as they agree with that We know of no Divine Rules and Laws of Faith and Life but the holy Scripture and the hearts of Believers have an imperfect Transcript of them The Confessions of Churches are but part of the Holy Scripture or Collections out of them containing the points of greatest weight And if in phrase or order much more in matter there be any thing humane we make it not our Rule nor are we bound to make it good no more then the Writings of godly men A point is not therefore with us an Article of Faith because our Churches or a Synod put it into a Confession but because it is in the Word of God For a Councils determinations do with us differ but gradually from the Judgement of a single man in this respect And therefore we give them the Scripture only as the full Doctrine of our Faith and the perfect Law of God And those points in it which Life or Death is laid upon and God hath told us we cannot be saved without we take as the Essentials of our Religion and the rest as the Integrals only If they ask Why then we do draw up Confessions of Faith I answer 1. To teach and help the people by gathering to their hands the most necessary points and giving them sometimes an explication of them 2. To let our Accusers see that we misunderstand not the
Scriptures 3. To let Pastors and other Subjects know what sence of Scripture the Magistrate will own within his Dominions 4. And to let the Pastors and the world know what sence in the principal Points we are agreed in But still we take not our Confessions for our Divine Rule and therefore if there be any errour in a Confession there is none in the Rule of our Religion and consequently none in the Religion which we all agree in but only in such a persons or Churches exposition of the Rule which yet among Christians is not in any essential Point 3. Understand well what is the Catholick Church that when the Papists ask you what Church you are of or call to you to prove its antiquity or truth you may give them a sound and Catholick answer The Catholick Church is the whole number of true Christians upon earth for we meddle not now with that part which is in Heaven It is not tyed to Protestants only nor to the Greeks only much less to the Romanists only or to any other party whatsoever but it comprehendeth all the members of Christ and as visible it containeth all that profess the Christian Religion by a credible profession If the Christian Religion may be known then a man may know that he is a Christian and consequently a member of the Catholick Church But if the Christian Religion cannot be known then no man can know which is the Church or which is a Christian All Christians united to Christ the Head are this Catholick Church If you tye the Church to your own party and make a wrong description of it you will ensnare your selves and spoil your belief and your defence of it 4. Run not into extreams mix not any unsound principles with your Religion For if you do the Papists will cull out those and by disgracing them will seem to disgrace your Religion 5. Use not any unsound Arguments to defend the Truth For if you do the truth will suffer and seem to be overthrown by the weakness of your Arguments 6. Joyn not with those men that cast out any Ordinance of God because the Papists have abused it Reformation of corrupted Institutions is not by the Abolition of them but by the Restauration of them There are few things in use among the Papists themselves as parts of worship but may lead us up to a good original or tell us of some other real Duty which did degenerate into these 7. Joyn not with those ignorant unpeaceable self-conceited womanish rabious Divines or private men that pour out unworthy reproaches at godly men among our selves as if they were Hereticks or such as the Churches should dis-own For these are they that please the Papists and harden them in their Error and offend the weak They think they may call us Hereticks or Blasphemers by authority when we call one another so Such Railers teach them what to say and play their game more effectually then they could do their own When they are alluring the simple people how soon will they prevail if they can but prove their charge against us from the pens of Protestants themselves Having told you on what grounds you must make good your cause against them I shall next give you three or four easie Arguments some of them formerly given you by which even the weakest may prove that Popery is but deceit CHAP. III. Argum. 1. IF there be any godly honest men on earth besides Papists then Popery is false and not of God But there be godly honest men on earth besides Papists therefore Popery is false and not of God The Major is proved thus It is an Article of the Popish faith that there are no godly honest men on earth besides Papists therefore if there be any such Popery is false By godly honest men I mean such as have true love to God and so are in a state of salvation The Antecedent I prove thus 1. Their very definition of the Church doth make the Pope the Head and confine the membership only to his subjects making the Roman Catholick Church as they call it the whole 2. But yet lest any ignorant Papists say I may be a Roman Catholick without believing that all others are ungodly and shall be damned I will give it you in the Determination of a Pope and general Councll Leo the tenth Abrog Pragm sanct Bull. in the 17 th General Council at the Laterane saith And seeing it is of necessity to salvation that all the faithful of Christ be subject to the Pope of Rome as we are taught by the testimony of divine Scripture and of the holy Fathers and it is declared in the Constitution of Pope Boniface 7. c. And Pope Pius the second was converted from being Aenaeas Sylvius by this Doctrine of a Cardinal approved by him at large Bull. Retract in the Vol. 4. of Binnius p. 514. I came to the Fountain of Truth which the holy Doctors both Greek and Latine shew who with one voyce say that he cannot be saved that holdeth not the unity of the holy Church of Rome and that all those vertues are maimed to him that refuseth to obey the Pope of Rome though he lye in sack cloth and ashes and fast and pray both day and night and seem in the other things to fulfill the Law of God So that if a Pope and General Council be false then Popery is false For their infallibility is the ground of their faith and they take it on their unerring authority But if the Pope and a General Council be to be believed then no man but a subject of the Pope can be saved no though he fast and pray in sack-cloth and ashes day and night and seem to fulfill the rest of the Law of God It s certain therefore that if any one of you that call your selves Romane Catholicks do not believe that all the world shall be damned save your selves you are indeed no Romance Catholicks but are Hereticks your selves in their account for you deny a principal Article of their faith and deny the Infallibility of the Pope with a General Council which is your very Foundation And therefore we find that even in the great charitable work of reducing the Abassines the Jesuite Gonzalus Rodericus in his speech to the Emperours mother laid so great a stress on this point that when she professed her subjection to Christ he told her that None are subject to Christ that are not subject to his Vicar Negavi Christo subjici qui ejus vicario non subjicitur Godignus de reb Abassin Lib. 2. c. 18. in Roderic liter p. 323. And Bellarmine saith de Eccl. l. 3. c. 5. that no man though he would can be subject to Christ that is not subject to the Pope that is he cannot be a Christian And therefore Card. Richlieu then Bishop of Lusson tels the Protestants that they were not to be called Christians And Knot against Chillingworth with abundance more of them
Well and what 's that to the question O Sir is it not the holy truth of God that you are about and should you thus abuse it and the souls of men you knew the question is Whether sense and the intellect thereby be infallible in judging Bread to be Bread when we see feel and eat it Had you never a word to say to this to perswade men that they have eyes and see not and hands and feel not or that the world knoweth not certainly what they seem to know by seeing and feeling I pray you hereafter deal by us as fairly as Bellarmine did and yet we will thank you for nothing who quite gave away the Roman cause by granting and pleading that sense is infallible in Positives and therefore we may thence say This is a Body because I see it and so this is Bread or wine because I see feel and taste it but not in Negatives and therefore we cannot say this is not a Body because I see it not I pray you give over talking of the Pope or Church or Religion or Men if you are uncertain of substances which are suppose but per accidentia the Objects of your sense And take nothing ill that I write of you till you are more certain that you see it and know what you see 3. But you 'l say Sense and Reason must here vail bonnet to faith Answ In the Negative case let it be granted and any case where faith can be faith But if sense and the Intellect therewith be fallible in Positives so that we cannot know Bread when we see and eat it faith cannot be faith then What talk you of faith if you credit not the soundest senses of all the men in the world when sense and reason are presupposed to faith How know you that faith here contradicteth sense You 'l say because the Church or Scripture saith This is my Body and that there is no Bread But how know you that there is any such thing in Scripture or that the Church so holdeth you think you have read or heard it But how know you that your sense deceived you not He that cannot know Bread when he seeth and eateth it is unlikely to know letters and their meaning when he seeth them See more of my answer to such Objections in a Book entitled The Safe Religion p. 241. to 248. The simplest Reader that hath honesty and charity is secured against Popery by the first Argument which he may make good to his own soul against all the Jesuites on earth And he that is unable to proceed on that account may by the evidence of this last Argument confute any Papist living if he be a man of sense and reason And having brought all our controversie so low that sense it self may be the judge I shall go no further in Argument as thinking it vain to use any reason with that man that will not believe his own eye-sight nor the sight and feeling and taste of all the world besides CHAP. X. I Come now to the next and principal part of my task which is to open to you their Deceits and give you Directions for the discovery and confutation of them that by the help of these you may see the Truth Detect 1. Remember this ground which they have given you that If you prove them guilty but of any one Error in points of belief determined by their Church you thereby disprove the whole body of Popery as such For you pull up the foundation which they build on and the Authority into which they resolve their faith They will grant you that if they are deceived by the Church in one thing they have no Certainty of any thing upon the Churches credit So that if you read Pauls discourse against Praying in an unknown tongue or the many precepts for our reading and meditating in the Law of God or the like and can but perceive that the Popish Latine service or their forbidding men to read the Scripture c. are contrary hereto or if you find out but any one of their Errors you cannot be a Papist if you understand their Profession But it is not so with us for though we know that the Scripture and all that is in it is of infallible Truth and that every true Christian while such is infallible in the Essentials of Christianity for else he were no Christian yet we profess that we know but in part and that our own Writings and Confessions may possibly in some things be besides the sense of Scripture and there being much more propounded in Scripture to our faith then what is of absolute necessity to salvation we may possibly after our studying and praying mistake in some things that are not of the Essence but the Integrity of Christianity and are necessary to the Melius esse the strength or comfort though not to the being of a Christian So that every Error in their faith destroyes their grounds and so their new Religion but so doth not every Error of ours Or to speak more distinctly let us distinguish between the Fides quae qua their Objective faith and our Subjective faith 1. Their Objective Faith hath Errors in it but ours hath none by their own confession For theirs is all the Decrees of their Popes and Councils and ours is only the Holy Scripture which they confess to be infallible Our own writings do but shew how we understand the Scriptures and so whether our subjective faith be right or not 2. We confess that it is not only possible but probable that we are mistaken in some lower points about the meaning of the Scriptures and yet our foundation is still sure But they have in a sort confounded their Subiective and Objective faith and one believes it on that account because others do believe it and so one age or part do but seek for the Object of their faith in the Actual faith of the other Yea 3. They conclude that every point which is of faith that is that 's determined by the Church to be so is of such necessity to salvation that no man can be saved that denyeth it or that doth not believe it if sufficiently proposed But we are assured that though all that is in Scripture be most true yet through misunderstanding some points there proposed to our faith may possibly be denyed and disputed against by a true believer and yet his salvation not be overthrown by it The Papists cry out against us for distinguishing between the Fundamentals or essentials of Religion and the Integrals but we know it to be necessary CHAP. XI Detect 2. WHEN you have brought the matter thus far and see that if they have one errour in faith their whole cause is lost then consider Whether it be Possible for that Doctrine which is so contrary to Scripture and to it self to be free from all Error 1. How contrary it is to Scripture 1. To forbid the reading of Scripture in a known
many others so like to the Arguments and Language of the Seekers and Infidels that we can scarcely know whom we hear when they speak to us For the discovery of their desperate fraud in this point and the right confuting of them 1. You must distinguish them out of their confusion 2. You must grant them all that is true and just which we shall as stiffly defend as they 3. You must reject their errors and confute them And 4. You may turn their own principall weapon against them to the certain destruction of their cause Of all these briefly in course 1. For the first two I have spoke at large in the Preface to the second part of the Saints Rest and in the determination in the first part of my Book against Infidelity But briefly to touch some of the most necessary things here 1. We must distinguish the Tradition of the Scriptures or the Scripture doctrine from the Tradition of other doctrines pretended to be the rest of the word of God 2. We must distinguish between a certain proved Tradition and that which is unproved and uncertain if not grosly feigned 3. We must distinguish between the Tradition of the whole Catholick Church or the greater part and the Tradition of the lesser more corrupted selfish part even the Roman part 4. We must distinguish between a Tradition of necessary doctrine or practice and the Tradition of mutable Orders 5. And we must distinguish between Tradition by way of Testimony or History or by way of Teaching Ministry and Tradition by way of Decisive Judgement as to the Universal Church suffer them not to jumble all these together if you would not be cheated in the dark 2. And then concerning Tradition we grant all these following Propositions so that it is not all Tradition that we deny 1. We grant that the Holy Scriptures come down to us by the certain Tradition of our fathers and Teachers and that what the seeing and hearing of the Apostles was to them that lived with them that Tradition and belief of certain Tradition is to us by reason of our distance from the time and place So that though the Scripture bear its own evidence of a Divine author in the Image and superscription of God upon it yet we are beholden to Tradition for the Books themselves and for much of our knowledge that these are the true writings of the Apostles and Prophets and all and not depraved c. 2. We thankfully acknowledge that the Essentials of the faith and more hath been delivered even from the Apostles in other wayes or forms besides the Scriptures as 1. In the Professions of the Churches faith 2. In the baptismal Covenant and signs and whole administration 3. In the Sacrament of the Lords Supper 4. In Catechisms or Catechizings 5. In the prayers and praises of the Church 6. In the hearts of all true believers where God hath written all the Essentials of the Christian saith and Law So that we will not do as the Papists perversly do when God delivereth us the Christian Religion with two hands Scripture compleatly and Verbal Tradition in the essentials they quarrell with the one hand Scripture on pretence of defending the other so will not we quarrell with Tradition the other hand but thankfully confess a Tradition of the same Christianity by unwritten means which is delivered more fully in the Scripture and this Tradition is in some respect subordinate to Scripture and in some respect co-ordinate as the spirits left hand as it were to hold us out the truth 3. We confess that the Apostles delivered the Gospel by voice as well as by writing and that before they wrote it to the Churches 4. By this preaching we confess there were Christians made that had the doctrine of Christ in their hearts and Churches gathered that had his ordinances among them before the Gospel was written 5. And we confess that the Converted were bound to teach what they had received to their children servants and others 6. And that there was a setled Ministry in many Churches ordained to preach the Gospel as they had received it from the Apostles before it was written 7. And that the said ordinances of Baptism Catechizing Professions Eucharist Prayer Praise c. were instituted and in use before the Gospell was written for the Churches 8. And that when the Gospel was written as Tradition bringeth it to us so Ministers are commissioned to deliver both the Books and the doctrine of this Book as the Teachers of the Church and to preach it to those without for their conversion 9. And that Parents and Masters are bound to teach this doctrine to their children and servants yea if a Minister or other person were cast into the Indies or America without a Bible he must teach the doctrine though he remembred not the words 10. We grant that to the great benefit of the Church the writers of all ages have in subserviency to Scripture delivered down the Sacred Verities and Historians the matters of fact 11. And that the unanimous Consent of all the Churches manifested in their constant professions and practices is a great confirmation to us 12. And so is the suffering of the Martyrs for the same truth 13. And the Declarations of such consent by Councils is also a confirming Tradition 14. And the Confessions of Hereticks Jews and other Infidels are Providentiall and Historical Traditions for confirmation 15. And we profess that if we had any Certain proof of a Tradition from the Apostles of any thing more then is written in Scripture we would receive it All this we grant them for Tradition 3. But in these points following we oppose them 1. We take the holy Scriptures as the Compleat universal Rule or Law of faith and Holy living and we know of no Tradition that containeth another word of God Nay we know there is none such because the Scripture is true which asserteth its own sufficiency Scripture and unwritten Tradition are but two wayes of acquainting the world with the same Christian doctrine and not with divers parts of that Doctrine so as that Tradition should add to Scripture yea contrarily it is but the substance of greatest verities that are conveyed by unwritten Tradition but that and much more is contained in the Scripture where the Christian doctrine is compleat 2. The manner of delivery in a form of words which no man may alter and in so much fullness and perspicuity is much to be preferred before the meer verbal delivery of the same doctrine For 1. The Memory of man is not so strong as to retain as much as the Bible doth contain and preserve it safe from alterations or Corruptions Or if one man were of so strong a memory no man can imagine that all or most should be so Or if one Generation had such wonderfull memories we cannot imagine that all their posterity should have the like If there were no statute Books Records or Law-books in
which is most sufficient and most cleare in it self but for us This we all yield The second way is necessary to sciences diminutely and insufficiently delivered by their authors for their supplement so Aristotle is supplemented by Albertus Magnus c. The third way specially if it be not excessive is tolerable to the well being though it be not necessary The fourth way assertively is to be rejected as Poyson Thus are the authorities to be understood that forbid to add to or diminish from the Scripture Deut. 12 32. Well! by this time you may see that when such doctrine as this for Scripture sufficiency and perfection as the Rule of faith and life admitting no addition as necessary but explication nor any other as tolerable but moderate ampliation which indeed is the same I say when this doctrine past so lately in a Popish General Council you may see that the very Doctrine of Traditions equaled with Scripture or being another word of God necessary to faith and salvation containing what is wanting in Scripture is but lately sprung up in the world And sure the Traditions themselves be not old then when the conceit of them came but lately into the world 4. Well I have done the three first parts of this task but the chief is yet behind which is to shew 1 How little the Papists get by their Argument from Tradition 2. And how â—uch they lose by it even all their cause 1. Two things they very much plead Tradition for the one is their private doctrines and practices in which they disagree from other Christians and here they lose their labour with the judicious 1. Because they give us no sufficient proof that their Tradition is Apostolical 2. Because the dissent of other Churches sheweth that it is not universal with other Reasons before mentioned 2. The other Cause which they plead Tradition for is the Doctrine of Christianity it self And this they do in design to lead men to the Church of Rome as if we must be no Christians unless we are Christians upon the credit of the Pope and his Subjects And here I offer to their Consideration these two things to shew them the vanity of their arguing 1. We do not strive against you in producing any Tradition or Testimony of Antiquity for the Scripture or for Scripture Doctrine we make as much advantage of such just Tradition as you What do such men as White Vane Cressy c. think of when they argue so eagerly for the advantage of Tradition to prove the Scripture and Christian faith Is this any thing against us Nothing at all We accept our Religion from both the hands of Providence that bring it us Scripture and Tradition we abhor the contempt which these partial Disputers cast upon Scripture but we are not therefore so partial our selves as to refuse any collateral or subordinate help for our faith The more Testimonies the better The best of us have need of all the advantages for our faith that we can get When they have extolled the Certainty of Tradition to the highest we gladly joyn with them and accept of any certain Tradition of the mind of God And I advise all that would prove themselves wise defenders of the faith to take heed of rejecting Arguments from Providences or any necessary Testimony of man especially concerning matter of fact or of rejecting true Church History because the Papists over value it under the name of Tradition left such prove guilty of the like partiality and injuriousness to the truth as the Papists are And whereas the Papists imagine that this must lead us to their Church for Tradition I answer that in my next observation which is 2. We go beyond the Papists in arguing for just Tradition of the Christian faith and we make far greater advantage of it then they can do For 1. They argue but from Authoritative Decision by the Pope under the name of Church-Tradition excepting the French party whereas we argue from true History and certain Antiquity and prove what we say Where note 1. That their Tradition is indeed no Tradition for if it must be taken upon the credit of a man as supposed Infallible by supernatural if not miraculous endowment this is not Tradition but Prophesie And if they prove the man to be such a man it s all one to the Church whether he say that This was the Apostles doctrine or This I deliver my self to you from God For if he were so qualified he had the power and credit of a prophet or Apostle himself And therefore they must prove the Pope to be a Prophet before their kind of Tradition can get credit and when they have done that there is no need of it this their honest Dr. Holden was ware of upon which he hath so handsomely canvassed them 2. Note also that such as Dr. Holden Cressy Vane White and other of the French way that plead for Tradition mean a quite other thing then the Jesuited Italian Papist meanes and while they plead for universal Tradition they come nearer to the Protestants then to their Brethren if they did not contradict themselves when they have done by making meer Romish Tradition to be universal 3. Note also that when Papists speak of Tradition confusedly they give us just reason to call them to Define their Tradition and tell us what they mean by it before we dispute with them upon an ambiguous word seeing they are so divided among themselves that one party understands one thing by it and another another thing which we must not suffer these juglers to jumble together and confound 2. Another advantage in which we go beyond the Papists for Tradition is that as we argue not from the meer pretended supernatural Infallibility or Authority of any as they do but from rational Evidence of true Antiquity so we argue not from a sect or party as they do but from the Universal Church As far as the whole Church of Christ is of larger extent and greater credit then the Popish party so far is our Tradition more Credible then theirs And that is especially in three things 1. The Papists are fewer by far then the rest of the Christians in the world And the testimony of many yea of all is more then of a part 2. The Papists above other parties have espoused an interest that leads them to pretend and corrupt Tradition and bend all things to that interest of their own that they may Lord it over all the world But the whole Church can have no such Interest and Partiality 3. And the Papists are but one side and he that will judge rightly must hear the other sides speak too But the Tradition that we make use of is from all sides concurring yea Papists themselves in many points Yea our Tradition reacheth further then the Universal Church for we take in all rational Evidence even of Jews Heathens and Hereticks and Persecutors that bear witness to the matters of fact
Professors of our Religion therefore c. But all this will not serve them without a Catalogue and telling them where our Church was before Luther To this we further answer we have no peculiar Catholick Church of our own for there is but one and that is our Church Wherever the Christian Church was there was our Church And where-ever any Christians were congregate for Gods worship there were Churches of the same sort as our particular Churches And wherever Christianity was there our Religion was For we know no Religion but Christianity And would you have us give you a Catalogue of all the Christians in the world since Christ Or would you have us as vain as H. T. in his Manuall that names you some Popes and about twenty professors of their faith in each age as if twenty or thirty men were the Catholick Church Or as if those men were proved to be Papists by his naming them This is easie but silly disputing In a word Our Religion is Christianity 1. Christianity hath certain Essentials without which no man can be a Christian and it hath moreover many precious truths and duties necessary necessitate praecepti and also necessitate medii to the better being of a Christian Our being as Christians is in the former and our strength and increase and better-being is much in the latter From the former Religion and the Church is denominated Moreover 2. Our implicite and actuall explicite Belief as the Papists call them must be distinguished or our General and our particular Belief 3. And also the Positives of our Belief must be distinguished from the implyed Negatives and the express Articles themselves from their implyed Consectaries And now premising these three distinctions I shall tell you where our Church hath been in all Ages since the birth of Christ 1. In the dayes of Christ and his Apostles our Church was where they and all Christians were And our Religion was with them in all its parts both Essential and perfective That is we now Believe 1. All to be true that was delivered by the Apostles as from God with a General faith 2. We believe all the Essentials and as much more as we can understand with a Particular faith 3. But we cannot say that with such a particular faith we believe all that the Apostles believed or delivered for then we must say that we have the same degree of understanding as they and that we understand every word of the Scriptures 2. In the dayes of the A postles themselves the Consectaries and implied Verities and Rejections of all Heresies were not particularly and expresly delivered either in Scripture or Tradition as the Papists will confess 3. In the next ages after the Apostles our Church was the one Catholick Church containing all true Christians Headed by Jesus Christ and every such Christian too many to number was a member of it And for our Religion the Essential parts of it were contained both in the Holy Scriptures and in the Publick Professions Ordinances and Practices of the Church in those ages which you call Traditions and the rest of it even all the doctrines of faith and universal Laws of God which are its perfective parts they were fully contained in the holy Scriptures And some of our Rejections and Consectaries were then gathered and owned by the Church as Heresies occasioned the expressing of them and the rest were all implyed in the Apostolical Scripture doctrine which they preserved 4. By degrees many errors crept into the Church yet so that 1. Neither the Catholick Church nor one true Christian in sensu composito at least did reject any essential part of Christianity 2. And all parts of the Church were not alike corrupted with error but some more and some less 3. And still the whole Church held the holy Scripture it self and so had a perfect General or Implicite belief even while by evill consequences they oppugned many parts of their own profession 5. When in process of time by claiming the universall Soveraignty Rome had introduced a new pretended Catholick Church so far as their opinion took by superadding a New Head and form there was then a two fold Church in the West the Christian as Christian headed by Christ and the Papal as Papal Headed by the Pope yet so as they called it but one Church and by this usurped Monarchy as under Christ endeavoured to make but one of them by making both the Heads Essential when before one only was tolerable And if the Matter in any part may be the same and the same Man be a Christian and a Papist and so the same Assemblies yet still the forms are various and as Christians and part of the Catholick Church they are one thing and as Papists and members of the separating sect they are another thing Till this time there is no doubt of our Churches Visibility 6. In this time of the Romish Usurpation our Church was visible in three degrees in three severall sorts of persons 1. It was visible in the lowest degree among the Papists themselves not as Papists but as Christians For they never did to this day deny the Scriptures nor the Ancient Creeds nor Baptism the Lords Supper nor any of the substance of our Positive Articles of Religion They added a New Religion and Church of their own but still professed to hold all the old in consistency with it Wherever the truth of holy Scriptures and the ancient Creeds of the Church were professed there was our Religion before Luther But even among the Papists the holy Scriptures and the said Creeds were visibly professed therefore among them was our Religion And note here that Popery it self was not ripe for a corruption of the Christian faith professed till Luthers opposition heightned them For the Scripture was frequently before by Papists held to be a most sufficient Rule of faith as I shewed before from the Council of Basil and consequently Tradition was only pleaded as conservatory and expository of the Scripture but now the Council of Trent hath in a sort equalled them And this they were lately driven to when they found that out of Scripture they were unable to confute or suppress the truth 2. At the same time of the Churches oppression by the Papacy our Religion was visible and so our Church in a more illustrious sort among the Christians of the most of the world Greeks Ethiopians and the rest that never were subject to the usurpation of Rome but only many of them took him for the Patriarch primae sedis but not Episcopus Ecclesiae Catholicae or the Governour of the Universall Church So that here was a visibility of our Church doubly more eminent then among the Romanists 1. In that it was the far greatest part of the Catholick Church that thus held our Religion to whom the Papists were then but few 2. In that they did not only hold the same Positive Articles of faith with us but also among their Rejections
whether you believe that the Oral Tradition of all the Church did preserve the Knowledge of Augustines Epiphanius Chrysostomes c. doctrine so much as their writings do Is the doctrine of Aquinas Scotus Gabriel c. yea the Council of Trent preserved now more certainly in mens memories then in writing If so they have better memories then mine that keep them and they have better hap then I that light of such keepers For I can scarce tell how to deliver my mind so in any difficult point but one or other is misunderstanding and misreporting it and by leaving out or changing a word perhaps make it another matter so that I am forced to refer them to my writings and yet there by neglect they misinterpret me till I open the book it self to them 6. Either the Fathers of the fifth age are intelligible in their writings or not If they be then we may understand them I hope with industry If they be not then 1. Much less were their transient speeches intelligible 2. And then the writings of the sixth age be not intelligible nor of any other and so we cannot understand the Council of Trent as the Papists do not that controvert its sense voluminously nor can we know the Churches judgement 7. By your leave the Roman Corrupters take on them so much Power to make new Laws and new Articles of Faith quoad nos by definitions and to dispense with former Laws that unless they are all Knights of the Post they can never swear that they had all that they have from their Fore-fathers 8. Well! but all this is the least part of my answer But I grant you that the sixth age understood and retained the doctrine of the fifth age and have delivered it to us But that there were no Hereticks or corrupters you will not say your selves Well then the far greatest part of the Catholick Church did not only receive from the fifth age the same Christian Religion but also kept themselves from the grossest corruptions of the Pope and his flatterers that were then but a small part And thus we stick to the Catholick Church succeeding to this day and you to an usurper that then was newly set on the Throne of universal Soveraignty So that your chief Argument treadeth Popery in the dirt because the greater part of the Catholick Church not only in the fifth and sixth age but in the seventh eighth nineth tenth thirteenth fourteenth fifteenth and sixteenth ages have been aliens or enemies to the Roman universal Monarchy therefore if one age of the Church knew the mind of the former age better then the Pope did we may be sure that the Pope is an usurper The third Argument of H. T. is that the Fathers of the first five hundred years taught their tenets therefore its impossible they should be for the Protestants Answ 1. Protestants are Christians taking the Holy Scriptures for the Rule of their faith If the Fathers were Christians they were for the Protestants but its certain they were Christians If you could prove that they were for some of your mistakes that would not prove them against the Protestants in the doctrine of Christianity and the holy Scriptures and so that we are not their Successors in Christianity and of the same Church which was it that you should have proved but forgot the question And of this we shall speak to you more anon Well! by this time I have sufficiently shewed the succession of our Church and continuation of our Religion from the Apostles and where it was before Luther and given you the Catholick Church instead of a dozen or twenty names in each age which it seems will satisfie a Papist but yet we have not done with them but require this following Justice at their hands Seeing the Papists do so importunately call to us for Catalogues and proof of our succession Reason and Justice requireth that they first give us a Catalogue of Papists in all ages and prove the succession of their Roman Catholick Church which they can never do while they are men And here I must take notice of the delusory ridiculous Catalogue wherewith H. T. begins his Manual His Argument runs thus That is the only true Church of God which hath had a continued succession from Christ and his Apostles to this day very true But the Church now in Communion with the Sea of Rome and no other hath had a continued succession from Christ and his Apostles to this time therefore c. For the proof of the Minor he giveth us a Catalogue And here note the misery of poor souls that depend on these men that are deluded with such stuff that one would think they should be ashamed the world should see from them 1. What if his Catalogue were true and proved would it prove the Exclusion that no other Church had a succession Doth it prove that Constantinople or Alexandria had no such succession because the Romanists had it where is there ever a word here under this Argument to prove that exclusive part of his Minor 2. And note how he puts that for the Question that is not the Question between us A fair beginning The Question is not about Churches in Communion with you but about Churches in subjection to you But this is but a pious fraud to save men by decieving them The Ancient Church of Rome had the Church of Hierusalem Corinth Philippi Ephesus and many a hundred Churches in Communion with her that never were in subjection to her 3. And if the Papists can but prove themselves true Christians I will quickly prove that the Protestants are in Communion with them still as Christians by the same Head Christ the same spirit baptism faith love hope c. though not as Papists by subjection to the same usurper 4. Our question is of the Universal Church And this man nameth us twenty or thirty men in an age that he saith were professors of their Religion And doth he believe in good sadness that twenty or thirty men are either the universall Church or a sufficient proof that it was of their mind 5. But principally did this man think that all or any besides their subjects had their wits so far to seek as to believe that the persons named in his Catalogue were Papists without any proof in the world but meerly because they are listed here by H. T Or might he not to as good purpose have saved his labour and said nothing of them 6 But what need we go any further we will begin with him at lis first Century and so to the second and if he can prove that Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary or John Baptist or the Apostles or any one of the rest that he hath named were Papists much more all of them I am resolved presently to turn Papist But unless the man intended to provoke his reader to an unreverent laughter about this abuse of holy things one would think he should not have named
men know what Council of Carthage decreed that the Bishop primae sedis should be called neither Summus Sacerdos nor Princeps Sacerdotum vel aliquid hujusmodi tantum Episcopus primae sedis i. e. Not the chief Priest or the chief of Priests but the Bishop of the first seat And how long will they shut their eyes against the testimony of two of their own Popes Pelagius and Gregory the first that condemned the name of Universal Bishop Sometime they find the Church of Rome called Apostolick and so were others as well as that as is commonly known And sometime the Pope is called the Pillar of the Church And what of that so are many others as well as he as all the Apostles were as well as Peter The Church is built on the Foundation of the Apostles and Prophets That the Pastors of the Church were ordinarily called the Pillars and props of it as by Nicephorus Gildas Theodoret Basil Tertullian Dionysius Hierom Augustine c. you may see proved in Gatakers Cinnus page 395 396. And lastly when the Papists read their Popes called the Successors of Peter they take this as a proof of their Soveraignty Whereas 1. Peter himself had no such Soveraignty 2. They succeed him not in his Apostleship 3. They are called Pauls Successors as well as Peters 4. Others are called Peters Successors too as well as they by the Fathers 5. And other Bishops ordinarily are called the Apostles Successors and other Churches called Apostolick Churches I shall only set before them the words of one man at this time Hesychii Hierosol apud Photium Cod. 269. and desire them to tell me whether ever more were said of the Pope yea or of Peter then he saith of Andrew calling him Chori Apostolici primogenitus primitus defixa Ecclesiae columna Petri Petrus fundamenti fundamentum principii principium vel primitiae qui vocavit antequam vocaretur adduxit priusquam adduceretur i. e. The first begotten of the Apostolick Chore the first fixed Pillar of the Church the Peter of Peter or the Rock of Peter the Foundation of the Foundation the Principal of the Principal who called before he was called and brought others to Christ before he was brought to him by any others And the same Hesychius saith of James apud Photium Cod. 275. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. i. e. With what Praises may I set forth the servant and Brother of Christ the chief Emperour or Commander or Captain of the New Hierusalem the Prince or chief of Priests the President or Principal of the Apostles the Crown or Leader among the Heads the principal Lamp among the Lights the principal planet among the Stars Peter speaketh to the people but James giveth the Law or sets down the Law Can they shew us now where more then this is said of Peter himself Much less of the Pope CHAP. XXVII Detect 18. ANother of the Principal Deceits of the Papists is the forging and corrupting of Councils and Fathers and the citation of such forgeries Be carefull therefore how you receive their Allegations till you have searched and know the Books to be genuine and the particular words to be there and uncorrupted They have by their greatness obtained the opportunity of possessing so many Libraries that they might the easilyer play this abominable game But God in mercy hath kept so many monuments of Antiquity out of their hands partly in the Eastern and partly in the Reformed Churches as suffice to discover abundance of their wicked forgeries and falsifications Of their forging Canons yea feigning Councils that never were as Concil Sinuessan Concil Rom. sub Silvestr See Bishop Ushers Answer to the Jes pag. 12 13. As also of their forging Constantines Donation and Isidore mercators forging of a fardell of Decretals and of their falsifying and corrupting in the Doctrine of the Sacrament the works of Ambrose of Chrysost or the Author operis Imperfecti of Fulbertus Bishop of Chartres of Rabanus of Mentz of Bertram or Ratrannus c. Read I pray you the words detecting their horrible impious cheats But their Indices expurgatorii will acquaint you with much more And yet their secreter expurgations are worst of all What words of Peters Primacy and others for their advantage they have added to Cyprian de unitate Ecclesiae see in Jer. Stephens his Edition of it where much more additions to Cyprians works are detected out of many Oxford Manuscripts Andreas Schottus the Jesuite publishing Basils works at Antwerp Lat. A. D. 1616. with Jesuitical fidelity left out the Epistle in which is this passage following which should not be lost speaking of the Western Bishops he saith verily the manners of Proud men do use to grow more insolent if they be honoured And if God be merciful to us what other addition have we need of But if Gods anger on us remain what help can the pride of the West bring us when they neither know the Truth nor can endure to speak it but being prepossessed with false suspicions they do the same things now which they did in the case of Marcellus contentiously disputing against those that taught the truth but for Heresie confirming it by their authority Indeed I was willing not as representing the publike person of the East to write to their Leader Damasus but nothing about Church matters but that I might intimate that they neither knew the truth of the things that are done with us nor did admit the way by which they might learn them And in general that they should not insult over the calamitous and afflicted nor think that Pride did make for their dignity when that one sin alone is enough to make us hatefull to God so far Basil in that Epistle left out by the Jesuite in which you may see the Romane power in those daies in the consciences of Basil and such other Fathers in the East And by the way how Tertullian reverenced them you may see lib. de pudicit pag. 742. where he calls Zepherinus as we say all to naught And the Asian Bishops condemning of Victor with Irenaeus his reproof of him Cyprians and Firmilians condemning Stephen Marcellinus his condemnation by all Liberius his being so oft Anathematized by Hilary Pictav the resistance of Zosimus and Boniface by the Africans c. shew plainly in what esteem the now-infallible universal Head was then among the Fathers and in all the Churches But when the Papists come to the mention of such passages what juglings do they use sometime they silence them sometime they pass them over in a few words that are buried in a heap of other matters sometime they bring in some forgeries to obscure them But commonly they make a nose of wax of Councils and Fathers as well as of Scripture and put any ridiculous sence upon them that shall serve their turns though perhaps six men among them may have five or six Expositions An Epistle of Ciril of Jerusalem to Austin is forged by one
was over the Bishop read the first verse and then the Boy had no fit thinking it had been some other verse And thus they proved him a deceiver and the Boy was much confounded but pretended more distraction and then that he might get away he complained of extream sickness and made water in the Urinal as black as ink groaning when he made it But the third day after they espyed him mixing ink with his Urine and nimbly conveying away the Inkhorn And when they came in upon him and found him in the conveyance he broke out into tears and was suddenly cured and confessed all how he had been taught his art and how he did all and confessed that his intent was to be cured by a Priest and to turn Papist and whether they have catcht him again or no I know not for I hear he is a Quaker in Bristol or at least a reviler of the Ministry The Bishop took his examination at large Octob. 8. 13. 1620. If any doubt of the story they may be satisfied yet by the Boy himself or by the Reverend Bishop yet alive or by any of the neighbours in Bilson that were at age there but thirty seven years ago But before the Bishop had discovered the knavery one of the Conjuring Priests writes the Narrative of the business which is printed with the rest and is Entituled A Faithful Relation of the proceedings of the Catholick Gentlemen with the Boy of Bilson shewing c. And they begin with Not to us O Lord but to thy Name give the Glory And so they proceed to make their report of it for deluding the people as a Miracle And the writing was by a Papist Gentleman examined attested upon Oath to be received from one Mr. Wheeler c. But when they heard of the Discovery they were ashamed of their faithful Relation At last the Bishop brought the Boy at the next summers Assizes July 26. 1621. to ask pardon openly of God and the woman accused by him and of the Countrey cheated by him and there was an end of that Popish Miracle Abundance more such I could give you out of certain records but I recited this for the sake of H. T. and the Papists of Wolverhampton And for your Miracles I beseech you if you regard not us yet open your ears to a Jesuite that speaks the Truth Joseph Acosta de temporib noviss lib. 3. c. 3. To all the Miracles of Antichrist though he do great ones the Church shall boldly oppose the Belief of the Scriptures and by the inexpugnable Testimony of this Truth shall by most clear light dispell all his juglings as Clouds Signs are given to Infidels Scriptures to Believers and therefore the Primitive Church abounded with Miracles when Infidels were to be called But the last when the Faithful are already Called shall rest more on the Scripture then on Miracles Yea I will boldly say that all Miracles are vain and empty unless they be approved by the Scripture that is have a doctrine conform to the Scripture But the Scripture it self is of it self a most firm Argument of Truth And the same Acosta confesseth in his Indian History that they do no Miracles in the Indies where the boast is And if they did it would confirm Christianity but not Popery Yea if Miracles be so much to be lookt at why will you not give us leave to observe them The same Miracles that you boast of do testifie against you if they be true To instance now but in one Prosper makes mention of a Miracle which Thyraeus de Daemoniac pag. 76. and many more of yours recite that was done by the Sacramental Wine A person possessed by the Devil was cured after many other means used in vain by the Drinking of the Wine in the Eucharist And doth not this Miracle justifie us that give the people the Wine and condemn you that refuse to give it them Many other Miracles I could recite that the Fathers say were done by the Sacrament in both kinds received which condemn you that forbid it CHAP. XXX Detect 21. ANother of the Papists waies of deceiving is by impudent Lyes and Slanders against their Adversaries which they vent with such confidence that the seduced people easily believe them They that are taught to believe their Priests against their own seeing hearing feeling tasting and smelling must needs believe the vilest Lyes that they are pleased to utter in cases where the miserable people are unable to disprove them I will give you but a few of that multitude of Instances that might be given 1. In a Manuscript of the Papists which I lately received from a Neighbour of Sturbridge as sent from Wolverhampton there are these words with which they conclude Luther having richly supped and made his friends merry with his facete conceits died the same night This is testified by Cochleus in vita Lutheri And John Calvin a branded sodomite consumed with lice and worms died blaspheming and calling upon the Devil This is registred by Schlusselburge and Bolseck these were the Ends of the Parents of the Protestant and Presbyterian pretended Reformed Religions And as if their own tongue must sentence them to Hell in the very words before they say All Lyars their part shall be in the pool burning with fire and brimstone which is the second death And so make Application of it to the Protestants as being Lyars and when they have done conclude with the two forecited impudent Lies of Luther and Calvin The like words of Calvin hath the late Marquess of Worcester or Dr. Baily for him in his Papers to King Charles the whole writing being stuffed with such impudent Lies that one would wonder that humane nature should be capable of such wickedness and that the silly people should swallow down such heaps of falshood And it is not these two alone but multitudes of Papists that have written these Lies of Luther and Calvin Thyraeus the Jesuite in his Book de Daemoniacis part 1. cap. 8. pag. 21. tells us this story that the same day that Luther dyed there was at Gheola a Town in Brabant many persons possessed of Devils that waited on their Saint Dymna for Deliverance and were all that day delivered but the next day they were all possessed again whereupon the Exorcist or some body asked the Devils where they had been the day before and they answered that they were commanded by their Prince to be at the Funeral of their fellow Labourer Luther And for proof of this Luthers own servant that was with him at his death looking out at the window did more then once to his great terror see a company of ugly spirits leaping and dancing about without and also that the Crows followed the Corps all the way with a great noise O wonderful patience and mercy of God that suffereth such abominable Lyars to live and doth not cause some sudden vengeance to befall them Reader I will tell thee now the case
Whorehouse to exhort them from Whoredom though he hath found by experience that when he comes among them he is overcome and playes the Whoremonger with them Lest the vices of your Clergy should be laid open and punished you exempt them from the secular power and will not have a Magistrate so much as question them for whoredom drunkenness or the like crimes It is one of Pope Nicolas Decrees as Caranza pag. 395. recites them that No Lay man must judge a Priest nor examine any thing of his life And no secular Prince ought to judge the facts of any Bishops or Priests whatsoever And indeed that is the way to be wicked quietly and sin without noise and infamy But for our parts we do not only subject our selves and all our actions to the tryal of Princes and the lowest Justice of Peace as far as the Law gives him power but we call out to Rulers daily to look more strictly to the Ministry and suffer not one that is ungodly or scandalous in the Church And if one such be known our Godly people will all set against him and will not rest till they cast him out in times when there is opportunity for it and get a better in his stead The whole Countrey knows the Truth of this If you say as the Quakers do that yet the most among us are ungodly I answer that Those among us that are known ungodly and scandalous are not owned by us nor are members of our Church or admitted to the Lords Supper in those Congregations that exercise Church-discipline but they are only as Catechuments whom we preach to and instruct if not cast out Your eighth General Council at Constantinople Can. 14. decreed that Ministers must not fall down to Princes nor eat at their Tables nor debase themselves to them but Emperors must take them as Equals But we are so far from establishing Pride and Arrogancie by a Law that though we hate servile flattery and man-pleasing yet we think it our duty to be the servants of all and to condescend to men of low estate and much more to honour our Superiors and God in them The same Council decreed Canon 21. that None must compose any Accusations against the Pope No marvail then if all Popes go for Innocents But we are lyable to the accusations of any And because you charge our Churches with Unholiness and that with such an height of Impudency as I am certain the Divel himself doth not believe you that provokes you to it even that there is not One Good among us nor one that hath Charity nor can be saved unless by turning Papist I shall therefore go a little higher and tell you that I doubt not but the Churches in England where I live are purer far than those were in the dayes of Augustine Hierom c. yea and that the Pastors of our Churches are less scandalous then they were then what if I should compare many of them even to St. Augustine St. Hierom and such others both in Doctrine and Holiness of Life should I do so I know you would account it arrogancy but yet I will presume to make some comparison and leave you to Judge impartially if you can As for the Heavenliness of their writings let but some of ours be compared with them and you will see at least that they spake by the same spirit and for their Commentaries on Scripture did we miss it as oft as Ambrose Hierom and many more we should bring our selves very low in the esteem of the Church Even your Cajetane doth more boldly censure the Fathers Commentaries then this comes to And as to our lives the Lord knows that I have no pleasure in opening any of the faults of his Saints nor shall I mention any but what are confessed by themselves in Printed Books and mentioned by others and to boast of our own Purity I take to be a detestable thing and contrary to that sense of sin that is in every Saint of God But yet if the Lords Churches and servants are slandered and reproached as they were by the Heathens of old the vindicating them is a duty which we owe to Christ Those Ministers that I Converse with are partly Marryed and partly unmarryed The Marryed live soberly in Conjugal Chastity as burning and shining lights before the people in exemplary Holiness of Life The unmarryed also give up themselves to the Lord and to his service and I verily think that of many such that converse with me there is not one that ever defiled themselves by incontinency and I am confident would be ready to take the most solemn Oath of it if any Papist call them to it And for the people of our Communion through the mercy of God such sins are so rare that if one in a Church be guilty once we all lament it and bring them to penitence or disown them And were the Churches better in the third fourth fift sixt or following Ages I doubt not And I judge by these discoveries 1. By the sad Histories of the Crimes of those times 2. By the lamentable complaints of the Godly Fathers of the Bishops and people of their times What dolefull complaints do Basil Gregory Nazianz. and Greg. Nyssen and Chrysostom Austin c. make it were too long to recite their words What complaints made Gildas of the Brittish Church What a doleful description have we of the Christian Pastors and People in his dayes from Salvian through his whole Book de Gubernat 3. I judge also by the Canons and by the Fathers directions concerning Offendors For example Gregory Mag. saith of drunkards Quod cum venia suo ingenio sunt relinquendi ne deteriores fiant si à tali consuetudine evellantur And was this the Roman Sanctity even then And was this St. Gregories Sanctity that Drunkards must be let alone with pardon lest if they be forced from their custome they be made worse Then fairfall the Ministers of England If such advice were but given by one of us it would seem enough to cast us out of our Ministry We dare not let one drunkard alone in our Church-communion where Church-discipline is set up So Augustine saith that Drunkenness is a mortal sin Si sit assidua if it be daily or usual And that they must be dealt with gently and by fair words and not roughly and sharply If one of us should make so light of Drunkenness what should we be thought I cite these two from Aquinas 22. q. 150. art 1. 4. ad 4 m art 2. 1. Many Canons determine that Priests that will not part with their Concubines shall be suspended from officiating till they let them go Whereas with us a man deserveth to be ejected that should have a Concubine but one night in his life Gratian Distinct 34. citeth c. 17. of a Toletane Council saying that he that hath not a Wife but a Concubine in her stead shall not be put from the Communion His
taken or catcht How think you now in the Judgement of Augustine and Gerson whether there have any Novelties been brought into the Church and whether all your Presumptions and burdens and as Gerson calls them halters for souls have come from the Apostles or are your own When all is thus overcome with Novelty do you make any question whether any thing be new It seems that Bernard thought that humane Traditions were too much befriended when he thus describeth the Assemblies that he approveth Epist 91. Such a Council do I delight in in which the Traditions of men are not obstinately defended or superstitiously observed but they do diligently and humbly enquire what is the good and well pleasing and perfect will of God And it seems to me that General Councils by error introduced Novelties when Later Councils were fain to undo what the former had done For so doth blessed Augustine profess they did saying De Baptis cont Donat. lib. 2. cap. 6. And Councils themselves that are gathered through several Regions or Provinces do without any scruple yield to the authority of more plenary Councils that are gathered out of the whole Christian world and those same plenary Councils do often yield or give place the former to the later when by some experiment of matters that which was shut is opened and that which lay hid is known Sure here are alterations made even by General Councils that correct one another And what should hinder the Introduction of Novelty when General Councils do so often err Nay if such Councils be Morally and Interpretatively the whole Church as the Papists say then the whole Church doth err in the reception of some Novelty before they declare it by their decrees If you say that General Councils cannot err nor introduce such Novelties your Champion Bellarmine and many of your own will give you the Lie saith he De Concil lib. 2. cap. 11. Neque potest c. It cannot be answered that those Councils erred because they were not lawfull that is the Arrian and other Heretical General Councils at that at Sirmium Millanie Ariminum Ephesus several at Constantinople dissallowed by the Papists For to most of them there was nothing wanting but the Popes assent Yea the second at Ephesus was altogether like that at Basil For both were called by the Pope in both of them the Popes Legate was present at the beginning from both of them the Popes Legate shortly after went away in both of them the Pope was excommunicated and yet that the Council of Ephesus erred the adversaries will not deny Hence he concludeth that the chief Power Ecclesiastical is not in the Church nor in the Council the Pope being removed formaliter vel suppletivè And what should hinder when there is but one mans vote against it even the Popes but that Novelty and error may enter at any time and when that one man is oft so wicked and Heretical as he is For General Councils are but a meer name and mockery The packing of them shews it the Paucity and nonUniversality of them shews it The Management of their affairs shews it They do nothing since the Papal reign but what the Pope will excepting the condemned Councils They have no Being till he Will nor make any Decrees but what he Will Nor are their Decrees of any further power then he is pleased to give them So that his Will is the sense of the General Council or universal Church I need not turn you for this to Sleidan or Uergerius Bishop of Trent that tell us the Holy Ghost came to that Council in a Cloak-bag from Rome nor to Espensaeus in Tit. 1. pag. 42. seeing Bellarmine speaks it out De Concil lib. 2. cap. 11. saying We must know that the Pope is wont to send Legates instructed concerning the judgement of the Apostolick seat with this Condition that if the Council do consent to the Judgement of the Apostolick seat it shall be formed into a Decree If not the forming of the decree shall be deferred till the Pope of Rome being advised with shall return his answer And saith Bellarmine de Concil lib. 2. cap. 11. In the Council of Basil Ses 2. it was decreed by common consent together with the Popes Legate that a Council is above the Pope which certainly is now judged erroneous And the Council of Lateran and Florence decreed the contrary And Pighius saith Hierarch Eccles l. 6. that the Councils of Constance and Basil went about by a new trick and pernicious example to destroy the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy and instead of it to bring in the Domination of a promiscuous confused popular multitude that is to raise again Babylon it self subjecting to themselves or to the community of the Church which they falsly pretended that they Represent the very Head and Prince of the whole Church and him that is the Vicar of Christ himself in this his Kingdom and this against Order and Nature against the clearest light of Gospel verity against all Authority of Antiquity and against the undoubted Faith and Judgement of the Orthodox Church it self Mark Papists General Councils with the Popes Nuncio may bring in Novelties in faith against the clearest light of the Gospel and the full Consent of Antiquity and yet these Councils affirmed their opinions to be de fide and the contrary to be Heretical and Damnable and contrary to all Antiquity You see then that Novelties are among you in matters of faith And the French to this day are guilty of those Novelties and also charge their Adversaries with Innovation Nay what will you say if General Councils themselves are but Novelties though they are the foundation of the faith of one half of the Papists as the Pope is of the other I say not so but judge whether your Champion Pighius say so Hierarch Eccles lib. 6. cap. 1. fol. 230. where he saith that Concilia universalia non habent Divinam c. General Councils have not a Divine or Supernatural Original but meerly an humane Original and are the Invention of Constantine a Prince profitable indeed sometimes to find out in Controversie which is the Orthodox and Catholick truth though to this they are not necessary seeing its a readyer way to advise with the Apostolick seat How now Sirs Is your Representative Church the foundation of your faith a Novelty of Constantines invention and yet are you in the old way and must we be put to prove you to be Novelists Do you think those Popes did go the Old way of whom Alvarus Pelagius speaks de planctu Eccles art 15. lib. 2. that they succeeded in authority but not in Sanctity intruding themselves procuring bargaining c. building Towers and Palaces in Babylon that is in Rome according to Hierom Some foul innovation sure they were guilty of that so re-edified Babylon So that this is my first proof that you are Novelists from the General Accusations of others and Confessions of your own 2. Another proof
is the purest it is one of the most impure If for Antiquity it is founded as Papal upon Novelty If because it is the Richest their money perish with them that measure the Church and truth of Christ by the Riches and splendor of this world For my part I cannot help you out of this snare CHAP. XLI Detect 32. ANother of their juglings is By working upon the peoples natural affections and asking them Where they think all their fore-fathers are that dyed in the communion of the Roman Church Dare they think they are all damned Intimating that its cruelty to say their ancestors are in Hell and if they say they be in Heaven then there is but one way thither and therefore you must go the way that they went But a weak understanding may easily deal with this kind of Sophistry if it be not mastered by affection For 1. What if we grant that many of our fore-fathers that dyed Papists are in Heaven Doth it follow that we must therefore be Papists No because it was not by Popery that they came to Heaven but by Christianity What if many recover and live that eat not only Earth and Dirt but Hemlock or Spear-wort or other poysons must I therefore eat them Or doth it follow that there is no other way to health 2. Our fore-fathers were all saved that were holy justified persons and no others But among so many and great impediments as Popery cast in their way we have great reason to fear that far fewer of them were saved then are now among the Reformed Churches And must I needs go that difficult way to Heaven because that some of them get thither Must I needs travail a way that is commonly beset with thieves because some that go that way do scape them This is our case 3. If this were a good way of Reasoning then may all the Heathens Infidels Mahometans use it that have been educated in darkness And indeed it is the Argument which the barbarous Heathens use when the Gospel is preached to them What think you say they is become of our fathers If they were saved without the Gospel so may we The story of that Infidel Prince is common that being ready to go to the water to be baptized stept back and asked Where are all my Ancestors now And when he was told that they were in Hell and that the Christians go to heaven he told them then he would be no Christian for he would go where his Ancestors are 4. If this be good reasoning then we may use it much more then you For we would ask you where be all our fore fathers that are dead since the Reformation and where be all those that dyed between the Resurrection of Christ and the appearing of Popery or the prevailing of it in the world And where be all that die in the Eastern and Southern Churches that are no subjects of the Pope of Rome Have we not as little reason to think that all these millions of men are damned as to think so of our Popish Ancestors 5. Why should we be more foolish for our souls then for our bodies I would not be poor because my Ancestors were so Nor would I have the Stone or Gout because my Ancestors had them Nor will I say that they are no diseases for fear of dishonouring my Ancestors that had them And why then should I willfully lick up any Popish errors because my Ancestors by the disadvantage of the times and of their education were cast upon them 6. It is not our fore-fathers but God that we must follow It is he and not they that is the Lord of our faith and of our souls It will not excuse us in judgement for disobeying God to say that our fore-fathers led us the way Nor will it ease us in Hell to suffer with our fore-fathers Christ tells us Luke 16. of a Rich man that in Hell would have had his brethren warned lest they should follow him But these men would have us to follow our fore-fathers even in their sin against God Whereas the Scriptures constantly make it an aggravation of a peoples sin when they follow their fathers in it take not warning by their falls The Jewish Christians were redeemed from the vain conversation received by Tradition from their fathers 1 Pet. 1. 18. Stephen tells the Jews Act. 7. 51 52. As your Fathers did so do yet which of the Prophets have not your Fathers persecuted Christ condemneth the Jews for allowing the deeds of their fathers Luk. 11. 47 48. Mat. 23. 32. Nay God asketh wicked men where their fathers are with a clean contrary meaning to this question of the Papists Zach. 1. 4 5 6. Turn unto me saith the Lord of Hosts be not as your fathers unto whom the former Prophets have cryed Turn your fathers where are they and the Prophets do they live for ever Ezek. 20. 18 27 30. I said unto their children walk ye not in the Statutes of your Fathers neither observe their judgements nor defile your selves with their Idols I am the Lord your God walk in my Statutes 30. Say unto the house of Israel Thus saith the Lord God Are ye polluted after the manner of your fathers and commit ye whoredom after their abominations Jer. 44. 9. Have ye forgotten the wickedness of your fathers They are not humbled even to this day The 18. of Ezek. is almost all of this that the son that followeth his father in his sins shall die and he that takes warning and avoideth his fathers sins shall live A hundred more such texts there are 7. Our fore-fathers might be saved that sinned in the dark and yet we be damned if we will follow them in the Light or at least we shall be beaten with more stripes then they if both must perish They had not our means or liberty If they had seen and heard what we have done many of them would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes Shall we sin wilfully after the knowledge of the Truth because our fathers sinned ignorantly for want of information CHAP. XLII Detect 33. ANother of their frauds is By pretending to a Divine Institution and Natural excellency of a visible Monarchical Government of the Church And so they would derive it from Peter from Christ yea from Nature and God the Author of Nature All their writings take this as their strength I shall at this time tie my self to Boverius his Cheating Consultation de Ratione verae fidei c. ad Carolum Principem intended for the perverting of our late King then in Spain In his Part. 1. Reg. 6. he asserteth that besides Christ the invisible Head of the Church there is a necessity that we acknowledge another certain visible Head subrogate to Christ and instituted of him without which none can be a member of Christ or any way subsist alive Yet Cardinal Richlieu will not have the Pope called Another Head He begins his proof with a cheat
such a Church and Ministry as they predicate and yet have no conjecture which it is As if they should believe that there is such a creature as the Moon but be not able to know it from the Stars The second sort of Seekers are to seek whether there be any Organized Political Church or any Ministry or any Ordinances proper to a Church at all or not Not denying them but Doubting and Seeking that so when they have found them at Rome they may prove but Finders and not gross changlings And withall they yield that private men may Declare the Word and pray together and read the Scripture The most rational and modest that hath wrote for this way is the Author of Asober Word to a Serious People A likely thing indeed it is that so rational a man should heartily believe that Christ hath planted so excellent a Ministry and Church and Ordinances as himself describeth and to those standing necessary uses which he mentioneth even instead of Christ to take men into the holy Covenant and yet that all should be left but for an Age or two and that ever since there is no such thing or at least no certainty of it The Stile shews us that this Author is no such dotard as to think as he speaks 3. Another sort of Seekers are those that do not only Doubt of but flatly deny any Ministry and Political Churches and Church-ordinances on Earth as things that are lost in an Universal Apostacy 4. Another sort of Seekers do not only doubt of or deny these Particular Churches and Ordinances but also they are to seek for the Universal Church it self and the holy Scriptures yea many of them not only Questioning them but flatly maintaining that we have no certainty that the Scripture is true or that we have the same that was written by the Apostles or that there is such a thing as true Ministry or State of Christianity in the World Hence it is that some of them pour out so many reproaches against the Ministry and the Holy Scriptures as you may find in Clem. Writer in two ignorant Pamphlets that have scorn in the very Titles as well as through the bulk one called The Jus Divinum of Presbyterie and the other Fides Divina In which he maintaineth the cause of the Infidels The opinion which this sort of men openly profess is that no particular man is bound to believe the Gospel but those that have themselves seen Miracles to confirm it and therefore in the first ages when Miracles were wrought those that saw them were bound to believe in Christ and at the second coming of Christ when again he shall be witnessed by Miracles it will again become a duty to be Christians but not to others that see no Miracles however they may hear of them This doctrine Clem. Writer hath professed to me with his own mouth But I may not censure him to be so weak as to believe himself It 's possible that such a silly soul may be found that shall think that Christ came into the world to set up Christianity as the true Religion for those only in an Age or two or more that saw Miracles but it 's unlikely that a man that hath any considerable use of his reason should be so silly Who will not despise Christ that thinks he came on so low a design Who would not be an Infidel that thinks ten thousand Infidels are saved for one Christian Yea who can be himself a Christian that thinks that he is not bound to be a Christian because he sees not Miracles It 's most evident therefore that this is but a Juggle and that such are either Infidels or Papists Infidelity is the thing professed and therefore that we take them for Infidels they cannot blame us But yet in Charity I hope and not without cause that some of this Profession are but Papists though others I have found to be desperate Infidels A fifth sort called Seekers also there are that own the Church and Ministery and Ordinances but yet suppose themselves above them for they think that these are but the Administrations of Christ to men in the passage to a higher state and that such as have received the Spirit and have the Law once written in their hearts are under as they call it the second Covenant and so are past the lower form of Ordinances Scripture Ministery and visible Churches And a sixth sort of Seekers there are that think the whole company of believers should now be over-grown the Scripture Ministry and Ordinances For they think that the Law was the Fathers Administration and the Gospel Ministry and Sacraments are the Sons Administration and that both these are now past and the season of the Spirits Administration is come which all must attend and quit the lower forms The David-Georgians were the chief that taught the world this lesson their Leader taking himself to be the Holy Ghost All these sorts of Seekers are bred or cherished by the Jesuites and Fryars And the truth is when a man is made a Seeker he is half made a Papist As a Dog when he hath lost his Master will follow almost any body that will whistle him so when men have lost their Ministry Church and Religion they are easily allured to the Church of Rome For they are a body as conspicuous to a carnal eye as any other And who will not rather be of the Roman Church and Religion then of none 4. Another sort of Hiders are the Quakers an impudent Generation and open enough in pulling down but as secret and reserved as the rest in asserting and building up What interests the Papists have in breeding and feeding this Sect among us hath been partly proved from the Oaths of Witnesses and Confessions of Fryars and somewhat I have spoken of it in three several Papers against them The Doctrine of this fourth sort is the same or scarse discernable from the rest 5. A fifth sort of Hiders are those Enthusiasts that shun the affected bombasted language of Behmen and such like but yet give us much of the body of Popery Headed by an infallible Prophetick Spirit instead of the Pope Such as the Authors of the Book against the Assemblies Confession owned by Parker but said to be written by a London Doctor And many such Doctors I know and hear of abroad in England They take on them to be adversaries to the Pope but they are friends to his Doctrines and maintain the necessity of an infallible living Judge and send us to Prophets for this infallible judgement And could the Papists bring men once to this it 's an easie matter to strike off the the feigned Prophetick head by disgracing such as meer fantasticks and to set on the ancient Papal Head which only will agree with the Body which they have received So much of the Libertines and the Hiders of their Religion of several sorts 3. Another sort that are spawned by the Papists are stark
a just Reconciliation as men that are Studious of Peace may prosecute with hope of some success And because I have lately met with a Paper called An Explanation of the Roman Catholick Belief c. which pretendeth to much moderation in divers points I purpose next to enquire whether it mean as it pretends that if it do we may give it welcome if not we may Detect its Fraud For as I should much rejoice to hear of so much amendment of the Roman Belief which I thought had been supposed by themselves to be incorrigible So I must confess that I am so much for plain and open dealing that I think it my duty to help to bring their works into the Light and try how they agree with the Truth and among themselves that men may judge of them as they are FINIS The Second Part PROVING That the Catholick Church is not a Political Body Headed by any Earthly Soveraign nor any such Unity to be Desired or endeavoured by any that would not Blaspheme Divide and Destroy under the pretence of Unity SPECIALLY Directed against the Soveraignty and Necessity too of General Coucnils to the followers of Grotius and others of that Party that at least would give them a Part in the Soveraignty with the Pope And propounding the true grounds and means of the Churches Unity and Peace By Rich. Baxter LONDON Printed by Robert White for Nevil Simmons Bookseller in Kederminster Anno Dom. 1659. Quest Whether the way to heal any Divisions in the Churches of Christ be by drawing them all into One Universal Visible Political Body under One Universal Visible Head or Government Or Whether the Catholick Church be a Body so United and Governed Neg. CHAP. I. Shewing the Occasion and Reasons of this Writing especially as from the Grotians which are Vindicated from the frivolous exceptions of Mr. Tho. Pierce I HAVE already in the first Part of this Book and formerly in another disproved the Popes Universal Headship and answered what Bellarmine Boverius and some others say for the maintaining of it And it is a work already done so fully by Chamier Whitaker and many others but most triumphantly and copiously by David Blondell in a French Treatise in Folio de primatu in Ecclesia against Cardinal Perron that I need not and therefore intend not to say much here upon that subject But this Disputation I principally intend 1. For the subverting of the Foundation of Popery which is the supposition that the Visible Catholick Church must needs be united in some Humane Visible Head 2. To confute the Opinion of the moderate sort of French Papists and Grotians that take a General Council to be the Legislative Head and the Judicial Head while they are in Being and the Pope ruling by the Laws of Councils to be the ordinary Judicial Head 3. To deliver some persons from a dangerous Temptation that by Grotius or his followers here in England are drawn into a conceit that the Catholick Church is such a Body as we here deny and think that the unity that the Scripture so commendeth to us cannot be attained without an Universal Visible Head which Temptation of theirs is much increased by observing the differences of Opinions in the world which every good man doth lament as we do all the sins and frailties that on earth accompany us in the state of imperfection As I blame not those that desire perfect Knowledge or Holiness but blame them that promise it to the Church on Earth when it is the prerogative of Heaven and much more should blame him that would say we shall be perfectly Wise and Holy if we will but be of this Opinion that the Church hath an Infallible Humame Head even so I blame not them that desire perfect Concord the Consequent of perfect Knowledge and Holiness for this is to desire Heaven But I blame them that promise us this Heaven on Earth and them much more that tell us we shall have it if we will but believe that a Pope or Council is the Universal Head and so will condemn the Church on Earth because it hath not attained that Celestial perfection which they have once fancied that it may and should attain Concerning Grotius his opinion design and great endeavours to reduce the Churches to Popery under the pretence of a Conciliation I have lately by the Invitation of Mr. Thomas Pierce given in my Evidence I think beyond all further question out of his own writings in his frequent and express assertions And Rivet in his Dialysis and his Apologet. and other writings hath sufficiently confuted him The mistakes of many in their judging of Grotius are caused by their supposition that the man was the same in his first Conciliatory enterprises and in his last which is not true He oft professeth his mutations himself and how apt he was to dislike that which he had but lately thought or said At first he thought out of Reconciling the Protestants among themselves But afterwards his design was to Reconcile them with the Papists and that by drawing them all to be Papists that is to unite in the Pope of Rome as the Universal Governour ruling according to Canons and Decrees and this he thought was the only way to the union of the Churches The Truth of this and the Mischiefs of the Enterprise must be apprehended by him that will understand my endeavours in this dispute and escape the snare that 's laid for their perversion And for the Truth of it I refer you to my foresaid writing of the Grotian Religion Since which it pleased Mr. Pierce to publish a sheet containing not any thing that hath the least aptitude to perswade a rational man that Grotianism is not Popery but some Reasons why he doth not at least as yet perform the vindication with a General profession how easily he can do it and make me a Winding sheet at least as sutable as that which I made for Popery which when he hath confuted I shall better know his mind and strength This with two or three frivolous Exceptions and many swelling words of Vanity with certain Squibs and empty jeers according to the manner of the man is the matter of his Advertisement Nothing could have been easier for him then to say or almost to say that I am very liable in every line and that his advantages are too many and that I am an advocate for the crimson sins of others and an encomiast of my own Nothing more vain then his ostentation of the mild discharge of his Censorship and his sensless intimation that I take the Virtues of Episcopal Divines for glittering sins when he never had a word from me of such a sence or tendency But Grotians will now be but Episcopal Divines and their glittering sins must be their Virtues Because I had acknowledged how civilly he dealt with me no doubt on a supposition that I was neerer his conceits then those that he had so copiously reproached he takes it
would have the causes taken away What! When I recite his very words Or was I deeply silent of the particular causes Do you mean Here or Throughout If Here so I was deeply silent of ten thousand things more which either it concerned me not to speak or I had not the faculty of expressing in one sentence If you mean Throughout you read without your eyes or wrote either with a defective Memory or Honesty Read again and you shall find that I recite the causes 3. But did I not all that my task required by reciting the Negation of the causes It was not saith Grotius the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome according to the Canons And I shewed you partly and the Canons shew you fully that that Primacy is the Universall Headship which Protestants I mean not Roman Grotian Protestants have ever used to call Popery But saith Mr. P. Grotius chargeth the Papists with it Answ 1. True but the Protestants much more as making many more faults by their withdrawing from Rome then they mended 2. And he chargeth not that which we have called Popery with it though he charge the Papists with it That some sins of the Papists did occasion it he confesseth and all the Papists that ever I spoke with of it do confess But I am referred for these causes charged on the Papists to Grot. Votum pag. 7 8. and thither I 'le follow Mr. P. that I may know how much he chargeth on the Papists himself And there I find that the things that Grotius found faulty in the Papists were but these two 1. That to the true and ancient doctrine many quirks of the Schoolmen that were better skli'd in Aristotle then the Scriptures were introduced out of a liberty of disputing not out of the Authority of Universal Councils And the Opinions stablisht in the Church were less fitly explicated 2. That Pride and Covetousness and manners of ill example prevailed among the Prelates c. And really did you think that he is no Papist that is but against the Schoolmens Opinions and the Prelates Pride Covetousness and Idleness and holdeth all that they call the Decrees of General Councils Hath not the Council at Lateran and Florence decreed that the Pope is above a General Council and the Council at Lateran decreed that Princes are to be deposed and their Subjects absolved from their fidelity if they exterminate not Hereticks such as Protestants out of their Dominions Is he no Papist that holds all that is in the Council of Trent if he be against some School-points not determined and against the Prelates Pride Well Sir I understand you better then I did And though you thought meet that your words might be conform to one another and not to truth to say that I called you Arminian and Pelagian I purpose if I had done so to call you an Arminian no more But I beseech you cry not out of persecution till the men of your mind will give us leave to be Rectors of Churches in their Dominions as you and others of your mind are allowed to be in these And demand not of Mr. Hickman the bread he eats nor the money he receives as if it were yours till we can have license to be maintained Rectors or at least to escape the Strappado in your Church But I promised you some more of Grotius in English to stop your mouth or open it whether you see cause and you shall have it Discus pag. 14. Grotius distinguisheth between the Opinions of Schoolmen which oblige no man for saith Melchior Canus our School alloweth us great liberty and therefore could give no just cause of departing as the Protestants did and between those things that are defined by Councils even by that of Trent The Acts of which if any man read with a mind propense to peace he will find that they may be explained fitly and agreeably to the places of the holy Scriptures and of the ancient Doctors that are put in the Margin And if besides this by the care of Bishops and Kings those things be taken away which contradict that holy doctrine and were brought in by evil manners and not by authority of Councils or Old Tradition then Grotius and many more with him will have that with which they may be content This is Grotius in English Reader is it not plain English Durst thou or I have been so uncharitable as to have said without his own consent that Mr. Pierce would have defended this Religion and that we have Rectors in England of this Religion and that those that call themselves Episcopal Divines and seduce unstudied partial Gentlement are crept into this garb and in this do act their parts so happily If words do signifie any thing it here appears that Grotius his Religion is that which is contained in the Council of Trent with all the rest and the reformation which will content him is only against undetermined School-Opinions and ill manners that Cross the doctrines of the Councils I 'le do the Papists so much right as to say I never met with a man of them that would not say as much Especially taking in all Old Tradition with all the Councils how much together by the ears now matters not as Grotius doth Yet more Discus p. 185. He professeth that he will so interpret Scripture God favouring him and pious men being consulted that he cross not the Rule delivered both by himself and by the Council of Trent c. Pag. 239. The Augustine Consession commodiously explained leath scarce any thing which may not be reconciled with those Opinions which are received with the Catholicks by Authority of Antiquity and of Synods as may be known out of Cassander and Hoffmeister And there are among the Jesuites also that think not otherwise Pag. 71. He tels us that the Churches that join with Rome have not only the Scriptures but the Opinions explained in the Councils and the Popes Decrees against Pelagius c. They have also received the Egregious Constitutions of Councils and Fathers in which there is abundantly enough for the correction of vices but all use them not as they ought They lye for the most part hid in Papers as a Sword in the Scabbard And this is it that all the lovers of piety and peace would have corrected And gives us Borromaeus for a president Pag. 48. These are the things which thanks be to God the Catholicks do not thus believe though many that call themselves Catholicks so live as if they did believe them but Protestants so live by force of their Opinions and Catholicks by the decay of Discipline Pag. 95. What was long ago the judgement of the Church of Rome the Mistris of others we may best know by the Epistles of the Roman Bishops to the Africans and French to which Grotius will subscribe with a most willing mind Rome you see is the Mistris of other Churches Pag 7. They accuse the Bull of Pius Quintus that it
Ecclesiam utramque Gallicanam Brittanicam etiam tum cum Ecclesia Brittanica non communicabat cum Romanâ certe si utraque pars absque prejudicio sese mutuo intelligeret pars extrema de rigore suo vellet remittere ea Brittanicae Ecclesiae cum Gallicana concensio non foret adeo improbabilis atque prima fronte videtur Ecclesiam utramque vel alterutram ignorantibus I add this but to shew the Judgement of those on whom the judgement of Grotius had any influence for a Communion with the French as if we little differed from them Still professing that I would run with the forwardest to meet them upon tolerable terms And that the remembrance of the moderation wisdom charity of the Cassandrian party in France that resisted the violence of the rest long in vain and lamented the massacres and were oppressed by them is very greateful to my thoughts and the names of many of them very honorable in my esteem And it grieves me that Grotius called by Mr. Pierce a Protestant should so far out-go them in Popery whom the same man confesseth to have been Papists He goes much further then Cassander Much further then Thuanus that so plainly and truly openeth abundance of the Popish evills that Grotius patronizeth and so long and successfully did his part to keep out of France the Authority of the Council of Trent which was part of Grotius his Religion And how far he went beyond that excellent man Michael Hospitalius the Head of that party so much commended by Beza as well as by Thuanus and Foxius and others is easie to manifest 5. And I am the more provoked also to perform this task because I see by many more as well as Mr. P. that the design is still on foot and that the Papists that are got so strong in England under the mask of the Vani the Seekers the Infidels the Quakers the Behmenists and many other Sects have so much addition to their strength by Grotians that go under the mask of Episcopal Divines Which yet I should the less be troubled at if France Savoy England Holland Poland Bohemia and all parts where they prevail did not acquaint us by bloody tormenting thundering flaming evidence how they use their power where they dare 6. And it moveth me much also to consider the consequence of the point in hand It is not a meer speculation but a point so practical that the right decision and understanding of it is as much as the Peace of millions of souls yea of all the Churches and Common-wealths in Christendom is worth All that have any thing of the love of God alive within them are somewhat sensible of the sinfulness and misery contained in the divisions and discord of Believers and therefore they must needs be solicitous for the Cure and lay out themselves and all they have or can do to accomplish it if they knew the way And the more zealous any man is for Peace the more resolutely will he carry on his work and bear down all opposition that would hinder him in that which he thinks the way of Peace And when persons thus disposed by humanity and grace shall be quite mistaken in the very thing they seek even in the Nature of the Churches unity and peace they will think themselves bound with all their zeal and diligence to endeavour the doing of an evill work and to accomplish a work neither possible nor desirable And it is not hard for a man of an indifferent wit to fore-see what uncharitableness discomposure of minds of Churches and Common-wealths and abusing and endangering of souls is like to be the fruit of such mistakes about the Churches Unity and Peace And as the School useth to say from Boetius and Anselm Malum non est nisi à bono propter bonum so it will be like by experience to be made a proverb that Bellum discordia non sunt nisi à pacificis propter pacem The greatest discords and wars will be from the Love and Endeavour of Unity and Concord and for the obtaining of them by impossible means These following evills may easily be foreseen 1. If men mistake about the Nature of the visible form of the Catholick Church and its unity it is like to pervert their judgements in many other weighty points of Religion For when they have received this Error as a Truth then they will be exceedingly inclined to bend the rest of their opinions to it and contrive them into a Consistent Form For Truth would to Truth as Fire would to Fire and Water to Water Yea all that is flexible within them shall be bended to the interest of this conceit 2. As soon as ever any man hath received this opinion of the necessity of an Universal Visible Head or common Government of the whole Chruch he is either a Papist or of an opinion equivalent in folly tyrannie and impiety to Popery For if such a Visible Head must be there is no other that can pretend to it with Reason or Honesty any more then the Pope Nor is it our quarrel against Rome that their Bishop rather then another should be this usurping Head but that they would have such a one at all It is not who shall be the man or power but whether there shall be any such man or power that we dispute This Error about the Necessity of an Universal Visible Head is the very thing that turneth most to Popery and this is the common argument that is mannaged by deceivers to that end as their writings commonly declare 3. And then when men are drawn over to be Papists for the avoiding of Schism and the obtaining of Unity they are unawares involved in the most desperate Schism which I have proved that party to be guilty of and with it drink in the dregs of all the Roman abominations When men have set up a new Church-form by setting up a new Head and Center of Unity and then judge of all particular Churches and Members by this standard it leadeth them unavoidably to separate from all the Churches and Christians upon earth that conspire not and center not with them in their new devised Head 4. And by this means Charity is much destroyed in mens souls and he that hath least of Love hath least of God and the Preachers and Pastors turn all their studies into matter of Controversie and their labors into wranglings and all under pretence of Catholick Unity And having not charity they prove not only sounding brass and tinkling Cymbals in their most learned labors but too often burning brass like Perillus Bull and military Trumpets and all this under pretense of Charity when they have destroyed it Hence is it that uncharitable censures are so common and the Lambs of Christ so often cloathed in the skins of Wolves by the Wolves that have by exchange put on the skin of the Lamb. Scarse a man that crosseth or displeaseth that is dissenteth
from or disobeyeth the uncharitable Clergy but he is stigmatized for an Heretick and charged with almost as much wickedness as their mouths are wide enough to utter and the ears of other men to hear What horrid things have they spoken of the poor Waldenses and Albigenses and Bohemians Of Luther Oecolampadius Calvin and who not Though I have had applauding flattering Letters from some of them that tryed whether I were flexible and ductile yet I doubt not but I shall have my share my self before they have done with me I wonder I hear not of it before now Hence among other reasons its like that Mr. Pierce became so destitute of Charity as to disgorge his sould of so many bitter reproaches and calumnies against the Puritans and Presbyterians whom if he know not he sinneth but as Paul did but if he know he terrifieth us from his principles by the fruits that which shews the want of Charity shews the want of saving Grace and consequently the want of right to Glory Hence it is that the greatest Schismaticks are the commonest accusers of their Brethren with schism Pharisaically saying I thank thee Lord that I am not as other men nor as these Schismaticks Hence also it is that so many learned well-meaning Papists do so pervert their studies and endeavors and abuse and lose and worse then lose their wits and parts to draw men to their way compassing Sea and Land to make a Romish Proselite especially of a Prince or man of power interest or ability to serve them What pains take they to draw Nations to their minds and to embroil the world in contentions and confusions to attain their ends What horrid persecutions Massacres and barbarous inhumane cruelties have multitudes of men of learning and good parts and natures been ingaged in by the very Principle that I now confute and for the promoting of their kind of Unity and Concord in wicked and impossible ways 7. Besides this it takes men off from seeking the true Peace of the hurch while they mistakingly pursue a false peace The Devil the cunning Enemy of Concord hath not a more effectual way to take men off from the ways and means of holy Concord then by starting them a false game and causing them to lay out all their labor to build a Babel when they should be building Zion Oh what a blessed state might the Church be in if all the Jesuites Fryers Prelates Priests and others had laid out that labor for a righteous possible Unity and Peace in Gods appointed way which they have vainly and impiously laid out to unite the world in a Vice-christ or Vice-god Fore seeing and at present feeling many of these calamitous consequences to the Church I think it of exceeding moment that mens judgements should be rectified that are misled concerning the nature of the unity of the Church Still professing that to me they are the dearest Christians and nearest to my heart that are most for Unity and Concord so it be in Christ and upon righteous possible conditions CHAP. II. The true State of the Controversie and how much we grant HAving given you an account of the Occasion and Motives that produced this Disputation I shall now briefly state the Controversie between us And because the terms are all plain and my sense of them explained in the fore-going part I shall think no more here necessary then to tell you in certain Propositions How much we Grant and How far we are Agreed and then to tell you what it is that we deny and wherein we differ Prop. 1. We are Agreed that Christ hath a true Catholick Church on earth and ever hath had since first he planted it and ever will have to the end of the world and that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it or hath it ever had an Intercision for a day or an hour and that this Church is so far Infallible as that it never was nor ever will be ignorant of or erroneous against any Article of faith or part of obedience that is of absolute Necessity to salvation otherwise by that error it should have ceased to be the Church of Christ Prop. 2. We are agreed that this Catholick Church in respect of the Internal faith and charity of the Members and their Communion with Christ by the quickening Spirit on his part and holy sincere returns of devotion on theirs may be called Mystical or Invisible The thing is utterly undenyable though some Papists in the perversness of contentious Disputations seem to deny it And doubtless when they assert that Christ hath no Invisible Church they must mean it simply and not quoad haeo interiora or else they speak against all sense and Reason No man is simply Invisible but every man as to his soul is Invisible Prop. 3. We are Agreed that this Catholick Church in regard of the outward Profession of this Inward Faith and Holiness and in regard of the discernable numbers of persons making this Profession hath ever been visible since first it began to be visible And that the visibility hath never had any intercision If some Protestanss say otherwise it 's clear that this is all that by the common judgement of Protestants is maintained viz. That Christians and the Catholick Church containing the Professing Christians through the world have ever since their first planting had a visible being but yet 1. That the Visibility was not such but that Hereticks as the Arrians did might make a controversie of it whether they or the true Christians were the Church indeed and by their greater numbers or Power might blind men that they should not see which was the true Church 2. And that in the Catholick Church some parts may be much more corrupt and others much more pure and the Purer part be so much the lesser and oppressed and vilified by the more corrupt that the most part should not discern their Purity but take them as they did the Waldenses for Hereticks 3. And that two parts or more of this Catholick Church may so fall out among themselves as that one of them shall deny the other to be part of the Catholick Church when yet they really for all that censure remain parts of it as much as they And hereupon may grow a contest between them which of the two is the true Catholick Church and one part may say It is we and not you and the other may say It is we and not you and no man shall be able to discern which of the two is the Catholick Church because it is neither of them but each are a part 4. And though the Bodies of the members are visible and their Worshipping actions Visible and their Profession audible yet the faith Professed is not Visible nor the Truth of their Profession or of their Christianity or Church Truth being the object of the Intellect and not of sence 5. And though the true members of the Church do know the true Church
and so it is apparent unto them yet most that are not members of it do not know it Arrians and Mahometans know us to be men professing such and such Articles of faith but they know not that to be the true faith nor us to be the true Church but judge the contrary In this sence contained in these Propositions it is that Protestants deny the Church to have been alwayes Visible and not as the Papists commonly mistake them Prop. 4. We are agreed that this Catholick Church is but One There are not two Visible nor two Mystical Catholick Churches Nor are the Mysticall and Visible two Bellarmine might have spared all his labour that he hath bestowed in vain upon this point to prove that the Visible and Invisible are not two Catholick Churches The Protestants are further from that Opinion then the Papists and it is more suitable to the Popish Interest and Cause to be of that Opinion then to the Protestants If it were not that they are past learning by the advantage of their Infallibility and especially of one man and one so mean condemned by them and that it is unlawfull to be a Teacher of Error I could tell them of a new device by the advantage of this distinction of Catholick Churches for the modelling their mistakes into a more specious plausible form then now it appeareth in to the rest of the Churches But we are glad of their company in any Truth and therefore will not disagree from them in that which makes against themselves One Objection I once heard a Learned Anabaptist cast in our way viz. There may be a Visible Church of hypocrites therefore the Mystical and Visible may be two Answ But the Question was of the Catholick Church and not of a particular Church We confess that some members of the Catholick Church are Mystical and Visible in the several respects before mentioned and that some are Visible and not Mystical or as Bellarmine well calls them Dead Members and not Living and that the Church as Visible is more comprehensive then the Church as Regenerate or Invisible and yet all but One Church though it have more members in it in one respect then in another And we confess that its possible for twenty or an hundred of these Dead members to constitute a particular Church by themselves though it is not usual for Visible Churches to be without Living members and so there may be a particular Visible Dead Member Analogically called a Member or a particular Visible Church that is thus Dead and these be parts of the Catholick Church as Visible But yet there is not two Catholick Churches One Visible and the other Invisible one alive and the other Dead In a Corn field there are 1. Good Corn. 2. Stricken blasted Corn that hath a name and shew but in deed no Corn. 3. Tares darnell cockle and such weeds It is called A Field as it conteineth them all It is called a Corn field only from the Corn. The Univocal proper parts of a Corn field is the Corn only The Visible and Analogical parts are also the blasted ears The darnel and cockle are no parts but noxious accidents There are not two fields of Corn one of true Corn and the of other blasted ears And yet the Corn field taken largely and Analogically hath more parties in it then true Corn and you may perhaps have some particular sheavs that are wholly of that which is blasted which you will call a sheaf of Corn Analogically only but a sheaf of weeds you will not at all call a sheaf of Corn. Even so in the Catholick Church there are sincere Christians which are true and living members and there are Hypocrites which are Analogically members and there are locally mixed many that by denying essential points of the Christian faith or by notorious Impiety do declare themselves to be weeds and no members of the Church at all Prop. 5. We are also Agreed that this One Visible Catholick Church is One Political Holy Society as united in Jesus Christ the Head who teacheth and ruleth it by his Ministers and other Officers in the several parts according to the necessity of each We call it One Political Society 1. Principally because that all the Church is united in this One Soveraign or Head the Lord Jesus and therefore it is called his body 2. They have all the same holy doctrine of faith and Law to live by and be judged by 3. They have all Church Officers of the same sort under Christ to teach and govern them 4. They have all the same kind of Holy Ordinances as Reading Preaching Praying Praise Sacraments c. appointed them by the Lord. 5. They are all engaged in One and the same Holy Covenant to the Lord More might be mentioned and shall be God willing in a peculiar Treatise of Catholicism or the Catholick Church And though Christ himself be not now seen among us yet may he truly be called a Visible Head For 1. He sometime lived visibly on earth 2. And is now the Visible King of all the Church as he is in the Heavens Though we see him not the Celestiall Inhabitants do It is but little of the world that seeth the Pope any more then they see Christ If one unseen to us may be a pretended Visible Head the other may be truly so So that the Body Head Laws Worship c. being Visible so is the Policy Prop. 6. We are agreed also that all these Christians and particular Churches are obliged by Christ even by the very Law of Nature and the ends of their calling and the General Laws of the Gospell to live in as much Love and Unity and Peace as they can and to hold as full and extensive communion as they can that is as far as their work requireth and their Capacity will permit and enable them those that are cohabitans and members of one Congregation must hold local communion in that Congregation unless Necessity prohibite Those that through distance are uncapable of joining in the same Assemblies should yet be conjoined 1. In the same Lord Faith Baptism Covenant Profession 2. In the same bond of Christian special Love 3. In the use of the same sort of holy worship as to the Substance though they differ in circumstances as in the Word Prayer Praises Sacraments c. 4. And in one sort of Church Officers and Government And as far as we have to do with each other all this should be manifested and we should readily own one another as Brethren and true Churches notwithstanding lesser differences Prop. 7. To these ends it is meet that the Bishops or Pastors of the Churches should hold in way of Association as frequent Assemblies as is needfull for the maintaining of mutual Love and Correspondency and right understanding of each other and to manifest their unity and assist each other in the work of God that it may be the more successfully carried on by united strength against
head or Soveraigns of the Church The Major is of unquestionable verity in Politicks Legislation is the first and chief work of Soveraignty The Minor is proved 1. Ad hominem by the confession of the chief Opponents Grotius de Imperio summar potest doth purposely maintain it and so do others See of this Lud. Molinaeus new Book supposed against the Presbyterians his Paraenesis 2. It is the high Prerogative of Christ the true King and Soveraign of the Church which none must arrogate He was faithfull in all his house as was Moses His Law is perfect It is sufficient to make the man of God perfect even a sufficient rule of faith and life No man must add thereto nor take ought therefrom but do whatsoever he hath commanded Deut. 12. 32. To the Law and to the Testimony if they speak not according to these it is because there is no light in them Isa 8. 20. Object But men may make By-laws under Christ and his Laws Answ True but as those are in this case no proper Laws so no man or men may make them for the Unversal Church For the business of those Laws is only to determine of circumstances which God hath made necessary in genere and left to the determination of men in specie And we may well know that there was some special reason why Christ did not determine of these himself And the reason is plain even because that they depend so much on the several states capacities customs c. of men that they are to be varied accordingly in several times and places If one standing Law would have fitted all the world or all ages in these matters Christ would have made it himself For if you say he makes some Laws and neglect others that are of the like kind and might as well have been done by himself you make him imperfect and insufficient to his work And if it be not fit that one Universal Law be made for the world then a Council must not make it And as the sufficiency of Christs law so the nature of the things declare it that these matters must not be determined of by an universal Law Should there be an universal Law to determine what day of the week or what hour of the day every Lecture or occasional Sermon shall be on Or what place every Congregation shall meet in Or where the Minister shall stand to preach Or what Chapters he should read each day Or what Text he should preach on or how long Whether by an hour-glass or without in what habit of apparrel particularly when many a poor man must wear such as he can get yea or what gestures or postures of body to use when that gesture in one Countrey signifieth reverence which in another rather signifieth neglect with abundance the like And the same is plain from the nature of the Pastoral office Every Bishop or Pastor is made by Christ the Ruler of the flock in such cases and they are bound to obey him Heb. 13. 17. And therefore a General Council must leave them their work to do which Christ hath put upon them and not take it out of their hands especially when being in the place and seeing the variety of circumstances they are more competent judges then a General Council at such distance The plain truth is Christ hath left them none of that work to do which belongeth to a Head or Soveraign but they make work for themselves that there may seem to be a Necessity of a power to do it The Church needeth none of their Laws Let us have but the Holy Scriptures and the Law of Nature and the civil Laws of men and the guidance of particular Pastors pro tempore and the fraternal Consultations and Agreements of Councils not to make any more work but to do this foresaid work unanimously and the Church can bear no more there is nothing left for Legislators Ecclesiastical to do We can spare their Laws and therefore their power and work Their business is but to make snares and burdens for us and therefore we can live without them and cannot believe that the felicity or unity or essence of the Church consisteth in them Argum. 7. All the inferior officers do derive their power from the supream All the other officers of the Catholick Church do not derive their power from the Pope or a General Council therefore a Pope or General Council are not the supream The Major is an unquestioned Maxime in Politicks It s essential to the Sovereaign to be the fountain of power to all under him Yea if it be but a deputed derived Soveraignty secundum quid so called as the Viceroy of Mexico Naples c. yet so far he must be the fountain of all inferiour power The Minor is maintained by most Christians in the world Every Bishop or Presbyter hath his power immediately from Jesus Christ as the Efficient cause though man must be an occasion or causa sine qua non or per accidens The Italian Bishops in the Council of Trent could not carry it against the Spaniards that the Pope only as Head was immediately jure divino and the rest but mediante Papa Moreover it is easie to prove out of Scripture that God never set up any Soveraign power in his Church personal or collective to be the fountain of all other Church power nor sendeth us to have recourse to any such for it Nor can they prove such a power on whom it is incumbent And lastly its most easie to prove de facto that the Bishops or Presbyters now in the several Churches in the world did not receive and do not hold their power from any such visible Head whether Pope or Council Though the Popelings do yet so do not all the rest of the Christian world Who are not therefore no Ministers or no Church of Christ whatever these bare affirmers and pretenders may imagine Nor are all the Ministerial actions in the world null which are not done by a power from him And even the Papists themselves will few of them pretend to receive their several powers of Priesthood from a General Council This therefore is not the Soveraign power or head of the Church Argum. 8. The Head or Soveraign Power hath the finally decisive Judgement and in great causes all must or may appeal to them A General Council hath not the finally decisive judgement nor may all men in great causes appeal to them Therefore a General Council is not the Head or Soveraign power The Major is undenyable The Minor is proved 1. In that it is not known nor hath the world any rule or way to know in what cases we must appeal to a General Council and what not and what is their proper work 2. In that an appeal to them is an absolute evasion of the guilty and in vain to the innocent because of the rarity of such Councils or rather the nullity 3. Because the prosecuting of such an Appeal
weighty a point without intolerable accusation of it The Soveraign Power or Headship of Pope or Council is not revealed in the Holy Scripture Therefore c. They have not yet produced a Text to prove either of them Those produced by the Italians for the Popes Headship are disclaimed by the French as meaning no such thing and our Writers have largely manifested their abusing of the Text. So have they done of those that are brought for the Headship of Councils These texts are spoke to so fully by Chamier Whitaker Amesius and abundance more that I think it in vain to do it here again That of 1 Tim. 3. 15. that the Church is the pillar and ground of Truth doth not speak a word of a General Council nor a word of Headship The whole Church united in Christ is the Pillar and Ground that is the certain Receptacle and retainer of the Truth the Law of Christ being written in their hearts None seems more to favour their concecit then Ephes 4. 15 16. which Grotius fastens on But even that is against them and not for them For 1. It is Christ and only Christ that is here said to be the head and all other parts contradistinguished and excluded from Headship and the Body is not said to be united in them 2. And it is by association and mutual communication of their several gifts that the parts are compacted together and edifie the whole and not by meeting in any one and deriving from it Object But were not the Apostles General Officers and so the Church united in General officers Answ This is little to the Question For 1. the Apostles had one among them to be the Soveraign or Head of the rest but were of equal power 2. Nor did a major part of their whole number make such a Head for the Church to unite in nor do we read that ever a Major vote carryed it among them against a Minor for they were all guided by the Spirit Yet its true that they met ofter together then a General Council can 2. The Apostles as extraordinarily qualified and as the Secretaries of the Spirit have no successors But the Apostles as ambulatory unfixed Ministers had even then many companions For Barnabas Luke Apollo and abundance more did then go up and down preaching as well as the Apostles yet had not any one of them a special charge of Governing all the Churches nor yet all of them united in a body For the Apostles called not the Evangelists and other fellow workers to consult in Councils about the Government of the whole But both they and their helpers did severally what they could to teach and settle the Churches 3. Who be they now that are the Apostles successors If all the Bishops in the world the case is as we left it If any small number of Primates or Patriarcks how shall we know which and how many If they be not twelve why should one Apostle have a successor and not others But there are no twelve only that lay claim to the succession And if you go further who can limit and say who and how many they be and how far the number may be increased or decreased and by whom In Cyprians dayes he and his fellows in the Council at Carthage declare that all Bishops were equal and none had power over other And so thought others in those times Nor was there then any number of Bishops that claimed to be the sole successors of the Apostles to rule all the rest And if they had when the Church increaseth the Rulers must increase But this is not to the main point Argum. 20. The Scripture doth appropriate the Universal Headship to Christ only and deny it to all others therefore neither Pope nor Council are the Universal Head Eph. 5. 23. It is the peculiar Title of Christ to be Head of the Church to whom it must be subject 1 Cor. 11. 3. The Apostle would have us know that the Head of every man is Christ and the head of the woman is the man and the Head of Christ is God So that there is a particular Head over some parcell of the body below Christ but to be the Universal Head of every man is the proper Title of Christ In 1 Cor. 12. the unity of the body and diversity of the members is more largely expressed then any where else in Scripture and there when the said unity of the body had been so fully mentioned the Apostle comes to name the Head of that Unity Vers 27. which is only Christ Now ye are the body of Christ and members in particular The Church is never called the body of the Pope or of a Council but the body of Christ yea as was even now said in the next words the Apostles Prophets and Teachers are enumerated to the particular members contradistinct from the Head so far are all or any one of them from being the head themselves And in Col. 2. 10 17 19. it is Christ only that is called the Head and the body is said to be of Christ and he only is mentioned as the Center of its Unity And not holding the Head from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministred and knit together increaseth with the increase of God And Col. 1. 18. And he is the Head of the body the Church If any say that you cannot hence argue Negatively that therefore no one else is the Head I answer They may as well say when it is affirmed that the Lord he is God you cannot thence conclude that Baal is not God The Apostle plainly speaks this of Christ as his peculiar honour And he spoke to men that knew well enough that natural bodies have but one Head unless they be Monsters And he would not so oft insist on this Metaphor intending so great a disparity in the similitude and never discover any such intention So in Ephes 1. 22. He gave him to be Head over all things to the Church which is his Body the fulness of him that filleth all in all And in Ephes 4. the Apostle purposely exhorteth us to the observation of this unity and purposely telleth us by a large enumeration wherein it doth consist but in all he never mentioneth the Pope or a Council yea he plainly excludeth them Vers 3 4. c. Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace There is one body and one spirit even as you are called in one hope of your calling One Lord One Faith One Baptism One God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in you all But unto every one of us is given Grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ He gave some Apostles and some Prophets and some Evangelists and some Pastors and Teachers for the perfecting of the Saints for the work of the Ministry for the Edifying of the body of Christ till we all come in the unity of the
by force The Pastors are the Judges of Heresie and Vice ad hoc thus far so as to judge who shall be Denounced by themselves unmeet for the Churches Communion and Judges of sound Doctrine so far as to resolve what is by themselves to be taught to the people and Judges of that Magistrate so far as to determine whether he be a fit subject for their Administrations and Communion For every man is to judge when he is to act and execute in these cases and therefore when the Question is Who is to be tolerated or forcibly restrained the Magistrate is the only Judge and the Minister but a teacher But the Question is whom should I admit or not admit to my Communion and whom should I perswade and require the Church to avoid or to receive Here the Pastors are the Judges And when the Question is Whether the Pastor go according to Gods Word or not here the people have Judicium Discretionis and cannot be forced though they ought to obey where they see not sufficient reason to the contrary Mat. 28. 18 19. Heb. 13. 17. 1 Thes 5. 12. 1 Cor. 4. 1. Luk. 12. 42 44. 1 Sam. 28. 18. Dan. 9. 8 10. Joh. 20. 23. 2 Chron. 36. 14 15 16. 19. The honor and power of the Pastors is for their work And so great is that work that as to fleshly accommodations it layeth us under abundance more trouble then the power and honor affordeth us relief from All true Pastors therefore should be so far from striving for Power Greatness and Rule and extent of their Diocess as matters of advantage that they should still look on their Power but as Power to thresh or plough or sow or reap a Power to give alms to all the poor in the Town to visit all the sick to cure mad men that will abuse me c. such a Power to labor and suffer in doing good And thus he that will be the Greatest but think of no other kind of greatness but a power to become the servant of all If men had these true apprehensions of the Episcopal office they would be no more forward in contending for power and large Diocesses then now they are in contending who shall Instruct most of the ignorant or go to the poor ungodly families to further their reformation or intreat beseech exhort most of the obstinate from man to man or who should relieve the most of the poor of all the Countrey about And if this be it they contend for they may Rule without a Commission from the Prince Who will hinder them that hath any fear of God 1 Cor. 4. 9 10 11 12 13 16. Act. 20. 18. to the end 2 Cor. 1. 24. Mark 10. 44. 1 Thes 2 9. Luk. 10. 2. 20. No man is called by God to more work then he can possibly do nor should desire and undertake more And therefore if Prelates and Councils and Popes would but conscionably bethink them of the work what it is and how to be done of what weight and how strict will be the account and then consider how they can do it our differences would quickly be at end For though godly men would put off no service they can do yet when they lookt on the undertaking of these Impossibles they would tremble to think on it All conscionable men are sensible of their weakness and the weight of the work and say who is sufficient for these things And I dare say the strongest of them all would feel the weight of the burden of one Parish and be readyer to beg and seek about for help then to contend for a a larger Diocess unless as the meer necessity of the Church for want of laborers might call them to labor in other parts Duty supposeth Authority and Authority supposeth ability and opportunity even natural ability and mental qualifications Psal 131. 1 2. 2 Cor. 2. 16. BY this much you may see what Unity may be expected in the Church on earth 1. A unity of internal Faith and Love and Spirit among all real Christians 2. A Unity of Profession all professing the same Belief that is of the word of God in General and of the Creed and Essentials of Religion in particular and as many more of the particular truths as they can reach 3. A Unity of Professors in local communion in the same Assemblies in Gods publick Worship in the Word Prayer Praises Sacraments c. Where they cohabite or have opportunity for such communion 4. Among those that are out of our reach or being neer us yet differing in some smaller things where a difference is tolerable we may yet in word writing and deed own each other as Brethren and combine for the promoting of the common good and the commonly received truths and duties So that we have in these four the unity of the spirit in the bond of Peace One Body the Catholick Church comprehending all properly called Christians One Spirit The sanctifying Spirit of Christ One Hope of our calling One Promise or Gospel and One Heaven and End One Lord even Christ the only Head of the Church One Faith Both objective in Scripture and the Creed and subjective specifical which is our Reception of Scripture doctrine and of Christ with his benefits One Baptism entring all one and the same Covenant with Christ to be his and take him for our Lord and Saviour renouncing the world the flesh and devil and signifying this by external washing in the name of that Father Son and Holy Ghost One God and Father Our Creator Preserver our End and Happiness Ephes 4. 3 4 5. And is all this Nothing to you that seemed so much to Paul that unless you have also an Earthly Universal Head and an Unity in Ceremonies wherein all must be of your mind and conform to you as if you were Gods you will revile at our divisions and run to Rome for further Unity HAving laid down those Grounds or Principles on which the Unity and Peace of the Church must be built there appears not any great need of adding any more for the reducing these to practice if these were but received the way of practice would be obvious But briefly I shall lay down these few Propositions implyed in those exprest before 1. Let every man profess his belief of the Holy Scriptures in General and in particular of all that Scripture hath exprest to be of Necessity to Salvation by denouncing death to them that have it not And let them also Profess to consent that God be their God and Christ their Saviour and the Holy Ghost their Sanctifier and that they renounce the flesh the world and Devil resolving to live a holy life And let this be by a credible way of Professing And all that do thus let us esteem love and use them as Christians till they some way plainly disown this Profession 2. Let every such Baptized Professor owning also the Ministry Church and Worship Ordinances plainly required
that I must needs conclude that either the Liturgy or much of it is forged or that the generality of your own Relators of their practice are grosly deceived and do deceive which is not likely because they are many and write at several times and it is against themselves 3. And as for the procession of the Holy Ghost and the denyal of two wills in Christ some of your own writers profess that the former in the Greeks and the later in many others is found to be but a verbal difference the same words not signifying the same thing in their esteem as in ours 4. However if they would but become the subjects of the Pope they might be of your Church for all this and therefore seeing they are the subjects of Christ we shall take both Ethiopians and Copties to be of the same Catholick Church with us for all these and many other of their errors Lastly saith H. T. Let him not cite the Armenians for they hold but one nature in Christ and that his flesh was changed into his Divinity and were condemned by the Council of Calcedon Answ The Armenians are a considerable part of the Catholick Church Binnius in the life of Eugenius the third saith their Catholick so call they their chief Bishop hath infinite that is above a thousand Bishops under him Oth. Frisingensis hath the like 1. Though they held but one nature in Christ it was not by permixtion or confusion of the natures as Eutiches imagined but Conjunction or Coalition Nicephor Hist Eccles lib. 18. cap. 53. And divers of your own writers say the difference is found to be but in words And even all this they now deny as you may see in their own Confession published not eighty years ago Artic. 26 27 28 29 30. c. 2. That they change the humane nature of Christ into the Divinity is your slander and therefore no good argument 3. That they were condemned by the five Acts or in any Act of the Council of Calcedon is another untruth sure you go much upon trust that dare venture to stuff your book with such falshoods But the best is your simple Papists know not but all is true they must believe you and cannot disprove you The Armenians then and we are of one Catholick Church and Religion notwithstanding all your forgeries and vain exceptions I know that one or two petty Councils chid them for not mixing water with wine in the Eucharist and more then that the Canons of the General Council called Quinisexti do condemn the same error as theirs and also their deputing the Sons of Priests successively to the Priesthood and not shaving their hair and their eating eggs and cheese on Saturdayes and Sundayes in Lent But 1. We fear not to say that we are of the same Church with men that err more then not shaving or then eating eggs and cheese comes to or any of this 2 And remember that this is one of your Reprobate Councils 3. And one that the third time when two General Councils before had done it did Canon 36. give aequalia privilegia equal priviledges to the Seat of Constantinople as Rome had So that I think you will have no mind of this General Council And if any other have judged them Eutichians though I renounce that opinion yet I must tell you that my Charity covereth far greater errors in the Papists or else I could not take them for Christians If the Question had ever been started in a Council whether mans soul and body are two Natures or but one it s ten to one but it would have made another heresie and yet perhaps the real difference have been no more then it is now there is no Controversie about it But H. T. addeth Protestants pretence to the Fathers of the first five hundred years is very idle because were it true as it is most false that those Fathers were Protestants yet could not that suffice to prove them is continued Succession of one thousand six hundred years Answ 1. It sufficeth us if those Fathers were Christians as we are though having no usurper of an universal Monarchy to Protest against they were not to be called Protestants 2. It is an idle pretence indeed to go about to prove a Succession of one thousand six hundred years by the bare instance of five hundred years but your idle head hath forged more idle pretences then this by way of calumniation But yet we may prove the Antiquity of our Religion from those Fathers and the Novelty of yours and a Succession for those five hundred years and for the rest if the whole Christian world had been big enough for you to see you might have discerned our Evidence of a further Succession He adds 2. Because those of the sixth age must needs know what was the Religion and Tenets of them that lived in the fifth age by whom they were instructed and with whom they daily conversed better then our Protestants can now do who have Protested on their salvation that it was the very same with theirs received from them by word of mouth c. Answ 1. Any thing will serve for the simple that will believe you But I pray you tell us whether it were all or some of the sixth age that made this solemn Protestation that you mention If all or most or the ten thousandth man tell us where we may find that Protestation If a few they were not the sixth age 2. If Pope Boniface alone was not the sixth age tell us where that age did Protest on their salvation that the Bishop of Rome was taken by their Fore fathers for the universal Monarch and Head of the Church beyond his bare Primacy of order 3. What age hath protested on their salvation that the Roman prohibition of reading Scriptures or of receiving the Eucharist in both kinds or other points anon to be mentioned were the Religion of their Fore-fathers and so from age to age 4. I pray you tell us where to find this Protestation of the tenth age which Genebrard Bellarmine and others of your own so complain of as having not learned men nor any Council but Apostatical Popes and an ignorant wicked Clergy that suspected a man of Heresie if he understood Greek or Hebrew and of Magick or Conjuring if he medled with Mathematicks 5. It is legible in the writings of the sixth Age that they did fetch the doctrine of the fifth age from their writings and not only from word of mouth What else mean the preservation of those writings and those numerous citations out of them Nay more they would not trust their memories in a General Council for the Canons of the Church no nor for the Canons of the next preceding Council no nor for the Common Creed but had all read and repeated out of the writing before the Council when there was occasion And let Conscience be free to speak truth for a few sentences and tell us in good sadness