Christ to be the Head of all Christian Unity or that Church to be the conservatory for ever of all Christian Truth more than any other Bishop or Church of the Apostles ordaining or planting Where I find almost as many absurdities hudled together as words For first what signifies the Bp. of Rome was not appointed by Christ Christ was not on earth when St. Peters Successors in the See of Rome sate there and when he ordained St. Peter chief of the Apostles Saint Peter was not yet Bishop of Rome Next if he meanes that St. Peter was not appointed by our Saviour as the Head of Christian Unity St. Hierom's testimony I suppose will be as good as the Doctors word who tels us Inter duodecim c. Amongst the twelve one was chosen that A HEAD being constituted the OCCASION OF SCHISM MIGHT BE TAKEN AWAY Where we see expresly Saint Peter the Popes Predecessor was advanced to be HEAD and this to take away occasion of Schism that is to be HEAD OF CHRISTIAN UNITY Thirdly hence also follows that Christian Unity is conserved by him more than by any other Bishop contrary to the Doctors assertion Fourthly he equivocates in the word Roman Church and takes in it a sence which he knowes we never mean't Our acception of it being of the Universal Church communicating with the Mother Church of Rome his of the private Diocess of Rome it selfe Fifthly it is groundless to affirm even of this private Church of Rome it selfe that she is not the conservatory of Christian Truth more than any other since the Doctor cannot but know the Fathers are of a contrary beleefe holding that the two chief Apostles dying there bequeathed to that Church as a sacred Legacy a greater vigour of Christian Tradition Again Histories and Fathers witnessing so unanimously her firm persistance above the rest objections often urged by our Authors to that purpose the Doctor might at least have afforded us one testimony of the contrary besides his own bare saying Lastly what is the Doctors intent in saying Christ did not appoint the Church of Rome conservatory for ever of all Christian truth What meanes this canting Parenthesis for ever As if Christ might perhaps appoint her to conserve truth for a while but meant after some time to discharge her of that office But this Parenthesis the Doctor reserved for a starting-hole that he might at pleasure cry out she had erred when he had found out some odd testimony which with the help of an id-est-clause might overthrow the Authority of the whole World His second Defence for relinquishing the means to preserve Unity of Faith which we charge them with is this that The way provided by Christ and his Apostles for preserving the Unity of Faith c. is fully acknowledged by their Reformation Which way sayes the Doctor is made up of two Acts of Apostolical Providence First their resolving upon some few heads of efficacy to the planting of Christian life through the world and preaching and depositing them in every Church Secondly their establishing an excellent subordination of Church-officers c. As for the first of these Acts as he calls them of Apostolical Providence if these two Heads he speaks of as thus deposited be indeed sufficient to form a Christian life in order to the attainment of Eternal bliss and that they came down certainly to us by this depository way at first in the Churches and so derived successively age by age Dr. Hammond is suddenly become a Proselyte and a plain Papist For we neither say we have any point of Faith superfluous for the Community of the Faithful nor that those we have came to us by any other meanes than seruando depositum by preserving uncorrupted those necessary doctrines thus deposited But I fear much when the matter comes to scanning Mr. Hammond in this his doctrine neither goes to Church nor stayes at home but halts very lamely in the mid-way He stayes not at home for his Church of England is so far from holding the points deposited by the Apostles in Churches a certain way to preserve Unity of Faith that nothing is more abominable to her than the name of Tradition This appeares by the sixth Article or Canon of Queen Elizabeth's female-headed General Council where the Scripture is made the sole ground of Faith and nothing affirmed as necessary to Salvation but what is built upon it whereas the Doctor here builds points necessary to salvation for sure those few heads of special efficacy to the planting a Christian life can be no lesse upon their preaching and depositing them in the Churches nay more the Unity of Faith that is Faith it self for Faith if not one is none upon this way of depositing Yet for all this he will not goe to Church neither though he stay not at home For ask him are those few Heads all that are necessary he will tell you nâ— yet which be those necessary Heads how many and why no more were thus delivered since this he sayes is A WAY TO PRESERVE UNITY IN FAITH and on the other side he sees what multiplicity is bred by the diverse interpretations of Scripture ask him I say these questions and no particular account can he give you only he had a mind to say somthing in geneneral lest he might be thought to have utterly contemned all Traditions Again these Churches in which were deposited those few Heads of such special eefficacy to plant Christian life were they infallible that is such as we may certainly trust to in their preserving that depositum if they were they might as well be infallible in other necessary points also and so the Doctor hath slipt by good hap into our Rule of Faith and though hoodwink't goes to Church again But if they be not infallible that is connot certainly tell us that they delivered us the right depositum and the same they received then the Drremaines as he is and hath brought nothing to his purpose For since Unity of Faith cannot be preserved without some efficacious meanes of bringing it down to us inerrably true unless this depositing was such as must upon necessity continue for ever which is that we call Infallibility or Indefectibility of the Church the providence of the Apostles had been very sleight and nothing at all to the Doctors purpose that is it had been no efficacious way to preserve Unity of Faith He addes afterwards And all this is asserted and acknowledged by every true son of the Church of England as zealously as is pretended by any Romanist Here again the Doctor seemes to step forwards towards the Church and to draw a great troup of backward unwilling Protestants after him For if they hold as I conceive he meanes by these words the doctrines deposited in the Church as zealously as the Romanists they must hold them as of Faith for so farre our well-grounded zeal carries us and that the depositary is so trusty as
in the Doctors judgment Not considering which yet any prudent man would that the whole world whom before they accounted onely Catholick and in which had been hundreds of Kings Queens and Bishops nay perhaps thousands for one of theirs had ever condemned by their contrary beliefe these Votes and Acts to bee scismatical and heretical Besides this King before the breach acknowledging himselfe subject to that Authority in Ecclesiastical matters as all Catholick Kings now doe and as all his Ancestor-Kings ever since Englands conversion had done it must be as I have told you often most apparent evidence and such as greater cannot be imagin'd which may warrant him to exalâ— himselfe above the Popes Authority so long setled in possession and that in those very things in which before he was acknowledgedly under him especially the contrary verdict of such an universality as I have before mention'd with its weight not to be counterpois'd preponderating and mightily prejudicing any pretence of Evidence Again if the thing were evident how happened it that no Christian King till the time of King Henry the eighth and in his time none but he should discern this clear evidence unless perhaps though they say love is blind yet his desire to Anna Bullen did open his eyes in such miraculous manner that he saw by the heavenly light of her bright star-like eyes that the Pope was Antichrist his Authority unlawful and himselfe who was then found under it in Ecclesiastical matters to be indeed above it in case the Popes spiritual power should cross his carnal pleasure To conclude my answer to this Chapter I would ask two things of Mr. Doctor one is in case a King should have broke from the Church and brought in Schism into his Country whether it could probably be perform'd in any other manner than the very method by which their Reformation was introduced The other is whether the Reformation be yet perfectly compleat or rather that Queen Elizabeth swept the Church indeed but left the dust sluttishly behind the door if it be not yet compleat I would gladly know how far this Reformation and Receding from Rome may proceed and what be the certain stints and limits of this rowling Sea which it may not pass For I see no reason in the Doctors grounds but if the secular powers think it convenient they may reform still end wayes as they please nay even if they list deny Christ to be God an acute Socinian will solve very plausibly all the objections out of Scripture and produce allegations which I doubt not he will make far stronger than the Doctor doth his against the Pope nor will there want some obscure testimonies out of Antiquity and express ones from the Arrian Hereticks to evince the Tenet if this then were voted by a King some of his Bishops and a Parliament the Doctor must not disobey and hold Christs Divinity since the thing was done by them to whom as the Doctor sayes rightfull power legally pertain'd They having no infallibility then may happen to vote such a thing and the Doctor having no infallible certainty to the contrary ought not recede from his lawful Superiours so as upon these grounds all religion may be reformed into Atheism and the infallibility of the Church once denied the temporal Power hath no reason to have his rightful authority stinted but at pleasure to make Reformation upon Reformation from generation to generation per omnia saecula saeculorum THE THIRD PART Containing the answers to the foure last Chapters of Dr. Hammonds Schism SECT 1. Doctor Hammonds second sort of Schism and his pretence that they retain the way to preserve Unity in Faith refuted MAster Hammond hath at length finish't his greatest task and done preaching of the first species of Schism as it is an offence against the subordination which Christ hath by himselfe and his Apostles setled in the Church and is now arrived to the second sort as it signifies an offence against the mutual unity peace and charity which Christ left among his Disciples This Schism against Charity for methods sake as he tells us he divides into three species The first is a Schism in the Doctrine or Traditions a departure from the unity of the Faith once delivered to the Saints from the institutions of Christ of the Apostles and of the Universal Church of the first and purest times whether in Government or practises c. Where first this methodical Dr. makes Faith and Charity all one putting his Schism against Faith for the first species of his Schism against mutual Charity Next he ranks also the rejecting Christs Institution of Government under this second species of Schism against Charity which most evidently was the first General Head of Schism hitherto treated of that is of the Offence against Subordination setled by Christ in the Church For Christ could not settle such a subordination in the Church but he must at the same time institute the Government of the Church since there can be neither subordination without Government nor Government without subordination So as now the Schism against Government is come to be one of the Schisms against mutual Charity and to mend the matter comprehended under the same Head with Schism against Faith Was ever such a confusion heard of And yet all this is done saith the Doctor for methods sake But to proceed the second species of his Schism against mutual Charity is an offence against external peace and Communion Ecclesiastical Where I find as much blundering as formerly For these words must either signifie an Offence against Superiors and Governors of the Church and then it is again co-incident both with the first general Head of Schism which dissolves the subordination of the Churches subjects and also with the first particular species of Schism against mutual Charity which according to the Doctors method included a breach from the Government instituted by Christ. Or else they must signifie an Offence against the mutually and equally-due correspondence and Charity which one fellow-member ought to have to another and then it falls to be the same with his third and last species which he calls The want of that Charity which is due from every Christian to every Christian. So that if the jumbling all the Bells together in a confused disorder may be called musical then the Doctors division may be styled methodical After this he subdivides this first species to wit Schism against Faith into A departure from those Rules appointed by Christ for the founding and upholding truth in the Church and into The asserting particular doctrins contrary to Christs and the Apostolical pure Churches establishment But first he cleares himselfe of the former of these by answering our suggestion as he calls it that in casting out the Authority of the Bishop of Rome they have cast off the Head of all Unity To which he tells us the answer is obvious First that the Bishop of Rome was never appointed by
pang and sollicitude before they durst open their doors They could neither eat nor sleep in any other security than that which a good Conscience gave them But the cruelst part of all was to defame us of Treason First you make a Law that to acknowledge the Successor of S. Peter had a common superintendency over the Church was Treason and then brand us for Traitors Should a Presbyterian or Independent Power make it Treason to acknowledge Prelacy would you think it reasonable presently to conclude all the older-fashion'd Protestants Traitors Nor can I perswade my selfe I offer any violence to Charity if I plainly and roundly charge you that in all this you proceeded flatly against your Consciences it being impossible you should really judge the bare receiving Orders beyond Sea to be Treason which is abundantly convinc't by your very offer of pardon nay sometimes preferment if hee whom you made the people beleeve was a dangerous and bloody Traitor would but go to Church with you For what Priest dyed for being a Priest but hee might have rescu'd himselfe at the last hour by such submission What Priest was so bad whom you were not ready to entertain with honour if hee would take party with you So unlucky is his Lordship in this Chapter that whatever his intention is he absolves us or at least condemns himselfe if he would be understood as the Letter of his Exceptions sounds he absolutely clears our Religion of a calumny which the Protestants most injuriously charge upon us that our vassalage to the Pope destroyes our subjection to our Prince citing so many instances where Catholikes remaining such have disobey'd the Pope If he on purpose layes his sense to bee ambiguous of which I have some jealousie because hee uses that jugling phrase in effect then hee absolutely proves himselfe a Deceiver In short if he mean honestly he justifies us if otherwise every honest man will condemn him But whatever his inward meaning is the Case open'd will declare it self Christ being to build his spiritual Kingdom upon the Basis not onely of the Roman Monarchy then flourishing but of a multitude of Kingdomes either bred out of the destruction of that or originally independent and distinct from it which in process of time should embrace his Faith saw it necessary to make such a band of Unity betwixt the Churches of which his spiritual Empire was to be integrated that it neither should be offensive to temporal Princes nor yet unprovided of meanes to keep the Church in such amity as to be able to work like the Congregation of Hierusalem which had Cor unum animam unam For this reason he gave the principality among his Apostles to S. Peter and consequently to his Successors among theirs The effect of this Principality was that when publick meetings of Bishops were necessary all emulation who should have recourse to the other was taken away since it was known all were to defer to him meet as and where was most fitting for him Again if any inconvenience fel among Christians there wanted not one who was by office to look to it though in the place where it fell out there were no superior Authority to curb the offenders This one Seat might by the ordinary providence of Almighty God keep a continuance of Succession from S. Peter to the end of the World whereas the vicissitude of humane nature permitted not the like to be done to all the Sees where all the rest of the Apostles had signed their Faith by their precious death Hence 't is the See of Rome is invested with the special priviledge of Mother and Mistress of the Church But not to dive into all or the questionable consequences of this Primacy this onely I intend to insist upon that it is the hinge upon which all the common government and unity in Faith Sacraments Ceremonies and communication of spiritual Fraternity depends which being removed the Church vanishes into a pure Anarchy no one Province or Country having the least obligation to any other to repair to it to obey it to make Meetings and common Ordinances with it So that the whole frame of the Church will be utterly dissolv'd ceasing to be a Church and becomming a ruinous heap of stones precious indeed in themselves but without order shape or connexion By this it clearly followes whatever is the truth of those Questions which our Bishop reckons up to have been disputed between other Christian Countries and the Papacy that as long as this Principality wee speak of is acknowledged so long there is an Unity in the Christian Church all particular Churches being by this subordination perfectly one both with their Head and among themselves This is the bridle our Saviour put in the mouth of his Church to wield it sweetly which way he pleased No dissention in Faith or Discipline nay not any war among Christian Princes could annoy the World if this Authority were duly preserved and governed Many excellent effects we have seen of it and more the world is likely to enjoy when the admirable conveniences of it shall bee unpassionately understood What Christian Prince can chuse but be glad to have an Arbitrator so prudent so pious so disinteressed as a good Pope should be to reconcile differences and to hinder bloodshed either in his own people or between his neighbours And who sees not that the Popes office and condition among those who reverence him is perfectly proper for such an effect beyond the hopes of wisedom that had not known th'exprience of it What a desperate attempt then is it to bite at this bridle and strive to put the whole Christian World in confusion This is your crime in this consists your Schism in this your impiety and wickedness Agreeing then that this is the substance of the Papacy temporal preheminences and wealth being but accidental to it wee shall presently see all those arrows which the Bishop shoots against us fall directly on his own head For if the Papacy stand firm and strong in all those Countries that have resisted the Pope when they conceived hee encroach'd on their ' liberties it is evident notwithstanding all such disputes the Being and Nature of one Church is entirely conserved they all governing themselves in an Unity of Faith and Sacraments and Correspondence like one Body as is visible to any that will but open his eyes and so are Members of one Christian Community Whereas the Reform as they call it has cut off England from all this communication and correspondence and made it no part of any Church greater than it self and by consequence that can pretend to Universality and Catholicism but a headless Synagogue without Brotherhood or Order if joyned with any other it is not in a common head but with the tayles of opposition to the Roman Catholike No more can the several Protestant Churches be allow'd to compose one Body than all the ancient Hereticks did nay than Turks and Iewes and
would not think he intended to treat the question in earnest seeing him begin with so serious a Preamble In the first five Paragraphs there is not a word concerning our question to be taken notice of in quality of a difficulty being nothing but a moral Preface indifferent to either side Only I desire by way of Memorandum that we may reflect well upon and bear in mind that vertue of ready and filial obedience of those under authority to their lawfully authorized Superiors mentioned by him and extolled for a vertue of the first magnitude And the indifferent Reader will aâ— once both easily discern hereafter whether the present Catholicks who hear the Church and believe her in her Lawfully authoriz'd Governors or the first Reformers who without any and against all Authority disobeyed and disbelieved her have the better title to that eminent vertue and he will also wonder why the Doctor should face his Book with the Encomiums of that Vertue the bare explication whereof applyed to the carriage of the first Reformers must manifestly condemn them and quite confute and disgrace all Doctor Hammonds laborious endeavours But a pretence to a vertue if confidently carried on seems to the vulgar an argument of a just claim and high commendations of it makes the pretence more credible For who willingly praises but what is either his own or his friends or dispraises but what is his enemies Which makes him in the next three Paragraphs proceed in the same tenor of Rhetorick and from Scriptures and Fathers paint â—ut the horrid vice of Schism in her own ugly shape as that it is carnality self-condemning contrary to charity bereaving one of the benefits of prayers and Sacraments as bad as and the foundation of all heresies that there is scarce any crime the place cited is absolute that there is not any crime though he mince it with scarce so great as Schisme not Sacriledg Idolatry Parracide that it is obnoxious to peculiar marks of Gods indignation Antichristianism worshiping or serving the Devil not expiable by martyrdom it being according to Iraenâ—â—s impossible though the Dr. mitigates the dangerous expression with very hard if not impossible to receive such an injury or provocation from the Governors of the Church as may make a separation excusable And lastly impossible according to St. Austin that there should be any just cause for any to separate from the Catholick Church Instead of which last words the Doctor full of jealousies and fears puts the Church truely Catholick as if there were much danger lest perhaps any should imagin Christs Church of which I conceive St. Austin meant it to be untruly Catholick And now what good honest well-minded Reader not much acquainted with the Doctors manner of Rhetorick would be so unconscionable as to think him guilty of that vice which he so candidly and largely sets forth in its own colours although in those expressions which might too directly prejudice his future work he seems something chary And indeed I wonder for whose sake he hath gathered such a bundle of severe rods out of the sacred Scriptures and the best Fathers to whip Schismaticks Such expressions as I hope will strongly incite the Protestant Reader whom a true care of his eternal good may invite to seek satisfaction in this point seriously to consider that the decision of no one controversie is more nearly concerning his salvation than this as appears by the abominable character of Schisme which the Doctor hath with so much pains deciphered to be an Abridgement of all the most hainons damnable inexcusable unexpiable vices that can be named or imagin'd Of which Augaean stable if Mr. Hammond can purge the Protestant Church he shall ever wear the most deserved title of the Reformers Hercules But I am sorry to foresee that the more he handles his work the more the dirt will remain sticking upon his own fingers He proceeds or rather infers from the former Premises an irrefragable Conclusion as he calâ— it that the examination of the occasion cause or motive of any mans Schism is not worth the producing or heeding in this matter This besides the manifest advantage it gives us of which hereafter is the preâ—tiest fetch to wave the whole question and whatsoever is material in it that I ever met with That you are excommunicated or separated from the Communion of our Church whence as you say the Schisme springs all the world sees and acknowledges What remains then to justifie or condemn you or us but that there was or was not sufficient cause to cast you out and deny you Communion For that our Church had authority to do it if you be found to deserve it being then her subjects or children none doubts If then there were no cause our Church was tyrannical If there were you are truely and properly Schismaticks first in giving just cause of your own ejection next in remaining out of our Church still and not removing those impediments which obstruct your return This is most evidently the very point of the difficulty which being in great haste to shorten your method you would totally decline Make what haste you please so you take the question along with you For assure your self however you would avoid it now you cannot possibly treat it without examining the causes and motives of breaking as de facto you do afterwards Although if you can evidence that there is actually no Schisme made between us then indeed I must confess there can be no need of examining the causes of a thing that is not But it is impossible to make this seem evident without putting out ours your own and the whole worlds eyes But you desire only that the truth of the matter of fact be lookt into whether the charge of Schisme be sufficiently proved c. It is proved Mr. Doctor if you be proved to have so misbehaved your selves within the Church that to conserve he Government inviolate she was forced to our-law you from her Communion These are the motives and causes which you conscious of and very tenderly sensible in those parts would have us leave untouch'd But on this we shall insist more at large when the very handling the question forces you though unwilling to touch the occasions or causes of Schisme at least such as you thought fit and seem'd most plausibly answerable by the notes you had glean'd up and down to that purpose SECT 2 Concerning his Notion of Schisme and the Excommunication of the Church HIs second Chapter begins with the distinction of Heresie and Schisme concerning which what he hath said is true but yet he hath omitted some part of the truth which was necessary to be told Wherefore let him but take along with him that not only Schisme is a dissenting from Authority and Heresie an introducing a false doctrine into the Church but also that all heresie which it concerns his cause to be willing to pretermit must necessarily include
reciprocal action or passion it must signifie an act of dividing exercised upon himself who therefore is the thing divided and since divisio est motus ab unitate ad pluralitatem division i◠a progress or motion from unity to plurality its proper and formal effect is to make that which it works upon more of one but that which it works upon saith the Doctor is himself the Schismatick therefore it cuts the Schismatick in two and either kils or mangles him as the Critick pleases See to what a pittifull case the Doctors acuteness hath brought a poor Schismatick from the too quaint notation of the killing letter of the Hithpael-like verb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I crave the Readers pardon for transgressing so long upon his patience to lay open a foolery but I did it to the intent Mr. Dr. and his friends may see how ridiculous and sometimes unsecure a thing it is to stand shewing ones skill in Grammar or letting the world see they understand a little Greek and Hebrew or interlarding their discourse with so many scraps of exotick languages to amuse the vulgar and in the mean time very little and very weakly to close with their adversary in the point in controversie with rigorous discourses solid pregnant and convincing reasons only which and not Greek and Criticisms are expected in so grave and concerning a Treatise But the former impertinences with sayings indifferent to both parts intermingled with some few glean'd citations and blind stories sawced with some pretty expressions sugar'd over with Scripture-phrase and then dish'd up handsomly with the help of a learned distinction will serve to make up several paragraphs Paragraphs Chapters Chapters a Book Iamque opus exegi c. and the work is done which if none thinks worth the pains of a reply all the substantial part being already confuted an hundred times over and only the cooking it up changed presently with the loudest Trumpet of Fame it is proclaimed unanswerable as this book hath been and hath a solemn triumph sounded in its behalf whereas only its contemptibleness made it victorious But to proceed all he concludes from his Criticism is this that Schisme is a voluntary recession from the Church and might not plain sence have told us this without critically straining and spoiling a word to prove it from Grammar For what man in his wits could possibly imagin Schisme being such an horrid sinne that one might perhaps fall into it whether he would or no and so become a Schismatick against his will There needs neither Greek nor Hebrew to understand this Every child knows by the very first principles of Nature that no man sins if he cannot help it Yet Mr. Hammond goes on a whole leaf and with most potent Argument◠overthrows that which would fall of it self like him that all-to-be-bang'd the dead Bear not the least hair of an objection bristling it self against him to fright him from his Conquest He maintains therefore that the actual Excommunication used by the Governors of the Church is not the crime of Schisme as if he should go about to prove that the sentence of a Judge when he condemns a murderer or a thief is neither the sin of murder nor the every For Excommunication as all men know is the Churches condemnation or punishment of the crime of Schisme as the Iudges last sentence of death is of the aforesaid delinquencies Who will not grant him this at the first word yet nevertheless he will needs prove it with many But Governors you say being men may possibly erre and so censure and excommunicate the innocent If what you say here may be you prove to have been I shall grant you have acquitted your self well In the mean time what onely may be may also not be and till such time as you can evidence an immunity from error in the governed as well as pretend a liableness in the Governors the whole oeconomy of the world gives it that the opinion of right shall stand on the Governors side For surely the order of the Politick World were a very pitiful slack thing if every frivolous and probable exception of Subjects should be held a sufficient cause to break asunder the well compacted Frame and dissolve the strongest Nerves of a long-setled Government even in may-be's then you are worsted What will become of you when we come to demonstrate to you hereafter that however in some private proofs of a particular fact the Governors may be mistaken yet in such publick misbehavior as your few new-fangled Predecessors used when they opposed themselves to the ever-self-constant Church it was impossible the Governors should be mistaken in judging you to be truly-named Schismaticks and consequently did well in treating you accordingly That there may be a continuance out of actual Communion without Schism as also That unjust Excommunication hurts no man would have been granted you for one word in plain English without the citing of so much Greek to so little purpose Onely we desire you would grant us in recompence what in all reason is due That a voluntary continuance in a just Excommunication makes the thus excommunicated Schismaticks Which part of the distinction being counterpois'd to those others you mentioned of actual continuance out of the Church and unjust Excommunication hurting no man and most neerly concerning the Question being objected by us to be your guilt whereas the other you treat are out of controversie between us it could not stand with the sincere treating a Question wholly to omit it and pass it over in silence But the seeming exactness of your method can yet easily over-slip that part of the distinction which sounds dangerously and is hard to be confuted though the main of the Question onely stands upon it and mention onely that which is easily excused because none objects it and very facile to be proved because none denies it Scilicet isthuc est sapere Your other testimonies here alledged tending onely as I conceive to prove That unjust Excommunication hurts no man are very currant and allowable And I could have helped you to twenty more as good as these to the same purpose some of them In Greek too which would have made a fine show Your interpretative Excommunication runs upon the same strain and so needs no further Answer besides that which the following Section affords it SECT 3. Concerning Dr. Hammond's Plea of a Weak Conscience not suffering him to subscribe to the Churches Doctrine against his present perswasion BUt now the Doctor hath got a new cloak for his Schism to wit the pretence of a weak Conscience which makes him think he ought not to communicate with the Church but is excused for not-communicating because the conditions of the Communion contain in them a sin And what sin should this be But to subscribe to things which their Conscience tells them is false Nay even saith the Doctor though the truth be on the Churches side yet
that professes her self fallible that is uncertain of the truth of her Doctrine cannot without accusing her self of the greatest injustice and tyranny in the World binde others to the belief of the said Doctrine For it carries the prejudice of the highest unreasonableness with it for a man to tell me I will force you â—o believe that which yet I my self know not whether it is to be believed or no. Let not Dr. Hammond then blame our Church for obliging men to subscribe to her Doctrine unless he can evidence first That she hath not that which she hath ever from the beginning of the Church pretended to to wit a security from fallibility by the perpetual assistance of her Spouse and Saviour But rather let him invent if he can any rational excuse for his own Church which professing her self fallible and so wanting all power to oblige to belief would notwithstanding have others believe her accounting the Puritans Anabaptists Presbyterians and Independants Schismaticks if they do not and dares enstyle her self a Church that is a Commonwealth which hath power and means to oblige to Unity in belief whereas her own professed fallibility or uncertainty evidences that she wants all the Nerves which should connect the Members of such a Body These grounds laid it were not amiss to insert here what the Author of that Epistle which was writ from Bruxels in answer to Dr. Hammond saith upon this place By this saith he you may perceive much of his discourse to be not onely superfluous and unnecessary but contrary to himself for he laboreth to perswade That the Protestant may be certain of some truth against which the Roman Catholick Church bindeth to profession of Error which is as much as to say That he who pretends to have no infallible Rule whereby to govern his Doctrine shall be supposed to be infallible and that he who pretends to have an infallible Rule shall be supposed to be fallible at most because fallible Objections are brought against him Now then consider what a meek and humble son of the Church as this Dr. would he thought ought to do when on the one side is the Authority of Antiquity and Possession such Antiquity and Possession without dispute or contradiction from the Adversary as no King can shew for his Crown and much less any other person for any other thing together with the perswasion of Infallibility and all the pledges Christ hath left to his Church for motives of Union On the other side uncertain Reasons of a few men pretending to Learning every day contradicted by incomparable numbers of men wise and learned and those few men confessing those Reasons and themselves uncertain fallible and subject to Error Certainly without a byass of interest or prejudice it is impossible to leave the Church if he be in it or not return if he be out of it For if infallibility be the ground of the Churches power to command belief as she pretends no other no time no separation within memory of History can justifie a continuance out of the Church Thus far that Letter which had it not been strangled in the birth and miscarried in the Printer's hand might have saved me the labor of this larger conâ—ute and being exactly short might justly be styled Dr. Hammonds Iliads in a Nut-shell since the force of it was so united the Reason in it so firmly connected as might have cost the Doctor a full ten years siege ere he could make a breach into it with his Brown-Paper Bullets But now it is high time to reflect upon the Doctors manner of arguing who tells us here That he needs give no more answer to our objection of a Schismatical departure then this That they who acknowledge not the Church of Rome to be Infallible may be allowed to make a supposition which is founded in the possibility of her inserting Errors in her Confessions c. And so goes on with three or four Suppositions all built upon that first general Supposition That the Roman Catholick Church hath erred or is not infallible I commend the Doctor for his wit The whole question is reduced to this one point Whether the Church erred or no as is most manifest For if she evidently errâ—d he and his Ancestors may possibly be excused for not believing her and rejecting her Government by Schism which she told you was sacred but if she was infallible no plea nor evasion can possibly serve your turn neither is it your or their supposing it which can make her fallible and so be a fit ground to build your excuse on Now comes this Gentleman who in the first page of his Book is entitled Doctor of Divinity to handle this Question and onely desires in courtesie that the main matter in controversie out of which it was easie to infer what he pleased should first be supposed or granted and that upon that ground he would evince his cause Just like that young smatâ—eâ—er in Logick who undertook to prove his fellow a Goose but first he would needs have him suppose that whatsoever had two Legs was one of those tame Fowl which his wary fellow notwithstanding his importunity refusing to grant he was left quite blank and his wise Argument at an end Such is the on-seâ— such must be the event of the Doctors Logick You and your first Reformers are Schismaticks says the Catholick in rejecting the Government of the Church and her chief Pastor which she told you was both lawful and sacred Your Church erred saith the Doctor and so we could not be obliged to believe her I but answers the Catholick you must first prove evidently that she is fallible and subject to Error O replies the Doctor we suppose that to be most certainly true and without all dispute Risum teneatis amici Yet Mr. Hammond hath involved another Error in the same passage more unpardonable if possible then the former so fruitful is his Logick of inconsequent absurdities For what man ever arrived to that heigth of mistake as to endeavor to manifest his innocency by the voluntary confession of a crime which implies the objected fault and much more to boot or to alledge for his plea against the accusation of his adversary that which more deeply condemns and is objected to him as a far more hainous crime by the same adversary Yet such is this Doctors acuteness He is accused by us of Schism and lays for the ground of his excuse That he acknowledges not our Churches infallibility which is charged upon him not onely to be both Schism and Heresie but as the very sink of all Infidelity For what man of Reason but stands in an hovering disposition of minde to embrace any Religion or rather Irreligion nay even Turcism it self as your best Champion the Lord Faulkland professes he would when a stronger blast of a more probable Reason shall turn the sail of his Wind-Mill Judgment knowing and acknowledging as he must and does That neither
greater Authority in Iames did St. Peter vote the contrary and St. Iames his sentence oversway or would not the advice of commanding them to abstain from the things there prohibited have been voted and accepted of by the Council though the proposition had been made by one of inferior dignity unless perhaps the Doctor imagines the Apostles and Elders of the Church assembled in the Council were such weak passionate and partial men that they did not decree things because they were reason and fitting but because St. Iames spoke them whose greater Authority the Doctor seating him in the principal place they were you must think somewhat afraid of But any thing serves this Doctor for an Evidence His all swallowing faith makes that seem a demonstration against the Pope which to us poor men because of our unbelief bears not so much as the least show of a probability And he imagines from the particle Then in the two and twentieth verse which he misunderstands that he who gives his sentence after another hath an Authority above him Though in reason one should rather think after such debate as had been concerning this matter Verse 7. it argued some greater Authority in him who should first break the Ice and interpose his judgment in such a solemnly-pronounced Oration as did St. Peter But the Doctor will have the contrary a demonstration and who can help it The up shot then of this Paragraph is that the Doctors concluding against St. Peters Primacy from St. Iames his being first named is a prejudice to his own cause from his principal place in the Council the Doctors own fiction from his giving the sentence and on it grounding the Rescript two fine little diminutive frauds and abuses of Scripture from his instalment a frivolous peece of affected ignorance and thus you have a perfect account cast up of the Doctors sixth Paragraph in his fourth Chapter of Evidences Ere I remove to another I desire the Reader whose little curiosity has not invited him to look into languages not to be amazed at the large Greek citations which here swell the Margin I can assure him they are nothing at all to the Question but of indifferent matters acknowledged by our selves And I will be bound both at this time and hereafter for the Doctors innocency in this point That he is never tedious nor over large either in Citations or Reasons which tend directly to the thing in controversie as hath heretofore in part been declared and shall more particularly be manifested hereafter In the seventh Paragraph to omit what hath been answered already he tells us That St. Paul had no Commission received from nor dependence on St. Peter citing for it Gal. 1. 12 17. Which words may import a double sence either that the manner of conferring upon him the power of an Apostle was not by means or dependence on St. Peter and so far indeed the Scripture is clear and we acknowledge it or else that this power given him was not dependent on or subject to St. Peter as the cheif of the Apostles which is the question here treated denied by us nor contradicted at all by the place alleaged But he proceeds in his fundamental absurdity that those two great Apostles wherever they came the one constantly applied himself to the Iews the other to the Gentiles Where if by constantly he means most commonly or even always yet so as they retained jurisdiction over the others Province then to omit that it hath been shown contrary to Scripture it makes nothing against us But if it signifie exclusively or so That neither had any Authority over the others Province in which sence onely it can limit St. Peters Universal Authority which as he expresses Section six is his aim then I refer the Reader to my eighth Section of this Chapter where he shall see the contrary manifested to the eye by nine or ten most express places of Scripture yet the Doctor goes on to evidence it by Testimonies which obliges us to address our selves with new vigor to bear the shock of so terrible an encounter His first testimony is his own knowledge Thus we know saith he it was at Antioch where St. Peter converted the Iews and St. Paul the Gentiles But puts down no testimony at all to confirm the weaker ones of his own We know which yet had been requisite that we might have known it too But he tells us that certainly St. Paul was no ways subordinate to St. Peter as appears by his behavior towards him avowed Gal. 2. 11. that is From his withstanding him to the face Yet wiser men then Mr. Hammond to wit St. Cyprian and St. Austin thought otherwise who interpreted St. Peters bearing it so patiently not as an argument of his less or equal Authority but of his greater humility that being higher in dignity he should suffer so mildly the reprehensions of an inferior Quem saith St. Cyprian quamvis Primum Dominus elegerit super eum aedificaverit Ecclesiam suam tamen cum secum Paulus disceptavit non vindicavit â—ibi aliquid insolenter aut arroganter assumpsit ut diceret se Primatum tenere obtemperari à novellis posteris sibi potiùs oportere nec despexit Paulum quod Ecclesiae priùs persecutor fuisset sed consilium veritatis admisit c. Whom though our Lord chose to be the first of the Apostles and upon him built his Church yet when Paul contended with him be did not challenge and assume to himself any thing in an insolent and proud manner as to say That he had the Primacy and so should rather be obeyed by newer and later Apostles neither did he despise Paul because he had formerly been a persecutor of the Church but admitted the councel of Truth Thus that ancient learned and holy Father St. Cyprian yet Mr. Hammond hath certainty of the contrary SECT 10. The Examination of ten dumb Testimonies which Dr. Hammond brings to plead for him THe next Testimony begins thus ACCORDINGLY that is to the Doctors own WE KNOW in Ignatius his Epistle to the Magnesians We read that the Church of Antioch was founded by St. Peter and St. Paul After which follows another of the same Author in his Epistle to the Antiochians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 You have been the Disciples of Peter and Paul What then These Testimonies are stark dumb in what concerns the Doctors purpose for the founding the Antiochians Church and teaching them might have been done by the promiscuous endeavors of those Apostles Here is not the least news of distinction much less exclusion of Authority and Jurisdiction True indeed the Testimonies are defective and to blame but the Doctor knows how to mend them by his Interpretation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 You have been the Disciples of Peter and Paul ID EST saith the Doctor converted and ruled by them the Iewish part by one and the Gentile by the other Was ever such an ID EST
who denies it Therefore what Ergo Kings are supreme in Ecclesiastical affairs How follows that since the onely word is wanting to wit supreme which can make good the inference The affairs of the Head depend on the Arms and Shoulders therefore will the Doctor infer they are supreme or highest as though dependence could not be both mutual and unequal It must needs argue a Soul very empty of reason to catch thus at every shadow of any aery word and think to deduce thence a full sentence The fourth is from Optatus noting it as a schismatical piece of language in the Donatists to say Quod Imperatori cum Ecclesiâ What has the Emperor to do with the Church citing for it his second Book But though perhaps I may be mistaken in not seeing so small a Testimony I finde no such thing in that place he quotes Indeed I finde that ancient Father arguing like a present Catholike calling the Doctor Schismatick and quite confuting and contradicting all his book saying Negare non potes scire te in urbe Româ PETRO PRIMO Cathedram Episcopalem esse collatam in quâ sederit omnium APOSTOLORUM CAPUT PETRUS Thou canst not deny that in the City of Rome the Episcopal Chair was given to PETER THE FIRST in which sate PETER THE HEAD OF ALL THE APOSTLES Then he proceeds to reckon up all the Popes of Rome successors of S. Peter till Pope Siricius who lived in his days Cum quo nobis totus orbis in commercio Formatorum in unâ Communionis societate concordat With whom the whole world agrees in one society of Communion by correspondence of communicatory Letters And afterwards probatum est nos esse in Ecclesiâ Sanctâ Catholicâ per Cathedram Petri quae nostra est per ipsam caeteras Dotes apud nos esse etiam Sacerdotium It is proved that we are in the holy Catholike Church by the chair of Peter which is ours what will become of the Doctor who can lay no claim nor hath any right to it nay hath disclaimed its right and who findes here a reason why we may justly be called Roman Catholikes It follows and by the chair of Peter other gifts are also with us even Priesthood Alas poor Doctor Hammond who having lost Communion with that Church hath lost also his Priesthood Mission and power to preach if this holy Father say true What hard fortune it was that Optatus lived not in the primitive times for then the Doctor had believed him and turned Papist but in regard he wrote after the three hundreth year the fatal period of any certain truth in Gods Church as the Doctor afterwards intimates he hath quite lost his labour and his Authority is invalid for writing Truth so late As for the Testimony it self which probably is this Fathers in some other place I see no difficulty at all in it For the Emperor being a nursing Father to the Church whose secular power she invoked to punish and repress such as were the Donatists none but Schismaticks would deny that power so granted to be sufficiently Authoritative to punish their pernicious Apostasie Then follow six Testimonies out of heathen writers all in a cluster that their Kings ought to be Priests and Augurs c. and the Doctor would have the example transfer'd to Christianity Indeed if Iesus Christ had not come from heaven to found a Church and besides what hath been said of St. Peters Primacy left it under the Government of Ecclesiastical persons the Apostles committing all jurisdiction in affairs of that nature to them without dependence of any secular superior then for any thing I know we might have come ere this to have been in statu quo prius that is Heathens again and so the Doctors Argument might have ta'ne place But if Christ founded a Church upon Apostles Ecclesiastical persons without the help of secular supports leaving all power both of Ordination and Iurisdiction to it the Doctor must either prove no disparity between the sacred oeconomy of Christs House and the Babel of heathenism or else grant his parity improper and absurd I never imagin'd there was any such extraordinary holiness in the heathenish Rites but a secular power might serve to perform and overlook them And as the reason why they were used by the Emperors was onely because their mock-Religion was nothing but a policy to delude and bridle the vulgar so if Christian Religion were nothing but a trick of State-policy it would do very well indeed in a secular Princes hands to alter and fashion it to the mold of the peoples humors But our all-wise God hath dealt more prudently with his Church encharging his sacred Mysteries and the Churches-Government to those persons whose very state of life being purely dependent on God and his service secures them from being cross-byass'd by worldly interests and secular pretences Yet the Doctor is so deeply immers'd in Schism that he relishes and fancies better the Pope-destroying example of heathen policy then the ever-sacred and heaven-instituted Government of Christianity His eleventh instance is from David who order'd the courses of the Priests and Solomon who consecrated the Temple but the Doctor may consider that David and Solomon were Prophets as well as Kings and so no wonder if according to the more particular prudence given them by God they did something extraordinary Neither doubt I but if nowadays any King were both a Saint and a Prophet it were very convenient he should assist and instruct the Church in a more particular way and yet not thank his Kingly Dignity for that Authority neither But indeed neither David nor Solomon shewed any strain of a higher Jurisdiction Their greater zeal might invite them and their exacter knowledge make their assistance requisite to order the courses of the Priests And as for Solomons Consecrating the Temple it was performed by offering Sacrifice which he himself offer'd not but the Priests so as his Consecrating it was nothing else but his causing them to Consecrate it A pittiful proof that Kings are over the Church in Ecclesiastical affairs His twelfth Testimony is of Hezekiah and Iosiah who ordered many things belonging to the Temple So wonderfully acute is this Doctor that no King can do a pious deed or even scarce say his Prayers but his honor-dropping-pen streight way entitles him Head of the Church His thirteenth is of St. Paul who saith he appealed from the judgement of the chief Priests to the Tribunal of Caesar. So as now Caesar a Heathen Emperor is become Head of the Church nay of two Churches according to Master Hammond the Heathenish and the Christian. But the good Doctor is most grievously mistaken here as he hath been almost in every place of Scripture he hath yet produc't I observe that though he be pretty good at mistaking all over his Book yet when he omes to alleadge any thing out of Gods Word he errs far more accurately For St. Paul appealed
it cannot deceive us Now you see the Doctor is got as farre as the Church-door But when he heares them within the Church talk that a company of men can be Infallible he leaps you back at one jump as far as the Sceptick Schooles of the Heathen Academicks But how could Mr. Hammond imagine this pretence sufficient to acquit him from Scism in renouncing the way to preserue Unity of Faith or to prove that he and his fellowes still fully acknowledged it The way to preserve Unity of Faith held by all the Christian world before their breach was the beleefe of the Churches Infallibility and we think mans wit cannot invent a better for that End Either then this must be the way to preserve Unity in Faith or some other if this you manifestly broke and rejected it as hath been shewn and as the 19th Article of Queen Elizabeths new Creed professedly declares if some other whatever it is it must needs include a fallibility and uncertainty in the Church of the doctrine she teaches Wherefore either evidence to us that a professed and beleeved fallibility can be a better way to preserve Unity in Faith than a beleefe of Infallibility or else grant that renouncing the latter you renounced the best and most efficacious way to conserve such an Unity The second way to preserve Unity in Faith here mentioned by the Doctor as fully and zealously acknowledged by him his fellows is the establishment by our Saviour and his Apostles of an excellent subordination of all inferiour Officers of the Church to the Bishop in every City of the Bishops in every province to their Metropolitans of the Metropolitans in every region or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to Patriarchs or Primates allowing also amongst them such a primacy of Order or Dignity a◠might be proportionable to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c Thus the Doctor In answer to which w◠will examine a while whether this way thu◠laid out be indeed the way to preserve Unity i◠Faith For if notwithstanding this subordination no Priest is bound to beleeve his Bishop nor Bishop his Metropolitan nor Metropolitan his Patriarch how can this conduce to the Unity of Faith But peradventure he will say this subordination in obedience is a great help to keep out errours and then if this be so we must take into consideration how this point relates to Unity of Government as it is a means to conserve Truth the breaking of which Unity is called Schism So the question in that case is reduced to the examine how his subordination provides against Schism Let us admit then that all the world were made up of Churches governed in this Order as the Doctor hath put them I would ask if in the time of the Arian Heresie a Priest had dissented from his Bishop an Arian but yet consented with his Metropolitan had it been schism in so doing The Doctor must answer No for the Metropolitan being of higher Authority than the Bishop the adherence to him would more secure the Priest from schism than the relinquishing the Bishop could endanger him Next if a Bishop dissent from an heretical Metropolitan but consents with a Catholick Patriarch is it yet Schism Surely no since the same reason clears him that cleared the Priest before Again if the Metropolitan dissent from his own Primate or Patriarch but agree with all the rest is it yet schism Certainly no for the collection of all the rest being of greater Authority than any one in particular can by consequence more excuse him than the other can condemn him Hitherto then we have found none of the Doctors Amulets against Shism Let us proceed If a Patriarch dissent from the first from the Doctors 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but yet concedes to all the rest is it yet schism The Doctor answers no For in regard he owed the other onely something more of a civil respect as a younger brother does an Elder without any inferiority to him in Command or Jurisdiction it cannot be a Schism Forwards still Suppose some Nation or some Patriarch dissent from a General Council is it yet Schism still the Dr. answers No for in his third Chapter which branch't Schism into all its Species he put no such schism as that against a General Council How then hath Mr. Hammond by this new way provided against Schism if according to this Subordination all the Church may fall together by the eares and all may find lawful excuses to secure them from being Scismaticks since the oeconomy of that distracted Family is so order'd that neither any one in particular nor any in common have any tie to hold them to the rest without which ty of consent in matters of faith this imagin'd subordination can no way be a meanes to preserve Unity of Faith and conquently the Drs. Church government without some stronger obligation to knit up all this Order in an Unity is not an Act of Providence either worthy our Saviour or his Apostles But what is become of the King or Emperour all this while is he no body now who before was the Chief It seemes the Apostles made no reckoning of him in all their Providence It is wonderful Mr. Hammond should so forget himself and proceed so inconsonantly to his own grounds that whereas before the King was Chief Governour Head of the Church Supreme in Ecclesiastical matters over and above both Metropolitans and Patriarchs c. Now in treating the Government of the Church instituted to preserve the Unity of Faith he thinks the Head of the Church whom he had formerly exalted above all that is called HOLY not worth the mentioning Does he think the Unity of such a Head conduces nothing to the preservation of Unity in Faith which yet he grants to a far more inferiour Bishop or accounts he it a small sin for a Patriarch to dissent from so Sacred a Head of his Church and his lawful Superiour nay Supreme in Ecclestastical matters and to whom the rightful power as the Doctor told us in those things legally pertaines Yet Mr. Hammond had good reason to omit it For though he may talk of and advance that doctrine in common so to escape the Supremacy of the Pope for you must conceive that he had rather have even a Bramble rule over their Church than that all o're spreading Cedar the Bishop of Rome yet he declines it as handsomely as he can when he should apply that doctrine to particulars as is seen in our present case For indeed who would not laugh at him if he had told us as he must had he introduced the King that it was the heighth of Schism to dissent in a point of Faith from a Thing which neither the Catholikes nor yet Protestants as you here see acknowledge but a kind of a Lay-Elder an Office which were it not three dayes older might seem borrowed from their dearly beloved brethren the Presbyterians Yet the Doctor is grown kind and allows
that the Scripture grants to S. Peter some Primacy of Order or Dignity If so Mr. Hammond then for any thing you know it may be a Primacy of Iurisdiction And it stands onely upon the certainty of your and our interpretation of Scripture whether it signifie such a Primacy or no. Neither indeed could it be any other if any hold may be taken from your words For S. Peter as you grant and as the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Simon the first of the Apostles plainly evidence had some kind of Primacy then given him and if it were then given him he then had it that is he had it in our Saviours life time but you told us before that S. Iohn had the dignity of place which is the same with Primacy of Order before all others in Christs life time even before S. Peter himself The Primacy then which S. Peter had in Christs life time must be some other Primacy and what Primacy could this be but the Primacy of Iurisdiction Again if by this Primacy he allows S. Peter he means such a precedency as hath any effect or efficacity in the Church according to the nature and degree of a Primacy this is all the substance of the Popes Authority and all that is held by us as of Faith but if he means by Primacy there a meerely inefficacious and dry Presidency and Precedency of Order such as is with us the walking on the right hand or sitting first at a Table without any superiority more than a courteous deference of the rest then the Doctor must imagine our Blessed Saviour had no better thing to do when he made S. Peter the first but to take order for feare the good Apostles should fall to complement who should sit go or speak in the first place and consequently this tenet being an Act of our Saviours register'd in Scripture must bee a courteous point of Faith obliging all the Apostles under pain of damnation to be civil and make a leg to S. Peter In the next paragraph the Doctor is full of feares and jealousies and makes a great doubt that the subjection of this Church to the Authority of the Bishop of Rome will never be likely to tend to the Unity of the whole And why think you so Mr. Doctor doe you not find evidently that the Church before Luther and K Henry renounced the said Authority enjoy'd most perfect peace and tranquillity as those who are under that government doe most blessedly now and on the contrary that after that Authority was rejected nothing has succeeded the rejecters but perpetual turmoiles schisms divisions and subdivisions into Sects and daily mutations in Faith and Government as far as the temporal sword did not hinder them Is not this as evident as all History and even our very eyes can witnesse a truth Lastly doe not the present distractions you now groan under awake you to see that the source of all your misery springs from the leaking Cistern of Schism you have digg'd for your selves Did your Ancestours find so little Unity under the Government of the Roman Catholike Church or have you found such a constant Unity since you left it that you can presume the re-admitting that Government is never likely to tend to Unity Yet you cannot think otherwise unlesse all other Churches of Christians paid that subjection too Do you your obligation why should their backwardnes in their duties make you deny yours Besides whom doe you call Christians all that cry Lord Lord that is professe the name of Christ but deny the onely certain Rule to come to the knowledge of his Law such as were the Gnosticks Carpocratians Donatists Socinians and all the heresies that ever arose since the infancy of the Church or doe you mean by the word Christians onely those qui faciunt voluntatem Patris doe the will of our heavenly Father that is all that hear the Church or have a certain and common Rule to know what Christs Law is if so all these acknowledge subjection to the Head-Bishop of Rome never denied by any but those who at the same time they denied it cast themselves out of the Church refusing to hear her You say the Eastern Churches had not acknowledg'd it ere your departure Admit they had not can their pattern warrant you more than it can warrant the Arrians Nestorians Eutychians c. unless you be certain they did well in it They rejected it indeed and for their reward were by all the Christian world till you falling into the same fault began to call them Brothers and by all your Ancestours justly held and called Schismaticks Yet when they were in their right mood they admitted it as much as any Roman-Catholike as appeares in the Acts of the Florentine Council to which they subscribed nay even when they were disgusted and refused Unity they acknowledged the power of the Bishop of Rome as appeares by a testimony of Gerson cited by your friend Bishop Bramhall against himselfe in his just vindication of the Church of England p. 101. which witnesses that the Greeks departed from the then-Pope with these words Wee acknowledge thy power we cannot satisfie your covetousness live by your selves His second doubt is that the Bishop of Rome is not able to administer that vast Province I wonder how he did of old and why he may not do the same again as well as formerly But the Dr. calls it a politick probleme whether hee can or no and would have it judged by those who are by God entrusted with the Flock Id est saith he by the Princes the nursing Fathers in every Church It is indeed a politick probleme that is a question concerning Government but since it concernes Government Ecclesiastical it falls not under the scanning of temporal Politicians The Christian Common-wealth would be brought to a pretty pass if the Government of Gods Church so long acknowledged as left by Christ and continued in the Church 300. yeares by their own confession ere there were any Christian Princes should anew be call'd into question by humane policy But these two words of Scripture Nursing Fathers make it plain to the Doctor satisfy'd with any thing himself fancies that the Government and Jurisdiction over the Church belongs to Kings as if to nurse cherish and foster were to rule order govern and command or as if Ioseph who was Foster-father to our Saviour was as good as or the same with God Almighty who was his true Father And I wonder where this Doctor ever read that our Saviour entrusted the Government of his Church and Ecclesiastical affaires to any but the Apostles Ecclesiastical persons or that any held Nero the Heathen Emperour to have right and title o be Head of the Church Again if our Saviour left that authority with his Apostles I would gladly know by what new Orders from Christ it came to be transfer'd from their Successors into the hands of secular Princes But the Doctor has
or at least that year was pure again For it cannot be imagin'd the doctrine of that Council was pure but the beleefe of the Faithful in that Age taught by those Pastors which there resided must be pure also Far more consonant then to their grounds is the doctrine of the Puritans denying promiscuously all Antiquity than to pick and cull out at pleasure what serves their turn as doe the Protestants and to like and reject allow and disallow what makes for or against them without giving any evident reason why they put such a difference In vain therefore does the Doctor like a very Saint pretend in behalfe of their Church an unaffected ignorance though they should mistake being conscious to himselfe what pitiful shifts he makes use of in stead of grounds In vain does he hope that this ruliness as he calls it and obedience of theirs will render them approvable to God unless they can render God an approved reason why they will at pleasure hold his sacred Spouse the Church holy in one Age and adulterate in another and shape and fashion Christs seamless coat according to the mode of their ever-changing fancy Lastly most vainly doe they hope this ruliness in holding to the first 300. yeares will lead them into all truth unless they could shew that all the points of Truth between them and us were professedly treated and decided in those times and the decision on their side He ends in a preaching manner with extolling the humble and docible temper of his Church Truly Mr. Doctor it is a wonderful commendation to your Church that she is yet to bee taught Pray when will she be at age to leave going to School when will she be out of her prentice-like tutorage and set up for her selfe to professe truth as a Church should do I thought a Church should have been Columna firmamentum veritatis the Pillar and firm foundation of Truth but yours is like the hinge of a door or a weather-cock docibly turning with every wind of doctrine How doe you think the Puritans or any other Sect should in reason yeeld any Authority to your Church since she professes her selfe yet learning her Faith that is as yet knowes it not If it be such a commendation in your Church to be docible I suppose it is so in others and consequently in the whole Church and then I pâ—ay who must teach her or what greater Professor is there on Earth of the knowledge of Christs Faith to whom the Universal Church may submit her selfe as dociâ—le Perhaps you will say that one particular Church must sisterly and charitably assist and teach another that is though each be ignorant it selfe yet like the blind leading the blind they must all be supposed mutual Mistreâ—ses and consequently all learned But let us examine a little further this docible and humble temper of your youngling Church Is it dâ—ciblenesse or humility think you to forsake a Mistress who had all the qualities which could give â—er Authority and fall to teach your selves new reformed doctrines without any Authority at all Such is the humble dâ—ciblenesse of your Church Is it docibleness to cast off the Authority of 14. General Councils and the consent of Christendome for twelve hundred yeares and rely upon your own judgments to interpret the rest as you list This is the so much brag d on docibleness and humble temper of your Church Parallel to the former or rather far ouâ—vying them though of a contrary strain is that most heroick Act of your docible humility to be willing to hold things concerning your eternal salvation upon the Authority of the four General Councils or the Doctors and Church of the first 300. yeares which Drs. and Councils notwithstanding it is an Article of your Faith that they are fallible And as for the Church of those times that it was fallible your selfe grants for you confesse that the same Church erred in the fourth Age. Now to hold Articles or points of Faith upon that Authority which it is an Article of Faith may deceive me is such a magnanimous piece of docible humility as I dare be bold to say in the Doctors behalfe neither the Apostles nor any Saint in the succeeding Church durst ever own Neither can the present Catholikes whom some who neither understand their own nor Catholike grounds laugh at as blindly humble and obedient to the Church lay claim to such an incomparable degree of humility proper and peculiar to the Protestants onely For we pretend not Faith certain but upon a deemed INFALLIBILITY in the Authority assuring it so as though they may be supposed blameable by you for failing in their grounds that is in believing the Church infallible yet they cannot be condemned for proceeding inconsequently upon those groundâ— for an infallible Authority deserves a firm assent But to stand to the acceptation of matters of Faith which you pretend most certain upon an Authority confessed by your selves uncertain is such a condiscension of humility such a prostrating your proper knowledge as is not onely a blindly-capâ—ivating your Judgment but even an utter renouncing all judgment prudence and common sence not a submitting the reason by a voluntary winking at objections but a quite extinguishing and perfect putting out of the very Eye of reason it selfe and is all one as if a man should say For any thing I know such a one may lye in what he tells mee yet neverthelesse I will strongly perswade my selfe that all hee sayes is most certainely true Yet this humility the Doctor calls here a special mark of the Church of Englands Reformation And surely you have reformed well since you have not only reform'd the Unity you before enjoy'd into distractions the Faith you formerly profest into new-fangled misbeleefes but your former reason and judgment into present folly and fancy What is said of your accepting the four Councils c. may also bee apply'd to your private interpretitions of Scripture which found your Faith which Faith you will have to be certain and firm though the persons Interpretation it is built on be fallible and obnoxious to errour The pious words in your own behalfe with which you close up your Chapter spoken in an Elegiack tone are very moanfully moving words out of a pulpit rhetorical enough for women not rational enough to satisfie any prudent man You professe you would preserve the Unity of the Apostolical Faith and primitive practises as entire as Christs body or garments Good Mr. Hammond leave mocking your Readers and tell us why the Primitive times must needs just end then when the Church began to flourish and the Fathers to write against your doctrine And as for Christs body or garments I see no such great respect in you or your Churches doctrine allow'd towards holy Reliques that I should be willing to trust those sacred pledges to your unhallowed hands from whose rude usage his mystical Body his Church Faith its Rule
is not innocency in you nor a sufficient excuse for your not-Communion that you doe not believe these doctrines but it is your sin and the root of all your misery and schism that you correct not that vice and so leave off that erroneous judgement which misleades you from the truth usurping the office of your spiritual guide the holy Catholick Church Free the soul then first of that vice and then you 'l stand in no need to offer violence to your minds nor be afraid to make an unsound confession the feare of which you pretend for your excuse But of this I have said already more then was needful Yet Mr. Hamond is ready to contest and maintain his negatives by grounds that all good Christians ought to be concluded by I hear again a sound of words in general hovering in the aire But what are those grounds in particular by which he will contest his doctrines he tells us in his last Paragrapraph that they are proofes from Scriptures or the first Writers those of the first 300. yeares or the four General Councils But let us ask first by whose interpretation of Scripture he will contest his Negatives hee will tell you by his own or some few others like himselfe which not professing themselves Infallible he must tell you also hee is uncertain whether it be right or no And is not this a wise ground to contest his Negatives by against the positive doctrine of Gods Church But let us ask whether he thinks our Saviours command to hear the Church bee a ground by which all Christians ought to bee concluded Perhaps after much shaking his head between loathness to reject our Saviours words and unwillingnesse to grant any thing to the Church he will answer yes the Church of the first 300. yeares Then ask him again who taught all good Christians that they should hear the Church of the first 300. years onely and then stop their ears against her perpetually for the future hee is gravell'd Again ask him whether those first three century of yeares treat of all late sprung Negatives Hee must tell you No they do not treat all our nâ—w controversies but he will praise them notwithstanding to put you â—ft your question and tell you they are the purest and most primitive times Ask him next why hee recurs to such obscure times and stark dumb in our present controversies and hee must answer if he will speak out candidly that durum telum necessitas necessity drives him to adhere to them All the following Ages except that holy year in which was celebrated the Council of Chalcedon inveighing most impurely against his new doctrine Thus the Dr. chuses obscurity for the Patron of his cause which can bee no Sun to reveal truth though it may serve for a dark hole to hide falshood Neither can hee from his grounds pretend otherwise to contest his Negatives than by meer negative arguments so as the inference must bee this Our points of doctrine were not contradicted by the Writers of the first 300. yeares therefore they are true This is the utmost he can conclude thence whereas to make this illation valid he must first prove that all truths about Faith were debated in those dayes next that all which was debated then is come downe certainly to our times Neither of which he will bee able to manifest Will not any judicious Reader think such Rules as these like to binde all good Christians to bee concluded by them Dr. Hammonds interpretations of Scripture Councils and Fathers that say nothing or else very litle on the by concerning the question And lastly negative arguments To omit that the Writers of those his primitive times speak as much and as efficaciously against the Doctors cause as is imaginable their present circumstances should invite or give them occasion To end then this Chapter with the Doctors words something alter'd these pitiful evasions and unwarrantable shifts put together and applied to this matter will manifestly charge him with an apparent guilt of this second branch of the second sort of Schism SECT 5. Our pretended Uncharitableness in judging and despising others retorted upon the Objecters IN his tenth Chapter hee gives us a short Sermon concerning the third species of Schism which is against mutual charity divided by him into two Heads of judging and despising others both which hee very charitably disclaimes in behalfe of their Church and would very courteously present us with them But to omit his pious formalities and come to grounds Doe you think it is uncharitablenesse to judge as our Saviour judg'd that is to beleeve what he said to be true Our Sauiours judgment is that if any one doe not heare the Church let him be to thee as a heathen or a publican If therefore we see with our eyes that you acknowledge no Church to be heard and yet proceed not to such harsh termes as our Saviour himselfe hath laid down to us I hope you will impute it to us as a great moderation and not as uncharitablenesse Now that you did not hear the Church when you broke from ours and much lesse since is most evident For your first Reformers most manifestly receded from the former acknowledged Government Rule of Faith Sacraments Doctrines and practises of the Roman Catholike Church of which you were then a member as hath been shewn and acknowledg'd and she teaching them the contrary then it could not bee said they heard her when they began their Reformations Neither did they joyn themselves with any other Church whom they might bee said to hear nor was this doctrin taught by the very Church of England it selfe in the former age since their Forefathers held and taught them a contrary beleefe Evident then it is that those few who in the time of King Henry the 8th adhered to his lust-born Reformation neither communicated with nor heard any Church at all but began a new Church a new Government a new Faith and new practises both without and against the command of that Church which both they and their Forefathers ever since that Church first taught them Christianity held to be the onely true Christian Congregation How can we then seeing evidently they heard not any Church judge otherwise then that our Saviours words are true that is that they are in a sad condition and you much fadder who have not returned whence they receded but followed their steps and have made the breach wider unlesse perhaps you think or hope the crime is lesse because there is now a greater multiplicity of offenders which harden one another to obstiâ—acy by their number Next is it uncharitablenesse not to renounce that Rule of Faith in which clearly is founded â—ll the Certainty we have of Christs Law and all the hopes of our salvation to wit the inerrability of our Church beleeved by our Ancestors ever since Christs doctrine first dawn'd to the dark world Yet this which witnesses your doctrine heretical wee must
to overload a weak patience and every small discountenancing makes those that have enjoy'd a long case cry out persecution I see your parchment Church shrinks and â—naâ—kles at the sight of the fire while the Catholike remaines firm and unconsum'd nay growâ— clearer in the midst of it And yet I doe not intend to deny many of you have been very great losers by these late Revolutions but onely to say your sufferings are to bee refer'd to a civil not religious account or at least that nothing even in your own judgment essential to Religion is persecuted or so much as deny'd in England for Bishops and Service-book and Kings Supremacy you must not call essential without contradicting your own both profession and practise since you can so kindly embrace your Sister-Churches and communicate with them who deny those points as zealously as the fiercest Anabaptist Lastly our literal sound of Hoc est Corpus meum which the Doctor calls our principal espoused doctrine of Transubstantiation Indeed wee had rather wed our beleefe to that sence of Gods word which Fathers Councils and the perpetual doctrine and practise of Gods Church hath recommended to us as the Virgin-daughter of him who is the Truth than to a loose Polygamy of 40. several interpretations Minerva's born of your own heads whose mutually-contradicting variety â—hews them to come by the paternal line from him who is the Father of all falshood For these prejudices instill'd into the hearts of Catholikes the Doctor and his Church spare us very charitably and are far from casting us out of the Church For Gods sake Mr. Dr. whither would you have cast us Would you throw the house out of the windowes I mean the Church Gods house out of the window of Schism which you broke in the side of it Again let us but see how artificial nay incomparable nonsence this Dr. speakes I conceive nothing can bee cast out of a thing that was never in it shew us then that there was once a constituted Church of Protestants govern'd by the King as Supreme Head and holding their doctrines and practises in which the Roman Catholike once was but receded from that Doctrine and Government and invented this new Religion which hee holds at present Unlesse the Catholikes were once thus in you how could you cast them out What a weakness is this to think that Robin Hood Little Iohn and a few Outlawes doe King Richard and all England a great deal of favour in not casting them out of their Rebel-commonwealth as no true members of it and denying them the protection of their seditious counter-lawes under which Lawes and in which Common-wealth neither the King nor his good subjects were ever reputed One word more ere I leave this point to let the rational Reader see whether the Protestants or we bee more chargeable of judging and despising others Suppose Mr. Doctor wee who are sons of the Catholike Church had both judged and despised you upon our own private heads it had been but to judge and despise our equals But your Reformation had been impossible unlesse you had first both judged despised and prefer'd your selves above your Supreme Governours the Church and all your Forefathers The chief Government impower'd actually over you in Ecclesiastical Affaires you rejected and cast out of this Island Next many of your wise Brethren since preaching teaching and writing whole Bookes to shew that that Governour is Antcichrist the Beast in the Apocalypse and what not Could these things bee done without judging and despising You made Reformations and recessions from the former Churches doctrine cry'd out she had erred was a Strumpet the Whore of Babylon impious sacrilegious idolatrous Was not this the most rash judging the most venemous railing at and reviling of Gods sacred Spouse formerly your Mistresse and Mother that ever was foam'd out of the mouth of madness it selfe Again the whole world whom you esteemed before good Christians and all your Ancestors in England condemned by their contrary beleefe your new Reformed Doctrine And doe you think your innovators could have broach't their opposite doctrines without both judging and despising all this vast Authority Your Charity then Mr. Doctor in this point can bee onely imagin'd to consist in this that you have not judged and despised your selves for all else that you thought formerly to deserve any Authority you both judged despised rejected revil'd and condemned In a word our judging you is our subscribing in our own thoughts to that Verdict which the Church has past against you whose tribunal was held by all the whole Christian world and your selves also till you became guilty to be the most high and sacred that ever gave sentence since the world's Creation As for despising your persons we deny it as a meer calumny and professe our selves bound to honour every one according to his quality and degree the reasons indeed which you produce to clear your selfe from Schism we despise as worse than ridiculous A Paradox in a matter indifferent if maintain'd ingeniously deserves its commendations but the most manifest absurdities that can bee imagin'd and in which are interessed mens salvations such as is the renouncing an Authority granted to bee the most ancient most sublime most sacred in the world upon fallible incertain and unevident grounds and onely sustain'd by plain contradictions false and self-â—eign'd suppositions ID ESTS of our own adding the best proof not arriving so high as a probability These I say Mr. Doctor have nothing to secure them from our despising unlesse perhaps it bee their falling below ouâ— contempt Of the mixt temper of these is the constitution of your Book which shews that you have been used to row at your own dull pleasure in the shallow and softly-murmuring current of a Sermon but never launch't with a well rigg'd Ship of Reason into the â—oysterous Maine of deeper controversies Thus the Doctor concludes his Treatise of Schism closing up his tenth Chapter with these words I foresee not any objection which may give mee temptation or excuse further to enlarge on this matter No truly I could never yet discern you guilty of that fault that objections gave you any great temptation to answer them since I have not seen you put one Objection or Argument of ours worth a straw from the beginning of the Book to the end On the contrary when you light on a wrong supposition of your own as that the Pope is onely a private Patriarch that the Papal Authority in this Island came to the Pope from the Title of its Conversion or from Concession of our Kings then I observe a very strong temptation in you to enlarge a whole Chapter upon that which no body objects except your own fancy Hee adds that he professes not to know any other branch of Schism or colour of fastning that guilt upon our Church made use of by any which hee hath not prevented Yes Mr. Doctor I told you before how you
unity of Church-government then not onely we but all the Angels and Saints in heaven who rejoyce at the conversion of sinners shall joyn in exalting Jubilees for the Blessed and long wish't for return of òur wandring and self-disinherited Brethren The former of these if Mr. Hammond will not beleeve it I have told him where he may see it as visibly as is possible any thing should be made to the eye of Reason The latter to wit the Popes Supremacy is defin'd in the Florentine Council subscribed to both by the Greek and Latine Churches where what the fourth General Council held at Chalcedon wrote to Pope Leo that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he was over the members of the Church as their Head is more plainly exprest in these words Wee define that the holy Apostolical See and the Bishop of Rome have the primacy over all the world and that the Bishop of Rome is Successour to S. Peter the Prince of the Apostles and truly Christs Vicar and Head of the whole Church and the Father and Teacher of all Christians and that there was given him in S. Peter from Christ a full power to feed direct and govern the Catholike Church To these two points if the Protestant will subscribe that is secure inviolate that which touches the root and most vital and intrinsecal part of the Chruch to wit the Rule of Faith she will not stick to open her outward rind that is offer some violence to her uniformity in indifferent and more extrinsecal practises to re-ingraft their dry and sapless branch which now lies withering into her ever-flourishing body To which if these poor endeavours of mine may in the least contribute I shall for the future not reprehend but congratulate Dr. Hammond for his fortunate Errours and honour his ill grounded reasons as of richest value which by stirring up others to detest them and shew what weak pleas are producible for Schism became the happy occasion of his own and others salvation and of Embosoming the Daughter-Church of England in a Charitable Communion with her dearest Mother by whose painful throwes she was first born to Christ her Spouse at whose breasts shee suck'd the first milk of his Doctrine and from whose arms and ever-cherishing embraces first by the malignity of an ill-govern'd passion next by humane policy shee has been so long separated FINIS DOWN-DERRY OR Bishop BRAMHAL'S Iust Vindication of the Church of England refuted MY choice at first directed me rather to answer Mr. Hammond than my Lord of Derry having observ'd his Book not only to bear a greater vogue in the world but to be inwardly furnished with Arguments more suitable to the profession of a Divine But after I had advanc'd past the mid-way of my journey I met some Protestant friends who though formerly they had still cry'd up the Doctor yet soon as I told them in confidence that an Answer to his Schism would instantly bee ready for the the Press they immediately began to extol the Bishop and demand either a present Reply to him or else they should not spare to conclude the Victory their own When I had exprest how weak and unreasonable their discourse was which if admitted would always judg him to have the right cause that speaks the last word I parted with a promise if in stead of that sport which he far more than the other tempts a wit-at leasure to make with him they would accept of a short Refutation of the substantial passages I should not fail to endeavour their satisfaction which thus I perform Reading with some diligence the Bishops Book I find that as there is much commendable in it for industry so is it expos'd to an unavoidable Check of being Patron to an ill Cause whence it may bee a pattern of wit and labour but little assistance to the truth further than by shewing how weak Errour is But not to spend time and paper in vain let us state the controversie clearly that it may be seen how strongly and pertinently his Discourse proceeds Not that I intend minutely to examine his whole Work whereof the far greater part is little or nothing to our controversie as will appear by the bare stating the Question but onely to say enough for him whom the substance can content without engaging into unnecessary and circumstantial disputes He begins his Book telling us nothing can be objected with more colour of truth against the Church of England than that they have withdrawn themselves from obedience to the Vicar of Christ and separated from the Communion of the Catholike Church And that this crime is justly charg'd upon his Church not onely with colour but with undeniable evidence of fact will appear by the very position of the Case and the nature of his Exceptions As for the first it is unquestionably certain and universally assented to by all Protestants who understand any thing that at the beginning of Henry the eighths Reign nay at his first courting his Protestant Mistress the Church of England agreed with that of Rome and all the rest of her Communion in two Points which were then and are still the Bonds of Unity betwixt all her Members One concerning Faith the other Government For Faith her Rule was that the Doctrines which had been inherited from their Forefathers as the Legacies of Christ and his Apostles were solely to bee acknowledg'd for obligatory and nothing in them to bee changed For Government her Principle was that Christ had made St. Peter First or Chief or Prince of his Apostles who was to be the first Mover under him in the Church after his departure out of this world and to whom all others in difficulties concerning matters belonging to the universal either Faith or Government should have recourse And that the Bishops of Rome as Successors of St. Peter inherited from him this priviledge in respect of the Successors of the rest of the Apostles and actually exercised this power in all those countries which kept Communion with the Church of Rome that very year wherein this unhappy separation began It is no lesse evident that in the dayes of Edward the sixth Queen Elizabeth and her Successors neither the former Rule of Unity of Faith nor this second of Unity of Government which is held by the first have had any power in that Congregation which the Protestants call the English Church This is our chief objection against you As for us our Tenet is That those Churchs who continue in Communion with the Roman are the onely Churches which in vertue of the first Principle above mentioned have the true Doctrine and in vertue of the second the right Government and in vertue of both the unity and incorporation into the Church of Christ necessary for salvation And by consequence Wee hold them onely to make the entire Catholike or Universal Church of Christians all others by misbelief or Schism being excluded Now because no understanding man can deny this to be
Christians may be now said to doe since the sole root of unity Protestants can pretend is onely their agreement in certain general Points which most of the old Hereticks profess'd and even Turks and Iewes beleeve some part of the Christian Faith As for the Protestant distinction that all are of one Communion who agree in fundamentals 't is no better than a meer shift til they exhibit a list of such Points and prove them obligingly and satisfactorily to all the rational people of the World that they and they onely are essential to Christian Communion His eighth Chapter would fain be thought to prove the Pope and Court of Rome guilty of Schism First because shee takes upon her to bee Mistress where shee is but Sister to other Churches It is their saying and our denying it till they have proved what they affirm The second Argument is a meeâ— calumny that shee obtrudes new Creeds and unjustly excommuicates those who will not receive them At the third blow hee layes the Axe as he sayes to the root of Schism but if I understand his words it is to his own legs The Papacy sayes â—ee qua talis which hee interprets as it is maintain'd by many Good-night my Lord of London-Derry for certainly your wits are in the dark If you once begin to say as it is maintain'd by many you imply it is not maintain'd by all and therefore not the Papacy qua talis for so Catholikes have not the least difference amongst them If you will dispute against private Opinions cite your Authors and argue against them not the Church whose beleefe is contain'd in the Decrees of Councils and universal consent of Fathers and Doctors His fourth Charge is that the Popes hold themselves to bee Bishops of every particular See which is a more gross and false imputation than any of the rest Other two branches he offers at but confesses them not to be decided in our Church and therefore can make nothing for him His ninth Chapter pretends to solve the Romanists Arguments and first that grand one of Schism which hee maintaines to be so clearly unimputable to Protestants that he sayes they hold Communion with thrice as many Christians as wee doe And truly if by Christians he meanes those who lay claim to the name of Christ I neither deny his answer nor envy him his multitude For Mâ—â—ichees Gnosticks Carpocratians Arians Nestorians Euâ—yâ—hians c. without number all â—surp to themselves the honour of this Title and I most faithfully protest I do not think his Lordship has any solid reason to refuse Communion to the worst of them But if he meanes by Christians those who never changed the doctrine which their Fathers taught them as received from the Apostles so let him shew me one who is not in communion with the Roman Church and I also shall be of that one's Communion The second Argument hee undertakes is That Protestants admit not the Council of Trent To which hee replies it was not General because the Heretical Patriarchs were not called many Bishops were absent too many Italians there fewer Bishops present at the determination of weightiest Points than the King of England could assemble in a moneth What trivial stuff is this Is not a Parliament the General Representative of the Nation unless every Lord though a known and condemn'd Rebel be summon'd or unless every Member that has a right to sit there bee present Who is so impertinent as to quarrel at the generalness of a Parliament if some Court Lords bee admitted to their Voices or if the number of Voters in some Parliaments bee fewer than in others What 's this to the purpose if none that have a true right be excluded Yet these are the grand Exceptions only in some words wherein hee expresses his anger Passion made him quite forget they might possibly be retorted upon his own condition else what a blindness is it to call the Bishops of Italy hungry parasitical Pensioners It seemes my Lord you keep a good Table speak the truth boldly and have great Revenues independent of any As for the instance of the French Churches non-admittance of the Council of Trent your selfe confesses it is there received for matters of doctrine and I confesse that for other Canons the execution of them may be omitted unlesse the true Superiours presse their observance Secondly he sayes it was not free A false and injurious calumny taken out of Sleidan accounted by our part a frank lyar and forger Thirdly he seigns an Objection to himself their breaking from the Patriarchat which already wee have clear'd is not the question and himself though weakly and sillily endeavours to prove cannot stand with the claim of Papal Authority from Christ. After these he descends to consider such of our Arguments as hee is pleas'd to think of lesser importance As first That Protestants have no Clergy because no Priests For the notion of a Priest is to bee a Sacrificer and their Reform renounces all truly called Sacrifice This he hides in obscure and common terms of matter and form and shuffles likewise certain common words in Answer Secondly because their Ministers whom they term Priests were made by no Bishops The Controversie is largely treated by Doctor Champney against Mason Hee answers it with childish and impudent words Father Oldcorn whom he cites was known to be a weak and timorous man who might bee easily surprised I could never hear that any Catholike esteemed judicious was ever admitted to a free perusal of their Registers but know wel that the Contemporaries protested against any lawful Ordination of their first Bishops and were answer'd by silence He sayes they hold no spiritual Jurisdiction from the Crown But the Statutes of the Nation and their own Oaths say the contrary Let him dispute it with the Lawyers The tenth Chapter containes what he expects to be the result of his Book Hee first complaines of hard usage and thinks the very Turk not so cruel as those who now persecute Protestants in England Truly no good man I beleeve wishes his Party harm But mee thinks he might remember they suffer not so much as themselves have done in their Reign against those who in respect of them were Aborigines whose possession was the same that Christian Religion had among us And would to God they could even now be quiet and friendly when they are in eadem damnatione Prelacy as well as Popery being voted damnable Heresie by the late Parliament 'T is true their Religion as consider'd including Episcopacy is cast out of the Land but then how comes Episcopacy to be essential to their Religion Have not the Bishops alwayes profess'd themselves of the same Communion with the Huguenots of France the Zuinglians of Switzerland c. who hold Episcopacy abominable The persons of such Bishops as reside in England and are accus'd of nothing but Episcopacy live free and secure enjoy their whole Estates except what belonged to their Dignity and