souls are acquainted with the sincerity of it whatever any that know not our hearts may say against it 5. All that are truly Baptized and own their Baptismal Covenant are visible members of the true Catholick Church For it is the very nature and use of Baptisme to enter us into that Church But Greeks Abassines Georgians Armenians c. and Protestants are all truly Baptized and own their Baptismal Covenant therefore we are all of the true Catholick Church What is ordinarily said against this succession of our Church I have answered in my safe Religion I now add an answer to what another viz H. Turbervile in his Manuall saith against us in the present point The easiness of his Arguments and the open vanity of his exceptions will give me leave to be the shorter in confuting them His first Argument pag. 43. is this The true Church of God hath had a continued Succession from Christ But the Protestant Church and so of all other Sectaries hath not a continued Succession from Christ to this time therefore c. Answ 1. I pray thee Reader be an impartial Judge what this man or any Papist ever said with sense and reason to prove that the Eastern and Southern Churches have no true Succession Let them talk what they please of their Schisme the world knows they have had as good a Succession as Rome Are they not now of the same Church and Religion as ever they have been All the change that many of them have made hath been but in the entertaining of some fopperies common to Rome and them And if any of these which you call Sectaries can prove their Succession it destroyes your Argument and Cause Me thinks you should not ask them where their Church was before Luther 2. But how doth this Disputer prove his Minor that we have no Succession Only by a stark falshood forsooth by the Concession of the most Learned Adversaries who freely and unanimously Confess that before Luther made his separation from the Church of Rome for nine hundred or one thousand years together the whole world was Catholick and in obedience to the Pope of Rome Answ O horrid boldness that a man that pleads for the sanctity of his Church dare thus speak so notorious an untruth in the face of the world At this rate of Disputing the man might have saved the labour of writing his Book and have as honestly at once have perswaded his Disciples that his Adversaries unanimously consess that the Papists cause is best What if the fifteen cited by him had said so when I can bring him one thousand five hundred of another mind and cite him fifteen for one of another mind is that the unanimous confession of his Adversaries But unless his Adversaries were quite beside themselves there is not one of them could say as he feigneth them to say For doth not the world know that the Eastern and Southern Churches far exceeding the Romanists in number did deny obedience to the Pope of Rome Would this perswade his poor Disciples that we all confess that there are or were no Christians in the world but Protestants and Papists His first cited Confession is Calvins that all the Western Churches have defended Popery A fair proof Doth this Disputer believe in good sadness that the Western Churches are all the world or a sixth part of the world But this is the Popish arguing What Calvin speaks of the Western Churches that is the prevailing power in each Nation of them he interprets of all the world So he deales with Dr. White who expresly in the words before those which he citeth affirmeth the visibility of the Churches of Greece Ethiope Armenia and Rome but only saith that at all times there hath not been visible distinct companies free from all corruption which one would think every penitent man should grant that knows the corruption of his own heart and life It would be tedious to stand to shew his odious abuse of the rest when they that say most of the word world but as it is used Luk. 2. 1. so much of his first argument His second is this Without a continued number of Bishops Priests Laicks succeeding one another in the profession of the same faith from Christ and his Apostles to this time a continued succession cannot be had But Protestants have no continued number c. Answ And how proves he the Minor No how at all but puts us to disprove it and withall gives us certain Laws which we will obey when they grow up to the honour of being reasonable His first Law is that We must name none but only such as held explicitely the thirty nine Articles all granting and denying the same points that the late Protestants of England granted or denyed for if they differ from them in any one materiall point they cannot be esteemed Protestants Answ A learned Law And what call you a material point You may yet make what you list of it If they differ in any point Essentiall to Christianity we grant your imposition to be necessary But there is not the least Chronologicall or Geographicall or other truth in Scripture but is a Materiall Point though not Essential Must you needs know which these Essentials are In a word Those which the Apostles and the ancient Church pre-required the knowledge and profession of unto Baptism And because all your fond exceptions are grounded on this one point I shall crave your patience while I briefly but sufficiently prove that Men that err and that in points materiall may yet be of the same Church and Religion Argum. 1. If men that err in points material that is precious truths of God which they ought to have believed may yet be true Christians and hold all the Essentials of Christianity then may they be of the same true Church and Religion But the former is true therefore so is the later The Antecedent is proved in that all truths which may be called Materiall are not of the essence of Christianity Argum. 2. The Apostle Thomas erred in a Materiall point which is now an essentiall when he would not believe Christs Resurrection and yet was a member of the true Church therefore c. Argum. 3. The Papists err in material points and yet think themselves of the same true Church therefore they must confess that differing in Material points may be the case of members of the same true Church For proof of the Minor I demand Are none of the points Material that have been so hotly agitated between the Jesuites and Dominicans and Jansenists the Papall party and the Councill party The Thomists Scotists Ockamists c. At least review the Jesuite Casuists cited by the Jansenists Mysterie of Jesuitism and tell us whether it be no whit Material Whether a man may kill another for a Crown or may kill both Judge and witnesses to avoid an unjust sentence Or whether a man should go with good meanings into a Whore-house to perswade them
is nothing else but the increase and exaggeration of sins in those who are perverse and the decrease and diminution of them in those who amend And pag. 90. that the defect of Gods honour occasioned by Peter was not supplyed and repaired by any other and so not by Christ And pag. 146. that Gods aim is alwayes the utmost good of every creature And he oft enough tels us that God attaineth all his will And is this man a Papist or are Papists in good sadness that tell the world that none but the subjects of the Pope can be saved and yet now the number that perish will be inconsiderable and God aimeth at the utmost Good of every creature Sure he thinks that all the Toads must be made men and all men made Angels and every star must be made a Sun I shall pass by the Books that are written against the Creation and against Scripture and against Hell c. which swarm among us only advising your Highness to take heed that you venture not upon any worldly motives to stand guilty before the living God of allowing or tolerating such Books to be published and such doctrines as these to be preached to your People to the everlasting undoing of their precious souls If you ask who it is that presumeth thus to be your Monitor It is one that serveth so great a Master that he thinks it no unwarrantable presumption in such a case to be faithfully plain with the greatest Prince It is one that stands so neer Eternity where Lazarus shall wear the Crown that unfaithfull man-pleasing would be to him a double crime it is one that rejoyceth in the present happiness of England and earnestly wisheth that it were but as well with the rest of the world and that honoureth all the providences of God by which we have been brought to what we are but dare not own all the actions of men that have been the Instruments as he hath thought meet to manifest in this writing and leave upon record And he is one that concurring in the Common Hopes of greater Blessings yet to these Nations under your Government and observing your Acceptance of the frequent Addresses that from all parts of the Land are made unto you was encouraged to do what you dayly allow your Preachers to do and to concur with the rest in the tenders and some performance of his service and particularly the County of Wilts who have Petitioned you for the Summ of what I have here exprest and whose Petitions I desire may be written upon your heart That the Lord will make you a healer and preserver of his Chucrhes here at home and a successfull helper to his Churches abroad is the earnest prayer of Your Highnesses faithfull Subject Rich. Baxter Reader IF thou come hither with a practical esteem of Truth desiring to know it that thou maist obey it with an humble mind dost study and pray to the Father of Lights and art impartially willing to receive the Truth in the Love of it that thou maist be saved and with diligence and meekness to read and weigh the Evidences that I bring thee thou art then the person to whom I recommend these Papers with confident expectation of success The Controversies here handled are those that have made and still are making the greatest comhustions in the Christian world And yet to almost all men of learning on both sides they seem exceeding easie I seldom meet with a Learned Protestant but taketh Popery for such transparent fallacies that he is little or no whit troubled with any doubtings in the business And I seldom meet with a Learned Papist but is as confident on the other side as if besides them all the Christian world were blind and mad Interest and prejudice must needs do much then on one side at least And which side hath the greatest worldly interest to by as their understanding is soon discerned by one that knows the Papalpower their Cardinals Prelates and the Riches Honours and priviledges of their Clergy and that knows our state And if thou wilt hear the Reasons of the confidence of both sides I will tell it thee here as briesly and plainly as I can We are confident of our own Religion because we believe the Gospel and we have no other Rule and Iest of our Religion And we are confident that Popery is a deceit because we both believe the Gospel and the judgement of the ancient and present Churches and because we believe our sense it self As sure as we know Bread from Flesh and Wine from Blood by seeing tasting c. so sure know we that Popery is false And if a Controversie is not at an End when it is brought to the judgement of all the senses of all the sound men in the world it being about the object of sense then we are past hope of ending controversies And therefore as we will not waste our time with every fellow that will dispute with us that Snow is black or the Fire cold no more will we trouble our selves with these men that tell us that Bread is not bread and Wine is not wine And if you would know the Reasons of the confidence of the Papists I know no more of them but what their Writings and speeches do express and those I have hereafter given you Two things they are still harping on the first is that in our way we have no assurance that the Christian Religion is true or that Scripture is the word of God Save me the labour of repetitions and read but what I have witten in the Preface to the second Part of the Saints Rest Edit 2. c. where I give you the Resolution of our faith and in my Safe Religion Disp 3. and then believe them if thou canst Their second is that thred-bare Question Where was your Church before Luther Where hath it been successively in each age And here meer Sophistry carryeth it through the Papal world to the deluding of the simple that will be catcht with chaffe and are not able to see things for Names I have dealt with some of them that harped on this string and never met with any thing from them that should seem considerable to a discerning man save only the two unanswerable arguments of Confidence that I say not Impudence and Loquacity Though I have more fully shamed this Question in this Book I will here also give you at the entrance a short view of the case The men that ask us where our Church and Religion was either know not through ignorance or will not let others know through wickedness what our Church and Religion is Shew us say they a Church in all ages that held the thirty nine Articles or that held all that the Protestants hold or else they were not Protestants Forsooth we must receive from them a Definition of a Protestant and then we must prove the succession of such Know therefore before you dispute about the succession
such as comes not from a wilfull neglect of means there no ignorance of the articles of faith is damnable and so no article absolutely necessary so that the question indeed is not Whether men believe or not but Whether they are Unbelievers or Heathens or ignorant persons by a willfull neglect of sufficiently proposed Truth or not So that all that part of the Heathen or Infidell world O how great that have no such proposals of the Gospel may not only be saved but be better and safer then most Christians if not all who certainly are sinfully ignorant of some truth which they ought to know Obj. But say they it will not stand with faith to deny belief to God in any thing sufficiently revealed for he that believeth him in one thing believeth him in all Answ Very true if they know it to be the Word of God And if this be all the Protestants are ready to averre upon their most solemn Oaths that they believe every thing without exception which they know to be a Divine Revelation and no wonder for so doth every man that believes that there is a God and that he is no lyar If this will serve your turn you have no more to say against us your mouths are stopt But may it not stand with faith to be ignorant and that through sinfull neglect of some revealed truth of God or of the meaning of his word If you are so proud as to think that all the justified are perfect and have no sin yet at last consider whether a man that liveth in Heathenism til fourscore years of age and then turns Christian is not afterward ignorant through his former sinfull negligene But dare you say that you have no sinfull ignorance to bewail Will you confess none nor beg pardon or be beholden to Christ to pardon it That they make no point of faith necessary while they seem to make all necssary see but what I have after cited from Frans à S. Clara probl 15 16 17. and abundance more that are mentioned there by him 3. And that by this Protean jugling they make the Church invisible is apparent For what man breathing knoweth the secrets of the souls of others whether they have resisted or not resisted the light and whether they are ignorant of the articles of faith upon sinfull contempt or for want of some due means of faith or internal capacity or opportunity We are as sure that all men are ignorant of some thing that God hath revealed to be known in nature and Scripture as that they are men But now whether any one of these men be free from those aggravations of his ignorance and that in every point upon which the Papists make him an unbeliever is unknown to others When the Faith or Infidelity of men and so their being in the Church or out of it must not be known by the Matter of Faith which they profess but by the secret passages of their hearts their willingness or unwillingness resistance or not resistance and such like the Church then is invisible no man can say which is it nor who is of it He that professeth not the Faith may be a Catholick and he that professeth it for ought they know may be an Infidel as being sinfully yet ignorant of some one truth that is not in his express confession thus by confusion the bulders of Babel marre their work 4. And that the wisest of them say in the main as we say see here in some proofs Bellarm. de Verbo Dei lib. 4. cap. 11. In the Christian Doctrine both of Faith and Manners some things are simply necessary to salvation to all as the Knowledge of the Articles of the Apostles Creed of the ten Commandements and of some Sacraments The restore not so necessary that a man cannot be saved without the explicite Knowledge belief and profession of them These things that are simply necessary and are profitable to all the Apostles preached to all Allthings are Written by the Apostles which are Necessary to all and which they openly preacht to all see the place Costerus Echirid c. 1. p. 49. Non inficiamur praecipua illa fidei capita quae omnibus Christianis cognitu sunt ad salutem Necessaria perspicuè satis esse Apostolicis scriptis comprehensa That is We deny not that those Chief Heads of the Faith which are to all Christians necessary to be known to salvation are perspicuously enough comprehended in the Writings of the Apostles Judge by these two to spare the trouble of citing more whether they be not forced after all their Cavils to say as we in distinguishing of Articles of Faith And they cannot be ignorant that the Church hath still had Forms of Profession which were called her Symbols as being the Badge of her Members and did not suspend all upon uncertain conjectures about the frame and temper of the Professors minds But if indeed it be not the want of Necessary Articles of Faith that they accuse us of but the want of willingness or diligence to know the truth let them prove their accusations and let those persons that they prove guilty bear the blame Do they think we would not as willingly know the truth as they and that we do not pray as earnestly for Divine illumination Do we not read their Books I verily think incomparably more then they do ours and are we not willing to confer with the wisest of them that can inform us I have often privately and publickly desired you that if any of them can say more then all these Schoolmen Fryars and Jesuites say which I have read they would let me hear it that I may want no means they can afford me for my fuller information But yet they have not done with us When we prove a succession of our Religion by proving a succession of such as adhered to the Scriptures which are the Doctrine of our Religion an Argument that no Papist under heaven can confute they vainly tell us that All Hereticks pretend to Scripture and therefore that will not prove the point But 1. Doth it follow that Scripture is not a sufficient Rule of our Religion because Hereticks may pretend to it You take the 39 Articles for our Religion and yet may Hereticks that are far from our minds pretend to them It 's the liker to be the Rule because all Hereticks pretend it and would borrow credit from it to their Heresies The Law of the Land is the Rule of our Justice and yet Lawyers and their Clients that are contrary to each other do plead it for their contrary Causes The Creed it self is pretended by Arrians for their Heresie What must we have no Rule or Test or discovery of our Religion which a Heretick can pretend for his impiety What words of God or man are not capable of being misinterpreted If we should give you every day a confession of Faith some Hereticks might pretend to hold the same No wonder then if they
end the. p. 288. l. 24. for left r. lest p. 297. l. 17. for them r. the. p. 314. r. Paulus 5. p. 356. l. 31. r. hatchets p. 362. l. 28. r. at last p. 365. l. 8. for may r. many l. 33. r. Maldonate p. 397. l. 30. r. the other of l. 32. for parties r. straw p. 409. l. 32. r. in the. l. 36. blot out none p. 422. l. 13. r. presided p. 426. l. 17. blot out of p. 432. l. 33. for had r. had not p. 434. l. 4. for to r. as p. 435. l. 1. r. members p. 433. l. 29. blot out a. p. 452. l. 20. r. But when the. A Key for Catholicks To open the juglings of the Jesuits and satisfie all that are but truly willing to understand whether the cause of the Romane or the Reformed Churches be of God and to leave the Reader utterly unexcusable if after this he will be a Papist CHAP. I. THE thoughts of the divided state of Christians have brought one of the greatest and constantest sadness to my Soul that ever it was acquainted with especially to remember that while we are quarrelling and plotting and writing and fighting against each other so many parts of the world about five of six remain in the Infidelity of Heathenism Judaism or Mahometanism where millions of poor souls do need our help and if all our strength were joyned together for their Illumination and Salvation it would be too little Oh horrible shame to the face of Christendom that the Nations are quietly serving the Devil and the Turk is in possession of so many Countries that once were the Inheritance of Christ and that his Iron yoak is still upon the necks of the persecuted Greeks and that he stands up at our doors in so formidable a posture still ready to devour the rest of the Christian world and yet that instead of combining to resist him and vindicate the cause and people of the Lord we are greedily sucking the blood of one another and tearing in pieces the body of Christ with furious hands and destroying our selves to save the enemy a labour and spending that wit that treasure that labour and that blood to dash our selves in pieces on one another which might be nobly and honestly and happily spent in the cause of God These thoughts provoked me to many an hours consideration How the wounds of the Church might be yet healed And have made it long a principal part of my daily Prayers that the Reconciling Light might shine from Heaven that might in some good measure take up our differences and that God would at last give healing Principles and dispositions unto men especially to Princes and the Pastors of the Church But the more I studied how it might be done the more difficult if not impossible it appear'd and all because of the Romane Tyranny the Vice-Christ or pretended Head of the Church being with them become an essential part of it and the Subjection to him essential to our Christianity it self So that saith Bellarmine de Eccles l. 3. c. 5. No man though he would can be a Subject of Christ that is not subject to the Pope and this with abundance of intolerable corruptions they have fixed by the fancy of their own Infallibility and built upon this foundation a worldly Kingdom and the temporal Riches and Dignity of a numerous Clergy twisting some Princes also into the Interest so that they cannot possibly yield to us in the very principal points of difference unless they will deny the very Essence of their New Christianity and Church and pluck up the foundations which they have so industriously laid and leave men to a suspicion that they are fallible hereafter if they shall confess themselves mistaken in any thing now and unless they will be so admirably self-denying as to let go the temporal advantages which so many thousands of them are interested in And whether so much light may be hoped for in so dark a generation or so much love to God and self-denyal in millions of men so void of self-denyal is easie to conjecture And we cannot in these greatest matters come over to them unless we will flatly betray our Souls and depart from the Unity of the Catholick Church and from the Center of that Unity to unite with another called the Romane Catholick Church in another Center And if we should thus cast away the Truth and Favour of God and sin against our Knowledge and Conscience and so prove men of no Faith or Religion under pretence of desiring a Unity in Faith and Religion yet all would not do the thing intended but we should certainly miss of these very ends which we seek when we had sold the Truth and our Souls to obtain them For there is nothing more certain then that the Christian World will never unite in the Romane Vice-Christ nor agree with them in their Corruptions against plain Scripture Tradition Consent of the ancient Church against the Reason and common sense of Mankind This is not by any wise man to be expected Never did the universal Church or one half of it center to this day in the Romane Soveraignty And why should they hope for that which never yet was done When they had their Primacy of Place to be the Bishop of the first Seat and first of the Patriarcks it made the Pope no more a Soveraign and a Vice-Christ then the King of France is Soveraign to the Duke of Saxony or Bavaria or then the Senior Justice on the Bench is the Soveraign of the rest and yet even this much he never had but from the Romane Empire What claim did he ever lay in his first Usurpations to any Church without those bounds It was the Empire that raised him and the Empire limited his own Usurpations Saith their own Reinerius or whoever else Cont. Waldens Catal. in Biblioth Patr. To. 4. pag 773. The Churches of the Armenians and Aethiopians and Indians and the rest which the Apostles converted are not under the Church of Rome Yea in Gregories days they found the Churches of Brittain and Ireland both strangers and adversaries to their Soveraignty insomuch as they could not procure them to receive their Government nor change so much as the time of Easter for them no nor to have Communion with them at last Anno 614. Laurentius their Arch-Bishop here wrote this Letter with Mellitus and Justus to the Bishops and Abbots in all Scotland that is Ireland While the Sea Apostolick after its manner directed us to preach to the Pagan Nations in these Western parts as in the whole world and we happened to enter this Island called Brittain before we knew them believing that they walked after the manner of the universal Church we reverenced both the Brittains and the Scots in great Reverence of their Sanctity But when we knew the Brittains we thought the Scots were better But we have learnt by Daganus the Bishop in this forementioned Island and by
Columbanus the Abbot coming into France that the Scots do nothing differ from the Brittains in their Conversation For Bishop Daganus coming to us refused not only to eat with us but even to eat in the same House where we did eat Usher Epist Hibern 7. p. 18. Our most peaceable Bishop Hall was forct to write a Roma irreconciliabilis While we are thinking of Reconciliation they are about our ears with Plots and violence and with swarms of Rome-bred Sects and are day and night industriously undermining us so that by their continual Alarms I am called off to these defensive wars which here I have undertaken yet still resolving that the Desperateness of the Cure shall not make me run from them into a contrary extream nor be out of the way of Peace nor neglect any necessary means how hopeless soever of success The Work that here I have undertaken is 1. To give you briefly those Grounds on which you must go if you will keep your ground against a Papist 2. To give a few invincible Arguments which the weakest may be able to use to overthrow the principal grounds of the Papists 3. To detect their Frauds and give to the younger sort of Ministers sufficient Directions for the Confutation of all the Papists in the world 4. To propound though in vain such terms of Peace as we can yield to CHAP. II. BEfore I mention the Grounds or Cause that you must maintain I must premise this Advice to the Common People 1. Wrong not the Truth and your selves by an unequal conflict Enter not rashly upon Disputes with those that are Learned and of nimble tongues if you be ignorant or of weak capacities your selves Though I shall here shew you that Scripture Church Tradition Reason and Sense are on your side yet experience tels us how the words of Juglers have made millions of men deny belief to their eyes their taste and other senses An ignorant man is soon silenced by a subtile wit and many think that when they cannot answer they must yield though they deny both Sense and Reason by it If any of them secretly entice you desire them to debate the case with some able learned experienced Minister in your hearing It is the office of your Pastors to defend you from the wolves If you once despise them or straggle from them and the Flocks and trust to your own Reason that is unfurnished and unprepared for such work you may take that you get by it if you be undone You need the help of Pastors for your souls as well as of Physicians for your Bodies and Lawyers for your Estates or else God would never have set them over you in his Church Let them but come on equal terms and you shall see what Truth can do In this way we will not avoid a Conference with any of them But alas with ignorant unlearned people what may not such Deceivers do that can perswade so many thousand souls to give no Credit to their own eyes or taste or feeling but to believe a Priest that Bread is not Bread and Wine is not Wine 2. Yet I would have the weakest to endeavour to understand the reasons of their Profession and to be able to repell Deceivers And to that end I shall here give you first some Directions concerning the cause which you must defend And concerning this Observe these things following 1. Understand what the Religion is that you must hold and maintain It is the antient Christian Religion Do not put every Truth among the Essentials of your Religion Our Religion doth not stand or fall with every Controversie that is raised about it That which was the true Religion in the Apostles days is ours now that which all were baptized into the Profession of and the Churches openly held forth as their Belief Reformation brings us not a new Religion but cleanseth the old from the dross of Popery which by innovation they had brought in A man that cannot confute a Papist may yet be a Christian and so hold fast the true Religion It followeth not that our Religion is questionable or unsafe if some point in Controversie between them and us be questionable or hard The Papists would fain bring you to believe that our Religion must lie upon some of these Controversies but it s no such matter Perhaps you will say That then it is not about Religion that we differ from them I answer yes it is about the Essentials of their Religion but it is but for the preserving the Integrity of ours against the Consequences and additions of theirs They have made them a New Religion which we call Popery and joined this to the Old Religion which we call Christianity Now we stick to the old Religion alone and therefore there is more essential to their Religion then is to ours so that our own Religion even the ancient Christianity is out of Controversie between us The Papists do confess that the Creed the Lords Prayer the ten Commandments are true yea that all the Scripture is the word of God and certainly true so that our Religion is granted us as past dispute And therefore it is only the Papists Religion that is in question between us and not ours If you will make those lower Truths to be of the Essence of your Religion which are not you will give the Papists the advantage which they desire 2. If the Papists call for a Rule or Test of your Religion and ask you where they may find it assign them to the Holy Scriptures and not to any Confessions of Churches further then as they agree with that We know of no Divine Rules and Laws of Faith and Life but the holy Scripture and the hearts of Believers have an imperfect Transcript of them The Confessions of Churches are but part of the Holy Scripture or Collections out of them containing the points of greatest weight And if in phrase or order much more in matter there be any thing humane we make it not our Rule nor are we bound to make it good no more then the Writings of godly men A point is not therefore with us an Article of Faith because our Churches or a Synod put it into a Confession but because it is in the Word of God For a Councils determinations do with us differ but gradually from the Judgement of a single man in this respect And therefore we give them the Scripture only as the full Doctrine of our Faith and the perfect Law of God And those points in it which Life or Death is laid upon and God hath told us we cannot be saved without we take as the Essentials of our Religion and the rest as the Integrals only If they ask Why then we do draw up Confessions of Faith I answer 1. To teach and help the people by gathering to their hands the most necessary points and giving them sometimes an explication of them 2. To let our Accusers see that we misunderstand not the
Scriptures 3. To let Pastors and other Subjects know what sence of Scripture the Magistrate will own within his Dominions 4. And to let the Pastors and the world know what sence in the principal Points we are agreed in But still we take not our Confessions for our Divine Rule and therefore if there be any errour in a Confession there is none in the Rule of our Religion and consequently none in the Religion which we all agree in but only in such a persons or Churches exposition of the Rule which yet among Christians is not in any essential Point 3. Understand well what is the Catholick Church that when the Papists ask you what Church you are of or call to you to prove its antiquity or truth you may give them a sound and Catholick answer The Catholick Church is the whole number of true Christians upon earth for we meddle not now with that part which is in Heaven It is not tyed to Protestants only nor to the Greeks only much less to the Romanists only or to any other party whatsoever but it comprehendeth all the members of Christ and as visible it containeth all that profess the Christian Religion by a credible profession If the Christian Religion may be known then a man may know that he is a Christian and consequently a member of the Catholick Church But if the Christian Religion cannot be known then no man can know which is the Church or which is a Christian All Christians united to Christ the Head are this Catholick Church If you tye the Church to your own party and make a wrong description of it you will ensnare your selves and spoil your belief and your defence of it 4. Run not into extreams mix not any unsound principles with your Religion For if you do the Papists will cull out those and by disgracing them will seem to disgrace your Religion 5. Use not any unsound Arguments to defend the Truth For if you do the truth will suffer and seem to be overthrown by the weakness of your Arguments 6. Joyn not with those men that cast out any Ordinance of God because the Papists have abused it Reformation of corrupted Institutions is not by the Abolition of them but by the Restauration of them There are few things in use among the Papists themselves as parts of worship but may lead us up to a good original or tell us of some other real Duty which did degenerate into these 7. Joyn not with those ignorant unpeaceable self-conceited womanish rabious Divines or private men that pour out unworthy reproaches at godly men among our selves as if they were Hereticks or such as the Churches should dis-own For these are they that please the Papists and harden them in their Error and offend the weak They think they may call us Hereticks or Blasphemers by authority when we call one another so Such Railers teach them what to say and play their game more effectually then they could do their own When they are alluring the simple people how soon will they prevail if they can but prove their charge against us from the pens of Protestants themselves Having told you on what grounds you must make good your cause against them I shall next give you three or four easie Arguments some of them formerly given you by which even the weakest may prove that Popery is but deceit CHAP. III. Argum. 1. IF there be any godly honest men on earth besides Papists then Popery is false and not of God But there be godly honest men on earth besides Papists therefore Popery is false and not of God The Major is proved thus It is an Article of the Popish faith that there are no godly honest men on earth besides Papists therefore if there be any such Popery is false By godly honest men I mean such as have true love to God and so are in a state of salvation The Antecedent I prove thus 1. Their very definition of the Church doth make the Pope the Head and confine the membership only to his subjects making the Roman Catholick Church as they call it the whole 2. But yet lest any ignorant Papists say I may be a Roman Catholick without believing that all others are ungodly and shall be damned I will give it you in the Determination of a Pope and general Councll Leo the tenth Abrog Pragm sanct Bull. in the 17 th General Council at the Laterane saith And seeing it is of necessity to salvation that all the faithful of Christ be subject to the Pope of Rome as we are taught by the testimony of divine Scripture and of the holy Fathers and it is declared in the Constitution of Pope Boniface 7. c. And Pope Pius the second was converted from being Aenaeas Sylvius by this Doctrine of a Cardinal approved by him at large Bull. Retract in the Vol. 4. of Binnius p. 514. I came to the Fountain of Truth which the holy Doctors both Greek and Latine shew who with one voyce say that he cannot be saved that holdeth not the unity of the holy Church of Rome and that all those vertues are maimed to him that refuseth to obey the Pope of Rome though he lye in sack cloth and ashes and fast and pray both day and night and seem in the other things to fulfill the Law of God So that if a Pope and General Council be false then Popery is false For their infallibility is the ground of their faith and they take it on their unerring authority But if the Pope and a General Council be to be believed then no man but a subject of the Pope can be saved no though he fast and pray in sack-cloth and ashes day and night and seem to fulfill the rest of the Law of God It s certain therefore that if any one of you that call your selves Romane Catholicks do not believe that all the world shall be damned save your selves you are indeed no Romance Catholicks but are Hereticks your selves in their account for you deny a principal Article of their faith and deny the Infallibility of the Pope with a General Council which is your very Foundation And therefore we find that even in the great charitable work of reducing the Abassines the Jesuite Gonzalus Rodericus in his speech to the Emperours mother laid so great a stress on this point that when she professed her subjection to Christ he told her that None are subject to Christ that are not subject to his Vicar Negavi Christo subjici qui ejus vicario non subjicitur Godignus de reb Abassin Lib. 2. c. 18. in Roderic liter p. 323. And Bellarmine saith de Eccl. l. 3. c. 5. that no man though he would can be subject to Christ that is not subject to the Pope that is he cannot be a Christian And therefore Card. Richlieu then Bishop of Lusson tels the Protestants that they were not to be called Christians And Knot against Chillingworth with abundance more of them
What though some in England took the King to be the Soveraign and some the Parliament and soom thought it was in both Conjunct did this prove that you were more than one Common-wealth Answ Where the Soveraignty is mixt and not in either alone if any one shall set up the one as the only Soveraign and subject the other to them they change the form of the Commonwealth but do not set up two Commonwealths but if half take one for the Soveraign and the other half take the other for the Soveraign they plainly divide the Commonwealth into two if they do it only in mind and the secret thoughts of their hearts this cannot be known to others and so cannot be the ground of a Society but if they do it by a publike consent and practice they evidently make two Commonwealths What else brought us into a war which ended not till one party was subdued It is not possible that one Political body should have two Soveraigns specifically distinct Indeed it may have five hundred natural persons in the Soveraignty as in a Senate but they are but one Political person or one summa potestas 2. But I prove the Minor by another Argument Where there are two three or four Heads or Soveraigns at once numerically distinct there are two or three or four Churches But the Roman Church pretending to be Catholike hath had two or three or four Heads at once numerically distinct therefore it was two or three or four Churches The Major is a known truth to all that are verst in any degree in the doctrine of Politicks It is not only two species of Soveraignty but two individual Soveraigns that are inconsistent with the numerical Unity of a Political body Two or ten or two hundred may joyn in one Soveraignty as one Political person as I said but if there be two Soveraigns there are certainly two Societies for if both be Supream neither is Subordinate The Minor is not to be denyed for the Papists lay their very foundation on a supposed division for sooth Peter and Paul were both at once their Bishops And there is not many of them that adventure to tell us that Peter only was the Supream and that Paul was under him but they make them as equals or coordinate and some of them say that Paul was the Bishop of the uncircumcision and Peter of the Circumcision and then Peters Church is confined to the Jews And they do not tell us that one Headship was divided between them For then that example would direct them still to have two Popes or two Bishops to a Church so that Peter being a Head and Paul a Head they had sure distinct bodies But whether they stand to this or not they cannot deny their many following divisions The twenty third schisme as Wernerus a zealous Papist in fasciculo tempor reckons them was between Felix the fifth and Eugenius of which the said Wernerus speaking saith That hence arose great contention among the writers of this matter pro contra and they cannot agree to this day for one part saith that a Council is above the Pope the other part on the contrary saith No but the ' Pope is above the Council God grant his Church peace c. Of the twenty second schisme the same Wernerus saith thus ad annum 1373. the twenty second schisme was the woâ—st and most subtile schisme of all that were before it For it was so perplexed that the most Learned and Conscientious men were not able to discuss or find out to whom they should adhere And it was continued for fourty years to the great scandal of the whole lergy and the great loss of souls because of Heresies and other evils that then sprung up because there was then no discipline in the Church against them And therefore from this Urbane the sixtht to the time of Martin the fifth I know not who was Pope After Nicolas the fourth there was no Pope for two years and an half and Celestine the fifth that succeeded him resigning it Boniface the eighth entered that stilled himself Lord of the whole world in Spirituals and Temporals of whom it was said He entered as a Fox lived as a Lyon and dyed like a Dog saith the same Wernerus The twentieth schisme saith the same Author was great between Alexander the third and four Schismaticks and it lasted seventeen years The nineteenth schisme was between Innocent the second and Peter Leonis and Innocent get the better because he had more on his side saith he The thirteenth schisme saith Wernerus was between another and Benedict the eighth The fourteenth schisme saith the same Author was scandalous and full of confusion between Benedict the ninth and five others which Benedict saith he was wholly vitious and therefore being damned appeared in a monstrous and horrid shape his head and tail were like an Asses and the rest of his body like a Bear saying I thus appear because I lived like a beast In this schisme saith Wernerus there were no less then six Popes at once 1. Benedict was expulsed 2. Silvester the third gets in but is cast out again and Benedict restored 3. But being again cast out Gregory the sixt is put into his place who because he was ignorant of letters and yet infallible no doubt caused another Pope to be Consecrated with him to perform Church Offices which was the fourth which displeased many and therefore a third is chosen which was the fifth instead of the two that were fighting with one another but Henry the Emperor coming in deposed them all and chose Clement the second who was the sixth of all them that were alive at once But above all schisms that between Armosus and Sergius and their followers was the fowlest such saying and unsaying doing and undoing there was besides the dismembring of the dead Pope and casting him into the water And of eight Successors saith Wernerus I can say nothing observable of them because I find nothing of them but scandalous because of the unheard of contention in the holy Apostolike sea one against another and together mutually against each other Reader wouldst thou be troubled with any more of these Relations I tell thee nothing but from their own Historians and that which multitudes of them agree in I go not to a Protestant for a word But one Pope in those contentious times I find lived in some peace and that was Silvester the second of whom saith Wernerus as others commonly This Silvester was made Pope by the help of the Devil to whom he did homage that all might go as he would have it but he quickly met with the usual End as one that had placed his Hope in deceitful Devils Well! I shall now appeal to reason it self whether this were one Church that for fourty or say others fifty years together had several Heads some of the people following one and some another and the most Learned and most Conscientious not able
following ages we will be tryed by them in the articles of our faith and in the principal controversies we have with the Papists Yea but this will not serve their turn It is the present Church that must judge or none For say they if the ancient Church had power so hath the present and if the ancient Church had possession of the truth how shall we know it but by the present I answer 1. We may know it by the Records of those times far surer then by the reports of men without writing Controversies or numerous mysterious points are sorrily carryed in the memories especially of the most even of the Teachers And for the Records one diligent skilfull man will know more then ten thousand others One Baronius Albaspinaeus Petavius among the Papists and one Usher Blondell Salmasius Gataker c. among the Protestants knew more of the mind of antiquity then a whole Country besides or perhaps then some Generall Councils 2. Well! but if you appeal to the greater number to them shall you go You must be tried by the present Church Why then you are condemned Is it the lesser number or the greater or the better that must be judge You will not say the leser as such If you do you know where you are If you say the Better part shall be judge who shall be Judge which is the Better part we are ready to prove the Reformed Churches the Better part and if we do not we will give you the day and lose our cause But I suppose you will appeal to the Greater part Content Then the world knows you are lost The Greeks Moscovites Armenians Abassines and all other Churches in Asia Africa and Europe are far more then the Papists and your own pens and mouths tell us that these are against you Many of them curse you as Hereticks or Schismaticks the rest of them know you not or refuse your government They all agree against your Popes universall Headship or Soveraignty and so against the very form of your new Catholick Church So that the world knows the Judgement of the far greatest part of Christians on earth to be against you in the main so that you see what you get by appealing to the Catholick Church But I know you will say that all these are Schismaticks or Hereticks and none of the Catholick Church But they say as much by you some of them and all of them abhor your charge and how do you prove it and who shall be Judge whether they or you be the Catholick Church You tell us of your succession and of twenty tales that are good if you may be Judges your selves but so do they say as much which is good if they be Judges When we offer to dispute our case with you you ask us Who shall be Judge and tell us the Catholick Church must be Judge But who shall be Judge between you and them which is the Catholick Church you will not let us be Judges in our own cause and why then should you Are we Protestants the lesser number as to you so are you to all the rest that are against you And what reason have we to let the lesser number Judge over the Greater If still you say because you are the Better let that be first tryed but no reason you should there also be the Judges So that the case is plainly come to this Either the Papists must stand to the Greater number and then the controversie is at end or they must shamefully say we will not dispute with you unless we may be the Judges our selves though the fewer Or else they must lay by their talk of a Judge and dispute it equally with us by producing their evidence which we are ever ready for CHAP. XVIII Detect 9. THE most common and prevalent Deceit of the Papists is by ambiguous terms to deceive those that cannot force them to distinguish and to make you believe they mean one thing when they mean another and to mock you with cloudy words I shall here warn you to look to them therefore especially in three terms on which much of their controversies lies that is the words Church Pope and Council For there 's but few understand what they mean by any one of these words 1. When you come to dispute of the Church with them see that you agree first under your hands of the Definition of that Church of which you dispute And when you call them to Define it you will find them in a wood you will little think how many severall things it is that they call the Church For example sometime they mean the whole Body Pastors and People but more commonly they mean only the Pastors which are the far smallest part And sometime they mean the Church Reall and sometimes only the Church Representative as they call it in a Generall Councill But whether they mean the Pastors or People they exclude all saving the Pope of his subjects and so by the Church mean but a part or sect Sometime in the Question about Tradition some of the French take the Church for the community as fathers deliver the doctrine of Christ to their children c. And sometime they take it in its Politicall sence for a holy society consisting of a visible Head and members But then they agree not of that Head some setting the Pope highest and some the Councill But frequently they take the word Church for the supposed Head alone as in most questions about Infallibility Judging of Controversies expounding Scripture keeping of Traditions defining points of faith c. They say The Church must do these but commonly they mean the supposed Head And one part mean a Generall Councill and the Jesuites and Italians and predominant part do mean only the Pope so that when they talk of the whole Catholick Church and call you to its Judgement and boast of its Infallibility you would little think it they mean all this while but one poor sinfull man and such a man as sometime hath been more unlearned then many of your school boys of twelve or fourteen years of age and sometime hath been a Murderer Adulterer and if General Councils or the common vote may be believed an Heretick an Infidel an Incarnate Devil This man is their Church as Gretser Bellarmine and the rest of that strain profess So that if you do but force them to define and explain what they mean by the Church you will either cause them to open their nakedness or find them all to pieces about the very subject of the Dispute 2. So also when they use the name of a Pope in disputation make them explain themselves and tell you in a Definition what they mean by a Pope For though you would think this term were sufficiently understood yet you shall find them utterly at a loss and all to pieces about it Let us consider distinctly of the Efficient Matter and Form 1 As to the efficient cause of their Pope
many others so like to the Arguments and Language of the Seekers and Infidels that we can scarcely know whom we hear when they speak to us For the discovery of their desperate fraud in this point and the right confuting of them 1. You must distinguish them out of their confusion 2. You must grant them all that is true and just which we shall as stiffly defend as they 3. You must reject their errors and confute them And 4. You may turn their own principall weapon against them to the certain destruction of their cause Of all these briefly in course 1. For the first two I have spoke at large in the Preface to the second part of the Saints Rest and in the determination in the first part of my Book against Infidelity But briefly to touch some of the most necessary things here 1. We must distinguish the Tradition of the Scriptures or the Scripture doctrine from the Tradition of other doctrines pretended to be the rest of the word of God 2. We must distinguish between a certain proved Tradition and that which is unproved and uncertain if not grosly feigned 3. We must distinguish between the Tradition of the whole Catholick Church or the greater part and the Tradition of the lesser more corrupted selfish part even the Roman part 4. We must distinguish between a Tradition of necessary doctrine or practice and the Tradition of mutable Orders 5. And we must distinguish between Tradition by way of Testimony or History or by way of Teaching Ministry and Tradition by way of Decisive Judgement as to the Universal Church suffer them not to jumble all these together if you would not be cheated in the dark 2. And then concerning Tradition we grant all these following Propositions so that it is not all Tradition that we deny 1. We grant that the Holy Scriptures come down to us by the certain Tradition of our fathers and Teachers and that what the seeing and hearing of the Apostles was to them that lived with them that Tradition and belief of certain Tradition is to us by reason of our distance from the time and place So that though the Scripture bear its own evidence of a Divine author in the Image and superscription of God upon it yet we are beholden to Tradition for the Books themselves and for much of our knowledge that these are the true writings of the Apostles and Prophets and all and not depraved c. 2. We thankfully acknowledge that the Essentials of the faith and more hath been delivered even from the Apostles in other wayes or forms besides the Scriptures as 1. In the Professions of the Churches faith 2. In the baptismal Covenant and signs and whole administration 3. In the Sacrament of the Lords Supper 4. In Catechisms or Catechizings 5. In the prayers and praises of the Church 6. In the hearts of all true believers where God hath written all the Essentials of the Christian saith and Law So that we will not do as the Papists perversly do when God delivereth us the Christian Religion with two hands Scripture compleatly and Verbal Tradition in the essentials they quarrell with the one hand Scripture on pretence of defending the other so will not we quarrell with Tradition the other hand but thankfully confess a Tradition of the same Christianity by unwritten means which is delivered more fully in the Scripture and this Tradition is in some respect subordinate to Scripture and in some respect co-ordinate as the spirits left hand as it were to hold us out the truth 3. We confess that the Apostles delivered the Gospel by voice as well as by writing and that before they wrote it to the Churches 4. By this preaching we confess there were Christians made that had the doctrine of Christ in their hearts and Churches gathered that had his ordinances among them before the Gospel was written 5. And we confess that the Converted were bound to teach what they had received to their children servants and others 6. And that there was a setled Ministry in many Churches ordained to preach the Gospel as they had received it from the Apostles before it was written 7. And that the said ordinances of Baptism Catechizing Professions Eucharist Prayer Praise c. were instituted and in use before the Gospell was written for the Churches 8. And that when the Gospel was written as Tradition bringeth it to us so Ministers are commissioned to deliver both the Books and the doctrine of this Book as the Teachers of the Church and to preach it to those without for their conversion 9. And that Parents and Masters are bound to teach this doctrine to their children and servants yea if a Minister or other person were cast into the Indies or America without a Bible he must teach the doctrine though he remembred not the words 10. We grant that to the great benefit of the Church the writers of all ages have in subserviency to Scripture delivered down the Sacred Verities and Historians the matters of fact 11. And that the unanimous Consent of all the Churches manifested in their constant professions and practices is a great confirmation to us 12. And so is the suffering of the Martyrs for the same truth 13. And the Declarations of such consent by Councils is also a confirming Tradition 14. And the Confessions of Hereticks Jews and other Infidels are Providentiall and Historical Traditions for confirmation 15. And we profess that if we had any Certain proof of a Tradition from the Apostles of any thing more then is written in Scripture we would receive it All this we grant them for Tradition 3. But in these points following we oppose them 1. We take the holy Scriptures as the Compleat universal Rule or Law of faith and Holy living and we know of no Tradition that containeth another word of God Nay we know there is none such because the Scripture is true which asserteth its own sufficiency Scripture and unwritten Tradition are but two wayes of acquainting the world with the same Christian doctrine and not with divers parts of that Doctrine so as that Tradition should add to Scripture yea contrarily it is but the substance of greatest verities that are conveyed by unwritten Tradition but that and much more is contained in the Scripture where the Christian doctrine is compleat 2. The manner of delivery in a form of words which no man may alter and in so much fullness and perspicuity is much to be preferred before the meer verbal delivery of the same doctrine For 1. The Memory of man is not so strong as to retain as much as the Bible doth contain and preserve it safe from alterations or Corruptions Or if one man were of so strong a memory no man can imagine that all or most should be so Or if one Generation had such wonderfull memories we cannot imagine that all their posterity should have the like If there were no statute Books Records or Law-books in
which is most sufficient and most cleare in it self but for us This we all yield The second way is necessary to sciences diminutely and insufficiently delivered by their authors for their supplement so Aristotle is supplemented by Albertus Magnus c. The third way specially if it be not excessive is tolerable to the well being though it be not necessary The fourth way assertively is to be rejected as Poyson Thus are the authorities to be understood that forbid to add to or diminish from the Scripture Deut. 12 32. Well! by this time you may see that when such doctrine as this for Scripture sufficiency and perfection as the Rule of faith and life admitting no addition as necessary but explication nor any other as tolerable but moderate ampliation which indeed is the same I say when this doctrine past so lately in a Popish General Council you may see that the very Doctrine of Traditions equaled with Scripture or being another word of God necessary to faith and salvation containing what is wanting in Scripture is but lately sprung up in the world And sure the Traditions themselves be not old then when the conceit of them came but lately into the world 4. Well I have done the three first parts of this task but the chief is yet behind which is to shew 1 How little the Papists get by their Argument from Tradition 2. And how â—uch they lose by it even all their cause 1. Two things they very much plead Tradition for the one is their private doctrines and practices in which they disagree from other Christians and here they lose their labour with the judicious 1. Because they give us no sufficient proof that their Tradition is Apostolical 2. Because the dissent of other Churches sheweth that it is not universal with other Reasons before mentioned 2. The other Cause which they plead Tradition for is the Doctrine of Christianity it self And this they do in design to lead men to the Church of Rome as if we must be no Christians unless we are Christians upon the credit of the Pope and his Subjects And here I offer to their Consideration these two things to shew them the vanity of their arguing 1. We do not strive against you in producing any Tradition or Testimony of Antiquity for the Scripture or for Scripture Doctrine we make as much advantage of such just Tradition as you What do such men as White Vane Cressy c. think of when they argue so eagerly for the advantage of Tradition to prove the Scripture and Christian faith Is this any thing against us Nothing at all We accept our Religion from both the hands of Providence that bring it us Scripture and Tradition we abhor the contempt which these partial Disputers cast upon Scripture but we are not therefore so partial our selves as to refuse any collateral or subordinate help for our faith The more Testimonies the better The best of us have need of all the advantages for our faith that we can get When they have extolled the Certainty of Tradition to the highest we gladly joyn with them and accept of any certain Tradition of the mind of God And I advise all that would prove themselves wise defenders of the faith to take heed of rejecting Arguments from Providences or any necessary Testimony of man especially concerning matter of fact or of rejecting true Church History because the Papists over value it under the name of Tradition left such prove guilty of the like partiality and injuriousness to the truth as the Papists are And whereas the Papists imagine that this must lead us to their Church for Tradition I answer that in my next observation which is 2. We go beyond the Papists in arguing for just Tradition of the Christian faith and we make far greater advantage of it then they can do For 1. They argue but from Authoritative Decision by the Pope under the name of Church-Tradition excepting the French party whereas we argue from true History and certain Antiquity and prove what we say Where note 1. That their Tradition is indeed no Tradition for if it must be taken upon the credit of a man as supposed Infallible by supernatural if not miraculous endowment this is not Tradition but Prophesie And if they prove the man to be such a man it s all one to the Church whether he say that This was the Apostles doctrine or This I deliver my self to you from God For if he were so qualified he had the power and credit of a prophet or Apostle himself And therefore they must prove the Pope to be a Prophet before their kind of Tradition can get credit and when they have done that there is no need of it this their honest Dr. Holden was ware of upon which he hath so handsomely canvassed them 2. Note also that such as Dr. Holden Cressy Vane White and other of the French way that plead for Tradition mean a quite other thing then the Jesuited Italian Papist meanes and while they plead for universal Tradition they come nearer to the Protestants then to their Brethren if they did not contradict themselves when they have done by making meer Romish Tradition to be universal 3. Note also that when Papists speak of Tradition confusedly they give us just reason to call them to Define their Tradition and tell us what they mean by it before we dispute with them upon an ambiguous word seeing they are so divided among themselves that one party understands one thing by it and another another thing which we must not suffer these juglers to jumble together and confound 2. Another advantage in which we go beyond the Papists for Tradition is that as we argue not from the meer pretended supernatural Infallibility or Authority of any as they do but from rational Evidence of true Antiquity so we argue not from a sect or party as they do but from the Universal Church As far as the whole Church of Christ is of larger extent and greater credit then the Popish party so far is our Tradition more Credible then theirs And that is especially in three things 1. The Papists are fewer by far then the rest of the Christians in the world And the testimony of many yea of all is more then of a part 2. The Papists above other parties have espoused an interest that leads them to pretend and corrupt Tradition and bend all things to that interest of their own that they may Lord it over all the world But the whole Church can have no such Interest and Partiality 3. And the Papists are but one side and he that will judge rightly must hear the other sides speak too But the Tradition that we make use of is from all sides concurring yea Papists themselves in many points Yea our Tradition reacheth further then the Universal Church for we take in all rational Evidence even of Jews Heathens and Hereticks and Persecutors that bear witness to the matters of fact
Professors of our Religion therefore c. But all this will not serve them without a Catalogue and telling them where our Church was before Luther To this we further answer we have no peculiar Catholick Church of our own for there is but one and that is our Church Wherever the Christian Church was there was our Church And where-ever any Christians were congregate for Gods worship there were Churches of the same sort as our particular Churches And wherever Christianity was there our Religion was For we know no Religion but Christianity And would you have us give you a Catalogue of all the Christians in the world since Christ Or would you have us as vain as H. T. in his Manuall that names you some Popes and about twenty professors of their faith in each age as if twenty or thirty men were the Catholick Church Or as if those men were proved to be Papists by his naming them This is easie but silly disputing In a word Our Religion is Christianity 1. Christianity hath certain Essentials without which no man can be a Christian and it hath moreover many precious truths and duties necessary necessitate praecepti and also necessitate medii to the better being of a Christian Our being as Christians is in the former and our strength and increase and better-being is much in the latter From the former Religion and the Church is denominated Moreover 2. Our implicite and actuall explicite Belief as the Papists call them must be distinguished or our General and our particular Belief 3. And also the Positives of our Belief must be distinguished from the implyed Negatives and the express Articles themselves from their implyed Consectaries And now premising these three distinctions I shall tell you where our Church hath been in all Ages since the birth of Christ 1. In the dayes of Christ and his Apostles our Church was where they and all Christians were And our Religion was with them in all its parts both Essential and perfective That is we now Believe 1. All to be true that was delivered by the Apostles as from God with a General faith 2. We believe all the Essentials and as much more as we can understand with a Particular faith 3. But we cannot say that with such a particular faith we believe all that the Apostles believed or delivered for then we must say that we have the same degree of understanding as they and that we understand every word of the Scriptures 2. In the dayes of the A postles themselves the Consectaries and implied Verities and Rejections of all Heresies were not particularly and expresly delivered either in Scripture or Tradition as the Papists will confess 3. In the next ages after the Apostles our Church was the one Catholick Church containing all true Christians Headed by Jesus Christ and every such Christian too many to number was a member of it And for our Religion the Essential parts of it were contained both in the Holy Scriptures and in the Publick Professions Ordinances and Practices of the Church in those ages which you call Traditions and the rest of it even all the doctrines of faith and universal Laws of God which are its perfective parts they were fully contained in the holy Scriptures And some of our Rejections and Consectaries were then gathered and owned by the Church as Heresies occasioned the expressing of them and the rest were all implyed in the Apostolical Scripture doctrine which they preserved 4. By degrees many errors crept into the Church yet so that 1. Neither the Catholick Church nor one true Christian in sensu composito at least did reject any essential part of Christianity 2. And all parts of the Church were not alike corrupted with error but some more and some less 3. And still the whole Church held the holy Scripture it self and so had a perfect General or Implicite belief even while by evill consequences they oppugned many parts of their own profession 5. When in process of time by claiming the universall Soveraignty Rome had introduced a new pretended Catholick Church so far as their opinion took by superadding a New Head and form there was then a two fold Church in the West the Christian as Christian headed by Christ and the Papal as Papal Headed by the Pope yet so as they called it but one Church and by this usurped Monarchy as under Christ endeavoured to make but one of them by making both the Heads Essential when before one only was tolerable And if the Matter in any part may be the same and the same Man be a Christian and a Papist and so the same Assemblies yet still the forms are various and as Christians and part of the Catholick Church they are one thing and as Papists and members of the separating sect they are another thing Till this time there is no doubt of our Churches Visibility 6. In this time of the Romish Usurpation our Church was visible in three degrees in three severall sorts of persons 1. It was visible in the lowest degree among the Papists themselves not as Papists but as Christians For they never did to this day deny the Scriptures nor the Ancient Creeds nor Baptism the Lords Supper nor any of the substance of our Positive Articles of Religion They added a New Religion and Church of their own but still professed to hold all the old in consistency with it Wherever the truth of holy Scriptures and the ancient Creeds of the Church were professed there was our Religion before Luther But even among the Papists the holy Scriptures and the said Creeds were visibly professed therefore among them was our Religion And note here that Popery it self was not ripe for a corruption of the Christian faith professed till Luthers opposition heightned them For the Scripture was frequently before by Papists held to be a most sufficient Rule of faith as I shewed before from the Council of Basil and consequently Tradition was only pleaded as conservatory and expository of the Scripture but now the Council of Trent hath in a sort equalled them And this they were lately driven to when they found that out of Scripture they were unable to confute or suppress the truth 2. At the same time of the Churches oppression by the Papacy our Religion was visible and so our Church in a more illustrious sort among the Christians of the most of the world Greeks Ethiopians and the rest that never were subject to the usurpation of Rome but only many of them took him for the Patriarch primae sedis but not Episcopus Ecclesiae Catholicae or the Governour of the Universall Church So that here was a visibility of our Church doubly more eminent then among the Romanists 1. In that it was the far greatest part of the Catholick Church that thus held our Religion to whom the Papists were then but few 2. In that they did not only hold the same Positive Articles of faith with us but also among their Rejections
did Reject the chief of the Popish errors as we do Besides many particular points named in my Safe Religion they Rejected with us the Popes Catholick Monarchy the pretended Infallibility of the Pope or his Councils the new form of the Papall Catholick Church as Headed by him with other such points which are the very fundamentall controversies between us and the Papists So that besides that the Papists themselves profess our Religion the major part of the Catholick Church did profess it with the Rejection of the Papacy and Papall Church and so you may as easily see where our Religion was before Luther as where the Catholick Church or most of Christians were before Luther 3. And beside both these our Religion was professed with a yet greater Rejection of Romish corruptions by thousands and many thousands that lived in the Western Church it self and under the Popes nose and opposed him in many of his ill endeavours against the Church and truth together with them that gave him the hearing and were glad to be quiet and gave way to his tyranny but never consented to it Concerning these we have abundant evidence though abundance more we might have had if the power and subtilty of the Papall faction had not had the handling of them 1. We have abundance of Histories that tell us of the bloody wars and contentions that the Emperours both of East and West have had with the Pope to hinder his tyranny and that they were forced by his power to submit to him contrary to their former free professions 2. And we have abundance of Treatises then written against him both for the Emperours and Princes and against his doctrine and tyranny some store of them Goldastus hath gathered And intimations of more you have in their own expurgatory Indices 3. And we have the histories and professions of the Albigenses Waldenses Bohemians and others that were very numerous and if Raynerius say true they affirmed about the year one thousand one hundred that they had coutinued since the Apostles and no other Originall of them is proved 4. Particular evidence unanswerable is given in by Bishop Usher de Succes statu Eccl. and Answer to the Jesuites and the Ancient Religion of Ireland and in Dr. Field and Morneyes Mysterie of Iniquity and of the Church and Illyricus and many others 5. Even Generall Popish Councils have contended and born witness against the Popes superiority over a Councill 6. And in that and other points whole Countreyes of their own are not yet brought over to the Pope 7. They have still among themselves Dominicans Jansenists c. that are reproached by the Jesuites as siding with Calvin in many Controversies as Catharinus and many more in others Most points of ours which we oppose to Popery being maintained by some or other of them 8. But the fullest evidence is the certain history or knowledge of of the case of the common people and Clergy among them who are partly ignorant of the main matters in Controversies between us as we see by experience of multitudes for one to this day and are generally kept under the fear of fire and sword and torments so that the truth of the Case is this the Roman Bishops were aspiring by degrees to be Arch-bishops and so to be Patriarchs and so to have the first seat and vote and to be called the Chief Bishops or Patriarchs and at last they made another thing of their office and claimed about six hundred years or more after Christ to be universal Monarchs or Governours of all the Church But though this claim was soon laid it was comparatively but few even in the West that made it any Article of their faith but multitudes sided with the Princes that would have kept the Pope lower and the most of the People medled not with the matter but yielded to necessity and gave place to violence except such as the Albigenses Bohemians Wicklefists and the rest that more openly opposed So that no man could judge of the multitude clearly which side they were on being forced by fire and sword and having not the freedom to profess their minds So that in summ our Religion was at first with the Apostles and the Apostolick Church and for divers hundred years after it was with the universal Christian Church And since Romes usurpation it was even with the Romanists though abused and with the greater part of the Catholick Church that renounced Popery then and so do now and also with the opposers of the Pope in the West under his own nose You see now what Succession we plead and where our Church and Religion still was If any deny that we are of the same Church and Religion with the Greeks Abassines and most of the Christian world yea all that is truly Christian I easily prove it 1. They that are Christians joyned to Christ the Head are all of the same Church and Religion for none else are Christians or united to Christ but the Church which is his Body But the sincere Greeks Abassines c. and we are Christians united to Christ the Head therefore we are all of one and the same Church and Religion 2. They that believe the same holy Scripture and differ in no essential part of the Christian faith are of the same Church and Religion but so do both we and all true Christians therefore we are all of one Church and Religion 3. They that are truly regenerate and Justified hating all known sin longing to be perfect Loving God above all and seeking first his Kingdom and Righteousness and accounting all things but as dung in comparison of Christ these are all of the true Catholick Church and the true Christian Religion but such are all that are sincere both of the Greeks Abassines c. and the Reformed Churches as we prove 1. To others by our Profession and Practice by which only they are capable of judging of us 2. To ourselves infallibly against all the Enemies of our salvation in Hell or Earth by the knowledge and acquaintance with our own hearts and the experience of the work of God upon them All the Jesuites in the world cannot perswade me that I love not God and hate not sin and prefer not the Love of Christ before all the world when I feel and know that I do till they can prove that they know my heart better then I do 4. If Christ Consent to it and we Consent to it then we are all that are sincere in their profession of the true Catholick Church and Religion for if he consent and we consent who is there that is able to break the match But Christ consenteth and we consent as we prove by parts 1. His consent is expressed in his Gospel that whoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life and whoever will may drink of the water of life freely 2. And our consent we openly professed at Baptisme and have frequently renewed and our own
that I must needs conclude that either the Liturgy or much of it is forged or that the generality of your own Relators of their practice are grosly deceived and do deceive which is not likely because they are many and write at several times and it is against themselves 3. And as for the procession of the Holy Ghost and the denyal of two wills in Christ some of your own writers profess that the former in the Greeks and the later in many others is found to be but a verbal difference the same words not signifying the same thing in their esteem as in ours 4. However if they would but become the subjects of the Pope they might be of your Church for all this and therefore seeing they are the subjects of Christ we shall take both Ethiopians and Copties to be of the same Catholick Church with us for all these and many other of their errors Lastly saith H. T. Let him not cite the Armenians for they hold but one nature in Christ and that his flesh was changed into his Divinity and were condemned by the Council of Calcedon Answ The Armenians are a considerable part of the Catholick Church Binnius in the life of Eugenius the third saith their Catholick so call they their chief Bishop hath infinite that is above a thousand Bishops under him Oth. Frisingensis hath the like 1. Though they held but one nature in Christ it was not by permixtion or confusion of the natures as Eutiches imagined but Conjunction or Coalition Nicephor Hist Eccles lib. 18. cap. 53. And divers of your own writers say the difference is found to be but in words And even all this they now deny as you may see in their own Confession published not eighty years ago Artic. 26 27 28 29 30. c. 2. That they change the humane nature of Christ into the Divinity is your slander and therefore no good argument 3. That they were condemned by the five Acts or in any Act of the Council of Calcedon is another untruth sure you go much upon trust that dare venture to stuff your book with such falshoods But the best is your simple Papists know not but all is true they must believe you and cannot disprove you The Armenians then and we are of one Catholick Church and Religion notwithstanding all your forgeries and vain exceptions I know that one or two petty Councils chid them for not mixing water with wine in the Eucharist and more then that the Canons of the General Council called Quinisexti do condemn the same error as theirs and also their deputing the Sons of Priests successively to the Priesthood and not shaving their hair and their eating eggs and cheese on Saturdayes and Sundayes in Lent But 1. We fear not to say that we are of the same Church with men that err more then not shaving or then eating eggs and cheese comes to or any of this 2 And remember that this is one of your Reprobate Councils 3. And one that the third time when two General Councils before had done it did Canon 36. give aequalia privilegia equal priviledges to the Seat of Constantinople as Rome had So that I think you will have no mind of this General Council And if any other have judged them Eutichians though I renounce that opinion yet I must tell you that my Charity covereth far greater errors in the Papists or else I could not take them for Christians If the Question had ever been started in a Council whether mans soul and body are two Natures or but one it s ten to one but it would have made another heresie and yet perhaps the real difference have been no more then it is now there is no Controversie about it But H. T. addeth Protestants pretence to the Fathers of the first five hundred years is very idle because were it true as it is most false that those Fathers were Protestants yet could not that suffice to prove them is continued Succession of one thousand six hundred years Answ 1. It sufficeth us if those Fathers were Christians as we are though having no usurper of an universal Monarchy to Protest against they were not to be called Protestants 2. It is an idle pretence indeed to go about to prove a Succession of one thousand six hundred years by the bare instance of five hundred years but your idle head hath forged more idle pretences then this by way of calumniation But yet we may prove the Antiquity of our Religion from those Fathers and the Novelty of yours and a Succession for those five hundred years and for the rest if the whole Christian world had been big enough for you to see you might have discerned our Evidence of a further Succession He adds 2. Because those of the sixth age must needs know what was the Religion and Tenets of them that lived in the fifth age by whom they were instructed and with whom they daily conversed better then our Protestants can now do who have Protested on their salvation that it was the very same with theirs received from them by word of mouth c. Answ 1. Any thing will serve for the simple that will believe you But I pray you tell us whether it were all or some of the sixth age that made this solemn Protestation that you mention If all or most or the ten thousandth man tell us where we may find that Protestation If a few they were not the sixth age 2. If Pope Boniface alone was not the sixth age tell us where that age did Protest on their salvation that the Bishop of Rome was taken by their Fore fathers for the universal Monarch and Head of the Church beyond his bare Primacy of order 3. What age hath protested on their salvation that the Roman prohibition of reading Scriptures or of receiving the Eucharist in both kinds or other points anon to be mentioned were the Religion of their Fore-fathers and so from age to age 4. I pray you tell us where to find this Protestation of the tenth age which Genebrard Bellarmine and others of your own so complain of as having not learned men nor any Council but Apostatical Popes and an ignorant wicked Clergy that suspected a man of Heresie if he understood Greek or Hebrew and of Magick or Conjuring if he medled with Mathematicks 5. It is legible in the writings of the sixth Age that they did fetch the doctrine of the fifth age from their writings and not only from word of mouth What else mean the preservation of those writings and those numerous citations out of them Nay more they would not trust their memories in a General Council for the Canons of the Church no nor for the Canons of the next preceding Council no nor for the Common Creed but had all read and repeated out of the writing before the Council when there was occasion And let Conscience be free to speak truth for a few sentences and tell us in good sadness
And they extoll Cyril equally with Celestine Novo Paulo Celestine they forgot Peter Novo Paulo Cyrillo Unu◠Celestinus Unus Cyrillus c. The next witness brought is the Council of Calcedon as caling Leo Universal Archbishop and Patriarch of old Rome and sentence is pronounced against Dioscorus in the names of Leo and Saint Peter Answ 1. This is but one of your common frauds It was not the Council that called him universall Archbishop but two Deacons in the superscription of their Libels viz. Thedodorus and Ischirion And were they the Catholick Church 2. By Universal Archbishop it s plain that they meant no more then the chief in dignity and order of all Archbishops and not the Governour of all 3. I have shewed you before that this very Council in its Canons not only give the Bishop of Constantinople equal priviledges with the Bishop of Rome but expresly say that Rome received this primacy of order à patribus from a Council because it was Sedes Imperii the seat of the Emperour I thought I had given you enough of this Council before Sure I am when Bellarmine comes to this Canon he hath nothing to say for his cause but plainly to charge this famous fourth General Council with lying or falshood and to say that the Pope approved not this Canon But approved or not approved if this was the Catholick Church representative sure I am that their testimony is valid to prove that there was then no Catholick reception of the Roman Monarchy as of God but contrarily a meer primacy of Dignity and Honour given it newly by men In the sixth age he had not one Council to pretend it seems for the Roman Soveraignty for he cites none but about other matters of which anon In the seventh age which he calls the sixth though then the Soveraignty was claimed by Boniface he citeth no Council for it niether In the eighth age from the year seven hundred he cites the second Council of Nice as approving an Epistle of Pope Adrian wherein he saith that the Roman Church is the Head of all Churches Answ 1. But whether Adrian himself by the Head meant the chief in Dignity or the Governour of all is a great doubt 2. But whatever he meant the Synods approving his Epistle for Images is no proof that they approved every word in it 3. Yea Tharasius seems to imply the contrary calling him only Veteris Romae primas testatorum principum successor as if his Sea had the Priviledge only of being the Primate of Rome and not the Ruler of the world 4. But if this Council did as it did not openly own the Papal Soveraignty it had been no great honour to him For as in their decrees for Images they contradicted two Councils at Constantinople and that at Frankford contradicteth them so might they as well contradict the Church in this Even as they defined Angels to be corporeal which the Council of Laterane afterward contradicted But the plain truth is it was the scope of Adrians Epistle as for Images which they expressed themselves to approve And that their Image-worship it self hath no Catholick succession me thinks they should easily grant considering not only 1. That there is nothing in the first ages for them 2. And that Epiphanius and many before him speak expresly against it 3. But specially that there have been more General Councils of those ages against them then for them and that before this of Nice decreed for them the representative Catholick Church except still the Pope be the Catholick Church did condemn them I suppose by this time you will think it needless for me to follow H. T. any further in his Catalogue I am content that any impartial sober person judge whether here be a satisfactory proof of a Catholick succession of the Papal Soveraignty when through so many ages they bring not a word for any succession at all much less that it was owned by the Catholick Church and least of all that all the rest of Popery was so owned Object But at least some other points of Popery are proved by H. T. to have such a succession Answ Peruse his proofs and freely judge Two of the thirty two Articles which I mentioned before he speaks to The one is that Bishops Priests and Deacons should abstain from their Wives or be degraded But 1. The Council which he cites for this is but a Provincial Council in Spain in the fifth Age and what 's this to Catholick succession 2. The Evidences for the Antiquity of Priests marriages are so clear and numerous that I will not thank any of them to confess their doctrine a Novelty 1 Cor. 9. 5. Have we not power to lead about a Sister a Wife as well as other Apostles and as the brethren of the Lord and Cephas I hope they will not deny that Peter had a Wife 1 Tim. 3. 2 4. A Bishop must be blameless the husband of one Wife One that ruleth well his own house having his children in subjection with all gravity ver 12. Let the Deacons be the husbands of one wife ruling their children and their own houses well Tit. 1. 7. If any be blameless the husband of one Wife having faithfull children The Antient Canons called the Apostles say Can. 6. Let not a Bishop or Presbyter put away his own Wife on pretence of Religion And if he reject her let him be excommunicated but if he persevere let him be deposed Let Bellarmine perswade those that will believe him that this Canon speaks but of denying them maintenance Canons as well as Scripture are unintelligible to these men The Canons at Trull of the fifth and sixth Council do expresly expound this Apostolick Canon as I do here and they profess it was the Apostles concession then to the Bishops to marry and they themselves forbid any to separate Priests from their Wives and professedly oppose the Roman Church in it Can. 12 13. For this Bellarmine lib. 2. cap. 27. de Pontif. Rom. reproacheth them and that 's his answer Forsooth the Pope approved not these Canons 1. Let Adrians words be read and then judge 2. What if he did not Our enquiry is of Catholick Tradition and succession and not of the Popes opinion But it s easie to bring much more for this Another point that H. T. proves is The same Canon of Scripture which they own And for this he brings one Provincial Council Carth. 3. as in the sixth Age. An excellent proof of Catholick succession through all Ages But have we not better proof of the contrary Let him that would be satisfied peruse these records and judge Euseb Eccles Hist l. 3. cap. 9. vel 10. and there Joseph li. 1. cont Apion Constitut Apostol whosoever was the author lib. 2. cap. 57. Canon Apostult Dionys Eccl. Hier. cap. 3. Melet. in Euseb Eccl. Histor lib. 5. cap. 24. Origen in Niceph. hist Eccles lib. 5. cap. 16. Orig. Philocal cap. 3. Euseb Hist l. 6. cap.
men know what Council of Carthage decreed that the Bishop primae sedis should be called neither Summus Sacerdos nor Princeps Sacerdotum vel aliquid hujusmodi tantum Episcopus primae sedis i. e. Not the chief Priest or the chief of Priests but the Bishop of the first seat And how long will they shut their eyes against the testimony of two of their own Popes Pelagius and Gregory the first that condemned the name of Universal Bishop Sometime they find the Church of Rome called Apostolick and so were others as well as that as is commonly known And sometime the Pope is called the Pillar of the Church And what of that so are many others as well as he as all the Apostles were as well as Peter The Church is built on the Foundation of the Apostles and Prophets That the Pastors of the Church were ordinarily called the Pillars and props of it as by Nicephorus Gildas Theodoret Basil Tertullian Dionysius Hierom Augustine c. you may see proved in Gatakers Cinnus page 395 396. And lastly when the Papists read their Popes called the Successors of Peter they take this as a proof of their Soveraignty Whereas 1. Peter himself had no such Soveraignty 2. They succeed him not in his Apostleship 3. They are called Pauls Successors as well as Peters 4. Others are called Peters Successors too as well as they by the Fathers 5. And other Bishops ordinarily are called the Apostles Successors and other Churches called Apostolick Churches I shall only set before them the words of one man at this time Hesychii Hierosol apud Photium Cod. 269. and desire them to tell me whether ever more were said of the Pope yea or of Peter then he saith of Andrew calling him Chori Apostolici primogenitus primitus defixa Ecclesiae columna Petri Petrus fundamenti fundamentum principii principium vel primitiae qui vocavit antequam vocaretur adduxit priusquam adduceretur i. e. The first begotten of the Apostolick Chore the first fixed Pillar of the Church the Peter of Peter or the Rock of Peter the Foundation of the Foundation the Principal of the Principal who called before he was called and brought others to Christ before he was brought to him by any others And the same Hesychius saith of James apud Photium Cod. 275. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. i. e. With what Praises may I set forth the servant and Brother of Christ the chief Emperour or Commander or Captain of the New Hierusalem the Prince or chief of Priests the President or Principal of the Apostles the Crown or Leader among the Heads the principal Lamp among the Lights the principal planet among the Stars Peter speaketh to the people but James giveth the Law or sets down the Law Can they shew us now where more then this is said of Peter himself Much less of the Pope CHAP. XXVII Detect 18. ANother of the Principal Deceits of the Papists is the forging and corrupting of Councils and Fathers and the citation of such forgeries Be carefull therefore how you receive their Allegations till you have searched and know the Books to be genuine and the particular words to be there and uncorrupted They have by their greatness obtained the opportunity of possessing so many Libraries that they might the easilyer play this abominable game But God in mercy hath kept so many monuments of Antiquity out of their hands partly in the Eastern and partly in the Reformed Churches as suffice to discover abundance of their wicked forgeries and falsifications Of their forging Canons yea feigning Councils that never were as Concil Sinuessan Concil Rom. sub Silvestr See Bishop Ushers Answer to the Jes pag. 12 13. As also of their forging Constantines Donation and Isidore mercators forging of a fardell of Decretals and of their falsifying and corrupting in the Doctrine of the Sacrament the works of Ambrose of Chrysost or the Author operis Imperfecti of Fulbertus Bishop of Chartres of Rabanus of Mentz of Bertram or Ratrannus c. Read I pray you the words detecting their horrible impious cheats But their Indices expurgatorii will acquaint you with much more And yet their secreter expurgations are worst of all What words of Peters Primacy and others for their advantage they have added to Cyprian de unitate Ecclesiae see in Jer. Stephens his Edition of it where much more additions to Cyprians works are detected out of many Oxford Manuscripts Andreas Schottus the Jesuite publishing Basils works at Antwerp Lat. A. D. 1616. with Jesuitical fidelity left out the Epistle in which is this passage following which should not be lost speaking of the Western Bishops he saith verily the manners of Proud men do use to grow more insolent if they be honoured And if God be merciful to us what other addition have we need of But if Gods anger on us remain what help can the pride of the West bring us when they neither know the Truth nor can endure to speak it but being prepossessed with false suspicions they do the same things now which they did in the case of Marcellus contentiously disputing against those that taught the truth but for Heresie confirming it by their authority Indeed I was willing not as representing the publike person of the East to write to their Leader Damasus but nothing about Church matters but that I might intimate that they neither knew the truth of the things that are done with us nor did admit the way by which they might learn them And in general that they should not insult over the calamitous and afflicted nor think that Pride did make for their dignity when that one sin alone is enough to make us hatefull to God so far Basil in that Epistle left out by the Jesuite in which you may see the Romane power in those daies in the consciences of Basil and such other Fathers in the East And by the way how Tertullian reverenced them you may see lib. de pudicit pag. 742. where he calls Zepherinus as we say all to naught And the Asian Bishops condemning of Victor with Irenaeus his reproof of him Cyprians and Firmilians condemning Stephen Marcellinus his condemnation by all Liberius his being so oft Anathematized by Hilary Pictav the resistance of Zosimus and Boniface by the Africans c. shew plainly in what esteem the now-infallible universal Head was then among the Fathers and in all the Churches But when the Papists come to the mention of such passages what juglings do they use sometime they silence them sometime they pass them over in a few words that are buried in a heap of other matters sometime they bring in some forgeries to obscure them But commonly they make a nose of wax of Councils and Fathers as well as of Scripture and put any ridiculous sence upon them that shall serve their turns though perhaps six men among them may have five or six Expositions An Epistle of Ciril of Jerusalem to Austin is forged by one
was over the Bishop read the first verse and then the Boy had no fit thinking it had been some other verse And thus they proved him a deceiver and the Boy was much confounded but pretended more distraction and then that he might get away he complained of extream sickness and made water in the Urinal as black as ink groaning when he made it But the third day after they espyed him mixing ink with his Urine and nimbly conveying away the Inkhorn And when they came in upon him and found him in the conveyance he broke out into tears and was suddenly cured and confessed all how he had been taught his art and how he did all and confessed that his intent was to be cured by a Priest and to turn Papist and whether they have catcht him again or no I know not for I hear he is a Quaker in Bristol or at least a reviler of the Ministry The Bishop took his examination at large Octob. 8. 13. 1620. If any doubt of the story they may be satisfied yet by the Boy himself or by the Reverend Bishop yet alive or by any of the neighbours in Bilson that were at age there but thirty seven years ago But before the Bishop had discovered the knavery one of the Conjuring Priests writes the Narrative of the business which is printed with the rest and is Entituled A Faithful Relation of the proceedings of the Catholick Gentlemen with the Boy of Bilson shewing c. And they begin with Not to us O Lord but to thy Name give the Glory And so they proceed to make their report of it for deluding the people as a Miracle And the writing was by a Papist Gentleman examined attested upon Oath to be received from one Mr. Wheeler c. But when they heard of the Discovery they were ashamed of their faithful Relation At last the Bishop brought the Boy at the next summers Assizes July 26. 1621. to ask pardon openly of God and the woman accused by him and of the Countrey cheated by him and there was an end of that Popish Miracle Abundance more such I could give you out of certain records but I recited this for the sake of H. T. and the Papists of Wolverhampton And for your Miracles I beseech you if you regard not us yet open your ears to a Jesuite that speaks the Truth Joseph Acosta de temporib noviss lib. 3. c. 3. To all the Miracles of Antichrist though he do great ones the Church shall boldly oppose the Belief of the Scriptures and by the inexpugnable Testimony of this Truth shall by most clear light dispell all his juglings as Clouds Signs are given to Infidels Scriptures to Believers and therefore the Primitive Church abounded with Miracles when Infidels were to be called But the last when the Faithful are already Called shall rest more on the Scripture then on Miracles Yea I will boldly say that all Miracles are vain and empty unless they be approved by the Scripture that is have a doctrine conform to the Scripture But the Scripture it self is of it self a most firm Argument of Truth And the same Acosta confesseth in his Indian History that they do no Miracles in the Indies where the boast is And if they did it would confirm Christianity but not Popery Yea if Miracles be so much to be lookt at why will you not give us leave to observe them The same Miracles that you boast of do testifie against you if they be true To instance now but in one Prosper makes mention of a Miracle which Thyraeus de Daemoniac pag. 76. and many more of yours recite that was done by the Sacramental Wine A person possessed by the Devil was cured after many other means used in vain by the Drinking of the Wine in the Eucharist And doth not this Miracle justifie us that give the people the Wine and condemn you that refuse to give it them Many other Miracles I could recite that the Fathers say were done by the Sacrament in both kinds received which condemn you that forbid it CHAP. XXX Detect 21. ANother of the Papists waies of deceiving is by impudent Lyes and Slanders against their Adversaries which they vent with such confidence that the seduced people easily believe them They that are taught to believe their Priests against their own seeing hearing feeling tasting and smelling must needs believe the vilest Lyes that they are pleased to utter in cases where the miserable people are unable to disprove them I will give you but a few of that multitude of Instances that might be given 1. In a Manuscript of the Papists which I lately received from a Neighbour of Sturbridge as sent from Wolverhampton there are these words with which they conclude Luther having richly supped and made his friends merry with his facete conceits died the same night This is testified by Cochleus in vita Lutheri And John Calvin a branded sodomite consumed with lice and worms died blaspheming and calling upon the Devil This is registred by Schlusselburge and Bolseck these were the Ends of the Parents of the Protestant and Presbyterian pretended Reformed Religions And as if their own tongue must sentence them to Hell in the very words before they say All Lyars their part shall be in the pool burning with fire and brimstone which is the second death And so make Application of it to the Protestants as being Lyars and when they have done conclude with the two forecited impudent Lies of Luther and Calvin The like words of Calvin hath the late Marquess of Worcester or Dr. Baily for him in his Papers to King Charles the whole writing being stuffed with such impudent Lies that one would wonder that humane nature should be capable of such wickedness and that the silly people should swallow down such heaps of falshood And it is not these two alone but multitudes of Papists that have written these Lies of Luther and Calvin Thyraeus the Jesuite in his Book de Daemoniacis part 1. cap. 8. pag. 21. tells us this story that the same day that Luther dyed there was at Gheola a Town in Brabant many persons possessed of Devils that waited on their Saint Dymna for Deliverance and were all that day delivered but the next day they were all possessed again whereupon the Exorcist or some body asked the Devils where they had been the day before and they answered that they were commanded by their Prince to be at the Funeral of their fellow Labourer Luther And for proof of this Luthers own servant that was with him at his death looking out at the window did more then once to his great terror see a company of ugly spirits leaping and dancing about without and also that the Crows followed the Corps all the way with a great noise O wonderful patience and mercy of God that suffereth such abominable Lyars to live and doth not cause some sudden vengeance to befall them Reader I will tell thee now the case
Whorehouse to exhort them from Whoredom though he hath found by experience that when he comes among them he is overcome and playes the Whoremonger with them Lest the vices of your Clergy should be laid open and punished you exempt them from the secular power and will not have a Magistrate so much as question them for whoredom drunkenness or the like crimes It is one of Pope Nicolas Decrees as Caranza pag. 395. recites them that No Lay man must judge a Priest nor examine any thing of his life And no secular Prince ought to judge the facts of any Bishops or Priests whatsoever And indeed that is the way to be wicked quietly and sin without noise and infamy But for our parts we do not only subject our selves and all our actions to the tryal of Princes and the lowest Justice of Peace as far as the Law gives him power but we call out to Rulers daily to look more strictly to the Ministry and suffer not one that is ungodly or scandalous in the Church And if one such be known our Godly people will all set against him and will not rest till they cast him out in times when there is opportunity for it and get a better in his stead The whole Countrey knows the Truth of this If you say as the Quakers do that yet the most among us are ungodly I answer that Those among us that are known ungodly and scandalous are not owned by us nor are members of our Church or admitted to the Lords Supper in those Congregations that exercise Church-discipline but they are only as Catechuments whom we preach to and instruct if not cast out Your eighth General Council at Constantinople Can. 14. decreed that Ministers must not fall down to Princes nor eat at their Tables nor debase themselves to them but Emperors must take them as Equals But we are so far from establishing Pride and Arrogancie by a Law that though we hate servile flattery and man-pleasing yet we think it our duty to be the servants of all and to condescend to men of low estate and much more to honour our Superiors and God in them The same Council decreed Canon 21. that None must compose any Accusations against the Pope No marvail then if all Popes go for Innocents But we are lyable to the accusations of any And because you charge our Churches with Unholiness and that with such an height of Impudency as I am certain the Divel himself doth not believe you that provokes you to it even that there is not One Good among us nor one that hath Charity nor can be saved unless by turning Papist I shall therefore go a little higher and tell you that I doubt not but the Churches in England where I live are purer far than those were in the dayes of Augustine Hierom c. yea and that the Pastors of our Churches are less scandalous then they were then what if I should compare many of them even to St. Augustine St. Hierom and such others both in Doctrine and Holiness of Life should I do so I know you would account it arrogancy but yet I will presume to make some comparison and leave you to Judge impartially if you can As for the Heavenliness of their writings let but some of ours be compared with them and you will see at least that they spake by the same spirit and for their Commentaries on Scripture did we miss it as oft as Ambrose Hierom and many more we should bring our selves very low in the esteem of the Church Even your Cajetane doth more boldly censure the Fathers Commentaries then this comes to And as to our lives the Lord knows that I have no pleasure in opening any of the faults of his Saints nor shall I mention any but what are confessed by themselves in Printed Books and mentioned by others and to boast of our own Purity I take to be a detestable thing and contrary to that sense of sin that is in every Saint of God But yet if the Lords Churches and servants are slandered and reproached as they were by the Heathens of old the vindicating them is a duty which we owe to Christ Those Ministers that I Converse with are partly Marryed and partly unmarryed The Marryed live soberly in Conjugal Chastity as burning and shining lights before the people in exemplary Holiness of Life The unmarryed also give up themselves to the Lord and to his service and I verily think that of many such that converse with me there is not one that ever defiled themselves by incontinency and I am confident would be ready to take the most solemn Oath of it if any Papist call them to it And for the people of our Communion through the mercy of God such sins are so rare that if one in a Church be guilty once we all lament it and bring them to penitence or disown them And were the Churches better in the third fourth fift sixt or following Ages I doubt not And I judge by these discoveries 1. By the sad Histories of the Crimes of those times 2. By the lamentable complaints of the Godly Fathers of the Bishops and people of their times What dolefull complaints do Basil Gregory Nazianz. and Greg. Nyssen and Chrysostom Austin c. make it were too long to recite their words What complaints made Gildas of the Brittish Church What a doleful description have we of the Christian Pastors and People in his dayes from Salvian through his whole Book de Gubernat 3. I judge also by the Canons and by the Fathers directions concerning Offendors For example Gregory Mag. saith of drunkards Quod cum venia suo ingenio sunt relinquendi ne deteriores fiant si à tali consuetudine evellantur And was this the Roman Sanctity even then And was this St. Gregories Sanctity that Drunkards must be let alone with pardon lest if they be forced from their custome they be made worse Then fairfall the Ministers of England If such advice were but given by one of us it would seem enough to cast us out of our Ministry We dare not let one drunkard alone in our Church-communion where Church-discipline is set up So Augustine saith that Drunkenness is a mortal sin Si sit assidua if it be daily or usual And that they must be dealt with gently and by fair words and not roughly and sharply If one of us should make so light of Drunkenness what should we be thought I cite these two from Aquinas 22. q. 150. art 1. 4. ad 4 m art 2. 1. Many Canons determine that Priests that will not part with their Concubines shall be suspended from officiating till they let them go Whereas with us a man deserveth to be ejected that should have a Concubine but one night in his life Gratian Distinct 34. citeth c. 17. of a Toletane Council saying that he that hath not a Wife but a Concubine in her stead shall not be put from the Communion His
conversed with them or that there are many more worlds of men besides this earth or that Christ instituted twenty Sacraments how should we deal with these men but hy denying their fictions as sinfull Novelty and rejecting them as corrupt additions to the Faith And were this any Novelty in us And should they bid us prove in the express words of Scripture or antiquity our Negative Propositions that Christ gave but one form of prayer that he did not oft descend that he gave no more Decalogues Sacraments c. Is it not a sufficient proof of any of these that they are not written and that no Tradition of them from the Apostles is proved and that they that hold the Affirmative and introduce the Novelty must prove and not we Our Articles of faith are the same and not increased nor any new ones added But the Papists come in with a new faith as large as all the Novelties in the Decretals and the Councils and these innovations of theirs we reject Now our Rejections do not increase the Articles of our faith no more then my beating a dog out of my house or keeping out an enemy or sweeping out the filth doth enlarge my house or increase my family They do not take all the Anathema and Rejections in their own Councils to be Canons or Articles of faith For example The Pope hath made it an Article of faith that no Scripture is to be interpreted but according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers This wereject and make it no Article of our faith but an erroneous Novelty Do we hereby make a new Article because we reject a new one of theirs yea a part of the Oath of their Church made by Pope Pius after the Council of Trent 1. If this be an Article prove it if you can 2. If it be a Truth and no Novelty I pray you tell us which be Fathers and which not and help us to know certainly when we have all or the unanimous Consent And then tell us whether every man is not forsworn with you that interprets any text of Scripture before he have read all the Fathers or any text which six of them never expounded or any text which they do not unanimously agree on And yet though it be not our necessary task we can easily prove to you that this is a New Article of your devising 1. Because else no man must expound any Scripture at all before these Fathers were born For how could the Church before them have their unanimous consent And 2. Because that otherwise these Fathers themselves wanted an Article of faith unless it was an Article to them that they must expound no Scripture but by their own Consent 3. Because these Fathers do few of them expound all or half or the twentieth part of the Scripture 4. Because they took liberty to disagree among themselves and therefore do not unanimously consent in abundance of particular texts 5. Because they tell us that they are fallible and bid us not take it on their trust 6. Because the Apostles have left us no such rule or precept but much to the contrary 7. Your own Doctors for all their Oath do commonly charge the Fathers with error and misexpounding Scripture as I shewed before Canus and many others charge Cajetan a Cardinal and pillar in your Church with making it his practise to differ from the Fathers and choosing expositions purposely for the Novelty pro more suo as his custom And when he hath highly extolled Cajetan Loc. Theol. lib. 7. pag. 223. he adds that yet his doctrine was defiled with a Leprosie of errors by an affection and lust of Curiosity or confidence on his wit expounding Scripture as he list happily indeed for the most part but in some few places more acutely then happily because he regarded not antient Tradition and was not verst in the reading of the Fathers and would not learn from them the Mysteries of the sealed book And in another place he blames him that he alway followed the Hebrew and Greek text And many other Papists by him and others are blamed for the same faults Andradius and more of the later plead for it And yet these men are counted members of your Church that go against an Article of your new faith and Oath So Transubstantiation is one of your New Articles in that Oath Do we make a New one now if we reject it Or need we be put to prove the Negative And yet we can easily do it And Edm. Albertinus among many others hath done it unanswerably Another of your Articles is that it belongeth to your Holy Mother the Church to judge of the true sence of Scripture And you mean the Roman Church and that they must judge of it for all the Christian world Prove this to be the Antient doctrine if you can If we reject this Novelty are we Innovators or need we prove the Negative And yet we can do it and have oft done it at large Did Athanasius Basil Nazianzen Nyssen Augustine Hierom Chrysostome Epiphanius and the rest of the Fathers send to Rome for the sence of the Scriptures which they expound or did they procure the Popes Approbation before any of them published their Commentaries You know sure that they did not The like may be said of all the rest of your New Articles and Practises We stand our ground Some of your Novelties we reject as trifles some as smaller errors and some as greater but still we keep to our antient faith of which the Scripture is a full and sufficient Rule as Vincentius Lirinens ubi supra though we are glad of all helps to understand it we say with Tertullian de carne Christi cap. 6. Nihil de eo constat quia Scriptura non exhibet Non probant quia non Scriptum est His qui insuper argumentantur nos resistemus CHAP. XXXVII Detect 28. ANother of their Deceits is this They make advantage of our charitable Judgement of them and of their uncharitable judgement of us and all other Christians to affright and entice people to their sect They say that we cannor be saved nor any that are not of the Roman Church But we say that a Papist may be saved They say that we want abundance of the Articles of faith that are of necessity to salvation We say that the Papists hold all that is necessary to salvation Luther saith that the Kernel of true faith is yet in the Church of Rome therefore say they Let Protestants take the shell And hence they make the simple people believe that even according to our own Confessions their Church and way is safer then ours I have answered this formerly in my Safe Religion but yet shall here once more shew you the nakedness of this Deceit 1. The Papists denying the faith and salvation of all other Christians doth no whit invalidate our faith nor shake our salvation Our Religion doth not cease to be true when ever a peevish
of Necessity to salvation or not I before cited the words of Albertinus the Jesuite I shall now give you many more and more fully which Frans à Sancta Clara hath gathered to my hands in his Deus Natura Gratia Problem 15. 16. pag. 109 c. And 1. pag. 110. he tells us himself that the Doctors commonly teach that a just and probable ignorance ought to excuse and that it is probable when one hath a probable foundation or ground as a Country-man when he believes that a thing is lawfull drawn by the Testimony of his Parish Priest or Parents or when a man seeing reasons that are probable on both sides doth choose those which seem to him the more probable which yet indeed are against the truth to which he is otherwise well affected in this case he erreth without fault though he err against the truth and so labour of the contrary ignorance Hither is it to be reduced when the Articles of Faith are not propounded in a due manner as by frivolous reasons or by impious men for then to believe were an act of imprudence saith Aquin. 2. 2. q. 1. ar 4. So that if the truth of Scripture be so propounded as to seem most improbable it is no sin to disbelieve it and if such are excused as by a Parent or Parish-Priest are seduced and that have not a due proposal of the Truth then it must follow that the Heathens and Infidels are innocent that never had Christ proposed any way to them and by their Parents have been taught Mahometanism or Paganism But what if I can prove that even the want of a due proposal is a punishment for their sin and that they ought themselves to seek after the truth and that it is long of their own sins that necessary truths do seem improbable to them will sin excuse sin And pag. 111. he telleth us That as to the Ignorance of things necessary as means to salvation the Doctors differ for Soto 4. d. 5. q. 5. l. denatur grat c. 12. And Vega l 6. c. 20. sup Trid. will have no more explicite faith required now in the Law of Grace then in the Law of Nature Yea Vega loco citato and Gab. 2. d. 21. qu. 2. art 3. 3. d. 21. qu. 3. think that in the Law of Nature and in cases in the Law of Grace a man may be saved with only Natural Knowledge and that the habit of faith is not required And Horantius being of the contrary opinion saith that they are men of great name that are against him whose gravity and great and painfull studies moved him not to condemn them of heresie in a doubtfull matter not yet judged O happy Rome that hath a judge that can put an end to all their controversies And yet cannot determine whether it be Necessary to salvation to be a Christian Yea saith S. Clara Alvarez de Auxil disp 56. with others seems to hold that to Justification is not required the knowledge of a supernatural object at all Other say that both to Grace and to Glory an explicite faith in Christ is necessary as Bonavent 3. d. 25. and others Others say that to salvation at least an explicite faith in the Gospel or Christ is required though not to Grace or Justification And this is the commoner in the Schools as Herera declareth and followeth it And for Scotus S. Clara saith I take him to be of that opinion that is not necessary as a Means to Grace or Glory to have an explicite Belief of Christ or the Gospel ut 4. d. 3. q. 4. he seems at large to prove Pag. 113. he adds What is clearer then that at this day the Gospell bindeth not where it is not authentically preached that is that at this day men may be saved without an explicite belief of Christ for in that sence speaks the Doctor concerning the Jews And verily what ever my illustrious Master hold with his Learned Master Herera I think that this was the Opinion of the Doctor Scotus and the common one which also Vega a faithfull Scotist followeth and Faber 4. d. 3. Petigianis 3. d. 25. q. 1. and of the Thomists Bannes 22. q. 2. a. 8. Cano and others And he gathers it to be the mind of the Council of Trent Ses 6. cap. 4. and adds pag. 113. Its effectually proved by the Doctor from Joh. 15. If I had not come and spoke to them they had not had sin I know the Dictors of the contrary opinion answer that such are not cendemned for the sin of Infidelty precisely but for other sins that binder the illumination and special help of God But verily the Doctor there argueth that the Jews might by circumcision be cleansed from Original sin and saved without the Gospel and accordingly he may argue as to all others to whom the Gospel is not authentically promulgate Else his reason would not hold And our most grave Corduba l. 2. qu. Theol. q. 5. subscribes to this opinion saying since the promulgation of the Gospel an Explicite Belief of Christ is necessary except with the invincibly ignorant to whom an implicite sufficeth to the life of grace but whether it suffice to the life of glory is a probleme but it is more probable that here also an implicite sufficeth Page 114. he addeth the consent of Medina re recta in Deum fide lib. 4. cap. ult and of Bradwardine fol. 62. that an Implicite belief of Christ is sufficient to salvation And pag. 115. he saith that this is the way to the end debates of them that think the Article of the Trinity of Christ of the incarnation c. are necessary to salvation though not to Justification and answering them he saith that such are not formally without the Church You see then formally Insidels are in their Church and may be saved in his opinion And pag. 116. after a blow at Vellosillus he citeth also Victoria Relect. 4 de Indis Richard de Med. Villa 3. 25. art 3. qu. 1. and others for this opinion And tells you what his Implicite faith is to believe as the Church believeth And page 118. he answereth from Scotus the Question Whether such persons may hold the contrary error to the truth that they are ignorant of and saith No out of Scotus while it is preached but in some one place till he know it to be believed as a truth by the Church and then he must firmly adhere to it Which the charitable Fryar applieth to England as excusable for not believing some of their Articles And he citeth Petigianis saying If a simple old woman shall hear a false opinion from a false Prophet as that the substance of the bread remains with Christs body in the Eucharist and believe it doth she sin because of this No This were too hard and cruell to affirm Pag. 119. he citeth Angles and agreeth with him that such as have no knowledge of these things to stir them up are
is the purest it is one of the most impure If for Antiquity it is founded as Papal upon Novelty If because it is the Richest their money perish with them that measure the Church and truth of Christ by the Riches and splendor of this world For my part I cannot help you out of this snare CHAP. XLI Detect 32. ANother of their juglings is By working upon the peoples natural affections and asking them Where they think all their fore-fathers are that dyed in the communion of the Roman Church Dare they think they are all damned Intimating that its cruelty to say their ancestors are in Hell and if they say they be in Heaven then there is but one way thither and therefore you must go the way that they went But a weak understanding may easily deal with this kind of Sophistry if it be not mastered by affection For 1. What if we grant that many of our fore-fathers that dyed Papists are in Heaven Doth it follow that we must therefore be Papists No because it was not by Popery that they came to Heaven but by Christianity What if many recover and live that eat not only Earth and Dirt but Hemlock or Spear-wort or other poysons must I therefore eat them Or doth it follow that there is no other way to health 2. Our fore-fathers were all saved that were holy justified persons and no others But among so many and great impediments as Popery cast in their way we have great reason to fear that far fewer of them were saved then are now among the Reformed Churches And must I needs go that difficult way to Heaven because that some of them get thither Must I needs travail a way that is commonly beset with thieves because some that go that way do scape them This is our case 3. If this were a good way of Reasoning then may all the Heathens Infidels Mahometans use it that have been educated in darkness And indeed it is the Argument which the barbarous Heathens use when the Gospel is preached to them What think you say they is become of our fathers If they were saved without the Gospel so may we The story of that Infidel Prince is common that being ready to go to the water to be baptized stept back and asked Where are all my Ancestors now And when he was told that they were in Hell and that the Christians go to heaven he told them then he would be no Christian for he would go where his Ancestors are 4. If this be good reasoning then we may use it much more then you For we would ask you where be all our fore fathers that are dead since the Reformation and where be all those that dyed between the Resurrection of Christ and the appearing of Popery or the prevailing of it in the world And where be all that die in the Eastern and Southern Churches that are no subjects of the Pope of Rome Have we not as little reason to think that all these millions of men are damned as to think so of our Popish Ancestors 5. Why should we be more foolish for our souls then for our bodies I would not be poor because my Ancestors were so Nor would I have the Stone or Gout because my Ancestors had them Nor will I say that they are no diseases for fear of dishonouring my Ancestors that had them And why then should I willfully lick up any Popish errors because my Ancestors by the disadvantage of the times and of their education were cast upon them 6. It is not our fore-fathers but God that we must follow It is he and not they that is the Lord of our faith and of our souls It will not excuse us in judgement for disobeying God to say that our fore-fathers led us the way Nor will it ease us in Hell to suffer with our fore-fathers Christ tells us Luke 16. of a Rich man that in Hell would have had his brethren warned lest they should follow him But these men would have us to follow our fore-fathers even in their sin against God Whereas the Scriptures constantly make it an aggravation of a peoples sin when they follow their fathers in it take not warning by their falls The Jewish Christians were redeemed from the vain conversation received by Tradition from their fathers 1 Pet. 1. 18. Stephen tells the Jews Act. 7. 51 52. As your Fathers did so do yet which of the Prophets have not your Fathers persecuted Christ condemneth the Jews for allowing the deeds of their fathers Luk. 11. 47 48. Mat. 23. 32. Nay God asketh wicked men where their fathers are with a clean contrary meaning to this question of the Papists Zach. 1. 4 5 6. Turn unto me saith the Lord of Hosts be not as your fathers unto whom the former Prophets have cryed Turn your fathers where are they and the Prophets do they live for ever Ezek. 20. 18 27 30. I said unto their children walk ye not in the Statutes of your Fathers neither observe their judgements nor defile your selves with their Idols I am the Lord your God walk in my Statutes 30. Say unto the house of Israel Thus saith the Lord God Are ye polluted after the manner of your fathers and commit ye whoredom after their abominations Jer. 44. 9. Have ye forgotten the wickedness of your fathers They are not humbled even to this day The 18. of Ezek. is almost all of this that the son that followeth his father in his sins shall die and he that takes warning and avoideth his fathers sins shall live A hundred more such texts there are 7. Our fore-fathers might be saved that sinned in the dark and yet we be damned if we will follow them in the Light or at least we shall be beaten with more stripes then they if both must perish They had not our means or liberty If they had seen and heard what we have done many of them would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes Shall we sin wilfully after the knowledge of the Truth because our fathers sinned ignorantly for want of information CHAP. XLII Detect 33. ANother of their frauds is By pretending to a Divine Institution and Natural excellency of a visible Monarchical Government of the Church And so they would derive it from Peter from Christ yea from Nature and God the Author of Nature All their writings take this as their strength I shall at this time tie my self to Boverius his Cheating Consultation de Ratione verae fidei c. ad Carolum Principem intended for the perverting of our late King then in Spain In his Part. 1. Reg. 6. he asserteth that besides Christ the invisible Head of the Church there is a necessity that we acknowledge another certain visible Head subrogate to Christ and instituted of him without which none can be a member of Christ or any way subsist alive Yet Cardinal Richlieu will not have the Pope called Another Head He begins his proof with a cheat
Heathens Atheists or Infidels These carry their judgement as to the positive part as close as any of the rest and are grown in England to a far greater number and strength then is commonly imagined It is not only Leviathan or his Ocean that is guilty of this Apostasie however they use the name of Christ but abundance that lurk under several names A great while I knew not what to make of this close Generation but now I have found out that which should make a believing tender heart to bleed even gross Infidelity causing them secretly to scorn at Christ and the holy Scripture and the life to come as bitterly as ever Julian did And this is crept so high and spred so far that it is dreadful to those few that are acquainted with its progress Some that have lately professed to turn Papists for what ends I know not are known to be stark Infidels And some that have long gone for leading men with them have satisfied us by their writings that they are Romanists of the most ancient strain even of the Roman Religion that was ancienter then Peter and Paul And many of the unsetled sort of Protestants are so far forsaken of God as to Apostatize to the same condition Montaltus the Jansenian takes the Jesuites for false unworthy calumniators for giving out that they have long had a design at Port-Royal to overthrow the Gospel and set up Infidelity and meer Deism But I am sure they deserve much harder words of us in England between them for doing so much to destroy the Christianity of many in order to the setting up of Popery I do not charge it all and only on the Papists I know the Devil hath more sorts of Instruments then one But that they have had a notable hand in this Apostasie we have good reason to satisfie us Not that they desire that men should be absolutely and finally Infidels But 1. they would make the world believe that all must be Infidels that will not receive the Christian Faith upon the Roman account and terms And in order to this they industriously seek to disgrace the Scripture and overthrow all the grounds of the Faith of such as they dispute with And so make them Infidels in order to the proof of that their affirmation 2. And then they think that they must take them off all Religion as Boverius afore cited to prepare them for the Popish Religion 3. And the malice of some of them is such that they had rather men were Infidels then Protestants or at least they will venture them upon Infidelity in the way rather than not take them off from being Protestants And no wonder when they allow Infidels so much more charity then Protestants as to their salvation as all the Authors cited by S. Clara before do signifie And when Rome burneth Protestants but giveth toleration for Jews And thus by these Devilish devices the Hiders in England that keep close their Religion are discovered at last to be one part of them Infidels or Heathens and another part of them Papists And no wonder if they would lately have introduced the Jews here into England and if they have so many other designs to promote this Apostasie 4. Another sort that Popery hath here hatch or cherished are the Socinians a Sect with whom both Papists and Heathens do joyn hands as the Bond of their Conjunction Yet I know that they were not bred at first by Popery and I know that the genuine Papist that holds fast the Articles of their Faith must needs disown the Socinian But however it comes to pass I am sure there are too many of late self-conceited men innovaters in Philosophie that have reduced their Theologie to their novel Philosophie and expounded Scripture by such conceits as suit with the Socinians I shall say nothing of the Millenaries the Levellers and many such like But here in the close I would desire any Papist that is conscious of the promoting of any of these fore-mentioned abominations to tell us whether this be like to be the way of God Or whether Peter or Paul did ever take such a course as this to plant the Gospel or build up the Church And whether it be like to be the Cause of God that must be maintained by such means Is not their damnation just that say Let us do evill that good may come thereby Should not the means be suited to the end Hath the glory of God any need of a lie This course will never ingratiate your opinions with any wise considerate men This is but working with the Devil for God like one that doth consult with a Witch or Conjurer to find the goods of the Church when they are stoln Do you think God needs the Devils help Or is it like to be help that comes from him But the truth is it is your bad Cause that requires these evils means and it is your bad hearts that set you on work to use them Though you think perhaps that you do God service by it yet you know not what Spirit you are of Christ owneth not such ways as these and therefore his servants will not own them CHAP. XLVI Detect 37. ANother Practical fraud of the Papists is In hiding themselves and their Religion that they may do their work with the more advantage I shall tell you briefly 1. The way by which they do this and 2. The advantage they get by it And 3. Help you to detect them 1. The principal means by which they conceal themselves is By thrusting themselves into all Sects and Parties and putting on the vizor of any side as their cause requireth It 's well known that formerly we had abundance of them that went under the name of Protestants and were commonly called by the name of Church-Papists But there is great reason to think that there are more such now Some of them are Prelatists and some of them call themselves Independants some creep in among the Anabaptists and some go under the cloak of Arminians and some of Socinians and some of Millenaries and all the other Sects before mentioned They animate the Vanists the Behmenists and other Enthusiasts the Seekers the Quakers the Origenists and all the Juglers and Hiders of the times It is they that keep life in Libertinisms and in Infidelity it self Among every one of these parties you may find them if you have the skill of unmasking them 2. Another way of Hiding themselves is by having a Dispensation to come to any of our Assemblies or join in worship with any party good or bad Or else they will prove it lawfull without a Dispensation where the Pope interdicteth it not And their way is this that all the old known Papists especially of the poorer sort shall be still forbidden to come to our Assemblies lest they bring the blot of levity and temporizng on their Religion and lest there should not be a visible party among them to countenance their cause But
without importunity or constraint And were our Power but answerable to our Desires we would soon put an end to these contentions of the Church without the hurt of any of the Dissenters Yea did there appear but any considerable Hopes of success I should venture to be more large in Proposals to that end But when wiser men of greater interest can do no good and the case appeareth as next to desperate a few words may suffice to satisfie my own conscience and to please my mind with the mention of a Peace and to help some others to right Dispositions and Desires though we have never so little expectation of success And in order to what follows I must first desire every Reader rightly to understand the meaning and design of all that I have hitherto said It is but to be a necessary help to the Discovery of the Truth and the confutation of the contrary errors and the just defence of the doctrine of Christ and of his Churches I solemnly protest that it is none of my design or desire 1. To make any believe that the Difference is wider between us and the Papists then indeed it is Nay I am satisfied that in many doctrinall points it is not so great as commonly it is taken to be by many if not most on both sides as in the points of certainty of Salvation of Pardon of Justification of Works of Faith and in almost all the controversies about Predestination Redemption Free-will the work of Grace c. The Dominicans in sence agree with the Calvinist as they call them and the Jesuites with the Lutherans and Arminians and so in divers other points The divers understanding of words among us and the weakness and passions of Divines and a base fear of the censures of a party hath occasioned may on both sides to feign the differences to be much wider then indeed they are so that when an Alvarez a Bannes a Gibieuf have spoken the same things as the Protestants do they are presently fain to pour out abundance of unworthy slanders against the Protestants for fear of being accounted Protestants themselves And to shew their party how much they differ from us they must feign us to be monsters and to hold that which commonly we abhor And some Protestants are too blame also in some measure in this kind This unchristian dealing will gripe the conscience when once it is awakened Let me be rather numbred with those that are ambitious to seem as Like to all the Churches of Christ and as much to agree with them as honestly and possibly I may what party soever distaste that union and agreement And let my soul abhor the desire of appearing more distant and disagreeing then we are what censures so ever I may incur Our students would not so ordinarily read Aquinas Scotus Ariminensts Durandus c. if there were not in them abundance of precious truth which they esteem How neer doth Dr. Holden come to us in the fundamental point of the Resolution of our faith How neer come to the Scotists to us in sence about the point of Merit and Waldensis and others yet neerer How neer comes Contarenus to us and many more in the point of Justification How neer comes Cardinall Cajetan to us in the Liberty of dissenting from the Fathers in the Exposition of the Scriptures and so doth Waldonate and many another How neer comes Cardinal Cusanus lib. de Concord to us even in the Essential point of difference about the Original and Title that Rome hath to its supremacy How neer comes Gerson to us in the point of Venial and Mortal sin perhaps as neer as we are to our selves How neer come the Dominicans and Jansenians to us in the points of Predestination Grace and Free will For my own part I scarce know a Protestant that my thoughts in these do more concur with then they do with Jansenius that is indeed with Augustine himself There are very few points of the Protestant doctrine which I cannot produce some Papist or other to attest and easily thus be even with Mr. Brerely upon fairer terms then he deals with us 2. I do also protest that it is none of my desire or design to create any unjust Censures of the final state of Papists in any Readers nor to perswade men that they are all damned or that there are no honest godly men among them When I read such writers as Gerson Barbanson Ferus and others I am fully satisfied that there are many among them how many God only knows that truly fear God and are sanctified gracious people with whom I hope to dwell for ever And therefore I think it my Duty not only to forbear unjust Censures of them but also to love them with that entire speciall Christian Love by which Christ would have us known to be his Disciples and to perswade all others to do the like Though still I am constrained to say that in my small acquaintance with them I find no comparison between the English Papists and our Churches in point of Holiness I would they were much better 3. I do also protest that it is not my desire or design to make any innocent Papist to be accounted guilty of the faults of others which he disowns 4. Nor is it any of my desire or design to provoke the Magistrate to any cruelty or injustice towards them nor to lay any penalty on them but what is truly of necessity for the safety of himself and the Common-wealth and a just restraint of them from perverting others and doing mischief to the souls of men as I shall open more at large anon 5. Nor is it any of my desire or design to make the generality of them unjustly more odious with Rulers or People then the measure of their corruptions do deserve Or to hide any of their vertues or deprive them of any honour which is their due This much my conscience witnesseth of my intents though I know the partial will hardly believe it when they feel themselves smart by that Contradiction which they have made necessary for our own defence And this I thought necessary to premise before I lay down the following Proposals that prejudice and passion do not turn away men eyes or cause them to misinterpret them For it is prejudice partiality and faction that hath hitherto frustrated all such Proposals and attempts CHAP. LI. THere are five several Degrees of Peace which lye before us to be attempted between the Roman and Reformed Churches We shall begin with the highest and upon supposition of the failing of our Designs for that come down to the next and so to the Lowest 1. The first Degree of Peace to be Intended and Desired is That we may so far Agree as that we may hold personal Communion in the same Assemblies in the worship of God and live under the same particular Pastors 2. If that cannot be attained the next Degree desirable is That we may hold
a just Reconciliation as men that are Studious of Peace may prosecute with hope of some success And because I have lately met with a Paper called An Explanation of the Roman Catholick Belief c. which pretendeth to much moderation in divers points I purpose next to enquire whether it mean as it pretends that if it do we may give it welcome if not we may Detect its Fraud For as I should much rejoice to hear of so much amendment of the Roman Belief which I thought had been supposed by themselves to be incorrigible So I must confess that I am so much for plain and open dealing that I think it my duty to help to bring their works into the Light and try how they agree with the Truth and among themselves that men may judge of them as they are FINIS The Second Part PROVING That the Catholick Church is not a Political Body Headed by any Earthly Soveraign nor any such Unity to be Desired or endeavoured by any that would not Blaspheme Divide and Destroy under the pretence of Unity SPECIALLY Directed against the Soveraignty and Necessity too of General Coucnils to the followers of Grotius and others of that Party that at least would give them a Part in the Soveraignty with the Pope And propounding the true grounds and means of the Churches Unity and Peace By Rich. Baxter LONDON Printed by Robert White for Nevil Simmons Bookseller in Kederminster Anno Dom. 1659. Quest Whether the way to heal any Divisions in the Churches of Christ be by drawing them all into One Universal Visible Political Body under One Universal Visible Head or Government Or Whether the Catholick Church be a Body so United and Governed Neg. CHAP. I. Shewing the Occasion and Reasons of this Writing especially as from the Grotians which are Vindicated from the frivolous exceptions of Mr. Tho. Pierce I HAVE already in the first Part of this Book and formerly in another disproved the Popes Universal Headship and answered what Bellarmine Boverius and some others say for the maintaining of it And it is a work already done so fully by Chamier Whitaker and many others but most triumphantly and copiously by David Blondell in a French Treatise in Folio de primatu in Ecclesia against Cardinal Perron that I need not and therefore intend not to say much here upon that subject But this Disputation I principally intend 1. For the subverting of the Foundation of Popery which is the supposition that the Visible Catholick Church must needs be united in some Humane Visible Head 2. To confute the Opinion of the moderate sort of French Papists and Grotians that take a General Council to be the Legislative Head and the Judicial Head while they are in Being and the Pope ruling by the Laws of Councils to be the ordinary Judicial Head 3. To deliver some persons from a dangerous Temptation that by Grotius or his followers here in England are drawn into a conceit that the Catholick Church is such a Body as we here deny and think that the unity that the Scripture so commendeth to us cannot be attained without an Universal Visible Head which Temptation of theirs is much increased by observing the differences of Opinions in the world which every good man doth lament as we do all the sins and frailties that on earth accompany us in the state of imperfection As I blame not those that desire perfect Knowledge or Holiness but blame them that promise it to the Church on Earth when it is the prerogative of Heaven and much more should blame him that would say we shall be perfectly Wise and Holy if we will but be of this Opinion that the Church hath an Infallible Humame Head even so I blame not them that desire perfect Concord the Consequent of perfect Knowledge and Holiness for this is to desire Heaven But I blame them that promise us this Heaven on Earth and them much more that tell us we shall have it if we will but believe that a Pope or Council is the Universal Head and so will condemn the Church on Earth because it hath not attained that Celestial perfection which they have once fancied that it may and should attain Concerning Grotius his opinion design and great endeavours to reduce the Churches to Popery under the pretence of a Conciliation I have lately by the Invitation of Mr. Thomas Pierce given in my Evidence I think beyond all further question out of his own writings in his frequent and express assertions And Rivet in his Dialysis and his Apologet. and other writings hath sufficiently confuted him The mistakes of many in their judging of Grotius are caused by their supposition that the man was the same in his first Conciliatory enterprises and in his last which is not true He oft professeth his mutations himself and how apt he was to dislike that which he had but lately thought or said At first he thought out of Reconciling the Protestants among themselves But afterwards his design was to Reconcile them with the Papists and that by drawing them all to be Papists that is to unite in the Pope of Rome as the Universal Governour ruling according to Canons and Decrees and this he thought was the only way to the union of the Churches The Truth of this and the Mischiefs of the Enterprise must be apprehended by him that will understand my endeavours in this dispute and escape the snare that 's laid for their perversion And for the Truth of it I refer you to my foresaid writing of the Grotian Religion Since which it pleased Mr. Pierce to publish a sheet containing not any thing that hath the least aptitude to perswade a rational man that Grotianism is not Popery but some Reasons why he doth not at least as yet perform the vindication with a General profession how easily he can do it and make me a Winding sheet at least as sutable as that which I made for Popery which when he hath confuted I shall better know his mind and strength This with two or three frivolous Exceptions and many swelling words of Vanity with certain Squibs and empty jeers according to the manner of the man is the matter of his Advertisement Nothing could have been easier for him then to say or almost to say that I am very liable in every line and that his advantages are too many and that I am an advocate for the crimson sins of others and an encomiast of my own Nothing more vain then his ostentation of the mild discharge of his Censorship and his sensless intimation that I take the Virtues of Episcopal Divines for glittering sins when he never had a word from me of such a sence or tendency But Grotians will now be but Episcopal Divines and their glittering sins must be their Virtues Because I had acknowledged how civilly he dealt with me no doubt on a supposition that I was neerer his conceits then those that he had so copiously reproached he takes it
Ecclesiam utramque Gallicanam Brittanicam etiam tum cum Ecclesia Brittanica non communicabat cum Romanâ certe si utraque pars absque prejudicio sese mutuo intelligeret pars extrema de rigore suo vellet remittere ea Brittanicae Ecclesiae cum Gallicana concensio non foret adeo improbabilis atque prima fronte videtur Ecclesiam utramque vel alterutram ignorantibus I add this but to shew the Judgement of those on whom the judgement of Grotius had any influence for a Communion with the French as if we little differed from them Still professing that I would run with the forwardest to meet them upon tolerable terms And that the remembrance of the moderation wisdom charity of the Cassandrian party in France that resisted the violence of the rest long in vain and lamented the massacres and were oppressed by them is very greateful to my thoughts and the names of many of them very honorable in my esteem And it grieves me that Grotius called by Mr. Pierce a Protestant should so far out-go them in Popery whom the same man confesseth to have been Papists He goes much further then Cassander Much further then Thuanus that so plainly and truly openeth abundance of the Popish evills that Grotius patronizeth and so long and successfully did his part to keep out of France the Authority of the Council of Trent which was part of Grotius his Religion And how far he went beyond that excellent man Michael Hospitalius the Head of that party so much commended by Beza as well as by Thuanus and Foxius and others is easie to manifest 5. And I am the more provoked also to perform this task because I see by many more as well as Mr. P. that the design is still on foot and that the Papists that are got so strong in England under the mask of the Vani the Seekers the Infidels the Quakers the Behmenists and many other Sects have so much addition to their strength by Grotians that go under the mask of Episcopal Divines Which yet I should the less be troubled at if France Savoy England Holland Poland Bohemia and all parts where they prevail did not acquaint us by bloody tormenting thundering flaming evidence how they use their power where they dare 6. And it moveth me much also to consider the consequence of the point in hand It is not a meer speculation but a point so practical that the right decision and understanding of it is as much as the Peace of millions of souls yea of all the Churches and Common-wealths in Christendom is worth All that have any thing of the love of God alive within them are somewhat sensible of the sinfulness and misery contained in the divisions and discord of Believers and therefore they must needs be solicitous for the Cure and lay out themselves and all they have or can do to accomplish it if they knew the way And the more zealous any man is for Peace the more resolutely will he carry on his work and bear down all opposition that would hinder him in that which he thinks the way of Peace And when persons thus disposed by humanity and grace shall be quite mistaken in the very thing they seek even in the Nature of the Churches unity and peace they will think themselves bound with all their zeal and diligence to endeavour the doing of an evill work and to accomplish a work neither possible nor desirable And it is not hard for a man of an indifferent wit to fore-see what uncharitableness discomposure of minds of Churches and Common-wealths and abusing and endangering of souls is like to be the fruit of such mistakes about the Churches Unity and Peace And as the School useth to say from Boetius and Anselm Malum non est nisi à bono propter bonum so it will be like by experience to be made a proverb that Bellum discordia non sunt nisi à pacificis propter pacem The greatest discords and wars will be from the Love and Endeavour of Unity and Concord and for the obtaining of them by impossible means These following evills may easily be foreseen 1. If men mistake about the Nature of the visible form of the Catholick Church and its unity it is like to pervert their judgements in many other weighty points of Religion For when they have received this Error as a Truth then they will be exceedingly inclined to bend the rest of their opinions to it and contrive them into a Consistent Form For Truth would to Truth as Fire would to Fire and Water to Water Yea all that is flexible within them shall be bended to the interest of this conceit 2. As soon as ever any man hath received this opinion of the necessity of an Universal Visible Head or common Government of the whole Chruch he is either a Papist or of an opinion equivalent in folly tyrannie and impiety to Popery For if such a Visible Head must be there is no other that can pretend to it with Reason or Honesty any more then the Pope Nor is it our quarrel against Rome that their Bishop rather then another should be this usurping Head but that they would have such a one at all It is not who shall be the man or power but whether there shall be any such man or power that we dispute This Error about the Necessity of an Universal Visible Head is the very thing that turneth most to Popery and this is the common argument that is mannaged by deceivers to that end as their writings commonly declare 3. And then when men are drawn over to be Papists for the avoiding of Schism and the obtaining of Unity they are unawares involved in the most desperate Schism which I have proved that party to be guilty of and with it drink in the dregs of all the Roman abominations When men have set up a new Church-form by setting up a new Head and Center of Unity and then judge of all particular Churches and Members by this standard it leadeth them unavoidably to separate from all the Churches and Christians upon earth that conspire not and center not with them in their new devised Head 4. And by this means Charity is much destroyed in mens souls and he that hath least of Love hath least of God and the Preachers and Pastors turn all their studies into matter of Controversie and their labors into wranglings and all under pretence of Catholick Unity And having not charity they prove not only sounding brass and tinkling Cymbals in their most learned labors but too often burning brass like Perillus Bull and military Trumpets and all this under pretense of Charity when they have destroyed it Hence is it that uncharitable censures are so common and the Lambs of Christ so often cloathed in the skins of Wolves by the Wolves that have by exchange put on the skin of the Lamb. Scarse a man that crosseth or displeaseth that is dissenteth
from or disobeyeth the uncharitable Clergy but he is stigmatized for an Heretick and charged with almost as much wickedness as their mouths are wide enough to utter and the ears of other men to hear What horrid things have they spoken of the poor Waldenses and Albigenses and Bohemians Of Luther Oecolampadius Calvin and who not Though I have had applauding flattering Letters from some of them that tryed whether I were flexible and ductile yet I doubt not but I shall have my share my self before they have done with me I wonder I hear not of it before now Hence among other reasons its like that Mr. Pierce became so destitute of Charity as to disgorge his sould of so many bitter reproaches and calumnies against the Puritans and Presbyterians whom if he know not he sinneth but as Paul did but if he know he terrifieth us from his principles by the fruits that which shews the want of Charity shews the want of saving Grace and consequently the want of right to Glory Hence it is that the greatest Schismaticks are the commonest accusers of their Brethren with schism Pharisaically saying I thank thee Lord that I am not as other men nor as these Schismaticks Hence also it is that so many learned well-meaning Papists do so pervert their studies and endeavors and abuse and lose and worse then lose their wits and parts to draw men to their way compassing Sea and Land to make a Romish Proselite especially of a Prince or man of power interest or ability to serve them What pains take they to draw Nations to their minds and to embroil the world in contentions and confusions to attain their ends What horrid persecutions Massacres and barbarous inhumane cruelties have multitudes of men of learning and good parts and natures been ingaged in by the very Principle that I now confute and for the promoting of their kind of Unity and Concord in wicked and impossible ways 7. Besides this it takes men off from seeking the true Peace of the hurch while they mistakingly pursue a false peace The Devil the cunning Enemy of Concord hath not a more effectual way to take men off from the ways and means of holy Concord then by starting them a false game and causing them to lay out all their labor to build a Babel when they should be building Zion Oh what a blessed state might the Church be in if all the Jesuites Fryers Prelates Priests and others had laid out that labor for a righteous possible Unity and Peace in Gods appointed way which they have vainly and impiously laid out to unite the world in a Vice-christ or Vice-god Fore seeing and at present feeling many of these calamitous consequences to the Church I think it of exceeding moment that mens judgements should be rectified that are misled concerning the nature of the unity of the Church Still professing that to me they are the dearest Christians and nearest to my heart that are most for Unity and Concord so it be in Christ and upon righteous possible conditions CHAP. II. The true State of the Controversie and how much we grant HAving given you an account of the Occasion and Motives that produced this Disputation I shall now briefly state the Controversie between us And because the terms are all plain and my sense of them explained in the fore-going part I shall think no more here necessary then to tell you in certain Propositions How much we Grant and How far we are Agreed and then to tell you what it is that we deny and wherein we differ Prop. 1. We are Agreed that Christ hath a true Catholick Church on earth and ever hath had since first he planted it and ever will have to the end of the world and that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it or hath it ever had an Intercision for a day or an hour and that this Church is so far Infallible as that it never was nor ever will be ignorant of or erroneous against any Article of faith or part of obedience that is of absolute Necessity to salvation otherwise by that error it should have ceased to be the Church of Christ Prop. 2. We are agreed that this Catholick Church in respect of the Internal faith and charity of the Members and their Communion with Christ by the quickening Spirit on his part and holy sincere returns of devotion on theirs may be called Mystical or Invisible The thing is utterly undenyable though some Papists in the perversness of contentious Disputations seem to deny it And doubtless when they assert that Christ hath no Invisible Church they must mean it simply and not quoad haeo interiora or else they speak against all sense and Reason No man is simply Invisible but every man as to his soul is Invisible Prop. 3. We are Agreed that this Catholick Church in regard of the outward Profession of this Inward Faith and Holiness and in regard of the discernable numbers of persons making this Profession hath ever been visible since first it began to be visible And that the visibility hath never had any intercision If some Protestanss say otherwise it 's clear that this is all that by the common judgement of Protestants is maintained viz. That Christians and the Catholick Church containing the Professing Christians through the world have ever since their first planting had a visible being but yet 1. That the Visibility was not such but that Hereticks as the Arrians did might make a controversie of it whether they or the true Christians were the Church indeed and by their greater numbers or Power might blind men that they should not see which was the true Church 2. And that in the Catholick Church some parts may be much more corrupt and others much more pure and the Purer part be so much the lesser and oppressed and vilified by the more corrupt that the most part should not discern their Purity but take them as they did the Waldenses for Hereticks 3. And that two parts or more of this Catholick Church may so fall out among themselves as that one of them shall deny the other to be part of the Catholick Church when yet they really for all that censure remain parts of it as much as they And hereupon may grow a contest between them which of the two is the true Catholick Church and one part may say It is we and not you and the other may say It is we and not you and no man shall be able to discern which of the two is the Catholick Church because it is neither of them but each are a part 4. And though the Bodies of the members are visible and their Worshipping actions Visible and their Profession audible yet the faith Professed is not Visible nor the Truth of their Profession or of their Christianity or Church Truth being the object of the Intellect and not of sence 5. And though the true members of the Church do know the true Church
and so it is apparent unto them yet most that are not members of it do not know it Arrians and Mahometans know us to be men professing such and such Articles of faith but they know not that to be the true faith nor us to be the true Church but judge the contrary In this sence contained in these Propositions it is that Protestants deny the Church to have been alwayes Visible and not as the Papists commonly mistake them Prop. 4. We are agreed that this Catholick Church is but One There are not two Visible nor two Mystical Catholick Churches Nor are the Mysticall and Visible two Bellarmine might have spared all his labour that he hath bestowed in vain upon this point to prove that the Visible and Invisible are not two Catholick Churches The Protestants are further from that Opinion then the Papists and it is more suitable to the Popish Interest and Cause to be of that Opinion then to the Protestants If it were not that they are past learning by the advantage of their Infallibility and especially of one man and one so mean condemned by them and that it is unlawfull to be a Teacher of Error I could tell them of a new device by the advantage of this distinction of Catholick Churches for the modelling their mistakes into a more specious plausible form then now it appeareth in to the rest of the Churches But we are glad of their company in any Truth and therefore will not disagree from them in that which makes against themselves One Objection I once heard a Learned Anabaptist cast in our way viz. There may be a Visible Church of hypocrites therefore the Mystical and Visible may be two Answ But the Question was of the Catholick Church and not of a particular Church We confess that some members of the Catholick Church are Mystical and Visible in the several respects before mentioned and that some are Visible and not Mystical or as Bellarmine well calls them Dead Members and not Living and that the Church as Visible is more comprehensive then the Church as Regenerate or Invisible and yet all but One Church though it have more members in it in one respect then in another And we confess that its possible for twenty or an hundred of these Dead members to constitute a particular Church by themselves though it is not usual for Visible Churches to be without Living members and so there may be a particular Visible Dead Member Analogically called a Member or a particular Visible Church that is thus Dead and these be parts of the Catholick Church as Visible But yet there is not two Catholick Churches One Visible and the other Invisible one alive and the other Dead In a Corn field there are 1. Good Corn. 2. Stricken blasted Corn that hath a name and shew but in deed no Corn. 3. Tares darnell cockle and such weeds It is called A Field as it conteineth them all It is called a Corn field only from the Corn. The Univocal proper parts of a Corn field is the Corn only The Visible and Analogical parts are also the blasted ears The darnel and cockle are no parts but noxious accidents There are not two fields of Corn one of true Corn and the of other blasted ears And yet the Corn field taken largely and Analogically hath more parties in it then true Corn and you may perhaps have some particular sheavs that are wholly of that which is blasted which you will call a sheaf of Corn Analogically only but a sheaf of weeds you will not at all call a sheaf of Corn. Even so in the Catholick Church there are sincere Christians which are true and living members and there are Hypocrites which are Analogically members and there are locally mixed many that by denying essential points of the Christian faith or by notorious Impiety do declare themselves to be weeds and no members of the Church at all Prop. 5. We are also Agreed that this One Visible Catholick Church is One Political Holy Society as united in Jesus Christ the Head who teacheth and ruleth it by his Ministers and other Officers in the several parts according to the necessity of each We call it One Political Society 1. Principally because that all the Church is united in this One Soveraign or Head the Lord Jesus and therefore it is called his body 2. They have all the same holy doctrine of faith and Law to live by and be judged by 3. They have all Church Officers of the same sort under Christ to teach and govern them 4. They have all the same kind of Holy Ordinances as Reading Preaching Praying Praise Sacraments c. appointed them by the Lord. 5. They are all engaged in One and the same Holy Covenant to the Lord More might be mentioned and shall be God willing in a peculiar Treatise of Catholicism or the Catholick Church And though Christ himself be not now seen among us yet may he truly be called a Visible Head For 1. He sometime lived visibly on earth 2. And is now the Visible King of all the Church as he is in the Heavens Though we see him not the Celestiall Inhabitants do It is but little of the world that seeth the Pope any more then they see Christ If one unseen to us may be a pretended Visible Head the other may be truly so So that the Body Head Laws Worship c. being Visible so is the Policy Prop. 6. We are agreed also that all these Christians and particular Churches are obliged by Christ even by the very Law of Nature and the ends of their calling and the General Laws of the Gospell to live in as much Love and Unity and Peace as they can and to hold as full and extensive communion as they can that is as far as their work requireth and their Capacity will permit and enable them those that are cohabitans and members of one Congregation must hold local communion in that Congregation unless Necessity prohibite Those that through distance are uncapable of joining in the same Assemblies should yet be conjoined 1. In the same Lord Faith Baptism Covenant Profession 2. In the same bond of Christian special Love 3. In the use of the same sort of holy worship as to the Substance though they differ in circumstances as in the Word Prayer Praises Sacraments c. 4. And in one sort of Church Officers and Government And as far as we have to do with each other all this should be manifested and we should readily own one another as Brethren and true Churches notwithstanding lesser differences Prop. 7. To these ends it is meet that the Bishops or Pastors of the Churches should hold in way of Association as frequent Assemblies as is needfull for the maintaining of mutual Love and Correspondency and right understanding of each other and to manifest their unity and assist each other in the work of God that it may be the more successfully carried on by united strength against
weighty a point without intolerable accusation of it The Soveraign Power or Headship of Pope or Council is not revealed in the Holy Scripture Therefore c. They have not yet produced a Text to prove either of them Those produced by the Italians for the Popes Headship are disclaimed by the French as meaning no such thing and our Writers have largely manifested their abusing of the Text. So have they done of those that are brought for the Headship of Councils These texts are spoke to so fully by Chamier Whitaker Amesius and abundance more that I think it in vain to do it here again That of 1 Tim. 3. 15. that the Church is the pillar and ground of Truth doth not speak a word of a General Council nor a word of Headship The whole Church united in Christ is the Pillar and Ground that is the certain Receptacle and retainer of the Truth the Law of Christ being written in their hearts None seems more to favour their concecit then Ephes 4. 15 16. which Grotius fastens on But even that is against them and not for them For 1. It is Christ and only Christ that is here said to be the head and all other parts contradistinguished and excluded from Headship and the Body is not said to be united in them 2. And it is by association and mutual communication of their several gifts that the parts are compacted together and edifie the whole and not by meeting in any one and deriving from it Object But were not the Apostles General Officers and so the Church united in General officers Answ This is little to the Question For 1. the Apostles had one among them to be the Soveraign or Head of the rest but were of equal power 2. Nor did a major part of their whole number make such a Head for the Church to unite in nor do we read that ever a Major vote carryed it among them against a Minor for they were all guided by the Spirit Yet its true that they met ofter together then a General Council can 2. The Apostles as extraordinarily qualified and as the Secretaries of the Spirit have no successors But the Apostles as ambulatory unfixed Ministers had even then many companions For Barnabas Luke Apollo and abundance more did then go up and down preaching as well as the Apostles yet had not any one of them a special charge of Governing all the Churches nor yet all of them united in a body For the Apostles called not the Evangelists and other fellow workers to consult in Councils about the Government of the whole But both they and their helpers did severally what they could to teach and settle the Churches 3. Who be they now that are the Apostles successors If all the Bishops in the world the case is as we left it If any small number of Primates or Patriarcks how shall we know which and how many If they be not twelve why should one Apostle have a successor and not others But there are no twelve only that lay claim to the succession And if you go further who can limit and say who and how many they be and how far the number may be increased or decreased and by whom In Cyprians dayes he and his fellows in the Council at Carthage declare that all Bishops were equal and none had power over other And so thought others in those times Nor was there then any number of Bishops that claimed to be the sole successors of the Apostles to rule all the rest And if they had when the Church increaseth the Rulers must increase But this is not to the main point Argum. 20. The Scripture doth appropriate the Universal Headship to Christ only and deny it to all others therefore neither Pope nor Council are the Universal Head Eph. 5. 23. It is the peculiar Title of Christ to be Head of the Church to whom it must be subject 1 Cor. 11. 3. The Apostle would have us know that the Head of every man is Christ and the head of the woman is the man and the Head of Christ is God So that there is a particular Head over some parcell of the body below Christ but to be the Universal Head of every man is the proper Title of Christ In 1 Cor. 12. the unity of the body and diversity of the members is more largely expressed then any where else in Scripture and there when the said unity of the body had been so fully mentioned the Apostle comes to name the Head of that Unity Vers 27. which is only Christ Now ye are the body of Christ and members in particular The Church is never called the body of the Pope or of a Council but the body of Christ yea as was even now said in the next words the Apostles Prophets and Teachers are enumerated to the particular members contradistinct from the Head so far are all or any one of them from being the head themselves And in Col. 2. 10 17 19. it is Christ only that is called the Head and the body is said to be of Christ and he only is mentioned as the Center of its Unity And not holding the Head from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministred and knit together increaseth with the increase of God And Col. 1. 18. And he is the Head of the body the Church If any say that you cannot hence argue Negatively that therefore no one else is the Head I answer They may as well say when it is affirmed that the Lord he is God you cannot thence conclude that Baal is not God The Apostle plainly speaks this of Christ as his peculiar honour And he spoke to men that knew well enough that natural bodies have but one Head unless they be Monsters And he would not so oft insist on this Metaphor intending so great a disparity in the similitude and never discover any such intention So in Ephes 1. 22. He gave him to be Head over all things to the Church which is his Body the fulness of him that filleth all in all And in Ephes 4. the Apostle purposely exhorteth us to the observation of this unity and purposely telleth us by a large enumeration wherein it doth consist but in all he never mentioneth the Pope or a Council yea he plainly excludeth them Vers 3 4. c. Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace There is one body and one spirit even as you are called in one hope of your calling One Lord One Faith One Baptism One God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in you all But unto every one of us is given Grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ He gave some Apostles and some Prophets and some Evangelists and some Pastors and Teachers for the perfecting of the Saints for the work of the Ministry for the Edifying of the body of Christ till we all come in the unity of the
division nor discontent Lay the Churches peace upon no new humane Impositions if you would have it hold Peruse Rom. 14. and the other Text last cited 1 Cor. 6. 12. 11. The Churches Peace or Unity must not be laid on any bare words of mans devising It 's not a work for Councils or Prelates to form the Christian doctrine in new methods and terms and then to force others to subscribe or use those very terms If the same men that refuse this be willing to subscribe to the whole Scripture or to a Confession in Scripture terms you may force him to no more Object But Hereticks will subscribe to Scripture Answ 1. They must wrest it then or wrest their Consciences And by either or both these shifts they may also subscribe to any of your Confessions 2. If his Heresie be latent in his mind you know it not nor can call him an Heretick nor doth it hurt the Church If it he published or preached to others let civil Governors question him for corporal punishment and let the Associate Pastors question him to his Reformation or Rejection You will have a better ground to reject him for delivering falsehood in his own words then for not subscribing to Truth in your words when he subscribed the same Truth in Gods Words There is no Unity to be expected if you will so far depart from the Scripture sufficiency as to make any more for sense or phrase of absolute necessity to our peace By phrase or terms I mean either the same numerically as in the Original or equipollent as in translations And I say not that it 's necessary to the unity of the Church that every word in Scripture Original or Translations be subscribed to for some may doubt of the corruption of a word or Book But that no more is necessary If all Scripture be not of that degree of Necessity much less humane additions Isa 8. 20. 1 Tim. 3. 17. 2 Tim. 1. 13. 1 Cor. 9. 5. 1 Tim. 6. 20. Act. 20. 32. 12. The Churches Unity Peace must not be laid upon all Divine Truths as not on lesser darker points which neither the being nor well-being of Christianity is concerned in so much as to rest upon them Phil. 3. 15 16. Rom. 14. 15 17 20. Heb. 5. 11 12 13 14. 1 Cor. 7. 19. Gal. 5. 6. 6. 15. Col. 3. 11. 13. We ought to love and esteem as Christians and members of the Catholick Church all those that profess to believe the Essentials of Christianity and to be sanctified by the Spirit of God and lead a holy upright life so they make a credible profession not evidently contradicted by words or deeds though these persons may differ from us in many lower points of Doctrine Worship or Government 1 Cor. 1. 2. Eph. 6. 24. Gal. 6. 15 16. Phil. 3. 16. Rom. 15. 1 2. 14. 1 2. 1 Cor. 8. 9. 14. We ought so to manage the Worship of God in our particular solemn Assemblies that no sober peaceable Christian may be repulsed or forced from our local Communion through differences in things of indifferent nature Heb. 8. 5. Mat. 15. 9. Rom. 14. 13. 14 1. 2 Cor. 11. 3. Joh. 4. 23 24. 15. If any Churches differ from us in Ceremonies or smaller things or if any particular Christians differ so that they cannot in conscience hold local Communion with us in the same Assemblies for Worship E. G. if we sit at the Lords Supper and they dare not take it without kneeling if we sing a version of the Psalms which they scrup'e to joyn in If we permit none to joyn that will not conform in disputable things in such cases though it be first our duty to do our best to remove all offences yet if that cannot be done we may and ought in several Assemblies to take each other for Brethren and of the same Catholick Church so be it we all hold the same essentials of Faith and Godliness and walk accordingly and especially if we also hold those weighty superstructures that the welfare of the Church is most concerned in Though here were few or no instances of this case in the days of the Apostles when divisions were not so great as now yet the general rules in the fore-cited Texts do prove it 16. Ecclesiastical Ministerial Government by whomsoever exercised must not degenerate into a secular coercive Government nor may we use carnal weapons nor meddle by force with mens bodies or estates nor yet can we oblige the Magistrate to do it meerly to execute our censures or without sufficient Evidence to prove it his duty nor can we oblige the people against the Word of God clave errante so that neither Bishop nor Council hath any such power as is properly decisively Judicial obliging to execution be the sentence right or wrong But our people must know that though we be their Guides or Rulers yet are we but Ministers and that they have a higher power to regard and must not obey us against the Lord but in and for him The Power of Pastors therefore is not like Magistrates or absolute Judges as is said before but like a Physitian in his Hospital or in an infected City among his Patients and like a Reader of any Science to voluntary Scholars in his School and as an Embassador to them to whom he is sent So that our Governing being but by the Word and on the Conscience is of the same nature with our Directing 1 Pet. 5. 3. Luke 22. 25 26. 3 Joh. 9. 10. 1 Cor. 4. 1 2. 17. Magistrates are Governors of the Church even as a Church and of Christians as Christians though not Absolutely nor in the same respects by the same means to the same neerest Ends as Pastors Magistrates must force us to our duty and punish us if we be wicked or negligent even as Pastors and cast us out of our Benefices and deny us encouragements if we be insufficient so that ad hoc the Magistrate is the only Judge what is sound doctrine and what heresie what Ministers are sufficient or insufficient culpable or not I say ad hoc so far as to Judge who shall have publick Liberty and Countenance and who shall be punished restrained and discountenanced Thus far the Mastrate is Judge in Religion besides that Judgement of Choice which every private man hath And therefore the Princes of the Christian world should hold some correspondencies like General Councils among themselves by their agents for carrying on the work of Christ and much of the unity and prosperity of Christians lyeth on their hands Isa 49. 23. Psal 2. 12. Rom. 13. 1 2 3 4. 1 King 2. 27 35. 2 King 18. 4. 2 King 23. 8 20. 2 Chron. 14. 3 5. Josh 1. 8. 1 Tim. 2. 2. 18. Yet are the Pastors of the Church in their places Rulers or Guides of Princes and Magistrates that is we Guide them by Doctrine and Church discipline as they Rule us