bear the place of the Example 27. It may be granted that Images may be worshipped C. 23. improperly and by accident with the same kind of worship C. 24. with which the Exemplar but not for their own sakes and properly and therefore Latria is not properly and for themselves to be given for them 28. A Vow is an Act of Religion due to God only like L. 3. c. 9. De cultu sanctor as an Oath and Sacrifice as appears from the Scriptures whose Vowes are constantly said to be made to God Yet it is most certain that in some manner Vowes may be made to Saints 29. It is not probable that Christ in these words this is De Eucharist l. 1. c. 9. my Body would speak figuratively 30. One Body may be in divers places at once L. 3. c. 3. 31. That the Elements in the Eucharist are turned into L. 3. per. tot Christs Body 32. It is a truth necessary to be believed that whole L. 4. c. 21. 22. Christ is in the kind of Bread and whole Christ is in the kind of Wine 33. No more Grace is contain'd in one kind then in C. 23. both 34. Worshipping the Host excuses from Idolatry because C. 29. they believe there is no Bread remaining and no Catholick holds that Divine Worship is to be given to Bread 35. Our Sacrifice is truly and properly called a Sacrifice L. 2. de missa c. 2. no less than the ancient Sacrifices as is shown in the former Book 36. The Rite of Reconciling Sinners after Baptism which De Paenit lib. consists of Repentance discovered by external signs and the word of Absolution Catholicks affirm to be a true and proper Sacrament 37. There is a treasure of superfluous Merits in the Church De Indulg l. c. 2 3 11. which may by the Pope be applyed to the benefit of other persons by Indulgences 38. The Catholick Church doth openly affirm Extream Unction De Extrem Unct. c. 1. to be truly and properly a Sacrament 39. Orders are a Sacrament truly and properly so called De Ord. c. 1. 40. Matrimony of Believers is a proper Sacrament De Matrim c. 1. To these innumerable other might be added of strange nature to the Word of God and belief and practise of the ancient Church but these are more then sufficient to confront those vainly objected to us by them whereof some are most false others most true others false or true as they may be taken And now the manner of proceeding in this Discourse being propounded to be touched in the second place here must not be forgotten In which I confess I have not a little varied from my first intention and resolution which were in a plain compendious way to set down the Principal Doctrine of Faith and Worship agreeable to God's Holy Word and to the mind of the best Ancient Churches as well as our Own and that without Passion or particular Reflexions on any Party or Person by name knowing that of Synesius to be most true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Synes Ep 57. That Soul which would be a Vessel to receive God must be void of all Passions But finding some things both approved and disproved by me would scarce be credited without such instances I held my self obliged to forsake that resolution in the process of my Discourse and a little in the beginning where I was forced by ill Paper and Ink to write somewhat over the second time to make it legible Otherwise I determined to avoid Names and Testimonies of Authors after the manner of them who before me have written Institutions and Sums of this nature Yet have I not taken upon me in an imperious way to multiply Canons and Axioms and impose them with expectation of greater faith in them then such men will allow to the Decrees of the Holy Councils so called And this with a perswasion I know not how or why wrought into credulous persons that now-a-dayes only Scripture is understood and they only speak Scripture but others humane Inventions Which most bold demand 't is a wonder how many prone naturally to superstitious novelties do without the least suspicion of vanity and falsity readily receive for a most certain and fundamental Truth but is indeed a fundamental Error and the root of all Heresie towards the Faith and of all Schism towards the Church I remember how some years since enquiring of one very near to me what Divinity his Tutor grounded him in he answered me Wollebius And farther inquiring what Wollebius said of a certain point he replyed as he there found it against which when I put in my exception he wondered at me and indeavored to silence me by telling me It was a Canon I have not here proceeded so Canonically as others nor yet so Polemically but considering according to St. Johns distinction that there are Children in Christ 1 John 2. 13. and Young men and Old men commonly call'd Incipientes Prosicientes and perfecti i. e. Beginners Proficients and Perfect men I have here pitched upon the mean sort of these to whom to direct my Labors knowing there were but too many Catechises amongst us for the former and too few Treatises or none for the second And that to write Polemically for the satisfaction of the third required another more proper language and a more Scholastical Person and much more large Volumes then this one though this Book hath increased under my hands well nigh thrice as much as I at first intended And in truth it is to be lamented and blushed at that none of the Learned men of our Church have yet appeared in so noble and necessary a Work as the fuller and more entire managing of the Elenctical part of Divinity to the preventing daily mischiefs arising from the necessity of repairing to our Enemies of both sides to perfect Theological Studies without the due ballance on our side to prevent prejudice I hope God will stir up the spirits of some to set their hands to and enable them to go through so good a Work Voetius of Utrecht than whom I think none of this Age hath Certum autorem ejus qui solidè compendiosè accommodatè ad nestra tempora hee â—gat hâ—ctenus non vidi expectandum est ergo c. Voetius Bibl. l. 2. c. 5. been acquainted with more modern Authors much complains for want of some compendious Body of Elenctical Divinitie which to that day he had not seen And therefore expected that long defired Piece of Famous Altingius should at length come forth which was only in the hands of his Scholars in writing Yet I find this Work of Henricus Altingius to have been published the same year with Voetius his Bibliotheca viz. Anno 1654. and called Theologia Elenctica Nova viz. New Elenctical Divinitie which in truth hath not its name New for nothing in that manner of handling Divinity as none before
only to signifie how Christ was lifted up on the Cross but as practised in the Roman Church to the intent direct and divine Worship be given it 7. Wicked men eat not the Body of Christ Sure enough in a proper sense not denominatively only as the consecrated Elements are called the Body of Christ very often and currently 8. That they who communicate not are to be put out of the Church This is such an Error as the Ancient Church was guilty of as well as we as your own Vicecomes sheweth at large Vicecomes Vol. 3. l. 1. c. 18. 9. The Keys of the Church consist only in opening the Word of God No such thing is held by us 10. Private Confession is to be taken away Not so much as Sectaries say this absolutely 11. The Ceremonies of the Church are to be abrogated Simply and falsly said and directly contrary to the Articles of our Artic. 20. Church 12. Prayers in the Latin Tongue are barbarous and against St. Pauls Precept Very true where they are at first so instituted and understood by very few or none and so are they in the English Tongue or any other 13. No man can fulfill the Law This is true or false as it may be taken 14. More Masses then one cannot be said in one day in one Church Here our Accuser saith he knows not what For neither doth our Church inhibit more then once to officiate Liturgically neither did the Ancient Church practise if permit it for above four hundred years after Christ as appears from Dioscorus Bishop of Alexandria consulting with Leo the first Bishop of Rome what he should Leo 1 Epist 79 or as some So. See also Grecian consecr Dist c. 51. do when Christians were so numerous that they could not all be received into the Church at once who answered In such cases he might safely reiterate the office And the Council of Antisiodorum or Auxere held about the Year 578 decreed that but one Mass should be said upon one Altar in one day which is as much observed by the Church of Rome now-a-days as other Canons of Councils which lye in their way thrown out And where in the Ancient Church do you read of above one Altar in one Church 15. Unity is no Note of the Church Discords and Divisions are certain signs of Errors but Unity is no certain sign of Truth nor so much as of a Church how then can it be of a true Church 16. Universal Councils may be repeal'd by Particular This See Petrus Gregorius Syntagm l. 15. c 3. is nothing he might have said by particular persons as the Popes who may according to that Church null Acts of Councils Oecumenical But we only hold that in things mutable according to the condition Article 34. of Time Place and other Circumstances rendring some Decrees prejudicial to some Churches contrary to the intention of the first Ordainers of them a Provincial Church may make alterations 17. The Church may erre in Faith And what of that meaning any one Individual single Church as the Roman hath according to our Articles 18. The Precepts of the Church concerning set Fasts are A Doctrine of Devils It is rather a Doctrine of Devils to teach so 19. Peter was not the Prince of the Apostles Peter was A or if you will The Principal Apostle but he was not the Prince of any one of them much less of all 20. The Bishop of Rome is Antichrist We are not so much agreed about this point as to give in a full verdict but we agree he is Antichristian 21. The difference concerning Leaven and Easter is inconsiderable Where no danger of Schisms or confusions may alter the case it is true 22. It is Heathenish to invoke Saints that reign with Christ Whether heathenish or no may be doubted they never worshipping any relating to Christ But for all that it may be and is superstitious and idolatrous in the sense very current in the Roman Church 23. The Reliques of Saints are not to be worshipped We hold so indeed though we hold they are to be respected relatively 24. The Saints in Heaven have no merits It is true taken strictly and properly 25. Indulgences of the Church are vain They are not only vain but wicked and generally blasphemous and ridiculous as mangâ—ed by the Church of Rome contrary or at least without all Precedents of the Christian Church for many hundred years viz. in remitting Sins or Punishments after this life and that divers times before they are committed Is not this fine and wonderful ancient and Catholick 26. Nothing is to be read in the Church besides Canonical Scripture This is rank Puritanism contradicted by themselves in their practise who read their Sermons as well as others and pray which is aequivalent to reading in this case out of their own heads rather than Scripture 27. In Oecumenical Councils and Private for the explaining of the Doctrine of Faith the consent of Lay-Princes is necessary It is necessary for the orderly assembling of such Councils It is necessary for the giving any Secular enforcement unto them 28. That it is lawful for Lay-men alone the Clergy opposing to introduce the Ancient Religion This is true no farther then that of Gerson which is alledged to this purpose A Lay-man with Scripture on his side is to be preferred before a Council without it Supposing a monstrous Proposition no wonder if a monstrous conclusion follows 29. He is no Bishop that teacheth not This is also a Puritan strain It being only true that he is no faithful conscientious Pastor but either proud or treacherous or sloathful or basely prudent who doth not in person discharge his Office so far as he is able without turning the care of his flock over to others using that for an argument of keeping close in his Cabin which is rather an argument of appearing in his charge viz. storms on the Church Opposition the Faith and Orders of the Church meet withal and difficulties obstructing the truth It being both shameful and ridiculous both in Bishop and Priest to censure others for enemies to the Church and for them so to wast it in all mens esteem in deserting it and delivering it up to the care of others themselves seeking little else then their temporal Harvest and case These men are over the Church indeed but 't is as the Extinguisher is over the Candle to put it out They pretend for themselves they have been sufferers for the Church and so it should seem indeed by their carriage to it in that through their scandalous negligence as to their charge they take a course to revenge themselves of it by making it suffer as much or more for them 30. Faith alone justifies How this is held we have even now as also we shall hereafter more fully explain 31. There are no Merits in Good works There are none properly so called 32. Priests and Monks may marry 'T is true where the
nor too narrow and rigorous The Reason hereof may be first taken from the name which imports such 〈◊〉 dictae Gâ—â—â—â— voce ex interpretatieâ—â— electionas quâ— quis sive ad instituendas suâ—cipiendas utitur c. Tertullianus Praescript cap. 6. Vide 〈◊〉 Hispalens Origin lib. â—3 a singularity of choice and addiction to an opinion which may as well be true as false good as evil Thus the ancient Heathens as well Roman as Grecian used the word and so did the Christians too for some hundred years after Christ And when it began to be restrain'd to the evil part a second thing made the notion of it no less difficult and obscure viz. the largeness of it for those errors which were not material or of any great consequence to the Christian Faith or Church as for to stigmatize them which were of note and moment in the same And a third thing obscuring the true nature is the manner of asserting and maintaining great as well as small Errours The word Heresie generally signifies any opinion either good or bad More especially it signifies an Errour in Religion Thus Ecclesiastical Writers take it Yet most properly it is an Errour in the Foundation of Christian Religion taught and defended with obstinacy Perkins on Galat. 5. v. 20. To understand this we must know how that a twofold Criminalness in Heresie according to the two more essential parts constituting it according to opinions generally received The one is called the formal part which relates to the manner of holding such opinions as are erroneous Inter Haereticâ—s non sunt deputandi qui aut ab Ecclesiasticis seducti sunt à parentibus in errorem lapsi nullà pertinaci animâ—sitate defendunt quaerunt autem 〈◊〉 solicitudine veritatem corrigi parati quum invenerint Augustin Epist 168. For lighter errours against the Doctrine of the Scriptures and peace of the Church being maintained with obstinacy and against due proposal of the truth do characterize and constitute an Heretick The other is the material part namely That about which men do err in Faith And this hath a peculiar difficulty in it arising from the undetermined points of Faith and I think a moral impossibility as they call it to define what are those so necessary points of Faith to be believed the denyal where of makes an Heretick This is thought generally to be sufficiently explained in the Creeds of the Church by some But others find many considerable points not therein comprehended unless by such a reduction whereby any thing almost may be compelled to come under anothers wing There are therefore that hold that the decrees and resolutions of Counsels fully and only can satisfie this scrupulousness and no question but all these conduce very much to the acquiring a settled Judgment in matters of Faith and espeially this latter against which notwithstanding there may be made these following exceptions First That all things defined by Councels and that with the affixing of Anathema's are confessedly not of Faith but of Rites and Order also Secondly That those Canons which are of Faith are so variously and miserably handled and distracted by Learned Interpreters that a sober well-meaning Christian may without any heretical pravity of mind fall involuntarily into a reputed Heresie Thirdly That contrary things have sometimes been determined in several ages From all which it is manifest That it is much more easie to define Heresie then an Heretick because there is an ingredient of personal aversion from or opposition to the Truth which can scarce be discovered but in the abstract Heresie may properly enough be defined to be not an opinion but a False Proposition contrary to the Catholick Faith And if it be thus uncertain and obscure what Heresie is through so many various kinds and degrees thereof answerable to the several branches therefore it cannot be easie to prove all Heresie in the common notion as opposite to Faith to be destructive to Faith That it destroyes that Part of Faith against which it is bent is undeniable but that any particular Errour should destroy the whole any farther than it is opposite to the whole Body of Faith is incredible Some Heresies pluck up the Tree of Life Faith by the roots some cut it down to the root some lop off the arms some lesser branches and some which have been reputed Heresies do only brush and beat off the leaves and ornaments An example of the former is given by St. Paul to the Corinthians some of whom it should seem denied the Resurrection in general and by necessary implication of Christ who was as dead as any mortal man else But if there be no resurrection 1 Cor. 15. 13 14. of the dead then is Christ not risen And if Christ be not risen then is our preaching vain and your faith is also vain It were to no purpose to believe any point in Christian Religion dis-believing that of the resurrection And in short to deny any thing expressed or necessarily and immediately included in the form of words used in Baptism is to root up all our Creed and render all our Faith vain in other Articles An instance of the second sort of Heresie may be to deny the Mediation of Christ by way of satisfaction for us restraining the intercession of him to that supposed one now in Heaven Of the third may be Errours about Free-will and affirming a positive necessity to commit sin against God Of the denyal of the efficacy of Good works done in Christ towards our salvation and the affirming a meritoriousness in them towards the same Of the last the affirming it unlawful to use any Ceremonies in Gods service but what are specially commanded in his word And from hence it seemeth necessary to distinguish Heresies and Hereticks into Formal or direct and Virtual and real A Formal Heresie is Propositio sapiens haeresim est ex cujus concessione co-assumpto aliquo quod non potest rationabiliter negari sequitur â—aeresis in fide vt siquis diceret quod beatus Gregorius non fuisset Papa Gerson de necessitate Salutis that which is expresly maintained and asserted in tearms but denied in the inference and consequence whichyet certainly and necessarily follows upon such positions as supposing a man should with the Monothelites of old affirm that Christ had but one Will. This is a formal and direct Heresie but if as it is possible the same person should deny the true consequence hereof viz. That he consisted but of one Nature He were not a formal Heretick in this latter because though this Errour doth certainly arise from the former yet all Heresies being erroneous apprehensions and affections of the mind this Errour being not received into his mind doth not so affect him as to denominate him formally an Heretick Yet must he answer for Heresie in his account before God because the movers and promoters of such shall no more escape then he shall from the punishment of
to him or otherwayes becomes his by the like Divine title as the Supream Power rightly posited and possessed doth to the owner thereof and therefore this being more sacred the invasion of this right is much more wicked and unjust Secondly Because a publick mischief and of general influence upon all is much more intolerable than a private But such a violation of Princely Right must of necessity draw on a publick mischief upon the whole civil Body I mean all the Subjects in such a Nation who shall be distracted between the sense of obedience known otherwise to be due and the terrour of usurped Power threatning ruin to such as comply not with their unjustice This being so necessary and convincing a truth unto most men of competent reason though incompetent conscience they have sought out an evasion which as occasion may serve may unqualifie Princes and ennoble and enable Subjects to oppose in hostile manner the tyrannies as they call them of Princes And the one strikes high and through the loyns of all Supremacie in single Persons affirming that one man is not capable of such a mass of power without apparent tyranny And as for manifest tyranny no great scruple they think ought to be made in repressing and curbing it and reducing it into its proper bounds This must be refelled by a more reasonable and sober judgment of tyranny For 't is a gross and dangerous mistake to look upon tyranny with such a vulgar and evil eye as to conceive that Plinipotencie and illimited Power is presently tyranny And that tyranny is not so much the abuse and unjust exercise of power which is the truest description of it but power it self and that it is not separable from some kind of Government as that which is absolute and unconfin'd by Laws But the first thing here supposed and so commonly and boldly taught is very false For there is no such thing as a Government in it self tyrannical and there is no one of all those which have been or may be invented but may equally be subject to that imputation And to be brief there can no possible reason be given why the Government of one should be tyranny rather than that of many of a Senate Or why people should not be said more truly to be free under that than this the Laws being more benign and equal there than here as who can deny but they may be whatever actually they are Nay we see that where most plausibly and gloriously Liberty is pretended by Governours and presumed on by the credulous multitude there commonly the yoke of obedience is most heavy and that a bold affirmation of a Free people prevails to the perswasion of men that so in truth they are contrary to common sense And all this chiefly from that fundamental Errour taken for an unquestionable truth viz. That to be governed by many is a state of Freedom and by a single Person of tyranny But tyranny is not proper to any one kind of Government whether consisting of one or more It is in brief no Government at all but the excess and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Arist lib. 3. Polit. cap. 4. 5. corruption of Governing and is in it self equally incident to all kinds however where Learning most flourished of old that extream hath been as it were appropriated to one the better surely to secure the hold which many Usurpers possessed themselves of commonly taking occasion from the miscarriages of such persons as were the managers of Power to invade Government themselves And if it be a true and reasonable distinction of Tyrants into Titled and Titleless how is it possible those great many and zealous assertours of Popular Liberty and invaders of Government as Junius Erutus with his Fellows should escape the due censure of the worst of Tyrants who expelling a Tyrant who had a Title usurped a power to which he had no Title and then proceeded to exercise an act to which he had no power viz. the thrusting out of his Equal and Collegue collating because possibly he might have afterward committed an offense not that he had This was a piece of tyranny not exceeded by any before him But it may be alleadged That there is a Law whereby it was free for any man to kill Tyrants and some late Demagogues have written for the promotion of Religion forsooth as well as Civil Liberty that to kill Buchananus De Jure Regni apud Scotos Tyrants and here I will not show whom they call Tyrants is as good an act as to slay Wolves Lyons and Bears But I would fain know whence such a Law proceeded if not from tyranny it self Even such persons who under colour of natural Law of returning evil for evil and self preservation have done the greatest injustice imaginable not only against the person persecuted but the people who never at any time had power so to deliver themselves nor if they had did generally and unanimously or could confer the same on the new Pretenders to it That Law therefore of killing Tyrants invented by Tyrants taketh place on the Authors of it as much as any body else and where the like power can be snatched up may have the same event on popular States-men as well as Kings and Princes For they are Tyrants too The other ground of Resistance of Supremacie abused by a single Ruler is commonly taken from a supposed right in Inferiour Magistrates as they are vulgarly called to restrain the exorbitancies and chastise the fury of immoderate Princes This invention hath so much more of speciousnes than the former by how much there is a sound of Authority and hope of greater order and prudence and formality of Justice than could be expected from a disorderly ignorant loose and precipitant multitude But being examined duly will be found very rotten and vain For as hath been well observed before me and is easie to be apprehended Grotiâ—s De Imperio summarum Pat. by the meanest capacity Magistrates here are no more than common people it being plain That no man can be properly tearmed a Magistrate or Governour but as he hath power and autority either derived or originally in himself over others and not as he is himself subject unto another Therefore any person bearing the name and office of a Magistrate though he be called also a Peer is no more than a Subject in relation to him who gave him that power and dignity And having no power but what he received and having received no power but to such and such ends and purposes and no man did ever intend to enable another to offer violence or injury to himself to disown a power borrowed and to make it absolute and to draw the Sword of Justice against him that first put it into his hands is not only base ingratitude but as notorious rebellion as if any of the vulgar rank should do the same St. Paul doth indeed require good Christians to make supplications 1
differences which of all Pretenders to these are assuredly so affected and blessed most with them Therefore these are not sufficient lights and demonstration of themselves to us For we grant readily That whatever Church hath all them is without controversie a true Church of Christ but whether this or that Church pretending to them hath them really remains to be enquired into Hence it hath been judged expedient to repair to some more sensible and apparent Notes or Indications to certifie us of matter of Fact viz. that so it is with this Church and not with another And it is well said That Notes of a thing must necessarily be distinct from the thing they notifie unto us and that especially in these two things First in reference to the thing described than which they must be more evident and apparent as the argument must alwayes be more clear than the thing in Question to be proved therewith Secondly in reference to other things they must not be common to more than that thing they are used to express and signifie As no man that never saw an horse before can know it from an Ox by being told that an Horse hath two ears four legs and a long tail And a third note of a true Note may be added and that is that it be inseparable For though no more but one thing has such a mark by which it may be known yet if that thing be moveable and not constant to it it cannot at all times be known by it as the Moon cannot alwayes be distinguished and known from other stars from horns or Angles which many times it wants This speculation is very rational but yet not exempt altogether from the inconveniencies of the former opinion it failing little less in the Invention and Application of such unfailing Notes as are presumed and promised For those being the very choicest of many more Notes mentioned by some for the guiding us to the true Catholick Church they are either obscure or inconstant and separable or lastly common to those Churches not received for pure and Catholick as will appear by and by Therefore I suppose a mean opinion may in this case be most true and safe as that First there can be no such infallible outward means of comming to or discerning the true Church from the false as may secure any one from errour For the Prophesies and Promises of Christ concerning the glory and conspicuousness of his Church viz. that it should be as a City set on a hill That it should be the Light of the world That it should be a Mountain unto which all Nations should flow and such like infer no more than this That whereas under the Law the Doors of Christs Church were in a manner shut against the greatest part of the world under the Gospel Christ would keep open house to all commers and that it should be more possible and easie to enter into the communion of his true Flock than formerly it had been not that it should not be possible to mistake but upon affected and wilful ignorance next to malice Neither doth there appear any greater reason why any man should be infallible in the choice of the true Church than when he is in the true Church that he should be infallible in all points of Faith therein truly professed In a word No greater inconvenience doth appear from the want of infallible means to lead men to the true Church who are in sight but not knowledge of it than to bring Heathens into an ordinary capacity of entring into it A man may be damned in that corrupt and degenerate state he now is in for want of that grace he could not of himself acquire and yet God be under no imputation of injustice or tyranny who gives him no more than he deserves and denyes him no more than he may justly detain from him For the mercy of God exceeds all not only merit but admiration that so many find the way to the truth while some as St. Paul hath it are Ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth 2 Tim. 3. 7. But were it so that those means to salvation whether general or particular did work naturally not Evangelically or morally by the co-adjutancie of grace accompanying them and inwardly disposing the mind to assent to and embrace them then indeed ought there to be certain and infallible causes outward to that end but it is not so for as liberal as God hath shewn himself in the Gospel and means outward of attaining to the truth he keeps the reins still in his own hands and the key of knowledge by him the efficacy of the most probable means even that of distinguishing and knowing the true Church depending upon his free and inscrutable Grace which would in this particular be superfluous and useless if certain access might be made unto it by demonstrative notes to that purpose A second thing commending herein a mean opinion may be the due acknowledgment of the use of such outward marks and means guiding us to this prime truth of the Church For notwithstanding we have said the Grace of God hath a main stroke in every mans right choice of such dubious undemonstrable truths yet doth it not ordinarily concurr and we have nothing to know of extraordinary acts of God but by such ordinary means as he hath instituted and tyed us to observe to be capable thereof and therefore are we to embrace and improve all outward helps which may best conduce to that end otherwise we either forfeit or repel such grace from us And of such means I know none more reasonable and probable to bring us to the knowledge of this point then are they above mentioned Thirdly the use of those means or notes upon tryal will be found to consist not so much in the Affirmative as Negative sense that is not characterizing Catholick Churches in opposition to Heretical by being found only in any Church because they are also found in such as are reputed Heretical but being not found in Churches pretending Catholicisme stigmatizing them for false and defective And truly it is well worth the labour to be informed of errors as that which prepareth to the knowledge of the truth Lastly it is to be observed of the nature of Notes or Properties that they are either of the whole Species or kind as that given by Plato of a Man That he is a two-footed creature having no feathers on his body or they are Particular relating to some Individuum or single one of that kind as that given of God himself to distinguish Saul whom God had 1 Sam. 9. 2. 10. 24 designed King from the rest of the people from his stature That he was higher by head and shoulders than the rest of the people And thus was Elijah the Tishbite known to Amaziah That he was an hairy man girt with 2 Kings 1. 8. a girdle of Leather Now in this question it is
Abraham all which sufficiently nulls the Jews pretensions taken from their Law We now proceed to the Second general Head against them taken from their Messias CHAP. VI. The Vanity of the Jewish Religion shewed from the proofs of the true Messias long since come which are many BOth Jews and Christians agree that the Covenant made by God with Adam and Abraham was through the Messias But the difference between them is notwithstanding very great The Jews still expecting the Messias to come and the Christian believing it as the first Article of his Faith that he is actually come and hath delivered his Laws and performed all things prefigured and promised by the Law of Moses If this supposition of the Christian be not true then is the whole Bodie of his Faith a meer shadow and false And if the Messias be come then is the Religion of the Jew false and no better then a vain Superstition This therefore is diligently and Faithfully to be enquired into though with this Caution premised That it is a thing to be supposed no less and taken for granted in the Christian Religion that Christ the Messias is come then it is to be supposed to Religion in general that there is a God These following Circumstances evince the Messias to be come First the certain expiration of the time prefixed by the Holy Scriptures and the Jewish Doctors themselves for the coming of Christ The great Masters of the Jews affirm that the world shall continue six thousand years whereof two thousand are to go before the Law and two thousand should be under the Law of Moses and that in the fifth thousand year the Messias should Sixtus Senenfis Bibl. lib. 2. Genebr Chro. initio Vid. Rayl mundum Martini Pug. fidei Part. 2. cap. 6. come into the world Who these are and from whence they collect this is no place to shew here Genebrard Galatinus Raymundus Martini have done it and many of the Fathers receiving their tradition from them have spoken to that purpose But the Jews themselves do reckon from the Creation to this day above five thousand four hundred years and yet there is no appearance of a Messias for their turn So that being driven to this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 extremitie they have been constrained to take up this curse to secure their suspected Cause viz. Let the Spirit of all them be burst in pieces who compute times as Buxtorfe relates to us And if it be so as some Jews have Buxtorf Synagog cap. 3. Vid. Ray mundum Martini Pug. fidei Part. 2. cap. 6. phancied viz. That the Messias was born the same day their Temple was burnt at Jerusalem Where has he spent his time all this while Why doth he not appear to their deliverance They are wont to say It is for their sins In which I agree with them that indeed it is for their sins that they are never like to see that Messias whom they dream of because they rejected See Chrysostom Serm. 3. Against the Jews Tom. 6. p. 338 339. him who came to them as the true Messias Secondly The apt Analogie and correspondence between the Messias received by Christians and foretold by the ancient Prophets doth declare him come For instance that of Genesis That the seed of the woman should Gen. 3. Deut. 18. 15. break the Serpents head That in Deutronomie A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up of your brethren like unto me c. That of Esay the seventh and thirty fourth verse Behold a Virgin shall conceive and bring forth a child Esa 7. 34. and they shall call his name Immanuel however modern Jews endeavour to pervert and corrupt that text That of the Psalmist The Lord said unto my Psal 110. Lord fit thou on my Right hand until I have made thine enemies thy footstool That of Micah And thou Bethlehem Judah art not the least amongst the Princes Mich. 5. 2. of Judah For out of thee shall come a Governour which shall rule my people Israel And many more like places are interpreted of the Jews themselves of the Messias And it being so whom have they to show now the time is past that many stand in competition with Christ our true Messias Thirdly several Events prove the Messias already come In Genesis it is Gen. 49. 10. Numb 24. 17. Esa 9. 6. Esa 4. 2. John 5. 43. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Athanasius de Incarnatione Chrysostom Ser. 2. against the Jews p. 333 334. to 6. sheweth how that thrice they were cōfounded in attempting to rebuild their City and Temple said The Scepter shall not depart from Judah nor the law-giver from between his feet until Shiloh come c. And so in Numbers there shall come a Star out of Jacob and Scepter out of Israel And in Esay To us a Son is born to us a Child is given and the Government shall be upon his shoulders And by the same Prophet it is said In that day shall the Branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious c. To which many other places might be added All which we urge not upon our own authority but the judgement of their ancient Rabbies especially that Famous Chaldee Paraphrast so applying them Now these can belong to none but him whom we acknowledge for the Messias Christ Jesus though diverse Impostors and false Christs have pretended to such Prophecies to the delusion and confusion of that unhappy and blind Nation as Christ truly foretold And however great varietie may be found amongst Learned Christians concerning the precise times wherein the said Predictions had their verification yet all unanimously agree that they are fulfilled the Jew in vain dissenting Fourthly the Destructions and Dissipations of that Nation and Church prove the truth of the Messias come For now so great obscurity and confusion are found in their best Records and especially their Genealogies upon which depend their assurance of their Messias that not knowing now them of the Tribe of Judah from them of any other Tribe and much less the Line of David from others They are not able to distinguish a vain pretender from a real heir of David and so must needs suspect all pretenders to be the Messias Fifthly by vertue of the Ancient Phophecies and promises made unto the Jews by their Predecessors their form of worship was to continue unto their Messias at least but nothing is more plain than that this is actually dissolved and that in the most material parts of it Their holy City Jerusalem their more Holy Temple in it and their most Holy Altar in that are all ruined and buried in oblivion and a Mock City built in opposition to that by Alius Adrian and from him called Aelia properly Sixthly The unparralell'd Judgments of God continually pursuing that Nation until the accomplishment of all things foretold by Christ and his Apostles concerning destruction to come upon them to the utmost confuteth their Expectations
private reason perswade him That he hath found out the truth and yet at the same time assure him That he is no less fallible than another man and therefore may possibly embrace and hug a false conception with as much fondness as a true and withal That private Judgements are not in themselves so safe as publique nor single as many What violence were this to his reason nay how much more rational than the first simple Act to comply with the Reason of others whom reason also requires to listen to and obey and Scripture much more From hence we may rightly conclude against both extremes in these days who yet agree in this very ill-grounded opinion That there must be an Infallible Director or Judge or we cannot submit to them in matters of Faith and our Salvation This is absolutely untrue both in humane and divine matters Who sees not indeed that it were to be wished for and above all things desired Who sees not the great inconvenience for want of such a standard of opinions as this But can we rationally conclude therefore that so it is Or hath God or ought he of his necessary goodness and wisdom as some have ventured to affirm to grant all things that are infallibly good for man Is it not sufficient that a fair though not infallible way is opened to attain the truth here and bliss hereafter but every one must find it Is it little or no absurditie That infinite never come to means of truth and so great that many who enjoy them do not receive the benefit by them Again Are good manners and virtues no less essential to Salvation than Faith and is there no infallible Judge of manners Is there no infallible Casuist And must there be of points of Faith How many have the infallible Rule of holy Life and yet mistake either in the sense or application of it so far as to perish in unknown Sins And yet none have to prevent that great and common evil call'd for an infallible Censour whose determinations might settle doubtful consciences in greatest safety and silence all apologies which are wont to be made for our sins and errors and so bring us nec essarily to truth or leave us under self and affected condemnation But The Ground of this mistake being farther searched into will be found very weak and fallacious An infallible Faith say they must have an infallible Judge And of these some assume thus There is no man infallible Therefore no man can be Judge of Faith Others assume thus But there is and must be an infallible Faith Therefore there must be an infallible Judge So that we see both would have infallible Judges but differ only in their choice of them For The former would have the Scriptures Judge and Rule which is very honest but very simple The later would have some external Judge which hath much more of reason in it And fails only in the choice of this Judge or in the description of him For There is nothing more unreasonable than to ordain that which is under debate to be Judge of it self besides the great absurdity of confounding the Rule or Law and the Interpreter and Judge And There is nothing more fallacious than to confound Causes and occasions together as the later opinion doth For If the Church or whatever Judge may be supposed were the true direct cause of our Faith then indeed it would necessarily follow That our Faith could no wayes be infallible unless the Judge were also infallible the effect not exceeding the cause nor the Conclusion the Premises or propositions from whence it was deduced But Because the Church is only on Occasion or a Cause without which we should neither believe the Scriptures in general to be the Word of God nor any sentence to be duly drawn from the same there is no necessity at all of such a consequence For The Infallibility now spoken of is either the thing believed which is the Word of God of which the Church I hope is no Cause or the Grace of Faith excited and exercised by us through the Spirit of Grace in us the mynistery of the Church serving thereunto acording to St. Paul saying We therefore as workers together with 2 Cor. 6. 1. him beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain For as in things natural He that applies Actives to Passives that is the Cause proper to the matter about which the Action is is not the proper or natural cause of the Effect but the occasion only yet is said vulgarly so to be as when a man applies fire to combustible matter he may though improperly be said to burn it when it is the fire and not he that burns it So the Church or Judge of Scriptures sense applying the same to a capable subject the effect is true and infallible Faith but it is not the effect of the Church or instrument or mean rather but of the Holy Spirit of Grace which taketh occasion from thence to produce Faith and that infallible For Were this Infallibility we now speak of the Churches then when ever the Church should so propound and urge points of Faith they must needs have an effect in the Soul For if they say The Church teaches in an humane way they say she teaches in a fallible way which overthrows all And from this is cleared that difficulty which opposeth a Judge of Scripture and Faith because none could be found infallible For not making the Judge the cause of Faith but occasion he may be necessarily required to Faith God who is the only principal cause with his holy word seldom or never concurring without those outward means And therefore though I readily enough grant That the Scriptures are so plainly written that a single simple person wanting greater helps to attain to the abstruser sence of them and using his honest and simple endeavour may easily find so much of the Rule of Faith and holy Life as to be saved by them yet I cannot say the same of any men who presuming on Gods power against his promise which includeth the use of outward meanes or mistaking his promise for absolute when it is conditional shall look no farther than their own wits shall lead them Now The outward meanes to which God hath annexed his promise of Grace may be these First That which we have here handled a general and sober submission to the Guides of our youth and our spiritual Fathers and Pastors in Christ which to forsake is the part of a wanton and fornicating Soul according to Solomon This common Reason and nature it self seem to require of all Prov. 2. 17. under Autority by the disposition of Almighty God That they in the first place hearken unto the voice and explication of the Church wherein they are educated until such time as a greater manifestation of truth shall withdraw them unwillingly from the same For so long as Senses are equally probable on both
Traditions It is as seldome found That a tale should be reported in the very same phrase or words it was at first told as it is that things transcribed with any common honesty or diligence should fail considerably so much as in the Letter And if they say in Tradition forms of words are not so much to be stood upon doth it not altogether hold as good when this Tradition is written How then do not men blush to argue so boldly and at the same time so weakly There is therefore a twofold Infallibility to be distinguished as well in Relation to unwritten Doctrines as written the one consisting in the Matter delivered the other in the manner so delivering And truly as to this later it cannot be said without some strong Presumption to the contrary the written Traditions which are the Scriptures have been so preciseâ—y and absolutely defended from either the common injuries of time or special miscarriages incident to humane frailty or perhaps as some conjecture the studious mischiefs of sacrilegious hands laid on them as not one title one word one period should not have been damnified thereby The Providence of God granting some such minuter defections from the Original Copies hath been singular in preserving them in that degree of perfection and entireness we now enjoy them So that infinite is the disparity in this case between them and unwritten Traditions which none have been so audacious positively to affirm though indeed their large and loose reasons seem to tend that way that any one unwritten doctrine hath been conserved unto us in the same form of words it was at first delivered to the Church And the like though not so great advantage is to be acknowledged on the Scriptures part compared with the pretended unwritten word of God in reference to the matter and that in these three respects 1. The Evidence 2. The Importance and 3. The Influence that the doctrine of the Scriptures have and ought to have over all Traditions And for the first It is impossible taking traditions as they are distinguished from Scripture that the like grounds of Faith should be offered to us as we have above shown are to be found proving the Scriptures to be the word of God For are all or some only Gods word All cannot be because Traditions in several Places of the world have been diverse and even contrary Because some are acknowledged to have been the Constitutions of Men or the Church since the Apostolical Age. Because many are acknowledged to have been quite lost Because many have been confessed to be changed of them which remain Now if the Church hath failed in the due Custodie of such treasures committed to her How can any man be assured sufficiently of the integrity of the remainer How can the Church be esteemed an Infallible Witness of traditions And who can but admire the Confidence of such Patrons of the Churches fidelity or rather felicity for I would not nor need I call in question its good will and Honesty in her Office of Preserving the Monuments of our Religion untouch'd by errors who by reasons would demonstrate that that cannot be which we see done before our eyes For at other times the same Party if not the same persons stick not to profess that divers Antienter Traditions are perished and more modern have succeeded them They say that some Traditions are as 〈◊〉 as sense can make them The Tradition that there were such famous Cities as Nineve and Babylon and are such as Constantinople and Rome requires the same Faith as the beholding them with our Eyes But first It should have been said in the argument They are as evident as those things we are informed of by our senses but this is far from truth All the testimonies of Past and present persons affirming that to be so which I have no sense of immediately being abundantly sufficient to beget a belief but not equalling in evidence the testimonie of any mans well-disposed senses For does not this so general testimonie it self depend upon a mans senses receiving the same Or can any man be so well assured upon the Credit of any persons whatever that the Apostles delivered such things to be believed and observed by the Church as if he himself immediately received the same from them If it be said that the case of Ecclesiastical Tradition is far different from humane in that the Church is divinely assisted to such ends supposing this at present still we are no less intregued then before For as is said The truth of a thing and the Evidence whereby it appears to be true are very much different And here it will be no less difficult to make such a supposed Assistance appear then the tradition it self which it commends to the World upon such pretences And therefore they who have sifted this matter more narrowly and stated it most rationally have thought it best to forsake such topicks at present as Extraordinarie Assistances and Hen. Holdeni Analysis Fid. tell us plainly that what the Church doth in this case she doth it not as divinely directed but as so many Men delivering their testimonie which is true but then what becomes of Infallibility all men singly and conjointly as men being fallible Well therefore they proved to tell us That to a jugde of Controversies Credible Testimonie or moral infallibilitie may suffice and to this I agree in the main though the term Moral Certainty and Moral Infallibilitie seems to me as vain and improper as it is modern it upon enquirie amounting to no more then the old Probabilitie well and reasonably grounded The next thing in Holy Writ is the much greater importance the things therein contained are of above unwritten doctrines For who of all the Ancients but such as are by tradition stigmatized for Heretiques for such their Basil Ma. de spiritu sancto 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 opinions did constitute any rule of Faith distinct from the Scriptures or bring any to stand in competition therewith Some 't is true have distinguished between Dogmes of Traditions and doctrines of the Scripture and haveaffirmed That as well the one as the other ought to be received by a good Christian All this we agree to how we shall show by and by more fully and here by comparing this by the words of St. John saying This Joh. 4. 21. Commandment have we from him that he that loveth God love his brother also By which it is not required that any Christian should with the same kind or degree of Love love his neighbour with which he loveth God For we must love God only for his own sake and our brother for Gods sake Nay when God sayes we must love our neighbour as our selves he does not exclude difference in degrees of love In like manner when it is said That we ought to believe and receive the unwritten as well as written traditions it was never intended by that excellent Father that we should admit
they do not believe contrary to the Faith of the Church It may be said that Baptism alone is sufficient to distinguish such implicit believers from Heathens which I grant as to the Essence or nature of Christianity but not to the Life and exercise of a Christian for that as St. Paul hath by his word and example certified us is by the Faith Col. 2. 20. of the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us Therefore as I am so charitable to all well-disposed Christians to be perswaded there is no necessity for all to have either the like measure or manifestation of Faith in any one point of Faith our Saviour Christ requiring Faith but as a grain Math. 17. 20. of Mustard-seed sometimes so am I to all Churches as to be perswaded That they all require and that in all a some measure of Faith explicite as necessary to Salvation and that besides this Believing as the Church believes For in truth this is nopoint of Faith in the Actus Signatus or general notion though to believe the Church Catholick may be For who sees not a vast difference between believing the Church it self and believing what the Church believes And that may be compleated in believing the Being and Extent of it which is much short of the body of Faith which it receives and professes CHAP. XIV Of the Effects of True Faith in General Good Works Good Works to be distinguished from Perfect Works Actions good four wayes THere is a great difference between Good works and Perfect works For the first hath respect unto the thing done and the other unto the manner of doing it agreeable to all due forms and Circumstances And every work that is good is not Perfect though every work that is perfect must of necessity be Good And to the doing of a Good work there seems to be no more absolutely Act. 17. 11. Rom. 10. 17. Si Fidelis fecerit opus bonum hic ei prodest liberans eum a malis in illo saeculo ad percipiendum regnum coelesto magis autem ibi quam hîc Si autem Infidelis fecerit bonum opus hîc ei prodest opus ipsius hîc ei reddit Deus pro opere su◠In illo autem saeculo nihil ei prodest opus ipsius Opus imperfectum in Math. Hom. 26. required than that a man should act according to well informed and regulated reason and true affection So that the works of natural men may be good though heathens such as are Visiting the sick and relieving the poor defending the Fatherless and widow oppressed and especially such outward moral Acts as may be done by natural men tending to their Conversion and Salvation as willing hearing and equal judging of the doctrine of Faith even before actual Faith conceived for which St. Paul esteemed the Bereans praise worthy* So that they are not absolutely Splendid Sins for were it so they were by no means to be done and no man did well who before his Conversion went to hear Christ preach or gave any attentive ear to what St. Paul wrote or taught for want of Faith whereas we are taught by common reason as well as by St. Paul that Faith it self cometh by hearing of the word of God For how can any man possibly believe what he never heard of So then some duties and Acts are laudable and acceptable to God without Faith though not arising to the perfection of Evangelical Goodness by which a man pleaseth God and is acceptable unto him even to his Justification and Salvation There may therefore be distinguished a fourfould goodness in Actions 1. Natural when a man acteth agreeable to the perfection of the Rule of natural Beings as a man acteth agreeable to the perfection of the Rule of natural Beings as a man is said to walk well when he goes according to the nature of man and limps not nor halts and to write a good hand when his letters and words do answer exactly a Perfect Rule or Copie This Religion taketh no notice of at all 2. A man is said to do a Good Act when it is so morally and in its kind as tending to the honour of his Creator whose Instruments meer Moral men are in exercising his Paternal providence and to the benefit of others For it being the proper Character of God which is spoken of him by the Psalmist viz. Thou art Good and thou doest Good They whom God Psal 119. 68. chooseth and stirreth up to minister under him in good and useful things to the Communitie or any particular do that which is good however not absolute 3. There is a Religious or divine goodness in Actions which are done agreeable to the Revealed Will of God passing natures sagacitie or search And this is twofold Legal and Evangelical both exceeding the former but the one exceeded of the other viz. Legal of Evangelical Vere enim quando declinamus d malo facimus bonum quantum ad comparationem caeterorum hominum nolentium declinare à malo facere bonum dicuntur bona quae agimus quantum autem ad Veritatem secundum quod dic itur in hoc loco Quia unus est bonus bonum nostrum non est bonum Orig. Hom. 8. in Matthaeum For as Natural Acts are good done according to natures intention and institution by themselves but are not good compared with moral duty performed and moral Acts are Good in themselves but not so in respect of a Superiour Order and end of working instituted of God in his holy Law So are Legal Acts wrought according to Gods word given to the Israelites under that dispensation or Covenant as required of God and serving to those ends God propounded to himself and his people Wherefore it is that the Children of Israel revolting from God and forsaking that instituted worship of his Law are thus censured by the Prophet * Hos 8. 3. Hosea Israel hath cast off the thing that is good the enemie shall pursue him And St. Paul than whom no divine writer more opposes the Law occasion being offered yet giveth his suffrage †1 Tim. 1. 8. The Law is good if a man useth it Lawfully And the Gospel it self is not good unless used Lawfully Therefore were the works of the Law also good works within their bounds but not so compared with the Perfection of the Gospel but displeasing to God and pernicious to men who being delivered in the fulness of time by the coming of Christ from the Pedagogie and beggerly Elements of the Mosaical Law should presume to retain that vail which was done away in Christ and embrace those shadows the body Christ being present Hence it is that St. Paul as in many other places writing to the Corinthians speaketh thus at large The Letter killeth i. e. the Literal sense and observation of the 2 Cor. 3. 6. Old Law after the New became of force destroyeth rather than
particularly assured of his being in Christ The whole Antecedent I grant viz. That every man believeth Christ when he receiveth him and that Christ is received by Faith And that every man is bound to apply Christ particularly and his Promises to himself But the consequence here made follows not from hence For by the former a man believes assuredly that the Promises of Grace made through Christ to the Church do particularly belong to him he hath a right to them being called to the Covenant Neither do we promise any other security of Salvation by only Faith but to those that labour in their calling and be fruitful of good Works Dr. Fulk on Rhem. Test Phil. 3. v. 11. And thus far a man is and ought to be sure of his Salvation But there being implyed in all Promises of Everlasting Salvation certain conditions of obeying and repenting as well as believing simply whether a man is to that degree proficient in these as to put him in actual possession of Christ this is no where revealed neither are we commanded to believe it And when St. Paul saith to the Romans * Rom. 8. 15 16. See likewise 1 John 5. 9 10 Ye have not received again the spirit of bondage to fear but ye have received the spirit of adoption whereby we cry Abba Father What is more plain than that his meaning is to distinguish the general state of the Church of the Jews from the Church of the Gentiles and the spirit of Moses as I may so say which tender'd to bondage from the spirit of Christ which is that free Spirit For as it is elsewhere said If the Son make you free then shall you be free indeed And from hence no more can be concluded to any single person than to the whole Church of God in which there are many reprobates as all agree Neither is the matter helped out any whit by what follows The Spirit it self beareth witness with our Spirit that we are the Sons of God I presume few will be so severe and ignorant as to deny the large acceptation in Scripture of the Children of God and Sons of God and Saints viz. That generally they signifie no more than those who were elected outwardly to the Faith and Profession of Christ and to the means of becoming not only denominatively and of Right but really and effectually in Fact the heirs of Eternal Salvation To be then the Sons of God here with St. Paul signifies no more than by Faith to be the peculiar people and favorites of God above all such as were not thus brought home to Christs Fold Now that such singular Grace and Priviledges belonged to Christian St. Paul proves from the testimony of the Spirit namely That the Christian Religion is only the true Religion thus The Spirit beareth witness with our Spirit Our own Judgment our Consciences doth stedfastly assure us that we are the Children of God but this is not all this proves nothing to another to the convincing of him that we are the true Servants and Children of God but the Spirit of God bearing witness with our Spirit doth And the Spirit of God beareth witness with us sufficiently when it declareth openly by miracles signs and wonders wrought before the eyes of our Adversaries that what we preach and believe is the truth Which is the same with what St. Paul writes to the Corinthians 1 Cor. 2. 4. saying And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of mans wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of Power That your faith might stand not in the wisdom of man but in the power of God In which words he plainly sheweth the ground of the Corinthians faith not to be taken from any fair or plausible Rhetorick or form of words whereby men are led oftentimes to believe against reason but on the more solid grounds of extraordinary miracles wrought by the power of God and which did demonstrate to all equal judges That it was the Spirit of God which both taught them such mysteries of Faith as they preached and confirmed the same by such signs and wonders as did appear generally at the publication of the Gospel Now what doth all or any of this concern the supposed particular inward tacit testimony whereby it is said a man is to be assured of his Salvation And no more do the words of the Apostle in the end of the same Chapter prove too long to be recited but this Rom. 8. 35 36 37 38 39. is briefly to be answered 1. That they speak not at all of any individual single Christian but of the Church of God and that indefinitely or at large viz. That God hath so determined to plant propagate and maintain that Religion into which divers were collected by the ministry of the Apostles that whatever or from whomsoever evils might befall the Church of God yet they should never prevail with such persecutions to separate the faithful from Christ no not all the Powers nor Principalities on Earth nor all the Angels of Heaven or of Hell But to secure these and the like testimonies the better to their opinions some much admired persons of the Reformation peradventure suspecting what might be answered have proceeded to say That what promises Calvin Inst Christ hath made to his Church do equally concern every Christian as well as the Church which I cannot yield to without these Exceptions First That it may be understood of a particular Church as well as particular Persons But as may hereafter appear God hath made no absolute promise to any particular Church so far that it can be any point of Faith to believe that Gods counsel decree are such to it as never to suffer it to Apostatize from him So that no individual Church can be sure of its perseverance in the truth and if not that how should any particular person claim so much But the Promises of Christ being taken as they ought of a Church indefinitely it is most agreeable to Gods word to maintain an infallible perpetuity of the same Again It is to be remembred that all this while we are speaking not so much of certainty before God according to which we may yield the Salvation of men to be infallible but certainty before men or to the party concerned immediately which we call Assurance or Evidence In the body of an Orthodox Church it is certain in it self that many men shall be saved but not certain to us that any one therein shall nor evident to any one that he shall To the reasons taken from the Power of God who is able to save and reveal this And the truth of God who is faithful in his Promise And the Knowledge of God that he knoweth who are his what need we make any answer besides showing the vanity of that inference which is drawn from the possibility of any thing to the Fact it self and of that presumption rather than faith which
Gods Word already confirming this duty and to leave others to every ingenuous Christians diligent use of it to avoid prolixity And for the objections which may be made and are commonly found against what is above delivered for the same reason I pass them over as likewise because I intend not here Controversie but Positive Institutions CHAP. XXVII An Application of the former Discourse of Civil Government to Ecclesiastical How Christs Church is alwayes visible and how invisible Of the Communion of Christ and his Members The Church of Christ taken specially for the Elect who shall infallibly be saved never visible But taken for true Professours of the Faith must alwayes be visible though not Conspicuous in comparison of other Religions or Heresies THE Reasons moving me to insist a while upon Civil Government before I entred upon Ecclesiastical are First because I find Authors of the grounds of Christian Religion to treat of the same generally Secondly because where breaches have been made often in the Faith and Discipline of the Church there necessary provision ought to be made to secure them for the future but for want of due understanding of this Doctrine licencious zeal blinded with presumption hath transported very many into unchristian practises Thirdly because it is a necessary introduction to the more clear and compendious pursuing of our subject of the Spiritual Society of the Church of Christ and particularly its Form The Form of Christs Church may be distinguished according to the vulgar Notion into invisible and visible or inward and outward Invisible we here call that which doth not at all offer it self to our outward sense of seeing cannot be beholden with our eye Or that which may in some manner appear to our sight but not as a Church of Christ though in truth it so may be According to the first acceptation of invisible we understand the Body Mystical of Christ consisting of himself the only proper Head the Holy Spirit animating and influencing the same and the particular members of the holy most happy invisible Spirits in heaven and Saints on earth spiritually united to them by Christ in the divine band of holiness And hitherto do the words of the Apostle to the Ephesians seem to be applyed saying Having made known the mystery of his will That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather Ephes 1. 9 10. together in one all things in Christ both which are in heaven and which are in earth even in him signifying hereby the mystical conjunction of Men and Angels in Christ Jesus although there are who not improbably and more literally do understand these words only of the collection and uniting of Jews who in respect of their peculiar exaltation to Gods service and favour are stiled in Scripture heavenly compared with the Gentiles and Gentiles into one Faith and Church of Christ which therefore divers times is called a Mystery as Romans the 16. 25 26. Ephes 3. v. 3 4 5. Col. 1. 26 27. 1 Tim. 3. 16. because as is there expressed it was an hidden and incredible thing to the Jews that the Gentiles should be taken into the like priviledges and rights of serving God as were once esteemed incommunicable to any so fully as to the Jews But whether the Scripture according to its most genuine and literal sense intendeth at any time to comprehend into one Society Angelical Peings and Humane as the Church of Christ as I do not find though the Ancients as well as Modern have held such an opinion so do I not oppose the Mystery of which we now speak being sufficiently verified in the preternatural and invisible conjunction of Christ and his Church in the indissoluble bands of his Spirit guiding the members thereof into all sufficiencie of Grace here and immortal absolute glory hereafter in heaven To understand this co-union or conjunction of Christ and his Members the better we are to call to mind a threefold union intimated in holy Writ unto us First a conjunction of Nature when more are of the same individual nature as the three Persons in the Holy Trinity are united in the same Divine Nature though in themselves distinct which is so proper to that mystery of the Trinity that it is not to be found elsewhere no not in that intimate communion we now speak of between Christ and his Members their natures continuing distinct Again another conjunction proper to Christian Religion is the union of two natures into one Person as in the Mystery of Christs incarnation when the humane and divine Nature become one so far as to constitute but one Person Christ Jesus So do not Christ and his Church But by a third way are Christ and his Church united into one aggregate Spiritual Body or Society which is effected by his Spirit which yet do not make properly a Part of that Body but by its manifold divine Graces do produce and conserve the same Christ thereby and his Church being as St. Paul saith One Spirit He that is joyned unto the Lord is one Spirit And 1 Cor. 6. 17. St. John likewise saith Hereby we know that we dwell in him and he in us because he hath given us of his Spirit This truly and only in a proper sense is invisible and that alwayes and hath two Parts the triumphant in Heaven which is a most perfect pure holy and blessed Society which have through the bloud of the Lamb and the power of his Spirit overcome the three grand Enemies Sin Death and the Devil and reaped the fruits of their sufferings and labours all tears being wiped from their eyes all sorrows being fled away all temptations for ever conquered and ceasing to molest them Now this part of Christ's Church remains alwayes invosible unto us here below And as for the other Part which is called Militant and are described to be A number of faithful and elect people living under the Cross and aspiring towards the perfection of Grace and Glory hereafter supposing at present what may hereafter be farther discussed viz. That such a peculiar number of holy persons there are within the visible Church of Christ which shall infallibly attain to everlasting bliss in heaven yet neither are these as such at any time visible or discernable to our common senses It being scarce if at all possible to judge infallibly who shall be saved and who shall not be saved it being much more difficult for any man to be assured of another mans salvation than of his own seeing that as is said hereunto an inward testimony of Gods Spirit is required which is the ground of that sound hope which is commonly called Assurance but the Promises of God in holy Scripture do not extend in like manner to the assuring of any man that another shall be saved as that he himself shall or that anothers faith shall not fail as that his own shall not but thus far only probably a truer and more certain sentence may
be pronounced by others who are ordained of God to be judges of our state of Grace upon the discovery of our consciences to them then can be by our selves which is sufficient but of the unalterableness of that state no man can certainly affirm any thing Which holdeth true likewise as to the contrary state of Damnation For though a more than probable judgment may be made of the state of Damnation of him who continues impenitently in notorious sins yet may no man pronounce a peremptory sentence against any such person that he inevitably shall be damn'd because he cannot see into the abstruse Counsels of Almighty God so far as to deny a Liberty left in him to confer such efficacious grace upon such a notorious offender as may reduce him to God no more than withdraw grace from him who at present standeth in all probable way of perseverance This being so it followeth from hence necessarily That the Church of Christ taken for the so faithful and elect that they shall without all peradventure attain the Crown of the Triumphant is evermore in its own nature invisible that is not to be distinguished by us nor known certainly and if so then in vain and to no purpose at all are such Disputations as are made about the invisible Church in that sense of invisibility which signifies that which can in no manner appear certainly to us The other sense of invisibleness according to which a thing is possible to be seen is an object of sense but actually is either not to be seen or with very great difficulty For as in Philosophy it is with Divisibility so may it be with Visibility in Divinity Every thing that hath Quantity according to the Philosopher is divisible or is capable of being divided into lesser parts even without end but yet so small may the parts so divided become at last that no Artist shall be able to cut them any more in pieces So may we understand a thing to be visible which is so small and inconsiderable that actually it can hardly if at all be perceived But visible and palpable being taken for things which not only affect the senses simply but with some more than common notoriety the usual question Whether the Church of Christ is alwayes visible ought to be understood of such a competence of perspicuity as may ordinarily be discerned by persons rightly disposed in their understandings taking here right disposition of our inward apprehensions in a proportionable manner to that which relates to our common outward senses which if it be called into doubt as it may no wonder that the other may be and that without remedy Now according to the most strict acceptation of Visible for whatsoever may possibly be discerned the reasolution will be easie That Christs Church is and must alwayes be visible For thus to be Invisible is as much as not to be at all For seeing the Parts of which it consists be they but two or three persons in the most rigorous sense are Visible the whole must needs be visible too of it self however it may in the more received sense be termed invisible because compared with the Church of Christ as prophesied of and promised in the Gospel it is so inconsiderable as may deserve rather to be accounted invisible it being out-shined and over-shadowed by other Pretenders But there being two things which constitute the Church one the association of many persons into outward communion one with another the other the inward communion in the true Faith of Christ and the former being common very often to Hereticks as well as true Christians it may be doubted whether the true Church of Christ as opposed to heretical Societies is at all visible For seeing the true and orthodox Faith together with its practical holiness do not occur plainly to our senses the true Faith cannot be discerned visibly from the false by any outward sense How can it possibly be said that the Church of Christ is at all visible or apparent to a man 'T is true a man may discern a real man from a painted man or from any other creature from the outward notices of his body though he cannot see his soul which doth primarily constitute the person of man but he cannot see whether he be a true and honest man in a moral sense from any thing appearing outwardly So may one discern the Faith professed in general to be Christian by the outward frame and fashion of the Church professing the same but the soundness of the same and sincerity according to Christs will and institution he cannot from thence conclude upon And therefore if the Catholick Faith as Catholick in the stricter sense can never be visible the Catholick Church so being and denominated from that Faith can never be said to be properly visible but only as a Society not as the true Society of Christians in opposition to the false For instance sense or common reason not informed from the word of God could never judge whether the Arrian or the Catholick Faith as it then began to be called were most truly Christian but they both might judge that they were Christian Societies and so at least outwardly made a true Church But because it is one thing to profess the true Faith and another quite distinct from that Truly to profess the Faith as it is one thing to profess Justice and Truth and Honesty and another truly to profess these and practise them therefore can there be no estimate taken of the true Catholick Church from the persons professing the Catholick Faith who are alwayes uncertain and mutable but judgement must be made from the outward constitution only which are Discipline or Government and not Doctrine or Faith For where the former is not rightly composed according to the mind and institution of Christ there cannot be said to be a true Church And where the second is wanting there must likewise be no Church the foundation of the Church and Rule failing viz. the true Faith But wherever these be inviolately and incorruptly preserved and publickly professed though we should suppose every particular Member of such a Society to be notorious Hypocrites yet the Church might be said to be a true Church because the Church doth not receive any more than its material subsistance from the persons believing but its formal and more distinct Being it hath from the true Regiment and Faith which it is possible though scarce probable may be sufficiently preserved under hypocritical and wicked members of the same This is not only true in it self but appears so to be from the necessity of having any knowledge of the true Church at all and its being visible at any time For it never being certainly visible who are the predestinate infallibly to Life and who are not who shall constantly stand and who shall fall who are inwardly hypocrites and who are faithful and sincere indeed seeing notwithstanding the exactest judgment and search of man there
may be a falling away It could never appear which is the true Church if judgment were to be made not from the outward Forms and Faith professed but from the affection and inclination of Persons or from the invisible decrees of God of granting or denying persevering Grace to persons in the Church So that it is manifest from hence how lurious frivolous vain and sophistical disquisitions must needs be which are founded and managed upon the ground of an invisible Church properly so called The improper acceptation then of Invisible can only occasion a just controversie i. e. as it is taken comparatively and in relation to a much more conspicuous and glorious Society and that either of Infidels who may by numbers much exceed in outward glory much out-shine it in power over-rule it and by persecution and oppression so far straiten lessen and crush it that it may be termed obscure and invisible Or otherwise compared with the Societies of much more publick and outwardly glorious Hereticks and Schismaticks pretending the Catholick Church And truly if acute and exact Geographers computing the several professions of Religion and their possessions of the earth deceive us not the Church of Christ may comparatively with other superstitions Mahometan Jewish and Gentile be not unaptly said to be invisible Christian Religion being allowed but Five parts of Thirty Mahometan six and Idolaters nineteen parts of the earth But if we shall divide Christian again into Catholick according to the Judgment of several See Brerewoods Inquiries Chap. 14. Writers there will not remain at present above two parts of all the Thirty parts of the earth to be possessed by the Catholicks and if so what will become of the visibility of the Church thus understood And if a moderate sense of visibility be admitted signifying a real and apparent being only of the Church though inferiour in pomp and number unto others how doth the great end and benefit for which chiefly the Church is to be maintained Catholick and Visible shrink up into little or nothing when it cannot commend it self for any such glory to the beholder nor signalize it self to the doubter of the true Faith in the Church as may hereafter appear more fully when we shall come to speak of the Notes of the Church It may suffice to conclude this Point with these two First That Christs Church is essentially and so long as it is at all must necessarily be a Society or a communion of many For so we are taught to believe out of the Apostles Creed which speaking of the Catholick Church exegetically interpreteth what we are to understand by that term viz. The Communion of Saints And therefore we are to distinguish between being of the Catholick Church and being Christians A man may be a Christian and yet not be of the Church For no man can be of the Church who doth not hold communion with it For to deceive himself and say though he be not of the visible Communion or visible Church he may be or is of the invisible and mystical is to take for granted that which he ought to prove but never can be able but from somewhat external and the ordinary method and most effectual means of being mystically united unto Christ is by being Politically united which must be visibly unto the Body of Christ the Church It hath been therefore ever matter of greatest wonder to me to hear and read how freely all struglers and Factions of Christians how inconsiderable soever do assert to and confidently to assert that common Rule Without the Church there is no salvation and are so obscure nice or absurd in their sense of it having very little or nothing to secure themselves from self-condemnation besides an ill grounded presumption that they are inwardly united to Christ and are of the invisible Church which in truth is no Church but a certain state wherein there is no administration or order that we can learn now all Society must necessarily have order and administrations for their regulating but none such do we read of to be in Christs invisible Body Christ himself being all in all and therefore improperly called a Church And therefore all such being infallibly saved who are so of Christs Body they that so abruptly and peremptorily assure themselves they are of that invisible State do in effect contradict themselves and mean they shall be saved without being of the Church For surely the Authour of that saying meant nothing else but that before one could be according to Gods ordinary dispensation revealed in his word of Christs mystical Body called abusively the Invisible Church he must belong to the visible communion of Christs Political Body or Church So that it is not sufficient to comfort our selves with an opinion that we are good Christians and hold the same Faith entirely and purely that is required of us unless we hold outward communion And therefore secondly as Christs Church must necessarily be a Society communicating so must it be a visible communion and outward For how is it possible that such communion which constitutes a Society should be entred into unless it be visible There shall therefore as well out of the very nature of the Design God and Christ had to establish a Church as from the many promises fortifying that Resolution and perfecting that Design be evermore an outward visible company of Professours of Christian Religion in the world which shall retain the Faith of Christ and the necessary effects of it in Worship to that degree of perfection which shall or may lead a Believer certainly to Salvation as will more plainly appear from what is now to succeed viz. the outward Form of the Church CHAP. XXVIII Of the Outward and Visible Form of Christs Church Christ ordained One particularly What that was in the Apostles dayes and immediately after The vanity of such places of Scripture as are pretended against the Paternal Government of the Church FOR the Church to be and to be visible or appear to be I reckon the same thing and therefore thought good to speak of that and premise it to what in order follows on this subject viz. The Visible Form 2. The Adjuncts or Affections And 3. the Power of the Church of Christ By the Form of the Church we mean that frame and outward constitution whereby the Society of Christian believers are not only united mystically and inwardly to Christ as their proper Head and universal nor as agreeing in the substance of one Faith and Worship but as conventing and consenting in one outward Discipline or Administration of this Body so collected So that Discipline otherwise called Government is by principal Sectaries themselves rightly affirmed to be an essential ingredient into the nature of a Church which will manifestly appear if we distinguish between the nature of a Christian or many Christians separate in themselves from any Jurisdiction and the nature of a Church For a Christian or a true Believer differeth from
be in them before and which doth more than countervail such antecedent liberty of simply teaching as was then in some manner fixed Thirdly there was in such cases as this added a Power and Right of instituting others as occasion offered which is unknown to have been in them as Evangelists From it follows that of all the forementioned kinds of Government that of the Church approached neerest to that call'd Monarchical which was only absolute and universal in Christ the Soveraign Head thereof but Ministerially under him and over the Church under their circuit Politically as proper Heads and Rulers and whatever power after extraordinary Callings by Revelation from God ceased any one dispartake of in the Church was ctrtainly at first derived from such single Persons alone however to the solemnity of such ordination others of an inferiour Order concurred thereto And as the Government of the civil World was originally without exception so far as search can be made by the most curious Antiquaries Monarchical though it were not governed by one man alone but by Civil Supream Princes of several Dominions into which the earth was parcelled So though no one Father or Bishop ever presided over all the Christian world yet several single Persons in their respective Provinces governing the Church as Principal the Government of the Church may rightly be termed Monarchical in Particular but Aristocratical as to the whole For as the Apostles were all Monarchs compared with their Proselites Converts and Churches by them founded but were but Peers compared one with another So was it with the Bishops and Patriarchs of the Church succeeding them whereby the Prophesie of Christ in St. Matthew was verified spoken not so much as some mistake it of his Heavenly Kingdome but earthly his Church and its ensuing glory Verily I say unto you that ye which M … â—â— have followed me in the regeneration when the son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve Tribes of Israel That when the Church of Christ should flourish then there should be such as in lieu of the twelve Tribes of Israel should Rule as in Thrones the Church of God under the Gospel They who object against this the words of Christ in Saint Matthew Ye know that the Princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them and Mâ—tt 20 25. 26. they that are great exercise autority upon them But it shall not be so among you Do declare no less against Aristocratical then Monarchical Government yea all Government over the Church And their favourable gâ—osS in behalf of one will be as valid for that which they reject For as it was not at all the mind of Christ that there should be no Governours at all over his Church so doth it not at all appear that what was lawful for many to do was not lawful for one But here the old cheat again takes place to suppose that the Government of one is in it self tyrannical and of many free but neither Christ nor nature ever taught them how to prove this presumptuous imagination And to this may we add another such mistake from St. Peters words That men should not be Lords over Gods heritage And what then Must there be more 1 Pet. 5. 3. than one over a Church and not onely one May a company of Presbyters oblige Christians to do or believe such things and not Lord it but if by a principal Person bearing Rule this same thing be done then is the Precept violated Besides who sees not that hath not a mind to be blind That the Apostle speaks nothing at all in these words of the kind of Government but the exercise of it and abuse Surely if Episcopal Government could not choose but tyrannize and Presbyterial could do nothing but according to Scripture and equity this Objection were unanswerable otherwise not worth the mentioning much less answering as common as it is and as confidently urged And as to that Pretense intended to overthrow our prime ground of Christs institution taken from what was first actually found in the Church viz. That Imparity of Christs Ministers was not found in the Church till about an hundred and forty or fifty years after Christ when it is confessed by the Enemies of Ecclesiastical Hierarchies that it prevailed Let the Huggers of this Device First consider what a pitiful addition is made to their cause from hence seeing that it is undenyable there was a disparity all the Apostles dayes who in order excelled all Ecclesiastical Persons and that almost one hundred years were spent of the said tearm in their time So that about fifty or sixty years only this imaginary Government had its being and then was lost again for fourteen hundred and then was better lost then found and taken up again But a far worse inconvenience spoils this jest as being founded and raised only from conjecture and that conjecture upon the obscurity of those ages not so clearly known as afterwards CHAP. XXIX Of the necessity of holding visible Communion with Christs Church Knowledge of that visible Church necessary to that Communion Of the Notes to discern the true Church how far necessary Of the Nature or Condition of such Notes in General IT being so necessary as we have above shewed to be in communion with the visible Church of Christ and the Nature of things themselves being more intrinsick many times than to characterize sufficiently them to the Enquirer into them it hath been thought necessary to explain them farther by more apparent and observable notices given of them And in the Doctrine of the Church these seem to be of greatest consequence Visibility Universality or Catholickness Sanctity and Perpetuity Of all which we shall briefly speak in order yet first premising somewhat concerning Notes in General For seeing as we have said it is necessary to know the true Church from the false and the Natures of things are often-times so abstruse and hidden from us that we cannot discover them from their own Light therefore it hath been judged very reasonable to pitch upon certain outward Notes eading us unerringly to the knowledge of the thing it self And in truth I cannot wholly approve of that course chosen to certifie us and point out to us the-true Church taken from the very being of it such as are Faithful and sincere Doctrine taught therein Sacraments duly administred Worship purely performed and Discipline rightly constituted because these are rather of the very intrinsick nature and definition it self of the Church than notes and characters outward whereby the nature it self should be certainly known We all indeed without exception consent that that Church is the true Church which is thus qualified and affected believeth aright is governed aright administreth the Sacraments aright and worshippeth aright and in one word which followeth most exactly the Rules of Holy Scripture but in the Assumption and Application is all the doubt and infinite
to the world Upon this Innovating Hereticks were forced to seek subterfuge from revelations and extraordinary discoveries promised as they corruptly understood Scripture by Christ in St. John saying I have yet many things to say unto you but ye Joh. 16 12 13. cannot bear them now Howbeit when the Spirit of truth shall come he will guide you unto all truth c. Hence they collected That Christ communicated not all to his immediate Disciples but reserved diverse things to be imparted extraordinarily to them and the phansie of such extraordinary favours from God is such a bewitching device that few not soundly setled in Faith can chose but expect and thirst after and at last conceit that so God doth deal with them when there is no such matter And of this Sacrilegious and Heretical folly are those Churches no less than simple single persons guilty which under pretense of power in the Church which must not be denyed of declaring the sense of Scripture and Faith do in very deed invent and introduce new Articles of Faith and absurd Scholies unheard of before either in substance or form and say They do but explain only what was before implyed and included in holy Writ For all Articles of Faith all necessary and due Discipline all true Administration of Sacraments wherein the truth of Christian Churches are generally affirmed to consist must long since have been discovered from the Rule of all these or otherwise they who were ignorant of or defective in these could not lay any just claim to be true Churches of Christ So that in truth Antiquity thus understood is an excellent Note of the true Faith and the true Faith not contradicted in worship as is possible more than a Note or Sign of a true Church it is the very Being it self But where Antiquity it self is obscure the condition of a Note according to the Canvasers of this point being to be more cleer than that which is in question it cannot do this good office for us And to argue backward as too many do very incongruously endeavouring to prove that which should prove is to discover the fondness of their opinions and falsness of their cause at the same time For instance to say the Church cannot err in Doctrine therefore we must believe this to be most ancient And to affirm that no man can precisely declare the time and place when such a Doctrine entred the Church taxed for innovation is very absurd as commonly and confidently as it is used For St. Augustine on whose grounds they seem to build this supposition supposed that First no time could be instanced in when such an usance was not in the Church but many times this can be done against pretences to Apostolicalness though the direct time when it began may not be instanced in For whenas most Doctrines of Faith have some practical worship proper 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Aristoteles Polit Lib 5. 8. 175. to them and evidencing them such as are the form the matter the rites of prayer none of which recorded in the Church insinuate any such opinions in that age of the Church especially of publick approbation is it not an argument more than conjectural there was then no such thing believed in the Church though we be not able to determine when it first sprung up Again it is very weak and frivolous which is presumed as unquestionable that all abuses and corruptions in the Church had some proper period wherein they must needs show themselves according to that formality as afterwards they appeared in and became notorious No doubt is to be made but points of Doctrine had their conceptions augmentations and progressions insensible as infinite other things in nature and manners have had and daily have A man may better demand the hour in which an Apple began first to rot or the week in which an old Groat began first to be defaced and loose its form than require a determinate point of time or perhaps the year in which such a Doctrine began to be corrupted into an heretical sense and practise But many of these are very exactly and faithfully set down and found short of immemorialness of Tradition as they term it For Succession another note of the Church I find it by some divided into Succession Doctrinal and Personal meaning better than they speak For I know nothing properly succeeding but where something is departed or lost Now the Doctrine of the Church being incessant and perpetual and not diverse from it self cannot be said so properly to succeed it self as to persevere in the Church But if we should pass that order and allow this language yet the thing it self seems here quite to be mistaken it being not at present enquired into the Faith of the Church which if it were granted to be sound and Catholick doth not of it self necessarily and fully infer a true Church and upon the reasons before agreed to viz. Due administration of Discipline to be essential to a true Church but into the Form constituting it a Visible and Formal Church to which is indispensably required proper Pastors and that by the appointment of Christ as St. Paul thus witnesseth speaking of Christ leaving Ephes 4. 11 12 the earth and ascending into heaven and deputing thereupon certain Officers in his stead in a visible ministration which he ceaseth now to exercise 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 Now it is not necessary here to determine the quarrel about the kind of Officers here mentioned it sufficing to our purpose what is very evident that they who are Governours of the Church must be given to the Church by Christ But Christ acting no longer politically or visibly as hath been said and must be yielded but mystically he cannot be said to ordain any immediately in his own person but by the ministry of others Now how is it possible to distinguish them whom Christ hath appointed to constitute others in the Church from them to whom he hath given no such order but by this succession we now speak of namely a traduction of that faculty which is in one deriving it originally though by many intermediate hands from Christ himself to another succeeding him because as the Apostle to the Hebrews speaks the Priests are not suffered to continue by reason of Death This Hebr. 7. 23. surrogation then of Pastors and Priests is not to be at the pleasure or arbitrement of men to institute but must be by the will of Christ and this will of Christ must be revealed unto us either by the ordinary line and course from himself and Apostles or else must by some extraordinary and miraculous way be made known to men For though we deny it to be Christs practise to commission men to these ends we do not deny it to be
and for ought appears the Schismatical may be in greater unity within it self than the Catholick how can any man discern from unity which is the Catholick or true Church The Unity therefore which may any wise describe or distinguish the sounder part of Christs Church from the heretical must not be taken from that which it holdeth within it self but with some other which is acknowledged for Catholick wherein comes the use of Antiquity again because the Ancient Churches of Christ were saved by the same Faith and Worship that all succeeding Churches must be therefore if it may appear that a Church doth not agree in all necessary or considerable points of Faith Worship and Government with them of former ages supposed to be truly Catholick it self cannot be Catholick or a true Christian Church But they who look no higher than one Age or two and no farther then one place or two and finding convenient agreement amongst themselves do characterise themselves for Christs Church fall into the censure of St. Paul to the Corinthians who measuring themselves by themselves and comparing 2 Cor. 10. 12. themselves among themselves are not wise And in the Revelation of St. John we read of some Nations into whose heart God hath put to fulfill Revel 17. 7. his will and to agree and give their Kingdom unto the Beast until the word of God should be fulfilled I hope this unity of consent will not be taken for any argument of the faithfulness of their consent or Catholickness But more we shall have occasion to speak of Unity in the treating of Schism In the mean time I see no force at all in the places alleadged out of the Old Testament to prove so much as may be well allowed to the unity of the Church as where it is said My Beloved is but one and to the Cantic like purpose For such places taken in relation to Fact and not to Precept and counsel rather that Gods Church should be so and endeavour to keep the Spirit of Unity in the bond of peace as the Apostle speaks can Ephes 4. 3. be understood strictly only of that single Nation of the Jews which was alone chosen so peculiarly to himself Or of the future Coalition of Jew and Gentile into one Body as the same Apostle in the same Epistle speaketh of Christs Passion That he might reconcile both unto God in one Chap. 2. 16. Body by the Cross having slain the enmity thereby i. e. between Jew and Gentile These difficulties and uncertainties in this Note of Unity have constrained the Patrons of the Roman Cause to find out such an Unity which indeed is more apparent and certain to him that commits his Faith to be guided by some outward sign but so much repugnant to all ancient Churches so wholly strange to them and unheard of that it may seem to do them much more mischief than advantage as that which excludes all Antiquity from having any suffrage in this cause And this their Note is Unity Bellarm. de Notis Eccles lib. 4. cap. 10. init with the Bishop of Rome as boldly said and as weakly proved as their enemies could wish St. Hierom indeed saith to Damasus he is resolved to hold as He and that See believed in one particular of the Trinity and used not simply and abstractly consider'd this as a probable argument of Orthodoxness and preserving the peace of the Church but with the concurrence of other Circumstances rendring his Opinion probable But doth he or any ancient Author deserving with themselves the name of a Father teach as they would perswade indefinitely That to hold communion with the Bishop of Rome is to be assured you are of the true Catholick Church Christs Charter much stood upon to St. Peter and the Rhetorical flourishes many times of the Holy Fathers extolling St. Peter and his Successors but never categorically affirming or soberly determining so will not amount to this Hence they proceed to Universality too as a sign of the true Church and an help to Unity it self For it profitteth nothing that there be some one Church and that in one Age and Place which is at unity with it self if it be not universal Christs Church is said to be universal but so many senses are given of Universality it self that it is hard to apply it positively to any pretending to it For nothing so plain as that the Christian Faith doth not and never did possess all Nations nor all the persons of those Nations where it hath flourished No man therefore can know the true Church by that which is not true of it And therefore I make no doubt but the most anciently genuine and proper sense of that expression in the Apostles Creed where it is said I believe the Catholick Church Vide Augustinum Epistolâ— 50. aimed at no more than to cause us to believe that Christs Church was from that time forward no longer to be of one Nation or one Denomination as it was before Christs Incarnation but Catholick that is Universal and indifferently to extend to all People For at that time when the Creed was composed the secondary sense wherein Catholick and sound Believer signified the same thing was scarce at all heard of no not before the Councel of Nice under Constantine Afterwards it was applyed to particular Sees as well Alexandrian Antiochian and some others as Roman In Theodosius the second his dayes which above 400 years after Christ a Sozomenus Ecclesiast Hist lib. 7. cap. 4. Law was made that none should call themselves Catholicks but such as believed aright concerning the Holy Trinity the rest should be termed Hereticks Afterward notwithstanding every Sect and Heresie usurped that name as may appear from that very place corruptly cited out of Austin August Epist ad Epistolam Fundamenti by some to prove the true Church from the Title of Catholick it self For saith he however all Hereticks desire to be called Catholicks yet if any enquired for a Catholick Church they were directed to the Orthodox and not Heretical Churches But if we take the word Catholick in a more restrained sense not for that which is all over the world actually but so far as it doth extend passeth generally through all and that not Places but Ages too where shall we find a Catholick Church Christians never for fourteen or fifteen hundred yeers not conspiring into one belief no not in things held very important to Faith and I mean not only single persons but Societies of Christians Therefore neither from hence can we conclude directly of the true Church in opposition to Heretical And therefore the Patrons of this opinion of the Universality finding themselves harder pursued with difficulties than they can evade being taken in their own snares are forced according to their very vain custom to leave off the tryal of the truth from matter of Fact which is most plain and ready and proceed to say It ought so
themselves For though infinite Instances may be given of Cities and Nations which have wrung the Civil Power out of the hands of their Princes and Magistrates and pretended they would be ruled by their own Counsels and power yet could they never effect this but were constrained after all devices used to no purpose to let go their hold if not Pretensions and suffer the assumed Power to return to a more capable subject Which incapacity of using such Power is no less then an unanswerable Demonstration to me that it was never there placed by any divine Will or Right but somewhere else Now though some eminent Reformers of the Late Age have been so superfluously and in truth superstitiously nice and as is pretended jealous for Christs honour and absolute Headship over his Church that would not so much as allow the name of Government to the Church or any in it least Christ should suffer loss but administration must be the Junius de Ecclesia name signifying power and Rule exercised in the Church yet in truth all this is no better then a Superstitious fear where there is no fear For they are not names but things that are so much to be heeded And if these men in their Charge had not acted the part of Governours as well as others we might have allowed this invention for tollerable but the truth is the honour pretended to Christ and the Gentle usage of the People have ended in the same thing which the other more openly and honestly professed to do the difference being only in the Hands so acting But 't is no new thing to beguile dissetled people with new words into new orders neither will it ever be left off as common a Stratagem as it is so long as the People are people and Craft and Ambition shall spurrmen of Fortune to currie and scratch that unruly beast to the end that when they find it convenient they may get up of them and ride them at their pleasure This incapacity of all Christians to rule themselves being the same with the other necessarily inferreth a more proper subject of that Power which not being assumed but delivered any more then the Faith it self founds a distinction of Christians and the Church as ancient as the Church it self not unknown to Civil Societies For as hath been said a Kingdom or Commonwealth is said to decree and act such a thing when not the thousand part thereof so much as know any thing of it till it be done so that clearly there is a Nation Real and Representative and Formal and proper This consisteth of all Persons in that Society and every member of that Political Bodie The other of such Principal Parts of that Bodie as are in Possession of autority and power to Rule the rest and whose Acts are interpreted to be the Acts of the whole State And that the Church consisting of infinite Persons uncapable of consulting or acting Decretorily must and alwayes had certain Select Persons representing the whole which it should conclude the thing it self together with Precedents of all Places and Ages do prove The greatest arguments and most colourable are taken from the Infancy of the Church to the contrary For both Hereticks and Schismaticks endeavour at contrary conclusions from the Scripture Patrons of the Popes absoluteness argue from a Superiority or Primacy of order in St. Peter when the Church consisted it may be of twenty persons to make good the Popes pretensions to supremacy over the universal Church when it consisteth of so many Nations But to this our answer is ready First that the like power was never in St. Peter over his fellow Apostles and the Rest that is claimed by the Present Bishop of Rome Secondly That if such a Power as is asserted to St. Peter for the Popes sakehad ever been in him really yet it could be no good ground of his Successors claiming the same over the Catholick Church And that First because there is no probability of the like Gifts and Graces requisite to such Autority in the Popes of Rome as were given by Christ to St. Peter yea there are more instances to be given of the Ignorance and horrible vitiousness of Persons possessing that Chaiâ— then in any other Patriarchal See in Christendom Secondly There is no Rule of Certainty setting aside the Personal incapacities and imperfections how far the Apostolical power was derived to their Successors but what may be taken from the end of such power which was to conserve the Church in due order of Government Devotion and Faith and this may as well and better be performed without one Persons engrossing to himself the Disposal of all things Primarily though not in the Execution Thirdly the difference is vast between the Church consisting of so few and contracted into so narrow a circuit as at the first founding of it when one man might have with great facility taken the whole management of the Church upon him and in following Ages when it was diffused into so many and far distant quarters of the Universe not to be inspected or managed by one man though an Apostle On the other side Persons of Democratical Principles and purposes finding in holy Writ that the whole Church without distinction of Persons were often assembled together and that during their such meeting matters concerning the due administration of the Church were treated of collect from thence that in right and not rather occasionally they concurred to Publick Acts of the Church but this likewise is a fallacy without any necessity of consequence as will appear from the original and orderly search made into the first Constitution and the gradual Progress of Ecclesiastical Persons and functions First then That Christ is the Head of the Church and under that General notion of Power life and motion doth communicate his influence unto his Body the Scripture is so manifest and it is so generally and willingly by all assented to that it were lost time to insist on it He is then by immediate consequence the fountain of all Power resting in that Body as doth appear from the several Appellations subordinate to that of Head attributed unto him in Scripture For Hebrews the third and first he is called The Apostle of our profession And in the Book of the Acts he is stiled that Prophet Heb. 3. 1. Acts. 3. 22. Deut. 18. 15. Luk. 4. 18. which was in Deuteronomie promised to the true Israel And an Evangelist he is made to us by his own words verifying the Prediction of Esaias upon himself Saying The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel And St. Peter calleth him our 1 Pet. 2. 25. Mat. 23. 10. Bishop Doctour or Master he claims as proper to himself in St. Mathew And to the Hebrews as before he is called a Priest an High priest yea lastly a Deacon or Minister for the words properly used signify the same Rom. 15. 8. thing
Eucharist and especially going upon the grounds of Luther Calvin Perkins and some others of Great note that all Sacerdotal they may call them if they please Ministerial Acts done by him who is no true Minister are really null and void Fourthly we conclude that seeing all Ecclesiastical power as Ecclesiastical doth proceed from Christ and his Successors and that by Ordinary and visible means they who have not received the same by such Ordinary Methods are usurpers of the same whether Political or Mystical And that to deny this to the Church is to deny that which Christ hath given them and such a Principle of the Churches well Being without which it cannot subsist and it not subsisting neither can the Faith it self And to the reason above given we may add Prescription beyond all memory For from Christs time to this day a perpetual and peculiar power hath ever been in the Clergy which hath constantly likewise born the name of the Church to assemble define and dispose matters of Religion And why should not Prescription under Unchristian as well as Christian Governours for so many Ages together be as valid sacred and binding to acknowledgment in the Case of Religion as Civil Matters will ever remain a question in Conscience and common Equity even after irresistible Power hath forced a Resolution otherwise It is true such is the more natural and Ancient Right Civil Power hath over the outward Persons of men than that which Religion hath over the Inward man that it may claim a dominion and disposal of the Persons of even Christian subjects contrary to the soft and infirm Laws of the Church because as hath been said Men are Men before they are Christians and Nature goeth before Grace And Civil society is the Basis and support to Ecclesiastical Yet the grounds of Christianity being once received for good and divine and that Religion cannot subsist nor the Church consist without being a Society and no Society without a Right of counsel and consultation and no consultation without a Right to assemble together the Right of assembling must needs be in trinsique to the Church it self Now if no man that is a Christian can take away the essential ingredient to the Church how can any deny this of Assembling For the practise of it constantly and confidently by the Apostles and brethren contrary to the express will of the Lawful Powers of the Jews and Romans and the reason given in the Acts of the Apostles of obeying God rather then man do imply certainly a Law and Charter from God so to do and if this be granted as it must who can deny by the same Rule necessity of Cause and constant Prescription that they may as well provide for the safety of the Faith by securing the state of the Church as for the truth and stability of the Church by securing the true Faith by doctrine and determination The Great question hath ever been Whether the Church should suffer loss of power and priviledges upon the Supream Powers becomming Christian Or the Supream power it self loose that dominion which it had before it became of the Church For if Christianity subjected Kings necessarily to the Laws of others not deriving from them then were not Kings in so good a Condition after they were Christians as before when they had no such pretences or restraints upon them and so should Christs Law destroy or maim at least the Law of God by which Kings reign But there may be somewhatsaid weakning this absurdity For Granting this That there is a God and that he is to be worshipped and that as he appointeth all which we must by nature believe it seems no less natural to have these observed than the Laws of natural Dominion Now granting that at present which if we be true to our Religion we must not deny viz. That Christian Religion is the true Religion and that God will be worshipped in such sort as is therein contained For any Prince absolute to submit to the essentials of that Religion is not to loose any thing of his Pristine Rights which he had before being an Heathen for he never had any Right to go against the Law of God more then to go against the Law of Nature but it doth restrain his Acts and the exercise of his Power And if the Supream after he hath embraced Christianity shall proceed to exert the same Authority over the Church as before yet the Church hath no power to resist or restrain him Civilly any more than when he was an Alien to it Now it being apparent that Christian Faith and Churches had their Forms of believing and Communion before Soveraign powers were converted and that he who is truly converted to a Religion doth embrace it upon the terms which he there finds not such as he brings with him or devises therefore there lies an Obligation upon such powers to preserve the same as they found it inviolate And truly for any secular Power to become Christian with a condition of inverting the orders of the Church and deluting the Faith is to take away much more than ordinary accrues unto it by such a change It is true the distinction is considerable between the Power of a Christian and unchristian King exerted in this manner because taking the Church in the Largest sense in which all Christians in Communion are of it what Christian Kings act with the Church may in some sense bear the name of the Church as it doth in the State acting according to their secular capacity but much more improperly there than here because there are no inferiour Officers or Magistrates in such a Commonwealth which are not of his founding and institution whatsoever they do referr to him and whatsoever almost he doth is executed by them But Christ as we have shewed having ordained special Officers of his own which derive not their Spiritual Power at all from the Civil and to this end that his Church might be duly taught and governed what is done without the concurrence of these can in no proper sense bear the name of the Church But many say the King is a Mixt person consisting partly of Ecclesiastical and partly Civil Authority but this taken in the ordinary latitude is to begg the Question and more a great deal than at first was demanded For who knows how far this Mixture extends and that it comprehends not the Mystical Power of the Church as well as the Political And how have they proved one more than the other by such a title It were reasonable therefore first to declare his Rights in Ecclesiastical matters as well as Civil and thence conclude he is a Mixt Person and not to affirm barely he is a Mixt Person and from thence inferr they know not what Ecclesiastical power themselves And if he hath such power whether it is immediately of God annexed to his Natural Right or by consent of the Church is attributed unto him For by taking this course we
may possibly to them were this any more than to say They would be at peace and unity with them when they became of their mind did as they would have them and not differ from them But I have transgressed I fear on this subject here at present which yet is not impertinent altogether it proving that it is Lawful to Excommunicate such who agree with us in Faith And the summ of the reason is this viz. Because there are as hath been acknowledged on both sides yea is almost on all sides granted two things essential to the Church Doctrine and Government or Discipline as it is called to act any thing to the violation of either of these may justly subject a man to this Ecclesiastical Censure And however at first sight dissension and opposition to the Rites and practices of a Church may not appear of a mortal nature of themselves as being perhaps about things in nature alterable yet in the consequence making a breach in the wall of the City of God they let in certain ruine and destruction Thieves and Robers And this holds no less to the Justification of the Church in Excommunicating refractory and disobedient persons to the Church in her citations though in truth the ground of her citation be matter of small moment It were indeed much to be wish'd that such severe sentences might not be executed but on occasions of greatest moment not only for the persons sake so excluded but the Churches sake denouncing whose autority must needs be much weakened and her sentence much contemned when upon matters appearing meerly trivial and light it is inflicted And therefore most useful it seemeth That redress of pecuniary pretensions on persons relating to Ecclesiastical Courts should not be by Excommunication but from the Civil Power enabling the Ecclesiastical to exact their dues But where this is not in use and where no other means appears of obliging men to reverence and submit to Ecclesiastical Powers but the punishment Ecclesiastical I would fain have such persons who profess not the utter abolition of such autority and dissolution propound some other effectual way of keeping up the power and autority of those Courts besides Excommunication before they declare so smartly against the abuse of it Lastly whosoever doth by contempt and disobedience first deny the Churches power and in very deed sever himself from it can he or any man of Christian reason or modesty contradict the Churches Act in declaring and formally manifesting what was more closely but really before done by himself So far as a man disobeys and opposes the Church so far is he really separated from it And to be partly on and partly off as some men propound to themselves and please themselves in thinking it free to choose and leave at their pleasure what their private judgements shall lead them to is not at all to clear them from the guilt or imputation of Schismaticalness For all proper Schismaticks agree in many things with the Church which they trouble and divide And every Schismatick stands divided from the Church And may not the censure of the Church by Excommunication most reasonably at least follow a mans own Act and declare that to be so which himself hath made so especially not only thereby or so much punishing the Offendor as securing the innocent and sound by such notice from the like contagion Doth not St. Paul cleerly imply so much when Gal. 5. 12. he saith to the Gallatians I would they were even cut off that trouble you How did these intruders and seducers so trouble the Church as to deserve such Excision or Cutting off By two things principally one whereof follows in the next verse by a presumption of such Christian Liberty which was never intended by Christ for his Church Another was in point Gal. 1. 6 7. of doctrine innovating rather in form than words For it was not another doctrine of the Gospel that was offered to these green and unstable Christians but another Form the easier to prevail upon their Consciences and to alienate them from their true Pastors Such as these would the Apostle have Cut off and therefore very false and frivolous is that ground of Socinian Extract mentioned in the beginning viz. That nothing which in it self hinders not salvation can give just occasion of Excommunication I do not here as many insist much upon the words of Christ in St. Matthew whereby he warrants a man to account him as Heathen and publican Math. 18. 15 16 17. who shall refuse to hear the Church arbitrating and judging within it self because I am of their opinion who expound this not of excommunication from the Church but of a freedom granted to a man to go to the humane Civil Power for justice against such a brother as if he were no better than a Heathen and Publican who will not listen to the voice and judgement of the Church Yet surely this intimates a power in the Church to determine and a duty in the members of it to submit unto the Judgement of it and if a private man may treat one of his brethren as he would a heathen in some cases may not the Church This is the least we can honestly make of Christs Charter given to the Church by St. Peter in Mat. 16. 19. the same Gospel I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven But consideration and limitation of this grievous censure is not to be omitted according to diversity of Persons Relations and the Causes given from whence I suppose arose the distinction of Major and Minor or Greater and Lesser Excommunication of ancient use in the Church And Anathema and Excommunication according to the Ancient differ For Excommunication is nothing else but a denunciation of a person alienated from the Communion of the Church in the mysteries and worship proper to Christians And this we may take to be the Lesser Excommunication but Anathema or the Greater Excommunication besides excluding from Christian Communion added a Curse corporal which the Scripture calls properly a Delivering unto Satan as well for the destruction of Body as Soul Thus was that incestuous person excommunicated by St. Paul For the destruction of the flesh that the Spirit may be 1 Cor. 5â— 5. saved in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ For though we say that this Anathema was to the destruction of the flesh we mean only Actually as in that state but the end of that was rather the Salvation of it by such outward judgements reducing the offender to repentance This Anathema upon the body by plaguing it being miraculously inflicted hath ceased But yet not all bodily punishments with it taking here bodily punishments not only for bodily pains but bodily and outward losses Of this sort may be those separate men from all Civil Communion
fit the Case For when the Scripture saith Christ is a Door or Christ is a Vine or a Lamb it is not the same formally as to say that a Lamb is Christ or a Door or a Vine is Christ Yet if that rigour must be observed in Scripture Propositions to have them true that without a Trope or Figure they must be understood otherwise we must be reproached to deny Scripture the foresaid speeches must as necessarily inferr a Transubstantiation of Christ into the Nature of a Door or Vine or Lamb as his bare words at the Celebration do inferr a Transubstantiation of the Elements into his Nature And no apparence of disparity can be here shown if so be Christs Literal meaning must be here urged as they do Now That the Signs which were before are Really Present in the Sacrament after Consecration doth appear from the most-Essential thing to a Sacrament A Sacrament we have defined to be a Visible Sign with Austin and infinite others I say a Visible and Real Sign and not Visibly Apparently or Seemingly a Sign or a Sign of a Sign as the deluding Specieses remaining after supposed Transubstantiation are said to be And it is an Impossible thing as is before shewed in the general treating of Sacraments that the Sign should be the thing signified For if some Sign could be the thing signified then something signified should be a Sign and so both wayes the Relate and Cor-relate should be the same too and two should be one and one should be two and if this may be what may not be or at least said to be For as to the instances given That in some Cases a thing may be a Sign and the thing signified it hath been showed how defective they are in that they are a Sign of the same nature perhaps or rather some qualification of it and not of the same thing numerically as the individual Sign in the Lords Supper is believed to be of that it is Therefore from hence they are put to their choice Whether of the two they will suffer the loss of the Sacrament or the absence of Christs Body in their sense For not only the nature of the thing now expressed require Sacramental Signs as well as the thing signified but the manifold Autorities of the Ancientest of the Greek and Latin Fathers have for this reason called the Sacramental Elements Signs Figures Representations Types Antitypes of Christs Body and Blood as might at large be shewed our Adversaries not denying it But what answer do they make to them The Modern Greeks as Cardinal Bessario who is herein followed by some more modern than himself Latinizing answer confessing that the Fathers Bessario Do Eucharist Sacramento often so speak but say they they speak only of the Bread and Wine before Consecration and not after Here is some wit in this shuffle and evasion but no truth at all For before Dedication and Consecration they are not Signs or Figures or Antitypes at all They have no more relation to the Body and Blood of Christ than the like Elements at our Common tables and therefore they must be understood to speak of them after Consecration But the Answer of the Scholastical managers of this controversy in the Latin Church shows less modesty and no more truth For Aūg. in Psal 3. they say St. Austin who calls the consecrated Elements a Figure of Christs Body spake not of every empty Figure but of a Figure of a thing really present All this we grant willingly viz that the Signs Sacramental are not Signs of things future or Absent This is nothing at all to the purpose And the Second answer is notoriously and boldly false saying That St. Austin might there speak as Manichee who denied the Real Body Contra Adamant C. 12. of Christ For it was in confutation of Manicheans And of Tertullians words who likewise calls the consecrate Elements Signs they make non-sense joyning head and tail together that they may really signifie nothing least they should signify that for which we alleadg them Tertullian saies Hoc est Corpus meum Id est Figura Corporis mei Figura Corporis mei saies one after his greater Doctors is referred not unto Corpus meum as an Fisher Jes explication thereof but unto Hoc in this manner Hoc id est Figura Corporis mei est Corpus meum i. e. This that is the Figure of my Body is my Body If it be not sufficient conviction of their Errour and confusion that they are driven to such unnatural tossing of mens words against common sense and Grammar and having so done to affect nothing but what is directly false or unintelligible as this Scholie is making the Figure and the Body the very same thing I confess I have nothing to say For this is the subject we have at present in hand That the Sign and thing signified must by eternal necessity be distinct but this opinion of Transubstantiation destroys this and destroying this destroys the Sacrament For whereas they say That the remaining Species supply the place of the Substance abolished and are Signs This cannot consist with the impossibility of such Accidents without a subject in that contrary to their definition they should stick and not stick to a thing in that they are Accidents their nature requires that they should have a subject and the nature of this mutation requires they should have none And where as they argue That what any Creature can do the Creatour can much more do and therefore if the Creature can sustain Accidents the Creatour God Almighty can I answer If the Creature could sustain Accidents without a subject then doubtless could God the Creatour but doth it follow that because the Creature can be a subject to them therefore the Creatour can also All that a Creature can Do the Creatour can do but all that the Creature can Suffer I trow the Creatour cannot But to be the subject to Accidents is a Passion and imperfection and no Action and therefore nothing can be concluded from hence Therefore they proceed one strain higher not doubting to say That what the Creature can do by its Passive Capacity the Creatour can do by his Active which if it did not imply a contradiction in nature itself I should easily grant but this it doth For first it is to make an Accident a Substance For t is the nature of a Substance to subsist of it self without the aid or support of any other thing distinct from it Not that the Secondary being can subsist without the First God himself but without any thing Created And therefore seeing that Substance it self cannot continue in its Being without Gods omnipotent hand supporting it this doth equalize the nature of Accidents to that of Substance in that it supposeth that Accidents by a divine power may subsist of themselves as well as Substance For substance cannot subsist at all without a Divine power and thus Accidents by a
that communion which may detain any man of Christian modesty and Charity from pronouncing such an one to be infallibly damn'd or out of possibility to salvation And if it be hereupon demanded What difference we put between Infidels and such corrupt Christians seeing diverse have undertaken to assert a Possibility of salvation to them also living exactly to the Light and Rule of Nature in them I answer not absolutely at present dashing the argument a-pieces by denying the supposition and their colourable proofs thereof but demonstrating a vast discrimination between the one and other condition For commonly where Heresies which are so properly called and not Gentilism as they are which destroy the first Principles of Christianity are taught and maintained there are to be found all truths necessarie to salvation in a Christian sense For the Holy Scriptures we suppose are there received and submitted unto which are able to make a 2 Tim 3. 16 17. man wise unto salvation and thorowly to furnish him unto all good works And the Records of the Church and ancienter practise good guides against the rocks way-laying a man in his course to Heaven And the want of actual communion with a Church doth then only expose our souls to Perdition when it is wilfully and causelesly slighted and contemned And then only doth Separation visible 〈◊〉 less Visible alienation of mind and affection put on the nature of Schism And there are two general defects in a Church which justify Separation according to those two things we have shewed do constitute a Church Doctrine of Faith and Divine Regiment called commonly Discipline If a Church errs notoriously in the former no Separation can be called Schism oâ— if defective not in Government absolutely for without some Government it could not be so much as a Society but in the Government oâ—dained for it because then it should not be a Christian Society For the faith of Christians held do not make a Christian Society but the Christian Regiment Christian Regiment also I call that not whereby Christians are Governed for Civil Governments are common to Heathens and Christians but that which is Proper to Christians as Christians and was instituted by Christ for Christians and not invented out of mens wise brains and accommodated to the Church and perhaps called Divine to give it greater credit and place amongst Christians Of which we have alreadie spoken It being a common rule amongst the Ancients Clemens Alexand Stromal immutable with me There can be no true Flock without true Pastours And there can be no true Pastours where they are not set over the Flock according to Christs known and received will but some presumed tacit and extraordinary Vocation as they term it when there is an entrance by the Window and not by the Door From hence it doth appear how uncertain and confused their notion and position is who without any more adoe conclude all those to be Schismaticks and that upon their own Principles and Concessions who separate from a Christian Societie which they acknowledge to be a true Church For very great is the ambiguity both of Separation and True Church First Separation is as we have before noted either of Subordinates or Co-ordinates And of Subordinates either simply or with Restriction Simply subordinate I call them not comparitively with Christs Imperial Power but with all External power who by divine Right of Providence owe direct obedience to their Pastours in all things not inhibited by the Law of God to which all Spiritual Pastours are to be no â—ess subject than the sheep themselves And thus every Bishop is true Head and Governor of that Flock which under Christ is committed to his Care and Custodie But in like manner is not that Bishop subject to the Metropolitane and much less that Metropolitane to his Patriarch For these are but Ecclesiastical Constitutions and of no distinct Order though Degree According to which obligations of obeying the refusing to obey and dis-uniting ones self from the Governours of the Church doth aggravate or extenuate the Division and the guilt thereof And without all peradventure may one Church divide from another upon less grounds then the Members of one Church separate from the more immediate Head of the same How thick do instances stand in Ecclesiastical History of Churches who by vertue of their Respective Governours have been divided and yet both remain true Churches Again a True Church is said so to be more than one way viz. As to Being absolutely and Being perfectly We know that every Errour in Doctrine though great nay though heretical doth not presently destroy the nature of a Church absolutely though it takes away from the perfection of a Church How that opinion was delivered by the Fathers viz. That Heresie destroyes the Church we have Cyprianus Epistola 52. â— gat Novatianos eâ—â—e Christianosâ— shewed in part speaking of Heresie and now may add farther that the the same persons of old or their Co-equals denied an Heretique to be a Christian also and therefore they are to be understood of the such foul and unchristian Heresies which rased the foundation of faith it self as did the Valentinians the Gnosticks the Marcionites and such like For t is now agreed to That unless a man be a Christian he cannot be an Heretique Or if at any time they spake of more tolerable Heresies not wholly inconsistent with Christianity it self then they laid the burden of Damnation upon that accessorie but separable Aggravation Uncharitableness which alone and especially conjoined with such errours exposed to damnation But as it is with the Natural Man it is with the Spiritual There are some parts Essential and Vital which cannot be wanting or corrupted but the Whole must loose its nature and denomination and there are others not absolutely Essential which are called Integral without which the Body may possible subsist but not be perfect in its material Parts And so it is with the Body of Faith consisting of so many Articles or members as Parts some Vital and essential some necessarie to its perfections but not its Being absolutely And a Church may be called a true Church which is defective or Excessive in these though not in them And yet we need not betake our selves to that explication by some used of a True-man and a Thief to express how a Church may be a True Church and an erroneous one at the same time For the nature of this truth we ascribe unto the Church consisting only in Morality If the Church failes in that the Nature of it failes as it doth not in a man when he is corrupted with falsness and vice But this we say That although all Truths are equally true as to the nature of Truth it self they are not of equal importance and use to us or to a Church Therefore such a Latitude being in the notion of a True Church how can any man so confidently say that No Church can separate from the Church
of Rome but they must make themselves thereby Schismatiques before God though before the Church they cannot be condemned for such qualifying this hard saying with this Supposition only That the Church of Rome alwayes had and hath Salvation in it as a true Church though corrupted For that we may and do call a True Church wherein the principles of Christianity are kept intire as to the most fundamental of them but withal this hinders not but diverse things at the same time and by the same Church which are damnable may be found in it For in the same house saith St Paul there are Vessels to honour and dishonour which we may as well interpret of Tenets of faith as of the Professours of the Faith And in the same Dispensatorie are both Poisons and Cordials yea in the same dish may be found Food sufficient to nourish and destroy shall we therefore not be careful to avoid the whole because we do acknowledge the wholesomness of so many in it Who knowes not that there are monstrousnesses in Excess as well as defect And that it suffices not to keep a man in communion with a Church that all things necessary are therein contained when withal many things not only unnecessary but pernicious are shuffled together with them If we can therefore shew as we suppose we have and can that the Roman Church alloweth and propoundeth many heretical dogmes many Idololatrical practises what will it avail them to have it granted them that all truths are extant there in the Monuments of their Church It will here infallibly be replied by them That it cannot be that a Church at the same time can hold all things needful in Faith and worship and yet maintain such errours as are charged upon them To which I say and grant That 't is not possible they should hold the same things as contrary or appearing so unto them But really they may and actually doe First as Philosophers should of contraries In gradu remisso not Intenso In the remisser and lower degrees not the extremest Secondly They may hold contraries really though not formally and as contrary For instance They may hold this fundamental opinion That God alone is to be worshipped with that divine worship which is the supreamest of all And they may hold that such a thing for example the Host is very God which verily is not God and consequently may teach the worship of such a reputed God Their Churches faith if it teaches strictly that only the true God is to be worshipped is inviolate and sound in Thesis But their Perswasion that such this is is an errour in fact rather than in Faith which contradicts the former opinion really But we hold That it is necessary to salvation that we erre not in such gross facts though we abominate detest and renounce the sin never so solemnly And the like may we say in many points of difference between us and them when they hold the proposition in General sound and good but by help of infinite and unintelligible distinctions word it out and ware off the imputation but not the Guilt of Errour Of the number of which things hard to be understood is that consideration of Schism before God and Schism before the Church with an implication that Separation from a true Church makes men Schismaticks before God though not before men because for example The Church of Rome cannot oblige any body to stand to the Autority which it so abaseth namely by breaking the Canons of the Church It is true A Church or Man may be a Schismatick before God and not before the Church But it cannot possibly be imagined how a man can be a Schismatique before men and from men and not before God But if it could be were we not in a very fair way to hell if we had no more to answer for than our Schism before God Were not our whole Church Schismatical and as good as lost though men took no notice of it It doth not follow therefore neither is it confessed that all are Schismaticks who separate from a true Church unless the separation be from it As it is true For we have shown that a Church true in essentials may fail in Integrals And it is no hard matter to show that a Church Erring in doctrines constituting the body of Faith may be separated from without Schism And the reason proving this is because that such Churches are alreadie really Schismatical through the said errours and it is not only lawful but a duty to separate from Schismaticks For so saith St. Paul We command you brethern in the name of the 2 Thes 3. 6. Lord Jesus Christ that ye withdraw your selves from every brother that walketh disorderly and not after the tradition which he received of us And what Traditions do we think St Paul intendeth there Only Ecclesiastical Canons and decrees of Councils for the better Government of the Catholick Church That this he may mean I denie not but that no more I denie For he that offends against the Faith offends against the Traditions To the Church but he that breaks the Constitutions offends against the Traditions Of the Church only which are of far inferiour nature It may well be doubted whether breaking of the Canons of the Church only can justify a Separation from a Church because they are not so much the Traditions delivered To the Church by Christ and his Apostles as the Traditions Of the Church which in their nature are mutable But yet if any co-ordinate Church shall refuse to innovate but stick resolutely and firmly to the received Discipline and Lawes of the Church while others shall violate them and choose new Forms and impose new Conditions of communion with it not agreeable to the old upon which a schism followes surely the guilt of Schism is to fall only upon that Church which thus innovates For though I am apt to believe that such alterations may not be sufficient to justifie a renunciation of Communion with such an Innovating Church and much less in single persons and private members of the same Church yet doubtless it fully excuses from the guilt of Schism if it patiently and passively persists in the more ancient and conformable way to the Churches of Christ in past ages even with apparent peril of Schism provided that the said Traditional Laws and practices shall not by the more judicious and conspicious part of the Church assembled freely and Lawfully in Council be judged inconvenient and so according to the Right it hath to reverse or establish things in nature alterable declar'd void and introduce new For in such cases disowning of the Power and Autority of the Church and refusing the decrees thereof tending to the General unitie of it is of it self a Schismatical Act. But in notorious errours in Doctrine or Faith it is free for any particular Church to divide from another because such corruption is of selfe damnable And in such cases we need
purpose or to their advantage to say for instance sake as the more sober especially when they would gain upon the good opinion of men That Images may be worshipped relatively and as instruments to devotion and helps but when there are found and generally known to be such doctrines as teach a veneration of Images for their own sakes and directly and that with the same sort of worship that the things they represent are capable of though perhaps they upon a pinch can insert a distinction which neither can be understood nor profit such a doctrine as this known to be delivered by the Principal Doctors of their Churches and maintain'd not being condemned by that Church however not generally embraced may subject a Church to a censure of Heresie and Idolatry of both and so in other things whereof tolerable senses are given in the Church of Rome or else they could not be said so much as to be a Church at all but intolerable and Heretical are also uncondemned and so are no true Church and so may be separated from without Schism but not without peril of damnation united to And do not our brethren for such they were before they professed Schism and I hope may be after they have renounced it see now plainly enough the vaniâ—y and spitefulness of their Evasion Are not the Cases infinitely different and that in their own eyes Hear they what Perkins saith to our and their purpose So long as a Church Perkins on Gal. C. 5. V. 20. or people do not Separate from Christ we may not separate from them 2 Pro. 24. 21. Fear the King and meddle not with them that vary i. e make alterations against the Laws of God and the King Indeed Subjects may signifie what is good for the State and what is amiss but to make any alteration in the State either Civil or Ecclesiastical belongs to the Supream Magistrate And â—n another place the same Author hath these words Great therefore is the rashness Id. Galat 1. V. 2. and want of moderation in many that have been of us that condemn our Church for no Church without sufficient conviction going before If they say we have been admonished by books published I say again these be grosser faults in some of those books than any of the faults that they reprove in the Church of England and therefore the books are not â—it to convince especially a Church Thus we see how the cases in the matter difier And no less may we see the difference in the manner For 't is apparent that Schismaticks against the Church of England never had any Legal autority to warrant their vile and Scandalous practices but were forced to give names to things uncapable of them to excuse themselves or else by an unnatural course to entitle the People to a Power Supream who have none at all but what is given them from another fountain neither did the people concurr with such misdemeaners as was pretended they did But thirdly another difference is to be noted from the Rights of a Patriarchal Power over a Provincial Church not properly of its Diocess and that of a Metropolitan with his Suffragans over the members of the Church which they altogether make For according to the constitutions of the Church though a Patriarchs Power was Intensively equal to Episcopal over his proper and immediate Diocess and Extensively much greater than the Metropolitans or Bishops in relation to other Diocesses yet was it never so Intensive i. e. so particular and great in those Bishops Diocesses over which he had only an Order of Unity rather than Intrinsick power to dispose matters therein though in process of time this also was invaded much by him and might be recovered to the proper Bishop by the Laws of the Church But the Bishops of this Church had the sole and immediate disposing of the affairs of it and nothing could be concluded without obligation of obedience out of Conscience without their Concurrence as desparately as Schismaticks then did and still do rage at this truth But then as Hinderson saith with others They would never reform themselves It is very likely so meaning as they would have them but that not to the better Rule of the Ancient Churches and the Scriptures is more than they knew or would acknowledg when they saw because still they would have done otherwise and invented a new Rule of their own But seeing the grounds and Cause of separation are they upon which the Guilt of Schism is avoided or contracted according to the nature of them and obscure and difficult and tedious is the method leading to the tryal of the sufficiency of them to justifie a Separation therefore it were well contrived if as in the search of a true Church they may being very long and uncertain and grievous to most proceeding upon the points of Faith and Parts of worship themselves certain infaâ—lible obvious and plain Characters could be produced to convince the Schism and distinguish it from simple and innocent Separation A Fair attempt to which hath been made by Austin who dispuâ—ing against the Donatists denies that any man can separate from the Universal Church innocently So that although it should be doubtful as most things are managed by Learned Partisans whether considering the grounds of Separation in themselves the Separation be Schismatical or lawful and laudable yet by such an outward Characteristick it might be competently discerned And so farmust I needs comply with that Judicious and Holy Father and such as urge this out of him against us as to yield it a most probable outward Note of Schism for any man or number of men not a Church but in Fieri as they speak only and in breeding to divide from the Universal Church not only as comprehending all Ages but of any one Age the weight and evidence of which Concession will appear from the esteem of the Church Catholick and the wrath and extent of Christs promises to preserve it in All truth For this is certain That Christ directed his promises and restrained them to no one time or Age. And it is not probable there should be such an Intercession or intermission of Faith or Christianity that the universal Church should mortally err in any one thing necessary to salvation nay though we take it not in such a large sense as sometimes it is wont to be used for all individual persons in it as well as Churches of which the whole is constituted And therefore to desert the communion of all Churches not of persons for this is scarce to be supposed to happen at any time doth argue shrewdly That the separation hath much of Schism in it without examination of particular grounds which are pretended sufficient For it will be said That it ought not to be supposed that Christ should deliver over his whole Church to such heretical errours which only can exempt a Separation from Schism From such notorious suspicions as these we
may clear our selves thus First by putting a difference between the Church so united as is here supposed to rightly denominate it the Catholick or Universal Church and the Church disunited and divided long before any Reformation came to be so much as called for in these western Parts with attempts to put such desires into practice The division or Schism between the Western and Eastern Churches happened about the years 860 and 870 under Nicholas the first of Constantinople and Adrian the Second Bishop of Rome Where the guilt was is of another subject But the Schism rested not here but infested the Greek Church also subdividing the Armenian from the Constantinopolitan Now in such Case as this which is as much different from that of the Donatists who divided from all these entirely united together as may be who can conclude a Division from the Church so divided long before a Schism ipso facto because a Division was made from one Part of it calling itself indeed the Catholick Church Had therefore Reformers so divided from the Catholick Church united as did the Donatists it were more than probable that their division might from thence be known to be Schism without any more ado but it is certain it was quite otherwise And therefore some other Conviction must be expected besides that Characteristick And what must that be The Infallibility of any one Eminent Church which like a City on a Mountain a Beacon on a Hill a Pharus or Lighttower to such as are like to shipwrack their Faith may certainly direct them to a safe Station and Haven And all this to be the Church or See of Rome But alas though this were as desirable as admirable yet we have nothing to induce us to receive it for such but certain prudent inferences that such there is because such there ought to be for the ascertaining dubious minds in the truth and therefore so say they actually it is and lest humane reason should seem too malapert to teach what divine Autority ought to do therefore must the Scripture be canvas'd and brought against the best Presidents in Antiquity to the Contrary to Patronize such necessary Dogms The matter then returns to what we at first propounded viz. the Judging of Schism from the Causes and of the Causes from the Scriptures and the more Genuine and ancient Traditions of Christs Church before such Schism distracted the same These two things therefore we leave to be made Good by Romanists in which they are very defective First that there is any One Notorious infallible Judge actually constituted whereby we may certainly discern the Schismaticalness or Hereticalness of any one Church varying from the truth and this because It were to be wish'd a Judg were somewhere extant Secondly that what ever Security or Safety of Communion is to be found in the Visible Church properly and inseparably belongs to the Roman Church because some of the Ancients tell the time when it did not actually err But if our proofs be much more strong and apparent which declare that actually it doth err and wherein it doth err what an empty and bootless presumption must it needs be to invite to its communion upon her immunity from Erring or to condemn men of Schism for this only That they communicate not with it which is the bold method of Roman Champions THE Second BOOK OF THE FIRST PART CHAP. I. Of the Formal Object of Christian Faith Christ An Entrance to the treating of the Objects of Faith in Particular AND Thus far have we treated of Religion in General and specially of Christian Religion or Faith in its Rule the Scriptures Its Causes its Effects its Contraries its Subject the Church in its several Capacities Now we are briefly to treat of the Particular Object Christian Faith That as God is the true and proper Author of Christian Faith he is also the principal Object is most certain and apparent and is therefore by the Schools called the Formal Object that is either that which it immediately and most properly treats of or for whose sake other things spoken of besides God and Christ are there treated of For other Religions as well as Christian treat of God and the works of God but none treat of God or his works as consider'd in Christ his Son but the Christian For the two Greatest Acts which have any knowledge of of God being Creation and Redemption both these are described unto us in Holy Writ to be wrought by God through Christ Jesus as the Book of Proverbs and of Wisdom intimate to us when they shew how God in Wisdom made the Worlds Christ being the true Wisdom of the Father And more expresly in the entrance into the Gospel of St. John Joh. 1. 2 â— the Word of God being Christ is said to be in the beginning with God and All things were made by him and without him was not any thing made that was made And St. Paul to the Ephesians affirmeth All things to be created by God Eph. 3. 9. Col. 1. 15 16. by Jesus Christ And to the Colossians speaking of Christ the Image of the Invisible God addeth For by him were all things created that are in Heaven and that are in the Earth Visible and Invisible c. This therefore discriminates the treating of things natural in Christian Theologie from all other Sciences and Theologies that all is spoken of in relation to Christ Jesus Therefore having in the beginning of this Tract spoken of God in General as supposed rather than to be proved in Divinity viz. of his absolute Being his Unity being but one His Infiniteness being all things in Perfection and Power we are here to resume that matter and continue it by a more particular enquiry into the Nature Attributes Acts and Works of God here supposing what before we have spoken of the First notion of Gods Being and those immediately joined with them His Unity and Infiniteness which Infiniteness necessarily inferreth all other Attributes proper to him as of Power Prefence in all places and all times and Omniscience and therefore here we shall speak only of the Nature or Being of God in the more peculiar sense to Christians that is being distinct in Persons as well as One in Nature CHAP. II. Of the special consideration of God as the object of Christian Faith in the Vnity of the Divine Nature and Trinity of Person FROM the Unity or singularity of Gods nature as to number doth flow an Unity and Simplicity of that one Individual Nature in it self For as the Nature of God cannot be found in several and separate Persons subsisting by themselves as may the nature of man so neither ought we to imagin that there is multiplicity of natures constituting the same God For as there are not many Gods differing Generically as there are Bodies Celestial and Podies Terrestial and again of Terrestial some Bodies Elemental and uncompounded naturally Other Mixt and compounded and such are Fish Foul
Place where their Site was And to this purpose is there express provision made by a Council of Ments in the middle age of the Church under Charles the Great in the ninth Chapter that the Monks of Religious Houses should be subject to their proper Bishop and do nothing without his approbation But it is one thing to plead in general for the lawfulness and expediencie of Monastick Life and that of both sexes and another to deliver laws and due prescriptions for the well disciplining of them which is the work of the wisest heads and sincerest hearts to Religion to be here passed over There may yet seem somewhat due to an objection against the said state taken from the vow exacted from such as enter themselves into it which no wonder that they who oppose so blindly the thing it self should much more oppose But they who approve of it can find little reason to quarrel at that bond And that first because such Monastick Life is not alwaies in Society which they call Convents but may be undertaken at a mans own pleasure both for time and place and other circumstances every Christian having power to dispose of himself not prejudicing the general right and inteâ—â—â—t of his Governours over him to what life he pleases and with what â—â—â—cumstances But if a man resolves to become a member of some special Society already formed by certain Rules and Laws to desire to be matriculated into that Body and not to be willing to conform to the constitutions of it is unjust and unreasonable And so Pikewise not to give that outword and common assurance of faithful submission unto the same by an Oath of Vow For do men think it reasonable that Prentises should be bound to be true faithful and keep their Masters secrets even before they know them and when they know them to be none of the justest or honestest or shall men that enter but into civil Companies be it but of Merchant-Taylers or Barber-Surgeons be constrained by Oath to be true and faithful to them but they who are admitted into Religious Societies be left to do and live as the please What were this but to seek an occasion under colour of friendliness and good affection to divide and destroy it as is apparent in the seemingly modest pretenses of dissenters and disaffected persons to our Church who upon condition that they may give and reverse certain orders and laws offer themselves to become one with it Thus the Vulgar take it but in truth it is for the Church to be one with them And is not this a notable piece of modesty condescension and complyance But here let that rest as also what we have to say of the second thing generally to be consider'd in the Worship of God viz. The state of serving God CHAP. VII Of Religious Worship the third thing considerable in it viz. The Exercise of it in the several kinds of it And first of Prayer the chiefest Act of Gods Worship contrary to Sectaries who are Enemies to it in three respects And first by their vain conceit of Preaching wherein consisteth not the proper Worship of God as in Prayer THE third thing wherein the worship of God may be said yet more properly to consist is the Kinds of Worship And these we shall reduce to three Prayer Preaching and Obedience in the due exercise of all Christian Graces and Vertues wherein the Life of Faith properly consisteth And first we shall begin with prayer as that wherein was ever thought the worship of God principally to consist be that Religion Christian or Unchristian unless we be forced to except some modern and immodest pretenders to Reformation For though they keep within such bounds as a grave and judicious defender of our Church says none ever exceeded not to deny prayer absolutely yet have they brought it to that pass so humbled and diluted it that there is little place found for it and less value And surely were they but true to their own principles and arguments no use at all would they acknowledge of prayer more then certain Heathens and Hereticks whose arguments must needs be accepted by them if they will believe conformable to themselves St. Hierome upon Matthew tells us There is sprung up here a certain Hieronymus in Matth. cap. 6. 8. Heresie and Dogme of Philosophers who say If God knows what we pray for and that we have need of such things as we desire before we ask in vain we speak to him who knows all before To whom saith he we answer That we do not so much tell God what we would have as begg of him Clemens Alexandrinus likewise tells us that one Prodius was Clemens Alexa Strom. 7 Authour of that Opinion Thus far profane Sectaries amongst us have not generally proceeded though we have been credibly informed that some have However they unanimously conspire to debase prayer and corrupt Christian worship it self in these three Respects First in advancing preaching much inferiour to it in a Church become Christian infinitely before it Secondly by opposing Set or Prescribed Forms of Prayer And thirdly in expunging the Lords Prayer out of their uncertain and wild Liturgies Which the Presbyterian Sect the Sire of all others was not a little guilty of and so seldome used it that being demanded why they left it out in their prayers thought good to give such a modest reason as this They feared they should be out in the recitation of it so had they accustomed their tongues to liberty and variety of words But they had other reasons which they were ashamed to utter but to their trusty friends But let us first see how preaching transcends prayer and hath insulted and trampled over it For such have been the extreams of late that whereas formerly the Proverb was No Penny no Pater Noster now No Preaching no Pater Noster No Sermon no Prayer in Gods House And whereas it was said by our Saviour Christ of old and by the Prophet before him My House shall be called which almost every ordinary man knows accord-to Matth. 21. 3. the Hebrew Idiom is the very same with shall be the House of Prayer unto all Nations and never was it called or accounted a preaching house but by them that called it a Steeple-house and little otherwise judged of it now have things been so reformed with a witness ot rather a vengeance that Sermoning carries all afore it bears all down to little or nothing But what if all this while preaching be not the worshipping of God at all Will they continue so obstinate as to make it almost the only thing in Gods house That they who with strange boldness profess and in constant practise declare they will have nothing to do with Gods house as Gods house but only as a Vestry-house when they are to take the Parish Accompts unless there be a Sermon do hold that Sermoning active and passive preach'd and heard is the main matter of Religion
till some extraordinary Pastours as they call'd themselves made the alteration much for the worse God knows and would have no man enter the proper place of worship unless it were to hear the Word that is their word This custome God be thanked was never quite laid down in our English Church and I trust in God never will but gain strength countenance and encouragement knowing that the Mother Churches or Cathedrals being Precedents to all inferiour Churches pertaining to them do by their example of daily prayers and a free access at all convenient times of the day granted for men to pray to God their private particular prayers not only approve but commend to and invite her daughter Churches to the like most godly practise All Eastern as well as Western Churches out of the Precincts of the Reformation herein very unhappy set us the like example And all Churches at first by great prudence and piety of the founders and promoters were there placed where they might be most convenient for the Parish to resort to at all times and also to the best advantage of Roads that so travellers passing by might have an opportunity to enter them and do the devotions to God But now a thing to be lamented such a godly custom would be censur'd for superstition as the Devil and the Enemies of God never want words to traduce where they want reason to disprove what is good and commendable And being born to an errour have a certain horrour of leaving it though no reason can possibly be picked up to retain it Besides Popish and Superstitious what have any man I would fain hear to say against private prayers in Churches And those tearms are now so bald and generally so boldly and ignorantly applyed that they prove nothing more many times than the profaneness of the user and have done the Church of Rome more credit and service in that many excellent things have been made proper and singular to that Church which in truth are not then all the franck language and most averse practises of such men have done them discredit or hurt But it were very strange if they could here find nothing in Scripture to colour their cause or credit this ungodly opinion Christ saith say they or at least may Thou when thou prayest enter into thy closet and when thou hast Matth. 6. 6. shut thy door pray to thy father which is in secret and thy father which is in secret shall reward thee openly But do they who turn these words thus to their purpose really think that Christ hereby advised men to pray rather at home than in the publick When I can believe it I will shew the contrary and before For Christ spake not against the publickness but the hypocrisie of this prayer It is not probable indeed that a man should be so hypocritical in private as he may in publick And therefore to obviate that mortal evil to all divine prayer our Saviour both confutes and redresses it shewing it is far better for such and more acceptable to God to be take themselves to their closets where no Man but God and their own Consciences can see them than with such vain ostentation to beg applause of men And if all the world were such Hypocrites as Christ reproved it were better no man should ever come to Church at any time But there is the contrary vice to be shun'd and that is Profaneness For that is no less scandalous yea much more and must be so accounted But they who out of undue reasons refuse the publick place of Gods worship are to be noted as Prophane It is most certain that they who keep to St. Pauls precept in his Epistle to Timothy That men pray every where lifting up holy hands c. cannot pray 1 Tim. 2. 8. Ephes 6. always in one place especially if we add that other precept of St. Paul Pray always for no man can be always in that most common place of prayer And therefore it may be inferred from hence that it is lawful and acceptable to God to pray privately but not that prayer in publick is not to be preferred before private For would it not as well hold against prayer in families which is not in the closet And if to every house there were a place dedicated specially to Gods worship as there is in every parish I should hold that prayers generally in the family and particularly of persons singly were more laudably performed in that publick place than in a private chamber But it is further to be noted That when St. Paul saith we should pray every where he never intended to equalize all places in fitness to Gods service he intended not to take off distinction of Christian places to that end but Judaical as the Temple of the Jews which diverse green Christians supposed was to be the special if not only place assigned of God for his worship St. Paul informs them better assures them that they should pray every where as well as at Jerusalem meaning nothing less then that where there were Christian Temples to which they might resort they should not need go to them but may keep at home as well being God is every where and they must pray every where but that a place of worship solemniz'd by Christians was altogether as proper as that Temple of the Jews Isidore saith indeed Prayer is most opportunely made in private places and is more pleasing to God viz. so qualified as before A sincere prayer at home is better many degrees than an hypocritical one in publick And the Gloss upon St. Pauls words â—â—ith In every place that is where ever you are and not only in the Church And the like it saith upon Christs words in St. John to the woman of Samaria That neither John 4. 21. on that mount nor yet at Jerusalem men should worship God But who sees not that it is to be understood signally and not so superstitiously as that a Temple might not be as pleasing to God in any other place as at Jerusalem or Mount Gerizzim And I know he addeth as divers other Fathers the Temple of the heart which is worthily said to encourage such persons to inward and chamber-devotion whose leisure or labours will not suffer them to repair to Church not to erect an alter in heart house equal to that in the Church And for my part I see no reason to except unclean places from Gods worship as some Casuists do when a more comely and convenient cannot be had For there is no place unclean in such Cases But we are now enquiring about the right a place hath to our Services other things being equal As if a man hath as good an heart as simple intention as pure charity as laudable matter petition'd for whether the place of Gods worship be not it he ought to offer his Sacrifice in rather than any other And whether publick is not required rather than private And here
And that Oraculum by notice whereof the Bishop of Rome with the Senate of Cardinals granted to the Sclavonian Nation that they should use the tongue of their Country in sacred actions seemeth to pertain to all Nations named Christians Omnis spiritus laudet Dominum omnis lingua confiteatur ei Let every spirit praise the Lord and every tongue confess to him And Thomas Cajetane a man doubtless most learned and acute wrote in a certain place It were better for the edification of the Church publick prayers to be said in the vulgar tongue in the Church which the people may hear than in the Latin tongue And when he was for this reproved by some he answered He built upon the foundation of the Apostles in his fourteenth Chapter of his first Epistle to the Corinthians c. Thus far and much more followeth out of that grave man to this purpose So that in one of those things which convince the Church of Rome of Innovation and obstinacie in novelties as nothing need more be said against it to that end nothing being said more for it in the upshot of all Disputes but that for some time it hath been in use there and the Trentine Convention hath Azorus Institut Mor. l. 8. c. 26. Salmer in 1 Cor. 16. Disp 30. made all sure according to their manner by decreeing it inconvenient that Divine Offices should commonly be in the vulgar tongue as Azorius writeth and as Salmeron It anathematizes such as will not be content with the three tongues in which the super scription was written upon the Cross of Christ Which is a fansie without any firmness at all it being certain no such thing was intended thereby and evident that the Hebrew tongue was scarce ever used in Christian services though the Syriack hath been And it is not agreed whether of the two was the Language but this we rest not on nor can the Romanists But when they have turned every stone to little purpose they come to that which will never fail them in this or any other point the determination of their Church and practise of the same which upon no accounts must be violated for that were to loose or hazard all as Azorius in the place fore-cited doth with little modesty and less advantage to his cause profess and answering this question Whether the vulgar tongue might not be indulged to Hereticks petitioning for it and for the peace of the Church saith I answer Councils and Fathers and the Church were never wont to yield to such like Hereticks demands But this he proves in matters quite of a different nature as if when the Fathers would hear of no accommodation with Arius Eutycheus Nestorius holding notorious heresies against Christ even when they would have introduced some verbal agreement they could be precedents to oppose that wherein if it were false can consist no heresie but is true and most generally was practised by all the Fathers and Churches at first and so continued for eight hundred years And therefore he speaks more to this purpose in these words following If it should be granted to Lutherans and Calvinists that they should celebrate Divine Service in their vulgar tongue they would afterward give out that they had got their wills yea that the Church had changed her opinion and left off her ancient custom as contrary to Scripture and so charge the Church with erring and would exult with incredible joy and gladness over it c. This is in truth the very same reason which our grave Puritans render why they conform not to the Church in her Service whenas they confess they have nothing of sin to object against the thing it self viz. They should be judged of mutability and levity should thereby weaken their Ministry in the esteem of their people which in all probability they borrowed from their Father Calvin one of whose reasons against the moderation Calvin Epist of Melancthon was that if they should make any correction in that Reformation which was so hastily hudled up they should weaken their Ministry The reasonableness of which I leave to others to judge of But rejecting the common reasons all of which we are not here to examine of Papists we shall freely oblige them to give better grounds of the Liturgies in unknown tongues than may be ordinarily found amongst them though no sufficient can be given And one is the great veneration had to the traditions of the Ancients in worshipping God not that anciently any instance can be given that may be a precedent to the corruptions of these times but that having with sober grave and holy advice framed a Liturgy in any one tongue they were very scrupulous how they made any alteration therein though of words only and therefore that which is vulgarly spoken altering daily and that which was written remaining altogether unchanged in words tract of time bred a diversity between the one and the other But this we demand of our Adversaries what one president for many hundred years together they can produce where at the first institution of publick Service it was so contriv'd that nothing of the vulgar language should be taken into it There is a vast difference between a passive and an active and purposed inconvenience The ancient predecessours of the Roman Church never intended that their Latin Service should be hid or unknown from the common people which many generations after followed yet so it must needs fall out in time But they who at this day plant Churches in both Indies and obtrude their Latine tongue upon the people there and who deny liberty to other Provincial Churches in Europe and elsewhere to celebrate in their known Language do purpose mischief unto such Christians and become Schismatical in not only not redressing themselves according to the Rule of their fore-fathers whom they should much more imitate in ordering their service so that the Common Christian might understand the same as primitively and for a long time they did than in sticking so severely to the bare Letters and Syllables they used not making conscience of far more scandalous practices in altering the service it self in matter by absurd additions and detractions but with denunciation of Excommunication against such Churches as shall presume to redress that evil of ignorance and render Christians intelligent of what they do But I have been of opinion that the vulgar have been no small cause of this great superstition and inconvenience to themselves In that in process of time their devotion slacking in timely repairing to the Church and in due demeanor in the Church neglecting to concur with the Minister of God and to reciprocate with him and almost deserting the Service by coldness sloth and indevotion the Priest was constrained perhaps with a Deacon or Clerk only to perform the service alone And truly let such people look to their modern teachers who have instilled such ungracious opinions into them as to take them off
of St. Paul that 1 Cor. 14. 35. women should ask their husbands and learn at home And St. Chrysostom often exhorts his hearers to consider of what they hear in publique at home and meditate of the Scriptures at home which was either privately with every mans self or to such as could not have access to the Publique And this publique way of Preaching had for a long time no prescribed subject but what the Bishop thought proper or seasonable for instruction or Exhortation was uttered by him But in Saint Bafils Nazianzens Chrysostoms and Augustines Sermons we find mention made of the Scriptures read before and Sermons made by way of Exposition of them after the manner that Epistles and Gospels are in use with us and commended as proper subjects to instruct Christian People the one giving us matter of Instruction from the history of the Life Doctrine Miracles and Death of our only Saviour Christ and the other principally moving us to the exercise of all Christians Graces and Vertues conformable to our calling and knowledg of God and Christ Far were our Christian Ancestors and well they might from the modern perswasion of Erratick Christians that the Sermon was more necessary than the Scriptures or that reading of the Scriptures was not Preaching or that Catechizing and instructing Novices in Christian Religion was not Preaching I confess I am of opinion that there is a distinction to be made between a Preaching and a Sermon taking here a Sermon for an Oration made by un-Christian as well as Christian Orators to inform and perswade to what they aimed at in such speeches And no instance can be given of any Orator Gentile or Christian for many hundred years that presumed to speak to the People out of his own writings rehearsed to them Poets were wont in Publique to recite their verses in Publique out of their book by reading and therefore could never in my judgment comply with the very modern practise of it there being no reason why it should be more tolerated in Divine than Humane Orations or why setting the custome of the place aside which must needs be corrupt and absurd as it is singular and new it is less ridiculous to rehearse a Divine Oration which we call a Sermon by reading than Humane I am sure the ancient Fathers whom we pretend to imitate and all modern Churches without exception of any but our own abhor it And are not at all sensible of the vulgar arguments weight to justifie it viz. because the matter is the same And what difference is there between a Sermon deliver'd without reading and with it if the hearer sees him not or looks not on him that Preaches But it is very expedient the Hearers eye should be attent as well as his ear and yet that is not all might be said neither but all I will here say But undoubtedly they erregregiously on the other hand who imagine such sermoning as we now speak of is only Preaching according to the mind of the Apostle and that which is the only proper means of Salvation We are not saved but by Faith we cannot believe but by hearing we cannot hear without a Preacher as the Apostle most undeniably concluding from thence the absolute necessity of Preaching But what Preaching When I said Recitation of a Speech concerning divine matters and our Salvation was not properly a Sermon or Oration unless pronounced after the universal Law of all Orators which is to denominate things aright I said not that it was not Preaching taking preaching from the end of it and not so much from the form The end is undoubtedly knowledg first of the Christian Faith The next end is Assent to that Doctrine of Faith The third end is Obedience to the Faith The last end is the Salvation of such a true believer Now all these may without doubt be obtained without the Forms of Oratory and by so many wayes as we are made capable of these great ends so many wayes are we preacht to And therefore reading to and writing to another as the Apostles did their their Epistles to several Churches or any communication may be called the word of God and Preaching as really as the most Oratorical Sermon Though still considering the nature of man and the ordinary course of perswading settled all the world over I cannot grant that such wayes are so effectual or operative upon the partakers of the same instructions By what is said may be gathered what I propounded at first viz. in what sense Preaching and Hearing may be reduced to the Worshipping of God and become part of his Service For taking the service of God strictly and properly neither of both of them are such but they are a necessary foundation to build our worship of God on They have of late dayes amongst Sectaries been called The Means in so high and signal sense as if they need say no more and they comprehended all Religious acts eminently which is nothing so They are indeed The Means and that of Faith worship and Salvation But worshipping of God in prayer and praises c. and obeying his will and living godly and soberly in this present world are much more effectual and excellent Means of our Salvation than they They are but Means to the more excellent means of Salvation as Faith Hope and Charity and therefore must know their place and keep their distance and Mr. Thorndyck Epilog l. 3. c. 25. their limits too For as an excellent person hath at large showed the vain abuse of this preaching by Presbyterians which shall cause me to contract here Preaching is not so much as the Means of Salvation unless it contains it self within the limits of the doctrine of the Church To the confirmation of whose opinion I shall here give St. Austins Judgment Nobis autem ad certam regulam loqui fas est ne verbâ—rum licentia etiam rebus quae his significantur impiam gignat opinicnem Aug. Civit. Dei l. 10. c. 23. who would have not only limits set to the matter but manner of preaching too by obliging to the phrase of the Church saying We Christians must speak by certain Rule lest by a License taken of wording it a wicked opinion be begot of the things themselves signified thereby And concerning this we know St. Paul hath thus provided in his directions to Timothy Hold fast the Form of sound words which thou hast heard of me in Faith and Love which is in Christ Jesus It was very well known to the ancient Church that if Preachers kept not themselves in the compass of sober words and phrases to which faithful ears had been accustomed though their new Forms and phantastique phrases might possibly admit of a fair construction yet naturally they tended to the dissetling of mens minds from the truth and drawing them to novelty of doctrine and worship By which means as also by affected postures gestures pronunciation and such like carrying with them an
Negatively not to believe them and Privatively or contrarily to believe The state of Nature and of the Jews might be such before Christ as not to have the true and clear notion of Christ as the Son of God and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Chrysost ad Judaizantes Serm. 27. Tom. 6. pag. 369. of the Trinity and yet not to oppose or directly deny it as Jews and Turks at this day For they have now a contrary Faith unto these and therefore how they can be excused from Idolatry according to the favorablest staters of Idolaters here now mentioned I cannot see For they who worship God as he is not but as he is framed by such mens wits are a kind of Idolaters But Christian Faith teaches us that to God it is essential to be Three in One and One in Three which is by all but Christians I mean Turks and Jews absolutely denyed And therefore Chrysostom denyes the Jews worship God This likewise prosecuted gives us no small help towards the resolution of that doubt and reconciling of that contrariety which seemeth to have been the main motive to the entertaining a new notion of Idolatry and clearing thereby the Church of Rome from that foul and mortal Imputation For it being generally granted that the Church of Rome is a true Church it must of force be denied that it is Idolatrous because Idolatry is inconsistent with the Nature of a true Church and destroyeth the Faith in the very foundation To which argument very pressing I confess I offer this Reply First calling to mind the distinction heretofore laid down of a true Church either in the Integral Parts of Christian Doctrine or Essential We deny the Romane Church to hold all the Integral Parts of the body of Faith and so not a true Church We hold also that it retaineth the Essentials and so may be termed a true Church Again of Essential or Fundamental points of Faith we distinguish the Abstract sense and the Concrete sense And affirm that although in the Abstract sense or Proposition the Church of Rome is in many points free from Idolatry yet taking their doctrines concretely with their practise interpreting them they are certainly Idolatrous But a Church is chiefly to be judged by the article in iâ— self and not in the unnatural sense appearing in particular practises The Church of Rome holds That the true God alone is to be worshipped But if the Sons of that Church notwithstanding worship somewhat besides God this is a corruption in Fact and not in Faith And perhaps the Church being an Abstract Body from single Persons and the Faith from single Practise the particular errors which are committed there not flowing necessarily from that general Principle may not be charged but in a vulgar sense upon the Church But yet be it so that the Churches determinations should not oblige men necessarily to Idolatry the Idolatrous Practises of so many in the worshiping of the Host Agnus Dei Images and Saints and Angels permitted and countenanced in that Church were sufficient ground of separation from that Church without Schismaticalness But secondly we are bound here to distinguish of Idolatry which as may appear by what is said admitteth of diverse senses and acceptations and degrees For there is an Idolatry which hath quite another object both real and formal from the true divine object of worship and that cannot stand with Christianity And there may be an Idolatry which errs only in the real Object but retaineth the Formal Object of Worship The real Object is the thing Qui ad Idol latriam develvitm non plené nec integâ—è prophams officitur misi negaverit Chrisâ—um Ruffin Invectivá 2. in Hieron Christians in their Apostafie neither did nor were to make an absolute Apostasie from God the Father and Christ but in outward profession still to acknowledg them and to be called Christians c. Med Apost p. 66 67. Gen. 20. 1 Tim. 1. 13. it self to which an Act is directed The Formal Object is the thing under such a Form or Consideration Now though the romanists do err as certainly they do in the real Object of worship they profess they own and retain the true formal reason of Worship in that they designall to the honor of the true God and Christ and lay that down as a Reason of their worshiping that Object For if that be true which Ruffinus and Mr. Mede affirm as I conceive it is That those Christians who in Persecution fell away to Gentile Idolatry became not thereby wholly prophane unless at the same time they denyed Christ much more is it true that they who profess and intend as they say ultimately the honor of Christ in their outward Idolatry are to be looked upon as belonging Radically to Christs Church The sum therefore of our opinion is this That we really believe the Romane Church to be Idolatrous but not to cease thereby to be Christian unless it declared against Christ And we believe that more refined sense of Idolatry to be damnable in it self but whether by general deprecation of all Sins known and unknown as also that they as they profess do it with Abimelech in the integrity of their heart and with St. Paul fighting against Christ Ignorantly they may not find mercy is hard to determine but t is easie to determine them to be in the way of damnation who shall fall wilfully after better education and information into those heinous practises But if they should urge this argument so strongly to me that I must be forced to that which as yet I am not sensible or viz. either to deny the Romane Church to be a true Church or to deny it to be guilty of Idolatry I should soon choose to deny the Church of Rome to be a true Church of Christ especially since the late corrupt decisions of what was ambiguous before and capable of a fair interpretation for the worst than Ego hoc arbitror quòd non pallut nomen Domini nist ille qui visus est homini ejus credere quomedo tollit membra Christi facit membra meretricis qui prius Christo credit sie ille poliuit nomen Domini qui prius nominis ejus fidem susceperit Hieron in c. 43. Ezech. deny that to be Idolatry which the principal of their Doctors have taught and the generality of the People do constantly practise For what doth it avail them to confront those foul and notorious dogmes alledged cut of their prime Writers making for plain Idolatry or the instances of gross practises with showing some tolerable sense quite antiquated which such Facts may be done in Whenas first they can give not so much reason why the moderate and favourable construction made should be the sense of their Church as may be given why it is Secondly if it were not so that some remained in that Church to buoy up in some manner the sinking Faith and stand up for the
oppressed truth they could in no tolerable sense be called a Church at all But by reason of that small struggling for Life in that Church they may be termed a Church out of Charity at least if not verity For Charity believeth all things CHAP. XV. Of Idolatry in the Romish Church in particular viz. In worshipping Saints Angels Reliques and especially the supposed blood of Christ No good foundation in Antiquity or the Scriptures for the said Worship FROM what hath passed may we with greater expedition conclude what remains of the Object of Worship and the superstition even to Idolatry committed in worshipping of Saints and Angels not only in themselves but Reliques For certainly Prayer to them or invocation of them is a proper Act of adoration no man doubts it And therefore see in what degree men pray to them they worship them as likewise what outward honor they give them or their Remains or Images And for the Spirits of just men made perfect as also their Reliques really such we allow due respect proper for such Objects But for the Images of Saints we know none proper to them as not at all belonging to them no part of them bearing no relation to them but as it shall please vain men to appoint it Yet though we hold no reverence at all is due to the Image of Saints or Angels for their own sakes or for the sakes of them they represent yet also hold we it unlawful to offer any indignity to them unless constrained from the abuses and superstitions used toward them which when they arrive at that height as to be made objects mediate or immediate of religious worship may lawfully suffer the same fate with the brazen Serpent in Hezechiah's dayes But first of Invocation of Saints in any sense How can we sufficiently wonder at the uncertainty yea contradiction of the greatest Patrons of it Whereof not only some affirm and some deny but the same Persons sometimes affirm and sometimes deny any such thing to be required or mentioned in Scripture Pighius and Cope give their reason why Saints were not worshipped under the Old Testament to be because they were not then partakers of the beautiful Vision as afterward Bellar. de Batitud Sanct. l. 1. c. 19. And this reason gives Bellarmin likewise yet for all that presums to alledg the words of Jacob Gen. 48. very ridiculously First because he confessed the Old Testament afforded no Presidents or Precepts for it Secondly because those words have quite another Sense than that he would draw them to I shall therefore cut off all that may be answered to the frivolous allegation of Scripture in that behalf as duly examined making more suspected of error than point than confirming it so very violent is the use of them And enquire rather first about the manner and then the reason and lastly the Authority or Tradition for this very briefly Of the three several distinct wayes wherein we are said to pray unto Saints one is not to pray to Saints at all but unto God For the first named by learned men which is to pray to God that upon intuition or consideration of Saints worth or prayers or intercession he would hear us doth not make Saints at all the Object of our prayers but the subject or matter of them which whether convenient to be used or not is besides our present question and belonging to another place and therefore may well be passed over and rather granted to be lawful and useful than disputed For certainly he that petitions a King to grant him any thing for such a Favorites sake who is about him and is his friend doth not thereby petition such a Courtier himself And this may be proved out of the ancient offices of the Church A second way is when we directly pray to them but not Particularly supposing they should either particularly understand all that we do or beg but by a general Petition desiring that they would pray for us A Third way is when we desire of Saints and Angels such things as are proper only to God to give us As if we should pray unto them to forgive us our sins to give us grace of mind and health of Body But these two do not seem to be distinct kinds but only differing in extent and matter For in the first a man doth make the matter of his request that they would promote that request which tendeth principally to God and ultimately In the second that they would procure to them the things prayed for which two differ in degrees not kind of Invocation Again they are wont here also to distinguish of Civil worship and religious And of Religious worship again into Divine proper and improper As for the former I see no reason how common soever it is to grant any such thing to Saints or Angels seeing all the ground of civil reverence given from one to another as in profession of our service honor and obedience to our Parent Masters or Governors wholly dependeth upon our civil and visible communion with them and civil Acts passing from one to another which communion or relation is extinguished quite by their natural death and departure out of this world as appeareth in the most intimate of all relations between men in this world which is that of Man and Wife which Nature Reason and the Scripture teach us to be as free as if they had never met together or known one another after the decease of either And surely all civil relations being founded on flesh and blood or Nature the foundation taken away must also cease and come to nothing Should a subject ask a Petition of his Soveraign that were alive but some hundred miles distant or out of hearing or of whose capacity to hear his prayers he had no competent assurance I cannot tell what more to call it but I am sure it were very absurd and ridiculous Now whether the communion of Saints and Angels which generally is no more than mystical and not at all civil or natural with us be such as doth not wholly render them unsensible of our Acts though directed to them here I at present determine not but this I may say that the bond of civil communion is quite broke between us and them and therefore are all Acts of that nature vain and groundless So that I may pray any Christian brother to pray for me here while we hold both civil and religious communion together but thiâ— being built upon that ceaseth together with that and becoms no longer of a mixt nature partly religious and partly natural or civil but purely Mystical and not to be exercised by such mixt acts as Invocation or outward veneration there being no known intercourse or reciprocation civil between us Therefore of necessity whoever maintains worship to be given to Saints must ascribe and defend divine worship to them and so in express terms we find them to do however they please to mollifie and extenuate