Church from the corruption of Doctrine and contentions and contradictions in the practice of Religion as any exorbitancies in state is so far from being soveraign that he holds upon the matter the little authority he hath in other things but precariò of him who hath the exercise of the other jurisdiction And as this mischief and confusion is very demonstrable to all men who understand the foundation and rules of Policy and Government so the benefits which accrew from this distinction are not discernable by the eyes of reason or of faith Temporal Princes and Kings cannot have authority to change Religion nor are qualified to perform the Offices and functions of Religion that 's true Nor hath any Ecclesiastical and Spiritual power authority to change Religion The Pope whom some Men call the Church nor a General Council which no doubt is the most natural representative of the Universal Church doth not pretend that they can change Religion Our Saviour left our Religion intire and the Apostles left all things so plain which he directed that no power under Heaven can add to or take from that body of Religion which they commended to all Christians nor can it be more reasonably imagined that God will suffer any Christian state to make such an alteration than that the Universal Church shall fall away from being Christian but if Christianity were deposited with one Church-man or any body of Church-men we have too much reason to apprehend what would become of it by the progress Arianisme once and other Heresies too made in the World by possessing many great and learned Men even of the Fathers themselves So that we may say that the purity of Christian Religion hath been in truth preserved by the piety of Princes with the advice and assistance of their National and Ecclesiastical Councils more than by any spiritual authority Religion it self then must not cannot be changed but the advancement of it the information in it the exercise and practice by which it is best to be made manifest cannot be so well provided for as by that supreme soveraign authority to which God hath intrusted the peace and prosperity of a Nation which best knows how to establish such formes and ceremonies and circumstances in what pertains to Religion as are most agreeable to the nature and inclination and disposition of a people A conformity in humours and in manners is a great introduction to conformity in Religion and will not suffer the pride and affectation and singularity of any man to contradict the order established This Soveraign Authority knows best how to preserve Peace in which the being of a Nation consists and how to reform errors which are grown and prevent those which are growing by such ways as may not disturb that peace and such errours as are grown too obstinate are too deep rooted to be pulled up without shaking the whole peace of the Kingdom he will let alone drawing by degrees such nourishment from it as most cherishes it until a fitter season for the intire cure of it No Reformation is worth the charge of a Civil War Nor was it a light reproach which Seneca charged upon Sylla Qui patriam durioribus remediis quam pericula erant sanavit The Remedy was worse than the Disease and God knows Christianity hath paid very dear for the too hasty and passionate application of remedies to very confessed diseases when the disease was not ripe for the remedy nor the remedy proportioned to the disease State surgery cannot be used with too much caution nor are the wounds and sores of it cured at once or with one kind of medicine but the lenitives and corrosives must be applied successively and if the first will do it there cannot be too little used of the latter No sore is so ill cured as that which is hastily cured There is no necessity nor convenience that the outward exercise and forms of Religion be the same in all climates and in all Countries Nay it is very necessary that it be different according to the natures and customes of the people It would be very incongruous where genuflexion is neither the posture of reverence or devotion to introduce a command for kneeling and there are many particulars worthy of the same consideration They do equally mistake who believe that the out-works of Religion must be equally with the same passion guarded and preserved as the walks themselves that no form or ceremony or circumstance in Religion may not be altered or parted with more than the faith it self and they who would be always mending and altering and reforming according to every model description they meet with as a thing indifferent and only to please the fancies of men where there is no indifference there may be alterations made by and according to the wisdom of the Government and as the good Order and peace of the Nation requires and with the same gravity and deliberation as all other mutations and provisions are made but there must be out-works still and such as may secure the walls from rude approaches every fanciful Engineer must not demolish the out-works upon pretence they are too high or too irregular nor must the decency of the prospect so much transport others as not to suffer the least alteration in them though thereby the walls would be the better garded No one Classis of men will dispassionately weigh all necessary consideration in this matter but that authority which must provide for the publick peace is the most competent provider for this branch of it It is no irreverence to the purest times to believe that in the first plantation of Christian Religion I speak not of infusion of Christian Religion into the Apostles and the inspiration by the Holy Ghost but of the plantation of it by the Apostles and those who succeeded them by the strength of their reason and the powerful effects of their lives and actions the same method and order and application was used and observed as is in other Plantations The Sun and the Soil are first consulted and husbandry practised accordingly in the sowing of Seeds or setting of Plants and that husbandry altered and improved according to seasons and upon observation and experience what is most like to advance the Plantation If ever the Spaniard loses the West Indies which it is probable enough he will do it will be by his positive and rigorous adhering to the same rules which were most prudently established by Philip the Second upon the first conquest of that Empire and under which the Infant Plantation prospered exceedingly and not admitting any such material alterations since as would produce more benefit and advantage now than the other did then and which time and the people will make if the policy of the Government do not first introduce it and then it is very hazardous that the presumption of doing it will shake off that authority that should have done it It may be observed in the
damnation and truly the manner of his excusing his so brief answering his Book that is his not answering it at all is very well worth the taking notice of It may be the Doctor was conscious to himself of having said many particulars throughout his Book which had not been urged above thirty years since and upon the petulancy of Mr. Cressy and some other of his friends were now become necessary to be pressed and therefore was so wary as to quote Catholick Authors to justifie all that he alledged the controversie being upon matter of fact which need no other proof on his side than the authority he cited and which in truth is not capable of any other answer but that he hath alledged somewhat that is not true But that he says plainly he will not examine for he observes in the Doctors Book a world of quotations out of Authors he never saw nor intends to see containing many dismal stories and many ridiculous passages of things done or said by several Catholicks in former and some in later times He says If he had a mind to examine and say something in answer to them an impossibility of finding out those Authors must have been his excuse but he hath a better excuse than that for if the Doctor would have lent him those Books out of his Library he should have thanked him for his civility but should have refused to make use of his offer for to what purpose would it have been to turn over a heap of Books to find out quotations in which neither the Church or himself is concerned Not concerned he says though they had been opinions or actions even of Popes themselves it is to him all one whether his allegations be true or false c. pag. 172. which is one of the most haughty resolutions and declarations for a man who doth in the next page call for an applause for having so clearly overthrown his adversary that hath been heard of all those quotations are the testimonies of Catholick writers which prove somewhat that Mr. Cressy denies or contradicts somewhat that he and his friends have confidently affirmed and by doing so have obliged him to produce that evidence the truth whereof he will not vouchsafe to examine because it is all one to him whether the allegations be true or false An admirable answer He thinks it very reasonable to magnifie his Religion upon visions and apparitions and miracles but cares not for quotations out of Catholick Authors of dismal stories and many ridiculous passages of things said and done by Catholicks which are therefore cited toprove the frequent and common delusions in those visions and apparitions and miracles it 's all one to him whether these allegations be true or false That is very strange if he should say that in all times the Popes have constantly been the protectors of all vertue and chastity can any answer be more pertinent than the testimony of all the Catholick writers of that time that after a world of other impieties committed by him a Gentleman of Rome found Pope Iohn the Twelfth in bed with his wife and killed him Can it be all one to him whether this allegation be true or false Is it possible that he is not concerned in the opinion and actions of Popes whose persons he declares as a point of Catholick Religion to be necessarily believed to be the conservators of the purity of Religion and the determiners of any Heresie that shall arise or start up and he hath still that comfort that he is assured That never Pope yet how wicked soever did bring any Heresie into the Church now is not he concerned though I cannot blame him for not daring to peruse or examine the Records of such deviations when he is put in mind of Pope Liberius who though he did not bring Arrianism into the Church did support and maintain it when he found it there and being Pope became Arrian which may periwade a man to believe that our Saviour did not depute him as his deputy to determine controversies in Faith These and much other vexations of this kind he preserves himself from by his firm resolution not to examine any of the Doctors quotations but whether he be so absolutely unconcerned in them whether they be true or false shall be left to his own party to judge Nothing will concern Mr. Cressy unless the Doctor will undertake to demonstrate that it is unlawful or but considerably dangerous to be a member of a Church where any persons do or have lived who have been obnoxious to errors or guilty of ill actions and in this he hath wisely provided for his own ease for he is sure the Doctor will not undertake to make any such demonstration and yet it may be it is one of the best arguments by which he hath gained most of the Proselytes he hath made There is great difference as hath been said before between remaining in a Church where many errors are received and practised and ill actions are committed and leaving and renouncing a Church upon pretence of some errors in it to run into another Church which hath the same or greater errors But the difference is yet greater between errors in a Church and errors of a Church errors and vices committed and practised in a Church and errors and vices committed and practised by a Church such as the Church it self knows to be errors and many men believe the Church of Rome guilty of many of those I will not mention the common objection of the worshipping of Images which the Church carefully difclaims and takes it very ill that any Catholick should be thought so brutish as to worship and Image in wood or stone and yet the sufficient evidence of that brutality prevailed with some Emperors and General Councils utterly to suppress them and take them out of all Churches and very pious and learned Catholicks have since and still do very heartily with that they were abolished for the scandal it brings upon the Church For let that declare what it will nothing is more notorious than that more than the common people do literally and really pay adoration to the very Image nor are they without reason to perswade them that there is a peculiar vertue in it for why should the Saint be more propitious in one place than another if the address were only to the Saint and not some advantage in the Image it self Why should so many more miracles be done by our Lady in one place than another insomuch as there is no Catholick Province but hath distinct Images of her which receives more remarkable visits than others and works more wonderful effects Who can read the life of S. Bernard and find him with that fervour and vehemence in his devotion before a Crucifix that the Image bowed it self and with both the arms imbraced him and then returned to the stiffness of its posture This is testified in the most authentick account the Church hath of his
his Nuntio and assumed the exercise of the Regal power both at Land and Sea and imprisoned those Catholicks and threatned to take their Lives who had promoted the peace and desired to return to the King's Subjection And when since the Kings happy Restoration the Nobility and Catholick Clergie of Ireland thought it necessary to present some Testimony of their future Allegiance to the King in which they declared that the Pope had no power to dispence with their fidelity to his Majesty or to absolve them from any Oaths they should take to that purpose which Declaration was attested and subscribed by many of the principal Catholick Nobility and others of the best quality and interest as likewise by some of their Titular Catholick Bishops and many of their Secular and Regular Clergie But complaint and notice hereof being sent to Rome the Pope was so offended at it that he caused his Nuntio in Flanders to command some of the Clergy who had subscribed that Paper to attend him and threatned to excommunicate them and Cardinal Barbaryne at the same time writ a Letter to the Bishops and Clergie of Ireland in which he signified how much the Pope was displeased that such a subscription and declaration had been made and commanded them to discountenance and suppress the same and take care that it should proceed no farther and the Cardinal added That they should remember what they well knew that the Kingdom remained still under Excommunication This being the case it cannot but be very necessary that his Majesty should know what opinion his Catholick Subjects have of this Foreign power which will observe no limits but of his own prescription and will concern all Roman English Subjects to explain their sence of it that they may not be thought to desire only the protection of those Laws which gives them equal title to whatever all other Subjects enjoy and to be willing to be dispenced with for performance of all those obligations which other Subjects are under and in consideration whereof the other benefits are granted to them VII Whether the English Catholick Subjects are not bound in Conscience to submit to the Laws of the Land in all things which are not against the Law of God and who is to be judge whether they are against the Law of God or no and if Men are forbid to keep Company or to have conversation with dissolute and prophane Persons how they can justifie the living in continual company with and in constant profession of friendship to those who they conceive and believe to be out of a possibility of Salvation and for which if in truth they do believe it the saying they may believe as well as hope that they will repent and become Catholick before they dye when whatever they may hope they do not in truth believe that they will ever change their Religion so that it is more reasonable to believe from the learning reason and judgment of many Catholicks that they do not believe it whatever they are obliged to say or rather whatever others say to them and whether Protestants who do think that the Papists do really believe they must be damned are not very excusable if they avoid and decline any commerce or conversation with them even to the abstaining from buying or selling with them or from entertaining any Servant of that Religion since it cannot reasonably be presumed that a Servant can love a Master which it is his duty to do who he doth believe will infallibly be damned VIII How Mr. Cressy and the rest who have received Orders in the Church of England can justifie or excuse their being re-ordained after they change their Religion since so many Councils have declared against it and no one for it and since the succession of Bishops is as plainly manifest in one Church as in the other and in truth may be more doubted upon their own grounds in the Roman from the number of Schismes and the continuance of them in which so many excommunicated Persons have been consecrated Bishops and they again ordained Priests under the same condemnation which may be supposed to have made a great confusion by many Mens having conferred Orders who by their Rules I say were Laymen themselves However what difference can there be assigned why such of the Greek Church who come to them are not re-ordained but those of the Church of England are compelled to be IX Whether St. Peter exercised any jurisdiction or assumed any superiority over the rest of the Apostles during the Seven Years he remained at Antioch as he ought to have done if the Supremacy was annexed to his Person or in the Four and twenty Years he reigned in Rome and whether the contrary be not manifest by St. Paul's Epistle to the Galathians not so much by the Contest that was between him and St. Peter about Circumcision even at Antioch in St. Peter's own Diocess where St. Paul withstood him to his face because he was to be blamed which is poorly answered by those who say it was in the warmth of disputation when all men contradict each other without distinction of quality or degree But I say I do not urge the equality so much by that contradiction though it be not answered as by the matter occasion and substance of that Epistle which seems to be written principally upon that Subject St. Paul had converted that People the Galathians from Paganisme to the Faith of Christ and he was no sooner gone from them to another place but some other Christians for there was no attempt to reduce again to Paganisme were inclined to amuse with Scruples that they were not throughly informed of the whole faith that was necessary nor by one who had ever seen our Saviour and so was not like to be himself informed as well as they especially when St. Peter preached contrary to what the other taught so that the weight of what was objected by those whoever they were was the incompetency of the Person who had taught them in comparison of the other and particularly of St. Peter So that St. Paul could not at this time have been ignorant of that Supremacy if there had been any this Epistle being written above Seventeen Years after his conversion nor could he have avoided the mentioning of it upon this argument if he had known it especially since he writ that Letter from Rome where Peter at the same time was nor could he more clearly have confuted that Opinion than he hath done except he had believed St. Peter himself to have affected it which he had no reason to do since he knew who they were who had infused those suggestions He gives them a short accompt of his own Apostleship and how he had spent his time since of his first Journey to Ierusalem yet that he went not thither till three Years after his conversion and till after he performed many acts of his Apostleship in which he received no direction from any Of
vindicate the honour and the sanctity of S. Benedict from the Doctors contumelious imputations which contumelious imputations and whether the weight and vigour of the vindication be answerable to the zeal will be next examined and the examination will be the shorter because he will leave the other Saints to answer for themselves but is obliged in respect of the publick interest that obliges the whole Western Patriarchate and especially England to be tender of the honour of S. Benedict by whose disciples if they were Fanaticks he says Christianity hath been established amongst us and in veneration to whom such a world of Religious Houses and Churches have been erected and inriched with vast possessions and therefore he cannot without renouncing his duty as a Christian Religious man and an English man conspire to his dishonour by silence whereas probably silence would have been the more seasonable vindication and truly I have no mind to rake into the ashes of a Person whom I believe to have been a devout man in a dark time according to his talent of understanding and who hath been so long since dead nor do I believe the Doctor had inclination to have made that scrutiny if it had not been made necessary to him by a very unnecessary reproach and the more Mr. Cressy enlarges upon that argument the more he will be offended on the behalf because he is in love with his own mistakes else he could not tell us that Englands Christianity was established by the Disciples of S. Benedict Indeed there is some evidence and for ought I know it may be true that we owe our glass windows and our warmer habitations to one of his Disciples our Country-man Bennet who was an Abbot here and is a Saint too who having made many journeys into Italy when he returned last from thence brought with him Architects who taught our people to build Houses with Stone which till then were rarely seen the habitations being commonly in Houses made of Earth nor was there till his time any glass windows seen in England All this may be true and there are several Authors aver it but Mr. Cressy very well knows that Christianity was planted with us many hundred years before the birth of S. Benedict and we may reasonably believe by the Roman Records to which we are more beholding for those testimonies than to our own and which are in truth as full and clear as in any other matter of fact in that first Age that it was sooner planted in Britain than it was at Rome it self for if Ioseph of Arimathea did come into England in the last year of Tiberius it was before S. Peter ever was at Rome Sure it is that there was no Monastery built in England according to S. Bennet's rules till near the year Six Hundred so that there is no reason to acknowledge that he or his Disciples planted Christianity with us If Mr. Cressy will be offended with all men who examine the miracles of S. Benedict as they are mentioned by S. Gregory or in the lives of the Saints with less reverence than he himself considers them he will have as many quarrels with Roman Catholicks as with Protestants since there are very few of them of his talent of learning and understanding who give credit to one of one hundred of those which are mentioned to have been done though they are all willing how piously they shall do well to consider the Women and the weaker People should believe them all nor doth the less serious discoursing of them in any degree reflect upon the honour of S. Gregory or of S. Bennet himself much less imply that they were guilty of lying against the Holy Ghost for S. Gregory gives no other testimony of those miracles than that he was informed by four men who are named by him and who had conversed much with the Saint that they were true nor doth it appear that the Saint himself did own or avow the having done those miracles which are imputed to him by other men so that if they should in truth be but pretended miracles and visions they cannot be imputed to either of them as sleights of Legerdemain Besides take them all to be true as they are reported most of them may be proved to be no miracles for if it was only the Nurses Sieve that she had borrowed of a Neighbour to winnow her Corn which was broken in two pieces as Saint Gregory reports a youth without a miracle might joyn them together to wipe off his Nurses tears Indeed if it was an Earthen-pot that with the fall broke into a hundred pieces as the Author of the Lives of the Saints declares it to be it was a harder work for a little boy to put them together again And if he did after three years such austerity in a Cave and such a spare diet as the cure kept him to find it necessary to roll himself in thorns to conquer his amorous passions the miracle is rather in the novelty of the invention than in the cure it wrought Nor doth it appear to be confirmed by the practice of any of his Disciples since who probably may have been liable to the same temptations He doth very well to pass over all the other instances the Doctor gives of the same nature except his being spectator of the Soul of his sister Scholastica which implies a subtiler sight than any other Saint ever pretended to nor will I mention any of the rest not so much as the Crow that buried the poysoned piece of bread which by the way was a miracle on the Crows part more than on the Saints I say I forbear to mention any more of them lest I should be much less serious in it than the Doctor hath been for which I will only make this excuse that if Mr. Cressy will call to him any three friends who have been bred in as good company as he hath been and let them together read S. Bennet's in the Lives of the Saints and if at least one of them be not as pleasant upon it and believes as little of it as the Doctor seems to do I will ask his pardon for being less serious than he would have me upon such occasions I think the Doctor may lawfully and reasonably suspect the truth of most of those miracles which Mr. Cressy seems to believe and conclude the falshood of many of them without denying that any miracles were wrought by God's servants in that Age nor will he be scrupulous in denying that he hath met with many or any learned and prudent men who have been eye-witnesses of many and deserve to be believed It is a wonderful thing that when God himself never wrought miracle in the Old or New Testament nor ever any qualified by him to that purpose but it was to some visible purpose to manifest his power and glory and always by persons eminent in his favour and trusted and imployed by him in his particular service and
that torrent which over-bore them ought not to be imputed since it over whelmed multitudes of all professions who heartily abhorred those that they were compelled to obey It is a great instance of Mr. Cressy's good temper if it be of his sincerity that he is so solicitous to purge the Iesuits from the imputations which are more particularly cast on them I believe they did not expect it from him who is not thought to agree with them in all which they account fundamental Yet truly the excuse he makes for them is such as if he invited men to keep up their prejudice against them That for asmuch as concerns the unsafe Antimonarchical doctrine contained in those books cited by the Doctor it is almost a whole Age since that they have been by their General forbidden under pain of Excommunication and other most grievous censures to justifie them either in writing preaching or disputing c. Mr. Cressy speaks much of retractation and says well That they who by writing or otherwise have published scandalous doctrine which hath corrupted other men do not do their duty in being silent and giving over to do that which will be no longer safe for them to do but that recantation and retractation is necessary that they may be known to be no longer of the samc mind Is there any man of the society that hath written against that Anti-monarchical doctrine who hath endeavoured to confute Cardinal Bellarmine or Mariana or Emanuel Sa or any of the rest Is not Bellarmine's book of the power of the Pope over Kings are not all the other books to be bought at every Stationers shop Who knows any thing of the Generals warrants but themselves It was known to and permitted by the Pope that is the Pope was willing when their books were out that they should be quiet and write no more which would excuse them for not answering those books which Catholicks as well as Protestants should write against them and that they might not enter into dispute with the Colledge of Sorbon which detested their Principles He says It is well known that in this point Princes and States are generally become more clear-sighted and more wise than formerly they have been and by consequence the Court of Rome also It is indeed well known that the Court of Rome adheres still to its own principles though they do not think fit to put Princes in mind what they are well knowing that all their Bulls and Interdictions and Absolutions how long soever since published are still in the same force and vigour as they were the first hour of their publication and it is very few years since that upon an occasion of some consultation between the secular and regular Clergy of Ireland to present an address to the King in testimony of their obedience in which they disclaimed any temporal authority to be in the Pope the Court of Rome was so alarm'd by it that Cardinal Barberine writ to them to desist from any such Declaration and put them in mind that the Kingdom of England was still under Excommunication and since that time the Pope hath made many Bishops in Ireland which his predecessors had forborn to do from the death of Queen Elizabeth to the year One thousand Six hundred and Forty and this is the clear-sightedness and wisdom that the Court of Rome is lately improved in But he doth assure you that if an oath were framed free from ambiguity and without odious phrases inserted in it wholly unnecessary to the substance of it the Iesuits would not make any scruple of joyning with their Catholick brethren in it Alas what authority hath he to assure us this He knows very well that the Society will not trust him to frame such Oath and that they and he differ very much in their judgments in that point and of all men Mr. Cressy is the most unfit for such an undertaking He cannot forget that shortly after he deserted the Church of England and published his Exomologesis which in comparison of all that he hath writ since may be looked upon as a modest Book he did in that Book publish a protestation or subscription which all the Roman Catholicks in England would be willing to take and in truth it did not differ much in substance or sence from the Oaths which are enjoyned by the Law and no doubt he would have taken it himself and did then believe that all other Catholicks might have taken it likewise But within a short time all that impression of that Book was bought up or otherwise procured and a second Edition of it published wherein there were very many substantial alterations and additions from what was in the former the protestation of duty and obedience which was in the first was totally left out in the second impression it being not thought a fit obligation for the Catholicks to enter into The discourse he had made of Purgatory was likewise left out for he had mistaken the tenent of his new Church in that particular Many other alterations were made as must be confessed by any man who will take the pains to examine both Editions There were also many additions especially of reproaches against the Church of England and many bitter and virulent expressions against the Clergy of that Church And I know a person who meeting with Mr. Cressy expostulated with him upon all those particulars and asked him how it came to pass that those were left out when his Book had been first licensed by Dr. Holden and another Doctor of the Sorbon and why the other calumnies were added which so much reflected upon the Clergy contrary to what in his own Conscience he knew was true to all which he answered with passionate protestations that he never knew of one or the other till he saw the second impression that his Superiours were offended with the first in which there were some mistakes and that he had intirely left it to their discretions to do what they should think fit upon it whereupon they had caused it to be reprinted as it now stood without at all communicating with him which it seems being a custom amongst them gives me yet some hope that the very unusual passion and incivility that runs through this discourse may be added by the appointment and direction of some Superiour Since he is not so much altered in his face or habit from what he was when he was thirty years of Age as he is from that modesty and gentleness of nature and smoothness and civility of stile if all the expressions in his Book are his own from the time I knew him and had conversation with him But he finds it much easier to revile than answer any Books the Doctor hath writ in any time Nor can his opinion be doubted of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy both which he hath often taken and as often declared his detestation of the Covenant which Mr. Cressy will never be able to prove he ever
combination of the Presbyterians and Independants whom they do likewise as unskilfully to their purpose irreconcile to them as if they could subdue the whole Kingdom and so care not whom they provoke If the noise and clamour and evil-speaking of these men do awaken the sleeping Laws to take that vengeance upon them that they were ordained for and which yet remain in that drowzy posture that their own modesty may reduce them to the manners of Gentlemen and Subjects or if the Kings mercy continue as obstinate toward them as their guilt and provocation so that he thinks fit still to abate the sharp edge of the Laws towards them in which very few men wish his Majestie less merciful there are still other Laws which the dignity of his Government will not suffer him to restrain and which are provided to vindicate those who do their duty from the extravagant passions and insolence of those who observe no rules of good behaviour and of peaceable conversation And what may be inflicted upon them of this kind will be unpitied by all good Catholicks and will never be thought a persecution of their Religion and it may be their Superiours at least upon their observation to what ill use they put their tongues may exact from them that silence for cherishing whereof their Order was first instituted and hereafter only imploy such in their missions as may return to them again without doing them any harm or bringing prejudice to the Religion they profess Mr. Cressy thinks he hath a wonderful advantage against the Church of England because he says he can find no religious Orders in it he cannot hear so much as of one single person whom he might call a Fanatick for leaving the flesh and the world to the end he or she might intirely consecrate themselves to God in solitude and exercises of spiritual prayer and mortification and if God should call any one to such a state of life there is an utter want amongst them of instructors or instructions proper for it I will not enter into any discourse of the benefits or inconveniences or ill uses which are too often made of those Monasteries and Religious houses of the He 's and the She 's I have nothing to say against them nor do I doubt that there are amongst them many persons of great learning and vertue and therefore I shall say no more but that most Catholick Kingdoms think the number of them too great and frequently forbid the erecting more of them and the Popes themselves have done the like in Italy and have dissolved many of them but I may say which is as much as is necessary to say that we have no cause to lament the absence of them in England since any defects which arise by the want of them is so abundantly provided by the noble Colledges in both the Universities and the great Free-Schools all so plentifully endowed not only for the good education of Youth in all principles of vertue piety and good literature but for the support of them after they are bred in the improvement of their parts for the service of the Church and of their Country insomuch that it may be truly said that more Scholars are liberally maintained upon the sole charge and charity of the several Founders and greater emoluments assigned for the encouragement of learning in England than can be said of any Kingdom in Europe how much larger and richer soever and I believe the Common-wealth of Learning in all other parts doth think and with great reason that all kinds of Learning are at this day in as great a heighth and perfection as they have been in any age in any Kingdom of the world and Mr. Cressy cannot forget though he doth not care to acknowledge that himself had his education in a Religious house founded by Walter Merton where he received a much more liberal and bountiful education and support than he hath ever had from S. Benedict and from whence he brought more learning than he hath found in any other place that he hath since inhabited or I doubt than he hath yet about him In this Religious house where I think he lived as many years as he hath done since under a worse discipline he had opportunity and obligation to consecrate himself to God in as much solitude as would contribute thereunto and to exercises of spiritual Prayer and mortification He was as much bound to chastity and to all kind of temperance as the severe Rules and Statutes of a magnificent Founder could oblige him and which he was likewise sworn to observe And I believe he under went as severe and a much more beneficial Novitiate there in which silence likewise was a part of the mortification as he did afterwards at Douay for I saw him in both those It is very true there and in all other Colledges if they found that the obligations they were under were stricter than they could submit to they are at liberty to quit those benefits their Founder hath bequeathed them and to dispose of themselves according to their inclinations otherwise they may enjoy the other to their lives end as very many do who prefer that solitude before the pleasures of the world It is very true that the Church and State of England did by observation and experience find that vows did not make people chast who would not be restrained by conscience of their duty to God and that those actions were not worthy the name of vertue and piety I speak still only of our own Country which were the effects of force and want of opportunity to decline them In a word the practice they had too much testimony and evidence of made them conclude that the mischief from those inclosures constraints and vows was greater and more apparent than the benefit and advantage and so they thought not fit to restrain that liberty which God and Nature did allow to all those persons who would decline the profit of those Communities in which they were possessed of them and betake themselves to another condition of life And I doubt not but Mr. Cressy knows that many learned Catholicks have always been and still are very averse to those vows and inclosures of Women which seems not to be much favoured by the Church it self the constitutions whereof require a greater number of years than are now required before they receive the vail and whether the scandalous lives of many Religious men abroad brings not a greater prejudice to the Religion they profess than their habit and vows brings honour to it I leave to his observation The other defect he finds in our Church of want of instructors and instructions for those in case God should call any one to such a state of life in solitude and exercises of spiritual prayer and mortification is yet more strange Without doubt if God doth in truth call any one to such a state of life he will not leave him destitute of instruction and
in sancta Romana Ecclesia atque altera in Galliarum tenetur Respondet Gregorius Papa Novit fraternitas tua Romanae Ecclesiae consuetudinem in qua se nutritam meminit sed mihi placet ut sive in Romana five in Galliarum seu in qualibet Ecclesia aliquid invenisti quod plus omnipotenti Deo posset placere sollicitè eligas in Anglorum Ecclesia quae adhuc ad fidem nova est institutione praecipuâ quae de multis Ecclesiis colligere potuisti infundas non enim pro locis res sed pro bonis rebus loca amanda sunt Ex singulis ergo quibusque Ecclesiis quae pia quae religiosa quae recta sunt elige haec quasi in fasciculum collect a apud Anglorum mentes in consuetudinem depone If Austin had conformed himself to these Instructions it is very probable that he might have had as good success in reconciling the Eritish Church who principally insisted against any deference to the Roman not comprehending any possible reason for such a superiority or if the successors of Gregory had been of his temper and Christian prudence Christendom had been much better united at this day or more innocently separated and unanswerable reasons for the reformation of some errors which had unwarily creeped in or removing some scandals which could not otherwise be kept out would not have been so often rejected upon no other reason than that the Bishop of Rome was not of that opinion nor would whole National Churches because they have with the consent of the Soveraign power removed some error which the other chuses to retain be reviled with the names of Hereticks and Schismaticks and the universal be contracted within the Province of Rome and not be allowed to be members of the Catholick Church because they will not be subject to that of the Roman which would usurp the authority of condemning many more Christians than are contained within the community thereof To make any profession of a willingness to submit mens judgments for the sence of Scripture to a lawful General Council besides that I do not know that there is any difference upon any Text of Scripture that concerns Salvation I confess I take it to be very impertinent and in that respect not very ingenious since it is manifestly impossible for any such Council ever to meet whilst that of Rome challenges the sole power of calling it and pretends to such a Soveraignty in it that nothing must be debated by it but what is proposed by the Pope or his Legats and all Kingdoms or Provinces as well as private persons who will not submit to his Soveraignty shall be excluded from thence under the notion of being Hereticks so that all Protestants must appear as Delinquents to be censured and condemned which would be a strange condition to submit to when no body can compel them to appear but their own Soveraigns Nor can it be called a free Council where all who ought to be looked upon as members of it are not equally free When General Councils were first called all the Christians of the world were one mans subjects who could both compel as many of them as he thought necessary to be present and to obey and submit to whatsoever was determined whereas now there being so many Kings and Princes who have much larger Dominions than the Emperor and are equally Soveraigns in those their Dominions and none of their subjects can appear there without their Soveraigns consent And lastly it being a Catholick Tenent that how numerous soever the convention in Council is and how universal soever the consent is in what is determined the Canons made there are not obligatory to any Kingdom before it be received and submitted to in that Kingdom upon which the Council of Trent is not yet received in France and in many other Catholick Countries and therefore it will be very hard for Mr. Cressy to justifie the defending or urging the authority of that Council in England where it was never received and hath been always rejected And for these reasons it may reasonably be thought morally impossible for any general free Council ever to meet which must grow every day more impossible as the Christian Faith is farther spread and when the whole world is converted as we do not only pray it may but believe it will be it will be very hard for the greatest Geographer to assign a place for the meeting where the Bishops from all parts may reasonably hope to live to be present there and to return from thence with the resolutions of the Councils into his own Country For the Instruments and means of unity which Mr. Cressy says were left by our Lord to his Church for the preservation of unity besides that most of those means are as applicable to the Church of England as to the Church of Rome though none of them in the terms he uses appear to be enjoyned or left by our Saviour let him but prove the Ninth and Tenth That the ordinary authority is established in the Supreme Pastor the Bishop of Rome and that his jurisdiction extends it self to the whole Church c. and in case any Heresies arise or that any Controversies cannot be any otherwise ended he hath authority to determine the points of Catholick truth opposed c. I say let him prove this and he hath no need of any of the other means and I will give him farther this advantage over me that if he can prove that I am obliged to conform my judgment in any thing to the determination of the Pope more than to the determination of the Bishop of S. Iago I will go to Mass with him to morrow and Mr. Cressy himself might be a good Catholick if he had not unwarrantably to say no worse of it subscribed to the Bull of Pius the Fourth which is no obligation by the Council when he submitted to his new Ordination though he were of the same opinion And if that Tenth proposition of his be the doctrine of the Catholick Church the Colledge of Sorbon hath been often to blame in not consenting to it and I know not how the Iansenists in France can be excused for paying not more reverence to the judgment and determination of two Popes upon the five Propositions for Alexander the Seventh confirmed what Innocent the Tenth had first defined nor was the silence that is since submitted to in those particulars an effect of the Popes authority but of the Kings which amounts to little less than a revocation at least a suspension of the Popes Decree The Argument that the Doctor uses from the Tragical miscarriages of Popes is very apposite and convincing to those Propositions which Mr. Cressy would perswade men to believe do establish his personal Supremacy He says that our Saviour hath committed a Supreme jurisdiction to the person of the Bishop of Rome over the whole Church that in case any Heresies arise or any Controversies in causis
that he says is not to be imputed to want of authority in the Pope but to the unruliness of mens passions and pride and I say it serves the Doctor 's turn if his authority be not such as can curb and suppress the unruliness of the passions and pride of his own Subjects He will not understand how the Doctor can say that the Church of England makes no Articles of Faith but such as have testimony and approbation of the whole Christian World of all Ages and are acknowledged to be such by Rome it self and in other things she requires subscription to them not as Articles of Faith but as inferiour truths which she expects submission to in order to her peace and tranquillity Mr. Cressy is the only man alive that can find obscurity in this clause and I confess his exception to it is so obscure that I will rather rely upon the Readers understanding of the most exact plainness of it than inlarge my self in any explanation and I wish that he could say as much for the Church of Rome that it makes no Article of Faith but such as have the testimony and approbation of the whole Christian World of all Ages our complaint is that he multiplies articles of faith to that degree that he will not suffer us to be saved for believing all that most Christians believed for a thousand years together without the least doubt of their Salvation nor will he yet let us know the full extent he would have our faith reach to for we are no less obliged to submit to what he or his Successors shall declare hereafter to be matter of faith than to what is at present contained in the whole Canons of the Council of Trent which makes it absolutely necessary for the peace of Conscience as well as the peace of Kingdoms to protest against and as far as in us lies to restrain that exorbitant authority but of all arguments it is a most pleasant one that if the Church of England believes nothing as of faith but what the Popes and Church of Rome do likewise believe Therefore it follows that the Church of Rome notwithstanding its Idolatry Fanaticisme c. failes in no necessary point of faith which would be true if it added nothing to that confessed faith that must destroy it He then involves himself in his old circle of the Churches authority and of that Churches being the Church of Rome and of the residence of that authority being in the Person of the Pope which whosoever refuses to submit to must be an Heretick to all which enough hath been said before nor can I enlarge upon it without saying somewhat that I have said before which I have no mind to do We come now to the Seventh and Eighth Chapters concerning Penance c. upon which I shall enlarge the less because the Church of England is so far from condemning Confession or Penance that it uses and commends both and upon Confession always satisfaction is enjoyned there as much as in the Church of Rome it is true that with us it is not so positively enjoyned that is men are not compelled to it nor are those forms used in ours or those interrogatories administred by which those secrets are extorted from Men and Women which they would willingly conceal and which may lawfully be concealed as in their Church but Penitents are lest to their own liberty and their own method of drawing such information and comfort from their Confessors as they believe most useful to them which was the original end of Confession and from which very many good Catholicks believe there is at present too great a deviation God forbid the integrity and piety of any Church should be suspected much less condemned for the evil livers who remain within the pale of it No Church hath ever yet nor any will ever be but the triumphant without abundance of them yet it being the principal end and the most manifest perfection of Religion to introduce an innocence of life and a sincerity of manners into all those who profess it all Churches cannot too severely affect that Discipline which hath the greatest operation upon the lives and actions of their Children whether there are not some corruptions creeped into the common practice of auricular Confession whether the ordinary customary Confessors are not too remiss or over curious in examining and consequently in informing their Penitents or too easie and perfunctory in their absolutions will not become me to determine but Mr. Cressy well knows that very many learned and pious Catholicks do publickly lament the scandalous corruptions which have been practised and countenanced in that vital part of their Religion Who those Apostates from the Catholick Church are who have left their Monasteries out of carnal liberty and carnal lusts I am not at all informed but if they are so carnally minded I doubt some of them may be instructed by him to ask him how he forgot what he had formerly believed and whether he was in a moment inspired to answer to a new Catechisme full of new Articles of Faith If conscience hath had no influence upon them they have been very weak and not Roman Catholicks enough to be tempted by the Woman since they might have had the full use of her with much more good husbandry and less guilt without leaving their Monasteries for it is a ruled and a vowed case by most if not all their Casuists that fornication is a less sin than marriage and the reason they give is that the last is living in perpetual adultery Whoever hath lived in those places which are most inhabited by Religious Men is very little conversant with the Catholick same if he doth believe the major part of Religious Men to be enough mortified against that liberty though no doubt very many of them have subdued the temptation and it will not only be charity but common justice to think that those Apostates over whom Mr. Cressy so much infults have been governed by their Conscience since it was hardly possible they could be invited by the Woman having enough of that Sex at their devotion without the obligation and impediment of marriage and till Mr. Cressy informs us why Monasteries are better Schools of Holiness and Devotion than our Colledges are whose Discipline is as severe admitting cleanliness be to be preferred before slovenlines and doctrine much stricter enough hath been already said for their vindication and need not be repeated I think I understand the excuse that Mr. Cressy makes for the notorious transgressions which have been in the matter of confession and absolution in reference to which he says the Doctor is not ignorant that not very long since among several dangerous positions collected out of some modern Casuists such scandalous relaxations in administring the Sacrament of Penance had a principal place all which were not only condemned by the Bishops of France almost in every Diocess but also a Book the Author of which
the care of their Souls is committed than him who is a stranger to them or if they have heard of him they ought the less to believe him Whoever knows the Doctor and Him or hath carefully perused their writings cannot be blamed for preferring the former before the latter But then how can these people who read the Scripture and appeal to it know that they have the true Scripture which is the word of God which is a worn-out question that hath been as often answered as asked The Church of Rome hath no other evidence of the truth of it than we have and the Tradition that hath derived it doth as much belong to the Church of England as to the other there is no difference between us in any particular that relates to Tradition where the tradition is as universal or as manifest as it is in that of the Scripture The Doctor is so far from saying or thinking that every Christian is to be a judge of the sence of Scripture that he doth not believe that every Church is fit to be a judge of it nor doth it appear that the Church of Rome it self which would be thought to be Catholick and instar omnium doth pretend to understand much less to judge of the sence of the whole Scripture and yet a very weak member of either may clearly understand the sence of those particular places which are necessary to be understood for his salvation as no man is so ignorant as not to know what the sence of Adultery and of Theft and Murder and the like which he is forbid to be guilty of and if he be so ignorant he will not be the more inclined to detest them by reading the School-men and if he be of the Church of England he knows whither to repair for advice and counsel in difficult cases and refuses not to submit to it But that no authority may be able to do us good he hath obtained a very extraordinary faculty to answer and avoid it and which is the nearest to smelling it out with his Nose that I have been informed of The Doctor to prove that the Christians in all times were indulged and exhorted to read the Scriptures besides many other arguments backs his demonstrations as Mr. Cressy confesses with an army of the ancient Fathers who are cited by him and their doctrine acknowledged by several late Catholick Divines of the most eminent account and which he himself confesses to be true but he says notwithstanding that no Catholick nor he thinks any other man in his right wits will grant that every Porter Cobler or Lawndress is capable to instruct themselves by reading the Scriptures alone or to clear the doctrine of the mystery of the Holy Trinity the Incarnation of our Saviour the Procession of the Holy Ghost c. In all which I do not know that he hath an adversary After he hath asked the Doctor a question or two of his own judgment concerning the Fathers concessions in those cases whether they did not suppose that they to whom they gave this license would for the sence of difficult points have submitted their judgments to the Church But then he undertakes to know that if there had been such an Architect of principles as the Doctor in the time of the Fathers they would not have been so zealous in their exhortations to a promiscuous reading of Scriptures For he says and hopes you will take his word for it that the Doctors principles do evidently contain the most pernicious Soul-destroying Heresie that ever assaulted Gods Church principles which banish peace charity humility and obedience utterly from the Church and State which if true as they could never have entred into the Doctors thoughts by reading the Scriptures so there can be no such antidote to expel those poysons as by the Scriptures for I will undertake to shew very plain places in Scripture of the sence whereof there is no doubt made for the confutation of all those principles and if he be of the Philosophers mind that more Syllogisms can be made for truth than against it he will not think the worse of reading the Scriptures for those principles yet he concludes that if the Fathers had foreseen these mischiefs they would never have given such advice yet he does confess that the four first general Councils never put any such restraint upon the reading the Scriptures for which he gives as good a reason as his answer concerning the Fathers because of the difference between the Heresies of those times and the Heresies of these times The Inventors of the ancient Heresies he says were great learned Prelates and subtle Philosophers and the object of their Heresies were sublime mysteries of Faith examined and framed by them according to the grounds of Plato ' s and Aristotle's Philosophy c. Hence he says it come to pass that in those days the Scriptures might be read freely enough by ordinary Christians without danger especially considering their intention of reading them was not to find out a new Religion but to instruct themselves in piety and to inflame their hearts in the Divine love pag. 161 162. But our modern Heresies he says are of a quite different complexion they are conversant about matters obvious to the weakest capacities as the external administration of Sacraments the jurisdiction of Superiors Civil and Ecclesiastical the manner of mens devotions the institution of Religious Orders the obligation of Vows the Ordinances of the Church touching Fasting Matrimony Celibacy paying of Tithes c. Or if about sublime mysteries men are taught to examine such mysteries by natural reason and the verdict of their outwardsenses Is not the English or sence of all this that towards the conviction of the highest and the greatest Heresies which ever were in the Church and which were only worthy of the name of Heresies and were condenned as such by the pure and strong evidence of Scripture the reading of the Scriptures might be permitted at least might be read without danger especially because the intention of reading them then was that men might be the better for it But that now in these modern Heresies upon the Sacraments and the institution of Religious Orders and Vows c. the reading the Scriptures are pernicious and serves only to find out a new Religion I can in truth collect no other sence than this from Mr. Cressy's distinction between the ancient and modern Heresies or for his conclusion that those godly Fathers who are cited by the Doctor and truly cited as he confesses had lived amongst us or if such Heresies had been then spread amongst their Disciples they would not have been so zealous in their exhortations to a promiscuous reading of Scripture I think they would because I am sure they would have had the same reason and would have wondered how any differences of opinion upon the Civil or Ecclesiastical jurisdiction upon the manner of mens devotions or upon the institution of Religious
think never saw that excellent Person to take upon them to asperse a Noble man of the most Prodigious learning of the most exemplar manners and singular good nature of the most unblemished integrity and the greatest Ornament of the Nation that any Age hath produced with the Character of a Socinian Mr. Cressy well knows that before that time of his Journey into Ireland in the Year One thousand six hundred thirty eight that Noble Lord had perused and read over all the Greek and Latine Fathers and was indefatigable in looking over all Books which with great expence he caused to be transmitted to him from all parts and so could not have been long without Mr. Dallies Book if Cressy's presenting it to him had not given him opportunity to have raised this scandal upon his memory nor could that Book have been so grateful to him if he had not read the Fathers For Mr. Chillingworth if Mr. Cressy had not been very wary in saying any thing that might redound to the honour of any of the present Prelates he cannot but know that the present Arch-Bishop of Canterbury had first reclaimed him from his doubtings and they were no more nor had he ever declared himself a Catholick except being at S. Omers amounts to such a Declaration before ever he was sent for by Arch-Bishop Laud and I am very much deceived which I think I am not in that particular if Chillingworth's Book against Mr. Knott was not published before the time of Cressy's Journey in thirty eight into Ireland and I know had been perused by him and therefore Mr. Dallies Book could not interrupt him in his study of the Fathers nor induce him to fix his mind upon Socinian grounds which now serves his turn to reproach all men and the Church of England it self for refusing to believe his miracles or to submit to that authority to whose blind guiding he hath lazily given up himself and all his faculties Yet he does so much honour to those grounds that he does confess that they obstructed a good while his entrance into the Catholick Church the contrary whereof I know to be true as much as negative can be true and that he never thought of entring into the Religion he now professes till long after the death of the Lord Falkland and Mr. Chillingworth nor till the same rebellious power that drove the King out of the Kingdom drove him likewise from the good preferments which he enjoyed in the Church and then the necessity and distraction of his fortune together with the melancholick and irresolution in his nature prevailed with him to bid farewell to his own reason and understanding and to resign himself to the conduct of those who had a much worse than his If the having read Socinus and the commending that in him which no body can reasonably discommende in him and the making use of that reason that God hath given a man for the examining of that which is most properly to be examined by reason and to avoid the weak arguments of some men how superciliously soever insisted upon or to discover the fallacies of others be the definition of a Socinian the party will be very strong in all Churches but if a perfect detestation of all those Opinions against the Person and Divinity of our Saviour or any other doctrine that is contrary to the Church of England and the Church of England hath more formally condemned Socinianism than any other Church hath done as appears by the Canons of One thousand six hundred and forty can free a man from that reproach as without doubt it ought to do I can very warrantably declare that that unparallel'd Lord was no Socinian nor is it possible for any man who is a true Son of the Church of England to be corrupted with any of those Opinions But in truth if Mr. Cressy hath that Prerogative in Logick as to declare men to be Socinians from some propositions which he calls Principles which in his judgment will warrant those deductions though he confesses he does not suspect the Doctor will approve such consequences yet he is confident with all his skill he cannot avoid them that is he is a Socinian before he is aware of it and in spight of his teeth this is such an excess in the faculty of arguing as must make him a dangerous Neighbour and qualifies him excellently to be a Commissioner of the Inquisition who have often need of that kind of subtilty that will make Heresies which they cannot find All this invention is to perswade his new friends of that which they call the old Religion that his old Friend's Religion is new that they have no reverence for antiquity no regard for the Authority of the Fathers and only make use of their natural reason to find out a new Religion for themselves whereas in truth whoever will impartially and dispassionately make the enquiry shall find that there is no one substantial controversie between the Roman and the Church of England but what is matter of Novelty and hath no foundation in Antiquity and that the Fathers are more diligently read and studied in our Church than they are in theirs and more reverence is paid to them by us than by them though neither they nor we nor any other Christian Church in the World do submit or concur in all that the Fathers have taught who were never all of one mind and therefore may very lawfully have their reasons examined by the reasons of other men This that I say concerning the reading and the reverence paid to the Fathers ought to be believed till they can produce one Prelate or Member of the Church of England who hath ever used such contemptuous words of the Fathers Ego ut ingenuè fatear plus uno summo Pontifici crederem in his quae fidei mysteria tangunt quà m mille Augustinis Ieronymis Gregoriis c. Credo enim scio quòd summus Pontifex in his quae fidei sunt non posse errare quoniam authoritas determinandi quae ad fidem spectant in Pontifice residet which are the words of Cornelius Mussus an Italian Bishop and much celebrated amongst them for his extraordinary learning in Epis. ad Rom. cap. 14. pa. 606. Michael Medina a man as eminent in the Council of Trent as any who sate there in the debate whether a Bishop was Superiour to a Presbyter jure Ecclesiastico or jure Divino when they who sustained the former alledged Saint Ierome and S. Augustine to support their opinion Medina said aloud Non mirum esse si isti nonnulli alii Patres re nondum eo tempore illustratâ in eam haeresim incidissent How would Mr. Cressy and his Friends insult if a Doctor of the Church of England should publish in Print by the authority of the Church Illud asserimus quo juntores eo perspicaciores esse Doctores contra hanc quam objectant multitudinem Respondemus inquit ex verbo
by taking away the strong supporters which have hitherto upheld it and erecting rotten or mouldering pillars in the place and all this benefit and advantage may be lost or prevented by his fond and unseasonable advertisement if the King and the Bishops have prudence enough to make good use of it by driving away or discountenancing such a perfidious and unskilful champion May they not from hence apprehend that as he came to them upon a sudden and unexpected so that he is upon thoughts of returning to the Church for which he hath so much care and entering into a kind of correspondence with his adversaries by giving good counsel how to behave himself better But how comes it to pass that this miserable Doctor who he yet seems to think may mean well to be so stupidly couzened and deceived that instead of complying with his engagement to defend the Church he hath betrayed her and the whole cause to all the Fanatick Sects which have separated from her and with most horrible cruelty sought her destruction and with her the ruine of Monarchy All this tragical demolishing of foundations consists in this that he allows all sober enquirers to be for themselves judges of the sence of Scripture in necessaries and judges likewise what points are necessary This saying of his hath betrayed the cause of his Church and left her in a most forlorn condition tottering upon foundations and principles which to Mr. Cressy's certain knowledge were not extant at least not known in England thirty years since Let it be in the first place observed and it is sure worthy to be observed that this most pernicious proposition which hath in such an instant brought the Church of England into such a tottering condition is not made use of nor so much as taken notice of by any of those enemies of hers the Presbyterians Anabaptists or Independents who have been so vigilant and industrious so many years to make her totter and yet now the work is so near done to their hands by a secret friend who is the more able to do them good by his not pretending any affection towards them neither of them will put their cause upon that proposition nor apply it to their own designs and therefore it is possible that it may not be altogether so dangerous to the Church as he would have it supposed to be and of which it is probable he would not have given notice if he had in truth thought it to be dangerous In the next place let us examine whether the Doctor himself cannot make another and better interpretation of his own words than his implacable enemy hath done all good Physicians compound their Antidotes according to the nature and malignity of the poyson that their patients have swallowed Now the poyson that Mr. Cressy and his lurking brethren usually bait their traps with and by which they catch most of their prey is Their confident denouncing damnation against those and all those who are not of their mind that is who are not received into the Church of Rome and not intirely submit to all her dictates That the Scripture consists in dumb letters which cannot declare its own meaning and therefore is liable to be misinterpreted by the wit of bold and presumptuous men as the founders of all Heresies have been and therefore they can only be safe who receive and conform themselves to that interpretation of Scripture that the Church in the custody of which it is deposited hath given and declared to be Orthodox That that Church is the Church of Rome where there constantly resides a Supreme Magistrate who in case any new opinions shall start up to the prejudic of Religion which have not been enough convinced by former definitions of the Church hath full authority committed to him by our Saviour to declare and determine what is agreeable or contrary to the sence of the Scripture since it cannot be supposed that our Saviour would constitute an officer and not indue him with all necessary faculties or not qualifie him sufficiently for the discharge of so great a trust and from hence they resolve that the greatest danger of damnation is not from the commission of those sins against which the spirit of God hath so plainly denounced it but in an obstinate presumption in contradicting the opinions or directions of the Catholick Church and refusing to submit to the authority of the Vicar of Christ who hath the unquestionable power to bind and to loose to pardon and to condemn sins having the Keys of Heaven and of Hell and therefore whilst they will depend upon him and put themselves under his protection they cannot but be safe This is the common poyson which these men carry about them to administer to those who they find most like to be deluded and in the composition of it there are some ingredients according to the humour of the compounder which cannot be according to the Catholick prescription since that Soveraign power of their Supreme Magistrate the Pope is not nor ever will be acknowledged to be an essential part of the Roman Catholick Religion Let us now see what Antidote the Doctor hath provided for the prevention or expulsion of this poyson to confirm men in their absolute confidence and dependence upon the Scripture the force and virtue whereof that poyson would enervate he says That it is repugnant to the nature of the design to the wisdom and goodness of God to give an infallible assurance to persons in writing his will for the benefit of mankind if those writings may not be understood by all persons who sincerely endeavour to know the meaning of them in all such things as are necessary for their Salvation and consequently there can be no necessity supposed of any infallible society of men either to attest or explain those writings amongst Christians and this and no more than this is the sence of that which contains all that confusion which Mr. Cressy thinks must bring confusion upon his own Church as into that of the Roman and from thence the Doctor proceeds to shew how incompetent a Magistrate they have chosen to determine all differences in Religion which he proves by such arguments as are very natural for the proving thereof and for the answering avoiding whereof we shall be compelled anon to take notice of Mr. Cressy's admirable artifice and dexterity Now if the Doctor hath for want of skill in discerning consequences made choice of an improper medium to prove that which he hath a mind to prove God forbid that there should be such Tragical effects to attend that argumentation as the destruction of Church and State and it would be as unreasonable to condemn an argument that he who uses it thinks to his purpose because it was never used till within thirty Years One man says that the Scripture is so very difficult that no man can understand it without repairing to the advice of an adversary who will tell him the interpretation
bitterly inveigh against his Principles and all for the novelty of them that is he says somewhat that hath not been said before and which they are not provided to answer which is rather an argument that all disputing is to little purpose and that it is time to give it over because neither party is reformed than that what he says is easie to be answered there will be every day new Principles new Arguments to inform and convince and convert those who obstinately persist in old Errours They who are but moderately versed in the Controversies about the Substantial points in difference between the Protestants I mean which are common with all Protestants and the Church of Rome cannot but find that the Romish Champions have quite shifted the Scene in all their arguments upon the most material matters and have found new mediums to support their cause They are visibly weary all but the Iesuits of insisting upon the Popes infallibility you scarce meet with an argument from it in any Book that is Printed nor can you engage them in it upon discourse They are with great difficulty drawn into the matter of Transubstantiation but presently shelter themselves under the shadow of their Church and if they cannot avoid enlarging upon it they neither use argument or answer that ever Bellarmine relied upon being not satisfied with much he said in that point or Purgatory or some other matters which he hath handled more at large insomuch that it hath been observed these many years that Bellarmine's Controversies are so gathered up that they are not easie to be procured amongst the greatest Book-sellers and if they are ever reprinted they will pass a severe expurgation In these varieties and lawful changes of the method and order of disputation amongst learned men which cannot but be administred by the often saying and repeating the same things which are often evinced by a new medium after it hath been long unmoveable by an old why should it only be unlawful or incongruous in the Doctor or any other Writer in defence of the Church of England to introduce new principles if they will better contribute to the maintenance of old truths and which it is plain doth stagger them and forces them to fall upon the Person and decline the matter yet I am contented for the ending all disputes which are full of obstinacy and uncharitableness to concur in the reference and how ill soever Mr. Cressy and I have agreed from the beginning of his Book hitherto I am intirely of his mind in the matter and very words of his conclusion That there is a horrible depravation in the minds especially of Ecclesiasticks which depravation can now only be cured by the wisdom and power of the Civil Magistrate and to his wisdom and severity I leave it I have now waited upon Mr. Cressy to the end of his Book and I think have not left any clause in it of any importance unanswered and before I conclude I shall observe Cressy's own method in giving him some Counsel and Advice without taking much notice of his Post-script in which there is little addition of new matter but from the same temper of spirit some variety of bitterness with some new very ill words He wishes that if the Doctor thinks not himself obliged in Conscience by breaking all Rules of piety and humanity to do all manner of despight to his Catholick fellow Subjects he would hereafter please to abstain from reviling and blaspheming Gods Saints or traducing the most divine exercises of contemplative Souls more perfectly practised only in Heaven Alas the Doctor wishes and desires that all the English Roman Catholicks against whose corrupt opinions he hath with much strength of reason and very little passion writ very weightily but never against their Persons would be his Fellow-subjects give that evidence and security of and for their fidelity as their Fellow-subjects do That they would disclaim all kind of subjection to any other Soveraign and which till they do and which the Catholick Religion cannot hinder them from doing they cannot reckon themselves nor be accounted by others his Fellow-subjects And I do heartily wish not without some apprehension that Mr. Cressy hath not by breaking all rules of modesty and discretion brought more prejudice upon the Persons of his fellow-Catholicks than all the Doctor 's want of humanity hath done It was a little too soon to awaken all the Protestants of England that they might discern in what an ill condition they must be in if that Catholick spirit that discovers it self unwarily in him and others of his fraternity should have any prevalence or much countenance in the State To his blaspheming and reviling Gods Saints so absurdly charged upon him enough hath been said before nor is there evidence to induce the most charitable man to believe that all those are Gods Saints which stand in Mr. Cressy's Calender of Saints and it was very unadvisedly done that only one single line was not expunged if there was no more that gave the occasion of mentioning Saints and Miracles and Enthusiasmes which extorted from the Doctor all those animadversions which put the other into so much rage and fury that for the support of that one onely line he hath writ this whole Book that in every line is full of nothing but Miracles and Saints and divine exercise of contemplative Souls which by his favour is as new a Principle to defend the Romish Religion by as any the Doctor hath introduced against it and surely contains more of that kind of Learning than all the Books of pure aud solid Controversie that have been written since Luther begun his Separation as if he had a mind to put the verity of the Lives of the Saints in issue and to be strictly examined from which affectation I suppose his Superiours will divert him that they and their Miracles may be left to their own repose And for his most divine exercise of contemplative Souls more perfectly practised only in Heaven which is another new principle and which and the like must unavoidably be examined by new methods and argumentations it would be much better to leave those obscure contemplations to the Persons who delight in them and find relief by them which we may charitably hope is better understood by them than comprehended by us but if they will not keep their Cipher privately to themselves for their mutual correspondence and conversation but will constitute a new language in old words for the information and amazement of other men and will be then offended and shortly after condemn them for being without the effects which pious Souls naturally produce they should not take it ill if men who patiently hear what they say do in truth believe that they themselves are without any clear notions and can draw no sence out of that mist of words in which it is concealed Mental Prayer which they would fain make their imaginations understood by is a faculty every devout
of the Essence of Religion and reject only some Canons which are indifferent for if any thing remains indifferent after the determination of the Council and may therefore be rejected it is manifest that the jurisdiction is not in the Council though confirmed by the Pope but in that power that rejects it and judges of the indifferency For his invitation of the Doctor to a Christening that a Colledge in Cambridge may have another name given to it than it is now called by S. Bennet or Corpus Christi Colledge the wit of it is enough answered when taken notice of The last Paragraph of his Postscript is a pure piece of Oratory and may be in imitation of no worse an Orator than Caesar himself who when he had tried all fair and foul means threats and promises to draw Cicero to his party and found it was impossible to engage him to be active against Pompey he only considered how to make him Neutral to sit still without doing any thing in the quarrel and writ to him Neque tutius neque honestius reperies quidquam quà m ab omni contentione abesse So Mr. Cressy after he hath heaped more ill words upon the Doctor and applied more reproachful Epithets to his grave and learned person and stile than hath been gathered together in so small a volume within these nine and twenty years he concludes his Postscript with desiring him to consider that Almighty God commands us to love Peace and Truth and then gravely informs him how they ought always to go together and left his too civil address to him should more work upon him than would become an adversary he quickens him for the better application of his Text by telling him that since he hath demolished all Tribunals in Gods Church which might peaceably end controversies and had endeavoured as much as in him lay to banish peace eternally from among Christians it was expected from him that he should give some testimony to the world that he is at least a seeker and promoter of truth and so proceeds very Rhetorically to perswade him that he doth not himself believe any thing that he says to others because he is too reasonable a man and of too great abilities to think that such a Book as his last can convert any Catholick who cannot read without trembling at the blasphemy of it and without a horrible aversion from one who would make their Church and their Faith odious Indeed I believe they will suffer very few of their Proselytes to read that or any other of his Books which may open their eyes or inform them of the darkness they are in If Mr. Cressy's word may be taken as no doubt it will he will tell them of blasphemies that may make them tremble though he hath not in his whole answer named one but if a man will not that is cannot give credit to all the stories which are told of S. Bennet and S. Francis he is streight a blasphemer of Gods Saints as he who will not submit to the authority of the Bishop of Rome demolishes all Tribunals in Gods Church which might peaceably end controversies and endeavours to banish peace eternally from amongst Christians whereas it is only that Tribunal that hinders and obstructs the peace which but for that judicatory would be generally imbraced The counsel I would now give to Mr. Cressy will consist in two kinds the first with reference to himself purely the second with reference to the cause If he thinks fit any more to write against the Church of England which I do not disswade him from that he will state truly and clearly the difference between it and the Church of Rome which he hath never yet done I advise him to remember that he hath been a member and son of the Church of England cherished and educated in her during the most vigorous part of his age and that he ows to that education all the learning he hath I will charitably believe that he saw or thought he saw good reason to withdraw himself from her Communion and that he is satisfied in his conscience with his present state of separation let it be so why should that hinder him from living fairly and civilly towards her It is an ungenerous thing to fall from streight embraces to publick revilings Men of honour after they have contracted friendships with each other for a long time and afterwards find cause from some mutation in manners and upon discovery of infirmities with which they can no longer comply to live at a greater distance towards each other to repose less confidence than they used to do and by degrees to grow strangers they yet retain such a decent behaviour that standers by can scarce discover any alteration of affections in them they are never heard to speak ill to traduce or disgrace one another and believe that it is a debt and duty due to their former friendship never to undervalue each others parts or to bring the honour of either into question common prudence and good breeding prevents those excesses and methinks in Religion the same temper should have a greater influence and Mr. Cressy should for his own sake allow some beauty to have been in the Church that did so long detain him and not desire to render her so ugly and deformed as takes away any excuse from any body for staying so long in her company This I expected from his natural genius and from the conversation he frequented where bitterness of words was never allowable towards men whose opinions were very different and if any new illumination hath perswaded him that such urbanity is not consistent with the zeal that Religious discourses should be warmed with he should suspect it for delusion He hath an excellent example given him by a Catholick learned and Reverend Bishop the present Bishop and Prince of Condun who treats an enemy more inferiour to him and more liable to reproach than the Church of England can be imagined to be to Mr. Cressy with such condescension and humanity as if they stood upon the same level with him And no question those strokes make a deeper impression upon all ingenuous men than louder blows and are with more difficulty repelled Whereas Mr. Cressy like a rude and blustering wind disturbs all sorts of men who stand near him offends and provokes all Classes of men with his unnecessary choler What can the King think to see his Laws and Government so vilified by his scornful expressions to hear his Royal Ancestor whose obsequies were kept and observed at Nostre Dame in Paris with the highest solemnity by the first great King France ever had in spight of the Pope's Excommunication called a Tyrant by one of his own subjects What can all the Protestant Nobility and Prelates of England think to see the Ecclesiastical and Civil Laws of the Church and State despised and trampled upon by a man who could not live an hour in that Air but by the
majoribus to determine the points of Catholick truth c. To which there can be nothing more substantially answered for confutation than that the State of the Church must have been very deplorable and desperate if that had been a Catholick verity when Pope Marcellinus sacrificed to Idols or when Pope Liberius turned Arrian and would be much more lamentable in these days when the Church must remain in perpetual wardship and servitude under the Pope since no man can rationally expect a general Council to relieve her and when there is no other definition of Heresie in the Coena Domini than that which contradicts or is contrary to the doctrine or practice of the Church of Rome and when the authority of the Pope is urged as the best expedient for the establishing peace and unity in the world can there be any thing replied more pertinently for the conviction than the mention of those Popes who by the assuming that authority and purely for the vindication of it have caused more Christian blood to have been spilt more horrible Massacres of Kings and Princes and People than all the Heresies in the world and all other politick differences have produced if you cast in the Wars for the Holy Land which may justly be cast upon the Popes account and which is a circumstance very infamous as well as lamentable much the greatest part of this destruction and ruine proceeded from the perjury of Popes themselves after they had promised and sworn to observe such pacts and agreements voluntarily entred into by themselves or from the Dispensations they granted to others to break their Faith and not to perform the contracts they had entred into all which he says being granted nothing will follow whereas certainly it must follow that the persons of such men are not capable or worthy of such trusts or authority which is as much as those arguments are urged for Mr. Cressy would be contented to confess that some Popes for about an Age or two did cause intolerable disorders in the Church and Empire which by the way is argument enough against those personal qualifications upon condition that we would gratifie him with acknowledging that the Government of Popes did for a thousand years produce excellent order in the world which we are so far from granting that as we must confess that they were so modest for half that time as to make no claim to any such authority in Church or State so from the time they did claim it it produced more blood-shed than all other quarrels whatsoever And as Mr. Cressy must have the assistance of very good Antiquaries to name one War of a years continuance that was ever composed by the authority or mediation of any Pope where there can very hardly be named one solemn bloody War upon what Politick pretence soever it was at first entred into but that hath been carried on either upon his immediate advice and interest or fomented under-hand by his Council and assistance of which the Rebellion in Ireland must be one of the latest instances It cannot be denied that some Ages have been so ignorant and barbarous that the Popes authority hath been sufficient to kindle the most cruel and the most unnatural bloody diffentions and he hath never failed in contributing his utmost power to that end and it can be as easily proved that in this last Age many rebellions and ravenous Wars have fallen out which might either have been prevented or quickly composed as the late Rebellions in France and those in Catalonia being both between Catholicks if he as a common Father would have interposed his special authority and excommunicated those who he could not doubt were in Rebellion but he never would be induced to apply his power to that good end The Supremacy and Soveraignty of the Bishop of Rome was never the product of peace it grew very fat and the bulk thereof encreased to that unruly size in and by the most bloody Wars which Christendom hath ever been infested with which makes it discernable enough what diet they chuse to feed upon of which appetite their late savage Bulls against the peace of Munster and that of Osningbrooke when the Empire was even at its last gasp for want of blood is too great a manifestation Nor have they to this day how little noise soever they now make disclaimed any of those principles or the pretence to any of that power by the exercise whereof so many intolerable disorders as Mr. Cressy confesses were caused for about an Age or two in the Church and in the Empire I wonder Mr. Cressy should accuse the Doctor for arguing less reasonably in mentioning the Schismes which have been in the Church of Rome and the more modern disorders by reason of the quarrels between Bishops and Monastick Orders about exemptions and priviledges c. But I wonder more at his unskilfulness in the Ecclesiastical History when he says that all the Schismes were after the Church was above twelve hundred years old for before there were scarce any which is so great a mistake that my old kindness will scarce suffer me to take notice of it The last Schisme as I think before the year twelve hundred was that between Alexander the third and Victor the fifth which was after the year eleven hundred and fifty and is reckoned by all Ecclesiastical Writers to be the twenty fourth or twenty fifth Schisme and it is an unreasonable objection that there can be no such power inherent in the Pope as he assigns to him when it is so frequently uncertain who is Pope and that uncertainty hath continued so long and all the Princes of Christendom divided in the reception of him and the anti-Pope sometimes three or four together act and do all that the true Pope pretends to do and is obeyed as such in the Dominions of several Christian Princes This sure cannot be thought a light argument by any but such who think the pretence too frivolous to require an argument against it and he says the mention of the quarrels between Bishops and Monastick Orders and between the Regulars and the Seculars and much more such stuff implies no more but that Subjects are often times Rebellious to their Superiours therefore it were better there were no Superiours at all when such stuff is an unanswerable argument that the authority with the which he would invest the Pope for peace and unity sake doth not produce either where it is most submitted to He says very true that it is not the Popes infallibility but his authority which ends Controversies which is a good argument that they must remain unended when either party doth not acknowledge his authority and it seems the case is not very different when both sides do confess it for he says that all Catholicks do acknowledge that they are obliged at least to silence when imposed by the Pope yet it cannot be denied but that some have not complied with the obligation but