to their sin then to my wrong The main ground of the Exception is That I yield the Church of Rome a true visible Church wherein the harsh noise of a mis-construed phrase offends their eare and breeds their quarrell For this belike in their apprehension seems to sound no lesse then as if I had said The Church of Rome is a true-believing Church or a true part of the mysticall body of Christ a sense which is as far wide from my words or thoughts as from truth it self Wherefore serves this Book but to evince the manifold Corruptions of that foul Church That she is truely visible abates nothing of her abominations For who sees not that Visible refers to outward Profession True to some essentiall Principles of Christianity neither of them to soundnesse of Belief So as these two may too well stand together A true visible Church in respect of outward Profession of Christianity and an Hereticall Apostaticall Antichristian Synagogue in respect of Doctrine and Practice Grant the Romanists to be but Christians how corrupt soever and we cannot deny them the name of a Church Outward Visibility gives them no claim either to Truth or Salvation Shortly then in two things I must crave leave to vindicate my self One that I do no whit differ from my self the other that I differ not from the Judgement of our best Orthodox and approvedly-classicall Divines Both which cleared what have I done It is a grievous challenge this of Inconstancy for though whiles we are here in this region of Mutability our whole man is subject to change yet we do all herein affect a likenesse to the God of Truth in whom there is no shadow by turning especially in Religion so much more as that doth more assimilate and unite us to that unchangeable Deity Lo say they the man that once wrote No peace with Rome now cries nothing but Peace with Rome whiles he proclaims it a true visible Church and allows some Communion with it Alas brethren why will ye suffer a rash and ignorant Zeal thus to lye palpably in your way to Truth Be but pleased to cast your eyes upon the first Chapter of that Book of mine which is thus objected to me in a causelesse exprobration that which long since I wrote of the Irreconcilablenesse of Rome and see if that Section be not a full expression of the same Truth and that in the same words which I have here published There shall you finde taught That there is no other difference betwixt us and Rome then betwixt a Church miserably corrupted and happily purged betwixt a sickly languishing dying Church and one that is healthfull strong and flourishing That Valdus Wiclef Luther did never goe about to frame a new Church which was not but to cleanse restore reform that Church which was That they meant onely to be Physicians to heal not Parents to beget a Church There you shall finde That we are all the same Church by virtue of our outward Vocation whosoever all the world over worship Jesus Christ the only Son of God the Saviour of the world and professe the same common Creed that some of us doe this more purely others more corruptly that in the mean time we are all Christians but sound Christians we are not There ye shall finde this very Objection so fully answered as if it had been either formerly moved or so long since prevented the words are these But how harshly doth this sound to a weak reader and more then seems to need reconciliation with it self that the Church should be one and yet cannot be reconciled Certainly yet so it is The dignity of the outward forme which comprehends this Unity in it self avails nothing to Salvation nothing to Grace nothing to the soundnesse of Doctrine The Net doth not straight make all to be Fish that it hath dragg'd together ye shall finde in it vile weeds and whatsoever else that devouring element hath disgorged The Church is at once one in respect of the common Principles of Faith and yet in respect of consequences and that rabble of opinions which they have raked together so opposed that it cannot as things now stand by any glew of Concord as Cyprian speaketh nor bond of Unity be conjoined That which Rome holds with us makes it a Church that which it obtrudes upon us makes it Hereticall the truth of Principles makes it one the Error and impiety of Additions makes it irreconcilable c. Look on the face therefore of the Roman Church she is ours she is Gods look on her back she is quite contrary Antichristian More plainly Rome doth both hold the Foundation and destroy it she holds it directly destories it by consequent In that she holds it she is a true Church howsoever impured in that she destroies it what semblance soever she makes she is a Church of malignants If she did altogether hold it she should be sound and Orthbox if altogether she destroied it she should be either no Church or devilish but now that she professes to hold those things directly which by inferences she closely overthrows she is a truely visible Church but an unsound one Thus I wrote well-near twenty years agone without clamor without censure And since that in my Latine Sermon to the Convocation did I very ought from this hold Did I not there call heaven earth to record of our innocence in separating from the Romane Church Did I not cast the fault upon their violence not our will Did I not professe Lubentes quidem discessimus c. We willingly indeed departed from the Communion of their Errors but from the Communion of the Church we have not departed Let them abandon their Errours and we embrace the Church Let them cast away their Soul-killing Traditions and false appendances of their new Faith we shall gladly communicate with them in the right of the same Church and hold with them for ever This I freely both taught and published with the allowance with the applause of that most Reverend Synod and now doth the addition of a Dignity bring envy upon the same Truth Might that passe commendably from the pen or tongue of a Doctor which will not be endured from the hand of a Bishop My brethren I am where I was the change is yours Ever since I learned to distinguish betwixt the right hand of Veritie and the left of Errour thus I held and shall I hope at last send forth my Soul in no other resolution And if any of you be otherwise minded I dare boldly say he shall doe more wrong to his Cause then to his adversary That I differ not from my self you have seen see now that I differ not from our learned judicious approved Divines That the Latine or Western Church subject to the Romish Tyranny unto the very times of Luther was a true Church in which a saving profession of the truth of Christ was found and wherein Luther himself received his Christianity
Ordination and power of Ministery our Learned Doctor Field hath saved me the labour to prove by the suffrages of our best and most renowned Divines amongst whom he sites the Testimony of Calvin Bucer Melanchthon Beza Mornay Deering And if since that time it be foully corrupted so as now that acute Author is driven to the distinction of Verè Ecclesia and Vera Ecclesia yet at last he thus concludes But will some man say Is the Roman Church at this day no part of the Church of God Surely a◠Austine noteth that the societies of Hereticks in that they retain the profession of many parts of heavenly truth and the ministration of the Sacrament of Baptisme are so far still conjoined with the Catholick Church and the Catholick Church in and by them bringeth forth children unto God so the present Roman Church is stil in some sort a part of the visible Church of God but no otherwise then other societies of Hereticks are in that it retaineth the profession of some parts of heavenly truth and ministreth the true Sacrament of Baptisme to the Salvation of the Souls of many thousand infants c. Thus he Junius distinguishing betwixt the Church and Papacie determines the Church of Rome to be a truely-living though sick Church whereof the Papacie is the disease marring the health threatning her life and punctually resolves Ecclesia Papalis qua id habet c. The Popish Church in that it hath in it that which pertaines to the definition of a Church is a Church Doctor Raynolds makes it his Position That the Church of Rome is neither the Catholick Church nor a sound member of the Catholick yielding it a member whiles he disproves it sound Paraeus Accusant nos c. They accuse us saith he that we have made a division in departing from the Church Nos verò c. But we have not departed from the Church but from the Papacie Master Hooker is most pregnant for this point Apparent it is saith he that all men are of necessitie either Christians or not Christians If by external Profession they be Christians they are of the visible Church of Christ and Christians by external profession they are all whose mark of recognisance hath in it those things which we have mentioned yea although they be impious Idolaters wicked Hereticks persons Excommunicable yea and cast out for notorious improbitie Thus he and going on he shews how it is possible for the self-same men to belong to the Synagogue of Satan and to the Church of Jesus Christ The passages are too long to transcribe and the Books are obvious Doctor Crakenthorp in his learned answer to Spalatensis defends heretical Churches to be truely members of the Catholick Church though unsound ones subscribing herein to the determination of Alphonsus and descending to this particular concludes Haec tamen ipsa tua Romana c. This your Romane Church must be accounted both to be in the Church and to be a Church not simply not according to the integrity of Faith not according to any inward virtue not so effectually that it should avail to Salvation for a man to be in it but yet a Church it is in some respects according to the external profession of Faith and of the Word of God according to the administration of the Sacraments according to some Doctrines of true belief by which as by so many outward Ligaments she is yet knit to the Orthodox and Catholick Church Thus he fully to my words and meaning I might swell up the bulk with many more a Catalogue whereof Brierley hath for his own purpose fetcht up together I will onely shut up this Scene with out late most Learned Soveraign King James who in the Conference at Hampton Court with the acclamation of all his judicious hearers avowed that no Church ought further to separate it self from the Church of Rome in Doctrine or Ceremony then she hath departed from her self when she was in her flourishing and best estate and from Christ her Lord and Head Well therefore doth my Reader see that I have gone along with good company in this assertion Although I am not ignorant that some worthy Divines of ours speak otherwise in the height of Zeal denying the Church of Rome to be a true Church to be a Church at all whose contradiction gives colour to this offence But let my Reader know that however their words are opposite yet not their judgement a mutuall understanding shall well accord us in the matter however the terms sound contrary Our old word is Things are as they are taken The difference is in the acception of True and Church both which have much latitude and variety of sense Whiles by True they mean right believing and by Church a company of Faithfull which have the Word of God rightly understood and sincerely preached and the Sacraments duly administred it is no marvell if they say the Church of Rome is neither true nor Church who would who can say otherwise But whiles we mean by a true Church a multitude of Christians professing to agree in the main Principles of Religion how can they but subscribe to us and in this sense yield the Church of Rome both a Church and truely visible So as shortly in a large sense of True Church these Divines cannot but descend to us in a strict sense of both we cannot but ascend to them in fine both agree in the substance whiles the words cross Certainly in effect Master Perkins saith no other whiles he defines his Reformed Catholick to be one that holds the same necessary Heads of Religion with the Romane Church yet so as he pares off and rejects all Errours in Doctrine whereby the same Religion is corrupted wherein that well-allowed Author speaks home to my meaning though in other terms That the Roman Church holds the necessary Heads of Religion gives it a right in my sense to a true Visibilitie that it holds foul Errours whereby the Doctrine is corrupted makes it false in belief whiles it hath a true Being This then may give sufficient light to that passage in my sixth page whereat some have heedlesly stumbled That which I cited from Luther out of Cromerus I finde also alledged by Doctor Field out of Luther himself the words are that under the Papacy is the very kernel of Christianity much good yea all Know Reader the words are Luther's not mine neither doth he say in the Papacy but under it under it indeed to trample upon not to possess or if to possess yet not to injoy Their fault is not in defect of necessary Truths but in excess of superfluous additions Luther explicates himself For his Kernel is the several Articles of Christian belief his all good is Scriptures Sacraments Creeds Councils Fathers all these they have but God knows miserably corrupted That they thus have them is no whit worse for us and little
better for themselves would to God they were theirs as well in true use as in possession It was an ill descant that a nimble Papist made upon those words of Luther which yield them the kernel of Christianity If we have the kernel saith he let them take the shell Soft friend you are too witty Luther did not give you the kernell and reserve us the shell He yielded you both kernell and shell such as it is but the shell rotten the kernell worm-eaten Make much of your kernell but as you have used it it is but a bitter morsel swallow that if you please and save the shell in your pocket Neither think to goe away with an idle misprision We are a true visible Church what need we more why should we wish to be other then we are Alas poor souls a true Visibility may and doth stand with a false Belief Ye may be of a true visible Church and yet never the nearer to Heaven It is your interest in the true mysticall body of Christ that must save your Souls not in the outwardly visible your Errours may be and are no less damnable for that ye are by outward profession Christians yea so much the more Woe is me your danger is more visible then your Church If ye persist wilfully in these gross Corruptions which do by consequent raze that foundation which ye profess to lay ye shall be no less visible spectacles of the wrath of that just God whose Truth and Spirit ye have so stubbornly resisted The God of Heaven open your eyes to see the glorious light of his Truth and draw your hearts to the love of it and make your Church as truely sound as it is truly visible Thus in a desire to stand but so right as I am in all honest judgements I have made this speedy and true Apologie beseeching all Readers in the fear of God before whose bar we shall once give an account of all our overlashings to judge wisely and uprightly of what I have written in a word to doe me but justice in their opinions and when I beg it favour Farewell Reader and God make us Wise and Charitable THE RECONCILER AN EPISTLE PACIFICATORY Of the seeming Differences of Opinion concerning the Trueness and Visibility of the Roman Church By JOS. EXON TO THE Right Honourable and Truly Religious My singular good Lord EDWARD Earl of NORWICH My ever Honoured Lord I Confess my Charity led me into an Errour Your Lordship well knows how apt I am to be overtaken with these better deceits of an over-kinde credulity I had thought that any dash of my Pen in a sudden and easie advertisement might have served to have quitted that ignorant Scandal which was cast upon my mistaken Assertion of the true Visibility of the Romane Church The issue proves all otherwise I finde to my grief that the misunderstanding tenacity of some zealous spirits hath made it a quarrel It cannot but trouble me to see that the Position which is so familiarly current with the best Reformed Divines and which hath been so oft and long since published by me without contradiction yea not without the approbation and applause of the whole representative body of the Clergy of this Kingdom should now be quarrelled and drawn into the detestation of those that know it not As one therefore that should think it corrosive enough that any occasion should be taken by ought of mine to ravell but one thred of that seamless Coat I do earnestly desire by a more full explication to give clear satisfaction to all Readers and by this seasonable Reconcilement to stop the flood-gates of contention I know it will not be unpleasing to your Lordship that through your Honourable and Pious hands these welcome Papers should be transmitted to many Wherein I shall first beseech yea adjure all Christians under whose eyes they shall fall by the dreadful Name of that God who shall judge both the quick and the dead to lay aside all unjust Prejudices and to allow the words of Truth and Peace I dare confidently say Let us be understood and we are agreed The Searcher of all hearts knows how far it was from my thoughts to speak ought in favour of the Romane Synagogue If I have not sufficiently branded that Strumpet I justly suffer Luther's broad word is by me already both safely construed and sufficiently vindicated But do you not say It is a true visible Church Do you not yield some kinde of Communion with these clients of Antichrist What is if this be not Favour Mark well Christian Reader and the Lord give thee understanding in all things To begin with the latter No man can say but the Church of Rome holds some Truths those Truths are God's and in his right ours why should not we challenge our own wheresoever we find it If a very Devil shall say of Christ Thou art the Son of the living God we will snatch this Truth out of his mouth as usurped and in spight of him proclaim it for our own Indeed there is no communion betwixt light and darkness but there is communion betwixt light and light Now all Truth is Light and therefore symbolizeth with it self With that light therefore whose glimmering yet remains in their darkness our clearer light will and must hold communion If they profess Three Persons in one Godhead Two Natures in one Person of Christ shall we detrect to joyn with them in this Christian Verity We abhor to have any Communion with them in their Errours in their Idolatrous or Superstitious practices these are their own not ours If we durst have taken their part in these this breach had not been Now who can but say that we must hate their evil and allow their good It is no countenance to their Errours that we imbrace our own Truths it is no disparagement to our Truths that they have blended them with their Errours Here can be no difference then if this Communion be not mistaken No man will say that we may sever from their common Truths no man will say that we may joyn with them in their hateful Errours For the former He that saith a Thief is truly a man doth he therein favour that Thief He that saith a diseased dropsied dying body is a true though corrupt body doth he favour that Disease or that living carkass It is no other no more that I say of the Church of Rome Trueness of Being and outward Visibility are no praise to her yea these are aggravations to her falshood The advantage that is both sought and found in this Assertion is onely ours as we shall see in the sequel without any danger of their gain I say then that she is a True Church but I say withall she is a false Church True in Existence but false in Belief Let not the homonymie of a word breed jarres where the sense is accorded If we do not yield her the true Being of a Church why do we
doth not cease to be a Wife unless being despoiled of her marriage-ring she be manifestly divorced The Church of Rome therefore is yet the Church of Christ but what manner of Church Surely so corrupted and depraved and with so great tyrannie oppressed that you can neither with a good Conscience partake with them in their holy things nor safely dwell amongst them Thus he again wherein you see he speaks as home for me as I could devise to speak for my self and as appositely professeth to oppose the contrary Look now how this Learned Author may be reconciled to his own pen and by the very same way shall my pen be reconciled with others Either he agrees not with himself or else in his sense I agree with my gainsayers Nothing is more plain then that he in that former speech and all other Classick Authors that speak in that Key mean by a True Church a sound pure right-believing Church so as their vera is rather verax Zanchie explicates the terme whiles he joines veram puram together so as in this construction it is no true Church that is an unsound one as if truth of Existence were all one with truth of Doctrine In this sense whosoever shall say the Church of Rome is a true Church I say he calls evil good and is no better then a teacher of lyes But if we measure the true Being of a Visible Church by the direct maintenance of Fundamental Principles though by consequences indirectly overturned and by the possession of the Word of God and his Sacraments though not without foul adulteration what judicious Christian can but with me subscribe to Learned Zanchius that the Church of Rome hath yet the true Visibility of a Church of Christ What should I need to press the latitude and multiplicity of sense of the word Church there is no one term that I know in all use of Speech so various If in a large sense it be taken to comprehend the Society of all that profess Christian Religion through the whole world howsoever impured who can deny this title to the Roman If in a strict sense it be taken as it is by Zanchius here and all those Divines who refuse to give this style to the Synagogue of Rome for the Company of Elect Faithful men gathered into one mystical Body under one Head Christ washed by his Blood justified by his Merits sanctified by his Spirit conscionably waiting upon the true Ordinances of God in his pure Word and holy Sacraments who can be so shameless as to give this title to the Roman Church Both these sentences then are equally true The Church of Rome is yet a true Church in the first sense The Church of Rome long since ceased to be a true Church in the second As those friendly Souldiers therefore of old said to their fellows 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 why fight we Stay stay dear brethren for Gods sake for his Churches sake for your Souls sake stay these busie and unprofitable litigations put up on both sides your angry pens turn your Swords into Siths to cut down the rank corruptions of the Roman Church and your Spears into Mattocks to beat down the walls of this mystical Babylon There are enemies enough abroad let us be friends at home But if our sense be the same you will ask why our terms varie and why we have chosen to fall upon that manner of expression which gives advantage to the Adversary offence to our own Christian Reader let me beseech thee in the bowels of Christ to weigh well this matter and then tell me why such offence such advantage should be rather given by my words then by the same words in the mouth of Luther of Calvin of Zanchie Junius Plessee Hooker Andrews Field Crakenthorp Bedell and that whole cloud of Learned and Pious Authors who have without exception used the same language and why more by my words now then twentie years agoe at which time I published the same Truth in a more full and liberal expression Wise and charitable Christians may not be apt to take offence where none is given As for any advantage that is hereby given to the Adversaries they may put it in their eye and see never the worse Loe say they we are of the true visible Church this is enough for us why are we forsaken why are we persecuted why are we sollicited to a change Alas poor souls do they not know that Hypocrites leud persons Reprobates are no less members of the true visible Church what gain they by this but a deeper damnation To what purpose did the Jews cry The Temple of the Lord whiles they despited the Lord of that Temple Is the Sea-weed ever the less vile because it is drag'd up together with good fish They are of the visible Church such as it is what is this but to say they are neither Jews nor Turks nor Pagans but misbelievers damnably Heretical in opinion shamefully Idolatrous in practice Let them make their best of this just Eulogie and triumph in this style may we never prosper if we envie them this glorie Our care shall be that besides the Church sensible as Zuinglius distinguisheth we may be of the Church spiritual and not resting in a fruitless Visibility we may finde our selves lively lims of the mystical body of Christ which onely condition shall give us a true right to Heaven whiles fashionable Profession in vain cries Lord Lord and is barred out of those blessed gates with an I know you not Neither may the Reader think that I affect to goe by-waies of speech no I had not taken this path unless I had found it both more beaten and fairer I am not so unwise to teach the Adversary what disadvantage I conceive to be given to our most just Cause by the other manner of explication Let it suffice to say that this form of defence more fully stops the Adversaries mouth in those two main and envious Scandals which he casts upon our holy Religion Defection from the Church and Innovation then which no suggestion hath wont to be more prevalent with weak and ungrounded hearts What we further win by this not more charitable then safe Tenet I had rather it should be silently conceived by the judicious then blazoned by my free pen. Shortly in this state of the Question our gain is as clear as the Adversaries loss our ancient Truth triumphs over their upstart Errours our Charity over their merciless Presumptions Fear not therefore dear Brethren where there is no room for danger suspect not fraud where there is nothing but plain honest simplicity of intentions censure not where there is the same Truth clad in a different but more easie habit of words But if any mans fervent zeal shall rather draw him to the liking of that other rougher and harder way so as in the mean time he keep within the bounds of Christian Charity I tax him not let every man abound
Faith are those Principles of Christian Religion and Fundamental Grounds and Points of Faith which are undoubtedly contained and laid down in the Canonicall Scriptures whether in expresse termes or by necessary consequence and in the Ancient Creeds universally received and allowed by the whole Church of God IV. There cannot be now-a-dayes any new Rule of Faith V. As there cannot be any new Rule of Faith so there cannot now be any new Faith It is not therefore in the power of any creature under Heaven to make any Point to be of Faith which before was not so or to cause any Point not to be of Faith which formerly was so VI. He cannot be an Heretick who doth not obstinately deny something which is truly a Point of Faith or hold some Point contrary to the foresaid Articles of Christian Faith VII There are and may be many Theologicall Points which are wont to be believed and maintained and so many lawfully be of this or that particular Church or the Doctors thereof or their Followers as godly Doctrines and Probable Truths besides those other Essential and main matters of Faith without any prejudice at all of the common Peace of the Church VIII Howsoever it may be lawfull for Learned men particular Churches to believe and maintain those Probable or as they may think Certain Points of Theologicall Verities yet it is not lawfull for them to impose and obtrude the said Doctrines upon any Church or Person to be believed and held as upon the necessity of Salvation or to anathematize or eject out of the Church any Person or company of men that thinks otherwise IX Notwithstanding any such unjust Anathema denounced against any such Person or Church whosoever holds those Principles and Essential Points of Christian Faith however he be in place far remote from all the Visible Churches of Christ and neither know not or receive not those other Positions of Theological determination is throughly capable in such condition of Christian Communion and if many such be met together under a lawfull Pastor there cannot be denied unto them both the truth and title of a true Visible Church of Christ X. The Church of Rome is onely and at the best a Particular Church XI All Christian Churches are no other then Sisters and Daughters of that great and Universall Mother which furnisheth both Heaven and earth of equall priviledge in respect of God and his Faith save onely that each one is so much more honourable as it is more pure and holy It is not therefore lawfull for any one of them in regard of the businesses of Faith to take upon her self the power and command over any other or to prescribe unto any of them what they must necessarily believe upon pain of damnation XII Those issues of Controversie in regard whereof the Reformed Catholicks are wont to be condemned and anathematized by the Romane Church are far from Principles of Christian Faith neither are any other than their own Theologicall Positions and the institutions and devises of that particular Church XIII The Reformed Catholicks have not offered to bring in any new Opinion or Doctrine into the Church but only labour and endeavour to procure some late superfluous additions to the Faith to be cashiered rejected XIV Vainly therefore and unjustly is it required of them that they should shew the succession of their Religion and Church as raised upon a quite other foundation to be derived from the Apostolick times to the present since all that they professe is a desire to purge the very same Church of God from certain new Errors and Superstitious rites wherewith it is miserably defiled XV. Out of all which Premisses it necessarily followeth that the Romane Church which upon these grounds sticketh not to exclude true Christians differing from them in matter of such Doctrines from the Church of God and eternall Salvation is justly guilty of great insolency and horrible breach both of Charity and Peace and that the Reformed notwithstanding this rash and unjust censure of theirs forasmuch as they do inviolably hold all the Points of the truly ancient and Christian Faith do justly claim unto themselves a most true and perfect interest in the communion of all Christian Churches and eternall Salvation XVI There is no lesse danger in adding to the Articles of Christian Faith then in diminishing them or detracting from them XVII Those Points which the Romane Church is wont to adde and forcibly to put upon all Catholicks as well the Reformed as those whom they term their own are such as are grounded on her own mere authority XVIII The Reformed Catholicks do justly complain and prove that those Points which the Romane Church imposeth and urgeth as the meet additions both of Faith and Divine worship are neither safe nor agreeable to the holy Word of God and plead it to be utterly unjust that those accessory Points of their devising or determining wherein every Church should be left free and at her due liberty should be imperiously thrust upon them notwithstanding their vehement and just resistance XIX It argues a palpable self-love in the Romane Church and must needs at the last draw down a grievous Judgement from God upon her that this Particular Church will needs make her self uncapable of any better condition in that she vainly brags that she cannot erre and fearfully accurseth and sends down to hell all those that profer her the least endeavour of the means of her remedy and redresse XX. Upon all these grounds it is plain that the Reformed Catholicks are in a safe estate and that contrarily the Romane are in a miserable errour and fearfull danger and lastly that it is only through their default that the Church of God is not reduced to an happy Purity and Peace 2 Tim. 2. 7. Consider what I say and the Lord give you understanding in all things AN ANSWER TO POPE URBAN'S INURBANITIE Expressed in a BREEVE sent to LEWIS the French King exasperating him against the Protestants in France Written in Latine by the Right Reverend Father in God JOSEPH Lord Bishop of Excester Translated into English by his Son ROBERT HALL Master of Arts in Excester Colledge in Oxford LONDON Printed by JAMES FLESHER 1661. A BREEVE of Pope Urban the Eighth sent to Lewis the French King upon the taking of ROCHEL OUR most dear Son in Christ we send you greeting and Apostolical Benediction The voice of rejoicing and Salvation is in the tabernacles of the righteous let the wicked see this and fret and let the Synagogue of Satan consume away The most Christian King fighteth for Religion the Lord of hosts fighteth for the King We verily in this Mother-City of the world triumph with holy joy we congratulate this your Majesties Victory the trophees whereof are erected in Heaven the glory whereof the generation that is to come shall never cease to speak of Now at the length this Age hath seen the Tower of ROCHEL no lesse
not Gods that are made with hands Did ever any Ephesian beast bray out such another challenge Is it possible that humane reason should be so brutified as to think a man may make his own God as to seek a Deity in liveless metals as to bow his knees to what hath faln from his fingers O Idolatry the true Sorceress of the world what beasts do thine inchantments make of men Even the fine Athenian not the gross Theban wits were fain to be taught that the Godhead is not like to gold or silver or stone And would to God the modern Superstition were less foppish Hear this ye seduced souls that are taught to worship a pastry-God Ergo adeo stolidi opifices ab se fabrefieri Deos credunt saith our Jesuite Lorinus of these Ephesians These so foolish workmen think they can make their Gods And why not of Gold as well as of Grain why not the Smith as well as the Baker Change but the name the absurdity is but one To hold that a man can make his own fingers or that those fingers can make that wheat whereof the wafer is made were a strange folly but that a man can make the God that made him and eat the God that he hath made is such a monster of Paradoxes as puts down all the fancies of Paganisme and were enough to make a wavering soul say with Averroes Sit anima mea cum Philosophis I remember their learned Montanus upon Luke 22. 19. construes that Hoc est corpus meum thus Verum corpus meum in hoc Sacramento panis continetur sacramentaliter etiam corpus meum mysticum My true body is sacramentally contained in this Sacrament of bread as also my body mystical and withall as willing to say something if he durst speak out addes cujus arcanam mysteriis refertissimam rationem ut explicatiorem habeant homines Christiani dabit aliquando Dominus whose secret and most deeply-mystical meaning God will one day more clearly unfold to his Christian people Now the God of Heaven make good this honest Prophesie and open the eyes of poor mis-led souls that they may see to distinguish betwixt a slight corruptible wafer and an incomprehensible immortal God And if from this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Bread-worship I should lead you to their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cross-worship and from thence to their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Image-worship you would finde reason enough why that man of Sin the author of these Superstitions should be called the Beast The Violence and impetuosity of these Ephesians was answerable for here was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Trouble verse 23. then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Concourse verse 40. then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Confusion and that in the whole City verse 29 and more then that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a furious rushing into the Theatre and then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a boisterous snatching of those that were conceived opposites besides all their shouting and out-cries and savage uproar What should I need to tell you that this furious prosecution is no other then an ordinary symptom of Idolatry and to make it good what should I need to lay before your eyes all those turbulent effects that in our daies have followed malicious Superstition those instigations of publick Invasions those conspiracies against maligned Soveraignty those suffossions of walls those powder-trains those shameless Libels those patrocinations of Treasons and to make up all those late Bulls that bellow out prohibitions of justly-sworn allegeance those bold absolutions from sacred Oaths 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as he said of the Lacedaemonians In all these we too well feel that we have to doe with the beast with S. John's beast no whit short of S. Paul's God knows how little pleasure I take in displaying the enormities of our fellow-Christians Although to say as it is not the Church but the Faction is it that by their practice thus merits the title of savageness Of that Faction let me say with sorrow of heart that their wilful opposition to truth their uncharitable and bloody courses their palpable Idolatry hath powred shame and dishonour and hath brought infinite loss and disadvantage to the blessed Name of Christ And now ye see by this time that in the generality natural and vicious men are no other then beasts that specially all contentious adversaries to the Truth and impetuous Idolaters are beasts of S. Paul's Theatre Wherefore then serves all this but to stir us up to a threefold use of holy Thankfulness of Pity of Indignation The two first are those duo ubera Sponsa the two breasts of Christs Spouse as Bernard calls them Congratulation and Compassion The former of Thankfulness to our good God that hath delivered us as from the wretchedness of our corrupt Nature so from blinde and gross misdevotion yea from the tyranny of Superstition Alas what are we better what other then our neighbours that our Goshen should be shined upon whiles their Aegypt is covered with darkness What are we that we should be renewed in the spirit of our mindes and be created according to the Image of God whiles they continue in the woful deformation of their bestial corruptions that our Understanding should be inlightned with the beams of Divine truth whereas those poor souls are left in the natural dungeon of their ignorance or groveling to base earthly unreasonable traditions O God of mercies had it pleased thee to give them our illumination and attraction and to have left us in their miserable darkness and indocility we had been as they are and they perhaps had been as we should be Non nobis Domine Not unto us Lord not unto us but to thy Name let the praise be given of this thy gracious sequestration and thou that onely hast done it take to thy self the glory and improvement of thine own work Of Pity and yearning of bowels whether to those careless unregenerates that cannot so much as complain of their too-pleasing corruptions but applaud themselves in the free scope of their own brutish sensuality as if they had made a covenant with death an agreement with hell or whether to our poor seduced brethren that are nursed up in an invincible ignorance of Truth and are held down with the imperious sway of Antichristian usurpation Alas it is too true which our learned Spalatensis why should I not call him ours who sealed up that truth of ours which his pen had so stoutly maintained with his last blood hath observed and published Nam plebem rudiorem c. that the ruder multitude under the Papacy are carried commonly with more inward religious affection toward the Blessed Virgin or some other Saint then towards Christ himself Whose heart would not bleed at the thought of this deplorable irreligion and yet these poor souls think they doe so well as that they cry out of our damnation for not accompanying them At tu Domine usque quò How long Lord how long wilt
our remedies Thus that learned Spaniard in an honest confession of the degenerate courses of the late Popes from the simple integrity of their Predecessors What should I adde unto these the presumptuous Dispensations with Vows and Oaths with the Laws of God himself with the Law of Nature a priviledge ordinarily both yielded and defended by flattering Canonists and that which meets with us at every turn in Hostiensis Archidiaconus Felinus Capistranus Triumphus Angelus de Clavasio Petrus de Ancorano Panormitan as is largely particularized by our learned Bishop of Derry Sect. V. The new challenge of Popes domineering over Kings and Emperours I May well shut up the Scene with that notorious Innovation of the Popes subducing himself from the due Obedience of his once-acknowledged Lord and Soveraign and endeavouring to reduce all those Imperiall powers to his homage and obedience The time was when Pope Gregory could say to Mauritius Vobis obedientiam praebere desidero I desire to give you due obedience and when Pope Leo came with cap and knee to Theodosius for a Synod to be called with Clementia vestra concedat as Cardinall Cusanus cites it from the History The time was when Nemo Apostolicae c. No man did offer to take upon him the steering of the Apostolick Bark till the authority of the Emperour had designed him as their Balbus out of their own law That of Pope Gregory is plain enough Ecce serenissimus c. Behold saith he speaking of his own advancement to the Bishoprick of Rome our gracious Lord the Emperor hath commanded an Ape to be made a Lion and surely at his command it may be called a Lion but it cannot be one so as he must needs lay all my faults and negligences not upon me but upon his own piety which hath committed this Ministery of power to so weak an Agent The time was when the Popes of Rome dated their Apostolick letters with the style of the reign of their Lords the Emperours now ever since Pope Paschal they care only to note the year of their own Apostleship or Papacy The time was when the holy Bishops of that See professed to succeed Saint Peter in homely simplicity in humble obedience in piety in zeale in preaching in tears in sufferings now since the case is altered the world sees and blushes at the change for now Quanta inter Solem Lunam c. Look how much the Sun is bigger then the Moon so much is the Papall power greater then the Imperiall now Papa est Dominus Imperatoris The Pope is the Emperours Lord saith their Capistranus and the Emperour is subject to the Pope as his minister or servant saith Triumphus and lest this should seem the fashionable word of some clawing Canonist only hear what Pope Adrian himself saith Unde habet c. Whence hath the Emperour his Empire but from us all that he hath he hath wholly from us Behold it is in our power to give it to whom we list And to the same purpose is that of Pope Innocent the Fourth Imperator est advocatus c. The Emperour is the Popes Advocate and swears to him and holds his Empire of him But perhaps this place is yet too high for an Emperour a lower will serve fit Canonicus c. The Emperor is of course made a Canon and brother of the Church of Lateran Yet lower he shall be the Sewer of his Holiness Table and set on the first dish and hold the Bason for his hands Yet lower he shall be the Train-bearer to the Pope in his walking Processions he shall be the Quirie of his Stable and hold his stirrup in getting upon his horse he shall be lastly his very Porter to carry his Holinesse on his shoulder And all this not out of will but out of duty Where now is Augustus ab Augendo as Almain derives him when he suffers himself thus to be diminished Although there is more wonder in the others exaltation Papae Men are too base to enter into comparison with him His authority is more then of the Saints in Heaven saith one yet more he excelleth the Angels in his Jurisdiction saith another yet more once The Pope seems to make one and the same Consistory with God himself and which comprehends all the rest Tu es omnia super omnia Thou art all and above all as the Council of Lateran under Julius Oh strange alteration that the great Commanders of the World should be made the drudges of their subjects That Order and Soveraignty should lose themselves in a pretence of Piety That the professed Successour of him that said Gold and silver have I none should thus trample upon Crowns That a poor silly Worm of the Earth should raise up it self above all that is called God and offer to crawle into the glorious Throne of Heaven CHAP. XVIII The Epilogue both of Exhortation and Apologie NOT to wearie my Reader with more particularities of Innovation let now all Christians know and be assured that such change as they sensibly finde in the Head they may as truly though not so visibly note in the Body of the Roman Church yea rather in that Soul of Religion which informeth both And if thereupon all our endeavour as we protest before God and his holy Angels hath been and is only to reduce Rome to it self that is to recall it to that original Truth Piety Sincerity which made it long famous through the World and happy how unjustly are we ejected persecuted condemned But if that Antient Mistress of the World shall stand upon the terms of her Honour and will needs plead the disparagement of her retractions and the age and authority of these her impositions let me have leave to shut up all with that worthy and religious contestation of Saint Ambrose with his Symmachus That eloquent Patron of Idolatry had pleaded hard for the old Rites of Heathenism and brings in Antient Rome speaking thus for her self Optimi principes c. Excellent Princes the Fathers of your Country reverence ye my years into which my pious Rites have brought me I will use the Ceremonies of my Ancestors neither can I repent me I will live after mine own fashion because I am free This Religion hath brought the World under the subjection of the Laws these sacred Devotions have driven Hannibal from our walls from our Capitol Have I been preserved for this that in mine old age I should be reproved Say that I did see what were to be altered yet late and shamefull is the amendment of age To which that holy Father no lesse wittily and elegantly answers by way of retortion bringing in Rome to speak thus rather I am not ashamed in mine old age to be a Convert with all the rest of the World It is surely true that in no age it
is too late to learn Let that old age blush that cannot mend it self It is not the gravity of years but of manners that deserves praise It is no shame to goe to the better And when Symmachus urges Majorum servandus est ritus We must observe the Rites of our forefathers Dicant igitur saith Saint Ambrose Let them as well say that all things should remain in their own imperfect Principles that the World once overcovered with darknesse offends in being shined upon by the glorious brightnesse of the Sun And how much more happy is it to have dispelled the darknesse of the Soul then of the body to be shined upon by the beams of Faith then of the Sun Thus he most aptly to the present occasion whereto did that blessed Father now live he would doubtlesse no lesse readily apply it Nec erubescas mutare sententiam Never blush to change Ruffinus never blush to change your minde you are not of such authority as that you should be ashamed to confesse you have erred Oh that this meek ingenuity could have found place in that once-famous and Orthodox Church of Christ how had the whole Christian World been as a City at unity in it self and triumphed over all the proud hostilities of Paganism But since we may not be so happy we must sit down and mourn for our desolations for our divisions In the mean time we wash our hands in innocence There are none of all these instanced particulars besides many more wherein the Church of Rome hath not sensibly erred in corrupt additions to the Faith so as herein we may justly before Heaven and earth warrant our disagreement of judgment from her The rest is their act and not ours we are mere patients in this schism and therefore goe because we are driven That we hold not Communion with that Church the fault is theirs who both have deserved this strangenesse by their Errours and made it by their Violence Contrary to that rule which Cato in Tully gives of unpleasing Friendship they have not ript it in the seam but torn it in the whole cloth Perhaps I shall seem unto some to have spoken too mildly of the estate of that debauched Church There are that stand upon a mere nullity of her Being not resting in a bare depravation For me I dare not goe so far If she be foul if deadly diseased as she is these qualities cannot utterly take off her Essence or our relations Our Divines indeed call us out of Babylon and we run so as here is an actuall separation on our parts True but from the Corruptions wherein there is a true confusion not from the Church Their very charge implies their limitation as it is Babylon we must come out of it as it is an outward visible Church we neither did nor would This Dropsie that hath so swoln up the body doth not make it cease to be a true body but a sound one The true Principles of Christianity which it maintains maintain life in that Church the Errours which it holds together with those Principles struggle with that life and threaten an extinction As it is a visible Church then we have not detracted to hold Communion with it though the contemptuous repulse of so many admonitions have deserved our alienation as Babylon we can have nothing to doe with it Like as in the course of our life we freely converse with those men in civil affairs with whom we hate to partake in wickednesse But will not this seem to savour of too much indifferency What need we so vehemently labour to draw from either part and triumph in winning Proselytes and give them for lost on either side and brand them for Apostates that are won away if which way soever we fall we cannot light out of a true visible Church of Christ what such necessity was there of Martyrdome what such danger of relapses if the Church be with both Let these Sophisters know that true Charity needs not abate any thing of zeal If they be acquainted with the just value of Truth they shall not enquire so much into the Persons as into the Cause Whatever the Church be if the Errours be damnable our blood is happily spent in their impugnation and we must rather chuse to undergoe a thousand deaths then offend the Majesty of God in yielding to a known falshood in Religion neither doth the outward Visibility of the Church abate ought of the hainousnesse of mis-opinions or the vehemence of our oppositions Were it Saint Peter himself if he halt in Judaizing Saint Paul must resist him to his face neither is his fault lesse because an Apostles yea let me say more Were the Church of Rome and ours lay'd upon severall Foundations these Errours should not be altogether so detestable since the symbolizing in many Truths makes grosse Errours more intolerable as the Samaritan Idolatry was more odious to the Jewes then merely Paganish If the dearest daughter of God upon earth should commit spirituall whoredome her uncleannesse is so much more to be hated as her obligations were greater Oh the glorious crowns therefore of those blessed Martyrs of ours who rather gave their bodies to be burnt to ashes then they would betray any parceâ—l of Divine Truth Oh the wofull and dangerous condition of those Souls which shutting their eyes against so clear a light either willingly sit down in palpable darkness or fall back from the sincerity of the Gospel into these miserable enormities both of Practice and Doctrine It is not for me to judge them that I leave unto that high and awfull Tribunal before which I shall once appear with them But this I dare say that if that righteous Judge shall punish either their obstinacy or relapses with eternal damnation he cannot but be justified in his judgements whiles in the midst of their torments they shall be forced to say Thou O God art just in all that is befaln us for thou hast done right but we have done wickedly For us as we would save our Souls let us carefully preserve them from the contagion of Romish Superstition let us never fear that our discretion can hate Errour too much let us awaken our holy zeal to a serious and servent opposition joyned with a charitable endeavour of reclamation shortly let us hate their Opinions strive against their Practice pity their mis-guiding neglect their censures labour their recovery pray for their Salvation AN APOLOGETICAL ADVERTISEMENT to the READER Reader Nothing can be so well said or done but may be ill taken Whiles I thus sincerely plead for Truth the well-meaning ignorance of some mistakers hath passed as deep as unjust censures upon me as if Preferment had changed my note and taught me to speak more plausible language concerning the Roman Church then I either did or ought Wherein as I pity their Uncharitablenesse so I earnestly desire to rectifie their Judgement lest their prejudice may turn more
the two other Books and seconds that so I might return my payment cum foenore In that your Lordships Tractate I could not but observe the lively Image of your self that is according to the generall interpretation of all sound Professours of the Gospel of christ of a most Orthodox Divine And now remembring the Accordance your Lordship hath with others touching the Argument of your Book I must needs reflect upon my self who have long since defended the same Point in the defence of many others I do therefore much blame the Petulcity of whatsoever Author that should dare to impute a Popish affection to him whom besides his excellent Writings and Sermons God's visible eminent and resplendent Graces of Illumination Zeal Piety and Eloquence have made truely Honourable and glorious in the Church of Christ Let me say no more I suffer in your suffering not more in consonancy of Judgement then in the sympathy of my Affection Goe on dear Brother with your deserved Honour in God's Church with holy courage knowing that the dirty feet of an adversary the more they tread and rub the more lustre they give the figure graven in Gold Our Lord Jesus preserve us to the glory of his saving Grace Your Lordships unanimous friend and Brother THO. Covent and Litchfield TO THE Right Reverend Father in GOD JOHN LORD Bishop of SALISBURY MY Lord I send you this little Pamphlet for your censure It is not credible how strangely I have been traduced every where for that which I conceive to be the common Opinion of Reformed Divines yea of reasonable men that is for affirming the true Being and Visibility of the Roman Church You see how clearly I have endeavoured to explicate this harmless Position yet I perceive some tough misunderstandings will not be satisfied Your Lordship hath with great reputation spent many years in the Divinity-Chair of the famous University of Cambridge Let me therefore beseech you whose Learning and Sincerity is so throughly approved in God's Church that you would freely how shortly soever express your self in this Point and if you finde that I have deviated but one hairs breadth from the Truth correct me if not free me by your just Sentence What need I to intreat you to pity those whose desires of faithful offices to the Church of God are unthankfully repaied with Suspicion and Slander whose may not this case be I had thought I had sufficiently in all my Writings and in this very last Book of mine whence this quarrell is picked shewed my fervent zeal for God's Truth against that Antichristian Faction of Rome and yet I doubt not but your own ears can witness what I have suffered Yea as if this calumny were not enough there want not those whose secret whisperings cast upon me the foul aspersions of another Sect whose name is as much hated as little understood My Lord you know I had a place with you though unworthy in that famous Synod of Dort where howsoever sickness bereaved me of the houres of a conclusive Subscription yet your Lordship heard me with equall vehemency to the rest crying down the unreasonableness of that way God so love me as I do the tranquillity and happiness of his Church yet can I not so overaffect it that I would sacrifice one dram of Truth to it To that good God do I appeal as the witness of my sincere heart to his whole Truth and no-less-then-ever-zealous detestation of all Popery and Pelagianisme Your Lordship will be pleased to pardon this importunity and to vouchsafe your speedy Answer to Your much devoted and faithfull Brother JOS. EXON TO THE Right Reverend Father in GOD JOSEPH Lord Bishop of EXON these My LORD YOU desire my Opinion concerning an Assertion of yours whereat some have taken offence The Proposition was this That the Roman Church remains yet a True Visible Church The occasion which makes this an ill-sounding Proposition in the ears of Protestants especially such as are not throughly acquainted with School Distinctions is the usuall acception of the word True in our English Tongue For though men skilled in Metaphysicks hold it for a Maxime Ens Verum Bonum convertuntur yet with us he which shall affirm such a one is a true Christian a true Gentleman a true Scholar or the like he is conceived not onely to adscribe Trueness of Being unto all these but those due Qualities or requisite Actions whereby they are made commendable or praise-worthy in their severall kinds In this sense the Roman Church is no more a True Church in respect of Christ or those due Qualities and proper Actions which Christ requires then an arrant Whore is a true and loyall Wife unto her Husband I durst upon mine oath be one of your Compurgators that you never intended to adorn that Strumpet with the title of a true Church in this meaning But your own Writings have so fully cleared you herein that suspicion it self cannot reasonably suspect you in this Point I therefore can say no more concerning your mistaken Proposition then this If in that Treatise wherein it was delivered the Antecedents or Consequents were such as served fitly to lead the Reader into that Sense which under the word True comprehendeth onely Truth of Being or Existencie and not the due Qualities of the thing or Subject you have been causelesly traduced But on the other side if that Proposition comes in ex abrupto or stands solitarie in your Discourse you cannot marvell though by taking the word True according to the more ordinarie acception your true meaning was mistaken In brief your Proposition admits a true sense and in that sense is by the best Learned in our Reformed Church not disallowed For the Being of a Church does principally stand upon the gracious action of God calling men out of Darkness and Death unto the Participation of Light and Life in Christ Jesus So long as God continues this Calling unto any people though they as much as in them lies darken this Light and corrupt the means which should bring them to Life and Salvation in Christ yet where God calls men unto the Participation of Life in Christ by the Word and by the Sacraments there is the true Being of a Christian Church let men be never so false in their Expositions of God's Word or never so untrustie in mingling their own Traditions with God's Ordinances Thus the Church of the Jews lost not her Being of a Church when she became an Idolatrous Church And thus under the government of the Scribes and Pharisees who voided the Commandements of God by their own Traditions there was yet standing a true Church in which Zacharias Elizabeth the Virgin Mary and our Saviour himself was born who were members of that Church and yet participated not in the Corruptions thereof Thus to grant that the Romane was and is a True Visible Christian Church though in Doctrine a False and in Practice an Idolatrous Church is a true Assertion and of greater
Upon the sight of an Eclipse of the Sun LIght is an ordinary and familiar Blessing yet so dear to us that one hours interception of it sets all the world in a wonder The two great Luminaries of Heaven as they impart light to us so they withdraw light from each other The Sun darkens the full Moon in casting the shadow of the earth upon her opposed face the new Moon repays this blemish to the Sun in the interposing of her dark body betwixt our eyes and his glorious beams the earth is troubled at both O God if we be so afflicted with the obscuring of some piece of one of thy created lights for an hour or two what a confusion shall it be that thou who art the God of these Lights in comparison of whom they are mere darknesse shalt hide thy face from thy creature for ever O thou that art the Sun of Righteousnesse if every of my sins cloud thy face yet let not my grievous sins eclipse thy light Thou shinest alwayes though I do not see thee but Oh never suffer my sins so to darken thy visage that I cannot see thee IV. Upon the sight of a gliding Star HOw easily is our sight deceived how easily doth our sight deceive us We saw no difference betwixt this Star and the rest the light seemed alike both whiles it stood and whiles it fell now we know it was no other then a base slimy Meteor guilded with the Sun-beams and now our foot can tread upon that which ere while our eye admired Had it been a Star it had still and ever shined now the very fall argues it a false and elementary Apparition Thus our Charity doth and must mis-lead us in our Spirituall judgements If we see men exalted in their Christian Profession fixed in the upper region of the Church shining with appearances of Grace we may not think them other thenâ—stars in this lower firmament but if they fall from their holy station and imbrace the present world whether in Judgement or Practice renouncing the Truth and power of Godliness now we may boldly say they had never any true light in them and were no other then a glittering composition of Pride and Hypocrisie O God if my Charity make me apt to be deceived by others let me be sure not to deceive my self Perhaps some of these apostating Stars have thought themselves true let their mis-carriage make me heedfull let the inward light of thy Grace more convince my truth to my self then my outward Profession can represent me glorious to others V. Upon a fair Prospect WHat a pleasing variety is here of Towns Rivers Hills Dales Woods Medows each of them striving to set forth the other and all of them to delight the eye So as this is no other then a naturall and reall Landscap drawn by that Almighty skilfull hand in this table of the Earth for the pleasure of our view no other creature besides Man is capable to apprehend this Beauty I shall doe wrong to him that brought me hither if I do not feed my eyes and praise my Maker It is the intermixture and change of these Objects that yields this contentment both to the Sense and Minde But there is a sight O my Soul that without all variety offers thee a truer and fuller delight even this Heaven above thee All thy other Prospects end in this This glorious circumference bounds and circles and inlightens all that thine eye can see whether thou look upward or forward or about thee there thine eye alights there let thy thoughts be fixed One inch of this lightsome Firmament hath more Beauty in it then the whole face of the Earth And yet this is but the floor of that goodly fabrick the outward curtain of that glorious Tabernacle Couldst thou but Oh that thou couldst look within that veile how shouldst thou be ravisht with that blissefull sight There in that incomprehensible light thou shouldst see him whom none can see and not be blessed thou shouldst see millions of pure and majesticall Angels of holy and glorified Souls there amongst thy Fathers many mansions thou shouldst take happy notice of thine owne Oh the best of earth now vile and contemptible Come down no more O my Soul after thou hast once pitched upon this Heavenly glory or if this flesh force thy descent be unquiet till thou art let loose to Immortality VI. Upon the frame of a Globe casually broken IT is hard to say whether is the greater Mans Art or Impotence He that cannot make one spire of grasse or corn of sand will yet be framing of Worlds he can imitate all things who can make nothing Here is a great World in a little room by the skill of the workman but in lesse room by mis-accident Had he seen this who upon the view of Plato's Book of Common-wealth eaten with Mice presaged the fatall miscarriage of the publick State he would sure have construed this casualty as ominous Whatever become of the Materiall world whose decay might seem no lesse to stand with Divine Providence then this Microcosme of individuall man sure I am the frame of the Morall world is and must be dis-joynted in the last times Men do and will fall from evil to worse He that hath made all times hath told us that the last shall be perilous Happy is he that can stand upright when the world declines and can endeavour to repair the common ruine with a constancy in goodnesse VII Upon a Cloud WHether it were a naturall Cloud wherewith our ascending Saviour was intercepted from the eyes of his Disciples upon mount Olivet I inquire not this I am sure of that the time now was when a Cloud surpassed the Sun in glory How did the intentive eyes of those ravished beholders envy that happy Meteor and since they could no more see that glorious Body fixed themselves upon that Celestiall Chariot wherewith it was carried up The Angels could tell the gazing Disciples to fetch them off from that astonishing prospect that this Jesus should so come again as they had seen him depart He went up in a Cloud and he shall come again in the clouds of Heaven to his last Judgement O Saviour I cannot look upward but I must see the sensible monuments both of thine Ascension and Return Let no cloud of Worldlinesse or Infidelity hinder me from following thee in thine Ascension or from expecting thee in thy Return VIII Upon the sight of a Grave digged up THE Earth as it is a great devourer so also it is a great preserver too Liquors and Fleshes are therein long kept from putrifying and are rather heightened in their Spirits by being buried in it but above all how safely doth it keep our Bodies for the Resurrection We are here but lay'd up for custody Balmes and Sere-cloths and Leads cannot doe so much as this lap of our common Mother when all these are dissolved into her dust as being unable to keep themselves from
she was not conceiving as well thou mightest were not this woman a Convert she would never have offered her self into this presence Her modesty and her tears bewray her change and if she be changed why is the censured for what she is not Lastly how strong did it savour of the leven of thy profession that thou supposest were she what she was that it could not stand with the knowledge and holinesse of a Prophet to admit of her least touch yea of her presence Whereas on the one side outward conversation in it self makes no man unclean or holy but according to the disposition of the patient on the other such was the purity and perfection of this thy glorious guest that it was not possibly infectible nor any way obnoxious to the danger of others sin He that said once Who touched me in regard of virtue issuing from him never said Whom have I touched in regard of any contagion incident to him We sinfull creatures in whom the Prince of this world findes too much may easily be tainted with other mens sins He who came to take away the sins of the world was uncapable of pollution by sin Had the woman then been still a sinner thy censure of Christ was proud and unjust The Pharisee spake but it was within himself and now behold Jesus answering said What we think we speak to our hearts and we speak to God and he equally hears as if it came out of our mouths Thoughts are not free Could men know and convince them they would be no lesse liable to censure then if they came forth clothed with words God who hears them judges of them accordingly So here the heart of Simon speaks Jesus answers Jesus answers him but with a Parable He answers many a thought with Judgment the blasphemy of the heart the murder of the heart the adultery of the heart are answered by him with reall vengeance For Simon our Saviour saw his errour was either out of simple ignorance or weak mistaking where he saw no malice then it is enough to answer with a gentle conviction The convictive answer of Christ is by way of Parable The wisdome of God knows how to circumvent us for our gain and can speak that pleasingly by a prudent circumlocution which right-down would not be digested Had our Saviour said in plain terms Simon whether dost thou or this sinner love me more the Pharisee could not for shame but have stood upon his reputation and in a scorn of the comparison have protested his exceeding respects to Christ Now ere he is aware he is fetcht in to give sentence against himself for her whom he condemned O Saviour thou hast made us fishers of men how should we learn of thee so to bait our hooks that they may be most likely to take Thou the great housholder of thy Church hast provided victuals for thy family thou hast appointed us to dresse them if we do not so cook them as that they may fit the palats to which they are intended we do both lose our labour and thy cost The Parable is of two Debtors to one Creditor the one owed a lesser sum the other a greater both are forgiven It was not the purpose of him that propounded it that we should stick in the bark God is our Creditor our sins our Debts we are all Debtors but one more deep then another No man can pay this Debt alone satisfaction is not possible only remission can discharge us God doth in mercy forgive as well the greatest as the least sins Our love to God is proportionable to the sense of our remission So then the Pharisee cannot chuse but confesse that the more and greater the sin is the greater mercy in the forgivenesse and the more mercy in the forgiver the greater obligation and more love in the forgiven Truth from whose mouth soever it falls is worth taking up Our Saviour praises the true judgment of a Pharisee It is an injurious indiscretion in those who are so prejudiced against the persons that they reject the truth He that would not quench the smoaking flax incourages even the least good As the carefull Chirurgion strokes the arme ere he strikes the vein so did Christ here ere he convinces the Pharisee of his want of love he graceth him with a fair approbation of his judgment Yet the while turning both his face and his speech to the poor Penitent as one that cared more for a true humiliation for sin then for a false pretence of respect and innocence With what a dejected and abashed countenance with what earth-fixed eyes do we imagine the poor woman stood when she saw her Saviour direct his face and words to her She that durst but stand behinde him and steal the falling of some teares upon his feet with what a blushing astonishment doth she behold his sidereall countenance cast upon her Whiles his eye was turned towards this Penitent his speech was turned to the Pharisee concerning that Penitent by him mistaken Seest thou this Woman He who before had said If this man were a Prophet he would have known what manner of Woman this is now heares Seest thou this Woman Simon saw but her outside Jesus lets him see that he saw her heart and will thus convince the Pharisee that he is more then a Prophet who knew not her conversation only but her Soul The Pharisee that went all by appearance shall by her deportment see the proof of her good disposition it shall happily shame him to hear the comparison of the wants of his own entertainments with the abundance of hers It is strange that any of this formall Sect should be defective in their Lotions Simon had not given water to so great a guest she washes his feet with her teares By how much the water of the eye was more precious then the water of the earth so much was the respect and courtesie of this Penitent above the neglected office of the Pharisee What use was there of a Towell where was no water She that made a fountain of her eyes made precious napary of her hair that better flax shamed the linen in the Pharisees chest A kisse of the cheek had wont to be pledge of the welcome of their guests Simon neglects to make himself thus happy she redoubles the kisses of her humble thankfulnesse upon the blessed feet of her Saviour The Pharisee omits ordinary oyle for the head she supplies the most precious and fragrant oyle to his feet Now the Pharisee reades his own taxation in her praise and begins to envy where he had scorned It is our fault O Saviour if we mistake thee We are ready to think so thou have the substance of good usage thou regardest not the complements and ceremonies whereas now we see thee to have both meat and welcome in the Pharisees house and yet hear thee glance at his neglect of washing kissing anointing Doubtlesse omission of due circumstances in thy
they straight vent it into the eare of their Master O Saviour whiles thou art in Heaven thy school is upon earth Wherefore serve thy Priests lips but to preserve knowledge What use is there of the tongue of the learned but to speak a word in season Thou teachest us still and still we doubt and ask and learn In one short question I finde two Truths and two Falshoods the Truths implied the Falshoods expressed It is true that commonly man's suffering is for sin that we may justly and do often suffer even for the sins of our Parents It is false that there is no other reason of our suffering but sin that a man could sin actually before he was or was before his being or could before-hand suffer for his after-sins In all likelihood that absurd conceit of the Transmigration of Souls possessed the very Disciples How easily and how far may the best be miscarried with a common errour We are not thankfull for our own illumination if we do not look with charity and pity upon the grosse mis-opinions of our brethren Our Saviour sees and yet will wink at so foul a misprision of his Disciples I hear neither chiding nor conviction He that could have inlightned their mindes as he did the world at once will doe it by due leisure and only contents himself here with a milde solution Neither this man nor his Parents We learn nothing of thee O Saviour if not meekness What a sweet temper should be in our carriage towards the weaknesses of others judgment how should we instruct them without bitterness and without violence of Passion exspect the meet seasons of their better information The tender Mother or Nurse doth not rate her little one for that he goes not well but gives him her hand that he may goe better It is the spirit of lenity that must restore and confirm the lapsed The answer is direct and punctual neither the sin of the man nor of his Parents bereaved him of his eyes there was an higher cause of this privation the glory that God meant to win unto himself by redressing it The Parents had sinned in themselves the man had sinned in his first Parents it is not the guilt of either that is guilty of this blindness All God's afflictive acts are not punishments some are for the benefit of the creature whether for probation or prevention or reformation all are for the praise whether of his Divine Power or Justice or Mercy It was fit so great a work should be usher'd in with a preface A suddain and abrupt appearance would not have beseemed so glorious a demonstration of Omnipotence The way is made our Saviour addresses himself to the Miracle a Miracle not more in the thing done then in the form of doing it The matter used was clay Could there be a meaner could there be ought more unfit O Saviour how oft hadst thou cured blindnesses by thy word alone how oft by thy touch How easily couldst thou have done so here Was this to shew thy liberty or thy power Liberty in that thou canst at pleasure use variety of means not being tied to any Power in that thou couldst make use of contraries Hadst thou pull'd out a box and applied some medicinal ointment to the eyes something had been ascribed to thy skill more to the natural power of thy receit now thou madest use of clay which had been enough to stop up the eyes of the seeing the virtue must be all in thee none in the means The utter disproportion of this help to the Cure addes glory to the worker How clearly didst thou hence evince to the world that thou who of clay couldst make eyes wert the same who of clay hadst made man since there is no part of the body that hath so little analogie to clay as the eye this clearness is contrary to that opacity Had not the Jews been more blinde then the man whom thou curedst and more hard and stiffe then the clay which thou mollifiedst they had in this one work both seen and acknowledged thy Deity What could the clay have done without thy tempering It was thy spittle that made the clay effectual it was that Sacred mouth of thine that made the spittle medicinal the water of Siloe shall but wash off that clay which this inward moisture made powerfull The clay thus tempered must be applied by the hand that made it else it avails nothing What must the blinde man needs think when he felt the cold clay upon the holes of his eyes or since he could not conceive what an eye was what must the beholders needs think to see that hollowness thus filled up Is this the way to give either eyes or sight Why did not the earth see with this clay as well as the man What is there to hinder the sight if this make it Yet with these contrarieties must the Faith be exercised where God intends the blessing of a Cure It was never meant that this clay should dwell upon those pits of the eyes it is onely put on to be washed off and that not by every water none shall doe it but that of Siloam which signifies Sent and if the man had not been sent to Siloam he had been still blinde All things receive their virtue from Divine institution How else should a piece of wheaten bread nourish the Soul How should spring-water wash off spiritual filthiness How should the foolishness of preaching save Souls How should the absolution of God's Minister be more effectual then the breath of an ordinary Christian Thou O God hast set apart these Ordinances thy Blessing is annexed to them hence is the ground of all our use and their efficacy Hadst thou so instituted Jordan would as well have healed Blindness and Siloam Leprosie That the man might be capable of such a Miracle his Faith is set on work he must be led with his eyes daubed up to the pool of Siloam He washes and sees Lord what did this man think when his eyes were now first given him what a new world did he finde himself now come into how did he wonder at Heaven and earth and the faces and shapes of all creatures the goodly varieties of colours the chearfulness of the light the lively beams of the Sun the vast expansion of the aire the pleasant transparence of the water at the glorious piles of the Temple and stately palaces of Jerusalem Every thing did not more please then astonish him Lo thus shall we be affected and more when the scales of our mortality being done away we shall see as we are seen when we shall behold the blessedness of that other world the glory of the Saints and Angels the infinite Majesty of the Son of God the incomprehensible brightness of the all-glorious Deity O my Soul that thou couldst be taken up before-hand with the admiration of that which thou canst not as yet be capable of foreseeing It could not be but that many eyes
of all other this eare of Malchus hath the loudest tongue to blazon the praise of thy Clemency and Goodnesse to thy very enemies Wherefore came that man but in an hostile manner to attach thee Besides his own what favour was he worthy of for his Masters sake And if he had not been more forward then his fellows why had not his skin been as whole as theirs Yet even amidst the throng of thine apprehenders in the heat of their violence in the height of their malice and thine own instant peril of death thou healest that unnecessary eare which had been guilty of hearing Blasphemies against thee and receiving cruell and unjust charges concerning thee O Malchus could thy eare be whole and not thy heart broken and contrite with remorse for rising up against so mercifull and so powerfull an hand Could thou chuse but say O blessed Jesu I see it was thy Providence that preserved my head when my eare was smitten it is thine Almighty Power that hath miraculously restored that eare of mine which I had justly forfeited this head of mine shall never be guilty of plotting any further mischief against thee this eare shall never entertain any more reproaches of thy name this heart of mine shall ever acknowledge and magnifie thy tender mercies thy Divine Omnipotence Could thy fellows see such a demonstration of Power and Goodnesse with unrelenting hearts Unthankfull Malchus and cruell souldiers ye were worse wounded and felt it not God had struck your breasts with a fearfull obduration that ye still persist in your bloody enterprise And they that had laid hold on Jesus led him away c. Christ before Caiaphas THat Traitor whom his own cord made soon after too fast gave this charge concerning Jesus Hold him fast Fear makes his guard cruell they binde his hands and think no twist can be strong enough for this Sampson Fond Jews and Souldiers if his own will had not tied him faster then your cords though those Manicles had been the stiffest cables or the strongest iron they had been but threds of tow What eyes can but run over to see those hands that made Heaven and Earth wrung together and bruised with those mercilesse cords to see him bound who came to restore us to the liberty of the Sons of God to see the Lord of Life contemptuously dragged through the streets first to the house of Annas then from thence to the house of Caiaphas from him to Pilate from Pilate to Herod from Herod back again to Pilate from Pilate to his Calvarie whiles in the mean time the base rabble and scum of the incensed multitude runs after him with shouts and scorns The act of death hath not in it so much misery and horrour as the pomp of death And what needed all this pageant of Cruelty wherefore was this state and lingring of an unjust execution Was it for that their malice held a quick dispatch too much Mercy Was it for that whiles they meant to be bloody they would fain seem just A suddain violence had been palpably murderous now the colour of a legal processe guilds over all their deadly spight and would seem to render them honest and the accused guilty This attachment this convention of the innocent was a true night-work a deed of so much darknesse was not for the light Old Annas and that wicked Bench of gray-headed Scribes and Elders can be content to break their sleep to doe mischief Envie and malice can make noon of midnight It is resolved he shall die and now pretences must be sought that he may be cleanly murdered All evil begins at the Sanctuarie The Priests and Scribes and Elders are the first in this bloody scene they have pai'd for this head and now long to see what they shall have for their thirty silverlings The Bench is set in the Hall of Caiaphas False witnesses are sought for and hired they agree not but shame their suborners Woe is me what safety can there be for Innocence when the evidence is wilfully corrupted What State was ever so pure as not to yield some miscreants that will either sell or lend an oath What a brand hath the wisdome of God set upon falshood even dissonance and distraction whereas Truth ever holds together and jars not whiles it is it self O Saviour what a perfect innocence was in thy Life what an exact purity in thy Doctrine that malice it self cannot so much as devise what to slander It were hard if Hell should not finde some Factors upon earth At last two Witnesses are brought in that have learned to agree with themselves whiles they differed from truth they say the same though false This fellow said I am able to destroy the Temple of God and build it again in three daies Perjured wretches Were these the terms that you heard from that Sacred mouth Said he formally thus as ye have deposed It is true he spake of a Temple of destroying of building of three daies but did he speak of that Temple of his own destroying of a material building in that space He said Destroy ye Ye say I am able to destroy He said this Temple of his body Ye say the Temple of God He said I will make up this Temple of my body in three daies Ye say I am able in three daies to build this material Temple of God The words were his the sentence yours The words were true the evidence false So whiles you report the words and misreport the sense ye swear a true falshood aud are truly forsworn Where the resolutions are fixed any colour will serve Had those words been spoken they contained no crime had he been such as they supposed him a mere man the speech had carried a semblance of ostentation no semblance of Blasphemy yet how vehement is Caiaphas for an answer as if those words had already battered that sacred pile or the protestation of his ability had been the highest treason against the God of the Temple That infinite Wisdome knew well how little satisfaction there could be in answers where the sentence was determined Jesus held his peace Where the asker is unworthy the question captious words bootlesse the best answer is silence Erewhile his just and moderate speech to Annas was returned with a buffet on the cheek now his silence is no lesse displeasing Caiaphas was not more malicious then crafty what was in vain attempted by witnesses shall be drawn out of Christs own mouth what an accusation could not effect an adjuration shall I adjure thee by the living God that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ the Son of God Yea this was the way to screw out a killing answer Caiaphas thy mouth was impure but thy charge is dreadfull Now if Jesus hold his peace he is cried down for a prophane disregarder of that awfull Name if he answer he is ensnared an affirmation is death a denial worse then death No Caiaphas thou shalt well know it was not fear
that we might be a singular pattern and strange wonder of his Bounty What should I speak of the wholsome temper of our Clime the rich provision of all usefull Commodities so as we cannot say only as Sanchez did I have moisture enough within my own shell but as David did Poculum exuberans My cup runs over to the supply of our neighbour Nations What speak I of the populousnesse of our Cities defencednesse of our shoars These are nothing to that Heavenly treasure of the Gospel which makes us the Vineyard of God and that sweet Peace which gives us the happy fruition of that saving Gospel Albion do we call it nay as he rightly Polyolbion richly blessed O God what where is the Nation that can emulate us in these favours How hath he fenced us about with the hedge of good Discipline of wholesome Laws of gracious Government with the brazen wall of his Almighty and miraculous protection Never Land had more exquisite Rules of Justice whether mute or speaking He hath not left us to the mercy of a rude Anarchie or a Tyrannical violence but hath regulated us by Laws of our own asking and swai'd us by the just Scepters of moderate Princes Never Land had more convincing proofs of an Omnipotent Tuition whether against forein Powers or secret Conspiracies Forget if ye can the year of our Invasion the day of our Purim Besides the many particularities of our deliverances filed up by the pen of one of our worthy Prelates How hath he given us means to remove the rubs of our growth and to gather away the stones of false Doctrine of Heretical pravitie of mischievous machinations that might hold down his truth And which is the head of all how hath he brought our Vine out of the Egypt of Popish Superstition and planted it In plain terms how hath he made us a truely-orthodox Church eminent for purity of Doctrine for the grave and reverend solemnity of true Sacraments for the due form of Government for the pious and Religious form of our publick Liturgie With what plenty hath he showred upon us the first and later rain of his Heavenly Gospel With what rare gifts hath he graced our Teachers With what pregnant spirits hath he furnish'd our Academies With what competencie of maintenance hath he heartned all learned Professions So as in these regards we may say of the Church of England Many Daughters have done vertuously but thou excellest them all How hath the vigilant eye of his Providence out of his tower of Heaven watch'd over this Island for good Not an hellish Pionier could mine under ground but he espied him not a dark Lantern could offer to deceive midnight but he descries it not a Plot not a purpose of evil could look out but he hath discovered it and shamed the Agents and glorified his Mercy in our deliverance Lastly how infinitely hath his loving care laboured to bring us to good What sweet opportunities and incouragements hath he given us of a fruitfull obedience And when his Fatherly counsels would not work with us how hath he scruzed us in the Wine-presse of his Afflictions one while with a raging Pestilence another while with the insolence and prevalence of Enemies one while with unkindly Seasons another while with stormy and wracking Tempests if by any means he might fetch from us the precious juice of true Penitence and faithfull Obedience that we might turn and live If the presse were weighty yet the wine is sweet Lay now all these together And what could have been done more for our Vineyard O God that thou hast not done Look about you Honourable and Christian hearers and see whether God hath done thus with any Nation Oh never never was any people so bound to a God Other neighbouring Regions would think themselves happy in one drop of those Blessings which have poured down thick upon us Alas they are in a vaporous and marish vale whiles we are seated on the fruitfull Hill they lie open to the massacring knife of an Enemy whiles we are fenced they are clogged with miserable incumbrances whiles we are free Briers and Brambles overspread them whiles we are choicely planted their Tower is of offence their Winepresse is of blood Oh the lamentable condition of more likely Vineyards then our own Who can but weep and bleed to see those wofull Calamities that are faln upon the late-famous and flourishing Churches of Reformed Christendome Oh for that Palatine Vine late inoculated with a precious bud of our Royal Stem that Vine not long since rich in goodly clusters now the insultation of Boars and prey of Foxes Oh for those poor distressed Christians in France Bohemia Silesia Moravia Germany Austria the Valteline that groan now under the tyrannous yoak of Antichristian oppression How glad would they be of the crums of our Feasts how rich would they esteem themselves with the very gleanings of our plentifull crop of Prosperity How do they look up at us as even now militantly-triumphant whiles they are miserably wallowing in dust and blood and wonder to see the Sun-shine upon our Hill whiles they are drenched with storm and tempest in the Valley What are we O God what are we that thou shouldst be thus rich in thy Mercies to us whiles thou art so severe in thy Judgments unto them It is too much Lord it is too much that thou hast done for so sinfull and rebellious a people Cast now your eyes aside a little and after the view of God's Favours see some little glimpse of our requital Say then say O Nation not worthy to be beloved what fruit have ye returned to your beneficent God Sin is impudent but let me challenge the impudent forehead of sin it self Are they not sour and wilde Grapes that we have yielded Are we lesse deep in the Sins of Israel then in Israel's Blessings Complaints I know are unpleasing however just but now not more unpleasing then necessary Woe is me my mother that thou hast born me a man of contention I must cry out in this sad day of the sins of my people The searchers of Canaan when they came to the brook of Eshcol they cut down a branch with a cluster of Grapes and carried it on a staffe between two to shew Israel the fruit of the Land Numb 13. 23. Give me leave in the search of our Israel to present your eyes with some of the wilde Grapes that grow there on every hedge And what if they be the very same that grew in this degenerated Vineyard of Israel Where we meet first with Oppression a Lordly sin and that challengeth precedencie as being commonly incident to none but the Great though a poor Oppressor as he is unkindly so he is a monster of mercilesness Oh the loud shrieks and clamours of this crying sin What grinding of faces what racking of Rents what detention of Wages what inclosing of Commons what ingrossing of Commodities what griping Exactions what straining
one in the Heart One Baptism so it is one in the Face Where these are truly professed to be though there may be differences of administrations and ceremonies though there may be differences in opinions yet there is Columba una all those are but diversly-coloured feathers of the same Dove What Church therefore hath one Lord Jesus Christ the righteous one Faith in that Lord one Baptism into that Faith it is the One Dove of Christ To speak more short one Faith abridges all But what is that one Faith what but the main fundamental Doctrine of Religion necessary to be known to be believed unto Salvation It is a golden and usefull distinction that we must take with us betwixt Christian Articles and Theological Conclusions Christian Articles are the Principles of Religion necessary to a Believer Theological Conclusions are School-points fit for the discourse of a Divine Those Articles are few and essential these Conclusions are many and unimporting upon necessity to Salvation either way That Church then which holds those Christian Articles both in terms and necessary consequences as every visible Church of Christ doth however it vary in these Theological Conclusions is Columba una Were there not much latitude in this Faith how should we fetch in the antient Jewish Church to the unity of the Christian Theirs and ours is but one Dove though the feathers according to the colour of that fowl be changeable It is a fearfull account then that shall once be given before the dreadfull Tribunal of the Son of God the only Husband of this one Church by those men who not like the children of faithfull Abraham divide the Dove multiplying Articles of Faith according to their own fancies and casting out of the bosome of the Church those Christians that differ from their either false or unnecessary conclusions Thus have our great Lords of the Seven hills dared to doe whose faction hath both devoured their Charity and scorned ours to the great prejudice of the Christian world to the irreparable damage of the glorious Gospel of our Lord Jesus The God of Heaven judge in this great case betwixt them and us us who firmly holding the foundation of Christian Religion in all things according to the antient Catholick Apostolick Faith are rejected censured condemned accursed killed for refusing their gainfull Novelties In the mean time we can but lament their fury no lesse then their errours and send out our hopelesse wishes that the seamlesse coat might be darn'd up by their hands that tore it From them to speak to our selves who have happily reformed those errours of theirs which either their ambition or profit would not suffer them to part with since we are one why are we sundred One saies I am Luther's for Consubstantiation another I am Calvin's for Discipline another I am Arminius's for Predestination another I am Barrow's or Brown's for Separation What frenzy possesses the brains of Christians thus to squander themselves into Factions It is indeed an envious cavil of our common adversaries to make these so many Religions No every branch of different Opinion doth not constitute a several Religion were this true I durst boldly say old Rome had not more Deities then the modern Rome hath Religions These things though they do not vary Religions and Churches yet they trouble the quiet unity of the Church Brethren since our Religion is one why are not our tongues one why do we not bite in our singular conceits and binde our tongues to the common Peace But if from particular visible Churches which perhaps you may construe to be the threescore Queens here spoken of you shall turn your eyes to the true inward universal company of Gods Elect and secret ones there shall you more perfectly finde Columbam unam one Dove for what the other is in profession this is in truth that one Baptism is here the true Laver of Regeneration that one Faith is a saving reposal upon Christ that one Lord is the Saviour of his Body No natural body is more one then this mystical one Head rules it one Spirit animates it one set of joynts moves it one Food nourishes it one Robe covers it So it is one in it self so one with Christ as Christ is one with the Father That they may be one even as we are one I in them and thou in me John 17. 22. Oh blessed Unity of the Saints of God which none of the makebates of Hell can ever be able to dissolve And now since we are thus and every other way one why are we not united in Love why do we in our ordinary conversation suffer slight weaknesses to set off our Charity Mephibosheth was a cripple yet the perfect love of Jonathan either cures or covers his impotency We can no more want infirmities then not be men we cannot stick at infirmities if we be Christians It is but a poor love that cannot passe over small faults even quotidianae incursionis as that Father speaks It is an injurious niceness to condemn a good Face in each other for a little mole Brethren let us not aggravate but pity each others weaknesses and since we are but one Body let us have but one Heart one Way And if we be the Dove of Christ and his Dove is one oh let us be so one with each other as he is one with us And as the Church and Commonwealth are twins so should this be no lesse one with it self and with her temporal head Divisum est cor eorum Their heart is divided was the judgment upon Israel ose 10. 2. Oh how is every good heart divided in sunder with the grief for the late divisions of our Reuben We do not mourn we bleed inwardly for this distraction But I do willingly smother these thoughts yea my just sorrow choaks them in my bosome that they cannot come forth but in sighs and groans O thou that art the God of peace unite all hearts in Love to each other in loyal Subjection to their Soveraign Head Amen As the Church is one in not being divided so she is but one in not being multiplied Here is unus uni unam as the old word is He the true Husband of the Church who made and gave but one Eve to the first Adam will take but one wife to himself the second Adam There are many particular Churches all these make up but one universal as many distinct lims make up but one intire body many grains one bach many drops and streams one Ocean So many Regions as there are under Heaven that do truly professe the Christian name so many National Churches there are in all those Nations there are many Provincial in all those Provinces many Diocesan in all those Dioceses many Parochial Churches in all those Parishes many Christian Families in all those Families many Christian Souls now all those Souls Families Parishes Dioceses Provinces Nations make up but one Catholick Church of Christ upon earth The God of the
as the great Emperour could say I have been all things and am never the better Have ye Great ones all the incurvations of the knee the kisses of the hand the styles of Honour yea the flatteries of Heralds let Gods hand touch you but a little with a spotted Fever or girds of the Colick or belking pains of the Gout or stoppings of the bladder alas what ease is it to you that you are laid in a Silken bed that a potion is brought you on the knee in a Golden cup that the Chirurgion can say he hath taken from you Noble blood As Esau said of his birth-right ye shall say mutat is mutandis of all these ceremonies of Honour What are these to me when I am ready to dye for pain Is it Beauty What is that or wherein consists it Wherein but in mere opinion The Aethiopians think it consists in perfect Blackness we Europeans in white and red and the wisest say That is fair that pleaseth And what Face is it that pleaseth all Even in the worst some eyes see features that please in the best some others see lines they like not And if any Beauty could have all voices what were this but a wast and worthless approbation Grant it to be in the greatest exquisiteness what is it but a Blossome in May or a Flower in August or an Apple in Autumn soon faln soon withered Should any of you glorious Dames be seized upon with the nasty pustles of the small Pox alas what pits do those leave behind them to bury your Beauties in Or if but some languishing Quartan should arrest you how is the delicate skin turn'd tawnie How doth an unwelcome Dropsie wherein that disease too often ends bag up the eyes and mis-shape the face and body with unpleasing and unkindly tumors In short when all is done after all our cost and care what is the best hide but saccus stercorum as Bernard speaks which if we do not finde noisome others shall Well may I therefore ask with Ecclesiasticus Quid superbit terra cinis Why is this earth and ashes proud though it were as free from sin as it is from perfection But now when wickedness is added to vanity and we are more abominable by sin then weak by nature how should we be utterly ashamed to look up to Heaven to look upon our own faces Surely therefore whensoever you see a Proud man say there is a Fool 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. the heathen Menander could say so for if he were not a mere stranger in himself he could be no other then confounded in himself We see our own outward filthiness in those loathsome excretions which the purest nature puts forth but if we could as well see our inward Spiritual beastliness we could not but be swallowed up of our confusion It falls out with men in this case as with some old foul and wrinkled dames that are soothed up by their Parasites in an admiration of their Beauty to whom no glass is allowed but the picturers that flatters them with a smooth fair and young image Let such a one come casually to the view of a Glass she falls out first with that mirrour and cries out of the false representation but after when upon stricter examination she finds the fault in her self she becomes as much out of love with her self as ever her flatterers seemed to be enamour'd of her It is no otherwise with us We easily run away with the conceit of our Spiritual Beauty of our innocent Integrity every thing feeds us in our over-weening opinion Let the Glass of the Law be brought once and set before us we shall then see the shameful wrinkles and foul morphews of our Souls and shall say with the Prophet We lye down in our shame and our confusion covereth us for we have sinned against the Lord our God Jer. 3. 25. Thus if we be humbled in spirit◠we shall be raised unto true Honour even such Honour as have all his Saints To the participation whereof that God who hath ordained graciously bring us for the sake of Jesus Christ the Righteous to whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost one infinite God be all Honour and Glory now and for ever Amen CHRIST AND CAESAR A SERMON preached at Hampton-Court By Jos. HALL Joh. 19. 15. The chief Priests answered We have no King but Caesar THere cannot be a more loyal speech as it may be used One Sun is enough for Heaven one King for earth But as it is used there cannot be a worse For in so few words these Jews flatter Caesar reject Christ oppose Christ to Caesar First pretending they were Caesar's subjects secondly professing they were not Christs subjects thirdly arguing that they could not be Christ's subjects because they were Caesar's The first by way of affirmation Caesar is our King the second by way of negation No King but Caesar the third by way of implication Christ is not our King because Caesar is The first was a truth Caesar was indeed now their King but against their wils Conquest had made his name unwelcome They say true then and yet they flatter Wonder not at this a man may flatter yea lye in speaking truth when his heart believes not the title that his tongue gives So it was with these Jews they call'd him King whom they malign'd as an Usurper For they feeding themselves with the conceit of being God's free people wherein Judas Gaulonites and Sadducus the Pharisee had soothed them hated him as an enemy whom they were forced to fear as their King holding it no better then a sinful vassalage to stoop unto an Heathen scepter Ye know the question moved upon the Tribute-money Matth. 22. 17. Is it lawful to pay tribute to Caesar Lo they say not Is it needful but Is it lawful The Herodians were a Faction that had never moved this question unless the Pharisees and their scrupulous clients had denied it They make it a difficulty not of purse but of conscience Licetne Is it lawful Yet here Regem habemus Caesarem Caesar is our King They liked well enough to have a King yea hereupon they were so ready to swagger with God and his Samuel They had learn'd of Nature and experience the best form of Government 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but they would have had him of their own As God said of the great Prophet so they are glad to hear him say of their King De numero fratrum tuorum From among thy brethren Propriety is in nothing more pleasing then in matter of Government It is a joy to think we have a King of our own our own blood our own Religion according to the motto of our Princes Ich Dicn Otherwise next to Anarchy is Heterarchy neither do we find much difference betwixt having no head at all and having another mans head on our shoulders The Bees love to have a King but one that is of their own hive If an Hornet
give wilful provocations of this publick revenge by gross open intolerable injuries as Hanun did to David such are incroachments upon their neighbour-territories violating the just covenants of league and commerce by main violences if fourthly they refuse to give just satisfaction where they have unjustly provoked as the Benjamites in case of the Sodomitical villany of their Gibeah Where all where any of these are found well may we brand that people with delight in warre And since they will needs delight in warre God shall fit them accordingly With the froward thou shalt shew thy self froward Ps 18. 26. He shall delight in warring against them He shall rouze up himself as a Giant refreshed with new wine Therefore thus saith the Lord of Hoasts the mighty one of Israel Ah I will ease me of my adversaries and revenge me of mine enemies Es 1. 24. These are the Enemies The Defeat follows Rebuke and scatter The two first though bad enough must be rebuked the last must be scattered All Gods enemies may not be to us alike neither aequè nor aqualiter Some are Calves simple though violent some others are Bulls fierce and furious some other Lions from among the reeds ravenous and devouring all these though cruel yet perhaps are not malicious an increpa is enough for them Saul was one of these wild Buls breathing out threatnings against the Church and tossing upon his horn many worthy Christians had it not been pity he had been destroyed in that height of his rage an increpation brought him home God had never such a Champion Now certamen bonum certavi I have fought a good fight saith he justly of himself 2 Tim. 4. 7. This increpa then is Discountenance them dishearten them discomfit them disband them Put them down O Lord and let them know they are but men humble them to the very dust but not to the dust of death to correction as Habacuc speaketh not to a full destruction onely till they humbly bring pieces of silver till they come in with the tributes of peacefull submission of just satisfaction The end of all just was is Peace As we are first bidden to inquire of Abel ere we inferre it offeres ei pacem Deut. 20. 10. so when we hear of Abel we must stint it Warre to the State is Physick to the body This is no other then a civil evacuation whether by potion or phlebotomy What is the end of Physick but health when that is once recovered we have done with the Apothecary He wantons away his life foolishly that when he is well will take Physick to make him sick It is far from us to wish the confusion of the ignorant and seduced enemies of God's Church those that follow Absalom with an upright heart No we pity them we pray for them Oh that they would come in with their pieces of silver and tender their humble obediences to the apparent Truth of God and yield to the laws of both Divine and humane Justice Oh that God would perswade Japâ—â—t to dwell in the tents of Sem Father forgive them for they know not what they doe O thou sword of the Lord how long will it be ere thou be quiet put up thy self into thy scabbard rest and be still Jer. 47. 6. But for those other that delight in war Dissipa Domine Scatter them O Lord. Confusion is but too good for them bring them to worse then nothing The perfection and suddenness of this dissipation is expressed emphatically in the beginning of this Psalm by a double Metaphor as smoak before the wind as wax before the fire so scatter them Of all light bodies nothing is more volatile then smoak of all solid none more flitting then wax As wind is to the smoak and fire to the wax so are the Judgements of God to his enemies the wax melteth the smoak vanisheth before them The conceit is too curious of those that make the Gentiles to be smoak who mount up in the opinion of their wisdome and power the Jews wax dropp'd from the honey-comb of their many Divine priviledges No all are both smoak and wax Even so do thou scatter them O Lord and be not merciful to them that offend on malicious wickedness Two thoughts onely remain now for us The first that it must be God onely who must rebuke and scatter The second that it is our Prayer onely that must obtain from God this rebuke this dissipation Both which when I have touched a little I shall put an end to this exercise of your patient Devotion It is God onely that must doe it for vain is the help of man And how easie is it for the Almighty to still the enemy and avenger They are as a potters vessel to his iron Scepter as the thorns or wax to his fire as chaff or smoak to his wind To our weakness the opposite powers seem strong and unconquerable the Canaanitish was reach up to Heaven and who can stand before the sons of Anak When we see their Bulwarks we would think they roll Pelion upon Ossa with the old Giants when we see their Towers we would think they would scale Heaven with the builders of Babel when we see their Mines we would think they would blow up the earth Let the wind of Gods Power but breath upon them they vanish as smoak let the fire of his wrath but look upon them they melt as wax Tyrannous Aegypt had long made slaves of God's people and now will make slaughter of them following them armed at the heels into the chanel of the Sea Stand still and see the Salvation of the Lord for the Aegyptians which you have seen to day ye shall see no more for ever Exod. 14. 13. The great Hoast of proud Benhadad will carry away all Samaria in their pockets for pin-dust Ere long ye shall see their haughtie King come in haltred and prostrate Vaunting Sennacherib comes crowing over poor Jerusalem and he will lend them two thousand horses if they can set riders on them and scorns their King and defies their God Stay but till morning all his hundred fourscore and five thousand shall be dead corpses Vain fools What is a finite power in the hands of an infinite Where there is an equality of force there may be hard tugging but where brass meets with clay how can that brittle stuff escape unshattered Let this cool your courages and pull down your plumes O ye insolent enemies of God When ye look to your own sword there is no rule with you Mihi perfacile est c. It is easie for me saith Uldes in the story to destroy all the earth that the Sun looks upon but when God takes you to task what toyes what nothings ye are Behold we come against you in the Name of the Lord of Hoasts It is he that shall rebuke and scatter you He will doe it but he will doe it upon our Prayers Not that our poor Petitions can put mercy into God
place here not Probabilities How powerfully doth he convince the unbelieving Jews of Ephesus and Rome out of Moses and the Prophets Act. 28. 23. This this is the weapon whereby our grand Captain vanquished the great challenger of the bottomless pit Scriptum est All other blades are but Lead to this Steel Councils Fathers Histories are good helps but ad pompam rather then ad pugnam These Scriptures are they whereof S. Augustin justly Hac fundamenta haec firmamenta What do we multiply volumes and endlesly go about the bush That of Tertullian is most certain Aufer ab haereticis quaecunque Ethnici sapiunt ut de Scripturis solis questiones suas sistant stare non poterunt Take from Hereticks what they borrow of Pagans and hold them close to the trial by the Scriptures alone they cannot stand Bring but this fire to the wildest beast his eye will not indure it he must run away from it for these kind of creatures are all as that Father Lucifugae Scripturarum What worlds of volumes had been spared how infinite distractions of weak and wavering souls had been prevented if we had confined our selves to S. Paul's fence Our third rule must be To redouble our strokes uncessantly unweariably not giving breath to the beast not fainting for want of our own S. Paul laid on three months together in the Synagogue of Ephesus two years more in the school of Tyrannus Act. 19. 8 9. and accordingly gives us our charge State ergo Stand close to it Eph. 6. 14. If when we have dealt some few unsuccessful blows we throw up the bucklers or lean upon our pummels we lose our life with the day I could as the case might stand easily be of the minde of that souldier who when he heard Xenophantus by his musick stirring up Alexander to the fight wisht rather to hear a Musician that could take him off but since we have to doe with an enemy which nec victor nec victus novit quiescere as Annibal said of Marcellus there is no way but to fight it out Ye have not yet resisted unto blood faith the Apostle If need be we must do so Serpens sit is ardor arena Dulcia virtuti as he said Oh be constant to your own holy resolutions if ever ye look for an happy victory Well did the dying Prophet chide the King of Israel that he struck but thrice Thou shouldst have smitten often then thou shouldst have smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it 2 Kings 13. 19. Let neither buggs of fear nor suppalpations of favour weaken your hands from laying load upon the beast of Errour Fight zealously fight indefatigably and prevail In the battails of Christ as S. Chrysostome observes the issue is so assured that the crown goes before the victory but when ye once have it hold fast that you have that no man take your crown Revel 3. 11. Our last rule is To know our distance and where we find invincible resistance to come off fairly So did S. Paul in the Theatre of the Ephesian Synagogue when after three months disputation some were hardened and in stead of believing blasphemed the way of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he departed and separated Act. 19. 9. Those beasts we cannot master we must give up If Babylon will not be cur'd she must be left to her self To apply this to the Theatre of the times There is no challenge either more frequent or more heavy then that we have left that Church which they miscal our Mother Had we gone from her that is gone from her self we had but followed her in leaving her had we left her that hath blasphemed her forsaken truth we had but followed S. Paul but now let the world know we have not left her she hath abandon'd us Non fugimus sed fugamur as Casaubon cites from our late Learned Soveraign It is her violence not our choice that hath excluded us Because we could not but leave her errors she hath ejected our persons This schism shall one day before that great Tribunal of Heaven fall heavily upon those perverse spirits that had rather rend the Church then want their will and can be content to sacrifice both Truth and Peace together with millions of Souls to their own ambition Let this suffice for the beasts of Opinion which are Errours Turn your eyes now if you please to S. Paul's fight with the beast of Practice Vices And in the first place see how the Ephesian beasts fought with S. Paul Act. 19. 28 29. Ye find them as so many enraged Bulls scraping the earth with their feet and digging it with their horns snuffing up the aire with their raised nostrils rushing furiously into the Theatre tossing up Gaius and Paul's companions into the aire and with an impetuous violence carrying all before them This hath been ever the manner of wickedness to be headstrong in the pursuit of it's own courses impatient of opposition cruel in revenge of the opposers Doth Eliah cry out against the murders and Idolatries of Ahab the beast hath him in chace for his life and earths him in his cave Doth Michaiah cross the designes of the false Prophets in the expedition of Ramoth the beast with the iron-horns pusheth him in the face and beats him down into the dungeon Doth John Baptist bend his Non licet against Herodias's incest the beast flies in his throat and with one grasp tears his head from his shoulders So it ever was so it ever will be Am I become your enemy because I tell you the truth saith S. Paul Stetisse lego judicandos Apostolos saith Bernard If still therefore heart-burnings and malicious censures attend the faithful delivery of Gods sacred errand the Beast is like it self Sagittant in obscura luna rectos corde as St. Chrysostome reads that in the Psalm In the mean time what doth S. Paul Doth he give in doth he give out No here was still 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ephes 6. 20. He traverses his ground indeed for his advantage from Ephesus to Macedonia but still he galls the beast where-ever he is as Idolaters so all sorts of flagitious sinners felt the weight of his hand the dint of his stroke all which wheresoever he finds them he impartially pierces through with the darts of denounced Judgement that is the verbum asperum and sagitta volans in Psal 91. the curse of the Law Gal. 3. 13. See how he wouuds those other beasts of Ephesus No whoremonger nor unclean person nor covetous man which is an Idolater hath any inheritance in the Kingdome of God Ephes 5. 5. and For these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience verse 6. Tribulation and anguish to every soul that doth evil In flaming fire rendring vengeance to those that know not God and obey him not And why do not we in imitation of this noble champion of God strike through the loyns of wickedness whereever we finde it that if
as out of the right apprehension of these differences my Reader shall evidently see the vanity of this cavill and finde cause to bless God fox the safety of his station in so pregnant and undeceivable a truth For me I shame not to profess that I have passed my most and best hours in quiet Meditations wherein I needed not bend mine edge against any Adversary but Satan and mine own corruptions These controversary points I have rather crost in my way then taken along with me Neither am I ignorant what incomparably-clear beams in this kind some of the worthy Lights of our Church have cast abroad into all eyes to the admiration of present and future times no corner of truth hath lyen unsearch'd no plea unargued the wit of man cannot make any essential additions either to our proofs or answers But as in the most perfect discovery where Lands and Rivers are specially described there may be some small obscure inlets reserved for the notice of following experience so is it in the business of these sacred quarrels that brain is very unhappy which meets not with some traverse of discourse more then it hath borrowed from anothers Pen. Besides which having faln upon a method and manner of Tractation which might be of use to plain understandings the familiarity whereof promised to contribute not a little to the information and setling of weaker Souls I might not hide it from you to whose common good I have gladly resolved to sacrifice my self Let it be taken with the same construction of love wherewith it is tendred And that you may improve this and all other my following labours to a sensible advantage give me leave to impart my self to you a little in this short and free Preamble It is a large body I know and full of ordinate variety to which I How direct my words Let me a while in these lines sever them whom I would never abide really disjoined Ye my dear fellow-labourers as my immediate Charge may well challenge the first place It is no small joy to me to expect so able hands upon whom I may comfortably unload the weight of this my spiritual care If Fame do not over-speak you there are not many soils that yield either so frequent Flocks or better fed Goe on happily in these high steps of true Blessedness and save your selves and others To which purpose let me commend to you according to the sweet experience of a greater Shepherd two main helps of our Sacred trade first the tender Pastures and secondly the still Waters By the one I mean an inuring of our people to the principles of wholesome Doctrine by the other an immunitie from all Faction and disturbance of the publick peace It was the observation of the learnedst King that ever sate hitherto on the English Throne that the cause of the miscarriage of our People into Popery and other Errours was their ungroundedness in the points of Catechism How should those Souls be but carried about with every winde of Doctrine that are not well ballasted with solid informations Whence it was that his said late Majestie of happy memory gave publick order for bestowing the latter part of Gods Day in familiar Catechising then which nothing could be devised more necessary and behoveful to the Souls of men It was the Ignorance and ill-disposedness of some cavillers that taxed this course as prejudicial to Preachings since in truth the most useful of all Preaching is Catechetical This layes the Grounds the other raiseth the Walls and Roof this informs the Judgment that stirs up the Affections What good use is there of those Affections that run before the Judgment or of those walls that want a Foundation For my part I have spent the greater half of my life in this station of our holy service I thank God not unpainfully not unprofitably But there is no one thing whereof I repent so much as not to have bestowed more hours in this publick Exercise of Catechism in regard whereof I could quarrel with my very Sermons and wish that a great part of them had been exchanged for this Preaching conference Those other Divine Discourses enrich the Brain and the Tongue this settles the Heart those other are but the descants to this plain-song Contemn it not my Brethren for the easie and noted homeliness the most excellent and beneficial things are most familiar What can be more obvious then Light Aire Fire Water Let him that can live without these despise their commonness Rather as we make so much more use of the Divine bounty in these ordinary benefits so let as the more gladly improve these ready and facile helps to the Salvation of many Souls the neglect whereof breeds instability of Judgment misprision of necessary Truths fashionableness of profession frothiness of discourse obnoxiousness to all Errour and Seduction And if any of our people loath this Manna because they may gather it from under their Feet let not their palates be humour'd in this wanton nauseation They are worthy to fast that are weary of the bread of Angels And if herein we be curious to satisfie their roving appetite our favour shall be no better then injurious So we have seen an undiscreet School-master whiles he affects the thanks of an over-weening Parent marre the progress of a forward child by raising him to an higher form and Authour ere he have well learned his first rules whence follows an empty ostentation and a late disappointment our fidelity and care of profit must teach us to drive at the most sure and universal good which shall undoubtedly be best attained by these safe and needful ground-works From these tender Pastures let me leade you and you others to the still Waters Zeal in the Soul is as natural heat in the body there is no life of Religion without it But as the kindliest heat if it be not tempered with a due equality of moisture wastes it self and the body so doth Zeal if it be not moderated with discretion and charitable care of the common good It is hard to be too vehement in contending for main and evident truths but litigious and immaterial verities may soon be over-striven for in the prosecution whereof I have oft lamented to see how heedless too many have been of the publick welfare whiles in seeking for one scruple of truth they have not cared to spend a whole pound-weight of precious Peace The Church of England in whose Motherhood we have all just cause to pride our selves hath in much Wisdom and Piety delivered her judgement concerning all necessary points of Religion in so compleat a body of Divinity as all hearts may rest in These we reade these we write under as professing not their truth onely but their sufficiency also The voice of God our Father in his Scriptures and out of these the voice of the Church our Mother in her Articles is that which must both guide and settle our resolutions Whatsoever is besides these
is but either private or unnecessary and uncertain Oh that whiles we sweat and bleed for the maintenance of these oracular Truths we could be perswaded to remit of our Heat in the pursuit of Opinions These these are they that distract the Church violate our peace scandalize the weak advantage our enemies Fire upon the Hearth warms the Body but if it be misplaced burns the House My brethren let us be Zealous for our God every hearty Christian will pour Oyle and not Water upon this holy flame But let us take heed lest a blind self-love stiffe prejudice and factious partiality impose upon us in stead of the causes of God Let us be suspicious of all New Verities and careless of all unprofitable and let us hate to think our selves either wiser then the Church or better then our Superiours And if any man think that he sees further then his fellows in these Theological prospects let his tongue keep the counsel of his eyes left whiles he affects the fame of deeper learning he embroile the Church and raise his glory upon the publick ruines And ye worthy Christans whose Souls God hath entrusted with our spiritual Guardianship be ye alike minded with your Teachers The motion of their tongues lies much in your eares your modest desires of receiving needful and wholesome Truths shall avoid their labour after frivolous and quarrelsome Curiosities God hath blessed you with the reputation of a wise and knowing people In these Divine matters let a meek Sobriety set bounds to your inquiries Take up your time and hearts with Christ and Him crucified with those essential Truths which are necessary to Salvation leave all curious disquisitions to the Schools and say of those Problems as the Philosopher did of the Athenian shops How many things are here that we have no need of Take the nearest cut you can ye shall find it a side-way to Heaven ye need not lengthen it with undue circuitions I am deceived if as the times are ye shall not find work enough to bear up against the oppositions of professed hostility It is not for us to squander our thoughts and hours upon useless janglings wherewith if we suffer our selves to be still taken up Satan shall deal with us like some crafty Cheater who whiles he holds us at gaze with tricks of jugling picks our pockets Dear Brethren whatever become of these worthless driblets be sure to look well to the free-hold of your Salvation Errour is not more busie then subtile Superstition never wanted sweet insinuations make sure work against these plausible dangers Suffer not your selves to be drawn into the net by the common stale of the Church Know that outward Visibility may too well stand with an utter exclusion from Salvation Salvation consists not in a formalitie of Profession but in a Soundness of Belief A true body may be full of mortall diseases So is the Roman Church of this day whom we have long pitied and labored to cure in vain If she will not be healed by us let us not be infected by her Let us be no less jealous of her contagion then she is of our remedies Hold fast that precious Truth which hath been long taught you by faithful Pastors confirmed by clear evidences of Scriptures evinced by sound Reasons sealed up by the blood of our blessed Martyrs So whiles no man takes away the crown of your constancie ye shall be our Crown and rejoycing in the day of our Lord Jesus to whose all-sufficient Grace I commend you all and vow my self Your common Servant in him whom we all rejoice to serve JOS. EXON The Contents CHAP. I. THE extent of the Differences betwixt the Churches Pag. 375 CHAP. II. The Original of the Differences 376 CHAP. III. The Reformed unjustly charged with Noveltie Heresie Schisme 378 CHAP. IV. The Romane Church guilty of this Schisme 380 CHAP. V. The Newness of the Article of Justification by inherent Righteousness 381 Sect. 2. This Doctrine proved to be against Scripture 383 Sect. 3. Against Reason 384 CHAP. VI. The Newness of the Doctrine of Merit 385 Sect. 2. Against Scripture 386 Sect. 3. Against Reason ibid. CHAP. VII The Newness of the Doctine of Transubstantiation 387 Sect. 2. Against Scripture 389 Sect. 3. Against Reason 390 CHAP. VIII The Newness of the Half-Communion 391 Sect. 2. Against Scripture 392 Sect. 3. Against Reason ibid. CHAP. IX The Newness of Missal Sacrifice 393 Sect. 2. Against Scripture ibid. Sect. 3. Against Reason 394 CHAP. X. The Newness of Image-Worship ibid. Sect. 2. Against Scripture 396 Sect. 3. Against Reason 397 CHAP. XI The Newness of Indulgences and Purgatory ibid. Sect. 2. Against Scripture 399 Sect. 3. Against Reason 400 CHAP. XII The Newness of Divine Service in an unknown tongue ibid. Sect. 2. Against Scripture 402 Sect. 3. Against Reason ibid. CHAP. XIII The Newness of a full forced Sacramental Confession 403 Sect. 2. Not warranted by Scripture 404 Sect. 3. Against Reason ibid. Sect. 4. The Novelty of Absolution before Satisfaction 405 CHAP. XIV The Newness of the Romish Invocation of Saints ibid. Sect. 2. Against Scripture 406 Sect. 3. Against Reason 407 CHAP. XV. The Newness of Seven Sacraments 408 Sect. 2. Besides Scripture 409 Sect. 3. Against Reason ibid. CHAP. XVI The Newness of the Romish Doctrine of Traditions ibid. Sect. 2. Against Scripture 411 Sect. 3. Against Reason 412 CHAP. XVII The Newness of the universal Headship of the Bishop of Rome ibid. Sect. 2. The Newness of challenged Infallibility 414 Sect. 3. The Newness of the Popes Superiorities to Councils 415 Sect. 4. The new presumption of Papal Dispensation ibid. Sect. 5. The new challenge of popes domineering over Kings and Emperours 416 CHAP. XVIII The Epilogue both of Exhortation and Apologie 417 THE OLD RELIGION CHAP. I. The extent of the Differences betwixt the Churches THE first blessing that I daily beg of my God for his Church is our Saviours Legacy Peace that sweet Peace which in the very name of it comprehends all happiness both of estate and disposition As that Mountain whereon Christ ascended though it abounded with Palms and Pines and Myrtles yet it carried onely the name of Olives which have been an ancient Embleme of Peace Other Graces are for the Beauty of the Church this for the Health and Life of it For howsoever even Wasps have their Combes and Hereticks their Assemblies as Tertullian so as all are not of the Church that have Peace yet so essential is it to the Church in S. Chrysostome's opinion that the very name of the Church implies a consent and concord No marvel then if the Church labouring here below make it her daily suit to her glorious Bridegroom in Heaven Da pacem Give Peace in our time O Lord. The means of which happiness are soon seen not so soon attained even that which Hierome hath to his Ruffinus Una fides Let our Belief-be but one and our hearts will be but
one But since as Erasmus hath too truly observed there is nothing so happy in these humane things wherein there are not some intermixtures of distemper and Saint Paul hath told us there must be Heresies and the Spouse in Solomon's Song compares her blessed Husband to a yong Hart upon the Mountain of Bether that is Division yea rather as under Gensericus and his Vandals the Christian Temples flamed higher then the Towns so for the space of these last hundred years there hath been more combustion in the Church then in the Civil State my next wish is that if differences in Religion cannot be avoided yet that they might be rightly judged of and be but taken as they are Neither can I but mourn and bleed to see how miserably the World is abused on all hands with prejudice in this kind Whiles the adverse part brands us with unjust censures and with loud clamours cries us down for Hereticks on the other side some of ours do so slight the Errours of the Romane Church as if they were not worth our Contention as if our Martyrs had been rash and our quarrels trifling others again do so aggravate them as if we could never be at enough defiance with their Opinions nor at enough distance from their Communion All these three are dangerous extremities the two former whereof shall if my hopes fail me not in this whole Discourse be sufficiently convinced wherein as we shall fully clear our selves from that hateful slander of Heresie or Schisme so we shall leave upon the Church of Rome an unavoidable imputation of many no less foul and enormous then novel Errours to the stopping of the mouths of those Adiaphorists whereof Melanchthon seems to have long agoe prophesied Metuendum est c. It is to be feared saith he that in the last Age of the World this errour will reign amongst men that either Religions are nothing or differ onely in words The third comes now in our way That 〈◊〉 Laertius speaks of Menedemus that in disputing his very ears would sparkâ—â—â— is true of many of ours whose zeal transports them to such a detestation of the Romane Church as if it were all Errour no Church affecting nothing more then an utter opposition to their Doctrine and Ceremony because theirs like as Maldonat professeth to mislike and avoid many fair interpretations not as false but as Calvin's These men have not learned this in S. Augustine's School who tels us that it was the rule of the Fathers as well before Cyprian and Agrippinus as since that whatsoever they found in any Schism or Heresie warrantable and holy that they allowed for its own worth and did not refuse it for the abettors Neither for the chaff do we leave the floor of God neither for the bad Fishes do we break his nets Rather as the Priests of Mercurie had wont to say when they eat their Figs and Honey 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. All truth is sweet it is indeed Gods not ours wheresoever it is found the Kings Coin is current though it be found in any impure Chanel For this particular they have not well heeded that charitable profession of zealous Luther Nos fatemur c. We profess saith he that under the Papacy there is much Christian good yea all c. I say moreover that under the Papacy is true Christianity yea the very kernel of Christianity c. No man I trust will fear that fervent spirits too much excess of indulgence under the Papacy may be as much good as it self is evil Neither do we censure that Church for what it hath not but for what it hath Fundamental truth is like that Maronaean wine which if it be mixed with twenty times so much water holds his strength The Sepulchre of Christ was overwhelmed by the Pagans with earth and rubbish and more then so over it they built a Temple to their impure Venus yet still in spight of malice there was the Sepulchre of Christ And it is a ruled case of Papinian that a Sacred place loseth not the Holiness with the demolished wals No more doth the Romane lose the claim of a true visible Church by her manifold and deplorable corruptions her unsoundness is not less apparent then her being If she were once the Spouse of Christ and her Adulteries are known yet the Divorce is not sued out CHAP. II. The Original of the Differences IT is too true that those two main Elements of evil as Timon called them Ambition and Covetousness which Bernard professes were the great Masters of that Clergie in his times having palpably corrupted the Christian World both in doctrine and manners gave just cause of scandal and complaint to godly mindes which though long smothered at last brake forth into publick contestation augmented by the fury of those guilty defendants which loved their reputation more then Peace But yet so as the Complainants ever professed a joynt allowance of those Fundamental Truths which descried themselves by their bright lustre in the worst of that confusion as not willing that God should lose any thing by the wrongs of men or that men should lose any thing by the envy of that evil spirit which had taken the advantage of the publick sleep for his Tares Shortly then according to the prayers and predictions of many Holy Christians God would have his Church reformed How shall it be done Licentious courses as Seneca wisely have sometimes been amended by correction and fear never of themselves As therefore their own President was stirred up in the Council of Trent to cry out of their corruption of Discipline so was the Spirit of Luther somewhat before that stirred up to tax their corruption of Doctrine But as all beginnings are timorous how calmly did he enter and with what submiss Supplications did he sue for redress I come to you saith he most holy Father and humbly prostrate before you beseech you that if it be possible you would be pleased to set your helping hand to the work Intreaties prevail nothing the whiles the importune insolence of Eckius and the undiscreet carriage of Cajetan as Luther there professes forced him to a publick opposition At last as sometimes even Poisons turn Medicinal the furious prosecution of abused Authority increased the Zeal of Truth like as the repercussion of the flame intends it more and as Zeal grew in the Plaintif so did Rage in the Defendant so as now that was verified of Tertullian A primordio c. From the beginning Righteousness suffers violence and no sooner did God begin to be worshipped but Religion was attended with Envie The masters of the Pythonisse are angry to part with a gainful though evil guest Am I become your enemy because I told you the truth saith Saint Paul yet that truth is not more unwelcome then successful For as the breath of
a man that hath chewed Saffron discolours a Painted face so this blunt sincerity shamed the glorious falshood of Superstition The proud offenders impatient of reproof try what fire and faggot can doe for them and now according to the old word suppressed spirits gather more authority as the Egyptian violence rather addeth to God's Israel Insomuch as Erasmus could tell the Rector of Lovan that by burning Luther's Books they might rid him from the Libraries of men not from their Hearts The ventilation of these points diffused them to the knowledge of the World and now upon serious scanning it came to this as that Honour of Rotterdam professeth Non defuisse that there wanted not great Divines which durst confidently affirm that there was nothing in Luther which might not be defended by good and allowed Authours Nothing doth so whet the edge of wit as contradiction Now he who at first like the blind man in the Gospel it is Beza's comparison saw men like trees upon more clear light sees and wonders at those gross Superstitions and Tyrannies wherewith the Church of God had been long abused And now as the first Hue and Cry raiseth a whole Countrie the World was awakened with the noise and startling up saw and stood amazed to see it s own Slavery and besottedness Mean while that God who cannot be wanting to himself raiseth up Abettors to his Truth The contention grows Books flie abroad on both parts Straight Buls bellow from Rome nothing but Death and Damnation to the opposites Excommunications are thundred out from their Capitoline powers against all the partakers of this so called Heresie the flashes of publick Anathemas strike them down to Hell The condemned reprovers stand upon their own integrity call Heaven and Earth to record how justly they have complained how unjustly they are censured in large Volumes defending their innocence and challenging an undeniable part in the true visible Church of God from which they are pretended to be ejected appeal next to the Tribunal of Heaven to the sentence of a free general Council for their right Profer is made at last of a Synod at Trent but neither free nor general nor such as would afford after all semblances either safety of access or possibility of indifferency That partial meeting as it was prompted to speak condemns us unheard right so as Ruffinus reports it in that case of Athanasius Judicandi potestas c. The power of judging was in the accusers contrary to the rule of their own Law Non debet c. The same party may not be the Judge Accuser Witness contrary to that just rule of Theodericus reported by Cassiodore Sententia c. The sentence that is given in the absence of the parties is of no moment We are still where we were opposing suffering in these terms we stand What shall we say then if men would either not have deserved or have patiently indured reproof this breach had never been Wo be to the men by whom this offence cometh For us that rule of Saint Bernard shall clearly acquit us before God and his Angels Cam carpuntur vitia c. When faults are taxed and scandal grows he is the cause of the scandal who did that which was worthy to be reproved not he that reproved the ill-doer CHAP. III. The Reformed unjustly charged with Novelty Heresie Schisme BE it therefore known to all the world that our Church is onely Reformed or Repaired not made new there is not one Stone of a new foundation laid by us yea the old Wals stand still onely the overcasting of those ancient stones with the untempered morter of new inventions displeaseth us Plainly set aside the Corruptions and the Church is the same And what are these Corruptions but unsound adjections to the Ancient structure of Religion These we cannot but oppose and are therefore unjustly and imperiously ejected Hence it is that ours is by the opposite styled an Ablative or Negative Religion forsomuch as we joyn with all true Christians in all affirmative positions of ancient Faith onely standing upon the denial of some late and undue additaments to the Christian belief Or if those Additions be reckoned for ruines it is a sure Rule which Durandus gives concerning Material Churches appliable to the Spiritual That if the Wall be decayed not at once but successively it is judged still the same Church and upon reparation not to be re-consecrated but onely reconciled Well therefore may those mouths stop themselves which loudly call for the names of the Professors of our Faith in all succession of times till Luther look'd forth into the World Had we gone about to broach any new positive Truths unseen unheard of former times well and justly might they challenge us for a deduction of this line of Doctrine from a pedigree of Predecessours Now that we onely disclaim their superfluous and novel opinions and practices which have been by degrees thrust upon the Church of God retaining inviolably all former Articles of Christian Faith how idle is this plea how worthy of hissing out Who sees not now that all we need to doe is but to shew that all those points which we cry down in the Romane Church are such as carry in them a manifest brand of Newness and Absurdity This proof will clearly justifie our refusal Let them see how they shall once before the awful Tribunal of our last Judge justifie their uncharitableness who cease not upon this our refusal to eject and condemn us The Church of Rome is sick ingenuous Cassander confesseth so Nec inficior c. I deny not saith he that the Romane Church is not a little changed from her ancient beauty and brightness and that she is deformed with many diseases and vicious distempers Bernard tells us how it must be dieted profitable though unpleasing medicines must be poured into the mouth of it Luther and his associates did this office as Erasmus acknowledgeth Lutherus porrexit Luther saith he gave the World a potion violent and bitter whatever it were I wish it may breed some good health in the body of Christian people so miserably foul with all kinds of evils Never did Luther mean to take away the life of that Church but the sickness wherein as Socrates answered to his Judges surely he deserved recompence in stead of rage For as S. Ambrose worthily Dulcior est Sweeter is a religious chastisement then a smoothing remission This that was meant to the Churches health proves the Physicians disease so did the bitterness of our wholsome draughts offend that we are beaten out of doors neither did we run from that Church but are driven away as our late Soveraign professeth by Casaubon's hand We know that of Cyrill is a true word Those which sever themselves from the Church and communion are the enemies of God and friends of
Devils and that which Dionysius said to Novatus Any thing must rather be born then that we should rend the Church of God Far far was it from our thoughts to teare the seamless coat or with this precious Oile of Truth to break the Churches head We found just faults else let us be guilty of this disturbance If now Choler unjustly exasperated with an wholesome reprehension have broken forth into a furious persecution of the gainsayers the sin is not ours if we have defended our innocence with blows the sin is not ours Let us never prosper in our good Cause if all the water of Tyber can wash off the blood of many thousand Christian Souls that hath been shed in this quarrel from the hands of the Romish Prelacie Surely as it was observed of olde that none of the Tribe of Levi were the professed followers of our Saviour so it is too easy to observe that of late times this Tribe hath exercised the bitterest enmity upon the followers of Christ Suppose we had offended in the undiscreet managing of a just reproof it is a true rule of Erasmus that generous spirits would be reclaimed by teaching not by compulsion and as Alipius wisely to his Augustine Heed must be taken lest whiles we labour to redress a doubtful complaint we make greater wounds then we find Oh how happy had it been for Gods Church if this care had found any place in the hearts of her Governours who regarding more the entire preservation of their own Honour then Truth and Peace were all in the harsh language of warre 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 smite kill burn persecute Had they been but half so charitable to their modern reprovers as they profess they are to the fore-going how had the Church florished in an uninterrupted Unity In the old Catholick Writers say they we bear with many Errours we extenuate and excuse them we finde shifts to put them off and devise some commodious senses for them Guiltiness which is the ground of this favour works the quite contrary courses against us Alas how are our Writings racked and wrested to envious senses how misconstrued how perverted and made to speak odiously on purpose to work distast to enlarge quarrel to draw on the deepest censures Wo is me this cruel uncharitableness is it that hath brought this miserable calamity upon distracted Christendome Surely as the ashes of the burning Mountain Vesuvius being dispersed far and wide bred a grievous Pestilence in the Regions round about so the ashes that flie from these unkindly flames of discord have bred a woful infection and death of Souls through the whole Christian world CHAP. IV. The Church of Rome guilty of this Schisme IT is confessed by the President of the Tridentine Council that the depravation of the discipline and manners of the Romane Church was the chief cause and original of these dissentions Let us cast our eyes upon the Doctrine and we shall no less finde the guilt of this fearful Schism to fall heavily upon the same heads For first to lay a sure ground Nothing can be more plain then that the Romane is a particular Church as the Fathers of Basil well distinguish it not the universal though we take in the Churches of her subordination or correspondence This truth we might make good by authority if our very senses did not save us the labour Secondly No particular Church to say nothing of the universal since the Apostolick times can have power to make a Fundamental point of Faith It may explain or declare it cannot create Articles Thirdly Onely an errour against a point of Faith is Heresie Fourthly Those Points wherein we differ from the Romanists are they which onely the Church of Rome hath made Fundamental and of Faith Fifthly The Reformed therefore being by that Church illegally condemned for those Points are not Hereticks He is is properly an Heretick saith Hosius who being convicted in his own judgment doth of his own accord cast himself out of the Church For us we are neither convicted in our own judgment nor in the lawful judgment of others we have not willingly cast our selves out of the Church but however we are said to be violently ejected by the undue sentence of malice hold our selves close to the bosome of the true Spouse of Christ never to be removed as far therefore from Heresie as Charity is from our Censurers Only we stand convicted by the doom of good Pope Boniface or Sylvester Prierius Quicunque non c. Whosoever doth not rely himself upon the Doctrine of the Romane Church and of the Bishop of Rome as the infallible rule of Faith from which even the Scripture it self receives her force he is an Heretick Whence follows that the Church of Rome condemning and ejecting those for Hereticks which are not is the Authour of this woful breach in the Church of God I shall therefore I hope abundantly satisfie all wise and indifferent Readers if I shall shew that those Points which we refuse and oppose are no other then such as by the confessions of ingenuous Authors of the Roman part have been besides their inward falsities manifest upstarts lately obtruded upon the Church such as our ancient Progenitours in many hundreds of successions either knew not or received not into their Belief and yet both lived and dyed worthy Christians Surely it was but a just speech of S. Bernard and that which might become the mouth of any Pope or Council Ego si peregrinum c. If I shall offer to bring in any strange opinion it is my sin It was the wise Ordinance of the Thurians as Diodorus Siculus reports that he who would bring in any new Law amongst them to the prejudice of the old should come with an Halter about his neck into the assembly and there either make good his project or dy For however in humane constitutions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. the later orders are stronger then the former yet in Divinity Primum verum The first is true as Tertullian's rule is the old way is the good way according to the Prophet Here we hold us and because we dare not make more Articles then our Creeds nor more sins then our Ten Commandements we are indignely cast out Let us therefore address our selves roundly to our promised task and make good the Novelty and Unreasonableness of those Points we have rejected Out of too many Controversies disputed betwixt us we select only some principal and out of infinite varieties of evidence some few irrefragable testimonies CHAP. V. The Newness of the Article of Justification by inherent Righteousness TO begin with Justification The Tridentine Fathers in their seven moneths debating of this point have so cunningly set their words that the Errour which they would establish might seem to be either hid or shifted yet at the last they so far declare themselves as to
Provincial Council of Colen shall serve for all Bellarmine himself grants them herein ours and they are worth our entertaining That Book is commended by Cassander as marvellously approved by all the learned Divines of Italy and France as that which notably sets forth the sum of the judgment of the Ancients concerning this and other Points of Christian Religion Nos dicimus c. We say that a man doth then receive the gift of Justification by Faith when being terrified and humbled by repentance he is again raised up by Faith believing that his sins are forgiven him for the Merits of Christ who hath promised Remision of sins to those that believe in him and when he feels in himself new desires so as detesting evil and resisting the infirmity of his flesh he is inwardly inkindled to an endeavour of good although this desire of his be not yet perfect Thus they in the voice of all Antiquity and the then present Church Onely the late Council of Trent hath created this Opinion of Justification a Point of Faith Sect. 2. The Errour hereof against Scripture YET if age were all the quarrel it were but light For though Newness in Divine Truths is a just cause of suspicion yet we do not so shut the hand of our munificent God that he cannot bestow upon his Church new Illuminations in some parcels of formerly-hidden Verities It is the charge both of their Canus and Cajetan that no man should detest a new sense of Scripture for this that it differs from the ancient Doctors for God hath not say they tied exposition of Scripture to their senses Yea if we may believe Salmeron the latter Divines are so much more quick-sighted they like the Dwarf sitting on the Giants shoulder overlook him that is far taller then themselves This Position of the Romane Church is not more new then faulty Not so much Novelty as Truth convinceth Heresies as Tertullian We had been silent if we had not found this Point besides the lateness erroneous erroneous both against Scripture and Reason Against Scripture which every where teacheth as on the one side the imperfection of our Inherent Righteousness so on the other our perfect Justification by the Imputed Righteousness of our Saviour brought home to us by Faith The former Job saw from his dunghil How should a man be justified before God If he will contend with him he cannot answer one of a thousand Whence it is that wise Solomon asks Who can say My heart is clean I am pure from sin And himself answers There is not a just man upon earth which doth good and sinneth not A Truth which besides his experience he had learned of his Father David who could say Enter not into Judgement with thy Servant though a man after God's own Heart for in thy sight shall no man living be justified and If thou Lord shouldst mark iniquities O Lord who shall stand For we are all as an unclean thing we saith the Prophet Esay including even himself and all our Righteousness are as filthy rags And was it any better with the best Saints under the Gospel I see saith the chosen Vessel in my members another law warring against the law of my minde and leading me captive to the law of sin which is in my members So as In many things we sin all And If we say that we have no sin we do but deceive our selves and there is no truth in us The latter is the summe of Saint Paul's Sermon at Antioch Be it known unto you men and brethren that through this Man is preached to you forgiveness of sins and by him all that believe are justified They are justified but how Freely by his Grace What Grace Inherent in us and working by us No By Grace are ye saved through Faith and that not of your selves it is the gift of God Not of works lest any man should boast Works are ours but this is Righteousness of God which is by the faith of Jesus Christ to all them that believe And how doth this become ours By his gracious imputation Not to him that worketh but believeth in him who justifieth the wicked is his faith imputed for righteousness Lo it is not the Act not the Habit of Faith that justifieth it is he that justifies the wicked whom our Faith makes ours and our sin his He was made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him Lo so were we made his Righteousness as he was made our sin Imputation doth both it is that which enfeoffes our sins upon Christ and us in his Righteousness which both covers and redresses the imperfection of ours That distinction is clear and full That I may be found in him not having mine own righteousness which is of the Law but that which is through the Faith of Christ the righteousness which is of God by Faith S. Paul was a great Saint he had a Righteousness of his own not as a Pharisee onely but as an Apostle but that which he dares not trust to but forsakes and cleaves to God not that essential Righteousness which is in God without all relation to us nor that habit of Justice which was remaining in him but that Righteousness which is of God by faith made ours Thus being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ For what can break that peace but our sins and those are remitted For God's elect it is God that justifies And in that Remission is grounded our Reconciliation For God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself not imputing their sins unto them but contrarily imputing to them his own righteousness and their Faith for righteousness We conclude then that a man is justified by faith And Blessed is he to whom the Lord imputes righteousness without works Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins covered Let the vain Sophistry of carnal mindes deceive it self with idle subtilties and seek to elude the plain Truth of God with shifts of wit we bless God for so clear a light and dare cast our Souls upon this sure evidence of God attended with the perpetual attestation of his ancient Church Sect. 3. Against Reason LAstly Reason it self fights against them Nothing can formally make us Just but that which is perfect in it self How should it give what it hath not Now our Inherent Righteousness at the best is in this life defective Nostra siqua est humilis c. Our poor Justice saith Bernard if we have any it is true but it is not pure For how should it be pure where we cannot but be faulty Thus he The challenge is unanswerable To those that say they can keep God's Law let me give S. Hierome's answer to his Ctesiphon Profer quis impleverit Shew me the man that hath done
for the Angel even after his Resurrection says He is not here for he is risen Sect. 3. Transubstantiation against Reason NEver did or can Reason triumph so much over any prodigious Paradox as it doth over this Insomuch as the Patrons of it are fain to disclaim the Sophistry of Reason and to stand upon the suffrages of Faith and the plea of Miracles We are not they who with the Manichees refuse to believe Christ unless he bring Reason we are not they who think to lade the Sea with an egge-shell to fadome the deep Mysteries of Religion with the short reach of natural apprehension We know there are wonders in Divinity fit for our adoration not fit for our comprehending But withall we know that if some Theological Truths be above right Reason yet never any against it for all Verity complies with it self as springing from one and the same Fountain This Opinion therefore we receive not not because it transcends our conceit but because we know it crosseth both true Reason and Faith It implies manifest contradiction in that it referres the same thing to it self in opposite relations so as it may be at once present and absent near and far off below and above It destroies the truth of Christ's humane body in that it ascribes Quantity to it without extension without locality turning the flesh into spirit and bereaving it of all the properties of a true body those properties which as Nicetas truely cannot so much as in thought be separated from the essence of the body insomuch as Cyril can say If the Deitie it self were capable of partition it must be a body and if it were a body it must needs be in a place and have quantity and magnitude and thereupon should not avoid circumscription It gives a false body to the Son of God making that every day of Bread by the power of words which was made once of the substance of the Virgin by the Holy Ghost It so separates Accidents from their Subjects that they not onely can subsist without them but can produce the full effects of Substances so as bare Accidents are capable of Accidents so as of them Substances may be either made or nourished It utterly overthrows which learned Cameron makes the strongest of all reasons the nature of a Sacrament in that it takes away at once the Signe and the Analogie betwixt the Signe and the thing signified The Signe in that it is no more Bread but accidents the Analogie in that it makes the Signe to be the thing signified Lastly it puts into the hands of every Priest power to doe every day a greater Miracle then God did in the Creation of the World for in that the Creator made the Creature but in this the creature daily makes the Creator Since then this Opinion is both New and convinced to be grossly Erroneous by Scripture and Reason justly have we professed our deterstation of it and for that are unjustly ejected CHAP. VIII The Newness of the Half-Communion THE Novelty of the Half-Sacrament or dry Communion delivered to the Laity is so palpable as that the Patrons of it in the presumptuous Council of Constance profess no less Licet Christus c. Although Christ say they after his Supper instituted and administred this venerable Sacrament under both kinds of Bread and Wine c. Licet in primitiva c. Although in the Primitive Church this Sacrament were received by the faithful under both kinds Non obstance c. Yet this custome for the avoiding of some dangers and scandals was upon just reason brought in that Laicks should receive onely under one kinde and those that stubbornly oppose themselves against it shall be ejected and punished as Hereticks Now this Council was but in the year of our Lord God 1453. Yea but these Fathers of Constance however they are bold to controll Christ's Law by Custome yet they say it was consuetudo diutissimè observata a custome very long observed True but the full age of this Diutissimè is openly and freely calculated by Cassander Satis constat It is apparent enough that the Western or Romane Church for a thousand years after Christ in the solemn and ordinary Dispensation of this Sacrament gave both kinds of Bread and Wine to all the members of the Church A point which is manifest by innumerable ancient Testimonies both of Greeks and Latines And this they were induced to doe by the example of Christs institution Quare non temerè c. It is not therefore saith he without cause that most of the best Catholicks and most conversant in the reading of Ecclesiastical Writers are inflamed with an earnest desire of obtaining the Cup of the Lord that the Sacrament may be reduced to that ancient custome and use which hath been for many Ages perpetuated in the universal Church Thus he We need no other Advocate Yea their Vasquez draws it yet lower Negare non c. We cannot deny that in the Latin Church there was the use of both kinds and that it so continued until the dayes of Saint Thomas which was about the year of God 1260. Thus it was in the Romane Church but as for the Greek the World knows it did never but communicate under both kinds These open Confessions spare us the labour of quoting the several testimonies of all Ages else it had been easie to shew how in the Liturgie of Saint Basil and Chrysostome the Priest was wont to pray Vouchsafe O Lord to give us thy Body and thy Blood and by us to thy people how in the order of Rome the Archdeacon taking the Chalice from the Bishops hand confirmeth all the receivers with the blood of our Lord and from Ignatius's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 One Cup distributed to all to have descended along through the clear records of S. Cyprian Hierome Ambrose Augustine Leo Gelafius Paschasius and others to the very time of Hugo and Lombard and our Halensis and to shew how S. Cyprian would not deny the blood of Christ to those that should shed their blood for Christ how Saint Austin with him makes a comparison betwixt the blood of the Legal Sacrifices which might not be eaten and this blood of our Saviours Sacrifice which all must drink But what need allegations to prove a yielded truth So as this halfing of the Sacrament is a mere novelty of Rome and such a one as their own Pope Gelasius sticks not to accuse of no less then Sacriledge Sect. 2. Half-Communion against Scripture NEither shall we need to urge Scripture when it is plainly confessed by the last Councils of Lateran and Trent that this practice varies from Christs institution Yet the Tridentine Fathers have left themselves this evasion that however our Saviour ordained it in both kinds and so delivered it to his Apostles notwithstanding he hath not by any command enjoyned it to
this sense can be no other then figurative and commemorative Is it really propitiatory Without shedding of blood there is no remission If therefore sins be remitted by this Sacrifice it must be in relation to that blood which was shed in his true personal Sacrifice upon the Cross and what relation can be betwixt this and that but of representation and remembrance in which their moderate Cassander fully resteth Sect. 3. Missal Sacrifice against Reason IN Reason there must be in every Sacrifice as Cardinal Bellarmine grants a destruction of the thing offered and shall we say that they make their Saviour to crucifie him again No but to eat him for Consumptio seu manducatio quae fit à Sacerdote The consumption or manducation which is done of the Priest is an essential part of this Sacrifice saith the same Authour For in the whole action of the Masse there is saith he no other real destruction but this Suppose we then the true humane flesh blood and bone of Christ God and man really and corporally made such by this Transubstantiation whether is more horrible to crucisie or to eat it By this rule it is the Priests teeth and not his tongue that makes Christs body a Sacrifice By this rule it shall be hostia an host when it is not a Sacrifice and a reserved host is no Sacrifice howsoever consecrated And what if a mouse or other vermin should eat the Host it is a case put by themselves who then sacrificeth To stop all mouths Laicks eat as well as the Priest there is no difference in their manducation but Laicks sacrifice not and as Salmeron urges the Scripture distinguisheth betwixt the Sacrifice and the participation of it Are not they which eat of the Sacrifices partakers of the Altar And in the very Canon of the Mass Ut quotquot c. the prayer is That all we which in the participation of the Altar have taken the sacred Body and Blood of thy Son c. Wherein it is plain saith he that there is a distinction betwixt the Host and the eating of the Host Lastly sacrificing is an act done to God if then eating be sacrificing the Priest eates his God to his God Quorum Deus venter Whiles they in vain studie to reconcile this new-made Sacrifice of Christ already in Heaven with Jube haec praferri Command these to be carried by the hands of thine holy Angels to thine high Altar in Heaven in the sight of thy Divine Majesty we conclude That this proper and propitiatory Sacrifice of the Masse as a new unholy unreasonable Sacrifice is justly abhorred by us and we for abhorring it unjustly ejected CHAP. X. The Newness of Image-Worship AS for the setting up and worshipping of Images we shall not need to climbe so high as Arnobius or Origen or the Council of Eliberis Anno 305. or to that fact and history of Epiphanius whose famous Epistle is honored by the Translation of Hierome of the picture found by him in the Church of the Village of Anablatha though out of his own Diocese how he tore it in an holy zeal and wrote to the Bishop of the place beseeching him that no such Pictures may be hanged up contrary to our Religion though by the way who can but blush at Master Fisher's evasion that it was sure the Picture of some prophane Pagan when as Epiphanius himself there sayes it had Imaginem quasi Christi vel Sancti cujusdam the Image as it were of Christ or some Saint Surely therefore the Image went for Christs or for some noted Saints neither doth he finde fault with the irresemblance but with the Image as such That of Agobardus is sufficient for us Nullus antiquorum Catholicorum None of the ancient Catholicks ever thought that Images were to be worshipped or adored They had them indeed but for history sake to remember the Saints by not to worship them The decision of Gregory the Great some 600 yeares after Christ which he gave to Serenus Bishop of Massilia is famous in every mans mouth and pen El quidem quia eas ador ari vetuisses c. We commend you saith he that you forbade those Images to be worshipped but we reprove your breaking of them adding the reason of both For that they were only retained for history and instruction not for adoration Which ingenuous Cassander so comments upon as that he shews this to be a sufficient declaration of the judgement of the Romane Church in those times Videlicet ideo haberi picturas c. That Images are kept not to be adored and worshipped but that the ignorant by beholding those Pictures might as by written records be put in minde of what hath been formerly done and be thereupon stirred up to Piety And the same Authour tells us that Sanioribns scholiasticis displicet c. The sounder Schoolmen disliked that opinion of Thomas Aquine who held that the Image is to be worshipped with the same adoration which is due to the thing represented by it reckoning up Durand Holcot Biel. Not to spend many words in a clear case What the judgement and practice of our Ancestours in this Iland was concerning this point appears sufficiently by the relation of Roger Hoveden our Historian who tells us that in the year 792. Charls the King of France sent into this Isle a Synodal Book directed unto him from Constantinople wherein there were divers offensive passages but especially this one that by the unanimous consent of all the Doctours of the East and no fewer then 300 Bishops it was decreed that Images should be worshipped quod Ecclesia Dei execratur saith he which the Church of God abhorres Against which Errour Albinus saith he wrote an Epistle marvellously confirmed by authority of Divine Scriptures and in the person of our Bishops and Princes exhibited it together with the said Book unto the French King This was the setled resolution of our Predecessours And if since that time prevailing Superstition have incroached upon the ensuing succession of the Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 let the old rules stand as those Fathers determined away with Novelties But good Lord how apt men are to raise or believe lies for their own advantage Urspergensis and other friends of Idolatry tell us of a Council held at London in the days of Pope Constantine Anno 714. wherein the worship of Images was publickly decreed the occasion whereof was this Egwin the Monk after made Bishop had a Vision from God wherein he was admonished to set up the Image of the Mother of God in his Church The matter was debated and brought before the Pope in his See Apostolick there Egwin was sworn to the truth of his Vision Thereupon Pope Constantinus sent his Legate Boniface into England who called a Council at London wherein after proof made of Egwin's Vision there was an act made for Image-worship A figment so gross that even their Baronius
according to S. Hierome's profession worship not the relicks of Martyrs nor Sun nor Moon nor Angels nor Archangels nor Cherubim nor Seraphin nor any name that is named in this world or in the world to come and unjustly are we hereupon ejected CHAP. XI The Newness of Indulgences and Purgatorie NOthing is more palpable then the Noveltie of Indulgences or Pardons as they are now of use in the Roman Church the intolerable abuse whereof gave the first hint to Luther's inquirie Pope Le◠had gratified his fister Magdalen with a large Monopoly of Germane Pardons Aremboldus her Factour was too covetous and held the market too high The height of these over-rated Wares caused the Chapmen to inquire their worth They were found as they are both for age and dignity For age so new as that Cornelius Agrippa and Polydore Virgil and Machiavel and who not tell us Boniface the Eighth who lived Anno 1300. was the first that extended Indulgences to Purgatory the first that devised a Jubilee for the full utterance of them The Indulgences of former times were no other then relaxations of Canonical Penances which were enjoined to hainous sinners whereof Burchard the Bishop of Wormes sets down many particulars about the year 1020. For example if a man had committed wilfull murther he was to fast forty daies together in bread and water which the common people calls a Lent and to observe a course of Penance for seven years after Now these years of Penance and these Lents were they which the Pardons of former times were used to strike off or abate according as they found reason in the disposition of the Penitent which may give light to those terms of so many Lents and years remitted in former Indulgences But that there should be a sacred treasure of the Church wherein are heaped up piles of satisfaction of Saints whereof only the Pope keeps the keyes and hath power to dispense them where he lists is so late a device that Gregorie of Valence is forced to confesse that not so much as Gratian or Peter Lombard which wrote about 400 years before him ever made mention of the name of Indulgence Well therefore might Durand and Antonine grant it not to be found either in the Scriptures or in the writings of the antient Doctors and our B. Fisher goes so far in the acknowledgement of the Newness thereof that he hath run into the censure of late Jesuites Just and warrantable is that challenge of Learned Chemnitius that no testimony can be produced of any Father or of any antient Church that either such Doctrine or Practice of such Indulgences was ever in use untill towards 1200 years after Christ Talium indulgentiarum Some there were in the time immediatly fore-going but such as now they were not Besides Eugenius his time which was too near the Verge for the words of Chemnitius are Per annos ferme mille ducentos Bellarmine instances in the third Council of Lateran about the year 1116. wherein Pope Paschal the second gave Indulgences of forty daies to those which visited the threshold of the Apostles But it must be considered that we must take this upon the bare word of Conrad Urspergensis Secondly that this Indulgence of his is no other but a relaxation of Canonical Penance For he addes which Bellarmine purposely concealeth iis qui de capitalibus c. to those that should doe Penance for capital sins he released forty daies Penance So as this instance helps nothing neither are the rest which he hath raked together within the compasse of a few preceding years of any other alloy Neither hath that Cardinal offered to cite one Father for the proof of this Practice the birth whereof was many hundred years after their expiration but cunningly shifts it off with a cleanly excuse Neque mirum c. Neither may it seem strange if we have not many antient Authours that make mention of these things in the Church which are preserved only by use not by writing So he He saies Not many Authours he shews not one And if many matters of rite have been traduced to the Church without notice of Pen or Presse yet let it be shewn what one Doctrine or Practice of such importance as this is pretended to be hath escaped the report and maintenance of some Ecclesiastick Writer or other and we shall willingly yield it in this Till then we shall take this but for a mere colour and resolve that our honest Rossensis deals plainly with us who tells us Quamdiu nulla fuer at de Purgatorio cura c. So long as there was no care of Purgatorie no man sought after Indulgences for upon that depends all the opinion of Pardon If you take away Purgatory wherefore should we need pardons Since therefore Purgatory was so lately known and received of the whole Church who can marvel concerning Indulgences that there was no use of them in the beginning of the Church Indulgences then began after men had trembled some while at the torments of a Purgatory Thus their Martyr not partially for us but ingenuously out of the power of truth professes the Novelty of two great Articles of the Romane Creed Purgatorie and Indulgences Indeed both these now hang on one string although there was a kinde of Purgatory dreamed of before their Pardons came into play That device peep'd out fearfully from Origen and pull'd in the head again as in S. Austin's time doubting to shew it Tale aliquod c. That there is some such thing saith he after this life it is not utterly incredible and may be made a question And elsewhere I reprove it not for it may perhaps be true And yet again as retracting what he had yielded he resolves Let no man deceive himself my brethren there are but two places and a third there is none Before whom S. Cyprian is peremptory Quando isthinc excessum fuerit When we are once departed hence there is now no more place of repentance no effect of satisfaction here is life either lost or kept And Nazianzen's verse sounds to the same sense And S. Ambrose can say of his Theodosius that being freed from this earthly warfare Fruitur nunc luce perpetuâ c. he now enjoies everlasting light during tranquillity and triumphs in the troops of the Saints But what strive we in this We may well take the word of their Martyr our Roffensis for both And true Erasmus for the ground of this defence Mirum in modum c. They do marvellously affect the fire of Purgatory because it is most profitable for their Kitchins Sect. 2. Indulgences and Purgatory against Scripture THese two then are so late come strangers that they cannot challenge any notice taken of them by Scripture neither were their names ever heard of in the language of Canaan yet the wisdome of that all-seeing Spirit hath not left us without preventions of
of God which is universal not making differences of places or times like an high-elevated Star which hath no particular aspect upon one Region That there is a lawfull commendable beneficial use of Confession was never denied by us but to set men upon the rack and to strain their Souls up to a double pin of absolute necessity both praecepti and medii and of a strict particularity and that by a screw of Jus divinum Gods Law is so mere a Romane Novelty that many ingenuous Authours of their own have willingly confessed it Amongst whom Cardinall Bellarmine himself yields us Erasmus and Beatus Rhenanus two noble Witnesses whose joynt Tenet he confesses to be Confessionem secretam c. That the secret Confession of all our sins is not onely not instituted or commanded Jure divino by Gods Law but that it was not so much as received into use in the Ancient Church of God To whom he might have added out of Maldonat's account omnes Decretorum c. all the Interpreters of the Decrees and amongst the School-men Scotus We know well those sad and austere Exomologeses which were publickly used in the severe times of the Primitive Church whiles these took place what use was there of private These obtained even in the Western or Latine Church till the dayes of Leo about 450. years in which time they had a grave publick Penitentiary for this purpose Afterwards whether the noted inconveniences of that practice or whether the cooling of the former fervour occasioned it this open Confession began to give way to secret which continued in the Church but with freedome and without that forced and scrupulous strictnesse which the latter times have put upon it It is very remarkable which Learned Rhenanus hath Caeterum Th. ab Aquino c. But saith he Thomas of Aquine and Scotus men too acute have made confession at this day such as that Joh. Geilerius a grave and holy Divine which was for many years Preacher at Strasburgh had wont to say to his friends that according to their rules it is an impossible thing to confesse adding that the same Geilerius being familiarly conversant with some religious Votaries both Carthusians and Franciscans learned of them with what torments the godly minds of some men were afflicted by the rigour of that Confession which they were not able to answer and thereupon he published a book in Dutch intituled The sicknesse of Confession The same therefore which Rhenanus writes of his Geilerius he may well apply unto us Itaque Geilerio non displicebat c. Geilerius therefore did not dislike Confession but the serupulous anxiety which is taught in the Summes of some late Divines more fit indeed for some other place then for Libraries Thus he What would that ingenuous Author have said if he had lived to see those volumes of Cases which have been since published able to perplex a world and those peremptory Decisions of the Fathers of the Society whose strokes have been with Scorpions in comparison of the Rods of their Predecessors To conclude This bird was hatched in the Council of Lateran Anno 1215. fully plumed in the Council of Trent and now lately hath her feathers imped by the modern Casuists Sect. 2. Romish Confession not warranted by Scripture SInce our quarrell is not with Confession it self which may be of singular use and behoof but with some tyrannous strains in the practice of it which are the violent forcing and perfect fulnesse thereof it shall be sufficient for us herein to stand upon our negative That there is no Scripture in the whole Book of God wherein either such necessity or such intirenesse of Confession is commanded A Truth so clear that it is generally confessed by their own Canonists Did we question the lawfulness of Confession we should be justly accountable for our grounds from the Scriptures of God now that we crie down only some injurious circumstances therein well may we require from the fautors thereof their warrants from God which if they cannot shew they are sufficiently convinced of a presumptuous obtrusion Indeed our Saviour said to his Apostles and their successors Whose sins ye remit they are remitted and whose sins ye retain they are retained But did he say No sin shall be remitted but what ye remit or No sin shall be remitted by you but what is particularly numbred unto you S. James bids Confesse your sins one to another But would they have the Priest shrieve himself to the penitent as well as the penitent to the Priest This act must be mutual not single Many believing Ephesians came and confessed and shewed their deeds Many but not all not Omnes utriusque sexus They confessed their deeds some that were notorious not all their sins Contrarily rather so did Christ send his Apostles as the Father sent him he was both their warrant and their pattern But that gracious Saviour of ours many a time gave absolution where was no particular confession of sins Only the sight of the Paralyticks Faith setcht from him Son be of good chear thy sins be forgiven thee the noted Sinner in Simon 's house approving the truth of her Repentance by the humble and costly testimonies of her Love without any enumeration of her sins heard Thy sins are forgiven thee Sect. 3. Against Reason IN true Divine Reason this supposed duty is needlesse dangerous impossible Needlesse in respect of all sins not in respect of some for however in the cases of a burdened Conscience nothing can be more usefull more soveraign yet in all our peace doth not depend upon our lips Being justified by faith me have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Dangerous in respect both of exprobration as Saint Chrysostome worthily and of infection for Delectabile carnis as a Casuist confesseth Fleshly pleasures the more they are called into particular mention the more they move the appetite I do willingly conceal from chast eyes and ears what effects have followed this pretended act of Devotion in wanton and unstaied Confessors Impossible for who can tell how oft he offendeth He is poor in sin that can count his stock and he sins alwayes that so presumes upon his innocence as to think he can number his sins and if he say of any sin as Lot of Zoar Is it not a little one as if therefore it may safely escape the reckoning It is a true word of Isaac the Syrian Qui delicta c. He that thinks any of his offences small even in so thinking falls into greater This Doctrine and Practice therefore both as new and unwarrantable full of Usurpation Danger Impossibility is justly rejected by us and we for so doing unjustly ejected Sect. 4. The Noveltie of Absolution before Satisfaction LEst any thing in the Romane Church should retain the old form how absurd is that innovation which they have made in the order of their
call her the Church of Rome What speak we of or where is the Subject of our question Who sees not that there is a Moral Trueness and a Natural He that is morally the falsest man is in Nature as truly a man as the honestest and therefore in this regard as true a man In the same sense therefore that we say the Devil is a true though false Spirit that a Cheater is a true though false man we may and must say that the Church of Rome is a true though false Church Certainly there hath been a true Errour and mistaking of the sense that is guilty of this quarrel As for the Visibility there can be no question Would God that Church did not too much fill our eye yea the world There is nothing wherein it doth more pride it self then in a glorious conspicuity scorning in this regard the obscure paucity of their opposers But you say What is this but to play with ambiguities That the Church of Rome is it self that is a Church that it is visible that it is truly existent there can be no doubt but is it still a part of the truly existent visible Church of Christ Surely no otherwise then an Heretical and Apostatical Church is and may be Reader whosoever thou art for God's sake for thy Souls sake mark where thou treadest else thou shalt be sure to fall either into an open gulf of Uncharitableness or into a dangerous precipice of Errour There is no fear nor favour to say that the Church of Rome under a Christian Face hath an Antichristian Heart overturning that Foundation by necessary inferences which by open profession it avoweth That Face that Profession those avowed Principles are enough to give it claim to a true outward Visibilitie of a Christian Church whiles those damnable inferences are enough to feoffe it in the true style of Heresie and Antichristianisme Now this Heresie this Antichristianisme makes Rome justly odious and execrable to God to Angels and Men but cannot utterly dis-church it whiles those main Principles maintain a weak life in that crazie and corrupted body But is not this language different from that whereto our eares and eyes have been inured from the mouths and pens of some Reverend Divines and Professors of our Church Know Reader that the stream of the famous Doctors both at home and abroad hath run strongly my way I should have feared and hated to go alone what reason is there then to single out one man in a throng Some few worthy Authors have spoken otherwise in the warmth of their zealous contention yet so as that even to them durst I appeal for my Judges for if their sound differ from me their sense agrees with me that which as I touched in my Advertisement so I am now ready to make clear by the instance of Learned Zanchius whose pregnant testimonies compared together shall plainly teach us how easie a reconcilement may be made betwixt these two seemingly-contrary Opinions That worthy Author in his Profession of Christian Religion which he wrote and published in the Seventieth year of his age having defined the Church of Christ in general and passed through the Properties of it at last descending to the sub-division of the Church Militant comes to enquire how particular Churches may be known to be the true Churches of Christ whereof he determins thus Illas igitur c. Those Churches therefore do we acknowledge for the true Churches of Christ in which first of all the pure Doctrine of the Gospel is preached heard admitted and so onely admitted that there is neither place nor ear given to the contrary For both these are the just Property of the flock or sheep of Christ namely both to hear the voice of their own Pastor and to reject the voice of strangers John 10. 4. In which secondly the Sacraments instituted by Christ are lawfully and as much as may be according to Christs institution administred and received and therefore in which the Sacraments devised by men are not admitted and allowed In which lastly the Discipline of Christ hath the due place that is where both publickly and privately charitable care is had both by Admonitions Corrections and at last if need be by Excommunications that the Commandements of God be duely kept and that all persons live soberly justly and piously to the glory of God and edification of their Neighbour Thus he wherein who sees not how directly he aims both at the justifying of our Churches and the cashiering of the Roman which is palpably guilty of the violation of these wholesome Rules And indeed it must needs be said if we bring the Romane Church to this touch she is cast for a mere counterfeit she is as far from Truth as Truth is from Falshood Now by this time you goe away with an opinion that Learned Zanchy is my professed Adversary and hath directly condemned my Position of the Trueness and Visibility of the Roman Church Have but patience I beseech you to read what the same excellent Author writes in his golden Preface to that noble Work De natura Dei where this question is clearly and punctually decided There you shall finde that having passed through the woful and gloomy offuscations of the Church of God in all former Ages he descending to the darkness of the present Babylon concludes thus to have no less ceased to be the Church of Christ then those Eastern Deinde non potuit Satan c. Moreover Satan could not in the very Roman Church doe what he listed as he had done in the Eastern to bring all things to such pass as that it should no more have the form of a Christian Church for in spight of Satan that Church retained still the chief Foundations of the Faith although weakned with the Doctrines of men it retained the publick Preaching of the Word of God though in many places mis-understood and mis-construed the invocation of the Name of Christ though joyned also with the invocation of dead men the administration of Baptisme instituted by Christ himself howsoever defiled with the addition of many Superstitions So as together with the Symbol of the Covenant the Covenant it self remained still in her I mean in all the Churches of the West no otherwise then it did in the Church of Israel even after that all things were in part prophaned by Jeroboam and other impious and idolatrous Kings upon the defection made by them from the Church and Tribe of Juda. For neither do I assent to them which would have the Church of Rome Churches which afterwards turned Mahumetan What Church was ever more corrupt then the Church of the Ten Tribes yet we learn from the Scriptures that it was still the Church of God And how doth Saint Paul call that Church wherein Antichrist he saith shall sit the Temple of God Neither is it any Baptisme at all that is administred out of the Church of Christ The Wife that is an Adulteress
use and necessity in our Controversie with Papists about the Perpetuity of the Christian Church then is understood by those who gainsay it This in your Reconciler is so well explicated as if any shall continue in traducing you in regard of that Proposition so explained I think it will be onely those who are better acquainted with wrangling then reasoning and deeper in love with Strife then Truth And therefore be no more troubled with other mens groundless suspicions then you would be in like case with their idle Dreams Thus I have inlarged my self beyond my first intent But my love to your self and the assurance of your constant love unto the Truth inforced me thereunto I rest alwayes Your loving Brother JO. SARUM Jan. 30. 1628. TO THE Reverend and Learned MASTER DOCTOR PRIDEAVX Professor of Divinity in OXFORD and Rector of EXETER Colledge WOrthy Master Doctor Prideaux all our little world here takes notice of your Worth and Eminencie who have long furnished the Divinity Chair in that famous University with mutuall grace and honour Let me intreat you upon the perusall of this sorry sheet of Paper to impart your self freely to me in your Censure and to express to me your clear Judgement concerning the true Being and Visibility of the Romane Church You see in what sense I profess to hold it neither was any other ever in my thoughts Say I beseech you whether you think any learned Orthodox Divine can with any colour of Reason maintain a contradiction hereunto And if you finde as I doubt not much necessity and use of this true and safe Tenet help me to adde if you please a further supply of Antidotes to those Popish Spiders that would fain suck Poison out of this Herb. It was my earnest desire that this satisfactory Reconcilement might have stilled all tongues and pens concerning this ill-raised brabble but I see to my grief how much men care for themselves more then peace I suffer and the Church is disquieted your Learning and Gravity will be ready to contribute to a seasonable Pacification In desire and exspectation of your speedy Answer I take my leave and am Your very loving Friend and Fellow-labourer JOS. EXON TO THE Right Reverend Father in GOD And my very good LORD JOSEPH Bishop of EXCESTER Right Reverend Father in GOD UPon the receit of your Reconciler which it pleased you to send me I took occasion as my manifold distractions would permit to peruse what had been said on both sides concerning the now-being of the Roman Church Wherein I must profess that I could not but wonder at the needless Exceptions against your Tenet you affirming no new thing in that passage misliked in your Old Religion And this your Advertisement afterward so fully and punctually cleareth and your Reconciler so acquitteth it with such satisfying ingenuitie that I cannot imagine they have considered it well or mean well that shall persist to oppose it For who perceives not that your Lordship leaves no more to Rome then our best Divines ever since the Reformation have granted If their speeches have been sometimes seemingly different their meaning hath been alwayes the same that in respect of the common Truths yet professed among the Papists they may and ought to be termed a True Visible Church in opposition to Jews Turks and Pagans who directly denie the Foundation howsoever their Antichristian additions make them no better then the Synagogue of Satan This being agreed upon by those whose Judgement we have good reason to follow cited in your Advertisement and by others they doe an ill office to our Church in my opinion who set them at oddes in this Point that are so excellently reconciled and give more advantage to the Adversary by quarrelling with our Worthies then the Adversary is like to get by our acknowledgement that they are such a miserable Church as we discover them to be What I have thought long since in this behalf it appeareth in my Lecture De Visibilitate Ecclesiae and as often as this hath come in question in our publick Disputes we determine here no otherwise then your Lordship hath stated it And yet we trust to give as little advantage to Popery as those that doe detest it and are as circumspect to maintain our received Doctrine and Discipline without the least Scandall to the weakest as those that would seem most forward That distinction of Rome's case before and since the Council of Trent holds not to dis-Church it but shews it rather to be more incurable now then heretofore Neither finde I any particulars objected which those Worthy men have not sufficiently cleared that have justified your Assertion Not to trouble therefore your weightier affairs with my needless interposition as that Controversie about the Altar Josuah 22. had presently a fair end upon the full understanding of the good meaning on both sides so I trust in God this shall have In which I am so perswaded that if it were to be discussed there after our Scholastical manner it might well be defended either pro or con without prejudice to the Truth according to the full stating which your Advertisement and Reconciler have afforded And thus with tender of my due Observance and Prayers for your happiness I rest Your Lordships in Christ to be commanded JO. PRIDEAUX From Exon Coll. Martii 9. No. TO My Reverend and Learned Friend MASTER DOCTOR PRIMEROSE PREACHER to the FRENCH CHURCH in LONDON WOrthy Master Doctor Primerose You have been long acknowledged a great Light in the Reformed Churches of France having for many years shined in your Orbe the famous Church of Burdeaux with notable effects and singular approbation both for Judgement and Sincerity both which also your Learned Writings have well approved so as your Sentence cannot be liable to the danger of any suspicion Let me intreat you to declare freely what you hold concerning the Trueness and Visibility of the Roman Church as it is by me explicated and withall to impart your knowledge of the common Tenet of those forein Divines with whom you have so long conversed concerning this Point which if I mistake not onely a stubborn ignorant will needs make litigious It grieves my Soul to see the Peace of the Church troubled with so absurd a misprision In expectation of your Answer I take leave and commend you and your holy Labours to the blessing of our God Farewell From Your loving Brother and Fellow-labourer JOS. EXON TO THE Right Reverend Father in GOD And my very good Lord JOSEPH Bishop of EXCESTER Right Reverend Father in God I Have been so busied about my necessary Studies for preaching on Sunday Tuesday and this Thursday that I could not give sooner a full Answer to your Lordships Letter which I received on Friday last at night whereby I am desired to declare freely what I think concerning the Trueness and Visibility of the present Romane Church as it is by your Lordship explicated and what is the common Tenet
of the forein Divines with whom I have so long conversed beyond the Seas concerning that Point I might answer in two lines that I have read your Reconciler and judge your Opinion concerning that Point to be learned sound and true Though that if I durst favour an officious lie I would willingly give my Suffrage to those Divines which out of a most fervent Zeal to God and perfect hatred to Idolatry hold that the Roman Church is in all things BAâ—EL in nothing BETHEL And as they which seek to set right a crooked Tree bow it the clean contrary way to make it straight so to recover and pull out of the fire of eternal Damnation the Romane Christians I would gladly pourtray them with sable colours and make their Religion more black in their own eyes then they are in ours the hellish-coloured faces of the flat-nosed Ethiopians or to the Spaniard the monstrous Sambenit of the Inquisition But fearing the true reproach cast by Job in his friends teeth Will ye speak wickedly for God and talk deceitfully for him and knowing that we must not speak a lie no not against the Devil which is the Father of lies I say that the Roman Church is both BABEL and BETHEL and as God's Temple was in Christs daies at once the house of Prayer and a den of thieves so she is in our daies God's Temple and the habitation of Devils the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird Which I prove thus The Church is to be considered three manner of waies First according to Gods right which he keepeth over her and maintaineth in her by the common and external Calling of his Word and Sacraments Secondly according to the pure Preaching of the Word and external Obedience in hearing receiving and keeping the Word sincerely preached Thirdly according to the election of Grace and the personal Calling which hath perpetually the inward working of the Holy Ghost joyned with the outward Preaching of the Word as in Lydia Thence cometh the answer of a good conscience toward God by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ To begin with the last Consideration These onely are Gods Church which are Jews inwardly in the spirit as well as outwardly in the letter whose praise is not of men but of God who are Nathanaels and true Israelites in whom there is no guile invisible to all men visible to God alone who knoweth them that are his and each of them to themselves because they have received the Spirit which is of God that they might know the things which are freely given them of God and the white stone and new name which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it Of this Church called by the Apostle the people which God foreknew Rom. 11. 2. there is no controversie amongst our Divines In the second Consideration these onely are the true visible Church of God amongst whom the Word of God is truly preached without the mixture of humane Traditions the holy Sacraments are celebrated according to their first institution and the people consenteth to be led and ruled by the word of God As when Moses laid before the faces of the people all the words which the Lord commanded him And all the people answered together All that the Lord hath spoken we will doe The Lord said unto Moses Write thou these words for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel And Moses said to the people Thou hast avouched this day the Lord to be thy God and to walk in his waies and to keep his Statures and his Commandments and his Judgements and to hearken unto his voice And the Lord hath avouched thee this day to be his peculiar people as he hath promised thee and that thou shouldest keep all his Commandements This condition of the Commandement God did often inculcate into their ears by his Prophets As when he said to them by Jeremiah This thing commanded I them saying Obey my voice and I will be your God and ye shall be my people and walk ye in all the waies that I have commanded you that it may be well unto you So in the Gospel Christ saith My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me But a stranger will they not follow but will flie from him for they know not the voice of strangers where he giveth the first mark of the Visible true and pure Church to wit the pure Preaching and Hearing of Christs voice As likewise St. John saith He that knoweth God heareth us Hereby know we the Spirit of Truth and the spirit of Errour Again the Lord saith By this shall all men know that ye are my Disciples if ye love one another pointing out the Concord and holy agreement which is among the Brethren as another mark of the Orthodox Church As likewise when he saith Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorifie your Father which is in Heaven he sheweth that good Works are the visible mark of the true Orthodox Church The true Preaching and reverend Hearing of the Gospel is a visible mark of our Faith and Hope our Concord in the Lord is a mark of our Charitie our good Works are real and sensible testimonies of our inward Faith Hope and Charitie Where we finde these three Signes we know certainly that there is Christs true Church and judge charitably that is probably that every one in whom we see these outward tokens of Christs true and Orthodox Church is a true member of the mystical body of the Lord Jesus I say charitably because outward marks may be outwardly counterfeited by Hypocrites as it is said of Israel They did flatter with their mouth and they lyed unto him with their tongues For their heart was not right with him neither were they stedfast in his Covenant and of many of those that followed our Saviour Many believed in his Name when they saw the Miracles which he did But Jesus did not commit himself unto them because he knew all men Therefore when the people of Israel departed from the Covenant and by their Idolatry brake as much as in them lay the contract of Marriage between them and God they ceased in that behalf to be Gods true Spouse and people though still they called him their Husband and their God When they made a molten Calf in the wilderness and worshipped the works of their own fingers God said to Moses Thy people which thou broughtest out of the Land of Egypt have corrupted themselves and not my people And Moses to shew that on their part they had broken the Covenant broke the Tables of the Covenant When under Achaz they did worse Isaiah called them children that are corrupted their Prince and Governours Rulers of Sodome themselves people of Gomorrah their holy
how much we are more apt to take it Let but some spark of Heretical Opinion be let fall upon some unstable proud busie spirit it catcheth instantly and fires the next capable subject they two have easily inflamed a third and now the more Society the more speed and advantage of a publick combustion When we see the Church on a flame it is too late to complain of the flint and steel It is the holy wisdome of Superiors to prevent the dangerous attritions of stubborn and wrangling spirits or to quench their first sparks in the tinder But why should not Grace and Truth be as successfull in dilating it self to the gaining of many hearts Certainly these are in themselves more winning if our corruption had not made us indisposed to good O God out of an holy envy and emulation at the speed of evill I shall labour to enkindle others with these Heavenly flames it shall not be my fault if they spread not XXVII Upon the sight of an humble and patient Begger SEE what need can doe This man who in so lowly a fashion croucheth to that Passenger hath in all likelihood as good a stomack as he to whom he thus abaseth himself and if their conditions were but altered would look as high and speak as big to him whom he now answers with a plausible and dejected reverence It is thus betwixt God and us He sees the way to tame us is to hold us short of these earthly contentments Even the savagest Beasts are made quiet and docible with want of food and rest O God thou onely knowest what I would doe if I had health ease abundance do thou in thy Wisdome and Mercy so proportion thy gifts and restraints as thou knowest best for my Soul If I be not humbled enough let me want and so order all my estate that I may want any thing save thy self XXVIII Upon the sight of a Crow pulling off wool from the back of a Sheep HOw well these Creatures know whom they may be bold with That Crow durst not doe this to a Wolf or a Mastive The known simplicity of this innocent beast gives advantage to this presumption Meeknesse of spirit commonly draws on injuries The cruelty of ill natures usually seeks out those not who deserve worst but who will bear most Patience and mildnesse of Spirit is ill bestowed where it exposes a man to wrong and insultation Sheepish dispositions are best to others worst to themselves I could be willing to take injuries but I will not be guilty of provoking them by lenity For harmlesness let me goe for a Sheep but whosoever will be tearing my fleece let him look to himself XXIX Upon the sight of two Snails THere is much variety even in creatures of the same kinde See there two Snails one hath an house the other wants it yet both are Snailes and it is a question whether case is the better That which hath an house hath more shelter but that which wants it hath more freedome The priviledge of that cover is but a burthen you see if it have but a stone to climb over with what stresse it draws up that beneficiall load and if the passage prove streight findes no entrance whereas the empty Snail makes no difference of way Surely it is alwaies an ease and sometimes an happinesse to have nothing No man is so worthy of Envy as he that can be chearfull in want XXX Upon the hearing of the street-Cries in London WHat a noise do these poor souls make in proclaiming their commodities Each tells what he hath and would have all hearers take notice of it and yet God wot it is but poor stuffe that they set out with so much ostentation I do not hear any of the rich Merchants talk of what bags he hath in his chests or what treasures of rich wares in his store-house every man rather desires to hide his Wealth and when he is urged is ready to dissemble his ability No otherwise is it in the true Spirituall Riches He that is full of Grace and Good works affects not to make shew of it to the world but rests sweetly in the secret testimony of a good Conscience the silent applause of Gods Spirit witnessing with his own whiles contrarily the venditation of our own Worth or Parts or Merits argues a miserable indigence in them all O God if the confessing of thine own Gifts may glorifie thee my modesty shall not be guilty of a niggardly unthankfulnesse but for ought that concerns my self I cannot be too secret Let me so hide my self that I may not wrong thee and wisely distinguish betwixt thy Praise and my own XXXI Upon the Flies gathering to a galled Horse HOw these Flies swarm to the galled part of this poor Beast and there sit feeding upon that worst piece of his flesh not medling with the other sound parts of his skin Even thus do malicious tongues of Detractors if a man have any infirmity in his person or actions that they will be sure to gather unto and dwell upon whereas his commendable parts and well-deservings are passed by without mention without regard It is an envious self-love and base cruelty that causeth this ill disposition in men In the mean time this only they have gained it must needs be a filthy Creature that feeds upon nothing but Corruption XXXII Upon the sight of a dark Lantern THere is light indeed but so shut up as if it were not and when the side is most open there is light enough to give direction to him that bears it none to others He can discern another man by that light which is cast before him but another man cannot discern him Right such is reserved Knowledge no man is the better for it but the owner There is no outward difference betwixt concealed skill and ignorance and when such hidden knowledge will look forth it casts so sparing a light as may only argue it to have an unprofitable being to have ability without will to good power to censure none to benefit The suppression or ingrossing of those helps which God would have us to impart is but a Thieves Lantern in a true mans hand O God as all our light is from thee the Father of lights so make me no niggard of that poor Rush-candle thou hast lighted in my Soul make me more happy in giving light to others then in receiving it into my self XXXIII Upon the hearing of a Swallow in the Chimney HEre is musick such as it is but how long will it hold When but a cold morning comes in my guest is gone without either warning or thanks This pleasant season hath the least need of chearfull notes the dead of Winter shall want and wish them in vain Thus doth an ungratefull Parasite no man is more ready to applaud and injoy our Prosperity but when with the times our condition begins to alter he is a stranger at least Give me that Bird which will sing in Winter
the least substance To affect obscurity or submission is base and suspicious but that LIV. Upon a Corn-field over-grown with Weeds HEre were a goodly field of Corn if it were not over-laid with Weeds I do not like these reds and blews and yellows amongst these plain stalks and ears This beauty would do well elswhere I had rather to see a plot lesse fair and more yielding In this Field I see a true picture of the World wherein there is more glory then true substance wherein the greater part carries it from the better wherein the native sons of the Earth out-strip the adventitious brood of Grace wherein Parasites and unprofitable hang-byes do both rob and overtop their Masters Both Field and World grow alike look alike and shall end alike both are for the Fire whiles the homely and solid ears of despised Vertue shall be for the garners of Immortality LV. Upon the sight of Tulips and Marigolds c. in his Garden THese Flowers are true Clients of the Sun how observant they are of his motion and influence At Even they shut up as mourning for his departure without whom they neither can nor would flourish in the Morning they welcome his rising with a chearfull openness and at Noon are fully displayed in a free acknowledgment of his bounty Thus doth the good heart unto God When thou turnedst away thy face I was troubled saith the man after Gods own heart In thy presence is life yea the fulnesse of joy Thus doth the Carnall heart to the world when that withdraws his favour he is dejected and revives with a smile All is in our choice whatsoever is our Sun will thus carry us O God be thou to me such as thou art in thy self thou shalt be mercifull in drawing me I shall be happy in following thee LVI Upon the sound of a crackt Bell. WHat an harsh sound doth this Bell make in every eaâ—e The metall is good enough it is the rift that makes it so unpleasingly jarring How too like is this Bell to a scandalous and ill-lived Teacher His Calling is honourable his noise is heard far enough but the flaw which is noted in his Life marres his Doctrine and offends those ears which else would take pleasure in his teaching It is possible that such a one even by that discordous noise may ring in others into the triumphant Church of Heaven but there is no remedy for himself but the fire whether for his reforming or judgment LVII Upon the sight of a Blinde man HOW much am I bound to God that hath given me eyes to see this mans want of eyes With what suspicion and fear he walks How doth his hand and staffe examine his way With what jealousie doth he receive every morsell every draught and yet meets with many a post and stumbles at many a stone and swallows many a flie To him the world is as if it were not or as if it were all rubs and snares and downfalls and if any man will lend him an hand he must trust to his however faithlesse guide without all comfort save this that he cannot see himself miscarry Many a one is thus Spiritually blinde and because he is so discerns it not and not discerning complains not of so wofull a condition The god of this world hath blinded the eyes of the Children of disobedience they walk on in the waies of death and yield themselves over to the guidance of him who seeks for nothing but their precipitation into Hell It is an addition to the misery of this inward occaecation that it is ever joyned with a secure confidence in them whose trade and ambition is to betray their Souls Whatever become of these outward Senses which are common to me with the meanest and most despicable creatures O Lord give me not over to that Spiritual darkness which is incident to none but those that live without thee and must perish eternally because they want thee LVIII Upon a Beech-tree full of Nuts HOW is this Tree overladen with mast this year It was not so the last neither will it I warrant you be so the next It is the nature of these free trees so to powr out themselves into fruit at once that they seem after either sterile or niggardly So have I seen pregnant Wits not discreetly governed overspend themselves in some one master-piece so lavishly that they have proved either barren or poor and flat in all other Subjects True Wisdome as it serves to gather due sap both for nourishment and fructification so it guides the seasonable and moderate bestowing of it in such manner as that one season may not be a glutton whiles others famish I would be glad to attain to that measure and temper that upon all occasions I might alwaies have enough never too much LIX Upon the sight of a piece of Money under the Water I Should not wish ill to a Covetous man if I should wish all his Coin in the bottome of the River No pavement could so well become that stream no sight could better fit his greedy desires for there every piece would seem double every teston would appear a shilling every Crown an Angel It is the nature of that Element to greaten appearing quantities whiles we look through the aire upon that solid body it can make no other representations Neither is it otherwise in Spiritual Eyes and Objects If we look with Carnal eyes through the interposed mean of Sensuality every base and worthlesse pleasure will seem a large contentment if with Weak eyes we shall look at small and immaterial Truths aloof off in another element of apprehension every parcell thereof shall seem main and essential hence every knack of Heraldry in the Sacred Genealogies and every Scholastical querk in disquisitions of Divinity are made matters of no lesse then life and death to the Soul It is a great improvement of true Wisdome to be able to see things as they are and to value them as they are seen Let me labour for that power and staiedness of Judgment that neither my Senses may deceive my Minde nor the Object may delude my Sense LX. Upon the first rumour of the Earthquake at Lime wherein a Wood was swallowed up with the fall of two Hills GOod Lord how do we know when we are sure If there were Man or Beast in that Wood they seemed as safe as we now are they had nothing but Heaven above them nothing but firm Earth below them and yet in what a dreadfull pitfall were they instantly taken There is no fence for Gods hand A man would as soon have feared that Heaven would fall upon him as those Hills It is no pleasing our selves with the unlikelihood of Divine Judgments We have oft heard of Hills covered with Woods but of Woods covered with Hills I think never till now Those that planted or sowed those Woods intended they should be spent with Fire but loe God meant they should be devoured with Earth We
What an happiness is it that without all offence of Necromancy I may here call up any of the antient Worthies of Learning whether humane or divine and confer with them of all my doubts that I can at pleasure summon whole Synods of Reverend Fathers and acute Doctors from all the Coasts of the Earth to give their well-studied judgments in all points of question which I propose Neither can I cast my eye casually upon any of these silent Masters but I must learn somewhat It is a wantonness to complain of choice No Law bindes us to read all but the more we can take in and digest the better-liking must the Mindes needs be Blessed be God that hath set up so many clear Lamps in his Church now none but the wilfully blinde can plead darkness And blessed be the memory of those his faithfull Servants that have left their blood their spirits their lives in these precious papers and have willingly wasted themselves into these during Monuments to give light unto others LXXII Upon the red Crosse on a Door OH sign fearfully significant This sicknesse is a Crosse indeed and that a bloody one both the form and colour import Death The Israelites doors whose lintels were besprinkled with blood were passed over by the destroying Angel here the destroying Angel hath smitten and hath left this mark of his deadly blow We are wont to fight chearfully under this Ensign abroad and be victorious why should we tremble at it at home O God there thou fightest for us here against us under that we have fought for thee but under this because our sins have fought against thee we are fought against by thy Judgments Yet Lord it is thy Crosse though an heavy one It is ours by merit thine by imposition O Lord sanctifie thine Affliction and remove thy Vengeance LXXIII Upon the change of Weather I Know not whether it be worse that the Heavens look upon us alwaies with one face or ever varying For as continual change of Weather causes uncertainty of Health so a permanent setledness of one Season causeth a certainty of distemper perpetual Moisture dissolves us perpetual Heat evaporates or inflames us Cold stupifies us Drought obstructs and withers us Neither is it otherwise in the state of the Minde If our thoughts should be alwaies volatile changing inconstant we should never attain to any good habit of the Soul whether in matter of Judgment or Disposition but if they should be alwaies fixed we should run into the danger of some desperate extremity To be ever thinking would make us mad to be ever thinking of our Crosses or Sins would make us heartlesly dejected to be ever thinking of Pleasures and Contentments would melt us into a loose wantonness to be ever doubting and fearing were an Hellish servitude to be ever bold and confident were a dangerous presumption but the interchanges of these in a due moderation keep the Soul in health O God howsoever these Variations be necessary for my Spiritual condition let me have no weather but Sun-shine from thee Do thou lift up the light of thy countenance upon me and stablish me ever with thy free spirit LXXIV Upon the sight of a Marriage WHat a comfortable and feeling resemblance is here of Christ and his Church I regard not the Persons I regard the Institution Neither the Husband nor the Wife are now any more their own they have either of them given over themselves to other not onely the Wife which is the weaker vessel hath yielded over her self to the stronger protection and participation of an abler head but the Husband hath resigned his right in himself over to his feebler consort so as now her weaknesse is his his strength is hers Yea their very flesh hath altered property hers is his his is hers Yea their very Soul and spirit may no more be severed in respect of mutuall affection then from their own severall bodies It is thus O Saviour with thee and thy Church We are not our own but thine who hast married us to thy self in truth and righteousnesse What powers what indowments have we but from and in thee And as our holy boldness dares interesse our selves in thy Graces so thy wonderfully-compassionate mercy vouchsafes to interesse thy self in our Infirmities thy poor Church suffers on Earth thou feelest in Heaven and as complaining of our stripes canst say Why persecutest thou me Thou again art not so thine own as that thou art not also ours thy Sufferings thy Merits thy Obedience thy Life Death Resurrection Ascension Intercession Glory yea thy blessed Humanity yea thy glorious Deity by virtue of our right of our Union are so ours as that we would not give our part in thee for ten thousand Worlds O gracious Saviour as thou canst not but love and cherish this poor and unworthy Soul of mine which thou hast mercifully espoused to thy self so give me Grace to honour and obey thee and forsaking all the base and sinfull rivalty of the World to hold me only unto thee whiles I live here that I may perfectly enjoy thee hereafter LXXV Upon the sight of a Snake I Know not what horrour we finde in our selves at the fight of a Serpent Other creatures are more loathsome and some no lesse deadly then it yet there is none at which our blood riseth so much as at this Whence should this be but out of an instinct of our old enmity We were stung in Paradise and cannot but feel it But here is our weaknesse it was not the body of the Serpent that could have hurt us without the suggestion of sin and yet we love the sin whiles we hate the Serpent Every day are we wounded with the sting of that old Serpent and complain not and so much more deadly is that sting by how much it is lesse felt There is a sting of Guilt and there is a sting of Remorse there is mortall venome in the first whereof we are the least sensible there is lesse danger in the second The Israelites found themselves stung by those fiery Serpents in the Desart and the sense of their pain sent them to seek for Cure The World is our Desart and as the sting of Death is Sin so the sting of Sin is Death I do not more wish to finde ease then pain if I complain enough I cannot fail of cure O thou which art the true brazen Serpent lifted up in this wildernesse raise up mine eyes to thee and fasten them upon thee thy Mercy shall make my Soul whole my wound soveraign LXXVI Upon the Ruines of an Abby IT is not so easie to say what it was that built up these walls as what it was that pulled them down even the wickednesse of the Possessours Every stone hath a tongue to accuse the Superstition Hypocrisie Idlenesse Luxury of the late owners Methinks I see it written all along in Capitall letters upon these heaps A fruitfull Land maketh he barren for the iniquity of
impregnable by the obstinacie of treacherie then strength of nature surrendred to the King and Saint Peter Neither is any so foolish as to ascribe this glorious Victory rather to happiness then to vertue By your long siege of many moneths you have taught us that Europe oweth your French Legions no lesse commendation for their constancy then for their expedition your Army going clear away with the Victory over your enemies by slighting all dangers and enduring all hardness devoteth their life unto You and promiseth You an absolute trimph of conquered Heresie The waters of the Ocean made a noise and were troubled fighting for the besieged Rebels they made choice of death rather then a surrender undermining treacherie approaching even to Your Majesties tents Hell all opened her mouth vomiting out troops of mischiess and dangers to the end so rich a Fort might not be taken away from their Impietie The Lord stood on thy right hand thou hast not onely overcome the forces of thine enemies but thou wert able also to put a bridle upon the Ocean aiding them Let us all give thanks to Almighty God who hath delivered thee from the contradictions of the unbelieving people Howbeit sith You are not ignorant with what care the fruits of victories ought to be preserved lest they perish there is no doubt but that in a short time all the remainder of the Hereticks that have got stable-room in the French Vineyard shall by You be utterly discomfited The Church desireth that this Diademe of perfect renown be put upon that helmet of Salvation wherewith the Lord mighty in battell seemeth to cover the head of Your Majestie for we believe shortly that all tumults being appeased in France the glistering Ensign of Lewis the Conqueror shall shine to the captive Daughter of Sion rehearsing the French Trophees and beholding the brightness of your lightning lance God who performeth the desire of them that fear him prosper our desires and the prayers of the Catholick Church Our Nuntio who was an eye-witness of Your Princely glory in your tents will be a faithfull Interpreter of our Pontificall gratulation to your Majestie on whom we most lovingly bestow our Apostolicall Benediction Given at Rome at S. Mary the greater under the Seal of the Fisher the eight and twentieth day of November in the year of our Lord 1628. and the sixth year of our Pontificate TO My much respected Friend Mr Doctor Primrose Pastor of the French Church in London and Chaplain to his most Excellent Majestie SIR OUR Friend Mr. Tourvall a Frenchman shewed me erewhile a Latine printed Epistle of Pope Urbane written as their manner is in a swelling and bloody style and lately sent to Lewis the French King wherein after the good Pope had loudly chaunted forth a song of Triumph for his Majesties Victory over Rochel abundantly congratulating both the King and Nation he thence proceeds in most barbarous manner to that bloody word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Smite Cast down earnestly urging and inforcing the utter extirpation of all the Hereticks as he calls them stabling in France When I had read it I could not contain my self but must suddenly vent mine indignation in these few lines I take up pen in hand therefore and do not meditate but pour forth this Answer Such as it is receive it Reverend Sir and peruse it and at your discretion give it either Light or Fire Farewell From your Friend JOS. EXON TO POPE URBAN THE EIGHTH JOSEPH Bishop of EXCESTER wisheth Right Wits and Charity WHY may not the meanest Bishop be bold to expostulate with a Pope I crave no leave neither need I I take our antient liberty I wis there was no such distance of old betwixt Rome and Eugubium or between my Ex and the chanell of Tiber. Hear now therefore Pope Urbane that which ere long thou shalt hear with horror and confusion of face before that dreadfull Tribunall of Christ These bloody blots of thine little beseem the Shepherd of a Christian Flock What is it for thee like a grim Herald to give the Summons to War Is it for thee to excite Christian Princes already too much gorged with blood to the profligation and fearfull slaughter of their own Subjects Were the Keyes for this cause committed to thy charge that thou shouldest open the Iron gates of War and the Pale gates of Death Tell me thou shadow of S. Peter didst thou take these French Protestants for Malchus whose ears while thou wouldst have cut off thy sword by a light mistake glanc'd upon their throats Or was it lately voiced to thee from heaven concerning these wretched Animals stabling in France Arise Pope Urbane Kill and eate Art thou the Pilot of the Churches peace and talkest of nothing but glittering helmets swords and spears instruments of war bloodshed What noise could the howling of the She-Wolf of thy Romulus have made if this direfull note of thine become the Bell-weather of S. Peter's fold Well since thou wilt bespaul bedribble the ashes of unhappy Rochel and scatter with thy disdainfull breath the despised dust of that forlorn City yet withall call to minde a little how not many Ages are past since the time was that the hereditary Sceptre of this thy now Lewis broke open the gates of Rome demolished the walls dispersed and slew the inhabitants and shut up thy great Predecessour laden with bitter scoffes and execrations in his blinde dungeon Neither shall many years run on again unlesse my presaging thoughts too much deceive me before the Angel shall shout forth and the amazed world shall congratulate the fall of thy Rochel's case shall ere long be thine own O thou most accursed City Blessed shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou hast rewarded us yea happy he that shall take thy little ones and dash out their brains against the stones In the mean time sport thy self at our miseries laugh at our tears make merry at our sighs sing at our groans and applaud our torments But know for all this there is a just avenger that looks down from his Heaven upon us whose rod we at once kisse and exspect his vengeance Plead thou our cause O God yea thine own only thine why should not our confident Innocence appeal to thy Judgment If there be any thing in the whole composure of our most Sacred Religion hitherto professed by us that hath issued out of the impure fountain of mans brain let it even perish with the authors yea let it utterly perish O Lord and be banished into that Hell whence it came But if we never dared to obtrude any Doctrine upon the Christian world but that alone wherewith thou didst of old inspire thy Prophets and Apostles and by those thine infallible pen-men didst faithfully deliver over to thine own people surely then either it must be our happiness to erre with thee the God of Truth or thou dost and wilt still ever maintain with us this thine only True and Evangelicall
Religion But alas poor souls we are mistaken all this while it is nothing else but pure Piety forsooth which we ignorantly condemn for Cruelty 't is the zeal of Gods house wherewith Good Prelate thou art so inflamed that thou hast hereupon both wished and importuned the utter extirpation of all those Hereticks stabling in the French Territories O forehead O bowels For us we call God Angels Saints to witness of this foul calumniation I wis those whom thou falsly brandest for Hereticks thou shalt one day hear when the Church shall imbrace them for her children Christ for the spiritual Members of his mystical body For what I beseech you do we hold which the Scriptures Councils Fathers Churches and Christian Professors have not in all Ages taught and published To say the truth All that which we professe your own most approved Authors have still maintained whence then is this quarrell Shall I tell you There are indeed certain new Patches of Opinion which you would needs adde to the ancient Faith these we most justly reject and do still constantly refuse They are humane they are your own briefly they are either doubtfull or impious And must we now be cast out of the bosome of the Church and be presently delivered up to fire and sword Must we for this be thunder-strucken to Hell by your Anathemas there to frie in perpetuall Torments Is it for this that a stall and shambles are thought good enough for such brutish animals Good God! See the justice and charity of these Popelings This is nothing but a mere injury of the Times it was not wont to be Heresie heretofore that is so now-a-daies If it had been our Happinesse to have lived in the Primitive times of the Churches Simplicity before ever that Romish Transcendency Image-worship Transubstantiation Sacrifice of the Masse Purgatory single or half-Communion Nundination of Pardons and the rest of this rabble were known to the Christian world surely Heaven had been as open to us as to other Devout Souls of that purer Age that took their happy flight from hence in the Orthodox Faith of Christ Jesus But now that we are reserved to that dotage of the world wherein a certain new brood of Articles are sprung up it is death to us forsooth and to be expiated by no lesse punishment then the perpetuall torments of Hell-fire Consider this O ye Christians wheresoever dispersed upon the face of the whole earth consider I say how far it is from all Justice and Charity that a new Faith should come dropping forth at mens pleasure which must adjudge Posterity to eternal death for Mis-believers whom the ancient Truth had willingly admitted into Heaven These new Points of a politick Religion are they indeed that have so much disturbed the peace of Christendome these are they that set at variance the mighty Potentates of the earth who otherwise perhaps would sit down in an happy Peace these are they that rend whole Kingdomes distract people dissolve Societies nourish Faction and Sedition lay wast the most flourishing Kingdomes and turn the richest Cities to dust and rubbish But should these things be so Do we think this will one day be allowed for a just warrant of so much war and bloodshed before the Tribunall of that supreme Judge of Heaven and earth Awake therefore now O ye Christian Princes and You especially King Lewis in whose eares these wicked counsels are so spightfully and bloodily whispered rouse up your self and see how cruell Tyranny seeks to impose upon your Majesty in a most mischievous manner under a fair pretence of Piety and Devotion They are your own native Subjects whom these malicious foreigners require to the slaughter yea they are Christs and will you imbrue your hand and sword in the blood of those for whom Christ hath shed his yea who have willingly lavished their own in the behalf of You and your great Father Hear I beseech thee O King who art wont amongst thine own to be instiled Lewis the Just If we did adore any other God any other Christ but thine if we aspired to any other Heaven embraced any other Creed any other Baptisme lastly if we made profession of a new Church built upon other foundations there were some cause indeed why thou shouldest condemn such Hereticks stabling in France to the revenging sury of thy flames If this thy people have wilfully violated any thing established by our common God or lawfully commanded by thee we crave no pardon for them let them smart that have deserved it is but just they should But do not in the mean time fall fiercely upon the fellow-servants of thy God upon thine own best Subjects whose very Religion must make them loyall suffer not those poor wretches to perish for some late upstart superfluous additions of humane invention and mere will-worship who were alwaies most forward to redeem Thine thy Great Fathers Safety and Honour with the continuall hazzard of their owne most precious lives Let them but live then by thy gracious sufferance by whose Valour and Fidelity thou now reignest But suppose they were not yours yet remember that they are Christians a title wherewith your style is wont most to be honored washed in the same Laver of Baptisme bought with the same price renewed by the same Spirit and whatsoever impotent malice bawle to the contrary the beloved Sons of the Celestiall Spouse yea the Brethren of that Spirituall Bride-groom Christ Jesus But they erre you will say from the Faith From what faith I beseech you Not the Christian surely but the Romish What a strange thing is this Christ doth not condemn them the Pope doth If that great Chancellour of Paris were now alive he would freely teach his Sorbon as he once did that it is not in the Popes power that I may use his owne word to hereticate any Proposition Yea but an Oecumenicall Council besides hath done it What Council That of Trent I am deceived if that were hitherto received in the Churches of France or deserved to be so hereafter Consult with your own late Authors of most undoubted credit they will tell you plainly how unjust that Council was yea how no Council at all It was only the Popes act whatsoever was decreed or established by that pack'd Conclave envassalled to the Seven hills Consider lastly I beseech you how the Reformed Christians stand in no other terms to the Papists then the Papists do to the Reformed Heresie is with equall vehemency upbraided on both sides But do we deale thus roughly with the followers of the Roman Religion Did we ever rage against the Popish Faith with fire and sword Was ever the crime of a poor misled conscience capitall to any soul You may finde perhaps but very seldome some audacious Masse-priest some firebrand of Sedition and contemner of our publick Laws to have suffered condign punishment But no Papist I dare boldly say ever suffered losse either of life or lim merely for his Religion