the Church may declare matters of Faith The testimony of St. Augustine vindicated Page 44. CHAP. III. The Absurdities of the Romanists Doctrine of Fundamentals The Churches Authority must be Divine if whatever she defines be Fundamental His Lordship and not the Testimony of S. Augustine shamefully abused three several wayes Bellarmin not mis-cited the Pelagian Heresie condemned by the General Council at Ephesus The Popes Authority not implyed in that of Councils The gross Absurdities of the distinction of the Church teaching and representative from the Church taught and diffusive in the Question of Fundamentals The Churches Authority and Testimony in matters of Faith distinguished The Testimony of Vincentius Lirinensis explained and shewed to be directly contrary to the Roman Doctrine of Fundamentals Stapleton and Bellarmin not reconciled by the vain endeavours used to that end Page 79. CHAP. IV. The Protestant Doctrine of Fundamentals vindicated The unreasonableness of demanding a Catalogue of Fundamentals The Creed contains the Fundamentals of Christian Communion The belief of Scripture supposed by it The Dispute concerning the Sense of Christs Descent into Hell and Mr. Rogers his Book confessed by T. C. impertinent With others of the same nature T. C. his fraud in citing his Lordships words Of Papists and Protestants Vnity The Moderation of the Church of England compared with that of Rome Her grounds of Faith justified Infant-Baptism how far proved out of Scripture alone Page 98. CHAP. V. The Romanists way of Resolving Faith The ill consequences of the resolution of Faith by the Churches Infallibility The grand Absurdities of it manifested by its great unreasonableness in many particulars The certain Foundations of Faith unsettled by it as is largely proved The Circle unavoidable by their new attempts The impossibility of proving the Church Infallible by the way that Moses Christ and his Apostles were proved to be so Of the Motives of Credibility and how far they belong to the Church The difference between Science and Faith considered and the new art of mens believing with their wills The Churches Testimony must be according to their principles the formal object of Faith Of their esteem of Fathers Scripture and Councils The rare distinctions concerning the Churches Infallibility discussed How the Church can be Infallible by the assistance of the Holy Ghost yet not divinely Infallible but in a manner and after a sort T.C. applauded for his excellent faculty in contradicting himself Page 109. CHAP. VI. Of the Infallibility of Tradition Of the unwritten Word and the necessary Ingredients of it The Instances for it particularly examined and disproved The Fathers Rule for examining Traditions No unwritten Word the Foundation of Divine Faith In what sense Faith may be said to be Divine Of Tradition being known by its own light and the Canon of the Scripture The â—estimony of the Spirit how far pertinent to this Controversie Of the use of Reason in the resolution of Faith C's Dialogue answered with another between himself and a Sceptick A twofold resolution of Faith into the Doctrine and into the Books Several Objections answered from the Supposition made of a Child brought up without sight of Scripture Christ no Ignoramus nor Impostor though the Church be not Infallible C's Blasphemy in saying otherwise The Testimonies of Irenaeus and S. Augustin examined and retorted Of the nature of Infallible Certainty as to the Canon of Scripture and whereon it is grounded The Testimonies produced by his Lordship vindicated p. 161. CHAP. VII The Protestant Way of resolving Faith Several Principles premised in order to it The distinct Questions set down and their several Resolutions given The Truth of matters of fact the Divinity of the Doctrine and of the Books of Scripture distinctly resolved into their proper grounds Moral Certainty a sufficient Foundation for Faith and yet Christian Religion proved to be infallibly true How Apostolical Tradition made by his Lordship a Foundation of Faith Of the Certainty we have of the Copies of Scripture and the Authority of them S. Augustine's Testimony concerning Church-Authority largely discussed and vindicated Of the private Spirit and the necessity of Grace His Lordship's Way of resolving Faith vindicated How far Scripture may be said to be known by its own Light The several Testimonies of Bellarmine Brierly and Hooker cleared p. 202. CHAP. VIII The Churches Infallibility not proved from Scripture Some general Considerations from the design of proving the Churches Infallibility from Scripture No Infallibility in the High-Priest and his Clergy under the Law if there had been no necessity there should be under the Gospel Of S. Basil's Testimony concerning Traditions Scripture less liable to corruptions than Traditions The great uncertainty of judging Traditions when Apostolical when not The Churches perpetuity being promised in Scripture proves not its Infallibility His Lordship doth not falsifie C's words but T. C. doth his meaning Producing the Jesuits words no traducing their Order C's miserable Apology for them The particular Texts produced for the Churches Infallibility examined No such Infallibility necessary in the Apostles Successours as in Themselves The Similitude of Scripture and Tradition to an Ambassadour and his Credentials rightly stated p. 235. CHAP. IX The Sense of the Fathers in this Controversie The Judgement of Antiquity enquired into especially of the three first Centuries and the reasons for it The several Testimonies of Justin Martyr Athenagoras Tatianus Irenaeus Clemens Alexandrinus and all the Fathers who writ in vindication of Christian Religion manifested to concurr fully with our way of resolving Faith C's Answers to Vincentius Lyrinensis à Gandavo and the Fathers produced by his Lordship pitifully weak The particulars of his 9th Chapter examined S. Augustine's Testimony vindicated C's nauseous Repetitions sent as Vagrants to their several homes His Lordships Considerations found too heavy for C's Answers In what sense the Scripture may be called a Praecognitum What way the Jews resolved their Faith This Controversie and the first part concluded p. 261 PART II. Of Schism CHAP. I. Of the Universal Church THe Question of Schism explained The nature of it enquired into Several general Principles laid down for clearing the present Controversie Three grounds of the charge of Schism on Protestant Churches by our Authour The first of the Roman Churches being the Catholick Church entred upon How far the Roman Church may be said to be a true Church The distinction of a Church morally and metaphysically true justified The grounds of the Unity of the Catholick Church as to Doctrine and Government Cardinal Perron's distinction of the formal causal and participative Catholick Church examined The true sense of the Catholick Church in Antiquity manifested from S. Cyprian and several cases happening in his time as the Schism of Novatianus at Rome the case of Felicissimus and Fortunatus Several other Instances out of Antiquity to the same purpose by all which it is manifest that the Unity of the Catholick Church had no dependence on the Church of Rome
that but only the concurrent Testimonies of some Schoolmen who must be confessed to be excellent Criticks and well versed in ancient M.SS. unless where they met with a little Greek or some hard Latin words and among whom the mistake of one would pass current for want of examining Copies let the Reader therefore judge whether Judgement be more probable But I think it not worth while to say more about it In your vindication of the Authority of Canus you make use of a very silly piece of Sophistry for say you Though he make Infidels and Novices in the Faith to be convinced by the Authority of the Church yet you say It doth not follow that he makes the said Authority a fallible but a certain and sure way to make them believe it But 1. The Question is Whether Canus doth understand that place of S. Augustine of Infidels and Novices or no 2. Suppose he sayes It is a sure way Doth it therefore follow that it is an infallible way Is nothing certain but what is infallible I hope you are certain that the Church of Rome is the Cacholick Church but Are you infallible that she is so If you advance all certainty to Infallibility or bring down all Infallibility to Certainty every Christian is as infallible as your Church is For I make no question but that every good Christian is certain of the Grounds and Principles of his Religion The same thing you return upon again after to little purpose you multiply words about Canus and Stapleton's Testimonies For say you because S. Augustine speaks of a sure way therefore he must mean an infallible way as though what was not supernaturally infallible was presently unsure I pray tell me Are you sure that two and two make four Yet I hope you will not say You are supernaturally infallible that they do so I hope you are sure there is a Pope at Rome and a goodly Colledge of Cardinals there but Are you infallible in this It is not then certainly the same to deny a thing to be infallible and to make it unsure And you are either very weak or very wilful in saying so In what sense this so much controverted place of S. Augustine is to be understood will be afterwards discussed and whether it be intended wholly for Infidels or no only I shall take notice now how in the last words of this Chapter you would again inferr Infallibility from undoubted certainty For say you the Church in S. Augustine's time esteemed her self undoubtedly certain that the Gospel was the infallible Word of God for otherwise she might be deceived her self and deceive others in commanding them to believe that to be God's Word which was only the word of man But What is it you would inferr from all this For we believe the Church as undoubtedly certain as may be that the Scriptures are God's Word yet we are far enough from believing that her Testimony now is supernaturally infallible CHAP. VII The Protestant Way of resolving Faith Several Principles premised in order to it The distinct Questions set down and their several Resolution given The Truth of matters of fact the Divinity of the Doctrine and of the Books of Scripture distinctly resolved into their proper grounds Moral Certainty a sufficient Foundation for Faith and yet Christian Religion proved to be infallibly True How Apostolical Tradition made by his Lordship a Foundation of Faith Of the certainty we have of the Copies of Scripture and the Authority of them S. Augustine's Testimony concerning Church-Authority largely discussed and vindicated Of the private Spirit and the necessity of Grace His Lordship's Way of resolving Faith vindicated How far Scripture may be said to be known by its own Light The several Testimonies of Bellarmine Brierly and Hooker cleared HAving thus far followed you through all your intricacies and windings and shewed with what diligence and subtilty you would juggle men out of their Faith under a pretence of Infallibility it will be necessary for the vindicating our Doctrine and the clearing this important Controversie with all evidence and perspicuity to lay down those certain grounds which we build our Faith upon And although it be one of the greatest of your Modern Artifices to perswade the world that Protestants have no certain grounds of Faith at all yet I doubt not but to make it evident that the way taken by the most judicious and considerative Protestants is as satisfactory and reasonable as I have already made it appear that yours is unreasonable and ridiculous Which I shall the rather do because through the want of a clear and distinct apprehension of the true way of resolving Faith no Controversie in Religion hath been more obscure and involved than this hath been Therefore for our more distinct method of proceeding I shall first endeavour to prevent misunderstanding by premising several things which are necessary for a through opening the state of the Controversie and then come to the resolution of it The things then I would premise are these following 1. That we enquire not after the reason why we assent to what is divinely revealed but after the reason why we believe any thing to be a Divine Revelation Therefore when men speak of the last resolution of Faith into the Veracity of God revealing they speak that which is undoubtedly true but it reacheth not our present enquiry I freely grant that the ultimate reason why any thing is believed is upon the Testimony of him from whom it comes and the greater the knowledge and fidelity is of him whose Testimony I believe the stronger my Assent is supposing I have sufficient evidence that it is his Testimony But that is our present Question for it being taken for granted among all Christians that God's Testimony is absolutely infallible there can no dispute arise concerning the ground of resolving Faith supposing God's Revelation to be sufficiently known For no one questions but God's Veracity however discovered is a sufficient ground for Faith but all the Question is How we come to know wherein this Veracity of God doth discover it self or what those things are which are immediately revealed by him Therefore to tell us that the resolution of Faith is into Gods Infallible Testimony without shewing on what account this testimony is to be beleeved to be from God is to tell us that which no one doubts of and to escape that which is the main question For in case Isaac should have denyed submission to his Fathers will when he went to be sacrificed till he could be satisfied concerning the lawfulness of that action which his Father went about Do you think it had been satisfactory to him if Abraham had told him that God had power to relax his own Laws and therefore he need not question the lawfulness of the action might not Isaac have presently answered That he did not question that what God commanded was lawful but that he desired was some evidence that he had
contain the Gospel in them for it is plain he speaks of them and not the Doctrine abstractly considered should have wanted that consent of the Catholick Church that it had not been delivered down by a constant succession of all Ages from the Apostles and were not received among the Christian Churches but started out from a few persons who differ from all Christian Churches as this Apostleship of Manichaeus did he might justly question the Truth of them And this I take to be truest and most natural account of these so much controverted words of S. Austin by which sense the other two Questions are easily answered for it is plain S. Austin means not the judgement of the present Church but of the Catholick Church in the most comprehensive sense as taking in all ages and places or in Vincentius his words Succession Vniversality and Consent and it further appears that the influence which this Authority hath is sufficient to induce Assent to the thing attested in all persons who consider it in what age capacity or condition soever And therefore if in this sense you extend it beyond Novices and Weaklings I shall not oppose you in it but it cannot be denied that it is intended chiefly for doubters in the Faith because the design of it is to give men satisfaction as to the reason why they ought to believe But neither you nor any of those you call Catholick Authours will ever be able to prove that S. Austin by these words ever dreamt of any infallible Authority in the present Church as might be abundantly proved from the chapter foregoing where he gives an account of his being in the Catholick Church from the Consent of People and Nations from that Authority which was begun by miracles nourished by hope increased by charity confirmed by continuance which certainly are not the expressions of one who resolved his Faith into the infallible Testimony of the present Church And the whole scope and design of his Book de utilitate credendi doth evidently refute any such apprehension as might be easily manifested were it not too large a subject for this place where we only examine the meaning of S. Austin in another Book The substance of which is that That speech of his doth not contain a resolution of his Faith as to the Divinity of Christs Doctrine but the resolution of it as to the Truth and authenticalness of the writings of the Apostles and Evangelists which we acknowledge to be into the Testimony of the Catholick Church in the most large and comprehensive sense The next thing we come to consider is an Absurdity you charge on his Lordship viz. That if the infallible Authority of the Church be not admitted in the Resolution he must have recourse to the private Spirit which you say though he would seem to exclude from the state of the Question yet he falls into it under the specious title of Grace so that he only changeth the words but admits the same thing for which you cite p. 83 84. That therein his Lordship should averr that where others used to say They were infallibly resolved that Scripture was Gods Word by the Testimony of the Spirit within them that he hath the same assurance by Grace Whether you be not herein guilty of abusing his Lordship by a plain perverting of his meaning will be best seen by producing his words A man saith he is probably led by the Authority of the present Church as by the first informing inducing perswading means to believe the Scripture to be the Word of God But when he hath studied considered and compared this Word with it self and with other writings with the help of ordinary Grace and a mind morally induced and reasonably perswaded by the Voice of the Church the Scripture then gives greater and higher reasons of Credibility to it self than Tradition alone could give And then he that believes resolves his last and full assent that Scripture is of Divine Authority into internal arguments found in the letter it self though found by the help and direction of Tradition without and Grace within Had you not a great mind to calumniate who could pick out of these words That the Bishop resolved his Faith into Grace Can any thing be more plain than the contrary is from them when in the most perspicuous terms he says that the last Resolution of Faith is into internal arguments and only supposeth Tradition and Grace as necessary helps for the finding them Might you not then as well have said That his Lordship notwithstanding his zeal against the Infallibility of Tradition is fain to resolve his Faith into it at last as well as say that he doth it into Grace for he joyns these two together But Is it not possible to assert the Vse and Necessity of Grace in order to Faith but the last Resolution of it must be into it Do not all your Divines as well as ours suppose and prove the Necessity of Grace in order to believing and Are they not equally guilty of having recourse to the private Spirit Do you really think your self that there is any thing of Divine Grace in Faith or no If there be free your Self then from the private Spirit and you do his Lordship For shame then forbear such pitiful calumnies which if they have any truth in them You are as much concerned as Your adversary in it You would next perswade us That the Relator never comes near the main difficulty which say you is if the Church be supposed fallible in the Tradition of Scripture how it shall be certainly known whether de facto she now errs not in her delivery of it If this be your grand difficulty it is sufficiently assoiled already having largely answered this Question in terminis in the preceding Chapter You ask further What they are to do who are unresolved which is the true Church as though it were necessary for men to know which is the true Church before they can believe the Scriptures to be the Word of God but when we assert the tradition of the Church to be necessary for believing the Scriptures we do not thereby understand the particular Tradition of any particular Church whose judgement they must rely on but the Vniversal Tradition of all Christians though this must be first made known in some particular Society by the means of some particular persons though their authority doth not oblige us to believe but only are the means whereby men come acquainted with that Vniversal Tradition And therefore your following discourse concerning the knowing the true Church by its motives is superseded for we mean no other Church than the Community of Christians in this Controversie and if you ask me By what motives I come to be certain which is a Community of Christians and which of Mahumetans and how one should be known from another I can soon resolve you But we are so far from making it necessary to know which particular society
mistake to suppose a Church cannot continue without a vital inherent Principle of Infallibility in her self which must be discovered by Infallible Directions from the Head of it whereas we grant the necessity of an Infallible Foundation of Faith but cannot discern either from Scripture Reason or Antiquity that there must be a living and standing Infallible Judge which must deliver and interpret those Infallible Records to us We grant then Infallibility in the Foundation of Faith we assert the highest Certainty of the Infallibility of that Foundation we declare that the owning of that Infallible Foundation is that which makes men Christians the body of whom we call a Church we further grant that Christ hath left in his Church sufficient means for the preservation of it in Truth and Unity but we deny that ever he promised such an Infallibility to be constantly resident in that Church as was in the Prophets and Apostles and that neither any intention of Christ or any reason in the thing can be manifested why such an Infallibility should be so necessary for the Churches preservation that without it the Wisdom of Christ must be questioned and the Church built on a sandy Foundation Your citation of Vincentius Lyrinensis proves nothing but the Churches constancy in adhering to that Doctrine of Faith which was delivered from the beginning but how that should prove a Constant Infallibility I cannot understand unless it is impossible that there should be any Truth where there is no inherent Infallibility Thus we see what very little success you have in the attempt of proving the Churches continual Infallibility from Scripture From hence you proceed to the consideration of the way How Scripture and Tradition do mutually confirm each other His Lordship grants That they do mutually but not equally confirm the authority either of other For Scripture doth infallibly confirm the authority of Church-Traditions truly so called but Tradition doth but morally and probably confirm the authority of the Scripture This you say is apparently false but endeavour not to make it evident that it is so Only you say A. C. refused already to grant it Et quid tum postea Must every thing be false which A. C. refuses to grant But let us see whether his Similitude makes it out For saith he 't is as a Kings Embassadours word of mouth and his Kings Letters bear mutual witness to each other Just so indeed saith his Lordship For his Kings Letters of Credence under hand and Seal confirm the Embassadours authority infallibly to all that know his Seal and hand But the Embassadours word of mouth confirms his Kings Letters but only probably For else Why are they callâ—d Letters of Credence if they give not him more credit than he gives them To which you make a large Reply 1. That the Kings hand and Seal cannot confirm infallibly to a Forein King who neither knows hand nor Seal the Embassadours authority and therefore this reacheth not the business How we should know infallibly that the Scripture is Gods Word 2. That the primary reason Why the Embassadour is admitted is his own credit to which correspond the motives of Credibility of the Church by which the Letters of Credence are admitted 3. That none can give authority to the Letters of Credence or be infallibly certain of them but such as infallibly know that hand and Seal 4. That none can infallibly know that hand and Seal but such as are certain of the Embassadours sincerity But Doth all this disprove what his Lordship saith That though there be a mutual Testimony yet it is not equal for although the Letters of Credence might be the sooner read and admitted of on the Embassadours Reputation and Sincerity yet still those Letters themselves upon the delivery of them may further and in a higher degree confirm the Prince he is sent to of his authority to act as Embassadour Supposing then that there be a sufficient Testimony that these Letters were sealed by the Secretary of State who did manifest his Sincerity in the highest manner in the sealing of them though a Forein Prince might not know the hand and Seal yet upon such a creditable Testimony he may be assured that they were sealed by the Prince himself But then withall if the Embassadour to assure the Prince offers his own life to attest the truth of his Credentials and the Prince by reading the Letters find something in them which could not be written by any other than that Prince he then hath the highest certainty he can desire This is the case between Tradition and Scripture General Tradition at first makes way for the first admission of Scripture as the general repute of an Embassadours coming doth for his access to the Prince the particular Tradition of the Church is like the Embassadours affirming to the Prince that he hath Letters of Credence with him but then when he enquires into the Certainty of those Letters those Motives of Credibility not which relate to the person of the Embassadour but which evidently prove the sealing of those Letters as the constant Testimony of such who were present at it the Secretaries and Embassadours venturing their lives upon it must confirm him in that and lastly his own reading the Credentials give him the highest Confirmation i. e. The testimony of those who saw the miracles of Christ and his Apostles and confirmed the Truth of their Testimony by their dying for it are the highest inducement to our believing that the Scriptures were sealed by God himself in the miracles wrought and written by his own hand his Spirit infallibly assisting the Apostle but still after all this when in these very Scriptures we read such things as we cannot reasonably suppose could come from any but God himself this doth in the highest degree settle and confirm our Faith Therefore as to the main scope for which this Similitude was used by his Lordship it holds still but your mistake lyes in supposing that the Embassadours reception depended wholly on his own single Testimony and that was enough to make any Prince infallibly certain that his Letters of Credence are true which cannot be unless he knows before-hand that Embassadour to be infallibly true which is impossible to be supposed at his first reception Yet this is plainly your case that the Scriptures are to be infallibly believed on the single Testimony of the present Church which is to make the Embassadour himself give authority to his Letters of Credence and set hand and seal to them Whereas the contrary is most evident to be true But then supposing these Credentials admitted the Prince transacts with the Embassadour according to that power which is conveyed to him therein And thus it is in the present case Not as though a Prince treated every Envoy with equal respect to an Embassadour no more ought any Pastors of the Church be received but according to that power and authority which their Credentials viz. the
that you deny not the truth of what is therein contained for otherwise the want of Authority in themselves the ambiguity of them the impossibility of knowing the sense of them without Tradition are the very same arguments which with the greatest pomp and ostentation are produced by you against the Scriptures being the Rule whereby to judge of Controversies Which we have no more cause to wonder at than Irenaeus had in the Valentinians because from them we produce our greatest arguments against your fond opinions Now when the Valentinians pretended their great rule was on oral Tradition which was conveyed from the Apostles down to them to this Irenaeus opposeth the constant Tradition of the Apostolical Churches which in a continued succession was preserved from the Apostles times which was the same every where among all the Churches which every one who desired it might easily be satisfied about because they could number them who by the Apostles were appointed Bishops in Churches and their successors unto our own times who taught no such thing nor ever knew any such thing as they madly fancy to themselves We see then his appeal to Tradition was only in a matter of fact Whether ever any such thing as their opinion which was not contained in Scripture was delivered to them by the Apostles or no i. e. Whether the Apostles left any oral Traditions in the Churches which should be the rule to interpret Scriptures by or no And the whole design of Irenaeus is to prove the contrary by an appeal to all the Apostolical Churches and particularly by appealing to the Roman Church because of its due fame and celebrity in that Age wherein Irenaeus lived So that Irenaeus appealed to the then Roman Church even when he speaks highest in the honour of it for somewhat which is fundamentally contrary to the pretensions of the now Roman Church He then appealed to it for an evidence against such oral Traditions which were pretended to be left by the Apostles as a rule to understand Scripture by and were it not for this same pretence now what will become of the Authority of the present Roman Church After he hath thus manifested by recourse to the Apostolical Churches that there was no such Tradition left among them it was very reasonable to inferr that there was none such at all for they could not imagine if the Apostles had designed any such Tradition but they would have communicated it to those famous Churches which were planted by them and it was absurd to suppose that those Churches who could so easily derive their succession from the Apostles should in so short a time have lost the memory of so rich a treasure deposited with them as that was pretended to be from whence he sufficiently refutes that unreasonable imagination of the Valentinians Which having done he proceeds to settle those firm grounds on which the Christians believed in one God the Father and in one Lord Jesus Christ which he doth by removing the only Objection which the Adversaries had against them For when the Christians declared the main reason into which they resolved their Faith as to these principles was Because no other God or Christ were revealed in Scripture but them whom they believed the Valentinians answered this could not be a sufficient foundation for their Faith on this account because many things were delivered in Scripture not according to the truth of the things but the judgment and opinion of the persons they were spoken to This therefore being such a pretence as would destroy any firm resolution of Faith into Scripture and must necessarily place it in Tradition Irenaeus concerns himself much to demonstrate the contrary by an ostension as he calls it that Christ and the Apostles did all along speak according to truth and not according to the opinion of their auditours which is the entire subject of the fifth Chapter of his third Book Which he proves first of Christ because he was Truth it self and it would be very contrary to his nature to speak of things otherwise then they were when the very design of his coming was to direct men in the way of Truth The Apostles were persons who professed to declare truth to the world and as light cannot communicate with darkness so neither could truth be blended with so much falshood as that opinion supposeth in them And therefore neither our Lord nor his Apostles could be supposed to mean any other God or Christ then whom they declared For this saith he were rather to increase their ignorance and confirm them in it then to cure them of it and therefore that Law was true which pronounced a curse on every one who led a blind man out of his way And the Apostles being sent for the recovery of the lost sight of the blind cannot be supposed to speak to men according to their present opinion but according to the manifestation of truth For what Physitian intending to cure a Patient will do according to his Patients desire and not rather what will be best for him From whence he concludes Since the design of Christ and his Apostles was not to flatter but to cure mens souls it follows that they did not speak to them according to their former opinion but according to truth without all hypocrisie and dissimulation From whence it follows that if Christ and his Apostles did speak according to truth there is then need of no Oral Tradition for our understanding Scripture and consequently the resolution of our Faith as to God and Christ and proportionably as to other objects to be believed is not into any Tradition pretending to be derived from the Apostles but into the Scriptures themselves which by this discourse evidently appears to have been the judgement of Irenaeus The next which follows is Clemens of Alexandria who flourished A. D. 196. whom St. Hierome accounted the most learned of all the writers of the Church and therefore cannot be supposed ignorant in so necessary a part of the Christian Doctrine as the Resolution of Faith is And if his judgement may be taken the Scriptures are the only certain Foundation of Faith for in his Admonition to the Gentiles after he hath with a great deal of excellent learning derided the Heathen Superstitions when he comes to give an account of the Christians Faith he begins it with this pregnant Testimony to our purpose For saith he the Sacred Oracles affording us the most manifest grounds of Divine worship are the Foundation of Truth And so goes on in a high commendation of the Scripture as the most compendious directions for happiness the best Institutions for government of life the most free from all vain ornaments that they raise mens souls up out of wickedness yielding the most excellent remedies disswading from the greatest deceit and most clearly incouraging to a foreseen happiness with more of the same nature And when after he perswades men with so much Rhetorick and
ground than not being able to distinguish between the submission of Obedience and Faith For his Lordship saith It may be our duty not to oppose General Councils in case they erre and yet it may be no pride not to believe known and gross errours of General Councils and I pray What shadow of a contradiction is here And if it be pride in us not to believe gross errours imposed on us Is it not much more intolerable in them who offer to impose them What Authority the Pope hath either to order or confirm Councils it is not here a place to enter upon again since it hath been so largely discoursed of in so many places But you force me though not to the repetition of matter yet to the repeating my saying that I will not oftener than I should but only to shew how little you deserve any further answer There is nothing now remaining to the end of your Book which hath not been over and over even in these last Chapters but only a long discourse touching Succession which you shew your self of how little importance it is when after you have endeavoured at large to prove the necessity of personal Succession you grant That it is not sufficient without succession of Doctrine too And on that account you deny the Greek Church to have a true Succession And in vindication of Stapleton you say All the Succession which he and you contend for is a Succession of Pastors which hold entire both the Vnity and the Faith of the Church So that it comes to this at last that you are bound to prove a continual Succession of all that which you call the Faith of your Church in every age from the Apostles times if you would have us believe that Doctrine or own your Church for the true Church of Christ. And therefore I conclude these general Answers with his Lordships words If A. C. T. C. or any Jesuit can prove that by a visible continued Succession from Christ or his Apostles to this day either Transubstantiation in the Eucharist or the Eucharist in one kind or Purgatory or Worship of Images or the Intention of the Priest of necessity in Baptism or the Power of the Pope over a General Council or his Infallibility with or without it or his Power to depose Princes or the publick Prayers of the Church in an unknown tongue with divers other points have been so taught I for my part will give the Cause CHAP. VI. The Sense of the Fathers concerning Purgatory The Advantage which comes to the Church of Rome by the Doctrine of Purgatory thence the boldness of our Adversaries in contending for it The Sense of the Roman Church concerning Purgatory explained The Controversie between the Greek and Latin Church concerning it The Difference in the Church of Rome about Purgatory Some general Considerations about the Sense of the Fathers as to its being an Article of Faith The Doubtfulness and Vncertainty of the Fathers Judgments in this particular manifested by S. Austin the first who seemed to assert a Purgation before the day of Judgement Prayer for the Dead used in the Ancient Church doth not inferr Purgatory The Primate of Armagh vindicated from our Adversaries Calumnies The general Intention of the Church distinguished from the private Opinions of particular persons The Prayers of the Church respected the day of Judgement The Testimonies of the Fathers in behalf of Purgatory examined particularly of the pretended Dionysius Tertullian S. Cyprian Origen S. Ambrose S. Hierom S. Basil Nazianzen Lactantius Hilary Gregory Nyssen c. And not one of them asserts the Purgatory of the Church of Rome S. Austin doth not contradict himself about it The Doctrine of Purgatory no elder than Gregory 1. and built on Credâ—lity and Superstition The Churches Infallibility made at last the Foundation of the belief of Purgatory The Falsity of that Principle and the whole concluded THese general Answers being dispatched there remains only now this Question concerning Purgatory to be discussed Which being the great Diana of your Church no wonder you are so much displeased at his Lordship for speaking against it for by that means your craft is in danger to be set at nought There being no Opinion in your Church which brings in a more constant revenue by Masses for the dead and Indulgencies besides Casualties and Deodands by dying persons or their friends in hopes of a speedier release out of the pains of Purgatory So that if this Opinion were once out of Countenance in the world you would lose one of the best Arts you have of upholding the Grandeur of your Church For then farewel Indulgences and years of Jubilee farewel all those rich Donations which are given by those at their death who hope by that means to get the sooner out of the Suburbs of Hell to a place of rest and happiness For What Engine could possibly be better contrived to extort the largest gifts from those whose riches were as great as their sins than to perswade them that by that means they would be sooner delivered out of the Flames of Purgatory and need not doubt but they should come to Heaven at last And Would not they be accounted great Fools that would not live as they pleased in this world as long as they could buy themselves out of the pains of another And by this means your Church hath not only eaten but grown fat by the sins of the people it being truly observed by Spalatensis That the Doctrine of Purgatory hath been that which hath most inriched the Church of Rome which he gives as the reason of the most zealous contending for that Doctrine among those of your party who find so much advantage by it And we might easily believe there was something extraordinary in it when you tell us It is therefore firmly to be believed by all Catholicks that there is a Purgatory yea we are as much bound to believe it as we are bound to believe for Instance the Trinity or Incarnation it self because since it is defined by the Church we cannot lawfully or without sin and peril of damnation deny or question this doctrine We had need then look to our selves who look on this Doctrine as a meer figment that hath no foundation at all either in Scripture Reason or Tradition of the Primitive Church but much more had you need to look to your selves who dare with so much confidence obtrude so destructive a Doctine to a Christian life without any evidence of the truth of it to be believed as much as the Trinity or Incarnation it self which expressions take them in the mildest sense you can give them carry a most insufferable boldness with them But these are not all the bold words which you utter on this Subject for you say elsewhere That Bellarmin doth not more boldly than truly affirm yea evidently prove that all the Fathers both Greek and Latin did constantly teach Purgatory
decrying the use of those things which should discover their falsity For although the judgement of sense were that which the Apostles did appeal to that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you although that were the greatest and surest evidence to them of the Resurrection of Christ although Christ himself condemned them for their unbelief and hardness of heart because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen yet according to your Principles men must have a care of relying on the judgement of sense in matters of Faith lest perchance they should not believe that great Affront to humane Nature the Doctrine of Transubstantiation Neither are men only deprived of the judgement of sense but of the concurrent use of Scripture and Reason for these are pretended to be uncertain fallible nay dangerous without the Churches Infallibility So that the short of your grounds of establishing Faith is If we will find our way we must renounce the judgement of sense and reason submit our selves and Scripture to an Infallible Guide and then you tell us we cannot miss of our way when it is impossible for us to know our Guide without the use of those things which we are bid to renounce These things laid together make us admire more at your confidence than invention in making the current title of your Book to be Dr. Lawd's Labyrinth in which it is hard to say whether your immodesty or blindness be the greater But as though you were the only Heroes for asserting the Christian Cause and all others but more subtle betrayers of it you begin your Book with a most ingenious comparison of the learned labours of those of your Church to the stately Temple of Solomon and the artificial but pestiferous works of all Heretical Authors i. e. all but your selves to Labyrinths and intricate Dungeons In which only your discretion is to be commended in placing this at the entrance of your Book for whosoever looks but further into it and compares it with that you pretend to answer will not condemn the choice of your Similitudes but your forgetfulness in misapplying them But it matters not what titles you give to the books of our Authors unless you were better able to confute them and if no other book of any late Protestant Writer hath been any more discovered to be of this intangling nature than this of his Lordship whom you call our grand Author is by you you may very justly say of them as you do in the next words they are very liable to the same Reproach In which we commend your ingenuity that when you had so lately disparaged our Authors and Writings you so suddenly wipe off those Aspersions again by giving them the deserved name of Reproaches When you say his Lordships Book is most artificially composed we have reason to believe so fair a Testimony from a professed Adversary but when notwithstanding this you call it a Labyrinth we can interpret it only as a fair plea for your not being able to answer it And who can blame you for calling that a Labyrinth in which you have so miserably lost your self but in pity to you and justice to the cause I have undertaken I shall endeavour with all kindness and fairness to reduce you out of your strange entanglements into the plain and easie paths of Truth which I doubt not to effect by your own Clew of Scripture and Tradition by which you may soon discover what a Labyrinth you were in your self when you had thought to have made directive Marks as you call them for others to avoid it To omit therefore any further preface I shall wait upon you to particulars the first of which is the Occasion of the Conference which you say was for the satisfaction of an honourable Lady who having heard it granted in a former Conference that there must be a continual visible company ever since Christ teaching unchanged doctrine in all points necessary to salvation and finding it seems in her own reason that such a company or Church must not be fallible in its teaching was in quest of a Continual Visible Infallible Church as not thinking it fit for unlearned persons to judge of particular doctrinals but to depend on the judgement of the true Church The Question then was not concerning a Continual and Visible Church which you acknowledge was granted but concerning such a Church as must be infallible in all she teaches and if she be infallible according to your doctrine of Fundamentals whatever she teaches is necessary to salvation which that Lady thought necessary to be first determined because saith Mr. Fisher It was not for her or any other unlearned persons to take upon them to judge of particulars without depending upon the judgement of the true Church which seeming to allow of some use of our own judgement supposing the Churches Authority you pervert into these words Not thinking it fit to judge c. but to depend c. But let them be as they will unless you gave greater reason for them it is not material which way they pass For his Lordship had returned a sufficient Answer to that pretence which you are content to take no notice of in saying That it is very fit the people should look to the judgement of the Church before they be too busie with particulars But yet neither Scripture nor any good Authority denyes them some moderate use of their own understanding and judgement especially in things familiar and evident which even ordinary capacities may as easily understand as read And therefore some particulars a Christian may judge without depending To which you having nothing to say run post to the business of Infallibility for when it was said The Lady desired to rely on an Infallible Church therein his Lordship says neither the Jesuite nor the Lady her self spake very advisedly For an Infallible Church denotes a particular Church in that it is set in opposition to some other particular Church that is not infallible Here now you begin your discoveries for you tell us he makes this his first crook in his projected Labyrinth which is apparent to any man that has eyes even without the help of a Perspective As seldome as Perspectives are used to discern the turns of Labyrinths nothing is so apparent as that your eyes or your judgement were not very good when you used this expression For I pray what crook or turn is there in that when a Lady demanded an Infallible Church to her guide to say that by that question she supposeth some particular Church as distinct from and opposite to others to be infallible No say you she sought not any one particular Church infallible in opposition to another Church not infallible but some Church such as might without danger of errour direct her in all doctrinal points of Faith Rarely well distinguish'd Not any particular Church but some particular Church For if
answer that when you say It is necessary we must believe the Scriptures to be the VVord of God with Divine Faith this Divine Faith must be taken in one of these three senses either first that Faith may be said to be Divine which hath a Divine Revelation for its Material Object as that Faith may be said to be a Humane Faith which is conversant about natural causes and the effects of them And in this sense it cannot but be a Divine Faith which is conversant about the Scripture because it is a Divine Revelation Or secondly a Faith may be said to be Divine in regard of its Testimony or Formal Object and so that is called a Divine Faith which is built on a Divine Testimony and that a Humane Faith which is built on a Humane Testimony Thus I assert all that Faith which respects particular Objects of Faith supposing the belief of the Scriptures is in this sense Divine because it is built on a properly Divine Testimony but the Question is Whether that Act of Faith which hath the whole Scripture as its Material Object be in that sense Divine or no. Thirdly Faith may be said to be Divine in regard of the Divine Effects it hath upon the soul of man as it is said in Scripture to purifie the heart overcome the world resist Satan and his Temptations receive Christ c. And this is properly a Divine Faith and there is no Question but every Christian ought to have this Divine Faith in his soul without which the other sorts of Divine Faith will never bring men to Heaven But it is apparent that all who heartily profess to believe the Scriptures to be the VVord of God have not this sort of Divine Faith though they have so firm an assent to the Truth and Authority of it that they durst lay down their lives for it The Assent therefore we see may be firm where the effects are not saving The Question now is Whether this may be called a Divine Faith in the second sense that is Whether it must be built on a Testimony infallible For clearing which we must further consider the meaning of this Question How we know Scripture to be Scripture which may import two things How we know that all these Books contain God's VVord in them Or secondly How we know the Doctrine contained in these Books to be Divine If you then ask me Whether it be necessary that I believe with such a Faith as is built on Divine Testimony that these Books called the Scripture contain the principles of the Jewish and Christian Religion in them which we call God's VVord I deny it and shall do so till you shew me some further necessity of it than you have done yet and my reason is because I may have sufficient ground for such an Assent without any Divine Testimony But if you ask me On what ground I believe the Doctrine to be Divine which is contained in those Books I then answer affirmatively On a Divine Testimony because God hath given abundant evidence that this Doctrine was of Divine Revelation Thus you see what little reason you have to triumph in your Argument from Divine Faith inferring the necessity of an unwritten VVord of God But the further explication of these things must be reserved till I come to the positive part of our way of resolution of Faith I now return Having after your way that is very unsatisfactorily attempted the vindicating your resolution of Faith from the Objections which were offered against it by his Lordship you come now to consider the second way propounded by him for the resolving Faith which is That Scripture should be fully and sufficiently known as by divine and infallible Testimony by the resplendency of that light which it hath in it self only and by the witness it can so give to it self against which he gives such evident reasons that you acknowledge the Relator himself hath sufficiently confuted it and you agree with him in the Confutation Yet herein you grow very angry with him for saying That this Doctrine may agree well enough with your grounds in regard you hold that Tradition may be known for God's VVord by its own light and consequently the like may be said of Scripture This you call aspersing you and obtruding falshoods upon you Whether it be so or no must appear upon examination Two Testimonies are cited from A. C. to this purpose the first is Tradition of the Church is of a Company which by its own light shews it self to be infallibly assisted Your Answer is That the word which must properly relate to the preceding word Company and not to the more remote word Tradition But what of all this Doth any thing the less follow which the Bishop charged A. C. with For it being granted by you That there can be no knowing an Apostolical Tradition but for the Infallibility of the present Church the same light which discovers the Infallibility of that Company doth likewise discover the Truth of Tradition If therefore your Church doth appear infallible by its own light which is your own confession May not the Scripture as well appear infallible by its own light For is there not as great self-evidence at least that the Scripture is infallible as that your Church is infallible And therefore that way you take to shift the Objection makes it return upon you with greater force For I pray tell me how any Company can appear by its own Light to be assisted by the Holy Ghost and not much more the Holy Scripture to be divine Especially seeing you must at last be forced to derive this Infallibility from the Scriptures For you pretend to no other Infallibility than what comes by a promise of the immediate assistance of the Holy Ghost How then can any Company appear by its own Light to be thus infallibly assisted unless it first appear by its own Light that there was such a Promise and how can that unless it antecedently appear by its own Light that the Scripture in which the Promise is written is the VVord of God You tell us A. C ' s. intention is only to affirm That the Church is known by her Motives of Credibility which ever accompany her and may very properly be called her own Light How well you are acquainted with A. C ' s. intention I know not neither is it much matter for granting this to have been his intention may not the Scripture be known by her Motives of Credibility as well as the Church and do not these accompany her as much as the Church and may they not be called her Light as properly as those of the Church It is plain then by all the senses and meanings you can find out in the very same that you say the Church may be known by her own Light the Scripture may much more and therefore you have no reason to quarrel with his Lordship or affirming it The second Testimony
is roving and uncertain 2. That notwithstanding his brags he must have recourse to a private spirit himself 3. That though the Bishop would seem to deny it diverse eminent Protestants do resolve their Faith into the private spirit This being the substance of what you say I shall return a particular Answer to each of them For the first you tell us He delivers himself in such a roving way of discourse as signifies nothing in effect as to what he would drive at No that is strange when that which his Lordship drives at is to shew how far this opinion is to be allowed and how far not which he is so far from roving in that he clearly and distinctly propounds the state of the question and the resolution of it which in short is this If by the testimony of the spirit be meant any special revelation of a new object of Faith then he denies the truth of it at least in an ordinary way both because God never sends us to look for such a testimony and because it would expose men to the danger of Enthusiasms but if by the testimony of the Spirit be meant the habit or the act of Divine infused Faith by vertue of which they believe the object which appears credible then he grants the truth but denyes the pertinency of it because it is quite out of the state of the question which inquires only after a sufficient means to make this object credible against all impeachment of folly and temerity in believing whether men do actually believe or not And withal adds that the question is of such outward and evident means as other men may take notice of as well as our selves Judge you now whether this may be called roving if it be so I can freely excuse you from it in all the discourses I have met with in your Book who abhorre nothing more then a true stating and methodical handling any question But yet say you the Bishop cannot free himself from that imputation of recurring to the private Spirit against any that should press the business home Sure you refer us here to some one else who is able to press a business home for you never attempt it your self and instead of that only produce a large testimony out of A. C. That he did not acquit the Bishop wholly of this Whether he did or no is to little purpose and yet those very words which his Lordship cites are in your testimony produced out of him Only what you add more from him that he must be driven to it that his Lordship denies and neither A. C. or you have been able to prove it But though the Bishop seems not only to deny any such private revelation himself but will not confess that any Protestants hold it yet you say there can be no doubt in this since Calvin and Whitaker do both so expresly own it But according to those principles laid down before both these testimonies are easily answered For 1. Neither of them doth imply any private revelation of any new object but only a particular application of the evidence appearing in Scripture to the conscience of every Believer 2. That these testimonies do not speak of the external evidence which others are capable of but of the internal satisfaction of every ones conscience Therefore Calvin saith Si conscientiis optimè consultum volumus c. if we will satisfie our own consciences not If we will undertake to give a sufficient reason to others of our Faith So Whitaker Esse enim dicimus certius illustrius testimonium quo nobis persuadeatur hos libros esse sacros c. There is a more certain and noble testimony by which we may be perswaded that these Books are sacred viz. that of the Holy Ghost 3. Neither of these testimonies affirm any more than the more judicious Writers among your selves do Your Canus asserts the necessity of an internal efficient cause by special assistance of the Spirit moving us to believe besides and beyond all humane authorities and motives which of themselves are not sufficient to beget Faith and this a little after he calls Divinum quoddam lume◠incitans ad credendum A divine light moving us to believe and again Interius lumen infusum à Spirit◠Sancto An inward light infused by the Spirit of God There is nothing in the sayings of the most rigid Protestants is more hard to explain or vindicate from a private revelation then this is if as you say one would press it home Nay hath not your own Stapleton Calvins very phrase of the necessity of the secret testimony of the Spirit that one believe the testimony and judgement of the Church concerning Scripture And is there not then as much danger of Enthusiasm in believing the Testimony of your Church as in believing the Scriptures Nay doth not your Gregory de Valentiâ rather go higher then the testimonies by you produced out of Calvin and Whitaker on this very subject in the beginning of his discourse of the resolution of Faith It is God himself saith he in the first place which must convince and perswade the minds of men of the truth of the Christian Doctrine and consequently of the Sacred Scriptures by some inward instinct and impulse as it appears from Scripture it self is fully explained by Prosper If you will then undertake to clear this inward instinct and impulse upon the minds of men whereby they are perswaded of the truth of Christianity and Scripture from Enthusiasm and a private spirit you may as easily do it for the utmost which is said by Calvin or Whitaker or any other Protestant Divine This therefore is only an argument of your desire to cavil and as such I will pass it over For what concerns the influence which the Spirit hath in the resolution of Faith it will be enquired into afterwards The last way mentioned in order to the resolution of Faith is that of Reason which his Lordship saith cannot be denyed to have some place to come in and prove what it can According to which he tells us no man can be hindred from weighing the tradition of the Church the inward motives in Scripture it self all testimonies within which seem to bear witness to it and in all this saith he there is no harm the danger is when a man will use no other scale but reason or prefer reason before any other scale Reason then can give no supernatural ground into which a man may resolve his Faith that the Scripture is the word of God infallibly yet Reason can go so high as it can prove that Christian Religion which rests upon the authority of this Book stands upon surer grounds of nature reason common equity and justice then any thing in the world which any Infidel or meer naturalist hath done doth or can adhere unto against it in that which he makes accounts or assumes as Religion to himself This
report of such men whom I can make it appear could have no interest in deceiving you A. I can see no reason to the contrary Will you then believe such men who lost their lives to make it appear that their Testimony was true A. Yes Will you believe such things wherein persons of several Ages Professions Nations Religions Interests are all agreed that they were so A. Yes if it be only to believe a matter of fact on their Testimony I can see no ground to question it That is all I desire of you and therefore you must believe that there was in the world such a person as Jesus Christ who dyed and rose again and while he lived wrought great miracles to confirm his Doctrine with and that he sent out Apostles to preach this Doctrine in the world who likewise did work many miracles and that some of these persons the better to preserve and convey this Doctrine did write the substance of all that Christ either did or spake and withall penned several Epistles to those Churches which were planted by them These are all matters of fact and therefore on your former Principle you are to believe them There are then but two Scruples left Supposing all this true yet this doth not prove the Doctrine Divine nor the Scriptures which convey it to be infallible To which I answer 1. Can you question Whether that Doctrine be Divine when the person who declared it to the world was so divine and extraordinary a person not only in his conversation but in those frequent and unparalleld Miracles which he wrought in the sight and face of his enemies who after his death did rise again and converse with his Disciples who gave evidence of their fidelity in the Testimony they gave of it by laying down their lives to attest the Truth of it Again Can you question the Divinity of that Doctrine which tended so apparently to the destruction of sin and wickedness and the power of the evil Spirit in the world For we cannot think he would quit his possession willingly out of the bodies and souls of men that therefore which threw him out of both must be not only a Doctrine directly contrary to his interest but infinitely exceeding him in power And that can be no less than Divine But still you will say Is it not besides all this necessary to believe these very Books you call the Scripture to be divinely inspired and how should I know that To that I answer 1. That which God chiefly requires from you is the belief of the Truth and Divinity of the Doctrine for that is the Faith which will bring you to obedience which is the thing God aims at 2. If you believe the Doctrine to be True and Divine you cannot reasonably question the Infallibility of the Scriptures For in that you read that not only Christ did miracles but his Apostles too and therefore their Testimony whether writing or speaking was equally infallible all that you want evidence for is that such persons writ these Books and that being a matter of fact was sufficiently proved and acknowledged before Thus you see if we take a right method and not jumble things confusedly together as you do what a satisfactory account may be given to any inquisitive person first of the Reasonableness next of the Truth and lastly of the Divinity both of the Doctrine and the Books containing it which we call the Scripture Let us now again see How you make the Bishop and Heathen dispute The substance of which is That you make your Heathen desire no less than infallible evidence that the Bible is God's VVord by conviction of natural reason whereas his Lordship attempts only to make the Authority of Scriptures appear by such Arguments as unbelievers themselves could not but think reasonable if they weighed them with indifferency For though saith he this Truth That Scripture is the VVord of God is not so demonstratively evident à priori as to inforce assent yet it is strengthened so abundantly with probable Arguments both from the Light of Nature it self and Humane Testimony that he must be very wilful and self-conceited that shall dare to suspect it And sure any reasonable man in the world would think it sufficient to deal with an adversary upon such terms But saies your Heathen A man cannot be infallibly certain of what is strengthened with but probable Arguments since that which is but probably true may also be said to be but probably false Which being a thing so often objected against us by your party must be somewhat further explained How far Infallibility may be admitted in our belief may partly be perceived by what hath been said already and what shall be said more afterwards That there is and ought to be the highest degree of actual Certainty I assert as much as you But say you The very Arguments being but probable destroy it To which I answer by explaining the meaning of probable Arguments in this case whereby are not understood such kind of Probabilities which cannot raise a firm Assent in which sense we say That which is probable to be is probable not to be but by Probabilities are only meant such kind of rational Evidence which may yield a sufficient foundation for a firm Assent but yet notwithstanding which an obstinate person may deny Assent As for Instance if you were to dispute with an Atheist concerning the Existence of a Deity which he denies and should proceed with you just as your Heathen doth with the Bishop Sir All that Religion you talk of is built only upon the belief of a God but I cannot be infallibly convinced by natural reason that there is such a one You presently tell him that there is so much evidence for a Deity from the works of nature the consent of all people c. that he can have no reason to question it But still he replies None of these are demonstrations for notwithstanding I have considered these I believe the contrary but demonstrations would make me infallibly certain these then are no more but probable Arguments and therefore since it is but probably true it may be probably false How then will you satisfie such a person Can you do it any otherwise than by saying that we have as great Evidence as the nature of the thing will bear and it is unreasonable to require more Unless you will tell him it is to no purpose to believe a God unless he believe it infallibly and there being no infallible Arguments in nature he must believe it on the Infallibility of your Church And do you not think this were an excellent way to confute Atheists But when we speak of probable Arguments we mean not such as are apt to leave the mind in suspence whether the thing be true or no but only such as are not proper and rigid demonstrations or infallible Testimony but the highest Evidence which the nature of the thing will bear
can desire that they are infallibly conveyed to us 1. If the Doctrine of Christ be True and Divine then all the Promises be made were accomplished Now that was one of the greatest That his Spirit should lead his Apostles into all Truth Can we then reasonably think that if the Apostles had such an infallible Assistance of the Spirit of God with them in what they spake in a transitory way to them who heard them that they should want it in the delivering those Records to the Church which were to be the standing monuments of this Doctrine to all Ages and Generations If Christ's Doctrine therefore be True the Apostles had an infallible Assistance of God's Spirit if they had so in delivering the Doctrine of Christ by preaching nothing can be more unreasonable than to imagine such should want it who were employed to give an account to the world of the nature of this Doctrine and of the Miracles which accompanied Christ and his Apostles So that it will appear an absurd thing to assert that the Doctrine of Christ is Divine and to question whether we have the infallible Records of it It is not pertinent to our Question in what way the Spirit of God assisted them that wrote Whether by immediate suggestion of all such things which might be sufficiently known without it and whether in some things which were not of concernment it might not leave them to their own judgement as in that place When they had rowed about five and twenty or thirty furlongs when no doubt God's Spirit knew infallibly whether it was but thought not fit to reveal it whether in some lighter circumstances the Writers were subject to any inadvertencies the negative of which is more piously credible whether meer historical passages needed the same infallible Assistance that Prophetical and Doctrinal these things I say are not necessary to be resolved it being sufficient in order to Faith that the Doctrine we are to believe as it was infallibly delivered to the world by the preaching of Christ and his Apostles so it is infallibly conveyed to us in the Books of Scripture 2. Because these Books were owned for Divine by those Persons and Ages who were most competent Judges Whether they were so or no. For the Age of the Apostles was sufficiently able to judge whether those things which are said to be spoken by Christ or written by the Apostles were really so or no. And we can have no reason at all to question but what was delivered by them was infallibly true Now from that first Age we derive our knowledge concerning the Authority of these Books which being conveyed to us in the most unquestionable and universal Tradition we can have no reason in the world to doubt and therefore the greatest reason firmly to assent that the Books we call the Scripture are the infallible Records of the Word of God And thus much may suffice in general concerning the Protestant Way of resolving Faith I now return to the examination of what you give us by way of answer to his Lordship's discourse The first Assault you make upon his Lordship is for making Apostolical Tradition a ground of Faith but because your peculiar excellency lyes in the involving plain things the best service I can do is to lay things open as they are by which means we shall easily discern where the truth lyes I shall therefore first shew how far his Lordship makes Apostolical Tradition a ground of Faith and then consider what you have to object against it In that Section which your Margent referrs to all that he sayes of it is That the Voice and Tradition of that Church which included in it Apostles Disciples and such as had immediate Revelation from Heaven was Divine and the Word of God from them is of like validity written or delivered And as to this Tradition he saith there is abundance of Certainty in it self but how far it is evident to us shall after appear At the end of the next n. 21. he saith That there is double Authority and both Divine that confirms Scripture to be the Word of God Tradition of the Apostles delivering it and the internal worth and argument in the Scripture obvious to a soul prepared by the present Churches Tradition and Gods Grace But n. 23. he saith That this Apostolical Tradition is not the sole and only means to prove Scripture Divine but the moral perswasion reason and force of the present Church is ground enough for any one to read the Scripture and esteem reverently of it And this once done the Scripture hath then In and home-arguments enough to put a soul that hath but ordinary Grace out of doubt that the Scripture is the Word of God infallible and Divine I suppose his Lordships meaning may be comprized in these particulars 1. That to those who lived in the Apostolical times the Tradition of Scripture by those who had an infallible Testimony was a sufficient ground of their believing it infallibly true 2. That though the conveyance of that Tradition to us be not infallible yet it may be sufficient to raise in us a high esteem and veneration for the Scripture 3. That those who have this esteem for the Scripture by a through studying and consideration of it may undoubtedly believe that Scripture is the Divine and Infallible Word of God This I take to be the substance of his Lordships discourse We now come to examine what you object against him Your first demand is How comes Apostolical Primitive Tradition to work upon us if the present Church be fallible Which I shall answer by another How come the decrees of Councils to work upon you if the reporters of those Decrees be fallible If you say It is sufficient that the Decree it self be infallible but it is not necessary that the reporter of those Decrees should be so The same I say concerning the Apostolical Tradition of Scripture though it were infallible in their Testimony yet it is not necessary that the conveyance of it to us should be infallible And if you think your self bound to believe the Decrees of General Councils as infallible though fallibly conveyed to you Why may not we say the same concerning Apostolical Tradition Whereby you may see though Tradition be fallible yet the matter conveyed by it may have its proper effect upon us Your next Inquiry if I understand it is to this sense Whether Apostolical Tradition be not then as credible as the Scriptures I answer freely supposing it equally evident what was delivered by the Apostles to the Church by word or writing hath equal Credibility You attempt to prove That there is equal evidence because the Scripture is only known by the Tradition of the Church to be the same that was recommended by the Apostolical Church which you have likewise for Apostolical Tradition But 1. Do you mean the same Apostolical Tradition here or no which the Arch-Bishop
which had been in the world but knowing that the Christians did with the greatest resolution adhere to that Doctrine which was delivered by Christ and his Apostles they could not suppose that they should embrace these figments unless they could some way or other father them upon them Upon which they pretended that these very things which they delivered were really intended by Christ and the Apostles in their writings but because so few were capable of them they gave only some intimations of them there but delivered these great mysteries privately only to those who were perfect and that this was St. Pauls meaning when he said I speak wisdome among them that are perfect This Irenaeus gives us an account of in the beginning of all his discourse but is more fully expressed in the original Greek of Irenaeus preserved by Epiphanius in the heresie of the Valentinians On which account alone as Petavius saith Epiphanius hath well deserved of Posterity for preserving entire those original Fragments of Irenaeus his Greek therein being much more intelligible and smooth than the old harsh Latin version of him His words are All which things are not expresly declared in as much as all are not fit to understand them but are mysteriously couched by our Saviour in parables for such who are able to understand them Thus they said the 30. Aeônes were represented by the 30. years in which our Saviour did not appear publickly and by the parable of the works in the vineyard in which the 1 3 6 9 11 hours making up 30. did again denote their Aeônes and that St. Paul did most expresly signifie them when he used so often 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Duodecad of Aeôns by the 12 years at which our Saviour appeared disputing with the Doctors The raising of Jairus his daughter of 12 years represented Achamoth being brought to light whose passions were set forth by those words of our Saviour My God my God why hast thou forsaken me in which were three passions of Achamoth Sorrow Fear and Despair With many things of a like nature but hereby we sufficiently see what their pretence was viz. That there were deep mysteries but obscurely represented in Scripture but whose full knowledge was delivered down by an Oral Cabala from Christ and his Apostles Now we must consider what course Irenaeus takes to confute these pretensions of theirs First he gives an account what that Faith was which the Church dispersed up and down the world received from the Apostles and their Disciples viz. that thereby they believed in one God the Father Almighty who made Heaven and Earth the Sea and all in them and in one Jesus Christ the Son of God c. which was directly contrary to the Valentinian Heresies who supposed the Supream God and Demiurgus to be different and so Christus and Salvator and so in others This Faith which the Church hath received it unanimously keeps though dispersed through the whole world for although the languages be different yet the Tradition is the same among them whether they live in Germany France Spain the East Aegypt Libya or elsewhere And after in the first Book he hath shewed the many different opinions of the several broods of these Hereticks and in the second discovered the fondness and ridiculousness of them in his third Book he undertakes from Scripture to shew the falseness of them And begins with that excellent expression before cited For we have not known the disposition or oeconomy of our Salvation by others than by those by whom the Gospel came to us which they then first preached and after by the will of God delivered to us in writings to be the Foundation and Pillar of our Faith Which being laid down by him at his entrance as the grand principle on which he goes will lead us to an easie understanding of all that follows This therefore he not only asserts but proves for whereas some of the Adversaries pretended that the Apostles preached before they fully understood all they were to know he shews how false that was because after Christs Resurrection from the grave they were endued with the Spirit of God descending from on high upon them and were furnished with a perfect knowledge by which they went up and down preaching the Gospel which all and each of them had the knowledge of Thus Matthew in the Hebrew tongue set forth his Gospel when Peter and Paul at Rome preached the Gospel and founded a Church and after their departure Mark the Disciple and Interpreter of Peter writ those things which were preached Afterwards John published his Gospel at Ephesus in Asia And all these saith he delivered to us one God maker of Heaven and Earth and one Christ his Son To whom if one doth not assent he despiseth those who were our Lords companions and therefore despiseth our Lord Christ and likewise despiseth the Father and is condemned of himself resisting and opposing his own salvation which all Hereticks do Can any thing be more plain than that Irenaeus makes it his design to resolve Faith into the writings of Christ and his Apostles and saith That these writings were delivered as a Foundation of Faith that the reason why the Christians believed but one God and one Christ was because they read of no more in the Gospels published by them That he that despiseth them who were our Lords companions despise himself and God and condemn themselves He doth not say he that despiseth the lawfully sent Pastours of the Church meeting in General Councils nor them who have power to oblige the Church to believe as well as the Apostles had as you say but evidently makes the obligation to believe to depend upon that revelation of Gods will which was made by the Apostles and is by their writings conveyed down to us Would not the Valentinians have thought themselves presently run down by such wayes of confutation as yours are that they must believe the present Church infallible in whatever is delivered to be believed to the world But doth not Irenaeus himself make use of the Churches Tradition as the great argument to confute them by I grant he doth so and it is on that very account that he might confute them and not lay down the only sure Foundation of Christian Faith For he gives that reason of his doing so in the beginning of the very next Chapter For saith he when we dispute against them out of the Scripture they are turned presently to an accusing of the Scriptures as though they were not in all things right and wanted Authority and because of their ambiguity and for that truth cannot be found out by them without the help of Tradition I need not say that Irenaeus prophesied of you in this saying of his but it is as true of you as if he had Your pretences being the very same against the Scriptures being the rule of Faith with those of the Valentinians only
it is to say It is Infallible and not Infallible at the same time and about the same thing and in the same manner For What is drawing a Conclusion but a discerning that truth which results from the connexion of the premises together for that which is concluded hath all its truth depending upon the evidence of the premises otherwise it is a simple Proposition and not a Conclusion If you had then said That the Spirit of God did immediately reveal to the Council the truth of what was to be decreed you had spoken that which might have been understood though not believed but this you durst not say for fear of the charge of Enthusiasms and new Revelations but when you say The Council must use means and make Syllogisms as other fallible creatures do but then it is Infallible in the drawing the Conclusion from the premises though it be fallible in the connexion of those premises is an unparalleld piece of profound non-sense For suppose the matter the Council was to determine was the Popes Infallibility in order to the proving this you say The Council must use all arguments tending to prove it there comes in Christ's Prayer for S. Peter that his Faith should not fail and that this must be extended to his Successors thence the argument is formed Whomsoever Christ prayed for that his Faith should not fail is Infallible but Christ prayed for the Pope that his Faith should not fail therefore he is Infallible Now you say The Council is fallible in the use of the means for this Conclusion i. e. it may not infallibly believe the truth of the major or minor Proposition but yet it may infallibly deduce thence the Conclusion though all the strength of the Conclusion depends upon the truth of the premises You must therefore either assert that the Decrees of Councils are immediately revealed as Divine Oraclâ—s or else that they are fallible Conclusions drawn from fallible premises And were it not for a little shame because of your charging others with immediate Revelations I doubt not but you would assert the former which you must of necessity do if you will maintain the Infallibility of General Councils for if there be any infirmity in the use of the premises it must of necessity be in the Conclusion too But suppose you mean an Infallible Assent to the matter of the Conclusion though it be fallibly deduced you are as far to seek as ever for Whereon must that Assent be grounded It must be either upon the truth of the premises or something immediately revealed If on the truth of the premises the Assent can be no stronger than the grounds are on which it is built if on something revealed it must needs be still an immediate Revelation But I forget my self all this while to urge you thus with absurdities consequent from reason for in answer to his Lordship you grant That it is a thing altogether unknown in nature and art too that fallible principles can either as Father or Mother beget or bring forth an Infallible Conclusion for when his Lordship had objected this you return him this Answer That this is a false supposition of the Bishop for the Conclusion is not so much the child of those premises i. e. it is not the Conclusion as the fruit of the Holy Ghost directing and guiding the Council to produce an Infallible Conclusion whatever the premises be true or false certain or uncertain all is a case This is necessary for the peace and unity of the Church to believe Contradictions and therefore not to be denied unless an impossibility be shewed therein I doubt believing contradictions is accounted no impossibility with you But I hope no man will attaque Gods Omnipotency and deprive him of the power of doing this Is it come to that at last Whatever you assert that is repugnant to the common reason of mankind and involves contradictions in it that you call for Gods Omnipotency to help you in Thus Transubstantiation must be believed because God is Omnipotent and that men may believe any thing though not grounded on Scripture and repugnant to Reason because God is Omnipotent We acknowledge God's Omnipotency as much as you but we dare not put it to such servile uses to make good any absurd imaginations of our brains If you had said It was possible for God to enlighten the minds of the Bishops in a General Council either to discern infallibly the truth of the premises or immediately to reveal the truth of the Conclusion you had spoken intelligible falshoods But to say that God permits them to be fallible in the use of the means and in drawing the Conclusion from them but to be Infallible in the Conclusion it self without any immediate Revelation and then to challenge Gods Omnipotency for it I know not whether it be a greater dishonour to God or reproach to humane understanding And if such incongruities as these are do not discover that you are miserably hampered as his Lordship saith in this argument I know not what will But we must proceed to discover more of them two things his Lordship very rationally objects against Stapletons assertion That the Council is discursive in the use of the means but prophetical in delivering the Conclusion 1. That since this is not according to principles of nature and reason there must be some supernatural Authority which must deliver this truth which saith he must be the Scripture For if you fly to immediate Revelations the Enthusiasm must be yours But the Scriptures which are brought in the very exposition of all the Primitive Church neither say it nor enforce it Therefore Scripture warrants not your prophecy in the Conclusion Neither can the Tradition Produce one Father who sayes This is an Vniversal Tradition of the Church that her definitions in a General Council are prophetical and by immediate Revelation Produce any one Father that sayes it of his own authority that he thinks so To all this you very gravely say nothing and we can shrewdly guess at the reason of it 2. His Lordship proves That it is a repugnancy to say That the Council is prophetical in the Conclusion and discursive in the use of the means for no Prophet in that which he delivered from God as Infallible truth was ever discursive at all in the use of the means Nay saith he make it but probable in the ordinary course of prophecy and I hope you go no higher nor will I offer at Gods absolute power but his Lordship was deceived in you for you run to Gods Omnipotency that that which is discursive in the means can be prophetical in the Conclusion and you shall be my great Apollo for ever And this he shews is contrary to what your own Authours deliver concerning the nature and kinds of prophecy and that none of them were by discourse To this you answer That both Stapleton and you deny that the Church is simply prophetical
is now about a twelvemonth since there appeared to the world a Book under the Title of Dr. Lawd's Labyrinth but with the usual sincerity of those persons pretended to be Printed some years before It is not the business of this Preface to enquire Why if Printed then it remained so long unpublished but to acquaint the Reader with the scope and design of that Book and of this which comes forth as a Reply to it There are three things mainly in dispute between us and those of the Church of Rome viz. Whether they or we give the more satisfactory account of the Grounds of Faith Whether their Church or ours be guilty of the charge of Schism And Whether their Church be justly accused by us of introducing many Errours and Superstitions In the handling of these all our present Debate consists and therefore for the greater Advantage of the Reader I have distributed the whole into three distinct parts which I thought more commodious than carrying it on in one continued discourse And lest our Adversaries should complain that we still proceed in a destructive way I have not only endeavoured to lay open the palpable weakness of their Cause but to give a rational account of our own Doctrine in opposition to theirs Which I have especially done in the great Controversie of the Resolution of Faith as being the most difficult and important of any other I hope the Reader will have no cause to blame me for false or impertinent Allegations of the Fathers since it hath been so much my business to discover the fraud of our Adversaries in that particular which I have chiefly done from the scope and design of those very Books out of which their testimonies are produced In many of the particular Differences I have made use of several of their late Writers against themselves both to let them see how much Popery begins to grow weary of it self and how unjustly they condemn us for denying those things which the moderate and rational men of their own side disown and dispute against as well as we and chiefly to undeceive the world as to their great pretence of Unity among themselves Since their Divisions are grown to so great a height both at home and in foreign parts that the dissenting parties mutually charge each other with Heresie and that about their great Foundation of Faith viz. the Popes Infallibility The Jansenists in France and a growing party in England charging the Jesuits with Heresie in asserting it as they do them with the same for denying it As to my self I only declare that I have with freedom and impartiality enquired into the Reasons on both sides and no interest hath kept me from letting that side of the ballance fall where I saw the greater weight of reason In which respect I have been so far from dissembling the force of any of our Adversaries Arguments that if I could add greater weight to them I have done it being as unwilling to abuse my self as the world And therefore I have not only consulted their greatest Authours especially the three famous Cardinals Baronius Bellarmin and Perron but the chiefest of those who under the name of Conciliators have put the fairest Varnish on the Doctrine of that Church However I have kept close to my Adversary and followed him through all his windings from which I return with this satisfaction to my self that I have vindicated his Lordship and Truth together As to the style and way of writing I use all that I have to say is that my design hath been to joyn clearness of Expression with evidence of Reason What success I have had in it must be left to the Readers judgement I only desire him to lay aside prejudice as much in judging as I have done in writing otherwise I despair of his doing me right and of my doing him good For though reason be tractable and ingenuous yet prejudice and interest are invincible things Having done thus much by way of Preface I shall not detain thee longer by a particular Answer to the impertinencies of our Authours Preface since there is nothing contained therein but what is abundantly answered in a more proper place And I cannot think it reasonable to abuse so much the Readers Appetite as to give him a tedious Preface to cloy his stomach If any after perusal of the whole shall think fit to return an Answer if they do it fairly and rationally they shall receive the same civility if with clamour and impertinency I only let them know I have not leisure enough to kill Flyes though they make a troublesome noise If any service be done to God or the Church by this present work next to that Divine Assistance through which I have done it thou owest it to those great Pillars of our Church by whose command and encouragement I undertook it Who the Authour was of the Book I answer I have been the less solicitous to enquire because I would not betray the weakness of my cause by mixing personal matters in debates of so great importance And whether he be now living or dead I suppose our Adversaries cannot think it at all material unless they judge that their Cause doth live and dye with him THE CONTENTS PART I. Of the Grounds of Faith CHAP. I. The Occasion of the Conference and Defence of the Greek Church T. Cs. Title examined and retorted The Labyrinth found in his Book and Doctrine The occasion of the Conference about the Churches Infallibility The rise of the dispute about the Greek Church and the consequences from it The Charge of Heresie against the Greek Church examined and she found Not-guilty by the concurrent testimony of Fathers General Councils and Popes Of the Council of Florence and the proceedings there That Council neither General nor Free. The distinction of Ancient and Modern Greeks disproved The debate of the Filioque being inserted into the Creed The time when and the right by which it was done discussed The rise of the Schism between the Eastern and Western Churches mainly occasioned by the Church of Rome Page 1. CHAP. II. Of Fundamentals in General The Popish Tenet concerning Fundamentals a meer step to the Roman Greatness The Question about Fundamentals stated An enquiry into the nature of them What are Fundamentals in order to particular persons and what to be owned as such in order to Ecclesiastical Communion The Prudence and Moderation of the Church of England in defining Articles of Faith What judged Fundamental by the Catholick Church No new Articles of Faith can become necessary The Churches power in propounding matters of Faith examined What is a sufficient Proposition Of the Athanasian Creed and its being owned by the Church of England In what sense the Articles of it are necessary to Salvation Of the distinction of the material and formal object of Faith as to Fundamentals His Lordship's integrity and T. C. his forgery in the testimony of Scotus Of Heresie and how far
Roman Church And from what hath been hitherto said I am so far from suspecting his Lordships candor as you do that I much rather suspect your judgement and that you are not much used to attend to the Consequences of things or else you would not have deserted Bellarmin in defence of so necessary and pertinent a point as the Infallibility of the particular Church of Rome Secondly You answer to his Lordships Discourse concerning Bellarmin's Authorities That you cannot hold your self obliged to take notice of his pretended Solutions till you find them brought to evacuate the Infallibility of the Catholick or the Roman Church in its full latitude as Catholicks ever mean it save when they say the particular Church of Rome But taking it in as full a Latitude as you please I doubt not but to make it appear that the Roman Church is the Roman Church still that is a particular Church as distinct from the Communion of others and therefore neither Catholick nor Infallible which I must refer to the place where you insist upon it which I shall do without the imitation of your Vanity in telling your Reader as far as eighthly and lastly what fine exploits you intend to do there But usually those who brag most of their Valour before-hand shew least in the Combat and thus it will be found with you I shall let you therefore enjoy your self in the pleasant thoughts of your noble intendments till we come to the tryal of them and so come to the present Controversie concerning the Greek Church The Defence of the Greek Church It is none of the least of those Arts which you make use of for the perplexing the Christian Faith to put men upon enquiring after an Infallible Church when yet you have no way to discern which is so much as a true Church but by examining the doctrine of it So that of necessity the rule of Faith and Doctrine must be certainly known before ever any one can with safety depend upon the judgement of any Church For having already proved that there can be no other meaning of the Question concerning the Church as here stated but with relation to some particular Church to whose Communion the party enquiring might joyn and whose judgement might be relyed on we see it presently follows in the debate Which was that Church and it seems as is said already a Friend of the Ladies undertook to defend that the Greek Church was right To which Mr. Fisher answers That the Greek Church had plainly changed and taught false in a point of Doctrine concerning the Holy Ghost and after repeats it that it had erred Before I come to examine how you make good the charge you draw up against the poor Greek Church in making it erre fundamentally it is worth our while to consider upon what account this dispute comes in The Inquiry was concerning the True Church on whose judgement one might safely depend in Religion It seems two were propounded to consideration the Greek and the Roman the Greek was rejected because it had erred From whence it follows that the dispute concerning the Truth of Doctrine must necessarily precede that of the Church For by Mr. Fishers confession and your own A Church which hath erred cannot be relyed on therefore men must be satisfied whether a Church hath erred or no before they can judge whether she may be relyed on or no. Which being granted all the whole Fabrick of your Book falls to the ground for then 1. Men must be Infallibly certain of the grounds of Faith antecedently to the testimony of the Church for if they be to judge of a Church by the Doctrine they must in order to such a judgement be certain what that Doctrine is which they must judge of the Church by 2. No Church can be known to be Infallible unless it appear to be so by that Doctrine which they are to examine the truth of the Church by and therefore no Church can be known to be Infallible by the motives of credibility 3. No Church ought to be relyed on as Infallible which may be found guilty of any errour by comparing it with the Doctrine which we are to try it by Therefore you must first prove your Church not to have erred in any particular for if she hath it is impossible she should be Infallible and not think to prove that she hath not erred because she cannot that being the thing in question and must by your dealing with the Greek Church be judged by particulars 4. There must be a certain rule of Faith supposed to have sufficient Authority to decide Controversies without any dependence upon the Church For the matter to be judged is the Church and if the Scripture may and must decide that Why may it not as well all the rest 5. Every mans reason proceeding according to this rule of Faith must be left his Judge in matters of Religion And whatever inconveniencies you can imagine to attend upon this they immediately and necessarily follow from your proceeding with the Greek Church by excluding her because she hath erred which while we are in pursuit of a Church can be determined by nothing but every ones particular reason 6. Then Fundamentals do not depend upon the Churches declaration For you assert the Greek Church to erre fundamentally and that this may be made appear to one who is seeking after a Church Suppose then I inquire as the Lady did after a Church whose judgement I must absolutely depend on and some mention the Greek and others the Roman Church You tell me It cannot be the Greek for that hath erred fundamentally I inquire how you know supposing her to erre that it is a fundamental errour will you answer me because the true Church hath declared it to be a fundamental errour but that was it I was seeking for Which that Church is which may declare what errours are fundamental and what not If you tell me It is yours I may soon tell you You seem to have a greater kindness for your Church then your self and venture to speak any thing for the sake of it Thus we see how finely you have betrayed your whole Cause in your first onset by so rude an attempt upon the Greek Church And truly it was much your concernment to load her as much as you can For though she now wants one of the great marks of your Church which yet you know not how long your Church may enjoy viz. outward splendor and bravery yet you cannot deny but that Church was planted by the Apostles enjoyed a continual Succession from them flourished with a number of the Fathers exceeding that of yours had more of the Councils of greatest credit in it and which is a commendation still to it it retains more purity under its persecutions then your Church with all its external splendour But she hath erred concerning the Holy Ghost and therefore hath lost it A severe censure which his
What a case then were we in if the Pope were Christ's Vicar in Heaven as he pretends to be on Earth but it is our comfort he is neither so nor so Thus we see what repugnancy there is both to Scirpture and Reason in this strange Doctrine of your Churches Definitions making things necessary to Salvation which were not so before I should now proceed to shew how repugnant this Doctrine is to the unanimous consent of Antiquity but I find my self prevented in that by the late Writings of one of your own Communion and if you will believe him in his Epistle Dedicatory which I much question the present Popes most humble Servant our Countryman Mr. Thomas White Whose whole Book call'd his Tabulae Suffragiales is purposely designed against this fond and absurd Opinion nay he goes so high as to assert the Opinion of the Pope's Personal Infallibility not only to be Heretical but Archi-heretical and that the propagating of this Doctrine is in its kind a most grievous sin It cannot but much rejoyce us to see that men of wit and parts begin to discover the intolerable arrogance of such pretences and that such men as D. Holden and Mr. White are in many things come so near the Protestant Principles and that since they quit the Plea of Infallibility and relye on Vniversal Tradition we are in hopes that the same reason and ingenuity which carried these persons thus far will carry others who go on the same principles so much farther as to see how impossible it is to make good the points in Controversie between us upon the Principle of Vniversal Tradition Which the Bigots of your Church are sufficiently sensible of and therefore like the Man at Athens when your Hands are cut off you are resolved to hold this Infallibility with your Teeth and so that Gentleman finds by the proceedings of the Court of Rome against him for that and his other pieces But this should not have been taken notice of lest we should seem to see as who doth not that is not stark blind what growing Divisions and Animosities there are among your selves both at home and in foreign parts and yet all this while the poor silly people must be told that there is nothing but Division out of your Church and nothing but Harmony and Musick in it but such as is made of Discords And that about this present Controversie for the forenamed Gentleman in his Epistle to the present Pope tells him plainly That it is found true by frequent Experience That there is no defending the Catholick Faith against the subtilties of his Heretical Countrymen without the principles of that Book which was condemned at Rome And what those principles are we may easily see by this Book which is writ in defence of the former Wherein he largely proves that the Church hath no power to make New Articles of Faith which he proves both from Scripture Reason and Authority this last is that I shall referr the Reader to him for for in his second Table as he calls it he proves from the testimonies of Origen Basil Chrysostom Cyril Irenaeus Tertullian Pope Stephen Hierom Theophylact Augustine Vincentius Lerinensis and several others nay the testimonies he sayes to this purpose are so many that whole Libraries must be transcribed to produce them all And afterwards more largely proves That the Faith of the Church lyes in a continued succession from the Apostles both from Scripture and Reason and abundance of Church-Authorities in his 4 5 and 6. Tables and through the rest of his Book disproves the Infallibility of Councils and Pope And can you think all this is answered by an Index Expurgatorius or by publishing a false-Latin Order of the inquisition at Rome whereby his Books are prohibited and his Opinions condemned as heretical erronious in Faith rash scandalous seditious and what not It seems then it is grown at last de fide that the Pope is infallible and never more like to do so than in this age for the same person gives us this character of it in his Purgation of himself to the Cardinals of the Inquisition saying That their Eminencies by the unhappiness of the present Age in which Knowledge is banished out of the Schools and the Doctrines of Faith and Theological Truths are judged by most voices fell it seems upon some ignorant and arrogant Consultors who hand over head condemn those Propositions which upon their oaths they could not tell whether they were true or false If these be your proceedings at Rome happy we that have nothing to do with such Infallible Ignorance This is the Age your Religion were like to thrive in if Ignorance were as predominant elsewhere as it seems it is at Rome But I leave this and return 3. The last thing is Whether the Church hath Power by any Proposition or Definition to make any thing become necessary to Salvation and to be believed as such which was not so before But this is already answered by the foregoing Discourse for if the necessity of the things to be believed must be supposed antecedently to the Churches Being if that which was not before necessary cannot by any act whatsoever afterwards become necessary then it unavoidably follows That the Church neither hath nor can have any such power Other things which relate to this we shall have occasion to discuss in following your steps which having thus far cleared this important Controversie I betake my self to And we are highly obliged to you for the rare Divertisements you give us in your excellent way of managing Controversies Had my Lord of Canterbury been living What an excellent entertainment would your Confutation of his Book have afforded him But since so pleasant a Province is fallen to my share I must learn to command my self in the management of it and therefore where you present us with any thing which deserves a serious Answer for truth and the causes sake you shall be sure to have it In the first place you charge his Lordship with a Fallacy and that is because when he was to speak of Fundamentals he did not speak of that which was not Fundamental But say you He turns the difficulty which only proceeded upon a Fundamentality or Necessity derived from the formal Object that is from the Divine Authority revealing that Point to the Material Object that is to the importance of the Matter contained in the Point revealed which is a plain Fallacy in passing à sensu formali ad materialem Men seldom suspect those faults in others which they find not strong inclinations to in themselves had you not been conscious of a notorious Fallacy in this distinction of Formal and Material Object as here applyed by you you would never have suspected any such Sophistry in his Lordship's Discourse I pray consider what kind of Fundamentals those are which the Question proceeds on viz. such as are necessary to be owned as such by
tam manifesta monstratur where it is plain quae which is relative only to Truth and not to Scripture or any thing else A wonderful abuse of S. Austin to make him parallel plain Scripture evident sense or a full Demonstrative Argument with Truth As though if evident Truth were more prevalent with him than all those Arguments which held him in the Catholick Church plain Scripture evident Sense or Demonstrations would not be so too What Truth can be evident if it be not one of these three Do you think there is any other way of manifesting Truth but by Scripture Sense or Demonstration if you have found out other waies oblige the world by communicating them but till then give us leave to think that it is all one to say Manifest Truth as plain Scripture evident Sense or clear Demonstrations But say you He speaks only of that Truth which the Manichees bragged of and promised As though S. Austin would have been perswaded sooner as it came from them than as it was Truth in it self I suppose S. Austin did not think their Testimony sufficient and therefore sayes Quae quidem si tam manifesta monstratur c. i. e. If they could make that which they said evident to be Truth he would quit the Church and adhere to them and if this holds against the Manichees will it not on the same reason hold every where else viz. That manifest Truth is not to be quitted on any Authority whatsoever which is all his Lordship asserts But You offer to prove that S. Austin by Truth could not mean plain Scripture But can you prove that by Truth he did not mean Truth whereever he found it whether in Scripture or elsewhere No say you It cannot be meant that by Truth he should mean plain Scripture in opposition to the Definitions of the Catholick Church or General Councils For which you give this Reason because he supposes it impossible that the Doctrine of the Catholick Church should be contrary to Scripture for then men according to S. Austin should not believe infallibly either the one or the other Not the Scriptures because they are received only upon the Authority of the Church nor the Church whose Authority is infringed by the plain Scripture which is brought against her For which you produce a large citation out of S. Austin to that purpose But the Answer to that is easie For S. Austin when he speaks of Church-Authority quâ infirmatâ jam nec Evangelio credere potero he doth not in the least understand it of any Definitions of the Church but of the Vniversal Tradition of the Catholick Church concerning the Scriptures from the time of Christ and his Apostles And what plain Scriptures those are supposable which should contradict such a Tradition as this is is not easie to understand But the case is quite otherwise as to the Churches Definitions for neither doth the Authority of Scripture at all rest upon them and there may be very well supposed some plain Scriptures contrary to the Churches Definitions unless it be proved that the Church is absolutely Infallible and the very proof of that depending on Scripture there must be an appeal made to plain Scripture whether the Churches Definitions may not be contradicted by Scripture When therefore you say This is an impossible Supposition that Scripture should contradict the Churches Definitions like that of the Apostle If an Angel from Heaven teach otherwise let him be accursed Gal. 1. You must prove it as impossible for the Church to deviate from Scripture in any of her Definitions as for an Angel to preach another Gospel which will be the braver attempt because it seems so little befriended either by sense or reason But say you If the Church may be an erring Definer I would gladly know why an erring Disputer may not oppugn her That which you would so gladly know is not very difficult to be resolved by any one who understands the great difference between yielding an Internal Assent to the Definitions of the Church and open opposing them for it only follows from the possibility of the Churches Errour in defining that therefore we ought not to yield an absolute Internal Assent to all her determinations but must examine them by the best measures of Truth in order to our full Assent to them but though the Church may erre it doth not therefore follow that it is lawful in all cases or for all persons to oppugn her Definitions especially if those Definitions be only in order to the Churches Peace but if they be such as require Internal Assent to them then plain Scripture evidence of Sense or clear Reason may be sufficient cause to hinder the submitting to those Definitions 2. You tell us That his Lordship hath abused S. Austin 's Testimony because he speaks not of the Definitions of the Church in matters not Fundamental according to the matter they contain but the Truth mentioned by him was Fundamental in its matter This is the substance of your second Answer which is very rational and prudent being built on this substantial Evidence If S. Austin doth preferr manifest Truth before things supposed Fundamental in the matter then no doubt S. Austin would not preferr manifest Truth before things supposed not-Fundamental in the matter And do not you think this enough to charge his Lordship with shamefully abusing S. Austin But certainly if S. Austin preferred manifest Truth before that which was greater would he not do it before that which was incomparably less If he did it before all those things which kept him in the Catholick Church such as the consent of Nations Miracles Universal Tradition which he mentions before do you think he would have scrupled to have done it as to any particular Definitions of the Church These are therefore very excellent waies of vindicating the Fathers Testimonies from having any thing of sense or reason in them 3. You say He hath abused S. Austin by putting in a wrangling Disputer But I wonder where his Lordship ever sayes that S. Austin mentions any such in the Testimony cited For his words are these But plain Scripture with evident Sense or a full Demonstrative Argument must have room where a wrangling and erring Disputer may not be allowed it And there 's neither of these over against these words he referrs to S. Austin's Testimony and not the foregoing but may convince the Definition of the Council if it be ill founded When you therefore ask Where the wrangling Disputer is to be found had it not been for the help of this Cavil we might have been to seek for him But when you have been enquiring for him at last you cry out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Oh! I see now And you are the fittest man to find him out that I know You say This is done to distinguish him from such a Disputer as proceeds solidly and demonstratively against the Definitions of the Church when they are
are for he speaks of those things which all Christians who have a care of their Salvation are to avoid of such things as are contrary to all Antiquity and such kind of Dogmata I freely grant the Definitions of your Church to be Your second citation is as happy as the first cap. 28. Crescat saith he speaking of the Church sed in suo duntaxat genere in eodem scilicet Dogmate eodem sensu eâdemque sententiâ An excellent place no doubt to prove it in the Churches power to define new Articles of Faith because the Church must alwaies remain in the same Belief sense and opinion When his words but little foregoing are Profectus sit ille fidei non permutatio which without the help of English Lexicons you would willingly render by leaving out that troublesome Particle non that the best progress in Faith is by adding new Articles though it be as contrary to reason as it is to the sense of Vincentius Lerinensis If Vincentius saith that the Pelagians erred in Dogmate fidei which words neither appear cap. 24. nor 34. he gives this reason for it because they contradict the Vniversal sense of Antiquity and the Catholick Church cap. 34. So that still Vincentius where-ever he speaks of this Dogma fidei speaks in direct opposition to your sense of it for new definitions of the Church in matters of Faith There being scarce any book extant which doth more designedly overthrow this opinion of yours then that of Vincentius doth To shew therefore how much you have wronged his Lordship and what little advantage comes to your cause by your insisting on Vincentius his testimony I shall give a brief account both of his Design and Book The design of it is to shew what wayes one should use to prevent being deceived by such who pretend to discover new matters of Faith and those he assigns to be these two setling ones faith on the Authority of Scripture and the tradition of the Catholick Church But since men would enquire The Canon of Scripture being perfect and abundantly sufficient for all things what need can there be of Ecclesiastical tradition He answers For finding out the true sense of Scripture which is diversly interpreted by Novatianus Photinus Sabellius Donatus Arrius Eunomius Macedonius Apollinaris c. In the following Chapter he tells us what he means by this Ecclesiastical tradition Quod ubique quod semper ab omnibus creditum est that which hath Antiquity Vniversality and Consent joyning in the belief of it And can any new Definitions of the Church pretend to all or any of these He after enquires what is to be done in case a particular Church separates it self from the communion of the Catholick He answers We ought to prefer the health of the whole body before any pestiferous or corrupted member But in case any Novel Contagion should spread over not a part only but endanger the whole Church then saith he a man must adhere to Antiquity which cannot be deceived with a pretence of Novelty But if in Antiquity we find out the errour of two or three particular Persons or City or Province what is then to be done then saith he the Decrees of General Councils are to be preferred But in case there be none then he adds The general consent of the most approved writers of the Church is to be enquired after and what they all with one consent openly frequently constantly held writ and taught that let every man look on himself as bound to believe without hesitation Now then prove but any one of the new Articles of Faith in the Tridentine Confession by these rules of Vincentius and it will appear that you have produced his Testimony to some purpose else nothing will be more strong and forcible against all your pretences than this discourse of Vincentius is which he inlarges by the examples of the Donatists Arrians and others in the following Chapters in which still his scope is to assert Antiquity and condemn all Novelties in matters of Faith under any pretext whatsoever For this ch 12 14. he cites a multitude of Texts of Scripture forbidding our following any other Doctrine but what was delivered by Christ and his Apostles and Anathematizing all such as such as should Preach any other Gospel and concludes that with this remarkable speech It never was never is never will be lawful to propose any thing as matter of Faith to Christian Catholicks besides what they have received And it was is and will be becoming Christians to Anathematize all such who declare any thing but what they have received Do you think this man was not of your minde in the Doctrine of Fundamentals could he do otherwise then believe it in the Churches power to define things necessary to Salvation who would have all those Anathematized who pretend to declare any thing as matter of Faith but what they received as such from their Ancestours And after he hath at large exemplified this in the Photinian Nestorian Apollinarian Heresies and shewed how little the Authority of private Doctors how excellent soever is to be relyed on in matters of faith he concludes again with this Whatsoever the Catholick Church held universally that and that alone is to be held by particular persons And after admires at the madness blindness perverseness of those who are not contented with the once delivered and ancient rule of Faith but are still seeking new things and alwaies are itching to add alter take away some thing of Religion or matter of Faith As though that were not a Heavenly Doctrine which may suffice to be once revealed but an earthly institution which cannot be perfect but by continual correction and amendment Is not this man now a fit person to explain the sense of your Churches new Definitions and Declarations in matters of Faith And have not you hit very right on this sense of Dogma when here he understands by it that Doctrine of Faith which is not capable of any addition or alteration And thus we understand sufficiently what he means by the present controverted place that if men reject any part of the Catholick Doctrine they may as well refuse another and another till at last they reject all By the Catholick Doctrine or Catholicum dogma there he means the same with the Coeleste dogma before and by both of them understands that Doctrine of Faith which was once revealed by God and which is capable of no addition at all having Antiquity Vniversality and Consent going along with it and when you can prove that this Catholicum dogma doth extend beyond those things which his Lordship calls Catholick Maxims or properly Fundamental Truths you will have done something to the purpose which as yet you have failed in And thus we say Vincentius his rule is good though we do not say that he was infallible in the application of it but that he might mention some such things to
believed as Fundamental when once the Church hath determined them 5. The Church of England prescribes only to her own Children and by those Articles provides but for her own peaceable consent in those Doctrines of Truth But the Church of Rome severely imposes her Doctrine upon the whole world under pain of damnation To all these very considerable Instances of our Churches Moderation your Answer is The Question is not Whether the English Congregation or the Roman Church be more severe but Whether the English Protestants Severity be not unreasonable supposing she be subject to errour in defining those Articles For after many words to the same i. e. little purpose the reason you give for it is That every just Excommunication inflicted for opposing of Doctrine must necessarily suppose the Doctrine opposed to be infallibly true and absolutely exempt from errour otherwise the Sentence it self would be unreasonable and unjust as wanting sufficient ground From whence you charge Protestants with greater Tyranny and Injustice towards their people than they can with any colour or pretence of reason charge upon the Roman Church which excommunicates no man but for denying such Doctrine as is both infallibly True and also Fundamental at least as to its formal Object This is the strength of all you say which will be reduced to this short Question Whether the proceedings of that Church be more unreasonable which excommunicates such as openly oppose her Doctrine supposing her Fallible or of that Church which excommunicates all who will not believe whatever she defines to be Infallibly true This is the true State of the Controversie which must be judged by the resolving another Question Whether it be not a more unreasonable Vsurpation to bind men upon pain of damnation hereafter and excommunication here to believe every thing Infallible which a Church defines or to bind men to peace to a Churches Determinations reserving to men the liberty of their judgements on pain of Excommunication if they violate that peace For it is plain on the one side where a Church pretends Infallibility the Excommunication is directed against the persons for refusing to give Internal Assent to what she defines But where a Church doth not pretend to that the Excommunication respects wholly that Overt Act whereby the Churches Peace is broken And if a Church be bound to look to her own Peace no doubt she hath power to excommunicate such as openly violate the bonds of it which is only an Act of Caution in a Church to preserve her self in Vnity but where it is given out that the Church is Infallible the Excommunication must be so much the more unreasonable because it is against those Internal Acts of the mind over which the Church as such hath no direct power And thus I hope you see how much more just and reasonable the proceedings of our Church are then of yours and that eo nomine because she pretends to be infallible and ours doth not His Lordship shews further in Vindication of the Church of England and her grounds of Faith that the Church of England grounded her Positive Articles upon Scripture and her Negative do refute there where the thing affirmed by them is not affirmed by Scripture nor directly to be concluded out of it And this he saith is the main principle of all Protestants that Scripture is sufficient to Salvation and contains in it all things necessary to it The Fathers are plain the Schoolmen not strangers in it And Stapleton himself confesses as much Nay and you dare not deny it as to all material Objects of Faith and your formal here signifies nothing And when A. C. saith That the Church of England grounded her Positive Articles upon Scripture if themselves may be Judges in their own cause His Lordship answers We are contented to be judged by the joynt and constant belief of the Fathers which lived within the first four or five hundred years after Christ when the Church was at the best and by the Councils held within those times and to submit to them in all those Points of Doctrine This Offer you grant to be very fair and you do for your selves promise the same and say You will make it good upon all occasions Which we shall have tryal of before the end of this Book To what his Lordship saith concerning the Negative Articles That they refute where the thing affirmed by them is either not affirmed in Scripture or not directly to be concluded out of it A. C. replies That the Baptism of Infants is not expresly at least not evidently affirmed in Scripture nor directly at least not demonstratively concluded out of it Here two things his Lordship answers 1. To the Expression 2. To the thing 1. To the Expression That he is no way satisfied with A. C. his addition not expresly at least not evidently for saith he What means he If he speak of the lâ—tter of Scripture then whatsoever is expresly is evidently in the Scripture and so his addition is in vain If he speak of the meaning of Scripture then his addition is cunning For many things are expresly in Scripture which yet in their meaning are not evidently there And as little satisfied his Lordship declares himself with that other nor directly at least not demonstratively because many things are directly concluded which are not demonstratively To the first you answer That a Point may be exprest yet not evidently exprest otherwise there could be no doubt concerning what were exprest in Scripture since men never question things that are evident Now say you the Baptism of Infants must not only â—e exprest but evidently exprest to prove it sufficiently i. e. undeniably by Scripture alone But the Question being concerning matters of Doctrine and not meer words those things are expresly affirmed which are evidently and no other For it is one thing for words to be expresly in Scripture and another for Doctrines to be so For these latter are no further expresly affirmed there than as there is evidence that the meaning of such words doth contain such a Doctiine in them As to take your own Instance This is my Body we grant the words to be express but we deny that which he had then in his hands was his real Body for his hands were part of his real Body Now we do not say That the Doctrine of Transubstantiation is expresly but not evidently contained here for we say The Doctrine is not there at all but only that those are the express words This is my Body as it is in other figurative expressions in Scripture But that which causeth this litigation about words is That you look upon that which is evident and undeniable to be all one whereas there may be sufficient evidence where all men are not perswaded by it And so you would put his Lordship to prove out of Scripture Infant-Baptism evidently and demonstratively i. e. undeniably whereas his Lordship supposeth it
be infallible or no and thus at last you give Reason the Vmpirage in the choice of Religion And what is there more than this that we contend for If there be then any danger of Scepticism a private spirit or what other inconveniencies you object against our way of judging the truth of Religion by the Vse of Reason it will fall much more heavily upon your selves in this way of believing the Infallibility of the Church on the Motives of Credibility Therefore I assure you it were much more consonant to the principles of your party to tell men The Infallibility of your Church ought to be taken for granted and that men are damned for not believing it though no reason be given for it but only because you say it which is as much as to say the reason of the Point is It must needs be so then thus to expose it to the scorn and contempt of the world by offering to prove it by your Motives of Credibility For unawares you thereby give away the main of your Cause for by the very offer of proving it you make him whom you offer to prove it to judge whether these proofs be sufficient or no and if he be capable to judge of his Guide certainly he may be of his Way too considering that he hath according to us an Infallible Rule to judge of his Way whereas according to you he hath but Prudential Motives in the choice of his Guide Thus by this Opinion of yours you have gained thus much That there is nothing so absurd which you charge upon us but it falls unavoidably upon your own head By this way of resolving Faith you undermine it and leave a sure Foundation for nothing but Scepticism which is the last thing to shew the great unreasonableness of this way of yours that when you are making us believe you are taking the greatest care to make our Religion sure you cancel our best evidences and produce nothing but crackt and broken titles which will not stand any fair tryal at the bar of Reason And that you make the Foundations of Religion uncertain I offer to prove by the reason of the thing for if you require that as necessary for Faith which was never believed to be so when the Doctrine of Faith was revealed if upon the pretence of Infallibility you assert such things which destroy all the rational evidence of Christian Religion and if at last you are far from giving the least satisfactory account concerning this Infallibility of your Church then certainly we may justly charge you with unsetling the Foundations of Religion instead of giving us a certain resolution of Faith 1. You make that necessary to Faith which was not looked on as such when the Doctrine of the Gospel was revealed and what other design can such a pretence seem to have than to expose to contempt that Religion which was not received by a true Divine Faith because it wanted that which is now thought to be the only sure Foundation of Faith viz. the Infallibility of the Church of Rome What then will become of the Faith of all those who received Divine Revelations without the infallible Testimony of any Church at all With what Faith did the Disciples of Christ at the time of his suffering believe the Divine Authority of the Old Testament was it a true Divine Faith or not If it was whereon was it built not certainly on the Infallible Testimony of the Jewish Church which at that time consented to the death of the Messias condemning him as a malefactor and deceiver Or did they believe it because of that great Rational Evidence they had to convince them that those Prophecies came from God If so why may not we believe the Divinity of all the Scriptures on the same grounds and with a Divine Faith too With what Faith did those believe in the Messias who were not personally present at the Miracles which our Saviour wrought but had them conveyed to them by such reports as the woman of Samaria was to the Samaritans Or were all such persons excused from believing meerly because they were not Spectators But by the same reason all those would be excused who never saw our Saviour's miracles or heard his Doctrine or his Apostles But if such persons then were bound to believe I ask On what Testimony was their Faith founded Was the woman of Samaria infallible in reporting the discourse between Christ and her Were all the persons infallible who gave an account to others of what Christ did yet I suppose had it been your own case you would have thought your self bound to have believed Christ to have been the Messias if you had lived at that time and a certain account had been given you of our Saviour's Doctrine and Miracles by men faithful and honest though you had no reason to have believed them infallible I pray Sir answer me would you have thought your self bound to have believed or no If you affirm it as I will suppose you so much a Christian as to say so I pray then tell me Whether persons in those circumstances might not have a true and Divine Faith where there was no infallible Testimony but only Rational Evidence to build it self upon And if those persons might have a Divine Faith upon such evidence as that was may not we much more who have evidence of the same nature indeed but much more extensive universal and convincing than that was And how then can you still assert an infallible Testimony of the conveyers of Divine Revelation to be necessary to a Divine Faith Nay further yet How very few were there in comparison in the first Ages of the Christian Church who received the Doctrine of the Gospel from the mouths of persons infallible And of those who did so what certain evidence have men That all those persons did receive the Doctrine upon the account of the Infallibility of the propounders and not rather upon the Rational Evidence of the Truth of the Doctrine delivered and whether the belief of their Infallibility was absolutely necessary to Faith when the report of the Evidences of the Truth of the Doctrine might raise in them an obligation to believe supposing them not infallible in that delivery of it but that they looked on them as honest men who faithfully related What they had seen and heard And this seems the more probable in that the Apostles themselves in their undoubtedly divine writings do so often appeal to their own sufficiency and integrity without pleading so much their Infallibility S. John saith That which we have seen and heard and handled declare we unto you S. Peter appeals to his being an Eye-witness to make it appear he delivered no cunningly devised fables S. Luke makes this a ground That the things were surely believed because delivered from them who were Eye-witnesses and Ministers of the Word If they insisted so much upon this Rational Evidence and so sparingly on
wrought to attest this Infallibility For as long as you require such an assent to the present Churches Infallibility it is necessary on your own grounds that the present Church should alwayes work miracles in order to the proving this Infallibility 2. We desire such miracles as may sufficiently convince the Infidels as to this point of your Infallibility For that was alwayes the way used in Scripture The intention of miracles was to perswade those who did not believe Would Pharaoh or the Aegyptians have believed Moses if all his miracles had been wrought in a corner where none but Israelites had been present Would the Jews have believed in Christ if he had not come in publick among them and wrought such frequent publick and uncontrouled miracles that his greatest enemies durst not deny them If you would then have us believe your present Churches Infallibility let your Pope or at least your Priests come and do such kind of miracles among us which may bear the examination of inquisitive men and then try whether we will not believe your Infallibility but till then excuse us Think not we are of such easie Faith that the pretended growing out of a Leg in Spain or any of your famous miracles wrought by your Priests in Italy will perswade us to believe your Church Infallible It is alwayes observed your miracles are most talked on where people are most ignorant and therefore most apt to be deceived Your Priests like the Devils in the Primitive times can do no feats when their opposers are by It is an easie thing for a stump to grow a Leg in its passage from Spain hither for Fama crescit eundo such things are most believed where circumstances are least capable of examination And the juglings and impostures of your Priests have been so notorious in this kind that their pretences to miracles have made more Infidels then Catholicks by making men more apt to question whether ever there were any real miracles done then believe the truth of yours Very likely then it is that you should perswade the world your Church is Infallible because of the miracles wrought in it 3. What discrimination do you put between those lying wonders which you are foretold shall be wrought at the coming of Antichrist and those pretended miracles which are wrought among you Convince us by sufficient evidence that the things which seem most confirmed by your miracles viz. Invocation of Saints is a thing consonant to the doctrine established by the undoubted miracles of Christ and his Apostles If it be contrary to it either you must prove that doctrine false or if you admit it true you prove your miracles to be false because contrary to a doctrine established by miracles undoubtedly Divine And God can never be supposed to attest with miracles the truth of doctrines contrary to each other And thence the wisest of your Church are so far from insisting on this of miracles for a motive of credibility concerning your Churches Infallibility that they leave it out from being a note of the Church because Hereticks as they say may as to all outward appearance work as great miracles as the best Catholicks And therefore Bellarmin saith No man can have an absolute certainty concerning the truth of miracles because the Devil though he cannot work true miracles can work as to appearance the greatest Therefore since the confirmation of Christian Religion by miracles undoubtedly Divine there can be no relyance on the tryal of miracles for the truth of any doctrine for those very miracles and doctrine must be judged according to that rule of Faith which was confirmed by Divine miracles Thus we have examined those motives which seem most to prove Infallibility and shewn how little they agree to the present Churches Infallibility 3. As to the other motives what evidence do you produce That where-ever they are the Church is Infallible and that these do infallibly belong to your Church for both these must be made evident or you do nothing Now these motives are Sanctity of life Succession Vnity Antiquity and the very name of Catholick c. How hard is it to conceive the connexion between these and infallibility Nay they are so far from it that it hath been abundantly proved against your party that these are no certain notes of the true Church which is a Controversie I shall not now discuss And if the Church cannot be proved to be true by them much less certainly will it be proved to be Infallible But suppose all this is your Church so remarkable for Sanctity of life that it should be a motive for your Infallibility Have your Popes been indeed such Holy men that we may not question but they were moved by the Holy Ghost when they spake Certainly you have some other way to know it then all Histories both of friends and enemies and the constant fame of the world which hath then much abused us with stories quite of another nature Or is the state of your Church so pure and holy that it must shew it self Infallible by that But whom will you be judged by in this case I desire you not to stand to the verdict of your Adversaries Will you believe men of your own Communion pray read what sad complaints are made of the degenerate state of your Church by Petrarch Mantuan Clemangis Espencaeus Erasmus Cassander and several others and judge you whether we have not reason to cry up the Sanctity of your Church But these it may be you will say were discontented persons Will you believe then your Cardinals And if ever you will believe them it should certainly be when they meet to advise concerning the state of your Church and was not this the expression of the Colledge of chosen Cardinals for reformation of the Church under Paul 3. Per nos inquimus per nos nomen Christi blasphematur apud gentes Is not this a great evidence of your Sanctity If you will not believe the Cardinals you will not certainly question the judgement of him whom you would fain have to be Infallible the Pope himself And these are the words of Adrian 6. in his Instructions to his Legat at the diet of Norimberg A. D. 1522. Scimus in hâc Sede aliquot jam annis multa abominanda fuisse abusus in Spiritualibus excessus in mandatis omnia denique in perversum mutata If ever Pope was Infallible he was in saying so and he could not but be in Cathedrâ when he said it You see then what evidence you have from your selves concerning that Sanctity of life which is in your Church But it may be still you do not mean real Sanctity but that the doctrine of your Church tends more to promote it then that of any other Church I heartily wish the quite contrary could not be too truly said of it and it is well known that one of your great Artifices whereby you perswade great Persons to your Religion is
you believe the Revelation made by Christ to be Divine Your Answer must be either that your Churches Testimony gives you infallible Assurance of it and then the former Argument returns or else that Christ manifested his Testimony to be infallible and therefore his Revelation Divine because of the Motives of Credibility which accompanied his preaching If this be your Answer as it must be by your former discourse then by the same reason I prove your Churches Testimony to be the Formal Object of Faith because you have endeavoured to prove the Churches Infallibility by the same Motives of Credibility that Moses and Christ proved theirs Either therefore retract all your former discourse or else confess that by the same reason that the Divine Revelation made by Christ is the Formal Object of Faith the infallible Testimony of your Church must be so too For according to your own supposition there are equal Motives of Credibility and therefore equal obligation to believe the Infallibility of one as of the other 3. If the only reason which makes any thing be the Formal Object agrees to the Testimony of your Church then that Testimony must be the Formal Object of Faith to them that believe it Now that which is the only reason which makes any thing to be the Formal Object of Faith is the Supposition that it is infallible For why do you resolve your Faith finally into Divine Revelation Is it not because you suppose God to be infallible in all Revelations of himself and therefore if your Church be infallible as you say it is by the same reason that must be the Formal Object of Faith as if it were by the revelation of God himself But here you think to obviate this objection by some strange distinctions concerning your Infallibility You tell us therefore The Churches Infallibility is not absolutely and simply Divine or that God speaks immediately by her Definitions but only that she is supernaturally infallible by the assistance of the Holy Ghost preserving her from all errour in defining any thing as a point of Christian Faith that is as a Truth revealed from God which is not truly and really so revealed A rare Distinction this You say afterwards The Churches Definition is absolutely infallible but yet this Infallibility is not absolutely and simply Divine I pray tell us What is it then You say It is Supernatural but not Divine and this Supernatural Infallibility by the Assistance of the Holy Ghost securing from all errour but yet not absolutely and precisely Divine I pray tell us What kind of Infallibility that was which the Apostles had in delivering the Doctrine of Christ was that any more than such a Supernatural Infallibility as you fondly arrogate to your Church viz. such a one as might secure them from all errour in defining any thing as a point of Christian Faith which was not so that is as a Truth revealed from God which was not truly and really so revealed And yet I suppose you will not deny but those who lived in the Apostles times might resolve their Faith into that Infallibility which they had as its Formal Object and therefore why not as well into your Churches Infallibility since you pretend to as great Infallibility in your Church as ever was in the Apostles Thus I hope I have shewn it impossible for you not to make the Churches Testimony the Formal Object of Faith since you make it infallible as you do 2. We come now to consider the little evasions and distinctions whereby you hope to get out of this Labyrinth But having so manifestly proved that it follows from your Principles That the Churches Testimony is the Formal Object of Faith all your distinctions fall of themselves for thereby it appears that your Churches Testimony is not meerly a necessary Condition of believing but is the Formal Cause and Reason of it therefore your instance of approximation in natural Causes is nothing to the purpose No more is that of a Commonwealth's practising the same Laws being an Argument that those were its primitive Laws Unless you suppose it impossible 1. That a Common-wealth should ever alter its Laws Or 2. That it should practise contrary to its primitive Laws Or 3. That it should be supernaturally Infallible in judging which are primitive Laws and which not without these Suppositions I say That Instance signifies nothing to the business in hand and when you have proved these true I will give you a further Answer Your Answer to Aristotles Text or rather to that undoubted Maxim of Reason with which the citation of Aristotle concurred hath been considered already Your Answer to the Testimony of Canus is like the rest of your discourse trivial and not to the purpose for Canus doth not only deny the Churches Testimony to be the Formal Object of Faith but the necessity of believing its Testimony to be infallible Non intelligitur necessariò quod credo docenti Ecclesiae tanquam testi infallibili are the very words of the Testimony cited in the Margin of his Lordships Books Your next Section affords us some more words but not one drachm more of reason For How do you prove that the Churches Authority is more known to us than the Scriptures or How can you make it appear that there is any Authority but what is relative to us and therefore the distinction is in it self silly of Authority in se quoad nos For whatever hath Authority hath thereby a respect to some it hath its Authority over And Can any thing be a ground of Faith simply and in it self which is not so towards us For the Formal Object of Faith is that for whose sake we believe and therefore if Divine Revelation be as you say the Formal Object of Faith then it must be more known to us than the Testimony of the Church For that must be more known to us which is the main cause of Believing But if all your meaning be that we must first know what the Church delivers for Scripture before we can judge whether it were divinely revealed or no I grant it to be true but what is this to your Infallibility Will you prove the Infallibility of your Church to be more known to us than that of the Scriptures and on supposition that were true can you then prove that the Scriptures should still retain their prerogative above the Church What your Authors distinguish concerning objective and subjective Certainty pertains not to this place for the worth and dignity of the Scriptures may exceed that of Tradition yet when the knowledge of that worth relyes on that Tradition your esteem of the one must be according to your esteem of the other I will not here enquire Whether the adhesion of the Will can exceed the clearness of the Vnderstanding nor Whether Aristotle was unacquainted with subjective Certainty nor Whether our adhesion to Articles of Faith be stronger than to any Principles evident to natural
us still more evidence of your self-contradicting faculty for which we need no more than lay your words together Your words next before were If the Church should fall into errour it would be as much ascribed to God himself as in case of immediate Divine Revelation but here you add Neither is it necessary for us to affirm that the Definition of the Church is God's immediate Revelation as if the Definition were false God's Revelation must be also such It is enough for us to averr that God's Promise would be infringed as truly it would in that Supposition From which we may learn very useful instructions 1. That God's Promise may he infringed and yet God's Revelation not proved to be false But whence came that Promise Was it not a Divine Revelation if it was undoubtedly such Can such a Promise be false and not God's Revelation 2. That though if the Church erre God must be fallible yet for all this all God's Revelations may remain infallible 3. That though the only ground of Infallibility be the immediate Assistance of the Holy Ghost which gives as great an Infallibility as ever was in Prophets and Apostles yet we must not say That such an Infallibility doth suppose an immediate Revelation 4. That though God's Veracity would be destroyed if the Church should define any thing for a point of Catholick Faith which were not revealed from God which are your next words yet we are not to think if her Definition be false God's Revelation must be also such which are your words foregoing Those are excellent Corollaries to conclude so profound a discourse with And if the Bishop as you say had little reason to accuse you for maintaining a party I am sure I have less to admire you for your seeking Truth and what ever animosity you are led by I hope I have made it evident you are led by very little reason CHAP. VI. Of the Infallibility of Tradition Of the unwritten Word and the necessary Ingredients of it The Instances for it particularly examined and disproved The Fathers Rule for examining Traditions No unwritten Word the Foundation of Divine Faith In what sense Faith may be said to be Divine Of Tradition being known by its own light and the Canon of the Scripture The Testimony of the Spirit how far pertinent to this Controversie Of the use of reason in the resolution of Faith T. C ' s. Dialogue answered with another between himself and a Sceptick A twofold resolution of Faith into the Doctrine and into the Books Several Objections answered from the Supposition made of a Child brought up without sight of Scripture Christ no Ignoramus nor Impostor though the Church be not infallible T. C ' s. Blasphemy in saying otherwise The Testimonies of Irenaeus and S. Augustin examined and retorted Of the nature of infallible Certainty as to the Canon of Scripture and whereon it is grounded The Testimonies produced by his Lordship vindicated YOu begin this Chapter with as much confidence as if you had spoken nothing but Oracles in the foregoing Whether the Bishop or you were more hardly put to it let any indifferent Reader judge If he did as you say tread on the brink of a Circle we have made it appear notwithstanding all your evasions that you are left in the middle of it The reason of his falling on the unwritten Word is not his fear of stooping to the Church to shew it him and finally depend on her Authority but to shew the unreasonableness of your proceedings who talk much of an unwritten Word and are not able to prove any such thing If he will not believe any unwritten Word but what is shewn him delivered by the Prophets and Apostles I think he hath a great deal of reason for such incredulity unless you could shew him some assurance of any unwritten Word that did not come from the Apostles Though he desired not to read unwritten Words in their Books which is a wise Question you ask yet he reasonably requested some certain evidence of what you pretend to be so that he might not have so big a Faith as to swallow into his belief that every thing which his adversary saies is the unwritten Word is so indeed If it be not your desire he should we have the greater hopes of satisfaction from you but if you crave the indifferent Reader 's Patience till he hear reason from you I am afraid his patience will be tyred before you come to it But whatever it is it must be examined Though your discourse concerning this unwritten Word be as the rest are very confused and immethodical yet I conceive the design and substance of it lyes in these particulars as will appear in the examination of them 1. That there is an unwritten Word which must be believed by us containing such doctrinal Traditions as are warranted by the Church for Apostolical 2. That the ground of believing this unwritten Word is from the Infallibility of the Church which defines it to be so 3. That our belief of the Scriptures must be grounded on such an unwritten Word which is warranted by the Church under each of these I shall examine faithfully what belongs to them in your indigested discourse The first of these is taken from your own words where you tell us That our Ensurancer in the main Principle of Faith concerning the Scriptures being the Word of God is Apostolical Tradition and well may it be so for such Tradition declared by the Church is the unwritten Word of God And you after tell us That every Doctrine which any particular person may please to call Tradition is not therefore to be received as God's unwritten Word but such doctrinal Traditions only as are warranted to us by the Church for truly Apostolical which are consequently God's unwritten Word So that these three things are necessary ingredients of this unwritten Word 1. That it must be originally Apostolical and not only so but it must be of Divine Revelation to the Apostles too For otherwise it cannot be God's Word at all and therefore not his unwritten Word I quarrel not at all with you for speaking of an unwritten Word if you could prove it for it is evident to me that God's Word is no more so by being written or printed than if it were not so for the writing adds no Authority to the Word but only is a more certain means of conveying it to us It is therefore God's Word as it proceeds from him and that which is now his written Word was once his unwritten Word but however whatever is God's Word must come from him and since you derive the source of the unwritten Word from the Apostles whatever you call an unwritten Word you must be sure to derive its pedegree down from them So that insisting on that point of time when this was declared and owned for an unwritten Word you must be able to shew that it came from the Apostles otherwise it
contentment they had in their minds And so I verily believe it is but probably your meaning is This Doctrine will cause gripes and torture of spirit in those who have no other foundation of Faith but your Churches authority and never enquire after more If it does so much good may they do them and I verily believe Such doubts may tend more to their satisfaction at last than their present security and a Doctrine which tends to convince the world of the folly and unreasonableness of such a kind of implicite Faith the unsuitableness of it to the nature of Religion in general but more especially the Christian whose great commendation is that it puts men upon so much searching and enquiry into the truth of it would tend more to the good of the Christian world than any of those soft and easie principles which you seek to keep men in obedience by and that I am afraid more to your Church than to Christ. Why then such a Doctrine should cause needless gripes and tortures of spirit I cannot imagine it must certainly be a great confirmation to the mind of any good man to see still further reason for his Faith by which it grows more radicated and confirmed Or would you have a man disquiet himself because he is not still a Child much such a kind of thing this is that a mans mind must be tortured because his Faith grows stronger for we assert that there are degrees in Faith which you who make all Faith Infallible cannot do unless you suppose an Infallible thing may grow more Infallible And if all true Faith be Infallible how can men pray for the increase of Faith unless they pray for the increase of their Infallibility which is a prayer I suppose not many in your Church are allowed to make for then what becomes of your Popes prerogative when not only every one among you is supposed to be Infallible but hopes as well as prayes to be more Infallible which is more then your Pope or your Church dares pretend to But whether Doctrine tends more to inward gripes and tortures of spirit yours or ours let any reasonable man judge for we assert that true Faith is capable of degrees of augmentation but you assert that there is no Divine Faith but what is Infallible when therefore men by reflection upon themselves are so far from finding such an Infallibility in their assent that they combat with many doubts and fears as we see the Apostles did even after the resurrection of Christ you must pronounce that the Apostles when they questioned Christs resurrection from the dead had no Divine Faith at all for it is plain they were far from an Infallible assent to it when Christ upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen Were they Infallible in their assent then or no I hope you will not contradict it so much as to say so or had they no Divine Faith then at all what not S. Peter for whom Christ prayed that his Faith should not fail and from the indesectibility of whose Faith you derive that of the Pope but here you may see what a certain Foundation you have for it when it is so apparent here that S. Peter's Faith did fail and that as to so important an Article of Faith as Christ's own Resurrection for certainly S. Peter was one of the eleven Nay Doth not Christ upbraid them for their unbelief in not believing them that had seen him after he was risen We see then Christ chides them for not resolving their Faith into a humane and moral Testimony If you had been there no doubt you must have told him He was mistaken in the nature of Faith which could rest on nothing but an infallible Testimony and unless he shewed you by sufficient Motives that those persons who saw him risen were infallible for all his haste you were not bound to believe him But whether Christ or you be the more infallible judge you We see our Blessed Saviour requires no more Assent than the nature of the thing will bear nay he upbraids those who will not believe upon Moral and Humane Testimony but you say just the contrary as though you were resolved to contradict him But that is sufficient Argument to all Christians of the falsity and folly of your Doctrine which tends to no other end but to make all considering men Scepticks or Atheists For when you lay it down as a certain Maxim that no Faith can be Divine but what is infallible and they find no such Infallibility in the grounds or the nature of mens Assent What then follows but those worst sort of gripes and tortures such as argue an inward Convulsion of mind and bring men to a greater Question Whether there be any such thing as that you call true Divine Faith in the world You go on with your Catechumen's discourse who must suppose Either that the Church taught that he was to believe Scripture infallible upon her own infallible Testimony or not If so then he reflects that this Church hath plainly deceived him and all others who believed upon that Supposition and so exposed them all to the hazard of eternal damnation and therefore was no True Church but a deceiver From whence say you he gathers that her recommendation of Scripture is as much as nothing and so at last is left to the sole Letter of Scripture and so must gather from thence its Authority or there can be no means left him on the Bishop's own Principles to believe infallibly that Scripture is Divine and the True Word of God This discourse of yours consists of three Absurdities which will follow upon one of your Churches questioning her Infallibity 1. That then your Church will be guilty of Imposture 2. Then the Churches Testimony signifies nothing 3. That then the sole Letter of Scripture must assure men of its Divine Authority For the first I must confess him whom before you supposed a Child to be now grown to years of understanding since he doth so wisely reflect on himself as to your Churches gross Imposture in her pretence of Infallibility and no doubt it is one of the greatest which hath been known in the Christian world which you cannot your self deny supposing that it be not true that she is infallible For Can there be any higher cheat in the world than under a pretence of Infallibility to impose things upon mens Faith which are contrary to the Sense and Reason of mankind to keep them from that inward satisfaction which their souls might find from a serious consideration of the excellent nature of Christian Religion and a diligent practice of it to contradict thereby the very scope of Christianity which courts our esteem by offering it self to the fairest tryal when I say under this pretence Christian Religion is apparently dishonoured the welfare of mens souls hindered and the greatest corruptions
obtruded without possibility of amendment of them excuse your Church from Imposture if you can for my part I cannot nor any one else who throughly considers it For the second it will follow indeed that the Testimony of your Church is as much as nothing as to any infallible Foundation of Faith but yet it may be of great use for conveying Vniversal Tradition to us and so by that delivering the Scripture into our hands as the infallible Rule of Faith To the third it by no means follows that there is nothing but the sole Letter of Scripture left to convince us of the Divine Authority of Scripture I hope the working Miracles fulfilling Prophecies the nature and reasonableness of the Doctrine of Scriptures are all left besides the bare letter of Scripture and these we say are sufficient to make us believe that the Scripture contains the infallible Word of God Now your profound Christian begins to reflect on the Bishops way which is say you That the Testimony of the Church is humane and fallible and that the belief of the Scripture rests upon the Scripture it self But it will be more to our purpose to hear the Bishop deliver his own mind than to hear you so lamely deliver it which in short he summs up thus A man is probably led by the Authority of the present Church as by the first informing inducing perswading means to believe the Scripture to be the Word of God But when he hath studied considered and compared this Word with its self and with other writings with the help of ordinary grace and a mind morally induced and reasonably perswaded by the voice of the Church the Scripture then gives greater and higher Reasons of Credibility to it self than Tradition alone could give And then he that believes resolves his last and full Assent that Scripture is of Divine Authority into internal Arguments found in the Letter it self though found by the help of Tradition without and Grace within This is the substance of his Lordship's Opinion against which we shall now consider what your Discourser hath to object 1. The first is from the case of ignorant and illiterate persons such who either through want of learning could not read the Scripture and examine or else made little use of it because they supposed they might have infallible Faith without it What then becomes of millions of such souls both in former and present times To that I answer Although the Ignorance and carelesness of men in a matter of so great consequence be so great in all ages as is not to be justified because all men ought to endeavour after the highest waies of satisfaction in a matter so nearly concerning them and it is none of the least things to be blamed in your Church that she doth so much countenance this ignorance and neglect of the Scripture yet for such persons who either morally or invincibly are hindered from this capacity of examining Scripture there may be sufficient means for their Faith to be built upon For although such illiterate persons cannot themselves see and read the Scripture yet as many as do believe do receive the Doctrine of it by that sense by which Faith is conveyed that is Hearing and by that means they have so great certainty as excludes all doubting that such Doctrines and such matters of fact are contained in these Books by which they come to the understanding of the nature of this Doctrine and are capable of judging concerning the Divinity of it For the Light spoken of in Scripture is not a Light to the eye but to the mind now the mind is capable of this Light as well by the ear as by the eyes The case then of such honest illiterate persons as are not capable of reading Scripture but diligently and devoutly hear it read to them is much of the same nature with those who heard the Apostles preach this Doctrine before it was writ For whatever was an Argument to such to believe the Apostles in what they spake becomes an Argument to such who hear the same things which are certainly conveyed to us by an unquestionable Tradition So that nothing hinders but such illiterate persons may resolve their Faith into the same Doctrine and Motives which others do only those are conveyed to them by the ear which are conveyed to others by the eyes But if you suppose persons so rude and illiterate as not to understand any thing but that they are to believe as the Church believes do you if you can resolve their Faith for them for my part I cannot and am so far from it that I have no reason to believe they can have any 2. The second thing objected by your discourser is That if the Churches judgement be fallible then much more ones own judgement is fallible And therefore if notwithstanding all the care and pains taken by the Doctors of the Church their perswasion was only humane and fallible What reason hath any particular person to say That he is divinely and infallibly certain by his reading the Scripture that it is Divine Truth But 1. Is there no difference between the Churches Perswasion and the Churches Tradition Doth the Bishop deny but the perswasion of the Doctors of the Church is as infallible as that of any particular person But this he denies that they can derive that Infallibility of the grounds of their Perswasion into their Tradition so as those who are to receive it on their Testimony may be competent Judges of it May we not then suppose their Tradition to be humane and fallible whose perswasion of what they deliver is established on infallible grounds As a Mathematician is demonstratively convinced himself of the Truth of any particular Problem but if he bids another believe it on his Testimony the other thereby hath no demonstrative evidence of the Truth of it but only so great moral evidence as the Testimony of that person carries along with it The case is the same here Suppose those persons in the Church in every Age of it have to themselves infallible evidence of the Divinity of the Scripture yet when they are to deliver this to be believed by others unless their Testimony hath infallible evidence in it men can never have more than humane or moral certainty of it 2. It doth not at all follow that if the Testimony of the Church be fallible no particular person can be infallibly assured of the Divinity of the Scripture unless this assurance did wholly depend upon that Testimony indeed if it did so the Argument would hold but otherwise it doth not at all Now you know the Bishop denies that the Faith of any particular person doth rest upon the judgement of the Church only he saith This may be a Motive and Inducement to men to consider further but that which they rely upon is that rational evidence which appears in the Scripture it self 3. He goes on and argues against this use of
part of the world should be so grosly deceived in a matter of such moment especially supposing a Divine Providence then I freely and heartily assert We have such a kind of rational Infallibility or rather the highest degree of actual Certainty concerning the Truth of the Canon of Scripture and that the Catholick Church hath not de facto erred in defining it Thus I have followed your discoursing Christian through all his doubts and perplexities and upon the result can find no ground at all either of doubting concerning the Scripture or of believing the Testimony of your Church or any to be an infallible ground of Faith Your next passage is to tell us how his Lordships Dedalian windings as you finely call them are disintricated A happy man you are at squaring Circles and getting out of Labyrinths And thus it appears in the present case For when his Lordship had said That the Tradition of the Church is too weak because that is not absolutely Divine you repeat over your already exploded Proposition that there may be an infallible Testimony which is not absolutely Divine which when I have your faculty of writing things which neither you nor any one else can understand I may admit of but till then I must humbly beg your pardon as not being able to assent to any thing which I cannot understand and have no reason to believe And withall contrary to your second Answer it appears That if the Testimony of the Primitive were absolutely Divine because infallible the Testimony of the present Church must be absolutely Divine if it be infallible The rest of this Chapter is spent in the examining some by-citations of men of your own side chiefly and therefore it is very little material as to the truth or falshood of the present Controversie yet because you seem to triumph so much assoon as you are off the main business I shall briefly return an Answer to the substance of what you say His Lordship having asserted the Tradition of the Primitive Apostolical Church to be Divine and that the Church of England doth embrace that as much as any Church whatsoever withall adds That when S. Augustine said I would not believe the Gospel unless the Authority of the Catholick Church moved me some of your own will not endure should be understood save of the Church in the time of the Apostles only and some of the Church in general not excluding after Ages but sure to include Christ and his Apostles In your Answer to this you insult strangely over his Lordship in two things First That he should say Some and mention but one in his Margent 2. That that One doth not say what he cites out of him To the first I answer you might easily observe the use his Lordship makes of his Margent is not so much to bring clear and distinct proofs of what he writes in his Book but what hath some reference to what he there saies and therefore it was no absurdity for him to say in his Book indefinitely some and yet in his Margent only to mention Occham For when his Lordship writ that no doubt his mind was upon others who asserted the same thing though he did not load his Margent with them And that you may see I have reason for what I say I hope you will not suppose his Lordship unacquainted with the Testimonies of those of your side who do in terms assert this That I may therefore free you from all kind of suspicion What think you of Gerson when speaking of the greater Authority of the Primitive Church than of the present he adds And by this means we come to understand what S. Augustine said I would not believe the Gospel c. For there saith he he takes the Church for the Primitive Congregation of Believers who saw and heard Christ and were witnesses of what he did Is not this Testimony plain enough for you But besides this we have another as evident in whom are those very words which his Lordship by a lapse of memory attributes to Occham For Durandus plainly sayes That for what concerns the approbation of Scripture by the Church it is understood only of the Church which was in the Apostles times who were filled with the Holy Spirit and withall saw the Miracles of Christ and heard his Doctrine and on that account were convenient witnesses of all which Christ did or taught that by their Testimony the Scripture containing the actions and speeches of Christ might receive approbation Do you yet desire a Testimony more express and full than this is of one who doth understand the Church exclusively of all successive to the Apostles when he had just before produced that known Testimony of S. Augustine You see then the Bishop had some reason to say Some of your Church asserted this to be S. Augustine 's meaning and therefore your Instances of some where but one is meant are both impertinent and scurrilous For where it is evidently known there was but one it were a Soloecism to say some as to say that some of the Apostles betrayed Christ when it is known that none but Judas did it But if I should say that some Jesuits had writ for the killing of Kings and in the Margent should cite Mariana no person conversant in their writings would think it a Soloecism for though I produce him for a remarkable Instance yet that doth not imply that I have none else to produce but only that the mentioning of one might shew I was not without proof of what I said For your impudent oblique slander on the memory of that excellent Prelate Arch-Bishop Cranmer when you say If a Catholick to disgrace the Protestant Primacy of Canterbury should say Some of them carried a holy Sister lockt up in a Chest about with them and name Cranmer only in the Margent His memory is infinitely above your slyest detractions and withall when you are about such a piece of Criticism I pray tell me what doth some of them relate to Is Primacy the name of some men Just as if one should disgrace the See of Rome and say Some of them have been Atheists Magicians debauched c. Though I confess it were a great injury in this case to cite but one in the Margent unless in pity to the Reader yet you may sooner vindicate some of them from a Soloecism in Language when the See of Rome went before than any of them from those Soloecisms in manners which your own Authours have complained of But say you What if this singular-plural say no such thing as the words alledged by the Bishop signifie I have already granted it to have been a very venial mistake of memory in his Lordship of Occham for Durandus in whom those very words are which are in the Margent of his Lordships Book as appears in the Testimony already produced I acknowledge therefore that Occham in that place of his Dialogues doth speak
representing his meaning For where he doth most fully and largely express himself he useth these words which for clearing his meaning must be fully produced Scripture teacheth all supernaturally revealed truth without the knowledge whereof salvation cannot be attained The main principle whereon the belief of all things therein contained dependeth is that the Scriptures are the Oracles of God himself This in it self we cannot say is evident For then all men that hear it would acknowledge it in heart as they do when they hear that every whole is more than any part of that whole because this in it self is evident The other we know that all do not acknowledge it when they hear it There must be therefore some former knowledge presupposed which doth herein assure the hearts of all believers Scripture teacheth us that saving truth which God hath discovered to the world by Revelation and it presumeth us taught otherwise that it self is Divine and Sacred The question then being by what means we are taught this some answer That to learn it we have no other way then only Tradition As namely that so we believe because both we from our predecessours and they from theirs have so received But is this enough That which all mens experience teacheth them may not in any wise be denyed And by experience we all know that the first Motive leading men so to esteem of the Scripture is the Authority of Gods Church For when we know the whole Church of God hath that opinion of the Scripture we judge it even at the first an impudent thing for any man bred and brought up in the Church to be of a contrary mind without cause Afterwards the more we bestow our labour in reading or hearing the mysteries thereof the more we find that the thing it self doth answer our receiv'd opinion concerning it So that the former inducement prevailing somewhat with us before doth now much more prevail when the very thing hath ministred farther reason Can any thing be more plain if mens meaning may be gathered from their words especially when purposely they treat of a subject than that Hooker makes the Authority of the Church the primary inducement to Faith and that rational evidence which discovers it self in the Doctrine revealed to be that which it is finally resolved into For as his Lordship saith on this very place of Hooker The resolution of Faith ever settles upon the farthest reason it can not upon the first inducement By this place then where this worthy Authour most clearly and fully delivers his judgement we ought in reason to interpret all other occasional and incidental passages on the same subject So in that other place For whatsoever we believe concerning salvation by Christ although the Scripture be therein the ground of our belief yet the authority of man is if we mark it the key which openeth the door of entrance into the knowledge of the Scriptures I will not dispute whether here he speaks concerning the knowledge of Scripture to be Scripture or concerning the natural sense and meaning of Scripture suppose I should grant you the latter it would make little for your purpose for when he adds The Scripture doth not teach us the things that are of God unless we did credit men who have taught us that the words of Scripture do signifie those things You need not here bid us stay a while For his sense is plain and obvious viz. that men cannot come to the natural sense and importance of the words used in Scripture unless they rely on the authority of men for the signification of those words He speaks not here then at all concerning Church-Tradition properly taken but meerly of the authority of man which he contends must in many cases be relyed on particularly in that of the sense and meaning of the words which occurr in Scripture Therefore with his Lordships leave and yours too I do not think that in this place Hooker by the authority of man doth understand Church-Tradition but if I may so call it Humane-Tradition viz. that which acquainteth us with the force and signification of words in use When therefore you prove that it is Tradition only which is all the ground he puts of believing Scripture to be the Word of God from those words of his That utterly to infringe the force and strength of mans testimony were to shake the very Fortress of Gods truth Now say you How can that Fortress the Scripture be shaken were not that authority esteemed by him the ground of that Fortress That may very easily be shewn viz. by calling in question the truth of humane testimony in general for he plainly speaks of such a kind of humane testimony as that is whereby we know there is such a City as Rome that such and such were Popes of Rome wherein the ground of our perswasion can be nothing else but humane testimony now take away the credit and validity of this testimony the very Fortress of truth must needs be shaken for we could never be certain that there were such persons as Moses the Prophets Christ and his Apostles in the world we could never be certain of the meaning of any thing written by them But how farr is this from the final resolution of Faith into Church-Tradition But the place you lay the greatest force on is that which you first cite out of him Finally we all believe that the Scriptures of God are sacred and that they have proceeded from God our selves we assure that we do right well in so believing We have for this a demonstration sound and Infallible But it is not the Word of God which doth or can possibly assure us that we do well to think it his Word From hence you inferr That either he must settle no Infallible ground at all or must say that the Tradition of the Church is that ground No Infallible ground in your sense I grant it but well enough in his own for all the difficulty lies in understanding what he means by Infallible which he takes not in your sense for a supernatural but only for a rational Infallibility not such a one as excludes possibility of deception but all reasonable doubting In which sense he saith of such things as are capable only of moral certainty That the Testimony of man will stand as a ground of Infallible assurance and presently instanceth in these That there is such a City of Rome that Pius 5. was Pope there c. So afterwards he saith That the mind of man desireth evermore to know the truth according to the most Infallible certainty which the nature of things can yield by which it is plain that the utmost certainty which things are capable of is with him Infallible certainty and so a sound and Infallible ground of Faith is a certain ground which we all assert may be had without your Churches Infallible Testimony Whether therefore Brierely and you are not guilty if
at Rome from St. Peter If then Traditions be so uncapable of falsification and corruption how came they to be so much to seek as to what the Apostolical Tradition was in the very next age succeeding the Apostles What Could not those who lived in St. Johns and St. Peters time know what they did Could they be deceived themselves or had they an intent to deceive their posterity If some of them did falsifie Tradition so soon we see what little certainty there is in the deriving a Tradition from the Apostles if neither falsified then it should seem there was no universal practise of the Apostles concerning it but they looked on it as a matter of indifferency and some might practise one way and some another If so then we are yet further to seek for an Vniversal Tradition of the Apostles binding succeeding Ages For can you possibly think the Apostles did intend to bind unalterably succeeding Ages in such things which they used a Liberty in themselves If then it be granted that in matters of an indifferent nature the Apostles might practise severally as they saw occasion How then can we be certain of the Apostles universal practise in matters of an indifferent nature If we cannot so we can have no evidence of an Vniversal Tradition of the Apostles but in some things which they judged necessary But whence shall we have this unquestionable evidence first that they did such things and secondly that they did them with an apprehension of the necessity of them and with an intention to oblige posterity by their actions By what rule or measure must we judge of this necessity By their Vniversal practise but that brings us into a plain Circle for we must judge of the necessity of it by their Vniversal practise and we must prove that Vniversal practise by the necessity of the thing For if the thing were not judged necessary the Apostles might differ in their practise from one another Whence then shall we prove any practise necessary unless built on some unalâ—erable ground of reason and then it is not formally an Apostolical Tradition but the use of that common reason and prudence in matters of a religious nature or else by some positive Law and Institution of theirs and this supposing it unwritten must be evidenced from something distinct from their practise or else you must assert that whatever the Apostles did they made an unalterable Law for or lastly you must quit all Vnwritten Traditions as Vniversal and must first inferr the necessity and then the Vniversality of their practise from some record extant in Scripture and then you can be no further certain of any Vniversal practise of the Apostles then you are of the Scriptures by which it will certainly appear that the Scripture is farr more evident and credible then any Vniversal unwritten Tradition A clear and evident Instance of the uncertainty of knowing Apostolical Traditions in things not defined in Scripture is one of those you instance in your self viz. that of Rebaptizing Hereticks which came to be so great a Controversie so soon after the Apostolical Age. For though this Controversie rose to its height in St. Cyprians time which was about A. D. 250. yet it was begun some competent time before that For St. Cyprian in his Epistle to Jubaianus where he gives an account of the General Council of the Provinces of Africa and Numidia consisting of seventy one Bishops endeavours to remove all suspicion of Novelty from their opinion For saith he it is no new or sudden thing among us to judge that those ought to be baptized who come to the Church from Hereticks for now many years are past and a long time since under Agrippinus the Bishops meeting together did determine it in Council and thousands of Hereticks have voluntarily submitted to it How far off could that be from the Apostolical times which was done so long before Cyprians And although S. Augustine as it was his interest so to do would make this to have been but a few years yet we have greater evidence both of the greater antiquity and larger spread of this Opinion Whereby we may see how little the judgement of Vincentius Lyrinensis is to relyed on as to Traditions who gives Agrippinus such hard words for being the first who against Scripture the Rule of the Vniversal Church the judgement of all his Fellow-Priests the custom of his Ancestors did assert the rebaptization of Hereticks How little Truth there is in what Vincentius here saies and consequently how little certainty in his way of finding out Traditions will appear from the words of Dionysius of Alexandria in his Epistle to Philemon and Dionysius concerning this subject For therein he asserts That long before that custom obtained in Africa the same was practised and decreed in the most famous Churches both at Iconium Synada and other places On which account this great person professeth that he durst not condemn their Opinion who held so Whether this Synod at Iconium were the same with that mentioned by Firmilian is not so certain but if it were that can be no argument against the Antiquity of it For although Firmilian say That we long ago meeting in Iconium from Galatia Cilicia and the neighbour Regions have confirmed the same viz. that Hereticks should be baptized yet as the learned Valesius observes the pronoune We is not to be understood of Firmilian's person but of his predecessors and therefore checks both Baronius and Binius for placing that Synod A. D. 258. We see therefore this Opinion was so largely spread that not only the Churches in Africa Numidia and Mauritania favoured it but almost all the Eastern Christians For Dionysius in an Epistle to Xystus who succeeded Stephanus at Rome wherein he pleads for Moderation as to this Controversie and desires him more throughly to consider the weight of the business and not proceed so rashly as Stephanus had done he tells him in conclusion that he writ not this of himself but at the request of the several Bishops of Antioch Caesarea Aelia Tyre Laodicea Tarsus c. Nay and as it appears by Firmilians Epistle they made no question but this custom of theirs descended from Christ and his Apostles For telling Cyprian that in such places where the other custom had been used they did well to oppose truth to custom But we saith he joyn truth and custom together and to the custom of the Romans we oppose the custom of truth holding that from the beginning which was delivered by Christ and his Apostles And therefore adds Neither do we remember when this practice began seeing it was alwaies observed among us And thence charges the Church of Rome in that Epistle with violating that and several other Traditions of the Apostles But Vincentius Lyrinensis still takes Stephens part and all that he hath to say is That that is the property of Christian modesty and gravity not to deliver
of all his goods And when he speaks of the Doctrine it self of Christianity he saies It is suitable to whatever was rational among the Platonists or other Philosophers but far more agreeable to it self and containing much more excellent things than ever they could attain to the knowledge of In his second Apology for the Christians to the Emperour Antoninus Pius he insists much on the excellency of the Doâ—trine of Christianity from the Precepts of it chastity love of enemies liberality submission to authority worship of God c. Afterwards he proves the truth and certainty of all we believe concerning Christ from the exact accomplishment of the Prophecies made concerning him in the Old Testament which discourse he ends with this saying So many and so great things being seen are sufficient to perswade men to believe the truth of them who are lovers of truth and not seekers of applause and under the command of passions Thus we see in all his discourses where he had the most occasion administred to him to discover the most certain grounds of Christian Faith he resolves all into the rational evidence of the truth excellency and divinity of the Doctrine which was contained in the Scriptures For in his second Oration to the Greeks after he had spoken highly in commendation of the Scripture calling it The best expeller of all turbulent passions and the surest extinguisher of those preternatural heats in the souls of men which saith he makes men not Poets nor Philosophers nor Orators but it makes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dying men immortal and mortals become gods and transferrs them from the earth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to such places whose confines are far above Olympus therefore O ye Greeks come and be instructed be ye as I am for I was as you are And these were the things which prevailed with me the divine power and efficacy of the Doctrine What was it then I pray that Justin Martyr of a Philosopher becoming a Christian resolved his Faith into If we may believe himself it was into the evidence of the Doctrine of Christianity and not into the Infallibility of any Church The Testimony of this person I have the more largely insisted on both because he was so great a Philosopher as well as Christian and lived so near the Apostolical times Next him we produce Athenagoras as a Philosopher too as well as Christian who flourished under Antoninus and Commodus to whom he made his Apology in behalf of the Christians in which he first undertakes to manifest the reasonableness of the Doctrine which they owned the Foundation of it being the same with that which the best Philosophers acknowledged the existence and unity of the Deity But saith he if we had nothing but such reasons as he had produced our perswasion could only be humane but the words of the Prophets are they which establish our minds who being carried beyond themselves by the impulse of the Divine Spirit spake that which they were moved to when the Spirit used them as Instruments through which he spake Is not here a plain resolution of Faith into that Divine Authority by which the Prophets spake and that not as testified by any Infallible Church but as it was discernable by those persons he spake to for he appeals to the Emperours themselves concerning it which had been a fond and absurd thing for him to do if the knowledge of that Divine Inspiration did depend meerly on the testimony of Christians as such and were not to be discovered by some common Principles to them and others Much to the same purpose Tatianus speaks in that eloquent Oration of his against the Greeks who was Justin Martyrs Scholar and we shall see how agreeably he speaks to him in the account he gives how he became a Christian. After saith he he had abundantly discovered the vanity of the Theology and Superstitions of the Greeks he fell to the reading some strange Books much elder and more Divine than the Writings of the Greek Philosophers And to these saith he I yielded up my Faith for the great simplicity and plainness of the style and the freedom from affectation which was in the writers and that evidence and perspicuity which was in all they writ and because they foretold things to come made excellent promises and manifestly declared the Monarchy of the World What Protestant could speak higher of the Scripture and of those internal arguments which are the grounds of Faith than Tatianus in these words doth Yet we see these were the arguments which made him relinquish the Greek learning of which he was a Professor at Rome and betake himself to the profession of Christianity though he was sure to undergo not only contempt from the world but to be in continual hazard of his life by it That innate simplicity of the writings of the Scripture joyned with the perspicuity of it if at least those words be rightly translated 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by sermo nusquam obscurus and it doth not rather relate to the account of the worlds creation which I conjecture it may do but however the certainty of the predictions the excellency of the promises and the reasonableness of the Doctrine were the things which by the reading of the Books he was perswaded to believe them by But all this while we hear no news of any Churches Infallibility in order to Faith We come therefore to Irenaeus who was omnium doctrinarum curioâ—â—ssimus explorator as Tertullian speaks of him a great searcher into all kind of learning and therefore surely not to seek as to the true account of his Faith Whose judgement herein although we have had occasion to enquire into before yet we have testimonies enough beside to manifest his consent with them And although Irenaeus of all the ancient Fathers be looked on as the most favourable to Tradition and is most cited to that purpose in these disputes yet I doubt not but to make it appear that where he speaks most concerning Tradition he makes the resolution of Faith to be wholly and entirely into the Scripture and they who apprehend otherwise do either take the citations out of him upon trust or else only search him for the words of those citations and never take the pains to enquire into the scope and design of his discourse For clearing which we must consider what the subject was which he writ of what the plea's of the adverse party were what way Irenaeus takes to confute them and to establish the Faith of Christians as to the matter which was in Controversie The matter in dispute was this Valentinus and his Scholars not being contented with the simplicity of the Doctrine of the Gospel and in probability the better to suit their opinions to the Heathen Mythology had invented a strange Pedigree of Gods the better as they pretended to give an account of the production of things and the various dispensations
man How much beyond the Valentinians and Basilidians would Clemens have accounted so great a madness who so plainly asserts the Scriptures to be proved by themselves and that not casually or in the heat of argument But lest we should not throughly apprehend his meaning repeats it again in the same page 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 perfectly demonstrating the Scriptures by themselves And are not all these Testimonies of such persons so near the Apostolical times sufficient to acquaint us what the grounds of the Resolution of Faith were in the Christian Church when all of them do so unanimously fix on the Scripture and not so much as mention the Infallible Testimonies of any Church much less the Roman Much more might be cited out of this excellent Authour to the same purpose particularly where he refutes the Valentinians who deserted the Scriptures and pleaded Tradition but the Testimonies already produced are so plain that it will be to no purpose to produce any more It were easie to continue an account of the same grounds of Faith through the succeeding Writers of the Christian Church who have designedly writ on that subject in vindication of Christian Religion which they unanimously prove to be Divine chiefly by these Arguments from the undoubted Miracles which were wrought by Christ and his Apostles from the exact fulfilling of Prophecies and the admirable propagation of the Christian Doctrine all which are particularly insisted on by Origen against Celsus by Tertullian in his Apologetick adversus Scapulam and elsewhere by Minucius Felix Arnobius and Lactantius not to mention Eusebius in his Books of preparation and Cyril's Answer to Julian and others But having elsewhere more fully and largely considered that subject I rather chuse to referr the Reader to what hath been there handled already than to tire his patience with either repeating the same or adding more Testimonies to the same purpose Only that which is most pertinent to our present purpose I shall here add Whether is it credible that those persons who fully understood the Doctrine of Christianity who were themselves rational and inquisitive men and writ for the satisfaction not only of subtle adversaries but of doubting and staggering Christians should so unanimously agree in insisting on the evidence of matter of fact for the truth of the thing delivered in Scripture and the fore-mentioned Arguments for the Divinity of the Doctrine therein delivered had it not been the judgement of the Church they lived in that the resolution of Faith was into those grounds on which they insisted And is it again credible that any of them should believe the Testimony of the Church to be necessary as infallible in order to a Divine Faith and that without it the Scriptures could not be believed as Divine and yet in all their disputes with the Gentiles concerning the Doctrine of Christianity and with several Hereticks as the Marcionists c. concerning the Books of Scripture upon no occasion should mention this grand Palladium of Faith viz. the Infallibility of the present Church And lastly Is it credible that when in our modern Controversies men do evidently maintain faction and interest more than the common Principles of Christianity that he must be blinder than one that can see no distinction of colours that doth not discern on what account this Infallibility is now pretended Is it I say credible that a Doctrine pretended so necessary for our believing Scriptures with Divine Faith should be so concealed when it ought for the honour and interest of Christianity to have been most divulged Which now only in these last and worst times is challenged by an usurping party in the Church as left by Christ himself when no other evidence can be given of it but what was common to all ages of the Church as belonging to such a party under the pretence of the Catholick Church which doth so apparently use it only to uphold her pretended Authority and so makes it serve to the worst ends and the most unworthy designs Having thus far considered what the judgement of those Fathers was concerning the resolution of Faith who lived nearest the Apostolical times I should now come to consider what you can produce out of Antiquity for your Churches Infallibility or more generally for any infallible Testimony supposed in the Catholick Church whatever that be in order to a Foundation for Divine Faith But you very prudently avoid the Testimonies of Antiquity in so necessary a subject as this is for those Testimonies mentioned in the foregoing Chapter in explication of Matth. 28.20 takeing them as you have in so loose and careless a manner produced them make nothing at all for the Churches Infallible Testimonie but only assert that which is not denied that there shall alwaies be a Christian Church in the world Our only remaining task then as to this is to examine in what way you seek to enervate the Testimonies produced by his Lordship out of Antiquity which you do in the latter part of Chap. 8. His Lordship had truly said That this method and manner of proving the Scripture to be the Word of God which he useth is the same which the ancient Church ever held namely Tradition or Ecclesiastical Authority first and then all other arguments but especially internal from the Scripture it self For which he cites first The Church in S. Augustine 's time He was no enemy to Church-Tradition saith his Lorship yet when he would prove that the Authour of the Scripture and so of the whole knowledge of Divinity as it is supernatural is God in Christ he takes this as the all-sufficient way and gives four proofs all internal to the Scripture 1. The Miracles 2. That there is nothing carnal in the Doctrine 3. That there hath been such performance of it 4. That by such a Doctrine of Humility the whole world almost hath been converted And whereas ad muniendam fidem for the defending of the Faith and keeping it entire there are two things requisite Scripture and Church-Tradition Vincent Lyrinens places authority of Scriptures first and then Tradition And since it is apparent that Tradition is first in order of time it must necessarily follow that Scripture is first in order of nature that is the chief upon which Faith rests and resolves it self To this after you have needlesly explained his Lordships opinion in this Controversie you begin to answer thus He cites first Vincentius Lyrinensis l. 1. c. 1. who makes our Faith to be confirmed both by Scripture and Tradition of the Catholick Church But Are not you like to be trusted in citing Fathers who doubly falsifie a Testimony of your adversaries when you may be so easily disproved For 1. You tell us he cites that first which he produceth last 2. You cite that as produced by him for the Foundation of Faith which he expresly cites for the preservation of the Doctrine of Faith so he tells you ad muniendam fidem
those wise and holy men knew better the interest of Christianity than to offer to defend it by Principles in themselves false and much more liable to question than that was which they were to prove by them and therefore made choice of arguments in themselves strong and evident and built on Principles common to themselves and those whom they disputed against i. e. they urged them with the greatest strength of Reason and the clearest evidence of Divine Revelation and never questioned but that a Faith built on those grounds if effectual for a holy Life was a true and Divine Faith It seems then your cause cannot be maintained without the most sharp and virulent reflections on those Primitive Christians who among all those arguments whereby they so successfully prevailed over the Gentile world never did so much as vouchsafe to mention the least pretence to Infallibility for which they are now accused of using only the blunter weapons of humane and fallible motives and not those Primary and Divine Motives of Infallibility But this is not the first time we have seen what desperate shifts a bad cause puts men upon It may be yet your strength may lye in your last condition viz. That these arguments used by them were not internal For 1. You say That of Miracles is external the Scriptures themselves work none neither were ever any Miracles wrought to confirm that all the Books now in the Canon and no more are the Word of God I answer 1. I have already told you of a double resolution of Faith the one as to the Divinity of the Doctrine the other as to the Veracity of the Books which contain it when therefore Miracles are insisted on it is not in order to the latter of these which we have sufficient assurance of without them as I have already largely proved both as to the Truth and Integrity of the Canon of Scripture but Miracles we say are the arguments to prove the Divinity of the Doctrine by because they attest the Divine Revelation of the persons who deliver this Doctrine to the world 2. As to us who receive the report of those Miracles as conveyed to us by the Scripture those may be said to be internal arguments to the Scripture which are there recorded in order to our believing the Doctrine therein contained to be Divine The Motives of Faith being delivered to us now joyntly with the Doctrine although on different grounds we believe the Veracity of the Books of Scripture and the Infallibility of the Doctrine contained in it We believe that the Miracles were truly done because they are delivered to us by an unquestionable Tradition in such Authentick Writings as the Scriptures are but we believe the Doctrine contained in the Books to be Divine because attested by such Miracles and we believe the Books of Scripture to be divinely inspired because such persons cannot be supposed to falsifie to the world who wrought such great Miracles 2. You say The conversion of so many People and Nations by the Doctrine contained in Scripture is also external to the Scripture But still you suppose that these arguments are brought to prove these Books to be divinely inspired which is denied we say only That the admirable propagation of the Doctrine of the Gospel is a great argument that it was from God And therefore when afterwards you say That supposing all those arguments mentioned by the Bishop out of S. Augustine to be internal to the Scripture yet they cannot infallibly and divinely prove that Scripture is the Word of God If by Scripture you mean the Writings we pretend not to it if by Scripture you mean the Doctrine of it we assert it and think it no argument at all against that which you add That perswade they may but convince they cannot no doubt if they perswade they do much more than convince But I suppose your meaning is they do it not effectually if so that is not the fault of the arguments but of the person who by his obstinacy will not hearken to the clearest evidence of Reason All that this can prove is a necessity of Divine Grace to go along with external evidence which you dare not assert for fear of running into that private Spirit which you objected to his Lordship on the same account But it is very pretty which follows You say Supposing that all those arguments mentioned of Miracles nothing carnal in the Doctrine performance of it and conversion of the world by it were all of them internal to Scripture yet they could not prove infallibly the Scripture to be the Word of God and to prove this you tell us concerning the third and fourth How can it ever be proved that either the performance of this Doctrine or the conversion of Nations is internal to Scripture But Did you not suppose them before to be internal to Scripture and though they were so yet could not prove the Scriture c and to prove that you say they cannot be proved internal to Scripture Which is just as if I should say If you were Pope you would not be Infallible and all the evidence I should give for it should be only to prove that you were not Pope You conclude this Chapter with a Wonder I mean not any thing of Reason which would really be so But say you who can sufficiently wonder that his Lordship for these four Motives should so easily make the Scripture give Divine Testimony to it self upon which our Faith must rest and yet deny the same priviledge to the Church Seeing it cannot be denied but that every one of these Motives are much more immediately and clearly applied to the Church than to the Scripture What more immediately and clearly and so clearly that it cannot be denied Prove but any one of them as to that Church whose Infallibility is in question viz. the present Roman-Church and I will yield you the rest Produce but any one undoubted Miracle to confirm the Infallibility of your Church or the Pastors of it shew your Doctrine wherein it differs from ours not to be carnal manifest the performance of the Christian Doctrine only in the members of your Church prove that it is your Church as such which hath preached this Doctrine and converted whole Nations to the belief of it in any other way than the Spaniards did the poor Indians and we may begin to hearken with somewhat more patience to your arrogant and unreasonable pretence of Infallibility Can any one then who hath any grain of reason left him think that from these arguments while his Lordship disputes most eagerly against the present Churches Infallibility he argues mainly for it as you very wisely conclude that Chapter If this be arguing for your Churches Infallibility much good may such arguments do you And so I come to the last part of my task as to this Controversie which is to examine your next Chapter which puts us in hopes of seeing an End of
must needs be the same with that which was built on the Rock in the former Either therefore you must deny the See of Peter to be the Rock or you must of necessity assert the house built upon it to be the Vniversal Church and not the particular one of Rome and consequently the danger lyes not upon mens not being in communion with the Roman but with the truly Catholick Church And how from hence you will inferr That they are prophane who are out of the Roman Church it would be worth our while to understand 2. Suppose I should grant that S. Hierom did mean the particular Church of Rome yet I am not satisfied that this comes home to your purpose unless you could prove that S. Hierom spake of what was necessarily and unalterably to be in the Church of Rome and not meerly of what was in that time when he spake these words But that is your perpetual Paralogism in the citations of the Fathers in praise of the Church of Rome what they spake and it may be deservedly of the Church of their own time although sometimes their Rhetorick swell'd too high in their Encomiasticks that you will needs have to be understood of the same Church at all times and in our present age As though it were not possible for a Church to be eminent for purity of Doctrine in one age and to decline as much from it in another But I need give no other instance in this case than S. Hierom himself for if we believe S. Hierom in his Catalogue the two immediate predecessors of Damasus in the See of Rome Liberius and Felix were tainted with Heresie and that very Heresie viz. Arrianism which S. Hierom writes to Damasus about now I pray tell us then Whether if S. Hierom had lived in Liberius his time would he have writ to him after the same rate he now writes to Damasus if he had been of the same mind then he would have been so farr from scrupling the three hypostases that he must have subscribed the Arrian confession as S. Hierom tells us Liberius did through the instigation of Fortunatianus And therefore to let us see on what account he was now so liberal in his commendations of the Church of Rome he begins this Epistle with the praise of her present orthodoxness in the Catholick Faith And that amongst all the divisions and breaches of the Eastern Churches they preserved the Faith of their Fore-fathers entire That now the Sun of Righteousness rises in the West but that Lucifer who fell now reigns in the East with many expressions to the same purpose Which supposition being granted true at that time that which follows inferrs very little to your purpose unless you can prove that what was so then must necessarily continue so in all ages If the East was then corrupted and the West only sound what praises belonged to the Catholick Church in general did of right devolve to that part which remained sound in the opinion of those persons who judged so You would needs therefore from hence have your Church accounted Catholick now by the same argument that Tully said of the Roman Lady who still affirmed she was but thirty years of age that he believed it for he had heard her say so twenty years before so must we believe your Church sound and Catholick because it was said so of her so many hundred years since as though no infirmities or wrinkles could have come upon her ever since Prove your Church to be as sound and orthodox as pure and holy now as she was in the primitive Fathers time and we will not grudge her the highest of those commendations which were given her by them But without doing this your Testimonies come to nothing The same Answer will serve the remaining Testimonies of Eulalius and the Emperour Gratian who only spake of the communion of the Church of Rome as it was then That of Fulgentius stiling the Roman Church The top of the world only imports the eminency of it in regard of the power of that City it was in and so is wide enough from your purpose Thus we have considered all that you have produced out of Antiquity to prove that the Church is called Catholick with a particular relation to and dependence of the Church of Rome and can find nothing at all belonging to her as the center of Catholicism but that those things which are said of her and communion with her in relation to being called Catholick might as well have agreed with any other Apostolical Church remaining sound in the Catholick Faith Hence it appears that what his Lordship is pleased to term a perfect Jesuitism viz. the measuring the Catholick Church by that of Rome is really nothing else and that the perfect mistake belongs to you who assert that it was a received and known Truth in the Ancient Church Your vindication of the propriety of your Churches being called the Roman Catholick Church from the Roman Empire and the Jewish Church would then signifie something when you have proved that the Pope hath as much the Government of the Church as the Roman-Emperour had of all the Provinces within the confines of the Empire or that we are all bound as much to resort to Rome as the Jews were to Jerusalem for the solemn worship of God In the mean time the absurdity is never the less for being vulgar in calling yours The Roman Catholick Church And yet as though you had been only demonstrating these things you tell us very magisterially The truth is in all doubts concerning matter of Doctrine recourse is to be had to S. Peter 's successor who at least with a General Council can infallibly resolve all difficulties An excellent way of proving to say The truth is Might not I as well say The truth is the Pope neither in Council nor out of it hath any Infallibility at all And would not this be full as good an Answer as yours is an Argument but the very truth is you had rather have these things believed than go about to prove them least the weakness of the arguments should lay too much open your fond pretence of Infallibility Before you prove That the Pope can carry his Infallibility out of Rome with him shew us that he hath it there I grant S. Peter had been infallible though he had never been at Rome and it is far from being clear that the Pope is at all the more infallible for his being there How far you have been from proving That the Faith of every particular Church is to be examined and proved to be Catholick by its conformity to the Faith of the Roman Church may abundantly appear from the preceding discourse Those Questions which you say make nothing to your purpose concerning the Popes transferring his chair at Rome and the Roman Clergies deserting him and the true Faith I shall so far believe you in as to ease my self of the trouble of
formal guilt of Schism it being impossible any person should have just cause to disown the Churches Communion for any thing whose belief is necessary to salvation And whosoever doth so thereby makes himself no member of the Church because the Church subsists on the belief of Fundamental truths But in all such cases wherein a division may be made and yet the several persons divided retain the essentials of a Christian Church the separation which may be among any such must be determined according to the causes of it For it being possible of one side that men may out of capricious humours and fancies renounce the Communion of a Church which requires nothing but what is just and reasonable and it being possible on the other side that a Church calling her self Catholick may so far degenerate in Faith and practise as not only to be guilty of great errours and corruptions but to impose them as conditions of Communion with her it is necessary where there is a manifest separation to enquire into the reasons and grounds of it and to determine the nature of it according to the justice of the cause which is pleaded for it And this I hope may help you a little better to understand what is meant by such who say There can be no just cause of Schism and how little this makes for your purpose But you go on and I must follow And to his calling for truth c. I Answer What Hereticks ever yet forsook the Church of God but pretended truth and complain'd they were thrust out and hardly dealt with meerly because they call'd for truth and redress of abuses And I pray what Church was ever so guilty of errours and corruptions but would call those Hereticks and Schismaticks who found fault with her Doctrine or separated from her Communion It is true Hereticks pretend truth and Schismaticks abuses but is it possible there should be errours and corruptions in a Churches Communion or is it not if not prove but that of your Church and the cause is at an end if it be we are to examine whether the charge be true or no. For although Hereticks may pretend truth and others be deceived in judging of it yet doubtless there is a real difference between truth and errour If you would never have men quarrel with any Doctrine of your Church because Hereticks have pretended truth would not the same reason hold why men should never enquire after Truth Reason or Religion because men have pretended to them all which have not had them It is therefore a most senseless cavil to say we have no reason to call for truth because Hereticks have done so and on the same grounds you must not be call'd Catholicks because Hereticks have been call'd so But those who have been Hereticks were first proved to be so by making it appear that was a certain truth which they denyed do you the same by us prove those which we call errours in your Church to be part of the Catholick and Apostolick Faith prove those we account corruptions to be parts of Divine worship and we will give you leave to call us Hereticks and Schismaticks but not before But say you He should have reflected that the Church of God is stiled a City of Truth by the Prophet and so it may be and yet your Church be a fortress of Errour And a pillar and foundation of Truth by the Apostle but what is this to the Church of Romes being so And by the Fathers a rich depository or Treasury of all Divine and Heavenly Doctrines so it was in the sense the Fathers took the Church in for the truly Catholick Christian Church And we may use the same expressions still of the Church as the Prophets Apostles and Fathers did and nevertheless charge your Church justly with the want of truth and opposition to the preaching of it and on that ground justly forsake her Communion which is so far from being inexcusable impiety and presumption that it was only the performance of a necessary Christian duty And therefore that Woe of scandal his Lordship mentioned still returns upon your party who gave such just cause of offence to the Christian world and making it necessary for all such as aimed at the purity of the Christian Church to leave your Communion when it could not be enjoyed without making shipwrack both of Faith and a good Conscience And this is so clear and undeniable to follow you still in your own language that we dare appeal for a tryal of our cause to any Assembly of learned Divines or what Judge and Jury you please provided they be not some of the parties accused and because you are so willing to have Learned Divines I hope you will believe the last Pope Innocent so far as not to mention the Pope and Cardinals What follows in Vindication of A. C. from enterfeiring and shuffling in his words because timorous and tender consciences think they can never speak with caution enough for fear of telling a lye will have the force of a demonstration being spoken of and by a Jesuite among all those who know what mortal haters they are of any thing that looks like a lye or aequivocation And what reason there is that of all persons in the world they should be judged men of timorous and tender consciences But whatever the words were which passed you justifie A. C. in saying That the Protestants did depart from the Church of Rome and got the Name of Protestants by protesting against her For this say you is so apparent that the whole world acknowledgeth it If you mean that the Communion of Protestants is distinct from yours Whoever made scruple of confessing it But because in those terms of departing leaving forsaking your Communion you would seem to imply that it was a voluntary act and done without any necessary cause enforcing it therefore his Lordship denyes that Protestants did depart for saith he departure is voluntary so was not theirs But because it is so hard a matter to explain the nature of that separation between your Church and Ours especially in the beginning of it without using those terms or some like them as when his Lordship saith that Luther made a breach from it It is sufficient that we declare that by none of these expressions we mean any causeless separation but only such acts as were necessarily consequential to the imposing your errours and corruptions as conditions of Communion with your Church To the latter part his Lordship answers That the Protestants did not get that name by Protesting against the Church of Rome but by Protesting and that when nothing else would serve against her errours and superstitions Do you but remove them from the Church of Rome our Protestation is ended and our Separation too This you think will be answered with our old put off That it is the common pretext of all Hereticks when they sever themselves from the Roman Catholick
est If Faith be given against Christ that is to the dishonour of God or contrary to the precepts of true Religion it were perfidiousness to observe it But the Answer to this is easie for it appears from Simancha's own grounds that he supposeth it holds universally because Faith can never be given to Hereticks so as that promise can be lawfully performed because thereby he supposeth it given against Christ and to the dishonour of God and therefore concludes it would be perfidiousness to observe it And this is evident from Simancha's own grounds which he gives for it For saith he if Faith be not kept with Tyrants Pirats and other Robbers which kill the body much less with Hereticks who destroy souls which reason being absolute and universal his Proposition must be so too And very consonantly to his former assertions concludes That if Faith be given them with an Oath against the publick good against the salvation of souls against divine and humane Laws it is not to be kept and it is well known that all Heresies are accounted so by you and therefore in no case Faith is to be kept with Hereticks Neither can this possibly be understood meerly of private persons for his words are general and we see he vindicates the proceedings of the Council at Constance upon these grounds and he quotes Marius Salomonius and Placa who likewise assert in terms That Faith given to Hereticks is not to be kept and makes use of the instance of the Council of Constance to prove it And Menochius whom Simancha likewise cites who was an Italian Canonist and therefore might well know the practices of Rome in these cases saith That Placa expresly holds That Faith is not to be kept with Hereticks which he saith he understands so when Faith is given to the injury of the Catholick Faith and cites Conradus Brunus to this purpose That it is not lawful to make such agreements with Hereticks that they may enjoy the liberty of their own sect If therefore they must interpret how far the Faith given tends to the prejudice of the Catholick Faith we see how little security can be had from any solemn promise And Menochius himself asserts the safe-conduct granted by Princes in case of Heresie to be unlawful because the inferiour as he supposes Princes to be to the Ecclesiastical Tribunal cannot secure them who are condemned by the Superiour and because Kings and Emperours ought rather to destroy Hereticks than to secure them And therefore the Council of Constance did well in nulling the safe-conducts granted to Hereticks And what now is this but in plain terms to assert That Faith is not to be kept with Hereticks Neither can you say as some do That they are the Canonists and not the Church of Rome which assert this for besides that the Canonists understand well enough the intrigues and proceedings of the Court of Rome although it seems they do not conceal them so much as they should do yet they are not only these who have asserted it but some great men of your Church have upon occasion expresly said it for we are not to expect that this should be avowed as a publick Opinion of your Church for that were to make it unserviceable to you but when you have those whom you call Hereticks at an advantage then is the time to discover this So there wanted not some to perswade Charls the fifth notwithstanding the safe-conduct given to Luther at his coming to Worms to deal by him as the Council of Constance had done by John Husse and that upon this very account That no Faith was to be kept with Hereticks But the Emperour and the Princes about him were persons of too great honour and honesty to hearken to such perfidious Councils And no meaner a person than Cardinal Hosius admonishes Henry King of Poland that he ought not to keep the Faith he had given to the Protestants and gives this reason for it That an Oath ought to not be the bond of iniquity And the Jesuit Possevin is reported to have given the same counsel afterwards to Stephen King of Poland But these things are as much as possible kept from our view and the Books containing such Doctrines in them are like the Golden Legends bought up by themselves to prevent our discovery of their frauds and imposture and therefore if we cannot instance in those Jesuits who have expresly taught this Opinion in print yet that only argues the greater fraud and subtilty of them who will own and practise such things which they dare not publickly avow to the world And yet it appears from the way used by Becanus and you in vindication of your selves that you cannot possibly avoid the asserting such things from whence it necessarily follows That Faith is not to be kept with Hereticks But because the Doctrine it self is grown a matter so odious to the world being contrary to all principles of humanity and justice and which if practised by all those who call each other Hereticks would overthrow all civil societies therefore you dare not but in terms disown it though it still remains among those Arcana Societatis those hidden works of darkness which want only a fair opportunity to discover themselves But as much as you wipe your mouth though it be foul enough in saying That neither the Bishop nor all his gang are able to name one of them of that Opinion to make it appear how much you have abused your self in these words I shall make a short business of it and name your self for one and Becanus your Author for another and refer the Reader to what goes before for an evidence that you own those Principles from whence it unavoidably follows That no Faith is to be kept with Hereticks But Are the Jesuits indeed grown such honest men that not one of their number can be named who assert this Doctrine A happy change For sure they were not alwaies so if we believe that excellent person of as great integrity as learning and a Romanist too Jac. Augustus Thuanus in his Elegy in Parricidas wherewith he concludes his sacred Poems in which he speaks great and sad truths of that honest Society where he mentions those Cruelties and Assasinations which were brought into these parts of the world by the Arts and Opinions of a famous Society which makes nothing of Laws Faith Honesty Religion to advance that Interest which it hath espoused and expresly saith That they deny Faith to be kept that by their distinctions and subtilties they enervate the force of divine commands they deny obedience to authority destroy Religion under a pretence of Piety break engagements teach the murthering Kings and what not And yet all this while not one of all this Society ever taught That Faith was not to be kept with Hereticks But whence came then the great disputes Whether an Oath of Allegiance might be taken to Heretical Princes Was it
That to reform what is amiss in Doctrine or Manners is as lawful for a particular Church as it is to publish and promulgate any thing that is Catholick in either And your Question Quô judice lies alike against both And yet I think saith he It may be proved that the Church of Rome and that as a particular Church did promulgate an orthodox truth which was not then Catholickly admitted in the Church namely the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son If she erred in this fact confess her errour if she erred not Why may not another particular Church do as she did From whence he inferrs That if a particular Church may publish any thing that is Catholick where the whole Church is silent it may reform any thing that is not Catholick where the whole Church is negligent or will not Now to this you answer 1. That this procession from the Son was a truth alwaies acknowledged in the Church but what concerns that and the time of this Article being inserted into the Creed have been so amply discussed already that I shall not cloy the reader with any repetition having fully considered whatever you here say concerning the Article it self or its addition to the Creed 2. You answer That the consequence will not hold that if a particular Church may in some case promulgate an orthodox truth not as yet Catholickly received by the Church then a particular Church may repeal or reverse any thing that the whole Church hath already Catholickly and definitively received Surely no. Yet this say you is his Lordships and the Protestants case You do well to mention an egregious fallacy presently after these words for surely this is so For doth his Lordship parallel the promulgating something Catholick and repealing something Catholick together Surely no. But the promulgating something true but not Catholickly received with the reforming something not Catholick Either therefore you had a mind to abuse his Lordships words or to deceive the reader by beging the thing in Question viz. that all those which we call for a Reformation of were things Catholickly and definitively received by the whole Church which you know we utterly deny But you go on and say That thence it follows not that a particular Church may reform any thing that is not Catholick where the whole Church is negligent or will not because this would suppose errour or something uncatholick to be taught or admitted by the whole Church To put this case a little more plainly by the former Instance Suppose then that the Worship of God under the symbols of the Calves at Dan and Bethel had been received generally as the visible worship of the Tribes of Judah and Benjamin as well as the rest Doth not this Answer of yours make it impossible that ever they should return to the true Worship of God For this were to call in question the truth of Gods Promise to his Church and to suppose something not Catholick to be received by the whole Church And so the greater the corruptions are the more impossible it is to cure them and in case they spread generally no attempts of Reformation can be lawful which is a more false and paradoxical Doctrine than either of those which you call so And the truth is such pretences as these are are fit only for a Church that hateth to be reformed for if something not good in it self should happen in any one age to overspread the visible Communion of all particular Churches this only makes a Reformation the more necessary so far is it from making it the more disputable For thereby those corruptions grow more dangerous and every particular Church is bound the more to regard its own security in a time of general Infection And if any other Churches neglect themselves What reason is it that the rest should For any or all other particular Churches neglecting their duty is no more an argument that no particular Church should reform it self than that if all other men in a Town neglect preserving themselves from the Plague then I am bound to neglect it too But you answer 3. That all this doth not justifie the Protestants proceedings because they promulged only new and unheard of Doctrines directly contrary to what the Catholick Church universally held and taught before them for Catholick Truths This is the great thing in Question but I see you love best the lazy trade of begging things which are impossible to be rationally proved But yet you would seem here to do something towards it in the subsequent words For about the year of our Lord 1517. when their pretended Reformations began was not the real presence of our Saviours body and blood in the Eucharist by a true substantial change of Bread and Wine generally held by the whole Church Was not the real Sacrifice of the Mass then generally believed Was not Veneration of Holy Images Invocation of Saints Purgatory Praying for the dead that they might be eased of their pains and receive the full remission of their sins generally used and practised by all Christians Was not Free will Merit of good works and Justification by Charity or inherent Grace and not by Faith only universally taught and believed in all Churches of Christendom Yea even among those who in some few other points dissented from the Pope and the Latin Church To what purpose then doth the Bishop urge that a particular Church may publish any thing that is Catholick This doth not justifie at all his Reformation he should prove that it may not only add but take away something that is Catholick from the Doctrine of the Church for this the pretended Reformers did as well in England as elsewhere His Lordship never pretends much less disputes that any particular Church hath a power to take away any thing that is truly Catholick but the ground why he supposeth such things as those mentioned by you might be taken away is because they are not Catholick the Question then is between us Whether they were Catholick Doctrines or not this you attempt to prove by this medium Because they were generally held by the whole Church at the time of the Reformation To which I answer 1. If this be a certain measure to judge by what was Catholick and what not then what doth not appear to have been Catholick in this sense it was in our Churches power to reject and so it was lawful to reform our selves as to all such things which were not at the time of the Reformation received by the whole Church And what think you now of the Popes Supremacy your Churches Infallibility the necessity of Coelibate in the Clergy Communion in one kind Prayer in an unknown tongue Indulgences c. Will you say That those were generally received by the Church at the time of the Reformation If you could have said so no doubt you would not have omitted such necessary points and some of which gave the
imposed those things which had been before only the errours of particular persons as the Catholick Doctrines of that Church and the necessary conditions of Communion with her 3. I may answer yet further That it is not enough to prove any Doctrine to be Catholick that it was generally received by Christian Churches in any one Age but it must be made appear to have been so received from the Apostles times So that if we should grant that these Doctrines were owned for Catholick not only by the Church of Rome but all other Christian Churches so far as it can be discerned by their Communion yet this doth not prove these Doctrines so owned to be truly Catholick unless you can first prove that all the Christian Churches of one Age can never believe a Doctrine to be Catholick which is not so You see therefore your task increases further upon you for it is not enough to say That A. D. 1517. such and such Doctrines were looked on as Catholick and therefore they were so but that for 1517. years successively from the Apostles to that time they were judged to be so and then we shall more easily believe you When you will therefore prove Transubstantiation the Sacrifice of the Mass Image-worship Invocation of Saints or any other of the good Doctrines mentioned by you in a constant tradition from the Apostles times to have been looked on as Catholick Doctrines you may then say That Protestants in denying these did take away something Catholick from the Doctrine of the Church but till that time these Answers may abundantly suffice We now come closer to the business of the Reformation but before we examine the particulars of it the general grounds on which it proceeded must somewhat further be cleared which his Lordship tells you are built upon the power of particular Churches reforming themselves in case the whole Church is negligent or will not to which you say That you grant in effect as great power as the Bishop himself does to particular Churches to National and Provincial Councils in reforming errours and abuses either of doctrine or practice only we require that they proceed with due respect to the chief Pastor of the Church and have recourse to him in all matters and decrees of Faith especially when they define or declare points not generally known and acknowledged to be Catholick Truths What you grant in effect at first you in effect deny again afterwards For the Question is about Reformation of such errours and abuses as may come from the Church of Rome and when you grant a power to reform only in case the Pope consent you grant no power to reform at all For the experience of the world hath sufficiently taught us How little his consent is to be expected in any thing of Reformation For his Lordship truly saith in Answer to Capellus who denies particular Churches any power of making Canons of Faith without consulting the Roman See That as Capellus can never prove that the Roman See must be consulted with before any Reformation be made So it is as certain that were it proved and practised we should have no Reformation For it would be long enough before the Church should be cured if that See alone should be her Physitian which in truth is her disease Now to this you say That even Capellus himself requires this as though Capellus were not the man whom his Lordship answers as to this very thing But besides you say The practise of the Church is evident for it in the examples of the Milevitan and Carthaginian Councils which as St. Austin witnesseth sent their decrees touching Grace Original sin in Infants and other matters against Pelagius to be confirmed by the Pope but what is all this to the business of Reformation that nothing of that nature is to be attempted without the Popes consent That these Councils did by Julius an African Bishop communicate their decrees to Pope Innocent Who denyes but what is it you would thence infer to your purpose for the utmost which can be drawn hence is that they desired the Pope to contribute his assistance in condemning Pelagius and Coelestius by adding the authority of the Apostolical See to their decrees that so by the consent of the Church that growing Heresie might the more easily be suppressed And who denyes but at that time the Roman Church had great reputation which is all that Authority implyes and by that means might be more serviceable in preventing the growth of Pelagianism if it did concur with the African Councils in condemning that Doctrine But because they communicated their decrees to Pope Innocent desiring his consent with them that therefore no reformation should be attempted in the Church without the consent of the Pope is a very far-fetched inference and unhappily drawn from those African Fathers who so stoutly opposed Zosimus Innocents Successour in the case of Appeals about the business of Apiarius Did they think you look on themselves as obliged to do nothing in the reforming the Church without the Popes authority who would by no means yield to those encroachments of power which Zosimus would have usurped over them Nay it appears that till the African Fathers had better informed him Zosimus did not a little favour Coelestius himself and in case he had gone on so to do do you think they would have thought themselves ever the less obliged to reform their Churches from the Pelagian Heresie which began to spread among them And in this time of the Controversie between Zosimus and them though they carried it with all fairness towards the Roman See yet they were still careful to preserve and defend their own priviledges and in case the Pope should then have challenged that power over them which he hath done since no doubt they would not have struck at calling such incroachments The disease of the Church without any unhandsomness or incivility and would have been far from looking on him as the only Physitian of it To that pretence That things should have been born with till the time of a General Council his Lordship answers First 't is true a General Council free and entire would have been the best remedy and most able for a Gangrene that had spread so far and eaten so deep into Christianity But what should we have suffered this Gangrene to endanger life and all rather then be cured in time by a Physitian of weaker knowledge and a less able hand Secondly we live to see since if we had stayed and expected a General Council what manner of one we should have had if any For that at Trent was neither General nor free And for the errours which Rome had contracted it confirmed them it cured them not And yet I much doubt whether ever that Council such as it was would have been call'd if some Provincial and National Synods under Supreme and Regal power had not first set upon this great work of Reformation which
as immediate a revelation as the first discovery of it As is clear in the Council of the Apostles for I hope you will not deny but the non-obligation of the ceremonial Law was in some manner revealed to them before and yet I hope you will not say but the Apostles had an immediate revelation as to what they decreed in that Council It is very plain therefore that when you say General Councils neither have erred nor can err in their definitions they usurp as great a priviledge thereby as ever the Apostles had and in order to it must have as immediate an inspiration For never was there any such Infallibility either in the Prophets or Apostles as did suppose an absolute impossibility of errour but it was wholly hypothetical in case of Divine assistance which hindred them from any capacity of erring so long as that continued with them and no longer For inspiration was no permanent habit but a transient act in them and that being removed they were lyable to errours as well as others from whence it follows that where revelations were most immediate they did no more then what you assume to your Church viz. preserve them from actual errour in declaring Gods will So that nothing can be more evident then that you challenge as great an Infallibility and as immediate assistance of Gods Spirit in Councils as ever the Prophets and Apostles had And therefore that Divine was in the right of whom Canus speaks who asserted That since General Councils were Infallible their definitions ought to be equalled with the Scriptures themselves And although Canus and others dislike this it is rather because of the odium which would follow it than for any just reason they give why it should not follow For they not only suppose as great a Certainty or Infallibility in the Decrees of both but an equal obligation to internal assent in those to whom they are declared Which doth further prove that the revelation must be immediate for if by vertue of those definitions we are obliged to assent to the Doctrines contained in them as Infallibly true there must be an immediate Divine Authority which must command our Assent For nothing short of that can oblige us to believe any thing as of Divine revelation now Councils require that we must believe their definitions to be Divine truths though men were not obliged to believe them to be so before those definitions For that is your express Doctrine That though the matters decreed in Councils were in some manner revealed before yet not so as to oblige all men with an explicite assent to believe them but after the definitions of Councils they are bound to do it So that though there be not an object newly revealed yet there ariseth a new obligation to internal assent which obligation cannot come but from immediate Divine Authority If you say The obligation comes not simply by vertue of the Councils definitions but by a command extant in Scripture whereby all are bound to give this assent to the decrees of Councils I then say we must be excused from it till you have discharged this new obligation upon your self by producing some express testimony of Scripture to that purpose which is I think sufficient to keep our minds at liberty from this internal assent to the definitions of General Councils by vertue of any Infallibility in them And thus having more at large considered the nature of this Infallibility which you challenge to General Councils and having shewed that it implyes as immediate a revelation as the Apostles had the second thing is sufficiently demonstrated That this Infallibility cannot suppose discursiveness with fallibility in the use of the means because these two are repugnant to each other The next thing to be considered is Stapletons argument why Councils must be Prophetical in the conclusion because that which is determined by the Church is matter of Faith and not of knowledge and the assent required else would not be an assent of Faith but an habit of knowledge To which his Lordship Answers That he sees no inconvenience in it if it be granted for one and the same conclusion may be Faith to the believer that cannot prove and knowledge to the learned that can Which he further explains thus Some supernatural principles which reason cannot demonstrate simply must be supposed in order to Faith but these principles being owned reason being thereby inlightned that may serve to convert or convince Philosophers and the great men of reason in the very point of Faith where it is at the highest This he brings down to the business of Councils as to which he saith that the first immediate fundamental points of Faith as they cannot be proved simply by reason so neither need they be determined by any Council nor ever were they attempted they are so plain set down in Scripture If about the sense and true meaning of these or necessary deduction out of the prime Articles of Faith General Councils determine any thing as they have done at Nice and the rest there is no inconvenience that one and the same Canon of the Council should be believed as it reflects upon the Articles and grounds indemonstrable and yet known to the learned by the means and proof by which that deduction is vouched and made good And again the conclusion of a Council suppose that in Nice about the consubstantiality of Christ with the Father in it self considered is indemonstrable by reason there saith he I believe and assent in Faith but the same conclusion if you give me the ground of Scripture and the Creed for somewhat must be supposed in all whether Faith or knowledge is demonstrable by natural reason against any Arrian in the world So that he concludes The weaker sort of Christians may assent by Faith where the more learned may build it on reason the principles of Faith being supposed This is the substance of his Lordships Discourse In Answer to which you tell us That the Bishop seems to broach a new Doctrine that the assent of Faith may be an habit of knowledge But surely say you Divine Faith is according to the Apostle Heb. 11. an Argument of things which do not appear viz. by the same means by which we give this assent of Faith otherwise our Faith would not be free and meritorious An Answer I must needs say hugely suitable to your principles who are most concerned of all men to set reason at a distance from Faith and so you do sufficiently in this Discourse of it For it is no easie matter to understand what you mean but that is not to be wondered at since you make obscurity so necessary to Faith Divine Faith is you say an Argument of things which do not appear viz. by the same means by which we give this assent of Faith Do you mean that the objects of Faith do not appear or that the reason of believing doth not If only the former
believe him he did as much want all moral means for finding out the truth as another since he so ingenuously confessed at another audience That he was old and had never studied Divinity But What need he to do it that could so easily be inspired by kneeling at the feet of a Crucifix Your Doctrine then would not be very well taken at Rome that General Councils are a necessary Medium to his Holiness in order to the definition of matters of Faith No more would your following Distinction in vindication of Stapleton That though the Pope acquires no new power or certainty of judgement by the presence of a General Council and there is something thereby which conduceth to the due exercise of that power So that it must be an usurpation or undue exercise of power for the Pope to offer to define without a General Council I know not what liberty you have to write these things among us but if you were at Rome you durst not venture to do it Your saying that Bellarmin only sayes That the firmness of a Council in regard of us depends wholly on the Popes Confirmation argues you had very little to say For What firmness hath a Council at all in this dispute but in regard of us since you look on men as obliged to believe the Decrees of it Infallible And if the Decrees had any Infallibility from the Council that might make them firm in regard of us as well as the Pope But you object to your self That if the Pope be Infallible without the Council and the Council subject to errour without the Pope it must needs follow that all the Infallibility of General Councils proceeds from the Pope only not partly from the Pope and partly from the Council To which you answer That the assertors of that Opinion of whom you must be one if you know what you say may say that Christ hath made two promises to his Church the one to assist her Soveraign Head and Pastor to make him Infallible another to assist General Councils to make them so But What need this latter if the former be well proved For if the Head be Infallible by vertue of a promise from Christ he must be Infallible whether in Council or out of it And therefore it is a ridiculous shift to say The Pope hath one promise to make him Infallible in a General Council ano-to make him so out of it But I commend you that since you thought one would not hold you would have two strings for the Popes Infallibility And it is but adding a third promise to the Church in general and then your threefold cord may be surely Infallible You give many Reasons but none so convincing as Experience Why the Popes should not be Impeccable and if you search Scripture Antiquity and Reason you may find as much why he should not be Infallible For that of the necessity of one and not the other for the Church is of your own devising it having been sufficiently proved that the certainty of Faith doth not at all depend upon the Popes or your Churches or Councils Infallibility And it seems still very strange to all who know the doctrine and promises of Christianity and that the promotion of Holiness is the great design of it and that Faith signifies nothing without Obedience and that the Spirit of God is a Spirit of Holiness as well as Truth that you dare challenge such an assistance of the Divine Spirit as may make your Popes Infallible who have led lives quite contrary to the Gospel of Christ. Nay such lives as his Lordship saith as no Epicurean Monster storied out to the world hath out-gone them in sensuality or other gross impiety if their own historians be true Your vindication of Pope Liberius his submitting his judgement to Athanasius because the Pope had passed no definition ex Cathedrâ in the business hath no strength at all unless you first prove that the Popes definitions ex Cathedrâ were held Infallible then which none would ever believe that read the passage which his Lordship cites out of Liberius his Epistle to Athanasius For as he saith The Pope complemented exceeding low that would submit his unerring judgement to be commanded by Athanasius who he well knew could erre Whether S. Ambrose in his Epistle meddles with any doctrinal definitions or only with some difficulties which that year happened about the observation of Easter the fourteenth of the first month falling on the Lords day is not very material to our purpose But that it was something else besides Astronomical definitions which I know what S. Ambrose's excellency was in might easily appear if you had read the Epistle So that you might have spared your large account of the Paschal Letters sent by the Bishops of Alexandria about the keeping of Easter which are no great novelties to such who are at all acquainted with Antiquity and given us a fuller account why in such a matter of dispute about the right of the day to be kept that year the Roman Bishops should not rather have stood to the Popes definition than write to S. Ambrose if it had been then taken for granted that the Pope was Infallible But I might as well have passed by this testimony of S. Ambrose as you do that of Lyra which is so express for the Erring and Apostatizing of several Popes that you thought the best Answer to it were to let it alone However you come off with the story of Peter Lombard which is not of that consequence to require any further examination of the truth of it I am sure you are hard put to it in the case of Honorius when you deny that Honorius did really maintain the Monothelites Heresie and excuse the Councils Sentence by saying it was only in case of mis-information Since it manifestly appears by the sixth Synod action 13. that they condemned his Epistle written to Sergius as containing heretical and pernicious Doctrine in it And in the seventh Synod he is reckoned up with Arrius Macedonius Eutyches Dioscorus and the rest of condemned Hereticks among whom he is likewise reckoned by Leo 2. in his Epistle to Constantine Which evidence is so great that Canus wonders at those who would offer to vindicate him And in the mean time you provide excellent moral means for the Pope to judge of matters of Faith by in General Councils if they may be guilty of so gross mis-information as you suppose here in the case of Honorius and not one barely but three successively the sixth seventh and eighth and the whole Church from their time till Albertus Pighius who first began to defend him For conclusion of this point his Lordship would fain know since this had been so plain so easie a way either to prevent all divisions about the Faith or to end all Controversies did they arise why this brief but most necessary proposition The Bishop of Rome
erred yet we have yielded so much to you as to disprove what you have in general brought for the one before we come to meddle with the other But that being dispatched we come to a more short and compendious way of overthrowing your Infallibility by shewing the palpable falsity of such principles which must be owned by you as Infallible truths because defined by General Councils confirmed by the Pope Whereof The first in the Endictment as you say is that of the Priests Intention defined by the Councils of Florence and Trent both of them confirmed by the Pope to be essentially necessary to the validity of a Sacrament Concerning this there are two things to be enquired into 1. Whether this doth not render all pretence of Infallibility with you a vain and useless thing 2. Whether it be not in it self an errour We must begin with the first of these for that was the occasion of his Lordships entering upon it for he was shewing That your claim of Infallibility is of no use at all for the settling of Truth and Peace in the Church because no man can either know or believe this Infallibility It cannot be believed with Divine Faith having no foundation either in the written Word of God or Tradition of the Catholick Church and no humane Faith can be sufficient in order to it But neither can it be believed or known upon that decree of the Councils of Florence and Trent that the intention of the Priest is necessary to the validity of a Sacrament And lest you should think I represent his Lordships words too much with advantage I will take his Argument in the words you have summed it up in which are these Before the Church or any particular man can make use of the Popes Infallibility that is be settled and confirmed in the Truth by means thereof he must either know or upon sure grounds believe that he is Infallible But sayes the Bishop this can only be believed of him as he is S. Peters Successour and Bishop of Rome of which it is impossible in the relatours opinion for the Church or any particular man to have such certainty as is sufficient to ground an Infallible belief Why because the knowledge and belief of this depends upon his being truly in Orders truly a Bishop truly a Priest truly Baptized none of all which according to our principles can be certainly known and believed because forsooth the intention of him that administred these Sacraments to the Pope or made him Bishop Priest c. can never be certainly known and yet by the Doctrine of the Councils of Florence and Trent it is of absolute necessity to the validity of every one of these Sacraments so as without it the Pope were neither Bishop nor Priest Thus I grant you have faithfully sum'd up his Lordships Argument we must now see with what courage and success you encounter it Your first Answer is That though it be level'd against the Popes Infallibility yet it hath the same force against the Infallibility of the whole Church in points fundamental for we cannot be Infallibly sure there is such a number of Baptized persons to make a Church By this we see how likely you are to assoil this difficulty who bring it more strongly upon your self without the least inconvenience to your adversary For I grant it necessarily follows against the pretence of any Infallibility whether in Church Councils or Pope as being a certain ground for Faith for all these must suppose such a certainty of the due administration of Sacraments which your Doctrine of Intention doth utterly destroy For these two things are your principles of Faith that there can be no certainty of Faith without present Infallibility of the Church and that in order to the believing this testimony Infallible there must be such a certainty as is ground sufficient for an Infallible belief Now How is it possible there can be such when there can be no certainty of the Being of a Church Council or Pope from your own principles For when the only way of knowing this is a thing not possible to be evidenced to any one in any way of Infallible certainty viz. the intention of the Priest you must unavoidably destroy all your pretence of Infallibility For To what purpose do you tell me that Pope or Councils are Infallible unless I may be Infallibly sure that such decrees were passed by Pope and Council I cannot be assured of that unless I be first assured that they were Baptized persons and Bishops of the Church and for this you dare not offer at Infallible certainty and therefore all the rest is useless and vain So that while by this Doctrine of the intention of the Priest for the validity of the Sacraments you thought to advance higher the reputation of the Priesthood and to take away the assurance of Protestants as to the benefits which come by the use of the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lords Supper you could not have asserted any thing more really pernicious to your selves than this Doctrine is So strange an incogitancy was it in those Councils to define it and as great in those who defend it and yet at the same time maintain the necessity of a present Infallibility in the Church and General Councils For can any thing be more rational then to desire the highest assurance as to that whose decrees I am to believe Infallible And yet at the last you confess we can have but a moral certainty of it and that of the lowest degree the utmost ground of it being either the testimony of the Priest himself or that we have no ground to suspect the contrary Now what unreasonable men are you who so much to the dishonour of Christian Religion cry out upon the rational evidence of the truth of it as an uncertain principle and that Protestants though they assert the highest degree of actual certainty cannot have any Divine Faith because they want the Churches Infallible testimony and yet when we enquire into this Infallible Testimony you are fain to resolve it into one of the most uncertain and conjectural things imaginable For what can I have less ground to build my Faith upon than that the Priest had at least a virtual intention to do as the Church doth Whom must I believe in this case and whereon must that Faith be grounded On the Priests Testimony But how can I be assured but that he who may wander in his intention may do so in his expression too Or must I do it because I have no reason to suspect the contrary how can you assure me of that that I have no reason to suspect the contrary no otherwise then by telling me that the Priest is a man of that honesty and integrity that he cannot be supposed to do such a thing without intention So that though I were in Italy or Spain where some have told us it is no hard matter to meet with Jews
of Concomitancy that still both eating and drinking were supposed then even by the most unworthy receivers There were then no such fears of the effusion of the blood of Christ or the irreverence in receiving it and much less of the long beards of the Laity which are the worshipful reasons given by Gerson and others why the people should not be admitted to the use of the Chalice I do verily think the Apostles had as much care to preserve the due reverence of the Sacrament as ever the Councils of Constance or Trent had but they thought it no way to preserve the reverence of the Sacrament by shewing so little to Christ as not to observe his Institution But you very kindly grant that which you knew was impossible to be denied viz. That in ancient times when you say the number of Christians was small it was the ordinary custom for all that would the Laity as well as others to receive the Eucharist in both kinds but say you we averr this custom proceeded meerly out of free devotion and not out of any belief that it was absolutely necessary so to do by virtue of Christs precept It is no great matter what you averr since you averr so monstrous a Doctrine of Transubstantiation as confidently as you do this and with much alike reason For I have shewed already that the Institution of Christ in reference to this is perpetually obligatory and that the Apostles look upon that as an unalterable Rule and therefore your averring signifies nothing when you never offer to prove what you averr But I pray tell me By what means would you understand what precepts are perpetually obligatory which are not clear to our present purpose If positive command immutable reason universal practice of the Church may prove any thing so we have all these plain and clear for Communion in both kinds And not the least suspition or intimation given that they looked on it as a matter of free devotion but of indispensable necessity But What mean you in saying When the number of Christians was small they received it in both kinds Do Christs Institutions vary according to the numbers of Communicants Hath not Christ the same power to oblige many as a few or Do you think the numbers of breakers of his Institution make the fault the less But When was it the number of Christians was so small Only in the Apostles times or as long as the custom lasted of communicating in both kinds Do you think the number of Christians was so small in the Primitive times If you do you lamentably discover your ignorance in the History of those times Read the Christians Apologies over and you will believe the contrary But Did this small number continue in the time of the Christian Emperours even till after a thousand years after Christ For so long the Communion in both kinds continued so inviolably that neither you nor any before you are able to produce one Instance of a publick and solemn celebration of the Eucharist in the Church wherein the People did not communicate in both kinds And Could a matter so indifferent as you suppose this to be meet with no persons all this time who out of reverence to the blood of Christ should deny giving it to the People Nothing then but an unmeasurable confidence and a resolution to say any thing though never so false or absurd if it tend to the interest of your Church could make you say That communion in one kind was alwaies even in the first five or six hundred years allowed publickly as well in the Church as out of it Than which if you had studied it you could scarce have uttered a greater untruth and in which there are such multitudes of your own party bearing witness against you And Bellarmin is so far from helping you out in it that he is extremely at a loss to offer at any thing which hath any tendency that way But before we come to consider the Instances and Exceptions you make we must somewhat further see what the practice and sense of the Church was that we may the better judge Whether communion in both kinds were looked on as a matter only of free devotion or as something necessary by virtue of Christs Institution And for this I shall not insist on those multitudes of Testimonies which manifest the practice it self but briefly touch at some few which more directly prove that what they did was Because in doing otherwise they should have violated the Institution of Christ. To pass by therefore the Testimonies of Justin Martyr Irenaeus Clemens Alexandrinus Tertullian all clear for the practice the first I insist on is that of S. Cyprian against those who gave water in the Chalice instead of wine for whosoever doth but read the very entrance of that Epistle will soon find that he looked on Christs Institution in all the parts of it as unalterable For saith he although I know that most Bishops do keep to that which agrees with the truth of the Gospel and what our Lord hath delivered and do not depart from that which Christ our Master hath commanded and practised yet because some either through ignorance or simplicity in sanctifying the Cup of our Lord and delivering it to the people do not that which Jesus Christ our Lord and God the Authour and Teacher of this Sacrifice did and taught I have thought it a necessary part of my duty to write to you that if any one continue in that errour he may by discovering the light of truth return to the root and fountain of our Lords Tradition I insist on this Testimony not only for the clearness of it as to the custom of giving the Cup to the people but especially for the evidence contained in it of the unalterable nature of the Institution of Christ. For that he looks on as the great fault of them who ministred water instead of wine that they therein departed from the example and precept of Christ. Now there cannot be produced any greater evidence of any obligation as to this than there is as to the giving the Cup it self For here is Christs example and institution equally as to both of them and that in the same words Drink ye all of it If that were such a departing from the Institution to alter the Liquor Would it not have been accounted as great to take away the Cup wholly For afterwards he adds If men ought not to break the least of Christs commands How much less those great ones which pertain to the Sacrament of our Lords Passion and our Redemption or to change it into any thing but that which was appointed by him And if not to change the matter certainly neither can it be lawful to order the administration otherwise than Christ appointed I know Bellarmin saith The parity of reason will not hold because this is to corrupt the matter of the Sacrament but S. Cyprian doth not insist on that
wine nor communicated under the form of wine as 't is certain they frequently did in S. Leo 's time and after But you have very unhappily light of this for your first proof which is so evident against you For Leo who mentions the Manichees communicating in Catholick Churches tells the Catholicks What way they might discern them from themselves viz. that though they received the bread yet they refused the wine by which saith he you may discover their sacrilegious hypocrisie and by that means they may be expelled out of the society of Catholicks You were therefore very ill advised to make choice of this for your argument which makes it plain that all Catholicks did receive in both kinds and that the Manichees might be thereby known that they did not And if it were the custom for the Catholicks sometimes to receive in both kinds and sometimes not which is all the shift Bellarmin hath and the Manichees not at all this could be no note of distinction between them for although the Manichees might not receive at one time they could not tell but they might at another Now Leo's intention being to give such a note of distinction that they might not receive at all among them it evidently follows that all the Catholicks did constantly receive in both kinds and that they were only Manichees who did abstain from the Cup. For that Story which Bellarmin insists on and you referr to of the woman who being a Macedonian Heretick yet pretending to communicate with the Catholicks had the bread which her Maid brought with her and which she took instead of the Eucharist turned into a stone in her mouth upon which she runs presently to the Bishop and with tears confessed her fault as we take it wholly upon the Faith of Sozomen from whom Nicephorus transcribes it so I cannot imagine what it proves for your purpose unless it be that they in whose mouths the bread turns into a stone too will hardly have patience till the Cup be administred to them For so both Sozomen and Nicephorus relate it that immediately upon her feeling it to be a stone she ran to the Bishop and shewed him the stone acknowledging with tears her miscarriage But besides this you bring several Instances from the Communion of Hermites in the wilderness of travellers on their journeys of sick persons in their beds and private Communions in houses and lastly little Children in the Church and at home in their Cradles which communicated in form of wine only And Are not all these invincible proofs that there was a publick solemn administration of the Communion in one kind publickly allowed in Churches in all times When you can prove that the Communion of Hermites was in the Church or that they did not receive as well the wine as the bread in the wilderness or that such Communion was approved by the Church That the Communion of Travellers was not meer Communion in Prayers as Baronius and Albaspinaeus assert without any participation of the Eucharist at all or if it were that it was only a participation in one kind against which Albaspinaeus gives many reasons That the Communion of the sick was without wine when Justin Martyr saith That both bread and wine were sent to the absent when Eusebius tells us That the bread given to Serapion was dipt when S. Hierom saith of Exuperius That he preserved the blood in a glass for the use of the sick That Private Communions were without wine since Gregory Nazianzen saith his Sister Gorgonia preserved both the symbols of the body and blood of Christ and Albaspinaeus confesses that one might be carried home as well as the other or that these were approved by the Church since Durantus saith That the use of Private Communions coming up by persecutions were abrogated afterwards and are expresly condemned by the Council of Caesar-Augusta about the year 381. and the first Council of Toledo about A. D. 400. Lastly that the Communion of Infants was only in one kind either in the Church or at home or that this Communion of Infants which the Council of Trent condemns was a due administration of the Eucharist When I say you have proved all these things the utmost you can hence inferr is only that in some rare cases and accidental occasions Communion in one kind was allowed of But what is all this to the proving that the stated solemn administration of the Eucharist in one kind was ever practised much less allowed within a thousand years after Christ. And yet if you could prove that you fall short of vindicating your Church unless you add this which you never so much as touch at viz. That it was ever in all that time thought lawful to forbid the celebration of the Eucharist in both kinds Prove but this which is your only proper task and I say as his Lordship doth in another case You shall be my Apollo for ever We proceed to a fourth errour which is the Invocation of Saints defined by the Council of Trent As to which that which his Lordship saith may be reduced to three things 1. That those expressions of the Fathers which seem most to countenance it are but Rhetorical flourishes 2. That the Church then did not admit of the Invocation of Saints but only of the commemoration of Martyrs 3. That the Doctrine of the Roman Church makes the Saints more then Mediatours of Intercession To these three I shall confine my discourse on this subject and therefore shall follow you close in your Answers to them For the first When you are proving that the Fathers expressions were not Rhetorical flourishes you would fain have your own accounted so For say you How can it seem to any that duly considers it but most extreamly partial and strange to term so many exhortations so many plain and positive assertions so many Instances Examples Histories Reports and the like which the Fathers frequently use and afford in this kind and that upon occasions wherein dogmatical and plain delivery of Christian Doctrine and truth is expected nothing but flourishes of wit and Rhetorick And after you call these meer put-off's as before you had said That when any thing in the Fathers is against us then it is Rhetorick only when against you then it is dogmatical and the real sense of the Fathers But these are only General words fit only to deceive such who believe bold affirmations sooner then solid proofs This is a thing must be tryed by particulars because it is on both sides acknowledged that the Fathers did many times use their Rhetorick and that such things are uttered by them in their Panegyrical Orations especially which will not abide a severe tryal Doth not Bellarmin confess that St. Chrysostome doth often hyperbolize and Sixtus Senensis say as much of others that in the heat of their discourses they are carried beyond what they would have said in a strict debate But who are better
this you call The Doctrine of Catholicks The Doctrine rather of a proud tyrannical and uncharitable faction of men who that they might gain Proselytes to themselves shew how little they are themselves the Proselytes of Christ. But you offer us a reason for it Because all Catholicks hold that neither Faith nor Hope nor any Repentance can save us but that only which is joyned with a perfect Love of God without the Sacrament of Pennance actually and duely received and because Protestants reject this they cannot be saved But you are not at all the less excusable because you assert such Doctrines from whence such uncharitableness follows but the dreadful consequence of such Doctrines ought rather to make you question the truth of them For can any one who knows and understands Christianity ever believe that although he had a most hearty repentance for sin and a most sincere love to God he should eternally perish because he did not confess his sins to a Priest and receive absolution from him I can hardly perswade my self that you can believe such things but that only such Doctrines are necessary to be taught to maintain the Priests authority and to fright men into that pick-lock of conscience the useful practise of Auricular Confession To what purpose are all the promises of grace and mercy through Christ upon the sincerity of our turning to him if after all this the effect depends upon that Sacrament of Pennance of which no precept is given us by Christ much less any necessity of it asserted in order to eternal Salvation If this then be all your ground of condemning Protestants they may rejoyce in this That your reasons are as weak as your malice strong But it would be more fit for you to enquire Whether such who live and dye in such a height of uncharitableness whether with or without the Sacrament of Pennance can be in any capacity of eternal Salvation For that is a plain violation of the Laws of Christ this other even among your selves a disputable Institution of Christ and by many said not to be at all of that necessity which you suppose it to be For neither Medina nor Maldonate even since the Council of Trent dare affirm the denyal of your Sacrament of Pennance to be Heresie and must then the souls of all Protestants be sent to hell for want of that which it is questionable whether it were Instituted by Christ or no. But if this Sacrament of Pennance be so necessary to Salvation that they cannot be saved who want it What becomes then of all the Primitive Church which was utterly a stranger to your Sacrament of Pennance as shall be manifested when you desire it what becomes of the Greek Church which as peremptorily denies the necessity of it as Protestants do Both which you may find confessed and proved by Father Barns and many testimonies of your own Authours are brought by him against the Divine Institution and necessity of it Who very ingenuously confesses That by the Law of Christ such a one by the sentence of very many Catholicks may be pronounced absolved before God who manifests the truth of his Faith and Charity although he discovers not a word of the number or weight of his sins What unreasonable as well as uncharitable men are you then to assert That no Protestants can escape damnation for want of that which so many among your selves make unnecessary for the pardon of sin But it is just with God that those who are so ready to condemn others should be condemned by themselves and if your Consciences do not condemn you here your Sentence may be the greater in another world Your second Argument against Protestants is Because they want certainty of Faith by denying the Infallibility of Church and Councils but this hath been so throughly sifted already that I suppose none who have read the preceding discourses will have the least cause to stick at this and therefore we proceed to the Vindication of your censures from being guilty of the want of Charity For you are the men who would have us thank God when you condemn us to hell that we escape so and are angry with us that we do not believe that you most entirely love us when you judge us to eternal flames For you say that your denyal of Salvation to us is grounded even upon Charity If it be so you are the most charitable people in the world for you deny Salvation to all but your selves and some Heathens But say you If Salvation may be had in your Church as Protestants confess and there be no true Church or Faith but one it follows that out of your Church there is no Salvation to be had To which his Lordship had fully answered by saying T is true there is but one true Faith and but one true Church but that one both Faith and Church is the Catholick Christian not the particular Roman So that this passage is a meer begging the question and then threatning upon it without all reason or charity And all your declamations about the way of knowing the Doctrine of the Catholick Church have been spoiled by what hath been said already upon that subject We come therefore to that which is the proper business of this Chapter which is to examine the strength of that Inference which is drawn from the Protestants concession of the possibility of Salvation in your Church viz. That thence it follows that the Roman Church and Religion is the safer way to Salvation Two things his Lordship observes the force of this Argument lyes in the one directly expressed viz. The consent of both parties of the possibility of Salvation in the Roman Church the other upon the By viz. That we cannot be saved because we are out of the Church And of these two he speaks in order First he begins with the confession as to which his Answer lyes in three things 1. That this was the way of the Donatists of old and would hold as well for them as the Church of Rome 2. That if the principle on which this Argument proceeds be true it will be more for the advantage of Protestants then of your Church 3. That the principle it self is a contingent Proposition and may justifie the greatest Heresies in the world By this methodizing his Lordships discourse we shall the better discern the strength of your Answers to the several particulars of it In the first place he shews How parallel this is with the proceedings of the Donatists for both parts granted that baptism was true among the Donatists but the Donatists denyed it to be true baptism among the Catholick Christians and therefore on this principle the Donatists side is the surer side if that principle be true That it is the safest taking that way which the differing parties agree on To this you Answer nothing but what will still return upon your selves and discover the
he ever speak so concerning the Trinity or the Incarnation of Christ which you parallel with Purgatory What would men have thought of him if he had said of either of those Articles It is not incredible they may be true and it may be enquired into whether they be or no Whatever then St. Austins private opinion was we see he delivers it modestly and doubtfully not obtruding it as an Article of Faith or Apostolical Tradition if any be And the very same he repeats in his Answer to the first Question of Dulcitius so that this was all that ever he asserted as to this Controversie What you offer to the contrary from other places of St. Austin shall be considered in its due place 4. Where any of the Fathers build any Doctrine upon the sense of doubtful places of Scripture we have no further reason to believe that Doctrine then we have to believe that it is the meaning of those places So that in this case the enquiry is taken off from the judgement of the Fathers and fixed upon the sense of the Scriptures which they and we both rely upon For since they pretend themselves to no greater evidence of the truth of the Doctrine then such places do afford it is the greatest reason that the argument to perswade us be not the testimony of the Father but the evidence of the place it self Unless it be evident some other way that there was an universal Tradition in the Church from the Apostles times concerning it and that the only design of the Father was to apply some particular place to it But then such a Tradition must be cleared from something else besides the sense of some ambiguous places of Scripture and that Tradition manifested to be Vniversal both as to time and place These things being premised I now come particularly to examine the evidence you bring That all the Fathers both Greek and Latin did constantly teach Purgatory from the Apostles times and consequently that it must be held for an Apostolical Tradition or nothing can be And as you follow Bellarmin in your way of proving it so must I follow you and he divides his proofs you say into two ranks First Such who affirm prayer for the dead 2. Such who in the successive ages of the Church did expresly affirm Purgatory First with those who affirm prayer for the dead Which you say doth necessarily infer Purgatory whatever the Bishop vainly insinuates to the contrary The Question then between us is Whether that prayer for the dead which was used in the ancient Church doth necessarily inferr that Purgatory was then acknowledged This you affirm for say you If there were no other place or condition of being for departed souls but either Heaven or Hell surely it were a vain thing to pray for the dead especially to pray for the remission of their sins or for their refreshment ease rest relaxation of their pains as Ancients most frequently do From whence you add that Purgatory is so undenyably proved that the Relator finding nothing himself sufficient to Answer was forced to put us off to the late Primate of Armagh 's Answer to the Jesuits Challenge Which you say You have perused and find only there that the Authour proves that which none of you deny viz. That the prayers and commemorations used for the dead had reference to more souls than those in Purgatory But you attempt to prove That the nature and kind of those prayers do imply that they were intended for other ends than meerly that the body might be glorified as well as the soul and to praise God for the final happy end of the deceased Whereas that Answerer of the Jesuite would you say by his allegations insinuate to the Reader a conceit that it was used only for those two reasons and no other Which you say you must needs avouch to be most loudly untrue and so manifestly contrary to the Doctrine and practise of the Fathers as nothing can be more A high charge against two most Reverend and learned Primates together against the one as not being able to Answer and therefore turning it off to the other against the other for publishing most loud untruths instead of giving a true account of the grounds of the Churches practise It seems you thought it not honour enough to overcome one unless you led the other in triumph also but you do neither of them but only in your own fancy and imagination And never had you less cause to give out such big words then here unless it were to amuse the spectatours that they might not see how you fall before them For it was not the least distrust of his sufficiency to Answer which made his Lordship to put it oft to the Primate of Armagh but because he was prevented in it by him Who as he truly saith had very learnedly and at large set down other reasons which the Ancients gave for prayer for the dead without any intention to free them from Purgatory Which are not only different from but inconsistent with the belief of Purgatory for the clearing of which and vindicating my Lord Primate from your calumnies rather then answers it will be necessary to give a brief account of his Discourse on that subject He tells us therefore at first That we are here prudently to distinguish the Original institution of the Church from the private opinions of particular Doctors which waded further herein then the general intendment of the Church did give them warrant Now he evidently proves that the memorials oblations and prayers made for the dead at the beginning had reference to such as rested from their labours and not unto any souls which were thought to be tormented in that Vtopian Purgatory whereof there was no news stirring in those dayes This he gathers first by the practise of the ancient Christians laid down by the Authour of the Commentaries on Job who saith The memorials of the Saints were observed as a memorial of rest to the souls departed and that they therein rejoyced for their refreshing St. Cyprian saith they offered Sacrifices for them whom he acknowledgeth to have received of the Lord Palms and Crowns and in the Authour of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy the party deceased is described by him to have departed this life replenished with Divine joy as now not fearing any change to worse being come unto the end of all his labours and publickly pronounced to be a happy man and admitted into the society of the Saints and yet the Bishop prayes that God would forgive him all his sins he had committed through humane infirmity and bring him into the light and band of the living into the bosoms of Abraham Isaac and Jacob into the place from whence pain and sorrow and sighing flyeth And Saint Chrysostom shews that the funeral Ordinances of the Church were appointed to admonish the living that the parties deceased were in a state of joy and not of grief and