opinor aut quam rarissimum de purgatorio sermonem inveniet Sed neque Latini simul omnes at sensim hujus rei veritatem conceperunt He that pleases let him read the Commentaries of the Old Greeks and as I suppose he shall find none or very rare mention or speech of Purgatory But neither did all the Latins at one time but by little and little conceive the truth of this thing And again Aliquandin incognitum fuit serò cognitum Vniversae Ecclesiae Deinde quibusdam pedetentim partim ex Scripturis partim ex revelationibus creditum fuit For somewhile it was unknown it was but lately known to the Catholick Church Then it was believ'd by some by little and little partly from Scripture partly from revelations And this is the goodly ground of the doctrine of Purgatory founded no question upon tradition Apostolical delivered some hundreds of years indeed after they were dead but the truth is because it was forgotten by the Apostles and they having so many things in their heads when they were alive wrote and said nothing of it therefore they took care to send some from the dead who by new revelations should teach this old doctrine This we may conjecture to be the equivalent sence of the plain words of Roffensis But the plain words are sufficient without a Commentary Now for Polydore Virgil his own words can best tell what he says The words I have put into the Margent because they are many the sence of them is this 1. He finds no use of Indulgences before the stations of S. Gregory the consequent of that is that all the Latin Fathers did not receive them before S. Gregorie's time and therefore they did not receive them all together 2. The matter being so obscure Polydore chose to express his sence in the testimony of Roffensis 3. From him he affirms that the use of Indulgences is but new and lately received amongst Christians 4. That there is no certainty concerning their original 5. They report that amongst the Ancient Latins there was some use of them But it is but a report for he knows nothing of it before S. Gregorie's time and for that also he hath but a mere report 6. Amongst the Greeks it is not to this day believ'd 7. As long as there was no care of Purgatory no man look'd after Indulgences because if you take away Purgatory there is no need of Indulgences 8. That the use of Indulgences began after men had a while trembled at the torments of Purgatory This if I understand Latin or common sence is the doctrine of Polydore Virgil and to him I add also the testimony of Alphonsus à Castro De Purgatorio fere nulla mentio potissimum apud Graecos scriptores Qua de causa usque hodiernum diem purgatorium non est à Graecis creditum The consequent of these things is this If Purgatory was not known to the Primitive Church if it was but lately known to the Catholick Church if the Fathers seldom or never make mention of it If in the Greek Church especially there was so great silence of it that to this very day it is not believed amongst the Greeks then this Doctrine was not an Apostolical Doctrine not Primitive nor Catholick but an Innovation and of yesterday And this is of it self besides all these confessions of their own parties a suspicious matter because the Church of Rome does establish their Doctrine of Purgatory upon the Ancient use of the Church of praying for the dead But this consequence of theirs is wholly vain because all the Fathers did pray for the dead yet they never prayed for their deliverance out of Purgatory nor ever meant it To this it is thus objected It is confessed that they prayed for them that God would shew them a mercy Now Mark well If they be in Heaven they have a mercy the sentence is given for Eternal happiness If in Hell they are wholly destitute of mercy unless there be a third place where mercy can be shewed them I have according to my order mark'd it well but find nothing in it to purpose For though the Fathers prayed for the souls departed that God would shew them mercy yet it was that God would shew them mercy in the day of judgment In that formidable and dreadful day then there is need of much mercy unto us saith Saint Chrysostom And methinks this Gentleman should not have made use of so pitiful an Argument and would not if he had consider'd that Saint Paul prayed for Onesiphorus That God would shew him a mercy in that day that is in the day of Judgment as generally Interpreters Ancient and Modern do understand it and particularly Saint Chrysostom now cited The faithful departed are in the hands of Christ as soon as they die and they are very well and the souls of the wicked are where it pleases God to appoint them to be tormented by a fearful expectation of the revelation of the day of judgment but Heaven and Hell are reserved till the day of judgment and the Devils themselves are reserved in chains of darkness unto the judgment of the great day saith Saint Jude and in that day they shall be sentenc'd and so shall all the wicked to everlasting fire which as yet is but prepar'd for the Devil and his Angels for ever But is there no mercy to be shewed to them unless they be in Purgatory Some of the Ancients speak of visitation of Angels to be imparted to the souls departed and the hastening of the day of judgment is a mercy and the avenging of the Martyrs upon their Adversaries is a mercy for which the Souls under the Altar pray saith Saint John in the Revelation and the Greek Fathers speak of a fiery trial at the day of judgment through which every one must pass and there will be great need of mercy And after all this there is a remission of sins proper to this world when God so pardons that he gives the grace of repentance that he takes his judgments off from us that he gives us his holy Spirit to mortifie our sins that he admits us to work in his Laboratory that he sustains us by his power and promotes us by his Grace and stands by us favourably while we work out our salvation with fear and trembling and at last he crowns us with perseverance But at the day of Judgment there shall be a pardon of sins that will crown this pardon when God shall pronounce us pardon'd before all the world and when Christ shall actually and presentially rescue us from all the pains which our sins have deserved even from everlasting pain And that 's the final pardon for which till it be accomplished all the faithful do night and day pray incessantly although to many for whom they do pray they friendly believe that it is now certain that they shall then be glorified Saepissime petuntur illa quae
Tradition descends upon us with unequal certainty it would be very unequal to require of us an absolute belief of every thing not written for fear we be accounted to slight Tradition Apostolical And since no thing can require our supreme assent but that which is truly Catholick and Apostolick and to such a Tradition is required as Irenaeus says the consent of all those Churches which the Apostles planted and where they did preside this topick will be of so little use in judging heresies that beside what is deposited in Scripture it cannot be proved in any thing but in the Canon of Scripture it self and as it is now received even in that there is some variety 8. And therefore there is wholly a mistake in this business for when the Fathers appeal to Tradition and with much earnestness and some clamour they call upon Hereticks to conform to or to be tryed by Tradition it is such a Tradition as delivers the fundamental points of Christianity which were also recorded in Scripture But because the Canon was not yet perfectly consign'd they called to that testimony they had which was the testimony of the Churches Apostolical whose Bishops and Priests being the Antistites religionis did believe and preach Christian Religion and conserve all its great mysteries according as they have been taught Irenaeus calls this a Tradition Apostolical Christum accepisse calicem dixisse sanguinem suum esse docuisse nodum oblationem novi Testamenti quam Ecclesia per Apostolos accipiens offert per totum mundum And the Fathers in these Ages confute Hereticks by Ecclesiastical Tradition that is they confront against their impious and blasphemous doctrines that Religion which the Apostles having taught to the Churches where they did preside their Successors did still preach and for a long while together suffered not the enemy to sow tares amongst their wheat And yet these doctrines which they called Traditions were nothing but such fundamental truths which were in Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Irenaeus in Eusebius observes in the instance of Polycarpus and it is manifest by considering what heresies they fought against the heresies of Ebion Cerinthus Nicolaitans Valentinians Carpocratians persons that denied the Son of God the Unity of the Godhead that preached impurity that practised Sorcery and Witch-craft And now that they did rather urge Tradition against them than Scripture was because the publick Doctrine of all the Apostolical Churches was at first more known and famous than many parts of the Scripture and because some Hereticks denied S. Lukes Gospel some received none but S. Matthews some rejected all S. Pauls Epistles and it was a long time before the whole Canon was consigned by universal testimony some Churches having one part some another Rome her self had not all so that in this case the Argument from Tradition was the most famous the most certain and the most prudent And now according to this rule they had more Traditions than we have and Traditions did by degrees lessen as they came to be written and their necessity was less as the knowledge of them was ascertained to us by a better Keeper of Divine Truths All that great mysteriousness of Christs Priest-hood the unity of his Sacrifice Christs Advocation and Intercession for us in Heaven and many other excellent Doctrines might very well be accounted Traditions before S. Pauls Epistle to the Hebrews was published to all the World but now they are written truths and if they had not possibly we might either have lost them quite or doubted of them as we doe of many other Traditions by reason of the insufficiency of the propounder And therefore it was that S. Peter took order that the Gospel should be Writ for he had promised that he would doe something which after his decease should have these things in remembrance He knew it was not safe trusting the report of men where the fountain might quickly run dry or be corrupted so insensibly that no cure could be found for it nor any just notice taken of it till it were incurable And indeed there is scarce any thing but what is written in Scripture that can with any confidence of Argument pretend to derive from the Apostles except rituals and manners of ministration but no doctrines or speculative mysteries are so transmitted to us by so clear a current that we may see a visible channel and trace it to the Primitive fountains It is said to be a Tradition Apostolical that no Priest should baptize without chrism and the command of the Bishop Suppose it were yet we cannot be obliged to believe it with much confidence because we have but little proof for it scarce any thing but the single testimony of S. Hierom. And yet if it were this is but a ritual of which in passing by I shall give that account That suppose this and many more rituals did derive clearly from Tradition Apostolical which yet but very few doe yet it is hard that any Church should be charged with crime for not observing such rituals because we see some of them which certainly did derive from the Apostles are expired and gone out in a desuetude such as are abstinence from bloud and from things strangled the coenobitick life of secular persons the colledge of widows to worship standing upon the Lords day to give milk and honey to the newly baptized and many more of the like nature now there having been no mark to distinguish the necessity of one from the indifferency of the other they are all alike necessary or alike indifferent If the former why does no Church observe them If the latter why does the Church of Rome charge upon others the shame of novelty for leaving of some Rites and Ceremonies which by her own practice we are taught to have no obligation in them but the adiaphorous S. Paul gave order that a Bishop should be the husband of one wife The Church of Rome will not allow so much other Churches allow more The Apostles commanded Christians to Fast on Wednesday and Friday as appears in their Canons the Church of Rome Fasts Friday and Saturday and not on Wednesday The Apostes had their Agapae or love Feasts we should believe them scandalous They used a kiss of charity in ordinary addresses the Church of Rome keeps it only in their Masse other Churches quite omit it The Apostles permitted Priests and Deacons to live in conjugal Society as appears in the 5. Can. of the Apostles which to them is an Argument who believe them such and yet the Church of Rome by no means will endure it nay more Michael Medina gives Testimony that of 84. Canons Apostolical which Clemens collected scarce six or eight are observed by the Latine Church and Peresius gives this account of it In illis contineri multa quae temporum corruptione non plenè observantu◠aliis pro temporis materiae qualitate aut obliteratis aut totius
would bring in after Ages to the Authority of a competent judge or witness say the same thing for they plainly confess that the first Ages spake little or nothing to the present Question or at least nothing to their sence of them for therefore they call in aid from the following Ages and make them suppletory and auxiliary to their designs and therefore there are no Traditions to our purposes And they who would willingly have it otherwise yet have taken no course it should be otherwise for they when they had opportunity in the Councils of the last Ages to determine what they had a mind to yet they never named the number nor expressed the particular Traditions which they would fain have the world believe to be Apostolical But they have kept the bridle in their own hands and made a reserve of their own power that if need be they may make new pretensions or not be put to it to justifie the old by the engagement of a conciliary declaration 11. Lastly We are acquitted by the testimony of the Primitive Fathers from any other necessity of believing than of such Articles as are recorded in Scripture And this is done by them whose Authority is pretended the greatest Argument for Tradition as appears largely in Irenaeus who disputes professedly for the sufficiency of Scripture against certain Hereticks who affirm some necessary truths not to be written It was an excellent saying of S. Basil and will never be wip'd out with all the eloquence of Perron in his Serm. de fide Manifestus est fidei lapsus liquidum superbiae viâ—ium vel respuere aliquid eorum quae Scriptura habet vel inducere quicquam quod scriptum non est And it is but a poor device to say that every particular Tradition is consigned in Scripture by those places which give Authority to Tradition and so the introducing of Tradition is not a super-inducing any thing over or besides Scripture because Tradition is like a Messenger and the Scripture is like his Letters of Credence and therefore Authorizes whatsoever Tradition speaketh For supposing Scripture does consign the Authority of Tradition which it might do before all the whole Instrument of Scripture it self was consigned and then afterwards there might be no need of Tradition yet supposing it it will follow that all those Traditions which are truly prime and Apostolical are to be entertained according to the intention of the Deliverers which indeed is so reasonable of it self that we need not Scripture to perswade us to it it self is authentick as Scripture is if it derives from the same fountain and a word is never the more the Word of God for being written nor the less for not being written but it will not follow that whatsoever is pretended to be Tradition is so neither is the credit of the particular instances consigned in Scripture dolosus versatur in generalibus but that this craft is too palpable And if a general and indefinite consignation of Tradition be sufficient to warrant every particular that pretends to be Tradition then S. Basil had spoken to no purpose by saying it is Pride and Apostasie from the Faith to bring in what is not written For if either any man brings in what is written or what he says is delivered then the first being express Scripture and the second being consigned in Scripture no man can be charged with superinducing what is not written he hath his answer ready And then these are zealous words absolutely to no purpose but if such general consignation does not warrant every thing that pretends to Tradition but only such as are truly proved to be Apostolical then Scripture is useless as to this particular for such Tradition gives testimony to Scripture and therefore is of it self first and more credible for it is credible of it self and therefore unless Saint Basil thought that all the will of God in matters of Faith and Doctrine were written I see not what end nor what sence he could have in these words For no man in the World except Enthusiasts and mad-men ever obtruded a Doctrine upon the Church but he pretended Scripture for it or Tradition and therefore no man could be pressed by these words no man confuted no man instructed no not Enthusiasts or Montanists For suppose either of them should say that since in Scripture the holy Ghost is promised to abide with the Church for ever to teach whatever they pretend the Spirit in any Age hath taught them is not to super-induce any thing beyond what is written because the truth of the Spirit his veracity and his perpetual teaching being promised and attested in Scripture Scripture hath just so consigned all such Revelations as Perron saith it hath all such Traditions But I will trouble my self no more with Arguments from any humane Authorities but he that is surprized with the belief of such Authorities and will but consider the very many testimonies of Antiquity to this purpose as of Constantine St. Hierom St. Austin St. Athanasius St. Hilary St. Epiphanius and divers others all speaking words to the same sence with that saying of St. Paul Nemo sentiat super quod scriptum est will see that there is reason that since no man is materially a Heretick but he that errs in a point of Faith and all Faith is sufficiently recorded in Scripture the judgment of Faith and Heresie is to be derived from thence and no man is to be condemned for dissenting in an Article for whose probation Tradition only is pretended only according to the degree of its evidence let every one determine himself but of this evidence we must not judge for others for unless it be in things of Faith and absolute certainties evidence is a word of relation and so supposes two terms the object and the faculty and it is an imperfect speech to say a thing is evident in it self unless we speak of first principles or clearest revelations for that may be evident to one that is not so to another by reason of the pregnancy of some apprehensions and the immaturity of others This discourse hath its intention in Traditions Doctrinal and Ritual that is such Traditions which propose Articles new in materiâ but now if Scripture be the repository of all Divine Truths sufficient for us Tradition must be considered as its instrument to convey its great mysteriousness to our understandings it is said there are traditive Interpretations as well as traditive propositions but these have not much distinct consideration in them both because their uncertainty is as great as the other upon the former considerations as also because in very deed there are no such things as traditive Interpretations universal For as for particulars they signifie no more but that they are not sufficient determinations of Questions Theological therefore because they are particular contingent and of infinite variety and they are no more Argument than the
assistances without which he could not keep the law he may nevertheless in the rigor of justice be punished for not keeping it because the law was given him when he had strength and he ought to have preserv'd it For though he cannot be obliged to a new law to which he is not enabled yet for his sin he shall not be disoblig'd from an old law to which he was enabled Although God will not exceed his measures or do wrong to a sinner yet by his sin he shall receive no favour or immunity But in laws to be imposed afterwards the case I say is otherwise Because the persons are not capable of any such law and God knowing they cannot perform them cannot intend they should and therefore cannot justly punish them for not doing that which himself did never heartily intend they should do because he knew they could not The instances will make the matter to be confessed * Suppose a man falling into drunkenness should by the Divine judgement fall lame can God afterwards exact it of him that he should leap and dance in publick festivities when he can neither go nor stand If so suppose yet further that by the Divine judgment he should fall mad Is the mad man capable of a new law I suppose it will not be said he is or if it be suppose yet further that he be taken speechless and senseless or die Can God still exact of him obedience to any new Commandment If he be dead his day is done he can work no more nor be oblig'd any more and so it is if he be mad or any ways disabled the case is all one For whatsoever the disability be the incapacity and impossibility and the excuse is the same 6. When God as it is said punish'd the first sin with a consequent disability of doing any future services if he also punishes the not doing what he afterwards imposes I ask whether this later punishment be precisely due to the later or to the former sin If to the later then in vain is it laid upon the former account and yet if it be laid upon its own it is high injustice because of this law the man was not a subject capable when it was imposed the man was dead before the law was alive and a tree is as much capable of a law as a man is of an impossible Commandment But if the punishment of this later be inflicted upon the sinner for the first transgression by which he disabled himself then in vain was the later Commandment imposed For since the later sin was unavoidable and the first sin deserv'd the whole damnation what end could there be of imposing this new law by which God could not serve any new purpose no not for the manifestation of his justice in condemning him For if the first sin deserv'd condemnation there was no need to introduce a new pretence and to seek an occasion to slay him But if it did not it is certain the new sin could not make it just to do what was not just before because by this new omission there can be no new guilt contracted But of this I shall give yet a further account when I shall discourse in what sence God can be said to punish one sin with another 45. The consequent of the parts of this discourse is this that since the sin of Adam did not debauch our nature by any natural efficiency of the sin it self nor by our being in the loyns of Adam nor yet by any sentence or decree of God we are not by Adams sin made necessarily and naturally vicious and inclin'd to evil but are left in our mere nature such as it was and such as it is Nec si miserum Natura Sinonem Finxit vanum etiam mendacémque improba finget Nature makes us miserable and imperfect but not criminal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They are the words of S. Ignatius the Martyr If any man be a pious and a good man he is of God if he be impious he is of the Devil Not by Nature but made so by his own proceedings To all which I add this 46. That in Scripture there is no signification of any corruption or depravation of our souls by Adams sin which I shall manifest by examination of all those places which are the pretence of the contrary doctrine For if God hath not declared in Scripture any such thing we have the common notions of his justice and wisdom and goodness and truth in prejudice of the contrary SECT II. Consideration of the Objections against the former Doctrine 47. THE first is Every imagination of the thoughts of mans heart are only evil continually I answer it is true they were so but it was their own fault not Adams for so it is said expresly All flesh had corrupted his way upon earth and the earth was filled with violence 2. If this corruption had been natural and unavoidable why did God punish all the world for it except eight persons why did he punish those that could not help it and why did others escape that were equally guilty Is not this a respect of persons and partiality to some and iniquity towards all which far be it from the Judge of all the world 3. God might as well have punish'd all the world for sleeping once in a day or for being hungry as for sinning if so to do be natural and unavoidable 4. If God in these words complain'd of their Natural and Original corruption why did he but then as if it were a new thing complain of it and repent that he had made man since he prov'd so bad 5. This malice and corruption was such that God did send Noah the Preacher of righteousness to draw the world from it But no man supposes that it was fit to send a Preacher to dehort them from being guilty of Original sin Therefore it was good counsel Denique teipsum Concute numqua tibi vitiorum inseverit olim Natura aut etiam consuetudo mala namque Neglectis urenda filix innascitur agris Blame not nature but thy own evil customs for thy neglect of thy fields will make fern and thistles to grow It is not only because the ground is accursed but because it is neglected that it bears thorns Errasti si existimas nobiscum vitia nasci supervenerunt ingesta sunt said Seneca Thou art deceived if thou thinkest that vices are born with us No they are superinduc'd and come in upon us afterwards 48. And by this we may the better understand the following words I will not again curse the ground any more for mans sake for the imagination of mans heart is evil from his youth Concerning which note that these words are not two sentences For this is not the reason why God gave over smiting because man was corrupt from his youth For if this had been the reason it would have come to pass that the same cause which
I explicate it is wholly against the Pelagians for they wholly deny Original sin affirming that Adam did us no hurt by his sin except only by his example These Men are also followed by the Anabaptists who say that death is so natural that it is not by Adam's fall so much as made actual The Albigenses were of the same opinion The Socinians affirm that Adam's sin was the occasion of bringing eternal death into the World but that it no way relates to us not so much as by imputation But I having shewed in what sence Adam's sin is imputed to us am so far either from agreeing with any of these or from being singular that I have the acknowledgment of an adversary even of Bellarmine himself that it is the doctrine of the Church and he laboriously endeavours to prove that Original sin is meerly ours by imputation Add to this that he also affirms that when Zuinglius says that Original sin is not properly a sin but metonymically that is the effect of one sin and the cause of many that in so saying he agrees with the Catholicks Now these being the main affirmatives of my discourse it is plain that I am not alone but more are with me than against me Now though he is pleased afterwards to contradict himself and say it is veri nominis peccatum yet because I understood not how to reconcile the opposite parts of a contradiction or tell how the same thing should be really a sin and yet be so but by a figure onely how it should be properly a sin and yet onely metonymically and how it should be the effect of sin and yet that sin whereof it is an effect I confess here I stick to my reason and my proposition and leave Bellarmine and his Catholicks to themselves 25. And indeed they that say Original sin is any thing really any thing besides Adam's sin imputed to us to certain purposes that is effecting in us certain evils which dispose to worse they are according to the nature of error infinitely divided and agree in nothing but in this that none of them can prove what they say Anselme Bonaventure Gabriel and others say that Original sin is nothing but a want of Original righteousness Others say that they say something of truth but not enough for a privation can never be a positive sin and if it be not positive it cannot be inherent and therefore that it is necessary that they add indignitatem habendi a certain unworthiness to have it being in every man that is the sin But then if it be asked what makes them unworthy if it be not the want of Original righteousness and that then they are not two things but one seemingly and none really they are not yet agreed upon an answer Aquinas and his Scholars say Original sin is a certain spot upon the soul. Melancthon considering that concupiscence or the faculty of desiring or the tendency to an object could not be a sin fancied Original sin to be an actual depraved desire Illyrious says it is the substantial image of the Devil Scotus and Durandus say it is nothing but a meer guilt that is an obligation passed upon us to suffer the evil effects of it which indeed is most moderate of all the opinions of the School and differs not at all or scarce discernibly from that of Albertus Pighius and Catharinus who say that Original sin is nothing but the disobedience of Adam imputed to us But the Lutherans affirm it to be the depravation of humane nature without relation to the sin of Adam but a vileness that is in us The Church of Rome of late sayes that besides the want of Original righteousness with an habitual aversion from God it is a guiltiness and a spot but it is nothing of Concupiscence that being the effect of it only But the Protestants of Mr. Calvin's perswasion affirm that concupiscence is the main of it and is a sin before and after Baptism but amongst all this infinite uncertainty the Church of England speaks moderate words apt to be construed to the purposes of all peaceable men that desire her communion 26. Thus every one talks of Original sin and agree that there is such a thing but what it is they agree not and therefore in such infinite Variety he were of a strange imperious spirit that would confine others to his particular fancy For my own part now that I have shown what the Doctrine of the purest Ages was what uncertainty there is of late in the Question what great consent there is in some of the main parts of what I affirm and that in the contrary particulars Men cannot agree I shall not be ashamed to profess what company I now keep in my opinion of the Article no worse Men than Zuinglius Stapulensis the great Erasmus and the incomparable Hugo Grotius who also says there are multi in Gallia qui eandem sententiam magnis same argumentis tuentur many in France which with great argument defend the same sentence that is who explicate the article intirely as I do and as S. Chrysostome and Theodoret did of old in compliance with those H. Fathers that went before them with whom although I do not desire to erre yet I suppose their great names are guard sufficient against prejudices and trifling noises and an amulet against the Names of Arminian Socinian Pelagian and I cannot tell what Monsters of appellatives But these are but Boyes tricks and arguments of Women I expect from all that are wiser to examine whether this Opinion does not or whether the contrary does better explicate the truth with greater reason and to better purposes of Piety let it be examined which best glorifies God and does honour to his justice and the reputation of his Goodness which does with more advantage serve the interest of holy living and which is more apt to patronize carelesness and sin These are the measures of wise and good men the other are the measures of Faires and Markets where fancy and noise do govern SECT VI. An Exposition of the Ninth Article of the Church of England concerning Original sin according to Scripture and Reason 27. AFter all this it is pretended and talked of that my Doctrine of Original sin is against the Ninth Article of the Church of England and that my attempt to reconcile them was ineffective Now although this be nothing to the truth or falshood of my Doctrine yet it is much concerning the reputation of it Concerning which I cannot be so much displeased that any man should so undervalue my reason as I am highly content that they do so very much value her Authority But then to acquit my self and my Doctrine from being contrary to the Article all that I can do is to expound the Article and make it appear that not only the words of it are capable of a fair construction but also that it is reasonable they should be expounded so
〈◊〉 and yet there was no such Tradition but a mistake in Papias but I find it nowhere spoke against till Dionysius of Alexandria confuted Nepo's Book and converted Coracian the Egyptian from the opinion Now if a Tradition whose beginning of being called so began with a Scholar of the Apostles for so was Papias and then continued for some Ages upon the meer Authority of so famous a man did yet deceive the Church much more fallible is the pretence when two or three hundred years after it but commences and then by some learned man is first called a Tradition Apostolical And so it happened in the case of the Arrian heresie which the Nicene Fathers did confute by objecting a contrary Tradition Apostolical as Theodoret reports and yet if they had not had better Arguments from Scripture than from Tradition they would have fail'd much in so good a cause for this very pretence the Arrians themselves made and desired to be tryed by the Fathers of the first three hundred years which was a confutation sufficient to them who pretended a clear Tradition because it was unimaginable that the Tradition should leap so as not to come from the first to the last by the middle But that this trial was sometime declined by that excellent man S. Athanasius although at other times confidently and truly pretended it was an Argument the Tradition was not so clear but both sides might with some fairness pretend to it And therefore one of the prime Founders of their heresie the Heretick Arâ—emon having observed the advantage might be taken by any Sect that would pretend Tradition because the medium was plausible and consisting of so many particulars that it was hard to be redargued pretended a Tradition from the Apostles that Christ was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that the Tradition did descend by a constant succession in the Church of Rome to Pope Victors time inclusively and till Zephyrinus had interrupted the series and corrupted the Doctrine which pretence if it had not had some appearance of truth so as possibly to abuse the Church had not been worthy of confutation which yet was with care undertaken by an old Writer out of whom Eusebius transcribes a large passage to reprove the vanity of the pretender But I observe from hence that it was usual to pretend to Tradition and that it was easier pretended than confuted and I doubt not but oftener done than discovered A great Question arose in Africa concerning the Baptism of Hereticks whether it were valid or no. S. Cyprian and his party appealed to Scripture Stephen Bishop of Rome and his party would be judged by custome and Tradition Ecclesiastical See how much the nearer the Question was to a determination either that probation was not accounted by S. Syprian and the Bishops both of Asia and Africk to be a good Argument and sufficient to determine them or there was no certain Tradition against them for unless one of these two doe it nothing could excuse them from opposing a known truth unless peradventure S. Cyprian Firmilian the Bishops of Galatia Cappadocia and almost two parts of the World were ignorant of such a Tradition for they knew of none such and some of them expresly denied it And the sixth general Synod approves of the Canon made in the Council of Carthage under Cyprian upon this very ground because in praedictorum praesulum locis solum secundum traditam eis consuetudinem servatus est they had a particular Tradition for Rebaptization and therefore there could be no Tradition Universal against it or if there were they knew not of it but much for the contrary and then it would be remembred that a conceal'd Tradition was like a silent Thunder or a Law not promulgated it neither was known nor was obligatory And I shall observe this too that this very Tradition was so obscure and was so obscurely delivered silently proclaimed that S. Austin who disputed against the Donatists upon this very Question was not able to prove it but by a consequence which he thought probable and credible as appears in his discourse against the Donatists The Apostles saith S. Austin prescribed nothing in this particular But this custome which is contrary to Cyprian ought to be believed to have come from their Tradition as many other things which the Catholick Church observes That 's all the ground and all the reason nay the Church did waver concerning that Question and before the decision of a Council Cyprian and others might dissent without breach of charity It was plain then there was no clear Tradition in the Question possibly there might be a custome in some Churches postnate to the times of the Apostles but nothing that was obligatory no Tradition Apostolical But this was a suppletory device ready at hand when ever they needed it and S. Austin confuted the Pelagians in the Question of Original sin by the custome of exorcism and insufflation which S. Austin said came from the Apostles by Tradition which yet was then and is now so impossible to be proved that he that shall affirm it shall gain only the reputation of a bold man and a confident 4. Secondly I consider if the report of Traditions in the Primitive times so near the Ages Apostolical was so uncertain that they were fain to aym at them by conjectures and grope as in the dark the uncertainty is much increased since because there are many famous Writers whose works are lost which yet if they had continued they might have been good records to us as Clemens Romanus Egesippus Nepos Coracion Dionysius Areopagite of Alexandria of Corinth Firmilian and many more And since we see pretences have been made without reason in those Ages where they might better have been confuted than now they can it is greater prudence to suspect any later pretences since so many Sects have been so many wars so many corruptions in Authors so many Authors lost so much ignorance hath intervened and so many interests have been served that now the rule is to be altered and whereas it was of old time credible that that was Apostolical whose beginning they knew not now quite contrary we cannot safely believe them to be Apostolical unless we do know their beginning to have been from the Apostles For this consisting of probabilities and particulars which put together make up a moral demonstration the Argument which I now urge hath been growing these fifteen hundred years and if anciently there was so much as to evacuate the Authority of Tradition much more is there now absolutely to destroy it when all the particulars which time and infinite variety of humane accidents have been amassing together are now concentred and are united by way of constipation Because every Age and every great change and every heresie and every interest hath increased the difficulty of finding out true Traditions 5. Thirdly There are very many Traditions which are lost and
Ecclesiae magisterio abrogatis Now it were good that they which take a liberty to themselves should also allow the same to others So that for one thing or other all Traditions excepting those very few that are absolutely universal will lose all their obligation and become no competent medium to confine mens practices or limit their faiths or determine their perswasions Either for the difficulty of their being proved the incompetency of the testimony that transmits them or the indifferency of the thing transmitted all Traditions both ritual and doctrinal are disabled from determining our consciences either to a necessary believing or obeying 9. Sixthly To which I adde by way of confirmation that there are some things called Traditions and are offered to be proved to us by a Testimony which is either false or not extant Clemens of Alexandria pretended it a Tradition that the Apostles preached to them that died in infidelity even after their death and then raised them to life but he proved it only by the Testimony of the Book of Hermes he affirmed it to be a Tradition Apostolical that the Greeks were saved by their Philosophie but he had no other Authority for it but the Apocryphal Books of Peter and Paul Tertullian and S. Basil pretended it an Apostolical Tradition to sign in the aire with the sign of the Cross but this was only consigned to them in the Gospel of Nicodemus But to instance once for all in the Epistle of Marcellus to the Bishop of Antioch where he affirmes that it is the Canon of the Apostles praeter sententiam Romani Pontificis non posse Concilia celebrari And yet there is no such Canon extant nor ever was for ought appears in any Record we have and yet the Collection of the Canons is so intire that though it hath something more than what was Apostolical yet it hath nothing less And now that I am casually fallen upon an instance from the Canons of the Apostles I consider that there cannot in the world a greater instance be given how easie it is to be abused in the believing of Traditions For 1. to the first 50 which many did admit for Apostolical 35 more were added which most men now count spurious all men call dubious and some of them univerally condemned by peremptory sentence even by them who are greatest admirers of that Collection as 65.67 and 8â…˜ Canons For the first 50 it is evident that there are some things so mixt with them and no mark of difference left that the credit of all is much impaired insomuch that Isidor of Sevil says they were Apocryphal made by Hereticks and published under the title Apostolical but neither the Fathers nor the Church of Rome did give assent to them And yet they have prevailed so far amongst some that Damascen is of opinion they should be received equally with the Canonical writings of the Apostles One thing only I observe and we shall find it true in most writings whose Authority is urged in Questions of Theologie that the Authority of the Tradition is not it which moves the assent but the nature of the thing and because such a Canon is delivered they do not therefore believe the sanction or proposition so delivered but disbelieve the Tradition if they do not like the matter and so do not judge of the matter by the Tradition but of the Tradition by the matter And thus the Church of Rome rejects the 84. or 85. Canon of the Apostles not because it is delivered with less Authority than the last 35 are but because it reckons the Canon of Scripture otherwise than it is at Rome Thus also the fifth Canon amongst the first 50 because it approves the marriage of Priests and Deacons does not perswade them to approve of it too but it self becomes suspected for approving it So that either they accuse themselves of palpable contempt of the Apostolical Authority or else that the reputation of such Traditions is kept up to serve their own ends and therefore when they encounter them they are no more to be upheld which what else is it but to teach all the world to contemn such pretences and undervalue Traditions and to supply to others a reason why they should doe that which to them that give the occasion is most unreasonable 10. Seventhly The Testimony of the Ancient Church being the only means of proving Tradition and sometimes their dictates and doctrine being the Tradition pretended of necessity to be imitated it is considerable that men in their estimate of it take their rise from several Ages and differing Testimonies and are not agreed about the competency of their Testimony and the reasons that on each side make them differ are such as make the authority it self the less authentick and more repudiable Some will allow only of the three first Ages as being most pure most persecuted and therefore most holy least interested serving fewer designes having fewest factions and therefore more likely to speak the truth for Gods sake and its own as best complying with their great end of acquiring Heaven in recompence of losing their lives Others say that those Ages being persecuted minded the present Doctrines proportionable to their purposes and constitution of the Ages and make little or nothing of those Questions which at this day vex Christendome And both speak true The first Ages speak greatest truth but least pertinently The next Ages the Ages of the four general Councils spake something not much more pertinently to the present Questions but were not so likely to speak true by reason of their dispositions contrary to the capacity and circumstance of the first Ages and if they speak wisely as Doctors yet not certainly as witnesses of such propositions which the first Ages noted not and yet unless they had noted could not possibly be Traditions And therefore either of them will be less useless as to our present affairs For indeed the Questions which now are the publick trouble were not considered or thought upon for many hundred years and therefore prime Tradition there is none as to our purpose and it will be an insufficient medium to be used or pretended in the determination and to dispute concerning the truth or necessity of Traditions in the Questions of our times is as if Historians disputing about a Question in the English Story should fall on wrangling whether Livie or Plutarch were the best Writers And the earnest disputes about Traditions are to no better purpose For no Church at this day admits the one half of those things which certainly by the Fathers were called Traditions Apostolical and no Testimony of ancient Writers does consign the one half of the present Questions to be or not to be traditions So that they who admit only the doctrine and testimony of the first Ages cannot be determined in most of their doubts which now trouble us because their writings are of matters wholly differing from the present disputes and they which
particular authority of these men whose Commentaries they are and therefore must be considered with them 12. The summe is this Since the Fathers who are the best witnesses of Traditions yet were infinitely deceived in their account since sometimes they guest at them and conjectured by way of Rule and Discourse and not of their knowledge not by evidence of the thing since many are called Traditions which were not so many are uncertain whether they were or no yet confidently pretended and this uncertainty which at first was great enough is increased by infinite causes and accidents in the succession of 1600 years since the Church hath been either so careless or so abused that she could not or would not preserve Traditions with carefulness and truth since it was ordinary for the old Writers to set out their own fancies and the Rites of their Church which had been Ancient under the specious Title of Apostolical Traditions since some Traditions rely but upon single Testimony at first and yet descending upon others come to be attested by many whose Testimony though conjunct yet in value is but single because it relies upon the first single Relator and so can have no greater authority or certainty than they derive from the single person since the first Ages who were most competent to consign Tradition yet did consign such Traditions as be of a nature wholly discrepant from the present Questions and speak nothing at all or very imperfectly to our purposes and the following ages are no fit witnesses of that which was not transmitted to them because they could not know it at all but by such transmission and prior consignation since what at first was a Tradition came afterwards to be written and so ceased its being a Tradition yet the credit of Traditions commenced upon the certainty and reputation of those truths first delivered by word afterward consigned by writing since what was certainly Tradition Apostolical as many Rituals were are rejected by the Church in several ages and are gone out into a desuetude and lastly since beside the no necessity of Traditions there being abundantly enough in Scripture there are many things called Traditions by the Fathers which they themselves either proved by no Authors or by Apocryphal and spurious and Heretical the matter of Tradition will in very much be so uncertain so false so suspicious so contradictory so improbable so unproved that if a Question be contested and be offered to be proved only by Tradition it will be very hard to impose such a proposition to the belief of all men with an imperiousness or resolved determination but it will be necessary men should preserve the liberty of believing and prophecying and not part with it upon a worse merchandise and exchange than Esau made for his birthright SECT VI. Of the uncertainty and insufficiency of Councils Ecclesiastical to the same purpose 1. BUT since we are all this while in uncertainty it is necessary that we should address our selves somewhere where we may rest the soal of our foot And Nature Scripture and Experience teach the World in matters of Question to submit to some final sentence For it is not reason that controversies should continue till the erring person shall be willing to condemn himself and the Spirit of God hath directed us by that great precedent at Jerusalem to address our selves to the Church that in a plenary Council and Assembly she may Synodically determine Controversies So that if a General Council have determined a Question or expounded Scripture we may no more disbelieve the Decree than the Spirit of God himself who speaks in them And indeed if all Assemblies of Bishops were like that first and all Bishops were of the same spirit of which the Apostles were I should obey their Decree with the same Religion as I do them whose Preface was Visum est Spiritui Sancto nobis and I doubt not but our blessed Saviour intended that the Assemblies of the Church should be Judges of the Controversies and guides of our perswasions in matters of difficulty But he also intended they should proceed according to his will which he had revealed and those precedents which he had made authentick by the immediate assistance of his holy Spirit He hath done his part but we do not do ours And if any private person in the simplicity and purity of his soul desires to find out a truth of which he is in search and inquisition if he prays for wisdom we have a promise he shall be heard and answered liberally and therefore much more when the representatives of the Catholick Church do meet because every person there hath in individuo a title to the promise and another title as he is a governour and a guide of souls and all of them together have another title in their united capacity especially if in that union they pray and proceed with simplicity and purity so that there is no disputing against the pretence and promises and authority of General Councils For if any one man can hope to be guided by Gods Spirit in the search the pious and impartial and unprejudicate search of truth then much more may a General Council If no private man can hope for it then truth is not necessary to be found nor we are not obliged to search for it or else we are saved by chance But if private men can by vertue of a promise upon certain conditions be assured of finding out sufficient truth much more shall a General Council So that I consider thus There are many promises pretended to belong to General Assemblies in the Church but I know not any ground nor any pretence that they shall be absolutely assisted without any condition on their own parts and whether they will or no Faith is a vertue as well as Charity and therefore consists in liberty and choice and hath nothing in it of necessity There is no Question but that they are obliged to proceed according to some rule for they expect no assistance by way of Enthusiasme if they should I know no warrant for that neither did any General Council ever offer a Decree which they did not think sufficiently proved by Scripture Reason or Tradition as appears in the Acts of the Councils now then if they be tied to conditions it is their duty to observe them but whether it be certain that they will observe them that they will do all their duty that they will not sin even in this particular in the neglect of their duty that 's the consideration So that if any man questions the Title and Authority of General Councils and whether or no great promises appertain to them I suppose him to be much mistaken but he also that thinks all of them have proceeded according to rule and reason and that none of them were deceived because possibly they might have been truly directed is a stranger to the History of the Church and to the perpetual instances and experiments of
be the best way of proving the immortality of the Soul 357. Aristotle believed the Soul of man to be divine and not of the body 718 n. 41. There is no difference between the inferiour and superiour faculties of the Soul 728 n. 68. and 825 n. 19. The frailty of man's Soul 734 n. 83. Spirit Whether the ordinary gifts of the Spirit be immediate infusions of faculties and abilities or an improvement of our natural powers and means 4 n. 15. ad 34. How the Holy Spirit did inspire the Apostles and Writers of the New Testament as to the very words 8 n. 32. What in the sense of Scripture is praying with the Spirit 9 n. 37. and 47. What a Spirit is as to nature 236 § 11. How a Spirit is in place 236 § 11. The Holy Spirit perfects our Redemption 1. b. The Spirit of God 1. b. The frailty of the spirit of man 735 n. 83. The rule of the Spirit in us 782. To have received the Spirit is not an inseparable propriety of the regenerate 786. What the Spirit of God doth in us 787. The regenerate man hath not onely received the Spirit of God but is wholly led by him 788. Sublapsarians Their Doctrine in five Propositions 872. It is not much better then the Supralapsarian 873. Against this way 886 n. 8. Substance What a Substance is 236 § 11. Aquinas says that the Body of Christ is in the Elements not after the manner of a Body but a Substance this Notion considered 238 § 11. Succession Of the succession of Bishops 402 403. Supererogation How it and Christian perfection differ 590 591 n. 16 17. What it is 786. Superlative This is usually exprest by a synonymal word by an Hebraism 909. Supralapsarians Their Doctrine 871. T. Tears A Man by them must not judge of his Repentance nor by any other one way of expression 850 n. 86. Temptation Every temptation to sin if overcome increases not the reward 661 n. 7. No man is tempted of God 737 n. 86. The violence of a temptation doth not in the whole excuse sin 743. Testament In a humane or Divine Testament figurative words may be admitted 210 § 6. A certain Athenian's aenigmatical Testament 210 § 6. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What they were 835 n. 44. Theodoret. His words about Transubstantiation considered 264 265 § 12. Theology The power of Reason in matters of Theology 230 231 § 11. It findeth a medium between Vertue and Vice 673. Thief on the Cross. Why his Repentance was accepted 681 n. 65. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What that word means 637 n 10. 1. Epistle to Timothy Chap. 4. v. 8. explained 860 n. 114. Chap. 5. v. 22. explained 808 n. 31. Chap. 5.17 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 explained 152 § 48. and 166 § 51. Chap. 3.15 16. the pillar and ground of truth explained 386 387. Chap. 1.5 6. explained 949 n. 8. 2. Epistle to Timothy Chap. 2. v. 4. explained 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 162 § 49. Epistle to Titus Chap. 5.15 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 explained 780 n. 30. Tradition Christ and his Apostles made use of Scripture for arguments not Tradition 353. An answer to that Objection Tradition is the best argument to prove the Scripture to be the word of God therefore it is a better Principle then that 354. Oral Tradition was useful to convey matter of fact onely not Doctrines 354 355 358. Oral Tradition a very uncertain means to convey down a Doctrine 356. The Romanists have no Tradition to assure them the Epistle to the Hebrews is Canonical 361. The doctrine of the Scriptures sufficiency proved by Tradition 410. Some of the Fathers by Tradition mean Scripture 410 411 412. What Tradition is and what the word meaneth 420 § 3. When and in what case Tradition is an useful Topick 421. It is necessary in the Church because the Scripture could not be conveyed to us without it 424. The Questions that arose in the Council of Nice were not determined by Tradition but Scripture 425. The Tradition urged by the Ancients was not oral 425. The Romanists by their doctrine of Tradition gave great advantage to the Socinians 425. The doctrine of the Trinity relieth not upon Tradition but Scripture 425. That the doctrine of Infant-baptism relieth not upon Tradition onely but Scripture too 425 426. The validity of Baptism by Hereticks is not to be proved by Tradition without Scripture 426 427. The Procession of the Holy Ghost may be proved by Scripture without Tradition 427 428. The observation of the Lord's Day relieth not upon Tradition 428. Instances wherein oral Tradition has failed in conveyance 431. Saint Augustine's Rule to try Apostolical Traditions 432. Some Traditions said to be Apostolical have proceeded from the testimony of one man alone and he none of them 432. Of the means of proving a Tradition to be Apostolical 433. Of Vincentius Lirinensis his Rule to discern Apostolical Tradition 434. In the Question about the immaculate Conception Tradition is equally pretended on both sides 435. Traditions now held that are contrary to the Primitive Traditions 453 454. There is no Ecclesiastical Tradition for Auricular Confession 490. Of what use Tradition is in expounding Scripture 976. It is no sufficient medium to end Controversies 976 sect 5. per tot It was pretended by the Arians and divers other hereticks as well as the Orthodox 977 n. 3. The report of Tradition was uncertain even in the Ages Apostolical 978 n. 4. Tradition could not be made use of to determine the Controversie about Easter between the Churches of the East and West because both sides pretended it 979 n. 7. What Tradition it was the Fathers used to appeal to 979 n. 8. Transubstantiation The arts by which the Romanists have managed this Article Ep. Ded. to Real Pres. 174. It is acknowledged by the Romanists that this doctrine cannot be proved out of Scripture 187 § 2. and 298. How many figurative terms there are in the words of Institution 211 212 § 6. If this doctrine be true then the truth of Christian Religion which relieth upon the evidence of Sense is questionable 223 224 § 10. The Papists Answer to that Argument with our Reply 224 § 10. Bellarmine's Answer and a Reply upon it 226 § 10. If the testimony of our Senses in fit circumstances be not to be relied on the Catholicks could not have confuted the Valentinians and Marcionites 227 § 10. Irenaeus mentions an Impostour that essayed to counterfeit Transubstantiation long before the Roman Church decreed it 228 § 10. The miraculous Apparitions that are brought to prove Transubstantiation are proved to be false by their own doctrine 229 § 10. Picus Mirandula offered to maintain in Rome this Thesis Paneitas potest suppositare corpus Domini 230 § 11. How many ways the words of Christ Hoc est corpus meum may be verified without Transubstantiation 230 231 § 11. The folly of that assertion Credo quia impossibile est when applied to
desire to do natural or moral good things but even spiritual 784 4o. he may leave many sins which he is commanded to forsake 785 5o. he may leave some sins not only for temporal interest but out of fear of God and regard to his Law ibid. 6o. he may besides abstinence from evil do many good things 786 7 o he may have received the Spirit of God and yet be in a state of distance from God ibid. 6. The character of the unregenerate state or person n. 42.787 7. What are properly and truly sins of infirmity and how far they can consist with the regenerate estate 789 8. Practical advices to be added to the foregoing considerations 795. n. 65. Chap. IX Of the effect of Repentance viz. remission of Sins 800 Sect. 1. There is no sin but with Repentance may be pardoned ibid. 2. Of pardon of sins committed after baptism 802 3. Of the difficulty of obtaining pardon The doctrine and practice of the Primitive Church in this Article 803 4. Of the sin against the H. Ghost and in what sence it may be unpardonable 808 5. What sin is spoken of by our Lord Matth. 12.32 and that final impenitence is not it 810 6. The former doctrines reduced to practice 815 Chap. X. Of Ecclesiastical Penance or the fruits of Repentance 820 Sect. 1. What the fruits of Repentance are in general ibid. 2. Of Contrition or godly sorrow the reasons measures and constitution of it 821 3. Of the nature and differences of Attrition and Contrition 828 4. Of Confession 830 1o. Confession is necessary to Repentance ibid. 2o. It is due only to God 831 3o. In the Primitive Church there was no judicial absolution used in their Liturgies n. 54.838 4o. The judicial absolution of a Priest does effect no material change in the Penitent as to giving of pardon 841. n. 60 5. Attrition or imperfect Repentance though with absolution is not sufficient 842 6. Of Penance or satisfactions 844. 1o. sorrow and mourning 2o. Corporal austerities 3o. Prayers 847. 4o. Alms 848. 5o. forgiving injuries 6 o restitution 849 7. The former doctrine reduced to practice 850 8. The practice of Confession 854 9. The practice of Penances and corporal austerities 858 A Discourse in Vindication of Gods Attributes of Goodness and Justice in the matter of Original Sin against the Calvinists way of understanding it 1o. THe truth of the Article with the errors and mistakes about it 869 2o. Arguments to prove the truth 872 3o. Objections answered 881 4o. An Explication of Rom. 5.12 ad 19. 887 An Answer to the Bishop of Rochesters First Letter written concerning the Sixth Chapter of Original Sin in the Discourse of Repentance 895 The Bishop of Rochesters Second Letter upon the same subject 907 An Answer to the Second Letter from the Bishop of Rochester 909 The Liberty of Prophesying EPist Dedicatory Introduction Sect. 1. Of the nature of Faith and that the duty of it is compleated in believing the Articles of the Apostles Creed 941 2. Of Heresie its nature and measures That it is to be accounted according to the stricter capacity of the Christian Faith and not in opinions speculative nor ever to pious persons 947 3. Of the difficulty and uncertainty of arguments from Scripture in Questions not simply necessary nor literally determined 965 4. Of the difficulty of expounding Scripture 971 5. Of the insufficiency and uncertainty of Tradition to expound Scripture or determine questions 976 6. Of the insufficiency and uncertainty of Councils Ecclesiastical to expound Scripture or determine questions 984 7. Of the fallibility of the Pope and the uncertainty of his expounding Scripture and resolving Questions 995 8. How unable the Fathers or Writers Ecclesiastical are to determine our questions with certainty and truth 1007 9. How incompetent the Church in its diffusive capacity is to be Judge of controversies and how impertinent that pretence of the Spirit is 1011 10. Of the authority of reason and that it proceeding on the best grounds is the best Judge 1013 11. Of some causes of error in the exercise of reason which are in themselves inculpable 1016 12. How innocent error of mere opinion is in a pious person 1022 13. Of the deportment to be used toward persons disagreeing and reasons why they are not to be punished with death 1025 14. Of the practice of Christian Churches toward persons disagreeing and when persecution first came in use 1031 15. How far the Church or Governours may act to the restraining false or differing opinions 1034 16. Whether it be lawful for a Prince to give toleration to several Religions 1036 17. Of complying with disagreeing persons or weak Consciences in general 1038 18. A particular instance in the opinion of the Anabaptists to shew that there is so much reason on both sides of the Question that a pious person mistaking may be innocent in his error 1040 1o. The arguments usually alledged for baptizing Infants n. 3. ad 12.1041 1042 2o. How much the Anabaptists have to say in opposition to those arguments and to justifie their own tenent n. 12. ad 34.1043 ad 1051 3o. A reply to the arguments of the Anabaptists by the Author since the first Edition wherein the lawfulness of the Churches practice is established n. 34. ad fin Sect. 1051. ad 1068 19. That there ought not to be any toleration of doctrines inconsistent with piety or the publick good 1069 20. How far the Religion of the Church of Rome may be tolerated 1070 21. Of the duty of particular Churches in allowing Communion 1076 22. That particular men may communicate with Churches of different perswasions and how far they may do it 1077 The Discourse of Confirmation INtroduction Sect. 1. Of the Divine Original Warranty and Institution of the Rite of Confirmation 3 2. The Rite of Confirmation is a perpetual and never-ceasing Ministery 12 3. That Confirmation which by laying on of Hands gives the H. Spirit was actually continued and practised by all succeeding Ages of the Primitive Church 15 4. The Bishops were always and are still the only Ministers of Confirmation 18 5. The whole procedure of Confirmation is by prayer and laying on of Hands 22 6. Many great Graces and Blessings are consequent to the worthy reception and due ministery of Confirmation 24 7. Of preparation to Confirmation and the circumstances of receiving it 28 A Discourse of Friendship 1. HOw far a perfect Friendship is authorized by the principles of Christianity 35 2. What are the requisites of Friendship 38 3. What are the lawful expressions and acts of Friendship 42 4. Whether a Friend may be dearer than a Husband or Wife 47 5. What are the duties of Friendship 49 6. Ten Rules to be observed in the conduct of Friendship 50 Five Letters about change of Religion 53 THE AUTHORS PREFACE TO THE APOLOGY FOR AUTHORIZED and SET FORMS OF LITURGY WHEN Judges were instead of Kings and Hophni and Phinehas were among the Priests every
word spiritual is therefore carefully to be observed lest the contention of both parties should seem trifling and to be for nothing We say that Christs body is in the Sacrament really but spiritually They say it is there really but spiritually For so Bellarmine is bold to say that the word may be allowed in this question Where now is the difference Here by spiritually they mean present after the manner of a Spirit by spiritually we mean present to our Spirits only that is so as Christ is not present to any other sense but that of Faith or spiritual susception but their way makes his body to be present no way but that which is impossibe and implies a contradiction a body not after the manner of a body a body like a spirit a body without a body and a sacrifice of body and blood without blood corpus incorporeum cruor incruentus They say that Christs body is truly present there as it was upon the Cross but not after the manner of all or any body but after that manner of being as an Angel is in a place That 's there spiritually But we by the real spiritual presence of Christ do understand Christ to be present as the Spirit of God is present in the hearts of the Faithful by blessing and grace and this is all which we mean besides the tropical and figurative presence 9. That which seems of hardest explication is the word corporaliter which I find that Melanchthon used saying corporaliter quoque communicatione carnis Christi Christum in nobis habitare which manner of speaking I have heard he avoided after he had conversed with Oecolampadius who was able then to teach him and most men in that question but the expression may become warrantable and consonant to our doctrine and means no more than really and without fiction or beyond a figure like that of S. Paul in Christ dwelleth the fulness of the Godhead bodily upon which S. Austin says In ipso inhabitat plenitudo Divinitatis corporaliter quia in Templo habitaverat umbraliter and in S. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are opposed which are a shadow of things to come but the body is of Christ that is the substance the reality the correlative of the type and figure the thing signified and among the Greeks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies solidare to make firm real and consistent but among the Fathers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or body signifies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 every thing that is produced from nothing saith Phavorinus that is every thing that is real extra non ens that hath a proper being so that we receiving Christ in the Sacrament corporally or bodily understand that we do it really by the ministery of our bodies receiving him unto our souls And thus we affirm Christs body to be present in the Sacrament not only in type or figure but in blessing and real effect that is more than in the types of the Law the shadows were of the Law but the body is of Christ. And besides this the word corporally may be very well used when by it is only understood a corporal sign So S. Cyril of Jerusalem in his third Catechism says that the holy Ghost did descend corporally in the likeness of a Dove that is in a type or representment of a Doves body for so he and many of the Ancients did suppose and so he again uses the word Jesus Christ as a man did inspire the holy Spirit corporally into his Apostles where by corporally it is plain he means by a corporal or material sign or symbol viz. by breathing upon them and saying receive ye the holy Ghost In either of these sences if the word be taken it may indifferently be used in this question 10. I have been the more careful to explain the question and the use of these words according to our meaning in the question for these two reasons 1. Because until we are agreed upon the signification of the words they are equivocal and by being used on both sides to several purposes sometime are pretended as instruments of union but indeed effect it not but sometimes displease both parties while each supects the word in a wrong sence And this hath with very ill effect been observed in the conferences for composing the difference in this question particularly that of Poissy where it was propounded in these words Credimus in usu coenae Dominicae verè reipsâ substantialiter sen in substantiâ verum corpus sanguinem Christi spirituali ineffabili modo esse exhiberi sumi à fidelibus communicantibus Beza and Gallasius for the Reformed and Espencaeus and Monlucius for the Romanists undertook to propound it to their parties But both rejected it for though the words were not disliked yet they suspected each others sence But now that I have declared what is meant by us in these words they are made useful in the explicating the question 2. But because the words do perfectly declare our sence and are owned publickly in our doctrine and manner of speaking it will be in vain to object against us those sayings of the Fathers which use the same expressions for if by vertue of those words really substantially corporally verily and indeed and Christs body and blood the Fathers shall be supposed to speak for transubstantiation they may as well suppose it to be our doctrine too for we use the same words and therefore those authorities must signifie nothing against us unless these words can be proved in them to signifie more than our sence of them does import and by this truth many very many of their pretences are evacuated 11. One thing more I am to note in order to the same purposes that in the explication of this question it is much insisted upon that it be inquired whether when we say we believe Christs body to be really in the Sacrament we mean that body that flesh that was born of the Virgin Mary that was crucified dead and buried I answer I know none else that he had or hath there is but one body of Christ natural and glorified but he that says that body is glorified which was crucified says it is the same body but not after the same manner and so it is in the Sacrament we eat and drink the body and blood of Christ that was broken and powred forth for there is no other body no other blood of Christ but though it is the same which we eat and drink yet it is in another manner And therefore when any of the Protestant Divines or any of the Fathers deny that body which was born of the Virgin Mary that which was crucified to be eaten in the Sacrament as Bertram as S. Hierome as Clemens Alexandrinus expresly affirm the meaning is easie they intend that it is not eaten in a natural sence and then calling it corpus spirituale the word spiritual is not a substantial predication
all the words of our blessed Saviour why shall not their reason also or is it nothing so certain to the understanding as any thing is to the eye If therefore it be unreasonable to say that the accidents of bread are changed against our sense so it will be unreasonable to say that the substance is changed against our reason Not but that God can and does often change one substance into another and it is done in every natural production of a substantial form but that we say it is unreasonable that this should be changed into flesh not to flesh simply for so it is when we eat it nor into Christs flesh simply for so it might have been if he had as it is probable he did eaten the Sacrament himself But into that body of Christ which is in Heaven he remaining there and being whole and impassible and unfrangible this we say is unreasonable and impossible and that is now to be proved 6. Secondly In this question when our adversaries are to cousen any of the people they tell them the Protestants deny Gods omnipotency for so they are pleased to call our denying their dreams And this device of theirs to escape is older than their doctrine of Transubstantiation for it was the trick of the Manichees the Eutychians the Apollinarists the Arians when they were confuted by the arguments of the Catholicks to flye to Gods omnipotency 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says Nazianzen and it was very usually by the Fathers called the Sanctuary of Hereticks Potentia inquiunt ei haec est ut falsa sint vera mendacis est ut falsum dicat verum quod Deo non competit saith S. Austin They pretend it to belong to Gods power to verifie their doctrine that is to make falshood truth that is not power but a lye which cannot be in God and this was older than the Arrians it was the trick of the old Tragedians So Plato told them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which Cicero rendring says Cum explicare argumenti exitium non potestis confugitis ad Deum When you cannot bring your argument about you flye to the power of God But when we say this is impossible to be done either we mean it naturally or ordinarily impossible that is such a thing which cannot without a miracle be done as a child cannot with his hands break a giants arm or a man cannot eat a Milstone or with his finger touch the Moon Now in matters of Religion although to shew a thing to be thus impossible is not enough to prove it was not at all if God said it was for although to man it be impossible yet to God all things are possible yet when the question is of the sence of the words of Scripture which are capable of various interpretations he that brings an argument ab impossibili against any one interpretation shewing that it infers such an ordinary impossibility as cannot be done without a miracle hath sufficiently concluded not against the words for nothing ought to prejudice them but against such an interpretation as infers that impossibility Thus when in Scripture we find it recorded that Christ was born of a Virgin to say this is impossible is no argument against it because although it be naturally impossible which I think is demonstrable against the Arabian Physicians yet to him that said it it is also possible to do it But then if from hence any man shall obtrude as an Article of Faith that the blessed Virgin Mother was so a Virgin that her holy Son came into the world without any aperture of his mothers womb I doubt not but an argument ab impossibili is a sufficient conviction of the falshood of it though this impossibility be only an ordinary and natural because the words of Scripture affirming Christ to be born of a Virgin say only that he was not begotten by natural generation not that his egression from his Mothers womb made a Penetration of dimensions To instance once more The words of Scripture are plain That Christ is man That Christ is God Here are two natures and yet but one Christ No impossibility ought to be pretended against these plain words but they must be sophismes because they dispute against truth it self But now if a Monothelite shall say that by this unity of nature God hath taught an unity of wills in Christ and that he had but one will because he is but one person I do not doubt but an argument from an ordinary and natural impossibility will be sufficient to convince him of his heresie and in this case the Monothelite hath no reason to say that the Orthodox Christian denies Gods omnipotency and says that God cannot unite the will of Christs humanity to the will of his Divinity And this is true in every thing which is not declared minutely and in his particular sence There is ordinarily no greater argument in the world and none better is commonly used nor any better required than to reduce the opinion to an impossibility for if this be not true without a miracle you must prove your extraordinary and demonstrate your miracle which will be found to be a new impossibility A sence that cannot be true without a miracle to make it so it is a miracle if it be true and therefore let the literal sence in any place be presumed and have the advantage of the first offer or presumption yet if it be ordinarily impossible to be so and without a miracle cannot be so and the miracle no where affirmed then to affirm the literal sence is the hugest folly that can be in the interpretation of any Scriptures 7. But there is an impossibility which is absolute which God cannot do therefore because he is Almighty for to do them were impotency and want of power as God cannot lye he cannot be deceived he cannot be mock'd he cannot die he cannot deny himself nor do unjustly And I remember that Dionysius brings in by way of scorn Elymas the Sorcerer finding fault with S. Paul for saying God could not deny himself as if the saying so were denying Gods omnipotency so Elymas objected as is to be seen in the book de Divin Nom. c. 8. And by the consent of all the world it is agreed upon this expression That God cannot reconcile contradictions that is It is no part of the divine Omnipotency to make the same proposition true and false at the same time in the same respect It is absolutely impossible that the same thing should be and not be at the same time that the same thing so constituted in his own formality should lose the formality or essential affirmative and yet remain the same thing For it is absolutely the first truth that can be affirmed in Metaphysical notices Nothing can be and not be This is it in which all men and all Sciences and all religions are agreed upon as a prime truth in all sences and without distinctions For if any
Indeed Mr. Brerely hath got an ignorant fancy by the end which I am now to note and wipe off He saies that the Primitive Christians were scandalized by the Heathen to be eaters of the flesh of a child which in all reason must be occasioned by their doctrine of the manducation of Christs flesh in the Sacrament and if this be true then we may suspect that they to wipe of this scandal might remove their doctrine as far from the objection as they could and therefore might use some lessening expressions To this I answer that the occasions of the report were the sects of the Gnosticks and the Peputians The Gnosticks as Epiphanius reports bruised a new born infant in a mortar and all of them did communicate by eating portions of it and the Montanists having sprinkled a little child with meal let him blood and of that made their Eucharistical bread and these stories the Jews published to disrepute if they could the whole religion but nothing of this related to the doctrine of the Christian Eucharist though the bell always must tinkle as they are pleased to think But this turned to advantage of the truth and to the clearing of this Article For when the scandal got foot and run abroad the Heathens spared not to call the Christians Cannibals and to impute to them anthropophagy or the devouring humane flesh and that they made Thyestes's Feast who by the procurement of Atreus eat his own children Against this the Christian Apologists betook themselves to a defence Justin Martyr says the false devils had set on work some vile persons to kill some one or other to give colour to the report Athenagoras in a high defiance of the infamy asks Do you think we are murtherers for there is no way to eat mans flesh unless we first kill him Octavius in Minutius Felix confutes it upon this account We do not receive the blood of beasts into our food or beverage therefore we are infinitely distant from drinking mans blood And this same Tertullian in his Apologetick presses further affirming that to discover Christians they use to offer them a black pudding or something in which blood remained and they chose rather to die than to do it and of this we may see instances in the story of Sanctus and Blandina in the ecclesiastical histories Concerning which it is remarkable what Oecumenius in his Catena upon the 2 chap. of the first Epistle of S. Peter reports out of Irenaeus The Greeks having taken some servants of Christians pressing to learn something secret of the Christians and they having nothing in their notice to please the inquisitors except that they had heard of their Masters that the divine communion is the blood and body of Christ they supposing it true according to their rude natural apprehensions tortur'd Sanctus and Blandina to confess it But Blandina answered them thus How can they suffer any such thing in the exercise of their Religion who do not nourish themselves with flesh that is permitted All this trouble came upon the act of the forementioned hereticks the report was only concerning the blood of an infant not of a man as it must have been if it had been occasioned by the Sacrament but the Sacrament was not so much as thought of in this scrutiny till the examination of the servants gave the hint in the torture of Blandina Cardinal Perron perceiving much detriment likely to come to their doctrine by these Apologies of the primitive Christians upon the 11. anathematism of S. Cyril says that they deny anthropophagy but did not deny Theanthropophagy saying that they did not eat the flesh nor drink the blood of a meer man but of Christ who was God and Man which is so strange a device as I wonder it could drop from the pen of so great a wit For this would have been a worse and more intolerable scandal to affirm that Christians eat their God and sucked his blood and were devourers not only of a man but of an immortal God But however let his fancy be confronted with the extracts of the several apologies which I have now cited and it will appear that nothing of the Cardinals fancy can come near their sence or words for all the business was upon the blood of a child which the Gnosticks had kill'd or the Montanists tormented and the matter of the Sacrament was not in the whole rumour so much as thought upon 15. Lastly Unless there be no one objection of ours that means as it says but all are shadows and nothing is awake but Bellarmine in all his dreams or Perron in all his laborious excuses if we be allowed to be in our wits and to understand Latin or Greek or common sence unless the Fathers must all be understood according to their new nonsence answers which the Primitive Doctors were so far from understanding or thinking of that besides that it is next to impudence to suppose they could mean them their own Doctors in a few ages last past did not know them but opposed and spake some things contrary and many things divers from them I say unless we have neither sense nor reason nor souls like other men it is certain that not one nor two but very many of the Fathers taught our doctrine most expresly in this article and against theirs * And after all whether the testimonies of the Doctors be ancient or modern it is advantage to us and inconvenient for them For if it be ancient it shews their doctrine not to be from the beginning if it be modern it does it more for it declares plainly the doctrine to be but of yesterday now I am very certain I can make it appear not to have been the doctrine of the Church not of any Church whose records we have for above a thousand years together 16. But now in my entry upon the testimonies of Fathers I shall make my way the more plain and credible if I premise the testimonies of some of the Roman Doctors in this business And the first I shall name is Bellarmine himself who was the most wary of giving advantage against himself but yet he says Non esse mirandum c. it is not to be wondred at if S. Austin Theodoret and others of the ancients spake some things which in shew seem to favour the hereticks when even from Jodocus some things did fall which by the adversaries were drawn to their cause Now though he lessens the matter by quaedam and videantur and in speciem seemingly and in shew and some things yet it was as much as we could expect from him with whom visibilitèr if it be on our side must mean invisibilitèr and statuimus must be abrogamus But I rest not here Alphonsus à Castro says more De transubstantiatione panis in corpus Christi rara est in antiquis Scriptoribus mentio The ancient writers seldom mention the change of the substance of bread into
Christ is the blood of Christ so the Sacrament of faith is Now suppose a stranger to the tricks of the Roman Doctors a wise and a discerning man should read these words in S. Austin and weigh them diligently and compare them with all the adjacent words and circumstances of the place I would desire reasonably to be answered on which side he would conclude S. Austin to be if in any other place he speaks words contrary that is his fault or forgetfulness but if the contrary had been the doctrine of the Church he could never have so forgotten his Religion and Communion as so openly to have declared a contrary sence to the same Article Non hoc corpus quod videtis manducaturi estis c. You are not to eat this body which you see so he brings in Christ speaking to his disciples or to drink that blood which my crucifiers shall pour forth I have commended to you a Sacrament which being spiritually understood shall quicken you and Christ brought them to a banquet in which he commended to his disciples the figure of his body and blood * For he did not doubt to say This is my body when he gave the sign of his body * Quod ab omnibus sacrificium appellatur c. That which by all men is called a sacrifice is the sign of the true sacrifice in which the flesh of Christ after his assumption is celebrated by the Sacrament of remembrances But concerning S. Austins doctrine I shall refer him that desires to be further satisfied to no other record than their own Canon Law Which not only from S. Austin but from divers others produces testimonies so many so pertinent so full for our doctrine and against the dream of Transubstantiation that it is to me a wonder why it is not clapped into the Indices expurgatorii for it speaks very many truths beyond the cure of their Glosses which they have changed and altered several times But that this matter concerning S. Austin may be yet clearer his own third book de doctrinâ Christianâ is so plain for us in this question that when Frudegardus in the time of Charles the Bald had upon occasion of the dispute which then began to be hot and interested in this question read this book of S. Austin he was changed to the opinion of a Spiritual and mysterious presence and upon occasion of that his being perswaded by S. Austin Paschasius Ratberdus wrote to him as of a question then doubted of by many persons as is to be seen in his Epistle to Frudegardus I end this of S. Austin with those words of his which he intends by way of rule for expounding these and the like words of Scripture taken out of this book of Christian doctrine Locutio praeceptiva c. A preceptive speech forbidding a crime or commanding something good or profitable is not figurative but if it seems to command a crime or forbid a good then it is figurative Vnless ye eat the flesh of the son of man c. seems to command a wickedness it is therefore a figure commanding us to communicate with the passion of our Lord and sweetly and profitably to lay it up in our memory that his flesh was crucified and wounded for us I shall not need to urge that this holy Sacrament is called Eucharistia carnis sanguinis The Eucharist of the body and blood by Irenaeus Corpus symbolicum typicum by Origen In typo sanguis by S. Jerome similitudo figura typus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 images enigmaes representations expressions exemplars of the Passion by divers others that which I shall note here is this that in the Council of Constantinople it was publickly professed that the Sacrament is not the body of Christ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not by nature but by representment for so it is expounded 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the holy image of it and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Eucharistical bread is the true image of the natural flesh and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A figure or image delivered by God of his flesh and a true image of the incarnate dispensation of Christ. These things are found in the third Tome of the Sixth Action of the second Nicene Council where a pert Deacon ignorant and confident had boldly said that none of the Apostles or Fathers had ever called the Sacrament the image of Christs body that they were called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 antitypes before consecration he grants but after consecration they are called and are and are believed to be the body and blood of Christ properly which I suppose he might have learned of Damascene who in opposition to the Iconoclasts would not endure the word Type or Image to be used concerning the holy Sacrament for they would admit no other image but that he in defiance of them who had excommunicated him for a worshipper of Images and a half Sarazin would admit any Image but that but denied that to be an Image or Type of Christ de fide l. 4. c. 14. For Christ said not This is the Type of my body but it is it But however this new question began to branle the words of Type and Antitype and the manner of speaking began to be changed yet the Article as yet was not changed For the Fathers used the words of Type and Antitype and Image c. to exclude the natural sence of the Sacramental body and Damascene and Anastasius Sinaita and some others of that Age began to refuse those words lest the Sacrament be thought to be nothing of reality nothing but an Image And that this really was the sence of Damascene appears by his words recited in the Acts of the second Council of Nice affirming that the Divine bread is made Christs body by assumption and inhabitation of the Spirit of Christ in the same manner as water is made the laver of regeneration But however they were pleased to speak in the Nicene assembly yet in the Roman Edition of the Councils the Publishers and Collectors were wiser and put on this marginal note 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The holy gifts are oftentimes called types and figures even after consecration particularly by Gregory Nazianzen and S. Cyril of Hierusalem I remember only one thing objected to this testimony of so many Bishops that they were Iconoclasts or breakers of images and therefore not to be trusted in any other Article So Bellarmine as I remember But this is just as if I should say that I ought to refuse the Lateran Council because they were worshippers of Images or defenders of Purgatory Surely if I should I had much more reason to refuse their sentence than there is that the Greeks should be rejected upon so slight a pretence nay for doing that which for ought appears was in all their circumstances their duty in a high
and before the day of Judgment any souls are translated into a state of bliss out of a state of pain that is that from Purgatory they go to heaven before the day of Judgment He that can shew this will teach me what I have not yet learned but he that cannot shew it must not pretend that the Roman Doctrine of Purgatory was ever known to the Ancient Fathers of the Church SECT III. Of Transubstantiation THE purpose of the Dissuasive was to prove the doctrine of Transubstantiation to be new neither Catholick nor Apostolick In order to which I thought nothing more likely to perswade or dissuade than the testimonies of the parties against themselves And although I have many other inducements as will appear in the sequel yet by so earnestly contending to invalidate the truth of the quotations the Adversaries do confess by implication if these sayings be as is pretended then I have evinc'd my main point viz. that the Roman doctrines as differing from us are novelties and no parts of the Catholick faith Thus therefore the Author of the letter begins He quotes Scotus as declaring the doctrine of Transubstantiation is not expressed in the Canon of the Bible which he saith not To the same purpose he quotes Ocham but I can find no such thing in him To the same purpose he quotes Roffensis but he hath no such thing But in order to the verification of what I said I desire it be first observ'd what I did say for I did not deliver it so crudely as this Gentleman sets it down For 1. These words the doctrine of Transubstantiation is not expressed in the Canon of the Bible are not the words of all them before nam'd they are the sence of them all but the words but of one or two of them 2. When I say that some of the Roman Writers say that Transubstantiation is not express'd in the Scripture I mean and so I said plainly as without the Churches declaration to compel us to admit of it Now then for the quotations themselves I hope I shall give a fair account 1. The words quoted are the words of Biel when he had first affirmed that Christs body is contained truly under the bread and that it is taken by the faithful all which we believe and teach in the Church of England he adds Tamen quomodo ibi sit Christi corpus an per conversionem alicujus in ipsum that is the way of Transubstantiation an sine conversione incipiat esse Corpus Christi 〈◊〉 pane manentibus substantia accidentibus panis non invenitur expressum in Canâ—ne Biblii and that 's the way of Consubstantiation so that here is expresly taught what I affirm'd was taught that the Scriptures did not express the Doctrine of Transubstantiation and he adds that concerning this there were Anciently divers opinions Thus far the quotation is right But of this man there is no notice taken But what of Scotus He saith no such thing well suppose that yet I hope this Gentleman will excuse me for Bellarmines sake who says the same thing of Scotus as I do and he might have found it in the Margent against the quotation of Scotus if he had pleas'd His words are these Secondly he saith viz. Scotus that there is not extant any place of Scripture so express without the declaration of the Church that it can compel us to admit of Transubstantiation And this is not altogether improbable For though the Scriptures which we brought above seem so clear to us that it may compel a man that is not wilful yet whether it be so or no it may worthily be doubted since most learned and acute men such as Scotus eminently was believe the contrary Well! But the Gentleman can find no such thing in Ocham I hope he did not look far for Ocham is not the man I mean however the Printer might have mistaken but it is easily pardonable because from O. Cam. meaning Odo Cameracensis it was easie for the Printer or transcriber to write Ocam as being of more publick name But the Bishop of Cambray is the man that followed Scotus in this opinion and is acknowledged by Bellarmine to have said the same that Scotus did he being one of his docti acutissimi viri there mentioned Now if Roffensis have the same thing too this Author of the Letter will have cause enough to be a little ashamed And for this I shall bring his words speaking of the whole institution of the Blessed Sacrament by our blessed Saviour he says Neque ullum hic verbum positum est quo probetur in nostra Missa veram fierâ— carnis sanguinis Christi praesentiam I suppose I need to say no more to verifie these citations but yet I have another very good witness to prove that I have said true and that is Salmeron who says that Scotus out of Innocentius reckons three opinions not of hereticks but of such men who all agreed in that which is the main but he adds Some men and writers believe that this article cannot be proved against a heretick by Scripture alone or reasons alone And so Cajetan is affirm'd by Suarez and Alanus to have said and Melchior Canus perpetuam Mariae virginitatem conversionem panis vini in corpus sanguinem Christi non ita expressa in libris Canonicis invenies sed adeo tamen certa in â—ide sunt ut contrariorum dogmatum authores Ecclesia haereticos judicarit So that the Scripture is given up for no sure friend in this Q. the Article wholly relies upon the authority of the Church viz. of Rome who makes faith and makes heresies as she please But to the same purpose is that also which Chedzy said in his disputation at Oxford In what manner Christ is there whether with the bread Transelemented or Transubstantiation the Scripture in open words tells not But I am not likely so to escape for E. W. talks of a famous or rather infamous quotation out of Peter Lombard and adds foul and uncivil words which I pass by but the thing is this that I said Petrus Lombardus could not tell whether there was a substantial change or no. I did say so and I brought the very words of Lombard to prove it and these very words E. W. himself acknowledges Si autem quaeritur qualis sit ista conversio an formalis an substantialis vel alterius generis definire non sufficio I am not able to define or determine whether that change be formal or substantial So far E. W. quotes him but leaves out one thing very material viz. whether besides formal or substantial it be of another kind Now E. W. not being able to deny that Lombard said this takes a great deal of useless pains not one word of all that he says being to the purpose or able to make it probable that Peter Lombard did not say so or that he did not think so
reported by the Author of the modest discourse And the great Erasmus who liv'd and died in the communion of the Church of Rome and was as likely as any man of his age to know what he said gave this testimony in the present Question In synaxi transubstantiationem sero definivit Ecclesia re nomine veteribus ignotam In the Communion the Church hath but lately defin'd Transubstantiation which both in the thing and in the name was unknown to the Ancients Now this was a fair and friendly inducement to the Reader to take from him all prejudice which might stick to him by the great noises of the Roman Doctors made upon their presence of the Fathers being on their side yet I would not so rely upon these testimonies but that I thought fit to give some little Essay of this doctrine out of the Fathers themselves To this purpose is alledged Justin M. saying of the Eucharist that it was a figure which our Lord commanded to do in remembrance of his Passion These were quoted not as the words but as the doctrine of that Saint and the Letter will needs suppose me to mean those words which are as I find in 259 and 260. page of the Paris edition The oblation of a Cake was a figure of the Eucharistical bread which the Lord commanded to do in remembrance of his Passion These are Justins words in that place with which I have nothing to do as I shall shew by and by But because Cardinal Perron intends to make advantage of them I shall wrest them first out of his hands and then give an account of the doctrine of this holy man in the present Article both out of this place and others 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The oblation of a Cake was a figure of the bread of the Eucharist which our Lord deliver'd us to do therefore says the Cardinal the Eucharistical bread is the truth since the Cake was the figure or the shadow To which I answer that though the Cake was a figure of the Eucharistical bread yet so might that bread be a figure of something else Just as baptism I mean the external rite which although it self be but the outward part and is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or figure of the inward washing by the spirit of grace and represents our being buried with Christ in his death yet it is an accomplishment in some sence of those many figures by which according to the doctrine of the Fathers it was prefigured Such as in S. Peter the waters of the deluge in Tertullian were the waters of Jordan into which Naaman descended in S. Austin the waters of sprinkling These were types and to these baptism did succeed and represented the same thing which they represented and effected or exhibited the thing it did represent and therefore in this sence they prefigur'd baptism And yet that this is but a figure still we have S. Peters warrant The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us not the putting away the filth of the flesh but the answer of a good conscience towards God The waters of the flood were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a type of the waters of baptism the waters of baptism were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is a type answering to a type and yet even here there is a typical representing and signifying part and beyond that there is the veritas or the thing signified by both So it is in the oblation of the Cake and the Eucharistical bread that was a type of this and this the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or correspondent of that a type answering to a type a figure to a figure and both of them did and do respectively represent a thing yet more secret For as S. Austin said these and those are divers in the sign but equal in the thing signified divers in the visible species but the same in the intelligible signification those were promissive and these demonstrative or as others express it those were pronunciative and these of the Gospel are contestative So Friar Gregory of Padua noted in the Council of Trent And that this was the sence of Justin M. appears to him that considers what he says 1. He does not say the Cake is a type of the bread but the oblation of the Cake that is that whole rite of offering a Cake after the Leper was cleansed in token of thankfulness and for his legal purity was a type of the bread of the Eucharist which for the remembrance of the passion which he suffer'd for these men whose minds are purged from all perverseness Jesus Christ our Lord commanded to make or do To do what To do bread or to make bread No but to make bread to be Eucharistical to be a memorial of the Passion to represent the death of Christ so that it is not the Cake and the bread that are the type and the antitype but the oblation of the Cake was the figure and the Celebration of Christs memorial and the Eucharist are the things presignified and prefigur'd But then it remains that the Eucharistical bread is but the instrument of a memorial or recordation which still supposes something beyond this and by this to be figured and represented For as the Apostle says Our Fathers did eat of the same spiritual meat that is they eat Christ but they eat him in figure that is in an external symbol so do we only theirs is abolished and ours succeeds the old and shall abide for ever Nay the very words us'd by Justin M. do evince this it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 when it is an Eucharist it is still but bread and therefore there is a body of which this is but an outward argument a vehicle a channel and conveyance and that is the body of Christ for the Eucharistical bread is both bread and Christs body too For it is a good argument to say this is bread Eucharistical therefore this is bread and if it be bread still it must be a figure of the bread of life and this is that which I affirmed to be the sence of Justin M. The like expression to this is in his second Apology It is not common bread meaning that it is sanctified and made Eucharistical But here it may be the argument will not hold it is not common bread therefore it is bread for I remember that Cardinal Perron hath some instances against this way of arguing For the Dove that descended upon Christs head was not a common Dove and yet it follows not therefore this was a Dove The three that appeared to Abraham were not common men therefore they were men it follows not This is the sophistry of the Cardinal for the confutation of which I have so much Logick left as to prove this to be a fallacy and it will soon appear if it be reduc'd to a regular proposition This bread is not common therefore this bread is extraordinary bread
in two parts of the body which is one and whole and so is but in one place and consequently is but one soul. But if the feet were parted from the body by other bodies intermedial then indeed if there were but one soul in feet and head the Gentleman had spoken to the purpose But here these wafers are two intire wafers separate the one from the other bodies intermedial put between and that which is here is not there and yet of each of them it is affirm'd that it is Christs body that is of two wafers and of two thousand wafers it is at the same time affirm'd of every one that it is Christs body Now if these wafers are substantially not the same not one but many and yet every one of these many is substantially and properly Christs body then these bodies are many for they are many of whom it is said every one distinctly and separately and in it self is Christs body 2. For his comparing the presence of Christ in the wafer with the presence of God in Heaven it is spoken without common wit or sence for does any man say that God is in two places and yet be the same one God Can God be in two places that cannot be in one Can he be determin'd and number'd by places that sills all places by his presence or is Christs body in the Sacrament as God is in the world that is repletivè filling all things alike spaces void and spaces full and there where there is no place where the measures are neither time nor place but only the power and will of God This answer besides that it is weak and dangerous is also to no purpose unless the Church of Rome will pass over to the Lutherans and maintain the Ubiquity of Christs body Yea but S. Austin says of Christ Ferebatur in manibus suis c. he bore himself in his own hands and what then Then though every wafer be Christs body yet the multiplication of wafers does not multiply bodies for then there would be two bodies of Christ when he carried his own body in his hands To this I answer that concerning S. Austins mind we are already satisfied but that which he says here is true as he spake and intended it for by his own rule the similitudes and figures of things are oftentimes called by the name of those things whereof they are similitudes Christ bore his own body in his own hands when he bore the Sacrament of his body for of that also it is true that it is truly his body in a Sacramental spiritual and real manner that is to all intents and purposes of the holy Spirit of God According to the words of S. Austin cited by P. Lombard We call that the body of Christ which being taken from the fruits of the Earth and consecrated by mystick prayer we receive in memory of the Lords Passion which when by the hands of men it is brought on to that visible shape it is not sanctified to become so worthy a Sacrament but by the spirit of God working invisibly If this be good Catholick doctrine and if this confession of this article be right the Church of England is right but then when the Church of Rome will not let us alone in this truth and modesty of confession but impose what is unknown in Antiquity and Scripture and against common sence and the reason of all the world she must needs be greatly in the wrong But as to this question I was here only to justifie the Disswasive I suppose these Gentleman may be fully satisfied in the whole inquiry if they please to read a book I have written on this subject intirely of which hitherto they are pleas'd to take no great notice SECT IV. Of the Half-Communion WHEN the French Embassador in the Council of Trent A. D. 1561. made instance for restitution of the Chalice to the Laity among other oppositions the Cardinal S. Angelo answered that he would never give a cup full of such deadly poison to the people of France instead of a medicine and that it was better to let them die than to cure them with such remedies The Embassador being greatly offended replied that it was not fit to give the name of poison to the blood of Christ and to call the holy Apostles poisoners and the Fathers of the Primitive Church and of that which followed for many hundred years who with much spiritual profit have ministred the cup of that blood to all the people this was a great and a publick yet but a single person that gave so great offence One of the greatest scandals that ever were given to Christendom was given by the Council of Constance which having acknowledged that Christ administred this venerable Sacrament under both kinds of bread and wine and that in the Primitive Church this Sacrament was receiv'd of the faithful under both kinds yet the Council not only condemns them as hereticks and to be punished accordingly who say it is unlawful to observe the custom and law of giving it in one kind only but under pain of excommunication forbids all Priests to communicate the people under both kinds This last thing is so shameful and so impious that A. L. directly denies that there is any such thing which if it be not an argument of the self-conviction of the man and a resolution to abide in his error and to deceive the people even against his knowledge let all the world judge for the words of the Councils decree as they are set down by Carranza at the end of the decree are these Item praecipimus sub pâ—â—na excommunicationis quod nullus presbyter communicet populum sub utraque specie panis vini I need say no more in this affair To affirm it necessary to do in the Sacraments what Christ did is called heresie and to do so is punished with excommunication But we who follow Christ hope we shall communicate with him and then we are well enough especially since the very institution of the Sacrament in both kinds is a sufficient Commandment to minister and receive it in both kinds For if the Church of Rome upon their supposition only that Christ did barely institute confession do therefore urge it as necessary it will be a strange partiality that the confessed institution by Christ of the two Sacramental species shall not conclude them as necessary as the other upon an Unprov'd supposition And if the institution of the Sacrament in both kinds be not equal to a command then there is no command to receive the bread or indeed to receive the Sacrament at all but it is a mere act of supererogation that the Priests do it at all and an act of favour and grace that they give even the bread it self to the Laity But besides this it is not to be endur'd that the Church of Rome only binds her subjects to observe the decree of abstaining from the cup
not cannot profit himself how can he that stands by who understands no more be profited by that which does him that speaks no good For God understands though he does not and yet he that so prays reaps no benefit to himself and therefore neither can any man that understands no more The affirmation is plain and the reason cogent To the same purpose are the words of S. Chrysostom which A. L. himself quotes out of him If one speaks in only the Persian tongue or some other strange tongue but knows not what he saith certainly he will be a barbarian even to himself and not to another only because he knows not the force of the words This is no more than what S. Paul said before him but they all say that he who hears and understands not whether it be the speaker or the scholar is but a Barbarian Thus also S. Ambrose in his Commentary upon the words of S. Paul The Apostle says It is better to speak a few words that are open or understood that all may understand than to have a long oration in obscurity That 's his sence for reading and preaching Now for prayer he adds The unskilful man hearing what he understands not knows not when the prayer ends and answers not Amen that is so be it or it is true that the blessing may be established and a little after If ye meet together to edifie the Church those things ought to be said which the hearers may understand For what profit is it to speak with a tongue when he that hears is not profited Therefore he ought to hold his peace in the Church that they who can profit the hearers may speak S. Austin compares singing in the Church without understanding to the chattering of Parrots and Magpies Crows and Jackdaws But to sing with understanding is by the will of God given to man And we who sing the Divine praises in the Church must remember that it is written Blessed is the people that understands singing of praises Therefore most beloved what with a joyn'd voice we have sung we must understand and discern with a serene heart To the same purpose are the words of Lyra and Aquinas which I shall not trouble the Reader withall here but have set them down in the Margent that the strange confidence of these Romanists out-facing notorious and evident words may be made if possible yet more conspicuous In pursuance of this doctrine of S. Paul and the Fathers the Primitive Christians in their several Ages and Countries were careful that the Bible should be translated into all languages where Christianity was planted That the Bibles were in Greek is notorious and that they were us'd among the people S. Chrysostom homil 1. in Joh. 8. is witness that it was so or that it ought to be so For he exhorts Vacemus ergo scripturis dilectissimi c. Let us set time apart to be conversant in the Scripture at least in the Gospels let us frequently handle them to imprint them in our minds which because the Jews neglected they were commanded to have their books in their hands but let us not have them in our hands but in our houses and in our hearts by which words we may easily understand that all the Churches of the Greek communion had the Bible in their vulgar tongue and were called upon to use them as Christians ought to do that is to imprint them in their hearts and speaking of S. John and his Gospel he says that the Syrians Indians Persians and Ethiopians and infinite other nations 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they grew wise by translating his S. Johns doctrines into their several languages But it is more that S. Austin says The divine Scripture by which help is supplied to so great diseases proceeded from one language which opportunely might be carried over the whole world that being by the various tongues of interpreters scattered far and wide it might be made known to the Nations for their salvation And Theodoret speaks yet more plainly We have manifestly shown to you the inexhausted strength of the Apostolick and prophetick doctrine for the Vniversal face of the Earth whatsoever is under the Sun is now full of those words For the Hebrew books are not only translated into the Greek idiom but into the Roman tongue the Egyptian Persian Indian Armenian Scythian Sauromatick languages and that I may speak once for all into all tongues which at this day the Nations use By these authorities of these Fathers we may plainly see how different the Roman doctrine and practice is from the sentiment and usages of the Primitive Church and with what false confidence the Roman adversaries deny so evident truth having no other way to make their doctrine seem tolerable but by out-facing the known sayings of so many excellent persons and especially of S. Paul who could not speak his mind in apt and intelligible words if he did not in his Epistle to the Corinthians exhort the Church to pray and prophesie so as to be understood by the Catechumens and by all the people that is to do otherwise than they do in the Roman Church Christianity is a simple wise intelligible and easie Religion and yet if a man will resolve against any proposition he may wrangle himself into a puzle and make himself not to understand it so though it be never so plain what is plainer than the testimony of their own Cajetan That it were more for the edification of the Church that the prayers were in the vulgar tongue He says no more than S. Paul says and he could not speak it plainer And indeed no man of sence can deny it unless he affirms at the same time that it is better to speak what we understand not than what we do or that it were better to serve God without that noble faculty than with it that is that the way of a Parrot and a Jackdaw were better than the way of a man and that in the service of God the Priests and the people are to differ as a man and a bird But besides all this was not Latin it self when it was first us'd in Divine service the common tongue and generally understood by many Nations and very many Colonies and if it was then the use of the Church to pray with the understanding why shall it not be so now however that it was so then and is not so now demonstrates that the Church of Rome hath in this material point greatly innovated Let but the Roman Pontifical be consulted and there will be yet found a form of ordination of Readers in which it is said that they must study to read distinctly and plainly that the people may understand But now it seems that labour is sav'd And when a notorious change was made in this affair we can tell by calling to mind the following story The Moravians did say Mass in the Slavonian tongue for
that those who are under our Charges should know the force of the Resurrection of Christ and the conduct of the Spirit and live according to the purity of God and the light of the Gospel To this let us cooperate with all wisdom and earnestness and knowledge and spiritual understanding And there is no better way in the world to do this than by ministring to persons singly in the conduct of their Repentance which as it is the work of every man so there are but few persons who need not the conduct of a spiritual guide in the beginnings and progressions of it To the assistance of this work I have now put my Symbol having by the sad experience of my own miseries and the calamities of others to whose restitution I have been called to minister been taught something of the secret of Souls and I have reason to think that the words of our dearest Lord to S. Peter were also spoken to me Tu autem conversus confirma fratres I hope I have received many of the mercies of a repenting sinner and I have felt the turnings and varieties of spiritual entercourses and I have often observed the advantages in ministring to others and am most confident that the greatest benefits of our office may with best effect be communicated to souls in personal and particular Ministrations In the following book I have given advices and have asserted many truths in order to all this I have endeavoured to break in pieces almost all those propositions upon the confidence of which men have been negligent of severe and strict living I have cancell'd some false grounds upon which many answers in Moral Theologie us'd to be made to inquiries in Cases of Conscience I have according to my weak ability described all the necessities and great inducement of a holy life and have endeavoured to do it so plainly that it may be useful to every man and so inoffensively that it may hurt no man I know but one Objection which I am likely to meet withall excepting those of my infirmity and disability which I cannot answer but by protesting the piety of my purposes but this only that in the Chapter of Original sin I speak otherwise than is spoken commonly in the Church of England whos 's ninth Article affirms that the natural propensity to evil and the perpetual lusting of the flesh against the spirit deserves the anger of God and damnation against which I so earnestly seem to dispute in the sixth Chapter of my Book To this I answer that it is one thing to say a thing in its own nature deserves damnation and another to say it is damnable to all those persons in whom it is subjected The thing it self that is our corrupted nature or our nature of corruption does leave us in the state of separation from God by being unable to bear us to Heaven imperfection of nature can never carry us to the perfections of glory and this I conceive to be all that our Church intends for that in the state of nature we can only fall short of Heaven and be condemn'd to a poena damni is the severest thing that any sober person owns and this I say that Nature alone cannot bring us to God without the regeneration of the Spirit and the grace of God we can never go to Heaven but because this Nature was not spoil'd by Infants but by persons of reason and we are all admitted to a new Covenant of Mercy and Grace made with Adam presently after his fall that is even before we were born as much as we were to a participation of sin before we were born no man can perish actually for that because he is reconcil'd by this He that says every sin is damnable and deserves the anger of God says true but yet some persons that sin of mere infirmity are accounted by God in the rank of innocent persons So it is in this Article Concupiscence remains in the regenerate and yet concupiscence hath the nature of sin but it brings not condemnation These words explain the 〈◊〉 Original imperfection is such a thing as is even in the regenerate and it is of the nature of sin that is it is the effect of one sin and the cause of many but yet it is not daâ—â—ing because as it is subjected in unconsenting persons it loses its own natural venome and relation to guiltiness that is it may of it self in its abstracted nature be a sin and deserve Gods anger viz. in some persons in all them that consent to it but that which will always be in persons that shall never be damned that is in infants and regenerate shall 〈◊〉 damn them And this is the main of what I affirm And since the Church of England intended that Article against the Doctrine of the Pelagians I suppose I shall not be thought to recede from the spirit and sence of the Article though I use differing manners of expression because my way of explicating this question does most of all destroy the Pelagian Heresie since although I am desirous to acquit the dispensation of God and his Justice from my imputation or suspicion of wrong and am loth to put our sins upon the account of another yet I impute all our evils to the imperfections of our nature and the malice of our choice which does most of all demonstrate not only the necessity of Grace but also of Infant Baptism and then to accuse this Doctrine of Pelagianism or any newer name of Heresie will seem like impotency and weakness of spirit but there will be nothing of truth or learning in it And although this Article was penn'd according to the style of the Schools as they then did loâ—e to speak yet the hardest word in it is capable of such a sence as complies with the intendment of that whole sixth Chapter For though the Church of England professes her self fallible and consequently that all her truths may be peaceably improved yet I do think that she is not actually deceiv'd and also that divers eminently learned do consent in my sence of that Article However I am so truly zealous for her honour and peace that I wholly submit all that I say there or any where else to her most prudent judgment And though I may most easily be deceived yet I have given my reasons for what I say and desire to be tried by them not by prejudice and numbers and zeal and if any man resolves to understand the Article in any other sence than what I have now explicated all that I shall say is that it may be I cannot reconcile my Doctrine to his explication it is enough that it is consistent with the Article it self in its best understanding and compliance with the truth it self and the justification of God However he that explicates the Article and thinks it means as he says does all the honour he can to the Authority whose words if he does not understand yet the sanction
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But when Christ had been preached all the obfirmation and obstinacy of mind by which they shut their eyes against that light all that was choice and interest or passion and was to be rescinded by Repentance But Conversion was the word indifferently used concerning the change both of Jews and Gentiles because they both abounded in iniquity and did need this change called by S. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a redemption from all iniquity by S. Peter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a conversion from wickedness 10. In analogy and proportion to these Repentances and Conversions of Jews and Gentiles the Repentances of Christians may be called Conversion We have an instance of the word so used in the case of S. Peter When thou art converted strengthen thy brethren that is when thou art returned from thy folly and sin of denying the Lord do thou confirm thy brethren that they may not fall as thou hast done This is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a conversion from vanity and impiety or injustice when a person of any evil life returns to his duty and his undertaking in Baptism from the unregenerate to the regenerate estate that is from habitual sin to habitual grace But the Repentances of good men for their sins of infirmity or the seldom interruptions of a good life by single falls is not properly Conversion But as the distance from God is from whence we are to retire so is the degree of our Conversion The term from whence is various but the term whither we go is the same All must come to God through Jesus Christ in the measures and strictness of the Evangelical holiness which is that state of Repentance I have been now describing which is A perfect abrenunciation of all iniquity and a sincere obedience in the faith of Jesus Christ which is the result of all the foregoing considerations and usages of words and is further manifested in the following appellatives and descriptions by which Repentance is signified and recommended to us in Scripture 11. I. It is called Reconciliation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We pray you in Christs stead to be reconciled to God that is to be friends with him no longer to stand in terms of distance for every habitual sinner every one that provokes him to anger by his iniquity is his enemy not that every sinner hates God by a direct hate but as obedience is love so disobedience is enmity or hatred by interpretation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 enemies in their mind by wicked works So S. Paul expresses it and therefore the reconciling of these is to represent them holy and unblameable and unreprovable in his sight Pardon of sins is the least part of this reconciliation Our sins and our sinfulness too must be taken away that is our old guilt and the remanent affections must be taken off before we are friends of God And therefore we find this reconciliation press'd on our parts we are reconciled to God not God to us For although the term be relative and so signifies both parts as conjunction and friendship and society and union do yet it pleased the Spirit of God by this expression to signifie our duty expresly and to leave the other to be supposed because if our parts be done whatsoever is on Gods part can never fail And 2. Although this reconciliation begins on Gods part and he first invites us to peace and gave his Son a Sacrifice yet Gods love is very revocable till we are reconciled by obedience and conformity 12. II. It is called Renewing and that either with the connotation of the subject renewed or the cause renewing The renewing of the Holy Ghost and the renewing of the mind or the spirit of the mind The word is exactly the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is a change of mind from worse to better as it is distinguished from the fruits and effects of it So be renewed in your mind that is throw away all your foolish principles and non-sence propositions by which you use to be tempted and perswaded to sin and inform your mind with wise notices and sentences of God That ye put off concerning the old conversation the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts and that ye put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness which is an excellent description of Repentance In which it is observable that S. Paul uses two words more to express the greatness and nature of this change and conversion It is 13. III. A new Creature The new Man Created in Righteousness for the state of Repentance is so great an alteration that in some sence it is greater than the Creation because the things created had in them no opposition to the power of God but a pure capacity obediential but a sinner hath dispositions opposite to the Spirit of Grace and he must unlearn much before he can learn any thing He must die before he can be born Nam quodcunque suis mutatum finibus exit Continuò hoc mors est illius quod fuit anté Lucret. Our sins the body of sin the spirit of uncleanness the old man must be abolished mortified crucified buried our sins must be laid away we must hate the garments spotted with the flesh and our garments must be whitened in the blood of the Lamb our hearts must be purged from an evil conscience purified as God is pure that is as S. Paul expresses it from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit denying or renouncing all ungodliness and worldly lusts 14. And then as the antithesis or consequent of this is when we have laid away our sin and renounced ungodliness We must live godly righteously and soberly in this present world we must not live either to the world or to our selves but to Christ Hic dies aliam vitam adfert alios mores postulat Our manner of life must be wholly differing from our former vanities so that the life which we now live in the flesh we must live by the faith of the Son of God that is according to his Laws and most holy Discipline 15. This is pressed earnestly upon us by those many Precepts of obedience to God to Christ to the holy Gospel to the Truth to the Doctrine of Faith * of doing good doing righteousness doing the truth * serving in the newness of the Spirit * giving our members up as servants of righteousness unto holiness * being holy in all conversations * following after peace with all men and holiness being followers of good works providing things hones◠in the sight of God and men abhorring evil and cleaving to that which is good * perfecting holiness in the fear of God to be perfect in every good work * being filled with the fruits of righteousness walking worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing being
from the severities of Religion let me live by the measures of thy law not by the evil example and disguises of the world Renew a right spirit within me and cast me not away from thy presence lest I should retire to the works of darkness and enter into those horrible regions where the light of thy countenance never shineth II. I AM ashamed O Lord I am ashamed that I have dishonoured so excellent a Creation Thou didst make us upright and create us in innocence And when thou didst see us unable to stand in thy sight and that we could never endure to be judged by the Covenant of works thou didst renew thy mercies to us in the new Covenant of Jesus Christ and now we have no excuse nothing to plead for our selves much less against thee but thou art holy and pure and just and merciful Make me to be like thee holy as thou art holy merciful as our Heavenly Father is merciful obedient as our holy Saviour Jesus meek and charitable temperate and chaste humble and patient according to that holy example that my sins may be pardoned by his death and my spirit renewed by his Spirit that passing from sin to grace from ignorance to the knowledge and love of God and of his Son Jesus Christ I may pass from death to life from sorrow to joy from Earth to Heaven from the present state of misery and imperfection to the glorious inheritance prepar'd for the Saints and Sons of light the children of the new birth the brethren of our Lord and Brother our Judge and our Advocate our Blessed Saviour and Redeemer JESVS Amen A Prayer to be said by a Matron in behalf of her Husband and Family that a blessing may descend upon their posterity I. O Eternal God our most merciful Lord and gracious Father thou art my guide the light of mine eyes the joy of my heart the author of my hope and the object of my love and worshippings thou relievest all my needs and determin'st all my doubts and art an eternal fountain of blessing open and running over to all thirsty and weary souls that come and cry to thee for mercy and refreshment Have mercy upon thy servant and relieve my fears and sorrows and the great necessities of my family for thou alone O Lord canst do it II. FIT and adorn every one of us with a holy and a religious spirit and give a double portion to thy servant my dear Husband Give him a wise heart a prudent severe and indulgent care over the children which thou hast given us His heart is in thy hand and the events of all things are in thy disposition Make it a great part of his care to promote the spiritual and eternal interest of his children and not to neglect their temporal relations and necessities but to provide states of life for them in which with fair advantages they may live chearfully serve thee diligently promote the interest of the Christian family in all their capacities that they may be always blessed and always innocent devout and pious and may be graciously accepted by thee to pardon and grace and glory through Jesus Christ. Amen III. BLESS O Lord my Sons with excellent understandings love of holy and noble things sweet dispositions innocent deportment diligent souls chaste healthful and temperate bodies holy and religious spirits that they may live to thy glory and be useful in their capacities to the servants of God and all their neighbours and the Relatives of their conversation Bless my Daughters with a humble and a modest carriage and excellent meekness a great love of holy things a severe chastity a constant holy and passionate Religion O my God never suffer them to fall into folly and the sad effects of a wanton loose and indiscreet spirit possess their fancies with holy affections be thou the covering of their eyes and the great object of their hopes and all their desires Blessed Lord thou disposest all things sweetly by thy providence thou guidest them excellently by thy wisdom thou unitest all circumstances and changes wonderfully by thy power and by thy power makest all things work for the good of thy servants Be pleased so to dispose my Daughters that if thou shouldest call them to the state of a married life they may not dishonour their Family nor grieve their Parents nor displease thee but that thou wilt so dispose of their persons and the accidents and circumstances of that state that it may be a state of holiness to the Lord and blessing to thy servants And until thy wisdom shall know it fit to bring things so to pass let them live with all purity spending their time religiously and usefully O most blessed Lord enable their dear father with proportionable abilities and opportunities of doing his duty and charities towards them and them with great obedience and duty toward him and all of us with a love toward thee above all things in the world that our portion may be in love and in thy blessings through Jesus Christ our dearest Lord and most gracious Redeemer IV. O MY God pardon thy servant pity my infirmities hear the passionate desires of thy humble servant in thee alone is my trust my heart and all my wishes are towards thee Thou hast commanded me to pray to thee in all needs thou hast made gracious promises to hear and accept me and I will never leave importuning thy glorious Majesty humbly passionately confidently till thou hast heard and accepted the prayer of thy servant Amen dearest Lord for thy mercy sake hear thy servant Amen TO The Right Reverend Father in God JOHN WARNER D.D. and late Lord Bishop of Rochester MY LORD I NOW see cause to wish that I had given to your Lordship the trouble of reading my papers of Original Sin before their publication for though I have said all that which I found material in the Question yet I perceive that it had been fitting I had spoken some things less material so to prevent the apprehensions that some have of this doctrine that it is of a sence differing from the usual expressions of the Church of England However my Lord since your Lordship is pleased to be careful not only of truth and Gods glory but desirous also that even all of us should speak the same thing and understand each other without Jealousies or severer censures I have now obeyed your Counsel and done all my part towards the asserting the truth and securing charity and unity Professing with all truth and ingenuity that I would rather die than either willingly give occasion or countenance to a Schism in the Church of England and I would suffer much evil before I would displease my dear Brethren in the service of Jesus and in the ministeries of the Church But as I have not given just cause of offence to any so I pray that they may not be offended unjustly lest the fault lie on them whose persons I so much love
as to agree with Scripture and reason and as may best glorifie God and that they require it I will not pretend to believe that those Doctors who first fram'd the Article did all of them mean as I mean I am not sure they did or that they did not but this I am sure that they fram'd the words with much caution and prudence and so as might abstain from grieving the contrary minds of differing men And I find that in the Harmony of confessions printed in Cambridge 1586 and allowed by publick Authority there is no other account given of the English confession in this Article but that every Person is born in sin and leadeth his life in sin and that no body is able truly to say his heart is clean That the most righteous person is but an unprofitable servant That the Law of God is perfect and requireth of us perfect and full obedience that we are able by no means to fulfill that Law in this worldly life that there is no mortal Creature which can be justified by his own deserts in God's sight Now this was taken out of the English Confession inserted in the General Apology written in the year 1562 in the very year the Articles were fram'd I therefore have reason to believe that the excellent men of our Church Bishops and Priests did with more Candor and Moderation opine in this Question and therefore when by the violence and noises of some parties they were forced to declare something they spake warily and so as might be expounded to that Doctrine which in the General Apology was their allowed sence However it is not unusual for Churches in matters of difficulty to frame their Articles so as to serve the ends of peace and yet not to endanger truth or to destroy liberty of improving truth or a further reformation And since there are so very many Questions and Opinions in this point either all the Dissenters must be allowed to reconcile the Article and their Opinion or must refuse her Communion which whosoever shall inforce is a great Schismatick and an Uncharitable Man This only is certain that to tye the Article and our Doctrine together is an excellent art of peace and a certain signification of obedience and yet is a security of truth and that just liberty of Understanding which because it is only God's subject is then sufficiently submitted to Men when we consent in the same form of words The Article is this Original Sin standeth not in the following of Adam as the Pelagians do vainly talk 28. THE following of Adam that is the doing as he did is actual sin and in no sence can it be Original sin for that is as vain as if the Pelagians had said the second is the first and it is as impossible that what we do should be Adam's sin as it is unreasonable to say that his should be really and formally our sin Imitation supposes a Copy and those are two termes of a Relation and cannot be coincident as like is not the same But then if we speak of Original sin as we have our share in it yet cannot our imitation of Adam be it possibly it may be an effect of it or a Consequent But therefore Adam's sin did not introduce a necessity of sinning upon us for if it did Original sin would be a fatal curse by which is brought to pass not only that we do but that we cannot choose but follow him and then the following of Adam would be the greatest part of Original sin expresly against the Article 29. But it is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every Man The fault vitium Naturae so it is in the Latine Copyes not a sin properly Non talia sunt vitia quae jam peccata dicenda sunt but a disease of the Soul as blindness or crookedness that is it is an imperfection or state of deficiency from the end whither God did design us we cannot with this nature alone go to Heaven for it having been debauch'd by Adam and disrobed of all its extraordinaries and graces whereby it was or might have been made fit for Heaven it is returned to its own state which is perfect in its kind that is in order to all natural purposes but imperfect in order to supernatural whither it was design'd The case is this The eldest Son of Craesus the Lydian was born dumb and by the fault of his Nature was unfit to govern the Kingdom therefore his Father passing him by appointed the Crown to his younger Brother But he in a Battail seeing his Father in danger to be slain in Zeal to save his Fathers life strain'd the ligatures of his tongue till that broke which bound him by returning to his speech he returned to his title We are born thus imperfect unfit to raign with God for ever and can never return to a title to our inheritance till we by the grace of God be redintegrate and made perfect like Adam that is freed from this state of imperfection by supernatural aides and by the grace of God be born again Corruption This word is exegetical of the other and though it ought not to signifie the diminution of the powers of the soul not only because the powers of the soul are not corruptible but because if they were yet Adams sin could not do it since it is impossible that an act proper to a faculty should spoil it of which it is rather perfective and an act of the will can no more spoil the will than an act of understanding can lessen the understanding Yet this word Corruption may mean a spoiling or disrobing our Nature of all its extraordinary investitures that is supernatural gifts and graces a Comparative Corruption so as Moses's face when the light was taken from it or a Diamond which is more glorious by a reflex ray of the Sun when the light was taken off falls into darkness and yet loses nothing of its Nature But Corruption relates to the body not to the soul and in this Article may very properly and aptly be taken in the same sence as it is used by S. Paul 1 Cor. 15. The body is sown in Corruption that is in all the effects of its mortality and this indeed is a part of Original sin or the effect of Adams sin it introduc'd Natural Corruption or the affections of mortality the solemnities of death for indeed this is the greatest parth of Original sin Fault and Corruption mean the Concupiscence and Mortality Of the Nature of every man This gives light to the other and makes it clear it cannot be in us properly a sin for sin is an affection of persons not of the whole Nature for an Universal cannot be the subject of circumstances and particular actions and personal proprieties as humane Nature cannot be said to be drunk or to commit adultery now because sin is an action or omission and it is made up of many particularities it cannot be
that but it takes away the formality of it it is not a punishment to such but a Condition of Nature as it is to Infants For that even to them also there is no condemnation for their Original Concupiscence is Undeniable and demonstratively Certain upon this account Because even the actual desires and little Concupiscences of children are innocent and therefore much more their natural tendencies and inclinations For if a principle be criminal if a faculty be a sin much more are the acts of that faculty also a sin but if these be innocent then much more is that 40. Yet the Apostle does confess that Concupiscence and Lust hath of it self the Nature of sin Of it self that is it is in the whole kind to be reproved it is not a sin to all persons not to unconsenting persons for if it be no sin to them that resist then neither is it a sin to them that cannot consent But it hath the Nature of sin that is it is the material part of sin a principle and root from whence evil may spring according to S. Austins words Modo quodam loquendi vocatur peccatum quod peccato factum est peccati si vicerit facit reum S. Aug. lib. 1. de nup. Concup c. 23. Just as if a Man have a Natural thirst it may tempt him and is apt to incline him to drunkenness if he be of a sanguine disposition it disposes him to lust if cholerick to anger and is so much a sin as the fuel is a part of the fire but because this can be there where damnation shall not enter this Nature of sin is such as does not make a proper Guiltiness for it is a contradiction to say the sin remains and the guilt is taken away For he that hath a sin is guilty of punishment for that is he is liable to it if God pleases he may pardon if he please but if he pardons he takes away the sin For in the justified no sin can be inherent or habitual Quomodo justificati sanctificati sumus si peccatum aliquod in nobis relinquitur Hieron ad Oceanum If Concupiscence be an inherent sin in us before baptism it must either be taken away by baptism or imputed to us after baptism for if the malice remains the guilt cannot go away for God will by no means justifie the remaining sinner 41. These things I have chose to say and publish because I find that the usual doctrines about Original sin are not only false and presum'd without any competent proof but because as they are commonly believ'd they are no friends to piety but pretences of idleness and dishonourable to the reputation of Gods goodness and justice for which we ought to be very zealous when a greater indifference would better become us in the matter of our opinion or the doctrine of our sect and therefore it is not to be blam'd in me that I move the thoughts of men in the proposition for it is not an useless one but hath its immediate effects upon the Honour of God and the next upon the lives of men And therefore this hath in it many degrees of necessary doctrine and the fruits of it must needs do more than make recompence for the trouble I put them to in making new inquiries into that doctrine concerning which they were so long at ease But if men of a contrary judgment can secure the interests and advantages of piety and can reconcile their usual doctrines of Original sin with Gods justice and goodness and truth I shall be well pleased with it and think better of their doctrine than now I can But until that be done they may please to consider that there is in Holy Scripture no sign of it nor intimation that at the day of Judgment Christ shall say to any Go ye cursed sons of Adam into everlasting fire because your Father sinn'd and though I will pardon millions of sins which men did chuse and delight in yet I will severely exact this of you which you never did chuse nor could delight in this I say is not likely to be in the event of things and in the wise and merciful dispensation of God especially since Jesus Christ himself so far as appears never spake one word of it there is not any tittle of it in all the four Gospels it is a thing of which no warning was or could be given to any of Adams children it is not mention'd in the old Testament for that place of David in the 51. Psalm Clemens Alexandrinus and others of the Fathers snatch from any pretence to it and that one time where it is spoken of in the New Testament there is nothing said of it but that it is imputed to us to this purpose only that it brought in death temporal and why such Tragedies should be made of it and other places of Scripture drawn by violence to give countenance to it and all the systemes of Divinity of late made to lean upon this Article which yet was never thought to be fundamental or belonging to the foundation was never put into the Creed of any Church but is made the great support of new and strange propositions even of the fearful decree of absolute reprobation and yet was never consented in or agreed upon what it was or how it can be conveyed and was in the late and modern sence of it as unknown to the Primitive Church as it was to the Doctors of the Jews that is wholly unknown to them both why I say men should be so fierce in their new sence of this Article and so impatient of contradiction it is not easie to give a reasonable account For my own particular I hope I have done my duty having produced Scriptures and Reasons and the best Authority against it Qui potest capere capiat For I had a good spirit yea rather being good I came into a body undefiled Wisd. 8.19 20. CHAP. VIII Of Sins of Infirmity SECT I. 1. ALL Mankind hath for ever complain'd of their irremediable calamity their propensity to sin For though by the dictates of Nature all people were instructed in the general notices of vertue and vice right reason being our rule insomuch that the old Philosophers as Plutarch reports said that vertue was nothing else but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a disposition and force of reason And this reason having guided the wisest was form'd into laws for others yet this reason serv'd to little other purposes but to upbraid our follies and infelicities and to make our actions punishable by representing them to be unreasonable for they did certainly sin and they could no more help it than they could prevent their being sick or hungry or angry or thirsty Nature had made organs for some and senses for others and conversation and example brought in all So that if you reprov'd a Criminal he heard and understood you but could not helpt it as Laius in the Tragedy 〈◊〉
because they could not put to death Sejanus's daughters as being Virgins defloured them after sentence that by that barbarity they might be capable of the utmost Cruelty it makes God to be all that for which any other thing or person is or can be hated for it makes him neither to be good nor just nor reasonable but a mighty enemy to the biggest part of mankind it makes him to hate what himself hath made and to punish that in another which in himself he decreed should not be avoided it charges the wisdom of God with solly as having no means to glorifie his justice but by doing unjustly by bringing in that which himself hates that he might do what himself loves doing as Tiberius did to Brutus and Nero the Sons of Germanicus Variâ fraude induxit ut concitarentur ad convitia concitati perderentur provoking them to rail that he might punish their reproachings This opinion reproaches the words of the Spirit of Scripture it charges God with Hypocrisie and want of Mercy making him a Father of Cruelties not of Mercy and is a perfect overthrow of all Religion and all Laws and all Government it destroys the very being and nature of all Election thrusting a man down to the lowest form of Beasts and Birdâ— to whom a Spontaneity of doing certain actions is given by God but it is in them so natural that it is unavoidable Now concerning this hoâ—rid opinion I for my part shall say nothing but this That he that says there was no such man as Alexander would tell a horrible lie and be injurious to all story and to the memory and same of that great Prince but he that should say It is true there was such a man as Alexander but he was a Tyrant and a Blood-sucker cruel and injurious false and dissembling an enemy of mankind and for all the reasons of the world to be hated and reproached would certainly dishonour Alexander more and be his greatest enemy So I think in this That the Atheists who deny there is a God do not so impiously against God as they that charge him with foul appellatives or maintain such sentences which if they were true God could not be true But these men Madam have nothing to do in the Question of Original Sin save only that they say that God did decree that Adam should fall and all the sins that he sinned and all the world after him are no effects of choice but of predestination that is they were the actions of God rather than man But because these men even to their brethren seem to speak evil things of God therefore the more wary and temperate of the Calvinists bring down the order of reprobation lower affirming that God looked upon all mankind in Adam as fallen into his displeasure hated by God truly guilty of his sin liable to Eternal damnation and they being all equally condemned he was pleased to separate some the smaller number far and irresistibly bring them to Heaven but the far greater number he passed over leaving them to be damned for the sin of Adam and so they think they salve Gods Justice and this was the design and device of the Synod of Dort Now to bring this to pass they teach concerning Original Sin 1. That by this sin our first Parents fell from their Original righteousness and communion with God and so became dead in sin and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body 2. That whatsoever death was due to our first Parents for this sin they being the root of all mankind and the guilt of this sin being imputed the same is conveyed to all their posterity by ordinary generation 3. That by this Original corruption we are utterly indisposed disabled and made opposite to all good and wholly inclined to all evil and that from hence proceed all actual transgressions 4. This corruption of nature remains in the regenerate and although it be through Christ pardoned and mortified yet both it self and all the motions thereof are truly and properly sin 5. Original sin being a transgression of the righteous Law of God and contrary thereunto doth in its own nature bring guilt upon the sinner whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God and curse of the Law and so made subject to death with all miseries spiritual temporal and eternal These are the sayings of the late Assembly at Westminster Against this heap of errors and dangerous propositions I have made my former discoursings and statings of the Question of Original sin These are the Doctrines of the Presbyterian whose face is towards us but it is over-against us in this and many other questions of great concernment Nemo tam propè proculque nobis He is nearest to us and furthest from us but because I have as great a love to their persons as I have a dislike to some of their Doctrines I shall endeavour to serve truth and them by reproving those propositions which make truth and them to stand at distance Now I shall first speak to the thing in general and its designs then I shall make some observations upon the particulars 1. This device of our Presbyterians and of the Synod of Dort is but an artifice to save their proposition harmless and to stop the out-cries of Scripture and reason and of all the World against them But this way of stating the Article of reprobation is as horrid in the effect as the other For 1. Is it by a natural consequent that we are guilty of Adams sin or is it by the decree of God Naturally it cannot be for then the sins of all our forefathers who are to their posterity the same that Adam was to his must be ours and not only Adams first sin but his others are ours upon the same account But if it be by the Decree of God by his choice and constitution that it should be so as Mr. Calvin and Dr. Twisse that I may name no more for that side do expresly teach it follows that God is the Author of our Sin So that I may use Mr. Calvins words How is it that so many Nations with their Children should be involved in the fall without remedy but because God would have it so And if that be the matter then to God as to the cause must that sin and that damnation be accounted And let it then be considered whether this be not as bad as the worst For the Supralapsarians say God did decree that the greatest part of mankind should perish only because he would The Sublapsarians say that God made it by his decree necessary that all we who were born of Adam should be born guilty of Original Sin and he it was who decreed to damn whom he pleased for that sin in which he decreed they should be born and both these he did for no other consideration but because he would Is it not therefore evident that he absolutely decreed Damnation to these Persons
For he that decrees the end and he that decrees the only necessary and effective means to the end and decrees that it shall be the end of that means does decree absolutely alike though by several dispensations And then all the evil consequents which I reckoned before to be the monstrous productions of the first way are all Daughters of the other and if Solomon were here he could not tell which were the truer Mother Now that the case is equal between them 〈◊〉 of their own chiefest do confess so Dr. Twisse If God may ordain Men to Hell for Adam's sin which is derived unto them by Gods only constitution He may as well do it abâ—olutely without any such constitutions The same also is affirmed by Maccovius and by Mr. Calvin And the reason is plain for he that does a thing for a reason which himself makes may as well do it without a reason Or he may make his own Will to be the reason because the thing and the motive of the thing come in both cases equally from the same principle and from that alone Now Madam be pleased to say whether I had not reason and necessity for what I have taught You are a happy Mother of a fair and hopeful Posterity your Children and Nephews are dear to you as your right eye and yet you cannot love them so well as God loves them and it is possible that a Mother should forget her Children yet God even then will not cannot but if our Father and Mother forsake us God taketh us up Now Madam consider could you have found in your heart when the Nurses and Midwives had bound up the heads of any of your Children when you had born them with pain and joy upon your knees could you have been tempted to give command that murderers should be brought to stay them alive to put them to exquisite tortures and then in the midst of their saddest groans throw any one of them into the flames of a fierce fire for no other reason but because he was born at London or upon a Friday when the Moon was in her prime or for what other reason you had made and they could never avoid Could you have been delighted in their horrid shrieks and out-cries or have taken pleasure in their unavoidable and their intolerable calamity Could you have smiled if the hangman had snatched your eldest Son from his Nurses breasts and dashed his brains out against the pavement and would you not have wondred that any Father or Mother could espy the innocence and pretty smiles of your sweet babes and yet tear their limbs in pieces or devise devilish artifices to make them roar with intolerable convulsions Could you desire to be thought good and yet have delighted in such cruelty I know I may answer for you you would first have died your self And yet I say again God loves mankind better than we can love one another and he is essentially just and he is infinitely merciful and he is all goodness and therefore though we might possibly do evil things yet he cannot and yet this doctrine of the Presbyterian reprobation says he both can and does things the very apprehension of which hath caused many in despair to drown or hang themselves Now if the Doctrine of absolute Reprobation be so horrid so intolerable a proposition so unjust and blasphemous to God so injurious and cruel to men and that there is no colour or pretence to justifie it but by pretending our guilt of Adams sin and damnation to be the punishment Then because from truth nothing but truth can issue that must needs be a lie from which such horrid consequences do proceed For the case in short is this If it be just for God to damn any one of Adam's Posterity for Adam's sin then it is just in him to damn all for all his Children are equally guilty and then if he spares any it is Mercy And the rest who perish have no cause to complain But if all these fearful consequences which Reason and Religion so much abhor do so certainly follow from such doctrines of Reprobation and these doctrines wholly â—ely upon this pretence it follows that the pretence is infinitely false and intolerable and that so far as we understand the rules and measures of justice it cannot be just for God to damn us for being in a state of calamity to which state we entred no way out by his constitution and decree You see Madam I had reason to reprove that doctrine which said It was just in God to damn us for the sin of Adam Though this be the main error yet there are some other collateral things which I can by no means approve such is that 1. That by the Sin of Adam our Parents became wholly defiled in all the faculties and Powers of their souls and bodies And 2. That by this we also are disabled and made opposite to all good and wholly inclined to all evil And 3. That from hence proceed all actual transgressions And 4. That our natural corruption in the regenerate still remains though it be pardoned and mortified and is still properly a sin Against this I opposed these Propositions That the effect of Adams sin was in himself bad enough for it devested him of that state of grace and favour where God placed him it threw him from Paradise and all the advantages of that place it left him in the state of Nature but yet his nature was not spoiled by that sin he was not wholly inclined to all evil neither was he disabled and made opposite to all good only his good was imperfect it was natural and fell short of Heaven for till his nature was invested with a new nature he could go no further than the design of his first Nature that is without Christ without the Spirit of Christ he could never arrive at Heaven which is his supernatural condition But 1. There still remained in him a natural freedom of doing good or evil 2. In every one that was born there are great inclinations to some good 3. Where our Nature was a verse to good it is not the direct sin of Nature but the imperfection of it the reason being because God superinduced Laws against our natural inclination and yet there was in nature nothing sufficient to make us contradict our nature in obedience to God all that being to come from a supernatural and Divine principle These I shall prove together for one depends upon another 1. And first That the liberty of will did not perish to mankind by the fall of Adam is so evident that S. Austin who is an adversary in some parts of this Question but not yet by way of Question and confidence asks Quis autem nostrûm dicat quod primi hominis peccato perierit liberum arbitrium de humano genere Which of us can say That the liberty of our Will did perish by the sin of the first Man And he adds
appetites of the body and its desires whether reasonable or excessive and though these things were not direct sins to us in their natural abode and first principle yet they are proper inherent miseries and principles of sin to us in their emanation But from this state Christ came to redeem us all by his grace and by his spirit by his life and by his death by his Doctrine and by his Sacraments by his Promises and by his Revelations by his Resurrection and by his Ascension by his Interceding for us and Judging of us and if this be not a conjugation of glorious things great enough to amaze us and to merit from us all our services and all our love and all the glorifications of God I am sure nothing can be added to it by any supposed need of which we have no revelation There is as much done for us as we could need and more than we could ask Nempe quod optanti Divûm promittere nemo Auderet volvenda dies en attulit ultro Vivite foelices animae quibus est fortuna peracta Jam sua The meaning of which words I render or at least recompence with the verse of a Psalm To thee O Lord I 'le pay my vow My knees in thanks to thee shall bow For thou my life keep'st from the grave And dost my feet from falling save That with the living in thy sight I may enjoy eternal light For thus what Ahasuerus said to Ester Veteres literas muta Change the old Letters is done by the birth of our Blessed Saviour Eva is changed into Ave and although it be true what Bensirach said From the woman is the beginning of sin and by her we all die yet it is now changed by the birth of our Redeemer From a woman is the beginning of our restitution and in him we all live Thus are all the four quarters of the World renewed by the second Adam 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The East West North and South are represented in the second Adam as well as the first and rather and to better purposes because if sin did abound Grace shall super-abound I have now Madam given to you such accounts as I hope being added to my other Papers may satisfie not only your Ladiship but those to whom this account may be communicated I shall only now beg your patience since you have been troubled with Questions and enquiries and objections and little murmurs to hear my answers to such of them as have been brought to me 1. I am complained of that I would trouble the World with a new thing which let it be never so true yet unless it were very useful will hardly make recompence for the trouble I put the world to in this inquiry I answer that for the newness of it I have already given accounts that the Opinions which I impugne as they are no direct parts of the Article of Original sin so they are newer than the truth which I have asserted But let what I say seem as new as the Reformation did when Luther first preached against Indulgences the pretence of Novelty did not and we say ought not to have affrighted him and therefore I ought also to look to what I say that it be true and the truth will prove its age But to speak freely Madam though I have a great reverence for Antiquity yet it is the prime antiquity of the Church the Ages of Martyrs and Holiness that I mean and I am sure that in them my opinion hath much more warrant than the contrary But for the descending Ages I give that veneration to the great names of them that went before us which themselves gave to their Predecessors I honour their memory I read their Books I imitate their piety I examine their arguments for therefore they did write them and where the reasons of the Moderns and theirs seem equal I turn the balance on the elder side and follow them but where a scruple or a grain of reason is evidently in the other balance I must follow that Nempe qui ante nos ista moverunt non Domini nostri sed Duces sunt Seneca Ep. 33. They that taught of this Article before me are good guides but no Lords and Masters for I must acknowledge none upon earth for so am I commanded by my Master that is in Heaven and I remember what we were taught in Palingenius when we were boys Quicquid Aristoteles vel quivis dicat eorum Dicta nihil moror à vero cum fortè recedunt Saepe graves magnosque viros famâque verendos Errare labi contingit plurima secum Ingenia in tenebras consueti nominis alti Authores ubi connivent deducere easdem If Aristotle be deceiv'd and say that 's true What nor himself nor others ever knew I leave his text and let his Scholars talk Till they be hoarse or weary in their walk When wise men erre though their fame ring like Bells I scape a danger when I leave their spells For although they that are dead some Ages before we were born have a reverence due to them yet more is due to truth that shall never die and God is not wanting to our industry any more than to theirs but blesses every Age with the understanding of his truths Aetatibus omnibus omnibus hominibus communis sapientia est nec illam ceu peculium licet antiquitati gratulari All Ages and all men have their advantages in their enquiries after truth neither is wisdom appropriate to our Fathers And because even wise men may be deceived and therefore that when I find it or suppose it so for that 's all one as to me and my duty I must go after truth where-ever it is certainly it will be less expected from me to follow the popular noises and the voices of the people who are not to teach us but to be taught by us and I believe my self to have reason to complain when men are angry at a doctrine because it is not commonly taught that is when they are impatient to be taught a truth because most men do already believe a lie Recti apud nos locum tenet error ubi publicus factus est so Seneca Epist. 123. complained in his time it is a strange title to truth which error can pretend for its being publick and we refuse to follow an unusual truth Quasi honestius sit quiafrequentius and indeed it were well to do so in those propositions which have no truth in them but what they borrow from mens opinions and are for nothing tolerable but that they are usual Object 2. But what necessity is there in my publication of this doctrine supposing it were true for all truths are not to be spoken at all times and if a truth gives offence it is better to let men alone than to disturb the peace I answer with the labouring mans Proverb a Penny-worth of ease is worth a Penny at any time and a little truth
is worth a little Peace every day of the week and caeteris paribus Truth is to be preferred before Peace not every trifling truth to a considerable peace But if the truth be material it makes recompence though it brings a great noise along with it and if the breach of Peace be nothing but that men talk in Private or declaim a little in publick truly Madam it is a very pitiful little proposition the discovery of which in truth will not make recompence for the pratling of disagreeing Persons Truth and Peace make an excellent yoke but the truth of God is always to be preferred before the Peace of men and therefore our Blessed Saviour came not to send Peace but a Sword That is he knew his Doctrine would cause great divisions of heart but yet he came to perswade us to Peace and Unity Indeed if the truth be clear and yet of no great effect in the lives of men in government o◠in the honour of God then it ought not to break the Peace That is it may not run out of its retirement to disquiet them to whom their rest is better than that knowledge But if it be brought out already it must not be deserted positively though peace goes away in its stead So that Peace is rather to be deserted than any truth should be renounced or denied but Peace is rather to be procured or continued than some Truth offered This is my sence Madam when the case is otherwise than I suppose it to be at present For as for the present case there must be two when there is a falling out or a peace broken and therefore I will secure it now for let any man dissent from me in this Article I will not be troubled at him he may do it with liberty and with my charity If any man is of my opinion I confess I love him the better but if he refuses it I will not love him less after than I did before but he that dissents and reviles me must expect from me no other kindness but that I forgive him and pray for him and offer to reclaim him and that I resolve nothing shall ever make me either hate him or reproach him And that still in the greatest of his difference I refuse not to give him the Communion of a Brother I believe I shall be chidden by some or other for my easiness and want of fierceness which they call Zeal but it is a fault of my nature a part of my Original sin Vnicuique dedit vitium Natura Creato Mî Natura aliquid semper amare dedit Propert. Some weakness to each man by birth descends To me too great a kindness Nature lends But if the peace can be broken no more than thus I suppose the truth which I publish will do more than make recompence for the noise that in Clubs and Conventicles is made over and above So long as I am thus resolved there may be injury done to me but there can be no duel or loss of Peace abroad For a single anger or a displeasure on one side is not a breach of Peace on both and a War cannot be made by fewer than a bargain can in which always there must be two at least Object 3. But as to the thing If it be inquired 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what profit what use what edification is there what good to souls what honour to God by this new explication of the Article I answer That the usual Doctrines of Original sin are made the great foundation of the horrible proposition concerning absolute Reprobation the consequences of it reproach God with injustice they charge God foolishly and deny his goodness and his Wisdom in many instances And whatsoever can upon the account of the Divine Attributes be objected against the fierce way of Absolute Decrees all that can be brought for the reproof of their usual Propositions concerning Original sin For the consequences are plain and by them the necessity of my Doctrine and its usefulness may be understood For 1. If God decrees us to be born sinners Then he makes us to be sinners and then where is his goodness 2. If God does damn any for that he damns us for what we could not help and for what himself did and then where is his Justice 3. If God sentence us to that Damnation which he cannot in justice inflict where is his Wisdom 4. If God for the sin of Adam brings upon us a necessity of sinning where is our liberty where is our Nature what is become of all Laws and of all Vertue and vice How can Men be distinguished from Beasts or the Vertuous from the vicious 5. If by the fall of Adam we are so wholly ruined in our faculties that we cannot do any good but must do evil how shall any man take care of his ways or how can it be supposed he should strive against all vice when he can excuse so much upon his Nature or indeed how shall he strive at all For if all actual sins are derived from the Original and which is unavoidable and yet an Unresistible cause then no man can take care to avoid any actual sin whose cause is natural and not to be declined And then where is his Providence and Government 6. If God does cast Infants into Hell for the sin of others and yet did not condemn Devils but for their own sin where is his love to mankind 7. If God chuseth the death of so many Millions of Persons who are no sinners upon their own stock and yet swears that he does not love the death of a sinner viz. sinning with his own choice how can that he credible he should love to kill Innocents and yet should love to spare the Criminal Where then is his Mercy and where is his Truth 8. If God hath given us a Nature by derivation which is wholly corrupted then how can it be that all which God made is good For though Adam corrupted himself yet in propriety of speaking we did not but this was the Decree of God and then where is the excellency of his providence and Power where is the glory of the Creation Because therefore that God is all goodness and justice and wisdom and love and that he governs all things and all men wisely and holily and according to the capacities of their Natures and Persons that he gives us a wise Law and binds that Law on us by promises and threatnings I had reason to assert these glories of the Divine Majesty and remove the hinderances of a good life since every thing can hinder us from living well but scarcely can all the Arguments of God and man and all the Powers of Heaven and Hell perswade us to strictness and severity Qui serere ingenuum volet agrum Liberet arva priùs fruticibus Falce rubos silicemque resecet Vt novâ fruge gravis Ceres eat Boeth lib. 3. Metr 1. He that will sow his field with hopeful
my life confuting him and though I will not contend with him yet I will die with him in behalf of the Church if God shall call me but for other little things and trifling arrests and little murmurs I value none of it Quid verum atque decent curo rogo omnis in hoc sum Condo compono quod mox depromere possim Nullius addictus jurare in verba Magistri Quo me cunque rapit tempestas deferor I could translate these also into bad English verse as I do the others but that now I am earnest for my liberty I will not so much as confine my self to the measures of feet But in plain English I mean by rehearsing these Latin Verses that although I love every man and value worthy persons in proportion to their labours and abilities whereby they can and do serve God and Gods Church yet I inquire for what is fitting not what is pleasing I search after ways to advantage souls not to comply with humors and Sects and interests and I am tied to no mans private opinion any more than he is to mine if he will bring Scripture and right reason from any topick he may govern me and perswade me else I am free as he is but I hope I am before-hand with him in this question But one thing more I am willing to add By the confession of all the Schools of learning it is taught that Baptism hath infallibly all that effect upon Infants which God design'd and the Church intends to them in the ministery of that Sacrament because Infants cannot ponere obicem they cannot impede the gift of God and they hinder not the effect of Gods Spirit Now all hinderances of the operation of the Sacrament is sin and if sin before the ministration be not morally rescinded it remains and remaining is a disposition contrary to the effect of the Sacrament Every inherent sin is the obex bars the gates that the grace of the Sacrament shall not enter Since therefore Infants do not bar the gates do not hinder the effect of the Sacrament it follows they have no sin inherent in them but imputed only If it be replied that Original sin though it be properly a sin and really inherent yet it does not hinder the effect of the Sacrament I answer then it follows that Original sin is of less malignity than the least actual sin in the world and if so then either by it no man is hated by God to eternal damnation no man is by it an enemy of God a son of wrath an heir of perdition or if he be then at the same time he may be actually hated by God and yet worthily disposed for receiving the grace and Sacrament of Baptism and that sin which of all the sins of the world is supposed to be the greatest and of most universal and parmanent mischief shall do the least harm and is less opposed to Gods grace and indisposes a man less than a single wanton thought or the first consent to a forbidden action which he that can believe is very much in love with his own proposition and is content to believe it upon any terms I end with the words of Lucretius Desine quapropter novitate exterritus ipsâ Expuere ex animo rationem sed magis acri Judicio perpende si tibi vera videtur Dede manus aut si falsa est accingere contrá Fear not to own what 's said because 't is new Weigh well and wisely if the thing be true Truth and not conquest is the best reward 'Gainst falshood only stand upon thy guard Madam I Humbly beg you will be pleased to entertain these Papers not only as a Testimony of my Zeal for Truth and Peace below and for the Honour of God above but also of my readiness to seize upon every occasion whereby I may express my self to be Your most obliged and most Humble Servant in the Religion of the H. Jesus JER TAYLOR An ANSWER to a LETTER Written by the R. R. The Lord Bishop of ROCHESTER Concerning the Chapter of ORIGINAL SIN IN THE VNVM NECESSARIVM R. R. Father and my good Lord YOUR Lordships Letter Dated July 28. I received not till Septemb. 11. it seems R. Royston detained it in his hands supposing it could not come safely to me while I remain a prisoner now in Chepstow-Castle But I now have that liberty that I can receive any Letters and send any for the Gentlemen under whose custody I am as they are careful of their charges so they are civil to my person It was necessary I should tell this to your Lordship that I may not be under a suspicion of neglecting to give accounts in those particulars which with so much prudence and charity you were pleased to represent in your Letter concerning my discourse of Original Sin My Lord In all your Exceptions I cannot but observe your candor and your paternal care concerning me For when there was nothing in the Doctrine but your greater reason did easily see the justice and the truth of it and I am perswaded could have taught me to have said many more material things in confirmation of what I have taught yet so careful is your charity of me that you would not omit to represent to my consideration what might be said by captious and weaker persons or by the more wise and pious who are of a different judgment But my Lord First you are pleased to note that this discourse runs not in the ordinary channel True for if it did it must nurse the popular error but when the disease is Epidemical as it is so much the worse so the extraordinary remedy must be acknowledg'd to be the better And if there be in it some things hard to be understood as it was the fate of S. Paul's Epistles as your Lordship notes out of S. Peter yet this difficulty of understanding proceeds not from the thing it self nor from the manner of handling it but from the indisposition and prepossession of mens minds to the contrary who are angry when they are told that they have been deceived for it is usual with men to be more displeased when they are told they were in error than to be pleased with them who offer to lead them out of it But your Lordship doth with great advantages represent an objection of some captious persons which relates not to the material part of the Question but to the rules of art If there be no such thing as Original Sin transmitted from Adam to his posterity then all that Sixth Chapter is a strife about a shadow a Non ens Ans. It is true my Lord the Question as it is usually handled is so For when the Franciscan and Dominican do eternally dispute about the conception of the Blessed Virgin whether it was with or without Original Sin meaning by way of grace and special exemption this is de non ente for there was no need of any such
which interpretation I follow S. Paul not the Pelagians they who are on the other side of the question follow neither And unless men take in their opinion before they read and resolve not to understand S. Paul in this Epistle I wonder why they should fancy that all that he says sounds that way which they commonly dream of But as men fancy so the Bells will ring But I know your Lordships grave and wiser judgment sees not only this that I have now opened but much beyond it and that you will be a zealous advocate for the truth of God and for the honour of his justice wisdom and mercy That which follows makes me believe your Lordship resolv'd to try me by speaking your own sence in the line and your temptation in the interline For when your Lordship had said that My arguments for the vindication of Gods goodness and justice are sound and holy your hand run it over again and added as abstracted from the case of Original Sin But why should this be abstracted from all the whole Oeconomy of God from all his other dispensations Is it in all cases of the world unjust for God to impute our fathers sins to us unto eternal condemnation and is it otherwise in this only Certainly a man would think this were the more favourable case as being a single act done but once repented of after it was done not consented to by the parties interested not stipulated by God that it should be so and being against all laws and all the reason of the world therefore it were but reason that if any where here much rather Gods justice and goodness should be relied upon as the measure of the event * And if in other cases laws be never given to Ideots and Infants and persons uncapable why should they be given here But if they were not capable of a Law then neither could they be of Sin for where there is no law there is no transgression And is it unjust to condemn one man to Hell for all the sin of a thousand of his Ancestors actually done by them And shall it be accounted just to damn all the world for one sin of one man But if it be said that it is unjust to damn the innocent for the sin of another but the world is not innocent but really guilty in Adam Besides that this is a begging of the question it is also against common sence to say that a man is not innocent of that which was done before he had a being for if that be not sufficient then it is impossible for a man to be innocent And if this way of answer be admitted any man may be damned for the sin of any Father because it may be said here as well as there that although the innocent must not perish for anothers fault yet the Son is not innocent as being in his Fathers loyns when the fault was committed and the law calls him and makes him guilty And if it were so indeed this were so far from being an excuse to say that the Law makes him guilty that this were absolute tyranny and the thing that were to be complain'd of I hope by this time your Lordship perceives that I have no reason to fear that I prevaricate S. Paul's rule 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I only endeavour to understand S. Paul's words and I read them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in proportion to and so as they may not intrench upon the reputation of Gods goodness and justice that 's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be wise unto sobriety But they that do so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as to resolve it to be so whether God be honour'd in it or dishonour'd and to answer all arguments whether they can or cannot be answered and to efform all their Theology to the air of that one great proposition and to find out ways for God to proceed in which he hath never told of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ways that are crooked and not to be insisted in ways that are not right if these men do not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then I hope I shall have less need to fear that I do who do none of these things And in proportion to my security here I am confident that I am unconcern'd in the consequent threatning If any man shall Evangelize 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 any other doctrine than what ye have received something for Gospel which is not Gospel something that ye have not received let him be accursed My Lord if what I teach were not that which we have received that God is just and righteous and true that the soul that sins the same shall die that we shall have no cause to say The Fathers have eaten sowre Grapes and the childrens teeth are set on edge that God is a gracious Father pardoning iniquity and therefore not exacting it where it is not that Infants are from their Mothers wombs beloved of God their Father that of such is the Kingdom of God that he pities those souls who cannot discern the right hand from the left as he declar'd in the case of the Ninevites that to Infants there are special Angels appointed who always behold the face of God that Christ took them in his arms and blessed them and therefore they are not hated by God and accursed heirs of Hell and coheirs with Satan that the Messias was promisâ—d before any children were born as certainly as that Adam sinn'd before they were born that if sin abounds grace does superabound and therefore children are with greater effect involv'd in the grace than they could be in the sin and the sin must be gone before it could do them mischief if this were not the doctrine of both Testaments and if the contrary were then the threatning of S. Paul might well be held up against me but else my Lord to shew such a Scorpion to him that speaks the truth of God in sincerity and humility though it cannot make me to betray the truth and the honour of God yet the very fear and affrightment which must needs seize upon every good man that does but behold it or hear the words of that angry voice shall and hath made me to pray not only that my self be preserved in truth but that it would please God to bring into the way of truth all such as have erred and are deceived My Lord I humbly thank your Lordship for your grave and pious Counsel and kiss the hand that reaches forth so paternal a rod. I see you are tender both of truth and me and though I have not made this tedious reply to cause trouble to your Lordship or to steal from you any part of your precious time yet because I see your Lordship was perswaded induere personam to give some little countenance to a popular error out of jealousie against a less usual truth I thought it my duty to represent to your Lordship such things by which as I can so I ought to
be defended against captious objectors It is hard when men will not be patient of truth because another man offers it to them and they did not first take it in or if they did were not pleas'd to own it But from your Lordship I expect and am sure to find the effects of your piety wisdom and learning and that an error for being popular shall not prevail against so necessary though unobserved truth A necessary truth I call it because without this I do not understand how we can declare Gods righteousness and justifie him with whom unrighteousness cannot dwell But if men of a contrary opinion can reconcile their usual doctrines of Original Sin with Gods justice and goodness and truth I shall be well pleased with it and think better of their doctrine than now I can But until that be done it were well My Lord if men would not trouble themselves or the Church with impertinent contradictions but patiently give leave to have truth advanced and God justified in his sayings and in his judgments and the Church improved and all errors confuted that what did so prosperously begin the Reformation may be admitted to bring it to perfection that men may no longer go quà itur but quà eundum est THE Bishop of ROCHESTER'S Letter TO D r. TAYLOR WITH AN Account of the particulars there given in Charge Worthy Sir LET me request you to weigh that of S. Paul Ephes. 2.5 which are urged by some Ancients and to remember how often he calls Concupiscence Sin whereby it is urg'd that although Baptism take away the guilt as concretively redounding to the person yet the simple abstracted guilt as to the Nature remains for Sacraments are administred to Persons not to Natures I confess I find not the Fathers so fully and plainly speaking of Original Sin till Pelagius had pudled the stream but after this you may find S. Jerome in Hos. saying In Paradiso omnes praevaricati sunt in Adamo And S. Ambrose in Rom. 1.5 Manifestum est omnes peccasse in Adam quasi in massâ ex eo igitur cuncti peccatores quia ex eo sumus omnes and as Greg. 39. Hom. in Ezek. Sine culpâ in mundo esse non potest qui in nundum cum culpâ venit But S. Austin is so frequent so full and clear in his assertions that his words and reasons will require your most judicious examinations and more strict weighing of them He saith Epist. 107. Scimus secundùm Adam nos primâ nativitate contagium mortis contrahere nec liberamur à supplicio mortis aeternae nisi per gratiam renascamur in Christo Id. de verb. Apost Ser. 4. Peccatum à primo homine in omnes homines pertranstit etenim illud peccatum non in fonte mansit sed pertransiit and Rom. 5. ubi â—e invenit venundatum sub peccato trahentem peccatum primi hominis habentem peccatum antequam possis habere arbitrium Id. de praedestin grat c. 2. Si infans unius diei non sit sine peccato qui proprium habere non potuit conficitur ut illud traxerit alienum de quo Apost Per unum hominem peccatum intravit in mundum quod qui negat negat profectò nos esse mortales quoniam mors est poenae peccati Sequitur necesse est poena peccatum Id. enchir c. 9.29 Sola gratia redemptos discernit à perditis quos in unam perditionis massam concreverat ab origine ducta communis contagio Id. de peccator mer. remiss l. 1. c. 3. Concupiscentia carnis peccatum est quia inest illi inobedientia contra dominatum mentis Quid potest aut potuit nasci ex servo nisi servus ideo sicut omnis homo ab Adamo est ita omnis homo per Adamum servus est peccati Rom. 5. Falluntur ergo omnino qui dicunt mortem solam non peccatum transiisse in genus humanum Prosper resp ad articulum Augustino falsò impositum Omnes homines praevaricationis reos damnationi obnoxiâ—s nasci periturosque nisi in Christo renascamur asserimus Tho. 12. q. 8. Secundum fidem Catholicam tenendum est quod primum peccatum primi hominis originaliter transit in posteros propter quod etiam pueri mox nati deferuntur ad baptismum ab interiore culpâ abluendi Contrarium est haeresis Pelag. unde peccatum quod sic à primo parente derivatur dicitur Originale sicut peccatum quod ab animâ derivatur ad membra corporis dicitur actuale Bonavent in 2. sent dist 31. Sicut peccatum actuale tribuitur alicui ratione singularis personae ita peccatum originale tribuitur ratione Naturae corpus infectum traducitur quia persona Adae infecit naturam natura infecit personam Animae enim inficitur à carne per colligantiam quum unita carni traxit ad se alterius proprietates Lombar 2. Sent. dist 31. Peccatum originale per corruptionem carnis in animâ fit in vase enim dignoscitur vitium esse quod vinum accescit If you take into consideration the Covenant made between Almighty God and Adam as relating to his posterity it may conduce to the satisfaction of those who urge it for a proof of Original Sin Now that the work may prosper under your hands to the manifestation of Gods glory the edification of the Church and the satisfaction of all good Christians is the hearty prayer of Your fellow servant in our most Blessed Lord Christ Jesu JO. ROFFENS My Lord I Perceive that you have a great Charity to every one of the sons of the Church that your Lordship refuses not to solicite their objections and to take care that every man be answered that can make objections against my Doctrine but as your charity makes you refuse no work or labour of love so shall my duty and obedience make me ready to perform any commandment that can be relative to so excellent a principle I am indeed sorry your Lordship is thus haunted with objections about the Question of Original Sin but because you are pleas'd to hand them to me I cannot think them so inconsiderable as in themselves they seem for what your Lordship thinks worthy the reporting from others I must think are fit to be answered and returned by me In your Lordships of November 10. these things I am to reply to Let me request you to weigh that of S. Paul Ephes. 2.5 The words are these Even when we were dead in sins God hath quickned us together with Christ which words I do not at all suppose relate to the matter of Original Sin but to the state of Heathen sins habitual Idolatries and impurities in which the world was dead before the great Reformation by Christ. And I do not know any Expositor of note that suspects any other sence of it and the second Verse of that Chapter makes it so certain and plain that it is too visible to insist upon it
and cellars and retirements think that they being upon the defensive those Princes and those Laws that drive them to it are their enemies and therefore they cannot be secure unless the power of the one and the obligation of the other be lessened and rescinded and then the being restrained and made miserable endears the discontented persons mutually and makes more hearty and dangerous Confederations King James of blessed memory in his Letters to the States of the Vnited Provinces dated 6. March 1613. thus wrote Magis autem è re fore si sopiantur authoritate publicâ ità ut prohibeatis Ministros vestros nè eas disputationes in suggestum aut ad plebem ferant ac districtè imperetis ut pacem colant se invicem tolerando in ista opinionum ac sententiarum discrepantia Eóque justiùs videmur vobis hoc ipsum suadere debere quòd neutram comperimus adeò deviam ut non possint cum fidei Christianae veritate cum animarum salute consistere c. The like counsel in the divisions of Germany at the first Reformation was thought reasonable by the Emperour Ferdinand and his excellent Son Maximilian For they had observed that violence did exasperate was unblessed unsuccessfull and unreasonable and therefore they made Decrees of Toleration and appointed tempers and expedients to be drawn up by discreet persons and George Cassander was design'd to this great work and did something towards it And Emanuel Philibert Duke of Savoy repenting of his war undertaken for Religion against the Pedemontans promised them Toleration and was as good as his word As much is done by the Nobility of Polonia So that the best Princes and the best Bishops gave Toleration and Impunities but it is known that the first Persecutions of disagreeing persons were by the Arians by the Circumcellians and Donatists and from them they of the Church took examples who in small numbers did sometime perswade it sometime practise it And among the Greeks it became a publick and authorized practice till the Question of Images grew hot and high for then the Worshippers of Images having taken their example from the Empress Irene who put her son's eyes out for making an Edict against Images began to be as cruel as they were deceived especially being encouraged by the Popes of Rome who then blew the coals to some purpose And that I may upon this occasion give account of this affair in the Church of Rome it is remarkable that till the time of Justinian the Emperour A.D. 525. the Catholicks and Novatians had Churches indifferently permitted even in Rome itself but the Bishops of Rome whose interest was much concerned in it spoke much against it and laboured the eradication of the Novatians and at last when they got power into their hands they served them accordingly but it is observed by Socrates that when the first Persecution was made against them at Rome by Pope Innocent I. at the same instant the Goths invaded Italy and became Lords of all it being just in God to bring a Persecution upon them for true belief who with an incompetent Authority and insufficient grounds do persecute an errour less material in persons agreeing with them in the profession of the same common Faith And I have heard it observed as a blessing upon S. Austin who was so mercifull to erring persons as the greatest part of his life in all senses even when he had twice changed his minde yet to tolerate them and never to endure they should be given over to the Secular power to be killed that the very night the Vandals set down before his City of Hippo to besiege it he died and went to God being as a reward of his mercifull Doctrine taken from the miseries to come And yet that very thing was also a particular issue of the Divine Providence upon that City who not long before had altered their profession into truth by force and now were falling into their power who afterward by a greater force turned them to be Arians But in the Church of Rome the Popes were the first Preachers of force and violence in matters of Opinion and that so zealously that Pope Vigilius suffered himself to be imprisoned and handled roughly by the Emperour Justinian rather then he would consent to the restitution and peace of certain disagreeing persons But as yet it came not so far as Death The first that preached that Doctrine was Dominick the Founder of the Begging Orders of Friers the Friers Preachers in memory of which the Inquisition is intrusted onely to the Friers of his Order And if there be any force in Dreams or truth in Legends as there is not much in either this very thing might be signified by his Mother's dream who the night before Dominick was born dreamed she was brought to bed of a huge Dog with a fire-brand in his mouth Sure enough however his Disciples expound the dream it was a better sign that he should prove a rabid furious Incendiary then any thing else whatever he might be in the other parts of his life in his Doctrine he was not much better as appears in his deportment toward the Albigenses against whom he so preached adeo quidem ut centum haereticorum millia ab octo millibus Catholicorum fusa interfecta fuisse perhibeantur saith one of him and of those who were taken 180 were burnt to death because they would not abjure their Doctrine This was the first example of putting erring persons to death that I find in the Roman Church For about 170 years before Berengarius fell into opinion concerning the blessed Sacrament which they called Heresie and recanted and relapsed and recanted again and fell again two or three times saith Gerson writing against Romant of the Rose and yet he died sicca morte his own natural death and with hope of Heaven and yet Hildebrand was once his Judge which shews that at that time Rome was not come to so great heights of bloudshed In England although the Pope had as great power here as any-where yet there were no executions for matter of Opinion known till the time of Henry the fourth who because he usurped the Crown was willing by all means to endear the Clergy by destroying their enemies that so he might be sure of them to all his purposes And indeed it may become them well enough who are wiser in their generations then the children of light it may possibly serve the policies of evil persons but never the pure and chast dâ—signs of Christianity which admits no bloud but Christ's and the imitating bloud of Martyrs but knows nothing how to serve her ends by persecuting any of her erring Children By this time I hope it will not be thought reasonable to say he that teaches mercy to erring persons teaches indifferency in Religion unless so many Fathers and so many Churches and the best of Emperours and all the world till they were abused by Tyranny
Popery and Faction did teach indifferency For I have shewn that Christianity does not punish corporally persons erring spiritually but indeed Popery does the Donatists and Circumcellians and Arrians and the Itaciani they of old did in the middle Ages the patrons of Images did and the Papists at this day doe and have done ever since they were taught it by their St. Dominick Seventhly And yet after all this I have something more to exempt my self from the clamour of this Objection For let all Errours be as much and as zealously suppressed as may be the Doctrine of the following Discourse contradicts not that but let it be done by such means as are proper instruments of their suppression by Preaching and Disputation so that neither of them breed disturbance by charity and sweetness by holiness of life assiduity of exhortation by the word of God and prayer For these ways are most natural most prudent most peaceable and effectual Onely let not men be hasty in calling every dislik'd Opinion by the name of Heresie and when they have resolved that they will call it so let them use the erring person like a brother not beat him like a dog or convince him with a gibbet or vex him out of his understanding and perswasions And now if men will still say I perswade to indifferency there is no help for me for I have given reasons against it I must bear it as well as I can I am not yet without remedy as they are for patience will help me and reason will not cure them let them take their course and I 'le take mine Only I will take leave to consider this and they would do well to do so too that unless Faith be kept within its own latitude and not call'd out to patrocinate every less necessary Opinion and the interest of every Sect or peevish person and if damnation be pronounced against Christians believing the Creed and living good lives because they are deceived or are said to be deceived in some Opinions less necessary there is no way in the world to satisfie unlearned persons in the choice of their Religion or to appease the unquietness of a scrupulous Conscience For suppose an honest Citizen whose imployment and parts will not enable him to judge the disputes and arguings of great Clerks sees Factions commenced and managed with much bitterness by persons who might on either hand be fit enough to guide him when if he follows either he is disquieted and pronounced damned by the other who also if he be the most unreasonable in his Opinion will perhaps be more furious in his sentence what shall this man do where shall he rest the soal of his foot Vpon the Doctrine of the Church where he lives Well but that he hears declaimed against perpetually and other Churches claim highly and pretend fairly for truth and condemn his Church If I tell him that he must live a good life and believe the Creed and not trouble himself with their disputes or interest himself in Sects and Factions I speak reason because no Law of God ties him to believe more then what is of essential necessity and whatsoever he shall come to know to be revealed by God Now if he believes his Creed he believes all that is necessary to all or of it self and if he do his moral endeavour beside he can do no more toward finding out all the rest and then he is secured But then if this will secure him why do men press farther and pretend every Opinion as necessary and that in so high a degree that if they all said true or any two indeed of them in 500 Sects which are in the world and for ought I know there may be 5000 it is 500 to one but that every man is damned for every Sect damns all but itself and that is damn'd of 499 and it is excellent fortune then if that escape And there is the same reason in every one of them that is it is extreme unreasonableness in all of them to pronounce damnation against such persons against whom clearly and dogmatically Holy Scripture hath not In odiosis quod minimum est sequimur in favoribus quod est maximum saith the Law and therefore we should say any thing or make any excuse that is in any degree reasonable rather then condemn all the world to Hell especially if we consider these two things that we ourselves are as apt to be deceived as any are and that they who are deceived when they used their moral industry that they might not be deceived if they perish for this they perish for what they could not help But however if the best security in the World be not in neglecting all Sects and subdivisions of men and fixing ourselves on points necessary and plain and on honest and pious endeavours according to our several capacities and opportunities for all the rest if I say all this be not through the mercies of God the best security to all unlearned persons and learned too where shall we fix where shall we either have peace or security If you bid me follow your Doctrine you must tell me why and perhaps when you have I am not able to judge or if I be as able as other people are yet when I have judged I may be deceived too and so may you or any man else you bid me follow so that I am not whit the nearer truth or peace And then if we look abroad and consider how there is scarce any Church but is highly charg'd by many adversaries in many things possibly we may see a reason to charge every one of them in some things and what shall we doe then The Church of Rome hath spots enough and all the world is inquisitive enough to find out more and to represent these to her greatest disadvantage The Greek Churches denies the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son If that be false Doctrine she is highly to blame if it be not then all the Western Churches are to blame for saying the contrary And there is no Church that is in prosperity but alters her Doctrine every Age either by bringing in new Doctrines or by contradicting her old which shews that none are satisfied with themselves or with their own Confessions And since all Churches believe themselves fallible that only excepted which all other Churches say is most of all deceived it were strange if in so many Articles which make up their several bodies of Confessions they had not mistaken every one of them in some thing or other The Lutheran Churches maintain Consubstantiation the Zuinglians are Sacramentaries the Calvinists are fierce in the matters of absolute Predetermination and all these reject Episcopacy which the Primitive Church would have made no doubt to have called Heresie The Socinians profess a portentous number of strange Opinions they deny the Holy Trinity and the Satisfaction of our Blessed Saviour The Anabaptists laugh at Paedo-baptism the Ethiopian Churches
are Nestorian Where then shall we fix our confidence or joyn Communion To pitch upon any one of these is to throw the Dice if Salvation be to be had onely in one of them and that every errour that by chance hath made a Sect and is distinguished by a name be damnable If this consideration does not deceive me we have no other help in the midst of these distractions and dis-unions but all of us to be united in that common term which as it does constitute the Church in its being such so it is the Medium of the Communion of Saints and that is the Creed of the Apostles and in all other things an honest endeavour to find out what Truths we can and a charitable and and mutual permission to others that disagree from us and our Opinions I am sure this may satisfie us for it will secure us but I know not any thing else that will and no man can be reasonably prswaded or satisfied in any else unless he throws himself upon chance or absolute predestination or his own confidence in every one of which it is two to one at least but he may miscarry Thus far I thought I had reason on my side and I suppose I have made it good upon its proper grounds in the pages following But then if the result be that men must be permitted in their Opinions and that Christians must not persecute Christians I have also as much reason to reprove all those oblique Arts which are not direct Persecutions of mens persons but they are indirect proceedings ungentle and unchristian servants of faction and interest provocations to zeal and animosities and destructive of learning and ingenuity And these are suppressing all the monuments of their Adversaries forcing them to recant and burning their Books For it is a strange industry and an importune diligence that was used by our fore-fathers of all those Heresies which gave them battel and imployment we have absolutely no Record or Monument but what themselves who are adversaries have transmitted to us and we know that Adversaries especially such who observed all opportunities to discredit both the persons and Doctrines of the Enemy are not alwaies the best records or witnesses of such transactions We see it now in this very Age in the present Distemperatures that parties are no good Registers of the actions of the adverse side And if we cannot be confident of the truth of a story now now I say that it is possible for any man and likely that the interessed adversary will discover the imposture it is far more unlikely that after-Ages should know any other truth but such as serves the ends of the representers I am sure such things were never taught us by Christ and his Apostles and if we were sure that our selves spoke truth or that truth were able to justifie herself it were better if to preserve a Doctrine we did not destroy a Commandment and out of zeal pretending to Christian Religion lose the glories and rewards of ingenuity and Christian simplicity Of the same consideration is mending of Authors not to their own mind but to ours that is to mend them so as to spoil them forbidding the publication of Books in which there is nothing impious or against the publick interest leaving out clauses in Translations disgracing mens persons charging disavowed Doctrines upon men and the persons of the men with the consequents of their Doctrine which they deny either to be true or to be consequent false reporting of Disputations and Conferences burning Books by the hand of the hang-man and all such Arts which shew that we either distrust God for the maintenance of his truth or that we distrust the cause or distrust our selves and our abilities I will say no more of these but only concerning the last I shall transcribe a passage out of Tacitus in the life of Julius Agricola who gives this account of it Veniam non petissem nisi incursaturus tam saeva infesta virtutibus tempora Legimus cùm Aruleno Rustico Paetus Thrasea Herennio Senecioni Priscus Helvidius laudati essent capitale fuisse neque in ipsos modo authores sed in libros quoque eorum saevitum delegato Triumviris ministerio ut monumenta clarissimorum ingeniorum in comitio ac foro urerentur scil illo igne vocem populi Rom. libertatem Senatus conscientiam generis humani aboleri arbitrabantur expulsis insuper sapientiae professoribus atque omni bona arte in exilium acta ne quid usquam honestum occurreret It is but an illiterate policy to think that such indirect and uningenuous proceedings can among wise and free men disgrace the Authors and disrepute their Discourses And I have seen that the price hath been trebled upon a forbidden or a condemn'd Book and some men in policy have got a prohibition that their impression might be the more certainly vendible and the Author himself thought considerable The best way is to leave tricks and devices and to fall upon that way which the best Ages of the Church did use With the strength of Argument and Allegations of Scripture and modesty of deportment and meekness and charity to the persons of men they converted misbelievers stopped the mouths of Adversaries asserted Truth and discountenanced errour and those other stratagems and Arts of support and maintenance to Doctrines were the issues of Heretical brains The old Catholicks had nothing to secure themselves but the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of truth and plain dealing Fidem minutis dissecant ambagibus Ut quisque lingua est nequior Solvunt ligantque quaestionum vincula Per syllogismos plectiles Vae captiosis Sycophantarum strophis Vae versipelli astutiae Nodos tenaces recta rumpit regula Infesta discertantibus Idcirco mundi stulta deligit Deus Ut concidant Sophistica And to my understanding it is a plain art and design of the Devil to make us so in love with our own Opinions as to call them Faith and Religion that we may be proud in our understanding and besides that by our zeal in our Opinions we grow cool in our piety and practical duties he also by this earnest contention does directly destroy good life by engagement of Zealots to do any thing rather then be overcome and lose their beloved Propositions But I would fain know why is not any vitious habit as bad or worse then a false Opinion Why are we so zealous against those we call Hereticks and yet great friends with drunkards fornicatours and swearers and intemperate and idle persons Is it because we are commanded by the Apostle to reject a Heretick after two admonitions and not bid such a one God speed It is good reason why we should be zealous against such persons provided we mistake them not For those of whom these Apostles speak are such as deny Christ to be come in the flesh such as deny an Article of Creed and in such odious things it is not safe
of men with such a power In the mean time he that submits his understanding to all that he knows God hath said and is ready to submit to all that he hath said if he but know it denying his own affections and ends and interests and humane perswasions laying them all down at the foot of his great Master Jesus Christ that man hath brought his understanding into subjection and every proud thought unto the obedience of Christ and this is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the obedience of Faith which is the duty of a Christian. 14. But to proceed Besides these heresies noted in Scripture the age of the Apostles and that which followed was infested with other heresies but such as had the same formality and malignity with the precedent all of them either such as taught practical impieties or denied an Article of the Creed Egesippus in Eusebius reckons seven only prime heresies that sought to deflour the purity of the Church That of Simon that of Thebutes of Cleobius of Dositheus of Gortheus of Masbotheus I suppose Cerinthus to have been the seventh man though he express him not But of these except the last we know no particulars but that Egesippus says they were false Christs and that their doctrine was directly against God and his blessed Son Menander also was the first of a Sect but he bewitched the people with his Sorceries Cerinthus his doctrine pretended Enthusiasm or a new Revelation and ended in lust and impious theorems in matter of uncleanness The Ebionites denied Christ to be the Son of God and affirmed him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 begot by natural generation by occasion of which and the importunity of the Asian Bishops St. John writ his Gospel and taught the observation of Moses Law Basilides taught it lawful to renounce the faith and take false oaths in time of Persecution Carpocrates was a very bedlam half-witch and quite mad-man and practised lust which he called the secret operations to overcome the Potentates of the World Some more there were but of the same nature and pest not of a nicety in dispute not a question of secret Philosophy not of atomes and undiscernable propositions but open defiances of all Faith of all sobriety and of all sanctity excepting only the doctrine of the Millenaries which in the best Ages was esteemed no heresy but true Catholick Doctrine though since it hath justice done to it and hath suffered a just condemnation 15. Hitherto and in these instances the Church did esteem and judge of heresies in proportion to the rules and characters of Faith For Faith being a Doctrine of piety as well as truth that which was either destructive of fundamental verity or of Christian sanctity was against Faith and if it made a Sect was heresy if not it ended in personall impiety and went no farther But those who as S. Paul says not onely did such things but had pleasure in them that doe them and therefore taught others to doe what they impiously did dogmatize they were Hereticks both in matter and form in doctrine and deportment towards God and towards man and judicable in both tribunals 16. But the Scripture and Apostolical Sermons having expressed most high indignation against these masters of impious Sects leaving them under prodigious characters and horrid representments as calling them men of corrupt minds reprobates concerning the faith given over to strong delusions to the belief of a lie false Apostles false Prophets men already condemned and that by themselves Anti-Christs enemies to God and heresy it self a work of the flesh excluding from the kingdom of heaven left such impressions in the minds of all their successors and so much zeal against such Sects that if any opinion commenced in the Church not heard of before it oftentimes had this ill luck to run the same fortune with an old heresy For because the Hereticks did bring in new opinions in matters of great concernment every opinion de novo brought in was liable to the same exception and because the degree of malignity in every errour was oftentimes undiscernable and most commonly indemonstrable their zeal was alike against all and those Ages being full of piety were sitted to be abused with an over-active zeal as wise persons and learned are with a too much indifferency 17. But it came to pass that the further the succession went from the Apostles the more forward men were in numbring heresies and that upon slighter and more uncertain grounds Some footsteps of this we shall find if we consider the Sects that are said to have sprung in the first three hundred years and they were pretty and quick in their springs and falls fourscore and seven of them are reckoned They were indeed reckoned afterward and though when they were alive they were not condemn'd with as much forwardness as after they were dead yet even then confidence began to mingle with opinions less necessary and mistakes in judgment were oftner and more publick than they should have been But if they were forward in their censures as sometimes some of them were it is no great wonder they were deceived For what principle or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 had they then to judge of heresies or condemn them besides the single dictates or decretals of private Bishops for Scripture was indifferently pretended by all and concerning the meaning of it was the Question now there was no general Council all that while no opportunity for the Church to convene and if we search the communicatory letters of the Bishops and Martyrs in those days we shall find but few sentences decretory concerning any Question of Faith or new sprung opinion And in those that did for ought appears the persons were mis-reported or their opinions mistaken or at most the sentence of condemnation was no more but this Such a Bishop who hath had the good fortune by posterity to be reputed a Catholick did condemn such a man or such an opinion and yet himself erred in as considerable matters but meeting with better neighbours in his life-time and a more charitable posterity hath his memory preserved in honour It appears plain enough in the case of Nicholas the Deacon of Antioch upon a mistake of his words whereby he taught 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to abuse the flesh viz. by acts of austerity and self-denial and mortification some wicked people that were glad to be mistaken and abused into a pleasing crime pretended that he taught them to abuse the flesh by filthy commixtures and pollutions This mistake was transmitted to posterity with a full cry and acts afterwards found out to justifie an ill opinion of him For by S. Hierom's time it grew out of Question but that he was the vilest of men and the worst of Hereticks Nicolaus Antiochenus omnium immunditiarum conditor choros duxit foemineos And again Iste Nicolaus Diaconus ita immundus extitit ut etiam in praesepi Domini nefas perpetrârit Accusations
other Masters whose Theorems might abate the strength of their first perswasions and it is a great advantage in those cases to get possession and before their first principles can be dislodg'd they are made habitual and complexionall it is in their nature then to believe them and this is helped forward very much by the advantage of love and veneration which we have to the first parents of our perswasions And we see it in the Orders of Regulars in the Church of Rome That Opinion which was the Opinion of their Patron or Founder or of some eminent Personage of the Institute is enough to engage all the Order to be of that Opinion and it is strange that all the Dominicans should be of one Opinion in the matter of Predetermination and immaculate Conception and all the Franciscans of the quite contrary as if their understandings were formed in a different mold and furnished with various principles by their very Rule Now this prejudice works by many principles but how strongly they do possess the understanding is visible in that great instance of the affection and perfect perswasion the weaker sort of people have to that which they call the Religion of their Fore-fathers You may as well charm a Fever asleep with the noise of bells as make any pretence of Reason against that Religion which old men have intailed upon their heirs male so many generations till they can prescribe And the Apostles found this to be most true in the extremest difficulty they met with to contest against the Rites of Moses and the long Superstition of the Gentiles which they therefore thought fit to be retained because they had done so formerly Pergentes non quò eundum est sed quò itur and all the blessings of this life which God gave them they had in conjunction with their Religion and therefore they believed it was for their Religion and this perswasion was bound fast in them with ribs of iron the Apostles were forced to unloose the whole conjuncture of parts and principles in their understandings before they could make them malleable and receptive of any impresses But the observation and experience of all wise men can justifie this truth All that I shall say to the present purpose is this that consideration is to be had to the weakness of persons when they are prevailed upon by so innocent a prejudice and when there cannot be arguments strong enough to over-master an habitual perswasion bred with a man nourished up with him that always eat at his table and lay in his bosome he is not easily to be called Heretick for if he keeps the foundation of Faith other Articles are not so clearly demonstrated on either side but that a man may innocently be abused to the contrary And therefore in this case to handle him charitably is but to doe him justice And when an Opinion in minoribus articulis is entertained upon the title and stock of education it may be the better permitted to him since upon no better stock nor stronger arguments most men entertain their whole Religion even Christianity itself 5. Fifthly there are some persons of a differing perswasion who therefore are the rather to be tolerated because the indirect practices and impostures of their adversaries have confirmed them that those Opinions which they disavow are not from God as being upheld by means not of God's appointment For it is no unreasonable discourse to say that God will not be served with a lie for he does not need one and he hath means enough to support all those Truths which he hath commanded and hath supplied every honest cause with enough for its maintenance and to contest against its adversaries And but that they which use indirect arts will not be willing to lose any of their unjust advantages nor yet be charitable to those persons whom either to gain or to undoe they leave nothing unattempted the Church of Rome hath much reason not to be so decretory in her sentences against persons of a differing perswasion for if their cause were entirely the cause of God they have given wise people reason to suspect it because some of them have gone to the Devil to defend it And if it be remembred what tragedies were stirred up against Luther for saying the Devil had taught him an argument against the Mass it will be of as great advantage against them that they goe to the Devil for many arguments to support not onely the Mass but the other distinguishing Articles of their Church I instance in the notorious forging of Miracles and framing of false and ridiculous Legends For the former I need no other instances then what hapned in the great contestation about the immaculate Conception when there were Miracles brought on both sides to prove the contradictory parts and though it be more then probable that both sides play'd the jugglers yet the Dominicans had the ill luck to be discovered and the actors burn'd at Berne But this discovery hapned by providence for the Dominican Opinion hath more degrees of probability then the Franciscan is clearly more consonant both to Scripture and all Antiquity and this part of it is acknowledged by the greatest Patrons themselves as Salmeron Posa and Wadding yet because they played the knaves in a just Question and used false arts to maintain a true proposition God Almighty to shew that he will not be served by a lie was pleased rather to discover the Imposture in the right Opinion then in the false since nothing is more dishonourable to God then to offer a sin in sacrifice to him and nothing more incongruous in the nature of the thing then that truth and falshood should support each other or that true Doctrine should live at the charges of a lie And he that considers the arguments for each Opinion will easily conclude that if God would not have truth confirmed by a lie much less would he himself attest a lie with a true Miracle And by this ground it will easily follow that the Franciscan party although they had better luck then the Dominicans yet had not more honesty because their cause was worse and therefore their arguments no whit the better And although the argument drawn from Miracles is good to attest a holy Doctrine which by its own worth will support itself after way is a little made by Miracles yet of itself and by its own reputation it will not support any fabrick for in stead of proving a Doctrine to be true it makes that the Miracles themselves are suspected to be Illusions if they be pretended in behalf of a Doctrine which we think we have reason to account false And therefore the Jews did not believe Christ's Doctrine for his Miracles but disbelieved the truth of his Miracles because they did not like his Doctrine And if the holiness of his Doctrine and the Spirit of God by inspirations and infusions and by that which Saint Peter calls a surer word
of Prophecy had not attested the Divinity both of his Person and his Office we should have wanted many degrees of confidence which now we have upon the truth of Christian Religion But now since we are foretold by this surer word of prophecy that is the prediction of Jesus Christ that Antichâ—ist should come in all wonders and signs and lying miracles and that the Church saw much of that already verified in Simon Magus Apollonius Tyaneus and Manetho and divers Hereticks it is now come to that pass that the Argument in its best advantage proves nothing so much as that the Doctrine which it pretends to prove is to be suspected because it was foretold that false doctrine should be obtruded under such pretences But then when not onely true Miracles are an insufficient argument to prove a Truth since the establishment of Christianity but that the Miracles themselves are false and spurious it makes that Doctrine in whose defence they come justly to be suspected because they are a demonstration that the interessed persons use all means leave nothing unattempted to prove their propositions but since they so fail as to bring nothing from God but something from the Devil for its justification it 's a great sign that the Doctrine is false because we know the Devil unless it be against his will does nothing to prove a true proposition that makes against him And now then those persons who will endure no man of another Opinion might doe well to remember how by their Exorcisms their Devils tricks at Lowdon and the other side pretending to cure mad folks and persons bewitched and the many discoveries of their juggling they have given so much reason to their adversaries to suspect their Doctrine that either they must not be ready to condemn their persons who are made suspicious by their indirect proceeding in attestation of that which they value so high as to call their Religion or else they must condemn themselves for making the scandal active and effectual 6. As for false Legends it will be of the same consideration because they are false Testimonies of Miracles that were never done which differs onely from the other as a lie in words from a lie in action but of this we have witness enough in that Decree of Pope Leo X. Session the eleventh of the last Lateran Council where he excommunicates all the forgers and inventers of Visions and false Miracles which is a testimony that it was then a practice so publick as to need a Law for its suppression And if any man shall doubt whether it were so or not let him see the Centum gravamina of the Princes of Germany where it is highly complain'd of But the extreme stupidity and sottishness of the inventers of lying stories is so great as to give occasion to some persons to suspect the truth of all Church-story witness the Legend of Lombardy of the Authour of which the Bishop of the Canaries gives this Testimony In illo enim libro miraculorum monstra saepius quà m vera miracula legas Hanc homo scripsit ferrei oris plumbei cordis animi certè parùm severi prudentis But I need not descend so low for S. Gregory and Ven. Bede themselves reported Miracles for the authority of which they onely had the report of the common people and it is not certain that S. Hierome had so much in his stories of S. Paul and S. Anthony and the Fauns and the Satyrs which appeared to them and desired their prayers But I shall onely by way of eminency note what Sir Thomas More says in his Epistle to Ruthal the King's Secretary before the Dialogue of Lucian Philopseudes that therefore he undertook the translation of that Dialogue to free the world from a Superstition that crept in under the face and title of Religion For such lies says he are transmitted to us with such authority that a certain Impostor had perswaded S. Austin that the very Fable which Lucian scoffs and makes sport withall in that Dialogue was a real story and acted in his own days The Epistle is worth the reading to this purpose but he says this abuse grew to such a height that scarce any life of any Saint or Martyr is truly related but is full of lies and lying wonders and some persons thought they served God if they did honour to God's Saints by inventing some prodigious story or Miracle for their reputation So that now it is no wonder if the most pious men are apt to believe and the greatest Historians are easie enough to report such Stories which serving to a good end are also consigned by the report of persons otherwise pious and prudent enough I will not instance in Vincentius his Speculum Turonensis Thomas Cantipratanus John Herolt Vitae Patrum nor the Revelations of Saint Brigit though confirmed by two Popes Martin V. and Boniface IX Even the best and most deliberate amongst them Lippoman Surius Lipsius Bzovius and Baronius are so full of Fables that they cause great disreputation to the other Monuments and Records of Antiquity and yet doe no advantage to the cause under which they serve and take pay They doe no good and much hurt but yet accidentally they may procure this advantage to Charity since they doe none to Faith that since they have so abused the credit of Story that our confidences want much of that support we should receive from her records of Antiquity yet the men that dissent and are scandalized by such proceedings should be excused if they should chance to be afraid of truth that hath put on garments of imposture and since much violence is done to the truth and certainty of their judging let none be done to their liberty of judging since they cannot meet a right Guide let them have a charitable Judge And since it is one very great argument against Simon Magus and against Mahomet that we can prove their Miracles to be Impostures it is much to be pitied if timorous and suspicious persons shall invincibly and honestly less apprehend a Truth which they see conveyed by such a testimony which we all use as an argument to reprove the Mahometan Superstition 7. Sixthly Here also comes in all the weaknesses and trifling prejudices which operate not by their own strength but by advantage taken from the weakness of some understandings Some men by a Proverb or a common saying are determined to the belief of a Proposition for which they have no argument better then such a proverbial sentence And when divers of the common people in Jerusalem were ready to yield their understandings to the belief of the Messias they were turned clearly from their apprehensions by that Proverb Look and see does any good thing come from Galilee and this When Christ comes no man knows from whence he is but this man was known of what parents of what City And thus the weakness of their understanding was abused and that
prejudices Epiphanius makes Pride to be the onely cause of Heresies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pride and Prejudice cause them all the one criminally the other innocently And indeed S. Paul does almost make Pride the onely cause of Heresies his words cannot be expounded unless it be at least the principal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and consents not to sound words and the doctrine that is according to godliness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2. The summe is this If ever an Opinion be begun with pride or manag'd with impiety or ends in a crime the man turns Heretick but let the errour be never so great so it be not against an Article of Creed if it be simple and hath no confederation with the personal iniquity of the man the Opinion is as innocent as the person though perhaps as false as he is ignorant and therefore shall burn though he himself escape But in these cases and many more for the causes of deception encrease by all accidents and weaknesses and illusions no man can give certain judgement upon the persons of men in particular unless the matter of fact and crime be accident and notorious The man cannot by humane judgement be concluded a Heretick unless his Opinion be an open recession from plain demonstrative Divine Authority which must needs be notorious voluntary vincible and criminal or that there be a palpable serving of an end accidental and extrinsecall to the Opinion 3. But this latter is very hard to be discerned because those accidental and adherent crimes which make the man a Heretick in Questions not simply fundamental or of necessary practice are actions so internall and spiritual that cognizance can but seldome be taken of them And therefore to instance though the Opinion of Purgatory be false yet to believe it cannot be Heresie if a man be abused into the belief of it invincibly because it is not a Doctrine either fundamentally false or practically impious it neither proceeds from the will nor hath any immediate or direct influence upon choice and manners And as for those other ends of upholding that Opinion which possibly its Patrons may have as for the reputation of their Churche's Infallibility for the advantage of Dirges Requiems Masses Monthly minds Anniversaries and other Offices for the dead which usually are very profitable rich and easie these things may possibly have sole influences upon their understanding but whether they have or no God onely knows If the Proposition and Article were true these ends might justly be subordinate and consistent with a true Proposition And there are some Truths that are also profitable as the necessity of maintenance to the Clergy the Doctrine of Restitution giving Alms Lending freely Remitting debts in cases of great necessity and it would be but an ill argument that the Preachers of these Doctrines speak false because possibly in these Articles they may serve their own ends For although Demetrius and the Craftsmen were without excuse for resisting the preaching of S. Paul because it was notorious they resisted the Truth upon ground of profit and personal emoluments and the matter was confessed by themselves yet if the Clergy should maintain their just Rights and Revenues which by pious dedications and donatives were long since ascertained upon them is it to be presumed in order of Law and charity that this end is in the men subordinate to truth because it is so in the thing itself and that therefore no judgement in prejudice of these truths can be made from that observation 4. But if aliunde we are ascertained of the truth or falshood of a Proposition respectively yet the judgement of the personal ends of the men cannot ordinarily be certain and judicial because most commonly the acts are private and the purposes internall and temporal ends may sometimes consist with truth and whether the purposes of the men make these ends principal or subordinate no man can judge and be they how they will yet they do not always prove that when they are conjunct with errour the errour was caused by these purposes and criminal intentions 5. But in Questions practical the Doctrine itself and the person too may with more ease be reproved because matter of fact being evident and nothing being so certain as the experiments of humane affairs and these being the immediate consequents of such Doctrines are with some more certainty of observation redargued then the speculative whose judgement is of itself more difficult more remote from matter and humane observation and with less curiosity and explicitness declared in Scripture as being of less consequence and concernment in order to God's and Man's great end In other things which end in notion and ineffective contemplation where neither the Doctrine is malicious nor the person apparently criminal he is to be left to the judgement of God and as there is no certainty of humane judicature in this case so it is to no purpose it should be judged For if the person may be innocent with his Errour and there is no rule whereby it can certainly be pronounced that he is actually criminal as it happens in matters speculative since the end of the Commandment is love out of a pure conscience and faith unfeigned and the Commandment may obtain its end in a consistence with this simple speculative Errour why should men trouble themselves with such Opinions so as to disturb the publick charity or the private confidence Opinions and persons are just so to be judged as other matters and persons criminal For no man can judge any thing else it must be a crime and it must be open so as to take cognizance and make true humane judgement of it And this is all I am to say concerning the causes of Heresies and of the distinguishing Rules for guiding of our judgements towards others 6. As for guiding our judgements and the use of our Reason in judging for ourselves all that is to be said is reducible to this one Proposition Since Errours are then made sins when they are contrary to charity or inconsistent with a good life and the honour of God that judgement is the truest or at least that opinion most innocent that 1. best promotes the reputation of God's Glory and 2. is the best instrument of holy life For in Questions and interpretations of dispute these two analogies are the best to make Propositions and conjectures and determinations Diligence and care in obtaining the best Guides and the most convenient assistances prayer and modesty of spirit simplicity of purposes and intentions humility and aptness to learn and a peaceable disposition are therefore necessary to finding out Truths because they are parts of good life without which our Truths will doe us little advantage and our errours can have no excuse But with these dispositions as he is sure to find out all that is necessary so what Truth he inculpably misses of he is sure is therefore not necessary because he could not find it when
but alter his Opinion whereby he is perswaded that such an accident that afflicts him is an evil and such an object formidable let him but believe himself impregnable or that he receives a benefit when he is plundered disgraced imprisoned condemned and afflicted neither his steps need to be disturbed nor his quietness discomposed But if a man cannot change his Opinion when he lists nor ever does heartily or resolutely but when he cannot doe otherwise then to use force may make him an Hypocrite but never to be a right Believer and so in stead of erecting a trophee to God and true Religion we build a monument for the Devil Infinite examples are recorded in Church-story to this very purpose But Socrates instances in one for all for when Eleusius Bishop of Cyzicum was threatned by the Emperour Valens with banishment and confiscation if he did not subscribe to the Decree of Ariminum at last he yielded to the Arian Opinion and presently fell into great torment of Conscience openly at Cyzicum recanted the errour asked God and the Church forgiveness and complained of the Emperour's injustice and that was all the good the Arian party got by offering violence to his Conscience And so many families in Spain which are as they call them new Christians and of a suspected Faith into which they were forced by the tyranny of the Inquisition and yet are secret Moors are evidence enough of the inconvenience of preaching a Doctrine in ore gladii cruentandi For it either punishes a man for keeping a good Conscience or forces him into a bad it either punishes sincerity or perswades hypocrisie it persecutes a truth or drives into errour and it teaches a man to dissemble and to be safe but never to be honest 12. Ninthly It is one of the glories of Christian Religion that it was so pious excellent miraculous and perswasive that it came in upon its own piety and wisedome with no other force but a torrent of arguments and demonstration of the Spirit a mighty rushing wind to beat down all strong holds and every high thought and imagination but towards the persons of men it was always full of meekness and charity compliance and toleration condescention and bearing with one another restoring persons overtaken with an errour in the spirit of meekness considering lest we also be tempted The consideration is as prudent and the proposition as just as the precept is charitable and the precedent was pious and holy Now things are best conserved with that which gives it the first being and which is agreeable to its temper and constitution That precept which it chiefly preaches in order to all the blessedness in the world that is of meekness mercy and charity should also preserve itself and promote its own interest For indeed nothing will doe it so well nothing doth so excellently insinuate itself into the understandings and affections of men as when the actions and perswasions of a Sect and every part and principle and promotion are univocall And it would be a mighty disparagement to so glorious an Institution that in its principle it should be mercifull and humane and in the promotion and propagation of it so inhumane And it would be improbable and unreasonable that the sword should be used in the perswasion of one Proposition and yet in the perswasion of the whole Religion nothing like it To doe so may serve the end of a temporal Prince but never promote the honour of Christ's Kingdom it may secure a design of Spain but will very much disserve Christendom to offer to support it by that which good men believe to be a distinctive cognizance of the Mahometan Religion from the excellency and piety of Christianity whose sense and spirit is described in those excellent words of Saint Paul 2 Tim. 2.24 The servant of the Lord must not strive but be gentle unto all men in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging the truth They that oppose themselves must not be strucken by any of God's servants and if yet any man will smite these who are his opposites in Opinion he will get nothing by that he must quit the title of being a servant of God for his pains And I think a distinction of persons Secular and Ecclesiasticall will doe no advantage for an escape because even the Secular power if it be Christian and a servant of God must not be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I mean in those cases where meekness of instruction is the remedy or if the case be irremediable abscission by Censures is the penalty 13. Tenthly And if yet in the nature of the thing it were neither unjust nor unreasonable yet there is nothing under God Almighty that hath power over the Soul of man so as to command a perswasion or to judge a disagreeing Humane positive Laws direct all externall acts in order to several ends and the Judges take cognizance accordingly but no man can command the Will or punish him that obeys the Law against his will for because its end is served in externall obedience it neither looks after more neither can it be served by more nor take notice of any more And yet possibly the Understanding is less subject to humane power then the Will for that humane power hath a command over externall acts which naturally and regularly flow from the Will ut plurimùm suppose a direct act of will but always either a direct or indirect volition primâ—ry or accidental but the Understanding is a natural faculty subject to no command but where the command is itself a reason fit to satisfie perswade it And therefore God commanding us to believe such Revelations perswades and satisfies the understanding by his commanding and revealing for there is no greater probation in the world that Proposition is true then because God hath commanded us to believe it But because no man's command is a satisfaction to the understanding or a verification of the Proposition therefore the understanding is not subject to humane Authority They may perswade but not injoyn where God hath not and where God hath if it appears so to him he is an Infidel if he does not believe it And if all men have no other efficacy or authority on the understanding but by perswasion proposal and intreaty then a man is bound to assent but according to the operation of the argument and the energy of perswasion neither indeed can he though he would never so fain and he that out of fear and too much compliance and desire to be safe shall desire to bring his understanding with some luxation to the belief of humane Dictates and Authorities may as often miss of the Truth as hit it but is sure always to lose the comfort of Truth because he believes it upon indirect insufficient and incompetent arguments and as his desire it should be so is his best argument that it is so so the
sent away without cause and because the negative is in this case later then the affirmative it must enter as the affirmatives doe when they happen to be later then the negative Adde to this that for the introduction of a negative against the possession of a prevailing affirmative it is not enough to invalidate the arguments of the affirmative by making it appear they are not demonstrative for although that might have been sufficient to hinder its first entry yet it is not enough to throw it out because it hath gotten strength and reasonableness by long custome and dwelling upon the minds of men and hath some forces beyond what it derives from the first causes of its introduction And therefore whoever will perswade men to quit their long perswasions and their consonant practices must not tell them that such perswasions are not certain and that they cannot prove such practices to be necessary but that the Doctrine is false against some other revealed Truth which they admit and the practice evil not onely useless but dangerous or criminal So that the Anabaptists cannot acquit themselves and promote their cause by going about to invalidate our Arguments unless they do not onely weaken our affirmative by taking away not one or two but all the confidences of its strength but also make their own negative to include a duty or its enemy to be guilty of a crime And therefore if it were granted that we cannot prove the Baptism of infants to be necessary and that they could speak probably against all the Arguments of the right Believers yet it were intolerable that they should be attended to unless they pretend and make their pretence good that they teach piety and duty and necessity for nothing less then these can make recompence for so violent so great an inroad and rape upon the perswasions of men Whether the Anabaptists do so or no will be considered in the sequel Thirdly These Arguments which are in this Section urged in behalf of the Anabaptists their persons I mean finally not their cause at all but in order to their persons can doe the less hurt because they rely upon our grounds not upon theirs that is they are intended to perswade us to a charitable comport towards the men but not at all to perswade their Doctrine For it is remarkable that none of them have made use of this way of arguing since the publication of these Adversaria and of some things they can never make use As in that exposition of the words of S. Peter Be baptized and ye shall receive the holy Ghost which is expounded to be meant not in Baptism but in Confirmation which is a Rite the Anabaptists allow not and therefore they cannot make use of any such Exposition which supposes a Divine institution of that which they at no hand admit And so it is in divers other particulars as any wary person that is cautious he be not deluded by any weak and plausible pretence of theirs may easily observe But after all the Arguments for the Baptism of children are firm and valid and though shaken by the adverse plea yet as trees that stand in the face of storms take the surer root so will the right Reasons of the right Believers if they be represented with their proper advantages Ad 3. 13. The first Argument is the Circumcising of children which we say does rightly infer the Baptizing them The Anabaptist says no because admit that Circumcision were the type of Baptism yet it follows not that the circumstances of one must infer the same circumstances in the other which he proves by many instances and so far he sayes true And therefore if there were no more in the Argument then can be inferred from the type to the antitype both the supposition the superstructure would be infirm because it is uncertain whether Circumcision be a type of Baptism and if it were granted it cannot infer equal circumstances But then this Argument goes farther and to other and more material purposes even to the overthrow of their chief pretension For Circumcision was a seal of the righteousness of faith And if Infants who have no Faith yet can by a Ceremony be admitted into the Covenant of Faith as S. Paul conâ—ends that all the circumcised were and it is certain of Infants that they were reckoned amongst the Lord's people as soon as they were circumcised then it follows that the great pretence of the Anabaptists that for want of Faith Infants are incapable of the Sacrament comes to nothing For if Infants were admitted into the Covenant of Faith by a Ceremony before they could enter by choice and reason by Faith and Obedience then so they may now their great and onely pretence notwithstanding Now whereas the Anabaptist says that in the admission of the Jewish Infants to Circumcision and of Christian Infants to Baptism there is this difference that Circumcision imprints a character on the flesh but Baptism does not Circumcision had no word added but Baptism hath and therefore Infants were capable of the former but not of the latter for they might be cut with the Circumcising-stone but they cannot be instructed with the word of Baptism in that there was a character left by which they might be instructed when they come to age but in Baptism there is no character and the word they understand not therefore that was to purpose but this is not I answer that this is something to the circumstance of the Sacraments but nothing to the substance of the Argument For if the Covenant of Faith can belong to Infants then it is certain they can have the benefit of Faith before they have the grace that is God will doe them benefit before they can do him service and that is no new thing in Religion that God should love us first But then that God is not as much before-hand with Christian as with Jewish Infants is a thing which can never be believed by them who understand that in the Gospel God opened all his treasures of mercies and unsealed the fountain itself whereas before he poured forth only rivulets of mercy and comfort That Circumcision is a seal of the righteousness of faith Saint Paul affirms that so also is Baptism if it be any thing at all the Anabaptists must needs confess because they refuse to give Baptism to them who have not Faith and make it useless to them as being a Seal without a Deed. But then the Argument is good upon its first grounds But then for the title Reparties but now mentioned that Circumcision imprints a character but Baptism does not that Baptism hath a word but Circumcision had none they are just nothing to the purpose For as that character imprinted on the Infants flesh would have been nothing of instruction to them unless there had been a word added that is unless they had been told the meaning of it when they came to be men so neither will the word
receptive of any interpretation rather then the Commonwealth be disarmed of its necessary supports and all Laws made ineffectual and impertinent For the interest of the Republick and the well being of Bodies politick is not to depend upon the nicety of our imaginations or the fancies of any peevish or mistaken Priests and there is no reason a Prince should ask John-a-Brunck whether his understanding would give him leave to reign and be a King Nay suppose there were divers places of Scripture which did seemingly restrain the politicall use of the Sword yet since the avoiding a personal inconvenience hath by all men been accounted sufficient reason to expound Scripture to any sense rather then the literal which infers an unreasonable inconvenience and therefore the pulling out an eye and the cutting off a hand is expounded by mortifying a vice and killing a criminal habit much rather must the Allegations against the power of the Sword endure any sense rather then it should be thought that Christianity should destroy that which is the onely instrument of Justice the restraint of vice and support of Bodies politick It is certain that Christ and his Apostles and Christian Religion did comply with the most absolute Government and the most imperial that was then in the world and it could not have been at all endured in the world if it had not for indeed the world itself could not last in regular and orderly communities of men but be a perpetuall confusion if Princes and the Supreme power in Bodies politick were not armed with a coercive power to punish malefactors the publick necessity and universal experience of all the world convinces those men of being most unreasonable that make such pretences which destroy all Laws and all Communities and the bands of civil Societies and leave it arbitrary to every vain or vicious person whether men shall be safe or Laws be established or a murtherer hanged or Princes rule So that in this case men are not so much to dispute with particular Arguments as to consider the interest and concernment of Kingdoms and publick Societies For the Religion of Jesus Christ is the best establisher of the felicity of private persons and of publick Communities it is a Religion that is prudent and innocent humane and reasonable and brought infinite advantages to mankind but no inconvenience nothing that is unnatural or unsociable or unjust And if it be certain that this world cannot be governed without Laws and Laws without a compulsory signifie nothing then it is certain that it is no good Religion that teaches Doctrine whose consequents will destroy all Government and therefore it is as much to be rooted out as any thing that is the greatest pest and nuisance to the publick interest And that we may guess at the purposes of the men and the inconvenience of such Doctrine these men that did first intend by their Doctrine to disarm all Princes and Bodies politick did themselves take up arms to establish their wild and impious fancy And indeed that Prince or Commonwealth that should be perswaded by them would be exposed to all the insolencies of forreiners and all mutinies of the Teachers themselves and the Governours of the people could not doe that duty they owe to their people of protecting them from the rapine and malice which will be in the world as long as the world is And therefore here they are to be restrained from preaching such Doctrine if they mean to preserve their Government and the necessity of the thing will justifie the lawfulness of the thing If they think it to themselves that cannot be helped so long it is innocent as much as concerns the publick but if they preach it they may be accounted Authours of all the consequent inconveniences and punisht accordingly No Doctrine that destroys Government is to be endured For although those Doctrines are not always good that serve the private ends of Princes or the secret designs of State which by reason of some accidents or imperfections of men may be promoted by that which is false and pretending yet no Doctrine can be good that does not comply with the formality of Government itself and the well-being of Bodies politick Augur cùm esset Cato dicere usus est optimis auspiciis ea geri quae pro Reipub. salute gererentur quae contra Rempub fierent contra auspicia fieri Religion is to meliorate the condition of a people not to doe it disadvantage and therefore those Doctrines that inconvenience the publick are no parts of good Religion Vt Respub salva sit is a necessary consideration in the permission of Prophesyings for according to the true solid and prudent ends of the Republick so is the Doctrine to be permitted or restrained and the men that preach it according as they are good subjects and right Commonwealths-men For Religion is a thing superinduced to temporal Government and the Church is an addition of a capacity to a Commonwealth and therefore is in no sense to disserve the necessity and just interests of that to which it is superadded for its advantage and conservation 2. And thus by a proportion to the rules of these instances all their other Doctrines â—re to have their judgement as concerning Toleration or restraint for all are either speculative or practicall they are consistent with the publick ends or inconsistent they teach impiety or they are innocent and they are to be permitted or rejected accordingly For in the Question of Toleration the foundation of Faith good life and Government is to be secured in all other cases the former considerations are effectuall SECT XX. How far the Religion of the Church of Rome is tolerable 1. BUT now concerning the Religion of the Church of Rome which was the other instance I promised to consider we will proceed another way and not consider the truth or falsity of the Doctrines for that is not the best way to determine this Question concerning permitting their Religion or Assemblies Because that a thing is not true is not Argument sufficient to conclude that he that believes it true is not to be endured but we are to consider what inducements they are that possess the understanding of those men whether they be reasonable and innocent sufficient to abuse or perswade wise and good men or whether the Doctrines be commenced upon design and managed with impiety and then have effects not to be endured 2. And here first I consider that those Doctrines that have had long continuance and possession in the Church cannot easily be supposed in the present professors to be a design since they have received it from so many Ages and it is not likely that all Ages should have the same purposes or that the same Doctrine should serve the severall ends of divers Ages But however long prescription is a prejudice oftentimes so insupportable that it cannot with many Arguments be retrenched as relying upon these grounds that Truth is more
ancient then falshood that God would not for so many Ages forsake his Church and leave her in an errour that whatsoever is new is not onely suspicious but false which are suppositions pious and plausible enough And if the Church of Rome had communicated Infants so long as she hath prayed to Saints or baptized Infants the communicating would have been believed with as much confidence as the other Articles are and the dissentients with as much impatience rejected But this consideration is to be enlarged upon all those particulars which as they are apt to abuse the persons of the men and amuse their understandings so they are instruments of their excuse and by making their errours to be invincible and their Opinions though false yet not criminall make it also to be an effect of reason and charity to permit the men a liberty of their Conscience and let them answer to God for themselves and their own Opinions Such as are the beauty and splendour of their Church their pompous Service the stateliness and solennity of the Hierarchy their name of Catholick which they suppose their own due and to concern no other Sect of Christians the antiquity of many of their Doctrines the continuall Succession of their Bishops their immediate derivation from the Apostles their Title to succeed S. Peter the supposall and pretence of his personal prerogatives the advantages which the conjunction of the Imperial Seat with their Episcopal hath brought to that See the flattering expressions of minor Bishops which by being old Records have obtained credibility the multitude and variety of people which are of their perswasion apparent consent with Antiquity in many Ceremonials which other Churches have rejected and a pretended and sometimes an apparent consent with some elder Ages in many matters Doctrinal the advantage which is derived to them by entertaining some personal Opinions of the Fathers which they with infinite clamours see to be cried up to be a Doctrine of the Church of that time the great consent of one part with another in that which most of them affirm to be de fide the great differences which are commenced amongst their Adversaries abusing the liberty of Prophesying unto a very great licentiousness their happiness of being instruments in converting divers Nations the advantages of Monarchicall Government the benefit of which as well as the inconveniences which though they feel they consider not they daily do enjoy the piety and the austerity of their Religious Orders of men and women the single life of their Priests and Bishops the riches of their Church the severity of their Fasts and their exteriour observances the great reputation of their first Bishops for Faith and sanctity the known holiness of some of those persons whose Institutes the Religious persons pretend to imitate their Miracles false or true substantial or imaginary the casualties and accidents that have happened to their Adversaries which being chances of humanity are attributed to several causes according as the fancies of men and their interests are pleased or satisfied the temporal felicity of their Professors the oblique arts and indirect proceedings of some of those who departed from them and amongsâ— many other things the names of Heretick and Schismatick which they with infinite pertinacy fasten upon all that disagree from them These things and divers others may very easily perswade persons of much reason and more piety to retain that which they know to have been the Religion of their Fore fathers which had actual possession and seisure of mens understandings before the opposite professions had a name and so much the rather because Religion hath more advantages upon the fancy and affections then it hath upon Philosophie and severe discourses and therefore is the more easily perswaded upon such grounds as these which are more apt to amuse then to satisfie the understanding 3. Secondly If we consider the Doctrines themselves we shall find them to be superstructures ill built and worse managed but yet they keep the foundation they build upon God in Jesus Christ they profess the Apostles Creed they retain Faith and repentance as the supporters of all our hopes of Heaven and believe many more Truths then can be proved to be of simple and original necessity to Salvation And therefore all the wisest personages of the adverse party allowed to them possibility of salvation whilst their errours are not faults of their will but weaknesses and deceptions of the understanding So that there is nothing in the foundation of Faith that can reasonably hinder them to be permitted The foundation of Faith stands secure enough for all their vain and unhandsome superstructures But then on the other side if we take account of their Doctrines as they relate to good life or are consistent or inconsistent with civil Government we shall have other considerations 4. Thirdly For I consider that many of their Doctrines do accidentally teach or lead to ill life and it will appear to any man that considers the result of these Propositions Attrition which is a low and imperfect degree of sorrow for sin or as others say a sorrow for sin commenced upon any reason of a religious hope or fear or desire or any thing else is a sufficient disposition for a man in the Sacrament of Penance to receive absolution and be justified before God by taking away the guilt of all his sins and the obligation to eternall pains So that already the fear of Hell is quite removed upon conditions so easie that many men take more pains to get a groat then by this Doctrine we are obliged to for the curing and acquitting all the greatest sins of a whole life of the most vicious person in the world And but that they affright their people with a fear of Purgatory or with the severity of Penances in case they will not venture for Purgatory for by their Doctrine they may chuse or refuse either there would be nothing in their Doctrine or Discipline to impede and slacken their proclivity to sin But then they have as easie a cure for that too with a little more charge sometimes but most commonly with less trouble For there are so many Confraternities so many priviledged Churches Altars Monasteries Coemeteries Offices Festivals and so free a concession of Indulgences appendant to all these and a thousand fine devices to take away the fear of Purgatory to commute or expiate Penances that in no Sect of men do they with more ease and cheapness reconcile a wicked life with the hopes of Heaven then in the Roman Communion 5. And indeed if men would consider things upon their true grounds the Church of Rome should be more reproved upon Doctrines that infer ill life then upon such as are contrariant to Faith For false superstructures do not always destroy Faith but many of the Doctrines they teach if they were prosecuted to the utmost issue would destroy good life And therefore my quarrell with the Church of Rome is greater
Schismatick he that makes unnecessary and supposing the state of things inconvenient impositions or he that disobeys them because he cannot without doing violence to his Conscience believe them he that parts Communion because without sin he could not entertain it or they that have made it necessary for him to separate by requiring such conditions which to no man are simply necessary and to his particular are either sinfull or impossible 2. The Sum of all is this There is no security in any thing or to any person but in the pious and hearty endeavours of a good life and neither sin nor errour does impede it from producing its proportionate and intended effect because it is a direct deletery to sin and an excuse to errours by making them innocent and therefore harmless And indeed this is the intendment and design of Faith For that we may joyn both ends of this Discourse together therefore certain Articles are prescribed to us and propounded to our understanding that so we might be supplied with instructions with motives and engagements to encline and determine our wills to the obedience of Christ. So that Obedience is just so consequent to Faith as the acts of will are to the dictates of the understanding Faith therefore being in order to Obedience and so far excellent as itself is a part of Obedience or the promoter of it or an engagement to it it is evident that if Obedience and a good life be secured upon the most reasonable and proper grounds of Christianity that is upon the Apostles Creed then Faith also is secured Since whatsoever is beside the duties the order of a good life cannot be a part of Faith because upon Faith a good life is built all other Articles by not being necessary are no otherwise to be required but as they are to be obtained and found out that is morally and fallibly and humanely It is fit all Truths be promoted fairly and properly and yet but few Articles prescribed magisterially nor framed into Symbols and bodies of Confession least of all after such composures should men proceed so furiously as to say all disagreeing after such declarations to be damnable for the future and capital for the present But this very thing is reason enough to make men more limited in their prescriptions because it is more charitable in such suppositions so to doe 3. But in the thing itself because few kinds of errours are damnable it is reasonable as few should be capital And because every thing that is damnable in itself and before God's Judgement-seat is not discernible before men and Questions disputable are of this condition it is also very reasonable that fewer be capital then what are damnable and that such Questions should be permitted to men to believe because they must be left to God to judge It concerns all persons to see that they doe their best to find out Truth and if they do it is certain that let the errour be never so damnable they shall escape the errour or the misery of being damned for it And if God will not be angry at men for being invincibly deceived why should men be angry one at another For he that is most displeased at another man's errour may also be tempted in his own will and as much deceived in his understanding For if he may fail in what he can chuse he may also fail in what he cannot chuse his understanding is no more secured then his will nor his Faith more then his Obedience It is his own fault if he offends God in either but whatsoever is not to be avoided as errours which are incident oftentimes even to the best and most inquisitive of men are not offences against God and therefore not to be punished or restrained by men but all such Opinions in which the publick interests of the Commonwealth and the foundation of Faith and a good life are not concerned are to be permitted freely Quisque abundet in sensu suo was the Doctrine of S. Paul and that is Argument and conclusion too and they were excellent words which Saint Ambrose said in attestation of this great Truth Nec Imperiale est libertatem dicendi negare nec Sacerdotale quod sentias non dicere I end with a Story which I find in the Jews Books When Abraham sate at his Tent-door according to his custome waiting to entertain strangers he espied an old man stooping and leaning on his staff weary with age and travell coming towards him who was an hundred years of age he received him kindly washed his feet provided supper caused him to sit down but observing that the old man eat and prayed not nor begged for a blessing on his meat he asked him why he did not worship the God of Heaven The old man told him that he worshipped the Fire onely and acknowledged no other God At which answer Abraham grew so zealously angry that he thrust the old man out of his tent and exposed him to all the evils of the night and an unguarded condition When the old man was gone God called to Abraham and asked him where the stranger was He replied I thrust him away because he did not worship thee God answered him I have suffered him these hundred years although he dishonoured me and couldst not thou endure him one night when he gave thee no trouble Upon this saith the story Abraham fetcht him back again and gave him hospitable entertainment and wise instruction Go thou and doe likewise and thy charity will be rewarded by the God of Abraham 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 THE END ΧΡΙΣΙΣ ΤΕΛΕΙΩΤΙΧΗ A DISCOURSE OF CONFIRMATION ACTS 9.2 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ALSO A DISCOURSE OF The NATVRE OFFICES and MEASVRES OF FRIENDSHIP WITH Rules of conducting it In a Letter to M. K. P. To which are added Two Letters to Persons changed in RELIGION ALSO Three Letters to a Gentleman that was tempted to the Communion of the ROMISH CHVRCH Dion Orat. 1. de Regno 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 By JER TAYLOR Chaplain in Ordinary to King CHARLES the First and late Lord Bishop of Down and Connor LONDON Printed for R. Royston Bookseller to the King 's most Excellent Majesty 1673. To His Grace JAMES DUKE OF ORMONDE Lord Lieutenant General And General Governour of His Majestie 's Kingdom OF IRELAND ONE OF THE Lords of His Majestie 's most Honourable Privy Councils of His Majestie 's Kingdoms OF England Scotland and Ireland c. And Knight of the most Noble Order of the Garter May it please your Grace IT is not any Confidence that I have dexterously performed this Charge that gives me the boldness to present it to Your Grace I have done it as well as I could and for the rest my Obedience will bear me out For I took not this task upon my self but was intreated to it by them who have power to Command me But yet it is very necessary that it should be addressed to Your Grace who are as Sozomen
teaching us But it is at least hugely disputable and not at all certain that any man or society of men can be infallible that we may put our trust in Saints in certain extraordinary Images or burn Incense and offer consumptive oblations to the Virgin Mary or make Vows to persons of whose state or place or capacities or condition we have no certain revelation We are sure we do well when in the holy Communion we worship God and Jesus Christ our Saviour but they who also worship what seems to be Bread are put to strange shifts to make themselves believe it to be lawful It is certainly lawful to believe what we see and feel but it is an unnatural thing upon pretence of faith to disbelieve our eyes when our sense and our faith can better be reconciled as it is in the question of the Real Presence as it is taught by the Church of England So that unless you mean to prefer a danger before safety temptation to unholiness before a severe and a holy Religion Unless you mean to lose the benefit of your Prayers by praying what you perceive not and the benefit of the Sacrament in great degrees by falling from Christ's institution and taking half instead of all Unless you desire to provoke God to jealousie by Images and Man to jealousie in professing a Religion in which you may in many cases have leave to forfeit your faith and lawful trust Unless you will still continue to give scandal to those good people with whom you have lived in a common Religion and weaken the hearts of God's afflicted ones Unless you will chuse a Catechism without the Second Commandment and a Faith that grows bigger or less as men please and a Hope that in many degrees relies on men and vain confidences and a Charity that damns all the World but your selves Unless you will do all this that is suffer an abuse in your Prayers in the Sacrament in the Commandments in Faith in Hope in Charity in the Communion of Saints and your duty to your Supreme you must return to the bosom of your Mother the Church of England from whence you have fallen rather weakly than maliciously and I doubt not but you will find the Comfort of it all your Life and in the Day of your Death and in the Day of Judgment If you will not yet I have freed mine own Soul and done an act of Duty and Charity which at least you are bound to take kindly if you will not entertain it obediently Now let me add this That although most of these Objections are such things which are the open and avowed doctrines or practices of your Church and need not to be proved as being either notorious or confessed yet if any of your Guides shall seem to question any thing of it I will bind my self to verifie it to a tittle and in that too which I intend them that is so as to be an Objection obliging you to return under the pain of folly or heresie or disobedience according to the subject matter And though I have propounded these things now to your consideration yet if it be desired I shall represent them to your eye so that even your self shall be able to give sentence in the behalf of Truth In the mean time give me leave to tell you of how much folly you are guilty in being moved by such mock-arguments as your men use when they meet with women and tender consciences and weaker understandings The first is Where was your Church before Luther Now if you had called upon them to speak something against your Religion from Scripture or right Reason or Universal Tradition you had been secure as a Tortoise in her shell a Cart pressed with Sheaves could not have oppressed your cause or person though you had confessed you understood nothing of the mysteries of succession doctrinal or personal For if we can make it appear that our Religion was that which Christ and his Apostles taught let the Truth suffer what Eclipses or prejudices can be supposed let it be hid like the holy fire in the captivity yet what Christ and his Apostles taught us is eternally true and shall by some means or other be conveyed to us even the enemies of Truth have been conservators of that Truth by which we can confute their Errors But if you still ask where it was before Luther I answer it was there where it was after even in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament and I know no warrant for any other Religion And if you will expect I should shew any Society of men who professed all the doctrines which are now expressed in the Confession of the Church of England I shall tell you it is unreasonable because some of our Truths are now brought into our publick Confessions that they might be oppos'd against your Errors before the occasion of which there was no need of any such Confessions till you made many things necessary to be professed which are not lawful to be believed For if we believe your superinduc'd follies we shall do unreasonably unconscionably and wickedly but the questions themselves are so useless abstracting from the accidental necessity which your follies have brought upon us that it had been happy if we had never heard of them more than the Saints and Martyrs did in the first Ages of the Church But because your Clergy have invaded the liberty of the Church and multiplied the dangers of damnation and pretend new necessities and have introduc'd new Articles and affright the simple upon new pretensions and slight the very institution and the Commands of Christ and of the Apostles and invent new Sacramentals constituting Ceremonies of their own head and promise grace along with the use of them as if they were not Ministers but Lords of the Spirit and teach for doctrines the commandments of men and make void the Commandment of God by their tradition and have made a strange Body of Divinity therefore it is necessary that we should immure our Faith by the refusal of such vain and superstitious dreams but our Faith was completed at first it is no other than that which was delivered to the Saints and can be no more for ever So that it is a foolish demand to require that we should shew before Luther a Systeme of Articles declaring our sence in these questions It was long before they were questions at all and when they were made questions they remained so a long time and when by their several pieces they were determined this part of the Church was oppressed with a violent power and when God gave opportunity then the yoke was broken and this is the whole progress of this affair But if you will still insist upon it then let the matter be put into equal balances and let them shew any Church whose Confession of Faith was such as was obtruded upon you at Trent and if your Religion be Pius Quartus his Creed
explained 777 n. 26. Chap. 8.7 explained 781 n. 31. Chap. 7.22 23. explained 781 n. 31. Chap. 5.10 explained 818 n. 77. Rosary What it is 328. S. Sabbath THE observation of the Lord's day relieth not upon Tradition 428. The Jewish and Christian Sabbath were for many years in the Christian Church kept together 428. Sacraments The Sacraments as the Romanists teach do not onely convey Grace but supply the defect of it 337. The Romanists cannot agree about the definition of a Sacrament 404. They impute greater virtue to their Sacramentals then to the Sacraments themselves 429. The Church of God used of old to deny the Sacrament to no dying penitent that desired it 696. Of Confession to a Priest in preparation to the Sacrament 857. Saints The Romanists teach and practise the Invocation of Saints 329 332. and that with the same confidence and in the same style as they do to God ibid. They do not onely pray to Saints to pray for them but they relie upon their merits 330. They have a Saint for every malady 330. It is held ominous for a Pope to canonize a Saint 333 c. 2. § 9. Of the Invocation of Saints 467. Salvation The Primitive Church affirmed but few things to be necessary to Salvation 436. What Articles the Scripture proposeth as necessary to Salvation 436 437. The Church of Rome imposeth Articles of her own devising as necessary to Salvation 461. Of the Salvation of unbaptized Infants that are born of Christian parents 471. 1. Book of Samuel Chap. 2. v. 25. explained 812 813 n. 51. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What it meaneth in the style of the New Testament 724 n. 53. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 767 781. Satisfaction One may according to the Roman doctrine satisfie for another man's sin 322 c. 2. § 6. The use of that word in Classical Authours 844 845 n. 72. It was the same with Confession 845 n. 72. What it signified in the sense of the Ancients 844 and 832 n. 34. The Ancients did not believe Satisfaction simply necessary to the procuring pardon from God 847. Schism Photius was the first Authour of the Schism between the Greek and Latin Church 109 § 33. What Schism is 149 § 46. The whole stress of Religion Schismaticks commonly place in their own distinguishing Article 459. Scripture To make new Articles of Faith that are not in Scripture as the Papists do is condemned by the suffrage of the Fathers Pref. to Diss. pag. 4 5. Christ and his Apostles made use of Scripture for arguments and not Tradition 353. An answer to that Objection Scripture proves not it self to be God's Word 353. An answer to that Objection Tradition is the best Argument to prove the Scripture to be the Word of God therefore it is a better Principle 354. The Romanists hold the Scripture for no Infallible Rule 381. Whether the Scripture be a sufficient Rule 405 406 407. In what case the Scripture can give testimony concerning it self 406. Scripture is more credible then the Church 407. To believe that the Scripture contains not all things necessary to Salvation is a fountain of most Errours and Heresies 409. The doctrine of the Scripture's sufficiency proved by Tradition 410. Some of the Fathers by Tradition mean Scripture 410 411 412. Things necessary to Salvation are in the Scripture easie and plain 418. Scripture is the best Interpreter of Scripture 419. Tradition is necessary because Scripture could not be conveyed to us without it 424. The Questions that arose in the Nicene Council were not determined by Tradition but Scripture 425. The Romanists by their doctrine of Tradition give great advantage to the Socinians 425. That the Doctrine of the Trinity relieth not upon Tradition but Scripture 425. That the Doctrine of Infant-baptism relieth not upon Tradition onely but Scripture 425 426. The validity of the Baptism of Hereticks is not to be proved by Tradition without Scripture 426 427. The procession of the Holy Ghost may be proved by Scripture without Tradition 427 428. What Articles the Scripture proposeth as necessary to Salvation 436 437. The Romanists teach that the Pope can make new Articles of Faith and a new Scripture 450. The Authority of the Church of Rome as they teach is greater then that of the Scripture 450. When in the Question between the Church and the Scripture they distinguish between Authority quoad nos and in se it salves not the difficulty 451. The Romanists reckon the Decretal Epistles of Popes among the Holy Scriptures 451. Eckius his pitiful Argument to prove the Authority of the Church to be above the Scriptures ibid. Variety of Readings in it 967. n. 4. As much difference in expounding it 967 n. 5. Of the several ways taken to expound it 971 972 973. Of expounding it by Analogy of Faith 973 974 n. 4. Saint Basil's testimony for Scripture against Tradition which Perron endeavours to elude vindicated 982 983. Nothing of Auricular Confession in Scripture 479. The manner of it is to include the Consequents in the Antecedent 679 n. 52. Secular Whether this Power can give Prohibitions against the Ecclesiastical 122 § 36. It was not unlawful for Bishops to take Secular Imployment 157 § 49. The Church did always forbid Clergy-men to seek after Secular imployments 157 § 49. and to intermeddle with them for base ends 158 § 49. The Church prohibiting secular imployment to Clergy-men does it in gradu impedimenti 159 § 49. The Canons of the Church do as much forbid houshold cares as secular imployment 160 § 49. Christian Emperours allowed Appeals in secular affairs from secular Tribunals to that of the Bishop 160 § 49. Saint Ambrose was Bishop and Prefect of Milain at the same time 161 § 49. Saint Austin's condition was somewhat like at Hippo 161. § 49. Bishops used in the Primitive Church to be Embassadours for their Princes 161 § 49. The Bishop or his Clerks might doe any office of Piety though of secular burthen 161 § 49. If a Secular Prince give a safe conduct the Romanists teach it binds not the Bishops that are under him 341. Sense If the doctrine of Transubstantiation be true then the truth of Christian Religion that relies upon evidence of sense is questionable 223 224 § 10. The Papists Answer to that Argument and our Reply 224 § 10. Bellarmine's Answer and our Reply upon it 226 § 10. If the testimony of our Senses be not in fit circumstances to be relied on the Catholicks could not have confuted the Valentinians and Marcionites 227 § 10. The Touch the most certain of the Senses ibid. Signat That word as also Consignat in those Texts of the Fathers that are usually alledged against Confirmation by Bishops alone signifies Baptismal Unction 110 § 33. Vid. 20. b. Sin Venial sins hinder the fruit of Indulgences 320. The Papists teach the habit of the sin is not a distinct evil from the act of it 322. Of the distinction of sins mortal and venial 329 c.
but because the Apostle speaking of the Foundation in which Baptism is and is reckoned one of the principal parts in the Foundation there needed no Absolution but Baptismal for they and we believing one Baptism for the Remission of Sins this is all the Absolution that can be at first and in the Foundation The other was secunda post naufragium tabula it came in after when men had made a shipwrack of their good conscience and were as S. Peter says 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 forgetful of the former cleansing and purification and washing of their old sins Secondly It cannot be meant of Ordination and this is also evident 1. Because the Apostle says he would thence-forth leave to speak of the Foundation and go on to perfection that is to higher Mysteries Now in Rituals of which he speaks there is none higher than Ordination 2. The Apostle saying he would speak no more of Imposition of Hands goes presently to discourse of the mysteriousness of the Evangelical Priesthood and the honour of that vocation by which it is evident he spake nothing of Ordination in the Catechism or Narrative of Fundamentals 3. This also appears from the context not only because Laying on of hands is immediately set after Baptism but also because in the very next words of his Discourse he does enumerate and apportion to Baptism and Confirmation their proper and proportioned effects to Baptism illumination according to the perpetual style of the Church of God calling Baptism 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an enlightning and to Confirmation he reckons tasting the Heavenly gift and being made partakers of the Holy Ghost by the thing signified declaring the Sign and by the mystery the Rite Upon these words S. Chrysostom discoursing says That all these are Fundamental Articles that i◠that we ought to Repent from dead works to be Baptized into the Faith of Christ and be made worthy of the gift of the Spirit who is given by Imposition of Hands and we are to be taught the mysteries of the Resurrection and Eternal Judgment This Catechism says he is perfect so that if any man have Faith in God and being baptized is also confirmed and so tastes the Heavenly gift and partakes of the Holy Ghost and by hope of the Resurrection tastes of the good things of the World to come if he falls away from this state and turns Apostate from this whole Dispensation digging down and turning up these Foundations he shall never be built again he can never be Baptized again and never be Confirmed any more God will not begin again and go over with him again he cannot be made a Christian twice If he remains upon these Foundations though he sins he may be renewed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by Repentance and by a Resuscitation of the Spirit if he have not wholly quenched him but if he renounces the whole Covenant disown and cancel these Foundations he is desperate he can never be renewed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to the Title and Oeconomy of Repentance This is the full explication of this excellent place and any other ways it cannot reasonably be explicated but therefore into this place any notice of Ordination cannot come no Sence no Mystery can be made of it or drawn from it but by the interposition of Confirmation the whole context is clear rational and intelligible This then is that Imposition of hands of which the Apostle speaks Vnus hic locus abunde testatur c. saith Calvin This one place doth abundantly witness that the original of this Rite or Ceremony was from the Apostles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith S. Chrysostom for by this Rite of Imposition of hands they receiv'd the Holy Ghost Fo◠though the Spirit of God was given extra-regularly and at all times as God was pleas'd to do great things yet this Imposition of hands was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this was the Ministery of the Spirit For so we receive Christ when we hear and obey his word we eat Christ by Faith and we live by his Spirit and yet the Blessed Eucharist is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the ministery of the Body and Blood of Christ. Now as the Lord's Supper is appointed ritually to convey Christ's Body and Bloud to us so is Confirmation ordain'd ritually to give unto us the Spirit of God And though by accident and by the overflowings of the Spirit it may come to pass that a man does receive perfective graces alone and without Ministeries external yet such a man without a miracle is not a perfect Christian ex statuum vitae dispositione but in the ordinary ways and appointment of God and until he receive this Imposition of hands and be Confirmed is to be accounted an imperfect Christian. But of this afterwards I shall observe one thing more out of this testimony of S. Paul He calls it the Doctrine of Baptisms and Laying on of hands by which it does not only appear to be a lasting ministery because no part of the Christian Doctrine could change or be abolished but hence also it appears to be of Divine institution For if it were not S. Paul had beed guilty of that which our Blessed Saviour reproves in the Scribes and Pharisees and should have taught for Doctrines the Commandments of Men. Which because it cannot be suppos'd it must follow that this Doctrine of Confirmation or Imposition of hands is Apostolical and Divine The Argument is clear and not easie to be reprov'd SECT II. The Rite of Confirmation is a perpetual and never-ceasing Ministery YEA but what is this to us It belong'd to the days of wonder and extraordinary The Holy Ghost breath'd upon the Apostles and Apostolical men but then he breath'd his last recedente gratiâ recessit disciplina when the Grace departed we had no further use of the Ceremony In answer to this I shall 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by divers particulars evince plainly that this Ministery of Confirmation was not temporary and relative only to the Acts of the Apostles but was to descend to the Church for ever This indeed is done already in the preceding Section in which it is clearly manifested that Christ himself made the Baptism of the Spirit to be necessary to the Church He declar'd the fruits of this Baptism and did particularly relate it to the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Church at and after that glorious Pentecost He sanctified it and commended it by his Example just as in order to Baptism he sanctified the Floud Jordan and all other waters to the mystical washing away of sin viz. by his great Example and fulfilling this righteousness also This Doctrine the Apostles first found in their own persons and Experience and practised to all their Converts after Baptism by a solemn and external Rite and all this passed into an Evangelical Doctrine the whole mystery being signified by the external Rite in the words of the Apostle as before it was by Christ expressing
only the internal so that there needs no more strength to this Argument But that there may be wanting no moments to this truth which the Holy Scripture affords I shall add more weight to it And 1. The Perpetuity of this Holy Rite appears because this great Gift of the Holy Ghost was promised to abide with the Church for ever And when the Jews heard the Apostles speak with Tongues at the first and miraculous descent of the Spirit in Pentecost to take off the strangeness of the wonder and the envy of the power S. Peter at that very time tells them plainly Repent and be Baptized every one of you and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not the meanest person amongst you all but shall receive this great thing which ye observe us to have received and not only you but your Children too not your Children of this Generation only sed Natinatorum qui nascentur ab illis but your Children for ever For the promise is to you and to your children and to all that are afar off even to as many as the Lord our God shall call Now then let it be considered 1. This gift is by Promise by a promise not made to the Apostles alone but to all to all for ever 2. Consider here at the very first as there is a verbum a word of promise so there is sacramentum too I use the word as I have already premonished in a large fence only and according to the style of the Primitive Church It is a Rite partly Moral partly Ceremonial the first is Prayer and the other is Laying on of the hands and to an effect that is but transient and extraordinary and of a little abode it is not easie to be supposed that such a Solemnity should be appointed I say such a Solemnity that is it is not imaginable that a solemn Rite annexed to a perpetual Promise should be transient and temporary for by the nature of Relatives they must be of equal abode The Promise is of a thing for ever the Ceremony or Rite was annexed to the Promise and therefore this also must be for ever 3. This is attested by S. Paul who reduces this Argument to this Mystery saying In whom after that ye believed signati estis Spiritu Sancto promissionis ye were sealed by that Holy Spirit of promise He spake it to the Ephesians who well understood his meaning by remembring what was done to themselves by the Apostles but a while before who after they had Baptized them did lay their hands upon them and so they were sealed and so they received the Holy Spirit of promise for here the very matter of Fact is the clearest Commentary on S. Paul's words The Spirit which was promised to all Christians they then received when they were consigned or had the Ritual seal of Confirmation by Imposition of hands One thing I shall remark here and that is that this and some other words of Scripture relating to the Sacraments or other Rituals of Religion do principally mean the Internal Grace and our consignation is by a secret power and the work is within but it does not therefore follow that the External Rite is not also intended for the Rite is so wholly for the Mystery and the Outward for the Inward and yet by the Outward God so usually and regularly gives the Inward that as no man is to rely upon the External Ministery as if the opus operatum would do the whole Duty so no man is to neglect the External because the Internal is the more principal The mistake in his particular hath caused great contempt of the Sacraments and Rituals of the Church and is the ground of the Socinian Errors in these Questions But 4. What hinders any man from a quick consent at the first representation of these plain reasonings and authorities Is it because there were extraordinary effects accompanying this Ministration and because now there are not that we will suppose the whole Oeconomy must cease If this be it and indeed this is all that can be supposed in opposition to it it is infinitely vain 1. Because these extraordinary effects did continue even after the death of all the Apostles S. Irenaeus says they did continue even to his time even the greatest instance of Miraculous power Et in fraternitate saepissime propter aliquid necessarium eâ quae est in quoquo loco Vniversâ Ecclesiâ postulante per jejunium supplicationem multam reversus est spiritus c. When God saw it necessary and the Church prayed and fasted much they did miraculous things even of reducing the spirit to a dead man 2. In the days of the Apostles the Holy Spirit did produce miraculous effects but neither always nor at all in all men Are all workers of Miracles do all speak with Tongues do all interpret can all heal No the Spirit bloweth where he listeth and as he listeth he gives Gifts to all but to some after this manner and to some after that 3. These Gifts were not necessary at all times any more than to all persons but the Promise did belong to all and was made to all and was performed to all In the days of the Apostles there was an Effusion of the Spirit of God it ran over it was for themselves and others it wet the very ground they trode upon and made it fruitful but it was not to all in like manner but there was also then and since then a Diffusion of the Spirit tanquam in pleno S. Stephen was full of the Holy Ghost he was full of faith and power The Holy Ghost was given to him to fulfil his Faith principally the working Miracles was but collateral and incident But there is also an Infusion of the Holy Ghost and that is to all and that is for ever The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withall saith the Apostle And therefore if the Grace be given to all there is no reason that the Ritual ministration of that Grace should cease upon pretence that the Spirit is not given extraordinarily 4. These extraordinary Gifts were indeed at first necessary In the beginnings always appear the sensible visions of spiritual things for their sakes who cannot receive the understanding of an incorporeal Nature that if afterward they be not so done they may be believed by those things which were already done said S. Chrysostom in the place before quoted that is these visible appearances were given at first by reason of the imperfection of the state of the Church but the greater Gifts were to abide for ever and therefore it is observable that S. Paul says that the gift of Tongues is one of the least and most useless things a mere Sign and not so much as a Sign to Believers but to Infidels and Unbelievers and before this he greatly prefers the gift of