prevail against the Church Which Promise concerneth the Church in general and the necessary Faith of it and not any particular persons or places or successions of persons in them And Christ doth here assure us that the Gates of the Grave shall not swallow up the Church that it shall not enter in at them that it shall not die or perrish But he doth not say he will preserve it by the means of any Earthly Infallible Guide He can by other ways continue it till time it self shall fail The other place of Scripture is the promise of Christ a little while before his Ascension into the Heavens Lo I am with you alway even unto the end of the World As long as this Age of the Messiah shall last and that is the last time or Age. This promise is indeed made to the Apostles and to their successors also But it is a promise of general assistance and it is made upon condition that they go forth and make Disciples of all Men of all Nations and Baptize them and give them further instruction in the things which Christ gave in charge to them And some of the successors of the Apostles have not performed these conditions and the Governour of the Church of Sardis had not held fast what he had received and heard As God hath not promised an unerring Guide so neither hath he said he hath set up such an one in any Church on Earth He hath not said it either directly or by consequence The places which are supposed directly to affirm this are two and both mistaken One of them is that of Christ to his Disciples after he had given Commission to them to preach the Gospel He that heareth you heareth me me the infallible way and the Truth This Speech if it be extended to all Ministers it makes them all infallible Guides And it is certain they are so as long as they deliver to the People what they received from Christ. But the words are especially directed to the seventy Disciples who were taught to preach a plain Fundamental Truth that the Kingdom of God was come nigh to the Jews And these Disciples were able to give to the Jews a demonstration of the Truth of that Doctrine which they taught by miraculous signs By healing the Sick and doing among them mighty works Another place used as an express Testimony is that in the first to Timothy to whom St. Paul saith that the Church is the Pillar and Ground of Truth But this place also is misapplied It seemeth to be spoken of that Church of Ephesus in which St. Paul advised Timothy to behave himself with singular care Which place hath so far failed that the lofty Building called St. John's Church is now become a Turkish Mosch But if it were spoken in a general sense it would amount only to this meaning A Christian Church is like a Pillar sustained by a Pedestal on which a writing is so fixed that all who pass by may see it It is as Jerusalem once was to the Heathen-World a City on a Hill It is a visible Society which giveth notice to Jews and Gentiles of Christianity and is instrumental to awaken their observation and by their sense to prepare the way to their belief For this advertisement being so publickly given to them they have fair occasion of examining the grounds of Christian Truth which when they find they will be induced to build upon them In this sense likewise though not in this alone Apostolical Men were called Lights and Pillars In the Book of the Revelation this promise is made to him who persevereth in his Christianity notwithstanding the cross which it brings upon him Him will I make a Pillar in the Temple of my God and I will write my name upon him and the name of his God and the name of the City of his God which is new Jerusalem or the Christian Church And S. Chrysostom gives S. Paul the Titles of the Light of the Churches the Foundation of the Faith the Pillar and Ground of Truth The Governours of the Church do ministerially exhibit Christian Truth they do not by mere Authority impose it Among the Places which are said to prove by good consequence that there is a Living Guide of Faith that in the eighteenth of St. Matthews Gospel is the Principal There our Saviour requireth his Followers if their Brethren persisted in their offences to tell it to the Church and to esteem them no longer Members of their Society if they despised the Sentence of it From whence they conclude with strange Inadvertence that such a Decree is therefore infallible But our Lord speaks of their Brothers Trespasses against them and not of his Heresie And of the Discipline and not of the Doctrine either of the Synagogue or the Church In which case if we submit even where there is error in the Sentence for Peace sake and because we are come to the last Appeal we worthily sacrifice private Good to publick Order And such Submission is safe in point of property though not in point of Doctrine for we may without Sin depart from our property but not from our Faith Now much of this that has been said in order to the explication of the foregoing places might have been well omitted if I had designed this little Discourse for the use only of such Romanists as had been conversant with the writings of the Fathers For then I should have needed only to have cited those Ancients and shewed that their sense of these several places was plainly different from the modern interpretations of the Church Men of Rome And by this way of arguing they are self-condemned For they fall according to their own Rule of expounding Scripture by the unanimous consent of the Primitive Fathers who with one voice speak another sense Those who doubt of this may receive satisfaction from the Learned Letters of Monsieur Launoy If God had promised an infallible Guide or told us he had given one to his Church he would doubtless have added some directions for the finding of him For to say in general you shall have a Star which will always Guide you without all dangerous error and not to inform us in what part of the Firmament it is to be seen is to amuse rather than to promise Now God hath no where given us such direction He hath no where pointed us to this Church or that Council to this Person or that Local succession of Men. He hath not said the Guide is at Antioch or Hierusalem at Nice or Constantinople at Rome or Avignon You will say he hath directed us to St. Peter I answer no more than to the rest of the Apostles to whom he gave equal power in their Ordination All of whom he made equally Shepherds of the Flock to all of whom he gave equal Commission to make Proselytes of all Nations And in this sense
Man who liveth where Christianity is profess'd and refuseth to submit his Judgment to the Infallibilty of any Guide on Earth and particularly to the Church or Bishop of Rome hath notwithstanding that refusal sufficient means still left him whereby he may arrive at certainty in those Doctrines which are generally necessary to the Salvation of a Christian Man Satisfaction in this Inquiry is of great Moment For it relateth to our great end and to the way which leads to it And it nearly concerneth both the Romanists and the Reformed If there be not such a Guide the Estate of the Romanists is extreamly dangerous For then the Blind take the Blind for their unerring Leaders and being once misled they wander on without correcting their Error having taken up this first as their fixed Principle that their Guide cannot mistake the way On the other hand If God hath set up in his Church a Light so very clear and steddy as is pretended the Reformed are guilty of great presumption and expose themselves to great uncertainty by shutting their Eyes against it Now there lyes before Men a double Temptation to a belief of the being of such a Guide in the Christian Church Sloth and Vitious Humility of Mind Sloth inclineth Men rather to take up in an Implicit Faith than to give themselves the trouble of a strict Examination of things For there is less Pain in Credulity then in bending of the Head by long and strict Attention and severe Study Also there is a Shew of Humility in the deference which our understandings pay unto Authority especially to that which pretends to be under Christ Supreme on Earth Although in the paying of it without good reason first understood Men are not Humble but Slavish But these Temptations prevail not upon honest and considerate Minds which inquire without prejudice after Truth and submit to the Powerful Evidence of it Such will resolve the Question in the Affirmative and they may reasonably so do by considering these Propositions which I shall treat of in their order First The Christian Church never yet wanted nor shall it ever want either the Doctrines of necessary Faith or the Belief and Profession of them Secondly Wheresoever God requireth the Belief of them he giveth means sufficient for Information and unerring Assent Thirdly Whatsoever those means are every Man 's Personal reason giveth to the Mind that last Weight which turneth Deliberation into Faith Fourthly The means which God hath given us towards necessary Faith and the certainty of it is not the Authority of any Infallible Guide on Earth Yet Fifthly All Ecclesiastical Guidance is not to be rejected in our pursuance of the Doctrines of Christian Faith in the finding out or stating of which it is a very considerable help Sixthly By the help of it and Principally as it offers to us the Holy Scriptures in the Quality of the Rule of Faith we have means sufficient to lead us to certainty in that Belief which is necessary to Life Eternal First The Acknowledgment and Profession of the necessary Doctrines of the Christian Faith are annexed inseparably to the Christian Church There is but one Faith and according to the saying of Leo the great If it be not one it is not at all For it cannot be contrary to it self And though it be but one yet Men of differing Creeds pretend to it as the Merchants of Relicks in the Church of Rome shew in several places the one seamless Coat of Christ This one Faith never did nor ever shall in all places fail The Apostles were themselves without error both in their own assent to the Fundamentals of the Christian Faith and in the delivery of them They heard the Oracles of Christ from his own mouth and they were Witnesses of his Resurrection And they spake what they had seen and heard And they gave to the World Assurance of the Truth by the miraculous signs of their Apostolical Office And if they had not had such Assurance themselves and could not have given proof to others of their mission there would have been a defect in the first promulgation of the Gospel and such as could not afterwards have been amended That which at first had been delivered with uncertainty would with greater uncertainty have been conveighed down to after Ages and Men who in process of time graft error upon certain Truth would much more have grafted error upon uncertain Opinion Ever since the Apostles times there has been True Faith and the Profession of it in the Catholick Church And it will be so till Faith shall expire and Men shall see him on whom they before believ'd For a Church cannot subsist without the Fundamentals of Christianity And Christ hath Sealed this Truth with his promise that there shall be a Church as long as this World continues I mean by a Church a visible Society of Christians both Ministers and People for publick Worship on Earth cannot be invisible But the True Faith and the Profession of it is not fixed to any place or to any succession of Men in it God's Providence has written the contrary in the very Ashes of the Seven Churches of the lesser Asia Neither is any particular Church though so far infallible in Fundamentals as to be preserved from actual error an infallible Rule to all other Christians If they follow the Doctrine of it they err not because it is true but if they follow that Church as an unerring Guide or Canon they mistake in the Rule and Motive of their Faith For that particular Church which Teacheth Truth might possibly have err'd and the Church which errs might have shined with the True Light But the whole Church cannot so err in any Age for then the very being of a Church would cease Neither doth it hence follow that the Faith of the Roman Church when Luther arose was the only true and certain Doctrine For that Church was not then the only visible Church on Earth The Greek Church for instance sake was than more visible than now it is and more Orthodox The Rich Papacy having much prevailed upon the necessities of it by Arguments guilded with Interest That Church did not err in Fundamental Points the Article of the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father by the Son which the Romans accuse of Heresie being easily acquitted of it if Men agreeing in the sense forbear contention about the Phrases Besides if our Fore-Fathers under the Papacy embraced the True Faith we have it still the Faith not being removed but the Corruption Their Question therefore Where was your Religion before Luther is not more pertinent amongst Disputers than this is amongst Husbandmen Where was the Corn before it was weeded We have seen that necessary Faith is perpetual and it is as manifest that wheresoever God requireth the belief of it he vouchsafeth sufficient means for information and unerring Assent Of all he does not
St. Chrysostom affirmed concerning St. Paul that the whole World or the World of the Roman Empire was his Diocese You will reply that he promised on him particularly upon this Rock or Stone this Kipha a Syriac Word of the Masculine Gender this Peter to build his Church I answer the Ancients took the Word as Feminine and understood it rather of his Confession than of his Person If it was spoken of his Person it was spoken by way of Emphasis not Exclusion for there were twelve Foundations of these he might be called the first having first preached the Gospel to Jews and Gentiles the Eleven standing up with him and he speaking as the Mouth of the Apostolical Colledge We cannot by the strictest ennumeration find out any living infallible Guide existing in any Age after St. Peter in the Christian Church 1. This Guide could not be the Church diffusive of the first Ages For the suffrages of every Christian were never gathered And if we will have their sense they must rise from the dead and give it us 2. This Guide cannot be the Faith as such of all the Governours of all the Primitive Churches The sum of it was never collected There were anciently general Creeds but such as especially related to the Heresies then on foot and who can affirm upon grounds of certainty that each Bishop in the World consented to each Article or to each so expressed 3. This Guide is not a Council perfectly free and universal For a Guide which cannot be had is none If such a Council could assemble it would not err in the necessaries of Faith For there cannot be a regular Flock without a Shepherd and if all the Spiritual Shepherds in the World should at once and by consent go so much astray the whole Flock of the Church Catholick would be scattered And that would contradict the promise of Christ the Supreme Faithful Infallible Pastor But there never was yet an universal Council properly so called Neither can we suppose the probability of it but by supposing the being of one Temporal Christian Monarch of the World who might call or suffer it In the Councils called General if we speak comparatively there were not many Southern or Western Bishops present at them It was thus at that first Oecumenical Council the Council of Nice though in one sacred place as Eusebius hath noted there were assembled Syrians and Cilians Phoenicians and Arabians Paloestinians Egyptians Theboeans Libyans Mesopotamians a Persian a Scythian Bishop and many others from other Countries But there was but one Bishop for Africa one for Spain one for Gaul two Priests as Deputies of the infirm and Aged Bishop of Rome Whilst for Instance sake there were seventeen Bishops for the small Province of Isauria yet such Councils are very useful such we reverence but God did not set them up as the only and the infallible Guides of Faith If these were such Guides what Guided the Church which was before them By what rule was Ebion judged before the Council of Nice How can we be infallibly Guided by them in Controversies of Faith not determined by them nay not brought before them nay scarce moved till these latter days Such for the purpose are the Controversies about the vertue of the Sacrifice of Christ and of Justification by the Faith of mere recumbence upon his Merits Or how shall a private Man who errs in the Faith be deliver'd from his Heresy seeing he may die some years ere a Council can assemble or being assembled can form its decrees Arius vented his Heresy about ten years before the Council of Nice was called for the suppressing of it And soon after he had given vent to it it spread throughout Egypt and Lybia and the upper Thebes as Socrates has reported And in a short time many other Provinces and Cities were infected with the contagion of it And in the pretended Council of Trent no less than five Popes were successively concerned and it lasted in several places longer than two legal lives of a Man There was indeed a Canon in the Western Church for the holding of a Council once in the space of each ten years But that Canon has not been hitherto obeyed and as affairs stand in the Church it is impracticable For the Pope will exclude all the Greek and Reformed Bishops he will crowd the Assembly with Bishops of his own Creation and with Abots also he will not admit of former Councils unless they serve his purpose not so much as that of Nice it self He will be the Judge though about his own Supremacy He will multiply Italians and others who upon Oath owe their votes to him He will not hold a Council upon the terms approved by all Romish Princes Nor did they agree at their last Council the Emperour would not send his Bishops to Bologna nor the French King his to Trent And though the French Church believed the Doctrines of that Synod yet they did not receive them from the Authority of it but they embraced them as the former Doctrines of the Roman Church And the Parisian Faculty prepared the way to the Articles of Trent Notwithstanding all this we firmly believe that at least the first four general Councils did not err in Faith and it is pious to think that God would not suffer so great a temptation in the Church on Earth Yet still we believe those Councils not to be infallible in their constitution but so far as they followed an infallible rule For the greatest Truth is not always with the greatest number And great numbers may appear on contrary sides The Council of Constantinople under Constantine Copronymus consisting of three hundred thirty eight Bishops decreed against the use of Images in Churches Yet the second Synod of Nice consisting of about three hundred and fifty Bishops determin'd for it And a while after in the West the Council of Frankford consisting of about three hundred Bishops reversed that decree And after that the Council of Trent did re-establish it though there the voting Persons were not fifty With such uncertain doubts of belief must they move who follow a Guide in Religion without reference to a further rule But here there is offered to us by the Guide in Controversies an Objection of which this is the sum The fifth Canon of the Church of England does declare that the thirty nine Articles were agreed upon for the avoidance of the diversities of opinions and the establishing of consent toucâ—ing true Religion Consent touching true Religion is consent in Matter of Faith Establishing of consent relateth both to Layety and Clergy The third and fourth Canons of 1640. decree the Excommunication of those who will not abjure their holding Popery and Socinianism The Reâ—ormed Churches in France teach the like Doctrine threatning to cut them off from the Church who acquâ—eâ—ce not in the resolution of a National Synod
Sectaries have as many different Bibles in Canon Version and sense as are days in the year The Sectarian Bible is no more the Word of God then the Alcoran Almanack or Aesops Fables Of great corruption he speaks in general but his madness has admitted of so much caution that he forbears the mention of any one particular place The Learned Romanists understand much better and the Ingenuous Will confess it And they are not ignorant that we Translate from the Original Tongues after having compared the Readings of the most Ancient Copies and of the Fathers Whilst they Translate the Bible from the Vulgar Latin which indeed in the New Testament is a tolerable but in the Old a very imperfect Version If our English Bible were turned into any one of the Modern Tongues by a Judicious Romanist who could keep Council it would pass amongst many of that Church for a good Catholick Translation And this is the rather my perswasion because I have read in Father Simon that not unpleasant story concerning the Translation of Mr. René Benoist a Doctor of the Faculty of Paris This Doctor had observed that a new Latin Translation of the Organon of Aristotle performed by a person who understood not the Greek Tongue had been very well received Upon this occasion he was moved to turn the Bible into the French Tongue though he was ignorant of those of the Greek and Hebrew For the accomplishing of this Design he served himself upon the French Translation of Geneva changing only a few words and putting others of the same signification in their room But it seems he was not exact enough in this change of words For he having over-looked some words which were used by the Genevians and not the Romanists a discovery was made by the Divines of Paris and this Edition of the Bible was condemned by them though published under the name of one of their Brethren I do not say that such places of Scripture as contain Matters of Faith are plain to every Man But those who have a competence of capacity who are not prejudiced against the Truth who pray to God for his assistance who attend to what they read who use the Ministerial helps which are offered to them shall find enough in Holy Writ to Guide them to everlasting life In finding out the sense of the Scriptures the Church gives them help but it does not by its Authority obtrude the sense upon them The Guides of it are as Expositors and School-Masters to them And by comparing phrase with phrase and place with place and by other such ways they teach them how to judge of the meaning themselves They give them light into the nature of the Doctrine they do not require them to take it upon trust They endeavour to open their understandings that they may themselves understand the Scriptures And if they cannot themselves understand the Doctrine it will be of little use to them in their lives For they then believe in general that it is a necessary Truth but what Truth it is or for what ends it is necessary they apprehend not A Foolish Master in the Mathematicks may require his Schollars to take it upon his word that a Problem is demonstrated But a wise and useful teacher will give them light into the manner of the demonstration in such sort that they themselves shall at last be able to judge that it is truly performed And till they can do this they are not instructed St. Hierom relates it in praise of Marcella a Roman Lady that she would not receive any thing from him after the Pythagorean manner or upon bare Authority She would with such care examine all things that She seemed to him not so much his Schollar as his Judge It is certain that there are great depths and obscure Mysteries in the Holy Bible But the Doctrines of Christian Faith are to the sincere and industrious and such as wait on God in the way of the Reformed Church sufficiently plain But to the Idle the prejudiced the captious Light it self is Darkness The Romanists affright with this pretence of obscurity and profoundness as if we must not adventure into any part of the Waters because in some places we may go beyond our depth If there are hard and difficult places which the Vnstable wrest who required their meanness to make a judgment of that for which they might perceive themselves to be insufficient But whilst St. Peter speaketh of some few places in St. Paul's writings which are obscure he does at the same time suppose many others to be plain enough for the capacities of the Unlearned And if they be evil Men though very Learned they will wrest the plainest places and as some did in St. Hieroms days they will draw violently to their private sense a Text of Scripture which is incongruously and with relectance applied to it It is true all Sects of Christians cite the Scriptures but that does not prove the obscurity of those Sacred writings It rather shews the Partiality Boldness and Sophistry of those who alledge them All Laws are obscure if this Argument hath force in it For every Man in his own case has the Law on his side Men take up their opinions and Heresies from other reasons and then because the name of Scripture is venerable they rake into the several Books of it and they bend and torture places and force them on their side by unnatural construction So do the Socinians producing all the niceties of Grammar and Criticism in a matter of Faith Yet the Guide in Controversies useth it as an Argument against the plainness of this Rule of Faith that the Socinians cite the Holy Scriptures in favour of their Heresie But is not this Argument two-edged And will it not cut as well on the other side and do Execution against the words of Fathers and Councils and the Apostolical Creed it self For the Socinians those especially who are turned Arians since Petavius hath furnished them with Quotations will cite the writings of the Ancients And Slichtingius a mere Socinian hath expounded every Article of the Creed in a sense agreeable to the Heresie of his Master But if the Scriptures were so obscure in necessary matters what remedy would be administred by the Roman Church They cannot offer to us any Ancient infallible exposition What the Antients have said the Reformed generally understand much better then Popes amongst whom there have been some who could scarce read the Holy Gospel in Latin For the Fathers of the earliest Ages they were more busied in writing against Heresies then in explaining of Scriptures Nor to this day hath the Roman Church given any Authentick Collection of Expositions either of the Ancients or of her own And if we must go to any Church for a comment on the Scriptures let the Roman be one of our last Refuges For it is manifest that the Key the Papalins use is the Worldly Polity of that