knows not what or beleev not what himself speaks It was the proper badg of those times when after the alarm sounded in the Pulpit that our people therupon went forth in troops to battle neither did the peasant understand nor the man in black beleev although the sound rung generally in their ears that it was the sword of the Lord and of Gideon which they brandisht against the loyal band their foes Fourthly your pert assertion so often occurring in your Book that ther is neither reason truth nor honesty in my words is but the overflowing of that former intemperat zeal and the more frequent it occurs the less approbation it will find Fiftly your sharp and frequent menaces that if I write or speak again I shall hear more finde more feel more more to my smart more then I imagin more then I would rellishes too much of that insulting humour our poor bleeding Land then groaned under the many years of our anarchical confusion Sixtly the absence of your name in the frontispiece of your book which I have never before observed in all my life of any Protestant writer that hath ever in my time set forth a book here in England against Popery givs no small suspicion that the Authour of our Animadversions is no such Protestant as he would be thought to be Lastly that I may omit other special reasons your other general trick of charging me then most of all with fraud ignorance and wickednes when in your own heart you find me most clear from any such blemish thereby to put a vail upon your own caus which would otherways be disparaged makes me smell a fox a notorious one sic notus Vlysses This has been too often acted here in England to be soon forgotten The better the cause the lowder still was the cry against those who stood for it that the blustering nois of calumnies might drown all report of their innocence And by all this I cannot Sir but suspect that if the description of Popery your Animadversions gives us be right you are a Papist your self a great one and no true Protestant But as it is so let it be Thus much I only tell you that you may see I am neither neglective of your book nor idle but have perused and read it over And although what for the threats of your Animadversions and what for the reasons of my own Fiat Lux I may not enter into controversies yet I hope I may let you know that I have seen your work And that you may the better credit me I will give you a short account of it first in general then in particular All the whole design of Fiat Lux you do utterly mistake throughout all your book of Animadversions so that you conceiv that to be a Controversy which is none that to be absolutely asserted which is but hypothetically discoursed that to be only for one side which is indifferently for all although I speak most for them that are most spoken against and am in very deed absolutely against all speaking quarrelling disputing about Religion If you will but have patience to hear my purpose and design which to all men not interested and blinded with a prejudice is clear enough relucent in the whole context of Fiat Lux what I say will easily appear to your self Fiat Lux sayes one thing and supposes it another thing he desires and aims at that he dislikes this commends We are at this day at variance about Religion this Fiat Lux supposes but it were better to have peace this he aims at and desires And both these things are intermingled up and down in my Book according to that small faculty that God hath given me though not according to the usual method of Books now adayes Here Sir in few words you have the whole summe of Fiat Lux. And I hope you will grant that that to be the scope of my book which I made it for That we are now at varience is most clear and certain by me supposed and not to be denied And that it were better to have peace is as absolutely expedient as the other is evidently true These then being things both of them which no man can resist either by denying the one or disliking the other I thought them better intermingled than set apart and with more reason to be supposed then industriously proved Yet to superinduce a disposition unto peace my only work was to demonstrate an uselesnes an endlesnes an unprofitablenes of quarrels which I laboured quite through my book beginning it with an intimation of our quarrels which S. Paul calls the fruits and works of the flesh and ending it with a commendation of charity which is the great fruit and blessing of Gods holy Spirit Now the easier to perswade my Countreymen to a belief both of the one and the other first is insinuated in Fiat Lux both the ill grounds and worst effects of feuds then is the plea of parties specified their probabilities acknowledged and lastly an impossibility of ever bringing our debates to a conclusion either by light or spirit reason or scriptur texts so long as we stand separated from any superiour judicative power unto which all parties will submit is I think with a strong probability if not demonstrative evidence concluded And therfor is it thought by Fiat Lux to be more rational and Christian like to leav these endles groundles and ruinous contentions and resign our selvs to humility and peace This is the design and whole summ of my book And although I speak up and down here for Papists ther for Protestants elswhere for Presbyterians or Independents commonly out of the very discourses they make for themselvs yet do I not defend either their wayes or their arguments Nor do I teach any doctrin at all or hold there any opinion but only giv to understand in that one little book what is largely discoursed in a hundred That all parties do make out to themselves such a probability which as it stands joyned with the actours resolution and separated from any superiour visible power to which they will submit can never be subdued And hath not long experience proved this as true as any thing els What is ther in Fiat Lux that can be denied Is it not evident that we are now at variance and too long indeed have been Is it not also clear that peace charity and neighbourhood is better than variance dissention and wars do not parties strongly plead for themselvs so far perswaded each one that he is in the right that he will not yield that truth is with any but himself Is not all this evident I am sure it is and all England will witnes it And if any one should be able to evince that any reasonings made in Fiat Lux either for Papists Protestants or others be not certain or perhaps not probable yet he does nothing except he be able to prove likewise that they are not probable to Fiat Lux
or to those that use them whether Protestants or Papists which he can no more do than he can pull a star out of the firmament I say Sir again and mark I pray you what I say If you should chance to evince that the reasons brought by Fiat Lux either for the doctrin or practises of Papists or others be either not probable or untrue yet is your labour all in vain except you be able to demonstrate likewise that they are not probable to Fiat Lux or to Papists and others who use those reasons which you can no more do then any thing that is absolutely impossible By this time Sir you may discern how hard it is to deal with Fiat Lux and impossible to confute him sith he speaks nothing but what is as clearly true and evident as what we see at mid-day Nor do I in this any way exalt the ability of the Authour whom you are pleased so much and frequently to disable A Tomfool may say that which all the wise men in the world cannot gain-say as he did who said the Sun was above half an hour high at noon It was Fiat Lux his fortune rather then chois to utter words which will no sooner be read than acknowledged And it was your misfortune Sir to employ your greater talents in refuding evident truths perhaps for no other reason but becaus they issued from the pen of a man who is not so great a friend to faction as you could wish And although you proceed very harsh and furiously yet am I verily perswaded you now discern though too late for your credit that you had all this while according to our English proverb good Mr. Doctor a wrong sow by the ear Thus far in general Now briefly to give you som account in particular You spend four Chapters and a hundred and eighteen pages which is the fourth part of your Book before you com to the first line and paragraff of mine The applaus and honour of this world c And it is not unwittily done For being to be led as you heavily complain out of your ordinary road of controversies by the wilde chase of Fiat Lux it behoved you to draw som general common places of your own for your self to walk in and exercise your rhetorick and anger before you pursue a bird that flies not you say in any usual tract Preface from page 1 to page 19 Your preface wherein you speak of my subtilty and your own pretence affords me nothing but the beginning of your mistake which will run quite through your book 1 Chap. from page 19. to 29. Your first Chapter beats me about the pate for saying that I conceal my method with a terrible syllogistical dilemma He that useth no method say you cannot conceal it and if he hath concealed it he hath used one But I must pass by store of such doughty stuff being only fit for the young Oxford Schollar who being com home to take air would prove before his father and mother that two eggs were three Then going on you deny that Protestants ever opposed the merit of good works which at first I wondered at seeing the sound of it has rung so often in mine own ears and so many hundred books written in this last age so apparently witnes it in all places till I found afterwards in my thorow perusal of your book that you neither heed what you say or how much you deny At last giving a distinction of the intrinsick acceptability of our works the easlier to silence me you say as I say 2 Chap. from page 29. to 110. Your second chapter collects out of Fiat Lux as you say ten general conclusions spread all over like veins and arteries in the body of that my book And this you do that you may make your self a campus Martius to sport in without confinement to my method But you name not any page of my book where those principles may all or any of them be found and you do wisely for in the sens those words do either naturally make out or in which you understand them of all the whole ten I can hardly own any one The first of my principles must be this That we received the Gospel first from Rome We that is we English first received it thence But against this you reply That we received it not first from Rome but by Joseph of Arimathea from Palestin as Fiat Lux himself acknowledges Sir if Fiat Lux say both these things he cannot mean in your contradictory fals sens but in his own true one We that is we Englishmen the now actual inhabitants of this Land and progeny of the Saxons received first our Gospel and Christendom from Rome though the Brittans that inhabited this Land before differing as much from us as Antipodes had some of them been Christened long before us And yet the Christendom that prevailed and lasted among the Brittans even they also as well as we had it from Rome too mark this likewise But you reply Though persons from Rome did first plant Christianity among the Saxons was it the Popes Religion they taught did the Pope first finde it out or did they Baptise in the name of the Pope Good Sir it was the Popes Religion not invented but profest by him and from him derived unto us by his missioners You adde Did not the Gospel come to Rome as well as to us for it was not first preached there Sir properly speaking it came not so to Rome as it came to us For one of the twelve fountains nay two of the thirteen and those the largest and greatest was transferred to Rome which they watered with their blood we had never any such standing fountain of our Christian Religion here but only a stream derived to us from thence My second assertion must be From whom we first received our Religion with them we must still abide This principle as it is never delivered by Fiat Lux though you put it upon me so is it in the latitude it carries and wherin you understand it absolutely fals never thought of by me and indeed impossible for how can we abide with them in any truth who may perhaps not abide in it themselvs Great part of Flanders was first converted by Englishmen and yet are they not obliged either by Fiat Lux or any lux whatsoever to accompany the English in our now present wayes My third is The Roman Religion is still the same This indeed though I do no where formally express it yet I suppose it becaus I know it hath been demonstratively proved a hundred times over You deny it has been proved why do you not then disprove it becaus you decline say you all common places very good so do I let us com then to proper ones You fall then upon my Queries in the end of my book The Roman was once a true flourishing Church and if she ever fell she must fall either by apostacy heresy or
schism c. So I speak there And to this you reply that the Church that then was in the Apostles time was indeed true not that Roman Church that now is So so then say I that former true Church must fall then som time or other when did she fall and how did she fall by apostacy heresy or schism Perhaps say you neither way for she might fall by an earthquake Sir we speak not here of any causal or natural downfal or death of mortals by plague famine or earthquake but a moral and voluntary laps in faith What do you speak to me of earthquakes you adde therfor the second time that she might fall by idolatry and so neither by apostacy heresy or schism Good Sir idolatry is a mixt misdemeanour both in faith and manners I speak of the single one of faith And he that falls by idolatry if he keep still some parts of Christianity entire he falls by heresy by apostacy if he keep none At last finding your self pusled in the third place you lay on load She fell say you by apostacy idolatry heresy schisme licentiousnes and prophanenes of life And in this you do not much unlike the drunken youth who being bid to hit his masters finger with his when he perceived he could not do it he ran his whole fist against it But did she fall by apostacy By a partial one say you not a total one Good sir in this division apostasy is set to expres a total relaps in opposition to heresy which is the partial Did she then fall by heresy in adhering to any error in faith contrary to the approved doctrin of the Church Here you smile seriously and tell me that since I take the Roman and catholik Church to be one she could not indeed adhere to any thing but what she did adhere unto Sir I take them indeed to be one but here I speak ad bominem to one that does not take them so And then if indeed the Roman Church had ever swerved in faith as you say she has and be her self but as an other ordinary particular Church as you say she is then might you find some one or other more general Church if any ther were to judg her som Oecumenical councel to condemn her som fathers either greek or latin expresly to write against her as Protestants now do som or other grave solemn autority to censur her or at least som company of beleevers out of whose body she went and from whose faith she fell none of which since you are not able to assign my Query remains unanswered and the Roman still as flourishing a Church as ever she was The fourth assertion frequently say you pleaded by our Authour is that all things as to religion were ever quiet and in peace before the Protestants relinquishment of the Roman Sea This principle you pretend is drawn out of Fiat Lux not becaus it is there but only to open a door for your self to expatiate into som wide general discours about the many wars distractions and factious altercations that hav been aforetime up and down the world in som several ages of Christianity And you therfor say it is frequently pleaded by me becaus indeed I never speak one word of it And it is in truth a fals and fond assertion Though neither you nor I can deny that such as keep unity of faith with that Church can never so long as they hold it fall out upon that account Fift is that the first reformers were most of them contemptible persons their means indirect and ends sinister Where is it sir where is it that I meddle with any mens persons or say they are contemptible What and how many are these persons and where did they live But this you adde of your own in a vast universal notion to the end you may bring in the apostles and prophets and som kings into the list of persons by me surnamed contemptible and liken my speech who never speak any such thing to the sarcasms of Celsus Lucian Porphiry Julian and other Pagans So likewise in the very beginning of this your second chapter you spend four leaves in a paralel betwixt me and the Pagan Celsus wherof ther is not any one member of it true Doth Fiat Lux say you lay the caus of all the troubles disorders tumults wars within the Nations of Europ upon the Protestants Doth he charg the Protestants that by their schisms and seditions they make a way for other revolts doth he gather a rapsody of insignificant words doth he insist upon their divisions doth he mannage the arguments of the Jews against Christ c. so doth Celsus who is confuted by learned Origen c. Where does Fiat Lux where does does he does he any such thing Are you not ashamed to talk at this rate I give a hint indeed of the divisions that be amongst us and the frequent argumentations that are made to imbroil and pusle one another with our much evil and little appearance of any good in order to unity and peace which is the end of my discours But must I therfor be Celsus Did Celsus do any such thing to such an end It is the end that moralises and specifies the action To diminish Christianity by upbraiding our frailties is paganish to exhort to unity by representing the inconvenience of faction is a Christian and pious work When honest Protestants in the Pulpit speak ten times more full and vehemently against the divisions wars and contentions that be amongst us than ever came into my thoughts must they therfor be every one of them a Celsus a pagan Celsus what stuff is this But it is not only my defamation you aim at your own glory coms in the reer If I be Celsus the pagan Celsus then must you forsooth be Origen that wrote against him honest Origen That is the thing Pray sir it is but a word let me advice you by the way that you do not forget your self in your heat and give your wife occasion to fall out with you However you may yet will not she like it perhaps so well that her husband should be Origen My sixt principle must be that our departure from Rome hath been the caus of all our evils This is but the same with the fourth in other words but added for one to make up the number and it is you say every where spread over the face of Fiat Lux. Sir you may say what you pleas to be in his face but I know best what is in the heart and bowels both of Fiat Lux and his authour And sure I am this never came into my thoughts Our dissentions in faith may well multiply as we see with our eyes they do by our further departur from unity and this may caus much evil But the branches of our too too manifold evils found among the sons of men spread all as Fiat Lux also speaks from that fertil root of our innate
concupiscence which by evil customs rises up into a thick bole of vitious inclinations while we study not to impair but rather to augment and nourish it However I must give you leav to number this among my silly principles to the end you may talk more copiously of the disputes and wars and broils that are and have been in several parts of Christendom and fall again into your much affected and often iterated rhetorical strain So the Pagans judged the Primitive Christians c. Seventh is There is no remedy of our evils but by a returnal to the Roman Sea This and the principle foregoing had not you warily cloven a hair had been all one and both are equally mine But sir that may remedy our difference in faith which neither can nor will prevent varieties in philosophy or other worldly judgements nor considering the infinite diversity of mens humours is there any one thing equally prevalent with all men and at all times to the like good effect and if it do certainly help one evil it is not therfor a remedy for all But it seems you have yet a little more mirth and choller to vent and therfor I must permit you to adde this principle for mine that you may smilingly consider how the Romans should cure our evils that cannot prevent disorders differences and sins amongst themselvs The eight follows That Scriptur on sundry accounts is insufficient to settle us in the truth And in this you flourish and triumph most copiously for fifteen pages together as the champion of the word of God But sir you speak not one word to the purpos or against me at all if I had delivered any such principle Gods word is both the sufficient and only necessary means both of our conversion and settlement as well in truth as vertue But sir the thing you heed not and unto which I onely speak is this If the scripture be in two hands for example of the Protestant Church in England and of the Puritan who with that scriptur rose up and rebelled against her can the scriptur alone of it sels decide the busines how shall it do it has it ever don it or can that written word now solitary and in private hands so settle any in a way that neither himself nor present adherents nor future generations shall question it or with as much probability dissent from it either totally or in part as himself first set it This sir is the case unto which you do neither here nor in all your whole book speak one word And what you speak otherwis of the scripturs excellency I allow it for good What is not against me is with me Ninth The Pope is a good man and seeks nothing but our good This also I no where aver For I never saw him nor have any such acquaintance with him as to know whether he be a good man or no though in charity I do not use to iudg hardly of any body Much less could I say that he whom I know to have a general solicitude for all Churches seeks nothing but our good Sir if I had pondred my words in Fiat lux no better than you heed yours in your Animadversions upon it they might even go together both of them to lap pepper and spices or som other yet more vile emploiment Tenth that the devotion of Catholiks far transcends that of Protestants But sir I never made in Fiat lux any comparison between their devotions nor can I say how much the one is or how little the other But you are the maddest Commentatour I have ever seen you first make the Text and then Animadversions upon it Here at length you conclude your chapter and would say you your book also if you had none to deal with but ingenious and judicious readers It seems what follows is for readers neither judicious nor ingenious And becaus I knew you took me for one of those I went on in my view Indeed had I not undertaken to give you an account of your whole book I could have been well content to stop here with ingenious and judicious readers and look no further Doubtles in this affair good wits will jump You would write no more had you none but judicious readers and these will read no more becaus they are judicious But I poor ass must jogge on 3 ch from page 110 to 119. Your third chapter concerns my preface which in part you allow and partly dislike And I am equally content with both 4. or 5 ch from page 119 to 148. Your fourth chapter by mistake of press is named Fift and so I must here call it It begins my book and takes up five of my paragraffs at once You have loitered long about the gate like a trifling idlesbee and mean now it seems when you com to my own words to go nimbly over them as of lesser concernment then your own forestalled conceits which you have hitherto made sport with You first set up a maypole and then danced about it and now at length half tired and almost out of breath you come home to me My first paragraff about Diversity of feuds you do not much except against But I see you do not affect the schoolmen haply for the same reason the French love not Talbot having been used in their infancy to be frighted with that name However you think I have good reason to make honourable mention of them becaus they were say you the hammerers and forgers of Popery Alas sir I see that anger spoils your memory for in the twelfth and thirteenth chapter of that very book of your Animadversions you make Popery to be hammered and forged not a few hundreds of years before any schoolmen were extant You check me also for saying that reformation of religion is pretended by emulous Plebeians as though say you Hezekiah Josiah and other good Kings and Princes also of our own were emulous plebeians But sir when I say in Fiat lux p. 20. what glory the emulous plebeian sees given to higher spirits c. I only speak of the times of vulgar insurrection against autority as all men see except your self who will not My second paragraff of the Ground of quarrels you like well and explicate it with a text to help me out I could not haply tell how to cite James the fourth chapter the first and second vers of that chapter without your help However it is kindnes though it be but cours as sir Thomas Moor told his maid when she kist him as he was going to execution and so I take it My third paragraff about nullity of title would you think every period of it confute my self But that saying of S. Paul An à vobis verbum Dei processit an ad vos solos pervenit which I make use of to stop the mouth of all vitilitigatours in religion was cited by me you think in an unhappy hour becaus say you ther is is not any one single text of scriptur more
Ther be books lately set forth and by more then one author which do as powerfully dissipate the conceit we once had of hell as any ever did elude Purgatory Did we not lately find out texts and reasonings against our King and monarchy as many as we found out long ago against Pope and popery Gods providence and our souls immortality if any list to deny he may have more abundant argumentations every where occurring than any other piece of popery now rejected ever felt If one text of scriptur be by a trope of rhetorick made to speak a sens contrary to what was believed in catholick times in any one point cannot another text by some such slight be forced to frustrate another And thus when all articles are at last by such tricks of wit cashiered can ther be wanting several appearing incongruities contradictions tautologies improbabilities to disable all holy writ at once And cannot the Jew afford us at last arguments enough to dissipate at length the very name of Christ out of the world which after the whole extirpation of his law will but float on mens lips like an empty shadow till it quite vanish These things fir are not only true but clear and evident And nothing is wanting to justify them but a serious consideration These few words sir which I have bestowed upon you by way of supererogation above what I needed will somwhat enlighten you to discern the goodness and necessity of my consequence If the Papist who first brought us thâ—â— news of Christianity be now becom odious theâ— may all Christianity at length be thought a Romance c. Religion like a hous if a breach he once made and not repaired to former unity will by degrees all moulder away till no one room be left intire 7 ch from page 177. to 188. Your seventh chapter finished in five leafs runs of flies over no less than four of my paragraffs at once which make up above fifty pages concerning the obscurity of Nature and Providence All which discours of mine is you say nothing to my purpose but foisted in for a blinde to entertain my readers But sir those judicious readers you lately left behind you that discern my purpos better than I see you do will tell you that it is so much to my purpos that nothing could be more At least you let all pass without either censure or commendation till you meet happily at length with a word or too of mine let fall in my ninth paragraff called Help about scripture This makes your heart leap it is a common place you know how to sport in and you never meet with that sound but it makes you dance Your chapter then which is written against all my philosophical discours of nature and providence is called scripture vindicated as though I had industriously wrote against scripture And therin you sweetly dilate upon the excellency and goodness of the word of God as if I had any way diminished it or positively wrote against it just according to the tone of our late dismal times Lord I am for thy caus Lord I am left alone to plead thy caus Lord against thine enemies But sir the few words I there speak only incidentally in the end of that my paxagraff called Help concerning the surmises that men may have about scripture as they be but a small part of the many which I know to be now vented up and down the land in this our present state of separation one from another so if I had not given som touch of them in that metaphysick abstracted discours of Fiat lux which proceeds as I have said upon a supposition of our choosing and making religions here in England at pleasur unto endles differences and divisions it had been a maimed and imperfect work and no wayes satisfactory unto those judicious readers unto whom I write though you do not And I cannot but tell you whatsoever you think of your self you are in truth but a weak man except you dissemble and mistake on purpos to take that as spoken absolutely by me and by way of positive doctrin which I only deliver upon an hypothesis apparent to all the world besides your self I speak upon a supposition of doubting which these times have brought upon us of interpreting accepting rejecting framing forging religions and opinions to our selves and you reply against me words and discourses that presuppose an assent of beleeving If a man beleev he cannot doubt And if he doubt not of the scriptures truth he cannot make exceptions against any of its properties But if any begin to questions this or that or other part of doctrin contained in scriptur and delivered by those who first brought it as every one does who swerves from the Church he found himself in then I suppose such a one doubts And being now thereby separated from that body of beleevers to which he before by faith adhered he cannot now left to himself but proceed if he give attendance to the conduct of his own surmising thoughts to more suspicions than I was willing to express But sir what you say here and so often up and down your book of Papists contempt of scriptur I beseech you will please to abstain from it for the time to com I have conversed with the Roman catholiks of France Flanders and Germany I have read more of their books both histories contemplatives and scholastick divines than I beleev you have ever seen or heard of I have seen the devotion both of common people colledges of sacred priests and religious houses I have communed with all sorts of people and perused their councels And after all this I tell you and out of my love I tell you that their respect to scripture is real absolute and cordial even to admiration Others may talk of it but they act it and would be ready to stone that man that should diminish holy writ Let us not wrong the innocent The scriptur is theirs and Jesus Christ is theirs who also will plead their caus when he sees time 8 ch from page 188 to 198. In your eight chapter which falls upon my paragraff of Reason you are absolutely in a wood and wonder more then ordinary how that discours of mine concerning reason to be excluded from the imploiment of framing articles of religion can any wayes concern Protestants or be a confutation of Protestants As though Fiat lux were written to any such concernment against Protestants Your head is so full it seems of that controverting faculty for Protestants against Papists that if Popery be but mentioned in a book without an epithet of detestation you conclude presently that the book is written against Protestants And if every thing therin contained answer not the idea of your brain then it is impertinent with you it is silly it is besides the purpos And this censur you have given still as you have gone along all my whole book hitherto of every part and parcel of it even
the evil doer if he gave not satisfaction from further use of sacraments those Christians I say who could hitherto have no other comfort or assistance in this world under their spiritual pastour than what words of piety could afford had now by the grace of heaven princely protectours royal defenders and head champions under God to vindicate and make good all Christian rights discipline and truths now accepted and established from faith as well as other civil rites and customs dictated aforetime from meer reason equally revengers upon all evil doers indifferently that were found criminal in affairs as well purely Christian as civil still using the advice and direction of their prelates and Christian peers in the framing and establishing of all those laws they were now resolved to maintain So it was don in England so in all places of the Christian world And then the line of Christian government ran mixt which before was single And Christians now had a Joshua to their Aaron who were only led by Moyses before And although Aaron was head of the Church yet Joshua was head and leader prince and captain of all those people who were of that Church The chief byshop is an Aaron and every Christian king a Joshua And as it is a content and support to Aaron to have a Joshua with him to fight Gods battles and keep the people in awe so is it not a little comfort to Joshua to have an Aaron by him with whom he may consult And indeed no kingdom can have a perfect accomplishment without the presence of these two swords civil and spiritual Ecce duo gladij hîc satis est And although Christians even at this day when any heresy or novelty arises have still recours unto the same head of their religion for a decision of the doubt whom they consulted before for as the channel of Christianity is and must be still the same so must the spring-head be the same also yet when the thing is once decided they have none but kings and governours under him to see the direction executed as the only overseers with coactive power to do it And thus you see in brief how the Pope is head of the Church and the King head likewise and both immediately under God but with this difference that the king only governs Christianity established in his own royalty by law the Pope without further law rules and guides all the streams and rivulets of religion where ever it flows He is head of primary direction the king of sovereign execution he of guidance and spiritual autority only the king of civil and natural power invested in his place and dignity from God above to maintain any laws as well purely Christian as civil which himself shall accept establish and promulgate The Pope perswades but the King commands and although the Pope should formally command yet vertually and in effect such a command amounts only to a perswasion and he that obeyes not feels no smart for it except the king be pleased to espous his caus and punish the contumacious which if he justly do then have kings a just autority in those affairs if otherwise then hath the Pope no means of help or defence in this world any more after the conversion of kings than before it and help himself he cannot any other way than only by putting people out of his communion who care not of it The Pope is obeyed for conscience and love only to his religion the King for wrath and conscience too the Pope delivers the rule but in general only and blunt on one side the king particularises and gives it an edg the Popes headship is exercised in Ought and Should be the Kings is Will and shall be the Pope secludes the contumacious from heaven which he that beleevs not feels not the King over and above that cuts off malefactors from the face of the earth too and they shall be made by feeling to beleev it And these two defend and secure one another and keep both Christians and their faith inviolate And while Christians themselvs do both tenderly love their Pape and chief pastour and spring-head of their religion which is beleeved beyond him to flow invisibly from God the great ocean of truth and withall do honor fear and observ their King and princely governour who only bears the sword of justice and not in vain to take revenge upon all those whom the love of religion and spiritual sword of their pastour will not keep in awe they do their duty as they ought and shall find happines therein I must make haste and can say no more at present to this busines which as I have told you is somwhat besides my purpos Only one thing I must needs tell you before I pass on Although a king is in a good and proper sence stiled head as well of Church as State within his own dominions yet head of the Church absolutely is so proper to the Roman Patriarch that no man upon earth besides himself hath ever so much as pretended to it and that for six reasons First becaus head of the Church absolutely intimates an universal right over the guidance of religion not in one kingdom only but all where ever that religion is And the king of France for example neither did nor can pretend to be head of the Church of England much less of Hungary Spain Africk Italy Greece Asia c. Yet such a head there must needs be to the end the Church may be one mystick and spiritual body at unity in it self And that head must be unlimited to time and place as the Church it self is ever permanent and universally spread nor must the government alter as governments of particular kingdoms do Secondly head of the Church absolutely involves a primacy both of conveighing and interpreting faith and all princes in Europ received their faith at first from priests who sent for that end from their spiritual superior converted their kingdoms but they never gave faith either to them or their pastour Thirdly he that is head of the Church absolutely must be of the same connatural condition with the whole hierarchy to confirm baptise ordain preach attone the almighty by sacrifice impose hands segregate men from their worldly state unto his own spiritual one and in a special manner to exercise those priestly functions unto which he segregates them Fourthly head of the Church absolutely is to be indifferent unto kingdoms and all sorts of government as the religion also is and keep it like it self in all places unaltered in its nature however in its general dictates it may concur to the direction and good of all people and governments And therfor he cannot be confined to one place or government but must be as it were separate and in a condition indifferent to all as a general byshop whose sole care is to heed those eradiations of faith spread up and down the world may be and is when princes heed but