you deny them this and make them to be as out of the true Church and state of Life If yea Q. 2. Did all that the Apostles Baptized believe all the Apocrypha and all the Decrees of your Councils and your Oral Traditions Q. 3. Did the ancient Fathers and Catechists teach all those to the Catechumens before they Baptized them Q. 4. And were not those all Christians and in the true Church and in a state of Life whom the Apostles Baptized without the profession of any such Belief Q. 5. What was the Creed the Symbolum fidei used for if not to distinguish the Faith of the Christian Church from Infidelity Heresie and all without And if all the Decrees of Councils be as necessary to be the Symbol of Faith why were they not all made up into a Creed and why is the Creed differenced from them all to this day And why do you not cause the Baptized to recite and profess all these Councils Decrees but only the old Christian Creed Q. 6. Doth not Christ at the Institution of his Sacrament Mat. 28. expresly promise that he that believeth according to Baptism in the Father Son and Holy Ghost shall be saved Q. 7. Is it not a reproach to God and the Christian Religion to tell the World that God hath written us by his Spirit so great a Book as the Bible is and yet there is not in it enough to Salvation but that abundance unnecessary to Salvation is in it and some necessary things left out Q. 8. Have your Oral superadded Traditions more Evidence of Truth than the Bible or more Evidence of Necessity to be believed Not more Evidence of Truth For you confess the certain Truth of all the Bible and that as fully manifest as your Additions If it have more Evidence of Necessity what is it It is not because it is a Divine Revelation For so you confess all the Bible to be And do you pretend to a Tradition that saith You may be saved without most of the Bible though it be of God but not without fasting on Frydays or on the Vigils of Saints-days or other such Traditions But if you will make both the whole Bible and Tradition necessary to be believed it must be either Explicitely or as you call it Implicitely If Explicitely that is as each Point is particularly understood and believed then it 's doubtful whether there be one Man in the World that is a Christian and can be saved If Implicitely that is Virtually as it is in some General Proposition what is that General Is it that All that God revealeth is true Or that All that the Spirit of Christ in his Apostles delivered to the Church as his word is true These we all agree in if this will serve the turn Is it that the Church is the Ministerial Keeper of the Sacred Doctrine as delivered This also we agree in Or is it that the Church de eventu shall never corrupt alter or lose this word or any part of it If you mean it of every particular Church we are agreed of the contrary You confess that many Churches have fallen to Heresie and many Apostatized from the Faith If you speak of the Universal Church we are agreed that the Universal Church shall never Apostatize for if Christ had no Church he were no Head of it And we are agreed that they shall never turn such true Hereticks as hold not truly all the Essentials of Christianity For such also are no Christians because each Essential part is necessary to the Essence But whether the Universal Church much more the Greater part may not make or receive some culpable alteration by Amission Omission or Commission we have reason to question We never heard any Proof that the Negative was necessary to Salvation nor is it held by all your selves and whether by any one man I cannot tell For you take the Bible to be Gods Word and your knowledge of the various Readings of the Hebrew and Greek Copies and the multitude of Errours in the Vulgar Latine corrected by P. Clem. 8. and Sixtus 5. do satisfie all the World that you hold that the Universal Church or the major part even your own may culpably erre or alter the very written Word of God And who would then believe you if you said But the Unwritten Word it cannot alter It 's true indeed the Essentials considered as Written or Unwritten all the true Church nor any one Christian while such cannot deny But sure if many thousand Errours may be found in that Book which you take your selves for the Word of God and this through the fault or failing of such as have had the keeping of it and all Divine Revelations are to be believed and all the Word of God is Divine Revelation it notoriously followeth That your own Church hath not kept all that is matter of Divine Faith from alteration So that though many of your Wranglers will not distinguish the Essentials of Christianity called Fundamentals from the Integrals and Accidentals as if Christianity were nothing and had no determinate Essence yet this sheweth that you must do it whether you will or not or else you must confess that your Church may alter any thing or every thing as it hath done all these fore-mentioned Which we will not confess of the Church Universal But I suppose that we have not yet met with the Faith that you account necessary to salvation It is that the Pope of Rome and a General Council cannot erre in delivering to us the Apostolical Doctrine to be believed And this is an implicite believing of all that is written in Scripture and that is delivered orally from the Apostles If so words and names go very far with you as to mens salvation Is this to believe a thousand things which a man never knew or heard of if he do but believe the Infallibility of your Church What! Believe that which I never once thought of But this is but Implicite Faith A cheating Name for No-belief of those things For by Implicite here you can mean only Virtual and that is no Actual Belief of that thing at all but of something else which would infer more were it known Nay Virtual is too high a Name for it But will this serve the turn to salvation to believe that the Pope and his Council are Infallible What! though the same Person believe not in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost nor any of the Articles of his Creed no not a Life to come If you say Yea Then will you call this Christianity to believe in the Pope and not in Christ Or do you mean that men may be saved without Christianity but not without Popery If so why was not the Popes Name rather than Christs put into Baptism and the Creed or at least with Christs But the insuperable difficulty is How must I believe that the Pope hath this Infallibility From Christ or otherwise If not from Christ tell me
which way and why I must believe it If from Christ can I believe that the Pope hath Power from Christ before I believe that there is a Christ that hath such Power to give And can I believe in Christ and not believe that there is a God that sent him Can I believe that Jesus is the Christ and not believe that he is a Sacrifice for sin or a Mediator between God and Man and came to save his People from their sins And can I believe this and not believe that we are all sinners and that sin deserveth that punishment which Christ came to save us from Is not our Saviour and our Sin and Misery relatives as a Physician or Medicine and a Disease And can we believe that we have sin and desert of Punishment without believing that God is our Governour and gave us that Law which we broke and which obligeth us to Punishment Can we believe in Christ and not believe that he is God and Man that he dyed rose and ascended into Heaven and will judge us at last and that he pardoneth sin reneweth Souls by his Spirit and will give us life hereafter All these are included in believing in Christ as Christ And how must I believe that Christ hath given the Pope this Infallibility or Power By any written word which granteth it or by Oral Tradition If by the written Word then I must believe that that Word is true before I can believe that the Pope is made Pope or Infallible by it If by Oral Tradition whose must that be Then I must believe some bodies Oral Tradition as true and infallible before I believe in the Pope at all If it be the first Hearers of the Apostles then either the Pope was one of those or not If yea and he hath a Negative Voice in the credible report then I must believe him as Infallible before he is proved Infallible in order to my believing that he is Infallible which is a contradiction If Not Then I must believe the Infallibility of other Hearers of the Apostles before I can believe the Pope's And the Question will recur How I shall know them to be Infallible And who they were that were those Infallible Witnesses Whether Pastors only or the People Whether of some one Church or of all the Churches And how I shall prove that they gave such a Testimony So that your pretense of a Necessity of receiving Gods Word or the Christian Faith from the Pope and his Council cometh too late For it seemeth that we must believe it first before it be possible to believe in the Pope and Council as authorised by Christ And if my Implicite Faith be the Belief of this Article Any Church in all the world yea the greater part of all the Churches may err in matters of Faith or Apostatize and only the Pope of Rome and his Council cannot What Proof or whose Tradition doth this rest upon Q. 9. Do not Bellarmine Costerus and many of your Writers profess that the Scriptures contain all things ordinarily necessary to Salvation Yea many Writers that the Creed hath all that is absolutely to be believed Yea some that it hath more than all Yea abundance Cited by Fr. a Sancta Clara that the Belief in Christ is not necessary to all And will you say then that he that believeth Explicitely the whole Bible cannot be saved without believing also your pretended Traditions Q. 10. And do you not hereby instead of the light burden and easie yoak of Christ and his Commands which are not grievous bring Christians under a harder yoak than that which the Jews were not able to bear When it seemed good to the Holy Ghost in the Apostles to impose but a few and necessary things Act. 15. 28. And how large a Law is all the Bible and all your Councils Decrees and Oral Traditions set together Do all your Priests themselves or one of an hundred understand them all or know what they are Q. 11. While you pretend a Necessity of your numerous Ceremonies as Fasting on Frydays and such other named by you do you not lay a snare of perpetual Division in the Churches and do you not make as many inconsistent Churches as there be Societies of Christians that differ and still will differ about any of those Traditions or Ceremonies Q. 12. And do you not lay open your own Church to the accusation of innovation mutability and corruption when it is not to be denyed but in such things as those they have been mutable or innovated Have you not long left the Custom of adoring on the Lords-days without genuflexion though the first great General Council Nic. Can. 20. and the ancient Fathers commonly made it a Tradition and Practice of the whole Church and it was Decreed to be so used by all Abundance of such Instances may be given Q. 13. You do very injuriously to your own Sect and Cause here to pretend Tradition as coming down from the Apostles for such things as your own Doctors plead but your Churches later Institution for It 's fully proved by Daleus de jejuniis that the Lent Fast was long but for a short time before it came to fourty days And it 's an odd thing if you will pretend Tradition from the Apostles for the Holy-days or the Vigil Fasts of those Saints that were born many hundred years after the Apostles death We confess our Faith is not so big as yours We have many score Texts of Scripture that promise Salvation to them that believe much less than the Bible it self containeth Yet we profess our selves ready to believe as much more as you shall ever prove to us to have been delivered by the Apostles to the Church to be believed II. And for the second that we receive not our Faith the way that you do that is from the Authority of the Pope and Papists and from your Tradition We crave your consideration of these Questions 1. When the Apostles and Disciples Act. 8. were scattered and preached the Gospel to many Nations Were they not true Christians and saved that received the Gospel from any one of them or from any Person whatsoever If Aquila or Priscilla Converted a Sinner such a one saved a Soul from Death though Peter did it not nor his Authority was known to such a one 2. Do you believe that if the Roman Bishop or Churches Revelation or Proposal were necessary to true Faith and to Salvation that Christ would never have told Men so Nor any of his Apostles have left it us on Record When there were Heresies and Schismes so wofully troubling the Churches as we find in Paul's Epistles to the Cor. Gal. Col. and in the Rev. 2. and 3. ch should we never have found one word for this speedy way of decision to appeal to the Church of Rome Would Paul have rebuked them for saying I am of Cephas and made him but a Minister by whom they believed without ever mentioning his
particular Doctors but of the Church in Councils which we must call your Churches Judgment You undertake not to justifie any more And if I talk with any of my Neighbours and ask him what he believeth have I any more than a single Doctors opinion Is his Answer the Faith of your Church But would you have any one past seven years old believe you that writing is of no more use to Memory for conservation of Antiquities when God would not trust his Ten Commandments to the Peoples Memories but would write them in Stone and put them in the Arke which you have so little skill in Antiquity as to say here was the first writing Sure if you will read your Jesuite Euseb Nirembergius de Antiqu. scripturae you will not say that your Grand-Father taught you truly that Opinion as the Tradition of the Church Why do you write to your own Relations if writing be so un-intelligible Could the Bible have been kept as well in Memory as by Writings Why were the Gospels written then Do you go to Tradition or to Books to decide any Controversie now of the various readings Did Pope Clem. 8. and Sixtus 5. reform the vulgar Latine by Memory or by Books Pope Pius's Trent Oath sweareth Men to Interpret Scripture according to the consent of the Fathers Do any of your Doctors know how that is by Memory and Oral Tradition or by Books Did Possevine and Sixtus Senensis and such others Correct Books by Oral Tradition or by Books Did Celestine and the Carthage Council debate the Case of the Nicene Canon a narrow Instance which Memory might have served for out of Mens Memories or out of written Records Why doth 〈◊〉 bring us out new Forged Canons and why do the Copies of many Councils differ in the recital of Canons if Memory and Universal un-written Tradition can reconcile the difference Was the Athenian Philosophy propagated and preserved better by Memory or by Books Why is not the Stoicks and Epicureans and others as fully known now as Aristotles and Plato's if Memory without Books could have done Have you as full notice now of the Acts of James John Matthew Thomas Bartholomew c. without Book as you have of Paul's by the Book Is memory sufficient to have preserved to us the Statures of the Land without Books and Records Yea or the Common-Law without any Records or Book Cases Why are all your Councils written and all the Decretals to say nothing of the Civil Roman Laws Institutes Pandects and Digests Can you decide the Controversies about the Decretals published by Isidore Mercator by Tradition What are all your Libraries for at the Vatican Florence Paris and in each Learned Mans House if Books be so useless and unintelligible If one of your Relations ask you what is in the Council of Trent Florence Laterane and so upward can you tell him fully without Book by Tradition And are not these Councils your very Religion Doth every Papist Neighbour carry them all in his brain more certainly than in Books Or could your Grandfather and Grandmother have told us more certainly what is in them than Crab Surius Binius Baronius Justellus Albaspinaeus Petavius Sirmondus c. could do Or is all left uncertain because it is written Through Gods Mercy our Essentials and somewhat more are delivered certainly down to us by two hands by Oral and Practical Tradition and by the Scripture because they lye in a narrow room But yet if you had the front to tell the World that your immutable Church hath never changed the Creed it self we could not believe you because Books contradict you Tradition from your Great Grandfather cannot assure us that Filioque was in the Creed from the days of the Apostles Nor that the Holy Catholick Church the Communion of Saints and the other words mentioned in Vessius and Usher de Symbolis were in so long Nor that the Greeks added no words to their Creed at Nice nor afterward at Constantinople in General Councils nor that all S. Hilaries outcry against Creeds was in vain Nor can Tradition without Book yet assure us what were the very words of the Creed used commonly by the Greeks immediately before the Nicene Council nor who wrote that ascribed to Athanasius Nor among the various Formula's of that called the Apostles found as aforesaid in Irenaeus Tertullian Epiphanius Ruffinus c. which of them was in constant use or whether liberty of such alteration of words was not then used And no Unwritten Report of your Grandfather can assure us that your Mass-Book or Liturgy was the same in the Apostles days as it is now nor that it was for 600 years the same in all the Churches of one Empire and that every Bishop had not power to use what Liturgy he pleased in his own City or Parochia Nor can your Tradition assure us that what the Father and Grandfather used was used from the Apostles when the Church of Neocaesarea clamoured at S. Basil for his singularity and innovations and S. Basil retorts on them that they at Neocaesarea had scarce left any thing unchanged I hope this is not the less credible because Basil hath written it At least I pray hereafter give over your ill practice of leading simple Readers into a Wood of Church-History to lose them and the Question there among a multitude of Citations of old Books when you know not what else to say as William Johnson did because there the ignorant know nothing themselves but may as well believe the Affirmer as the Denyer and at least the diversion to voluminous Controversies about particular mens words may hide your Errours Do not resolve all the Controversie yea the Faith of your Followers into a multitude of Books of Councils and Fathers which they never saw And do not take so much care to corrupt and alter Books for your interest as instances and your Indices Expurg tell us you have done Resolve without Book the Controversie about your great Laterane Council whether Dr. Taylor Dr. Pierson Dr. Gunning and Bishop Cousins lately that say Innocent 3. made and published the Canons and the Council did not consent to them be in the right or rather they that answered Dr. Pierson and Dr. Gunning and indeed your Church which holds the contrary which Mr. Dodwell seemeth to me lately to have fully proved in his Book about tolerating Papists Nay why may we not expect that you lay by your Book Catechisms your Office Books your Controversie Books and teach your People all without Book But by this Counsel to your Relations you fully shew that you would have them to have no certainty at all either what Christianity is or what Popery is For they shall never speak with the Universal Church or with a General Council while they live And all their Neighbours to whom you send them are fallible Persons I suppose you one of the chief of them and alas how failible you are you have in two Writings grosly
Naked Popery OR THE NAKED FALSHOOD Of a Book called the CATHOLICK NAKED TRUTH OR THE Puritan Convert to Apostolical Christianity Written by W. H. Opening their Fundamental Errour of Unwritten Tradition and their unjust Description of the Puritan the Prelatical Protestant and the Papist and their differences and better acquainting the ignorant of the true difference especially what a Puritan and what a Papist is By RICHARD BAXTER a Professor of meer Apostolical Christianity Trita frequansque via est per Amici fallere nomen Trita frequensque licet sit via crimen habet The common beaten way of mens deceit Is as a Loving Friend to work the Cheat But though this be the common beaten way It will prove criminal another day W. H. this Author pag. â—5 saith If you do not find that they your Catholick Neighbours hold nothing nor Practise nothing but what they are able to give a very satisfactory account of to any impartial Enquirer then say I am a Knave a Lyar and a Cheat one that deserveth no mercy from God or Man in this World or the next LONDON Printed for N. Simmons at the Princes Arms in S. Paul's Church-Yard M DC LXXVII TO THE AUTHOR AND HIS RELATIONS CHAP. I. WHEN the Confutation of the Treatise of Transubstantiation was in the Press this Book came to my notice written if the Stile may go for Proof by the same Author It is conjectured that your Name is Mr. W. Hutchinson of Lincolnshire sometime of Queens Colledge in Cambridge and that it is indeed your nearest Relations whom you so earnestly labour to pervert Your Stile perswadeth me that you are serious and verily think that your way is right And I suppose you see that we also are as confident of the truth of our Profession as you are of yours The Question is whether it be your Zeal or ours that is according to Knowledge The Title of your Religion greatly pleaseth me and is the same that I assume For we are I perceive agreed in this that it is the Apostolical Christianity that is the true and safe Religion And hath God left the matter so obscure as that we cannot come to an agreement in so weighty a matter of Fact as to know what the Apostolical Christianity was when even Common History giveth us notice what the Athenian Philosophers held and what the ancient Romans held and so of almost every literate Nation You study and we study You pray and we pray You would know the truth whatever it cost you and so would We. As a Man that looketh daily when I am called away to God I solemnly protest that if I could find that Popery were the true Apostolick Christianity I would joyfully quit all the Friends Hope and Interests of this World to embrace it What is it that is your advantage and what is our disadvantage Are you more impartial in your search I am so Conscious of my Impartiality that I cannot believe that this maketh the difference Is it that we have not read the Papists writings I have reason to believe that I have read as many of them at least as you have done if you are not much above sixty years of age as I hear you are not near it But you have Conversed with more of them than I have done It 's like you have But is that the reason of my mistake You earnestly invite your Relations to Converse with the Papists because mens writings may be mistaken And on this ground I perceive you build all the certainty of your Faith That our Fathers and our Grand-Fathers have told us Infallibly what they received from their Fathers and Grand-Fathers and so on This is your certainty I will tell you briefly what I take for the Apostolical Christianity and by what Notices I receive it and then I will again consider yours I take not Christianity to be a thing so hardly to be known as you would make it either as to the Being of it or the Publication I take it to have its Essentials Integrals and Accidentals and that these are not to be confounded If it cannot be readily known what Christianity is how shall we preach it to Heathens or how shall Christians be known to others or themselves and who can have the comfort of an unknown Religion You tell us that nothing of it is written in the New Testament but the Life of Christ by four Men and a few occasional Epistles c. But do you think that Christ himself did not institute Christianity and tell Men plainly what it was Did not those four Men write Christ's Doctrine as well as his Life And is he not the Author of our Faith Did he not preach the Gospel And do you not call these four Books the four Evangelists And doth not the Gospel contain and describe Christianity Did not Christ oft tell us what it is to be his Disciples And were not the Disciples called Christians shortly after as words of the same signification But what place is there for any doubt when Christ himself did institute Baptism and describe it and command that all Nations being Discipled should be Baptized into the Name of the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost as being the Faith which Disciples must profess And do not you to this day profess that Baptizing is Christening and that Baptism washeth away all sin supposing the Baptized to receive it as Baptism by true Covenant-consent at least And doth not Baptism enter us into the true Church of Christ Sure all this is past dispute where then is the difficulty Is not a truly baptized Person a Christian And was it then as hard a matter as you make it to know what Faith was necessary to Baptism in the Person at age or the Parent of Infants Surely then the Scripture that mentioneth the History of so many thousands baptized would have told us of that grand Controversie and how it was decided But no such Controversie was then debated for ought we there find If Baptismal Covenanting with God the Father Son and Holy Ghost as our God and Father reconciled in Christ our Saviour and our Sanctifier be not the Symbol or Badge of Christians and that which visibly maketh them such your own Church and all the Christian World is deceived And we know that it was not the Custom of the Apostles and Pastors of the ancient Churches to make a meer Ceremony and dead Formality of Baptism by baptizing those that would but say the words I believe in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost without understanding what they said And therefore their ordinary Preaching was the Exposition of these three Articles And the Creed called The Apostles is the Exposition of these three Articles which though some Clauses were since added and though the Churches tyed not themselves just to the very same words as we find by the various forms of this Creed in Irenaeus Tertullian Marcellus's in Epiphanius Ruffinus c. yet for the
substance and sense and most of the very words all Churches used the same And when the Council of Nice taught them the way of making new Creeds which Hilary Pictav so sadly complaineth of yet still the matter of the old Creed was the substance of them all And the Eastern Creed which was used before the Nicene Council for that such a one there was the most Learned Antiquaries give us sufficient proof was but the same in sense as the Western even the Exposition of the Baptismal Faith and this the Baptized did profess before Baptism And the work of Catechists was to teach this and the sense of it to the Catechumens And that He that believeth and is baptized that is truly devoted to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost by the Baptismal Covenant shall be saved and he that believeth not shall be damned is by Christ himself made the sum of his Gospel or Law of Grace As the Image of the blessed Trinity on mans Soul is Life Light and Love so the summaries of that sacred Doctrine which must imprint it on us is the Symbolum Fidei the Creed the summary of things to be believed and the Lords Prayer the Symbolum and summary of things to be willed desired and sought and the Decalogue the summary of things to be practised being the Directory of Mans three Faculties the Intellect the will and the Executive Power And all this we believe was delivered to the Churches by the Apostles and received by all Christians many years eight at least before any Book of the New Testament was written And for the fuller understanding and improvement of it and for all the integral parts of Religion that were to be added the Apostles and Evangelists more enlargedly preached them to the People in their Sermons as Christ himself had done much of them We receive all that as Gods Word which by these Apostles was delivered as such to the Churches because they had the promise of the Holy Ghost to lead them into all truth and to bring all things that Christ taught and commanded to their remembrance We are assured that all that is contained in the New Testament was written by such inspired Persons and that the Spirit of God will knew that when they were to dye without written Records the memory of Mankind would not faithfully retain and deliver to Posterity such copious matter as the Integrals and useful Accidentals of Religion and therefore caused them to write it and leave it to Posterity So that our Christian Religion is contained and delivered to us in three Formulas or Prescripts The first containeth the whole Essence of Christianity and is the Sacramental Covenant in which we are believingly given up to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost and God to us in the Relation of a God and Father a Saviour and a Sanctifier This is done initially ad esse in Baptism and after ad robur in the Lords Supper This is delivered to us by Tradition Naturally Infallible de facto For all Christians as such have received and entred this Sacramental Covenant and full History assureth us that the very same Form of it is come down in all the Churches to this day The second Formula is the Exposition of the three Articles of this Sacramental Covenant in the Creed Lords Prayer and Decalogue which hath been delivered by memory also and kept unchanged save the foresaid additions of some explicatory words in the Creed to all the Churches to this day The third Form is all the holy Canonical Scriptures the Old Testament being as preparatory to the New which contain all the Essentials Integrals and needful Accidentals Our Religion then is all from Christ and his Spirit in inspired men commissioned to deliver it and is well called as you do the Apostolical Christianity We own no other It is all brought down to us by Tradition from the Apostles The Essentials in the Covenant and the explicatory Symbols or Summaries are delivered to us two ways First by Memory and Practice most currant and certain from Generation to Generation being no more than what Memory might well retain whereto yet the helps of the Ancients Writings reciting the Forms were used for the fuller certainty of Posterity Secondly in the holy Scriptures where they are contained as the Brain Heart and Stomach in the Body among all the rest as the Principal Parts The third form is so large that Memory could not preserve it and therefore God would have it delivered us in that Writing which we all call the Sacred Bible or Canonical Scripture This containeth thousands of words more than are of absolute necessity to Salvation but no more than is useful or helpful to Salvation In all this I have shewed you what our Religion is Objectively taken and which way we receive it Where you are therefore to note 1. That all our Sermons Writings Church-Articles c. are but the Expressions of our Subjective Religion telling other Men how particular Men and particular Churches understand those Divine Forms which are our Objective Religion These are various as Churches and Persons are every one having his own Faith and Religion in different measures and such expressions being but our sides mensurata may be altered and amended and we pretend not to perfection in them But the former being our sides vel Religio mensurans our Divine Objective Faith or Religion is inculpable and unalterable 2. Note that you Papists do grant all our Objective Faith and Religion even every word of it to be true infallible and of God You own I say every word of our Religion That is all the Sacramental Covenant all the Creed Lords Prayer and Decalogue and all that which we call the holy Canonical Scriptures But we own not all yours So that you do not you cannot find fault with the least Particle of our Religion as to the truth of it but 1. You think that it is not enough And 2. That we come not to it the right way that is we take not our Faith upon the word of Papists as Papists Is not this the difference And is not this all that you cry out against us for And now let us see whether your way be better and surer than this of ours is I. Your Religion is much Bigger than ours II. You hold it on other Reasons and plead another way of receiving it I. Your Religion Objective containeth besides all our Bible all the Apocryphal Books and all the Decrees of General Councils and all the other un-written Traditions if there be any more who knows what you name your self here fasting on Frydays and on the vigils of Saints Ember-days Lent and Images and such like Here now we humbly propose to your consideration 1. Whether you will take all these into the Essentials of Christianity or not If not a Man may be a Christian and consequently of the Church or Body of Christ and in a state of Salvation without them Why then do
in our reproach of the same pretended Schism 5. Note how shamelesly the Papists still tell us of all the Bishops of the Christian World being for them and asking us where was our Church before Luther that is a Society of Christians that obeyed not the Pope when they confess that Augustine and all the African Church for twenty years obeyed him not and alas soon after the Vandals came and conquered them and persecuted and destroyed those famous Bishops that did survive And that you may further know that they had yet more disobedient Resisters than African Bishops you may remember that even the Egyptian Monks so long famous for their great austerity and sanctity had renounced not only obedience but Communion with the Pope and his Adherents Fulgentius was about going to live with them for their holiness but he was told of this and turned his course vid. Vit. Fulgent And how great were all those Churches of Aethiopia Armenia exterior India and the rest which the Apostles converted which Reynerius aforesaid truly saith are not under the Church of Rome Cont. Waldens Catal. in Riblioth Patr. To. 1. p. 773. I have formerly recited the words of Melch. Canus one of their great Bishops saying Loc. Theolog. li. 6. c. 7. fol. 201. Not only the Greeks but almost ALL THE REST OF THE BISHOPS OF THE WHOLE WORLD have vehemently fought to destroy the priviledge of the Church of Rome And indeed they had on their side both the Arms of Emperours and the GREATER NUMBER OF CHURCHES and yet they could never prevail to abrogate the Power of the one Pope of Rome See here their own Confession 1. Where Christians opposing the Pope were before Luther 2. And of what credit their boast of Universality and Catholick Tradition is One while W. H. saith The Bishops of the whole World were for them But when their cause leads them to tell truth they say Almost all the Bishops of the whole World have vehemently fought against the Pope and the Arms of Emperors and the greater number of Churches were against them And indeed if it had been none but the Greeks he might well have said The greater number of Churches For the Contest which begun upon the Emperours removal to Constantinople and at the first General Council increasing more and more till Gregory opposed John's Claim of Universal Bishop as Antichristian at last Phoc as the cruel murderer of Mauritius gave the Title to the Bishop of Rome But that no whit ended the contest following Emperors being contrary minded and the Greeks continuing their Claim the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople excommunicating one another so that by this abominable striving which should be the Chief or Greatest the Churches that were of old in the Empire have been divided and so they continue to this very Day as unreconcileable as ever And when Gregory sent his Emissary hither to Preach to the Saxons they found the Christian Britans and Scots not only averse to the Government Orders and Ceremonies of Rome so that in many Kings Reigns neither words nor force could make them yield but also such as refused their Communion and would not so much as eat and drink with them in the same house No wonder then that Marinarius at the Council of Trent complain that the Church is shut up in the Corners of Europe and that Sonnius Bishop of Antwerp say Demonstr Relig. Christ li. 2. Tract 5. c. 3. I pray you what room hath the Catholick Church now in the habitable World Scarce three Elns long in comparison of the vastness which the Satanical Church doth possess The truth is saith Brierwood Divide the known World and alas how much is unknown into thirty parts and about nineteen are Heathens and six Mahometans and five Christians of all sorts And of these Christians the Papists at this day are as some think about a fifth part some think a fourth part and some think a third part And after the assuming of the Universal Title their Popes more and more degenerated to such odious wickedness at last as we hope few Pagans are guilty of which we speak not as from Enemies but from their own Historians and Flatterers such as Platina Baronius Genebrard c. Nay not so much from them as from Councils General and Provincial which have accused condemned and deposed them Read in my Key for Catholicks pag. 220 221 222. the words of Baronius Genebrard Platina CL. Espensaeus 〈◊〉 Muss Guicciardine c. Nic. Clemangis Bernard Alv. Pelagius say more Let any impartial man but read the Articles on which the Council at Constance condemned and deposed John 23. about 70 in number in which they make him almost as bad as a man out of Hell can be and indeed say he was commonly called The Devil incarnate Read the Articles on which the Council at Basil condemned and deposed Eugenius the Fourth as a perjured Wreteh an obstinate Heretick and all the rest Read the Articles on which another Council deposed John 13. alias 12. And read the Lives of many more in their own Historians And what came the Church to when it had such Heads when Baronius saith ad an 912. that the face of the holy Roman Church was exceeding filthy when the most potent whores did rule at Rome by whose pleasure Seats were changed Bishops were given and which is a thing horrid to be heard and not to be spoken their Lovers were thrust into Peters Chair being false Popes who are not to be written in the Catalogue of the Roman Popes but only for the marking of such times And what kind of Cardinals Priests and Deacons think you we must imagine that these Monsters did chuse when nothing is so rooted in Nature as for every one to beget his like For near 150 years saith Genebrard about fifty Popes were rather Apostatical than Apostolical And where was their uninterrupted Succession all this time Pope Nicolas in his Decretals Caranz p. 393. 395 saith He that by Money or the favour of Men or Popular or Military Tumults is intruded into the Apostolical Seat without the Concordant and Canonical Election of the Cardinals and the following religious Clergy let him not be taken for a Pope nor Apostolical but Apostatical And of the Clorgy he saith Priests that commit Fornication cannot have the honour of Priesthood Yea Let no Man hear Mass of a Priest whom he certainly knoweth to have a Concubine or Woman introduced And shall not Protestants forgive those that will not hear such or as bad Where then was the Papacy under such For above forty years together there were more Popes than one at once and sometimes more than two one dwelling at Rome and another at Avignion or elsewhere One set up and obeyed by one Party and another by another Party each condemning the other as an Usurper And had the Universal Church then any one Head And with what wickedness are they charged one destroying what the other was for see in
and allowed them so many and various Societies and with so great Priviledges as obliged them generally to uphold and serve him Though he cruelly persecuted all that were against his Power and Interest yet he allowed almost all the Diversities of such as would but unite in him and serve him 6. And as he so twisted his own and all his Clergies Interest that they were all ready to obey and defend him against their several Princes and thereby had a great power in every Christian State in Europe so keeping all his Clergie unmarryed their wealth still accumulated and flowed into the Church And the Eastern Empire being first weakned and then overthrown and the Western Nations kept weak and in continual Wars against each other there was none well able to resist his Pride but one party still was ready to flatter him partly to keep their own Clergy in Peace and partly to have his help against their Enemies And the grand Cheat by which they were commonly deceived was that they lookt more at his present possession of Primacie than at the reason and right by which he claimed it and so he that had been Prime Patriarch in one Empire set up by the Prince still claimed the right of the same places when the Empire was dissolved as if the Subjects of the Kings of France Spain c. must obey him because they did so when they were the Subjects of Constantine Theodosius Valentinian c. For by little and little he changed his Title mentioned in the Council of Calcedon into a pretended Divine Right and so they that would not have obeyed him as set up by Caesar and his Councils obeyed him as if he had been set up by God For the name of St. Peter and his Chair and Successour was used as the common blind And next to that he did by degrees change his claim of a Primacie in the Empire into a claim of Primacie in all the World and his claim of a meer Primacie into a claim of Soveraignty or Governing Monarchy If you ask me how could he blind Men so far as to make such a change You seem not to know Man-kind nor to observe common experience Do you not consider what power the Clergie had every where got with the People What an advantage possession and St. Peters name were And how lamentably ignorant they kept the People Do we not see that even in our more knowing times yea among Protestants yea with some Divines the evident distinction between their Humane Right and their pretended Divine Right and between an Universal Council or Church of the Empire and of the whole World have not been sufficiently observed in our Disputes against them And the additional Countries of voluntary Subjects in Brittain Hungary Sweden Denmark c. which of later times since his Imperial Primacie have fallen in to him have much helped to blind the people herein and to serve his Claim as by Divine Right For which ends his Emissaries have taken great pains at the East and West Indies in China and Japan and Congo and once they made an attempt in Abassia and among the Greeks and in many other Nations of the World laudably seeking to win some Heathens to Christ that they might win them to the Pope and turbulently seeking to disturb the Greeks and other Christian Churches to draw them to the obedience of the Pope The Doctrines by which they promote their design are more than I may now stay to open I. One of the chief is by depressing the Honour of the sacred Scriptures as insufficient to acquaint us with all Gods will that is necessary to our salvation without supplemental Tradition that so all men might be brought to depend on them as the Keepers of Tradition But 1. Is their Tradition yet written in any of their own Books or not If not where are they kept And who knoweth what they are Is it not strange that so many Doctors in so many Ages all remembring them would none of them ever write them down Are they in the Memory of the Pope only What of those that could not read or that were condemned as Hereticks of Infidels Then all the World must receive them from the Popes Memory If so must it be Word or Writing And had he no Memory of them before he was Pope But if it be in other Mens Memories that your unwritten Traditions are kept in whose is it If in all the Doctors of your Church why did not Luther Melancthon Pet. Martyr and the rest that turned from you know them Or did they suddenly forget them all when they turned Protestants And how vast must your necessary Religion be if yet it must have more in it unwritten than is to be found in all your great Volumes of Councils and your huge Library But I suppose you will say that all your unwritten Traditions are now written If so they are not unwritten And how long have they been written and by whom If Fathers and Sons could keep them unwritten in memory a thousand years why not 1100 and why not 1600 c. If they were written in the beginning where be the Books Are they not such as other Christians can read and understand as well as you or an illiterate Pope If there be a necessity of having them in writing now was there not the same necessity to former Ages 2. I suppose you will send us to your Councils for those Traditions But if the Bishops know them not before they come to the Council how do they begin to know them then Do they go thither for a new miraculous Revelation of an old Tradition left with the whole Church 1. But do not Councils oft determine things confessedly uncertain to the Church before and yet out of utter uncertainty it suddenly becometh an Article of Faith For Instance the great Council at Basil saith Bin. sess 30. p. 80. A hard Question hath been in divers parts and before this Synod about the Conception of the glorious Virgin Mary and the beginning of her Sanctification Some saying that the Virgin and her Soul was for some time or instant of time actually under Original Sin Others on the contrary saying that from the beginning of her Creation God loving her gave her Grace by which preserving and freeing that blessed Person from the Original Spot We having diligently lookt into the Authorities and Reasons which for many years past have in publick relation on both sides been alledged before this holy Synod and having seen many other things about it and weighed them by mature consideration do Define and Declare That the Doctrine affirming That the glorious Virgin Mary the Mother of God by the singular preventing and operating Grace of God was never actually under Original Sin but was ever free from all Original and actual Sin and was holy and immaculate is to be approved held and embraced of all Catholicks as godly and consonant to Church-worship Catholick Faith right Reason
and sacred Scripture and that henceforth it shall be lawful for no Man to Preach or Teach the contrary Where was this Tradition kept before that was so hard a Controversie till now 2. And do not General Councils bring in Novelties I cited formerly the words of Cajetan in his Oration in the Council at the Laterane under Leo 10. charging the Council of Constance Basil and Pisa with Novelty and such Novelty as would have quite defaced the Church and was inconsistent with it And Pighius chargeth them with the like Yea I told you before where he saith that General Councils themselves are a Novelty devised by Constantine 3. Be not General Councils themselves approved or reprobated at the pleasure of the Pope What a number of reprobated Councils were there that yet were as numerous as the approved and as lawfuly called and assembled Bellarmine instanceth in the 2. of Ephesus Constance Basil and many more Of which more before II. Another of their deceits is by pretending to Vinc. Lerinensis Rule quod ab omnibus ubique semper c. as if Antiquity and Universality were on their side I must remember that I have long ago confuted these and the rest of their deceits in my Key for Catholicks Yet I will briefly speak here to these two 1. For Antiquity we willingly stand to it and to the rejecting of all Novelty in Religion But we must have better proof than the word of our Grand-fathers or a Priest 1. Is any of their Books or Traditions elder than the holy Scripture 2. Either the Greeks Armenians Abassines c. have been sure Keepers of Antiquity or not If yea then we may take their Testimony as well as the Church of Romes If not why may not you prove as ill Keepers of it as they 3. But are they not certain Novelties that you would impose on us under the colour of Antiquity Read but Pet. Moulin de Novit Papismi or Mr. Th. Doelittles Discourse in the Morning Lectures against Popery and you shall see the Novelty of your Religion fully proved Take now but these few instances 1. Your very Patriarchate Primacie Claim of Universality General Councils are all proved Novelties before 2. Your own Writers confess that the denying the People Christs Blood or the Cup in the Lords Supper is a Novelty that prevailed by Custom by little and little and was not common long before the Council at Constance Dare you say that it was so from the beginning or of old 3. Can you possibly believe that your forbidding men to read the Scriptures in a known Tongue without a Licence is not a Novelty if ever you read Chrysostom Augustine Jerome or any thing of the Ancients 4. Is it not a Novelty for the publick Prayers of the Church to be ordinarily made in a Tongue not understood by the generality of the People But I must stop 2. And as to Universality I have before proved 1. That by their own Confession most of the Churches and Bishops of the World have been against them 2. That at this day they are not above the third part of Christians Too small an Universal Church for any man of Charity and Consideration to be a member of A Sect that call themselves All the Church Jacob. a Vitr Histor Orient Cap. 77. tells us that the Churches in the Easterly part of Asia alone exceeded in multitude both the Greek and Latine Churches As for their telling us that all these followed Dioscorus a Heretick or were Nestorians and that all the Abassines Armenians Georgians Syrians Coptics Greeks Protestants c. are Hereticks or Schismaticks I have answered it so oft at large that I must not repeat what I have said Only 1. I say that if the Censures and Revilings of Adversaries can un-christen all others and appropriate the Church to them that have least Charity perhaps the Qualiers may shortly have as fair a Title as the Papists If General Councils be not to be believed when they Hereticate Popes I will not believe a Railer when he Hereticates most of the Christian World whom he never saw or spake with Sure that man judgeth persons unheard 2. I repeat the words of Barchardus one of your own that long lived among them and spake what he saw p. 325 326. And is for those that we judge to be damned Hereticks as the Nestorians Jacobites Maronites Georgians and the like I found them to be for the most part good and simple men and living sincerely towards God and Men they are of great abstinence c. And p. 324. he saith that the Syrians Greeks Armenians Georgians Nestorians Nubians Jubeans Chaldeans Maronites Ethiopians Egyptians and many other Nations of Christians there inhabit and that some are Schismaticks not subject to the Pope and others called Hereticks as the Nestorians Jacobites c. but there are many in these Sects that are very simple knowing nothing of Heresies devoted to Christ materating the Flesh with Fastings and clothed with the most simple Garments so that they far excel the very RELIGIOUS of the Church of Rome And p. 323. of the Papists whom he calleth by the Name of Christians as if it were proper to them he saith There are in the Land of Promise men of every Nation under Heaven and every Nation liveth after their own Rites and to speak the very truth to our own great confusion there are none found in it that are worse and more corrupt in Manners than Christians that is Papists 3. If greater Errours and Vices than are among the Armenians the Abassines Syrians c. will allow us to reject men from our Communion how much more cause have we to renounce Communion with Popes and Papists than with these Churches 4. How can any man say that Nations and Countries are to be rejected as Hereticks unless the single persons guilty were tryed and heard when there is no Heresie but what is in individuals and no Law of God or Reason condemneth the innocent for the guilties faults much less all Posterity for their Ancestors III. But they never gain more than by aggravating the Divisions that are among other Christians and boasting of the Unity of their Church And the Contentions that have been among us have given them such advantage as that some in the sense of their former guilt having been Sect-masters themselves have turned Papists as thinking it the state of Union and having found no settlement in those ways which they have tryed because they never rightly understood the true temperament of the Christian Religion which they professed they think to find it in that way that they never tryed as sick men turn from side to side for ease while the cause of their weariness and pain is within them and turneth with them Here let the Reader note 1. That Fools judge of Differences in Religion by the noise that it makes in the World but men of Reason judge of it by the greatness and number of the points of
with him so but they will have his Body here still and yet a Vice-Christ or visible Monarch also in his stead See their own words which I have cited at large in my Answer to Mr. Johnson V. The pretended ground of this his Claim is that St. Peter received this power from Christ and that St. Peter was Bishop last at Rome and that the Pope succeedeth him in his Bishoprick and Power This is professed commonly by them But 1. It is false that St. Peter received any such Power from Christ as to be the Governour of all the rest of the Apostles and Christians in the World He never exercised or claimed such a Government but in cases of Controversie Act. 15. and Gal. 2 c. He dealeth but on equal terms with the rest And they that said I am of Cephas are as well rebuked as they that said I am of Paul And 1 Cor. 12. 28 29 c. Apostles are said to be but chief Members of the Church and Christ the only Head And when the Disciples strove who should be the greatest Christ giveth it not to Peter but forbideth it to them all And Peter himself as a fellow Elder exhorteth all Elders to oversee and feed the Flock not as Lords over the Heritage c. and never claimeth a Soveraignty to himself No word mentioneth any Power that St. Peter had greater than his Apostleship And Bellarmine professeth that the Pope hath not his power as succeeding him in his Apostleship but as an ordinary Pastor over the whole Church 2. There is no certainty that ever Peter was at Rome as Nilus hath shewed but a humane Testimony of many later Fathers upon the words of uncertain Reporters before them which are to be believed indeed as probable but no more There being as great a number of Papist Writers I think about 60 that tell us there was a Pope Joane and yet it is uncertain if not least probable But if he was at Rome Apostles were no where proper Bishops Bishops were the fixed Elders or Pastors of particular Churches Apostles were moveable and Itinerant having an Indefinite Commission to go preach the Gospel to all the world as far as they were able Though the ancient Fathers used to call them Bishops because pro tempore they Ruled perswasively where they came Though indeed their work was to settle Churches and Bishops and not to be settled Bishops themselves 3. Paul was certainly and long at Rome and liker to be as a Bishop there of the two If Paul was not one Peter was not for there is no more but less proof of his Government there If Paul was one then one City had two contrary to the old Canons 4. There is no proof that Peter's being last at Rome gave his Power to all or any following Bishops of Rome any more than to the Bishops of Antioch who are said to succeed him in his first Bishoprick or any more than Christs dying at Jerusalem the Mother Church did fix the Supremacie there or any more than the other eleven Apostles did leave their power which they had above all ordinary Bishops to the places where they abode either last or first If Peter's dying Bishop at Rome prove such a succession of Universal Monarchy the aforesaid Successions will be proved by the same Reason which yet none affirm Even Alexandria claimed but from St. Mark who was less than thirteen Apostles But no Testament of Peter declaring any conveyance of such a Monarchy is pretended by the Popes which is a wonder Nor any word that ever he used of such importance 5. I have shewed that General Councils Calced and Constant have declared that Romes primacy had a later humane rise Yet would they have exercised no other Government than St. Peter did the world would not have been troubled by them as they have been VI. The Papists seem not resolved themselves whether the Pope have an Universal Apostleship or Teaching office as well as the Universal Monarchy or Government Though Bellarmine say that he succeedeth not Peter as an Apostle but as a Pastor yet most others that I have seen medling with it say otherwise If he succeed not in the Apostleship he is no true Successour of St. Peter at all in any superemience of Power For what he had was as an Apostle If he do then he is bound to go preach himself to the Nations of the world as Peter was To send others to preach and not do it himself was no Apostleship They were sent themselves David and Solomon set up Priests and yet were themselves no Priests Hezekiah and Josiah sent and set up Preachers and yet undertook not that office themselves VII This Pope claimeth the sole Power of calling General Councils of all the Christian world yet never did it And consequently of being the Judge when any shall be called and so whether ever there shall be any or not And though former General Councils voted that they should be every ten years yet he prevaileth to the contrary VIII Also he claimeth the sole power of presiding in such Councils and also of making their Decrees either valid by his approbation or null or invalid by his Reprobation as he please so that nothing that they Decree is of force but as it pleaseth him whence we have distinct Catalogues of Approved and Reprobate Councils Yet no mortal man knoweth oftentimes how much of a Councils Acts and Decrees the Pope approveth When Martin the fifth had consented to all done by the Council of Constance the word Conciliariter acta seemed to the Council to mean all that they did de facto as a Council But the Popes ever since yet reject that Council on pretense that by conciliariter was meant all that de jure as a Council they might do Gregory the first approved of the four first General Councils receiving them as the four Gospels and if his Predecessors did not it was because their consent was not taken to be necessary nor much sought And yet now Bellarmine raileth at the Council of Calcedon and they tell us how much of it they receive and how much not And so of many others And nothing is more evident in such History than that the Emperors and not the Pope were they that called divers of the first Councils IX The Pope accordingly claimeth a supremacy above General Councils that he may dissolve them but they cannot question or depose him though General Councils have decreed the contrary I recited Binnius words before Vol. 2. p. 515. Pighius Gretser's Bellarmine's and multitudes more might soon be produced to the same sense The eighth General Council at Constantinople saith Can. 21. that None must compose any Accusations against the Pope Vid. Bellarm. de concil li. 2. c. 11. Saith Pighius Hier. Eccl. li. 6. The Councils of Constance and Basil went about by a new trick and pernicious example to destroy the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy and instead of it to bring in the domination of
name p. 47. What men many Bishops and Conformists have been and are in England p. 48. The Religion which is uppermost right or wrong will be professed usually by the most and therefore by bad men p. 49. It is worse with the Papists who are many very bad even where they differ from superiours and suffer ibid. His accusations of Puritanes and Prelaticks Protestants about imputed Righteousness and inherent confuted A true description of the Protestants judgment of justifying Righteousness p. 51 52 c. His derision of Imputed Righteousness as a Mummery p. 54 55. His gross slander that we are for meer Imputed Holiness p. 55. The true middle way about Indifferent Rituals p. 56. I. Of his charge on Prelatists for silencing Puritanes for not observing Fasts c. which they neglect themselves p. 57. Puritanes and Papists fasting 2. Of wax tapers on the Altar p. 58. 3. Of the Sign of the Cross p. 58 59. 4. Of the real presence p. 60. 5. Of Confession and Absolution p. 61. 6. Of bowing at the Name Jesus and Images p. 62. 7. Of the Surplice Girdle Stole and Casuble p. 63. 8. Of praying for the Dead p. 64. 9. Of the Government of the Pope and Councils p. 65. 1. Whether Gods Wisdom require it 2. Civil and Ecclesiastick Monarchy of the whole world Compared p. 66 67. 3. Is the Pope Universal Apostle or Teacher p. 55. 4. Whether the Pope be Head but in the Vacancy of Councils p. 66. 5. Most of the Christian World by far are no Papists 68. 6. The Pope dissenteth from General Councils and so far from the Universal Church we own them when he doth not 69. 7. The difference between the Kings Headship and the Popes 37. 8. Puritanes are for the Kings supremacie 70. 9. How far they submit their judgment to the Churches p. 70. 10. The Church teacheth us the Faith but may not judge in partem utramlibet viz. that there is no God no Christ no Heaven c. p. 71. II. It 's Schismatical and worse to feign that various habite Gestures Meats c. make various Religions Q. 1. Do variety of Liturgies make various Religions 2. Is not Religion more concerned in the Papists Doctrinal Differences among themselves about Predestination Grace Free-will the immaculate conception and hundreds more in the School Doctors and about the deposing excommunicating and killing Kings and about all the Controversies mentioned by the Jansenists in the Jesuits Morals and by Mr. Clarkson in the Practical Divinity of the Papists than in variety of Clothes Formes or Ceremonies And is it not as laudable for Protestants to hold Union and Communion with them that use not the same words or rites as in the Church of Rome to tolerate without so much as any disowning censure the foresaid Doctrinal Differences about King killing when excommunicate Murder Adultery Fornication Perjury Lying Stealing c. mentioned in the foresaid Books p. 72. CHAP. IV. H. W's ill forming Accusations which he can best answer p. 77. What Grotius meant by Papists p. 79. I. Of Papists Image-worship p. 79. II. Of Popes Pardons p. 80. III. Their praying to the Virgin Mary 83. IV. Latine prayers 84. V. Implicite belief in Teachers 85. VI. Preferring the Churches Laws to Gods 87. VII Obedience 88. CHAP. V. THe true History of the Papacie its original and growth 94. 1. The ancient Church took not the Papacie to be of Gods institution but Mans fully proved p. 99. c. 2. The Roman Primacie was ever but one Empire and not all the Christian People in the world proved p. 103 c. 3. Councils were General only as to the Empire and not the World p. 104. Five exceptions p. 106. Remarks upon the Africans pretended schism Austin being one p. 112. The not able words of Mel. Canus against the Roman Universality 113. The means of the Popes last growth to maturity 119. The doctrines by which they do their work p. 122. 1. Depressing the Scriptures sufficiency and crying up their Traditions which are again conjuted 123. 2. Pretending Antiquity and Universality 125. Both confuted The objection of Heresie and Schism to other Churches answered p. 127. 3. Aggravating our Divisions and boasting of their Unity p. 128. Even the scandalous contending Sects among Protestants have more Unity with each other than the Papists proved 4. Their vile Counsel to men to suspect all Religion and suspend it to make them Papists Boverius to our late King p. 131. CHAP. VI. WHat the Pope is in forty Characters or inadequate conceptions of him p. 134. c. CHAP. VII WHat a Papist is The word PAPIST is equivocal Many sorts are called Papists that differ both in the Foundation and the very Form and the Subject and the Terminus of Church Power and are not formally one Church as is commonly thought pag. 165. A PAPIST of the most learned sort described who placeth the Authority Universal and the Infallibility in the Pope and Council agreeing Thirty Properties or Characters of them The first about the Resolution of their Faith into the Authority or Infallibility of the Church proposing How Protestants resolve their Faith and how they take it from their Teachers p. 169. c. See the rest CHAP. VIII WHat the Papists Church called the Roman Catholick Church is in twenty Characters p. 184. CHAP. IX TWenty Properties of the Protestant's Religion as it differeth from Popery 187. ERRATA PAge 26. line 28. for Turrian read Pisanus p. 76. l. 7. for in r. it p. 97. l. 21. r. Presbyters p. 93. l. 20. r. Roman p. 94. l. 2. for or r. of p. 107. l. 1. for Gothes r. Vandals p. 110. l. 4. dele and. p 115. l. 13. for Com. r. Corn. p. 123. l. 11. r. Libraries p. 156. l. 28. r. Greatreaks Errata in Roman Tradition c. Page 18. l. 1. for most real r. Moral p. 20. l. 5. r. Georgians p. 29. l. 16. r. Sirmium p. 37. l. 5. for sind r. said