to Apostolicall traditions nor unwritten fundamentalls But we admit genuine Universall Apostolicall traditions As the Apostles Creed the perpetuall Virginity of the Mother of God the Anniversary Festivals of the Church the Lenton fast Yet we know that both the duration of it and the maner of observing it was very different in the Primitive times We believe Episcopacy to an ingenuous person may be proved out of Scripture without the help of Tradition but to such as are froward the perpetuall practise and tradition of the Church renders the interpretation of the Text more authentique and the proof more convincing What is this to us who admit the practise and tradition of the Church as an excellent help of Exposition Use is the best interpreter of Laws and we are so far from beleeving that We cannot admit tradition without allowing the Papacy that one of the principall motives why we rejected the Papacy as it is now established with Universality of Jurisdiction by the Institution of Christ and superiority above Oecumenicall Councils and Infallibility of Judgement was the constant tradition aâ— the Primitive Church So Sir you see your demonstration shaken into pieces You who take upon you to remove whole Churches at your pleasure have not so much ground left you as to see your Instrument upon Your two main ground-works being vanished all your Presbyterian and Independent superstructions do remain like so many Bubbles or Castles in the air It were folly to lay closer siege to them which the next puff of wind will disperse ruunt subductis tecta Columnis Howsoever though you have mistaken the grounds of our Reformation and of your discourse yet you charge us that we have renounced the Sacrifice of the Mass Transubstantiation the seven Sacraments Justification by inhaerent righteousness merits Invocation of Saints prayer for the dead with Purgatory and the Authority of the Pope Are these all the necessary Articles of the new Roman Creed that we have renounced Surely no you deal too favourably with us We have in like manner renounced your Image-worship your half Communion your prayers in a tongue unknown c. It seems you were loath to mention these things Of the Sacrifice of the Mass First you say we have renounced your sacrifice of the Mass If the Sacrifice of the Mass be the same with the Sacrifice of the Cross we attribute more unto it than your selves We place our whole hope of Salvation in it If you understand another propitiatory Sacrifice distinct from that as this of the Mass seems to be for confessedly the Priest is not the same the Altar is not the same the Temple is not the same If you think of any new meritorious satisfaction to God for the sins of the world or of any new supplement to the merits of Christs Passion You must give us leave to renounce your Sacrifice indeed and to adhere to the Apostle Heb. 10.14 By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified Surely you cannot think that Christ did actually sacrifice himself at his last Supper for then he had redeemed the world at his last Supper then his subsequent sacrifice upon the Cross had been superfluous nor that the Priest now doth more than Christ did then We do readily acknowledge an Eucharisticall sacrifice of prayers and praises we profess a commemoration of the sacrifice of the Cross And in the language of holy Church things commemorated are related as if they were then acted As Almighty God who hast given us thy Son as this day to be born of a pure Virgin In the Collects for these â—easts And whose praise the younger Innocents have this day set forth And between the Ascension and Pentecost which hast exalted thy Son Jesus Christ with great Triumph into Heaven we beseech thee leave us not comfortless but send unto us thy holy Spirit We acknowledge a Representation of that sacrifice to God the Father we acknowledge an Impetration of the benefit of it we maintain an Application of its vertue So here is a commemorative impetrative applicative sacrifice Speak distinctly and I cannot understand what you can desire more To make it a suppletory sacrifice to supply the defects of the onely true sacrifice of the Cross I hope both you and I abhor The next crime objected by you to us is Of Transubstantiation that we have renounced Transubstantiation It is true we have rejected it deservedly from being an Article of our Creed you need not wonder at that But if we had rejected it 400. years sooner that had been a Miracle It was not so soon hatched To find but the word Transubstantiation in any old Author were sufficient to prove him a counterfeit Of 7. Sacraments Your next Article of the septenary number of the Sacraments is not much older Never so much as mentioned in any Scripture or Councill or Creed or Father or antient Author Anno 1439 1528. 1547. first devised by Peter Lombard first decreed by Eugenius the fourth first confirmed in the Provinciall Councill of Senes and after in the Councill of Trent Either the word Sacrament is taken largely and then the washing of the Disciples feet is called a Sacrament then the onely sprinkâ—ing of Ashes on a Christians head is called a Sacrament then there are God knows how many Sacraments more than seven Or else it is taken strictly for a visible sign instituted by Christ to convey or confirm invisible Grace to all such partakers thereof as do not set a bar against themselves according to the Analogy between the Sign and the thing signified And in this sense the proper and certain Sacraments of the Christian Church common to all or in the words of our Church generally necessary to Salvation are but two Baptism and the Supper of our Lord. More than these St. Ambrose writes not of in his Book de Sacramentis because he did not know them These we admit for genuine and generall Sacraments Their Sacramentall vertue we acknowledge The rest we retein more purely than your selves though not under the Notion of such proper and generall Sacraments As Confirmation Ordination Matrimony Penitence though we neither approve of your preposterous manner of Absolution before satisfaction nor of your Ordinary penitentiary tax and lastly the Visitation of and Prayer for the sick which onely is of perpetual necessity The Unction prescribed by St. James Jam. 5.14 being appropriable to the miraculous gift of healing or recovering men out of sicknesses then in use Whereas your custome is clean contrary never or rarely to enoyl any man untill he be past all hope of Recovery The Ordinary and most received custome of preparing sick persons for another world in the primitive Church was Prayer and Absolution or the benefit of the Keys and the Viaticum of the body and blood of Christ which we retein Concerning Justification Of Justification we believe that all good Christians have true inherent Justice
you opened to the liberty and boldness of other men who if they should assume to themselves the same freedom that you have done might say as much with as much reason concerning the pressures of other great Princes abroad that God afflicts them because they will not become Protestants as you can say that God afflicted our late King because he would not turn Papist But if you will not allow his Majesties suffrings to be meerly probatory And if for your satisfaction there must be a weight of sin found out to move the wheel of Gods justice why do you not rather fix upon the body of his Subjects or at least a disloyall part of them Wee confess that the best of us did not deserve such a Jewell Soveraigns may be taken away for the sins of their subjects that God might justly snatch him from us in his wrath for our ingratitude Reason Religion and experience do all teach us that it is usuall with Almighty God to look upon a body politique or Ecclesiastique as one man and to deprive a perverse people of a good and gracious Governour as an expert Physician by opening a vein in one member cures the distempers of another Prov. 28. â— For the Transgressions of a Land many are the Princes thereof It may be that two or three of our Princes at the most the greater part whereof were Roman Catholiques Not above two or three of our Princes called Heads of the Church did stile themselves or give others leave to stile them the Heads of the Church within their Dominions But no man can be so simple as to conceive that they intended a spirituall headship to infuse the life and motion of grace into the hearts of the faithfull such an head is Christ alone No not yet an Ecclesiasticall headship We did never believe that our Kings in their own persons could exercise any act perteining either to the power of Order or Jurisdiction That is onely politicall heads 1 Sam. 15.17 Nothing can give that to another which it hath not it self They meant onely a Civill or Politicall head as Saul is called the Head of the Tribes of Israel to see that publick peace be preserved to see that all Subjects aswell Ecclesiastiques as others do their duties in their severall places to see that all things be managed for that great and Architectonicall end that is the weal and benefit of the whole body politique both for soul and body If you will not trust me Hear our Church it self When we attribute the Sovereign Government of the Church to the King Art 37. we do not give him any power to administer the Word or Sacraments but onely that Prerogative which God in holy Scripture hath alwayes allowed to Godly Princes to see that all Sates and Orders of their Subiects Ecclesiasticall and Civill do their duties and to punish those who are delinquent with the civill Sword Here is no power ascribed Expos Paraphr art Conf. Ang. Art 37. no punishment inflicted but meerly politicall and this is approved and justificed by S. Clara both by reason and by the example of the Parliament of Paris Yet by vertue of this Politicall power he is the Keeper of both Tables the preserver of true piety towards God as well as right Justice towards men And is obliged to take care of the souls aswell as the skins and carkasses of his subjects The Christian Emperours politicall heads This power though not this name the Christian Emperours of old assumed unto themselves to Convocate Synods to preside in Synods to confirm Synods to establish Ecclesiasticall Laws to receive appeals to nominate Bishops to eject Bishops to suppress Heresies to compose Ecclesiasticall differences in Councils out of Councils by themselves by their delegates All which is as clear in the History of the Church as if it were written with a beam of the Sun This power The old Kings of England politicall heads though not this name the Antient Kings of England ever exercised not onely before the Reformation but before the Norman Conquest as appears by the Acts of their great Councills by their Statutes and Articles of the Clergy by so many Laws of provision against the Bishop of Romes conferring Ecclesiasticall dignities and benefices upon foreiners by so many sharp oppositions against the exactions and usurpations of the Court of Rome by so many Laws concerning the Patronage of Bishopricks and Investitures of Bishops by so many examples of Church-men punished by the Civill Magistrate Of all which Jewels the Roman Court had undoubtedly robbed the Crown if the Peers and Prelates of the Kingdom had not come in to the rescue By the antient Laws of England it is death or at least a forfeiture of all his goods for any man to publish the Popes Bull without the Kings Licence The Popes Legate without the Kings leave could not enter into the Realm If an Ordinary did refuse to accept a resignation See Authorities for all these in Cawdries Case in Judge Crook his Reports the King might supply his defect If any Ecclesiasticall Court did exceed the bounds of its just power either in the nature of the cauie or manner of proceeding the Kings Prohibition had place So in effect the Kings of England were alwaies the Politicall heads of the Church within their own Dominions So the Kings of France are at this day But who told you that ever King Charles did call himself the Head of the Church Neither K. Charles K. James nor Queen Elizabeth stiled heads of the Church thereby to merit such an heavy Judgement He did not nor yet King James his Father nor Queen Elizabeth before them both who took Order in her first Parliament to have it left out of her Title They thought that name did sound ill and that it intrenched too far upon the right of their Saviour Therefore they declined it and were called onely Supreme Governours in all Causes over all persons Ecclesiasticall and Civill which is a Title de jure inseparable from the Crown of all soveraign Princes Where it is wanting de facto if any place be so unhappy to want it the King is but half a King and the Common-wealth a Serpent with two Heads Thus you see you are doubly and both wayes miserably mistaken First King Charles did never stile himself Head of the Church nor could with patience endure to hear that Title Secondly a Politicall Headship is not injurious to the Unity or Authority of the Church The Kings of Israel and Judah the Christian Emperours the English Kings before the Reformation yea even before the Conquest and other Soveraign Princes of the Roman Communion have owned it signally But it seems you have been told or have read this in the virulent writings of Sanders or Parsons or have heard of a ludicrous scoffing proposition of a Marriage between the two heads of the two Churches Sixtus Quintus and Queen Elizabeth for
a Church nor that Church any privileges unless the Court of Rome might have the Monopoly of them There is a vast difference between the Catholick Church and a Patriarchall Church The Ca-Catholick Church can never fail any Patriarchall Church may Apostate and fail We have a promise that the Candle shall not be put out we have no promise that the Candlesticks shall not be removed Rev. 2.5 The Roman Church it self not absolutely faln to ruin But suppossing that which wee can never grant the Catholick Church and Roman Church were Convertibles yet still you do us wrong First we do not maintain that the Roman Church it self is faln to ruin and desolation we grant to it a true metaphysicall being though not a true morall being we hope their errors are rather in superstructures than in fundamentals wee doe not say that the Plants of saving truth which are common to you and us are plucked up by the roots in the Roman Church but we say that they are over-grown with weeds and in danger to be choked Next for Idolatry Whether the Roman Church be guilty of Idolatry whether and why and how far we accuse your Church of it deserves further Consideration First you agree with us That God alone is the Object of Religion and consequently that all Religious worship is due terminatively only to him that God alone is to be invocated absolutely or ultimately that is so as to grant our requests and fulfill our desires by himself and that the Saints are not the objects of our prayers but joynt petitioners with us and intercessors for us to the throne of Grace Secondly we profess as well as you that there is a proportionable degree of honour and respect due to every creature in Heaven and Earth according to the dignity of it and therefore more honour due to a glorified Spirit than to a mortall man But withall we adde that this honour is not servitutis but charitatis not of service as to our Lords and Masters but of love and charity as to our friends and fellow servants of the same kind and nature with that Honour which we give to holy men on Earth And herein we are confident that we shall have your consent Thirdly we agree in this also that abundant love and duty doth extend an honourable respect from the person of a dear friend or noble benefactor to his Posterity to his memory to his Monument to his Image to his Reliques to every thing that he loved or that pertained to him even to the Earth which he did tread upon for his sake Put a Liefhebber or Virtueso among a company of rare Pictures and he will pick out the best pieces for their proper value But a friend or a child will more esteem the Picture of a Benefactor or Ancestor for its relation The respect of the one is terminated in the Picture that of the other is radicated in the exemplar Yet still an Image is but an Image and the kinds of respect must not be confounded The respect given to an Image must be respect proper for an Image not Courtship not Worship not Adoration More respect is due to the person of the meanest beggar than to all the Images of Christ and his Apostles and a 1000. Primitive Saints or Progenitors Hitherto there is neither difference nor perill either of Idolatry or superstition Wherein then did consist this guilt of Idolatry contracted by the Roman Church I am willing for the present to pass by the private abuses of particular persons which seem to me no otherwise chargeable upon the whole Church than for Connivence As the making Images to counterfeit tears and words and gestures and complements for advantage to induce silly people to believe that there was something of divinity in them and the multitude of fictitious Relicks and suppositious Saints which credulity first introduced since covetousness hath nourished I take no notice now of those remote suspitions or suppositions of the possibility of want of intention either in the Priest that consecrates the Sacrament or in him that Baptised or in the Bishop that ordeined him or in any one through the whole line of succession in all which cases according to your own principles you give divine worship to corporeall Elements which is at least materiall Idolatry I will not stand now to examine the truth of your distinctions of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yet you know well enough that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is no religious worship and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is coin lately minted that will not pass for current in the Catholick Church Whilst your common people understand not these distinctions of degrees of honour what holds them from falling downright into Idolatry Neither do I urge how you have distributed the Patronage of particular Countries the Cure of severall Diseases the protection of all distinct professions of men and all kinds of creatures among the Saints just as the Heathen did among their Tutelary Gods nor how little warrant you have for this practise from experience nor lastly how you build more Churches erect more Altars offer more presents powr out more prayers make more vows perform more offices to the Mother than to the Son Yet though we should hold our peace methinks you should ponder these things seriously and either for your own satisfaction or ours take away such unnecessary occasions of scandall and disunion But I cannot omit that the Councill of Trent is not contented to enjoyn the Adoration of Christ in the Sacrament which we never deny but of the Sacrament it self that is according to the common current of your Schoolmen the Accidents or Species of Bread and Wine because it conteins Christ Why do they not adde upon the same grounds that the pix is to be adored with divine worship because it conteins the Sacrament Divine honour is not due to the very Humanity of Christ as it is abstracted from the Deity but to the whole person Deity and Humanity hypostatically united Neither the Grace of Union nor the Grace of Unction can confer more upon the Humanity than the Humanity is capable of There is no such Union between the Deity and the Sacrament neither immediatly nor yet mediately mediante corpore Neither do you ordinarily ascribe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or divine worship to a Crucifix or to the Image of Christ indeed not Terminatively but transeuntly so as not to rest in the Image or Crucifix but to pass to the exemplar or person crucified But why a piece of Wood should be made partaker of divine honours even in Transitu or in the passage passeth my understanding The Heathens wanted not the same pretext for all their gross Idolatry Let them plead for themselves Non ego c. I do not worship that stone which I see but I serve him whom I do not see Lastly whilst you are pleased to use them I may not forget those strange
edge of the razor doth touch the very throats of his servants that the glory of the work may wholy redound to himself We may not limit God to those means which seem most probable in our eyes So long as Joseph trusted to his friend in Court God did forget him when Pharaohs Butler had quite forgotten Joseph then God remembred him God hath nobler wayes of restitution than by Battails and bloudshed that is by changing the hearts of his creatures at his pleasure and turning Esau's vowed revenge into love and kindness I confess P. 74. 75. His Majesties escape out of England almost miraculous his Majesties resolution was great so was his prudence that neither fear which useth to betray the succours of the Soul nor any indiscreet Action or word or gesture in so long a time should either discover him or render him suspected When I consider that the Heir of a Crown in the midst of that Kingdom where he had his breeding whom all mens eyes had used to Court as the rising Sun of no common features or physiognomy at such time when he was not onely believed but known to be among them when every Corner of the Kingdom was full of Spys to search him and every Port and Inne full of Officers to apprehend him I say that he should travail at such a time so long so far so freely in the sight of the Sun exposed to the view of all persons without either discovery or suspition seeme little less than a miracle That God had smitten the eyes of those who met him with blindness as the eyes of the Sodomites that they could not find Lots door or the Syrian Souldiers that were sent to apprehend Elisha This strange escape and that former out of Scotland where his condition was not much better And seems to presage that God hath something to do with him nor his person much safer do seem strangely to presage that God hath yet some great work to be done by him in his own due time You attribute this rare deliverance P. 76. Prayers and tears the proper Arms of woman and the hopes of his conversion in part to the prayers and tears of his Mother prayers and tears were the onely proper Arms of the old Primitive Christians more particularly they are the best and most agreeable defence of that sex but especially the prayers and tears of a Mother for the Son of her desires are most powerfull As it was said of the prayers and tears of Monica Especially of Mothers for St. Austine her Son fieri non potuit ut filius istarum lacrymarum periret It could not be that a Son should perish for whom so many tears were shed God sees her tears and hears her prayers and will grant her request if not according to her will and desire we often ask those things which being granted would prove prejudiciall to our selves and our friends yet ad utilitatem to his Majesties greater advantage which is much better She wisheth him a good Catholick and God will preserve him a good Catholick as he is We do not doubt but the prayers of his Father who now follows the Lamb in his whites for his perseverance Yet not so powerfull as his Fathers intercession now in Heaven will be more effectuall with God than the prayers of his Mother for his change P. 77. The Authors instance of Henry the great not pertinent Your instance of his Majesties Grand-father your grand King Henry the fourth is not so apposite or fit for your purpose He gained his Crown by turning himself towards his people you would perswade his Majesty to turn from his people and to cast away his possibilities of restitution that is Plutarch to cut off a naturall leg and take one of wood To the tears of his Mother you adde the blood of his Father P. 77. 78. The just commendation of K. Charls whom you justly stile happy and say most truly of him that he preferred the Catholick Faith before his Crown his liberty his life and whatsoever was most dear unto him This faith was formerly rooted in his heart by God not secretly and invisibly in the last moments of his life to unite him to the Roman Catholick Church but openly during his whole Reign all which time he lived in the bosom of the true Catholick Church It is gross impudence to feign that he dyed a Roman Catholick Yet you are so extremely partiall to your self that you affirm that he died invisibly a Member of your Roman Catholick Church as it is by you contre-distinguished to the rest of the Christian world An old pious fraud or artifice of yours learned from Machiavell to gain credit to your Religion by all means either true or false but contrary to his own profession at his death contrary to the express knowledge of all that were present at his murther Upon a vain presumption that Talem nisi vestra Ecclesia nulla parerit filium And because you are not able to produce one living witness you cite St. Austin to no purpose to prove that the elect before they are converted do belong invisibly to the Church Yea and before they were born also But St. Austine neither said nor thought that after they are converted they make no visible profession or profess the contrary to that which they beleeve Seek not thus to adorn your particular Church not with barrowed but with stollen Saints Whom all the world know to have been none of yours What Faith he professed living he confirmed dying In the Communion of the Church of England he lived and in that Communion at his death he commended his soul into the hands of God his Saviour The Authors confession confutes his demonstration that Prostants have no faith That which you have confessed here concerning King Charls will spoil your former demonstration that the Protestants have neither Church nor Faith But you confess no more in particular here than I have heard some of your famous Roman Doctors in this City acknowledge to be true in generall And no more than that which the Bishop of Chalcedon a man that cannot be suspected of partiality on our side hath affirmed and published in two of his Books to the world in Print That Protestantibus credentes c. persons living in the Communion of the Protestant Church if they endeavour to learn the truth and are not able to attein unto it but hold it implicitely in the preparation of their minds and are ready to receive it when God shall be pleased to reveal it which all good Protestants and all good Christians are they neither want Church nor Faith nor Salvation Mark these words well They have neither Church nor Faith say you If they be thus qualified as they all are they want neither Church nor Faith nor Salvation saith he His intelligence as good in Heaven as upon earth Lastly Sir to let us see that your