if it may be proved onely that the Church of Rome doth not err I think we are obliged to Communicate with her And therefore it were enough for her to prove her self free from Error which is a much easier task if she be so then to prove her self Infallible To prove the former is enough and in vain she attempts to prove the later till the former be proved Why then labours she to no purpose For as light as this Author makes of Instances yet all the World knows that a single Instance in one Error is enough to answer all the Arguments can be brought for her Infallibility seeing it must needs be false to say she cannot err who in any one thing doth err And truly I think her very claim to Infallibility is enough to prove that she doth err and therefore is not Infallible That an erring Church may plead Tradition himself does not greatly deny which is one thing that he longs to hear made out And he needs not go to the Greek Church his own will abundantly shew it him But That an erring Church adheres to Tradition if he means true Apostolical Tradition and adhering to it wholly and onely I know no man that will undertake to make it out to save his longing Let him shew us the Church that holds to this Tradition and we will not onely grant she errs not but will also be of her Communion though we will not grant her to be Infallible and so an happy end will be put to all our Disputes at once I confess it seems very odd to me that men should call us Hereticks and condemn us for erring in Faith and at the same time prove the Articles of their own Faith by the Infallibility of their Church and ground that Infallibility on Tradition and prove that Tradition to be an Infallible conveyance by an Argument which if it proves any thing to the purpose must prove that no man that hath been taught the Faith can ever err from it and yet still withal confess that a Church following Tradition now may leave it afterwards If a man may leave the Rule and by leaving it err in Faith then his holding to it formerly did not secure him from all error in Faith. And if a man cannot err from what he hath been taught then can no man that hath been taught the Faith be an Heretick In short Christ and his Apostles taught one and the same Doctrine Innovations 't is certain and Alterations have been made in this Doctrine it 's no matter whether it was through Forgetfulness or Malice or some other motive such things undeniably there are amongst Christians and therefore some have been taught otherwise than at first men were taught so that without all dispute the Rule of Tradition is somewhere broken The Church of Rome saith all have broke it but she only but how proves she this She says she holds the same to day which she did yesterday and so up to our Blessed Saviour's time We call again for a proof of this She tells us if she follow'd this Rule she could never err in Faith. But did she follow this Rule She says she did and if you will not believe her there 's an end And here I might end your trouble but that I have spied a few gleanings yet behind which may possibly be worth gathering up He tells page 25. We give only a General Latitudinarian Rule common to all the Heresies in the World You know Sir that the Holy Scripture is our Rule and this is indeed the General Rule given by God to us all and in this sense Latitudinarian too that it contains all things necessary to Salvation and common to Hereticks it is and ought to be thô they miserably abuse it and thô I could tell him too of Hereticks that trusted more to his Rule than to ours He therefore must pardon us if we cannot give him a better Rule than God hath given us neither can think fit to throw it away because some men will abuse it Yea but it makes light and darkness very consistent and Christ and Belial very good friends Ibid. I hope you read not this without a more than ordinary concernment for the man who ever he is that hath so little reverence for God and his holy Word for he cannot but know that the Holy Scripture only is our Rule against which he ventures to utter so much Blasphemy All the return I shall make for this is my hearty prayer That God may give him Repentance unto life In his 26 page we are told That the Difference constituting our Protestant Rule as distinguished from that of those most abominable Hereticks can only be As my own Judgment or others of my side thus or thus interpret Scripture's Letter and wriggle saith he which way you please there it will and must end at last Who can expect less but that where men pretend to Infallibility they should also pretend to know what is our Rule better then we our selves poor fallible Creatures do To what purpose should we tell them again and again what is our Rule when they are resolved beforehand not to believe that we know what it is If this conceited Sir would give us leave to know our own minds I would tell him once more That Plain Scripture is our Rule and that the Interpretation of it by any Sect of people Romanists or others is extrinsecal to it and no constitutive difference of it In general 't is the Word of God in contradistinction to the Roman Rule of Scripture and Traditions 't is the Written Word or Scripture only and as differenced from both Romanists and other Hereticks and Sectaries it is Scripture plainly delivering a sense own'd and declared by the Primitive Church of Christ in the Three Creeds Four first General Councils and Harmony of the Fathers This I hope is plain dealing and no Wriggling and here we take up our stand let him endeavour to draw us whither he can After he has been quarrelling with our Rule and with us for not giving a more distinct Rule he next complains of us for not following our Rule Not one of a Million even of your own Protestants saith he relies on or ever thinks of relying on your Rule of Faith in order to make choice of their Faith or determining what to hold Ibid. Thô I fear many of them are too negligent yet I hope he is out in his account or else I know he is uncharitable in thus judging without taking an account of them I am apt to think they are more attentive to their Rule than he imagines or else they would be a little more indifferent which Religion prevails than most of them yet seem to be Yet be it as he would have it 't is the fault of the people onely neither of our Religion nor our Rule And he knows well enough how easie it is for us too to spie such faults abroad After much talk to the same I mean to no purpose he asks page 27. How few use all the Fallible means for you allow them no other which they are to make use of to find out their Faith Again I answer too few but yet many more than he could wish did make use of them And how Fallible soever these means be they are as Infallible as any afforded the people in his Church and as much more certain as the Word of God is more certain than that of a Priest. But now comes the great Secret of all which was never discover'd till now Not the Letter of Scripture but honest Tradition is our Rule page 28. Nay and this is evident too though we could none of us see it all this while what bad eyes have Protestants That the Tradition of our Fathers and Teachers and not Scripture's Letter is indeed our Rule page 29. Where are we now In the Church of Rome e're we were aware of it We are all good Roman Catholicks on a sudden we are become an Infallible Church and did not know it What Vertue is there in these fine Letters and how insensibly do they work upon us Fear not Sir he has proved it I 'le warrant you and that unanswerably as he does all things Children simply believe their Fathers and Teachers page 27. Therefore their Rule is Tradition This is true only we must remember 't is a Tradition of Scripture only Next all hearers do not inquire whether others give not more congruous explications of Scripture then their own preachers do Therefore they follow Tradition They do indeed follow what the preacher has deliver'd to them from the Scripture and what he has made them see plainly there they think it needless to run as far as Rome to see more clearly by unwritten Tradition Lastly The Reformers meant not that the believing Church should have the Liberty to Interpret Scripture against the teaching Church or Pastors or coin a Faith out of it contrary to the present or former Congregation of which he was a Member page 29. Therefore again they follow Tradition They do indeed Apostolical and Scriptural Tradition And herein both Pastors and People are well agreed that they are neither for Coining faith and therefore will neither of them give leave to the other so to do They have a good old Faith delivered to them both by Scripture and the Primitive Church and to this they are resolved to stand Thus Sir having given you my thoughts of this ingenious Letter I leave you to think what you can of it better desiring you only to think no worse of your own Religion for it till you hear more from Your very faithful Friend and Servant FINIS
Imprimatur GVIL NEEDHAM Iuly 18. 1687. A LETTER TO A FRIEND Reflecting on some Passages in A LETTER to the D. of P. IN ANSWER TO THE Arguing Part OF HIS FIRST LETTER To Mr. G. LONDON Printed for William Rogers at the Sun over-against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet-street 1687. A LETTER TO A Friend c. SIR HAVING by your favour had a sight of the late Letter in Answer to the Arguing part of the D. of P ' s. first Letter to Mr. G. I now return you it with my thanks and some Reflections on so much of it as attempts to demonstrate the Infallibility of the Romish Faith and denies the certainty of ours For whatever becomes of the Conference which gave occasion to this Letter the Contents of it thus far are of as much Concernment to You and Me and indeed to all Protestants as to that worthy Person to whom he writes it The man is you see a great pretender to Logick but you find him making much more use of his Rhetorick and indeed it is to this if to any thing that he is beholding for so much as a pretence to the other and if we feel no harm from this we need not fear that the other can hurt us You may be sure he wants no Wit whom Mr. G. intrusts to hold his Cards and play his Game too with so well known a Gamester Pardon me for using his own Language in a matter so serious I say not as his Letter but as the Subject of it His Stile is pleasant and taking enough his way of Arguing meerly popular and his Art accommodate to the design he is upon of deluding the less thinking Lastly his Câ—nfidence is such as we ought to expect in men that talk of nothing lower than Self-evidence absolute Certainty and Infallibility I wish with all my heart that his value for Souls so precious to God be really as great as he would have us think theirs is little who as he deridingly speaks set up for Ministers of the Gospel If he find any of them so regardless of their Duty as he faith they are let him freely for me spend all his Rhetorick in Exclamations against them as he has begun to do Page 5. But when he talks of every Bodies speaking for himself one day and bringing in his own account and asks if the Happiness or Misery of their Souls will not depend on that account And then expostulates with our Ministers in this manner Can you suffer them to run that terrible Hazard without making them able to justifie their accounts themselves and furnishing them with Assurance that they can and with no more to say but that they hoped Dr. St. would make his party good with Mr. G. Ibid. I am apt to think him some Convert who knows not what to say either for the Church he hath chosen or against that he hath forsaken He has heard it may be something to this purpose said against the Priests of that Church whereof he now is and not knowing what else to say nor yet how to be silent he saith the same against the Ministers of ours Because our Ministers know that every one of us must give account of himself to God therefore they not only give us leave but earnestly exhort us to read and study the Gospel of Christ whereby we must be judged which is a Liberty very rarely granted in the Church of Rome And because they know also our Happiness or Misery depends on this account we shall be able to give of our selves therefore they will not have us depend upon their Word only who are not able to acquit us in the day of Judgment as the Romanists must do upon the word of their Priests or upon nothing at all that I know of but in preaching they explain the Scripture to us are importunate with us to search it they Catechize us exhort us to confer often with them commend good Books of Instruction to us use all ways they can to make us grow in Grace and Knowledg and to enable us to give our account with joyfulness But how comes this man if he be a Roman Catholick to talk of furnishing them with assurance that they can If they may be assured that they can give up a good account may they not be assured that they have the Grace of God and of their Iustitisfication and Salvation And if so then what 's become of that Decree of the Council of Trent We must not affirm that they who are truly justified ought to conclude with themselves without any doubting at all that they are justified seeing no man can know by a certainty of Faith under which there can be no falshood that he hath obtain'd the Grace of God If no man ought or can be assured that he hath the Grace of God how are our Ministers bound to furnish us with Assurance that we can justifie our Accounts our selves Can a man justifie his accounts that is not sure he hath the Grace of God Possibly his meaning may be no more but that our Ministers give us not sufficient Assurance of the Truth of our Faith and for want of that we cannot justifie our accounts But if this be his meaning it is very untowardly expressed and after all it will be a little hard to conceive how the bare Assurance of the Truth of what is taught should enable a man to justifie his account without an Assurance of Grace too which the Council denies that any man can have He tells us next That Truth is Truth because 't is built on intrinsecal grounds and not on private mens Abilities or their saying this or that And hence infers that Till those grounds be produced it cannot be with reason held Truth Ibid. He might as well have said more plainly What any thing is that it is whatever be the Reasons why it is so or whoever saith it is or it is not Yet can no man with Reason believe it till he have a Reason to believe it All this is true and I think every body knew it before he told us it nor is it the truer because he hath said it and therefore we have no more Reason to believe it than we had before But seeing Truth is Truth whatever private men say we think it can depend no more upon the saying of a Romish Priest than of an English Minister and therefore we think also that the Vulgar Papist at best hath less certainty of the Truth they hold than the Vulgar Protestant of the Truth we hold whilst besides the word of the Priest the former hath no grounds at all to build his Faith upon but the later hath besides the word of the Minister the Word of God in the Scripture which he may consult when he will. Moreover if we cannot with Reason hold a Truth till the intrinsecal grounds of it be produced then two things more must be true which I fear this Roman Catholick will not grant us First
that there is such a thing to be found among men Then will he have us grant That there are no means by which men may be secured from being deceived and then they will not take all that pains that are necessary to compass that good which for ought they can tell they may not compass with all their pains Ibid. But here he is too hasty for thô we know not where to find infallible men now living on Earth yet we know there is an Infallible and Living God and He by Men indued with his Infallible Spirit hath given us his Word plainly Written and this Word is a sufficient means to secure us from being dangerously deceived in any thing necessary to our Salvation if we diligently attend unto it and use the proper helps of understanding it And this is our encouragement to take all pains to compass the good we desire that the same Infallible God who hath given the means hath assured his blessing to them that diligently use them Yet I a little wonder to hear him talk of men's being discouraged from taking pains to be well assured of the truth for want of an Infallible Guide when it hath been the common Argument a long time whereby such a Guide has been commended to us that it would save us the pains of examining the particulars of our faith If we be in love with ease or if we be content to take pains all 's one there 's enough in the Infallibility of the Church of Rome for all the pleasure of the one or the necessity of the other may be a Motive sufficient to enter into that Communion wherein we may it seems have our free choice of either What cunning Gamesters are these men that hope to win with any hand Certainly they trust more to their Art than to their Cards After we have been sent from place to place to seek this Infallibility where now shall we find it at last In Tradition if any where for we have miss'd it everywhere else And there we have already found it if our Authour must be trusted The certainty of Scripture is from Tradition therefore there is no refusing that Tradition causes certainty and makes faith as certain as Scripture page 7. Yet it may be this Certainty comes not up to Infallibility yes it is the very same as you heard before and he adds page 23. This makes Tradition to be an Infallible ascertainer of some things at least and so unless some special difficulty be found in other things that light into the same channel it must needs bring them down Infallibly too Now it is very true that we have the Books of Scriptures by Tradition and what other way such antient Books could be convey'd unto us I confess I do not know neither indeed can I see what greater Certainty any man can reasonably desire that these indeed are the very same Books which the Authors of them left to the Church and which the Church hath always received as the Word of God. And this Tradition we look upon as a ground of sufficient certainty of this matter of Fact wherein no man was ever wont to desire better nor in reason can But then first This Tradition is not that of the Church of Rome only which is the only Tradition that I ever heard of that has been pretended to be the ground of Infallibility but a more Vniversal Tradition of all Christians if some of whom had not been more careful to preserve these Books than they of Rome we might for ought I know have lost some of them at least that Excellent Epistle to the Hebrews And in the next place this Vniversal Tradition is no more but Humane Testimony and that can be no ground of Infallibility which excludes all possibility of Error A Moral Certainty is enough to stand on such a foundation and all that can be rationally desired in this case These Books as writ by the Inspiration of the Holy Ghost are the foundation of our Christian Faith and he knows I hope that neither Papists nor Protestants content themselves with Tradition but produce abundance of other Arguments for the Confirmation of Scripture's Divine Authority And whereas he saith it makes Faith as Certain as Scripture no man can doubt but conveying the Book to us it conveys to us all points of Faith contained in the Book and witnessing the Book to be writ by men divinely inspired it also gives as good credit to the Faith contained in it as humane Testimony can give But he means another thing when he thus explains himself Vnless some special difficulty be found in other things that light into the same channel it must needs bring them down infallibly too These other things are things unwritten in that Holy Book and without more ado we will promise him that when ever he can shew us those other things and assure us that they light into the same channel of Vniversal not only Roman Tradition and are so convey'd to us we will entertain them with the same Certainty as we entertain the Scripture upon account of that Tradition only But for these other things which are to be parts of Faith too I fear we must either fish for them in the Channel of Tiber or not at all find them All Traditionary Christians believe the same to day which they did yesterday and so up to the time of our Blessed Saviour page 8. So saith Mr. G. And saith our Author There is no denying this but by denying that Traditionary Christians are Traditionary Christians But suppose these Traditionary Christians be so call'd from their adhering to a Tradition which reacheth not so high as our Blessed Saviour's time but only pretends to it as they are by others if not by themselves may we not call them Traditionary Christians and confess too that they believe the same to day as they did yesterday yea and as they did ever since the Council of Trent or some hundreds of years before that and yet deny that they believe the same that was believed quite up to the time of our Blessed Saviour Yes this is and will be denied till he can prove it Next Mr. G. faith If they follow this Rule they can never err in Faith. And his Friend tell us This is palpably self-evident and p. 9. therefore they are infallible But unless the Rule of Tradition which they follow be longer than it is yet proved to be they may follow it and err all along by following it And let it be never so long yet if they follow it not they may err and therefore are not infallible except he shew that they cannot choose but follow it So that unless it be first as was before said proved that God hath given a Rule which no man can possibly swerve from which supposed not only a Pope or Council but all who have it are infallible we must all be content to be fallible still Yea but They could not innovate in Faith