to the sincere and orthodox Christians which sir-name we take from our Mother the Catholique Church notified so for the single and onely Church of Christ by the Apostles Creed and in the sequence of ages as the tares grew up in the large field of Christianity the pure and sound part of the Church assigned this as a speciall and specificall difference between the Heretiques and the legitimate Christians and so it hath been accepted ever since as a notional discernment between them The word Catholike signifieth literally Universall and was meant to signifie that faith to be onely sincerely Christian which was universally and unanimously promulgated by the Apostles and conserved by the general conseat and fidelities of their disciples and so transmitted by all the concurrent testimonies of that age to the next succeeding it So as the Church is not called Catholike for the actuall extention of it into all nations but as the major part in respect of all Christian societies or in reference to the promise of this expansion over the whole world So that it hath alwaies been one of the visible markes of the Church the being the greatest society of Christians of any one communion And as all sects came out of the true Church she retaineth still the name of the whole as the body of the tree doth after many branches are torn off from it So as the Catholike Church neither is nor ever was a comprehender of all the sects of Christians but a compriser of a greater portion of them then any other profession which was separate from her and this majority the Catholike Church hath had in all Christian ages When we say then the Roman Catholicke Church we doe not meane to exclude all Churches from being Catholike besides the locall Church of Rome but as that is the head and spring of Catholike communion by way of dignity and preference above all other particular Churches we give Rome that single appellation as the head of all other Churches or by reason of the derivation of the Catholick faith from her to the rest of the Churches of the world as being the Chaire of S. Peter the Prince of the Apostles who was constituted head of the Universall Church and as the same authority and prerogative is descended upon his successors the Bishops of Rome in these respects in regard no Church is accounted nor is Catholicke that doth not adhere to her communion we stile the particular Roman the Catholike Church For if we speake formally and expresly the Catholike Church signifies the body of all particular Churches united in communion with the Vniversall and by way of participation any particular Church may be called Catholicke as it partakes with the intire body In this respect the Church of England before the separation was a Catholike Church and so are all Churches which remaine united to the Catholike Communion So as when you heare it objected that Roman and Catholike seem as incompatible as particular and Universall you may satisfy your selves that Rome doth not claime the title in that contradictory sense to say that the single and locall Church of Rome is the Universall Church but that Rome is the head of the Universall Church in which all particular ones are to be accounted Catholike in this sense of orthodox and true Churches as they are united to that head If the Protestants acknowledged any one particular Church to be the head of their communion that Church might be said to be the Universall Protestant Church by way of eminency and in this sense the Roman Church is stiled the Universall or Catholike Church I have said this as falling within the verge of the word Catholike without intending to passe further then the frontispice of the Church to read to you this inscription only of Catholike which is often misunderstood by those who will allow Universall Religion but no Catholike And I hope the signification of this your surname may minister great assurance to you when you consider that you suffer under that title and notion which hath alwaies been the discernment of true Christian Religion For S. Irenaeus one of the Primitive Fathers of the Church marketh that none of the sects of those ages did ever arogat this title of Catholikes Psal 90. With a shield his truth shall encompasse thee a thousand shall fall on thy side ten thousand on thy righthand but to thee it shall not approach It seems it hath been preserved miraculously among the insolences of all various errors which never durst lay violent hands upon this lovely intemerat virgin name of Catholicke the protection of the Psalmist hath been verifide upon this name Scuto circumdabit te veritas cadent à latere tuo mille decem mille à dextris tuis ad te autem non appropinquabit for of all the swarms of waspes and hornets which have flown out of the Church in all ages never any did so much as taint this name by their hiving themselves in it There hath alwaies descended upon the projectours of Babel this designe of Let us make to our selves a name Faciamus nobis nomen they have alwaies affected the celebration of their own name that have set up for themselves any new sect and their master hath payed them that vanity for labouring in his high way to allow the stamp of their owne names to be set upon the coine whereof he is the Prince and the Father This priviledge the divell hath allowed to all Arch-hereticks and hath communicated so much of his prerogative as to leave their names impressed as a signature upon their errors but none have been permitted to vitiate the name of Catholike by an imposition thereof upon any sophisticated Religion It is not my worke now to exhibit to you the proofes of the legitimate genealogy of your Religion from the true ancient Catholike stock I beleeve these very times may read to you the evidences of your antiquity by the aversion which all novelty declares against it I purpose only to convince the controversies of humane nature in the point of sufferings not to handle any contention in matter of faith beleeving you have more neede of helpe against the fingers of Pursivants then against the armes of Pulpits and this reflexion may serve you to confute the arguments of your flesh and blood against patience in all your persecutions in that you suffer under that notion which only can sanctifie the sufferings of any persecuted Christians Conclude then your selves happy in these times since you are in a capacity of making treasure of all your tribulations when others who it may be are under as heavy a temporall yoake as you drawing not in the same cariage of the Catholike faith will find the weight even in this world more intolerable They are much more to be lamented to whom we cannot apply S. Iohns comfort to the distressed Catholikes of his daies when he saith Apoc. 1.9 I your brother and partaker in
since hee breatheth downe such a suavity and savour upon all their most asperous regularities which are of so ill an odour to nature as the holy Spirit must needs incense and perfume them to make them tolerable And surely the purity of these living hoasts doth mediate powerfully for Gods patience and longanimity which he affordeth to many multitudes of such members of Christs body as doe rather crucifie againe to themselves the Sonne of God as the Apostle saith Heb. 6.6 then exhibit themselves images of Christ crucified And thus Christ is so infinitely mercifull as he suspendeth the justice of his Father against those in whom he still seems to suffer by presenting to him that part of his Church which suffereth in him whereby God hath stil various remonstrances set before his eyes of the passions of Christ to ingratiate his Church to him in these later ages wherein God hath been pleased to take the sweet savour of his Church more from the Altar of odours and incense within the veyle of the Sanctuary then from that of bloody sacrifices that is from the consecration of the religious orders of his Church which doe as it were evaporate their lives in a continuall fume of self-consumption by the fire of mortification In this estate the Church may say Psal 39. Sacrifice and oblation thou wouldst not but eares thou hast perfected to me Sacrificium oblationem noluisti aures autem perficisti mihi For God hath been pleased to perfect the eares of his Church in the attention to his Evangelicall counsels of chastity and relinquishment of all to take up the Crosse And this is remarkable for evincement of the single legitimation of the Catholike Church that no other communion of Christians have their eares so much as opened to the counsels of Christ It is strange that they who have their eares open to nothing but the letter of the Word should be so deal to those so literal words as recommend these Evangelicall counsels 1 Cor. 1.18 The word of the Crosse but as it is Verbum Crucis we may feare it seemeth stultitia to them but to the Catholique Church The power of God it is Virtus Dei. For sure it must be a singular operation of the Spirit of God to dispose the corruption of our flesh and blood to vow it selfe to such a lasting martyrdome in which as out of an ingot or wedge of gold the Wyer is hammered and drawne out by continuall macerations and percussions upon the flesh and as the matter may be said to endure more by being wrought and drawne out into small Wyers then when a piece of gold is stamped and coyned at one blow upon it so those bodies which are extenuated and filed away by lingring mortifications and macerating austerities may be truly said to have a more painfull kind of Martyrdome while they are thus wrought as it were into the image of Christ then those who have it marked impres'd upon their bodies all at one incision which is the case of Martyrs that at one blow have Christ stamped upon them the others are long under the Presse whilst as the Apostle saith Christ is formed in them Gal. 4.19 And these are such as according to the advice of Saint Paul doe exhibit their bodies a living hoast holy and pleasing to God which he calls A reasonable service to wit a spirituall and rationall offering of soule and body by internall purity accompanyed with extinction as it were of the life of the flesh by vigilancie abstinence and attention to divine offices And surely there are many of these unbloody sacrifices which are no lesse acceptable to God then the victims of the Martyrs For certainly it is a harder work to keepe our blood continually from running the course of nature in our veines then it is at once to poure it out of them The first is a continuall combat and an uncertain victory for the enemy who is overcome every day is still equally to be feared The last though it be a sharper conflict yet it is a present dispatch and a perpetuall extinction of all enmitie Wherefore S. Chrysostom saith He admireth more Joseph remaining unscorched in the flames of such a sollicitation then the three children coming with no scent of fire out of the furnace and S. Bernard saith he accounts a chaste soule not only to be celestiall by origin but even heaven it selfe by similitude And thus Christ who hath carried our nature into heaven above that of Angels hath left it a capacity even on earth to become Angelicall So we may say now that Christ in his Catholike Church presenteth his Father with Crucified Angels to represent to him his passion for the Virgins who crucifie their flesh with all the vices and concupiscences of it may well be sayd to be Angelicall Crucifixes And thus the wisedome of the Holy Ghost hath as it were varied the manner of Martyrs in the Church and subrogated crucified lives to officiate in the place of the sanguinary victims of the Primitive ages to make the same representation Whereupon as Christ did leave the unbloody sacrifice of himselfe to commemorat and apply the virtue of his passion so it seemeth the unbloody obligations of the religious bodies of his Church were instituted by the Holy Ghost to continue that part which was acted in the victims of the Martyrs which was a representation of the passions of Christ to God the Father wherby a continual influence of fresh graces is impetrated for the support of the Catholike Church in all her pressures Eph 5.32 This is a great Sacrament in Christ and in his Church so as we may say with the Apostle Sacramentum hoc magnum est in Christo in Ecclesiâ All this tendeth to illustrate to you how the Church is designed by her head Christ Jesus to remain a suffering body in this world to the end you who by Christs great mercies are members of it may not be tempted by the infirmity of nature to reply with Gedeon to the Angels of the Church Judg. 6.13 If our Lord be with us why have those evills apprehended us but rather in an holy assurance that God cannot be removed from us but by our owne diffidences let us answer with Eli to the message of ruine to our houses 1 Reg. 3.18 It is our Lord let him doe what is good in his eyes It is observable how to that Church of God to which no temporall sufferings were medicinally appointed there was no reward but temporall felicity manifestly proposed for as all the sacrifices of the temple were but figures of the blood of the Church of Christ so all their promises were but darke shadowes of heaven the which is as much cleerer and better exposed to us as the sufferings of men are worthyer then those of beasts and it was but just that they who had but water appointed for most of their purgations instead of the fire of
Christian discipline and mortification should have but earth measured out to thē for their possessions when the others who had all sorts of afflictions prescribed to them had heaven fairly laid open to their expectations And so there is more difference between the joyes glories that are proposed to Christians in the sight of God and the tasting the grapes and figs of Canaan conditioned with the children of Israel then there is between the being but aspersed with blood from the hand of a Priest and the being our selves the bloody sacrifices All our sufferings are then compensated by that measure of joy running over into our bosomes which is a promise of becomming Gods while the acquisitions proposed to our elder brothers were but the prosperities of men Wherefore we may note that untill the Crosse had opened the gates of heaven God did not make that the key wherewith his children were so precisely ordained to unlock them For the ancient Patriarks who were to stay long without the doores were not set to forge this key out of the fire of tribulation with so much sweat and labour as those who were presently to be let in upon the perfecting of their worke prescribed in the Gospell And so we may observe a far differing order in the promulgation of the Law and of the Gospell For to the Generalls of the Law there was given a promise of great temporall victories triumphs and subjugations of their enemies but we know the Champions of the Gospell had very different Commissions which consisted in all temporal sufferings defeatures and distresses These were the articles which Christ pend for their instructions That they should fly before their enemies from place to place be taken scorned scourged vilified under all worldly indignities In the world you shall have distresse John 16.33 In mundo pressurā habebitis is one of the last orders Christ gives his Commanders so that we may see S. Peter and S. Paul diversly equipaged for their expeditions to what Moses and Josuah were for their enterprises And yet the conquest of the first was to extend to the whole earth and the victories of the last but to a mole-hill in respect of the other So much more virtue Christs person hath conferd upon crosses and sufferings then God did allow to temporal prosperity Upon this foundation Christ to raise this point of afflictions which is annexed to his Church as high as nature can carry it exalts it by a revolt of nature it selfe against all innate inclinations advertising his Church that even their fathers brothers friends shall deliver them up to persecutions And I pray God you have the next following mark of the Disciples of Christ as evidently upon you as you have these which is Luk 21.17 19. In your patience you shall possesse your soules This is the onely shield Christ hath given his Church to cover her in all those showers of fiery darts which are to fall upon her He hath left her patience and permitted the world to furnish her with passions as necessaries for the exer I se thereof So then as you are members of the Catholike Church you must stock your best possession and resolve to live upon that in all your other sequestrations which is the possessing your soules in patience For indeed no body can possesse his soule that is remain master of it but by this security for without this hold of our minds the world hath power to alienate them by all casualties and violences that invade them and this is the reason why Christ who considereth nothing in his Church but soules having left this safeguard for them hath exposed all the rest to the injuries of the world as not worthy his protection so as having a sufficient power given us to maintain the possession of our soules we need not feare any dispoyling of such things of which the deprivement may improve that possession more then the fruition for the burning of our houses and the consumption of all our temporalties make such ashes as are the best soyling can be cast upon our earth for the bearing of patience and so we may fructifie this possession of our soules even by the perishment of our fortunes since I may then say with the Apostle Heb. 10.36 Patience is necessary for you that you may receive the promise of possessing your soules I may assure you consequently that you may improve the best part of your estates as Catholikes in all your sentences and sequestrations under that notion for you have the best treasure of the Church to undamage you which is the conformity to Christs sufferings which are better then indulgences granted out of the redundant treasures of his passions for these doe but deduct from temporary pains and the other doe improve eternall glory All you therefore who are suffering under the predicament of Catholikes have no worse a cause to claime that disposition of you which S. Heb. 10.34 Paul commends in the Church of his dayes in those great fights of affliction she sustained when the Christians took with joy the spoyle of their goods knowing that they had a better and a permanent substance since the same permanent assignment is made to you for all your privations and in some respect your portions are mended since that day though the purchase cost you not so deare as it did the then persecuted Catholikes for the accidentall beatitude of heaven is augmented since those dayes by the addition of many millions of glorified soules every one of which is some encrease of joy mutually to each beatify'd soule by a participation reflected from one anothers joyes and so the number of the blessed soules in this regard as it riseth raiseth the glory of heaven Wherefore it may now be better challenged of you this rejoycing in your traffique for heaven with the losse of your goods since you give lesse for it then the tortured Primitive Christians and have more in it For this consideration then you who as the Apostle saith have accesse through your faith into this grace wherein you stand Rom. 5.4 and glory in hope of the glory of the sonnes of God ought also to glory in tribulations knowing that tribulation worketh patience by which Christ hath ordained you shall possesse your soules And it may well be that those who spoyle and dispossesse you of your houses and lands doe restore your soules to you which were too much possessed by them and thus you may be re-estated in the best part of your selves which peradventure was sequestred by your owne estates For you know this was the case of the young man in the Gospel whose soule was under the seisure of his owne possessions which did put a worse restraint upon him then is upon any of your persons when he had nothing to hold him from following Christ but the bands of his owne abundances the which proved both sequestration and imprisonment of his soule Whereupon Christ asketh
and at the same time seeth him to be the brightnesse of his glory and the figure of his owne substance this must needs propitiate God infinitely to that body which representeth to him such an honour he hath received from the head thereof who being equall with him did thus admirably subject himselfe for the exaltation of his glory Doth not then the suffering Church rememorate to God continually the highest point of all his glory For the holocausting or incineration of infinite worlds in honour of the Majesty of God would not have been an oblation equivalent to the least drop of blood drawne from the person of Christ and therefore Christs designe in leaving his mysticall body in a suffering posture is one of the highest straines of his divine providence both in order to the honouring of his Father Ephes 4.13 and the purifying of his Church till The body and the head meet in the perfect man in the age of the fulnesse of Christ It then we review the state of the Church even since the Empire of the world undertooke her protection and repose we shall finde her still continuing an image of the life of Christ who we know had divers intermixtures in his course through this world sometimes he was in want and hunger in the desart sometimes declared in the glory of his miracles feeding multitudes and curing all diseases and again sometimes we find him withdrawing and hiding himselfe from the fury of the people and then at other times we behold him in authority and magistracy expelling the prophaners of the Temple and casting out the evill spirits out of the images of God and converting them into the temples of the Holy Ghost These vicissitudes we finde also in the state of his Church sometimes prospering spreading and feeding those multitudes which sodainly after have risen against her and forced many of her members to fly out of their reach into desarts and more dispeopled places in some times again she hath propagated miraculously and established her doctrine and her jurisdiction among many unbeleeving nations in a wonderfull felicity and in sequence of time hath beene banished and eliminated out of these dominions These alternative mutations are evident in the progresse of her dispersion through the world and we know she shall extend her selfe at last to the ends of the world and if not cover the face yet leave some of her markes upon the whole face of the earth Wee see her now as it were shipped away almost quite from Africa where she was so firmly planted many ages before America was so much as knowne to be in the world and now shee spreads there to a good growth while her plantation in Africa lies waste and desolate and the good seed which is falne in that ground seemeth to answer for the semination of those tares which the Enemy hath cast into these territories of Christianity And we may note that all the ancient heresies which so much infested the Church in former ages are now almost eradicated according to the fate of them Sap. 4.3 Spuria vitulamina non dabunt radices altas and the new ones which are now so flowerd and full blowne will shed and fall away like Tulips which commonly vary their colours every yeare somewhat till the roote it selfe in a few yeares leaveth bearing and these varieties of vexations will successively spring up to the Church out of the ruines of some errors new wil be erected and thus she shall be exercised to the end of the world till the man of sin Antichrist shall come to purge her by a generall conflagration as it were of the whole world in the flames of his blasphemy which shal be the last perfecting fire of tribulation shall reduce the Church to the finenesse of that gold which must pave the heavenly Jerusalem This is Christs method and designation of the manner of his Churches passage through this world up to him in whom since there can be neither impotency nor severity to this his body for the Apostle tells us Ephe. 5.29 He nourisheth and cherisheth it as a man doth his owne flesh we must resolve that this order is in reference to the presenting his Father with a continuall intuition of his suffering body whereby he is the most eminently honoured Ephe. 5.27 Not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing but that it may be holy and unspotted and to refine this body to the most perfect degree of purity which this locall separation from the head can admit of to reduce it at last to that glorious estate Non habentem maculam aut rugam aut aliquid hujusmodi sed ut sit sancta immaculata Wherefore I may properly say to you as members of this suffering body 1. Pet. 4.12 from S. Peters mouth Thinke it not strange in the fervour which is to you for tentation as though some new thing happened unto you for all that you are exposed to is in consequence of that order wherein Christ conducts his Church through this transitory world TO clucidate farther this position That God is propitiated by the sight of Christs suffering body we may make this animadversion upon the constitution of the Catholike Church That soone after the issue of bloud was stenched so as the bodies of the Martyrs did no longer afford that object of passions the Holy Ghost who had charge to preserve the Church in the most acceptable condition to God presently infused a spirit of voluntary mortifications and sufferings into the Church whereby many holy persons were divinely inspired to congregate bodies and societies of sufferers which should be united by a vow of perpetuall afflicting and exercising their bodies and making themselves lively images of Jesus Christ crucified by the rules of selfe-abnegation and exhibition of a life intirely sacrificed in the toleration of all sorts of austerities This spirit wrought upon both sexes and hath produced those admirable orders of mortified and crucified Christians which are so eminent in the Catholike Church so that the strongest powers of flesh and blood have been subdued by the weakest portions of it Virgins in the succeeding times have been as sanctified by their civill death and spirituall mortification as they were by the violent destruction of their lives consecration of their bodies in martyrdome to this ministery of the Churches sufferings which were wanting to the passions of Christ and so this order of selfe-sacrificing seemeth to have succeeded in the Church to the vacancie of the Martyrs whereby God hath this spectacle continued to him in the passions of the body of Christ in bodies and societies expresly set apart from the world for that intendment which are all the religious orders of the Catholike Church whose lives are nayled to the Crosse by many vowes of austerity penance and self-crucifixion and these make such a propitiating sacrifice of their lives to God as we may be assured he smels it as an odour of sweetnesse