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
AN ANSWER TO Monseiur de la Militiere his impertinent Dedication of his Imaginary Triumph To the KING of Great Britain to invite him to embrace the Roman Catholick Religion By John Bramhall D. D. and Lord Bishop of Derry HAGUE Printed in the Year 1653. An Answer to Monseiur de la Militiere his Epistle to the King of great Britain wherein he inviteth his Majesty to forsake the Church of England and to embrace the Roman Catholick Religion SIR YOu might long have disputed your Question of Transubstantiation with your learned Adversary and proclamed your own Triumph on a silver Trumpet to the world before any Member of the Church of England had interposed in this present Exigence of our Affairs I know no necessity that Christians must be like Cocks Plut. that when one Crows all the rest must Crow for Company Monseiur Aubertine will not want a surviving friend to teach you what it is to sound a Triumph before you have gained the victory He was no fool that desired no other Epitaph on his Tomb than this Here lyes the Author of this sentence Prurigo Disputandi scabies Ecclesiae Sir Henry Wotton the itch of disputing is the scab of the Church Having viewed all your strength with a single eye I find not one of your Arguments that comes home to Transubstantiation but only to a true reall presence which no genuine Son of the Church of England did ever deny no nor your Adversary himself Christ said This is my Body what he said we do stedfastly believe he said not after this or that manner neque con neque sub neque trans And therefore we place it among the Opinions of the Schools not among the Articles of our Faith The holy Eucharist which is the Sacrament of peace and unity rences in the Church directly about the Sacrament for the first 800. years ought not to be made the matter of strife and contention There wanted not abuses in the Administration of this Sacrament in the most pure and Primitive times as prophaness and uncharitableness among the Corinthians 1 Cor. 11. The Simonians and Menandrians and some other such Imps of Sathan unworthy the name of Christians Theod. ex Ignatio did wholy forbear the use of the Eucharist but it was not for any difference about the Sacrament it self but about the naturall Body of Christ They held that his flesh and Blood and Passion were not true and reall but imaginary and phantasticall things The Maniches did forbear the Cup but it was not for any difference about the Sacrament it self They made two Gods a good God whom they called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or light and an evill God whom they tearmed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or darkness which evill God they said did make some creatures of the Dreg or more feculent parts of the matter which were evill and impure And among these evill creatures they esteemed Wine which they called the Gall of the Dragon for this cause not upon any other scruple they either wholy absteined from the Cup Leo. Ser. 4. de quad Epiph. haer 30. 46. or used Water in the place of wine which Epiphanius recordeth among the errors of the Ebionites Aug. li. de Haeres c. 64 and Tacians And St. Austine of the Aquarians Still we doe not find any clashing either in word or writing directly about this Sacrament in the universall Church of Christ much less about the presence of Christ in the Sacrament Bel. l. 1. de Sac. Euch. c. 1. Neque ullus veterum disputat contra hunc errorem primis sex centis Annis The first that are supposed by Bellarmine to have broached any error in the Church about the reall presence were the Iconomachi after 700. years Primi qui veritatem corporis Domini in Eucharistia in quaestionem vecarunt fuerint Iconomachi post Annum Domini 700. Bel ibid. Syn Nic. 2 Act 6. only because they called the Bread and Wine the Image of Christs body This is as great a mistake as the former Their difference was meerly about Images not at all about the Eucharist so much Vasques confesseth Disp 179. c. 1. that In his â—udgement they are not to be numbred with those who deny the presence of Christ in the Eucharist We may well find different observations in those dayes Yet different observations as one Church consecrating leavened Bread another unleavened One Church making use of pure Wine another of Wine mixed with Water One Church admitting Infants to the Communion another not admitting them but without controversies or censures or animosity one against another we find no debates or disputes concerning the presence of Christs Body in the Sacrament and much less concerning the manner of his presence for the first eight hundred years And different expressions Yet all the time we find as different expressions among those Primitive Fathers as among our modern writers at this day some calling the Sacrament the sign of Christs Body the figure of his Body the Symbol of his Body the mystery of his Body the exemplar type and representation of his Body saying that the Elements do not recede from their first nature others naming it the true Body and Blood of Christ changed not in shape but in nature yea doubting not to say that in this Sacrament we see Christ we touch Christ we eat Christ that we fasten our teeth in his very flesh and make our Tongues red in his Bloud Yet notwithansting there were no questions no quarrels no contentions amongst them there needed no Councils to order them no conferences to reconcile them because they contented themselves to believe what Christ had said This is my Body without presuming upon their own heads to determine the manner how it is his Body neither weighing all their own words so exactly before any controversie was raised nor expounding the sayings of other men contrary to the analogy of Faith The first doubt about the The first difference abouâ— the presence of Christ in the Sacrament presence of Christs Body in the Sacrament seems to have been moved not long before the year 900. in the dayes of Bertram and Paschasius but the controversie was not well formed nor this new Article of Transubstantiation sufficiently concocted in the dayes of Berengarius after the year 1050. as appeareth by the gross mistaking and mistating of the question on both sides First Berengarius if we may trust his adversaries knew no mean between a naked figure or empty sign of Christs presence and a corporeall or Locall presence and afterwards fell into another extreme of impanation on the other side the Pope and the Councill made no difference between Consubstantiation and Transubstantiation they understood nothing of the spirituall or indivisible being of the flesh and blood of Christ in the Sacrament as appeareth by that ignorant and Capernaiticall retractation and abjuration which they imposed upon Berengarius Penned by
Deut. 29.29 Secret things belong to the Lord our God but things revealed unto us and our Children for ever This is the reason why we rest in the words of Christ This is my Body leaving the manner to him that made the Sacrament we know it is Sacramentall and therefore efficacious because God was never wanting to his own Ordinances where man did not set a bar against himself But to determine whether it be corporeally or spiritually I mean not only after the manner of a spirit but in a spirituall sense whether it be in the Soul only or in the Host also And if in the Host whether by Consubstantiation or Transubstantiation whether by Production or Adduction or Conservation or Assumption or by whatsoever other way bold and blind man dare conjecture we determine not Durand Motum sentimus modum nescimus praesentiam credimus This was the belief of the Primitive Church this was the Faith of the antient Fathers who were never acquainted with these modern questions de modo which edifie not but expose Christian Religion to contempt We know what to think and what to say with probability modesty and submission in the Schools But we dare neither scrue up the Question to such an height nor dictate our Opinions to others so Magisterially as Articles of Faith Nescire velle quae Magister maximus Docere non vult erudita est inscitia O! Against multiplying of questions and controversies how happy had the Christian world been if Scholars could have sate down contented with a latitude of Generall sufficient saving Truth which when all is done must be the Olive branch of peace to shew that the deluge of Ecclesiasticall division is abated without wading too far into particular subtilties or doting about Questions and Logomacâ—ies whereof commeth envy strife raylings evill surmisings perverse disputings Old controversies evermore raise up new controversies and yet more controversies as Circles in the water do produce other Circles Now especially these Scholasticall quarrels seem to be unseasonable when Zenos School is newly opened in the world who sometimes wanted opinions but never wanted Arguments Now when Atheism and sacrilege are become the mode of the times Now when all the fundamentals of Theology Morality and Policy are undermined and ready to be blown up Now when the unhappy contentions of great Princes or their Ministers have hazarded the very being of Monarchy and Christianity Now when Bellonia shakes her bloody whip over this Kingdom it becometh well all good Christians and subjects to leave their litigious questions and 〈…〉 to bring water to quench the fire of civil dissention already kindled rather than to blow the Coals of discord and to render themselves censurable by all discreet persons like that half-wirted fellow personated in the Orator Qui cum Capit is mederi debuisset reduviem curavit when his head was extremely distempered he busied himself about a small push on his fingers end But that which createth this trouble to you and me at this time is your Preface The Occasion of this Discourse and Epistle Dedicatory wherein to adorn your vainly imagined Victory in an unseasonable Controversie you rest not contented that your Adversary grace your Triumph unless the King of great Britain and all his subjects yea and all Protestants besides attend your Chariot Neither do you only desire this but augurate it or rather you relate it as a thing already as good as don P. 37. for you tell him that his eyes and his ears do hear and see those truths which make him to know the faults of that new Religion which he had sucked in with his milk you set forth the causes of his Conversion The tears of his Mother and the Blood of his Father whom you suppose against evident truth to have dyed an invisible Member of your Roman Catholick Church And you prescribe the means to perfect his Conversion which must be a conference of your Theologians with the Ministers of Charentou If your charity be not to be blamed The Authors indiscretion to wish no worse to another than you do to your self yet prudent men desire more discretion in you than to have presented such a Treatise to the view of the world under his Majesties protection without his licence and against his conscience Had you not heard that such groundless insinuations as these and other private whisperings concerning his Fathers Apostatising to the Roman Religion did lose him the hearts of many subjects If you did why would you insist in the same steps to deprive the Son of all possibility of recovering them To no purpose If your intentions be only to invite his Majesty to embrace the Catholick Faith The King is already a better Catholick than himself you might have spared both your Oyl and labour The Catholick Faith flourished 1200. years in the world before Transubstantiation was defined among your selves Persons better acquainted with the Primitive times than your self unless you wrong one another do acknowledge that the Fathers did not touch either the word or the matter of transubstantiation Discursus modestus JesuitaruÌ„ p. 13. Watsons quod lib. l. 2. Art 4. Mark it well neither name nor thing His Majesty doth firmly beleeve all supernaturall truths revealed in sacred Writ He embraceth cheerfully whatsoever the holy Apostles or the Nicene Fathers or blessed Athanasius in their respective Creeds or Summaries of Catholick Faith did set down as necessary to be believed He is ready to receive whatsoever the Catholick Church of this age doth unanimously believe to be a particle of saving Truth But if you seek to obtrude upon him the Roman Church with its adherents for the Catholick Church excluding three parts of four of the Christian world from the Communion of Christ or the opinions thereof for Articles and fundamentals of Catholick Faith neither his reason nor his Religion nor his charity will suffer him to listen unto you The Truths received by our Church are sufficient in point of Faith to make him a good Catholick More than this your Roman Bishops your Roman Church your Tridentine Councill may not cannot obtrude upon him Listen to the third generall Councill Par. 2. Act. 6. c. 7. that of Ephesus which decreed that it should be lawfull for no man to publish or compose another Faith or Creed than that which was defined by the Nicene Councill Not lawfull to add to the old Creed And that whosoever should dare to compose or offer any such to any persons willing to be converted from Paganism Judaism or Heresy if they were Bishops or Clerks should be deposed if Laymen anathematized Suffer us to enjoy the same Creed the Primitive Fathers did which none will say to have been insufficient except they be mad Concil Flor. Sess 10. prof sid in bulla Pti quarti as was alleged by the Greeks in the Councill of Florence You have violated this Canon you have obtruded a
new Creed upon Christendom New I say not in words only but in sense also Something 's are de Symbolo What are additions to the Creed and what are only explications somethings are contra symbolum and somethings are only praeter symbolum Something 's are conteined in the Creed either expresly or virtually either in the Letter or in the sense and may be deduced by evident consequence from the Creed as the Deity of Christ his two natures the procession of the Holy Ghost The addition of these was properly no addition but an explication Yet such an explication no person no Assembly under an Oecumenicall Councill Aq. 2. 2. q. 1. Art 10. can impose upon the Catholick Church And such an one your Tridentine Synod was not Secondly somethings are contra symbolum contrary to the symbolicall Faith and either expresly or virtually overthrow some Article of it These additions are not only unlawfull but hereticall also in themselves and after conviction render a man a formal Heretick whether some of your additions be not of this nature I will not now dispute Thirdly somethings are neither of the Faith nor against the Faith but only besides the Faith That is opinions or truths of an inferior nature which are not so necessary to be actually known for though all revealed truths be a like necessary to be believed when they are known yet all revealed truths are not a like necessary to be known It is not denyed but that Generall or Provinciall Councils may make constitutions concerning these for unity and uniformity and oblige all such as are subject to their jurisdiction to receive them either actively or passively without contumacy or opposition But to make these or any of these a part of the Creed and to oblige all Christians under pain of damnation to know and believe them is really to adde to the Creed and to change the Symbolicall Apostolicall Faith to which none can adde from which none can take away and comes within the compass of St. Pauls curse Gal. 1.8 If we or an Angell from Heaven shall Preach unto you any other Gospell or Faith than that which we have Preached let him be accursed Such are your Universality of the Roman Church by the Institution of Christ to make her the Mother of her Grand-Mother the Church of Jerusalem and the mistress of her many elder Sisters Your Doctrine of Purgatory and Indulgences and the Worship of Images and all other novelties defined in the Councill of Trent all which are comprehended in your New Roman Creed and obtruded by you upon all the world to be believed under pain of damnation He that can extract all these out of the old Apostolick Creed must needs be an excellent Chymist and may safely undercake to draw water out of a Pumice That afflictions come not by chance P. 4. Crosses are not alwaies punishments but sometimes corrections or tryals that prosperity is no evidence of Gods favour or adversity of his hatred that crosses imposed by God upon his servants look more forwards towards their amendment than backwards to their demerits and proceed not from a Judge revenging but from a Father correcting or which you have omitted from a Lord Paramount proving and magnifying before the world his own graces in his Servants for his glory and their Advantage are undeniable Truths which we readily admit As likewise that the dim eye of man cannot penetrate into the secret dispensations of Gods temporall judgements and mercies in this life so as to say this man is punished that other chastised this third is only proved But you forget all this soon after Which the Author presently forgets when you take upon you to search into yea more to determine the grounds and reasons why the hand of God P. 8. aswell as the Parliament hath been so heavy upon the Head of his late Majesty and his royall Son P. 14. Namely on Gods part because he called himself the head of the Church God purposing by his punishment to teach all other Princes that are in the Schism with what severity he can vindicate his glory in the injury done unto the Unity and Authority of his Church P. 9. And on the Parliaments part because he would not consent to the Abolition of Episcopacy and suppression of the Liturgy and Ceremonies established in the Church of England First what warrant have you to enquire into the Actions of that blessed Saint and Martyr which of them should be the causes of his sufferings Not remembring that the Disciples received a check from their Master upon the like presumption Joh. 9.2 Who sinned this man or his parents that he was born blind Jesus answered neither hath this man sinned nor his parents but that the works of God should be made manifest in him Better grounds of his Majesties sufferings than those of the Author The Heroicall Virtues the flaming Charity the admirable Patience the rare Humility the exemplary Chastity the constant and frequent Devotions and the invincible Courage of that happy Prince not daunted with the ugly face of a most horrid death have rendred him the glory of his Country the Honour of that Church whereof he was the chiefest member the admiration of Christendome and a pattern for all Princes of what Communion soever to imitate untill the end of the world His Suffrings were Palms his Prison a Paradise and his death-day the birth-day of his happiness whom his Enemies advantaged more by their cruelty than they could have done by their courtesie They deprived him of a corruptible Crown and invested him with a Crown of glory They snatched him from the sweet society of his dearest Spouse and from most hopefull Olive branches Psa 128.3 to place him in the bosoms of the holy Angels This alone is ground enough for his suffrings to manifest unto the world those transcendent and unparallel'd graces wherewith God had enriched him to which his suffrings gave the greatest lustre as the stars shine brightest in a dark night The Authors rash censure upon the Archbishop of Cant. The like liberty you assume towards the other most glorious Martyr the late Arch-Bishop of Canterbury a man of profound learning and exemplary life of clean hands of a most sincere heart a patron of all good learning a Professor of antient truth a great friend indeed and earnest pursuer of Order Unity and uniformity in Religion but most free from all sinister ends either a varitious or ambitious wherewith you do uncharitably charge him as if he sought onely his own Grandeur to make himself the head of a Schismaticall body In brief you therefore censure him because you did not know him I wish all your great Ecclesiastiques had his Innocency and fervent zeal for Gods Church and the peace thereof to plead for them at the day of Judgement By applying these particular Afflictions according to your own ungrounded Fancy what a wide gap have
do suspect jugling No man proclameth in the Market that he hath rotten wares to sell And therefore we must be carefull notwithstanding your great promises to keep well Epicharmus his Jewell Remember to distrust By your permission your glistering demonstration is a very counterfeit not so valuable as a Bristol Diamant when it comes to be examined by the wheel Sometimes nothing is more necessary than Reformation Reformation is sometimes necessary Never was house so wel builded that now and then needed not reparation Never Garden so well planted but must sometimes be weeded Never any order so well instituted but in long tract of time there will be a bending and declining from its Primitive perfection and a necessity of reducing it to its first principles Are your Houses of Religion which are Reformed therefore the less Religious Why then did all the Princes and Commonwealths in Europe Yea the Fathers themselves in the Councill of Trent cry out so often so earnestly for a Reformation yet were forced to content themselves with a vain shadow for the substance as Ixion embraced a Cloud for Juno or Children are often stilled with an empty bottle Reformation not agreeable to all person especially the Court of Rome But Reformation is not agreeable to all persons Judas loved not an Audit because he kept the Bag. Dull Lethargick people had rather sleep to death than be awaked to and mad phrenetick Bigots are apt to beat the Chirurgion that would bind up their wounds but none are so averse from Reformation as the Court of Rome where the very name is more formidable than Hannibal at the Gates yea than all the five terrible things No mervail they are afraid to have their Oranges squeesed to their hands if they were infallible as they pretend there was no need of a Reformation we wish they were but we see they are not On the other side There is danger in Reformation it cannot be denyed that Reformation when it is unseasonable or inordinate or excessive may do more hurt than good when Reformers want just Authority or due information or have sinister ends or where the remedy may be of worse consequence than the abuse or where men run out of one extreme into another therefore it is a rule in prudence Not to remove an ill custom when it is well setled Unless it bring great prejudices and then it is better to give one account why we have taken it away than to be alwaies making excuses why we do it not Needless alteration doth diminish the venerable esteem of Religion and lessen the credit of antient truths Break Ice in one place and it will crack in more Crooked sticks by bending streight are sometimes broken into two There is a right mean between these extremes The right rule of Reformation if men could light on it that is neither to destroy the body out of hatred to the sores and Ulcers nor yet to cherish the sores and Ulcers out of a doating affection to the body that is neither to destroy antient Institutions out of a zealous hatred to some new abusers nor yet to do at so upon antient Institutions as for their sakes to cherish new abuses Our Reformation is just Our Reformation not the ruin of Faith Church or Common-wealth as much the cause of the ruin of our Church and Common-wealth as the building of Tenderden Steeple was the cause of Goodwins Sands or the ruin of the Country thereabouts because they happened both much about the same time Careat successibus opto May he ever want success who judgeth of Actions by the Event Our Reformation hath ruined the Faith just as the plucking up of weeds in a Garden ruins the good Herbs It hath ruined the Church just as a body full of superfluous and vicious humours is ruined by an healthfull purgation It hath ruined the Common-wealth just as the pruning of the Vine ruins the Elm. No no Sir Our sufferings for the Faith for the Church for the Monarchy do proclame us Innocent to all the world of the ruin either of Faith or Church or Monarchy And in this capacity we choose rather to sterve Innocents than to swim in plenty as Nocents But this is but one of your doubles to keep us from the right forme It is your new Roman Creed that hath ruined the Faith It is your Papall Court that hath ruined the Church It is your new Doctrines of the Popes Omnipotence over temporall persons in order unto spirituall ends of absolving subjects from their Oaths of Alleageance of exempting the Clergy from secular jurisdiction of the lawfulness of murthering Tyrants and excommunicated Princes of aequivocation and the like that first infected the world to the danger of Civill Government Yet far be it from me to make these the Universal Tenets of your Church at any time much less at this time when they are much faln from their former credit neither can I deny that sundry dangerous positions destructive to all civill societies have been transplanted by our Sectaries and taken too deep root in our quarters but never by our fault If God should grant us the benefit of an Oecumenicall or Occidentall Councill it would become both you and us in the first place to pluck up such seditious opinions root and branch You say our Calvinistical Reformation so you are pleased to call it as you would have it for the moderate and orderly Reformation of England was the terror and eye-sore of Rome is founded upon two maxims Our first supposed Maxim The onâ—â—hat the Church was faln to ruin and desolation and become guilty of Idolatry and Tyranny The Catholick Church cannot come to ruin or be be guilty of Idolatry or Tyranny This is neither our foundation nor our superstruction neither our maxim nor our Opinion It is so far from it that we hold and teach the direct contrary First that the Gates of Hell shall never prevail against the Universall Church that though the rain descend and the floods come and the winds blow and beat upon it yet it shall never fall to ruin or desolation because it is builded upon a Rock Secondly we beleeve that the Catholick Church is the faithfull Spouse of Christ and cannot be guilty of Idolatry which is spirituall Adultery Thirdly we never said we never thought that the Oecumenical Church of Christ was guilty of Tyranny It is principled to suffer wrong to do none and by suffering to Conquer Chrysost as a flock of unarmed Sheep in the midst of a company of ravenous Wolves A new and unheard of kind of warfare as if one should throw an handfull of dry flax into the midst of a flaming fire to extinguish it But I presume this is one of the Idiotisms of your language Catholick and Roman not Convertibles in which by the Church you alwaies understand the Roman Church making Roman and Catholick to be convertibles As if Christ could not have
Catholick Church than your self You tell us moreover that this Church is the Roman Church That is not true but suppose it were most true as it is most false what should a man be better or nearer to the knowledge of the truth and consequently to his salvation for his submission to the Roman Church Yet cannot agree among themselves what this Roman Church is As long as you cannot agree among your selves either what this Roman Church is or what your infallible Judge is One saith it is the Pope alone Another saith no but the Pope with his Conclave of Cardinals A third will goe no less than the Pope and a Provinciall Councill A fourth will not be contented without the Pope and a generall Councill A fifth is for a Generall Councill alone either with or without the Pope A sixth party and they are of no small esteem among you here at this present is for the essentiall Church that is the Company of all faithfull people whose reception say they makes the true ratification of the Acts of its representative body It were as good to have no infallible Judge as not to know or agree who it is Be not so centorious in condemning others for not submitting to your Roman Church or infallible Judge nor so positive to make this submission so absolutely necessary to salvation untill you agree better what this Judge or Church is It is five to one against you that you your self miss the right Judge The English Church not perished Whatsoever become of your Church you say Ours is perished by the proper Axioms of our own Reformation and hath no more any subsistence in the world nor pretence to the Privilege of a Church This is hard He perisheth twice that perisheth by his own weapons Even so Josephs Brethren told Joseph himself with Consciences guilty enough One is not Gen. 42.13 This is that which the Court of Rome would be content to purchase at any rate This hath been the end of all then secret Negotiations and Instructions by all means to support the Presbyterian faction in England against Episcopacy Not that they loved them more than us but that they feared us more than them There was an Israelitish Church when Elias did not see it but he must be as blind as Bartimaeus that cannot see the English Church Wheresoever there is a lawfull English Pastor and an English Flock and a subordination of this Flock to that Pastor there is a branch of the true English Protestant Church Do you make no difference between a Church persecuted and a Church extinguished Have patience and expect the Catastrophe It may be all this while the Carpenters Son is making a Coffin for Julian If it please God we may yet see the Church of England which is now frying in the fire come out like Gold out of the Furnace more pure and more full of lustre If not his will be done Just art thou O Lord and righteous are all thy iudgements The Primitive Church was as glorious in the sight of God when they served him in Holes and Corners in Cryptis Sacellis conventiculis ecclesiolis as when his worship was more splendidly performed in Basilicis and Cyriacis in goodly Churches and magnificent Cathedrals Your design stops not at the King of great Britain P. 42. but extends it self to all his subjects yea to all Protestants whatsoever I wonder why you stay there The Authors vain dreams and would not adde all the Eastern Churches and the great Turk himself since you might have done it with one other penfull of Ink and with as much pretence of reason to secure himself from the joynt forces of Christendom thus united by your means A strong phantasie will discover Armies and Navies in the Clouds men and horses and chariots in the fire and hear articulate dictates from the Bels. This is not to write waking but dreaming Yet you make it an easy work to effect which there needs no disputation but onely to behold the Hereticall Genius of our Reformation P. 43. 44. which is sufficiently condemned by it self if men will onely take the pains to compare the fundamentall principles thereof with the Consequences Great Houses and Forts are builded at an easy charge in Paper When you have consulted with your Architects and Engeniers you will find it to be a work of more difficulty And your adversaries resolution may teach you to your cost what it is to promise your self such an easie conquest before the fight and let you see that those golden mountains which you phantasied have no subsistance but in your own brain and send you home to seek out that self-conviction there which you sought to fasten upon others When you are able to prove your Universall Monarchy your new Canon of Faith your new Treasury of the Church your new Roman Purgatory whereof the Pope keeps the Keys your Image worship your common prayers in a tongue unknown your deteining of the Cup from the Laity in the publike administration of the Sacrament and the rest of your new Creed out of the four first Generall Councils or the Universall Tradition of the Church in those dayes either as principles or fundamentall truths which you affirm or so much as ordinary points of faith which we deny we will yield our selves to be guilty both of Contradiction and Schism Untill you are able to make these innovations good it were best for you to be silent and leave your vapouring Desperate undertakings do easily forfeit a mans reputation P. 47. c. His vainer proposition of a conference Now are we come to the most specious piece of your whole Epistle that is the motion or proposition of a Conference by Authority of the King of France at the instance of the King of great Britain before the Arch-Bishop of Paris and his Coadjutor between some of your Roman Catholick Doctors and the Ministers of the reformed Church at Paris whom you do deservedly commend for their sufficiency and zeal You further suppose that the Ministers of the reformed Church will accept of such a disputation or by their Tergiversation betray the weakness of their cause And you conclude confidently beyond supposition that they will be confuted and convicted and that their conversion or conviction will afford sufficient ground to the King of great Britain to embrace the Communion of the Roman Catholick Church And that his conversion will reduce all conscientious Protestants to unity and due obedience I will contract your larger Palm to a Fist If the King of great Britain desire a solemn conference the King of France will enjoyn it If he injoyn it the Ministers will accept if they do accept it they are sure to be convicted if they be convicted the King of great Britain will change his Religion if hee change his Religion all conscientious Protestants will be reduced And all this to be done not by the old way of disputing No take heed
of that the burn'd child dreads the fire But by a proper new way of refuting old Protestant principles by new Independent practises Why was this Remedy found out no sooner This might have eased the Cardinals in their Consultations about propagating the Faith This might have saved Cardinall Allen all his Machiavillian Instructions to his English Emissaries This may in a short time turn the Inquisitors out of their employment for want of an Object and not leave such a thing as hereticall pravity in the world How must men praise your fortune and applaud your Invention But stay the second thoughts are wiser What if this Chain supposed to be of Adamant should prove a rope of sand And so it is I have seen a Sorites disgraced and hissed out of the Schools for drawing but one lame leg after it This is foundred of all four from the beginning to the end there is nothing in it but future Contingents which are known onely to God not one grain of necessary truth The King of England desires no such Conference First Sir be not angry if a man take away the subject of your whole discourse It is but your officiousness the King desires no such Conference Let them desire Conferences who waver in their faith All these blustering storms have radicated him deeper in his Religion And chiefly that which you make the chiefest motive to his Apostating the Martyrdom of his royall Father and an hereditary love to that Church which he hath justified with his blood Secondly If he should he had neither reason nor need to desert his English Clergy if his Majesty should encline to such a Conference do you think he would desert the English Clergy who have forsaken their Country their Friends their Estates out of their Conscience out of their duty to God and their Soveraign who understand the Constitution of the English Church much better than your self or any Foreiners how sufficient soever and cast himself wholly upon strangers whose Reformation you say is different from that of England in the points of Episcopacy Liturgy and the Ceremonies of the Church Say what was the Reason of this gross Omission were you afraid of that Image of the Church as you call it in a sleighting manner which they reteined Or did you not think any of the English Nation worthy to bear your books at a Conference It hath been otherwise heretofore and you will find it otherwise now when you come to prove it I know not whether England hath been more fortunate or unfortunate since the Reformation in breeding as many able Polemique writers on both sides as any Nation in Europe Stapleton Harding Parsons Sanders Reynolds Bishop c. for the Roman Church Jewell Andrews Abbot Laewd White Field Montague Reynolds Whitaker c. for the English Church I forbear to name those that are living And many more who come not short of these if they had pleased to communicate their Talents to the world This is such a Contumely as reflects upon the Nation and you must be content to be told of it Thirdly Such a Conference not fit to be granted by the King of France how are you sure that the King of France and his Counsell would give way to such a solemn and publique Conference private Insinuations use to prevail much when a man may Laevere tack to and again to compass his ends Authority or the Sword may put an end to Controversies But publick Conferences for the most part do but start new Questions and revive old forgotten animosities What were the Donatists the better for the Collation at Carthage The mind of a man is generous and where it looks for opposition fortifies it self against it Urban the Eighth was the wisest Pope you have had of late who by his moderation and courtesie cooled much of that heat which the violence of his Predecessors had raised against the Court of Rome The mild beams of the Sun were more prevalent than the blustering blasts of the North wind Multiplying of words more commonly engenders strife than peace Fourthly Nor to be accepted by the Ministers of the reformed Church upon what grounds are you so confident that the Ministers of the Reformed Church would admit of such a publick Disputation upon those terms which you propose That is to accept of the Archbishop of Paris and his Coadjutor two persons interessed for competent Judges I am as confident of the contrary that they would rather chuse to suffer than wrong their cause so much Frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora It were a readier way for them and but the same in effect to subscribe to a blank paper and to submit without disputation Nor could any such Success be expected from it Fifthly suppose all this notwithstanding such a Conference should hold what reason have you to promise to your self such success as to obtain so easie a Victory You have had Conferences and Conferences again at Poissye and other places and gained by them just as much as you might put in your eye and see never the worse When Conferences are onely made use of as Pageants to grace the Introduction of some new Proselyte and to preserve his Reputation from the aspersion of desultorious Levity they seem much more efficatious than they are As they know well enough who are privie to what is acted in the withdrawing room The time was when you have been as confident in a contrary Opinion that such a free Conference would have sealed the Walls of Rome and levelled the Popes Triple Crown Sixtly The Authors impertinence and sauciness with the King whether the Ministers should accept of such a partiall unequall Conference or not or whatsoever should be the success thereof you trespass too boldly upon his Majesties patience to dictate to him so pragmatically so magisterially what he should do or would do in such a case which is never like to be Doth his Fathers constancy encourage you to believe that He is a Reed shaken with the wind Qui pauca considerat facile pronunciat He that weighs no more circumstances or occurrences than serve for the Advancement of his design pronounceth sentence easily but temerariously and for the most part unsoundly When such a thing as you dream of should happen it were good manners in you to leave his Majesty to his Christian Liberty But to trouble your self and others about the Moons shining in the water so unseasonably so impertinently or with what will come to pass when the sky falls is unbeseeming the Counseller of a King His Pen over â—uns his wit Lastly consider how your pen doth over-run your reason and over-reach all grounds of probability to ascribe unto his Majesties change such an infallible Influence upon all Protestants as to reduce them to the Roman Communion not onely his own subjects but foreiners His blessed Fathers example had not so much influence upon the Scots his native
Subjects He was no Changeling indeed neither to the right hand nor to the left Henry the Fourth his Grandfather did turn indeed to the Roman Church Had his change any such Influence upon the Protestant party in France I know no followers such a change would gain him but I foresee clearly how many hearts it would lose him Certainly Sir if you would do a meritorious piece of â—â—…ice to his greatest Adversaries you could not fix upon any thing that would content them more highly than to see you successfull in this undertaking I have done with your Proposition Hee than compares it and your demonstration together will easily judge them to be twins at the first sight As a motive to his Majesties conversion you present him with a Treatise of Transubstantiation and desire that it may appear unto the world under his royall name P. 58. His improper choise of a Patron for his Treatise I meddle not with your Treatise some of your learned Adversaries friends will give you your hands full enough But how can his Majesty protect or patronise a Treatise against his Judgement against his Conscience so contrary to the doctrine of the Church of England not onely since the Reformation but before About the year seven hundred Serm. Saxon in festâ— Paschat The body of Christ wherein he suffered and his Body Consecrated in the Host differ much The body wherein he suffred was born of the Virgin consisting of flesh and bones and humane members his Spirituall body which we call the Host consists of many grains without blood bones or human members wherefore nothing is to be understood there corporally but all spiritually Transubstantiation was neither held for an Article of Faith nor a point of Faith in those dayes You charge the Protestants in divers places P. 62. That they have neither Church nor Faith but have lost both And at the later end of your Treatise you undertake to demonstrate it P. 222. His unskilfulnes or his unfortunateness in his Demonstrations But your demonstration is a meer Paralogism You multiply your terms you confound your terms you change and alter your terms contrary to the rules of right arguing and vainly beat the air concluding nothing which you ought to prove nothing which your Adversary will denie You would prove that Protestants have no Church That you never attempt But you do attempt to prove how pittifully God knows that they are not the onely Church that is the one Holy Catholique Church This they did never affirm they did never think It sufficeth them to be a part of that Universall Church more pure more Orthodox more Catholique than the Roman alwayes professing Christ visibly never lurking invisibly in an other Communion which is another of your mistakes I should advise you to promise us no more evident demonstrations Either your skill or your luck is so extremely bad In the second place you affirm that Faith is founded upon divine Authority and Revelation and deposited with the Church All that is true But that which you add that it is founded in the Authority of Christ speaking by the mouth of his Church By this Church understanding the Church of this Age and which is yet worse the Church of one place and which is worst of all the Bishop of that one Church is most false The great advantage of the Prostant above the Roman Catholique in the choise of his foundation And so is that which you add that the faith of Protestants is founded upon their own reasonings which makes so many differences among them Reason must be subservient in the application of the Rule of Faith It cannot be the foundation of Faith Bad reasoning may bring forth differences and errors about Faith both with you and us but the abuse of Reason doth not take away the use of Reason We have this Advantage of you that if any one of us do build an erroneous Opinion upon the holy Scripture yet because our adherence to the Scripture is firmer and neerer than our adherence to our particular error that full and free and universall assent which we give to holy Scripture and to all things therein conteined is an implicite Condemnation and retractation of our particular error which we hold unwittingly and unwillingly against Scripture But your foundation of Faith being composed of uncertainties whether this man be Pope or not whether this Pope be Judge or not whether this Judge be infallible or not and if infallible wherein and how far the faith which is builded thereupon cannot but be fallible and uncertain The stricter the adherence is to a false uncertain or fallible rule the more dangerous is the error So our right foundation purgeeth away our error in superstruction And your wrong foundation lessens the value of your truths and doubles the guilt of your errors I will by your leave requite your demonstration and turn the mouthes of your own Canons against your self That Church which hath changed the Apostolical Creed the Apostolicall Succession the Apostolicall Regiment and the Apostolicall Communion is no Apostolicall Orthodox or Catholique Church But the Church of Rome hath changed the Apostolicall Creed the Apostolicall Succession the Apostolicall Regiment and the Apostolicall Communion Therefore the Church of Rome is no Apostolicall Orthodox or Catholick Church They have changed the Apostolicall Creed by making a new Creed wherein are many things inserted that hold no Analogie with the old Apostles Creed The Apostolicall Succession by ingrossing the whole succession to Rome and making all other Bishops to be but the Popes Vicars and Substitutes as to their Jurisdiction The Apostolicall Regiment by erecting a visible and Universall Monarchy in the Church And lastly the Apostolicall Communion by excommunicating three parts of the holy Catholique Apostolique Church Again That Church which resolves its Faith not into divine Revelation and Authority but into Humane infallibility or the Infallibilitie of the present Church without knowing or according what that present Church is whether the Virtuall or the representative or the essentiall Church or a body compounded of some of these hath no true faith But the Church of Rome resolves it Faith not into didine Revelation and Authority but into the Infallibility of the present Church not knowing or not according what that present Church is whether the Virtual Church that is the Pope or the representative Church that is a generall Councill or the Essentiall Church that is the Church of Believers diffused over the world or a body compounded of some of these that is the Pope and a Generall or Provinciall Councill Therefore the Church of Rome hath not true faith The greater number of your Writers is for the Pope that this infallibility is fixed to this Chair But of all other Judgements this is most fallible and uncertain for if Simony make a Nullity in a Papall Election we have great reason to doubt that that Chair hath not been filled by
intelligence is as good in Heaven as it is upon Earth that you know both who are there and what they do you tell us that the Crown and Conquest which his late Majesty gained by his sufferings was procured by the intercession of his Grand-Mother Queen Mary We should be the apter to beleeve this if you were able to make it appear that all the Saints in Heaven do know all the particular necessities of all their posterity upon earth St. Austin makes the matter much more doubtfull than you that 's the least of his Assertion Aug. de cura pro mortuus c. 15. or rather to be plainly false fatendum est nescire quidem mortuos quid hic agatur But with presumptions you did begin your Dedication and with presumptions you end it In the mean time till you can make that appear we observe that neither Queen Maries constancy in the Roman Catholick Faith No faith sufficient armour against bloody attempts nor Henry the fourths change to the Roman Catholick Faith could save them from a bloudy end Then by what warrant do you impute King Charls his sufferings to his error in Religion Be your own Judge Heu quanta de spe decidimus Alas The Author much faln from his former charity in seeking the â—eunion of Christendome from what hopes are we faln Pardon our error that we have mistaken you so long You have heretofore pretended your self to be a moderate person and one that seriously endevoured the reuniting of Christendom by a fair Accommodation The widest wounds are closed up in time and strange Plants by inoculation are incorporated together and made one And is there no way to close up the wounds of the Church and to unite the disagreeing members of the same mysticall body Why were Caleb and Joshua onely admitted into the Land of promise whilst the carkasses of the rest perished in the Wilderness but onely because they had been Peace-makers in a time of Schism Well fare our learned and ingenuous Country-man S. Clara who is altogether as perspicacious as your self but much more charitable You tell us to our grief P. 204. that there is no accommodation to be expected that Cardinall Richelieu was too good a Christian and too good a Catholique to have any such thought that the one Religion is true the other false and that there is no society between light and darkness This is plain dealing to tell us what we must trust to No Peace is to be expected from you unless we will come unto you upon our knees with the words of the Prodigall Child in our mouthes Father forgive us we have sinned against Heaven and against thee Is not this rare Courtesie If we will submit to your will in all things you will have no longer difference with us So we might come to shake a worse Church by the hand than that which we were separated from The way to a generall Accomodation If you could be contented to wave your last four hundred years determinations or if you liked them for your selves yet not to obtrude them upon other Churches If you could rest satisfied with your old Patriarchal power and your Principium unitatis or Primacy of Order much good might be expected from free Councills and Conferences from moderate persons And we might yet live in Hope to see an Union if not in all Opinions yet in charity and all necessary points of saving truth between all Christians to see the Eastern and Western Churches joyn hand in hand and sing Ecce quà m bonum quam jucundum est habitare fratres in unum Behold how good and pleasant a thing it is for brethren to dwell toge-in unity But whilst you impose upon us daily new Articles of faith and urge rigidly what you have unadvisedly determined we dare not Sacrifice Truth to Peace nor be separated from the Gospel to be joyned to the Roman Church Yet in the point of our separation and in all things which concern either doctrine or discipline we profess all due obedience and submission to the judgement and definitions of the truly Catholique Church Lamenting with all our hearts the ptesent condition of Christendome which renders an Oecumenicall Councill if not impossible mens judgements may be had where their persons cannot yet very difficult wishing one as generall as might be and untill God send such an Opportunity endevouring to conform our selves in all things both in Credendis Agendis to whatsoever is uniform in the belief or practise in the doctrine or discipline of the Universall Church And lastly holding an Actuall Communion with all the divided parts of the Christian world in most things in voto according to our desires in all things FINIS