head and half pourtraict Christians used upon their altars even as they do at this day amongst other things of his great simplicity and ignorance Some will haply say if this were all that is done to saints to keep the pictur and read the lives of such renowned personages who consecrated themselvs to Gods glory and service for the incitement of our affections unto the like virtuous atchievements I should not much blame it But papists over and above this do pray to saints too and that is no wayes excusable Give me leav to reply to this That which you now say you cannot much blame has been made so odious that never a Catholick in England durst for this hundred years so much as let a Crucifix hang in his chamber lest both he and it should be torn asunder by us And what you judg in excusable their praying to saints which I have so often heard and read in our protestant Churches and books objected so eagerly and constantly against them when I found it other-wayes than we in England conceiv it to be I was glad both for their sakes and ours too I did therfor curiously examin and turn over the whole Roman Breviary and Missal which is the devotion of the Catholick Church and contains almost a fourth part of it a commemoration of several Saints according to the daies of the year wherin they flitted hence into a better life And I did not meet with so much as any one prayer addressed to any saint or angel of heaven no not upon those dayes wherin commemoration of them is made but directed all of them from the very first prayer to the last unto God the father by Jesus Christ in the unity of the holy ghost either exprest or implied And their practis herin is conform to antient tradition confirmed by their own law in a councel at Carthage under Pope Siricius an 397. wherin it was declared and ordained that all publick prayers of the Church should be made directly unto God the Father And Catholicks even upon a saints day making their prayer to God beg only of him amongst other their requests that the good works of such a saint in whom he glorified himself may speak better things for them than they can themselvs deserv For example upon St. Bennets day Intercessio nos quaesumus Domine Benedicti Abbatis commendet ut quod nostris meritis non valemus ejus patrocinio assequamur Upon the feast of St. Francis O God who by the merits of St. Francis doest inlarge thy Church with a new off-spring grant unto us by the imitation of him to despise earthly things and enjoy celestial And so run all the other praiers of the Church wherin any invocation of saints is made directed ever unto almighty God by his son Jesus Christ And this is no more than what was ever don in the Hebrew Church both befor and after Christianity was in the world as the works of ancient Rabbies can witnes and no less holy writ it self when it makes almighty God sooner as it were condescending to the peoples petition by the mediation of the merits of glorious patriarchs whom he singularly favoured and his wrath and displeasur against the Jews then at a height when he refuses to hear those saints in their behalf If Moyses and Samuel saith the sacred text Jer. 15. should stand before me yet is not my soul unto this people that is to say he would not in the behalf of such desperate wicked people accept of the praiers even of those saints that were most dear unto him and this was spoken by the prophet long after Moses and Samuel was dead Long before this the Patriarch Jacob does most plainly insinuate this custom of saints invocation as ordinary and familiar among the Hebrews when being to bless his two nephews Ephraim and Manasseh he speaks thus The angel who brought me out of all my evils bless these children and upon them be invocated my name and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac Gen. 48. And ther is a formal prayer to that purpose Exod. 32. which expresses as much invocation of saints as any or all the praiers of the Christian Church do ever use Remember saith Moses remember O God Abraham Isaac and Israel thy servants unto whom thou hast sworn by thy self saying I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven Which prayer was after imitated by Daniel c. 3. Withdraw not O Lord thy mercy from us for Abraham thy beloved Isaac thy servant and Israel thy holy one And if Daniel and Moses praied to saints well may we do it and if that of theirs was not a praying to saints but only to almighty God by the concurrence of their merits then is the Catholick Church to be not excused only but commended for she does the like in those prayers of hers she makes any mention either of saint or angel and no otherwise In their letanies indeed and short ejaculations Catholicks seem to invocate saints directly when in one part of them they say Holy Mary pray for us St. Peter pray for us c. But this though in words and sound it seems direct yet in sense and purpose it is indirect so that sancta Maria ora pro nobis omnes sancti Dei intercedite pro nobis is in sense but this Sancta Maria omnes sancti intercedant pro nobis ad Dominum ut nos mereamur c. And if we ponder it right it must needs be so for when I pray any one to pray for me considering the object and matter of my desire which both of us must joyn in I do not properly speaking pray to him but by him and only desire in my good affection that the prayers he makes for all may be available unto me And this is the more apparent becaus the letanies are directed unto God beginning continuing and ending with him Lord have mercy Christ have mercy Lord have mercy Father of heaven God Have mercy on us O Son redeemer of the world God Have mercy on us c. Holy Mary pray for us St. Michael pray for us c. Be propitious spare us O Lord. From all evil Deliver us O Lord c. By the mystery of thy incarnation Deliver us O Lord. By thy nativity Deliver us O Lord c. We sinners Beseech thee to hear us That thou grant us peace We beseech thee to hear us c. Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world spare us O Lord c. Lord have mercy Christ have mercy Lord have mercy Our Father c. Thus the letanies run and he that directs continues and ends his letany or praier to God must needs pray to him and objectively to none but him So that the interposition of any intercessour must needs be indirect in sense however it be exprest in words and can signifie no more but this that God would gratiously accept of the prayers they make in our behalf For
and boisterous vulgar A compendious narration of the story and morallity of it so ordered unto solid practis that it were suffered to be used for nothing else either for disputes or jesting conceits kept our English Christian nation for a thousand years together so long as it was catholick in all unity and peace and rendered them fruitful in all good works whereas the whole and very text now in this last age put into vulgar hands together with a fore apprehension and belief of the unmeritoriousnes and unprofitablenes of good works in order to eternal life unto which forsooth faith onely suffices which is contrary to the very genius and end and purpose of Gods word and them that wrote it hath filled the land with so much wretchlesnes and divisions And who shall interpret the scripture to us to the end it may guide our thoughts without errour It self so som say but then if we may guess at the natur of it by the fruits of the interpretation we have from it what a Chaos of confusion would it be thought to be for such be the contradictory interpretations that are all said to come from it Shall the Church interpret it no this is Popish and what Church those in whose hands we found it or from whose hands we first had it if the former they may be as destitute of power to interpret as our selves if the other then must we return unto the obedience of the Roman church for all the world knows we received the gospel first from Rome Must neither interpret but onely the spirit and divine light within our selves this may be it must teach us to know all things but what is the thing shall teach us to know it how shall we be assured that it is a spirit or light divine if we mistake here our pretended light my prove an ignis fatuus and no less foolish the illumination by it If we do not know even our own soul and spirit within us what it is how it informs our bodie how it works in it all those several operations of thoughts and corporeal alterations or whence it comes or how it is annexed to us while it stayes why it departs or whither it goes as it is certain we do not how can we judg assuredly whence such or such a thought arises in it from God above or sensual causes tho it never so much pretend a divine mission and be transfigured into a shape angelical or that any spirit or light within us is truly divine and not phantastical Do not the corporeal spirits inflamed by often beating upon an object naturally hammer forth such odde phantosms in great abundance without either order or measure invested all of them in such shapes as the artificer forged himself without any other exteriour aid but objective representations which ofentimes so vigorously represent themselves that from the objects of thought they stand at length in place of the subject thinking If any one will not beleev me let him but take the pains to make a journey into Bedlam here in London Paris and other Cities and convers but a while with the mad men there and then he will soon finde it true There he shall meet with countesses captains bishops kings nor real as themselvs imagin but fantastick and whimsical ones nay some one there will pretend to be Christ himself another the Holy Ghost a third God the Father of all things and what not and the fansy too is so strong and prevalent that the whip may chance at length to beat it out but all the reasoning in the world shall not do it The second consideration to promote moderation and consequently to make way for a right understanding is the sad precipices men have run themselvs and others by their headines and temerarious obstinacy in their opinions and conceits even to the utter ruine and depopulation of flourishing kingdoms as ancient histories will copiously witness And if any say Alas what do you tell us of those men they were a self-deluded people Does not the world say so of you Oh but we know the contrary Just so said they O but we cannot be deceived the truth the word the Lord himself cannot lye heaven and earth may fail these cannot This was even their very song O then if it be so they were in the right too Then you are not for they were in many things of a contrary opinion to you all of them and som in all things Well well God knows his elect 'T is true but you know them not No not I why should I not except I be reprobate You may be so walk then in fear He that hath the light must he not needs see it If he have it near him he may so that he be not hood-winked or blinded with a prejudice and he may think too he sees it when he has it not I have often waked at midnight and thought my whole chamber enlightned but by and by perceived it was only the glimpses of some natural luminous spirits not in the chamber but under my own eye-lids which was a vanishing and false light and not at all in the place I took it to be You may as well say as much of the apostles and prophets themselves I may so and would do it without any fear at all if I had no other motives of respect to their words than I have to yours Com com if the truth be hid it is hid to them that be lost Be it so yet still the question will be whether I be lost or you whether you or all mankind beside The third consideration is the genuin and connaturall excellency of a good Christian man whether we follow reason or autority in deciphering it which consists not in finding new wayes to the reformation of other mens thoughts but putting in practise the old received well known dictates of sobriety justice and piety in our selvs with submission unto the direction of such as delivered them unto us from that one Lord we all worship Oh but men have swarved from those wayes Let them they shall bear their own burden do not you swarv and it shall be well with you themselvs and such as were set over them as I know you are not shall render an account for those lost sheep whiles you are safe and being innocent have no account to give either for your selvs or others O but the zeal of the Lords hous doth eat us up Good let not that zeal of yours eat the Lords hous up and all is well Away away we cannot abide bishops and priests and copes and surplices they are very beams in our wayes It is is a sign of a weak and ill-affected eye not to be able to look upon any thing You shall not be burdened with the wearing either of the vestments or titles and the meer seeing should not be methinks so troublesom And yet late experience hath made it evident whatsoever tendernes you may pretend that
witty jest and jeer and so having given it a flap with a fox tail they pass on soberly to other matters in hand as is commonly done in the pulpits of witty preachers or if they handle it more seriously they do either for their own advantage mistake the doctrin or the proofs they bring against it whether through fraud or ignorance 't is hard to say and the foundations of catholick religion which be tradition and scripture they do so variously expound in severall times and places that one text shall have twenty several interpretations which if they be not catholick pass all for good here and at one time an autority of a father or councel shall be accepted and diversly interpreted in another time and place quite rejected now one piece of catholick doctrine shall be vehemently cryed down and at another time taken up again and maintained and at one and the same time in several parts of the world twenty points for example of catholick faith shall all of them be somewhere received and somewhere rejected amongst Protestants for they being still their own maisters may choos and throw away what they pleas and as long as they list without controul wheras the Romans keeping still one and the same treasury of religion and faith afford matter for them all either to take or leave either to approve or laugh at as they lâ—st as a well furnished table affords wanton children both what they may feed upon themselves and what being full they may spoil and play with and cast to the dogs §. 15. Scripture ANd whence com all these divisions only from this that every man hath a reason an interpretation a light a spirit of his own by which the bible which is now in all mens hands is made to speak what we pleas and our thoughts and tongues are our own what lord shall us controul This is a sad case while all of us upon those only motives which all men may take up at any time to abuse his innocent neighbour proceed to mutual hostility without end The very books that have been written against Roman catholick this last hundred years as they be furious and virulent so be they also so many and various that they would if they were all brought together fill up the Tower of London and by them have people been inflamed to such a height against the Romans that their bodies dignities honours fame houses and goods have been ineffably harrassed to this day And yet no body can say what ill that religion ever did in the world until Henry the eights dayes when it was first rejected and persecuted and when we have laid them in the dust we fly upon one another and pull and tear upon the same motiv all that stands in our light Reflect countrimen upon your selves shall we continue in a contest that can never possibly be ended and being prosecuted to the utmost must needs infer a general ruin upon all for whatsoever we say against any one may be said by any other against our selves and proved by the same argument and the same thing may be done to us upon the same account we do it to another All appellation to a visible judg is by anticatholicks jointly excluded and to the Roman catholick with whom unity hath ever dwelt we will not return nor can it be yet expected for the general disrepute unto that way hath so filled our ears and hearts that hating the very name of Papist we have not power to consider soberly what their religion may be Nay we are verily perswaded even from our nurses milk that Protestants are the only professors and Papists enemies to the gospel although to all the world besides the gospel is well enough known to be the Roman catholicks own and sole religion by which they walked and lived here in England many hundred years unto a fruitfulnes of all good works before Protestancy appeared and we pretend to fight against them only for the gospel and with the gospel whiles they forsooth are beleeved to have nothing at all to defend themselvs but a little traditional trumpery of mans inventions with a greater heap of vices of their own And upon this account proceed all our books that are written against Papists and popery in effect like unto that picture that was carried not long ago up and down the Protestant world wherein was drawn a fair ballance as a type of the two religions in whose left hand scale hanged beads girdles cardinals caps monks hoods fryars cowles disciplines crosses to signifie Popery in the other a fair great Bible to signifie Protestancy which hanging upon the ground quite weighed up the other scale into the air as light as very vanity And so credulous is the generallity of mankind that by such toies as these we are carried away unto not onely a dislike but even the highest detestation and contempt of a sacred religion without further examination But what do I speak of the generallity of the vulgar Even our sober and most judicious men who in other things speak and think like oracles in this busines of popery are not abashed to speak like children that talk of hobgoblings in the dark so prevalent is a prejudice brought upon us by the virulent impression of often iterated calumnies Nor are we able by the restraint of this great prejudice either to read the books or ponder seriously the reasons of our catholick neighbours for their faith Yea I have heard som Protestants in other things most wise and judicious to say openly that as for Papists he loved their persons but their religion he hated in his heart the reason is clear he knew the one and not the other And as we do all of us by this old imbibed prejudice detest Popery though we know not what it is so by any new-received dislike when we have once bodied with any one faction we revile all the rest and none will yield to another although in all reason that religion that hath precedency of time with all the other helps any juniour way can pretend unto might one would think have so much if not precedency yet equallity of respect as not to be by a way that is new in the world so bitterly reviled especially when all that venemous bitterness which by any junior sect is cast upon his foregoer may and is as heavily thrown upon himself by his successour But thus rancour and malice spreads abroad in our hearts and whole kingdom against his rule and doubtles to his great displeasure who carefully obliged us to the contrary rules of love and which is to be lamented the first sours and origin of all these defamations is the Pulpit where both by word and example we are taught to defame and hate even those we do not know We may fear som great curs lies upon our poor nation for these our unnatural disorders even so far as to blind us that we cannot see the truth Unto his dogs set upon
wonder take any one kingdom under his spiritual jurisdiction and they shall remain a hundred yea thousand years in all peace and unity upon religions account But let that kingdom once divide and separate from him and presently all those very self same byshops who before in their subordination to the Pope easily mannaged the peoples consciences and kept them in a most orderly peaceablenes not know in their separation from him which way to turn themselves but that heresies and schismes will rise and augment themselves without end in despight of all their power and endeavours as if unity and truth and peace were tied to the Popes chair Those that understand not catholick religion have stood many of them exceedingly amazed at this consideration and not without caus for whence can this happen It is not becaus Popes are all saints and only they for the venerable and renowned priests under him and great multitudes of people about him in all nations which shine like stars in the firmament may be without controul as good and holy many of them as himself and although Popes be for the most part very good civil and discreet men yet if it should happen that som one be no better than he should yet even that man shall be as zealous of unity in religion and preserv it as exactly as the best which exalts our wonderment unto such a height that we are even forced to acknowledg that there is some great secret in this business not easily to be resolved for all other byshops and princes the more worldly and sensual they be the less care have they of their flock and people If we shall say that these be the great powers of God upon him the doubt is at an end and a reason appears why people do fear so much to be excluded his communion if this be not admitted I am at a loss and can find no reason why a good king and true head of his Church if himself or the people can make him so should not be able by his acknowledged autority and sword to keep his own subjects in an unity of faith and peace as well as a bad Pope for so we beleev them all to be and pretended head keeps together other mens subjects of different manners and languages without sword or axe or corporal rods only by the meer love of his communion and fear they have to lose it Nor can we say that new opinions about religion are never broacht among catholiks for this as it cannot be expected amongst so many millions of great wits and spirits that be amongst them up and down the world so is it so far from being true that all the heresies that have rose in Christianity were invented ever by some catholick I mean that had been formerly such for his opposition to and apostacy from his general Pastour makes him ceas to be catholick any longer and generally by priests who preferring their own judgments before their pastours and the tradition they had hitherto walked by in the pride of their hearts led people after them out of the fold of the Church And whoever does so puts himself by his own autority in locum Petri and is to be looked upon by all good Catholicks who have care of their own salvation as a dangerous guide Thus did first begin our own Protestancy by Martin Luther Calvin and other fallen priests and the fall of murmuring Judas from the colledg of apostles of contesting Adam and Eve from the bliss of paradise of dissenting Lucifer and his angels from heaven who are said to dispute with Michael and his angels as Luther did with Eckius and his fellow Catholicks signifie nothing else But what does the Pape or Christian pastour do in this case When the tumult is once raised and a disorder begun in any part of his flock by som proud turbulent spirit amongst them the Pape first whistles him and his fellow petulcous rams into order by charitable admonition which still increases lowder by degrees and if this will not serv but that they will still be refractory he casts in his shepheards crook amongst them and divides the turbulent from the peaceful and so the infection stayes The disquiet ones being driven out depart in a rout together but within a while they separate and walk by sixes and seavens and subdivide at length so often that at last they go single whiles every sheep amongst them will be a ram and every ram a shepheard But the other quiet ones that hear the voice of their sheapherd and follow him in peace as becoms sheep to do enjoy all happines and spiritual content amongst themselvs to the unspeakable comfort of their souls under him whom Christ the great Messias hath set over them and this is called the Catholick flock which for the love they bear to their honoured pastour and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we commonly call Papists and somtimes becaus they will not forsake either their sheapheard or divine pastures of truth and sacraments wherein they have been brought up when we would speak more civilly we call them Recusants If any one shall think I speak too much in favour of catholick religion let such know that I favour nothing but truth and peace and it is the part of an ingenuous and well bred nature to support what he can the weaker side especially if he know it to be innocent and injuriously opprest as it often happens in this world that the stronger in right may be the weaker in repute Nor can any fewd amongst us ever be ended which is the thing I aim at so long as errour and injustice are maintained And although we quarrel furiously one with another yet considering that our strifes amongst our selves proceed upon the very same grounds and motives we pretend all of us to have against the general adversary we all hate till this capital dislike of Popery be diminished our other fewds must needs be kept alive No peace amongst our selves till we revoke our words and ill deeds against our innocent neighbours and at last comply charitably with them against whom our first dissention sprang up in this land Ephraim is against Manasses and Manasses against Ephraim but both against Juda and becaus they are both against Juda their lawful superiour therefor are they so furiously bent against one another whiles Ephraim to be in Juda's place who is thrust out by both parties labours to depress Manasses and Manasses for the same reason to trample upon Ephraim Thus is Presbyterian against Independent and Independent against Presbyterian but both against the Papist Protestant against Puritan and Puritan against Protestant but both against the Catholick And as soon as the Protestant had by violence supplanted and cast his Roman-neighbours out of all their dignities honour and livelihood the rancour had utterly ceased had not the Puritan rose up out of the Protestant bowels and subverted him by the same means he had used to his catholick foregoers and
be renewed so long as heresies are suffered to sport and spawn they only stay so long that their number may sufficiently increas for as for every individual person he is furnished strong enough in his very first being to skirmish and comes forth even out of the womb with an alarm and open defiance as the progeny that rose out of Cadmus his serpents teeth that were sowen in the earth came up all of them with nodding crests and shaking spears and as soon as they got their foot above ground fell a fighting And this is the state of things in our kingdom when lo most happily returns our glorious son to dissipate these mists King Charls the second to his own home after his too too long absence and retirement from the hands of our violent rage whom God inspire and strengthen that he may be able if possibly it may be according to his own hearts desire to pacify quiet and content us all But this I am sure can never be done had he ten times the wisdom of Salomon and the excellency of all the worthies of the world couched up together in his princely breast and his own worth is reported without any help of other title to deserv an empire whiles we desire contradictory things and will not rest if we have them not nor yet will submit unto his autority and reason who studies only our good and makes use of all the wisdom in the land to effect it Let there be but only two men whereof the one will have serene weather the other rain in one and the same time and place and I do not see how God himself except he chang their minds can pleas them both By this narration we may see when these divisions about religion came first into England what fruits they have had how they have grown and increased and what to judg of books and sermons that cast so much odium upon another It is very brief indeed considering the amplitude of the matter but I only intended to set it before my countrimen as a small plate of anchovies or cavearr to sharpen the appetite unto a further inquest after truth which all these several wayes pretend to exhibit And if my reader be cautious he may easily discern a reason why all these sects are so boisterous one against another and every one of them against the Roman catholick Ismael disturbed the whole hous and was ever quarrelling and bustling against Isaac The reason is the same both here and there Ismael was a natural son and Isaac the legitimate heir and natural sons be generally seditious violent and clamorous As Ismael therefor was Isaack his natural brother so is a protestant minister but the bi-blow of a legitimate catholick priest the Presbyterian likewise to him and so forward till you come to the Quaker who was begot by a delusion and brought into the world by a fright his hand is against every man and every mans hand against him The remedy and only means of peace is Ejice ancillam cum puero suo §. 21. Discovery IT may by what I have said without any further argumentation appear sufficiently that all anticatholick wayes are equally innocent But it will not yet be so clearly acknowledged that the catholick also is absolutely unblamable except I wipe off som few spots and blemishes which we conceiv all of us to be in that religion especially the vulgar gross ones about mass images service in the latin tongue communion in one kind saints praying for the dead and the respect and dignity of him we all hate the Pope When I have done this I shall then I hope have set the ballance straight and made popery appear equally as plausible innocent and unblamable as any protestancy These few prejudices once removed the light of a right understanding will easily spring up by vertue of what I have said already and what thence will offer it self to every unprejudiced eye and judgment in the land This that I may effect with more delight to my reader I will mix it with the occasion of the knowledg I have got of popery being my self neither born in a popish land nor popish family About six or seven years old I began both by the speech and gestur of my parents to understand the story of their misfortune which had happened it seems by the popery of my grandfather so far impeacht about the rising of the Earls in the north that he lost estate and life at which my father then a young stripling being affrighted betook himself to his feet and fled away not staying till he came to the borders of Nottingham and Leicestershire where he ended his dayes I could not even then but weep of times to see my father sigh so frequently and deeply which yet he seemed to do in great fear and secresy as I even then discerned nor did I ever speak word of it all my life till now after forty years that I find my self past either hopes or fear of many thing in this world But I could not tell all the while of my youth whether I should be angry at Popery or those that persecuted it although I remember I had a tender respect for it when I heard my father say People were better in Popery than we be now yet still he added with a sigh in the close I know not what to think of it But by this means I contracted a kind of habitual resolv to find out if I lived what this Popery might be which although troubles of school and childish sports covered for some years yet at length it came upon me again so fresh and vigorous that it ever and anon occurred unto me About eighteen years of age I lived in the University of Cambridg where being one time desirous to ask my good tutour who was my mothers kinsman to show me the statutes of the hous one of my fellow pupils wished me not to do it for that he had already told him that none were to look upon them but only the seniours and that it was expulsion for any els to read them becaus there was in them much of Popery about confession mass praying at altars for the souls of deceased founders and benefactors of the colledg unto all which I replied not a word The greatest benefit I got in the University was by looking over the heads and general contents of the many great volumes I there met with in severall fair libraries for though I was not able then any further to mannage or make use of them yet they stood me in stead afterwards when reflecting upon what I had there seen I discerned that all those great volumes of learning were so many as were Christian either latin or greek all catholick writers After two years wherein I had learned some few terms of logick out of Smith and John Seton I left the University and came up to London where I met with Churches and sermons good store Therein I observed
Corinth most heartily in his letters requesting their praiers and he esteemed it as good as if he had himself been by and heard it and yet the catholick altar is not so far from the people as Corinth is from Rome Wherefore in St. Pauls judgment one may pray for another not onely priest for the people but people also for the priest without being understood or so much as either heard or seen Nor could St. Paul in his own reason ever deny the efficacy of those praiers which be made by one for another in any whatever language for it was all one to him what language the Romans spake and if he did reflect upon it he could not be ignorant that they spake not the language of Corinth when he wrote to them from thence that they should pray for him there at so great a distance But if any will yet be obstinate and object unto me that S. Paul himself even in his epistle he wrote to Corinth from Ephesus which was his first letter he sent to that people speaks there about the end of the same letter very much against their praying and prophesying in an unknown tongue he may know first that even the tongue of the Romans whose prayers notwithstanding S. Paul so earnestly requested at Corinth was an unknwn tongue to those that lived there and yet that wise apostle would not we may think contradict himself Secondly then what was the matter The busines was this There were in the primitive Churches up and down many gifts and gratuities bestowed upon Christian people by that holy Spirit who would thereby exalt the gospels glory as extemporary prophesies working of miracles gift of tongues and the like and S. Paul hearing at Ephesus of some disorders in Corinth upon that account as those kind of gifts are possible to be abused he wrote to them about it to let them know that the spirit of Jesus for such his voluntary donations unto men was indeed to be praised but yet that Christians should not therefor place in those things their utmost glory and then to diminish further the huge esteem they had there of gifts and tongues before all other he lets them know that of all the other gifts that in particular was liable to the greatest inconveniences even far more than either wonder-working or prophecy This is the apostles drift as any one may see that understands a grave and sober letter But what is all this to any service of the Church But thirdly that I may make the thing yet a little plainer the Latin in which the Catholick service is kept is no unknown tongue and therefor that objection of no valiew against it There is no tongue in the world can be said absolutely either a known tongue or unknown but only with relation unto people and so every language in the world is in respect of som people a known tongue and in respect of others an unknown English is an unknown tongue to Vienna but not to London high Dutch is an unknown tongue to London but not to Vienna And therefor that we may conclude a tongue to be known or unknown we must compare it to the family or people in reference to whom it is used and no otherwise and that family or people must be considered not in any other respects if they have many but only in relation to that particular rank or order which refers unto such a language An English merchant living in Anwerp hath two languages which himself and family speaks English and Dutch and both of them in reference both to England and Holland jointly may be called both known tongues and unknown but in his busines with the English dutch is the unknown tongue in his Holland affairs english So the Pope as he is governour and lord of the city of Rome speaks Italian as all the other people there do and it is the only known tongue in that degree and order but as he is head of the whole Church spread over the earth which is a mystical body distinct from the body politick and hath a language of its own quite differing from the Italian that passes through Germany France and Spain both Indies and the Islands the north and south world wheresoever Christians live so he uses and speaks that general language which is latin and in that sens Italian is an unknown tongue and Latin only the known tongue of the Christian world So that in order to religion that one language that is spoken not in one corner but runs quite through the hous and is common to all as they be ranked in the series of Christianity wherein they are trained up by the father of the family and which in reference to religion he only speaks himself is the only known tongue in order to it and all other tongues unknown And so not latin but english not latin but dutch not latin but spanish is an unknown tongue to the Christian world for all these though they be the known languages of particular kingdoms which be but a corner of Christianity yet not they but latin is the known language of the whole Christian body and family through the world The hous of God is but one in it self although it be disperst over several nations and the language fitted for all the body must consequently be but one wherein all those nations are united and linked together exteriourly even as they be joined interiourly in faith which in that one tongue is carried up and down and conserved and all other tongues english french spanish be accidental to Christians as they be Christians even as the times and places of their abode be nor be they fastned unto them by their Christianity but by corporal birth and education which be contingent and altogether accidental to religion So then latin in reference to religion which for reasons above named must use one language is so far from being an unknown tongue that it is the only one known language of the Christian world united to Christian faith as the proper garment to a body by whose fashion it is discerned I know that a part of the Church useth greek in her Liturgy and som few people Hebrew as well as the generality does Latin But I mention only the latin tongue becaus my countrimen take notice only of that And all the three languages agree in this that they are segregated from vulgar use consecrated by the cross of the Meffiâ—s approved by the general pastour and equally liable to the present objection which is so trufatical that it casts not the least blemish upon popery for that custom and I hope all wife men will be of my mind Our land me thinks should thank the Pope for keeping his Mass and Psalter in such an unknown tongue For so our vulgar if they should be curious to see it yet can they neither be offended by what they hear nor so much as discern that our own English communion-book is drawn out of the