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world_n	good_a	seed_n	sow_v	1,957	5	9.8778	5	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A33377	Mr. Claude's answer to Monsieur de Meaux's book, intituled, A conference with Mr. Claude with his letter to a friend, wherein he answers a discourse of M. de Condom, now Bishop of Meaux, concerning the Church.; Reponse au livre de Monsieur l'évesque de Meaux, intitulé Conférence avec M. Claude. English	Claude, Jean, 1619-1687.; Bossuet, Jacques Bénigne, 1627-1704.	1687 (1687)	Wing C4591; ESTC R17732	130,139	128

these ruins Qu. 3. Whether the Church upon Earth be visible or invisible or whether both together considered in a different sense and under different respects Thus much I think Sir may suffice to give a resolution of the second question which was whether the Bishop of Condom's definition of the Church upon Earth was a good and sufficient definition viz. A Society making profession to believe the Doctrine of Jesus Christ and govern it self by his word or whether it was defective and required something else to be added to it You see the necessity of handling this subject with some exactness for it being our business to know what Society we must be of to obtain Salvation and both sides agreeing that it is the true Church being it concerns us to know to what Society the Promises of Jesus Christ are to be applied and both sides agreeing that it is the true Church The first thing in reason to be done is to form an abstracted Idea of the true Church before it be applied to any particular subject that so this may serve for a Rule and direct us to know at least what that true Church is which we enquire after We know in general that there is one true Church we know also that this Church is a Religious Society but when we come to define it particularly every one knows his own method of doing it This therefore is the first thing to be determined not only to avoid equivocation but to prevent a continual deviation which may otherwise happen through the whole dispute by means of a mistake in the beginning and this having given occasion to the second question the dispatching that already will mightily facilitate our enquiry into the third The thing then to be examined is whether the Society of true believers who only are the Church be visible or invisible or whether both in some senses and respects For the resolution of this Query I shall not say that this true Church being a Society of men and so a body that hath its external order as all other Societies have hath likewise consequent to that a visibility common to it with all other bodies Thus much is necessarily supposed for the Believers are not Angels nor invisible Spirits but in this respect like the rest of mankind But this visibility being supposed we must further enquire Whether there be not yet another which gives it the Character of Jesus Christ's true Church so that a man may say That the body we see and which is the object of our senses as the true Church of Christ In this there would not be the least difficulty had not God's design as to his Church been disturbed by the enemy of our Salvation For since God calls true Believers only and since as we have already shewn such alone constitute the Church were it not for what happens from some other thing there would not be among the outward Professors of Christianity either Hypocrites or Hereticks or Superstitious or worldly or profane persons And thus none but such as are truly the faithful being to be found among them this outward profession would be a sure means and an univocal Character to know the true Faith and Regeneration by and consequently to know the true Church of Jesus Christ as such So that we need say only thus much That although the Church were not immediately visible by its inward and cssential form because none can immediately see mens hearts but God only yet it would be visible by its external form as by a sure distinguishing Character For it might be seen by its Ministery and profession of Faith in Christ and known to such a degree that a man might infallibly and positively say That is the Church But we all know that is Jesus Christ sowed his good seed in the field of the world so to use the expressions in the Parable the enemy hath likewise sown Tares That is that with the true Believers are intermixt vast numbers of men who 〈◊〉 no more than the appearance and outside of Christianity and so make the outward profession to be a note subject to mighty uncertainties and equivocation This God hath permitted for reasons known to his own wisdom and hence have risen on one side false Churches and on the other false members of the true I mean whole Communities who have wrongfully assumed to themselves the title of a Church and single persons who wrongfully assumed the title of the Faithful So that the Church now like all other things liable to hypocrisy and dissimulation cannot be truly known without much difficulty And whereas according to the nature of the thing the Churches visibility and invisibility ought to lye here that its essential and internal from cannot be seen immediately and of it self but may by the mediation of its external form instead of this they do now consist further in a discerning between true and false a distinguishing betwixt that which is real and sincere and that which is counterfeit We must therefore examine how this distinction is to be made because in it consists the visibility or invisibility of the true Church Whether we must make it between several external bodies differing from one another or between several persons externally incorporated into the same Body I b●gin with the former and affirm that the discerning between several bodies depends upon some certain marks or characters whereby that body on whose side the true Church is may be distinguished from another where it is not I shall not now shew what those Characters are for this is another dispute between the Church of Rome and us which we need not here engage our selves in It is enough we are all agreed that such marks there are and that by them this distinction must be made That which most concerns us to take notice of and which I desire you would observe with a very particular attention is that after we have found this Body or external Society on whose side the true Church is we may and in reality do form to our selves two notions of it one proceeding from a mere Judgment of Charity the other from a Judgment of Reflection By the Judgment of Charity we look upon all within the Body to be true Believers indifferently For the searching of hearts being not in our power but peculiar to God Charity makes no distinctions but supposes that things are in truth what they should be and upon this supposition we call all that society the visible Church speaking simply and absolutely By the Judgment of Reflection having consulted the Rules of Scripture and the light of Experience we come to know that there are Tares mixed with the Wheat and that it is past a doubt that among these outward Professours are abundance of hypocritical superstitious ambitious and prophane people Hence we correct our first notion and term this Society a visible mixt Church Thus in the same external body we distinguish two different Bodies one of true

foregoing Principles THE first Consequence Sir to be drawn from what I said is that M. de Condom hath been very unjust in upbraiding us as if we dealt with that Article of our Creed concerning the Universal Church as the Arrians and Macedonians do with those that relate to Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost which is to confess them with the mouth but in effect to reject them by not believing them as we ought Those Hereticks evacuate the Articles concerning Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost because they allow them a Divinity which is but a seeming and imaginary one only and thus they rob Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost of their Real Essence Can any man say we do thus by the Church we make it essentially to consist in true and solid Faith and Regeneration Is not this to make it real what may be said of such as make it essentially to consist in a bare outward Profession Is not this to make it no better than a Phantome a Shadow Is not this to confess with the mouth but in effect to reject it Does not this make all those great and noble Ideas given of it in Scripture dwindle into nothing Judge you Sir if you please to which of these two Parties M. de Condom's reproach is most applicable II. By all I have said concerning the Visibility or Invisibility of the Church you may know what an unjust accusation they load us with daily of making the Church utterly invisible upon pretence that we place it in true Believers only for if this accusation were true it would fall not upon us but upon Scripture upon the Fathers and particularly upon St. Augustine whose Principles we follow intirely But as St. Paul never thought of making a Church perfectly invisible though he said The foundation of God standeth sure having this seal the Lord knoweth them that are his and let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity so neither do we pretend to spoil her of her Visibility when we say the same thing he did As St. Augustin hath not made her invisible though he said all that was related out of him the same thing must be said for us But what can we think of this method of disputing which supposing the charge upon tryal to be a granted confest thing falls strongly upon proving the Church's Visibility and so Proselytes men upon this false supposition and those useless Arguments Do not you look upon this as a very fair way of proceeding III. Hence likewise you may perceive how unjustly they put that question to us Where our Church was before the Reformation For if the Church consist of true Believers alone as we have shown ours was then just where it is now i. e. in the common Field where Jesus Christ hath sown his Wheat and the Enemy by Night his Tares There is only a twofold difference observable One that before the Reformation that part of the Field where the Corn was sown was wider whereas now it is contracted into less room because in many places the Tares have driven away the Wheat and remain alone another that then in the places where Wheat and Tares grew together the Wheat was thinner and got less nourishment and the Tares quite contrary whereas now the Wheat is thicker and better cultivated The Field is the World as Christ says the good Corn are true Believers the Tares are the Children of this World Before the Reformation the true Believers were mixt with the rest in the same exteriour Profession as they are still but they were if I may so say stifled as it were with the great number of the other sort and the spiritual life they led had much of uneasiness by reason of the Corruptions in the Ministry which stinted them in their necessary Food and besides mixt many such things with it as were not only incapable of sustaining life but even prejudicial to it Whereas since the Reformation these same Believers being separated from the rest are by this means much disburdened of that which opprest them they are more at liberty the Ministry allows them the Food of heavenly life in a much larger proportion and gives it them more pure and free from strange mixtures and though they still continue among worldly men yet now they do not find near so much prejudice from them IV. Another Instance of this nature is commonly given us and how injurious it is you may discern by the Principles laid down before They bid us shew them these true Believers before the Reformation single them out say they tell us their names were they visible or invisible If even at this time when things are not near so confused none but God only can know distinctly and infallibly what particular men are the true Believers If their visibility consist only in ones being able to say with certainty there are true Believers and not in saying such or such are the men is it not a very unjust demand to examine us of past Ages when things were so strangely in the dark Would not any man of equity think it enough that we can shew how far soever the Ministry was corrupted that still the true Believers might subsist under it and is not this very thing a visible indication of the Churches perpetual Visibility that God hath not forsaken us V. Another necessary Consequence of the Principles now establisht is that in an exteriour Society carrying the name of a Church it may so happen according to the Notion we frame of it from a Judgment of Charity that the Ministry Ecclesiastical Dignities and Chairs as they are termed may come to be filled by Hypocrites Superstitious Worldly and interested Persons and that there shall be a great many more such as these in Office than good men For seeing God only can have a distinct and personal knowledge of true Believers and since he does not bestow these Offices immediately and by his own hand it may without question come to pass that both those that confer and those that take upon them these Offices may be the Tares sown in the Lord's Field A man cannot have any absolute certainty that this shall not be so because there is not any promise to the contrary and because on the other hand there are instances that it hath been so already To pretend this cannot be because it would hinder the Churches subsisting for ever is no Argument at all for if the Church consist properly of true Believers as hath been undeniably proved the perpetual subsistence of true Believers does not depend on the faithfulness of the Ministers nor the untainted purity of the Ministry except we suppose the Principle of a blind Obedience to the Ministers which is a false Principle and destructive of Religion as hath been made appear in the defence of the Reformation Indeed this ground being laid when once the Ministry is corrupted it must needs follow that the faithful are corrupted too because bound

to receive implicitely whatever is delivered to them by their Ministry But reject this principle and there is no reason why the Faithful may not separate the good from the bad and why they may not subsist under such a Ministry by the help of that distinction which the Grace of God enables them to make And here Sir allow me to wonder a little at the pleasant double which the Doctors of the Romish Communion make when they dispute Our first and main question is whether we ought to acquiesce in the Council of Trent's Determinations Yes say they you must yield an implicit obedience to the Decrees of the Prelates assembled in a Body But why an Implicit Obedience Because say they the Church cannot subsist without it But why cannot it subsist without it Cannot it subsist by resuming the Ministry out of such hands and putting it into better Cannot it without going so far subsist by separating between good and bad food No they tell you it cannot because it is obliged to receive implicitely whatever the Prelates in a Body shall deliver What way of disputing call you this if it be not quite to swerve from good sense and reason and to be lost in an impertinent maze For is not this a perfect round first to prove an Implicite Obedience because the Church cannot otherwise subsist and then to prove the Church cannot otherwise subsist without this Obedience because men ought to obey implicitely VI. But let us proceed in drawing our Consequences And being we hit upon the point of the Implicit Obedience they exact to the decisions of Bishops and that Sovereign and Absolute Authority wherewith they would invest them let us try if this can agree with the Principles we have establish'd I meddle not now with those other reasons that might be made use of you will find them in part in the Book I quoted just now All I shall say is that since no man can have a distinct knowledg of the True Believers and that the True Church consists of such alone no man consequently can be secure that this Body of Prelates whether considered single or whether as convened in a Council are the true Church Yes but says one they represent the true Church I agree with you so far as the True Believers are still under their Ministry But representing the True Church does not presently endue them with its Opinions and Affections The true Church in conferring her Ministry upon men does not confer upon them withal either true Faith or true Regeneration much less perfect Infallibility Hence whatever determinations they give are still subject to an examination If these prove confermable to God's Word it is our duty not only to embrace them but further to respect ●he Body of Ministers as the true Church Representative because they have exprest her sense and Charity will carry us still further and incline us to esteem them true Believers because they have acted as such But when their divisions are found to disagree with God's Word we are to look upon them as men that have abused their ministry If this happen in things not plainly interesting the Conscience their ministry must be born with and the liberty of separating the clean from the unclean natural to every Believer made use of If they do interest the Conscience we groan under their ministry we pray to God we implore succors from above still using the Liberty of Conscience to refuse the Evil and retain the Good But if this Body of Prelates-proceed to violent taking away this necessary and indispensable Liberty of Conscience and reduce the faithful to this hard streight either to be damned for false Doctrine in slavishly following their Ministers errors or damn'd for dissimulation in pretending to follow them Then the true Believers ought to look upon them as men that have stript themselves of the right of the Ministry to oppose them to take it from them and repose the trust in other hands It is evident then the supreme Authority we contend about cannot take place because it is continually in danger of being invested in worldly men to whom it cannot in any case belong And so we should be continually in danger of mistaking That for the Church Representative which neither is really nor can possibly be so VII The seventh Use to be made of what we have advanced is the right apprehending of some expressions used by us viz. That the Church is corrupted that the state of the Church hath been interrupted and the like so as to reconcile these with Jesus Christ's Promises which import not only the perpetual existence but also the perpetual holiness and incorruption of the Church Now for that corruption attributed by us to the Church I say that whereas the Promises of Christ concern the true Church that is True Believers only our expression on the contrary respects the Church according to that Idea of Charity we form of it including all external Professors which are ordinarily call'd the Visible Church 'T is of the Church taken in this last notion that we say she is corrupted for the whole Body being made up as we have seen of good and bad man it hath come to pass that the wicked are mightily increased and the spirit of the World which is a spirit of error and superstition shewed it self in an eminent manner But we do not understand true Believers to be corrupted only so far forth as they may possibly have contracted some tincture of infirmity by conversing with the others And for that interruption of the state of the Church mentioned in our Confession of Faith where we say That the state of the Church being interrupted it was necessary it should be raised up again out of its ruines and desolation The meaning of those expressions is not what M. de Condom pretends that the true Church ceases to exist or that its Ministry was quite extinct in those times which we call times of desolation and ruine for we make a distinction between the Church and the state of the Church The Church is the true Believers making profession of Truth and Christian Piety and a real Holiness under a Ministry which dispenses all nourishment necessary for spiritual life without keeping back any It s natural and proper state is to be freed as much as its militant condition can admit from the impure mixture of prophane worldly men not to be covered over and as it were swallowed up with this Chaff and Tares to have a pure Ministry not incumbred with errors with false worship superstitious customs a Ministry in the hands of good men who are in possession of it by honest methods and set a good example to others This State is what we think hath been interrupted having seen strange opinions brought into Religion Superstitious propagated the Ministry invaded by men neither deserving nor capable of it and that were advanced by scandalous and unlawful methods having seen vices openly predominant among

grounds for upbraiding them with it as they did That the Protestants principles were not liable to the same objection who though they disown a blind obedience and entire submission do yet retain such external means as are most proper and expedient for preserving the unity of the Faith And whereas M. de Condom pretended that without entire obedience it was possible that as many several Religions might start up as there are Parishes 't is confest this may come to pass if we speak with respect to men only notwithstanding the Order and Ecclesiastical Assemblies be kept up because the mind of man is of its self subject to infinite Errors But in respect of God this cannot fall out so for he by his blessing on this external Order and the Communication of one and the same spirit to his true Believers and Elect does by this sure and infallible means preserve them in the unity of the same Faith and consequently of the same Church That Faith being not an humane but a Divine thing none but God alone can either produce or preserve it in mens hearts And this he infallibly does in the hearts of his Elect by his Spirit and such external means of the Ministry as himself hath appointed For Paul planteth and Apollo watereth but God giveth the increase Next he came to speak of the Deputies nominated by the Synod of Sainte-foy to confer with the Lutherans and said That he was extreamly pleased with what M. de Condom had confest even now That they never intended to give them a power of turning all things topsy turvey as he had ingeniously exprest it but that recourse must be had to the persons commissioning and their ratification obtained That he very humbly thankt him for this sincere acknowledgment which as to this particular resolved the whole Question so that this Act could not now be alledged any more for the blind obedience pretended to be infer'd from it That besides this his accusation against the Synod for consenting to change their Confession of Faith if taken in M. de Condom's sense vanished into nothing For there ought a distinction to be made between what is essential in it and what is not The essential part of the Confession consists in the things themselves called Articles or points of Faith and that which is not essential consists in the terms and modes of expression That the Synod had Authority to consent that the expressions in the Confession should be altered that other things might be inserted which might illustrate and explain it if this appeared to be useful for the reducing men that had deviated from it But the Synod never took upon them to alter any essential part of the Confession for it continues in this respect unalterable so far forth as it is agreable to the Word of God Mr. Claude concluding his discourse M. de Condom replied in the first place that notwithstanding what Mr. Claude said a little before concerning the Order observed by the Discipline it did however enjoyn that such as refused to acquiesce in the decisions of a National Synod should be cut off from the Church and that the Synod of Dort had actually cut off the Arminians he desired therefore to know of Mr Claude whether they were justly and lawfully cut off Mr. Claude answered that in his opinion the Synod of Dorts proceedings were very just M. de Condom told him This was all the Church of Rome desired that she also acknowledged her self under an Obligation to judg according to the word of God but this was not the matter in dispute The main business was about the Sense and Explanation of that word and that it was the Churches Province to give this Explanation and private men's to rest satified with it and if they did not the Church dealt justly in excommunicating them That it was thus the Protestants had been excommunicated in the Council of Trent As concerning the Letter of Mission to the National Synods is it not said he a plain trick to swear Submission to them upon supposal or condition that their Determinations shall be agreeable to Gods word This is all mere trifling What say you to it Sir Mr. Claude said there was no trick at all and he could discover nothing that was irregular in it If I have a right notion of your Doctrine replied M. de Condom you hold that a private Persons may doubt of the Judgment of the Church even when given in its last and highest Court of Jurisdiction We do hold said Mr. Claude that no man can have an absolute certainty of Faith that an Ecclesiastical Assembly shall give right Determinations and upon this account that men may be allow'd to doubt But withal that men should notwithstanding presume in favour of such an Assembly and in this respect we cannot properly call it doubting as hoping and believing that it will judg a right For Jesus Christ hath promised all that seek shall find and we ought to take it for granted that they will discharge their duty in seeking aright till Experience shews the contrary There is therefore an assurance of Charity and Equity that in some Sense excludes doubt But when we see Assemblies governed by Factions Cabals and temporal Interests then sure we have a great deal of reason to doubt as seeing men that have forsaken their Duty and consequently are such as cannot hope for any advantage from the blessing of God upon them Let me beg of you Sir said M. de Condom then That we may let alone what is good for nothing but to cast dust in our Eyes What you said just now of Cabals and Factions and private Interests is of no use in the World and only serves to perplex the matter I would know of you put the case there appeared nothing at all of Factions Cabals nor Interest in an Assembly but that all their proceedings were orderly and regular whether its Decisions ought to be received without examining them No Sir said Mr. Claude Why then Sir said he I was in the right to tell you that all your talk of Factions and Cabals signifies nothing That does not follow neither repli'd Mr. Claude for notwithstanding there appear not any thing to weaken a mans Presumptions that the Assembly will discharge their duty faithfully and that for ought we can discover to the contrary all things are carried regularly yet still this is no more than a humane Presumption not able to give any certainty of belief and consequently not precluding our Examination But when we see Disorder and Corruption manifestly prevail in an Assembly we can no longer presume in favour of such a one and instead of hoping the best we must fear the worst that can come from it So that it is not without ground that I spoke of Cabals and Factions Here M. de Condom resuming the former method of his Discourse said It was false that the Independents did absolutely throw off all Ecclesiastical Assemblies for