in Antiquity to the Bishop of Rome The ground of the Contest about this Title between the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople Of the proceedings of the Council of Chalcedon about the Popes Supremacy Of the Grammatical and Metaphorical sense of this Title Many arguments to prove it impossible that S. Gregory should understand it in the Grammatical sense The great absurdities consequent upon it S. Gregory's Reasons proved to hold against that sense of it which is admitted in the Church of Rome Of Irenaeus his opposition to Victor Victor's excommunicating the Asian Bishops argues no authority he had over them What the more powerful principality in Irenaeus is Ruffinus his Interpretation of the 6. Nicene Canon vindicated The Suburbicary Churches cannot be understood of all the Churches in the Roman Empire The Pope no Infallible Successour of S. Peter nor so acknowledged to be by Epiphanius S. Peter had no Supremacy of Power over the Apostles p. 422. CHAP. VII The Popes Authority not proved from Scripture or Reason The insufficiency of the proofs from Scripture acknowledged by Romanists themselves The impertinency of Luke 22.32 to that purpose No proofs offered for it but the suspected testimonies of Popes in their own cause That no Infallibility can thence come to the Pope as S. Peters Successour confessed and proved by Vigorius and Mr. White The weakness of the evasion of the Popes erring as a private Doctor but not as Pope acknowledged by them Joh. 21.15 proves nothing towards the Popes Supremacy How far the Popes Authority is owned by the Romanists over Kings C's beggings of the Question and tedious repetitions past over The Argument from the necessity of a living Judge considered The Government of the Church not Monarchical but Aristocratical The inconveniencies of Monarchical Government in the Church manifested from reason No evidence that Christ intended to institute such Government in his Church but much against it The Communicatory letters in the primitive Church argued an Aristocracy Gersons testimony from his Book de Auferibilitate Papae explained and vindicated S. Hieroms testimony full against a Monarchy in the Church The inconsistency of the Popes Monarchy with that of temporal Princes The Supremacy of Princes in Ecclesiastical matters asserted by the Scripture and Antiquity as well as the Church of England p. 451. CHAP. VIII Of the Council of Trent The Illegality of it manifested first from the insufficiency of the Rule it proceeded by different from that of the first General Councils and from the Popes Presidency in it The matter of Right concerning it discussed In what cases Superiours may be excepted against as Barties The Pope justly excepted against as a Party and therefore ought not to be Judge The Necessity of a Reformation in the Court of Rome acknowledged by Roman Catholicks The matter of fact enquired into as to the Popes Presidency in General Councils Hosius did not preside in the Nicene Council as the Popes Legat. The Pope had nothing to do in the second General Council Two Councils held at Constantinople within two years these strangely confounded The mistake made evident S. Cyril not President in the third General Council as the Popes Legat. No sufficient evidence of the Popes Presidency in following Councils The justness of the Exception against the place manifested and against the freedom of the Council from the Oath taken by the Bishops to the Pope The form of that Oath in the time of the Council of Trent Protestants not condemned by General Councils The Greeks and others unjustly excluded as Schismaticks The Exception from the small number of Bishops cleared and vindicated A General Council in Antiquiâ—y not so called from the Popes General Summons In what sense a General Council represents the whole Church The vast difference between the proceedings in the Council of Nice and that at Trent The Exception from the number of Italian Bishops justified How far the Greek Church and the Patriarch Hieremias may be said to condemn Protestants with an account of the proceedings between them p. 475. PART III. Of Particular Controversies CHAP. I. Of the Infallibility of General Councils HOw far this tends to the ending Controversies Two distinct Questions concerning the Infallibility and Authority of General Councils The first entred upon with the state of the Question That there can be no certainty of faith that General Councils are Infallible nor that the particular decrees of any of them are so which are largely proved Pighius his Arguments against the Divine Institution of General Councils The places of Scripture considered which are brought for the Churches Infallibility and that these cannot prove that General Councils are so Matth. 18.20 Act. 15.28 particularly answered The sense of the Fathers in their high expressions of the Decrees of Councils No consent of the Church as to their Infallibility The place of St. Austin about the amendment of former General Councils by latter at large vindicated No other place in St. Austin prove them Infallible but many to the contrary General Councils cannot be Infallible in the conclusion if not in the use of the means No such Infallibility without as immediate a Revelation as the Prophets and Apostles had taking Infallibility not for an absolute unerring Power but such as comes by a promise of Divine Assistance preserving from errour No obligation to internal assent but from immediate Divine Authority Of the consistency of Faith and Reason in things propounded to be believed The suitableness of the contrary Doctrine to the Romanists principles p. 505. CHAP. II. Of the Use and Authority of General Councils The denying the Infallibility of General Councils takes not away their Vse and Authority Of the submission due to them by all particular persons How far external obedience is required in case they erre No violent opposition to he made against them Rare Inconveniencies hinder not the effect of a just power It cannot rationally be supposed that such General Councils as are here meant should often or dangerously erre The true notion of a General Council explained The Freedom requisite in the proceedings of it The Rule it must judge by Great Difference between external obedience and internal assent to the Decrees of Councils This latter unites men in errour not the former As great uncertainties supposing General Councils Infallible as not Not so great certainty requisite for submission as Faith Whether the Romanists Doctrine of the Infallibility of Councils or ours tend more to the Churches peace St. Austin explained The Keyes according to him given to the Church No unremediable inconvenience supposing a General Council erre But errours in Faith are so supposing them Infallible when they are not The Church hath power to reverse the Decrees of General Councils The power of Councils not by Divine Institution The unreasonableness of making the Infallibility of Councils depend on the Popes Confirmation No consent among the Romanists about the subject of Infallibility whether in Pope or Councils No evidence from
he alledges there 's not a word of the Churches principality 2. That he only implies that he was the first of the Apostles made Bishop of any particular place viz. at Hierusalem which is called Christs Throne as any Episcopal Chair is in ancient Ecclesiastical Writers But whosoever will examine the places in Epiphanius will find much more intended by him than what you will allow For not only he saith that he first had an Episcopal Chair but that our Lord committed to him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his Throne upon Earth which surely is much more than can be said of any meer Episcopal Chair and I believe you will be much to seek where Hierusalem was ever called Christ's Throne upon earth after his Ascension to Heaven Besides if it were it is the strongest prejudice that may be against the principality of the Roman See if Jerusalem was made by Christ his Throne here And that a principality over the whole Church is intended by Epiphanius seems more clear by that other place which his Lordship cites wherein he not only saith That James was first made Bishop but gives this reason for it because he was the Brother of our Lord and if you observe How Epiphanius brings it in you will say he intended more by it than to make him the first Bishop For he was disputing before How the Kingdom and the Priesthood did both belong to Christ and that Christ had transfused both into his Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but his Throne is established for ever in his holy Church consisting both of his Kingdom and Priesthood both which he communicated to his Church quare Jacobus primus omnium est Episcopus constitutus as Petavius renders it so that he seems to settle James in that principality of the Church which he had given to it and what reason can you have to think but that Christ's Throne in which Epiphanius saith James was settled in the other place is the same with his Throne in the Church which he mentions here And What would you give for so clear a testimony in Antiquity for Christ's settling S. Peter in his Throne at Rome as here is for his placing S. James in it at Jerusalem His Lordship goes on And he still tells us the Bishop of Rome is S. Peter 's successor Well suppose that What then What Why then he succeeded in all S. Peter 's prerogatives which are ordinary and belonged to him as a Bishop though not in the extraordinary which belonged to him as an Apostle For that is it which you all say but no man proves Yes you say Bellarmine hath done it in his disputations on that subject For this you produce a saying of his That when the Apostles were dead the Apostolical Authority remained alone in S. Peter 's successor I see with you still saying and proving are all one But since you referr the Reader to Bellarmine for proofs I shall likewise referr him to the many sufficient Answers which have been given him You argue stoutly afterwards That because Primacy in the modern sense of it implies Supremacy therefore wherever the Fathers attribute a Primacy to Peter among the Apostles they mean his Authority and power over them I see you are resolved to believe that there cannot be one two and three but the first must be Head over all the rest A Primacy of Order his Lordship truly saith was never denied him by Protestants and an Vniversal Supremacy of power was never granted him by the Primitive Christians Prove but in the first place that S. Peter had such a Supremacy of power over the Apostles and all Christian Churches and that this power is conveyed to the Pope you will do something In the mean time we acknowledge as much Primacy Authority and Principality in S. Peter as D. Reynolds proves in the place you cite none of which come near that Supremacy of power which you contend for and we must deny till we see it better proved than it is by you But you offer it from S. Hierom because he saith The Primacy was given to Peter for preventing Schism but a meer precedency of order is not sufficient for that But Doth not S. Hierom in the words immediately before say That the Church is equally built on all the Apostles and that they all receive the Keyes of the Kingdom of Heaven and that the firmness of the Church is equally grounded on them and Can he possibly then mean in the following words any other Primacy but such as is among equals and not any Supremacy of power over them And certainly you think the Apostles very unruly who would not be kept in order by such a Primacy as this is unless a S. Peter's full jurisdiction over them And since it is so evident that S. Hierom can mean no other but such a preheminence as this for preventing Schism you had need have a good art that can deduce from thence a necessity of a Supremacy of power in the Church for that end For say you Whatsoever power or jurisdiction was necessary in the Apostles time for preventing Schisms must à fortiori be necessary in all succeeding ages but still be sure to hold to that power or jurisdiction which was in the Apostles times and we grant you all you can prove from it You still dispute gallantly when you beg the Question and argue as formally as I have met with one when you have supposed that which it most concerned you to prove Which is that God hath appointed a Supremacy of power in one particular person alwaies to continue in the Church for preservation of Faith and Unity in it For if you suppose the Church cannot be governed or Schism prevented without this you may well save your self a labour of proving any further But so far are we from seeing such a Supremacy of power as you challenge to the Pope to be necessary for preventing Schisms that we are sufficiently convinced that the Vsurping of it hath caused one of the greatest ever was in the Christian world CHAP. VII The Popes Authority not proved from Scripture or Reason The insufficiency of the proofs from Scripture acknowledged by Romanists themselves The impertinency of Luk. 22.32 to that purpose No proofs offered for it but the suspected testimonies of Popes in their own cause That no Infallibility can thence come to the Pope as St. Peters successour confessed and proved by Vigorius and Mr. White The weakness of the evasion of the Popes erring as a private Doctor but not as Pope acknowledged by them John 21.15 proves nothing towards the Popes Supremacy How far the Popes Authority is owned by the Romanists over Kings T. C's beggings of the Question and tedious repetitions past over The Argument from the necessity of a living Judge considered The Government of the Church not Monarchical but Aristocratical The inconveniencies of Monarchical Government in the Church manifested from reason No evidence that
first because he is called by his private name Simon and not by his Apostolical name Peter 2. Because Christ immediately subjoyns after St. Peters answer his threefold denyal of him 3. The event it self makes it appear by the Apostles flight St. Peters temptation and fall his conversion and tears when Christ looked on him and by his confirming the Disciples after Christs resurrection But saith he if this place be taken as respecting the future times of the Church the same thing must be expected in St. Peters Successours which fell out in St. Peter himself viz. that either through fear or some other motive they may be drawn into the shew of Heresie or into Heresie it self but so as either in themselves or their Successours they should be restored to the Catholick Faith But what reason there is for this latter interpretation though destructive to the Popes infallibility neither doth that person acquaint us nor can I possibly understand All the evasion that you have to avoid the force of what ever is brought against you out of this place is by conjuring up that rare distinction of the Popes not erring when he defines any thing as matter of Faith But see what that same person saith of this distinction of yours Excipiunt aliqui saith he Papam posse esse haereticum sed non posse haeresim promulgare Adeò quidlibot effutire pro libidine etiam licitum est Some Answer that the Pope may be a Heretick but cannot promulge or define Heresie So far do men think it lawful to say what they please But can any man saith he be guilty of so much incogitancy as not to see that these things are consequent upon each other It is a Pear tree and therefore it will bear Pears It is a Vine and therefore it will bring forth Grapes Christ saith An evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit but these say an evil tree cannot bring forth bad fruit The Apostle saith the wisdom of the Flesh cannot be subject to God but these say it cannot but be subject to God And then he further presseth That they would declare from what Authour they brought this contradiction into the Church of God lest men should believe they were inspired by the Father of lyes when they made it Nay he goes further yet in these stinging expressions An putatis licere in re quae totum Ecclesiae statum aâ—vivum tangit novitatem adeò inauditam adeò rationi adversantem adeò excedentem omnem fidem ex somniis cerebri vestri inferre Do you think it lawful in a matter which toucheth the whole state of the Church to the quick to produce so unheard of a novelty so repugnant to reason so far above all Faith out of the dreams of your own brain Go now and answer these things among your selves complain not that we account such evasions silly absurd and ridiculous you see they are accounted so by some of your own Communion or at least who pretend to be so and those no contemptible persons neither But such as have seen so much of the weakness and absurdity of your common doctrine that they openly and confidently oppose it and that upon the same grounds that Protestants had done it before them And I hope this is much more to our purpose to shew the insufficiency of these proofs than it was for you to produce the Testimonies of several Popes in their own Cause Which was all the proof that Bellarmin or you had that these words are extended to St. Peters Successours when we bring men from among your selves who produce several reasons that they ought not to be so interpreted But yet there is another place as pertinent as the former the celebrated Pasce oves agnos John 21.15 16 17. But sheep and Lambs say you are Christs whole flock So there are both these saith his Lordship in every flock that is not of barren Weathers and every Apostle and every Apostles successour hath charge to feed both sheep and Lambs that is weaker and stronger Christians not people and Pastours subjects and Governours as A. C. expounds it to bring the necks of Princes under the Roman Pride No say you no such charge is given to any other Apostles in the places his Lordship cites Matth. 28.19 Matth. 10.17 for these speak of persons unbaptized but that place of St. John of those who were actually Christs Flock and the words being absolutely and indefinitely pronounced must be understood generally and indefinitely of all Christs sheep and Lambs that is of all Christians whatsoever not excepting the Apostles themselves unless it appear from some other place that the other Apostles had the feeding of all Christs sheep as universally and unlimitedly committed to them as they were here to St. Peter But all this is nothing as Vigorius speaks about the solvere ligare pascere but dudum explosis cantilenis aures Christianorum obtundere to bring us those things over and over which have been answered as oft as they have been brought For how often have you been told that these words contain no particular Commission to St. Peter but a more vehement exhortation to the discharge of his duty and that pressed with the quickness of the question before it Lovest thou me How often that the full Commission to the Apostles was given before As the Father hath sent me so send I you And that as Christ was by his Fathers appointment the chief Shepheard of the Sheep and Lambs too so Christ by this equal Commission to all the Apostles gives them all an equal power and authority to govern his Flock How often that nothing appears consequent upon this whereby St. Peter took this office upon him but that afterwards we find St. Peter call'd the Apostle of the Circumcision which certainly he would never have been had he been looked on as the Vniversal Pastour of the Church we find the Apostles sending St. Peter to Samaria which was a very unmannerly action if they looked on him as Head of the Church How often that these indefinite expressions are not exclusive of the Pastoral charge of other Apostles over the Flock of Christ when they are not only bid to preach the Gospel to every creature but even those Bishops which they ordained in several Churches are charged to feed the Flock and therefore certainly the Apostles themselves had not only a charge to preach to unbaptized persons as you suppose but to govern the Flock of those who were actually Christs Sheep and Lambs as well as St. Peter How often I say have you been told all these and several other things in Answer to this place and have you yet the confidence to object it as though it had never been taken notice of without ever offering to take off those Answers which have been so frequently given But you must be pardoned in this as in all other things of an equal impossibility Well
Authority and Jurisdiction given by Christ to one Bishop above another St. Hierom was not so sensless as not to see that the Bishops of Rome Constantinople and Alexandria had greater Authority and larger Jurisdiction in the Church then the petty Bishops of Eugubium Rhegium and Tanis but all this he knew well enough came by the custom of the Church that one Bishop should have larger power in the Church then another But saith he if you come to urge us with what ought to be practised in the Church then saith he Orbis major est urbe it is no one City as that of Rome which he particularly instanceth in which can prescribe to the whole world For saith he all Bishops are of equal merit and the same Priesthood wheresoever they are whether at Rome or elsewhere So that it is plain to all but such as wilfully blind themselves that St. Hierom speaks not of that which you call the Character of Bishops but of the Authority of them for that very word he useth immediately before Si authoritas quaeritur orbis major est urbe And where do you ever find merit applyed to the Bishops Character They who say It is understood of the merit of good life make St. Hierom speak non-sense For are all Bishops of the same merit of good life But we need not go out of Rome for the proper importance of merit here For in the third Roman Synod under Symmachus that very word is used concerning Authority and Principality in the Church ejus sedi primum Petri Apostoli meritum sive principatus deinde Conciliorum venerandorum authoritas c. where Binius confesseth an account is given of the Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome the first ground of which St. Peters merit or principality apply now but this sense to S. Hierom and he may be very easily understood All Bishops are ejusdem meriti sive principatus of the same merit Dignity or Authority in the Church But you say he speaks not of the Pope as he is Pope good reason for it for St. Hierom knew no such Supremacy in the Pope as he now challengeth And can you think if St. Hierom had believed such an authority in the Pope as you do he would ever have used such words as these are to compare him with the poor Bishop of Agobio in Merit and Priesthood I cannot perswade my self you can think so only something must be said for the cause you have undertaken to defend And since Bellarmine and such great men had gone before you you could not believe there were any absurdity in saying as they did Still you say He doth not speak of that Authority which belongs to the Bishop of Rome as S. Peter 's Successor But if you would but read a little further you might see that S. Hierom speaks of all Bishops whether at Rome or Eugubium c. as equally the Apostles Successors For it is neither saith he riches or poverty which makes Bishops higher or lower Caeterùm omnes Apostolorum successores sunt but they are all the Apostles Successors therefore he speaks of them with relation to that Authority which they derived from the Apostles And never had there been greater necessity for him to speak of the Popes succeeding S. Peter in the Supremacy over the Church than here if he had known any such thing but he must be excused he was ignorant of it No that he could not be say you again for he speaks of it elsewhere and therefore he must be so understood there as that he neither contradict nor condemn himself But if the Epistle to Damasus be all your evidence for it a sufficient account hath been given of that already therefore you add more and bid us go find them out to see Whether they make for the purpose or no. I am sure your first doth not out of his Commentary on the 13. Psalm because it only speaks of S. Peters being Head of the Church and not of the the Popes and that may import only dignity and preheminence without authority and jurisdiction besides that Commentary on the Psalms is rejected as spurious by Erasmus Sixtus Senensis and many others among your selves Your second ad Demetriadem Virginem is much less to your purpose for that only speaks of Innocentius coming after Anastasius at Rome qui Apostolicae Cathedrae supradicti viri successor filius est Who succeeded him in the Apostolical Chair But Do you not know that there were many Apostolical Chairs besides that of Rome and had every one of them supreme authority over the Church of God What that should be on the 16. of S. Matthew I cannot imagine unless it be that S. Peter is called Princeps Apostolorum which honour we deny him not or that he saith Aedificabo Ecâ—lesiam meam super te But how these things concern the Popes Authority unless you had further enlightened us I cannot understand That ep 54. ad Marcellam is of the same nature with the last for the words which I suppose you mean are Petrus super quem Dominus fundaâ—it Ecclesiam and if you see what Erasmus saith upon that place you will have little cause to boast much of it Your last place is l. 1. Cont. Lucifer which I suppose to be that commonly cited thence Ecclesiae salus in summi Sacerdotis dignitate pendet but there even Marianus Victorius will tell you it is understood of every ordinary Bishop Thus I have taken the pains to search those places you nakedly refer us to in S. Hierom and find him far enough from the least danger of contradicting or condemning himself as to any thing which is here spoken by him So that we see S. Hierom remains a sufficient testimony against the Popes Monarchical Government of the Church His Lordship further argues against this Monarchy in the Church from the great and undoubted Rule given by Optatus that wheresoever there is a Church there the Church is in the Common-wealth and not the Common-wealth in the Church And so also the Church was in the Roman Empire Now from this ground saith his Lordship I argue thus If the Church be within the Empire or other Kingdom 't is impossible the Government of the Church should be Monarchical For no Emperour or King will endure another King within his Dominion that shall be greater than himself since the very enduring it makes him that endures it upon the matter no Monarch Your answer to this is That these two Kingdoms are of different natures the one spiritual the other temporal the one exercised only in such things as concern the worship of God and the Eternal Salvation of souls the other in affairs that concern this world only Surely you would perswade us we had never heard of much less read Bellarmin's first Book de Pontifice about the Popes Temporal Power which was fain to get license for the other four to pass at Rome and although he minces
exorbitances and capricious humours of any phantastical Spirits which may cry out That the most received truths ever since Christianity was in the world are intolerable errours If you are resolved yet further to ask Who shall be judge what a necessary reason or demonstration is His Lordship tells you I think plain enough from Hooker what is understood by it viz. such as being proposed to any man and understood the mind cannot chuse but inwardly assent to it And Do you require any other judge but a mans own reason in this case But you say Others call their arguments demonstrations but let them submit to this way of tryal and they may soon be convinced that they are not Still you say They will not be convinced but will break the peace of the Church supposing they have sufficient evidence for what they say But if men will be unreasonable who can help it Can you with telling them Councils are Infallible I doubt you would hear of more arguments than you could well satisfie against that presently We appeal then to the common reason of mankind Whether it be not a far probable way to end Controversies to perswade men in disputable matters to yield external obedience to the Decrees of a lawful General Council than to tell them they are bound to believe whatever they decree to be infallibly true And therefore you are very much mistaken when you say His Lordship declines the main Question which is of the necessity of submitting to a living Judge or a definitive sentence in case two parties equal for learning and integrity both pretend to equal evidence for what they say for his Lordship doth not deny but that in such a case the submitting to a definitive sentence may be a reasonable way to end the Controversie but then the difference between you lyes in two things 1. That you would bind men to internal assent to the Decrees of a Council as being Infallible but his Lordship saith They bind to external obedience as being the Supremest Judicatory can be expected in the Church 2. You pretend that Councils called and confirmed by the Pope are thus Infallible and our Supreme Judge in matters of Faith his Lordship justly dedies that and sayes That a Free General Council observing the same conditions which the first did is the only equal and indifferent Judge So that the Question is not so much Whether shall be a living Judge as Who shall be he and How far the definitive Sentence binds and What is to be done in case there cannot be a free and indifferent Judge for in this case we say Every Church is bound to regard her own purity and peace and in case of corruptions to proceed to a Reformation of them We now come to the remaining Enquiry which is Whether your Doctrine or ours tends more to the Churches peace For clearing of this his Lordship premises these things by way of Considerations 1. That there is n necessity of any such Infallibility in the Church as was in the Apostles 2. That what Infallibility or Authority belongs to the Church doth primarily reside in the whole body of the Church and not in a General Council 3. That in case a General Council erre the whole Church hath full Authority to represent her self in another Council and so to redress what was amiss either practised or concluded And so upon these principles his Lordship saith Here is a sufficient remedy for what is amiss and yet no infringing any lawful Authority in the Church and yet he grants as the Church of England doth that a General Council may erre But he saith It doth not follow because the Church may erre therefore she may not govern For the Church hath not only a Pastoral Power to teach and direct but a Praetorian also to controll and censure too where errours or crimes are against points fundamental or of great consequence Thus he represents the advantages which follow upon his opinion after which he comes to the disadvantages of yours But we must first consider what you have to object against what his Lordship hath here delivered To the first you say nothing but that Stapleton and Bellarmin attribute more Infallibility to the Church than his Lordship doth which is an excellent way to prove the necessity of it if you had first proved those two Authours Infallible To the second your Answer is more large for his Lordship to confirm what he said That the power and authority given by Christ lyes in the whole Church produces that saying of S. Austin That S. Peter did not receive the Keyes of the Church but as sustaining the person of the Church from whence he proves against Stapleton That it is not to be understood finally only for the good of the Church but that the primary and formal right is in the Church For he that receives a thing in the person of another receives it indeed to his good and use but in his right too To this you answer from Bellarmin That there is a twofold representing or bearing the person of another The one Parabolical and by way of meer figure and supposition only as Agar represented the people of the Jews under bondage of the Law c. The other historical and real viz. when the person representing has right or relation à parte rei in and towards the thing represented by vertue whereof it bears the person of the thing represented Now S. Peter say you sustained the person of the Church in this latter sense really and historically and not parabolically and in figure i. e. he received the Keyes as Head of the Church though that Reception were ordained for the good of the whole Church But Sir our enquiry is not How many waies one may imagine a Representation to be made but What kind of Representation that is which is suitable to S. Austin's meaning That there may be an Allegorical Representation no body denies but I cannot imagine How it can belong to this place or Who ever meant that S. Peter stood here for an Allegory of the Church and therefore the members of your distinction are not apposite For those who assert that S. Peter did sustain the person of the Church in his Lordships sense do yet acknowledge that he did it historicè and not parabolicè as you speak i. e. the donation was really made to him but then the Question is In what right or capacity it was made to him Whether in his personal or representative capacity For these are the two only proper members of a distinction here St. Austin saith not only in that place but in very many others that S. Peter did sustain the person of the Church when Christ said to him I will give thee the Keyes of the Kingdom of Heaven Now the Question is In what sense he sustained the person of the Church You say In his own right as Head of the Church We say As
What a case then were we in if the Pope were Christ's Vicar in Heaven as he pretends to be on Earth but it is our comfort he is neither so nor so Thus we see what repugnancy there is both to Scirpture and Reason in this strange Doctrine of your Churches Definitions making things necessary to Salvation which were not so before I should now proceed to shew how repugnant this Doctrine is to the unanimous consent of Antiquity but I find my self prevented in that by the late Writings of one of your own Communion and if you will believe him in his Epistle Dedicatory which I much question the present Popes most humble Servant our Countryman Mr. Thomas White Whose whole Book call'd his Tabulae Suffragiales is purposely designed against this fond and absurd Opinion nay he goes so high as to assert the Opinion of the Pope's Personal Infallibility not only to be Heretical but Archi-heretical and that the propagating of this Doctrine is in its kind a most grievous sin It cannot but much rejoyce us to see that men of wit and parts begin to discover the intolerable arrogance of such pretences and that such men as D. Holden and Mr. White are in many things come so near the Protestant Principles and that since they quit the Plea of Infallibility and relye on Vniversal Tradition we are in hopes that the same reason and ingenuity which carried these persons thus far will carry others who go on the same principles so much farther as to see how impossible it is to make good the points in Controversie between us upon the Principle of Vniversal Tradition Which the Bigots of your Church are sufficiently sensible of and therefore like the Man at Athens when your Hands are cut off you are resolved to hold this Infallibility with your Teeth and so that Gentleman finds by the proceedings of the Court of Rome against him for that and his other pieces But this should not have been taken notice of lest we should seem to see as who doth not that is not stark blind what growing Divisions and Animosities there are among your selves both at home and in foreign parts and yet all this while the poor silly people must be told that there is nothing but Division out of your Church and nothing but Harmony and Musick in it but such as is made of Discords And that about this present Controversie for the forenamed Gentleman in his Epistle to the present Pope tells him plainly That it is found true by frequent Experience That there is no defending the Catholick Faith against the subtilties of his Heretical Countrymen without the principles of that Book which was condemned at Rome And what those principles are we may easily see by this Book which is writ in defence of the former Wherein he largely proves that the Church hath no power to make New Articles of Faith which he proves both from Scripture Reason and Authority this last is that I shall referr the Reader to him for for in his second Table as he calls it he proves from the testimonies of Origen Basil Chrysostom Cyril Irenaeus Tertullian Pope Stephen Hierom Theophylact Augustine Vincentius Lerinensis and several others nay the testimonies he sayes to this purpose are so many that whole Libraries must be transcribed to produce them all And afterwards more largely proves That the Faith of the Church lyes in a continued succession from the Apostles both from Scripture and Reason and abundance of church-Church-Authorities in his 4 5 and 6. Tables and through the rest of his Book disproves the Infallibility of Councils and Pope And can you think all this is answered by an Index Expurgatorius or by publishing a false-Latin Order of the inquisition at Rome whereby his Books are prohibited and his Opinions condemned as heretical erronious in Faith rash scandalous seditious and what not It seems then it is grown at last de fide that the Pope is infallible and never more like to do so than in this age for the same person gives us this character of it in his Purgation of himself to the Cardinals of the Inquisition saying That their Eminencies by the unhappiness of the present Age in which Knowledge is banished out of the Schools and the Doctrines of Faith and Theological Truths are judged by most voices fell it seems upon some ignorant and arrogant Consultors who hand over head condemn those Propositions which upon their oaths they could not tell whether they were true or false If these be your proceedings at Rome happy we that have nothing to do with such Infallible Ignorance This is the Age your Religion were like to thrive in if Ignorance were as predominant elsewhere as it seems it is at Rome But I leave this and return 3. The last thing is Whether the Church hath Power by any Proposition or Definition to make any thing become necessary to Salvation and to be believed as such which was not so before But this is already answered by the foregoing Discourse for if the necessity of the things to be believed must be supposed antecedently to the Churches Being if that which was not before necessary cannot by any act whatsoever afterwards become necessary then it unavoidably follows That the Church neither hath nor can have any such power Other things which relate to this we shall have occasion to discuss in following your steps which having thus far cleared this important Controversie I betake my self to And we are highly obliged to you for the rare Divertisements you give us in your excellent way of managing Controversies Had my Lord of Canterbury been living What an excellent entertainment would your Confutation of his Book have afforded him But since so pleasant a Province is fallen to my share I must learn to command my self in the management of it and therefore where you present us with any thing which deserves a serious Answer for truth and the causes sake you shall be sure to have it In the first place you charge his Lordship with a Fallacy and that is because when he was to speak of Fundamentals he did not speak of that which was not Fundamental But say you He turns the difficulty which only proceeded upon a Fundamentality or Necessity derived from the formal Object that is from the Divine Authority revealing that Point to the Material Object that is to the importance of the Matter contained in the Point revealed which is a plain Fallacy in passing à sensu formali ad materialem Men seldom suspect those faults in others which they find not strong inclinations to in themselves had you not been conscious of a notorious Fallacy in this distinction of Formal and Material Object as here applyed by you you would never have suspected any such Sophistry in his Lordship's Discourse I pray consider what kind of Fundamentals those are which the Question proceeds on viz. such as are necessary to be owned as such by
the ground together being both built on the same mistaken Foundation CHAP. III. The Absurdities of the Romanists Doctrine of Fundamentals The Churches Authority must be Divine if whatever she defines be Fundamental His Lordship and not the Testimony of S. Augustine shamefully abused three several wayes Bellarmine not mis-cited the Pelagian Heresie condemned by the General Council at Ephesus The Pope's Authority not implyed in that of Councils The gross Absurdities of the distinction of the Church teaching and representative from the Church taught and dissusive in the Question of Fundamentals The Churches Authority and Testimony in matters of Faith distinguished The Testimonies of Vincentius Lerinensis explained and shewed to be directly contrary to the Roman Doctrine of Fundamentals Stapleton and Bellarmine not reconciled by the vain endeavours used to that end THe main Doctrine of Fundamentals being in the foregoing Chapter setled and cleared what remains of that subject will be capable of a quicker dispatch The scope of this Chapter is to assoil those difficulties which your doctrine of Fundamentals is subject to What little footing that hath in the place of S. Augustine was the last thing discussed in the preceding Chapter and therefore must not be repeated here His Lordship urgeth this reason why S. Augustine or any other reasonable man could not believe that whatever is defined by the Church is Fundamental in the Faith because full church-Church-Authority alwaies the time that included the Holy Apostles being past by and not comprehended in it is but church-Church-Authority and Church-Authority when it is at full Sea is not simply divine therefore the sentence of it not Fundamentall in the Faith To this you very wisely and learnedly answer I will not dispute with his Lordship whether it be or no because it is sufficient that such Authority be infallible For if it be infallible it cannot propose to us any thing as revealed by God but what is so revealed So that to dispute against this Authority is in effect to take away all Authority from divine Revelation we having no other absolute certainty that this or that is revealed by God but only the Infallibility of the Church proposing or attesting it unto us as revealed Whence also it follows that to doubt dispute against or deny any thing that is proposed by the Infallible Authority of the Church is to doubt dispute against and deny that which is Fundamental in Faith His Lordship denies the sentence of the Church to be Fundamental in the Faith because not Divine you dare not say It is Divine but contend that it is Infallible and from that Infallibility inferr That Whosoever denies the Churches Infallibility must deny something Fundamental in the Faith because we can have no other absolute certainty that any thing is revealed by God but only from the Churches Infallibility So that your whole proof rests upon a very rotten and uncertain Foundation viz. that all certainty in matters of Faith doth depend upon the Churches Infallibility the falshood and unreasonableness of which principle will at large be discovered in the succeeding Controversie And if this fails then the denial of the Churches Infallibility doth not inferr the denial of any thing Fundamental in the Faith because men may be certain of all Fundamentals without believing this Infallibility But yet say you There is no necessity of asserting Church-Authority to be Divine but only to be infallible in order to the making what she defines to be Fundamental A rare and excellent piece of your old Theological Reason as though any thing could be any further Infallible than it is Divine or any further owned to be Divine than as it is Infallible I pray acquaint us with these rare Arts of distinguishing between an Authority Divine and Infallible when the ground of that Infallibility is the supposition of something properly and simply Divine which is the Infallible Assistance of God's Spirit Is that Assistance Infallible too but not Divine If it be Divine as well as Infallible how comes that Infallibility which flows from it not to be Divine when the cause of it was simply and absolutely so Besides what Infallible Authority is that which makes all its Definitions Fundamental and yet is not in it self Divine From whence comes any thing to be Fundamental You tell us your self as it is known to be revealed by God And can any thing be known to be revealed by God but by an Authority Divine especially on your principles who make all certainty of knowing it to depend on that Churches Authority If so then since the Churches sentence makes things become matters of Faith some things may become matters of Faith which have no Divine Authority for them But this excellent and subtle distinction between Divine and Infallible Authority we shall have occasion to examine afterwards And therefore it is well you tell us Notwithstanding that Infallible and Divine seem to many great Divines to be terms convertible which only acquaints us with thus much that there are some men who understand things better than you do and that to do so is to be a great Divine And if Stapleton be one of these we are not much offended at it and so far we will take the Testimonies which you produce out of him That which next follows depends upon the proof of the Infallibility of General Councils which when you have sufficiently cleared we will believe that there can be no plain Scripture or Evident Reason against any of their Definitions but till then we must believe there may be room for both Your next Section promiseth to shew us a shameful abuse of S. Augustine 's Testimony three several waies But if it appears that not one of those waies will hold then it only follows that so many waies you have abused his Lordship and not he S. Augustine His Lordship having affirmed That plain Scripture with evident sense or a full demonstrative Argument must have room where a wrangling and erring Disputer may not be allowed it And there 's neither of these but may convince the Definition of the Council if it be ill founded Over against these words he cites that sentence of S. Austin Quae quidem si tam manifest a monstratur ut in dubium venire non possit praeponenda est omnibus illis rebus quibus in Catholicâ teneor Ita si aliquid apertissimum in Evangelio c. The plain meaning of which words of S. Augustine is That evident Truth is to be preferred before all Church-Authority Now a threefold Exception you take to his Lordships insisting on this Testimony 1. That S. Austin speaks not either of plain Scripture or evident sense or of a full demonstrative Argument but addressing his speech to the Manicheans he writes thus Apud vos autem ubi nihil horum est quod me invitet ac teneat sola personat veritatis pollicitatio and then follow the words cited by the Bishop quae quidem si
tam manifesta monstratur where it is plain quae which is relative only to Truth and not to Scripture or any thing else A wonderful abuse of S. Austin to make him parallel plain Scripture evident sense or a full Demonstrative Argument with Truth As though if evident Truth were more prevalent with him than all those Arguments which held him in the Catholick Church plain Scripture evident Sense or Demonstrations would not be so too What Truth can be evident if it be not one of these three Do you think there is any other way of manifesting Truth but by Scripture Sense or Demonstration if you have found out other waies oblige the world by communicating them but till then give us leave to think that it is all one to say Manifest Truth as plain Scripture evident Sense or clear Demonstrations But say you He speaks only of that Truth which the Manichees bragged of and promised As though S. Austin would have been perswaded sooner as it came from them than as it was Truth in it self I suppose S. Austin did not think their Testimony sufficient and therefore sayes Quae quidem si tam manifesta monstratur c. i. e. If they could make that which they said evident to be Truth he would quit the Church and adhere to them and if this holds against the Manichees will it not on the same reason hold every where else viz. That manifest Truth is not to be quitted on any Authority whatsoever which is all his Lordship asserts But You offer to prove that S. Austin by Truth could not mean plain Scripture But can you prove that by Truth he did not mean Truth whereever he found it whether in Scripture or elsewhere No say you It cannot be meant that by Truth he should mean plain Scripture in opposition to the Definitions of the Catholick Church or General Councils For which you give this Reason because he supposes it impossible that the Doctrine of the Catholick Church should be contrary to Scripture for then men according to S. Austin should not believe infallibly either the one or the other Not the Scriptures because they are received only upon the Authority of the Church nor the Church whose Authority is infringed by the plain Scripture which is brought against her For which you produce a large citation out of S. Austin to that purpose But the Answer to that is easie For S. Austin when he speaks of Church-Authority quâ infirmatâ jam nec Evangelio credere potero he doth not in the least understand it of any Definitions of the Church but of the Vniversal Tradition of the Catholick Church concerning the Scriptures from the time of Christ and his Apostles And what plain Scriptures those are supposable which should contradict such a Tradition as this is is not easie to understand But the case is quite otherwise as to the Churches Definitions for neither doth the Authority of Scripture at all rest upon them and there may be very well supposed some plain Scriptures contrary to the Churches Definitions unless it be proved that the Church is absolutely Infallible and the very proof of that depending on Scripture there must be an appeal made to plain Scripture whether the Churches Definitions may not be contradicted by Scripture When therefore you say This is an impossible Supposition that Scripture should contradict the Churches Definitions like that of the Apostle If an Angel from Heaven teach otherwise let him be accursed Gal. 1. You must prove it as impossible for the Church to deviate from Scripture in any of her Definitions as for an Angel to preach another Gospel which will be the braver attempt because it seems so little befriended either by sense or reason But say you If the Church may be an erring Definer I would gladly know why an erring Disputer may not oppugn her That which you would so gladly know is not very difficult to be resolved by any one who understands the great difference between yielding an Internal Assent to the Definitions of the Church and open opposing them for it only follows from the possibility of the Churches Errour in defining that therefore we ought not to yield an absolute Internal Assent to all her determinations but must examine them by the best measures of Truth in order to our full Assent to them but though the Church may erre it doth not therefore follow that it is lawful in all cases or for all persons to oppugn her Definitions especially if those Definitions be only in order to the Churches Peace but if they be such as require Internal Assent to them then plain Scripture evidence of Sense or clear Reason may be sufficient cause to hinder the submitting to those Definitions 2. You tell us That his Lordship hath abused S. Austin 's Testimony because he speaks not of the Definitions of the Church in matters not Fundamental according to the matter they contain but the Truth mentioned by him was Fundamental in its matter This is the substance of your second Answer which is very rational and prudent being built on this substantial Evidence If S. Austin doth preferr manifest Truth before things supposed Fundamental in the matter then no doubt S. Austin would not preferr manifest Truth before things supposed not-Fundamental in the matter And do not you think this enough to charge his Lordship with shamefully abusing S. Austin But certainly if S. Austin preferred manifest Truth before that which was greater would he not do it before that which was incomparably less If he did it before all those things which kept him in the Catholick Church such as the consent of Nations Miracles Universal Tradition which he mentions before do you think he would have scrupled to have done it as to any particular Definitions of the Church These are therefore very excellent waies of vindicating the Fathers Testimonies from having any thing of sense or reason in them 3. You say He hath abused S. Austin by putting in a wrangling Disputer But I wonder where his Lordship ever sayes that S. Austin mentions any such in the Testimony cited For his words are these But plain Scripture with evident Sense or a full Demonstrative Argument must have room where a wrangling and erring Disputer may not be allowed it And there 's neither of these over against these words he referrs to S. Austin's Testimony and not the foregoing but may convince the Definition of the Council if it be ill founded When you therefore ask Where the wrangling Disputer is to be found had it not been for the help of this Cavil we might have been to seek for him But when you have been enquiring for him at last you cry out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Oh! I see now And you are the fittest man to find him out that I know You say This is done to distinguish him from such a Disputer as proceeds solidly and demonstratively against the Definitions of the Church when they are
cannot be owned as an Apostolical Tradition 2. That what you call an unwritten Word must be something doctrinal so you call them your self doctrinal Traditions i. e. such as contain in them somewhat dogmatical or necessary to be believed by us and thence it was this Controversie rose from the Dispute concerning the sufficiency of the Scriptures as a Rule of Faith Whether that contained all God's Word or all matters to be believed or no or Whether there were not some Objects of Faith which were never written but conveyed by Tradition 3. That what is thus doctrinal must be declared by the Church to be an Apostolical Tradition which you in terms assert According then to these Rules we come to examine the Evidences by you produced for such an unwritten Word For which you first produce several Instances out of S. Austin of such things which were in his time judged to be such i. e. doctrinal Traditions derived from the Apostles and have ever since been conserved and esteemed such in the whole Church of Christ. The first you instance in is that we now treat That Scripture is the Word of God for which you propose the known place wherein he affirms he should not believe the Gospel but for the Authority of the Church moving him thereto But this proves nothing to your purpose unless you make it appear that the Authority of the Church could not move him to believe the Gospel unless that Authority be supposed to be an unwritten Word For I will suppose that S. Austin or any other rational man might be sufficiently induced to believe the Gospel on the account of the Churches Authority not as delivering any doctrinal Tradition in the nature of an unwritten Word but as attesting that Vniversal Tradition which had been among all Christians concerning it Which Universal Tradition is nothing else but a conveying down to us the judgement of sense and reason in the present case For the Primitive Christians being best able to judge as to what Authentick Writings came from the Apostles not by any unwritten Word but by the use of all moral means it cannot reasonably be supposed that the successive Christians should imbezzle these Authentick Records and substitute others in the place of them When therefore Manichaeus pretended the Authenticalness of some other writings besides those then owned by the Church S. Austin did no more than any reasonable man would do in the like case viz. appeal to the Vniversal Tradition of the Catholick Church upon the account of which he saies He was induced to believe the Gospel it self i. e. not so much the Doctrine as the Books containing it But of this more largely elsewhere I can hardly excuse you from a falsification of S. Austin's meaning in the ensuing words which you thus render If any clear Testimony were brought out of Scripture against the Church he would neither believe the Scripture nor the Church whereas it appears by the words cited in your own Margin his meaning is only this If you can find saith he something very plain in the Gospel concerning the Apostleship of Manichaeus you will thereby weaken the Authority of those Catholicks who bid me that I should not believe you whose Authority being weakned neither can I believe the Gospel because through them I believed it Is here any like what you said or at least would seem to have apprehended to be his meaning which is plainly this If against the consent of all those Copies which the Catholick Christians received those Copies should be found truer which have in them something of the Apostleship of Manichaeus this must needs weaken much the Authority of the Catholick Church in its Tradition whom he adhered to against the Manichees and their Authority being thus weakned his Faith as to the Scriptures delivered by them must needs be much weakned too To give you an Instance of a like nature The Mahumetans pretend that in the Scripture there was anciently express mention of their Prophet Mahomet but that the Christians out of hatred of their Religion have erased all those places which spake of him Suppose now a Christian should say If he should find in the Gospel express mention of Mahomet's being a Prophet it would much weaken the Authority of the whole Christian Church which being so weakned it must of necessity weaken the Faith of all those who have believed our present Copies Authentick upon the account of the Christian Churches Authority Is not this plainly the case S. Austin speaks of and Is it any more than any man's reason will tell him Not that the Churches Authority is to be relyed on as judicially or infallibly but as rationally delivering such an Universal Tradition to us And might not S. Austin on the same reason as well believe the Acts of the Apostles as the Gospel when they were both equally delivered by the same Universal Tradition What you have gained then to your purpose from these three citations out of S. Austin in your first Instance I cannot easily imagine Your second Tradition is That the Father is not begotten of any other person S. Austin's words are Sicut Patrem in illis libris nusquam Ingenitum legimus tamen dicendum esse defenditur We never read in the Scriptures that the Father is unbegotten and yet it is defended that we must say so And had they not good reason with them to say so who believed that he was the Father by way of exclusion of such a kind of Generation as the Eternal Son of God is supposed to have But Must this be an Instance of a doctrinal Tradition containing some Object of Faith distinct from Scripture Could any one whoever believed the Doctrine of the Trinity as revealed in Scripture believe or imagine any other that though it be not in express terms set down in Scripture yet no one that hath any conceptions of the Father but this is implied in them If it be therefore a Tradition because it is not expresly in Scripture Why may not Trinity Hypostasis Person Consubstantiality be all unwritten Traditions as well as this You will say Because though the words be not there yet the sense is and I pray take the same Answer for this of the Father's being unbegotten Your third is Of the perpetual Virginity of the Virgin Mary This indeed S. Austin saith is to be believed fide integra but he saith not divinâ but Do you therefore make this a doctrinal Tradition and an unwritten Word If you make it a doctrinal Tradition you must shew us what Article of Faith is contained in it that it was not looked on as an unwritten Word will appear by the disputations of those Fathers who writ most eagerly about it who make it their design to prove it out of Scripture Those who did most zealously appear against the Opinion of Helvidius were S. Hierom and S. Ambrose of the Latin Church S. Austin only mentions it in
could not at so small a distance of time prove any corruption by any Copies which were extant For saith he if they should say They would not embrace their writings because they were written by such who were not careful of writing Truth their evasion would be more sâ—y and their errour more pardonable But thus it seems they did by the Acts of the Apostles utterly denying them to contain matter of Truth in them and the reason was very obvious for it because that Book gives so clear an account of the sending the Spirit upon the Apostles which the Manichees pretended was to be only accomplished in the person of Manichaeus And both before and after S. Austin mentions it as their common speech That before the time of Manichaeus there had been corrupters of the sacred Books who had mixed several things of their own with what was written by the Apostles And this they laid upon the Judaizing Christians because their great pique was against the Old Testament and probably some further reason might be from the Nazarene Gospel wherein many things were inserted by such as did Judaize The same thing St. Austin chargeth them with when he gives an account of their Heresie And this likewise appears by the management of the dispute between S. Austin and Faustus who was much the subtillest man among them Faustus acknowledged no more to be Gospel than what contained the Doctrine delivered by our Saviour and therefore denied the Genealogies to be any part of the Gospel and afterwards disputes against it both in S. Matthew and S. Luke And after this S. Austin notes it as their usual custom when they could not avoid a Testimony of Scripture to deny it Thus we see what kind of persons these were and what their pretences were which S. Austin disputes against They embraced so much of Scripture as pleased them and no more To this therefore S. Austin returns these very substantial Answers That if such proceedings might be admitted the Divine Authority of any Books could signifie nothing at all for the convincing of errours That it was much more reasonable either with the Pagans to deny the whole Bible or with the Jews to deny the New Testament than thus to acknowledge in general the Books Divine and to quarrel with such particular passages as pinched them most that if there were any suspicion of corruption they ought to produce more true Copies and more ancient Books than theirs or else be judged by the Original Languages with many other things to the same purpose To apply this now to the present place in dispute S. Austin in that Book against the Epistle of Manichaeus begins with the Preface to it which is made in imitation of the Apostles strain and begins thus Manichaeus Apostolus Jesu Christi providentià Dei Patris c. To this S. Austin saith he believes no such thing as that Manichaeus was an Apostle of Jesus Christ and hopes they will not be angry with him for it for he had learned of them not to believe without reason And therefore desires them to prove it It may be saith he one of you may read me the Gospel and thence perswade me to believe it But what if you should meet with one who when you read the Gospel should say to you I do not believe it But I should not believe the Gospel if the Authority of the Church did not move me Whom therefore I obey in saying Believe the Gospel should I not obey in saying Believe not Manichaeus The Question we see is concerning the proving the Apostleship of Manichaeus which cannot in it self be proved but from some Records which must specifie such an Apostleship of his and to any one who should question the authenticalness of those Records it can only be proved by the testimony and consent of the Catholick Church without which S. Austin professeth he should never have believed the Gospel i. e. that these were the only true and undoubted Records which are left us of the Doctrine and actions of Christ. And he had very good reason to say so for otherwise the authority of those Books should be questioned every time any one such as Manichaeus should pretend himself an Apostle which Controversies there can be no other way of deciding but by the Testimony of the Church which hath received and embraced these Copies from the time of their first publishing And that this was S. Austin's meaning will appear by several parallel places in his disputes against the Manichees For in the same chapter speaking concerning the Acts of the Apostles Which Book saith he I must believe as well as the Gospel because the same Catholick Authority commends both i. e. The same Testimony of the Vniversal Church which delivers the Gospel as the authentick writings of the Evangelists doth likewise deliver the Acts of the Apostles for an authentick writing of one of the same Evangelists So that there can be no reason to believe the one and not the other So when he disputes against Faustus who denied the truth of some things in S. Paul's Epistles he bids him shew a truer Copy than that the Catholick Church received which Copy if he should produce he desires to know how he would prove it to be truer to one that should deny it What would you do saith he Whither would you turn your self What Original of your Book could you shew What Antiquity what Testimony of a succession of persons from the time of the writing of it But on the contrary What huge advantage the Catholicks have who by a constant succession of Bishops in the Apostolical Sees and by the consent of so many people have the Authority of the Church confirmed to them for the clearing the validity of its Testimony concerning the Records of Scripture And after laies down Rules for the trying of Copies where there appears any difference between them viz. by comparing them with the Copies of other Countries from whence the Doctrine originally came and if those Copies vary too the more Copies should be preferred before the fewer the ancienter before the latter If yet any uncertainty remains the original Language must be consulted This is in case a Question ariseth among the acknowledged authentical Copies of the Catholick Church in which case we see he never sends men to the infallible Testimony of the Church for certainty as to the Truth of the Copies but if the Question be Whether any writing it self be authentical or no then it stands to the greatest reason that the Testimony of the Catholick Church should be relyed on which by reason of its large spread and continual Succession from the very time of those writings cannot but give the most indubitable Testimony concerning the authenticalness of the writings of the Apostles and Evangelists And were it not for this Testimony S. Austin might justly say He should not believe the Gospel i. e. Suppose those writings which
contain the Gospel in them for it is plain he speaks of them and not the Doctrine abstractly considered should have wanted that consent of the Catholick Church that it had not been delivered down by a constant succession of all Ages from the Apostles and were not received among the Christian Churches but started out from a few persons who differ from all Christian Churches as this Apostleship of Manichaeus did he might justly question the Truth of them And this I take to be truest and most natural account of these so much controverted words of S. Austin by which sense the other two Questions are easily answered for it is plain S. Austin means not the judgement of the present Church but of the Catholick Church in the most comprehensive sense as taking in all ages and places or in Vincentius his words Succession Vniversality and Consent and it further appears that the influence which this Authority hath is sufficient to induce Assent to the thing attested in all persons who consider it in what age capacity or condition soever And therefore if in this sense you extend it beyond Novices and Weaklings I shall not oppose you in it but it cannot be denied that it is intended chiefly for doubters in the Faith because the design of it is to give men satisfaction as to the reason why they ought to believe But neither you nor any of those you call Catholick Authours will ever be able to prove that S. Austin by these words ever dreamt of any infallible Authority in the present Church as might be abundantly proved from the chapter foregoing where he gives an account of his being in the Catholick Church from the Consent of People and Nations from that Authority which was begun by miracles nourished by hope increased by charity confirmed by continuance which certainly are not the expressions of one who resolved his Faith into the infallible Testimony of the present Church And the whole scope and design of his Book de utilitate credendi doth evidently refute any such apprehension as might be easily manifested were it not too large a subject for this place where we only examine the meaning of S. Austin in another Book The substance of which is that That speech of his doth not contain a resolution of his Faith as to the Divinity of Christs Doctrine but the resolution of it as to the Truth and authenticalness of the writings of the Apostles and Evangelists which we acknowledge to be into the Testimony of the Catholick Church in the most large and comprehensive sense The next thing we come to consider is an Absurdity you charge on his Lordship viz. That if the infallible Authority of the Church be not admitted in the Resolution he must have recourse to the private Spirit which you say though he would seem to exclude from the state of the Question yet he falls into it under the specious title of Grace so that he only changeth the words but admits the same thing for which you cite p. 83 84. That therein his Lordship should averr that where others used to say They were infallibly resolved that Scripture was Gods Word by the Testimony of the Spirit within them that he hath the same assurance by Grace Whether you be not herein guilty of abusing his Lordship by a plain perverting of his meaning will be best seen by producing his words A man saith he is probably led by the Authority of the present Church as by the first informing inducing perswading means to believe the Scripture to be the Word of God But when he hath studied considered and compared this Word with it self and with other writings with the help of ordinary Grace and a mind morally induced and reasonably perswaded by the Voice of the Church the Scripture then gives greater and higher reasons of Credibility to it self than Tradition alone could give And then he that believes resolves his last and full assent that Scripture is of Divine Authority into internal arguments found in the letter it self though found by the help and direction of Tradition without and Grace within Had you not a great mind to calumniate who could pick out of these words That the Bishop resolved his Faith into Grace Can any thing be more plain than the contrary is from them when in the most perspicuous terms he says that the last Resolution of Faith is into internal arguments and only supposeth Tradition and Grace as necessary helps for the finding them Might you not then as well have said That his Lordship notwithstanding his zeal against the Infallibility of Tradition is fain to resolve his Faith into it at last as well as say that he doth it into Grace for he joyns these two together But Is it not possible to assert the Vse and Necessity of Grace in order to Faith but the last Resolution of it must be into it Do not all your Divines as well as ours suppose and prove the Necessity of Grace in order to believing and Are they not equally guilty of having recourse to the private Spirit Do you really think your self that there is any thing of Divine Grace in Faith or no If there be free your Self then from the private Spirit and you do his Lordship For shame then forbear such pitiful calumnies which if they have any truth in them You are as much concerned as Your adversary in it You would next perswade us That the Relator never comes near the main difficulty which say you is if the Church be supposed fallible in the Tradition of Scripture how it shall be certainly known whether de facto she now errs not in her delivery of it If this be your grand difficulty it is sufficiently assoiled already having largely answered this Question in terminis in the preceding Chapter You ask further What they are to do who are unresolved which is the true Church as though it were necessary for men to know which is the true Church before they can believe the Scriptures to be the Word of God but when we assert the tradition of the Church to be necessary for believing the Scriptures we do not thereby understand the particular Tradition of any particular Church whose judgement they must rely on but the Vniversal Tradition of all Christians though this must be first made known in some particular Society by the means of some particular persons though their authority doth not oblige us to believe but only are the means whereby men come acquainted with that Vniversal Tradition And therefore your following discourse concerning the knowing the true Church by its motives is superseded for we mean no other Church than the Community of Christians in this Controversie and if you ask me By what motives I come to be certain which is a Community of Christians and which of Mahumetans and how one should be known from another I can soon resolve you But we are so far from making it necessary to know which particular society
to belief But the belief it self that Scripture is the Word of God rests upon Scripture when a man finds it to answer and exceed that which the Church gave in Testimony For this his Lordship cites Origen who though much nearer the prime Tradition than we are yet being to prove that the Scriptures were inspired from God he saith De hoc assignabimus ex ipsis Scripturis Divinis quae nos competentèr moverint c. We will mention those things out of the sacred Scriptures which have perswaded us c. To this you answer Though Origen prove by the Scriptures themselves that they were inspired from God yet doth he never avow that this could be proved out of them unless they were received by the infallible Authority of the Church Which Answer is very unreasonable For 1. It might be justly expected that his Lordship had produced an express Testimony to his purpose out of Origen you should have brought some other as clear for his believing Scripture on the Churches Infallibility which you are so far from that you would put us to prove a Negative But if you will deal fairly and as you ought to do produce your Testimonies out of him and the rest of the Fathers concerning your Churches Infallibility Till then excuse us if we take their express words and leave you to gather Infallibility out of their latent meanings 2. What doth your Infallibility conduce to the believing Scriptures for themselves For you say The Scriptures cannot be proved by themselves to be Gods Word unless they were received by the infallible Authority of the Church it seems then if they be so received they may be proved by themselves to be Gods Word Are those proofs by themselves sufficient for Faith or no If not they are very slender proofs if they be What need your Churches Infallibility Unless you will suppose no man can discern those proofs without your Churches Testimony and then they are not proofs by themselves but from your Churches Infallibility which may serve for one accession more to the heap of your Contradictions His Lordship asserting the last resolution of Faith to be into simply Divine Authority cites that speech of Henr. à Gandavo That in the Primitive Church when the Apostles themselves spake they did believe principally for the sake of God and not the Apostles from whence he inferrs If where the Apostles themselves spake the last resolution of Faith was into God and not into themselves on their own account much more shall it now be into God and not the present Church and into the writings of the Apostles than into the words of their successors made up into Tradition All that you answer is That this argument must be solved by the Bishop as well as you because he hath granted the authority of the Apostles was Divine as well as you Was there ever a more senseless Answer Doth Gandavo deny the Apostles authority to have been Divine Nay Doth he not imply it when he saith Men did not believe for the Apostles sakes but for Gods who spake by them As S. Paul said You received our word not as the word of men but as it is indeed the Word of God How the Bishop should be concerned to answer this is beyond my skill to imagine If Origen speaks to such as believed the Scriptures to be the Word of God so doth the Bishop too viz. on the account of Tradition and Education If Origen endeavoured by those proofs to confirm and settle their Faith that is all the Bishop aims at that a Faith taken up on the Churches Tradition may be settled and confirmed by the internal arguments of Scripture But how you should from this discourse assert That the Authority of the Church must be infallible in delivering the Scripture is again beyond my reach neither can I possibly think what should bear the face of Premises to such a Conclusion Unless it be if Origen assert That the Scriptures may be believed for themselves if Gandavo saith That the resolution of Faith must be into God himself then the Churches Authority must be infallible but it appears already that the premises are true and what then remains but therefore c. which may indeed be listed among your rare argumentations for Infallibility 2. That Scripture cannot manifest it self to be an infallible Light the proof of which is the design of your following discourse Wherein you first quarrel with the Bishop for his arguing from the Scriptures being a Light for thence you say it will only follow that the Scripture manifests it self to be a Light which you grant but that it should manifest it self to be an infallible Light you deny for say you unless he could shew that there are no other Lights save the Word of God and such as are infallible he can never make good his consequence For in Seneca Plutarch Aristotle you read many Lights and those manifest themselves to be Lights but they do not therefore manifest themselves to be infallible Lights The substance of your argument lyes in this The Scripture discovers the Being of God so doth the Talmud and Alcoran as well as it the Scripture delivers abundance of moral instructions but these may be found in multitudes of other Books both of Christians and Jews and Heathens and as we do not thence inferr that these Books are infallible so neither can we that the Scriptures are This is the utmost of sense or reason which I can extract out of your discourse which reduced into Form will come to this If the Scriptures contain nothing in them but what may be found in other Books that are not infallible then the Scriptures cannot shew themselves to be infallible but the antecedent is true and therefore the consequent I could wish you would have taken a little more pains in proving that which must be your assumption viz. That Scripture contains nothing in it but what may be seen in Seneca Plutarch Aristotle the Talmud Alcoran and other Books of Jews and Heathens These are rare things to assert among Christians without offering at any more proof of them than you do which lyes in this Syllogism If Scripture contain some things which may be seen in these Books then it contains nothing but what may be seen in these Books but the Scripture contains some things which may be seen in other Books viz. the existence of God and moral instructions therefore it contains nothing but what is in them And Do you really think that you have now proved that there is nothing in Scripture that can shew it self to be infallible because some things are common to other writings Would you not take it very ill that any should say that you had no more brains than a Horse or a creature of a like nature because they have sense and motion as well as you Yet this is the very same argument whereby you would prove that the Scriptures cannot shew
that the Catholick Church is the subject of Infallibility But I had thought nothing could have been more necessary than to have known this But I proceed then How comes this Catholick Church to have this Infallible Assistance Cannot I suppose that Christ and the Holy Spirit may exist without giving this Assistance cannot I suppose that Christian Religion may be in the world without such an Infallibility Is this Assistance therefore a necessary or a free Act A free Act. If a free Act then for all you know Your Catholick Church may not be so assisted No you reply you are sure it is so assisted But Whence can you be sure of an arbitrary thing unless the Authours of this Assistance have engaged themselves by Promise to give your Catholick Church that Infallible Assistance Yes that they have you reply and then produce Luk. 10.16 Mat. 28.20 Joh. 14.16 But although our Infidel might ask some untoward Questions still as How you are sure these are Divine Promises when the knowledge that they are Divine must suppose the thing to be true which you would prove out of them viz. that your Church is infallible Supposing them Divine how are you sure That and no other is the meaning of them when from such places you prove that your Church is the only Infallible Interpreter of Scripture But I let pass these and other Questions and satisfie my self with this That it is impossible for you to prove such an Infallible Assistance of Christ and the Holy Spirit unless you produce some express Promise for it 2. This being impossible it necessarily follows That the only Motives of Credibility which can prove your Church Infallible must be such as do antecedently prove these Promises to be Divine This is so plain and evident a Consectary from the former that it were an affront upon humane understanding to go about to prove it For if the Infallibility doth depend upon the Promise nothing can prove that Infallibility but what doth prove that Promise to be True and Divine True or else not to be believed Divine or else not to be relyed on for such an Assistance none else being able to make a promise of it but the Authour of it As therefore my right to an estate as given by Will depends wholly upon the Truth and Validity of that Will which I must first prove before I can challenge any right to it So your pretence of Infallibility must solely depend upon the Promises which you challenge it by By which it appears that your attempting to prove the Infallibility of your Church by Motives of Credibility antecedent to and independent on the Scripture is vain ridiculous and destructive to that very Infallibility which you pretend to Which being by a free Assistance of Christ and his Spirit must wholly depend on the proof of the Promise made of it For if you prove no Promise all your Motives of Credibility prove nothing at all as I have at large demonstrated before and shall not follow you in needless repetitions 3. No right to any priviledge can be challenged by virtue of a free Promise made to particular persons unless it be evident that the intention of the Promiser was that it should equally extend to them and others For the Promise being free and the Priviledge such as carries no necessity at all along with it in order to the great ends of Christian Religion it is intolerable Arrogance and Presumption to challenge it without manifest evidence that the design of it was for them as well as the persons to whom it was made Indeed in such Promises which are built on common and general grounds containing things agreeable to all Christians it is but reasonable to inferr the universal extent of that Promise to all such as are in the like condition Hence the Apostle inferrs from the particular Promise made to Joshua I will never leave thee nor forsake thee the effect of it upon all believers Although had not the Apostle done it before us it may seem questionable on what ground we could have done it unless from the general reason of of it and the unbounded nature of Divine Goodness in things necessary for the Good of his People But in things arbitrary and such as contain special Priviledge in them to challenge a right to a Promise of the same Priviledge without equal evidence of the descent of it as the first Grant is great presumption and a challenge of the Promisor for partiality if he doth not make it good Because the pretence of the right of the Priviledge goes upon this ground that it is as much due to the Successor as to the Original Grantee 4. Nothing can be more unreasonable than to challenge a right to a Priviledge by virtue of such a Promise which was granted upon quite different considerations from the grounds on which that right is challenged Thus I shall after make it evident that the Promise of an Infallible Assistance of the Holy Ghost had a peculiar respect to the Apostles present employment and the first state of the Church that it was not made upon reasons common to all ages viz. for the Government of the Church deciding Controversies Foundation of Faith all which Ends may be sufficiently attained without them But above all it seems very unreasonable that a Promise made to persons in one office must be applied in the same manner to persons in a quite different office that a Promise made to each of them separate must be equally applied to others only as in Council that a Promise made implying Divine Assistance must be equally applied to such who dare not say that Assistance is Divine but infallible and after a sort Divine that a Promise made of immediate Divine Revelation and enabling the persons who enjoyed the Priviledge of it to work miracles to attest their Testimony to be infallible should be equally applied to such as dare not challenge a Divine Revelation nor ever did work a miracle to attest such an Infallible Assistance Yet all this is done by you in your endeavour of fetching the Infallibility of your Church out of those Promises of the assistance of Christ and his Spirit which were made to the Apostles These general Considerations do sufficiently enervate the force of your whole Chapter which yet I come particularly to consider His Lordship tells A. C. That in the second sense of Church-Tradition he cannot find that the Tradition of the present Church is of Divine and Infallible Authority till A. C. can prove that this company of men the Roman Prelates and Clergy he means are so fully so clearly so permanently assisted by Christ and his Spirit as may reach to Infallibility much less to a Divine Infallibilility in this or any other Principle which they teach In answer to this you tell us That the Bishop declines the Question by withdrawing his Reader from the thesis to the hypothesis from the Church to the Church of Rome But
that you deny not the truth of what is therein contained for otherwise the want of Authority in themselves the ambiguity of them the impossibility of knowing the sense of them without Tradition are the very same arguments which with the greatest pomp and ostentation are produced by you against the Scriptures being the Rule whereby to judge of Controversies Which we have no more cause to wonder at than Irenaeus had in the Valentinians because from them we produce our greatest arguments against your fond opinions Now when the Valentinians pretended their great rule was on oral Tradition which was conveyed from the Apostles down to them to this Irenaeus opposeth the constant Tradition of the Apostolical Churches which in a continued succession was preserved from the Apostles times which was the same every where among all the Churches which every one who desired it might easily be satisfied about because they could number them who by the Apostles were appointed Bishops in Churches and their successors unto our own times who taught no such thing nor ever knew any such thing as they madly fancy to themselves We see then his appeal to Tradition was only in a matter of fact Whether ever any such thing as their opinion which was not contained in Scripture was delivered to them by the Apostles or no i. e. Whether the Apostles left any oral Traditions in the Churches which should be the rule to interpret Scriptures by or no And the whole design of Irenaeus is to prove the contrary by an appeal to all the Apostolical Churches and particularly by appealing to the Roman Church because of its due fame and celebrity in that Age wherein Irenaeus lived So that Irenaeus appealed to the then Roman Church even when he speaks highest in the honour of it for somewhat which is fundamentally contrary to the pretensions of the now Roman Church He then appealed to it for an evidence against such oral Traditions which were pretended to be left by the Apostles as a rule to understand Scripture by and were it not for this same pretence now what will become of the Authority of the present Roman Church After he hath thus manifested by recourse to the Apostolical Churches that there was no such Tradition left among them it was very reasonable to inferr that there was none such at all for they could not imagine if the Apostles had designed any such Tradition but they would have communicated it to those famous Churches which were planted by them and it was absurd to suppose that those Churches who could so easily derive their succession from the Apostles should in so short a time have lost the memory of so rich a treasure deposited with them as that was pretended to be from whence he sufficiently refutes that unreasonable imagination of the Valentinians Which having done he proceeds to settle those firm grounds on which the Christians believed in one God the Father and in one Lord Jesus Christ which he doth by removing the only Objection which the Adversaries had against them For when the Christians declared the main reason into which they resolved their Faith as to these principles was Because no other God or Christ were revealed in Scripture but them whom they believed the Valentinians answered this could not be a sufficient foundation for their Faith on this account because many things were delivered in Scripture not according to the truth of the things but the judgment and opinion of the persons they were spoken to This therefore being such a pretence as would destroy any firm resolution of Faith into Scripture and must necessarily place it in Tradition Irenaeus concerns himself much to demonstrate the contrary by an ostension as he calls it that Christ and the Apostles did all along speak according to truth and not according to the opinion of their auditours which is the entire subject of the fifth Chapter of his third Book Which he proves first of Christ because he was Truth it self and it would be very contrary to his nature to speak of things otherwise then they were when the very design of his coming was to direct men in the way of Truth The Apostles were persons who professed to declare truth to the world and as light cannot communicate with darkness so neither could truth be blended with so much falshood as that opinion supposeth in them And therefore neither our Lord nor his Apostles could be supposed to mean any other God or Christ then whom they declared For this saith he were rather to increase their ignorance and confirm them in it then to cure them of it and therefore that Law was true which pronounced a curse on every one who led a blind man out of his way And the Apostles being sent for the recovery of the lost sight of the blind cannot be supposed to speak to men according to their present opinion but according to the manifestation of truth For what Physitian intending to cure a Patient will do according to his Patients desire and not rather what will be best for him From whence he concludes Since the design of Christ and his Apostles was not to flatter but to cure mens souls it follows that they did not speak to them according to their former opinion but according to truth without all hypocrisie and dissimulation From whence it follows that if Christ and his Apostles did speak according to truth there is then need of no Oral Tradition for our understanding Scripture and consequently the resolution of our Faith as to God and Christ and proportionably as to other objects to be believed is not into any Tradition pretending to be derived from the Apostles but into the Scriptures themselves which by this discourse evidently appears to have been the judgement of Irenaeus The next which follows is Clemens of Alexandria who flourished A. D. 196. whom St. Hierome accounted the most learned of all the writers of the Church and therefore cannot be supposed ignorant in so necessary a part of the Christian Doctrine as the Resolution of Faith is And if his judgement may be taken the Scriptures are the only certain Foundation of Faith for in his Admonition to the Gentiles after he hath with a great deal of excellent learning derided the Heathen Superstitions when he comes to give an account of the Christians Faith he begins it with this pregnant Testimony to our purpose For saith he the Sacred Oracles affording us the most manifest grounds of Divine worship are the Foundation of Truth And so goes on in a high commendation of the Scripture as the most compendious directions for happiness the best Institutions for government of life the most free from all vain ornaments that they raise mens souls up out of wickedness yielding the most excellent remedies disswading from the greatest deceit and most clearly incouraging to a foreseen happiness with more of the same nature And when after he perswades men with so much Rhetorick and
most part yet living These are your assertions and because you seek not to prove them it shall be sufficient to oppose ours to them Our assertion therefore is that the Church and Court of Rome are guilty of this Schism by obtruding erroneous Doctrines and superstitious practises as the conditions of her Communion by adding such Articles of Faith which are contrary to the plain rule of Faith and repugnant to the sense of the truly Catholick and not the Roman Church by her intolerable incroachments and usurpations upon the liberties and priviledges of particular Churches under a vain pretence of Vniversal Pastourship by forcing men if they would not damn their souls by sinning against their consciences in approving the errours and corruptions of the Roman Church to joyn together for the Solemn Worship of God according to the rule of Scripture and practise of the Primitive Church and suspending Communion with that Church till those abuses and corruptions be redressed In which they neither deny obedience to any Lawful Authority over them nor take to themselves any other Power than the Law of God hath given them receiving their Authority in a constant Succession from the Apostles they institute no Rites and Ceremonies either contrary to or different from the practise of the Primitive Church they neither exclude or dispossess others of their Lawful Power but in case others neglect their office they may be notwithstanding obliged to perform theirs in order to the Churches Reformation Leaving the Supreme Authority of the Kingdome or Nation to order and dispose of such things in the Church which of right appertain unto it And this we assert to be the case of Schism in reference to the Church of England which we shall make good in opposition to your assertions where we meet with any thing that seems to contradict the whole or any part of it These and the like practises of yours to use your own words not any obstinate maintaining any erroneous Doctrines as you vainly pretend we averre to have been the true and real causes of that separation which is made between your Church and Ours And you truly say That Protestants were thrust out of your Church which is an Argument they did not voluntarily forsake the Communion of it and therefore are no Schismaticks but your carriage and practises were such as forced them to joyn together in a distinct Communion from you And it was not we who left your Church but your Church that left her Primitive Faith and Purity in so high a manner as to declare all such excommunicate who will not approve of and joyn in her greatest corruptions though it be sufficiently manifest that they are great recessions from the Faith Piety and Purity of that Roman Church which was planted by the Apostles and had so large a commendation from the Apostolical men of those first ages Since then such errours and corruptions are enforced upon us as conditions of Communion with you by the same reason that the Orthodox did very well in departing from the Arrians because the Arrians were already departed from the Church by their false Doctrine will our separation from you be justified who first departed from the Faith and Purity of the Primitive Church and not only so but thrust out of your Communion all such as would not depart from it as farr as you Having thus considered and retorted your Assertions we come to your Answers Nor say you does the Bishop vindicate the Protestant party by saying The cause of Schism was ours and that we Catholicks thrust Protestants from us because they call'd for truth and redress of abuses For first there can be no just cause of Schism this hath been granted already even by Protestants And so it is by us and the reason is very evident for it for if there be a just cause there can be no Schism and therefore what you intend by this I cannot imagine unless it be to free Protestants from the guilt of Schism because they put the Main of their tryal upon the justice of the cause which moved them to forsake the Communion of your Church or else you would have it taken for granted that ours was a Schism and thence inferr there could be no just cause of it As if a man being accused for taking away the life of one who violently set upon him in the High-way with an intent both to rob and destroy him should plead for himself that this could be no murther in him because there was a sufficient and justifiable cause for what he did that he designed nothing but to go quietly on his road that this person and several others violently set upon him that he intreated them to desist that he sought to avoid them as much as he could but when he saw they were absolutely bent on his ruine he was forced in his own necessary defence to take away the life of that person Would not this with any intelligent Jury be looked on as a just and reasonable Vindication But if so wise a person as your self had been among them you would no doubt have better informed them for you would very gravely have told them All his plea went on a false supposition that he had a just cause for what he did but there could be no just cause for murther Do you not see now how subtil and pertinent your Answer is here by this parallel to it For as in that case all men grant that there can be no just cause for murther because all murther is committed without a just cause and if there be one it ceaseth to be murther So it is here in Schism which being a causeless separation from the Churches Vnity I wonder who ever imagined there could be just cause for it But to rectifie such gross mistakes as these are for the future you would do well to understand that Schism formally taken alwayes imports something criminal in it and there can be no just cause for a sin but besides that there is that which if you understand it you would call the materiality of it which is the separation of one part of the Church from another Now this according to the different grounds and reasons of it becomes lawful or unlawful that is as the reasons do make it necessary or unnecessary For separation is not lawful but when it is necessary now this being capable of such a different nature that it may be good or evil according to its circumstances there can be no absolute judgement passed upon it till all those reasons and circumstances be duely examined and if there be no sufficient grounds for it then it is formally Schism i. e. a culpable separation if there be sufficient cause then there may be a separation but it can be no Schism And because the Vnion of the Catholick Church lyes in Fundamental and necessary truths therefore there can be no separation absolutely from the Catholick Church but what involves in it the
but it belonged likewise to him to depose unworthy ones and restore the unjustly deposed by others We read of no less then eight several Patriarchs of Constantinople deposed by the Bishop of Rome Sixtus the third deposed also Polychronius Bishop of Hierusalem as his Acts set down in the first Tome of the Councils testifie On the contrary Athanasius Patriarch of Alexandria and Paulus Bishop of Constantinople were by Julius the first restored to their respective Sees having been unjustly expelled by Hereticks The same might be said of divers others over whom the Pope did exercise the like authority which he could never have done upon any other ground then that of Divine Right and as being generally acknowledged St. Peters Successour in the Government of the whole Church Three things I shall return you in Answer to this Discourse 1. That the practise of the Church doth not shew any such inequality as you contend for between the Pope and other Patriarchs 2. That no such practise of the Church can be proved from the instances by you brought And therefore lastly It by no means follows that the Pope exercised any such authority by Divine right or was acknowledged to be St. Peters Successour in the Government of the whole Church I begin with the practice of the ancient Church which is so far from being an evidence of such an inequality of Patriarchs as that you contend for that nothing doth more confirm that which his Lordship saith concerning the equality of them then that doth For which we appeal to that famous testimony to this purpose in the sixth Canon of the Nicene Council Let ancient customes prevail according to which let the Bishop of Alexandria have power over them who are in Aegypt Libya and Pentapolis because this was likewise the custome for the Bishop of Rome And accordingly in Antioch and other Provinces let the priviledges be preserved to the Churches Which Canon is the more remarkable because it is the first that ever was made by the ancient Church for regulating the rights and priviledges of Churches over each other which there was like to be now more contest about not only by reason of the Churches liberty under Constantine but because of the new disposition of the Empire by him which was made not long before the sitting of the Council of Nice But the particular occasion of this Canon is generally supposed to be this Meletius an ambitious Bishop in Aegypt much about the time that Arrius broached his Heresie at Alexandria takes upon him to ordain Bishops and others in Aegypt without the consent of the Bishop of Alexandria This case being brought before the Nicene Fathers they pronounce these ordinations null depose Meletius and to prevent the like practises for the future do by this Canon confirm the ancient customs of that nature in the Church so that the Bishop of Alexandria should enjoy as full right and power over the Provinces of Aegypt Libya and Pentapolis as the Bishop of Rome had over those subject to him as likewise Antioch and other Churches should enjoy their former priviledges Where we plainly see that the ground of this extent of power is not attributed to any Divine right of the Bishop of Rome or any other Metropolitan but to the ancient custome of the Church whereby it had obtained that such Churches that were deduced as it were so many colonies from the Mother-Church should retain so much respect to and dependence upon her as not to receive any Bishop into them without the consent of that Bishop who governed in the Metropolis Which was the prime reason of the subordination of those lesser Churches to the Metropolis And this custome being drawn down from the first plantation of Churches and likewise much conducing to the preserving of unity in them these Nicene Fathers saw no reason to alter it but much to confirm it For otherwise there might have been continual bandying and opposition of lesser Bishops and Churches against the greater and therefore the Discipline and Vnity of the Church did call for this subordination which could not be better determined then by the ancient custome which had obtained in the several Churches It being found most convenient that the Churches in their subordination should be most agreeable to the civil disposition of the Empire And therefore for our better understanding the force and effect of this Nicene Canon we must cast our eye a little upon the civil disposition of the Roman Empire by Constantine then lately altered from the former disposition of it under Augustus and Adrian He therefore distributed the administration of the Government of the Roman Empire under four Praefecti Praetorio but for the more convenient management of it the whole body of the Empire was cast into several Jurisdictions containing many Provinces within them which were in the Law call'd Dioeceses over every one of which there was appointed a Vicarius or Lieutenant to one of the Praefecti Praetorio whose residence was in the chief City of the Diocese where the Praetorium was and justice was administred to all within that Diocese and thither appeals were made Under these were those Proconsuls or Correctores who ruled in the particular Provinces and had their residence in the Metropolis of it under whom were the particular Magistrates of every City now according to this disposition of the Empire the Western part of it contained in it seven of these Dioceses as under the Praefectus Praetorio Galliarum was the Diocese of Gaul which contained seventeen Provinces the Diocese of Britain which contained five afterwards but three in Constantines time the Diocese of Spain seven Under the praefectus Praetorio Italiae was the Diocese of Africa which had six Provinces the Diocese of Italy whose seat was Milan 7. the Diocese of Rome 10. Under the Praefectus Praetorio Illyrici was the Diocese of Illyricum in which were seventeen Provinces In the Eastern Division were the Diocese of Thrace which had six Provinces the Diocese of Pontus 11. and so the Diocese of Asia the Oriental properly so called wherein Antioch was 15. all which were under the Praefectus Praetorio Orientis the Aegyptian Diocese which had six Provinces was under the Praefectus Augustalis in the time of Theodosius the elder Illyricum was divided into two Dioceses the Eastern whose Metropolis was Thessalonica and had eleven Provinces the Western whose Metropolis was Syrmium and had six Provinces According to this division of the Empire we may better understand the Affairs and Government of the Church which was model'd much after the same way unless where Ancient custom or the Emperour's edict did cause any variation For as the Cities had their Bishops so the Provinces had their Arch-Bishops and the Dioceses their Primates whose Jurisdiction extended as far as the Diocese did and as the Conventus Juridici were kept in the chief City of the Diocese for matters of Civil Judicature so the chief Ecclesiastical
their rights and liberties and thereupon gave present notice to Caelestine to forbear sending his Officers amongst them lest he should seem to induce the swelling pride of the World into the Church of Christ. And this is said to have amounted into a formal separation from the Church of Rome and to have continued for the space of somewhat more then one hundred years For which his Lordship produceth two publick instruments extant among the ancient Councils the one an Epistle from Boniface 2. in whose time the reconciliation to Rome is said to be made by Eulalius then Bishop of Carthage but the separation instigante Diabolo by the Temptation of the Devil The other is an exemplar precum or Copy of the Petition of the same Eulalius in which he damns and curses all those his Predecessours which went against the Church of Rome Now his Lordship urges from hence Either these Instruments are true or false If they be false then Boniface 2. and his Accomplices at Rome or some for them are notorious forgers and that of Records of great consequence to the Government and peace of the whole Church of Christ and to the perpetual Infamy of that See and all this foolishly and to no purpose On the other side if these instruments be true then 't is manifest that the Church of Africk separated from the Church of Rome which separation was either unjust or just if unjust then St. Austin Eugenius Fulgentius and all those Bishops and other Martyrs which suffered in the Vandalike persecution dyed in actual and unrepented Schism and out of the Church If it were just then is it far more lawful for the Church of England by a National Council to cast off the Popes Vsurpation as she did than it was for the African Church to separate because then the African Church excepted only against the Pride of Rome in case of Appeals and two other Canons less material but the Church of England excepts besides this grievance against many corruptions in Doctrine with which Rome at that time was not tainted And St. Austin and those other famous men durst not thus have separated from Rome had the Pope had that powerful Principality over the whole Church of Christ and that by Christs own Ordinance and Institution as A. C. pretends he had This is the substance of his Lordships discourse to which we must consider what Answer you return Which in short is That you dare not assert the credit of those two Instruments but are very willing to think them forgeries but you say the Schismatical separation of the African Church from the Roman is inconsistent with the truth of story and confuted by many pregnant and undeniable instances which prove that the Africans notwithstanding the context in the sixth Council of Carthage touching matter of Appeals were alwayes in true Catholick Communion with the Roman Church even during the term of this pretended separation For which you produce the Testimony of Pope Caelestine concerning St. Austin the proceeding of Pope Leo in the case of Lupicinus the Testimonies of Eugenius Fulgentius Gregory and the presence of some African Bishops at Rome To all which I Answer that either the African Fathers did persist in the decree of the Council of Carthage or they did not if they did persist in it and no separation followed then the casting off the Vsurpations of the Roman See cannot incur the guilt of Schism for these African Bishops did that and it seems continued still in the Roman Communion by which it is evident that the Roman Church was not so far degenerated then as afterwards or that the Authority of those persons was so great in the Church that the Roman Bishops durst not openly break with them which is a sufficient account of what Caelestine saith concerning St. Austin that he lived and dyed in the Communion of the Roman Church If you say the reason why they were in Communion with the Roman Church was because they did not persist you must prove it by better instances then you have here brought for some of them are sufficient proofs of the contrary As appears by the case of Lupicinus an African Bishop appealing to Leo who indeed was willing enough to receive him but what of that Did not the African Bishops of Mauritania Caesariensis excommunicate him notwithstanding that appeal and ordained another in his place and therefore the Pope very fairly sends him back to be tryed by the Bishops of his Province Which instance as it argues the Popes willingness to have brought up Appeals among them so it shews the continuance of their stoutness in opposing them And even Pope Gregory so long after though in his time the business of Appeals was much promoted at Rome yet he dares not challenge them from the Bishops of Africa but yields to them the enjoyment of those priviledges which they said they had enjoyed from the Apostles times And the testimonies of Eugenius and Fulgentius imply nothing of subjection to Rome but a Praeeminence which that Church had above all others which it might have without the other as London may I hope be the Head-City of England and yet all other Cities not express subjection to it But if after that Council of Carthage the Bishops of Rome did by degrees encroach upon the liberties of the African Churches there is this sufficient account to be given of it that as the Roman Bishops were alwayes watchful to take advantages to inhance their power and that especially when other Churches were in a suffering condition so a fit opportunity fell out for them to do it in Africa For not long after that Council of Carthage fell out that dismal persecution of the African Churches by the irruption of the Vandals in which all the Catholick Bishops were banished out of Africa or lived under great sufferings and by a strict edict of Gensericus no new Bishops were suffered to be ordained in the places of the former This now was a fair opportunity for the Bishop of Rome to advance his Authority among the suffering Bishops St. Peters pretended Successour loving to fish in troubled waters and it being fatal to Rome from the first Foundation of it to advance her self by the ruins of other places But we are call'd off from the ruins of other Churches to observe the methods whereby the Popes grew great under the Emperours which his Lordship gives an account of from Constantines time to Charles the Great about five hundred years which begins thus So soon as the Emperours became Christian the Church began to be put in better order For the calling and Authority of Bishops over the Inferiour Clergy that was a thing of known use and benefit for preservation of Vnity and Peace in the Church Which was confessed by St. Hierom himself and so settled in mens minds from the very Infancy of the Church that it had not been to that time contradicted by any The only difficulty then
sufficiently detected by the African Bishops And it is the worst of all excuses to lay the blame of it as you do on the Pope's Secretary for Do you think Pope Zosimus was so careless of his business as not to look over the Commonitorium which Faustinus carried with him Do you think Faustinus would not have corrected the fault when the African Bishops boggled so at it What made him so unwilling that they should send into the East to examine the Nicene Canons but intreated them to leave the business wholly with the Pope if he were not conscious of some forgery in the business But you say as a further plea in Zosimus his excuse That the Council of Sardica was an Appendix to the Nicene Council rather than otherwise An excellent Appendix made at two and twenty years distance from the other and called by other Emperours consisting of many other persons and assembled upon a quite different occasion If this had been an Appendix to the Nicene Council How comes that to have but twenty Canons How came Atticus and Cyrillus not to send these with the other How come all the Copies of Councils and Canons to distinguish them How came they not to be contained in the Code of Canons produced in the Council of Chalcedon in the cause of Bassianus and Stephanus If this were the same Council because some of the same things were determined How comes that in Trullo not to be the same with the 6. Oecumenical How comes the Council of Antioch not to be an Appendix to the Council of Nice if this was when it was celebrated before this and the Canons of it inserted in the Code of Canons owned by the Council of Chalcedon So that by all the shifts and arts you can use you cannot excuse Zosimus from Imposture in sending these Sardican under the name of the Nicene Canons And on what account the Pope satisfied the Canons then is apparent enough viz. for the advancing the Interess of his See and this the African Fathers did as easily discern afterwards as we do now But by this we see What good Foundations the Pope's claim of Supremacy had then and what arts not to say frauds they were beholding to for setting it up even as great as they have since made use of to maintain it CHAP. VI. Of the Title of Universal Bishop In what sense the Title of Vniversal Bishop was taken in Antiquity A threefold acceptation of it as importing 1. A general care over the Christian Churches which is attributed to other Catholick Bishops by Antiquity besides the Bishop of Rome as is largely proved 2. A peculiar dignity over the Churches within the Roman Empire This accounted then Oecumenical thence the Bishops of the seat of the Empire called Oecumenical Bishops and sometimes of other Patriarchal Churches 3. Nothing Vniversal Jurisdiction over the whole Church as Head of it so never given in Antiquity to the Bishop of Rome The ground of the Contest about this Title between the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople Of the proceedings of the Council of Chalcedon about the Popes Supremacy Of the Grammatical and Metaphorical sense of this Title Many arguments to prove it impossible that S. Gregory should understand it in the Grammatical sense The great absurdities consequent upon it S. Gregory's Reasons proved to hold against that sense of it which is admitted in the Church of Rome Of Irenaeus his opposition to Victor's excommunicating the Asian Bishops argues no authority he had over them What the more powerful principality in Irenaeus is Ruffinus his Interpretation of the 6. Nicene Canon vindicated The Suburbicary Churches cannot be understood of all the Churches in the Roman Empire The Pope no Infallible successor of S. Peter nor so acknowledged to be by Epiphanius S. Peter had no Supremacy of Power over the Apostles HIs Lordship having undertaken to give an account How the Popes rose by degrees to their Greatness under the Christian Emperours in prosecution of that necessarily falls upon the Title of Vniversal Bishop affected by John the Patriarch of Constantinople and condemned by Pelagius 1. and Gregory 2. This you call a trite and beaten way because I suppose the truth is so plain and evident in it but withall you tell us This Objection hath been satisfied a hundred times over if you had said the same Answer had been repeated so often over you had said true but if you say that it hath been satisfied once you say more than you are able to defend as will evidently appear by your very unsatisfactory Answer which at last you give to it So that if none of your party have been any wiser than your self in this matter I am so far from being satisfied with what they say that I can only pitty those persons whose interest swayes their understandings so much or at least their expressions as to make them say any thing that seems to be for their purpose though in it self never so senseless or unreasonable And I can scarce hold my self from saying with the Oratour when a like Objection to this was offered him because multitudes had said so Quasi verò quidquam sit tam valdè quà m nihil sapere vulgare That truth and reason are the greatest Novelties in the world For seriously Were it possible for men of common understanding to rest satisfied with such pitiful shifts as you are fain to make if they would but use any freedom in enquiring and any liberty of judging when they had done But when once men have given not to say sold away the exercise of their free reason by addicting themselves to a particular interest there can scarce any thing be imagined so absurd but it passeth currently from one to another because they are bound to receive all blindfold and in the same manner to deliver it to others By which means it is an easie matter for the greatest nonsense and contradictions to be said a hundred times over And Whether it be not so in the present case is that we are now to enquire into And for the same ends which you propose to your self viz. that all obscurity may be taken away and the truth clearly appear I shall in the first place set down What his Lordship saith and then distinctly examine What you reply in Answer to it Thus then his Lordship proceeds About this time brake out the ambition of John Patriarch of Constantinople affecting to be Vniversal Bishop He was countenanced in this by Mauricius the Emperour but sowrely opposed by Pelagius and S. Gregory Insomuch that S. Gregory plainly sayes That this Pride of his shews that the times of Antichrist were near So as yet and this was near upon the point of six hundred years after Christ there was no Vniversal Bishop no one Monarch over the whole Militant Church But Mauricius being deposed and murthered by Phocas Phocas conferred upon Boniface the third that very Honour which two of his predecessors had
man that he contended with 630. Bishops of the Council of Chalcedon about the Primacy of his See and whose Epistles breathe so much of self-denyal in all the contests he had about it And although Pope Agatho and the rest be of later standing when the Popes did begin a little more openly to take upon them yet Can the Protestants think that these men were byassed with their proper Interest Are not these weak pretences for them to reject their Authority upon For your part you say you could never understand this proceeding of Protestants The more a great deal is the pitty and if we could help your understanding and not endanger our own we would willingly do it Well but though Bellarmins pregnant reasons prove so abortive and though the Popes Authorities should not be taken yet his Lordship must needs wrong Bellarmin in saying That he doth upon the matter confess that there is not one Father in the Church disinteressed in the Cause who understands this Text as Bellarmin doth before Theophylact. And the reason is because though Bellarmin cite no more yet there might be more for all that for must he needs confcss there are no more Authours citable in any subject but what he cites himself As though Bellarmin were wont to leave out any authorities which made for his purpose especially in so weighty a subject as this Do you think he was so weak a person to run to Popes Authorities if he could have found any other and when he produces no more is it not a plain confession he found no more to his purpose But I am weary of such great Impertinencies and would fain meet with some thing of matter that might hold up the Readers patience as well as mine All that ever I can meet with that hath any thing of tendency that way is That this priviledge of the Indeficiency of St. Peters Faith doth not belong to him as an Apostle but rather as he was Prince of the Apostles and appointed to be Christs Vicar on earth after him Very handsomely begg'd again but where is the proof for all this Have you no Popes stand ready again to attest the truth of it For none else that have any reason would ever say it did St. Peter deny Christ as Prince of the Apostles Indeed it was then much for his honour that the Captain should fly from his colours first and Christs Vicar upon earth should the most need to have his Faith pray'd for that it should not fail I had thought St. Peter had been head of the Apostles and not Simon if Christ had spoke to him as his Vicar he would sure have call'd him Peter Peter and not Simon Simon But it seems he did not attend that Peter was the Rock on which his Church must be built or else he minded it so much that he thought that name improper when he mentions his falling You have therefore stoutly and unanswerably not proved but demonstrated that these words were spoken of St. Peter not as an Apostle but as Christs Vicar upon earth But suppose it were so what is this to those who pretend to be his Successours Yes very much For say you Whatever our Saviour intended should descend by vertue of that prayer of his did effectively so descend You might have put one of Bellarmins sine dubio's to this For Whoever was so sensless as to question that But you confess It is a very disputable question Whether every thing which Christ by his prayer intended and obtained for St. Peter was likewise intended by him to descend to St. Peters Successours Yet that some special priviledge was to descend to them is you say manifest by Bellarmins Authorities and Reasons If from nothing else I dare confidently say no man in his wits will believe it manifest And what that is neither you nor any one else can either prove or understand Yes say you it is that none of his Successours should ever so farr fall from the Faith as to teach Heresie in Pontificalibus or as you speak with Bellarmine any thing contrary to Faith tanquam Pontifex i. e. in vertue of that Authority which they were to have in the Church as St. Peters Successours Here then we fix a while to see this proved but our expectation is again frustrated For instead of proofs we meet with the old Mumpsimus of the Popes erring as private Doctor but not as Pastour of the Church A distinction so ridiculous that many among your selves deride it as will appear presently And therefore put in your tanquam Pontifex as long as you please you will gain no great matter by it When you can prove that Christ did intend in that one prayer some part of the Gift personally and absolutely to St. Peter and another part conditionally to his Successours I will grant it no absurdity to say that perhaps some part of the Gift did not belong to either of them But these are such strange fetches out of a plain Scripture that those may admire your subtilty who cannot be convinced by your reason Yet to let you see that these things are not so clear as you would have them I shall bring you some Arguments out of your own Writers against your interpretation of this place and I pray Answer them at your leasure Vigorius therefore proves that this place cannot be understood of St. Peter and his Successours that their Faith should not fail for then saith he 1. The Canons had decreed to no purpose that a Pope might be deposed in case of Heresie for those that suppose that he may fall into Heresie do doubtless suppose that his Faith fails Now here is a witness against you from your own Church and that out of your Canons too and that is better worth then twenty Testimonies of Popes for you 2. If this were understood of St. Peters Successours they who succeeded him at Antioch would enjoy this priviledge as well as those at Rome for they are saith he as well St. Peters Successours as the other And saith he if they understand this of one and not of the other totis faucibus se deridendos propinarent they expose themselves to contempt and laughter 3. If this were true of St. Peters Successours at Rome then the decrees of one Pope could not be revoked by the other because it is impossible they should erre in making those decrees But it is not Vigorius alone who hath shewed the weakness of your Arguments from this place for our learned Countryman Mr. White hath more fully and largely discovered the weakness of all your pretences from Scripture Fathers and Reason concerning the Popes succeeding St. Peter in his Infallibility And particularly as to this place he saith that either it concerns the present danger St. Peter was in or else doth represent what was to be afterwards in the Church and that it doth primarily and directly relate to St. Peters imminent tentation all the circumstances perswade us
to the Catholick Church which had been most proper for him if Head of the Church but only to the dispersed Jews in some particular Provinces Can any one then imagine he should be Monarch of the Church and no act of his as such recorded at all of him but carrying himself with all humility not fixing himself as Head of the Church in any Chair but going up and down from one place to another as the rest of the Apostles for promoting the Gospel of Christ To conclude all Is it possible to conceive there should be a Monarch appointed by Christ in the Church and yet the Apostle when he reckons up those offices which Christ had set in the Church speak not one word of him he mentions Apostles Prophets Evangelists Pastours and Teachers but the chief of all is omitted and he to whom the care of all the rest is committed and in whose Authority the welfare peace and unity of the Church is secured These things to me seem so incredible that till you have satisfied my mind in these Questions I must needs judge this pretended Monarchy in the Church to be one of the greatest Figments ever were in the Christian world And thus I have at large considered your Argument from Reason Why there should be such a Monarchy in the Church which I have the rather done because it is one of the great things in dispute between us and because the most plausible Argument brought for it is The necessity of it in order to the Churches peace which Monarchy being the best of Governments would the most tend to promote To return now to his Lordship He brings an evidence out of Antiquity against the acknowledgement of any such Monarchy in the Church from the literae communicatoriae which certified from one great Patriarch to another Who were fit or unfit to be admitted to their Communion upon any occasion of repairing from one See to another And these were sent mutually and as freely in the same manner from Rome to the other Patriarchs as from them to it Out of which saith his Lordship I think this will follow most directly that the Church-Government then was Aristocratical For had the Bishop of Rome been then accounted sole Monarch of the Church and been put into the definition of the Church as he is now by Bellarmin all these communicatory Letters should have been directed from him to the rest as whose admittance ought to be a rule for all to communicate but not from others to him at least not in that even equal brotherly way as now they appear to be written For it is no way probable the Bishops of Rome which even then sought their own greatness too much would have submitted to the other Patriarchs voluntarily had not the very course of the Church put it upon them To this you Answer That these literae communicatoriae do rather prove our assertion being ordained by Sixtus 1 in favour of such Bishops as were called to Rome or otherwise forced to repair thither to the end they might without scruple be received into their own Diocese at their return having also decreed that without such letters communicatory none in such case should be admitted But that these letters should be sent from other Bishops to Rome in such an even equal and brotherly way you say is one of his Lordships Chimaera's But this difference or inequality you pretend to be in them that those to the Pope were meerly Testimonial those from him were Mandatory witness say you the case of St. Athanasius and other Bishops restored by the Popes communicatory letters But supposing them equal you say it only shewed the Popes humility and ought to be no prejudice to his just authority and his right and power to do otherwise if he saw cause But all this depends upon a meer fiction viz. That these communicatory letters were ordained by Sixtus 1 in favour of such Bishops as were called to Rome than which nothing can be more improbable But I do not say that this is a Chimaera of your own Brains for you follow Baronius in it for which he produceth no other evidence but the Authour of the lives of the Popes but Binius adds that which seems to have been the first ground of it which is the second decretal Epistle of Sixtus 1 in which that Decree is extant But whosoever considers the notorious forgery of those decretal Epistles as will be more manifested where you contend for them on which account they are slighted by Card. Perron and in many places by Baronius himself will find little cause to triumph in this Epistle of Sixtus 1. And whoever reflects on the state of those times in which Sixtus lived will find it improbable enough that the Pope should take to himself so much Authority to summon Bishops to him and to order that none should be admitted without Communicatory letters from him It is not here a place to enquire into the several sorts of those letters which passed among the Bishops of the Primitive Church whether the Canonical Pacifical Ecclesiastical and Communicatory were all one and what difference there was between the Communicatory letters granted to Travellers in order to their Communion with forrain Churches and those letters which were sent from one Patriarch to another But this is sufficiently evident that those letters which were the tessera hospitalitatis as Tertullian calls it the Pass-port for Communion in forrain Churches had no more respect to the Bishop of Rome than to any other Catholick Bishop Therefore the Council of Antioch passeth two Canons concerning them one That no Traveller should be received without them another That none but Bishops should give them And that all Bishops did equally grant them to all places appears by that passage in St. Austin in his Epistle to Eusebius and the other Donatists relating the conference he had with Fortunius a Bishop of that party wherein St. Austin asked him Whether he could give communicatory letters whither he pleased for by that means it might be easily determined whether he had communion with the whole Catholick Church or no. From whence it follows that any Catholick Bishop might without any respect to the Bishop of Rome grant Communicatory letters to all forrain Churches And the enjoying of that Communion which was consequent upon these letters is all that Optatus means in that known saying of his that they had Communion with Siricius at Rome commercio formatarum by the use of these communicatory letters But besides these there were other letters which every Patriarch sent to the rest upon his first installment which were call'd their Synodical Epistles and these contained the profession of their Faith and the answers to them did denote their Communion with them Since therefore these were sent to all the Patriarchs indifferently and not barely to the Bishop of Rome there appears no difference at all in the letters sent to or
a publick person representing the Church not parabolically for that is no sustaining the person at all but really and historically And that S. Austin means As a publick person appears by the other expressions in the places cited that he did universam significare Ecclesiam signifie the whole Church and that those things which are spoken of Peter Non habent illustrem intellectum nisi cum referuntur ad Ecclesiam cujus ille agnoscitur in figurâ gestâsse personam Have no clear sense but when they are referred to the Church whose person he did bear Can you say this of a King who receives the Keyes of a Town whereof he takes possession for himself though it be for the good of the Kingdom that he signifies the whole Kingdom in it and that it cannot have any clear sense but when it is applied to the Kingdom which he represents No this cannot be for the King takes possession in his own full right and it is not the possession but the administration which is referred properly to the good of the Kingdom But this might be properly said of a Duke of Venice that he takes possession of a Town in the person of the State and that the proper sense is that the State took possession and he only representing it So that the full right lyes in the body of the State but he as chief member represents the whole And this is that which S. Austin means when he saith That S. Peter represented the Church propter primatum for the Primacy which he had amongst the Apostles i e. such a Primacy of order whereby he was fittest to represent the whole Church For it is impossible to conceive that he should mean that S. Peter should receive this as Head of the Church when you acknowledge that he was not Head of the Church till after the Keyes were given him For you say The performance of Christ's Promise in making him Head of the Church was not till after his resurrection But Will you say the Church had no power of the Keyes till then and then only finally too and not formally What became then of the power of the Keyes at S. Peters death if only formally in him and not in the Church What becomes of them at the death of every Pope Will you say as Bellarmin doth that Christ takes them and gives them to his Successour But he must be sure to wait till the Cardinals agree To whom he must give them Nothing then could be further from S. Austin's meaning than that S. Peter received the Keyes as Head of the Church and so that he represented the Church only finally whereas his expressions carry it that he means the formal right of them was conveyed to the Church and that S. Peter was only a publick person to receive them in the name of the Church But whatever S. Austin's meaning was the strength of his Lordships assertion doth not stand or fall with that for there are arguments sufficient besides to prove that the Authority for governing the Church was not committed formally to S. Peter much less to any pretended successour but that it primarily and formally resides in the whole body of the Church And were that the thing to be here disputed you must not think to take it for granted that if the Keyes were given personally to S. Peter by them was meant the Supreme Authority of governing the Church exclusively of the other Apostles To the third Consideration you answer That in case a General Council erre there can be no redress for errour in Faith for if one Council may erre so may another and a third and a fourth c. This indeed is very suitable to your Doctrine from the beginning that a man can be certain of nothing but what it is impossible should be otherwise I hope you are certain your self you do not erre but I suppose you do not think it impossible you should So although we do not think it impossible a Council should erre yet we may be certain it doth not and supposing it should we do not say It is impossible that a Council should not erre so that another Council may correct the errour of the former And doubtless men may be certain of it too if as his Lordship saith plain Scripture and evident demonstration be brought against the former errour But these are strange Doctrines that because a Council may erre therefore a Council can never afford remedy against inconveniences For one great inconvenience is the breaking the Churches peace that is remedied by the Councils Authority another is errour in Faith that may be remedied by another Council No say you for that may erre too but Doth it follow that it must erre or Is it probable that it should erre if the former errour be so discovered and the Council so proceed as his Lordship supposes For your other difficulty about the calling another General Council I have answered it already when I shewed what we meant by a General Council and when it was lawfully call'd When you after add That the Church never represented her self in another Council but where the former Council was unlawful and instance in the Councils of Ariminum and Ephesus you say the same which his Lordship doth for these Councils were therefore accounted unlawful because erroneous and factious and he never asserts the necessity of calling a new Council but in those two cases But if you would have us account none such but whom you do you must excuse us till we see greater reason for it then we do yet and so likewise for what follows that the Councils which rectified the errours of those were called by the Popes authority as that of Trent and others were which to speak mildly is a gross untruth You urge from his Lordships granting That the Church hath a Praetorian power to controul and censure too where errours or crimes are against points Fundamental or of great consequence that therefore he and all Protestants are justly censured by the Roman Church for opposing those Doctrines which are with her Fundamental and of great consequence But still there is no difference with you between the Roman Church and the Catholick between Papal Councils and Free and General between what she judges Fundamental and what all are bound to judge so If you prove then that we are bound to rely only on the judgement of your Church your consequence is good but otherwise it is tyed with a rope of sand and therefore we do not fear the lashes of it And the same fault runs through your subsequent discourse in which you suppose the Church Infallible in all she propounds which you know is constantly denyed and hath been at large disproved in our first Part. For the ground of your resolution of Faith being removed I see the Fabrick of your Church falls down with it For take but away your pretence of Infallibility and your confounding the Catholick and Roman
things before mentioned concerning the Father and the Son where he useth dicimus non dicimus as well as here And therefore Aquinas was much wiser who plainly condemns Damascen for a Nestorian in this licet à quibusdam dicatur c. Although it be said by some that in these words he neither affirms or denys it wherein I am much mistaken if he reflects not on Bonaventure Vasquez Petavius and several others think to bring Damascen off by the distinctions of à filio and per filium much to your purpose but in the great dispute at the Council at Florence between Bessarion and Marcus Ephesius about the importance of the Articles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Marcus Ephesius produceth the words of Damascen expresly that the Spirit doth not proceed from the Son but by the Son whereby it is plain that he understood per filium in opposition to à filio And Bessarion had nothing else to return in answer to it but that he could produce but one out of Antiquity who said so Thus we see if Theophylact and Damascen as well as Theodoret and Photius be Ancient Greeks your distinction comes to nothing But besides this it appears by the disputations of Hugo Etherianus against the Greeks who lived saith Bellarmin A. D. 1160. still extant in the Bibliotheca Patrum that the Greeks held the very same then that they do now And so in the Synod of Bar in Apulia when Anselm disputed so stoutly against the Greeks that Pope Vrban said he was alterius orbis Papa as the story is related by Eadmerus and Wilhelmus Malmesburiensis it appears they denyed the Procession of the Spirit absolutely from the Son and this was A. D. 1096. as is evident from the Letter of Hildebertus to him about the publishing his Disputation and from the Book of Anselm still extant on that subject We find not therefore any ground for this distinction of yours concerning the Ancient and Modern Greeks and therefore they who said that there was no real difference in any matter of Faith between the Ancient Greeks and Latins must be understood as well of the Modern Greeks as them Their words being no more capable of such a tolerable interpretation as you speak of than the words of any of the Modern Greeks are His Lordship was proving that the point was not fundamental that the Greeks and Latins differed in from that acknowledgement of Peter Lombard and the Schoolmen that is to say The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of the Father and the Son and that he is or proceeds from the Father and the Son is not to speak different things but the same sense in different words Now in this cause saith he where the words differ but the sentence of Faith is the same penitùs eadem even altogether the same can the point be fundamental But say you he was to prove that such as were in grievous errour in Divinity erred not fundamentally and for proof of this he alledges such as have no real errour at all in Divinity But do you not herein wilfully mistake his Lordships meaning For in the Paragraph foregoing his Lordship first declares his own judgement concerning the denying the Procession of the Holy Ghost viz. That he did acknowledge it to be a grievous errour in Divinity but yet he could not judge the Greeks guilty of a fundamental errour which he proves by a double medium 1. Because they did not thereby deny the Equality and Consubstantiality of the persons 2. Because divers learned men were of opinion that à filio per filium in the sense of the Greek Church was but a question in modo loquendi and therefore not fundamental now for this he produceth those testimonies Now I pray do you put no difference between the making the denyal of a Proposition to be an errour and the saying that such persons are guilty of the denyal of that Proposition His Lordship grants the denyal of the Procession to be a grievous errour in Divinity but he questioned as the Greeks expressed themselves for those very words he inserts whether they were guilty of denying that Proposition as appears by the authorities of the Schoolmen and therefore certainly much less guilty of a fundamental errour Thus you see his Lordship fully proves what he intends for if they agreed in sense they were much less guilty of a fundamental errour than if they had plainly denyed the Procession which he supposeth from those Authorities that they did not And therefore when you Sarcastically ask Is not this strong Logick The only answer I shall give you is That if you apprehend it not to be so it is because of the weakness of your Theological Reason And therefore you put his Lordships Defender on a strange task to prove from those Authorities that those Greeks who erre grievously in Divinity erre not fundamentally When the only design of his Lordship in producing those Authorities was to shew that according to their opinion the Greeks were so far from erring fundamentally that they did not erre grievously in Divinity And to this purpose the citation of Peter Lombard was pertinent who saith That because the Greeks acknowledge that the Holy Ghost is the Spirit of the Son though he doth not proceed from him therefore the difference between the Greeks and Latins is in words and not in sense but you say He speaks only of such as differed in words and not in substance as though he put a difference between the Greeks that some differed in words and others really which is quite beside his meaning for he takes not the least notice of any such difference among themselves but saith The difference it self concerning the Procession the Greeks acknowledging the Holy Ghost to be the Spirit of the Son is more verbal than real And that the present Greeks say full as much is evident for they acknowledge the same things in express words The testimony of Bonaventure hath been already considered as far as concerns Damascen as for the rest it was sufficient for his Lordships purpose to produce such a Confession from so bitter an enemy of the Greeks as Bonaventure was so his Lordship in his Marginal Citation sayes truly of him licèt Graecis infensissimus c. that he doth not deny but that salvation might be had without the article of Filioque but whether on that supposition there were sufficient reason to add it to the Creed will be considered afterwards Though Bonaventure held the Greeks to be Hereticks and Schismaticks I hope you do not think that is Argument enough to perswade us that they were so That any thing without which salvation might have been had before may by the definition of your Church become so necessary that men cannot be saved without the belief of it had need be more than barely asserted either by Bonaventure or you and we must wait for the proof of it for any thing here said
can desire that they are infallibly conveyed to us 1. If the Doctrine of Christ be True and Divine then all the Promises be made were accomplished Now that was one of the greatest That his Spirit should lead his Apostles into all Truth Can we then reasonably think that if the Apostles had such an infallible Assistance of the Spirit of God with them in what they spake in a transitory way to them who heard them that they should want it in the delivering those Records to the Church which were to be the standing monuments of this Doctrine to all Ages and Generations If Christ's Doctrine therefore be True the Apostles had an infallible Assistance of God's Spirit if they had so in delivering the Doctrine of Christ by preaching nothing can be more unreasonable than to imagine such should want it who were employed to give an account to the world of the nature of this Doctrine and of the Miracles which accompanied Christ and his Apostles So that it will appear an absurd thing to assert that the Doctrine of Christ is Divine and to question whether we have the infallible Records of it It is not pertinent to our Question in what way the Spirit of God assisted them that wrote Whether by immediate suggestion of all such things which might be sufficiently known without it and whether in some things which were not of concernment it might not leave them to their own judgement as in that place When they had rowed about five and twenty or thirty furlongs when no doubt God's Spirit knew infallibly whether it was but thought not fit to reveal it whether in some lighter circumstances the Writers were subject to any inadvertencies the negative of which is more piously credible whether meer historical passages needed the same infallible Assistance that Prophetical and Doctrinal these things I say are not necessary to be resolved it being sufficient in order to Faith that the Doctrine we are to believe as it was infallibly delivered to the world by the preaching of Christ and his Apostles so it is infallibly conveyed to us in the Books of Scripture 2. Because these Books were owned for Divine by those Persons and Ages who were most competent Judges Whether they were so or no. For the Age of the Apostles was sufficiently able to judge whether those things which are said to be spoken by Christ or written by the Apostles were really so or no. And we can have no reason at all to question but what was delivered by them was infallibly true Now from that first Age we derive our knowledge concerning the Authority of these Books which being conveyed to us in the most unquestionable and universal Tradition we can have no reason in the world to doubt and therefore the greatest reason firmly to assent that the Books we call the Scripture are the infallible Records of the Word of God And thus much may suffice in general concerning the Protestant Way of resolving Faith I now return to the examination of what you give us by way of answer to his Lordship's discourse The first Assault you make upon his Lordship is for making Apostolical Tradition a ground of Faith but because your peculiar excellency lyes in the involving plain things the best service I can do is to lay things open as they are by which means we shall easily discern where the truth lyes I shall therefore first shew how far his Lordship makes Apostolical Tradition a ground of Faith and then consider what you have to object against it In that Section which your Margent referrs to all that he sayes of it is That the Voice and Tradition of that Church which included in it Apostles Disciples and such as had immediate Revelation from Heaven was Divine and the Word of God from them is of like validity written or delivered And as to this Tradition he saith there is abundance of Certainty in it self but how far it is evident to us shall after appear At the end of the next n. 21. he saith That there is double Authority and both Divine that confirms Scripture to be the Word of God Tradition of the Apostles delivering it and the internal worth and argument in the Scripture obvious to a soul prepared by the present Churches Tradition and Gods Grace But n. 23. he saith That this Apostolical Tradition is not the sole and only means to prove Scripture Divine but the moral perswasion reason and force of the present Church is ground enough for any one to read the Scripture and esteem reverently of it And this once done the Scripture hath then In and home-arguments enough to put a soul that hath but ordinary Grace out of doubt that the Scripture is the Word of God infallible and Divine I suppose his Lordships meaning may be comprized in these particulars 1. That to those who lived in the Apostolical times the Tradition of Scripture by those who had an infallible Testimony was a sufficient ground of their believing it infallibly true 2. That though the conveyance of that Tradition to us be not infallible yet it may be sufficient to raise in us a high esteem and veneration for the Scripture 3. That those who have this esteem for the Scripture by a through studying and consideration of it may undoubtedly believe that Scripture is the Divine and Infallible Word of God This I take to be the substance of his Lordships discourse We now come to examine what you object against him Your first demand is How comes Apostolical Primitive Tradition to work upon us if the present Church be fallible Which I shall answer by another How come the decrees of Councils to work upon you if the reporters of those Decrees be fallible If you say It is sufficient that the Decree it self be infallible but it is not necessary that the reporter of those Decrees should be so The same I say concerning the Apostolical Tradition of Scripture though it were infallible in their Testimony yet it is not necessary that the conveyance of it to us should be infallible And if you think your self bound to believe the Decrees of General Councils as infallible though fallibly conveyed to you Why may not we say the same concerning Apostolical Tradition Whereby you may see though Tradition be fallible yet the matter conveyed by it may have its proper effect upon us Your next Inquiry if I understand it is to this sense Whether Apostolical Tradition be not then as credible as the Scriptures I answer freely supposing it equally evident what was delivered by the Apostles to the Church by word or writing hath equal Credibility You attempt to prove That there is equal evidence because the Scripture is only known by the Tradition of the Church to be the same that was recommended by the Apostolical Church which you have likewise for Apostolical Tradition But 1. Do you mean the same Apostolical Tradition here or no which the Arch-Bishop
is so great integrity and incorruption in those Copies we have that we cannot but therein take notice of a peculiar hand of Divine Providence in preserving these authentick records of our Religion so safe to our dayes But it is time now to return to you You would therefore perswade us That we have no ground of certainty as to the Copies of Scripture but comparing them with the Apostles Autographa but I hope our former discourse hath given you a sufficient account of our certainty without seeing the Apostles own hands But I pray what certainty then had the Jews after the Captivity of their Copies of the Law yet I cannot think you will deny them any ground of certainty in the time of Christ that they had the true Copies both of the Law and the Prophets and I hope you will not make the Sanhedrin which condemned our Saviour to death to have given them their only Infallible certainty concerning it If therefore the Jews might be certain without Infallibility why may not we for if the Oracles of God were committed to the Jews then they are to the Christians now You yet further urge That there can be no certainty concerning the Autographa's of the Apostles but by tradition And may not every universal tradition be carried up as clearly at least to the Apostles times as the Scriptures by most credible Authours who wrote in their respective succeeding ages I answer We grant there can be no certainty as to the Copies of Scripture but from tradition and if you can name any of those great things in Controversie between us which you will undertake to prove to be as universal a tradition as that of the Scriptures you and I shall not differ as to the belief of it But think not to fob us off with the tradition of the present Church instead of the Church of all ages with the tradition of your Church instead of the Catholick with the ambiguous testimonies of two or three of the Fathers instead of the universal consent of the Church since the Apostles times If I should once see you prove the Infallibility of your Church the Popes Supremacy Invocation of Saints Veneration of Images the necessity of Coelibate in the Clergy a punitive Purgatory the lawfulness of communicating in one kind the expediency of the Scriptures and Prayers being in an unknown tongue the sacrifice of the Mass Transubstantiation to name no moâ—e by as unquestionable and universal a tradition as that whereby we receive the Scriptures I shall extoll you for the only person that ever did any thing considerable on your side and I shall willingly yield my self up as a Trophey to your brave attempts Either then for ever forbear to mention any such things as Vniversal Tradition among you as to any things besides Scriptures which carry a necessity with them of being believed or practised or once for all undertake this task and manifest it as to the things in Controversie between us Your next Paragraph besides what hath been already discussed in this Chapter concerning Apostolical tradition of Scripture empties it self into the old mare mortuum of the formal object and Infallible application of Faith which I cannot think my self so much at leasure to follow you into so often as you fall into it When once you bring any thing that hath but the least resemblance of reason more than before I shall afresh consider it but not till then What next follows concerning resolving Faith into prime Apostolical Tradition infallibly without the Infallibility of the present Church hath been already prevented by telling you that his Lordship doth not say That the infallible Resolution of Faith is into that Apostolical Tradition but into the Doctrine which is conveyed in the Books of Scripture from the Apostles times down to us by an unquestionable Tradition Your stale Objection That then we should want Divine Certainty hath been over and over answered and so hath your next Paragraph That if the Church be not infallible we cannot be infallibly certain that Scripture is Gods Word and so the remainder concerning Canonical Books It is an easie matter to write great Books after that rate to swell up your discourses with needless repetitions but it is the misery that attends a bad cause and a bad stomach to have unconcocted things brought up so often till we nauseate them Your next offer is at the Vindication of the noted place of S. Austin I would not believe the Gospel c. which you say cannot rationally be understood of Novices Weaklings and Doubters in the Faith This being then the place at every turn objected by you and having before reserved the discussion of it to this place I shall here particularly and throughly consider the meaning of it In order to which three things must be enquired into 1. What the Controversie was which St. Austin was there discussing of 2. What that Church was which St. Austin was moved by the Authority of 3. In what way and manner that Churches Authority did perswade him 1. Nothing seems more necessary for understanding the meaning of this place than a true state of the Controversie which S. Austin was disputing of and yet nothing less spoke to on either side than this hath been We are therefore to consider that when Manes or Manichaeus began to appear in the world to broach that strange and absurd Doctrine of his in the Christian world which he had received from Terebinthus or Buddas as he from Scythianus who if we belieue Epiphanius went to Jerusalem in the Apostles times to enquire into the Doctrine of Christianity and dispute with the Christians about his Opinions but easily foreseeing what little entertainment so strange a complexion of absurdities would find in the Christian world as long as the writings of the Apostles and Evangelists were received every where with that esteem and veneration Two waies he or his more cunning Disciples bethought themselves of whereby to lessen the authority of those writings and so make way for the Doctrine of Manichaeus One was to disparage the Credulity of Christians because the Catholick Church insisted so much on the necessity of Faith whereas they pretended they would desire men to believe nothing but what they gave them sufficient reason for But all this while since the Christians thought they had evident reason for believing the Scriptures and consequently none to believe the Doctrine which did oppose them therefore they found it necessary to go further and to charge those Copies of Scripture with falsifications and corruptions which were generally received among Christians But these are fully delivered by S. Austin in his Book de utilitate credendi as will appear to any one who looks into it but the latter is that which I aim at this he therefore taxeth them for That with a great deal of impudence or to speak mildly with much weakness they charged the Scriptures to be corrupted and yet
Scriptures do convey to them We own therefore the Apostles as Gods immediate Embassadours whose miracles did attest their commission from Heaven to all they came to and no persons could pretend ignorance that this is Gods hand and Seal but all other Pastors of the Church we look on only as Agents settled to hold correspondency between God and Vs but no extraordinary Embassadours who must be looked on as immediately transacting by the Infallible Commission of Heaven When therefore the Pastor or Pastors of your Church shall bring new Credentials from Heaven attested with the same Broad-seal of Heaven which the Apostles had viz. Miracles we shall then receive them in the same capacity as Apostles viz. acting by an Infallible Commission but not till then By which I have given a sufficient Answer to what follows concerning the credit which is given to Christ's Legats as to himself for hereby it appears they are to have no greater authority than their Commission gives them Produce therefore an Infallible Commission for your Pastors Infallibility either apart or conjunctly and we shall receive it but not else Whether A.C. in the words following doth in terms attribute Divine and Infallible authority to the Church supposing it infallibly assisted by the Holy Ghost is very little material for Whether he owns it or no it is sufficient that it necessarily follows from his Doctrine of Infallibility For How can the Church be infallible by virtue of those Promises wherein Divine Infallibility you say is promised and by virtue of which the Apostles had Divine Infallibility and yet the Church not to be divinely Infallible The remainder of this Chapter which concerns the sense of the Fathers in this Controversie will particularly be considered in the next which is purposely designed for it CHAP. IX The Sense of the Fathers in this Controversie The Judgement of Antiquity enquired into especially of the three first Centuries and the reasons for it The several Testimonies of Justin Martyr Athenagoras Tatianus Irenaeus Clemens Alexandrinus and all the Fathers who writ in vindication of Christian Religion manifested to concurr fully with our way of resolving Faith C's Answers to Vincentius Lyrinensis à Gandavo and the Fathers produced by his Lordship pitifully weak The particulars of his 9th Chapter examined S. Augustine's Testimony vindicated C's nauseous Repetitions sent as Vagrants to their several homes His Lordships Considerations found too heavy for C's Answers In what sense the Scripture may be called a Praecognitum What way the Jews resolved their Faith This Controversie and the first Part concluded HAving thus largely considered whatever you could pretend to for the advantage of your own cause or the prejudice of ours from Reason and Scripture nothing can be supposed to remain considerable but the judgement of the Primitive Church in this present Controversie And next to Scripture and Reason I attribute so much to the sense of the Christian Church in the ages next succeeding the Apostles that it is no mean confirmation to me of the truth of the Protestant Way of resolving Faith and of the falsity of yours that I see the one so exactly concurring and the other so apparently contrary to the unanimous Consent of Antiquity For though you love to make a great noise with Antiquity among persons meanly conversant in it yet those who do seriously and impartially enquire into the sense of the Primitive Church and not guess at it by the shreds of Citations to your hands in your own writers which is generally your way will scarce in any thing more palpably discern your jugling and impostures then in your pretence to Antiquity I shall not here enquire into the corruptions crept into your Church under that disguise but as occasion is ministred to me in the following discourse shall endeavour to pluck it off but shall keep close to the matter in question Three things then I design in this Chapter 1. To shew the concurrence of Antiquity with us in the resolution of Faith 2. Examine what you produce from thence either to assert your own way or enervate ours 3. Consider what remains of this Controversie in your Book 1. For the manifesting the concurrence of Antiquity with us I shall confine my present discourse to the most pure and genuine Antiquity keeping within the compass of the three first Centuries or at least of those who have purposely writ in vindication of the Christian Faith Not that I do in the least distrust the consent of the succeeding Writers of the Primitive Church but upon these Reasons 1. Because it would be too large a task at present to undertake since no necessity from what you object but only my desire to clear the Truth and rectifie the mistakes of such who are led blindfold under the pretence of Antiquity hath led me to this discourse 2. Because in reason they could not but understand best the waies and methods used by the Apostles for the perswading men to the Christian Faith and if they had mentioned any such thing as an Infallibility alwaies to continue in the Charch those Pastors certainly who received the care of the Church from the Apostles hands could not but have heard of it And were strangely to blame if they did not discover and make use of it Whatever therefore of truly Apostolical Tradition is to be relyed on in such cases must be conveyed to us from those persons who were the Apostles immediate Successors and if it can be made manifest that they heard not of any such thing in that when occasion was offered they are so far from mentioning it that they take such different waies of satisfying men which do manifestly suppose that they did not believe it I know some of the greatest Patrons of the Church of Rome and such who know best how to manage things with best advantage for the interest of that Church have made little account of the three first ages and confined themselves within the compass of the four first Councils upon this pretence because the Books and Writers are so rare before and that those persons who lived then had no occasion to write of the matters in Controversie between them and us But if the ground why those other things which are not determined in Scripture are to be believed by us and practised as necessary be that they were Apostolical Traditions Who can be more competent Judges what was so and what not then those who lived nearest the Apostolical times and those certainly if they writ of any thing could not write of any thing of more concernment to the Christian world than the knowledge of such things would be or at least we cannot imagine but that we should find express intimations of them where so many so wise and learned persons do industriously give an account of themselves and their solemn actions to their Heathen persecutors But however silent they may be in other things which they neither heard nor thought of as in the
Cyprian The second Authority is out of St. Hierome whose words are The Roman Faith commended by the Apostle admits not such praestigiae deceits and delusions into it though an Angel should Preach it otherwise than it was Preached at first being armed and fenced by St. Pauls Authority it cannot be changed Here you tell us You willingly agree with his Lordship that by Romanam fidem St. Hierom understands the Catholick Faith of Christ and so you concur with him against Bellarmine that it cannot be understood of the particular Church of Rome But by the way you charge your Adversaries with great inconsequence that in this place they make Roman and Catholick to be the same and yet usually condemn you for joyning as Synonyma 's Roman and Catholick together A wonderful want of judgement as though the Roman Faith might not be the Catholick Faith then and yet the Catholick Faith not be the Roman Faith now The former speech only affirms that the Faith at Rome was truly Catholick the latter implyes that no Faith can be Catholick but what agrees with Rome and think you there is no difference between these two But you say further That this Catholick Faith must not here be taken abstractly that so it cannot be changed for Ruffinus was not ignorant of that but that it must be understood of the immutable Faith of the See Apostolick so highly commended by the Apostle and St. Hierom which is founded upon such a rock that even an Angel himself is not able to shake it But St. Hierom speaking this with a reference to that Faith he supposeth the Apostle commended in them although the Apostle doth not so much commend the Catholickness or soundness of their Faith as the act of believing in them and therefore whatever is drawn from thence whether by St. Hierome or any else can have no force in it for if he should infeâ— the immutability of the Faith of the Church of Rome from so apparently weak a foundation there can be no greater strength in his testimony than there is in the ground on which it is built and if there be any force in this Argument the Church of Thessalonica will be as Infallible as Rome for her Faith is commended rather in a more ample manner by the Apostle then that of Rome is St. Hierome I say referring to that Faith he supposes the Apostle commended in them must only be understood of the unchangeableness of that first Faith which appears by the mention of an Angel from Heaven Preaching otherwise Which certainly cannot with any tolerable sense be meant thus that St. Hierome supposed it beyond the power of an Angel from Heaven to alter the Faith of the Roman Church For in the very same Apology he expresseth his great fears lest the Faith of the Romans should be corrupted by the Books of Ruffinus But say you What is this then to Ruffinus who knew as well as St. Hierom that Faith could not change its essence However though St. Hierome should here speak of the Primitive and Apostolical Faith which was then received at Rome that this could receive no alteration yet this was very pertinent to be told Ruffinus because St. Hierome charges him with an endeavour to subvert the Faith not meerly at Rome but in all other places by publishing the Books of Origen with an Encomiastick Preface to them and therefore the telling him The Catholick Faith would admit of no alteration which was received at Rome as elsewhere might be an Argument to discourage him from any attempts of that nature And the main charge against Ruffinus is not an endeavour to subvert meerly the people of Rome but the Latin Church by his translation and therefore these words ought to be taken in their greatest latitude and so imply not at all any Infallibility in the Roman See The remaining Testimonies of Gregory Nazianzene Cyril and Ruffinus as appears to any one who reads them only import that the Roman Church had to their time preserved the Catholick Faith but they do not assert it impossible it should ever do otherwise or that she is an Infallible preserver of it and none of their Testimonies are so proper to the Church of Rome but they would equally hold for any other Apostolical Churches at that time Gregory Nazianzene indeed sayes That it would become the Church of Rome to hold the entire Faith alwayes and would it not become any other Church to do so to doth this import that she shall Infallibly do it or rather that it is her duty to do it And if these then be such pregnant Authorities with you it is a sign there is little or nothing to be found in Antiquity for your purpose But before we end this Chapter we are called to a new task on occasion of a Testimony of St. Cyril produced by his Lordship in stead of that in Bellarmin which appeared not in that Chapter where his Name is mentioned In which he asserts That the foundation and firmness which the Church of Christ hath is placed not in or upon the person much less the Successour of St. Peter but upon the Faith which by Gods Spirit in him he so firmly professed which saith his Lordship is the common received opinion both of the ancient Fathers and of the Protestants Vpon this Rock that is upon this Faith will I build my Church On which occasion you run presently out into that large common place concerning Tu es Petrus and super hanc Petram and although I should grant all that you so earnestly contend for viz. That these words are not spoken of St. Peters Confession but of his Person I know no advantage which will accrue to your cause by it For although very many of the Fathers understand this place of St. Peters Confession as containing in it the ground and Foundation of Christian Religion Thou art Christ the Son of the Living God which therefore may well be said to be the Rock on which Christ would build his Church and although it were no matter of difficulty to defend this interpretation from all exceptions yet because I think it not improbable the words running by way of address to St. Peter that something peculiar to him is contained in them I shall not contend with you about that But then if you say that the meaning of St. Peters being the Rock is The constant Infallibility in Faith which was derived from St. Peter to the Church of Rome as you seem to suggest you must remember you have a new task to make good and it is not saying That St. Peter was meant by the Rock will come within some leagues of doing it I pass therefore by that discourse as a thing we are not much concerned in for it is brought in by his Lordship as the last thing out of that testimony of Cyril but you were contented to let go the other more material Observations that you might more
by others by very many instances of the writers about that Age that Authoritas was no more then Rescriptum as particularly appears by many passages in Leo's Epistles in which sense no more is expressed by this than that by the Pope's Answer to the Council drawn out of the Authority of Scripture the Pelagians might more probably be suppressed But what is this to an Vniversal Pastorship given by Christ to him any otherwise then to those who sat in any other Apostolical Sees But your great quarrel is against his Lordship for making all the Patriarchs even and equal as to Principality of power and when he saith Equal as the Apostles were you say that is aequivocal for though the Apostles had equal jurisdiction over the whole Church yet St. Peter alone had jurisdiction over the Apostles but this is neither proved from John 21. nor is it at all clear in Antiquity as will appear when we come to that Subject But this assertion of the equality of Protestants is so destructive to your pretensions in behalf of the Church of Rome that you set your self more particularly to disprove it which you offer to do by two things 1. By a Canon of the Nicene Council 2. By the practise of the ancient Church You begin with the first of them and tell us That 't is contrary to the Council of Nice In the third Canon whereof which concerns the jurisdiction of Patriarchs the Authority or Principality if you will of the Bishop of Rome is made the Pattern and Model of that Authority and Jurisdiction which Patriarchs were to exercise over the Provincial Bishops The words of the Canon are these Sicque praeest Patriarcha iis omnibus qui sub ejus potestate sunt sicut ille qui tenet sedem Romae caput est princeps omnium Patriarcharum The Patriarch say they is in the same manner over all those that are under his Authority as he who holds the See of Rome is head and Prince of the Patriarchs And in the same Canon the Pope is afterwards styled Petro similis Authoritate par resembling St. Peter and his equal in Authority These are big words indeed and to your purpose if ever any such thing had been decreed by the Council of Nice but I shall evidently prove that this Canon is supposititious and a notorious piece of Forgery Which forgery is much increased by you when you tell us these words are contained in the third Canon of the Council of Nice Which in the Greek Editions of the Canons by du Tillet and the Codex Canonum by Justellus and all other extant in the Latin versions of Dionysius Exiguus and Isidore Mercator is wholly against the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. such kind of women which Clergy men took into their houses neither as wives or Concubines but under a pretext of piety In the Arabick Edition of the Nicene Canons set out by Alphonsus Pisanus the third Canon is against the ordination either of Neophyti or criminal persons and so likewise in that of Turrianus So that in no Edition whether Arabick or other is this the third Canon of the Council of Nice and therefore you were guilty either of great ignorance and negligence in saying so or of notorious fraud and imposture if you knew it to be otherwise and yet said it that the unwary reader might believe this Canon to be within the 20. which are the only genuine Canons of the Council of Nice Indeed such a Canon there is in these Arabick Editions but it is so far from being the third that in the Editions both of Pisanus and Turrianus it is the thirty ninth and in it I grant those words are but yet you will have little reason to rejoyce in them when I have proved as I doubt not to do that this whole farrago of Arabick Canons is a meer forgery and that I shall prove both from the true number of the Nicene Canons and the incongruity of many things in the Arabick Canons with the State and Polity of the Church at that time In those Editions set out by Pisanus and Turrianus from the Copy which they say was brought by Baptista Romanus from the Patriarch of Alexandria there are no fewer then eighty Canons whereas the Nicene Council never passed above 20. Which if it appear true that will sufficiently discover the Forgery and Supposititiousness of these Arabick Canons Now that there were no more then twenty genuine Canons of the Council of Nice I thus prove First from Theodoret who after he had given an account of the proceedings in the Council against the Arrians he saith That the Fathers met in Council again and passed twenty Canons relating to the Churches Polity and Gelasius Gricenus whom Alphonsus Pisanus set forth with his Latin version recounts no more then twenty Canons the same number is asserted by Nicephorus Callistus and we need not trouble our selves with reciting the testimonies of more Greek Authors since Binius himself confesseth that all the Greeks say there were no more then twenty Canons then determined But although certainly the Greeks were the most competent Judges in this case yet the Latins themselves did not allow of more For although Ruffinus makes twenty two yet that is not by the addition of any more Canons but by splitting two into four And if we believe Pope Stephen in Gratian the Roman Church did allow of no more then twenty And in that Epitome of the Canons which Pope Hadrian sent to Charles the Great for the Government of the Western Churches A.D. 773. the same number of the Nicene Canons appears still And in a M S. of Hincmarus Rhemensis against Hincmarus Laudunensis this is not only asserted but at large contended for that there were no more Canons determined at Nice then those twenty which we now have from the testimonies of the Tripartite history Ruffinus the Carthaginian Council the Epistles of Cyril of Alexandria and Atticus of Constantinople and the twelfth action of the Council of Chalcedon So that if both Greeks and Latins say true there could be no more then twenty genuine Canons of the Council of Nice which may be yet further proved by two things viz. the proceedings of the African Fathers in the case of Zosimus about the Nicene Canons and the Codex Canonum Ecclesiae Vniversae both which yield an abundant testimony to our purpose If ever there was a just occasion given for an early and exact search into the authentick Canons of the Council of Nice it was certainly in that grand Debate between the African Fathers and the Roman Bishops in the case of Appeals For Zosimus challenging not only a right of Appeals to himself but a power of dispatching Legats unto the African Churches to hear causes there and all this by vertue of a Canon in the Nicene Council and this being delivered to them in Council by Faustinus Philippus and Asellus whom
Christ intended to institute such Government in his Church but much against it The Communicatory letters in the primitive Church argued an Aristocracy Gersons Testimony from his Book de Auferibilitate Papae explained and vindicated St. Hieromes Testimony full against a Monarchy in the Church The inconsistency of the Popes Monarchy with that of Temporal Princes The Supremacy of Princes in Ecclesiastical matters asserted by the Scripture and Antiquity as well as the Church of England WE are now come to the places of Scripture insisted on for the proof of the Popes Authority which you have been so often and successfully beaten out of by so many powerful assaults of our Writers that it is matter of admiration that you should yet think to find any shelter there For those which you yet account Fortresses and Bulwarks for your cause have not only been triumphed over by your Adversaries but have been slighted by the wisest of your party and deserted as most untenable places As I shall make it appear to you in the progress of this dispute In which I shall not barely shew the palpable weakness of your pretended proofs but bring unanswerable arguments against them from persons of your own Communion For the force of that reason by which the Protestants have prevailed over you in this dispute hath been so great that it hath brought over some of the learnedst of your party not only to an acknowledgement of the insufficiency of these proofs but to a zealous opposition against that very Doctrine which you attempt to prove by them But such is the fate of a sinking cause that it catcheth hold of any thing to save it self though it be the Anchor of the ship which makes it sink the sooner Thus it will appear to be in these baffled Proofs which you only bring into the Field to shew what streights you are in for help and no sooner appear there but they fall off to the conquering side and help only to promote your ruine But since they are in the place where Arguments should be we must in civility consider them as if they were so The first place then is Luke 22.32 I have pray'd for thee that thy faith fail not What would a Philosopher think were he chosen as Vmpire between us as once one was between Origen and his Adversaries to hear this place produced to prove the Popes Authority and Infallibility And when a reason is demanded of so strange an Inference from a promise of recovery to St. Peter to an impossibility of falling in the Pope nothing else produced but the forged Epistles of some Popes and the partial Testimonies of others in their own cause Could he think otherwise but that these men loved their cause dearly and would fain prove it if they could tell how but since there was neither evidence in reason or more indifferent writers in it yet to let them see how confident they were of the Popes Infallibility they would produce their Infallible Testimonies to prove they were Infallible For we ask What evidence is there that the priviledge obtained for St. Peter whatever it is must descend to his Successours if to his Successours whether to all his Successours or only to some if only to some why to those at Rome more then at Antioch or any other place if to them at Rome why it must be understood of a Doctrinal and not a saving Faith as it was in St. Peter if of Doctrinal why not absolutely but only conditionally if they teach the Church For all these and several other enquiries of this nature we are told It must be so understood but if you ask Why all the Answer we can get is Because seven Popes at one time or other said so But at this you grow very angry and tell us 1. That Bellarmine besides these gives several pregnant reasons from the Text it self What were it worth to have a sight of them If you had thought them so pregnant you are not so sparing of taking out of Bellarmine but you would have given them us over again Bellarmins excellent proofs are two or three sine Dubio's Sine dubio saith he hic Dominus speciale aliquid Petro impetravit And who denies it but we grant it was so special to him that it never came to his Successours and again Sine dubio ipsis praecipuè debeat esse nota suae sedis auctoritas speaking of the Popes Testimonies for themselves Without all doubt they knew best their own Authority They were wonderfully to blame else but all the difficulty is to perswade others to believe them sine dubio when they speak in their own Cause And for that I can find no pregnant reason in him at all Well but we have a third sine dubio yet which may be more to the purpose than either of the other two For Bellarmin distinguishes of two priviledges which Christ obtained for St. Peter the first is That himself should never lose the true Faith though he were tempted of the Devil and this his Lordship grants that it was the special grace which Christs prayer obtained that notwithstanding Satans sifting him and his threefold denyal of his Master he should not fall into a final Apostacy The second priviledge is That he as Bishop should not be able to teach any thing against the Faith sive ut in sede ejus nunquam inveniretur qui doceret contra veram fidem or that there should be none found in his See who should do it Is not here an excellent conjunction disjunctive in this Sive Or that he should not do it himself or that his Successours should not do it Doth not this want pregnant proofs and we have them in the next words The first of these it may be very modestly did not descend to his Successours but secundum sine Dubio manavit ad posteros sive successores the second without all doubt did descend to his Successours Are not these pregnant reasons three sine dubio's given us by Cardinal Bellarmin For when he comes to confirm this last sine dubio he produces nothing but those Testimonies which his Lordship excepts against as not fit to be Judges in their own Cause If these then be Bellarmins pregnant reasons out of the Text no wonder that his Lordship was not pleased to Answer them But yet you are displeased that his Lordship should think that Popes were interessed persons in their own Cause No no all that ever sat in that See were such holy meek humble self-denying men that they would not for a world let a word fall to exalt their own Authority in the Church And we are mightily to blame to think otherwise of them Is it possible to think that Felix 1 and Lucius 1 should speak for their own interest though the Epistles under their names be such notorious counterfeits that all sober men among you are ashamed of them Is it possible that Leo 1. should do it who was so humble a
from him and the other Patriarchs on this occasion As for your instance of the Popes restoring Athanasius I have sufficiently answered it already and if the Popes letter were never so Mandatory as it was not yet we see it took no effect among the Eastern Bishops and therefore they were of his Lordships mind That the Government of the Church was not Monarchical but Aristocratical I did expect here to have met with the pretended Epistle of Atticus of Constantinople about the manner of making formed letters wherein one Î is said to be for the honour of St. Peter but since you pass it over on this occasion I hope you are convinced of the Forgery of it In the beginning of your next Chapter which because of the coherence of the matter I handle with this you find great fault with his Lordship for a Marginal citation out of Gerson because he supposeth that Gersons judgement was that the Church might continue without a Monarchical head because he writ a Tract de Auferibilitate Papae whereas you say Gersons drift is only to shew how many several waies the Pope may be taken away that is deprived of his office and cease to be Pope as to his own person so that the Church pro tempore till another be chosen shall be without her visible Head But although the truth of what his Lordship proves doth not at all depend upon this Testimony of Gerson which was only a Marginal citation yet since you so boldly accuse him for a false allegation we must further examine how pertinent this Testimony is to that which his Lordship brought it for The sentence to which this Citation of Gerson refers is this For they are no mean ones who think our Saviour Christ left the Church-militant in the hands of the Apostles and their Successours in an Aristocratical or rather a mixt Government and that the Church is not Monarchical otherwise than the Triumphant and Militant make one body under Christ the Head Over against these words that Tract of Gerson de Auferibilitate Papae is cited If therefore so much be contained in that Book as makes good this which his Lordship sayes he is not so much guilty of false alledging Gerson as you are of falsly accusing him To make this clear we must consider what Gersons design was in writing that Book and what his opinion therein is concerning the Churches Government It is well known that his Book was written upon the occasion of the Council of Constance in the time of the great Schism between the three Popes and that the design of it is to make it appear that it was in the power of the Council to depose the Popes and suspend them from all Jurisdiction in the Church Therefore he saith That the Pope may not only lose his office by voluntary cession but that in many cases he may be deprived by the Church or by a General Council representing the Church whether he consent to it or no Nay in the next consideration he saith That he may be deprived by a General Council which is celebrated without his consent or against his will And in the following consideration adds That this may be done not only declaratively but juridically the Question now comes to this Whether a person who asserts these things doth believe the Government of the Militant Church to be Monarchical and not rather Aristocratical and mixt Government And I dare appeal to any mans reason whether that may be accounted a Monarchical Government where he that is Supream may be deposed and deprived of his office in a Juridical manner by a Senate that hath Authority to do these things For it is apparent the Supream power lyes in the Senate and not the Prince and that the Prince is only a Ministerial Head under them And this is plainly Gersons opinion as to the Church although therefore he may allow the supream Ministerial Authority to be in the Pope which is all your Citations prove yet the radical and intrinsecal power lyes in the Church which being represented in a General Council may depose the Pope from his Authority in the Church And the truth is this opinion of Gerson makes the Fundamental power of the Church to be Democratical and that the Supream exercise is by Representatives in a General Council and that the Pope at the highest is but a Ministerial and accountable Head And therefore Spalatensis truly observes That this opinion of Gerson which is the same with that of the Paris Divines of which he speaks doth only in words attribute supream Ecclesiastical jurisdiction to the Pope but in reality it takes it quite away from him And this is the same Doctrine which then prevailed in the Council of Constance and afterwards at Basil as may be seen at large in their Synodical Epistle defended by Richerius Vigorius and others Now let any man of reason judge whether notwithstanding your charge of false citation from some expressions intimating only a Ministerial Headship his Lordship did not very pertinently cite this Tract of Gersons to prove that no mean persons did think the Church Militant not to be Governed by a Monarchical but by an Aristocratical or mixt Government But no sooner is this marginal citation cleared but the charge is renewed about another viz. St. Hierom yet here you dare not charge his Lordship with a false allegation but you are put to your shifts to get off this Testimony as well as you can For St. Hierom saying expresly in his Epistle to Evagrius Vbicunque fuerit Episcopus sive Romae sive Eugubii sive Constantinopoli sive Rhegii c. ejusdem meriti est ejusdem est sacerdotii his Lordship might well inferr That doubtless he thought not of the Roman Bishops Monarchy For what Bishop saith he is of the same merit or the same degree in the Priesthood with the Pope as things are now carried at Rome To this you Answer That he speaks not of the Pope as he is Pope or in respect of that eminent Authority which belongs to him as St. Peters Successour but only compares him with another private Bishop in respect of meer character or power of a Bishop as Bishop only But though this be all which any of your party ever since the Reformation have been able to Answer to this place yet nothing looks more like a meer shift than this doth For had St. Hierom only compared these Bishops together in regard of their order was not Sacerdotium enough to express that by if St. Hierom had said only that all Bishops are ejusdem sacerdotii there might have been some plausible pretence for this distinction but when he adds ejusdem meriti too he wholly precludes the possibility of your evading that way For What doth merit here stand for as distinct from Priesthood if it imports not something besides what belongs to Bishops as Bishops What can merit here signifie but some greater Power
the matter as much as may be and much more than Baronius and others did who pleaded downright for the Popes Temporal Power yet he must be a very weak Prince who doth not see how far that indirect and reductive power may extend when the Pope himself is to be Judge What comes under it and what not And What may not come under it when deposing of Princes shall be reduced under that you call The Worship of God and absolving subjects from their obedience tend to promote their Eternal Salvation But if the Pope may be Judge What temporal things are in ordine ad spiritualia and bring them under his power in that respect Why may not the Prince be Judge what spiritual things are in ordine ad temporalia and use his power over them in that respect too But in the mean time Is not a Kingdom like to be at peace then If the Pope challenged no other authority but what Christ or the Apostles had his Government might be admitted as well as that authority which they had but What do you think of us the mean while when you would perswade us that the Popes Power is no other than what Christ or the Apostles had you must certainly think us such persons as the Moon hath wrought particularly upon as you after very civilly speak concerning his Lordship Your instance from the Kings of France and Spain his Lordship had sufficiently answered by telling you That he that is not blind may see if he will of what little value the Popes Power is in those Kingdoms further than to serve their own turns of him which they do to their great advantage And when you would have this to be upon the account of Faith and Conscience Let the Pope exercise his power apparently against their Interest and then see on what account they profess obedience to him But as long as they can manage such pretences for their advantage and admit so much of it and no more they may very well endure it and his Lordship be far enough from contradicting himself When you would urge the same inconvenience against the Aristocratical Government of the Church you suppose that Aristocratical Government wholly Independent on and not subordinate to the Civil Government whereas his Lordship and the Church of England assert the Kings Supremacy in Government over all both persons and causes Ecclesiastical And therefore this nothing concerns us And if from what hath gone before it must as you say remain therefore fully proved that the external Government of the Church on earth is Monarchical It may for all that I see remain as fully proved that you are now the man who enjoy this Monarchical Power over the Church And whatever you stile the Pope Whether the Deputy or Vicar General of Christ or Servus servorum or what you will it is all one to us as long as we know his meaning whatever fair words you give him As though men would take it one jot the better to have one usurp and Tyrannize over them because he doth not call himself King or Prince but their humble servant Is it not by so much the greater Tyranny to have such kind of Ecclesiastical Saturnalia when the servus servorum must under that name tyrannize over the whole world We have already at large shewed How destructive this pretended Supremacy is to that Government of the Church by Bishops which his Lordship proves from the ancient Canons and Fathers of the Church doth of right belong to them viz. from several Canons of the Councils of Antioch and Nice and the testimonies of S. Augustine and S. Cyprian To all this you only say That you allow the Bishops their portion in the Government of Christs Flock But it is but a very small portion of what belongs to them if all their Jurisdiction must be derived from the Pope which I have shewed before to be the most current Opinion in your Church And I dare say you will not dispute the contrary His Lordship was well enough aware to what purpose Bellarmine acknowledged that the Government of the Church was ever in the Bishops for he himself saith It was to exclude temporal Princes but then he desires A. C. to take notice of that when Secular Princes are to be excluded then it shall be pretended that Bishops have power to govern but when it comes to sharing stakes between them and the Pope then hands off they have nothing to do any further than the Pope gives them leave What follows concerning the impossibility of a right executing of this Monarchy in the Church hath been already discussed of and you answer nothing at all to it that hath any face of pertinency for when you say it will hold as well against the Aristocratical Form I have plainly enough shewed you the contrary That which follows about the design of an Vniversal Monarchy in the State as well as the Church about Pope Innocent 's making the Pope to be the Sun and the Emperour the Moon the Spanish Friers two Scutchions Campanella 's Eclogue since you will not stand to defend them I shall willingly pass them over But what concerns the Supremacy of the Civil Power is more to our purpose and must be considered His Lordship therefore saith That every soul was to be subject to the higher power Rom. 13.1 And the higher Power there mentioned is the Temporal And the ancient Fathers come in with a full consent that every soul comprehends all without exception All spiritual men even to the highest Bishop even in spiritual causes too so the Foundations of Faith and good Manners be not shaken And where they are shaken there ought to be prayer and patience there ought not to be opposition by force Nay Emperours and Kings are custodes utriusque Tabulae They to whom the custody and preservation of both Tables of the Law for worship to God and duty to man are committed A Book of the Law was by Gods own command in Moses his time to be given to the King Deut. 17.18 And the Kings under the Law but still according to it did proceed to necessary Reformation in Church-businesses and therein commanded the very Priests themselves as appears in the Acts of Hezekiah and Josiah who yet were never censured to this day for usurping the High-Priests office Nay and the greatest Emperours for the Churches honour Theodosius the elder and Justinian and Charls the Great and divers others did not only meddle now and then but enact Laws to the great settlement and encrease of Religion in their several times Now to this again you answer That the civil and spiritual are both absolute and independent powers though each in their proper Orb the one in spirituals the other in temporals But What is this to that which his Lordship proves That there can be no such absolute independent spiritual power both because all are bound to obey the Civil Power and because the
the Catholick Church with them and there was the greater hopes of it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Since neither part did agree with the Bishop of old Rome or the Church which joynes with him but both oppose the evil customs and abuses which come by him which bears the same date with the Patriarchs first Answer to the Tubing Divines May 15. 1576. And the Patriarch in his letter heartily wishes an union and conjunction between them From hence we may easily gather how true both those things were viz. That the intent of their writing was to be admitted into the communion of the Greek Church and that the Patriarch did not in the least approve their Doctrine but confirmed the Tenets of the Roman Catholick Church But we must look further into the writings themselves to see how far they agreed and wherein they differed It appears then that the Patriarch did profess his consent with them in these things besides the Articles of the Creed and the satisfaction of Christ and other more general points viz. That the Sacrament was to be received in both kinds that the use of marriage was not to be absolutely forbidden the Clergy though their custom is that they must be married before they take Orders besides the grand Articles of the Popes Supremacy and the Roman Churches Infallibility Doth he that joyns with them in these things not in the least approve their Doctrine but confirm the Tenets of the Roman Catholick Church But withall it must be confessed that besides that common Article of the Procession of the Spirit wherein he disputes most earnestly there are five others in which they dissented from each other about Free will justification by Faith the number of Sacraments Invocation of Saints and Monastick life and about these the remaining disputes were In some of which it is easie to discern how far the right state of the question was from being apprehended which the Lutheran Divines perceiving sent him a larger and fuller explication of their mind in a body of Divinity in Greek but the Patriarchs troubles coming on Cantacuzenus deposing him too and other businesses taking him off upon his restauration he breaks off the Conference between them But although he differed from them in these things yet he was far enough from rebuking them for departing from the Roman Church although he was desirous they should have joyned with them in the approbation of such things as were in use among themselves And in those things in which he seems to plead for some practises in use in the Roman Church yet there are many considerable circumstances about them wherein they differ from the Church of Rome as hath been manifested by many others As in the Article of Invocation of Saints the Patriarch saith They do not properly Invocate Saints but God for neither Peter nor Paul do hear us upon which ground it is impossible to maintain the Romish Doctrine of Invocation of Saints And in most of the other the main difference lies in the want of a true State of the Questions between them But is this any such great matter of admiration that the Patriarch upon the first sight of their confession should declare his dissent from them in these things It is well enough known how much Barbarism had crept into the Greek Church after their being subdued by the Turks the means of Instruction being taken from them and it being very rare at that time to have any Sermons at all in so much that one of your Calogeri being more learned then the rest and preaching there in Lent was thereby under great suspicion and at last was by the Patriarch himself sent out of the way It is therefore more to be wondered they should preserve so much of the Doctrine of Faith entire as they have done then that any corrupt practises should prevail amongst them The most then which you can make of the judgement of the Patriarch Hieremias is that in some things he was opposite to the Protestants as in others to the Church of Rome But what would you have said if any Patriarch of Constantinople had declared his consent so fully with the Church of Rome as the Patriarch Cyril did afterwards with the Protestants who on that account suffered so much by the practises of the Jesuits of whom he complains in his Epistle to Vtenbogard And although a Faction was raised against him by Parthenius who succeeded him yet another Parthenius succeeding him stood up in vindication of him Since therefore such different opinions have been among them about the present Controversies of the Christian world and there being no declared Confession of their Faith which is owned by the whole Greek Church as to these things there can be no confident pronouncing what their judgement is as to all our differences till they have further declared themselves PART III. Of Particular Controversies CHAP. I. Of the Infallibility of General Councils How far this tends to the ending Controversies Two distinct Questions concerning the Infallibility and Authority of General Councils The first entered upon with the state of the Question That there can be no certainty of faith that General Councils are infallible nor that the particular decrees of any of them are so which are largely proved Pighius his Arguments against the Divine Institution of General Councils The places of Scripture considered which are brought for the Churches infallibility and that these cannot prove that General Councils are so Matth. 18.20 Acts 15.28 particularly answered The sense of the Fathers in their high expressions of the decrees of Councils No consent of the Church as to their infallibility The place of St. Austin about the amendment of former General Councils by latter at large vindicated No other places in S. Austin prove them infallible but many to the contrary General Councils cannot be infallible in the conclusion if not in the use of the means No such infallibility without as immediate a revelation as the Prophets and Apostles had taking Infallibility not for an absolute unerring power but such as comes by a promise of Divine Assistance preserving from errour No obligation to internal assent but from immediate Divine Authority Of the consistency of Faith and reason in things propounded to be believed The suitableness of the contrary Doctrine to the Romanists principles IF high pretences and large promises were the only things which we ought to value any Church for there were none comparable to the Church of Rome For there can be nothing imagined amiss in the Christian world but if we believe the bills her Factours set up she hath an Infallible cure for it If any enquire into the grounds of Religion they tell us that her testimony only can give them Infallible Certainty if any are afraid of mistaking in opinions they have the only Infallible Judge of Controversies to go to if any complain of the rents and divisions of the Christian world they have Infallible Councils either to