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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29199	A just vindication of the Church of England, from the unjust aspersion of criminal schisme wherein the nature of criminal schisme, the divers sorts of schismaticks, the liberties and priviledges of national churches, the rights of sovereign magistrates, the tyranny, extortion and schisme of the Roman Communion of old, and at this very day, are manifested to the view of the world / by ... John Bramhall ...	Bramhall, John, 1594-1663.	1654 (1654)	Wing B4226; ESTC R18816	139,041	290

flowers of the Crown so they might but hold the Diademe it self from their competitors Therefore our Ecclesiasticall law was called the Kings law because the edge and validity of it did proceed from authority royal our Ecclesiasticall Courts were stiled the Kings Courts by his Judges It is true the habitual Jurisdiction of Bishops flowes from their Ordination But the actual exercise thereof in Publick courts after a coercive manner is from the gracious concessions of Soveraign Princes In a word the law being meerly intended as a remedy against usurpation it cannot be a new Law but onely a Legislative declaration of the Old Common Law of England I will conclude this Chapter with the words of Bishop Bilson As for his Patriarchate by Gods law he hath non● in this Realm for Six hundred years after Christ he had non● for the last Six hundred years looking after greater matters he would have none Above or against the Princes Sword he can have none to the Subversion of the Faith or oppression of his Brethre● he ought to have none you must seek further for Subjection to his Tribunall This Land ●weth him none CHAP. V. That the Britanick Churches were ever exempted from forraign Iurisdiction for the first six hundred years And so ought to continue THirdly supposing that the reformed Church of England had separated it self from Rome and supposing that the municipal laws of the Realm then in force had not warranted such a separation yet the British Churches that is the Churches of the British Islands England Scotland and Ireland c. by the constitution of the Apostles and by the solemne sentence of the Catholique Church are exempted from all forraign Jurisdiction and cannot be Schismatical in the lawful vindication of a just priviledge so well founded for the clearer manifestation whereof let us consider First that all the twelve Apostles were equall in mission equall in commission equall in power equall in honour equal in all thing● except priority of order without which no Society can well Subsist So much Bellarmine confesseth that by these words As my father sent me so send I you Our Saviour endowed them with all the fulnesse of power that mortall men were capable of And therefore no single Apostle had Jurisdiction over the rest par in parem no● habet potestatem but the whole Colledge of Apostles to which the supream Mesnagery of Ecclesiasticall affaires did belong in common whether a new Apostle was to be ordained or the office of Deaconship was to be erected or fit persons were to be delegated for the ordering of the Church as Peter and Iohn Iudas and Sylas Or informations of great moment were to be heard as against Peter himself Though Peter out of Modesty might condescend and submit to that to which he was not obliged in duty yet it had not become the other Apostles to sit as Judges upon their Superiour placed over them by Christ. Or whether the weightier questions of the calling of the Gentiles and circumcision the law of Moses were to be determined still we find the Supremacy in the Colledge Secondly that drousy dream that the plenitude of Ecclesiastical power and Jurisdiction was given by Christ to Saint Peter as to an ordinary Pastour to be derived from him to his Successours but to the rest of the Apostles as delegates for tearm of life to die with themselves as it is lately and boldly asserted without reason without authority either divine or humane so it is most repugnant to the doctrine of the Fathers who make all Bishops to be the Vicars and Embassadours of Christ not of the Pope and successours of the Apostles indifferently Vicaria ordinatione who make but one Episcopacy in the world whereof every Bishop hath an equal share St. Peter was a Pastor and the Pastoral office is of perpetual necessity in the Church True But so were all the rest of the Apostles Pastors as well as he And if we examine the matter more narrowly cui bono for whose advantage this distinction was devised it was not for S. Peters own advantage who setting aside his principallity of order is confessed to have had but an equall share of power with his fellow Apostles but fo rs the Popes advantage and the Roman courts whom they desire to invest solely with the key of all originall Jurisdiction And if we trace on this Argument a little further to search out how the Bishop of Rome comes to be Saint Peters heire ex ass● to the exclusion of his Elder Brother the Bishop of Antioch they produce no authority that I have seen but a blind ill grounded legend out of a counterfeit Heg●sippus of Saint Peters being about to leave Rome and Christs meeting him upon the way and admonishing him to return to Rome where he must be crucified for his name which reason halts on both sides The foundation is Apocryphal and the superstruction is weak and unjointed without any necessary connexion Thirdly it appeareth not to us that the Apostles in their daies did either set up any universall Monarchy in the Church or so much dilate the borders or bounds of any one mans single Jurisdiction as to subject so great a part of the Christian World as the Western Patriarchate to his obedience The highest that they went if any of those Canons which bear their names be genuine was to nationall or provincial Primates or Patriarchs for a Protarch or Primate and a Patriarch in the language of the ancient Church signified one and the same thing in whose praeheminence there was more of order and care then of single Jurisdiction and power Read their three and thirtieth Canon It behooves the Bishops of every distinct Nation to know him who is their first or Primate and to esteem him as their head And to do nothing that is of difficulty or great moment contrary to his opinion But neither let him do any thing without the opinion of all them This Nationall Primacy or Protarchat● or Patriarchate under which the Britannique Churches flourished for many ages is the very same which we contend for Fourthly it is worthy of our inquiry how in processe of time some Primates did obtain a much more eminent degree of honour and a larger share in the government of the Church then others And of this their adventitious Grandeur we find three principal fountaines First ancient customes Secondly the Canons of the Fathers And thirdly the edicts of Christian Princes First ancient customes Upon this ground the first generall Councel of Nice settled the authority and priveledges of the three Patriarchal Sees of Rome Alexandria and Antioch Let ancient customes prevail And these customes commonly proceeded either from the memory of the Apostles who had founded such Churches from whence as from Apostolical fountaines their neighbours did fetch sound doctrine and reciprocally paid to them due respect So

spare for Britain In the whole term of three hundred years there were few above two hundred Bishops Ordained at Rome Italy alone may brag well near of as many Bishops at one time as many succeeding Popes did ordain in all their ages Let them not tell us of the scarcity of Christians in those dayes The writings of Tertullian and Saint Cyprian and the Councels held within the time limited do evince the contrary No the first badge of their Patriarchal authority in Britain was sending of the Pall as the onely badge during the times of the Britons and Saxons And the first Pall that came into Britain was after six hundred years But this doth yet appear much more clearly from the answer of Dionothus the Reverend and learned Abbot of Bangor which according to the manner of those times was an University or Seminary of Learning and piety among the Britons and he the well deserving Rector of it made in his own name and in the name of the Britons when they pressed him to submit to the Romaen Bishop as his Patriarch that he knew no obedience due to him whom they called the Pope but the obedience of love And that under God they were to be governed by the Bishop of Caerleon Observe first what strangers the Britons were to the Papacy That man whom you call the Pope Secondly that they acknowledged no subjection or subordination no obedience whatsoever due from them to Rome but onely the reciprocal duty of love that was just the same that Rome did owe to them Thirdly that under God that is immediatly without any Forrein Prelate or Patriarch intervening they were to be governed by the Bishop of Caerleon as their onely Primate and Patriarch Which priviledge continued to the succeeding Bishops of that See for many ages afterwards saving that the Archiepiscopal Chair was removed from Caerleon to St. Davids in the Raign of King Arthur And lastly observe the time when this answer was made after the first six hundred years were expired So it is a full demonstrative convincing proof for the whole term prefixed But lest any man should cavil and say that Dionothus was but one man and that the body of the British Clergy might be of another mind that which followes strikes the question dead That Austin Saint Gregories Legate proposing three things to the Britons First that they should submit to the Roman Bishop Secondly that they should conforme to the customes of the Roman Province about the observation of Easter and the administration of Baptisme And Lastly that they should joyn with him in Preaching to the Saxons all the British Clergy assembled themselves together Bishops and Priests in two several Synods one after another to deliberate hereupon and after mature consideration they rejected all his propositions Synodically and refused flatly and unanimously to have any thing to do with him upon those terms Insomuch as St. Austin was necessitated to return over the Seas to obtain his own consecration and after his return to consecrate the Saxon Bishops alone without the assistance of any other Bishops They refused indeed to their own cost twelve hundred innocent Monks of Bangor shortly after lost their lives for it Rome was ever builded in blood Howsoever these words quamvis Augustino prius mortuo have since been forged and inserted into venerable Bede to palliate the matter which are wanting in the Saxon Copy The concurring Testimonies of all our Historiographers witnessing the absolute and unanimous refusal of the Britons to submit to Rome and the matter of fact it self do confirm this for an undoubted truth beyond all exception So clear a truth it is that the British Churches for the first three hundred years neither ought nor paid any subjection to Rome Whence might well proceed that answer of Elutherius to King Lucius if that Epistle be not counterfeit when he desired him to send over a Copy of the Roman Lawes That he should chuse a Law Ecclesiastical out of holy writ by the Councel of his Kingdom that is principally of his Bishops for saith he you are the Vicar of Christ in your Kingdom The same in effect which is conteined in the Lawes of Edward the Confessor Hence it is that both our Histories and our Lawes do stile our Archbishops Pri●ates which in the Language of the Primitive times signifies as much as Patriarchs And sometimes call them expresly by the very name of Patriarchs it self Hence Vrban the second intertained and welcomed Anselm our Archbishop of Canterbury into the Councel of Barre tanquam alterius orbis Papam as the Pope of another world Or as others relate the passage as the Apostle of another world and a Patriarch worthy to be reverenced CHAP. VI. That the King and Church of England had both sufficient authority and sufficient grounds to withdraw their obedience from Rome and did it with due moderation SO from the persons who made the separation from the Lawes and Statutes of our Realm which warranted the separation and from the ancient Liberties and priviledges of the Britannick Churches I proceed to my fourth ground drawn from the Imperial prerogatives of our Soveraign Princes That though we should wave all the other advantages yet they had power to alter in the external discipline and regiment of the Church whatsoever was of humane institution for the benefit and advantage of the body politick Doctor Holden proposeth the case right by way of Objection But peradventure the Protestants will say that the King or supream Senate of every Kingdome or Common-Wealth have power to make Lawes and statutes by which either directly or at least indirectly as well the Clergy as the Laity of that Kingdom or Common-Wealth are bound to reject all forrain Iurisdiction superiority and dependance And that his Legislative power is essentially annexed to every Kingdom and Commonwealth seeing that otherwise they cannot prevent those dangers which may spring and issue from that fountain to their destruction and ruine The Protestants do say indeed without all peradventure upon that very ground which is alledged in the objection Neither do the Protestants want the suffrage of Roman Catholicks therein Because humane nature saith one cannot be destitute of necessary remedies to its own preservation And another To whom a Kingdome is granted of necessity all things are esteemed to be granted without which a Kingdome cannot be governed And a Kingdom cannot be governed unlesse the King enjoy this power even over Clerks c. Necessary remedies are no remedies unlesse they be just but worse then the disease And being just the Subject is obliged to active obedience But let us see what the Doctour pleads in answer to his own objection First he passeth by the native power of civil Soveraign Empire which ought not to have been omitted for therein consists the main force of the argument But as to the Ecclesiastical part he saith he could

is not to be doubted of but that after the year six hundred after that Pope Boniface had quitted his Patriarchal dignity by assuming a more lofty title of universal Bishop The succeeding Popes by the connivence leave or consent of our Kings did sometimes more sometimes lesse upon pretence of their universal Jurisdiction by degrees thrust in their sickle into the Ecclesiastical affaires of England Whosoever shall ponder duly with what a depth of prudence the Roman Court hath mesnaged all occasions and occurrences to the advantage and advancement of that See and consequently to the improvement of their own authority whosoever shall weigh seriously with what art and cunning the Papacy as it now is was tacked into the Church contrary to wind and weather and how their beginning of unity was scrued up to an omnipotence and universality of power whosoever shall duly consider what advantage they made to that See and therein to themselves by the onely countenancing of Phocas his base and bloody murther or of Charles Màrtel his more glorious and successeful revolt will not wonder to observe how they did watch their times when we had Princes of weak Judgments or necessitous or superstitious or of unjust or Litigious titles to wind themselves into Britain Nay rather he will admire that they did not radicate themselves more deeply and more firmly therein which without doubt they had effected but for their exorbitant rapines whilest they thought that like Foxes they might prey most boldly farthest from their own Kennel Anglia verè hortus noster deliciarum puteus inexhaustus est ubi multa abundant multa de multis extorqueri possunt That England indeed was his garden of delight a Well that could not be drawn dry And where many things did abound out of much much might be extorted But first this intrusion was manifest usurpation and tyranny This was the Gangrene of the Church which no subsequent possession or submission could warrant no tract of time or prescription sufficiently confirm Quod ab initio fuit invalidum tractu temporis non convalescit That which is not onely unjust but invalid in its beginning can never be made valid by the empty pretense of a following custome or prescription Neither do I find in truth that any of the petite Saxon Kings or their Subjects though some of them indebted to S. Gregory for their first conversion and all of them much weakned by their Sevenfold division for at first of Seven Kings there was but onely one who was a Christian namely the King of Kent Neither was it any of his progeny who did afterwards unite the Heptarchy into a Monarchy much lesse that any of the succeeding Kings of England or of great Brittain united did ever make any Solemne formal or obliging acknowledgment of their submission to the Bishop of Rome But on the contrary when Austin first arrived in England he staied in Isle of Thanet untill he knew the Kings pleasure and offered not to preach in Kent until he had the Kings License for him and his followers to preach throughout his Dominions So not onely their Jurisdiction but even the exercise of their pastorall function within that Realm was by the Kings leave and Authority The donation and resignation of King Iohn whereby he went about to make a free Kingdom servile and feudatary to the Pope did concern the Crown more then the Miter and was soon hissed out of the world to the perpetual shame and infamy of such mercenary Pastors yet to obtain this Ludibrious act the power of the Keyes was abused and the Kingdom of England stood interdicted by the space of six years and three Months The Popes in later times had some power in England of courtesy not of Duty but never that omnipotence which they gaped after Sometimes they sent their Nuncios or Legates into England So they did of old into other Patriarchates Sometimes they admitted appeales from England to Rome So they did of old from Africk Sometimes they excommunicated the English Subjects So did Pope Victor long since excommunicate all the Asiaticks But neither Asia nor Africk for all that did acknowledge the Popes Jurisdiction On the other side sometimes their Legates were not permitted to enter into the Realm or after their arrival thrust out of the Realm unless they wo●ld give caution by oath for their good demesnour Sometimes their Bulls and excommunications were slighted or damned and they who procured them soundly punished for their labours Sometimes all appeales to Rome were prohibited under most severe penalties and their decrees rejected All this while our Kings and Bishops called Councells the one under civil punishments the other under Ecclesiastical made Ecclesiastical lawes and constitutions in their Synods and Parliaments yea expresse constitutions against the Court of Rome it self with as much tartnesse and vehemency as King Henry the Eighth And with this onely difference that they indeavoured to draw the people out of the Popes clawes at home and he thought it more expedient to throw the Pope over the Brittish Sea once for altogether The old and lawful Patriarchal power of the Roman Bishops within their own destricts had been renounced long before by themselves Their new universal Monarchy erected by themselves was not capable of prescription or if it had yet such a dubious unquiet possession as the Popes did hold in England at the mercy and discretion of the right owners was not sufficient to make a legal prescription or to justifie their pretended title or to render them bonae fidei possessores lawful and conscionable possessours This is that which I am now to demonstrate in this second ground The most famous I had almost said the onely appellant from England to Rome that we read of before the Conquest was Wilfride Arch-Bishop of York who notwithstanding that he gained sentence upon sentence at Rome in his favour And notwithstanding that the Pope did send expresse Nuncios into England on purpose to see his sentence executed yet he could not obtain his restitution or the benefit of his sentence for six years during the Raignes of King Egbert and Alfrede his son Yea King Alfrede told the Popes Nuncios expresly That he honoured them as his Parents for their grave lives and honourable aspects but he could not give any assent to their Legation Because it was against reason that a person twice condemned by the whole Councel of 〈◊〉 English should be restored upon the Popes Letter If they had believed the Pope to be their competent Judge either as universal Monarch or so much as Patriarch of Brittaine or any more then an honourable Arbitrator which all the Patriarchs were even without the bounds of their proper Jurisdictions how comes it to passe that two Kings successively and the great Councels of the Kingdome and the other Arch-Bishop Theodore with all the prime Ecclesiasticks and the flower of the English Clergy did so long and so

Bishop of the world Which sense was far enough from the intention either of Gregory the Great or Iohn of Constantinople who had both of them so many true Archbishops and Bishops under them But this sense agrees well enough with the extravagant ambition of the later Popes and of the Roman Court who do appropriate all original Jurisdiction to themselves So many waies is the Court of Rome guilty of Schismatical pravity Besides these branches of Schisme there are yet two other novelties challenged by the Popes and their Parasitical Courtiers But neither these nor the other yet defined by their Church both destructive to Christian unity both apt to breed and nourish to procreate and conserve Schisme An infallibility of judgment and a temporall power over Princes either directly or indirectly General and Provincial Councels are the proper remedies of Schisme But this challenge of infallibility diminisheth their authority discrediteth their definitions and maketh them to be superfluous things What needs so much expence so many consultations so much travel of so many poor old fallible Bishops from all the quarters of the world when there is an infallible Judge at Rome that can determine all questions in his own conclave without danger of errour Was Marcellinus such an infallible Judge when he burned incense to Idols Or Liberius when he consented to the Arrians and gave his suffrage to the condemnation of blessed Athanasius Or Honorius when he was condemned and accursed in the sixth General Councel for a Monothelite Or Iohn the 22th when he was condemned by the Theologues of Paris before the King with sound of Trumpets for teaching that the soules of the just shall not see God untill the general resurrection were those succeeding Popes Iohn and Martine and Formosus and Stephen and Romanus and Theodorus and Iohn and Benedictus and Sergius who clashed one with another and abrogated the decrees one of another over and over again such infallible Judges Neither is it meer matter of fact to decree the Ordinations of a lawful Bishop to be void To omit many others But howsoever they tell us That the first See cannot be judged I will not trouble my self about the credit of the authorities whether they be true or counterfeit Nor whether the first See signifie Rome alone or any other of the five Proto-Patriarchates Thus much is certain that by judgment of discretion any private man may judge the Pope and withdraw from him in his errours and resist him if he invade either the bodies or the soules of men as Bellarmine confesseth That in the Court of Conscience every ordinary Pastour may judge him and bind him and loose him as an ordinary man And by their leaves in the external Court by coercive power if he commit civil crimes the Emperour if Ecclesiastical a Councel or the Emperour with a Councel may judge him and in some cases declare him to be fallen from his Papal dignity by the sentence of the Law in other cases if he be incorrigible depose him by the sentence of the Judge But there is a great difference between the judgment of Subjects a● those Ecclesiasticks were and the judgment of a Sovereign Prince between the judgment of a General Councel and the judgment of an assembly of Suffragans and inferiours And yet the Roman Clergy are known to have deposed Liberius their own Bishop and justly Or otherwise Foelix their Martyr had been a Schismatick Their other challenge of temporal power whether directly or indirectly and in ordine ad spiritualia cannot chuse but render all Christians especially Sovereign Princes jealous and suspicious of their power and averse from the communion of those persons who maintain so dangerous positions so destructive to their propriety The power of the ke●es doth not extend it self to any secular rights neither can Ecclesiastical censures alter or invalidate the Lawes of God and Nature or the municipal Lawes of a Land All which do injoyn the obedience of children to their Parents and of Subjects to their Sovereignes Gregory the seventh began this practice against Henry the fourth But what Gregory did bind upon earth God Almighty did not bind in heaven His Papal blessing turned to a curse And instead of an Imperial Crown Rodolph found the just reward of his treason The best is that they who give these exorbitant priviledges to Popes do it with so many cautions and reservations that they signifie nothing and may be taken away with as much ease as they are given The Pope say they is infallible not in his Chamber but in his Chair not in the premisses but in the conclusion not in conclusions of matter of fact but in conclusions of matter of faith Not alwaies in all conclusions of matter of faith but onely when he useth the right means and due diligence And who knoweth when he doth that So every Christian is infallible if ●e would and could keep himself to the infallible rule which God hath given him Take nothing and hold it fast So likewise for his temporal power over Princes they say the Pope not as Pope but as a spiritual Prince hath a certain kind of power temporal but not meerly temporal not directly but indirectly and in order to spiritual things Quo tencam vultus mutantem Protea nodo CHAP. IX An Answer to the Objections brought by the Romanists to prove the English Protestants to be Schismaticks BUt it is not enough to charge the Church of Rome unlesse we can discharge our selves and acquit our own Church of the guilt of Schisme which they seek to cast upon us First they object that we have separated our selves Schismatically from the communion of the Catholick Church God forbid Then we will acknowledge without any more to do that we have separated our selves from Christ and all his holy Ordinances and from the benefit of his Passion and all hope of salvation But the truth is we have no otherwise separated our selves from the communion of the Catholick Church then all the primitive Orthodox Fathers and Doctours and Churches did long before us that is in the opinion of the Donatists as we do now in the opinion of the Romanists because the Romanists limit the Catholick Church now to Rome in Italy and those Churches that are subordinate to it as the Donatists did then to Cartenna in Africk and those Churches that adhered to it We are so far from separating our selves from the communion of the Catholick Church that we make the communion of the Christian Church to be thrice more Catholick then the Romanists themselves do make it and maintain Communion with thrice so many Christians as they do By how much our Church should make it self as the case stands more Roman then it is by so much it should thereby become lesse Catholick then it is I have shewed before out of the Canons and Constitutions of our Church that we have not separated our selves simply and absolutely from the