Whole by Order and as much depend upon Spiritual Superiours having power to teach and preach Christs Law as the Common-wealth doth on Secular Magistrates to preserve their temporal Lawes and govern according to them without this order the Whole is dissolved the Body is lost the Church is gone Doubtless Mr. Doctor it is not the fault or choice of the present Protestants that they are thus bassled and persecuted which yet you have spent this whole Chapter except onely the first Paragraph to prove so needs no such great and large disproose to manifest that that which is so much against mens wills should bee their Choice and Crime Yet wee may justly impute your Churches ruine to the sandiness of her foundation which being the Authority of the secular Governors must render her liable to change as often as the unconstant wind of temporal circumstances shall alter the former Government or as oft as the former Government yet remaining shall see it necessary for the present peace or conveniences of the Common wealth to introduce or admit the more prevailing sway of a new Religion But I foresee that the Doctor to avoid this objection will cling in with us and call the Antichristian and Idolatrous Romanists their dear Brethren and tell them they acknowledge their Iurisdiction and Mission to come from them desiring them not to reject them now in their greatest necessity but let them seem to have an Authority deriv'd from the Apostles by their meanes proffering that they in courteons recompence will acknowledge Rome to bee a true Church This indeed is ordinary with them but yet as frivolous still as the former For the Authority which our Church could give you was onely to teach and preach Catholike Doctrine and ordain others to doe the same to govern the Catholike flock and to preserve them in the anciently received Unity of Faith The Authority to doe these could come indeed from us and so if any who pretend to have received Iurisdiction from us continue to execute and govern themselves by that Commission so far they are warranted by the former Authorization but if they went beyond their Commission nay more acted quite contrary to their Commission I wonder what Iurisdiction or Mission they can pretend as derived from us Our question then is of such a power as your Bishops pretend to and exercised that is of bearing the Ensign of a Squadron of the Churches Enemies Preaching an opposite Doctrine to the Church which you pretend to have impower'd you and ordaining others to doe the same Evident it is that the Roman Catholike Church which is the only spiritual power you can think to have any Iurisdiction or Mission from never gave you this Authority wherefore it must come to you from the meer secular Power on this Power therfore is built all the Authority you have to act as Protestants or in order to the Protestant Church and consequently the whole building of your Church was erected onely and solely upon this uncertain and sandy foundation This made Mr. Hooker one of the best and perhaps the most prudent Writer of all that profession affirm of their Church that it was not likely to continue more than fourscore years nor could he judge otherwise seeing it bear evidently the Principles of corruption and mutability in its very constitution to wit the materia prima of a secular Basis which continually exposed it to a mortality as the formes of Government should have their ever-limited period and discovering the professors and Governours of it to bee none of those to whom our Saviour promised his perpetual assistance to the end of the world How much happier then would you be if leaving this fleeting and unbodied shadow you would return and unite your selves to the Catholike Church Which enjoying this promise from our Saviour of an indefectible perpetuity not onely experiences the certain faithfulness of that promise in a large continuance of 1600. yeares but also sees with Evidence perhaps more than scientifical that the walls of this Hierusalem are built upon such strong foundations that the Church and the Authority and Jurisdiction of her Governours can never fail or decay since they rely not on the slippery and weak prop of the temporal power for their Authority but on those who received it from the eternal never-altering Fountain of all power with Commission to delegate and transmit it with an uninterrupted succession to the future Governours of the Church till wee all meet in the Unity of Glory Nor is the means of transmitting this Heavenfounded Jurisdiction to Posterity less certain than is the law of grace written in the hearts of the faithful in indelible characters that inviolable Rule of Faith a Rock too adamantine to be undermin'd by human policy Let then her enemies though even Princes rage as much as they please nay even bandy and conspire together to subdue this free-born Kings Daughter to their prophane yoke her Jurisdiction as it ever hath so will it ever remaine secure and inviolate being independent of them and by reason of the state of Eternity her end and aym of a superiour order to their Authority which was instituted only for the rightly dispencing the transitory goods of this world Your parallel of the Jews suffering under the Zelot's fury or the old Roman yoke which you make account is so evident that the Reader will supercede all necessity of making it up I conceive to aym very little or nothing at your purpose For though they intruded unfit men into the Priestly dignity yet they did not actually neither could they possibly take away the Jurisdiction of the High Priest because this Jurisdiction was not given them by those secular powers but by God himself the contrary of all which happens in your case as has been shewn For the Jurisdiction of your Bishops may be taken away by the same Parliamentary power that set it up That it was not their guilt nor yours neither wee willingly grant and I wonder you could imagine us so unwise as to object that to be your voluntary Crime which you cannot but know we hold to bee your involuntary punishment Your wishes and prayers for peace and communion among all who are called Christians are no less ours and this not in words only but in efficacious endeavours and in several Nations with daily labours and extreamest hazards to reduce the straying flock to their safely-guarded fold Nay this Communion is so vehemently desired and thirsted after by us that we are ready to buy it at any rate except the forfeiture of the Certainty of Faith and its Rule the forfeiture of which is the loss of our own Communion also If Mr. Hammond can perswade himself and his friends to return to this Rule of Faith the Churches Infallibility which onely can unite us in the same stedfast belief of Christs Doctrine and to acknowledg the Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome in the acknowledgment of which consists the constant
sure if I be not mistaken Doubtless then a Schismatical rejecting their Decrees and Authority is more hainous grievous and more worthy to be ranked amongst his fellow-Schisms then any of the others Yet of this in this Chapter where he expresly undertakes and prosesses to enumerate all the several sorts of Schism we hear not a syllable Thirdly What is become of Schism against the Head of the Church Is not the Papal Authority greater then the Authority of any Patriarch Primate Arch-Bishop Bishop Dr. Hammond or a Deacon Surely all imagin so but Dr. Hammond and his fellows why is this over-slipt then as if it were a matter of nothing But Dr. Hammond will answer That the Popes is not indeed an Authority but an Usurpation and therefore there can be no Schism against it To which I reply That I expect not that he should grant it here but since he knows very well and grants that the Papal Authority was in a long possession of this Island held and acknowledged then and still pretended to be sacred and of divine institution nay more since it is confessed by them that they rejected this Authority and that this rejection of it is objected to them by us as a far greater Schism than any of the other he mentious he ought at least have taken notice of it and shown in what degree of Schism the casting off such an Authority was to be reputed as being Chief and instituted by Christ unless he could manifest the pretended Authority of the Hope to be null and an Usurpation Moreover since it is the use of the multitude which makes words signifie and that three parts of four of those who bear the name of Christians if taken in the double extent or space both of time and place have acknowledged and called it a main Schism and greater then any the Doctor here reckons up to reject the Supream Authority of the Bishop of Rome the Doctor could not in reason avoid the mention of this so-commonly-called Schism unless he had first manifested that it was none Again to state the matter indifferently to both sides let us take the word Head of the Church as abstracted from an Ecclesiastical or Secular Governor that is from both Pope and Emperor or King nay if he pleases let us take it only in the later sence which is his I desire to know since the Emperor or King is according to him Supreme in Ecclesiastical affairs Head of the Church or Churches in his Dominions above Patriarchs and Primates c. why is not the denying this Authority a greater Schism even in his own grounds than a Schism against a Patriarch Deacon c. For the Authority of the Head rejected what means possible remain to reconcile and unite the members In omitting this therefore the Doctor hath neither been true to our Question nor his own Grounds In sum So wise a Logician is this Doctor of Divinity That whereas the Members of the division should adequately comprehend all the several sorts of the thing divided he has onely omitted the three principal Schisms against Government and those not onely principal in themselves but also solely importing the present Controversie and onely mentioned those which were not objected and so nothing at all concerning our Question Where I desire the Doctor to remember That all those Testimonies he hath huddled here together out of the Fathers against Petty-Schismaticks will light far heavier upon him and his fellows if they be found to have separated from the incomparably greater Authority of the whole Church and that not onely by a bare Schism but also which you here acknowledge to adde very much to the guilt of the former by an open and most manifest Sedition The rest of your Chapter is taken up is things which tend not at all to the Matter you purposed to handle that is To defend your Church against the Schisms we object which makes you also so ample and large in handling them You show therefore with a great deal of pains the particular dignities of Deacons Priests Bishops Arch-bishops Primates Patriarchs you tell us many things of the Seven Churches of Asia c. I will onely glean what may seem worth Animadversion treating it briefly because you speak it as you say by the way in passing and the question is not much concerned in it and omiting those Testimonies which are slightly objected here and come over and over again afterwards First then you affirm That the Roman Patriarchy extended not it self to all Italy which though a known untruth and which I have heard learned and unpassionate men of your own side acknowledge yet you will needs evince out of the obscure Testimony of one Ruffinus a discontented â—illy and barbarons Writer and if you blame me for excepting against him one of your late most extolled Writers Monsieur Daille shall defend me who characters Ruffinus to be An arrant Wooden statue a pitiful thing one that had scarce any reason in what he said and yet much less dexterity in defending himself yet you account here his Testimony very competent But how small soever the Popes Patriarchy be what is this to his Papal Authority since even we our selves acknowledge him a Private Bishop of Rome which yet prejudices not his Publick Authority as the Churches Universal Governor Your Testimony alleaged out of the Council of Chalcedon shall be answered hereafter when we come to discuss the Question of the Popes Authority as also your other out of the Council of Ephesus in its proper place where it is repeated Your other claw against the Pope is That these was none antiently above the Patriarchs but the Emperor which you think to evince because the Emperor made use of his secular Authority in gathering Councils And who denies but however the intention and ordering that great Affair belonged to the Popes yet the Emperors as being Lords of the world were fittest to command the execution of it But ere you can conclude hence against the Popes Authority over the Church you must first evince That the Emperors and the like may be said of Kings did this without the Popes signifying such their desires to them Next That if they did it sometimes against the Popes will or pretending it their proper power such an action or pretence of theirs was lawful And thirdly had it belonged to the Emperors which yet none grants you yet how will your consequence hold good That therefore the Pope hath no Authority over the Universal Church As if there were no other acts of an Universal Authority but to gather Councils which is all one as to say That the Kings of England could have no Universal Temporal Command or Jurisdiction in England but onely to call a Parliament All your Marginal Testimonies therefore which you here bring signifying no more to us But that the Emperor executed that business are far from making good the Position you alleage them for to wit
Jurisdictions but also to set them together by the ears as if they were jealous that their fellow Apostles like usurping competitors would intrude into their right and therefore give express charge to debar their ambition from putting their Sicklâ— into another mans Harvest Good Mr. Hammond let us have no more of these insincere dealings Let the restrictive and exclusive words which onely make for your purpose be the witnesses not yours at least put them down with that distinction as may easily be discerned and do not after a company of your own expressions mainly prejudicial to the Controversie immediately cite a place of Sacred Writ without producing the words and so gull the Reader to to believe That all which went before is perfect and pure Scripture Whereas indeed scarce so much as a blank Monosyllable is found in the Testimony to countenance your alleaging it But this is your solemn method all over your Book His next Argument is that St. Paul gave Commission to Timothy without St. Peter And who doubts but that each Apostle might by his own single power delegate and constitute whom he pleased and where he pleased in any place of the world I perceive by this whole Chapter that the Doctor understands not the question or at least could not have made a Book without counterfeiting not to understand it We voluntarily yeeld him that each Apostle had an Apostolical Commission over the whole world and yet fear no prejudice should hence arise to St. Peters Primacy amongst the rest of the Apostles Had Master Hammond known this it might have saved him all that pitiful puzzle in making good his first Evidence That St. Peter was over the Iews onely by patching those old garments of ancient Testimonies with the new peeces of his self-woven Additions This Concession of ours and mistake of his shews the next Paragraph which harps upon the same string to wit That St. Paul constituted Titus Primate in Creet to be nothing to the purpose And I observe That the Doctor to give him his due hath very good luck in this That he proves those things pretty plainly which none ever denied After this he tells us That Simeon Metaphrastes affirms St. Peter to have been in Britanny sometime and baptized many into the Faith of Christ and constituted Churches ordaining Bishops Presbyters and Deacons in the twelfth year of Nero. How now Doctor what will become of your excluding St. Peter from any Authority over the Gentiles if this Testimony be true were not all the ancient Britains at that time Heathens or Gentiles Alas no we and all antiquity were mistaken the Doctor tells us That in all reason it must be extended no farther then St. Peters line as he was Apostle of the Circumcision ID EST saith he to the Iews which might at that time â—e dispersed here So as though the story were true yet the Doctor hath ever a help at maw and rather then St. Peter shall touch a Gentile he will fancy strongly that there were I cannot tell how many Diocesses of Iews in England since there must be several Diocesses where there are several Bishops for St. Peter to convert and govern So that Britain must swarm with Jews Which might have been saith this evidencing Doctor dispersed there and this without any authority or likelihood but onely because Master Hammond and his ID ESTS say it In the last place the Doctor concludes out of his former laid grounds that is out of his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Iudas his going to Hell out of his own ID ESTS WE KNOW IT IS MANIFEST WE MAKE NO QUESTION out of his clasping together very unlike and disaccording Testimonies to his own voluntary Assertions with the Hooks and Eyes of SO and ACCORDINGLY but most of all out of the Papers of his own Additions pin'd before and behinde the too-bashful proofs Out of these grounds I say without so much as one word in any Testimony either out of Scripture Fathers or History restraining the Commission of St. Peter to the Iews onely he concludes That that Apostle could not be Universal Pastor of the Church This done he hooks in with another ACCORDINGLY a Testimony of St. Prospers which calls them Hereticks who depart from the Communion of Christ and his Apostles in the plural says the Doctor and then reckons up promiscuously such and such Apostles founding such and such Churches What follows hence against St. Peters authority This Testimony seems also something aenigmatical and requires Lynxe's eyes or the Doctors far-seeing and all-penetrating Optick to look through the thick rinde of it which he willingly lends you in these words Where as the Church had the several Apostles for their Founders and those Independent one from the other so the unity from which Hereticks and Schismaticks are said to depart IS SAID to have been founded EQUALLY in each of them in John James and Andrew as well as in St. Peter The word where and is said would almost perswade the Reader that all that follows is in the Testimony but nothing is there or any where else That the Apostles were independent of each other nor that this unity was founded equally in each of them nor in the rest as well as St. Peter But all these his Doctorship huddles together of his own head All the shadow of proof one can have a glimpse of from this place is That the Apostles are here named promiscuously and without distinction and that therefore all were equal Which as it is onely a Negative and non-concluding Argument to say That no distinction is here mentioned therefore there was none so were the Conclusion admitted as Consequent it makes as much against Christ as against St. Peter For he is also named joyntly with his Apostles as those whose joynt-communion Hereticks leave So as if the mentioning of several persons indifferently together without distinction of superiority argue an equality in their Authorities the Doctors Logick may with the same reason infer That Christ and his Apostles were independent of one another that the unity from which Schismaticks depart is founded EQUALLY in them in John James Andrew AS WELL as Christ c. And this may serve for a sample of the Doctors solidness in reasoning Yet it is some sign of wit if one can do himself no good at least to do himself no hurt but the Doctor by this very Testimony which made nothing at all for him has most expresly undone all his former work even beyond the help of an ID EST that is beyond all hopes of remedy For whereas he had bent all his endeavors to prove that some Apostles had the Iews onely for their Province and had more especially insisted for nine whole Paragraphs together in limiting St. Peters authority to the Iews no body knows where as likewise St. Iames his to the Iews in Iudea Section six and St. Iohns to the Iews of Asia Section fourteen This Testimony by himself here alleaged
Since the giving the Keys is particularly applied to St. Peter and that those Keys are a token of an Oeconomy or Stewardship in Christs house it follows the Apostles being a part of Christs house or his Church that Saint Peter was constituted Ecclesiastical Steward over them Fourthly The Doctors inference from the particular Application of these words to St. Peter That the Stewardship belongs to single persons and not to Consistories and Assemblies If he intend to deduce hence a power in all the rest of the Apostles and all other Prelates superior to their Assemblies or Consistories is something scrued and far-fetch'd whereas if the words be applied to infer That one was made Steward or Superior in the Consistory or Assembly of the Apostles they are plain and obvious the present circumstances making that Explication natural Lastly Saint Peter being thus constituted Steward in Christs house all that follows in the Doctor though otherwise meant runs on very currantly and upon his grounds to wit That whatsoever St. Peter acted by virtue of Christs power thus promised he should be fully able to act himself without the conjunction of any other and that what he thus did clave non errante no one or more men on Earth could rescind without him Thus hath Doctor Hammond while he disputes against his Brother Presbyters faln into a sudden fit of Popery and at unawares laid grounds for a greater Authority in the Pope then many Papists will grant him But it is onely a fit he will recover I doubt not speedâ—ly as soon he begins to combate us afresh But now as I said the Scene is chang'd The Presbyterian being routed by our weapons that the words were spoken particularly to St. Peter he throws them away affirming here pag. 88. most shamelesly and expresly against Scripture alleaged by himself which named St. Peter in particular and no other in particular That this power was as distinctly promised to each single Apostle as to St. Peter alleages for his first Evidence the words of Scripture Matth. 18. 18. which he says are most clear for that purpose But looking into the Text I finde it onely spoken in common and general to all the Apostles not a word particularizing each single Apostle and distinctly as the Doctor would have it which yet was done to Saint Peter Matth. 16. 19. His second most clear proof is introduced with the old ACCORDINGLY thus And ACCORDINGLY Matth. 19. the promise is again made of twelve Thrones for each to sit on to judge ID EST saith the Doctor to rule or preside in the Church Well done Doctor give you but your own proper weapon of ID EST in weilding which you have a marvellous dexterity and I 'll lay an hundred crowns on your head against the best disputant in Christendom All the world as far as I ever heard except this Doctor understands the place as meant of our Saviours coming to judgment at the Resurrection and the Apostles sitting with him to judge But the Doctor with the help of an ID EST hath made the day of Judgment come in the Apostles time turned judge into preside and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Throne or Iudgment seat into Cathedra an Episcepal Chair or See His third proof is a dumb Negative That the Holy Ghost descended on all the Apostles in fire without any peculiar mark allowed to St. Peter Which reduced into form mutters out thus much That St. Peter had no peculiar mark of fire Ergo concludes the Doctor He was not head of the Apostles Where first I would ask the Doctor how he knows there was no peculiar mark allowed St. Peter He was not there I suppose to see and there is no History either sacred or prophane that expresses the contrary Next if we may judge by exterior actions and may believe That out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks then perhaps the Doctor may receive some satisfaction in this point also that St. Peter had in a more peculiar manner the Holy Ghost For it was he that first burst out into that Heavenly Sermon which converted three thousand But nothing will serve the Doctors curiosity except a greater tongue of fire if he have not that it is most clear he is no head of the Apostles What a wise man is he to think St. Peter could not be chief Pastor of the Church but God must needs be bound to watch all occasions to manifest it by a particular miracle His fourth is from these words And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost In the name of Wonder what can be deduced from this place against St. Peters Primacy The Doctor will manifest it plainly And so saith he the promise of the spirit EQUALLY performed to all Suppose it were equally what follows thence Therefore St. Peter not chief of the Apostles As if none could be higher in dignity but he must necessarily have more of the Holy Ghost in him This Reason then you see is so shallow that even a childe may foard it but his consequence is still shallower inferring from their being full of the Holy Ghost that they had it equally As if each could not be full according to their diverse capacities and yet receive it in a very unequal degree Our Saviour Luke 4. 1 is said to be full of the Holy Ghost so is Barnabas Acts 11. 24. yet as I hope the Doctor will not say Barnabas had the Holy Ghost equally with our Saviour So all the Saints in Heaven are full of Glory yet differ as one Star from another in the degrees of that Glory distributed to them according to the measure of their several capacities Which puts me in minde of a story of a Plough-man who dining with his fellowrusticks when his companions strove to get the bigger Eggs he indifferently chose the lesser affirming That all were equal For which when he was laught at he defended himself with this as he thought serious Reason That the little Eggs had as much meat in them as they could hold and the great ones had no more and therefore there was no difference between them Surely the Doctor heard this dispute stole the Argument and now infers here from all being full of the Holy Ghost that all had it equally The Testimonies you alleage out of the Fathers That the power of the Keys was conforred on all the Apostles that from the giving St. Peter tho Keys the continual successions of Bishops flows that the Church is built upon the Bishops c. We allow of to a tittle and charge it upon you at either a pittiful ignorance or a malicious calumny to pretend by objecting those that we build not the Church upon Bishops in the plural nor allow any authority to them but to the Pope onely whereas you cannot but know how great Authority we give to Councils consisting of Bishops insomuch as it is a School-dispute amongst our Writers Whether the Pope or the Council be of higher
Apostles the Doctor will not deny the first to signifie St. Peter to whom he and his fellows are content at least to grant from our Saviours words a priority of Order This first foundation then shadowing to us St. Peter is here Chap. 21. 19. said to be a Iasper the self-same Stone whose lustre shined in our Saviour Apoc. 4. 3. and also in his Church Apoc. 21. 11. Whence follows would the Doctor triumphantly cry out as an IRREFRAGABLE EVIDENCE that St. Peter onely having the same lustre with our Saviour is like him in representation and so onely he resembles him as his Vicegerent or Vicar As also that being the same Stone the Church is made of and the first of all the rest it is unquestionably true would he say that he is the first part of the Church that is her Head Under what luckless Constellation was Mr. Hammond born to meddle with the Foundation-stones in the Apocalypse and not fore see this dangerous rub which makes him so far from evidencing against us thence that the very place objected happens to be an Evidence against himself I mean such a kinde of proof as he would call an Evidence And thus he concludes his fourth Chapter containing the first substantial part of his Book In which as I sincerely profess I have not found one word to the purpose that is not one restrictive word of St. Peters Universal Pastorship nor one express equalizing term of his power of the Keys to the rest of the Apostles so I must confess withal that I have both wearied my own patience in laying open such a gallimaufry of shallow impertinences and I fear my Reader also who may think his time ill-employ'd in perusing the confutation of so weak a Writer The Second Part. Comprehending the Answers of the Fifth Sixth and Seventh Chapters SECT 1. Of the pretended Primogeniture of Antioch and the Doctors mistake of the Council of Chalcedon THis Champion of Schism having as he thought empal'd the Universal Jurisdiction of St. Peter to the dispersed Iews onely proceeds laying first his own mistakes for his grounds in this fifth Chapter to depose the Pope which he entitles thus The Evidences from the Bishop of Romes succeeding Saint Peter examined as he did the fore-going Chapter The pretended Evidences of the Romanists c. Where first he would perswade many good honest Readers that he had urged our Evidences home and afterwards salved them whereas indeed he onely puts down a word or two of our bare tenet and that not even as we explicate it much less as we evidence it Secondly He would seem to intimate again that it belongs to us to evidence Let the Doctor know the Churches Evidence is her long-and-quietly enjoy'd possession of the belief of Infallibility in which she was actually found when his upstart and disobedient Forefathers the first Reformers went out from her-Communion POSSIDEO QUIA POSSIDEO OLIM POSSIDEO PRIOR POSSIDEO is all the Evidence and all the reason she is bound to give to her rebel-sons and out-lawed Subjects So as it is your part to evidence hers to hold and possess her own till you sufficiently that is demonstrably evidence her title to be unjust Thirdly The Doctor is here also as indeed generally every where contrary to himself inscribing the Chapters as answers to our Evidences yet spending almost the whole Chapters in producing pretended Evidences of his own so performing the quite contrary to what he promised But this is nothing with him His first Paragraph sayes onely That St. Peter having no Primacy the Bishop of Rome his Successor could consequently have none But because his Antecedent hath already been dash'd in peeces by my Answer to his former Chapter no Consequence can be built upon it till he have repaired his ground-work by a stronger Reply Yet Mr. Hammond is so self-conceitedly confident of the invincibleness of his former Chapter that he accounts this a work of Supererogation Whereas if to prove his first Evidence he hath produced any one express Testimony That St. Peters Iurisdiction was limited to the Iews onely which onely was the thing in question or if to prove his second EVIDENCE he hath produced any one express place to prove That the Keys though given to all yet were not more particularly given to St. Peter which onely is there the thing in question I will quit the field and yeeld though not my cause yet my own particular conquer'd But if he have not what a vanity is it to brag when he had said nothing at all to the Controversie that he hath said all that is necessary nay even supererogated and said more then needs In this second Paragraph the Doctor would evidence That the Priviledges attending St. Peters succession belong rather to the Bishop of Antioch then of Rome And this he endeavors by asking three Questions to which I shall answer in order First he asks Whether St. Peter did not as truly plant a Church of Iewish believers at Antioch and leave a Successor Bishop there as at Rome he is supposed to have done I answer If you mean he planted a Church there of Iewish believers onely so as he had no power over the Gentiles also I absolutely deny it and in your last Chapter your proper place to prove it in you had not one word to bless your self with but what you added of your own That he left a Successor Bishop there If you mean such an improperly call'd Successor as both himself and St. Paul left in many other places that is made some one a Bishop and left him to overlook and govern that Church I easily grant but if you mean such a Successor as should succeed in the amplitude of Saint Peters authority so as St. Peter should devest himself of his Primacy and give it him not carrying it along with him to Rome I deny he left there any such kinde of Successor neither can there be the least shadow of Reason why he should nor is there any Testimony or Ground that he did Your second Quere is Whether this were not done by him before ever he came to Rome I answer in the manner I have declared doubtless he did Your third Quere is Whether these two Concessions do not devolve all power and jurisdiction on the Bishop of Antioch St. Peters Successor there which by that tenure and claim of Succession from St. Peter can be pretended to by the Bishop of Rome I answer the first is not a Concession unless first distinguished as I shewed before and the distinction given intercepts the passage to his Conclusion To manifest which the better we may distinguish in St. Peter resident at Antioch two diverse qualities of dignity First his particular care of that Church as private Bishop in that See Secondly his publick office of Head of the Church in which consists his Primacy Now when he left that City and went to Rome he devested himself of the private care of
Communion of the Faithful This Rule therefore broken or rejected dissolves all positive Communion amongst Christians both in Faith and Sacraments For what tie could they possibly have to communicate in any thing consequent to Faith as Sacraments Government or any good work unless they first communicate in faith the rule and ground of those Sacraments Government and good works and how can they communicate in faith if there be no Infallibility to binde them to an Unity in it The denying therefore of this Infallibility is the reason of all Schism and even of Heresie too nay it selfe is the Heresie of Heresies opening a liberty for every man to embrace his owne new-fangled opinions and introducing principles of incertitude and at best probability in Religion whose natural course is to wander at last into a Civil kind of Atheism Nor can there be any rational pretence to oblige mens consciences to a Religion whose conâ—est uncertainty must needs infer an absolute abolishment of all Church discipline and content it selfe with a meer voluntary obedience that is legitimaâ—e all Schism by taking away the very possibility of Schismatizing Another reason may be given why the denying this infallibility perverts quite overthrows all unity in Church-government For the preservation of the Churches unity in government being essential to Religion that is to the Art of breeding up mankind to know and love God it cannot possibly be conceived to be of humane but divâ—ne institution and therefore being taught and instituted by Christ belongs to Faith and so requires to be recommended by the same never-eâ—ring Rule which teaches us the rest of his Doctrine He therefore that denies this Infallibility hath no sufficient reason to beleeve the Article of the Churches Government and consequently will easily finde evasion to excuse his obedience to her commands The Unity of the Church being thus clearly delivered there needs no new task to shew what Schism is it being nothing else but the unknitting and dissolving these several manners of this Unity and Communion and in breaking aâ—under that tye and obligation by which these Unions of the several members with one another and of all with the Head are firm'd and made inviolable What remaines to be done is onely to shew that this Anatomy of Schism is the perfect picture nay the very Sceleton of the carkasse-Church of England and that they have infring'd the lawes of Unity in all the aforesaid manners And as for the first which is the Unity of all the Members under one Head or Chief Bishop and Pastour of the Church in whom at the time of the breach all the Hierarchical Order was summed up as in the highest top of that Heaven-reaching Climax you confesse here Sect. 5. that you cast it out of this Island The Authority I say of the chief Pastourship of the Bishop of Rome to which you and the whole Church you were then in were subject acknowledged by you not Patriarchal onely but a large step higher to wit universally extended over all Patriarchs and the whole Church was that which you cast out and subtracted your selfe from its obdiencee If then you will hold to your former grounds so largely to your disadvantage laid in your third Chapter that it is Schism in a Deacon or Priest to disobey a Bishop in a Bishop to refuse subjection to his Aroh-Bishop c. How will you excuse your selves from Schism in rejecting the Authority of the Head of the Church unless you can evidence that Authority null that is that Doctrine false to which you had been subject ever since your first Conversion as to a more superiour Governour than either Bishop Arch-Bishop Primate or Patriarch In vaine then was your long frivolous digression that Kings may erect and translate Patriarchates since a greater Authority than a Patriarch was rejected by you and cast out of this Island which no King ever pretended to erect and remove at pleasure In vain do you think to shelter your Schism under the wings of the Regal power since your King being at that time actually under the Pope as far as concerned Ecclesiastical matters and acknowledging his supreme Pastourship lies himself as deeply obnoxious to the charge of Schism as you his subjects and followers or rather much more as being the Ringleader of the breach So as no plea is so unwarrantable as to bring him for your excuse who is the person accounted most guilty and who needs a plea himself for his own far more inexcusable Schism and disobedience But what excuse you bring or not bring concerns us not at present onely this remains certain and acknowledg'd that you cast out of the Island that Supreme Authority in which at that time the Faithful of the Church you were in communicated and in which chiefly consisted the Unity of the Hierarchical Government arising orderly and knit np peaceably in acknowledgment of and subjection to that One Head Whether you did this justly or no belongs to the formal part of Schism and shall be discussed in the following Section Next for what concerns the Unity of one Member-Church with another it is no lesse evident you have broke asunder all positive Communion not in Government onely as hath been shewn but in Faith and Sacraments with all Churches which communicated with the See of Rome whom before your Schism you 〈◊〉 the onely and sole true Members of Christs mystical Body That you broke from their Communion in Government hath been already manifested from your rejecting her Supreme Governour in the subjection to whom they all communicated Nor is it less evident that you have broke from their Faith as appeares from the irreconcileable diversity of the points of Faith between us and the large difference between your 39. Articles and our Council of Trent Nor has the Unity you and those Churches had in Sacraments escaped better Five of them being par'd away as unnecessary the sixth transelementated from the sacred price of our Redemption into the egena elementa of bread and wine and the seventh onely that is Baptism with much adoe remaining inviolate lest you should forfeit the name of Christians also together with the reality If the denial of these and your styling the best act of our Religion to wit the the oblation of the Unbloudy Sacrifice in your 31. Article a blasphemous fiction and pernicious imposture and lastly if your persecuting us to death be signes of a positive communion with us then killing may be called kindness and railing votes against us may perhaps be styled Communicatory letters with us All Communication then both positive and negative with the Church you were in formerly was by you renounced yet at least some pretence of excuse had been producible if departing out of that Church you had either kept or renew'd Communion with some other which was acknowledged by all the World or at least by your selves before the breach to have been a true one But you can pretend no such thing as
Communication with any Church either true or even fals For first at your dawning or rather twilight in King Henry's dayes for your progress hath not been to noon-day-light but to midnight you had nothing at all to doe with any other Church in Christendom Since that time though you have indeed a kinde of Communication with some few of your fellow Schismaticks yet if well examin'd it is negative onely Faction against Rome initiates you into so much friendship as to converse with the Calvinists sometimes to call them Brethren somtimes to be merry with your doublejug Companions in the Synod of Dort of whose drunken and beastly behaviour wallowing worse then swine in their own vomits I have heard a Pillar of your own Church scandalously complain having too much spirit of draff forced by them into his queaâ—ier stomach Though I say you may thus communicate with them in eating and drinking in which acts * before you made All Communion consist yet any other positive tie and obligation either with them or any others to conserve you in Communion so as you may be said to make up one Ecclesiastically-politick Body united by some inviolable Order such an obligation I say could never be discover'd between you and any other Church good or bad true or fals The Greek Church holding almost all that we doe and scarce two points with you which are against us as your friend Alexander Rosse hath particularly told you The Lutherans hold much more with us in opposition to you than with you in opposition to us The Calâ—inists are excluded by the most understanding Protestants from their Church since they admit not the Government of Bishops held by the others to be of Divine Right nor the Protestants Fundamental or as the Doctor calls it The Bottome of the Foundation of the Reformation to wit that the King is Head of the Church The 39. Articles which as the Kings Supremacy is the Imprimis so these are all the Items of the Protestants Faith obtain not a total admission from any Church but themselves nor amongst themselves neither their great Champion Mr. Chillingworth rejecting them at his pleasure Nor is there any visible form of Government uniting them all together but they are forced to fly sencelesly to an invisible one either of onely Christ in Heaven or onely Charity pretences to gull the easie vulgar not to satisfie prudent men who know that the Church though it be a spiritual Common-wealth breeding up Soules to a state of a future Eternity yet while it is here on earth it is a Common-wealth of Christians visibly comporting or discomporting themselves in order to Christs laws of which the Church is the Keeper and Conserver and therefore it must have visible Governours without expecting a miraculous recourse to Christ in Heaven to resolve emergent difficulties or to cherish and punish her weldemeaned or misdemeaned subjects But for a more full demonstration that the Church of England has no perfect Communion with the Greek Lutheran Calvinist or any other Church I refer the Reader to the learned Exomologâ—sis or Motives c. of Mr. Cressy a late Protestant Dean but now Religious of the ancient and holy Order of St. Benet where the Doctor may also read among other controversies excellently treated the charge of Schism sufficiently prov'd against his Church Perhaps the Doctor will alledge that their positive Communion with other reformed Churches consists in the acknowledgment of Gods Word and the holding to it But I would ask him whether he means they agree in the Name of Gods Word or in the Thing or Sence of it If in the Name onely then all that have the title of Christians that is all Hereticks and Schismaticks in the World are of one Communion nothing being more rife in their mouths and pens than wrong alledged testimonies out of the Bible the bare name then is not sufficient it must be the Thing that is the sence and meaning of Gods Word in which he must make their positive Communion consist but since they have no one certain known and commonly acknowledged Rule by which to interpret Gods word and fetch out the true inward sence lurking in the imperspicuous bark of the letter it followes they have no positive way or meanes to communicate in the same sence and therefore no positive unity can be grounded on that pretence And it would be as sencelesse to object that they communicate at least in fundamentals found in Gods word since the Scripture not telling them they cannot tell certainly themselves which points are fundamentals which not all being there with equal authority and like tenour delivered and proposed to them And if we should goe to reason to know what are fundamentals surely reason would give it that the rules of Faith and Government are more fundamental than all the rest No positive communion therefore have they with our Church as little with their fellow schismaticks it being the nature of boughs separated not to grow together into one tree after they have once lost connection with the root Where they are cut off there they lie and though for a short time they retain some verdure and some little moystning sap counterfeiting life that is as much Religion as serves them to talk of God and Christ yet after a while they wither roâ— and molder away into an hundred atomes of dust or else if they chance to be gathered up or taken away sooner they serve for nothing but to be thrown into the fire SECT 10. That the reforming Protestants were and are guilty of the formal part of Schism THat you have made then a material breach or schism is as evident as fact and reason can make the most manifest thing to the clearest understanding The formality of schism comes next to be enquired into which consists in its injustifiablenesse or doing it without just causes or motives which consequently unlesse you can shew you must unavoidably be concluded formal schismaticks And though the testimonies of the Fathers which you formerly produced affirming that there can be no just cause given of schism render all further proof unnecessary yet to make this matter stil more manifest I desire Mr. Hammond in the Churches behalfe that he would give me leave to summon him to the Bar of Reason that we may see what he can answer for himselfe and his friends whose defence here he undertakes Cath. Do not you know that the Church in whose bowels your ancestors til K. Henry began the breach were bred had no other form of Government then that which now is of the Bishop of Rome held chiefe Pastour of the universal Church and supreme in Ecclesiastical matters and that til the breach was made you held as sacred and were under that government Dr. I pretend not to deny it for this is the very authority I told you in my 7. c. 5. sect we cast out of this Island Besides Kings can erect and remove Patriarchates at
no doubt bid God give his foes a rap Then then it was that that second Solomon Robert Wisedom inspired questionless from Heaven warbled out that melodious and exquisit hymn which with a sweet twang closes up the book of Psalmes Preserve us Lord by thy dear word From Turk and Pope defend us Lord. And the rest of that devout piece able to ravish any Christian heart to hear it These and such other rarities of Reformation were then added as harmonious Epithalamiums to this under-age Bride-Church to celebrate her espousals or marriage with her Infant-Head After this the Dr. treates of the Reformation made under Queen Elizabeth in his 15. Paragraph consisting of five or six lines on either side a long Parenthesis which Parenthesis tells us partly strange news that Queens as well as Kings have according to our Laws Regal Power partly open fictions that this plenitude of power is as well in Sacred as Civil affairs and that they have this by the Constitution of our Monarchy Whereas he cannot but know there had been many a Monarch in England ere their Schismatical Laws were made which first allowed the King a plenitude of power in sacred matters In the next place he touches the ordination of their new created Bishops evidenced as he saith out of the records to have been performed according to the ancient Canons by the imposition of the hands of the Bishops Yet this modest evidencing Record durst never shew its head for about fifty years notwithstanding the outcries made by Catholicks against the pretended ordinations of Protestant Bishops and strong presumptions to the contrary till at length when the memory of that present age was past which might discountenance that pretence and argue it of impudence out steps a new old Record assuring us that they were regularly ordained And this is the firmest Basis the Protestant Ministry or Bishops have to witnesse that they have any more Authority to preach then an Anabaptistical Zelot whose profession is perhaps a Weaver his Calling his own Intrusion his Pulpit a Tub and his Diocesse a Conventicle But suppose you had a material Mission from the hands of Catholick Bishops and that Mr. Mason had vindicated you in this point yet can either Mr. Mason or any else even pretend to manifest that those Catholick Bishops gave you a Mission that is sent and Authorised you to preach Protestant Doctrines or could do it in case they would having no such power from the Church from whom they have all their power Unlesse you evidence this both Mr. Mason and Dr. Hammond may as well say nothing For since they gave you no such authority as you make use of that is to preach against the formerly received Faith nor sent you any such errand as you now declare and preach it follows that whatever you do to prejudice and extinguish that doctrine to propagate which they meant your Mission is done onely upon your own head without any authority but your own selfe-assumed licentiousnesse to talk and say what you list not derived from the consecrated hands of your Catholick Ordainers but from your own unhallowed schismatical hearts But Mr. Dr. is always afraid where no fear is answering at large here a supposed objection of ours against Q. Elizabeth for unchairing some Bishops and installing others But alas I am more courteous to the Queen than the Doctor imagines and think no worse of her but onely that in that fact she did after kind for supposing her once the Head of Schisinaticks and Chief-Bishopesse of their Church I see no reason but she should depose Bishops Catholikely affected and install heretical ones and in a word she and her Bishops voâ—e and act whatever they thought good and I cannot tell what should hinder them since the now rejected Authority of Gods Church could not All the superstructures of the Reformation then which the Doctor so often and so largely in this Chapter hath shown to be done regularly I grant him to have been done as regularly as his own heart could wish or mans wit imagine for the Authority of the Church being schismatically renounced and the infallible rule of Faith which could onely oblige men to an unanimous beleefe being broken and rejected these grounds I say being layed I yeeld that the superstructure not onely of their heresie but even of Lutheranism Zuinglianism Calvinism Arminianism Puritanism Brownism Socinianism Presbyterianism Anabaptism with those of Quakers and Adamites but even of Turcism and Atheism were all very regular orderly rational and connatural superstructures upon the forelaid foundations The ruine of all Faith must needs accompany the renouncing of Certainty Yet I had forgot to let the Reader see how the Doctor excuses the Queen for devesting some Bishops of their dignity and his excuse is because those Bishops refused to take the oath of Supremacy concluding that therefore she dealt justly in devesting those Bishops which thus refused to secure her Government or to approve their fidelity to their lawfull Soveraign By which one may see the Doctor knowes not the difference between the oath of Allegiance and the oath of Supremacy The oath of Allegiance or fidelity was instituted expresly for that purpose what needed she then presse them to take the oath of Supremacy to approvâ— their Fidelity or Allegiance cannot one be a true subject to his King by acknowledging him his Liege Soveraign unless he will take his oath he is Head of the Church As if neither any of the former Kings of England nor any of the Catholike Princes that now are or ever have been had so much as one true subject because none of them takes the Oath of Supremacy What followes is onely a narration how the Schism went on and the rent was made worse At length he shuts up this Chapter by pronouncing an absolute Negative of their guiltiness of Schism from this one evidence that all was done by those to whom and to whom onely the rightful power legally pertained to wit the King and Bishops of this Nation So as the King must be Head of the Church that 's concluded hoagh all the world say and swear the contrary though himselfe have not brought one express word to prove it Nay more he hath EVIDENCE it is no Schism because the King and the Bishops voted it as if whatsoever the King and Bishops vote let it be what schismatical doctrine it will though Socianism and Turcism it must not be schismatical so blind is prejudice that it can neither see without its own spectacles nor beyond its own narrow limits The Doctor discourses all this Chapter long as if he made account all the world were comprised in one poor corner of it England like the home-bred fellow that thought the Sun set at the next town if a King or Queen here with a few Bishops partly out of feare partly out of favour some out of malice and contradicted by others decree any thing it makes the case irrefragable
that the Scripture grants to S. Peter some Primacy of Order or Dignity If so Mr. Hammond then for any thing you know it may be a Primacy of Iurisdiction And it stands onely upon the certainty of your and our interpretation of Scripture whether it signifie such a Primacy or no. Neither indeed could it be any other if any hold may be taken from your words For S. Peter as you grant and as the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Simon the first of the Apostles plainly evidence had some kind of Primacy then given him and if it were then given him he then had it that is he had it in our Saviours life time but you told us before that S. Iohn had the dignity of place which is the same with Primacy of Order before all others in Christs life time even before S. Peter himself The Primacy then which S. Peter had in Christs life time must be some other Primacy and what Primacy could this be but the Primacy of Iurisdiction Again if by this Primacy he allows S. Peter he means such a precedency as hath any effect or efficacity in the Church according to the nature and degree of a Primacy this is all the substance of the Popes Authority and all that is held by us as of Faith but if he means by Primacy there a meerely inefficacious and dry Presidency and Precedency of Order such as is with us the walking on the right hand or sitting first at a Table without any superiority more than a courteous deference of the rest then the Doctor must imagine our Blessed Saviour had no better thing to do when he made S. Peter the first but to take order for feare the good Apostles should fall to complement who should sit go or speak in the first place and consequently this tenet being an Act of our Saviours register'd in Scripture must bee a courteous point of Faith obliging all the Apostles under pain of damnation to be civil and make a leg to S. Peter In the next paragraph the Doctor is full of feares and jealousies and makes a great doubt that the subjection of this Church to the Authority of the Bishop of Rome will never be likely to tend to the Unity of the whole And why think you so Mr. Doctor doe you not find evidently that the Church before Luther and K Henry renounced the said Authority enjoy'd most perfect peace and tranquillity as those who are under that government doe most blessedly now and on the contrary that after that Authority was rejected nothing has succeeded the rejecters but perpetual turmoiles schisms divisions and subdivisions into Sects and daily mutations in Faith and Government as far as the temporal sword did not hinder them Is not this as evident as all History and even our very eyes can witnesse a truth Lastly doe not the present distractions you now groan under awake you to see that the source of all your misery springs from the leaking Cistern of Schism you have digg'd for your selves Did your Ancestours find so little Unity under the Government of the Roman Catholike Church or have you found such a constant Unity since you left it that you can presume the re-admitting that Government is never likely to tend to Unity Yet you cannot think otherwise unlesse all other Churches of Christians paid that subjection too Do you your obligation why should their backwardnes in their duties make you deny yours Besides whom doe you call Christians all that cry Lord Lord that is professe the name of Christ but deny the onely certain Rule to come to the knowledge of his Law such as were the Gnosticks Carpocratians Donatists Socinians and all the heresies that ever arose since the infancy of the Church or doe you mean by the word Christians onely those qui faciunt voluntatem Patris doe the will of our heavenly Father that is all that hear the Church or have a certain and common Rule to know what Christs Law is if so all these acknowledge subjection to the Head-Bishop of Rome never denied by any but those who at the same time they denied it cast themselves out of the Church refusing to hear her You say the Eastern Churches had not acknowledg'd it ere your departure Admit they had not can their pattern warrant you more than it can warrant the Arrians Nestorians Eutychians c. unless you be certain they did well in it They rejected it indeed and for their reward were by all the Christian world till you falling into the same fault began to call them Brothers and by all your Ancestours justly held and called Schismaticks Yet when they were in their right mood they admitted it as much as any Roman-Catholike as appeares in the Acts of the Florentine Council to which they subscribed nay even when they were disgusted and refused Unity they acknowledged the power of the Bishop of Rome as appeares by a testimony of Gerson cited by your friend Bishop Bramhall against himselfe in his just vindication of the Church of England p. 101. which witnesses that the Greeks departed from the then-Pope with these words Wee acknowledge thy power we cannot satisfie your covetousness live by your selves His second doubt is that the Bishop of Rome is not able to administer that vast Province I wonder how he did of old and why he may not do the same again as well as formerly But the Dr. calls it a politick probleme whether hee can or no and would have it judged by those who are by God entrusted with the Flock Id est saith he by the Princes the nursing Fathers in every Church It is indeed a politick probleme that is a question concerning Government but since it concernes Government Ecclesiastical it falls not under the scanning of temporal Politicians The Christian Common-wealth would be brought to a pretty pass if the Government of Gods Church so long acknowledged as left by Christ and continued in the Church 300. yeares by their own confession ere there were any Christian Princes should anew be call'd into question by humane policy But these two words of Scripture Nursing Fathers make it plain to the Doctor satisfy'd with any thing himself fancies that the Government and Jurisdiction over the Church belongs to Kings as if to nurse cherish and foster were to rule order govern and command or as if Ioseph who was Foster-father to our Saviour was as good as or the same with God Almighty who was his true Father And I wonder where this Doctor ever read that our Saviour entrusted the Government of his Church and Ecclesiastical affaires to any but the Apostles Ecclesiastical persons or that any held Nero the Heathen Emperour to have right and title o be Head of the Church Again if our Saviour left that authority with his Apostles I would gladly know by what new Orders from Christ it came to be transfer'd from their Successors into the hands of secular Princes But the Doctor has
Sacraments Government nor any thing though never so sacred left by our Saviour hath found any security SECT 3. An examination of some common notes produced by Dr. Hammond to particularize his Clients to bee no Schismaticks HIs 9th Ch. undertakes to clear his Church from the 2d sort of his Schism against mutual â—â—arity to wit from that Schism which is against extern Peace or Communion Ecclesiastical And first he alledges for his plea that they have retain'd the right form of Government c. So that now Schism against Subordination or Government for they are all one which was the first general Head of Schism and also comprehended under the first species of the second Head as appeares C. 8. S. 2. is by the Doctors accurate method come to be under the second species also of the same second General Head Which is all one as if dividing vivens into Sensitive and Insensitive and then subdividing the Genus of Sensitive into the two Species of Rational and Irrational or Man and Beast he should first treat of Insensitive the first Genus and that done fall in hand with Sensitive the second and then under each Species of that returne to treat professedly of Insensitive again that is to speak of Trees Shrubs and Herbs when he should speak of men and creatures endued with sence Surely Doctor Hammond is more methodical in his Sermons otherwise the World must needs look upon him as another S. Iohn Baptist because hee preaches in a Wilderness But let us follow him through all his Mazes distinguish't by no orderly path but what his own inconstant and desultorious track makes First then he tells us that they retaiâ— the Form of Government in and under which the Apostles â—ounded Ecclesiastical Assemblies or Communion viz. that of the Bishop and his inferioâ— Officers in every Church As if the Arian Hereticks who denied Christ to be God and almost all heresies that ever broke from Gods Church did not retain afterwards the Authority of their own Bishops But what availed it either them or you but to the greater danger of damnation if you adhered to those Bishops who had rejected the Authority of their former Superiours and taught you doctrines contrary to the Order of Gods Church without whose order much lesse against it they had no Authority to teach at all Again you tell us of one piece of your Government that of Bishops constituted indeed by the Apostles but you tell us not of the main hinge of your Churches Government which is of the King being its Head and Supreme in Ecclesiastical matters This is the sum and top of your Churches Government put us not off with an odd end of it This is that for substituting which in stead of the Ecclesiastical Head you rejected wee charge you of Schism and breach of Communion Ecclesiastical for in so doing you cut Gods Church into as many single headed and consequently diverse-bodied and disparate Congregations as there are Kingdoms in Christendome Shew us that this your Novelty in Government was practised by the Apostles in their Assemblies or instituted by them or their Blessed Master and then you will say something to the point Remember your purest times of the first 300. yeares shew us that all that time the Church was ordered by the Emperours Presidency or that this Government was instituted by Christ and his Apostles If you cannot then tell us how comes it to be held now as a chief point of Faith You may not in reason think to uphold your self your by testimonies out of the following ages unles you wil disavow your own grounds for those ages were as you say all impure Lay your hand then on your heart Mr. Hammond and tell us in good sadness if you be not gravell'd in your own doctrine while you maintain this new Lay Ecclesiastical Government His second plea is that as they maintain the Order of Bishops so they submit to the exercise of it acknowledging the Authority of those Governors In answer to which no new thing is to be said this being the very same with the former only First changed into Secondly For the obeying submitting to and acknowledging the due Authority of Governours is the very formal maintaining and accepting the Government which was his first branch So as this is another orderly production of the Drs. methodical Head which vents it selfe in first secondly thirdly c. upon all occasions though both his first second and third bee the selfe-same formal thing His third plea is that they observe the circumstances necessary to the assembling themselves for publick worship First that of place Churches Secondly that of time the Lords day primitive Festivals As if all Schismaticks in the World doe not meet at some set times and in some appointed and set places Thirdly Formes of prayer and praises almost all out of our Mass and Breviary Celebration of Sacraments onely five of them being quite abolish't and three quarters of the sixth Sacramentals Copes and Surplisses which you might by the same principles call rags of Rome Preaching against Christ and his Church such doctrine as none ever sent you or your first Fore-fathers to preach Cathechising infecting and imbuing tender and easie minds with your tainted doctrine Fourthly that of Ceremonies such as the practice of the Primitive Church hath sent down recommended to us Pray by whom did she send them down and recommend them to you Examine wel and you shall find that the same authority recommended to you many more as from her though you only accepted of what you thought convenient Lastly that of discipline to binde all to these performances Doubtlesse all Sects in the world impose some obligation upon their subjects to keep them together else they could not bee a Sect. Yet that your tie either to that or any thing else concerning Government is as slack as may be is manifest out of the slender provision made against Schism according to the Protestant grounds See Part 3. Sect. 1. as I have shewn in my answer to the fore-going Chapter Neither are you beholding to your doctrine for any discipline sufficient to hold you together in Unity a professed fallibility is too weak for that but to the secular Power the threat of whose sword held you in awe for a while but as soon as that Power was dissolv'd your slack-sinew'd Church which no tie either in Reason or Conscience held together bewrayed its composition and like the statue seen by Nabuchadonosor fell all to pieces It were not amiss ere I leave these three pleas already mentioned to take a second survey of them that the Reader may visibly perceive how less than nothing this Doctor hath said either to his or indeed any purpose To make this discovery sincere we must mark his intent and scope in this Chapter which is to free or clear their Church from the breach of Commmunion Ecclesiastical which he makes to consist in such and such things Now
a man that goes about to clear another of an imputed fault should as I conceive propose the objected fault with the presumptions of the defendants guiltiness and then diluere objecta wipe off the stain of the accusations and clear his innocencie What does the Dr he takes no notice of what is objected but in stead of that onely reckons up some few indifferent things which their Church hath not rejected and sure it were a hard case if they had rejected all which their Forefathers taught them and then thinks the deed done In particular he tells us first that they retain the Government of Bishops but why they have innovated a new Church-government making the King Head in Ecclesiastical matters or why they obey those Bishops who can derive their mission of doctrine from no former Church or Authority which only are the things objected to them as schism of these two points hee sayes nothing That they now obey their Bishops he tells us but why they obey'd not him or why they cast out his Authority whom they held before to bee the chief-Chief-Bishop that 's a matter not worth clearing The Pope's Antichrist and ther 's an end Then he clears his side from Schism because they assemble in Churches but he never considers that wee charge them with plain Sacriledge for meeting there and deatining those places anciently ours and built by us out of the true owners hands and applying them to prophane uses All that with him is very laudable and needs no clearing either from injustice or sacriledge He clears their Church of Schism because they observe yet some Festivals and the like may bee said of Sacramentals and Ceremonies but considers not that the schism consists in this that they at their own voluntary pleasure refusing some and admitting others denied consequently obedience to that Authority which recommended both unto them and which disobedience their own grounds condemnes as shall presently bee shewed He cleares his Church of Schism by alledging they observe some form of Prayer but never takes notice that the crime wee object to them is this that they ruin'd Religious houses to build dwelling Halls so they mangled our Holy and ancient Service-books to patch up their reformed piece of the book of Common-prayer leaving out all the most sacred parts of it to wit Canon Missae and what ever concerned the Heaven-propitiating Sacrifice that highest and soul-elevating Act of Religion and onely taking out of it those sleighter things which might satisfie the lowersiz'd devotion of their reformed spirits and was enough to serve them to cry Lord Lord. He brings as a proofe of their innocencie from schism that they have celebration of Sacraments Preaching and Catechizing c. But thinks it not worth clearing that of seven Sacraments they have retain'd onely the substance of one and the shadow of another Nor ever considers whether their doctrine be true or false All is one for that with the Doctor if they doe but preach pray and catechise let it be what it will it is a certain note that they are no schismaticks Lastly hee puts as an argument to cleare them from schism that they have some Discipline to bind to these performances c. that is they use some little wit or meanes to maintain their schism and hold their tribe together but he waves that for which onely we accuse them of Schism to wit that they utterly renounced all the discipline and even all ground of it in that Church of which theirs was once a member and fancied to themselves a new one without any ground of Authority and with direct opposition and contempt of the former discipline Nor hath he onely in this present endeavour to clear his Church of Schism omitted the very mentioning those matters which were to be cleared but even the things he alledges as whose retaining hee makes account frees their Church from schism are such pitifull ordinary businesses so indifferent to all or most schismaticks and hereticks that they can no way particularize them to be none or exempt them from the common crue of their fellowes For what schism ever arose but had some kind of government or discipline had their meetings in some set places at some set times pray'd in their own new way preach't taught and catechiz'd their own doctrine So as the Doctor might with â—ar better Logick have concluded the Protestants no schismaticks because they have all noses on their faces this being common to Catholikes as well as Schismaticks and so might seem partly to excuse them whereas the other of admitting such points and no more which are the Doctors notes of his Church are disclaimed by all Catholikes and common to almost all Schismaticks Nay some schismaticks and hereticks have retained much more of what their Ancestors taught them as Lutherans some almost all points as the Greeks and the old Arians the latter of which excepting their one heresie against Christs divinity had twenty times more markes of a Church in all other things than the Drs could ever pretend to Fourthly hee assures us that the Popes Authority is an usurpation and the use of more ceremonies and Festivals an imposition of the Romanists How so Mr. Doctor if the Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome was brought in 900. yeares agoe when Pope Gregory sent to convert our Forefathers to Christs faith as your selfe and your followers grant then how is it an usurpation of the present Romanists Were wee who now live alive 900. yeares agoe or are they who lived 900. years ago alive now But in regard you onely say it and bring no proof I shall not trouble my self in vouchsasing you an answer As for the imposition of more ceremonies which you say the present Romanists used towards you without any authority from the Primitive Church it is so silly so contrary both to our grounds and your own also that you make your selfe ridiculous to any man that understands either one or the other For since the institution of Ceremonies is one of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or things indifferent left to the ordering of Gods Church as both the 20th Article of the new English Creed expressely determines and all moderate Protestants hold I wonder why our Church should not when she saw convenient ordain new Ceremonies and the like may bee said of new Festivals which are things indiferent also and recommend the observation and practice of them to you who were then members of that Church her subjects and children Most lawfully then did our Church even in your own grounds in imposing new Ceremonies on you her then-subjects and if so as unlawfully did you in spurning against her Ordinances Neither consequently can those few you retain upon your own head and not her Authority excuse you from Schism Equally absurd is your zealous profession of conforming your selves in ceremonies to the Primitive times for if the Church hath Authority upon emergent conveniences and difficulties to institute new Ceremonies and
Christs Church Re-acknowledge a certainty in Faith which is now brought by your professed uncertainty to the very brink of Atheism Return to the never-erring Rule of Faith the voice of the Church which held you for eight or nine hundred yeares in the firm and undivided Unity of the same beleef Doe I say this efficaciously and then you shall be freely cordially and with open armes received into Communion by them who would willingly though they lovingly reprehend you to make you reflect on your errours not onely spend empty words but even lay down their lives to procure your Salvation Sixthly the Doctor charges us that the only hindrances which obstruct external Communion are wholly imputable to us which hee proves first because the Pope excommunicated all those Catholikes that went to the Protestant Assemblies in the tenth year of Queen Elizabeth And was it not well done think you This has ever been the constant practice of Gods Church to enjoyn the Faithful to abstain from the Communion of those who maintained a different that is an heretical doctrine The simpler sort of Catholikes were gull'd by you to beleeve you had onely turn'd into English what was in Latine before and therefore out of an unwariness went to your Churches which lately had been theirs and not out of love to your new reformed doctrine Till at length the Father of the Church thought fit to disabusethem from the errour into which your false perswasions had led them and forbid them the same room who were not of the same company And I wonder how it can stand with reason or sence that holding you hereticks we should let the poore people goe to your Assemblies to bee taught false doctrine Nay even Nature it selfe seems to interdict such an unnatural commerce that Catholikes who held the Bishop of Rome's Supremacy of Divine Institution Mass and the rest of our doctrines from which you receded sacred should goe to your Congregations to hear the first rail'd against as Antichristian the second as Idolatrous and a blasphemous fiction the rest as erroneous and pernicious deceits Blame not then Mr. Hammond Nature Reason and the Pope for hindering this confusion which you call external Communion but rather blame your selves for introducing new doctrines whence result such incompossible and inconsistent practices Yet the Doctor tells us that from this prohibition proceeding from the Popes Excommunication it is visibly consequent that they were cast out and cannot be said to separate Sure it must bee a temper of shame above brazen to tell us this now in the tenth year of Queen Elizabeth whereas himself hath laid out knot by knot how the Unity of the Church in which they were formerly was unloosed or rather violently broken in the time of King Henry the eigthth King Edwards Protectour and all the first ten yeares of this Queen To which though enough and more then enough has been said yet I will once more presse it home to the Dr. and then leave him to his wordish shifts and the Reader to be his Judge You and your King also were once members of the Roman Catholike Church and subject to the Authority of the Pope This Authority you confess C. 7. S. 5. you cast out of this Island But a rejection of an Authority is a recession from that Authority therefore you are guilty of a recession from the formerly-acknowledg'd Authority So far for Government Now for Doctrines and Practices You once beleeved and practised as the Roman Catholike Church to wit when you were in her That you reformed you confess and C. 7. S. 14. call your reformations recessions from the doctrines and practises of Rome A recession therefore was made by you both from the former Government as also the former doctrines and practises But a recession is a voluntary departure as plain sence evidences therefore you made a voluntary departure from the formerly-acknowledg'd government doctrines and practises of Rome Now then to tell us so long after and after so large a narrative confession of your own to the contrary that you departed not but were cast out as if nothing had been done by you till the tenth year of Queen Elizabeth is such a piece of forgetfulness as could onely be peculiar to Dr. Hammond But I perceive the Doctor thinks there is no Schism till the Pope have actually excommunicated as if there might not bee a criminal departure from the former Faith its Rule Sacraments and the Churches Government before the Church comes with her spiritual rod of Excommunication to whip the Offender From all these I have already manifested that you had divided and by so doing made your selves uncapable of Communion with the former Faithful Upon this it was necessary to separate the Faithful from you in divine offices and therefore both just and fitting to excommunicate you as well to punish you who were long before schismaticks for your crime as to warn the sounder flock to abstain from your contagious communion Neither can you blame us for excommunicating you whom your own grounds here delivered clear in that point from any imputation of Rigour Your selfe confessing that you rejected Roman Catholikeâ— from your assemblies and censur'd them upon theiâ— avowed contumacy against the orders of your Church Let us know then why our Church might not doe the same and with much more reason to you who were once members of her and whose recession from her orders and contumaciouâ— persisting still your selfe will witness shew us I say why she had not as great Authority â—ver those who were once hers as yourâ— claimes over those who were never yours oâ— if you cannot then grant you were justlâ— excommunicated by her once and remain aâ— justly excommunicated still until you disavoâ— that contumacy which obstructs your Communion His second Reason why wee hindred the external Communion as he calls that confusion is our imposing such conditions on our Communion that they cannot subscribe without sinning or seeming to sin against conscience And what sin or seeming to sin is this think you the beleefe of Doctrines or Approbations of Practises which they neither beleeve nor approve of The question is not Mr. Doctor whether you beleeve or approve of them or no but whether it were your own sinful pride of understanding which made you and your first reformers disbelieve all their teachers and think themselves understood more of Gods mind than all the world before them and yet when they had done acknowledg'd themselves but fallible in their contrary beleefe that is uncertain whether they or their teachers were in the right and is not this a wise ground for any schollar to disbelieve his Master or any child to disobey his father and mother If it were pride which made you think otherwise as truly no man knowing the grounds you build your reformation upon and how the greatest and most learned authority this world could shew opposed you can in reason judge any other then it
in Bishops and Presbyters rightly ordained and multitudes rightly baptized none of which have fallen off from their profession Where the last words are most certainly true if he means that none of those who yet stand have as yet fallen off which I conceive is his meaning for all these who have not stood have fal'n off which are enow to shew of what mettal their Church was made and whether more have fal'n or stood let the Doctor judge But as for the rest of his selfe-congratulation it is a miserable piece of self flattery and which his own grounds quite discountenance For if a Church be a Congregation of the Faithful and Faith as S. Paul argues comes by hearing hearing from preaching preaching from mission or being sent which mission is an Act of Iurisdiction it follows that if their Bishops and Presbyters have now no Iurisdiction then the Protestants have neither lawful mission preaching hearing faith nor consequently Church Now that they can claim no Iurisdiction followes out of their own grounds for when we urge them upon what Authority they cast off the former Ecclesiastical Superior governing Gods Church in chief they run for their defence to the secular Power to which they attribute supreme Iurisdiction in matters Ecclesiastical within this Island It is acknowledg'd saith the Dr. C. 7. S. 2. that the Papal Power in Ecclesiastical Affaires was both by Acts of Convocation of the Clergy and of Parliament cast out of this Kingdome Thus you see he recurs to a power meerly secular in the Parliament for renouncing and abolishing a spiritual power and Jurisdiction held before greater than ever the Protestant Prelacy was imagin'd Meerly secular I say for the Doctor confesses here that it is easie to believe that nothing but the apprehension of dangers which hung over them could probably have inclined the Clergy to that their first Act And how great influence this apprehension of danger might have over the secular part of the Parliament is easie to be determined since they saw the gravest Patriot in the Kingdome in danger of death for holding against the Kings new pretended Title and many others for the same respect most cruelly persecuted A Parliament therefore meerly of Seculars and those such as can in no wise be presum'd free was held by you of sufficient Authority to renounce a Jurisdiction deemed formerly much higher and known to bee almost ten times longer setled in possession than your Prelacy I see not therefore why a secular power should not bee in your grounds sufficient to abolish a jurisdiction which onely leaned and relied on a secular support But what was done in King Henry's dayes being disannul'd again by both the spiritual and secular power in Queen Maries Reign must necessarily bee held of you invalid if you will goe consequently to your own grounds Let us then examine the resurrection of your Church by a Parliament held in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth In which Parliament to omit the small title the Queen had to the Crown being born of a second bedfellow whilst King Henry's former Wife was yet alive and declared illegitimate both by the whole Parliament and her own Fathers Act were wanting the spiritual Lords the Bishops who were for their Religion kept at that time in prison For which reason when a Quere was raised about the beginning of the late long Parliament whether Acts made without Bishops were valid it is said to have been resolved affirmatively upon this ground because otherwise the Protestant Religion voted by a Parliament in which was no Bishops would be invalid also I see not then what great advantages could be in that Parliament to Vote out the greater Authority of the Pope or give your new-made Bishops ordained God knowes how Iurisdiction but the same may be pretended by a succeeding Parliament to deprive them and set up a new Form of their own Certain it is that you acknowledge the Secular Power for the Source and first Fountain of your Iurisdiction Since then the present Secular Power has put a stop to your father Ordination and disannul'd your former Iurisdiction your own grounds conclude you de facto no Church for if you have no Iurisdiction you can have no influence of power over the Layity and so no spiritual Common wealth made up of Bishop as Head and Pastour and of the Layity as body and flock And as for the present this general suspension should we say no more of your Ecclesiastical power makes you de facto no Church so in time the very inward right it selfe which you pretend may be justly extinguish't For since your Jurisdiction confessedly depends on the secular Authority it followes if this be suspended or abolish't that must needs share in the same fate Now all the world agrees that not onely the possession of a secular power may be interrupted by force but the Right it selfe in time be absolutely lost and the new Government however at first introduc't be at length purged of its original blemishes into a clear and unquestionable Title In which case certainly your Church would be no more visible in England than it is now at Geneva Which sufficiently differences your condition from that of the Primitive Christians or the present English Catholikes they claiming a Jurisdiction underived from the secular power In vain therefore would it be to tell us their Character remains and therfore they are stil Bishops and Presbyters since the character can only entitle them to a name the thing being gone to wit their power of Iurisdiction and consequently their Mission For if they have no Authority to teach and preach more than the Layity they are level'd into an equal pitch with them so as now they cannot bee said to bee a body but a company of mutually distracted parts not an orderly Church or Congregation but a rude and indigested Chaos of Confusion It is not then Mr. Doctor your serving God in private Families which wee object to you for being an invisible Church which you run upon in your 5. Sect. but that which your self confesse here that Now all Order Form Bishops and Liturgy is thrown out of your Church together It is your want of Pastoral and Episcopal Authority which makes us conclude you no Church Yet so good is your Logick that in the next paragraph you think though Bishops be abolish't yet in case this come not through your fault it cannot be charged against you so as though all Prelacy and Superiority be taken away that is though there be none that have power to preach and teach and all be reduc'd into an equally-level'd Anarchy yet as long as it happens not through your fault yen are still a Church As if Doctor Hammond should say though his body were cut into millions of incoherent Atomes yet as long as this happens not through his fault it is still a well-ordered Body ID EST it is still Hammond The parts of Gods Church are compacted into a
all that is in the Britannick World belongs to us and is derived to us Yet is this also false For nothing in History is more evident than that the British Churches admitted appellations to Rome at the Council of Sardica And as much as we have Records in our Histories of the Pope Eleutherius so much appeares the Popes Authority in that time And out of St. Prosper contra Collatorem in Chron. Wee have that the Pope Celestinus by his care and sending St. German Vice sua in his own stead freed the Britans from Pelagianism and converted the Scots by Palladius though Venerable Bede as far as I remember does not touch that circumstance But that which is mainly to the purpose is that since the Priviledge wee pretend was one that descends upon the Pope in quality of Successor to St. Peter how far it was executed may be unknown but that it was due none can bee ignorant And here our late Bishop begins to shuffle from the priviledge of St. Peter to the Patriarchal Jurisdiction of the Pope which is another an historical a mutable power and so concernes not our present debate Two objections he makes seem to deserve an answer First That the Welsh or Britans sided with the Eastern Churches against the Roman in the observation of Easter To which I answer 't is true they observ'd not Easter right yet never so much as cited the Eastern Churches in abetment of their practise but onely the custome of their own Ancestors Neither was there any cause of siding wee not hearing it was ever pressed by the Church of Rome after Victor's time to any height The Council of Nice and the Emperour Constantine exhorted the Christian World to it but without any coercitive force And if the Britans resisted or rather neglected them I think wee ought not to say they sided against them but onely did not execute their desires St. Irenâ—us was of the French Church yet testifies this question was no matter of division so that it cannot bee guess'd by this what influence the Roman Church had or had not upon the British It seemes certain also that St. Lupus and Germanus neglected this Point that is thought it not necessary to be corrected however St. Austin seem'd more rigorous And though Palladius sent from Celestinus converted the Scots yet we find some of them in the same practise The second Objection is out of a piece of a worn Welsh Manuscript hoped by the Protestants to bee a Copy of some ancienter Original which though it has already been proved a manifest forgery counterfeited by all likelyhood in Q. Elizabeths time when the English Protestants sought to corrupt the Welsh by Catechisms and other Writings printed and not printed Yet if their great Antiquaries can shew that in St. Gregories time this name Papa or Pope taken by it self without other addition as Papa Urbis Romae c. was put as in later ages for the Bishop of Rome I shall confesse my selfe much surpriz'd If they cannot these very words sufficiently convince the Manuscript to bee a meer Imposture Another suspition against the legitimatnes of this paper naturally arises from this that Sr. Henry Spelman one so diligent in wiâ—ing off the dust from old writings found no other Antiquity in it worth the mention which shrewdly implies the Book was made for this alone And so this demonstrative proof of the Bishop is a conviction of the forgery of some counterfeit Knaue and the easiness of assent in Mr. Mosten and the Knight In his 6th Chapter he pretends three things 1. That the King and Church of England had sufficient Authority to withdraw their obedience from Rome 2ly That they had sufficient grounds for it and 3ly That they did it with due moderation I doubt not but the intelligent Reader understands by the first point that the Bishop meanes to shuffle away the true difficulty and whereas the Question is of the Priviledge given by Christ to Saint Peter and from him descended to the Popes his Successors spend his time about a Patriarchal Authority which wee also acknowledge to be of humane institution And here I must confesse that generally when no body opposes him his Lordship carries it clearly and gives his empty Reader full satisfaction Hee tells you out of Catholike Authors that Princes may resist the oppressions of Ecclesiasticks and themselves have priviledge to exercise Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction That Popes have been convented and deposed That Emperors have changed Patriarchs and that the Kings of England have as much power as Emperors And all this to handle the Question which is not in hand since our dispute is not what can be done in respect of the Popes Patriarchal Authority which the good Bishop himself professes the Pope has renounced these 600. years No doubt but th' other two points will follow the former in missing the Question For admitting the Popes Authority to bee derived from Christ what grounds can there bee for renouncing it or what moderation is the rejjecting it capable of Nay even if it were of humane institution many things there are which cannot bee rejected unless it appear the abuses are not otherwise remediable Suppose then the Christian World had chosen themselves one Head for the preservation oâ—â—o precious a Jewel as Unity in Religion how great absurdities must that Head commit what wrongâ— must it doe to cause it selfe to bee justly deposed and not onely the Person deposed but the very Government abolish't Suppose again that this alteration should â—ee made by some one party of the Christian Common-â—ealth which must separate it selfe from the assistance and communication of the â—â—st of Christianity ought not far weightier causes bee expected or greater abuses committed Suppose thirdly that by setting aside this Supreme Head eternal dissentions will inevibly follow in the whole Church of Christ to the utter ruine of faith and good life which our Saviour thought worth the comming down from Heaven to plant among us and then tell mee whether the refusal to comply with the humours of a lustful Prince be ground enough â—o renounce so necessary an Authority Let the Bishop bee now asked whether Kings deserve to bee deposed and Monarchy it selfâ— rejected for such abuses as hee gathers against the Pope or whether there may not easily bee made a collection of as many an I great misgovernments against the Court of England or any other Country Let him remember whether like abuses were not alledged against his own Parliamentary-Prelacy when it was put down Will hee justifie that if the mâ—â—demeanours pretended against them had been true the extirpation of Prelacy had been lawfull Surely hee would find out many remedies which hee would think necessary to bee first tryed and Sâ—â—ggin should as soon haue chosen a tree to bee hanged on as â—hee have ended the number of expedients to be â—â—yed before hee would give his assent to the extirpation of Episcopacy It is then of little concern to
his own private interpretation of Scripture nor the Church he is in is infallible or secured from Error by any promise of Christ. The denying this Infallibility therefore Mr. Doctor is the greatest crime we charge you with but you free of your Suppositions suppose it your chief virtue and put it for the ground of all your excuse In this Infallibility is founded all the power of the Church obliging to belief the inviolableness of her Government the unjustifiableness of any Schism the firm security that Faith is certain and lastly whatever in the Church is sacred The Doctor therefore in clearing himself by denying the Infallibility of the Church does the self-same as if some discontented subject having first out-lawed himself by denying the Laws and rejecting the Government of England and afterwards becoming obnoxious to those Laws by Robbing Murthering c. should endeavot to plead Not guilty by alledging That though indeed the English Subjects who accept the Laws and allow the Government of England are liable to punishment if they offend against them Yet I saith he who suppose this Government Tyrannical and these Laws unjust especially having a present perswasion and thinking in my Conscience they are so cannot be obliged to keep them and therefore must not be accounted a factious man nor be liable to punishment if I break them What will become of this malefactor Master Doctor your Logick clears him But the Reader and I am perswaded wiser judgments will think him more highly deserving the Gallows for refusing subjection to the Laws and Government and you more deeply meriting Excommunication for rejecting the Churches Infallibility the onely ground of her Authority then for all the rest of your particular faults which issue from that false principle But it is pretty to observe how the Doctor never clears himself from Schism upon any other grounds then those which if admitted would prove all the Malefactors in the World innocent and make it lawful nay an obligation in Conscience to dissolve the whole Fabrick of the Worlds Government So true it is That the very position of a Fallibility of Faith first lays and in time hatches the Cockatrice Eggs of both Atheism and Anarchy SECT 5. Containing some Observations upon Mr. Hammonds third Chapter of the Division of Schism WHen I had perused his third Chapter with intent to see what it might contain worth the answering finding scarce any thing which made either against us or for him I thought I had mistaken the Title of his Book but looking back I found it to have indeed this Inscription OF SCHISM A DEFENCE OF THE CHVRCH OF ENGLAND AGAINST THE EXCEPTIONS OF THE ROMANISTS BY H. HAMMOND D. D. So that now I remain'd satisfied what was the Title but much more unsatisfied to find my expectation so totally deluded and that in a large Chapter containing thirty six pages almost a full quarter of the Book not five words were found which touched the question directly nor could in any way be a preparative to it So as we have here 66 pages of 182. well towards half the Book premised by the Doctor to introduce the Question like the Mindian Gate too large an entrance for so narrow a Corporation Frivolous then had been the long Preamble of this Chapter had it been to the purpose and tended to the Question but if it be found nothing at all to the Question but to wave and conceal the main and indeed sole matter which concerns it nay more to have prevaricated from the very scope for which he would seem to intend it then I will leave it to the Reader to imagin what commendations this Chapter and its Author doth deserve Our Question is of Schism In this Chapter he undertakes to shew the several sorts of it which therefore he divides into Schism against Fraternal Charity and Schism against some one particular Governor as in the People against a Priest or Deacon in those against a Bishop in Bishops against their arch-Arch-Bishops in arch-Arch-Bishops against their Primate or Patriarch and there he stops lest if he had ascended a step higher to the Authority of the Pope he should have said more truth then will serve his turn For you must know he has a deep design against Antichrist and is resolved that half a score odd stories or some few words and unwarrantable practices of discontented persons especially being cited in Greek shall utterly overthrow him in despite of manifest practice of Antiquity clouds of testimonies from Fathers and the Doctrine of the Catholick Church of whose fallibility he is far from even pretending to any infallible Evidence But that we may manifest what we laid to his charge that all this long Chapter is but waste-paper the Reader may please to take notice that the Schism we charge the Protestants with is not of the peoples Schism against a Deacon or Presbyter nor of a Deacon or Presbyters Schism against a Bishop nor any link in that chain of Schisms which he there enumerates but we accuse them and their Fore-Fathers the first Reformers First of a Breach or Schism from the whole Catholick Church This is without controversie the Schism of Schisms and which in the first hearing of the word Schism objects it self to our understanding as being simply properly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such whereas the other are nothing but particular refractory disoâ—â—diences in comparison of this and may well consist with your obedience to the Universal Church This this I say is the chief and main Schism we impute to his fellow Protestants yet the Doctor in his present Book entituled Their Defence from Schism takes no notice of the chief thing he ought to clear them of will not have it come into play nor allow it a place in his Division as if it were either none at all or else such a slight one as was not worth taking notice of Strange that he could use such prolixity in trifling Schisms impertinent to the present discourse and not afford the least mention to the greatest Schism of all when the scope and aim of his Chapter necessarily required it and the Question forcibly exacted it Strange that he could remember even the peoples Schism against a Deacon or Presbyter and forget that which breaks from the whole body of the Universal Church But the Doctor is more carefull to preserve his own Copy-hold then the Churches Free hold for according to his division and Doctrine in this Chapter his Parishoners would be Schismaticks for disobeying him or a puny Deacon but neither he nor the Deacon Schismaticks at all for disobeying the whole Church And thus the Dr. has established his own Authority to be more inviolable then the Popes and by this one Division has quite conquered and got the upper-hand of Antichrist Secondly What is become of General Councils all this while Have not they as great an Authority as any private Patriarch Primate Arch-Bishop Bishop Dr. Hammond or a Deacon Far grâ—â—ter
and contradistinct Jurisdictions and all this meerly out of malice forsooth against the Pope to cut short his Authority as he is Successor of St. Peter These are the Evidences dear Countrymen your Doctors bring you to secure your Souls from the most dangerous sin of Schism SECT 9. Some Consequences out of the Doctors former Grounds and his further Process in Evidencing YEt let us see at least what work the Doctor will make of it if we let him alone to run blindly forwards upon his own grounds He will have all the Apostles to have several Provinces limiting their jurisdictions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Doctor misfortunately called them which must be peculiar to each and exclusive of one anothers right else this preparative ground will make nothing to the Doctor 's purpose Consequently to this foundation laid in the fifth Paragraph he begins the sixth thus If the Circumcision or Iewish Christians were peculiarly St. Peters Province and Section seven the Gentile Christians peculiarly St. Pauls c. Now if this Doctor will stand to these grounds thus laid I would gladly ask What becomes of the rest of the Apostles Must they stand by and look on while St. Paul converts all the Gentiles and St. Peter all the Iews You dare not say That they were subordinate to St. Peter and St. Paul that would endanger a kinde of primacy in jurisdiction Will you say then they onely help◠them That sounds dangerously still and intimates some principality in the others allowing them no jurisdiction at all but as far as the others please to accept of their aid You must say then that these Provinces of St. Peter and St. Paul were promiscuously and indifferently given to the rest But the main Pillars of your Evidences I mean your 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and your 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which you say all the Apostles had and which apply'd to St. Peter and St. Paul you will have to signifie peculiar and exclusively-proper Provinces will not bear apply'd to the rest of the Apostles the sence of a promiscuous authority It onely remains then that they have no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is no exclusive jurisdiction or peculiar Province at all and therefore nothing at all to do Thus this courteous Doctor hath by his acute way of reasoning infinitely obliged the rest of the Apostles in freeing them from the hard and laborious task their Master enjoyn'd them and getting them all leave to play Nor hath he less obliged the Pope if it proceeded from good-will in him and not from malice and ignorance for indistributing between St. Peter and St. Paul the Diocess of the whole world he hath at unawares confirm'd the Pope their Successor to be the Universal Pastor of the whole Christian world since it is most certain and by the Doctor acknowledged That the Bishops of Rome beginning with Clemens succeeded them both in that Chair and See But is it not a pretty thing that in his Section six contrary to the grounds he had laid himself and having no other reason but his own conjecture he cramps the vast jurisdiction of that Bishop Apostle and our Saviours large Commission of Euntes in universum mundum praedicate Evangelium omni creaturae Going into the whole world Preach the Gospel to every creature given to each Apostle into those few pitiful Parishes of the Jews of the dispersion And yet afterwards repenting he had granted him so much he balks his former too liberal donation to St. Peter of the Lydian Asia and bestows it on St. Iohn But me thinks I hear the Doctors Evidences call aloud upon us to lend them a due consideration which therefore especially the world being now adays so scant of demonstrations it were an infinite wrong to the advancement of Sciences carelesly to omit And first he evidences That St. Peter had no Primacy at Ierusalem where St. Iames sate or as he terms it Singular Supremacy By which expression if he would say St. Peter was not particular Bishop of that place it needs no evidencing But if he intends such a Primacy as is pretended St. Peter had what means the word Singular or how does the Doctor so quite take off all pretensions of St. Peter to such a Supremacy as he brags pag. 73 Because forsooth not Peter alone but James and John entrusted that charge to him What a miserable Doctor is this who makes account Saint Peter could not be chiefer in Authority than the rest of the Apostles unless he did all things alone by himself And how can it invalidate St. Peters greater Authority that he took other two with him since it is well known an Archbishop going to consecrate a Bishop takes two other Bishops with him and yet it follows not hence that an Archbishop hath no higher degree of Authority than the Bishops O but he findes St. Iames named before St. Peter Gal. 2. 9. and that doubtless he fancies to be an invincible Evidence not considering that if that argument were allow'd any weight his cause were lost since in most if not all other places in the Scripture St. Peter is constantly named first of all the Apostles Lastly he tells us that St. Iames had the Principal place in the Council of Jerusalem where St. Peter is present and ACCORDINGLY gives the sentence Acts 15 19. upon which the Rescript is grounded Where first that St. Iames had the principal place is a pitiful guessing Assertion of his own without the least pretence of a Testimony and yet he puts the word Principal in other letters as a main business Next whereas he alleages that St. Iames gave the Sentence and then quotes Acts 15. 19. I finde onely that St. Iames after he had produced his Reasons sayes Wherefore my sentence is c. But the Doctor turns my sentence which can onely signifie his opinion or judgment in the matter into the sentence which sounds a conclusive definition and decision of a business under debate No wiser nor honester is his next Assertion that the Rescript is grounded upon St. Iames his sentence in particular citing for it Ver. 22. of the same Chapter but there is nothing there particularizing St. Iames but onely that Then to wit after St. Peter St. Paul Barnabas and St. Iames had spoken it seemed good to the Apostles and Elders with the whole Church c. And upon what grounds can this demonstrative Doctor affirm That the Rescript was grounded particularly upon St. Iames his sentence and thence deduce his priority of dignity when as it is manifest to any one that shall read the Chapter that St. Peters sentence was the same with St. Iames in the main matter controverted both concurring that the Gentiles should be freed from the grievous burthen of Circumcision And although the abstaining from Fornication things strangled and blood be found in St. Iames his sentence onely yet how can this argue a
Authority Neither do the Testimonies of Bishops in the plural in the least manner touch us there being not one word in them excluding the Pope Nay rather they make for us for the Church being founded on Apostles and Bishops prejudices not St. Peter and his Successors to be the chiefest And if so then the Church is built most chiefly and especially on St. Peter and his Successors which is all we Catholicks say and not on them onely which he first calumniates us with and then dreamingly impugns ending his two and twentieth Paragraph with a Testimony out of St. Basil who calls Episcopacy The Presidency of the Apostles the very same adds the Doctor That Christ bestowed upon all and not onely on one of them as if we held there were but one Apostle or else that those Bishops who succeeded the rest of the Apostles and were constituted by them were not truly and properly Bishops It follows in the next Section By all which that is by your omitting our best proof from Scripture and answering the weakest by supposing a calumny by your mistake of twelve Thrones by St. Peters having no greater a tongue of fire and all the Apostles being full of the Holy Ghost by the Testimonies of Fathers naming Bishops and Apostles in the plural our of which meer plurality he infers an equality of Authority By all this the Doctor says it is evident again That the Power which Christs Commission instated on St. Peter was in like manner entrusted to every other single Apostle as well as to him c. Whereas he hath not produced one syllable expressing any singularity used to any other single Apostle as was to St. Peter nor one equalizing term of as well equally c. but what he addes himself Though these be the onely expressions can serve him and which he pretends to here as already produced and by producing them to have made the matter Evident But the Doctor being by this time pump'd dry of his own Evidences betakes himself to his former method of answering our Arguments or as he calls it to evacuate them And what Argument think you will he chuse to evacuate but that which is drawn from the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and how will he evacuate it but first from Homers Iliads next from the Revelations But indeed he puts our Argument so weakly or rather not at all that is he swallows our proof so glibly and yet evacuates it so groaningly that it were charity in some good body to ease him in this his greatest extremity The sum of his solution of I cannot tell what for he urges no Argument of ours but onely puts down the bare word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seems to be this That 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and therefore signifies vulgarly a Stone and in Homers Iliads is applied to denote an huge loggerly Stone like a Mill-stone 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Next this Stone by the Scripture must needs be a foundation Stone and there being Twelve foundation-stones named in the Apocalypse called there 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it must follow that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which before was a vulgar-stone is now advanced to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a precious stone Now follows his first inference as well as I can gather it That all the twelve Apostles being in like manner and not St. Peter onely and above the rest styled Foundation-stones it is consequent hence that all were equal Where first the Argument is again onely Negative to wit that no distinction is there put therefore there was none To make which inference good he must first shew that if there were any distinction it must necessarily be exprest upon all occasions Next it is a most pitiful peece of reason to perswade the Reader from onely a plurality and naming twelve Apostles that all were equal As if out of the very naming in the plural twelve Signs Shires Cities or Magistrates it must necessarily follow out of the bare common name of Sign Magistrate c. given to each of them that all were equal Again the Doctor hath quite overthrown his cause by arguing That not onely St. Peter but the rest also were called Foundation-stones and therefore they were all equal Since granting as he does that a Foundation-stone and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being the same and onely St. Peter having the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it follows in the Doctors grounds That he onely and in good reason that he more particularly should be a Rock or Foundation-stone Where note that the Doctor would have all the Apostles call Peter for the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being given St. Peter by our Saviour for no other end but to signifie he was a Rock or as the Doctor will have it a Foundation-stone and every Apostle being according to Master Hammond equally such it follows That they have all as good title to be called Peter as that Apostle who alone till Master Hammond writ had that appellation It follows to strengthen his former weak reason And it being there in vision APPARENT that the wall of the City Id est of the Church being measured exactly and found to be an hundred forty four Id est saith he Twelve times twelve cubits It is evident That that mensuration assigns an equal proportion whether of Power or Province to all and every of the Apostles which is again a prejudice to the Universal Pastorship of any one of them Thus the Doctor intends for an up-shot-Argument to evidence an equality in all the Apostles by the equal division of this Wall But I crave leave to ask the Doctor whether he be certain that none of those precious Stones which equally made up this Wall is richer then the rest For the richness in things of this nature being more considerable and more enhancing their value then the bulk and quantity it follows That the greater preciousness and lustre which manifests it self in one above another may better claim a signification That that Apostle who is represented by it had an authority above the rest then the equal measure of the Wall can infer an equality nay more if there be an equality in the bigness and an inequality in the worth there is no evasion but it must resemble a worthier person In order to which there comes a congruous Argument to my minde such as if it were on the Doctors side and he had the managing of it I know he would make it a MOST IRREFRAGABLE and UNQUESTIONABLE EVIDENCE And though Catholicks who understand the grounds of their Faith â—light such poor supports as a self-fancied Explication of the obscurest part of Scripture in which chiefly consists the Doctors talent in evidencing yet because perhaps he may fancy it stronger then twenty demonstrations and so it may come to do him much good he shall have it very willingly Amongst these twelve pretious Foundation-stones denoting the twelve
an indulgence or priviledge granted and given him by the Church in her Canons Which last is our tenet and most evidently visible in the very Testimonies alleaged against us His second Testimony for the two last were onely his over-sights or observations begins after the old strain thus And ACCORDINGLY the same Balsamon on Conc. Carthag Can. 16. doth upon that Canon professedly found the Authority of Princes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to advance an Episcopal See into a Metropolis and a new to constitute Bishops and Metropolitans Thus far the Doctor Where he is over head and ears again in a grievous mistake for neither doth Balsamon found the Authority of Princes to execute such Acts as of their own power on that Canon there being not a word in it to that purpose Neither doth he PROFESSEDLY say any thing as of himself but that you are PROFESSEDLY mistaken And had he said it I conceive it no such strong Argument That a professed Adversary should speak so professedly against one But indeed neither he nor the Canon say any such matter The Canon not so much as names either Episcopal or Metropolical Seâ—s but the main business there treated is That Bishops and Priests should not live upon base occupations nor employ themselves in secular businesses Which Balsamon in his Scholion or Comment more elucidates from like prohibitions of other Patriarchs adding in the end out of other mens opinions and not his own profession these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But some say these Canons or Constitutions take place when any one who hath taken holy Orders shall exercise a secular Ministery without the command of the Emperor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. And they adde saith Balsamon that the King is neither under Laws nor Canons and therefore he may securely make a Bishoprick a Metropolis c. and anew constitute Bishops and Metropolitans Where the Reader may see he introduces this as a deduction of others and that from no other grounds then this A King is neither bound by Canons nor Laws that is his Will is his Law or he may do lawfully what he lists and then indeed these grounds supposed I blame not the inference that he should erect transplant nâ—y pull down not only Bishops and Patriarchs but the whole Hierarchy it self your present lot consequent to these your grounds Thus at length we have found the bottom-stone of the Doctors grounds Why Kings may erect Patriarchates by their proper power not to be Councils as he pretended but their own all-lawful inerrableness to do what they please let Councils Canons Parliaments and Laws say what they will to the contrary A foundation fitting indeed to build the Doctors Assertion upon but in all other respects able to ruine and overthrow both Laws Commonwealths Canons and Church In his fifteenth Section persisting still in his seigned supposal That the Popes power is onely Patriarchal he goes on to prove that the antiquity of translating Patriarchs and Bishops belongs to Kings as well as of erecting Of which he gives some instances in our Countrey of England By which what he means to prove I cannot easily conjecture If he intends that Kings did oft do such things I wonder who denies it but if they did it by their proper right without the order or consent either of the Apostolical See or the Ecclesiastical State of his own Bishops he brings not one word in proof but rather expresly manifests the contrary from the carriage of St. Anselm then Archbishop of Canterbury as learned and pious a Prelate as that age produced who as the Doctor confesses when the King would have cut off as much from the Diocess of Lincoln as would make a new Bishoprick at Ely Anselm wrote to Pope Paschalis desiring his consent to it assuring him he would not give his consent but salvâ authoritate Papae the authority of the Pope being secured Where you see plainly the Archbishops consent was necessary and that without it the Kings desire seemed controleable Next that the Archbishop himself even with the Kings authority to back him would not venture on it till the Pope's consent was asked Here then Mr. Doctor you have a positive Testimony of the gravest Prelate our Countrey hath ever been honored with refusing the sufficiency of the Kings sole authority to conclude such businesses without his and the Popes consent which therefore more justly challenges audience in the Court of Reason then all your dumb Negatives though they were a thousand more To conclude in what your Testimonies were Positive to wit that such things were done de facto so far we yeeld to them in what they are Negative tacitly inferring that because they were done and no mans right named therefore they were done de jure by the proper right of him that did them So far we allow them no credit at all First Because they might have been performed by the secular Authorities either with consent of the Bishops or some indulgent grant of the Church to pious Princes or by order from the Pope or else Concession of some former Council an example of which we had lately in the Council of Chalcedon Next because Histories intending onely to relate matters of fact mention rather those that put things in execution and more visibly appear in the transacting them such as are Secular Magistrates and stand not scanning or debating much by whose right things were done which belongs to Lawyers and would be but a by-discourse hindering the orderly process of their Narrative strain Thirdly because every one who hath the least smack of Logick knows A Negative Argument proves nothing such as are all yours here alleaged For this is the tenor of them Historians say Some Kings translated some Patriarchates and it is not mentioned they did it by the Churches power therefore they did it by their own which will be found in good Logick to fall very far short of concluding Lastly because the Church ever challenged as her own proper right asserted to her by the Canons the jurisdiction and power to intermeddle in businesses purely Ecclesiastical In his seventeenth Paragraph he proposes two other Objections of the same nature with the rest The first in common that the King could exempt from Episcopal Jurisdiction which he says is largely asserted and exemplified in Coudrayes case 5 Report 14. And truly the Doctor is to be commended for his fair and sincere expression For it is indeed meerly asserted and exemplified without the least shadow of proof In the first example there alleaged King Kenulphus is said to have exempted a Monastery Consilio consensis Episcoporum Senatorum Gentis suae which was no instance of power in him unless it was also in the Bishops and Nobles That he could not or would not do it without their agreement The exemption of Reading Abbey by Henry the First argues no authority he being the Founder of it and not bound to give his goods to the Church
not from the Tribunal of the Jews much less their Synagogue representing their Church as the Doctor would perswade us but from the Tribunal of Portius Festus a Roman Governor under Caesar to Caesar himself I will onely put down the words as I finde them in their own Translation and so leave the Doctor to the Readers Judgement either to be accused for willfully abusing or ignorantly mistaking them But Festus willing to do the Iews a pleasure answered Paul and said wilt thou go up to Ierusalem and there be judged of these things before me Then said Paul I stand at Caesars judgement-seat where I ought to be judged c. Act. 25. 9 10 c. And now is not this Doctor think you the fittest man among all the sons of the Church of England to have a Pension for writing Annotations in folio on the Bible His last proof is that Iustinians third Book is made up of Constitutions de Episcopis Clericis Laicis Bishops Priests Laymen First we answer and the same may be said of the Theodosian Code that all the Laws found there must not necessarily be Iustinians since the Keepers of the Laws use not onely to put in their Law-books those Constitutions themselves made but also those they are to see observed among which are the Canons and Laws of the Church made before by Councils and other Ecclesiastical Powers Secondly We grant Iustinian may make Constitutions of his own concerning Bishops and Clergymen in what relates to temporal affairs or as they are parts of the civil Commonwealth And lastly If he shall be found to have made any Laws concerning them and without the Authority of the Church entrenching upon Ecclesiastical businesses let the Doctor prove he had power to make such and he will in so doing clear him in that part from that note of Tyranny which is objected against him What you say concerning the Canons of Councils that they have been mostly set out by the Emperors It is very certain you might if you had pleased instead of your Mostly have put Always the causing them to be promulgated belonging to the Office of the supreme secular Powers whose obligation it is to see that the Churches decrees be received and put in execution What you clap in within a Parenthesis as your custom is to intermingle truth with falshood that Canons of Councils received their Authority by the Emperor In the sence you take it is a great error For never was it heard that an Emperor claimed a negative voice in making a Canon of a Council valid which concerned matters purely Spiritual nay nor disaccepted them decreed unanimously by the Fathers but all the world lookt upon him as an unjust and tyrannical incroacher They receive indeed Authority from the Emperor in this sense that his subscription and command to proclaim them makes them have a more powerful reception and secures them from the obstacles of turbulent and rebellious spirits But this will not content you your aym is that they should not have the Authority or validity of a Canon without the last-life-giving-hand of the Emperors vote which is onely a strain of your own liberality to him or rather of your envy towards the Church without any ground of his rightful claim to any such Jurisdiction over Councils SECT 7. Other empty Proofs of this pretended Right confuted THese rubs being removed it will be our next sport to address an answer to his nineteenth Section it self where omitting his ten Parenthesisses which contain nothing but either sayings of his own or Greek out of Strabo's Geography That the Romans kept their assizes at divers places or Testimonies from the Council of Chalcedon already answered omitting these I say I will briefly resume the whole sence of the Paragraph as well as I can gather it out of the some-thing-more Lucid intervals of his mad Parenthesisses And this I take to be the sum of it That Kings should according to emergent conveniences change their Seats of Iudicature and that the same reasons may require a removal of Ecclesiastical Seats wherefore there being nothing to the contrary constituted either by Christ or his Apostles it follows That Kings may when they please erect and consequently remove Primacies and Metropolitans I answer That Secular Courts may be removed upon good occasions is so evident to every Fool that it needs neither Greek nor Strabo to prove it That Ecclesiastical Seats for greater conveniences of the Church be also subject to removal is likewise evident and constituted by the Council of Chalcedon Can. 17. But his inference That it belongs to the right of Kings to erect and transfer them is weaker then water nor has the Doctor infused into it the least grain of Reason to strengthen it Yet first to prove it he says Nothing is found either by Christ or his Apostles ordered to the contrary Which is a most pitiful Negative proof as indeed the greatest part of his Book iâ— and supposes to make it good That neither Christ nor his Apostles said did or ordered any thing but what is exprest in Scripture which is both expresly contrary to Scripture it self and to common reason also Besides this wise proof is both most unjust towards us and silly in him to expect unjust towards us ingaging us to prove out of Scripture That Kings cannot erect Primacies and Patriarchates whereas there is no such word there as either Primate or Patriarchate which he would have us shew thence not subject to Kings Nor is it less silly in him to expect That the Scripture should make mention of the erection or not erection of Primacies and Patriarchates by Secular Powers since the Secular Powers when the Scripture was written being most bloody Tyrants and Persecutors of the Church were more likely to hang up all Primates and Patriarchs then either erect or remove their Seats to a more convenient place Yet if you would see something to the contrary why Kings should not use Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction I can produce you the sence of the Catholick Church the best Testimony that can be alleaged for the meaning of Gods Spirit but because this weighs little with you I shew you next the Testimony of common sence and reason which tells you Faber fabrilia tractet and that those whose education institute of life particular designment to and total dependence on any course of life makes them more strongly addict all their thoughts to perfect themselves knowingly and magisterially in that their proper profession are fitter by far for such an employment then those whose diversly-distracted studies render them half-knowing or half-careful in such performances How much then is it more convenient that Ecclesiastical persons should manage the affairs of the Church then Secular Princes whom partly their necessary Temporal occasions partly voluntary Recreations Court attendances and entertainments so quite take up that they can have but saint and weak reflections either of knowledge or care in comparison of the others upon
the most concerning business imaginable the ordering Gods Church The Doctors Conclusion then which he says is both rational and evident is both irrational and very dim-coloured to any eye but his own who supposes as he tells us here for our farther confirmation That he hath made it already clear from the refutation of our Plea for St. Peters Universal Pastorship whereas it hath been manifested he had not one express word of proof to make good his pretended confutation insomuch as I promise him a general pardon and acquittance for the frivolousness of all the rest if he can shew me in his Answer that any one place expresly testified that which he pretended to evidence by Testimonies What he adds That it was appointed by the Council of Chalcedon de jure that the King may erect a Primacy when he pleases I dare be bold to call a forgery and that it needs an ID EST of the seventeens to make the Councils words sound to his purpose What he tells us next as a thing certain That King Ethelbert at the time of Austins planting the Faith did erect a Primacy at Canterbury the seat of his Kingdom Imperii sui totius Metropolis saith Bede c. is such a childish piece of insincerity that it craves as much pity as it deserves anger For Bede onely tells us there How the King answered them that he could not assent to their new doctrine yet because they were strangers and desired to communicate to him what they believed to be true he would not trouble them but rather kindly entertain them c. Then follows the Doctors Testimony Dedit ergo eis manfionem in Civitate Dovernensi quae Imperii sui totius erat Metropolis Eisque ut promiserat cum administratione victus temporalis c. Wherefore he gave them a dwelling place in the City of Canterbury the Mother-City of his whole Dominions and with administration of Temporal food he hindred them not from Preaching So that the giving them an House in Canterbury to dwell in and meat to eat is a clear evidence with Master Hammond That the King yet a Heathen erected a Primacy when certainly he knew not then what a Primacy meant Lastly To convince absolutely That Kings were Heads of the Church and translated and erected Primacies at pleasure he concludes That had it not been for this there is no reason assignable why this Nation being in Constantine's time under three Metropolitans there should be an addition of two Provinces or that the Metropolitical power should be so removed As if it could not be done at all unless the King did it What an Argument is here to bring for an up-shot of his proofs That the King is Head of the Church We both acknowledge that some removals of Ecclesiastical Seats have been in England but the Question is Whether it belongs to the Kings or the Popes to cause these removals he undertakes to prove it the Kings right we deny it The Doctor produces his Sacra Anchora or last proof That there is no reason assignable why these Sees were removed had it not been that the King had power We answer We can tell how to remove them without the Kings power to wit by the Popes which is the question he professes to make head against But proceeds not farther then onely to say it must needs be the King and that we cannot assign the Pope and that the thing was done and therefore the King must necessarily be the doer of it Thus you see the Doctor is constant to his Principles in putting his strongest Arguments in the rear What man living is able to withstand so potent and cunning an Adversary Besides suppose there had been neither Pope nor King was there any impossibility that consent of Bishops might remove the Primacy to another See especially the Bishops being anciently of such Authority in England That no weighty affairs were transacted but they had a share in the managing of them You see then Mr. Doctor there are two reasons assignable for the fact which you prove to be the Kings power because he did it and then prove he did it because otherwise it could not have been done After he hath thus convinc't Kings to have power also over Ecclesiastical affairs he proceeds to prove that this power of theirs taken away by the Laws is resumable and although his supposition being shown to be groundless there needs no answer to what he builds upon it yet we will not be so discourteous as to slight his mistakes by affording them no Reply Under Pope Melchiades in Constantines time was made a Decree that if the Donatist Bishops in Africk would return to the Unity of the Church they should be allowed either to keep the Bishopricks they had or be provided of others their obstinacy permitted not this to be executed and therefore it was recalled Neer a hundred years after under Pope Anastasius a National Council in Africa ordained a request to Him and other Bishops of Italy by whose predecessors the revocation had been made that the Donatist Bishops might retain their places if they would return to the Catholike Church the cunning Balsamon puts the provision it self for a Canon of this Council and it had been a foul offence in the Doctor to have taken notice of the request though he must needs have read it in Baronius whom he cites in the very place Therefore he concludes that Laws made at Rome do not take away the liberty of another National Council to make contrary Laws thereunto Although as far as can be drawn out of the fact and Council it argues the direct contrary and that it was not lawful for their National Council to infringe what had been done at Rome so unlucky is the Doctor in bringing Arguments so restiff and kicking that they cast their rider out of his inteâ—t He tells next that a Law though made by a General Council and with the consent of all Christian Princes yet if it have respect to a civil right may in this or that Nation be repealed quoting one Roger Widrington and Suarez the latter of them gives this reason because such a Law made at a general meeting of Princes is intrinsically a civil Law But what the Doctor will do with this after he hath produced it I cannot certainly say onely I see he must be very fruitful in unprov'd suppositions ere it will be able to do him or his cause any good First he must suppose that the title of the Head of the Church is a thing not Ecclesiastical but belonging to a civil right next that that same title is denyed their Kings only upon pretence of a Canon of a Council and not upon Christs donation of it to St. Peter these two unproved ând ungranted positions I say he must suppose gratis Otherwise to what end does he argue that the Canons of Councils are repealable and the Kings right by consequence resumeable What follows next
Fore-fathers nor were scandalized at the then received Doctrine of the Church holding as a point of Faith that the Pope was its Head but abominated the contrary as sacrilegious and schismatical The first urger of the breach then was the King as is also acknowledged let us see then what or who urg'd him that so we may trace the schism to its first original and shew the new-born brat its right Parent As for the King while his blood was yet in due temper and not over-heated with passion that is while his Conscience was uncorrupted it is well known he was as humble a son to the Church and her supreme Pastour the Bishop of Rome as any King in Christendom is at this present admitting appeals thither and his jurisdiction here nay indeed more officiously obedient then any King now-adays can pretend writing or else causing to be set out in his name a Book against Luther in defence of the Roman-Catholick Faith and the Popes Authority which that Apostate rejected for which work also he received in recompence from the Pope the title of Defender of the Faith inherited by the succeeding Kings though they have forfeited the claim to it by disavowing the fact which deserved it What was King Henries judgment of the Popes Universal Authority till he fell into passion is easie to be seen in his own Book where he strongly and rationally proves it in these words Negare Lutherus non potest quin omnis Ecclesia fidelium Sacro-Sanctam sedem Romanam velut Matrem Primatemque recognoscat ac veneretur quaecunque saltem neque locorum distantiâ neque periculis interjacentibus prohibetur accessu Quamquam si vera dicunt qui ex India quoque veniunt huc Indi etiam ipsi tot terrarum tot marium tot solitudinum plagis disjuncti Romano tamen Pontifici se submittunt Ergo si tantam tam latè fusam potestatem neque Dei jussu Pontifex neque hominum voluntate consecutus est sed quâ sibi vi vendicavit dicat velim Lutherus quando in tantae ditionis erupit professionem Num potest obscurum esse initium tam immensae potentiae praesertim si intra hominum memoriam nata sit Quod si rem dixerit unam fortasse aut duas aetates superare in memoriam vobis redigat ex Historiis Alioqui si tam vetusta sit ut rei etiam tantae obliteratae sit origo Legibus omnino cautum esse cognoscat ut cujus jus omnium hominum memoriam ita supergreditur ut sciri non possit cujusmodi habuerit initium censeatur habuisse legitimum Vetitumque esse constat omnium consensu Gentium ne quae di◠manserunt immota moveantur Luther cannot deny but all the Church of the faithful acknowledges and venerates the See of Rome as their Mother and Chief at least whatsoever Church is not hindred from coming thither by distance of place or dangers in the way Although if credit may be given to those who come from the Indies even the very Indians separated by such vast Lands Seas and Wildernesses submit themselves to the Bishop of Rome Wherefore if the Pope hath obtained so great and far-spread an Authority neither by the command of God nor the will of men but hath arrogated it to himself by some violence I would know of Luther when and at what time the Pope broke forth into the profession of so ample a Iurisdiction Can the beginning of such a vast power be obscure Especially if it were born within the memory of man But if he shall say this power exceeds one or two ages let him bring it into our memory by histories Otherwise if it be so ancient that the original of a matter even of so great importance be worn out of memory then let him know it is expresly provided for by the Laws that his right and title which so transcends all memory of man as it cannot be known how it began is judged to have had a lawful original and it is manifest that the consent of all Nations forbid those things should be moved which have long remained setled and firm Thus was King Henry affected and in this affection continued till he found an itching I conceive not too conscientious to his darling Anne Bullen she being too crafty to forgoe the glittering offer of a Crown made unto her by the love-besotted King he grew straight perplext in minde for his former marriage began to think it unlawful though till now neither he nor any in the world ever scrupled it The devotion he bore to his Saint Anne Bullen put a new heat of Religion into his tender heart his restless Conscience alas perswaded him that his marriage with Katherine although confirmed by two and twenty yeers continuance and sealed with the endearing pledge of issue must needs be disanuld The Pope was urged to dispence with his second marriage though his former wife lived King Henry wooed intreated bribed then grew into choller and at last plainly threatned a Schisme unless the Pope would grant and justifie his unlawful desire Here now if the Romish Religion were made up onely of Policy as those think whose eys her prudent and heaven-ordered Government dazles into a blind envy of her priviledges the Pope should rather have sought pretences to yeeld to this unwarrantable request then have denyed it with the loss of a Kingdom from his Jurisdiction but the common Father of the Church more considered unless we will give way to the suspicious Reports of enemies what detriment and scandal to the whole world was likely to result from such an impious example in so eminent a person then consulted with flesh and blood how to second his desire or cloak his grant with the outside of a dangerous necessity He first counselled friendly then reprehended him Fatherly at last refused his consent absolutely Upon this King Henry grew furious put away his most pious and vertuous Lady Queen Katherine whose Angelical Sanctity and Dove like patience he always continued to honour when as he beheaded her assumed Rival Her disenthronement was Anna Bullens enstalment The marriage was celebrated with a divorce of our poor Country from the Church Appeals to Rome denied under pain of death The Popes Authority which had remained inviolable ever since we English were by its means converted utterly rejected nay the very name of Pope rased out of all the Books in England Monasteries and Religious Houses pulled down or robbed their Revenues given by their devout Founders to pious uses confiscare and consecrared to the Kings riotous Lust. Subscriptions forced to a new and till that time unheard of Church-Government a Secular Head of an Ecclesiastical Body they that would not subscribe disgraced or put to death Thus the Reformation was first set on foot and this lust of King Henry was so fruitful that it at once begot Tyranny Rapine the Reformation Adultery Protestancy at least the embrio of it Sacriledge Queen Elizabeth
and Schism And though the Doctor excuses the imputation of King Henries Sacriledge saying That Sacriledge is no more Schism then it is Adultery yet it is enough if he grant as he must That both his Sacriledge and his Schism were born of the same mother-occasion the Kings lust and so though the Doctor say That facies non omnibus una Yet I answer Nec diversa tamen qualem decet esse sororum their faces not the same Nor different yet as sisters well became Neither is this all to shew that the first occasion of the breach was not Conscience The King himself desired oftentimes afterwards a reconcilement which being not possible without revoking all he had done despair made him resolve Over shooes over boots to make the rupture still wider while he lived though at his death when it was no time to dally the care of his Soul now out-weighing the pleasure of his Body he with extream grief of heart repented him of his Schism By this one may see how justly the Doctor pretended Pag. 18 19 as an excuse of his Schism The care of their Conscience and the not-admitting any sin which the Church may oblige them to subscribe to whereas if the original of the breach be this as it most evidently is then I cannot conceive the Church obliged the ring leader of it to any sin in bidding him keep his own wife But if you pretend another which by the whole scope of this Chapter you seem not to do it will be found to have no nobler an extraction then the former onely perhaps the carnal sin in him may be changed into a spiritual one in you that is King Henries lust into your self-conceited pride and refractory disobedience which may indeed outâ—vy and excel him though not excuse you But perhaps your grounds which before absolved the Rebel Out law and Anabaptist will absolve him too by saying it was King Henries present perswasion that his wife was to be put away and then comes in the whole eighth Paragraph of the second Chapter to plead for the adulterous King thus Nay though the error be really on his side yet if the doctrines so proposed that he ought to keep his wife as the condition of Communion be indeed agreeable to truth but yet be really apprehended by him to whom they are thus proposed to be false and disagreeable it will even in that case be hard to affirm That that man may lawfully subscribe or Kâ—-Henry lawfully keep his wife contrary to his present perswasion Thus much for the first thing I undertook to shew that the original of this breach proceeded not from Conscience the second will also appear no less manifest That the progress and promoting of it was altogether as unconsciencious The second consideration which renders this Schism more inexcusable in the now Protestants is That when it first was brought into this Kingdom it was no free choice of the Ecclesiastical State which could the Doctor prove he would think it perhaps of some weight The King using all means both by perswasions and force to make men subscribe persecuting continually those that refused and putting to death many upon the same score among the rest those two Lights of our Nation for learning and piety Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas Moor most intimate with the King and in the sincerest loyalty addicted to him till their knowing conscienciousness made them refuse to subscribe lest they might at once prejudice Loyalty and Religion by a preposterous obedience But what need more proofs since the Doctor grants here Section five That it is easie to believe that nothing but the apprehension of dangers which hung over them by a Praemunire incurred by them could probably have inclined the Clergy to subscribe thus he Though blowing and supping both at once he striaght-way addes That the Reasons or Arguments offered in debate were the causes as in all charity we are to judge of their decision Whereas I cannot see any reason why the Doctor should be so uncharitably charitable as to judge them not onely weak but to have been hardned and lost for the future all feeling of Conscience for their lapse since the fore-going fear bears the weight of a strong prejudice against the clear Verdict of Conscience and the future recantation of all the Bishops who then subscribed in Queen Maries time and their persisting in Queen Elizabeths days rather evidences That the curb being removed which misled them it was Conscience which made them return and strength and force of Conscience which made them afterwards persevere in the same judgment The third thing I am to prove and make the Doctor confess is That there was a breach made which denominates them truly and properly Schismaticks The first part is so clear that it needs no proof since the very deed bears witness For first your self acknowledge you renounced the Authority of the Roman See and cast it out of this Iland Which Authority yet you must acknowledge likewise That all the whole World which before the breach you held the onely good Christians submitted to as sacred and descended from Christs institution which Authority was known and held both by them and your selves till then to be over both you and your King in Ecclesiastical matters and had enjoyed the possession of that Claim confessedly eight or nine hundred years nor this upon title onely of a Patriarchate your Conversion or Grant of Kings but of an Universal Primacy and Pastorship over the whole Church by Christs grant and before your conversion was dream'd on Lastly The Government of the Church thus established was held by all those whom before that day you accounted the onely Faithful as of Divine Right and a point of Faith and that the denial of it twisted into one crime both Heresie and Schism A manifest breach then and Schism there was made by you first from that supreme Ecclesiastical Governor under whom both you and your Ancestors till that time had ever-continued and next from the Universality of Christians by erecting to your selves a new structure of Church-Government which all the vast Congregation of these from whom you broke detested and abhorred as Sacrilegious and Schismatical Singularity therefore most clearly manifested it self in your new Church-Government and if singularity be opposite to a community of which Communion is the Form it follows evidently That your singularity destroyed Communion and so was formally Schism Again if multitudes of things of the same species cannot be made one otherwise then by the unity of order it follows That what dissolves this order dissolves the unity and so causes a breach or Schism But you manifestly unravelled all the then constituted order of Gods Church by casting out of the Kingdom the supreme Authority in which as in a knot the other several ends were sum'd and tied up therefore you also unravelled and broke asunder its unity This then as it is acknowledged by you so in it self is
in the Doctors judgment Not considering which yet any prudent man would that the whole world whom before they accounted onely Catholick and in which had been hundreds of Kings Queens and Bishops nay perhaps thousands for one of theirs had ever condemned by their contrary beliefe these Votes and Acts to bee scismatical and heretical Besides this King before the breach acknowledging himselfe subject to that Authority in Ecclesiastical matters as all Catholick Kings now doe and as all his Ancestor-Kings ever since Englands conversion had done it must be as I have told you often most apparent evidence and such as greater cannot be imagin'd which may warrant him to exalâ— himselfe above the Popes Authority so long setled in possession and that in those very things in which before he was acknowledgedly under him especially the contrary verdict of such an universality as I have before mention'd with its weight not to be counterpois'd preponderating and mightily prejudicing any pretence of Evidence Again if the thing were evident how happened it that no Christian King till the time of King Henry the eighth and in his time none but he should discern this clear evidence unless perhaps though they say love is blind yet his desire to Anna Bullen did open his eyes in such miraculous manner that he saw by the heavenly light of her bright star-like eyes that the Pope was Antichrist his Authority unlawful and himselfe who was then found under it in Ecclesiastical matters to be indeed above it in case the Popes spiritual power should cross his carnal pleasure To conclude my answer to this Chapter I would ask two things of Mr. Doctor one is in case a King should have broke from the Church and brought in Schism into his Country whether it could probably be perform'd in any other manner than the very method by which their Reformation was introduced The other is whether the Reformation be yet perfectly compleat or rather that Queen Elizabeth swept the Church indeed but left the dust sluttishly behind the door if it be not yet compleat I would gladly know how far this Reformation and Receding from Rome may proceed and what be the certain stints and limits of this rowling Sea which it may not pass For I see no reason in the Doctors grounds but if the secular powers think it convenient they may reform still end wayes as they please nay even if they list deny Christ to be God an acute Socinian will solve very plausibly all the objections out of Scripture and produce allegations which I doubt not he will make far stronger than the Doctor doth his against the Pope nor will there want some obscure testimonies out of Antiquity and express ones from the Arrian Hereticks to evince the Tenet if this then were voted by a King some of his Bishops and a Parliament the Doctor must not disobey and hold Christs Divinity since the thing was done by them to whom as the Doctor sayes rightfull power legally pertain'd They having no infallibility then may happen to vote such a thing and the Doctor having no infallible certainty to the contrary ought not recede from his lawful Superiours so as upon these grounds all religion may be reformed into Atheism and the infallibility of the Church once denied the temporal Power hath no reason to have his rightful authority stinted but at pleasure to make Reformation upon Reformation from generation to generation per omnia saecula saeculorum THE THIRD PART Containing the answers to the foure last Chapters of Dr. Hammonds Schism SECT 1. Doctor Hammonds second sort of Schism and his pretence that they retain the way to preserve Unity in Faith refuted MAster Hammond hath at length finish't his greatest task and done preaching of the first species of Schism as it is an offence against the subordination which Christ hath by himselfe and his Apostles setled in the Church and is now arrived to the second sort as it signifies an offence against the mutual unity peace and charity which Christ left among his Disciples This Schism against Charity for methods sake as he tells us he divides into three species The first is a Schism in the Doctrine or Traditions a departure from the unity of the Faith once delivered to the Saints from the institutions of Christ of the Apostles and of the Universal Church of the first and purest times whether in Government or practises c. Where first this methodical Dr. makes Faith and Charity all one putting his Schism against Faith for the first species of his Schism against mutual Charity Next he ranks also the rejecting Christs Institution of Government under this second species of Schism against Charity which most evidently was the first General Head of Schism hitherto treated of that is of the Offence against Subordination setled by Christ in the Church For Christ could not settle such a subordination in the Church but he must at the same time institute the Government of the Church since there can be neither subordination without Government nor Government without subordination So as now the Schism against Government is come to be one of the Schisms against mutual Charity and to mend the matter comprehended under the same Head with Schism against Faith Was ever such a confusion heard of And yet all this is done saith the Doctor for methods sake But to proceed the second species of his Schism against mutual Charity is an offence against external peace and Communion Ecclesiastical Where I find as much blundering as formerly For these words must either signifie an Offence against Superiors and Governors of the Church and then it is again co-incident both with the first general Head of Schism which dissolves the subordination of the Churches subjects and also with the first particular species of Schism against mutual Charity which according to the Doctors method included a breach from the Government instituted by Christ. Or else they must signifie an Offence against the mutually and equally-due correspondence and Charity which one fellow-member ought to have to another and then it falls to be the same with his third and last species which he calls The want of that Charity which is due from every Christian to every Christian. So that if the jumbling all the Bells together in a confused disorder may be called musical then the Doctors division may be styled methodical After this he subdivides this first species to wit Schism against Faith into A departure from those Rules appointed by Christ for the founding and upholding truth in the Church and into The asserting particular doctrins contrary to Christs and the Apostolical pure Churches establishment But first he cleares himselfe of the former of these by answering our suggestion as he calls it that in casting out the Authority of the Bishop of Rome they have cast off the Head of all Unity To which he tells us the answer is obvious First that the Bishop of Rome was never appointed by
it cannot deceive us Now you see the Doctor is got as farre as the Church-door But when he heares them within the Church talk that a company of men can be Infallible he leaps you back at one jump as far as the Sceptick Schooles of the Heathen Academicks But how could Mr. Hammond imagine this pretence sufficient to acquit him from Scism in renouncing the way to preserue Unity of Faith or to prove that he and his fellowes still fully acknowledged it The way to preserve Unity of Faith held by all the Christian world before their breach was the beleefe of the Churches Infallibility and we think mans wit cannot invent a better for that End Either then this must be the way to preserve Unity in Faith or some other if this you manifestly broke and rejected it as hath been shewn and as the 19th Article of Queen Elizabeths new Creed professedly declares if some other whatever it is it must needs include a fallibility and uncertainty in the Church of the doctrine she teaches Wherefore either evidence to us that a professed and beleeved fallibility can be a better way to preserve Unity in Faith than a beleefe of Infallibility or else grant that renouncing the latter you renounced the best and most efficacious way to conserve such an Unity The second way to preserve Unity in Faith here mentioned by the Doctor as fully and zealously acknowledged by him his fellows is the establishment by our Saviour and his Apostles of an excellent subordination of all inferiour Officers of the Church to the Bishop in every City of the Bishops in every province to their Metropolitans of the Metropolitans in every region or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to Patriarchs or Primates allowing also amongst them such a primacy of Order or Dignity a◠might be proportionable to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c Thus the Doctor In answer to which w◠will examine a while whether this way thu◠laid out be indeed the way to preserve Unity i◠Faith For if notwithstanding this subordination no Priest is bound to beleeve his Bishop nor Bishop his Metropolitan nor Metropolitan his Patriarch how can this conduce to the Unity of Faith But peradventure he will say this subordination in obedience is a great help to keep out errours and then if this be so we must take into consideration how this point relates to Unity of Government as it is a means to conserve Truth the breaking of which Unity is called Schism So the question in that case is reduced to the examine how his subordination provides against Schism Let us admit then that all the world were made up of Churches governed in this Order as the Doctor hath put them I would ask if in the time of the Arian Heresie a Priest had dissented from his Bishop an Arian but yet consented with his Metropolitan had it been schism in so doing The Doctor must answer No for the Metropolitan being of higher Authority than the Bishop the adherence to him would more secure the Priest from schism than the relinquishing the Bishop could endanger him Next if a Bishop dissent from an heretical Metropolitan but consents with a Catholick Patriarch is it yet Schism Surely no since the same reason clears him that cleared the Priest before Again if the Metropolitan dissent from his own Primate or Patriarch but agree with all the rest is it yet schism Certainly no for the collection of all the rest being of greater Authority than any one in particular can by consequence more excuse him than the other can condemn him Hitherto then we have found none of the Doctors Amulets against Shism Let us proceed If a Patriarch dissent from the first from the Doctors 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but yet concedes to all the rest is it yet schism The Doctor answers no For in regard he owed the other onely something more of a civil respect as a younger brother does an Elder without any inferiority to him in Command or Jurisdiction it cannot be a Schism Forwards still Suppose some Nation or some Patriarch dissent from a General Council is it yet Schism still the Dr. answers No for in his third Chapter which branch't Schism into all its Species he put no such schism as that against a General Council How then hath Mr. Hammond by this new way provided against Schism if according to this Subordination all the Church may fall together by the eares and all may find lawful excuses to secure them from being Scismaticks since the oeconomy of that distracted Family is so order'd that neither any one in particular nor any in common have any tie to hold them to the rest without which ty of consent in matters of faith this imagin'd subordination can no way be a meanes to preserve Unity of Faith and conquently the Drs. Church government without some stronger obligation to knit up all this Order in an Unity is not an Act of Providence either worthy our Saviour or his Apostles But what is become of the King or Emperour all this while is he no body now who before was the Chief It seemes the Apostles made no reckoning of him in all their Providence It is wonderful Mr. Hammond should so forget himself and proceed so inconsonantly to his own grounds that whereas before the King was Chief Governour Head of the Church Supreme in Ecclesiastical matters over and above both Metropolitans and Patriarchs c. Now in treating the Government of the Church instituted to preserve the Unity of Faith he thinks the Head of the Church whom he had formerly exalted above all that is called HOLY not worth the mentioning Does he think the Unity of such a Head conduces nothing to the preservation of Unity in Faith which yet he grants to a far more inferiour Bishop or accounts he it a small sin for a Patriarch to dissent from so Sacred a Head of his Church and his lawful Superiour nay Supreme in Ecclestastical matters and to whom the rightful power as the Doctor told us in those things legally pertaines Yet Mr. Hammond had good reason to omit it For though he may talk of and advance that doctrine in common so to escape the Supremacy of the Pope for you must conceive that he had rather have even a Bramble rule over their Church than that all o're spreading Cedar the Bishop of Rome yet he declines it as handsomely as he can when he should apply that doctrine to particulars as is seen in our present case For indeed who would not laugh at him if he had told us as he must had he introduced the King that it was the heighth of Schism to dissent in a point of Faith from a Thing which neither the Catholikes nor yet Protestants as you here see acknowledge but a kind of a Lay-Elder an Office which were it not three dayes older might seem borrowed from their dearly beloved brethren the Presbyterians Yet the Doctor is grown kind and allows
that Church and so it was necessary he should substitute another in the charge of that private Bishoprick but did not devest himself of the dignity of chief of the Apostles and so no pretence can be competent to his substitute in Antioch This dignity annexed to his person by our B. Saviour went along with him whithersoever he went and remained with him living so that onely he who succeeded him dying the Bishop of Rome could claim the inheritance of that sacred Dignity which nothing but his blessed Predecessors death could delegate unto him At Rome he died and was by dying devested where he was devested there was necessary a succession into the dignity which he left and was wanting by his death to the whole Church This was his Primacy This therefore must be the title of his truly called Successor there and no pretence left for his substitute at Antioch made in his life time Most vain then is the Doctors conceit of the primogeniture in Antioch unless he could prove St. Peter died there in vain are his self-affirmed and onely-self-proved positions in his third Section to this purpose In vain his assertion in the beginning of the fourth That if Rome derived any authority from the succession of St. Peter Antioch must for the same reason be preferred before Alexandria since St. Peter onely constituted there a Successor to himself in the dignity which he then stript himself of that is of the private charge of that Church which being onely an ordinary office and no particularity resulting from St. Peters personal authority it had consequently from the force of such a substitute instalment nothing to elevate it beyond the pitch of an ordinary Bishoprick and so it remained liable upon convenient Reasons afterwards ensuing to be ranked after Alexandria This bolt then falling short of the mark he is resolved at length to shoot home and for his better advantages stalks under the patronage of the Council of Chalcedon citing a Canon thereof That the See of Constantinople shall have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 equal priviledges dignities and advantages with Rome upon this account That Constantinople was new Rome and the seat of the Empire at that time which say they was the reason that Rome enjoyed such priviledges and therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Fathers at Constantinople being moved with the same Reasons had rightly judged That now the same priviledges should belong to that Church or City 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And that this being next to old Rome should in all Ecclesiastical affairs have the same dignity or greatness that old Rome had Thus far the Doctor Where first I would ask him how he knows that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies the Primacy are there no kinde of priviledges but of equality in Jurisdiction Next I would know why 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 can exact no other interpretation but AS SHE must needs be interpreted as much as she or have the same dignity or greatness deducing an equality or identity from the particle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which onely denotes a similitude or likeness Thirdly I must chide Mr. Doctor and with very good reason too for Englishing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in ALL Ecclesiastick businesses whereas there is no such word as All in the Council and in this word All purposely added by the Doctor consists the most efficacious part of the Testimony For the worâ— ALL may include possibly the authority oâ— Primacy it self which no other word there alleaged can in any way signifie But the Doctors Pen is still very free to let down Ink when any thing of importance is to be added to a Testimony Fourthly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifying nothing but certain honorary pompous or ceremonious priviledges which might have accrued to some Church by the residence of the supreme Secular power there I see no necessity why the Popes Legates might not omit to oppose the reason there given for the collation of these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whereas had the word signified Primacy which was then as strongly and expresly pretended to come from Christs donation to St. Peter as is evident in Pope Leo's Epistles whose Legates presided in this Council as it is now by these present Popes then we should have heard another story Fifthly The Doctor grants that this Decree was as derogatory to the dignity of Antioch as Rome but it is evident that Antioch pretended to no Primacy over the whole Church Evident therefore it is from the Doctors own Concession That 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 could not signifie Primacy of Jurisdiction neither consequently was that struck at by the tumultuous Constantinopolitans Sixtly The very Council where this was handled calls and acknowledges Rome the first which the Doctor will interpret a precedency of order onely and this he will grant she retain'd notwithstanding these equal priviledges arrogated to Constantinople if then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 equal priviledges may be supposed to be given to another Romes precedency and priority in order remaining untouched why should we think or indeed how can we think that that word meant the Primacy or that this was concerned in the Decree being much higher then the former since this was sacred the other complementary this ever held as not possible to come otherwise then from Christs especial donation whereas that might have probably proceeded from Ecclesiastical Constitution Seventhly The Doctor onely proceeding upon a whimsie born and bred in his own brain tells us pag. 99. that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies a Patriarchate and the pomps attending it and that Canstantinople wanted onely the dignity of a Patriarchate to be equal to Rome Which is a most gross mistake and plainly demonstrating That the Doctor took this Testimony as he found it dropt from the Pen of some petty Writer and never â—etcht it from the Fountains of ancient History it self For it is certain and by all acknowledged That Constantinople was a Patriarchate before but the fourth and now pretended to be the second and so make Alexandria the third and Antioch the fourth Yet the Doctor runs on upon this ground and ignorant of the truth of the history winks and fights most cruelly paying the Primacy of Rome with his own sayings even to utter desolation till he comes to the end of the Paragraph Eighthly It is manifest by the History and Acts of the Council it self That this was no free Act nor ever came off clear The ambition of the Clergy of Constantinople extorting it with a tumultuous importunity it being voted after most of the Fathers were departed and onely those of the party of Constantinople left to determine in their own behalf what they or their instigators pleased whereupon it was contradicted and exclaimed against vehemently the next day by the Western Church in the Popes Legates disavowed and rejected by the Patriarch of Antioch and those under him No Patriarch of Alexandria was there and all the Metropolitans and Bishops under him
refused to subscribe The Act it self not numbred amongst the Acts of the Council till ambition which at first receiving such a check from so grave Authority was modest growing more impudent when the reprehending and curbing power was absent legitimated that bastard-issue and pin'd it to the end of the Council as Dr. Hammond does his own sayings to the end of his Testimonies Yet the Doctor tells us He could vindicate the validity of this Canon but that he means not to go out of his way Is it out of your way Mr. Doctor to vindicate that Testimony to be valid which you object for a strong proof against us and we reject as of insufficient Authority and illegitimate In my poor judgment it lies so directly in your way that you cannot possibly do your cause better service then to clear this point else why did you produce a Testimony lying under a just Exception unless you would stick to it and maintain it It lay in your way it seems to put that large-senc'd monosyllable ALL into the Testimony that was just in your way but to make good your own weak Allegation was quite out of your way Yet you were something excusable from under-propping your Testimony if you had been better employ'd in the mean time but I finde the whole fifth Paragraph in which you wave it from the beginning to the end made up onely of your own sayings and some of those too false upon which as upon grounds you proceed with an unresistable career So as your proofs are perfect Cobwebs both the ground and the work upon it being spun out of your own bowels But instead of vindicating it you first quarrel with us for strange dealing in not admitting any Testimony against us but wherein we have given our own suffrage which you call A method of security beyond all amulets c. Thus the Doctor plausibly indeed if his Readers were fools otherwise nothing can sound more unconsonantly For either the Pope is head of the Church or no If he suppose negatively then he plainly begs the Question which hangs yet in dispute and then upon this supposition I will grant it is not onely strange dealing but injustice usurpation tyranny impiety or whatever he will or else the Pope was and is Head of the Church and then the Doctors words may be objected as well to any Governor or any man living as to the Pope and it is not strange dealling but very good reason That he should refuse to subscribe to an Act endamaging the Canons of the Church it being his duty and obligation to keep them inviolate And if Pope Leo could in reason reject it then when one siding and self-interessed part of the Council had voted it we can with as good reason reject it now when Dr. Hammond alleages it SECT 2. THe Doctors next EVIDENCE that the Pope is not Head of the Church is from a Canon in the Council of Ephesus where saith Mr. Hammond the independency of Cyprus not onely from the Patriarch of Antioch but from all others whomsoever was contested then as from the Apostles times c. Thus the Doctor desirous to make the Reader believe that Cyprus had no kinde of Dependency on any one whomsoever Though the Testimony it self contests no more but that from the Apostles time they could never show That the Bishop of Antioch was there Et ordinaverit vel communicaverit unquam Insulae ordination is gratiam neque alius quisquam that is And ordain'd or conferred the grace of Ordination upon that Iâ—and nor any other The Testimony speaks onely That neither the Patriarch nor any other ordained there the Doctor interprets it That Cyprus was independent on the Patriarch of Antioch or any one whomsoever Which is not ingenuously done for there may be a dependency of subjection to the Jurisdiction of another though they never received from that other their Ordination Thus you see the Doctor seldom brings us an account of any Testimony but less or more he will be sure to enflame the reckoning But the Council exempted Cyprus from the peculiar subjection to a private Patriarch in particular True but is there any thing exprest there That either Cyprus or the Patriarch of Antioch himself were exempted from the Obedience or Jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome as Publick Head of the Church or was the Popes Primacy there called in question This should have been exprest to make good your inference But of this we have not so much as a syllable nor any thing that can deduce it since the I le of Cyprus might well have been exempted from the obedience of any particular Patriarch and yet both it and the Patriarchs themselves subjected to one Chief or Head of the Church As there may be some free State or City in Europe independent of any particular Kingdom or Province and yet both that State and all the Kingdoms and Provinces in Europe dependent or subject to the Universal Rule of an Emperor who is Lord of the whole Yet the Doctor hath not done with us thus he hath another fling at us out of this Council of Ephesus which determined saith the Doctor That no Bishop shall encroach upon anothers Province or usurp a power where from the Apostles times he had not enjoyed it Which how directly adds the Doctor it prejudgeth the pretensions of Rome is so manifest that it cannot need farther demonstrating This therefore being Dr. Hammonds PRIMUM PRINCIPIUM first Principle which is so evident by the light of nature and cannot need farther demonstrating it were not amiss if we put it in a Syllogism to let the Reader see how unavoidably the Doctor deduces a break-neck conclusion to the cause of Rome out of it The Argument then stands thus The Canon of Ephesus constitutes That nâ—… Bishop shall encroach upon anothers Province oâ—… usurp a power where from the Apostles time hâ—… had not enjoyed it But the Pope must Dr. Hammond subsume hath encroacht upon anothers Province and usurpt a power where from the Apostles times he had not enjoyed it Therefore his pretensions are prejudiced by this Canon of Ephesus Where as every childe may see nothing follows out of the words of the Council against the Pope which are the Major until the Doctor makes good his Minor That the Pope hath thus encroached c. Yet this being all that belongs to him to prove he either supposes as a first principle though it be the onely thing in controversie or else begs of us to grant him gratis and then tells us the Conclusion is so manifest it cannot need farther demonstrating Surely he was afraid here also to go out of his way and with good reason for had he gone about to evidence his Minor he would never have arrived at his Conclusion After this most palpable and evident demonstration he gives us two instances of the same alloy One of the Archbishop of Carthage whom the Emperor Iustinian made equal in