Dei Exod. 23. In judicio plurimorum non acquiesces Sententiae ut à vero devies and yet they are the words of Salmeron a man of great learning amongst the Iesuits and confessed of all men to be so in Ep. ad Rom. 5. dif 51. pa. 468. How would they triumph upon the modesty of one of our Clergy if when he had reckoned up the opinions of most of the Fathers upon a difficult Text of Scripture he should conclude Sed si meam quoque sententiam avet audire liberè fatebor in nulla prorsus earum meum qualecunque judicium acquiescere and yet these are the words of Maldonate in his Commentary upon the 11 verse of the 11 ch of St. Matthew Qui est minimus in regno Coelorum major est Iohanne Baptista The question is not whether these very eminent Men and great Scholars for such they were said well and reasonably but whether they who assume this liberty should reproach us who never mention the Fathers but with veneration and rarely dissent from them but when they dissent from one another for taking less liberty or whether they do ingenuously to desire the People should believe that they are so severe observers of the Doctrine of the Fathers that they never tread out of their steps Why may it not become the Church of England to use the same expressions which Cardinal Cajetan so long since did in his Preface to his Commentaries upon the Books of Moses in his excuse for having rejected many expositions of the Fathers Solis sacrae Scripturae authoribus reservata authoritas haec est ut ideo sic credamus esse quia ipsi sic scripserunt Why may it not become any particular member of that Church in a particular point it may be but in a particular expression to differ from a particular Father when Petavius who had as exactly read the Fathers and was as great a Master of universal Learning as this Age hath produced presumes to say Multa sunt à sanctissimis Patribus praesertim à Chrysostomo in homiliis aspersa quae si ad exactae veritatis normam accommodare volueris boni sensûs inania videbuntur in Epipha pa. 244. These and very many more of the like animadversions and detections by Monsieur Dallie anger vex Mr. Cressy and his new Friends much more than any disrespect he is guilty of towards the Fathers of which they cannot assign one instance all that he says besides the mentioning them always with all possible reverence is no more than what Mr. Cressy says of them and of the four first general Councils and which indeed was the cause of Monsieur Dallies writing that Book that those Holy men nor the times in which they lived knew any thing or had heard of any of the points especially in controversie between us and the Church of Rome and therefore that it was a vain affectation to appeal to them for a decision I do not much wonder at any thing Mr. Cressy says upon this argument for he owed to himself some extraordinary observation to make his tale of presenting that unlucky Book as he calls it of Mr. Dallie to My Lord Falkland and which he says perswaded Mr. Chillingworth to have a light esteem of the Fathers but I cannot but admire and grieve that he hath so much credit with any member of the Church of England how obscure soever as to perswade him to have the same opinion and thereupon to assume the Licence and the rashness to asperse as far as his talent can contribute unto it the memory of that most loved and most esteemed Lord Falkland whose name he is not worthy to pass through his mouth with the odious reproach of being a Socinian and that when no Person of the Church of Rome hath had the courage in so many years to attempt the answering that Book de usu Patrum one of the other Church should think it necessary to take the quarrel upon him and without any reason or any instance of moment reproach Mr. Dallie with his light esteem of the Holy Fathers in language not in any degree decent nor was the matter or the manner at all necessary to the other part of his Book concerning the Church of England nor can any Man who is disposed to make that enquiry meet with a greater encouragement to pursue it than by having read that Book of Mr. Dallies I am glad I am now come to Mr. Cressy's conclusion which is not long and consists in a softer and more civil kind of scolding than the other parts of his Book but with the same bitterness and hath in truth in it somewhat of ingenuity a man would not have expected for after so many reproaches almost in every page of his Book of being a Presbyterian an Independent an Hypocrite indeed all the calumnies cast upon him which a good wit and an ill nature can suggest he confesses at last that the Doctor in one of his Books and the place he cites declares That the Church of England upon the greatest enquiry he can make is the best Church of the World which is a greater and fuller vindication of him for all the contumelious aspersions cast on him and a more ample and clear testimony because it is more innocent that he is a true son of the Church of England than any Mr. Cressy can produce of his being a Roman Catholick Will any Presbyterian or Independent or Anabaptist make that Declaration he well knows they neither can nor will whilst they retain the principles of their parties and they cease to be of either party assoon as they make that declaration he confesses that the Doctor hath subscribed and submitted to and practises all that Church requires of him and hath farther unprovoked given this ample testimony to it that he was not obliged to do and which no man can give that is divided in his affections and equally inclined to another Church that differs from it and yet he is so jealous of the honour and security of the Church of England that Church that he hath Apostatized from that Church that he hath traduced and reviled with all the scurrility of Language of this Church in which he will not permit a possibility of Salvation he is so careful that he will not allow the Doctor to be a member of it but advises like a loving Father the drowzy and sleeping Prelates to be watchful over him as a spy and treacherous person who whilst he perswades them poor simple creatures that he will be a champion for their Church endeavours all he can to destroy and undermine it How will Mr. Cressy answer to his Superiors this preposterous zeal of his own behalf of a Church the most odious and the most formidable to them that when it is even almost undermined by Officers of its own who are trusted to search and survey all its Vaults and most secret Avenues so that it is upon the point of falling
IMPRIMATUR THO. TOMKYNS Ex Aed Lambethanis Nov. 29. 1673. ANIMADVERSIONS Upon a Book Intituled FANATICISM FANATICALLY Imputed to the Catholick Church By Dr. STILLINGFLEET And the Imputation Refuted and Retorted by S. C. By a Person of Honour LONDON Printed for R. Royston Bookseller to His most Sacred Majesty 1673. TO Dr. Stillingfleet SIR HAving lately it may be later than most men in England who are inquisitive after Books had a view of a little Book in answer to a Book of Yours which I had not then seen Intituled Fanaticism Fanatically Imputed by him Dr. Stillingfleet to the Catholick Church I had read very few leaves in it when I was able warrantably to say that Mr. Cressy was the Author of this Book a person whom I had long known and familiarly conversed with before he was perverted in his Religion aud had often seen since and upon the whole I must confess if there had not been some particulars in it which could not suffer me to be deceived I could hardly have believed that so much pride and bitterness and virulence could upon so little provocation and with so little excuse have dropped from his pen. The confidence of it amazed me as much as the rudeness and though I could not expect that a man who had treated his own Mother with so little respect could have much reverence for your Person who have so vigorously defended her and fully vindicated her from all the reproaches that Classis of men have been able to cast upon her and exposed their malice and their ignorance more nakedly to the view of the world than I think hath been ever done before for which all her true children are and always must be indebted to you and to your memory I thought the little angry Book fit to receive some answer and the Author of it worthy of reprehension and admonition which he might receive with less disturbance from an old Friend and I thought it likewise unreasonable that you whose studies are so wholly engrossed by and dedicated to the publick should be put to the trouble to free your self from these feeble calumnies which every man who hath read your Works is able to do and every man who loves the Church is bound in justice to do Besides I was willing to invite other Lay-men to shew with more efficacy their concernment for the Church and the Protestant Religion so variously and maliciously assaulted on all hands though God be thanked impotently enough that the defence of it may not be looked upon as the sole duty of the Clergy These were the motives that invited me to undertake this little task which I was not long performing and yet even when I had finished it if so imperfect a draught can be called finishing I chanced to have the pleasant sight of your Answer to several late Treatises c. and I can with a very good conscience assure you that mine was dispatched before I did see it and therefore especially since you have only taken a slight notice in the Preface of Mr. Cressy's waspish invectives I am willing if you please that my short Animadversions may be likewise presented to his view which is intirely left to be communicated or suppressed or corrected according to your judgment by SIR Your most affectionate unknown Servant ANIMADUERSIONS Upon a Book Intituled FANATICISM FANATICALLY Imputed to the Catholick Church By Dr. STILLINGFLEET And the Imputation Refuted and Retorted by S. C. IT was the wish not the hope of the most excellent Lord Bacon in his never enough admired Advancement of Learning that good Books had the quality or faculty of Moses's Rod that being become a Serpent eat up and devoured the other Serpents which were produced by the Rods of the Sorcerers or Magicians The number was so great in his time of idle and impertinent and Seditious Books and the number of the Readers who were delighted with them was likewise so great that Books of Learning weight and importance found little countenance and few Men at leisure to peruse them and he saw no remedy but by such a miracle What would that great and discerning Person think if he had lived in these days when the licence of writing and publishing light and scandalous Books of all Arguments without any rules or limits of modesty is grown the Epidemical disease of the Nation and a reproach to the Government in the violation of the Laws the contempt of the Magistrate and the general contagion that is spread abroad and threatens the very peace of the Kingdom at least disturbs the sober conversation of it The spirit of Martin Marprelate which hath for so many years been expired or extinguished is revived with greater insolence and improved and heightned as well against the State as the Church in a petulancy of language in a style so new and unbecoming Men of honest education that the gravest arguments in Divinity it self and Texts of the Sacred Scripture are handled in a manner and fashion and with such vain and Comical expressions as have not used to be admitted in the lightest arguments or in sober and chast mirth The important and vital parts of Government the dignity of the Laws established and even the Person of the King himself and the greatest Magistrates are arraigned censured and inveighed against in such a bitterness of words with terms so reproachful as have not been ever used in good company and as if the English tongue were too narrow to comprehend all the Ribaldry and filthiness of their thoughts and inventions they coin new words of contempt and indignation and make use of a Dialect never heard of but in the company of Ruffians and the lowest and most debauch'd of the People which for wit sake they apply to their vile purposes so that this extravagance if not timely suppressed doth really seem to threaten not only a general corruption of manners but of the purity and integrity of the Language and of the good humor and good nature and modest conversation of the Nation and upon this occasion I cannot but lament the want of that caution and prudence which was heretofore observed when this unruly Spirit first broke out in the time of Martin Marprelate who had a contribution of Jests and Scoffs and Comical inventions brought to him by all the party who desired to expose the Church and the Government of it to the contempt and scorn of the loose and rude People It was not thought worthy of any serious Man to enter into the lists with such adversaries or to take notice of their Pamphlets but Men of the same Classis of the same rankness of Wit and fancy and of honester principles were the Champions in that quarrel Thom. Nash was as well known an Author in those days as Martin who with Pamphlets of the same kind and size with the same pert Buffoonry and with more salt and cleanliness rendred that libellous and seditious crew so contemptible ridiculous and odious that in
answered all the Cavillations and invectives made before that the loudly repeated applause of his hearers hindered him a good space from proceeding Notwithstanding which the grave Doctors and Governours of the University though much satisfied with his abilities yet wisely considering that a petulant Histrionical stile even in objections did not fit so sacred a subject and that it was not lawful too naturally to personate a deriding Jew obliged the Preacher to a publick recantation-Sermon in the same Pulpit the Sunday following To which pretty tale I should make no reply since in the judgment of no dispassioned man it cannot be thought to be parallel to any thing the Doctor hath said or done Yet I shall endeavour to convince Mr. Cressy that his memory hath not been faithful to him in preserving the merit of that case and sentence and shall give him cause to believe that I was likewise present at that Sermon by putting him in mind that it was preached by one Mr. Lushington a man eminent for his parts upon those words in the Evangelist And his Disciples came and stole him away whilst we slept Which gave him occasion to help the Souldiers in their defence in which he gave them leave to use some light expressions against the witnesses for the Resurrection which were not decent upon that subject but that part was quickly ended when he put into the mouths of the Disciples to whom he likewise assigned a part words very worthy of them and fit to be uttered in that place and with which the gravest Auditors were abundantly satisfied though they were displeased with some light and scandalous expressions in some other parts of the Sermon Which he begun with qu' elle Novelle as if he came thither to ask and hear News but under favour of Mr. Cressy's memory nothing of this was the ground of the sentence or his Recantation but a Parliament being then sitting the Preacher had unwarily and very unnecessarily let fall some words which reflected upon their proceedings particularly that now every Pesant in Parliament by the priviledge of his Vote there cared not how he behaved himself towards the King or the Church or to that effect which made those who loved him best willing to censure him there that he might escape a harder judgment in another place Whereupon the Vice Chancellor who was Dr. Pierce afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells commanded a copy of the Sermon which being delivered and perused by him and a Delegacy of the Doctors Mr. Lushington was reprehended for the light and scandalous expressions he had used upon a subject too much above those excesses and was ordered to make a recantation Sermon for what he had said of the Parliament and had a Text likewise given him to that purpose the words concerning the Apostles in that of the Acts And they assembled together with one accord in one place Which Recantation he performed with great ingenuity and much applause If these particular recollections do not induce Mr. Cressy to concur in the truth of the relation I doubt we shall find few equal Arbiters to determine the difference between us for this Sermon if I am not very much deceived was preached in April 1624. or 25. of which I believe that there be not many surviving Auditors besides Mr. Cressy and my self In the next place let us examine how the Doctor came to provoke Mr. Cressy by laying this grievous charge of Fanaticism upon many members of the Catholick Church and to charge the Church it self to be guilty of giving too much countenance to it Mr. Cressy confesses that the first occasion was given him by charging the Church of England with Fanaticism which is sure as new a charge upon that Church as it can be upon the other which he is so far yet from retracting that he still justifies it by there being so many Fanaticks in the Church of England whereas he knows there is no Fanatick in England or in any other Country who doth not avow a particular malice and displeasure against the Church of England and if he doth not he is no Fanatick There can be nothing more contrary to Fanaticism than the order and discipline and steddiness of the Church of England And it is not ingenuously nor generously done of Mr. Cressy to charge that Church with inclining to and favouring an enemy that he knows hath rebelliously invaded her and would destroy her He would not think it just nor indeed would it be honest to charge the Church of Rome of inclining to or favouring of Iudaism because many Iews live there And yet the publick liberty and protection they have in their allowed Synagogues where they must both renounce and contemn and blaspheme the Person of our Saviour is a greater argument of inclination and of favour than can be charged upon the Church of England towards any Fanaticks all whom it doth heartily desire to convert or to remove out of its limits This unseasonable and untrue reproach made it necessary for the Doctor to answer and refell that calumny and as reasonable to instruct Mr. Cressy that his own Church is much more liable to that accusation than the other And why this provocation should be so innocent an assault for the one and the defence by the other should prove so heinous an offence will require an impartial Judge to determine who will likewise discover which of them doth most discover his excess of spleen and choler or gives most scope to all unchristian and even inhumane passions And he cannot but observe the Doctor 's commendable modesty that he would not give himself leave to retort the monstrous aspersion upon his own Mother without very exactly setting down the particular instances of the ground of that his Retorsion without any other sharp language than is unavoidable in the mention of the matters of fact a method Mr. Cressy doth warily decline in his bitterness towards his native Church nor do I blame him for being so much displeased with the length of the Doctors discourse of that subject nor for his so slightly answering those particulars of which he takes notice and undervaluing the rest rather than go about to answer them of which it will not be possible to avoid speaking more particularly anon and in the mean time I believe more of his Catholick than of his Protestant Friends do heartily wish that the task had been imposed upon him to answer the points in controversie between the Catholick Church and the Protestants and that the Doctor 's pleasant fourth Chapter had been left untouched to those who will needs be reading his Books than that Mr. Cressy's extraordinary zeal on the behalf of so prodigious a number of Saints and Miracles which are very rarely particularly urged by the learned Catholick writers in defence of their doctrine should invite men farther to examine those records which the Church it self hath given so many orders to reform Mr. Cressy finds himself most concerned to
then that the miracles themselves those arcana imperii were always exposed to the view and examination of those natural senses which God hath given men to judge by of what they see and hear If Moses's rod had not produced the Serpent and that Serpent had not devoured the other Serpents which the Magicians rods had brought out in the sight of Pharaoh and the Egyptians so that they could not but confess that they saw the rod and the Serpent and the execution it did and then that it returned again to be a rod God would not have blamed Pharaoh for not believing any thing that Moses had said to him If the guest at the wedding feast had not drank the first Wine and seen the empty pots filled again with Water and found the Wine poured out of those pots of Water to be better than the Wine that they had formerly drank we should never have heard any mention of that miracle They who were raised by our Saviour or his Apostles from the dead were seen dead by a multitude of the people and some of them buried and were by the same people seen alive again and conversed with by them The Passion and Resurrection and Ascension of Christ's the chief evidences upon which Christianity is founded were the object of the sight of witnesses enough who proved what they had seen Nor was there any one miracle that the senses of any men could contradict to be any thing but what they seemed to be And can Mr. Cressy be angry with us for not giving credit to a mass of Miracles most of which are said to be wrought many hundred years before they were heard of and by men who we are not sure ever were in this world since we do not meet with their names in any other History at least whose vertues were never heard of but by their miracles nor their miracles proved but by their vertues Mr. Cressy well knows that the Church hath been so oppressed with the numbers of them and so scandalized at the matter of them that by its special order and direction they have been several times purged and many of them rejected for the folly and impossibility of them and the last purgation was made by the Jesuit Ribadeneira who is the Author of the Lives of the Saints to which Mr. Cressy refers and was Chaplain to King Philip when he came into England to marry Queen Mary and upon the experience he got there he undertook to write the History of England for twenty years which whosoever shall read may very reasonably take it to be a History of Spain since he shall neither find the names of persons or any transactions of which he ever heard before and therefore it may be reasonably thought that he had no extraordinary faculty in writing Histories and that he had no better evidence of the miracles he hath preserved the memory of than of those which were rejected out of the former Legendaries That we may know that many good Catholick writers for I shall only cite such evidence against Mr. Cressy mention such miracles to which he is so solicitous to have due reverence paid as negligently as the Doctor hath done I shall set down the Animadversion which is given us by the best Catholick Historian of the Civil together with the Ecclesiastical transactions that I think is extant in any language Monsieur Mezeray in his own words The German Monks of this time says he as it is the Genius of men to fain miracles always in great dangers tell us that S. Uldrick Bishop of Ausburgh who accompanied Otho the second Emperor of Italy and Germany in his expeditions of War passed the River Aisne dry-foot and made himself the example for Otho and all his Army to follow the waters which had overflowed their Banks becoming miraculously solid under their feet and the River serving for a Bridge to itself It is very true this miracle is not inserted in the Life of that Saint the Bull of whose Canonization is the first that is extant in the first Tome of the Bullarium and was granted in the year 993. and there can be no reason why that miracle was left out since another is there recorded as the principal inducement to his Canonization of the vindicative humour of S. Peter which is more wonderful for it says that as Uldrick was going to repose himself S. Afra a Martyr of Ausburgh appeared to him with a Vermilion countenance and took him out into the fields where he found S. Peter who was sitting amongst a multitude of Saints who demanded vengeance of God against those who had persecuted them and they cried out especially against Armenulphus Duke of Bavaria who was then living and had demolished many Churches and Monasteries and given their Revenues to secular persons and Armenulphus was condemned by the judgment of all those Saints Is it not pity that the other of passing the River if it had not been too much talked of was not made use of to have contributed to that Canonization Because I do not intend to grieve Mr. Cressy any more upon his miracles throughout his Book except I may be thought obliged to it I will only in this place add a very memorable instance of the same Mezeray which he relates very pleasantly That the Duke of Aquitaine who was then a Soveraign Prince at his return from his third or fourth Pilgrimage from Rome for they were most esteemed who made most of those Journeys found his Country enriched with a new Treasury The Abbot of S. Iohn de Angeny having found the Scull of a man in the wall the report was spread abroad that it was the head of S. Iohn Baptist. The people of France Lorrain and Germany who in those days which were after the year One Thousand run with great zeal after all sorts of Reliques came thither from all parts King Robert the Queen the Duke of Normandy and an infinite number of Lords brought thither their Offerings That of the King was a shell of Gold which weighed thirty pounds which was a very admirable present in a time when Gold and Silver were fifty times more rare than it is in these days And truly when Monasteries came to their wealth by such devices as these it is not to be wondered at that succeeding times thought they might rob them of some part of it without being guilty of the sin of Sacriledge In a word since so many learned Catholick Authors either take no notice of the miracles imputed to the Saints by him who hath written their Lives or mention them very Comically since Cardinal Cajetan calls them old Wives tales and Cardinal Baronius who in the course of his History is obliged to relate many of them yet in such manner as makes it manifest he gave no credit to them And since Mr. Cressy himself confesses that no Catholick is bound to believe them I can see no reason why it should be so hainous an
that contribution should not take well Besides that as in the time of S. Bennet which may be reckoned to be about the year Five Hundred and Fifty Learning did in no degree flourish so it grew less and less for Seven Hundred years after his time or near so much even to the Age in which Erasmus lived who knew the talent of the Monks and Friers very well And truly I think Mr. Cressy's Superiors may believe that he hath taken too much pains in collecting a bundle of reproaches of a false pretender to Visions Miracles and Inspirations and an ignorant fool to be cast upon their Founder not one of which is laid to his charge by the Doctor and must therefore be imputed to another Author and he hath less reason to imagine that those reproaches must fall upon S. Gregory because he confirmed the Rules and writ the life of S. Bennet both which he might do without being guilty of either of those imputations He never knew S. Bennet and confirmed his Rules long after his death which makes some Catholick Writers believe that the Rules were in truth not made by S. Benedict and a known Catholick Antiquary Mr. Broughton takes upon him to pronounce that S. Gregory himself was never a Monk of that Order which is a greater affront to it than any that the Doctor hath put upon it I do not know but that the Church of England hath a just reverence and esteem of the learning and of the piety of S. Gregory and a greater than Mr. Cressy hath as will appear anon however as the most learned men who write many Books seldom write all with the same perfection and accurateness of judgment and their Readers do not look upon all with the same estimation so many do not believe and I doubt not many Catholicks that S. Gregorie's Dialogue of the Life of S. Bennet is for the learning or judgment of it equal to the rest of his Works But Mr. Cressy is very hard to be pleased who hath been so very angry with the Doctor for the rudeness and incivility of his language and is now no less displeased with him for his excess of civility in calling S. Benedict Saint which he says pag. 31. If he was guilty of what the Doctor charges him with savours something of blasphemy Truly though many men cannot comprehend how S. Benedict attained that degree yet no body is sure that he hath it not and his title doth not seem the worse because he doth not appear qualified by any particular Canonization at Rome there being I think no Record of any such but by a general consent amongst many devout persons which is the title of all those Primitive Saints to whose memories our Church pays as much reverence as the other doth before those very costly commencements were established at Rome which have lately conferred all those degrees and the preliminaries to it But I think it is now the civility of most of the Provinces of Europe to treat all men with the same stile that they assume to themselves or their Friends attribute to them and so we use to call those Saints who are commonly called so though we are not sure they are in Heaven and he would believe that he were very unkindly dealt with if he should be charged with want of integrity for calling the Reverend Prelates of our Church Bishops when if he did believe them really to be so he would not when he left the Church have been re-ordained and if he does not believe them to be such his insincerity is more to be reproved than our blasphemy in calling those Saints of whose station we are not so well assured But Mr. Cressy hath a greater insight into History and a more discerning spirit than any man of whom I have ever heard if he hath discovered That the greatest Iudgment and Plague that God ever no doubt in his just anger brought upon the Christian world or any Christian part of it in that general deluge of the Goths Vandals Huns Saxons Danes and other Pagan Nations proved a most unvaluable blessing as he says pag. 32. because God of those stones raised up children unto Abraham that is after these inhumane miscreants had for many hundred years massacred many millions of Christians demolished so many Churches and Religious houses and introduced a brutish savageness into the very nature of the Inhabitants within the Provinces of which they were possessed some of their posterity became Christians and yet for almost an Age after their conversion their manners remained still almost as much Pagan as they were before And for their building of Churches and Schools of piety hear what Monsieur Mezeray who is much more conversant with the transactions of those times than Mr. Cressy is says I know no time in which there were more Churches and Abbies built than in this speaking of the Tenth Century which was near the time when the most general conversion of these Barbarians happened The most wicked persons affected says he very much the title of Founders whist they ruined Churches on one side they built others on the contrary and made sacrilegious Offerings to God of those things which they had ravished from the poor and therefore those structures are not always the best Records of the piety of the Age in which they are erected and very few of the Monasteries into which Kings and Queens and Princes used to retire for attending their Heavenly meditation were erected after the incursion of those barbarous Pagans and before which that numerous Army of Martyrs was likewise expired since that time must be reckoned under the Ten Persecutions So that the unvaluable blessing that Christian Religion received from that impious inundation is not yet discovered or understood and less that the persons who by Gods blessed directions instilled into the hearts of men such an heroical Faith and Divine love were principally the Disciples of S. Benedict I must tell him again that Christianity was well cultivated before S. Bennet's Rules were published or confirmed which was not till after the year Six Hundred and from that time it received greater improvement from the piety and learning of many devout Prelates and from the learning and good lives of the Clergy and of other Religious men than it hath ever done by the disciples of S. Bennet except all the Monasteries that have been ever founded and all the professed Monks shall be looked upon as founded by him upon which computation I doubt many of Mr. Cressy's mistakes are to be imputed nor is he probably well informed of the numbers which have been converted to Christianity by the Protestant Churches though he takes upon him to know that there is not one Village which he would hardly undertake since he cannot but know that the Protestants have many large Plantations in Provinces inhabited by Pagans whereof many have been converted if he did not think that a conversion from Paganism is to little purpose
liberatur And he would likewise have found in the Canonization of Ignotius Loyala his thirty third miracle is that of Isabella Monialis ord S. Clarae who being threescore and seven years old being in a very high place about business by mischance had a terrible fall to the ground with which she broke her thigh and for above forty days adhibitis per Medicum Chirurgum eventu planè irrito medicamentis and all hope of life being in the judgment of all hopeless and desperate petita tamen pia cum religione impetrata reliquia B. Ignatii super coxendicem applicata statim sana est reddita coxendicem tibiam prius tumentem atque immobilem expedite sine dolore movere coepit die proxima surrexit ac libere perfecte ambulavit Many more of the like instances he will find in the fourth Tome of the great Bullarium and without the evidence of these three women these miracles had been lost which could not but contribute very much to their Canonization Nor was the Testimony of women ever rejected in those cases it is probable for that very reason for which Mr. Cressy seems to think their evidence ought not to be received because imagination is stronger in them than judgment and that whatsoever is esteemed by them to be pious is easily by them concluded to be true and such a Confessor as Mr. Cressy will easily perswade them to believe that many things are pious which he knows not to be true And in truth he hath not answered the weight of the Doctors instance of the visions of S. Bridget and S. Katherine of Syena with all the help that S. Anthony and Cardinal Baronius can give him the last of which apparently believed neither of them and his own addition is much less satisfactory to any discerning person that no Oecumenical Council hath made a Canon with an Anathema against all those who will not acknowledge all the Revelations of S. Bridget to have been divine and the belief of them necessary to salvation and that all that was done by the Council was upon occasion of invectives made against those Revelations by many Catholicks to require Joannes à Turrecremata to peruse and give his judgment of them which being favourable the Council approved them says the Doctor that is says Mr. Cressy freely permitted them to be read as containing nothing contrary to faith and good manners The Councils approbation was much more than that but if it were no more it doth not become the Catholick Church or any National Church to give that countenance to any new opinion that may encourage such a liberty as he says is taken by many writers to decry both the one and the other and introduces animosity and uncharitableness between Christians which hath been notorious enough in this particular And since he confesses that many illusions and fancies have been brought into the Church by pretence of such Revelations by the several Sects and Persons named by the Doctor as the Sects of Mendicants the Authors of the Evangelium aeternum and the rest all or most of which did find countenance and exceedingly disturb the peace of the Church and who Mr. Cressy confesses were Monsters raised up by the Devil in a cursed imitation of the graces and gifts communicated by God to his devout and faithful servants There cannot be too much vigilance in shutting all doors at which such illusions may enter and no body is to be blamed who is most jealous of their integrity We come in the next place to his fifth Chapter of resisting authority falsly imputed he says to Catholick Religion in which he says the Doctor doth very ingeniously absolve the Catholick Church her self and lays the fault only on the principles and practices of the Iesuitical party Indeed the Doctor cannot but absolve the Catholick Church from that reproach except he thought all Christian Churches liable to it but he is far from absolving all Catholicks of the Roman Church from rebellion excepting only the Iesuits though he instances most in them because the books which most defend it have been written by those of that Society but nothing can be stranger than that Mr. Cressy should so magnifie the general obedience of all Roman Catholicks that none of them were ever in rebellion against the King or his Father when he knows very well and hath some marks of it that the whole Irish Nation very few persons of honour excepted joyned in rebellion against the King and but for that rebellion neither Presbyterian Independant or Anabaptist had been able to have done any harm in England For the Scots rebellion was totally suppressed and their Army disbanded before the Irish rebellion begun It was that which produced all the mischief that succeeded in England and gave those Sects in Religion opportunity to bring in their confusion to the destruction of the Church and State with such barbarous circumstances as are too horrible to repeat though they can never be forgotten Was not that Rebellion begun and carried on intirely by the Kings Roman Catholick subjects Was there one man but Catholicks who concurred in it and did they pretend any other cause for it but Religion at least when they had the satisfaction they desired in whatsoever else they pretended did they not continue it still under pretence of Religion Was not the secular and regular Clergy equally engaged to support it And did not the Pope himself contribute to it if not contrive it And was not himself in the person of his Nuntio Rinnuccini General of the Rebels both by Sea and Land And can there be a greater manifestation that the Catholick Roman Religion it self favoured rebellion than when their head of their Church and all Ecclesiastical Orders joyned and concurred in it And it it cannot but be observed that though the Irish for ought appears only carried on or were active in that Rebellion there was not any English Catholick that made any publick profession against it nor did one English Priest Secular or Regular manifest his detestation or dislike of it by any publick writing And how much they favoured it in private discourse there wants not abundant evidence All which should be forgotten as it is forgiven before there be such loud Encomiums published of the never-failing obedience of the Romish Catholicks and the Records of later rebellions in France as well as those of the League should be razed out It is to be wished rather than hoped that the profession of Christian Religion in any Church had that impulsion in it as it ought to have that it preserved the professors of it from entring into rebellion and the practice of any other iniquity Yet it may be truly said that there were very few who did so much as pretend to have a reverence for the Church of England that were ever active in the late rebellion How far the fear and consternation men were in forced them to submit to
that torrent which over-bore them ought not to be imputed since it over whelmed multitudes of all professions who heartily abhorred those that they were compelled to obey It is a great instance of Mr. Cressy's good temper if it be of his sincerity that he is so solicitous to purge the Iesuits from the imputations which are more particularly cast on them I believe they did not expect it from him who is not thought to agree with them in all which they account fundamental Yet truly the excuse he makes for them is such as if he invited men to keep up their prejudice against them That for asmuch as concerns the unsafe Antimonarchical doctrine contained in those books cited by the Doctor it is almost a whole Age since that they have been by their General forbidden under pain of Excommunication and other most grievous censures to justifie them either in writing preaching or disputing c. Mr. Cressy speaks much of retractation and says well That they who by writing or otherwise have published scandalous doctrine which hath corrupted other men do not do their duty in being silent and giving over to do that which will be no longer safe for them to do but that recantation and retractation is necessary that they may be known to be no longer of the samc mind Is there any man of the society that hath written against that Anti-monarchical doctrine who hath endeavoured to confute Cardinal Bellarmine or Mariana or Emanuel Sa or any of the rest Is not Bellarmine's book of the power of the Pope over Kings are not all the other books to be bought at every Stationers shop Who knows any thing of the Generals warrants but themselves It was known to and permitted by the Pope that is the Pope was willing when their books were out that they should be quiet and write no more which would excuse them for not answering those books which Catholicks as well as Protestants should write against them and that they might not enter into dispute with the Colledge of Sorbon which detested their Principles He says It is well known that in this point Princes and States are generally become more clear-sighted and more wise than formerly they have been and by consequence the Court of Rome also It is indeed well known that the Court of Rome adheres still to its own principles though they do not think fit to put Princes in mind what they are well knowing that all their Bulls and Interdictions and Absolutions how long soever since published are still in the same force and vigour as they were the first hour of their publication and it is very few years since that upon an occasion of some consultation between the secular and regular Clergy of Ireland to present an address to the King in testimony of their obedience in which they disclaimed any temporal authority to be in the Pope the Court of Rome was so alarm'd by it that Cardinal Barberine writ to them to desist from any such Declaration and put them in mind that the Kingdom of England was still under Excommunication and since that time the Pope hath made many Bishops in Ireland which his predecessors had forborn to do from the death of Queen Elizabeth to the year One thousand Six hundred and Forty and this is the clear-sightedness and wisdom that the Court of Rome is lately improved in But he doth assure you that if an oath were framed free from ambiguity and without odious phrases inserted in it wholly unnecessary to the substance of it the Iesuits would not make any scruple of joyning with their Catholick brethren in it Alas what authority hath he to assure us this He knows very well that the Society will not trust him to frame such Oath and that they and he differ very much in their judgments in that point and of all men Mr. Cressy is the most unfit for such an undertaking He cannot forget that shortly after he deserted the Church of England and published his Exomologesis which in comparison of all that he hath writ since may be looked upon as a modest Book he did in that Book publish a protestation or subscription which all the Roman Catholicks in England would be willing to take and in truth it did not differ much in substance or sence from the Oaths which are enjoyned by the Law and no doubt he would have taken it himself and did then believe that all other Catholicks might have taken it likewise But within a short time all that impression of that Book was bought up or otherwise procured and a second Edition of it published wherein there were very many substantial alterations and additions from what was in the former the protestation of duty and obedience which was in the first was totally left out in the second impression it being not thought a fit obligation for the Catholicks to enter into The discourse he had made of Purgatory was likewise left out for he had mistaken the tenent of his new Church in that particular Many other alterations were made as must be confessed by any man who will take the pains to examine both Editions There were also many additions especially of reproaches against the Church of England and many bitter and virulent expressions against the Clergy of that Church And I know a person who meeting with Mr. Cressy expostulated with him upon all those particulars and asked him how it came to pass that those were left out when his Book had been first licensed by Dr. Holden and another Doctor of the Sorbon and why the other calumnies were added which so much reflected upon the Clergy contrary to what in his own Conscience he knew was true to all which he answered with passionate protestations that he never knew of one or the other till he saw the second impression that his Superiours were offended with the first in which there were some mistakes and that he had intirely left it to their discretions to do what they should think fit upon it whereupon they had caused it to be reprinted as it now stood without at all communicating with him which it seems being a custom amongst them gives me yet some hope that the very unusual passion and incivility that runs through this discourse may be added by the appointment and direction of some Superiour Since he is not so much altered in his face or habit from what he was when he was thirty years of Age as he is from that modesty and gentleness of nature and smoothness and civility of stile if all the expressions in his Book are his own from the time I knew him and had conversation with him But he finds it much easier to revile than answer any Books the Doctor hath writ in any time Nor can his opinion be doubted of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy both which he hath often taken and as often declared his detestation of the Covenant which Mr. Cressy will never be able to prove he ever
instructors and he may be very confident if he finds neither of those that God hath not called him Sure Mr. Cressy cannot forget the names of very many persons it may be both men and women with whom and in whose conversation he had the honour and the happiness to spend many years of the most innocent part of his life from whose grave and learned information and excellent example he might have led a life more useful to God his Country and himself and in which he would have had less to answer to all three than that which he hath since by worse counsel and example given himself unhappily to And for Books I shall not supply his Catalogue with the names of many more of the same kind which he might as well have mentioned but I shall put him in mind of the excellent pious and devout Sermons which are constantly preached in that Church much better I believe than he hath heard in any other language and there was no restraint upon him but if he had liked other Books of devotion better he might have read the life of Mother Teresa that abounds in those visions he admires and that mystical Theology he delights in and even his own Sancta Sophia if any other man would have taken the pains to have put it together in that Colledge he was bred in with the same liberty he hath done either ever since sure good Books are not wanting in that climate For Miracles whereof he says we do not pretend to one not so much as the curing a Tertian Ague to testifie that our Reformation is pleasing to God I shall say no more than I have done We have not many to boast of and very good Catholicks think they boast of too many and would be glad to be without the mention of most of them and I do believe that very many pious men of his Church do believe that the restoration of the Church of England from that dust and ruines to which the barbarity impiety and sacriledge of the late rebellion had exposed it and in which the Roman Catholicks his Majesties own subjects more delighted and triumphed to see it almost buried than any other Catholicks did is a greater miracle of Gods mercy and power and if we make our selves worthy of it even a testimony of his being pleased with it then all those of which they brag so much are an evidence that he is pleased with what they do I have never had the luck to see his Church History which he is offended with the Doctor for stiling a great Legend which he knows is the stile given to those Collections in all Languages and he challenges the Doctor more scornfully to give to the world a pretty little legend of his reformed Saints The Doctor could very well have given him as large a list of as extraordinary persons of most profound learning and most exemplary lives of the Church of England since the Reformation as any other Christian Kingdom can supply him who it may lawfully be presumed since their deaths have enjoyed those sacred mansions of bliss which God hath prepared for those who please him but we are not ashamed that our Church is too modest to confer the sacred title of Saints which God hath reserved to his own only disposal for them to whom he had before assigned such a proportion of grace as is answerable to that high station and doth not receive the advice nor communicate the power in that particular of or to any person or jurisdiction upon Earth yet it shall be glad and doth pray that all such whom the Church of Rome hath presumed to call to that honour without any ambition or privity of their own may really enjoy the same And we do not in the least degree apprehend the displeasure of God Almighty upon our Church because it doth with all humility and after all possible endeavour to be capable of his favours leave the disposal of all the places and offices and imployments in his own house to his own gracious will and pleasure And though we do not pretend to know so much of their modern Saints as to think that they were of the same Religion with us Yet we do presume to say that the primitive Saints and Martyrs were all as much our Saints and Martyrs as theirs that is that we are as much of the same faith with those as they are We are as firm in the Apostles faith who were the first Saints and Martyrs of Christ as they can pretend to be We adhere as much to all the doctrine they taught and endeavour to practise all the duties which are enjoyned by them as sincerely and diligently as they do During the twelve persecutions which were the times when those prodigious Armies of Martyrs for their numbers were levied it may lawfully be presumed that very much the major part of them for those persecutions raged much more furiously in the East than in any part of Europe never heard of the Church of Rome none of them professed to have any opinion in which we differ from them The first and only subject of their Martyrdom was that they loudly avowed the birth passion and resurrection of our Saviour and their peremptory refusal to offer sacrifice to or to acknowledge the power of the Pagan Gods and the last would have excused them and preserved their lives whatsoever they had thought of the other so that there was no other point of controversie in issue but whether they were Christians and their marvellous and without doubt divine courage in affirming that and asserting that doctrine so soon after they were informed of it and before they were acquainted with any other operation of it than in their courage to lay down their lives for it was the whole ground and merit of their Martyrdom For according to the best evidence we have of those dark times and of that darker affair we may reasonably believe that many thousands of those blessed Martyrs lost their lives within a day an hour or less time according as the wild and brutish rage of the Iudge could find ways for their torture and execution after the moment of their conversion in which the spirit and zeal of the new Christians to die for their faith was little more stupendious than the implacable rage of their persecutors was in the vindication of the honour of their Pagan Gods for which the husband condemned his wife the father his son the brother his brother and all relations those who were nearest and dearest to them to the most exquisite torments that could be devised Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum How the Church of Rome comes to ingross all these Saints and Martyrs to themselves as their peculiar Patrons and Advocates an evidence cannot easily be comprehended except they conclude the because they have a power to make or to declare Saints they have likewise a power to appoint them what they shall do after they are Saints which
is a species of Logick they make often use of to many purposes For our parts we have as much reason to be confident of all the good offices they can do us in Heaven as the others are but because we do not know what their province there is or whether there be such a line of communication that they know what we would have them to do for us we acquiesce in a profound veneration of their lives and of their deaths and a full confidence that they do enjoy the reward of both without importuning them by any particular address of our own in our behalf having an assurance in our selves that they will do us all the good they can though our ignorance knows not how to ask it from them and this is all that our Church informs or instructs us of our duty and behaviour to Saints And Mr. Cressy will not take it ill that I tell him if his Church History consists in the lives of any Welch Saints and Martyrs or of those who were before the year six hundred as there were many more before than there were after he cannot reckon those to belong to the Church of Rome since he well knows that before the arrival of Austin the Monk in England there had never been mention there of the Bishop of Rome but most of the Christians had been long before driven into Wales by the tyranny and power of the Pagan Saxons who spent their time more profitably by subduing the other parts of the Kingdom than they could have done by pursuing them into those mountains and narrow retreats where they could better have defended themselves So that the British Christians remained for some time in some quiet in those parts and lived under the direction of their Bishops and Prelates in the exercise of the Christian Religion according to the institutions which they had received from their first Planters and after Austin came into this Island with a worthy and no doubt a very pious intention and God blessed him so much that he converted a Pagan King and most of his subjects who were at that time only they who lived within the circuit of Kent which opened a door to him and those who succeeded him for a larger conversion for which his and their name ought always to be mentioned with reverence and gratitude as blessed instruments God used for the good of the Nation though they were not the first Planters of Christianity in the Island as Mr. Cressy well knows and that when Austin desired to confer with the British Christians and had two several meetings with their Bishops and Prelates they were so much offended with the proposition he made to them of their subjection to the Pope that they did not only positively reject that but would not consent to change the course of their observation of Easter in which they had always concurred with the Eastern Christians nor yield to any thing else that he proposed left they might be thought to have any respect for the Pope So that I say if his Saints are before the year six hundred he hath no claim to them but must either be content to be without their merits and miracles or that we may have an equal share with him upon our joynt stock of Christianity and I hope he hath not in his History inserted the lives or miracles of any which have been left out as exploded upon the reformation of more ancient Legends Methinks Mr. Cressy seems to imitate the example of angry women who think it lawful to give worse words than they receive which is the natural progress of choler he provokes first the Doctor by reproaching him with the number of Fanaticks amongst us to tell him that there is Fanaticism likewise in many of their Church and so mentions the Visions and Revelations and Miracles in many persons of great esteem amongst them and by those pertinent instances puts him into great wrath and he again to be revenged on him will no longer be contented that we have too many Fanaticks in the Church but will prove that the very nature and essence of our Church it self and our Religion is pure putid-Fanaticism A man would have expected upon this undertaking that he should presently have singled one of the Articles of the Church that is so founded but that would have held him too much to the point and restrained him from those wandrings with which he is so delighted that would withhold him from falling upon the person of the Doctor or upon the Presbyterians and Independents with whom no body can blame him for being angry for they drove him from the Church by driving him from his preferments in the Church And from this charge upon the Church without any one instance he falls again upon the Presbyterians and Hugonots of France and reckons up some of the opinions they hold and maintain and then says pag. 94. That he must take the boldness to tell him a great boldness indeed that the Doctor himself does hold the same and if he denies it it is because he is ignorant of what passes in his own mind Now the Doctor must be lost for if his own denial cannot absolve him from being concluded to be of an opinion and Mr. Cressy knows better of that which the Doctors ignorance keeps him from discerning of what passes in his own mind he is to blame if he doth not lade him with all opinions which he wishes he would own But to prove this intricate averment like a great Magistrate he takes upon him to administer many questions to him and kindly to make answer to them on his behalf and so makes him as arrant a Fanatick as he can wish Yet after all this he is compelled to confess with perhaps That it would be rashness in him to affirm that the Church of England doth ground her faith upon such a Fanatick principle as the Doctor lays and if the Doctor wrongs the Church of England he good man is unwilling to wrong her with him And in this fit of good nature he makes a kind of an Apology for the Bishops who may be deceived themselves in the Doctors principles by the negligence that is used in licensing Books to the Press or rather the Doctors virulence against poor Catholicks was so highly approved by the grave Censor Librorum that rather than it should be hindred from doing mischief to them he was content that the Principles also should pass which utterly destroy the foundations of his own Church and so concludes with some instances of the perfunctory care that is taken in the licensing Books The Church of England cannot but be now secure when a Benedictine Mark is so vigilant as to stand Sentinel that she may receive no prejudice from her own Children and he doth very well to put the Bishops in mind that they may be more solicitous what Books are suffered to be printed who have no less obligation upon them to look that no
orders or the rest come to be called Heresies And who had authority to declare them such If nothing that hath reference to any of these particulars was in practice in their time we have the less reason to acquiesce in the new invention of them and it will be the more worth our enquiry whether they who have put that brand upon them were not rather parties than judges and gainers by their determinations If those particulars can neither be confirmed by Scripture nor defended by reason we need not be troubled for their being called Heresies though there were no Scripture against them nor reason to confute them both which we conceive we have clearly on our sides let us examine them in order Concerning the external administration of Sacraments we take upon us to say that they rob the people of half that which our Saviour instituted and that besides the novelty of it for we say it was near if not full one thousand years before that violence was offered to Christianity they may as well defraud them of both as of either of the species and the answer they give to it can give no reasonable satisfaction to any for to that allegation that the body cannot be without the blood and consequently the bread contains both if our Saviour had thought so he would have instituted it in that manner the whole obligations of mystery depending only upon the institution then our Saviour well knew that in the sence they put upon it it would have been an institution directly contrary to the Law which our Saviour never violated for the eating the flesh with the blood was utterly unlawful and what was unlawful in the institution cannot become lawful since by any authority under Heaven and therefore they who cannot be suffered to receive it in both species are without the benefit of the Sacrament that was instituted by our Saviour and that is all I shall say of the external administration For the examination of the mysteries by natural reason and the verdict of their outward senses I shall only ask whether those outward senses are proper judges that that is bread and that is wine by their sight and their taste and their feeling it before the consecration which no body will deny How different the operation thereof may be after that mysterious action and the spiritual effect of it no man pretends to make a judgement by his outward senses but if he be admitted to taste both after the consecration why his senses should not be as competent discerners whether they remain still bread and wine as they were or are become flesh and blood which they were not before I cannot comprehend no more than why we should be bound to understand those few words literally which are so evidently contradicted by our senses which no other miracle ever was rather than many other metaphorical and allegorical expressions in which the Scriptures abound and which cannot be more controuled by the outward senses than this is For the jurisdiction of Superiors Civil and Ecclesiastical what Judge can there be but the Laws of that Kingdom where such jurisdiction is to be exercised and of that Church which ought to settle the publick manner of mens devotions For the institution of Religious Orders and the obligations of Vows the Bishop of Rome himself doth not pretend any power or authority to erect any Monastery Colledge or Religious House in any Kingdom or Province without the consent and approbation of King or Prince to whom the Soveraignty belongs and if they do admit such institutions to be made and such obligations by vows to be entred into as are prejudicial to the peace and happiness of their Dominions the institution is theirs and not the Popes and when their reason or their experience discovers any mischief or detriment to their other subjects to redound from those Institutions either in their original or by new orders and concessions or that the subjects under those Institutions are become less their subjects than their other fellow-subjects are and that they depend more on some foreign Prince than on them in their own Territories they may and ought to alter the form and institution or to suppress if they cannot reform the whole and if they cannot do this they cannot provide for the peace and happiness of the people committed to their charge And the like for fasting that is the observation of publick Fasts Celibacy paying of Tithes they can be no otherwise regulated than by the Civil and Ecclesiastical Laws of every Nation and Province and are so regulated and not in the same manner in all the Catholick Kingdoms and Provinces in Europe And therefore since that is the greatest objection Mr. Cressy makes against the reading of the Scripture that the contradictions which arise upon those particulars may be improved and inflamed into Heresies by the passion and humor of the Court of Rome we will rather acquiesce in the advice of the Primitive Fathers of the Church and believe that what the four first general Councils did not prohibit us to do we may lawfully continue the practice of and since the Church of England in conformity with the purest antiquity permits and enjoyns us to read the Scriptures we will obey its directions without caring what that of Rome forbids Mr. Cressy comes now in excuse of his just indignation against the Doctor 's Principles to discover a secret that his own unhappiness if not guilt gave the first occasion that those principles should be known and received into the Church of England and this discovery must be the more ingenuous because he is sure no man now alive knows any thing of it Then he tells you a story of his accidental finding and buying at a Book-sellers Shop Monsieur Dallies Book Of the true use of the Fathers which he shewed that night to his Noble Dear Lord Lucius Lord Falkland who reading a little of the Contents desired him to give it to him which he willingly did and that my Lord shortly after sent him a most civil Letter full of thanks both in his own and Mr. Chillingworth's name for that small present telling him that that little Book had saved him a most tedious labour of reading almost twenty great Volumes and then tells another story of Mr. Chillingworth and I confess when I read this notable discovery and knew that I was no great stranger to the transactions which had been in that time in that company I could not suddenly comprehend what his meaning or purpose was in making that relation but I quickly found that all his meaning was under the stile of his Noble Dear Lord as in truth he deserved from him the highest expressions of gratitude he could utter to traduce the memory of that incomparable Lord and to cause him to be thought a Socinian and I cannot enough lament that he hath found credit enough with two or three Persons of the Church of England who I am sure never knew I
the arms of such a Church that seems to believe or without believing to countenance such an imposture or any other thing contrary to common sense and repugnant to all motions of Piety Mr. Cressy will not part with the Doctor without kindly putting him in mind of his Souls health and that being a genuine English Protestant he will find an Excommunication denounced ipso facto against all such as shall in the manner there expressed openly oppose any thing contained in the Nine and thirty Articles in the Book of Common-Prayer and of Ordinations of Bishops and Priests c. which Excommunication he says is there declared to remain in force till the Offender repent of his wicked errour which he ought to revoke Having told him this he wishes him to reflect upon his Book called Irenicum long since published by him and comparing it with the Constitutions of the Church ratified with an Excommunication and thereupon to ask his conscience whether he hath not incurred that Excommunication since his guilt having been publick and notorious no repentance no retractation appears c. He foresees that himself who hath so often subscribed to those constitutions and so often taken those Oaths which accompanie them will be thought liable to that Excommunication having so apparently renounced all the obligations and shewed no other repentance than in a constant reviling and malice towards the Church in which he received his Baptism and therefore to clear himself from reproach he declares that the Doctor cannot doubt of the validity or legality of that Excommunication he for his part may so the Doctor is to look only to himself But if Mr. Cressy had not been in great hast as it cannot be denied that he hath used great expedition in his conclusion he might have thought himself obliged for the more full conviction of the Doctor to have alledged those particulars in his Irenicum which have involved him in that Excommunication and then that that Book was published by him after he had subscribed to the Thirty nine Articles c. neither of which he hath done nor I believe will ever be able to do I confess I have not the Irenicum now in my reach and therefore must only resort to Mr. Cressy himself for a vindication and methinks he contributes very fairly to it in a testimony he gives him pa. 100 without any purpose of good will towards him where he says It cannot be denied but that the Doctor did not during the late calamities joyn in the clamour for destroying the Church he was no root and branch enemy but on the contrary generously undertook their defence and with great boldness told his then Masters in his Irenicum that though Episcopal Government and Ordinations as likewise Deans and Chapters which anciently were the Bishops Councils were not necessary nor perhaps convenient as matters then stood yet neither was their utter destruction they might if the state pleased be retained without sin in all which he believes he hath laid an indelible reproach upon the Doctor but I must tell him that he hath therein given a larger testimony of the Doctor 's courage and affection to the Church than all his revilings will be able to deface For a young Scholar who had then no obligation to the Church by Oaths or Subscriptions and knew little of the constitution of the Church of England to tell his Masters as he justly calls them who had newly Murthered their King and perswaded the People to believe that Bishops were therefore suppressed because they were Anti-christian that they might still be retained without sin was such a flat contradiction to the Doctrine they would have the People be taught that he shewed more courage in saying so than all the English Catholick Clergy ever expressed who owed as much Allegiance to the King or would be thought to owe as much as any of his other Subjects yet never wrote one line or published one Opinion against whatsoever the Rebels said or did He might well say that Episcopal Government and Ordination were not necessary as matters then stood in a Government whose foundation was laid in the most precious blood of the King and the most horrid Sacriledge and Murthers that were ever perpetrated by Christians and when no honest man would or could be made a Bishop But it is too much countenance to Mr. Cressy's unwarranted calumnies to take pains to absolve the Doctor from his aspersions who stands an object of reverence and esteem with all men who have either for the Church However such is Mr. Cressy's modesty that for the excellent performance of his task he desires no other Iudges but the Prelates of the Doctor 's own Church which could have been no excuse for me to interpose my poor opinion in the matter but when he so frankly calls upon any indifferent Reader to judge between them two whether with better success he hath defended the cause of the Church of England against the Church of Rome or he Mr. Cressy the cause of the Doctor 's own Church against himself I may hope that I may be looked upon as one of those indifferent Readers who is called upon or authorized by him to speak my opinion in the matter and upon that supposition I do assure him upon the reputation of an old Friend that he hath very much hurt his own Church in his very passionate and uncomely way of defending her and in seeming to look upon some very Excentrick Lives in the estimation of most learned Catholicks as essential parts of their Religion and to make such Miracles and Dreams and Apparitions the very foundations of the Romish faith which the most credulous in the Church do but believe are possible to be true and the wisest and most learned think never to have been and lastly in undertaking to answer a Book which upon his own or his Associates clamour was necessarily to be full of citations of Catholick Authors and Testimonies contrary to what he averred and without applying any answer to them to declare that he will not examine them nor cares whether they are true or false So that his whole Book consists in nothing else besides the petulant insolent language but finding fault with the method of the Doctor 's arguing and his making use of new and other Principles than have heretofore been insisted upon in arguments of this kind and leaves all the material parts of the Book unanswered which possibly may make his Superiours believe that he hath not performed the task they imposed upon him very laudably For the Doctor having solidly discharged all that can be expected from him he needs no such private and obscure testimony as mine which can do him no good but he hath the acknowledgement of the King himself and the Church whose worthy Champion he deserves to be esteemed and it is like he performs the work the better because Mr. Cressy and so many of his Associates are so much offended and do so
man comprehends it signifying no more than performing that in thought which is otherwise done in speech and thoughts are as plain and easie to be understood as words can and whoever cannot express plainly and clearly to an other man whatever he thinks rather dreams than thinks but because the very noise of words do very often at least with some men disturb or interrupt or divert the thoughts they do pray very allowably and effectually and it may be more powerfully who apply themselves to God by fixing their silent thoughts upon God and upon what they desire of Him without using any words at all and this is mental Prayer which probably may keep the mind more and longer bent towards God than the pronunciation of words will enable or suffer it to be and yet I doubt it must have frequent intermission and relaxation and contemplation may hold its vigour longer upon other arguments than in the exercise of Prayer Men are not to be blamed and it may be less in our Country which hath and doth still suffer by men and women too of disturbed fancies who pretend to Revelations and Illuminations and such Enthusiasms not only to introduce many extravagant opinions in Religion but to warrant and justifie unquiet and seditious actions in the State from some light within which they insist upon in large discourses of words hudled together the meaning whereof other men cannot comprehend and therefore when they meet with this spirit revived again in the writings of some modern Catholicks within the space of nine and twenty or thirty years which had layn quiet or much quieter for four or five hundred years and scarce a mention of them in the common Catholick Writers of those times it cannot be wondred at that men are not willing to give any countenance to those infusions which have so often been discovered to be mere delusions or that many who have read all Teresa's visions and ecstasies and accidentally meet with some well exercised Quakers are apt to think their stile very like because they comprehend the sence of both alike and as it is some argument against the difficulty of a Book that it is translated into any other Language than that in which it is writ so when it is translated into very many Languages and understood by none or by very few who are not suspected for ignorance in the Language it is a great discouragement to the Reader if it be no reproach upon the work and I believe and hope that it is a fate Sancta Sophia will not undergo by being translated into as many Languages as Mother Teresa hath been But it may be that the objection which Mr. Cressy unwarily says keeps women from being admitted for witnesses of miracles in the Canonization of Saints in which he finds he was grosly deceived may be a good qualification of them for the receiving and applying extraordinary Illuminations and Revelations Naturally he says pag. 68. imagination is stronger in them than judgment and whatsoever is esteemed by them to be pious is easily concluded by them to be true and I must confess I have found more Nuns and Religious Persons who seem perfectly to understand that dialect than any other Catholicks with whom I have conversed I confess I am so unwilling to think lightly or speak pleasantly of any expedient that may possibly in other men advance devotion that I am most unwillingly drawn again into the discourse of it since I now find by casting my eye upon a little Treatise written by a friend of Mr. Cressy's or by himself to illustrate that subject that I am totally incapable of understanding it for though Mr. Cressy confesses that many persons even in the Catholick Church have been seduced by the Devil and their own pride to pretend to lights received from God which were either the effects of a distempered fancy or suggestions of the Devil which his friend likewise acknowledges and seems prepared to give advice how the one shall be discovered and distinguished from the other in which I would have been very glad to be instructed but am utterly disappointed by the first conditions that he establishes towards the discovery which is That the persons who pretend to Visions and Illuminations must necessarily be Roman Catholicks because he lays it a ground indisputable that all pretences and appearances of that kind in any persons of a different Faith are infallibly Diabolical which is so full a contradiction to the right of another sort of Enthusiafts who to many men seem to make their claim with as much reason and think that every instance that is urged out of the Scripture by this new Author of all the infusions and visions and illuminations and revelations from the Creation to the end of the Revelation may be as well applied to their justification as for that of the Roman Catholicks I am resolved to be no farther engaged in the Argument but for ever take my leave of it I am confident the Doctor is so willing to gratifie Mr. Cressy that he will deny him nothing that is reasonable but it is not a just request when himself hath declared in his Book that he will not examine one quotation which the Doctor hath with notable industry and punctuality set down to prove all he hath averred and that it concerns not him whether they be true or false he now requests him in his Postscript that he will not hereafter abuse the world by fathering on the Church the Exotick opinions of particular School-men it was his part to have shewed what School-men and what opinions the Church hath rejected and by representing the Churches Doctrines lamely falsly and dishonestly which he says is his enormous faultiness committed in his last Book through every one of the points mentioned by him which he says may be visible to all heedful Readers truly the more shame for him that would not have that advantage against him when he was without any other but he says irrefragable proofs are making ready of this if the Searchers would be quiet and let the Printers work but it is an even lay the want of that discovery will be always laid upon the Searchers though they cannot prevent the coming out of any thing else they have a mind to publish And it may seem strange after his confession in his Book that all is required in and by the Church of England is comprehended in the Articles and Canons and Book of Common-Prayer well known and published he would have it thought in his Postscript that they know not where to find doctrines for no other doctrines we defend and he shall do well to declare by what authority the Catholicks of England conform themselves to the Council of Trent that hath never been received in that Kingdom as it hath not been in some Catholick Countries and therefore is not obligatory there nor must he think he answers this question by saying that all Catholick Countries have received all that is
of the Essence of Religion and reject only some Canons which are indifferent for if any thing remains indifferent after the determination of the Council and may therefore be rejected it is manifest that the jurisdiction is not in the Council though confirmed by the Pope but in that power that rejects it and judges of the indifferency For his invitation of the Doctor to a Christening that a Colledge in Cambridge may have another name given to it than it is now called by S. Bennet or Corpus Christi Colledge the wit of it is enough answered when taken notice of The last Paragraph of his Postscript is a pure piece of Oratory and may be in imitation of no worse an Orator than Caesar himself who when he had tried all fair and foul means threats and promises to draw Cicero to his party and found it was impossible to engage him to be active against Pompey he only considered how to make him Neutral to sit still without doing any thing in the quarrel and writ to him Neque tutius neque honestius reperies quidquam quà m ab omni contentione abesse So Mr. Cressy after he hath heaped more ill words upon the Doctor and applied more reproachful Epithets to his grave and learned person and stile than hath been gathered together in so small a volume within these nine and twenty years he concludes his Postscript with desiring him to consider that Almighty God commands us to love Peace and Truth and then gravely informs him how they ought always to go together and left his too civil address to him should more work upon him than would become an adversary he quickens him for the better application of his Text by telling him that since he hath demolished all Tribunals in Gods Church which might peaceably end controversies and had endeavoured as much as in him lay to banish peace eternally from among Christians it was expected from him that he should give some testimony to the world that he is at least a seeker and promoter of truth and so proceeds very Rhetorically to perswade him that he doth not himself believe any thing that he says to others because he is too reasonable a man and of too great abilities to think that such a Book as his last can convert any Catholick who cannot read without trembling at the blasphemy of it and without a horrible aversion from one who would make their Church and their Faith odious Indeed I believe they will suffer very few of their Proselytes to read that or any other of his Books which may open their eyes or inform them of the darkness they are in If Mr. Cressy's word may be taken as no doubt it will he will tell them of blasphemies that may make them tremble though he hath not in his whole answer named one but if a man will not that is cannot give credit to all the stories which are told of S. Bennet and S. Francis he is streight a blasphemer of Gods Saints as he who will not submit to the authority of the Bishop of Rome demolishes all Tribunals in Gods Church which might peaceably end controversies and endeavours to banish peace eternally from amongst Christians whereas it is only that Tribunal that hinders and obstructs the peace which but for that judicatory would be generally imbraced The counsel I would now give to Mr. Cressy will consist in two kinds the first with reference to himself purely the second with reference to the cause If he thinks fit any more to write against the Church of England which I do not disswade him from that he will state truly and clearly the difference between it and the Church of Rome which he hath never yet done I advise him to remember that he hath been a member and son of the Church of England cherished and educated in her during the most vigorous part of his age and that he ows to that education all the learning he hath I will charitably believe that he saw or thought he saw good reason to withdraw himself from her Communion and that he is satisfied in his conscience with his present state of separation let it be so why should that hinder him from living fairly and civilly towards her It is an ungenerous thing to fall from streight embraces to publick revilings Men of honour after they have contracted friendships with each other for a long time and afterwards find cause from some mutation in manners and upon discovery of infirmities with which they can no longer comply to live at a greater distance towards each other to repose less confidence than they used to do and by degrees to grow strangers they yet retain such a decent behaviour that standers by can scarce discover any alteration of affections in them they are never heard to speak ill to traduce or disgrace one another and believe that it is a debt and duty due to their former friendship never to undervalue each others parts or to bring the honour of either into question common prudence and good breeding prevents those excesses and methinks in Religion the same temper should have a greater influence and Mr. Cressy should for his own sake allow some beauty to have been in the Church that did so long detain him and not desire to render her so ugly and deformed as takes away any excuse from any body for staying so long in her company This I expected from his natural genius and from the conversation he frequented where bitterness of words was never allowable towards men whose opinions were very different and if any new illumination hath perswaded him that such urbanity is not consistent with the zeal that Religious discourses should be warmed with he should suspect it for delusion He hath an excellent example given him by a Catholick learned and Reverend Bishop the present Bishop and Prince of Condun who treats an enemy more inferiour to him and more liable to reproach than the Church of England can be imagined to be to Mr. Cressy with such condescension and humanity as if they stood upon the same level with him And no question those strokes make a deeper impression upon all ingenuous men than louder blows and are with more difficulty repelled Whereas Mr. Cressy like a rude and blustering wind disturbs all sorts of men who stand near him offends and provokes all Classes of men with his unnecessary choler What can the King think to see his Laws and Government so vilified by his scornful expressions to hear his Royal Ancestor whose obsequies were kept and observed at Nostre Dame in Paris with the highest solemnity by the first great King France ever had in spight of the Pope's Excommunication called a Tyrant by one of his own subjects What can all the Protestant Nobility and Prelates of England think to see the Ecclesiastical and Civil Laws of the Church and State despised and trampled upon by a man who could not live an hour in that Air but by the
to be burned as Hereticks very few days before having made new Laws for the discovery of them stricter than had been ever before And there is no reason to believe that he did not die as much a Catholick as he was when he writ against Luther nor did any Catholick Prince forbear to enter into the strictest alliance with him notwithstanding the Popes Bulls of Excommunication Deprivation and Interdiction nor was there one Mass the less said for it in England and after his death his obsequies were with all possible solemnity observed as hath been said before in Paris at Nostre Dame by Francis the First notwithstanding all those Bulls from Rome in all which nothing can be more observable than that the great Emperor Charles the Fifth who had threatned and compelled that weak humorous Pope into all those acts of folly and presumption against the King had no sooner made him commit that insolence but himself entred into a straiter friendship and confederacy with the Excommunicated King than had ever before been between them The other reason why they will very unwillingly expose their interest to this manner of debate is That it would divide their party which if they were solicitous only for truth would not prevail with them Other Catholick Kingdoms and Nations which differ from one another as well in the profession as the exercise of the Roman Religion as the French hold a Council to be above the Pope and the Spaniards the Pope to be above a Council and many other particulars when they come to know that the Crown and Church of England have established only amongst themselves such an exercise of Christian Religion that in all the substantial and essential points is the same which they profess without censuring them or what they find fit to do in their Countries and have only made such alterations as by the constitution of that Kingdom they may lawfully do and which they find more agreeable to the manners of the Nation and for the peace and happiness of the people They will not think themselves concerned in the policy of other Kingdoms nor the Popes authority so much of the Essence of Catholick Religion that they are bound to support all his pretences which are different in all those Countries which are most devoted to him and therefore cannot flow from any determination of our Saviour which would have made it the same in all places besides they too well know that in all the particulars proposed the Catholick Doctors are not of one mind who are now kept united to them by not knowing the constitution of the Church of England nor that the Roman Catholicks in that Kingdom refuse to give that security for their duty to the King and for their peaceable and good behaviour as all other their fellow subjects chearfully give and as are required of all by the Laws of the Kingdom and if they would perform that common duty it is very probable that there appearing no more danger to threaten the State from them than from other men those Laws which the iniquity of their forefathers brought upon them by their conspiracies and treasons may be suspended towards their innocent Children until such time as their peaceable demeanour and good carriage shall make it appear just to be abolished This expedient for the reasons aforesaid will be obstructed by the Religious and regular Clergie who have so absolute a dependence upon the Pope that they are in truth subjects to no other Prince and probably some few of the secular Clergie may concur with them though more of them if they can discern any security to themselves in disclaiming the Popes authority which few of them look upon as of the Essence of their Religion and have in their hearts as well as in their professions as sincere purposes towards the King and his People However I know not why all the Lay Catholicks of his Majesties Dominions should bind up their interest with those who have different obligations from them nor how they can excuse themselves from not throughly examining every one of the particular heads proposed by which they will receive this benefit and information that they will clearly discern what is necessary for them to retain and insist upon without which in their conscience as thus informed they cannot continue members of the Catholick Church and what is so much of the policy of the State that is warrantable or unwarrantable only as it is established by the Soveraign authority and by this means they will know how to give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and to render unto God that which belongs unto God the just distribution whereof is of an equal concernment to all Christians being equally enjoyned by our Saviour Christ. THE END A Brief Catalogue of Books newly Printed and Reprinted for R. Royston Bookseller to his Most Sacred Majestie THe Works of the Reverend and Learned Henry Hammond D. D. containing a Collection of Discourses chiefly Practical with many Additions and Corrections from the Author 's own hand together with the Life of the Author enlarg'd by the Reverend Dr. Fell Dean of Christ Church in Oxford in large Folio Nova Vetera Or a Collection of Polemical Discourses addressed against the Enemies of the Church of England both Papists and Fanaticks in large Folio by Ieremiah Taylor Chaplain in Ordinary to King Charles the First of Blessed Memory and late Lord Bishop of Down and Conner Reflexions upon the Devotions of the Roman Church With the Prayers Hymns and Lessons themselves taken out of their Authentick Authors In Three Parts In Octavo New The Christian Sacrifice and the Devout Christian and Advice to a Friend these last three Books written by the Reverend S. P. D. D. in 12. Eph. 4. 31. Pag. 11. Pag. 26. Pag. 31. Pag. 32. Pag. 219. Pag. 35. Pag. 68. Pag. 94. Pag. 102. Mark 16. 16. Ver. 14. Mat. 3. 14. Mark 9. 10. Luke 18. 34. Rom. 10. 9 Rom. 1. 29 30. Rom. 10. 9 1 Cor. 3. 11 12. 1 Cor. 4. 5. Mat. 13. 29 30. Lib. 9. Ep. 39. Phil. 1. 15 18. 2 Esa. 4. 21. 26 27. Numb 12. 1. Zach. 8. 19.