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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A33192	Three letters declaring the strange odd preceedings of Protestant divines when they write against Catholicks : by the example of Dr Taylor's Dissuasive against popery, Mr Whitbies Reply in the behalf of Dr Pierce against Cressy, and Dr Owens Animadversions on Fiat lux / written by J.V.C. ; the one of them to a friend, the other to a foe, the third to a person indifferent.; Diaphanta	J. V. C. (John Vincent Canes), d. 1672.	1671 (1671)	Wing C436; ESTC R3790	195,655	420

the fancy And the respect if we will speak properly does not terminate upon the pictur but upon the person whom it represents which infers a worship of God in it not by it Chap. 15. from page 247 to 273. Is very earnest for scriptur and liturgy in a vulgar tongue This plea of Protestant ministers makes a plausible found And they know it well enough For it was the first thing that by their rhetorical colours cast upon it commended them to the people after the A postacy of the first reformers by whose perswasion the people was then made to beleev they should now be as gods all of them knowing good and evil The word of God saith Whitby is kept from the knowledge of the vulgar people in the Roman Church And thus they all say and ever will say be they never so much satisfied by Catholik writers to the contrary becaus it is to their own advantage it should be so thought in England and all other places where Protestants have invaded and now actually sit upon the Catholick Clergies benefice and byshoppricks But is ther any part or particle of Christian faith or religion or of the word of God that is kept from Catholiks or not made known to them in Books Catechisines Sermons all in their own language and in daily practis of that Church wherof they are members Do they not hear and read and see all the mysteries of our Christian faith Christ our Lords birth and passion resurrection and ascension into glory what he acted what he suffered what he taught what he constituted and ordained for our salvation what we are to hope what to beleev what to practice in order thereunto set before their eyes not only by continual sermons made to them all over the catholik world in their own vulgar tongue but by their Gospels and Epistles which they have lying by them collected for the cours of the whole year and translated into their own language together with several pious treatises and meditations upon all these rules and mysteries of faith unto so ample use that if they do but walk accordingly which is all that religion intends they cannot miss salvation Is not all this Gods word It is nothing els And what is ther more of the word of God except we will count letters and syllables The word of God then is not kept from the knowledg of the vulgar people in the Roman Church But why have they not the Bible translated as it lies in all languages where catholik faith is prosest Becaus it is obscure as it lies in that short and ambiguous phrase and under so many several tropes of rhetorick and schemes also of logick wherin it was wrote apt therby to be perverted and misunderstood as we see by experience to be true unto endles factions Nor does the word of God consist so much in letters and syllables as in the marrow and meaning of his will And not the sence and meaning but the letter of the scriptur is that which makes hereticks But is not that the word of God which is kept from the people It is the word of God but not kept from the people For it is but the same with that which is delivered and made known unto the people So much as it contains whatever it be either of saith or morality either of what is to be beleeved or hoped or practised they have it all but disintangled from those artificiall schemes of logick and rhetorick wherof the holy writ is fuller then any book was ever writ by man which there inwrap and render it obscure Ther is no instruction no rule of piety no particle of comfort either for this world or the other in St. Pauls epistles for example but Catholiks have it they read it in their own language if they be able to read they know it all And they have it in a better and more facil manner then they could find it out by perusing those high theological discourses of his which the learnedst of men can hardly and very hardly understand The like I say of other portions of holy writ Only the disputative part with the interwoven systems of rhetorick this may exercise great and more sublime divines who by help of their various litterature may consider not only the plain truths therin contained which are common to them with other vulgar beleevers but the nature of the Metonymies Synechdoche's Metaphors together with the several modes of argumentation refutation objections and inopinate transitions in the context This if my adversary OeN had understood it had saved one fourth part of his Animadversions upon Fiat Lux and Whitby here had been utterly silent But it is their only advantage both in this and other controverted points of faith with Roman Catholiks either to be ignorant or dissemble their knowledg And therfor I have good reason to think they will never seem to understand But God grant they may The wonder is that English Protestants should still be as fiercely eager in this point when they write controversies as ever they were when they do themselves most heartily repent I have heard several great clergy-men amongst them speak it that they had ever given the Bible in that short ambiguous phrase it is penned into the hands of people in their own tongue to be thus perverted as it is every one his own way unto endles and irreconcilable schismes It would glad their hearts no doubt to see the Roman Church do indiscreetly as they have don But that will never be Holy catholik Church has revealed translated and several wayes made known the will of God to her people appointing most divine wayes and methods such as she had her self received from God to inure and keep them in the practis of that their holy faith And the disputative and sublimer divinity or as I may so speak the philosophical part of holy writ such as can may read on Gods name and the Church will commend them for it while these with all the rest attend unto those duties and good works every one in his calling which their holy faith prescribes These are and ever were the wayes and method of the now present and ancient catholik Church most wise and holy And her subjects and beleevers have profited therby many thousands of them unto angelical sanctity and all of them unto somthing more than otherwise they would have had whilst others that swerv from these wayes promote themselvs unto wildness and schisme without end missing indeed the word of God in the very scripture they read and never attaining to the true life and power in that form of words which they use not unto intended sanctification but by their own misinterpretations wrest and deprave daily unto their own destruction Nor will people be ruled now by their ministers but thinking it their own right to interpret as they pleas make it their only work to read and cant sentences and coin opinions as they list Excepting only this

faggot guns and daggers do more then show you have not yet let go those hot and surious imaginations It is a phrase so ordinary with you that when another writer of your own judgment would have told me that my words are false or besides the purpos or the like you in a phrase of your own tell me still that I speak guns and daggers If he mean say you of me p 27. that ther is in good works an intrinsecal worth c. he speaks daggers and doth not himself beleev what he sayes And again p. 94. For men to come now in the end of the world and tell us That we must rest in the autority of the present Church c. is to speak daggers and swords to us upon a confidence that we will suffer our selves to be befoold So likewise p. 340. He tells us say you of me it is good to prefer a Translation besore the Originals What shall we do with those men that speak such swords and daggers and are well neither full nor fasting I pray Sir where did you borrow this trope had you it from the school of Aristotle or Mars his camp Thirdly your prophetick assurance so often inculcated that if you could but once com to whisper me in the ear I would plainly acknowledge either that I understand not my self what I say or if I do beleev it not givs a fair character of those fanatick times wherin ignorance and hypocrisy prevailed over worth and truth wherof if your self wer any part it is no wonder you should think that I or any man els should either speak he knows not what or beleev not what himself speaks It was the proper badg of those times when after the alarm sounded in the Pulpit that our people therupon went forth in troops to battle neither did the peasant understand nor the man in black beleev although the sound rung generally in their ears that it was the sword of the Lord and of Gideon which they brandisht against the loyal band their foes Measuring me it seems by your self you tell me no loss than seaven times in your book that I beleev not and I think seaventy times that I understand not what I speak my self It is a kind of charity in you to think your neighbour is as you know your self to be But I do not much care for that charity except you were better than I find you are Fourthly your pert assertion so often occurring in your book that ther is neither reason truth nor honesty in my words is but the overflowing of that former intemperat zeal and the more frequent it occurs the less approbation it will find Fiftly your sharp and frequent menaces that if I write or speak again I shall hear more find more feel more more to my smart more than I imagin more than I would rellishes too much of that insulting humour our bleeding Land then groaned under the many years of our anarchical confusion Sixthly the absence of your name in the frontispiece of your book which I have never before observed in all my life of any Protestant writer that hath ever in my time set forth a book here in England against Popery givs no small suspicion that the Authour of our Animadversione is no such Protestant as he would be thought to be Lastly that I may omit other special reasons your other general trick of charging me then most of all with sraud ignonorance and wickedness when in your own heart you find me most clear from any such blemish thereby to put a vail upon your own caus which would otherways be disparaged makes me smell a fox a notorious one Sic notus Ulysses This has been too often acted here in England to be soon forgotten The better the caus the lowder still was the cry against those who stood for it that the blustering nois of calumnies might drown all report of their innocence And by all this I cannot Sir but suspect that if the description of Popery your Animadversions givs us be right you are a Papist your self and no true Protestant a notorious Papist But as it is so let it be Thus much I only tell you that you may see I am neither neglective of your book nor idle but have perused and read it over And although what for the threats of your Animadversions and what for the reasons of my own Fiat I may not enter into controversie yet I hope I may let you know that I have seen your work And that you may the better credit me I will give you a short account of it first in general then in particular And this is all I mean here to do The whole design of Fiat Lux you do utterly mistake throughout all your book of Animadversions so that you conceiv that to be a controversy which is none that to be absolutely asserted which is but hypothetically discoursed out of the exceptions of other men that to be only for one side which is indifferently for all although I speak most for them that are most spoken against and am in very deed absolutely against all speaking quarrelling disputing about Religion If you will but have patience to hear my purpos and design which to all men not interested and blinded with a prejudice is clear enough relucent in the whole context of my Fiat what I say will easily appear to your self Fiat Lux sayes one thing and supposes it another thing he desires and aims at that he dislikes this he commends We are at this day at variance about Religion this Fiat Lux supposes But it were better to have peace this he aims at and desires And both these things are intermingled up and down in my book according to that small faculty that God hath given me though not according to the usual method that is found now adayes in books Here Sir in few words you have the summe of my Fiat And I hope you will grant that to be the scope of my book which I made it for That we are now at variance is most clear and certain by me supposed and not to be denied And that it were better to have peace is as absolutely expedient as the other is evidently true These then being things both of them which no man can resist either by denying the one or disliking the other I thought them better intermingled then set apart and with more reason to be supposed then industriously proved Yet to superinduce a disposition unto peace my only work was to demonstrate an uselesnes an endlesnes an unprofitablenes of quarrels which I laboured quite through my book beginning it with an intimation of our quarrels which St. Paul calls the fruits and works of the flesh and ending it with a commendation of charity which is the great fruit and blessing of Gods holy Spirit Now the easier to perswade my Countreymen to a belief both of the one and the other first is insinuated in Fiat Lux both the ill grounds and

worst effects of feuds then is the plea of parties specified their probabilities acknowledged and lastly an impossibility of ever bringing our debates to a conclusion either by light or spirit reason or scriptur texts so long as we stand separated from any superiour judicative power unto which all parties will submit is I think with a strong probability if not demonstrative evidence concluded And therfor is it thought by Fiat Lux to be more rational and Christian-like to leav these endles groundles and ruinous contentions and resign our selvs to humility and peace This is the design and whole summe of my book And although I speak up and down here for Papists there for Protestants elswhere for Presbyterians or Independants commonly out of the very discourses they make for themselvs yet do I not defend either their wayes or their arguments Nor do I teach any doctrin at all or hold there any opinion But I only give to understand in that one little book what is largely discoursed in a hundred That all parties do make out to themselves such a probability which as it stands joyned with the actours resolution and separated from any superiour visible power to which they will submit can never be subdued And hath not long experience proved this as true as any thing els What then is ther in Fiat Lux that can be denied Is it not evident that we are now at variance and too long indeed have been Is it not also clear that peace charity and neighbourhood is better then variance dissention and wars Do not parties strongly plead for themselvs so far perswaded each one that himself is in the right that he will not yield the truth to be with any but himself Is not all this evident I am sure it is and all England will witnes it And if any one should be able to evince that any reasonings made in Fiat Lux either for Papists Protestants or others be not certain or perhaps not probable yet he does nothing except he be able to prove likewise that they are not probable to Fiat Lux or to those that use them whether Protestants or Papists which he can no more do than he can pull a star out of the firmament I say Sir again and mark I pray you what I say If you should chance to evince that the reasons brought by Fiat Lux either for the doctrin or practises of Papists or others be either not probable or untrue yet is your labour all in vain except you be able to demonstrate likewise that they are not probable to Fiat Lux or to Papists and others who use those reasons which you can no more do then any thing that is absolutely impossible By this time Sir you may discern how hard it is to deal with Fiat Lux and impossible to confute him Sith he speaks nothing but what is as clearly true and evident as what we see at mid-day Nor do I in this any way exalt the ability of the Authour whom you are pleased so much and frequently to disable A Tom-fool may say that which all the wisemen in the world cannot gain-say as he did who said the Sun was higher at noon than any other hour of the day It was Fiat Lux his fortune rather then chois to utter words which will no sooner be read than acknowledged And it was your misfortune Sir to employ your greater talents in refuting evident truths perhaps for no other reason but becaus they issued from the pen of a man who is not so great a friend to faction as you could wish And although you proceed very harsh and furiously yet am I verily perswaded you now discern though too late for your credit that you had all this while according to our English proverb good Mr. Doctor a wrong sow by the ear Thus far in general Now briefly to give you som account in particular You spend four Chapters and a hundred and eighteen pages which is the fourth part of your book before you com to the first line and paragraff of mine The applaus and honour of this world c. And it is not unwittily done For being to be led as you heavily complain out of your ordinary road of controversies by the wilde chase of Fiat Lux it behoved you to draw som general common places of your own for your self to walk in and exercise your rhetorick and anger before you pursue a bird that slies not you say in any usual tract Preface from page 1. to page 19. Your preface wherin you speak of my subtilty and your own pretence affords me nothing but the beginning of your own mistake which will run quite through your book 1 Chap. from page 19. to 29. Your first chapter beats me about the pate for saying that I conceal my method with a terrible syllogistical dilemma He that useth no method say you cannot conceal it and if he hath concealed it he hath used one But I must pass by store of such doughty stuff being only fit for the young Oxford Schollar who being com home to take air would prove before his father and mother that two eggs were three Then going on you deny that Protestants ever opposed the doctrin and merit of good works which at first I wondered at seeing the sound of it has rung so often in mine own ears and so many hundred books written in this last age so apparently witnes it in all places till I found afterwards in my thorow perusal of your book that you neither heed what you say or how much you do deny But you perhaps love to talk of them better than your fore-fathers did though your thoughts be all the same And you will all equally bless your selvs from building of Churches as the Papists have don however your prattle goes 2 Chap. from page 29. to 110. Your second chapter collects our of Fiat Lux as you say ten general conclusions spread all over like veins and arteries in the body of that my book And this you do that you may make your self a campus Martius to sport in without confinement to my method But you name not any page of my book where those principles may all or any of them be found And you do wisely For in the sence those words do either naturally make out or in which you understand them of all the whole ten I cannot own any one for mine own set down in my book The first of my principles must be this That we received the Gospel first from Rome In your sence I never spoke this We that is we English first received it thence But you talk against it as if I meant that Brittans had it first from Rome We had it not first from Rome say you but by Joseph of Arimathea from Palestin as Fiat Lux himself acknowledges Sir if Fiat Lux say both these things he cannot mean in your contradictory fals sence but in his own true one We that is we Englishmen the

call the Vicars Wars For the inferiour priests and levites envying the dignities glory and revenues of their prelates when they could not otherwise get them into their own hands by their lamentable tones in Eloimi raised up the people of the land to further their design This trick of theirs they learned from wolves For these when they spy a waifaring man whom they would devour and yet by a narrow search perceiv him to be too strong for them starting aside upon som hillock there set upon their tails they howl for help And if any will not beleev Fiat Lux that such be the fruits of disputes and controversies and such their nature and genius let them beleev the Authour of Animadversions who as he sayes what he pleases and denies what he lists so to his frequent reproaches villifications and slanders he adjoyns his own menaces of terrour to make my words good and justify Fiat Lux. You frequently threaten me that if I write again I shall hear more far more than you have said in your Animadversions but I promis you Sir if you write again you shall never hear more from me For now the flies begin to com into my chamber which may haply expect I should heed their flight and hearken to their buzz and I must not leav those greater employments to look upon your Animadversions or any your other books Farewell Given this V. of the Ides of April in the year of our Lord MDCLXIII J. V. C. EPISTOLA AD CROESUM AGAINST Mr. Whitby The occasion of this second Epistle DOctour Pierce had preached a Sermon in the Court upon that text In the beginning it was not so from whence he took occasion to speak of Popery which in this and that and the other particular he said in the beginning was not so and consequently all of it a novelty This sermon was afterwards printed and not a little applauded by those who are taken with such airs Mr. Cressy a Catholik Gentleman the Authours friend then sojourning in London wrote a book called Catholik doctrin no novelties in consutation of that Sermon and went presently away to Paris But after his departure Mr. Whitby set forth a huge bulk of a book against Cressy The Authour in this his epistle gives notice to Mr. Cressy his friend then in France of the contents and tenour of that his adversaries book II. Epistola ad Croesum against Mr. Whitby SIR IT is now about a year since Dr Pierce made his pretty featous Sermon in the Court where by vertue of those few words of his text In the beginning it was not so Matth. 19. 8. he consuted all Popery in the space of one hour as a meer bundle of novelties The Treatise you left here in the hands of som friends before your departure to Paris to prove against the tenour of the said Sermon That Catholik doctrines are no novelties printed afterward by I know not what good hand gave us here in England after your departur a great deal of good satisfaction This book of yours about a moneth or two after it was extant was seconded by another against Dr. Pierce penned by Jo. Si● a small but a very quick and lively piece to invalidate his reasons So that Pierce had now two adversaries against him The latter J. S. hears not yet of any reply But your book Sir is lately answered not by Dr. Pierce himself who hath other irons in the fire and meets now with somthing in his own life which in the beginning was not so but by one Mr. Daniel Whitby a young man of a forward spirit and possest as it seems of a fair reformed library who hath undertaken or is willing at least to undergo the quarrel This book of Whitbyes wherof my antient love and friendship hath here invited me to give you a brief account is a great volum of 512 pages so fruitful is the seed of controversie when it is once sown to increase and multiply A compendium it is I think of his whole library Whether this book of his be made up all by one hand by reason of the unity of the name and diversity of stiles discerned in it is not easy to guess But that Mr. Whitby if he had many coadjutors with him either in his own chamber or abroad should by their mutual consent alone reap the honour of all their labours wherof his own part may haply be the least you need Sir neither grutch nor fear nor envy nor any way dislike The book is of that natur that it more behoovs it should be thought to issue from one young head then many old ones that the insufficiency when it shall appear may be rather attributed to the weaknes of the Author then caus he pleads for Of this Sir I may out of Whitbyes own words in his Epistle Dedicatory and the whole progres of his book assure you that this volume of his is wholly made up of the many several replies of divers Protestant writers who have stretcht their wits to the utmost in this last age to evacuate the Catholik faith and all their grounds autorities and reasons for it not only such as have written here in England which are not a few but those also beyond the seas who are all met friendly here together though never so much differing in their wayes twenty at least or thirty of the chiefest to help to make up Mr. Whitbies book These writers he tells us in his Epistle som of them who they be Hammond Field Salmasius Baron Usher Fern Dally Taylor Crackanthorp Hall Andrews Calixtus Plessis Chamier and Chillingworth But he does not there mention Pareus Blondel Baxter and several others whom in the context of his book he makes as much use of as any of those he there honours with the title of Champions with whose sword and buckler he means to defend himself and knock you down You may easily guess the reason Although indeed even Chamier Plessis and Dally his first and chiefest three wer as great Puritans as Baxter Pareus or Blondel and no less enemies to the English Protestant then Roman Catholik Church And Baxter himself if he will but do so much as dye shall seven year hence if not sooner be put into the next calendar and sit among the Champions of the English Church cited no more then as guilty of faction and heresy but as a Protector and Patron of the truth famous Baxter incomparable Baxter So p. 230. he cites Dr. Reynolds as a great Champion of his Church who was indeed a Champion of the Puritans against it Every non-Papist is a good Protestant especially when he is dead When they fight for their wives and children against catholik traditions and faith then are they all holy zealous champions But they are damned and swery notoriously from the truth if they may be themselvs beleeved when they contest with one another which ever happens after the first great victory with the common enemy obtained One thing is

of the first letter being razed out 2. Let it be as you will quoth Dally this testament can be of no value For it proceeds upon an uncertain if not fals supposition Who can say assuredly that either you are his son Caius or that Caius is indeed his son 3. Either quoth Chillingworth you must be his son and actual heir while he was alive or when he was dead Not while he was alive for the right can be but in one at once Not when he was dead for no man can be a son to one that is not no more then any person that is alive can be a father to one that has no being 4. Were this right quoth Baxter which is conveighed to you in your father only or in som others also besides himself If in himself alone why doth he say constituo which signifies simul statuo or I appoint together with others 5. It seems to me quoth Blondel that this testament Mr Caius is rather against then with you Either you pretend to be his son before his testament was made or after If before your own evidence witnesses against you Constituo Caium silium meum I make Caius my son If after then by this testament you are made his son but supposed only an heir and a title for that here is none at all 6. He does indeed quoth Plessts make him truly his heir But of what not of his estate which we contend about but only of his goods all his goods And can you think Mr. Caius that a dying man would speak improperly surely no. The goods of the mind vertue prudence temperance these as Aristotle witnesses are proprie bona properly are only to be called goods But the goods of the body and goods of fortune these are improperly and falsly so called 7. Let it be what kind of goods you will quoth Hall this very word meorum Mr. Caius quite overthrows all your pretensions These are your fathers words you say well then if it be so either the state you plead for is now his or now not his If it be now his then it is not yours if it be now not his then the very title you rely upon is fals 8. A testament is to be taken in its strict and rigorous sens quoth Field and so the word omnium spoils your plea Mr. Caius You must either have all his goods or none but you have neither his good face nor other his good endowments c. 9 Com com quoth Crackanthorp we needed not have gon so far or used so many words Caius pretends that his father who made this testament is the last of seventeen Knights of his family Out of his own mouth I will condemn him and with the very first word of his will he sayes his father made which is Ego For it is clear enough that Ego is the first person and not the last And all these are ushered in by a young Whitby To this hath Chamier told you that c. Can you not see what incomparable Chillingworth hath taught you that c. You will still be impertinent though learned Plessis hath informed you that c. Where were your eyes when great Dally hath told you that c. In these few words Sir I have given you a clear Emblem not only of this book of Mr. Whitbies but of all the writings have been made against catholik religion since the reformation Ther is no evidence so clear for that antient religion but it is endeavoared several wayes to be made frustrate Although unto Catholiks who understand their religion those evasions signifie no more then these I have specified against a title most irrefragable and firm Yet in that contest children and unexperienced people would judg poor Caius to be utterly lost And so indeed he will if those crafty Lawyers may determin the busines without recours to any Judg as is don in all our affairs and controversies of religion How many sophistical evasions is he to answer about one and the same thing How many captious snares to incur in any one of his answers to be overwhelmed without doubt while no Judg interposes either with their multitude of words or force of arms But enough of this which indeed can never be too much thought of Mr. Whitby Sir begins and ends his book just as you begin and end yours against which he writes For as you in the conclusion of your book set down som rules which you desire him that shall reply unto it for more clearnes and order and substantiallity of discours to observ so Whitby in the end of this his reply against your book wherin he hath not heeded to observ so much as any one of those your good rules does also prescribe laws for you if you mean to answer him again wherof the first is That you consider all the answers he hath given to any of your arguments and that otherwis if any one single answer remain your agument must be invalid p. 501. This is the first and wittiest of his conditions For the several shifts and evasions of above twenty men which he makes use of about most of the substantial points of controversie being all put together and multiplied as they be to som thousands would if they should be all spoken to in particular though never so briefly rais such a bulk of a book as hath been seldom seen and would never be read But being as I have already told you contradictory one to another and ten to one excessively childish would no less disable the repute and gravity of that man who should so much as take notice of them then to play with boyes at span-counter in the streets And as he ends his book with the same method of prescribing laws as you concluded yours so doth he begin his in the very self-fame words as you enter yours I cannot forbid my self to wonder that c. So begins your book I cannot forbid my self to wonder that c. so begins this book of his which he writes against you imitating and repeating your very words for many lines together and returning them hand over head upon your self by the method of our good women of Billingsgate not caring so he say again what you speak how true or fals just or unjust his words be Thus much in general I shall say more by and by after I have briefly told you what he does in each particular chapter of his book His first ch from page 1 to 7. Is a bitter invective against Papists whom he concludes for their cruelties and disloyalty unworthy of mercy or any affection He acknowledges indeed that Catholik religion cannot stand justly charged with any such crimes p. 2. But yet he layes the crimes upon them all notwithstanding so indefinitely and only upon them that he excludes universally all professours of that religion and them alone from all compassion and love Although he knows in his heart both that the religion the very religion

is not unlikely they may they will undo many a family In the end of this his first chapter are cited som Councils severity against heretiks wherin Mr Whitby thinks himself concerned with much regret and anger One of these saith he was kept at Lateran the other at Leyden under Pope Innocent I suppose concilium Lateranum is the councel he sayes was kept at Lateran though his Dictionary of proper words will not help him to understand in what countrey that town of Lateran is to be found And concilium Lugdunense is that which he englishes the councel of Leyden all the history and reading Mr. Whitby has not been able to distinguish betwixt Ludunum Batavorum and Lugdunum in Gallia betwixt Leyden in Holland where never any councel was kept and Lyons in France where Pope Innocent held that councel whilst he sojourned in Burgundy But though he be yet but raw you shall find him a greater proficient by and by As for that councel of Lateran wherin is a confiscation of goods and other penalties decreed upon such as run into disturbing heresies it touched only exteriour disciplin or temporal statutes and no article or busines of religion Nor did the Church make any such constitution by her own autority but declared only what secular power may justly do when they think it expedient and necessary to prevent further evils What power have Priests and Byshops over mens estates and lives But the Emperour and Kings were willing to have it so ordained in that venerable assembly that with a more plausible colour they might be able to provide for their Kingdoms peace even in those affairs which they themselvs were to execute though not to determin Nor does any King in Christendom think himself any further obliged by that decree to put such laws in execution then he shall with his privat councel think fit And all secular princes will by the advice of their peers proceed to such penalties when they pleas whether any synod decree it or no. Nor is it the wors if a councel do say that in som cases may be don which princes in their discretion think expedient His 2 ch from page 7 to 9. Tells us that Mr. Whitby is here in a trembling sweat good Sir for your faults I tremble saith he to consider that our Author should be so imprudent to say no wors to call God to witness to his soul that he hath studiously avoided all caveling distortion of texts c. And then he addes with a new fervour That all Fathers are miserably corrupted by you and allegations most disingeniously forged And if it be not so quoth he I will forfeit presently my life Good man he engages very far as you see for you He will dy dy presently if Fathers all the Fathers be not corrupted miserably corrupted by you And this he will do without any trembling if he do not make that good which he trembles to think of But it is no wondrous matter I think to hear him utter such daring words although he use here none of his mental reservations He knows himself as safe as a thief in a mill and that it will never be put to a Jury to find whether he be guilty or no. His first chapter was fuming wrath this second a shivering fear And so he proceeds from one passion to another quite through his book even to the end to verifie his own words in his Epistle to his Patron where upon the sight of your book he saith that he found himself put into such a passion as vented it self into this reply But these passions of his and the various vilifications both of your book and person wherewith this reply of his and assault against Catholiks is stuft or any other of his calumnies and bitter invectives against Papists which are many and hainous I shall not trouble you with now You must have patience and let them pass as other good people do where ever you meet them Ministers good men fight for their wives and children either those they have or hope to have which will be undon and lost if the odium of Popery and of all such as any way excuse and defend their innocence be not smartly kept up My adversary OeN did as much to innocent Fiat Lux which had no other fault but that it had excused the faultles To do well and hear ill this must be the lot as that is the endeavour of all good men in this world In his 3 ch from page 9. to 17. The challenge of Bishop Jewel for the first 600 years against Papists which all his graver brethren disliked Mr. Whitby if his word here be of any worth will make it good yea and enlarge it with Perkins White Baxter and Crackanthorp to 800 yea 1200 years wherein there was not they say any such creatur as a Papist in the world And he cares not a pin though Beza Melancton and Luther acknowledg to the contrary that Popery hath the prerogative of Antiquity before all other waies Beza saith he and Melancton are strangers to us Must we be accountable for Luthers words And yet all over his book he makes more use of strangers gives more credit to them then any of our own and would have us do so too Are not Chamier Dally Plessis Grotius Blondel as much strangers and of as little credit as Beza Melancton and Luther But what if our own Dr. Willet speaks for the Papists antiquity above others What if our own Whitaker say that to beleev by the testimony of the Church is the very heresie of the Papists O then his answer is ready at hand What is all this to the purpos did ever any Protestant say otherwis do they therfor confess their antiquity The stripling fears no colours If any or many both of our own and forreign Protestants do acknowledg the Papists antiquity why what then If some deny it then it is so It is as they say who say as he sayes And if any say otherwise it is otherwise It is not so Ther is one assertion in this his third chapter that deservs I think to be written in capital letters For p. 16. having told you Sir that Protestants either affront the evidence of Scripture against Papists or the intent of the Apostles or rather of God himself c. he thinks therfor that Protestants rejection of Popery may well be excused and especially saith he these are his words so much remarkable When you Papists know we hold that in all matters of faith it is all one with us to be praeter Scripturam and to be contra That is in plain English what is not in Scripture that Protestants hold to be against it And is this so First it is hard to say how far matters of faith reach Ther is one sort of people now in England that would have all things acted and disposed even in civil affairs only according to the tenour of Gospel And what is beside it they

peaceably accepted whom he ought indefinitly to obey not only for wrath but conscience It is not his part to weaken due loyalty with these seditious querks and quibbles Who can tell whether he be legitimatly begotten or rightly baptised or legally elected c. Catholiks have as much ground for their obedience to civil and spiritual Superiours as they have for their observance of their own natural father And I think that is enough If we had it not promised in Gospel as we have that Christ would preserv his Church from failing and errour yet the very beleef we have in his divinity would naturally infer such a confidence as Catholicks have in the Churches truth But Mr. Whitby understands not in whom this infallibility does originally reside as I perceiv by his fond interrogatories nor consequently what it is If he had ever had the happy hour to read the System of that learned Doctour Franciscus Davenport by whose light I have lately Sir since your departure hence to Paris sufficiently declared in our English tongue all this whole busines of infallibility he had saved a multitude of idle words drawn out of his famous fanatick Mr. Chillingworth Catholik Divines may several wayes defend and declare this busines of Infallibility as well as other points of religion according to their several conceptions and abilities and may go som of them so far as to defend even an intrinsecal inherent Infallibility either in the Pope or Councel And although this may suffer more difficulty then the extrinsecall one of Gods providence and guidance yet do I not see how any one can disprove a possibility of it However faith does not require so much at their hands If God be but infallible and Christ be true the church is safe Very many bitter books have been written against Catholiks and their religion injuriously diminishing both them and it upon the mistake of this one busines of Infallibility perhaps a wilful one two very lately by Mr. Moulin and Denton to the great hurt and dammage of the innocent if men beleev them It is a very pious and good rule that of the Canon and civil law Cum sunt jura partium obscura reo favendum est potius quam actori But I doubt much whether the people of England who may read these invective books against Papists follow that rule or no. When the right of Parties is obscure saith the law the defendant is rather to be favoured than the plaintiff If it were so here we should not have been by such bitter books so highly incensed as I see we are against poor Catholiks but against those rather who slander them Mr. Moulin would prove that Catholik religion and not Protestancy is guilty of sedition and he does it by a relation of passionate words and actions of some Popes recorded in stories And this he takes to be a sufficient proof that Catholik religion is guilty of sedition It were indeed to be wished that all Popes words and actions were answerable to their religion and rule But that is hardly to be expected in this world The very place and honour that has ever been given to that seat is no small temptation of pride or other passions incident therupon into a mind not more then ordinarily furnished with all Christian vertues But if we will beleev histories concerning them we shall find no series or succession of men in any one place or dignity of this world to have held forth so many lights of vertue as that one chair hath don And if som have been faulty they gave no doubt much caus of grief or scandal but none of wonderment to the world They may surely fail in a greater temptation since other Christians who have the same means of grace do fail in lesser But Catholiks saith Mr. Moulin are bound by the very tenour of their religion to hold for good and justifie all that any of their Popes have ever said or don This would be very strange why so Becaus saith he they beleev them infallible Who beleevs them infallible How infallible that they can neither do nor speak amiss Who ever thought that Insallible is a word taken up lately by schoolmen to expres the sovereign power and indeficiency of Gods Church and not any inherent endowments of a Pope who is brought up when he is young like one of us in the Catechise and practice of Christian religion and when he is ripe and placed by Gods providence in that supream chair is eminently to practise those holy rules and carefully to keep and maintain that depositum fidei the treasury of faith which he hath received and if he fail therin shall give an account and suffer for it in another world as severely as any other for their faults Nor are his words and actions a rule to other men of Christian religion but Christian religion is a rule to him both for his actions and words And all that Infallibility which Catholik writers to expres more than one thing in one short word make use of in their discourses with Protestants is only an extrinsecal providence of God watching over his Church to preserv the primitive apostolik spirit in her and to keep her alwayes even to the consummation of the world from errour and deficiency notwithstanding any opposition from without or the misdemeanours of any one or other within her self even the providence of that good God whose property it is not only to prevent evil from the good but even to work good out of evil that his Church which he hath promised to preserv may be ever safe And if ever this insallible providence do show it self it must furely be then when the ship is ready to be split by heresies and schismes that rise from som violent spirits breaking unity with that body so dangerously that Prelates are called together from all parts of the world as a help extraordinary in a general Councel to prevent the ruin And this is that which Divines mean when they say that the Pope is infallible in Cathedra in the Chair that is to say in consessu Seniorum Presbyterorum ecclesiae in a general convention of Christian Prelates So that Moulin speaks not one word to the purpos But Doctour Dentons book is not any such mistake but pure malice He intends to show that Papists were never punished for religion but for treason And his book is altogether made up of several stories of men Papists men sent over hither from beyond seas as he sayes to kill poison and destroy people Some when they had read his book took the Authour for a fool but I heard afterwards that he is Physician And upon that account I had him excused For if he be as bad at physick as he is in affairs of religion he had caus to be angry with them who came hither from forreign parts to take his office and emploiment out of his hands kill and poison people If the villains who ever they

of his I think he borrowed of som French Hugonots For all the wayes that be here now in England concur each one unto a body an organical body not only Roman Catholiks but our English Prelacy and Presbyterians too Yea the very Quakers to my knowledg esteem none to be so much as Christians who assemble not with them And they have with them som ministers of the gospel too though extemporary ones A wary reader may observ by the sole mirrour of this book of Whitbies which is a collection of most of the chief authors that have written against Popery since the Reformation how unsettled all Protestants be in all the controverted points of religion wherof ther is not any one by som of them denied but is by som others of them assirmed They know what Church to oppose but how much of her doctrin they should evacuate they could never yet unanimously agree nor what answer to fix steadily to any Catholik ground He will find also amongst other things that our present Protestants now adayes do generally swerv from the first reformers almost in all points both of disciplin and faith about supremacy good works free will possibility of keeping Gods commands the real presence prayer for the dead tradition c. which former Protestants for the first forty years would not abide to hear of but now they are all in a manner so allowed by most Protestants that there appears little difference between their way and catholik faith but only that this stands unchanged the other may alter again to morrow Indeed every Protestant writer is in one thing or other a new reformer as Whitby is here And every half-score years brings forth new scenes nor is there any now that heeds any Protestant writer that is gon if he speak contrary to him though he were never so eminent even in the very point and busines of Reformation This is enough for Whitby I heard Sir above half a year ago that Dr. Barlow had made ready for the Press another book of his own against Mr. Cressy and therfor deteined this my letter with me till I might give you an account of his with it Truly Sir I watched as earnestly for it as any cat watches for a mous But it will not yet appear In the interim one Mr. Stillingfleet has lately written a great book against Popery even so big a book in folio that none may buy it but only such as hate Popery more than they love sixteen shillings And he also proceeds this new french Hugonot way insisted on by Whitby He is only for a Church diffusive that holds fundamentals what ever they be and makes no account of any Church organical Wherby he utterly disables not the Roman Hierarchy only but even our English Protestant Church and government if men do but understand what he sayes And yet this man is mightily applauded by our English by shops which I cannot but marvel at and do thence conclude that they all begin now to think our English Church it self that it may be made good must be pulled down Councels he holds with Whitby that they can have no autority to move our assent although they be general as ther has never been any he sayes these thousand years And what is ther then for Gods sake shall move the Presbyterians Independents and others here in England to approve of the constitutions and government of our English Church set up by a far lesser assembly In a word this whole book of Stillingfleets is a large discours against a Theological argument of some Catholik disputant The argument it seems was this Christian faith cannot be divine except it have its birth from an infallible proposer and consequently the Church must either be infallible or els our faith is not divine The answer of this argument is the very life and vitals of Mr. Stillingfleets whole book That same argument of the Catholik Gentleman is indeed a pretty theological ratiocination and Stillingfleets answer evasions and distinctions both concerning the argument in general and all the particulars it runs into are not unwitty But this is no part of our busines Alas we in our controversies about religion are not come thus far Such a discours had been handsomly fitted to theologicall schools and very proper amongst learned divines there but here not so What is it to our busines in hand whether faith can or cannot be divine except the proposer be infallible and as it were divine This is a meer theological dispute And he that answers Stillingfleets book defends not faith immediately but an argumentators syllogisme Religion indeed as soon as ever it is questioned or disputed runs presently into Philosophy And therin if great heed be not taken it is quite lost And thence it comes to pass that most part of our controversie books is about school philosophy and human reasonings I blame not the Catholik Gentleman who ever he was for his argumenting Nor will Stillingfleet be blamed for defending his place But I let my countreymen spectators of the contest understand that in deed and truth so often as we dispute we are beyond the busines All writers of controversie speak more then faith when they either defend or oppose it And in reading controversies we see not so much the nature of the faith as the wit of him who opposes or defends it and so much this some times that the other is nothing at all discerned This the world must know and understand well or els they will be miserably mistaken as indeed I see all men are When two lawyers plead about a case of right perhaps three hours together all that three hours talk is not law or the right they talk of but only their ratiocinations about it And such are all our controversies about religion And he does best therin who still puts his adversary in mind what is his talk and what is the faith they talk of But he that defends both of them equally forgets himself And thus I see that generally men do miscarry on both sides the Protestant by calling that Romanish doctrin which is but a Catholiks discours for it and the Catholik by maintaining that talk of his which it is not a pin matter whether it stand or fall For faith is firm and constant though all my talk for it be miserably weak Now all the whole busines of faith which Stillingfleet and his adversary talk of is as I take it only this That the Church of Christ hath by Gods divine promis of being ever with her a power to oblige her subjects to hear and obey her if they mean to be happy in their way The Catholik affirms this Stillingfleet with his Protestants deny it And this is all the faith that is in it which is not here touched And a theological busines of Infallibility only spoke of And therfor Stillingfleet is much to blame when he speaks so often in his book of the Romanists way of resolving faith the

things specified here by your Disswader for popish novelties as they are rightly understood in the catholik sence and meaning Indulgences the real presence under the apperances or species of material symbols Communion in one kind Liturgy in hebrew greek or latin tongus unknown generally to vulgar people Use and respect of images and sacred figures Spiritual Supremcay in one byshop over the rest Saints invocation and sacrifice of mass are all acknowledged by former Protestant Reformers for old errours errours indeed but old very old ones a thousand years older than your Disswader makes them who would here make us beleev they are but fresh novelties As for the antiquity of Indulgences so far as they belong to Catholik beleef I need not trouble my self with further testimonies then the only one of your Disswader himself who is instar omnium For p. 17. he acknowledges their use to be ancient and primitive As for the real prefence Humpred in his Jesuitism sayes that Gregory the great who lived a thousand years ago taught Transubstantiation The Century writers Cent. 5. teach that Chrysostom who was two hundred years before Gregory is thought to confirm transubstantiation and Cent. 4. they place under the title of hurtsul opinions and errours of the fathers that saying of S. Greg Nyssen in his catechist sermon de devin● sacramento Not becaus it is eaten doth the bread becom the body of the word but forthwith by the word it is changed into the body as it is said by the word This is my body And they say in the same century c. 10. That Eusebius Emissenus did speak unprofitably of Transubstantiation Antony de Adamo in his anotomy of the mass sayes That the book of Sacraments ascribed to Ambrose affirms the opinion of Christs bodily presence in the sacrament Peter Martyr in his defence wholly dislikes the judgment of St. Cyril in this point Mr. Whitgist in his defence against Cartwright testifies of St. Ignatius disciple to St. John the Evangelist that he should say of some hereticks in his time That they do not admit Eucharist and oblations becaus they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ. which flesh suffered for our sins Adamus Francisci in his margarita theologica saith Commentum papistarum de transubstantiatione maturè in ecclesiam irrepsit And Antony de Adamo in his anatomy of the Mass saith I have not yet hitherto been able to know when this opinion of the real and bodily being of Christ in the Sacrament did begin This then according to the acknowledgment of Protestants and those very learned men is no novelty The indifferency of communion either in one kind or both is manifestly affirmed by Luther in his epistle ad Bohemos by Melanchton in his century of theological epistles and several other Protestants convinced therof by the current of primitive antiquity That the Christian Liturgy was in ancient times ever celebrated in Greek Chaldee Latin or other language unknown to vulgar Christians and in a part of the Church where lay people might not approach and great part of it secretly and out of the hearing of any body and with much pomp of vestments gold and silver chalices c. is amply testified by Theodore Beza in his eight epistle theological And therfor Queen Elizabeth did not think she acted against antiquity when she caused the Service to be read in English all over Wales where the people understand it not For which very same reason the great Cardinal Richlieu deservedly taxed heretical ministers who except at least in outward show against this ancient custom for their practising the very same thing as convinced in their own consciences that it was the ancient practice both in Bearn Narbo Province and other places where the ministers of those places read Service in the French Tongue which was not the language of those Provinces nor by any of those people any more understood than is Latin by the vulgar of mankind And yet the cafe is far otherwise in this affair affair amongst Catholiks than other people For these do but only come together to hear and attend to the Minister what he sayes But the Priests in the Catholik Church comes to make atonement for the people which may well be done so long as the said people are in a general disposition of heart fitly disposed to present themselves before the face of their Lord for that end whether they hear and know the sighs and requests of their petitioner in particular for them or no so long as they are assured they are of that true Church by whom their priests are directed in their duty For thus it was in the law of Moyses dictated by God himself There shall be no man saith the sacred text Lev. 16. in the tabernacle of the congregation when the priest goeth in to make an atonment in the holy place untill he come out and have made an atonement for himself and for his houshold and for all the congregation of Israel If God allowed of this custom four thousand years ago it can neither be a novelty nor ill As for images and their due respect the Magdeburgian Centuriators in their 4. Century testifie That Lactantius affirms many superstitious things concerning the efficacy of Christs image And in their 8. century That S. Bede erred in the worshipping of images So Bale in his pageant of Popes sayes That Gregory by his indulgences established pilgrimages to images and defended worshipping of images As also That S. Leo allowed the worshipping of Images Functius another Protestant in his chronology at 494. addes That Xenaias who lived thirteen hundred years ago was specially noted and condemned for being the first that stirred up wars against images This is then no novelty neither As for Purgatory and prayer for the dead Fulk in his Retentive affirms That it prevailed within three hundred years after Christ. And in his confutation of Purgatory That Ambrose allowed prayer for the dead and that it was the common errour of his time And again in the same book That Chrysostom and Jerom allowed prayer for the dead and in another place of the same book That Austin blindly defended it and again there That Tertullian Cyprian Austin Jerom and many others affirm that sacrifice for the dead is the tradition of the Apostles As also he had acknowledged about ten pages before in the same book That prayers for the dead is taught in the writings now extant under the name of Dionysius Areopagita mentioned in the acts of the Apostles which book though he doubt whether it be his or no yet himself writing against the Rhemish upon the 2. Thessalonians allows it to have been written above thirteen hundred years ago Chemnitius in his Examen sayes That it was taught by Austin Epiphanius and Chrysostom as nine pages before that he had said It was taught by Origen Ambrose Prudentius and Jerom. Mr. George Gifford in his Demonstration sayes That it was generally in

THREE LETTERS DECLARING The strange odd Proceedings of Protestant Divines when they write against Catholicks by the Example of Dr Taylor 's Dissuasive against Popery Mr Whitbies Reply in the behalf of Dr Pierce against Cressy and Dr Owens Animadversions on Fiat Lux. Written by J. V. C. The one of them to a Friend The other to a Foe The third to a Person Indifferent Sepulchrum patens est guttur eorum linguis sui● dolose agunt Judica illos Deus 1671. The Occasion of this Epistle THe Author had wrote a little Book called Fiat Lux to shew that wrangling about Religion is irrational and fruitless A Protestant understood afterward to be Dr Owen set forth Animadversions against that Book And this Epistle acquaints the Doctor of some of the ill qualities of those his Animadversions I. An Epistle to the Author of the Animadversions upon Fiat Lux. SIR I Was in my Journey in the North far enough from London when your Animadversions upon Fiat Lux came forth Nor did I ever set eye upon them till my return in February about half a year after which I tell you Sir to excuse my silence And now in brief For your labour I thank you for your endeavour I pitty you for your purpos I pardon you that being as I beleve intended for Gentlemens satisfaction the other for Fiat Lux his confutation this for the Authors coufusion I may not go about to reply unto you becaus this would be against the very end and principles of Fiat Lux it self which speaks forth nothing more then this That Controversies about Religion are vain and fruitless And lest this should not be able to detain me from any such reply you adde your own threats That if I shall dare to write again you will make me know what manner of man you are However Sir let we crave leave to thank you for the pastime your Animadversions have given me since my return But Sir you mistake the very drift and design of Fiat Lux which makes you to erre ever and anon throughout your whole Book whiles you take that as spoken absolutely which is only said upon an hypothesis of our present condition here in England distraction disputes and wars in order to a contrary end of unity love and concord designed by Fiat Lux and the Prosopopeia's brought in by me as Solomon in his Ecclesiastes makes the fool and atheist ever and anon to speak their minds these you conceiv to be my doctrin By vertu of these capital mistakes what by me is said of the obscurity of God Nature and Providence is with you impertinent that of Light and Spirit impious that of Plea of Parties frivolous that of Reason dissonant and to no purpos that of Scripture blasphemous that of the History of Religion no less inconsequent than untrue In a word this thing that thing every thing a wilde dishonest illiterate discours Some would wonder that he who writes in confutation of a Book should be himself the only man that understands it not But the reason is apparent It is your onely advantage to mistake The whole discours of Fiat Lux chained together one part with another from that which is supposed to that which is designed would breath so much of charity and sobernes that my Commentatour could not have told how to make any mad versions upon it It is not yet too late Now that you have finished your Animadversions or Comment or Notes upon it you may do well to take my Book again into your hands read it calmly and understand it That which you speak so frequently of Fiat Lux his ignorance is not altogether amiss for he pretends not much to learning although he knows what he sayes But yet Sir if you had defied and villified him with less violence and more seldom and not so universally in every point of history language and philosophy nor just then when you had least caus it had been more for your honour A third part of your Book which is taken up in talking of my ignorance and other qualities might well have been spared had you had arguments to demonstrate it And in my minde you too much forget your self when you recount so often with regret and anger that som gentlemen of the land should through their own inconsideration have any liking of a Book which you judg so slight aiery vain fallacious and simple As if they had none and you all the judgment of discerning Gentlemen Sir must be allowed a sens of Religion as well as Ministers and their portion of reason must not therfor be less becaus their Blood is more noble the company they keep more accomplisht and their education better They have the body although they wear not the Cloak of Religion and masters they are of their own reason tho not of yours This is one difference between Catholik countreys and ours that there the Clergy-man is only regarded for his vertue the power he hath received or is at least believed to have received from God in the great ministery of our reconciliation And if he have any addition of learning besides it is looked upon as a good accidental ornament but not as any essential complement of his Profession So that it often happens without any wonderment at all that the Gentleman Patron is the learned man and the Priest his Chaplain of little or no science in comparison But here in England our Gentlemen are disparaged by their own Black Coats and not suffered to use their judgments in any kinde of learning without a gybe from them The Gentleman is reasonles and the scribling Cassock is the only Schollar he alone must speak all know all and only understand I cannot but smile to see you turn so dexterously every thing that is said in Fiat Lux to your own use His discours of innocence and moderation gives you occasion to speak and amply dilate of wars murders adulteries lyes hypocrisies villanies And when he cries Peace Peace it is motive enough for you to cry Guns and Daggers You rave and rage against him and the whole earth you load your pen and pages with the tyrannies desolations disorders have been aforetime in the world not heeding that you had not so much as heard at this day of any such abuses if their holy and renowned Clergy-men who still declaimed against the vices of their times had not left them upon record or so much as considering that even now in these best times of Reformation are as grand disorders in all kindes as ever were in the worst times of Popish corruption Nay there was never any crow or magpie so pecked and cawed upon the back of a sheep as you do upon Fiat Lux and if he do but stir or wag you threaten if I understand you right to peck out his eyes And all this because Fiat Lux endeavours to show that animosities about matters of Religion are groundless prejudicial to peace and neighbourhood ruinous desolatory endles

now actual inhabitants of this Land and progeny of the Saxons received first our Gospel and Christendom from Rome though the Brittans who inhabited this Land before us differing as much from us as Antipodes had some of them been Christned long before us And yet the Christendom that prevailed and lasted among the Brittans even they also as well as we had it from Rome too mark this likewise But you reply Though persons from Rome did first plant Christianity among the Saxons was it the Popes Religion they taught did the Pope first finde it out or did they Baptise in the name of the Pope Good Sir it was the Popes Religion not invented by him as your cavil fondly imagines but owned professed and put in practice by him and from him derived unto us by his missioners You adde Did not the Gospel come to Rome as well as to us for it was not first preached there Sir properly speaking it came not so to Rome as it came to us For one of the twelve fountains nay two of the thirteen and those the largest and greatest was transferred to Rome which they watered with their blood we had never any such standing fountain of Christian Religion here but only a stream derived to us from thence My second assertion must be From whom we first received our Religion with them we must still abide This principle as it is never delivered by Fiat Lux though you put it upon me so is it in the latitude it carries and wherin you understand it absolutely fals never thought of by me and indeed impossible For how can we abide with them in any truth who may perhaps not abide in it themselvs Great part of Flanders was first converted by Englishmen and yet are they not obliged either by Fiat Lux or any lux whatsoever to accompany the English in our now present wayes If Rome first taught us Christianity she may then rather plead a power to guide us than we her This or some such like thing I might speak and rationally speak it But that we or any other should be obliged still to abide or rather to follow them who first taught us Religion though they should themselvs forsake their own doctrin as you would make me speak is a piece of folly never came into my thoughts And you may be ashamed to put it upon me Why do you not set down my own words and the page of my book where I delivered this principle My third must be The Roman Religion is still the same This also I do no where formally express nor enter into any such common place You will say I suppose it But doth this justifie you who say here that I assert it as a principle let it then be supposed for I do indeed suppose it becaus I know it hath been demonstrativly proved a hundred times over You deny it has bin proved why do you not then disprove it Becaus you decline say you all common places Very good so do I let us com to proper ones You fall then upon my Queries in the end of my book The Roman was once a true flourishing Church and if she ever fell she must fall either by apostasie heresie or schism c. So I speak there And to this you reply that the Church that then was in the Apostles time was indeed true not that Roman Church that now is So so then say I that former true Church must fall then som time or other when did she fall and how did she fall by apostacy heresy or schism Perhaps say you neither way for she might fall by an earthquake Sir we speak not here of any casual or natural downfall or death of mortals by plague famine or earthquake but a moral and voluntary laps in faith What do you speak to me of earthquakes You adde therfor the second time that she might fall by idolatry and so neither by apostacy heresy or schism Good Sir idolatry is a mixt misdemeanour both in faith and manners I speak of the single one of faith And he that falls by idolatry if he keep still some parts of Christianity entire he falls by heresy by apostacy if he keep none At last finding your self pusled in the third place you lay on load She fell say you by apostacy idolatry heresy schism licentiousnes and prophanenes of life And in this you do not much unlike the drunken youth who being bid to hit his masters finger with his when he perceived he could not do it he ran his whole fist against it But did she fall by apostacy By a partial one say you not a total one Good Sir in this division apostasy is set to expres a total relaps in opposition to heresy which is the partial Did she then fall by heresy or partial apostasy in adhering to any error in faith contary to the approved doctrin of the Church Here you smile seriously and tell me that since I take the Roman and Catholik Church to be one she could not indeed adhere to any thing but what she did adhere unto Sir I take them indeed to be one but here I speak ad hominem to one that does not take them so And then if indeed the Roman Church had ever swerved in faith as you say she has and be her self but as another ordinary particular Church as you say she is then might you find som one or other more general Church if any ther were possitively to judg her som Oecumenical councel to condemn her som fathers either greek or latin expresly to write against her as Protestants now do som or other grave solemn autority to censur her or at least som company of beleevers out of whose body she went and from whose faith she fell Since you are no wayes able to assign any of these particulars my Query remains unanswered and the Roman still as flourishing a Church as ever she was The fourth assertion frequently say you pleaded by our Authour is that all things as to religion were ever quiet and in peace before the Protestants relinquishment of the Roman Sea This principle you pretend is drawn out of Fiat Lux not becaus it is there but only to open a door for your self to expatiate into som wide general discours about the many wars distractions and factious altercations that have been aforetime up and down the world in som several ages of Christianity And you therfor say it is frequently pleaded by me becaus indeed I never speak one word of it And it is in truth a fals and fond assertion Though neither you nor I can deny that such as keep unity of faith with that Church can never so long as they hold it fall out upon that account If you had either cited the place or set down my own words they would have spoke their meaning I might say perhaps that our Land had no part of those disturbances upon the account of religion all the thousand years it was Catholik which

But Sir the thing you heed not and unto which I only speak if I any where hint at such a thing is this If the Scriptur be in two hands for example of the Protestant Church in England and of the Puritan who with that scriptur rose up and rebelled against her can the scriptur alone of it self decide the busines how shall it do it has it ever don it or can that written word now folitary and in private hands so settle any in a way that neither himself nor present adherents nor future generations shall question it or with as much probability dissent from it either totally or in part as himself first set it This Sir is the case unto which you do neither here nor in all your whole book speak one word And what you speak otherwis of the Scripturs excellency I allow it for good What is not against me is with me But no law whatsoever whether divine or humane can be a sufficient rule to men if no judge oversee it Ninth The Pope is a good man and seeks nothing but our good This also I no where aver I might mention the care and industry of that Sea and affirm it to be unworthily traduced But I never saw any Pope nor have I any such acquaintance with him as to know whether he be a good man in your sence or no free from pride anger covetousnes c. though in charity I do not use to judg hardly of any body Much less could I say that he whom I know to have a general solicitude for all Churches seeks nothing but our good Sir if I had pondered my words in Fiat Lux no better than you heed yours in your Animadversions upon it they might even go together both of them to lap pepper and spice or som other yet more vile employment Tenth that the devotion of Catholiks far transcends that of Protestants But Sir I never made in Fiat Lux any comparison between their devotions nor do I remember that I ever so much as mentioned the devotion of Protestants But you are the maddest Commentatour I have ever seen you first make the Text and then Animadversions upon it Here at length you conclude your chapter and would say you your book also if you had none to deal with but ingenious and judicious readers It seems what follows is for readers neither judicious nor ingenious And becaus I knew you took me for one of those I went on in my view Indeed had I not undertaken to give you an account of your whole book I could have been well content to stop here with ingenious and judicious readers and look no further Doubtles in this affair good wits will jump You would write no more had you none but judicious readers and these will read no more becaus they are judicious But I poor ass must jogge on 3 ch from page 110. to 119. Your third chapter concerns my preface which in part you allow and partly dislike And I am equally content with both 4 or 5 ch from page 119. to 148. Your fourth chapter by mistake of press is named fift and so I must here call it It begins my book and takes up five of my paragraffs at once You have loitered long about the gate like a trifling idlesbee and means now it seems when you come to my own words to go nimbly over them as of lesser concernment than your own forestalled conceits which you have hitherto made sport with You first set up a maypole and then danced about it and now at length half tired and almost out of breath you come home to me My first paragraff about Diversity of feuds you do not much except against But I see you do not affect the schoolmen haply for the same reason the French love not Talbot having been used in their infancy to be frighted with that name However you think I have good reason to make honourable mention of them becaus they were say you the hammerers and forgers of Popery Alas Sir I see that anger spoils your memory for in the twelfth and thirteenth chapter of that very book of your Animadversions you make Popery to be hammered and forged not a few hundred of years before any schoolmen were extant You check me also for saying that reformation of religion is pretended by emulous Plebians as though say you Hezekiah Josiah and other good Kings and Princes also of our own were emulous Plebeians But Sir when I say in Fiat Lux p. 20. what glory the emulous Plebeian sees given to higher spirits c. I only speak of the times of vulgar insurrection against autority as all men see except your self who will not My second paragraff of the Ground of quarrels you like well enough and explicate it with a text to help me out I could not haply tell how to cite James the fourth chapter the first and second vers of that chapter without your help However it is kindnes though it be but cours as Sir Thomas Moor told his maid when she kist him as he was going to execution and so I take it My third paragraff about nullity of title would you think every period of it confute my self But that saying of S. Paul An à vobis verbum Dei processit an ad vos solos pervenit which I make use of to stop the mouths of all vitilitigatours in religion was cited by me you think in an unhappy hour becaus say you ther is not any one single text of scriptur more satal to papal pretensions And why so Sir Becaus the Gospel you say came to Rome as well as it came to us here in England And this is all you say to prove that text to be so fatal to papal pretensions To this Sir I have already told you that it came not to us as it came to Rome and now I tell you again that it came to us from Rome and not to Rome from us And therfor is that text fatal to us not to them It may open their mouths but I am sure it stops ours Heats and resolutions the subject of my fourth paragraff which your self will not countenance you will not permit me to dislike You may talk against them and I may not But I may be excused for I knew not then such a man of art as your self would speak of that he understood better then I do The motives of moderation in my sixt paragraff you laugh at and I will not stop your merriment But in all this say you Fiat Lux hath a secret design which your eagle-sighted eye has discovered And in vain is the net spread before the eyes of a thing that hath a wing And I must know that the authour of Animadversions it that thing that hath a wing 6 ch from page 148. to 177. Your sixt chapter which meets just with my sixt paragraff of the Obscurity of God in the beginning where you declare the sufficient knowledg we have of God by

divine revelation whereunto by our humble beleef we have subscribed our consent is right and good but not at all against me who there treat a case of metaphysical concernment which you apprehend not It is no wonder then you should so much dislike all that my plea of uncertainty not only before any teacher appear but after too whiles you take the teacher and his words as they walk hand in hand actually linkt together with our beleef in him which actual beleef my supposition suspends and separates to the end I may consider whether any such teacher can appear so accomplisht as to move us who live in this present age and coin religion anew to a beleef invariable so that through your too much haste you utterly mistake all my whole discours and speak nothing at all to the case I treat of I speak wholly there as in other parts of Fiat Lux upon a supposition of the condition the generality of people are now actually in here in England where every one lets himself loose at pleasure to frame opinions and religions of themselvs And so cannot be thought to speak of a settled beleef but only of settling one or one to be settled which there and elswhere in that book I endeavour to show impossible to be so fixedly stated by any private man but that himself and others may rationally doubt it And that therfor our only way is to beleev and not dispute to submit to the old way we have formerly received and not to surmise a new This is the very substance scope and purpos not only of that paragraff but of my whole book which you do as utterly swerve from as ever any blinded man put to thrash a cock misplaced his blow Perhaps it is hard for you to conceiv your self in a state you are not actually in at present And if you cannot do this you will be absolutely unfit to deal with such hypothetik discourses as I see indeed you are Bellarmins little catechise had been a fitter book for you to write Animadversions upon than my Fiat Lux. There is good positive doctrin signed hic nunc and specified to your inclination and capacity I meddle not with any I deliver no positive doctrin at all I never descend to any particular conclusion or thesis of faith I defend no opinion but only this That every opinion is defensible and yet nonc impregnable Do you not blush Sir to see your own gross mistake God is my witnes when I finde you misled by your own errour so furiously to tax me with ignorance fraud blasphemy atheisme I cannot but pitty you And generally you talk at random as well in this chapter as others Let me give som little hint of it in particular for this once Where I in my foresaid paragraff say that differences of faith in its branches are apt to infer a suspition in its very root and consequently atheism To this you reply that That discours of mine is all rotten that Christian religion it self might thus be questioned that it is the argument of the Pagan Celsus that such contests have ever been that Protestants are resolved that Catholiks turn atheists as well as others that our religion is the same yesterday and to day that our evils are from our selves c. Doth this talk concern or plead to my assertion I know all this as well as you but that it is nothing to the purpos that I know and you it seems do not Though all this you say be true yet still it remains notwitstanding as true and certain as it was before and that is certain enough That difference of faith in its branches are apt to infer a suspicion in its very root and consequently atheism You have but beaten the air So likewise unto all that discours of mine If the Papist or Roman Catholik who first brought us the news of our Christianity be now becom so odious then may likewise the whole story of our Christianity be at length thought a Romance You speak with the like extravagancy and mind not my hypothetick at all to speak directly to my inference as it became a man of art to do But neglecting my consequence which in that discours is principally and solely intended you seem to deny my supposition which if my discours had been drawn into a syllogism would have been the minor part of it And it consists of two categories first that the Papist is now becom odious second that the Papist delivered us the first news of Christianity The first of these you little heed the second you deny That the Papist say you or Roman Catholik first brought Christ and his Christianity into this land is most untrue I wonder c. And your reason is becaus if any Romans came hither they were not Papists and indeed our Christianity came from the East namely by Joseph of Arimathea c. And this is all you say to my hypothetick or conditional ratiocination as if I had said nothing at all but that one absolute category which being delivered before I now only suppose You use to call me a civil logician but I fear a natural one as you are will hardly be able to justifie this motion of yours as artificial A conditional hath a verity of its own so far differing from the supposed category that this being fals that may yet be true For example if I should say thus A man who hath wings as an eagle or if a man had wings as an eagle he might fly in the air as well as another bird Such an assertion is not to be confuted by proving that a man hath not the wings of an eagle Yet so you deal with me here a great master of arts with a civil logician But that I may go along with you we had not Sir our Christianity immediately from the East nor from Joseph of Arimathea as I have already told you we Englishmen had not For as he delivered his Christianity to som Brittons when our land was not called England but Albion or Brittany and the inhabitants were not Englishmen but Brittons or Kimbrians so likewise did that Christianity and the whole news of it quite vanish being sodainly overwhelmed by the ancient deluge of paganisme nor did it ever come from them to us Nay the Brittons themselvs had so forgot and lost it that even they also needed a second conversion which they received from Pope Eleutherius And that was the onely news of Christianity which prevailed and lasted even amongst the very Brittans which seems to me a great secret of divine providence in planting and governing his Church as if he would have nothing to stand firm and lasting but what was immediately fixed and seated upon that rock For all other conversions have vanisht and the very seats of the other A postles failed that all might the better cement in an unity of one head Nay the tables which God made with his own hand were broken but the other

These few words Sir which I have bestowed upon you by way of supererogation above what I needed will somwhat inlighten you to discern the goodnes and necessity of my consequence If the Papist who first brought us the news of Christianity be now becom odious then may all Christianity at length be thought a Romance c. Religion like a hous if a breach be once made and not repaired to former unity will by degrees all moulder away till no one room be left intire 7 ch from page 177. to 188. Your seventh chapter finished in five leafs runs or flies over two or three of my paragraffs at once which make up above fifty pages concerning the obscurity of Nature and Providence All which discours of mine is you say nothing to my purpos but foisted in for a blinde to entertain my readers But Sir those judicious readers you lately left behind you who discern my purpos better than I see you do will tell you that it is so much to my purpos that nothing could be more At least you let all pass without either censure or commendation till you meet happily at length with a word or two of mine let fall in my ninth paragraff called Help about scripture This makes your heart leap it is a common place you know how to sport in and you never meet with that sound but it makes you dance Your chapter then which is written against all my philosophical discours of nature and providence is called scripture vindicated as though I had industriously wrote against scripture And therin you sweetly dilate upon the excellency and goodnes of the word of God as if I had any way diminished it or wrote against it just according to the tone of our late dismal times Lord I am for thy caus Lord I am left alone to plead thy caus Lord against thine enemies But Sir the few words I there speak only incidentally in the end of that my paragraff called Help concerning the surmises that men have about scripturs as they be but a small part of the many which I know to be now vented up and down the land in this our present state of separation one from another so if I had not given som touch of them in that metaphysick abstracted discours of Fiat Lux which proceeds as I have said upon a supposition of our chusing and making religions here in England at pleasur unto endles differences and divisions it had been a maimed and imperfect work and no wayes satisfactory unto those judicious readers unto whom I write though you do not And I cannot but tell you whatsoever you think of your self you are in truth except you dissemble and mistake on purpos but a weak man to take that as spoken absolutely by me and by way of positive doctrin which I only deliver upon an hypothesis apparent to all the world besides your self You would make a mad commentatour upon Solomons Ecclesiastes I speak upon a supposition of doubting which these times have brought upon us of interpreting accepting rejecting framing forging religions and opinions to our selves and you reply against me words and discourses that presuppose an assent of beleeving If a man beleev he cannot doubt And if he doubt not of the scriptures truth he cannot make exceptions against any of its properties But if any begin to question this or that or other part of doctrin contained in scriptur and delivered by those who first brought it as every one does who swerves from the Church he found himself in then I suppose such a one doubts And being now thereby separated from that body of beleevers to which he before by faith adhered he cannot now left to himself but proceed if he give attendance to the conduct of his own surmising thoughts to more suspicions then I was willing to express But Sir what you say here and so often up and down your book of Papists contempt of scriptur I beseech you will please to abstain from it for the time to com I have conversed with the Roman catholiks of France Flanders and Germany I have read more of their books both histories contemplatives and scholastick divines than I beleev you have ever seen or heard of I have seen the devotion both of common people colledges of sacred priests and religious houses I have communed with all sorts of people and perused their councels And after all this I tell you and out of my love I tell you that their respect to scriptur is real absolute and cordial even to admiration Others may talk of it but they act it and would be ready to stone that man that should diminish holy writ Let us not wrong the innocent The scriptur is theirs and Jesus Christ is theirs who also will plead their caus when he sees time 8 ch from page 188 to 198. In your eight chapter which falls upon my paragraff of Reason you are absolutely in a wood and wonder more then ordinary how that discours of mine concerning reason to be excluded from the imploiment of framing articles of religion can any wayes concern Protestants or be a confutation of Protestants As though Fiat Lux were written to any such concernment against Protestants Your head is so full it seems of that controverting faculty for Protestants against Papists that if Popery be but mentioned in a book without an epithet of detestation you conclude presently that the book is written for Popery against Protestants And if every thing therin contained answer not the idea of your brain then it is impertinent with you it is silly it is besides the purpos And this censur you have given still as you have gone along all my whole book hitherto of every part and parcel of it even from my preface to this present paragraff of Reason You cannot see how all that vain flourishing discours of mine concerning diversity of feuds ground of quarrels nullity of title heats and resolution motives to moderation obscurity of God natur and providence or the like should consute Protestancy or any way concern Protestants And therfor it is wholly impertinent Thus the famous Knight when he had once conceived an idea of his own errantry every flock of sheep must be an army and every wind-mill a giant or els it is impertinent to Don Quixot 9 ch from page 198 to 213. Your ninth chapter upon my paragraff of Light and Spirit is wholly spent neglecting all my other discours in solving the Jewish objection which I answer my self And if you have added any thing better than mine I shall be thankful for it as soon as I see it But I fear your vaunting flourishes about scriptur which you love to talk on will not without the help of your Credo and humble resignation solve the argument which that you may the easlier be quit of you never examin but only run on in your usual flourishes about the use and excellency of Gods word I told you in Fiat Lux what the Jew

me soberly Did the apostle mean by those words Cast out the Bond-woman with her son that the sons of Ishmael should be put to the sword or banisht out of their kingdom Now pray hear my discours which I coppied out of that original If my reader here be cautious he may easily discern a reason why all these sects are so boisterous one against another and every one of them against the Roman catholik Ismael disturbed the whole hous and was ever quarrelling and bustling against Isaac The reason is the same both here and there Ismael was a natural son and Isaac the legitimate heir And natural sons be generally seditious violent and clamorous As Ismael therfor was Isaac his natural brother so is a Protestant Minister but the by-blow of a catholick Priest the Presbyterian likewise to him and so forward till you com to the Quaker who was begot by a delusion and brought into the world by a fright his hand is against every man and every mans hand against him The remedy and only means of peace is Ejice ancillam cum puero suo These be my words out of S. Paul and what is his meaning the same is mine But you will have me in spight of my teeth becaus I speak nothing but good still to mean som evil I thought S. Paul had meant by those words if I must needs discover my understanding to you that the peaceable Isaacs were the only sons of Gods promised love and favour the inheritance of which blessing boisterous Ishmaels can never work out to themselvs by all their persecutions and bustling contentions And according to this meaning I concluded that to consider and think seriously of this were the only remedy and means of peace amongst us here in England Ejice ancillam cum puero suo is an antidote against all contentions emulations which are a suspicious mark not of an elect but of a reprobate But whatever I say I must neither think nor mean but what you will have me to do and that shall still be somthing that is odious An emblem hereof was the rod of Moses which in Moses hand was a walking-staff but out of it a serpent 15 ch from page 286 to 304. In your fifteenth chapter upon my paragraff of Messach you are in a mighty plunge what this Messach should be and what the ctimology of that word Latin it is not greek it is not and you are sure it is not hebrew surely it is say you some uncouth word like that of the Gnosticks Paldabaoth Alas good Sir it is English a pure English word used here in England all the Saxons time and som hundred years after the conquest till the French monosyllable had by little and little worn out the last syllable of the word And you may find it yet in the old Saxon laws which I have read my self those especially of King Ina if I rightly remember the name which be yet extant wherin strict care and provision is made that a due reverence be kept by all people in the Church all the time of their Messach which now we call Mess or Mass. Then having laughed at my admiration of catholik Service you carp at me for saying that the first Christians were never called together to hear a sermon and to convince me you bring som places out of S. Pauls Epistles and the Acts which commend the ministery of the word This indeed is your usual way of refuting my speeches you flourish copiously in that which is not at all against me and never apply it to my words lest it should appear as it is impertinent I deny not that people were by Gods word converted or that converts were further instructed or that the preaching of Gods word is good and useful many wayes but that which I say is that primitive Christians were never called together for that end as the great work of their Christianity This I have so clearly proved both in the second dialogue of the Reclaimed Papist and also in the foresaid paragraff of Messach that you divert from that to declaim of the necessity and excellency of preaching and bring neither text nor reason that may reach to my words at all You go on and wonder much that we should hear nothing in scriptur of this Christian sacrifice is any such were Sir you will neither hear nor see But say you the passion of our Lord is our Christian sacrifice Do not I say so too But that this incruent sacrifice was instituted by the same Lord before his death to figur out daily before our eyes that passion of his which was then approaching in commemoration of his death so long as the world should last this tho I plainly speak it you take no notice of it But the Judaical sacrifice say you is said by the Apostle in his Epistle to the Hebrews in this to differ from the sacrifice of Christians that ours was don but once theirs often It is true the sacrifice of our Lords passion of which the apostle in that whole discours only treats in opposition to that of bulls and goats was so don but once that it could not be don twice But as the sacrifices of the old law were instituted by almighty God to be often iterated before the passion of the Messias for a continual exercise of religion so did the same Lord for the very same purpos of religious exercise institute another to be iterated after his death unto which it were to have reference when it should be past as the former had to the same death when it was to com And it hath a reference so much the more excellent as that it doth by the almighty power of the same Messias exhibit to the faith of his beleevers that very true real body as crucified amongst us wherof the former Mosaical sacrifices gave meerly a shadow Did not our Lord do this Were not the apostles according to this rite 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sacrificing to our great Lord God when S. Paul was by imposition of hands segregated from the laiety for his divine service as I clearly in that my paragraff evince out of the history of the Acts of the apostles No say you the apostles were not then about any sacrifice but only preaching Gods word or som such thing to the people in the name and behalf of God But Sir is this to be in earnest or to jest The sacred text sayes they were sacrificing to our Lord liturgying and ministring to him You say They were not sacrificing to God but only preaching to the people And now the question is whether you or I more rightly understand that Apostolicall book For my sence and meaning I have all antiquity as well as the plain words of sacred text you have neither 16 ch from page 304 to 313. Your sixteenth chapter upon my paragraff of the Virgin Mary which is you say the most disingenious of all my book is spent in an invective against calumnies which

that lives the substance of it which is soon and easily conveighed Christ our Lord drew a compendium of all divine truths into two words which his great apostle again abridged into one And if the several gospels for every day in the year which are or may be in the hands of all catholiks the chiefest particles of divine epistles books of sacred history and meditation upon all the mysteries of salvation and spiritual treatises for all occasions and uses which be numberles amongst catholiks adjoyned to the many several rites of examination of conscience daily and continual practis of prayer and fasting and an orderly commemoration of the things God hath wrought for us throughout the year which all by law are tied to observ and do observ them may not give a sufficient acquaintance of what concerns our salvation and promote them enough towards it I am to seek what it is that can or what further good it may do to read the letter of Saint Pauls epistles to the Romans for example or Corinthians wherin questions and cases and theological discourses are treated that vulgar people can neither understand nor are at all concerned to know And I pray you tell me ingeniously and without heat what more of good could accrew to any by the translated letter of a book whereof I will be bold to say that nine parts in ten concern not my particular either to know or practis than by the conceived substance of Gods will to me and my own duty towards him or what is ther now here in England when the letter of scriptur is set open to every mans eye any more either of peace or charity piety or justice than in former catholik times when the substance of Gods word and will was given people in short and the observance of their duty prolixly prest upon them What did they do in those ancient catholik times they flockt every day in the week to their Churches which stood continually open there to pray and meditate and renew their good purposes they sung psalms hymns and canticles all over the land both day and night they built all our churches that we have at this day remaining amongst us and as many more which we have razed and pulled down they founded our universities established our laws set out tythes and glebe-land for their clergy built hospitals erected corporations in a word did all the good things we found don for our good in this our native kingdom But Quid agitur in Anglia Consulitur de religione The former Christians practised and we dispute they had a religion we are still seeking one they exercised themselves in good works by the guidance of their holy catholik faith which leads to them all these works we by our faith evacuate as menstruous rags they had the substance of true religion in their hearts we the text in our lips they had nothing to do but to conform their lives to Gods will all our endeavour is to apply Gods word to our own factions Sir mistake me not The question between us is not Whether the people are to have Gods word or no but whether that word consists in the letter left to the peoples disposal or in the substance urgently imposed upon people for their practis And this becaus you understand not but mistake the whole business all your talk in this your eighteenth chapter vades into nothing Where Fiat Lux sayes in that forenamed paragraff that the Pentateuch or hagiography was never by any High-priest among the Jews put into a vulgar tongue nor the Gospel or Liturgy out of greek in the Eastern part of the Christian Church or latin in the Western You slight this discours of mine becaus hebrew greek and latin was say you vulgar tongues themselvs I know this well enough But when and how long ago were they so not for som hundreds of years to my knowledge And was the Bible Psalms or Christian liturgy then put into vulgar tongues when those they were first writ in ceased to be vulgar This you should have spoke to if you had meant to say any thing or gain-say me Nor is it to purpos to tell me that S. Jerome translated the Bible into Dalmatian I know well enough it has been so translated by some special persons into Gothish Armenian Ethiopian and other particular dialects But did the Church either of the Hebrews or Christians either greek or latin ever deliver it so translated to the generality of people or use it in their service or command it so to be don as a thing of general concernment and necessity So far is it from this that they would never permit it This I said and I first said it before you spoke and your meer gainsay without further reason or probability of proof cannot disposses me Dr. Cousins now byshop of Durham lately sojourneying in Paris when he understood of a grecian byshops arrival there did with some other English Gentlemen in his company give him a visit and with the same or like company went afterwards to see him The articles of our English Church were translated into greek and shown him Many questious were asked him about the service of the grecian Church praying for the dead invocation of Saints real presence confession c. Dr. Cousins can tell himself what answer he received from that venerable grave prolate Cyrillus archbishop of Trapesond for that was his name and title In brief he owned not those articles as any way consonant to the faith of the Greeks who beleeved and had ever practised the contrary He also told them distinctly and openly that Mass or Liturgy was and had ever been the great work of their Christianity all over the greek Church that confession of sins to a priest praying for the dead invocation of saints and such like points wherein we in England differ from papists were all great parts of their religion and their constant practis Finally he let them know that all the Liturgies both those of St. Basil St. Chrysostom St. Gregory Nazianzen were ever kept in the learned greek differing from the vulgar language And withall showed his own greek book of Liturgy which he used himself at the altar Dr. Cousins did himself see him officiate with his lay-brother a monk of St. Basil belonging to St. Catherins monastery in mount Sina ministring to him at the altar and found both by his words and practis that in all those and other essential parts and observances of Christianity the Greeks agreed perfectly with the Roman Church This testimony Sir of a venerable arch-byshop to such a worthy person as Dr. Cousins might I should think suffice to justifie my words and make you beleev with me that Christian Liturgies have ever been used as Fiat Lux speaks in a learned language distinct from the vulgar But we need not go far from home for a testimony Neither the Bible nor service-Service-book was ever seen here in England for a thousand years space in any

singular in this book of Whithies that he frames no answers out of any judgment of his own ripened by a long and serious consideration of the things he speaks of in this his reply but recurres presently to the books of those his forenamed masters in his library and against your reasonings only opposes their words and fore-studied evasions such as they had invented each one his own way upon semblable occasions not heeding at al whether your discours against which he writes hath anticipated those shifts afore-hand as generally it does yea or no nor how far they evacuate one another This if he had pondred well which perhaps poor man he could not do it had prevented much of his collections and sunk his huge book into a far smaller bulk To this quoth he hath Chamier told you that c. Can you not see what incomparable Chillingworth hath taught you that c. You will still be impertinent although great Plessis hath informed you that c. Where wer your eyes when reverend Hall hath so plainly told you that c. And he brings somtimes not only four or five several answers of one author to the same thing all I suppose he found there written in his book but half a dozen of those his authors with all their manifold evasions to one single catholik ground and for the most part so confusedly that the first answer of the first author hath presently another first as consisting of two parts and the first of them may haply have another first so that three succeeding periods begin oftentimes with three firsts one after an other according as he penned them haud over head out of the books he wrote venting his reasons as som young children void worms three or four head and tails together Nor heeds he at all whether these his authors do chance to contradict one another in those affairs for which he brings them in so unnaturally together one affirming what the other denies one rejecting what the other allows one distinguishing what the other absolutely grants c. This benefit he will reap by this confused interlocution of his masters that if he com to be challenged upon any of the answers which he makes by their lips he shall not need when he findes them either weak or fals or any way prejudicial to own then for his what he had openly profest before-hand to be another mans replies So that they will serv a bird all bedecked with the feathers of many a fowl for pride and pompous show unto such as will admire him and to such as shall question him for a present remedy of excuse This is not my feather but the Cuckows It is not my saying but Chamiers It is the reply of Chillingworth It is the speech of Dr. Hammond and not any assertion of mine c. What can any one do Sir to such a man but neglect him Truly I look upon Whitby as a kind of master of Revels that appoints other men who are to speak every one their parts and gives them their qu of entrance whilst himself stands in som privat place to look on and see how they do perform And he provides commonly against any one of your catholik grounds or reasons for it four or five Protestant speakers by their several wayes to disable it wherof one shall haply say that the autority you bring is good but carries another meaning a second shall affirm it is naught and forged a third stands indifferent whether it be admitted or no but is sure it makes against you a fourth acknowledges it for your purpos but disparages the authour whence it is taken a fift admits both the autority of the author and truth of his words but tells you it is only one of his errors Whitby himself not saying all the while which of all these replies he holds himself for good but imagining you wholly opprest and overwhelmed with his various collection of contradicting drollery he passes on exulting to your next point or following reason in the same mode and method to be crusht And truly Sir one may see in this one book of Whitbies at a view what a judicious examiner who loves to read and ponder all things seriously cannot but observ in all the writers since the reformation put together One admits the catholik ground and autority another rejects and villifies it another accepts the words but by some trope or other turns the sens another allows the natural sens but sayes it is one of his errours another will not have that nor any other authority upon earth to be of any force in those affairs c. And thus they do about every particular of antient faith still laughing and hugging one anothers fancies though never so much contradictory as well to one another as to the common faith they all impugn What a strange confusion would this caus in the world if the like proceeding were countenanced in civil as here in spiritual affairs and men might be outed of their estates and possessions by half a score witty lawyers with cunning querks and subtle sophistries deluding his right and tenure no judg admitted to give sentence And indeed although this contest begin in spiritual affairs yet it ever ends in civil When they have once oated a Land of their old religion and the prosperity and peace attending it mens persons estates dignities nay the very laws of the Land are apprehended and brought into the power of these reformers to the utter desolation of a Kingdom And as this book of Whitbies Sir is a compendions mirrour of all Anticatholiks dealing with the old Roman faith so will I give you in civil affairs a perfect emblem of all Whitbies book That all may clearly see if this proceeding be allowable what confusion and injustice must needs follow The Emblem of the old Roman religion I make Caius the seventeenth Knight for example of his family which hath continued in the state time out of mind A faction rises to dispossess him of all that he and his ancestours had so long and peaceably enjoyed They tell him in general that his ancestors were intruders but differ very much about the time when the invasion was first made One sayes 200 year ago another 800 another 500 several men several wayes and cannot agree They com at last to his own particular title Caius shews his forefathers succession legally descending and quietly possessing for so many generations and an evident testament also for himself wherin it is expresly said Ego Gonvillus c. constituo Caium silium meum beredem bonorum mcorum omnium c. I Gonvil do constitute my son Caius heir of all my goods c. The adversaries put case Chamier Dally Plessis Blondel Baxter Hammond Hall c. laugh at this and tell him it is all impertinent and proves nothing 1 Alas quoth Chamier these words are plainly corrupted It was not written Caium but Saium And the corruption is easie only the bottom

of som others in this land stands justly charged with those crimes whereof he acknowledges catholik religion free and that Papists also or Roman Catholiks are the only men that have universally exhibited themselves unblamable towards that breast of love and mercy from whence he would have them all excluded And to make these Papists odious he names som wars and troubles of theirs in Ireland Poland Bohemia Savoy Indeed he needed not have wandred so far as Bohemia or Poland The story of our own England would have afforded a large volum of matter if all that Papists have ever don must be attributed to their religion for wars and broils enough to tire a reader How many battles have there been here between the Scot and English between the Sax and Norman between the Norman and Britton between the English and French at Agencourt and all over France with much bloodshed and slaughter between the two houses of York and Lancaster at home when all these parties were Papists and no other religion known amongst them Is there no other principle to attribute all these disorders unto but that religion which endeavours as much as it is able to stifle all these evil fruits of concupiscence amongst men which som time or other will shoot up notwithstanding all the heavenly endeavour of that divine seed implanted in men on purpos to suppres it Must or can Protestants be justly charged with the treasons murders robberies of all such as have been imprisoned in our Jayls or hanged at Tyburn since the reformation And yet thus we deal with poor Catholiks to adde affliction upon affliction and extinguish that small sparkle of life which is left in their bodies It is surely a general fault in Protestants that we think in our hearts whatever we speak outwardly that Roman catholiks are as they should be all Saints all spotles in their lives all of them unblamable universally unblameable And hence it is that if ever we discover one traytor fool or knave amongst any of that profession we exult and make bonefires for joy and record it in our books one age after another that all the world may know and ever remember that even som of them have been transgressors We do not wonder so at our own Protestants though thousands of them should prove traytors together and many are continually hanged and som also burnt for their wicked crimes I am sure the Papists have not themselvs any such opinion of men of their own religion that they should so necessarily be honest and good as that it is impossible any should be otherwise But even in catholik countreys they have their whips and stocks and gibbets and prisons and torturs provided for malefactors as well as we have here And Princes will there go to wars as well as we Did not the Kings of Israel and Judah do so And the people too think themselvs bound even by their religion to follow them Nor have any people rose in rebellious herds to do mischief but they would somtimes pretend religion for it although they act indeed against the dictamen not only of other mens religion but perhaps their own too Catholiks know their religion is good and pure and holy and apt to make all men so that walk according to its direction But if any swerv they pitty indeed and pray for their serious repentance but they wonder not as we do at it much less do they rejoyce when any of our Protestants are taken and hanged for treason nor do they write or spread it abroad in books nor make bonefires or keep holydayes for joy of a thing which is indeed the object of their grief and pitty But Mr. Whitby speaks here so much of equivocations and mental reservations as proper and peculiar only unto Papists which render them although they should promis and swear allegiance never so seriously not at all to be beleeved or trusted that I began to doubt whether all London and the whole Land may not haply be Papists although I thought not of it One thing I am sure of and all men are of my mind that when we go into a shop in London or into any market or fair in England to buy wares when they tell us yea and swear too that the thing we cheapen cost them so much out of their own purse we do not beleev a word they say but think they have either som reservation in their mind or use an equivocation or ly And even Mr. Whitby himself must either be a Papist too if mental reservation be peculiar only unto them when he sayes so often in his book of which I treat That there is not one reason in Mr. Cresseys book that is pertinent not one authority but corrupted not one instance but ushered in with disadvantages to the truth and sorgery or if he be not a Papist he must in these and several other passages in this his book wherin he either secretly equivocates or openly lyes at least Papistare and act that which he sayes only Papists practice To give one example he sayes p. 237. That one general councel calls the respect given to images a hundred times by the name of worship I have good reason to think that one Councel would not use that word much above fourscore times if they be rightly numbred So likewise he sayes here p. 4. That the whole colledg of Jesuits in London said that they would rather promote the late Kings ruin then hinder it lest the Puritans should make use of his distresses to any advantage O too too foolish and malicious calumny For surely this is somthing more then an equivocation They rather promote then hinder it How could they do either the one or the other Thus som of our mad countreymen were not ashamed to tell it abroad about ten years ago even in catholik countreys where they travelled that they who sate in Court and condemned our gracious King were most of them Papists and Jesuits And did all the whole colledg of Jesuits in London conclude this so generally that there was not any one against it Who took the votes that he could be so assured of this great seret And where is this colledg of Jesuits in London Who ever heard of any such thing Will ever any of this wild talk pass for other then the dream of a man in Bedlam We shall ere long be frighted by such as Whitby and Baxter from hanging our pot over the fire lest the whole colledg of Jesuits in the moon should conspire together to water down upon our heads and spoil our pottage They would never tell us these things or hope to be beleeved were not the opinion they hav of our reason as small as the confidence they hav of their own audacity is great And what will the colledg the whole colledg of Jesuits here in London determin next If they should chance to decree that no whale or cod or herring should ever com into the North seas as now it

were had been only sent over to make folks sick they had don him som service but to poison men and kill them down-right that may give the Physician a just caus of wrath against those intruding empyricks He begins his book thus I suppose it is a matter of faith with all Papists that the Pope is infallible and that he can depose Kings c. Thus doth that wise man open his mouth and begin his Recipe Two things very seldom seen in any Academick conclusions when students defend a whole body of divinity in the schools but never delivered in Gospel or declared in Councels or heard or thought of by any one Catholik in the world as any thing of his religion these Mr. Denton supposes to be matter of faith with all Papists I would ask Mr. Denton whether he thinks it a matter of faith among Papists That the earth moves or no. If one Catholik hold those two assertions which in his sence I cannot tell whether any one do or no I will be bold to say a thousand hold this The next book Dr. Denton writes against Papists will haply begin thus I suppose it is a matter of faith with all Papists that the earth moves And then he may go on with his moon-stories and build castles in the air and Dentonise as here he hath done Ch. 21. from p. 448. to 456. Allows that general Councels although they be not infallible are highly notwithstanding both themselvs and their decrees to be esteemed provided that they keep to Gods rule that clear reason be not against them that men of worth do not gainsay them and that their proceedings be legal Not otherwis Thus he recalls himself and mends the matter All these four things if general Councels observ they shall be observed themselves notwithstanding they may haply be a company of bastards and buffoons neither legitimately begotten nor rightly baptised nor validly elected nor legally ordained And whether these specified conditions be or be not in councels and their decrees every man as Whitby here and several other places of his book speaks is to judg according to his own pleasur and discretion So that according to his rule the discretion and will of particular men is the final resolv of all religion faith and practis Whence it will follow that if there be as many religions as men they must be all good When you object Sir that such a liberty as this will be destructive even of all articles canons and acts of Parliament in order to our establisht Protestancy or other affairs To this Whitby replyes according to his custom very hotly Doth it becom a consuter of Mr. Chillingworth saith he thus to trifle Hath he not told you that others may make the same defence as we as murderers may cry not guilty as well as innocent persons but not so justly not so truly For Gods sake who trifles here when both Chillingworth and Whitby too had put into every private mans hand an equal power of judging admitting or rejecting the decrees orders and laws of their superiours he now distinguishes with Chillingworth his fanatick Master that som do it justly and truly others not so justly not so truly But who shall pass judgment upon the final and only irrefragable judg or aver such a thing of any one who hath an equal and unlimited power beforehand to take and reject what himself pleases Both truth and justice must solely be in his will who may admit and refuse as himself willeth But the party now esteemed faulty will be meal-mouthed we must think and not dare to say he both truly and justly does what he does or to affirm that he uses his own discretion in that which he takes or refuses by his own liking The Protestant forsooth separated from the Roman both truly and justly but the Presbyterian Independent and Quaker these refuse the Protestants communion not so truly not so justly although they do it upon the same right and title and by the same principles the other used himself and allows to other men The Protestant shall reject the Parliament of Prelates who establisht Catholik religion and do it justly and truly only for this reason that they do it upon their own discretion but another if he shall except against a Council of Lords and Commons that shall set up Prelate Protestancy although according to Whitby they be no judges of our faith he does it not so justly not so truly though he do it by his own discretion allow'd him to be his final resolv What is this but to do wickedly and talk fondly First to subjugate all degrees of autority to every mans judgment as the final and last rule and then to question that rule which he made subject unto nothing But that we may understand what a worthy respect Mr. Whitby has for general Councels he tells us here that it is neither impossible nor improbable that general Councels may erre Nay our writers quoth he do not acknowledg generall Councels to be infallible even in fundamentals And Whitby writes we all know by this time what his writers writ before him I cannot but marvel at this his talk For Whitby in several places of his book affirms himself that fundamentals are so perspicuous and clear that no man can be so ignorant if he be not a natural fool as to mistake therin We saith he p. 104. distinguish between points fundamental and not fundamental These are clearly revealed and so of necessary beleef And to determine their sence there is no more need of a judg then for any other perspicuous truth What need of a judge to decide whether scriptur affirms that there is but one God that this God cannot lye that Jesus Christ was sent by his commission into the world that he was crucified and rose again that without faith and obedience we cannot com to heaven These and such like are the truths which we entitle fundamental And if the sence of this needs an infallible judg then let us bring Euclids elements to the bar and call for a judg to decide whether twice two make four So he likewise avers p. 441. that fundamentals are as perspicuous as if they were written by a sun-beam He reckons not the Trinity amongst his fundamentals perhaps he does not take it for one or will have no fundamentals but what are perspicuous I could make it easily appear that even fundamentals have been denied and that with as great reason as any he calls otherwis are denied now But I must be brief That which I here note is this What is as perspicuous as a sun-beam as certain as Euclids elements as evident as that which is most clearly revealed as notorious a known truth as that twice two make four so clear that there needs no judg to determin it This the Prelates of the Christian world met together which none but a natural fool can mistake must not be able to discern They and none but they can erre in

those ugly colours which so injuriously defaced that Religion that most innocent Religion which under the name of Popery lies here traduced by the pen of her own ungrateful Scribe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What Doctour Taylor against Popery And such a Disswasive as this But my amazement Sir is now blown over The Doctour appeared to me after some serious thoughts to be for a special reason that touches none so much as himself in some manner excusable That none should love Popery or ever come to know it concerns not only his wealth and dignity and life of ease which is the common caus of others also with himself but all the honour and fame he hath hitherto got by transcribing popish as now he calls but in former times named Catholik authors For having bin twenty years and upwards deeply plunged in reading and transcribing som of the innumerous spiritual books that are amongst Catholiks not only in Latin but other languages of several Kingdoms where that Religion flourishes he hath culled out thence many fine treatises which he hath set forth in his own name and language to his much renown and no small wealth and dignity amongst us Nor is it to be doubted but that he means for his yet further glory reaped from other mens labours and that spirit of piety which thence he got into his own pen to write out yet one book more The same store-house that furnished him with the life of Christ will dictate to him also the lives of his twelve Apostles and many other raptures of divine love and heavenly devotion And if people be but kept from Popery as he hopes and labours they may it will never be known whence he gathers those his fragrant pieties It was not handsom yet a piece of wisdom it was in the Grecian Cynick to spit in the dish which pleased him best lest others should taste how good it was and deprive him therby of som of his content This book of Doctour Taylors called a Disswasive printed in Dublin and as I understand reprinted here in London I suppose in the very same words by reason of the Authors absence is large enough containing 173 pages in quarto marvellously bitter and contumeliously insulting over that Religion which he cannot but know he misreports Indeed Sir there is more popery in one page of Dr. Taylors Life of Christ which he transcribed from popish Authors than is in all this whole book which he writes against those Authors popery that is owned by them to be their religion all this he puts upon them under the notion of popery throughout his whole hundred and seventy three pages except haply som three or four words whose sence also he perverts no Catholik upon earth acknowledges for any parcel of his faith Is not this strange disingenuous dealing How he comes to act thus and what is the feat he makes use of to discolour their Religion you shall hear by and by when I have first opened his book and the things contained in it His Disswasive hath three chapters and each chapter several sections The first chapter is intitled thus The Doctrin of the Roman Church in the conroverted articles is neither Catholik Apostolik nor Primitive The second thus The Church of Rome as it is at this day disordered teaches doctrins and uses practices which are in themselvs or in their true and immediat consequences direct impieties and give warranty to a wicked life The third thus The Church of Rome teaches doctrins which in many things are destructive of Christian society in general and of Monarchy in special both which the Religion of the Church of England and Ireland does by her doctrins greatly and Christianly support These three be things of importance and must either be great notorius crimes in the Defendant or monstrous slanders in the Plaintiff A Religion that is new impious and unsociable that is against antiquity piety and society is hardly good enough for Hell Who is he that shall dare to profess or countenance such a religion upon earth But let us see in order how all this is demonstrated to us by an old pious and sociable Doctour His first Chapter First then That the doctrin of the Roman Church in the controverted Articles is neither Catholik Apostolik nor Primitive he declares in eleven sections which make up that his first chapter First section sayes that the Roman Church pretends a power to make new Articles of faith and doubtles uses that power and for that end corrupts the Fathers and makes expurgatory Indices to alter their works The second that this power of making new articles is a novelty and yet beleeved by Papists Third that the Roman doctrin of Indulgences is unknown to antiquity Fourth that Purgatory is another novelty Fift Transubstantiation another Sixt Half-communion another Seventh Liturgy in an unknown tongue another Eighth Veneration of Images the like Ninth Pictures the same Tenth the Popes general Episcopacy likewise And the eleventh and last speaks almost as many more all of a heap to make up his one last section as Invocation of Saints sufficiency of scriptures absolving sinners before pennance simple Priests giving Confirmation selling Masses for nine pence circumgestation of the Eucharist intention in Sacraments Mass-sacrifice and supper without Communion All this is Popery all new and therfor the Roman Church is neither Catholik Apostolik nor Primitive This is the sum of his first Chapter What in the name of God does this Author of the Disswasive your learned Doctour mean by the Church of Rome and by the doctrine of the Roman Church This Sir is a main busines and ought if he had meant sincerity to have been firmly stated before any thing were treated either of the one or the other But this he utterly here omits which he should principally have heeded that he may speak loosely and hand over head anything he may deem fit to black his own paper and other mens fame If he take them as he ought the Church of Rome for that universality of Catholik beleevers who live in several kingdoms of the world united in faith and sacraments under the Spirit of Jesus Christ and one visible Pastour and the doctrin of that Church for the body of faith and religion handed to them from age to age as taught and delivered from Christ and his Apostles which they call in the phrase of St. Paul Depositum fidei or treasure of faith I say if he mean this by the Roman Church and doctrin of that Church as he ought to do I will be bold to aver that ther is not any one claus or period in his book true and three parts of his book absolutely impertinent If he mean otherwis then Catholiks themselvs conceiv or profess he was bound in honour to make his mind known that the renown of an innocent Religion and worthy persons might not suffer prejudice by his ambiguous speech But perhaps he studied how to abuse that Religion that he may

who was Leo the tenth to be any judg in those Controversies of Religion or to have any power statuendi of deciding or determining in such affairs Nor is ther any the least mention either in Luther's resistance or Leo his censure about constituting new articles but only deciding the old which Luther would have thought to be erroneous however strengthened by antiquity and from which old errours he would make himself a reformation and innovation by the right which was in himself not subjected to any man no not to the Pope himself in those affairs Is this a mistake think you in your Disswader or somthing wors Truly I cannot think he was so ignorant The like insincerity doth this your Disswader exhibit in all that his talk of the Catholiks dealing with the Fathers works and the indexes or tables adjoyned to them jumbling his words so confusedly together that his reader might beleev that to be don to the Fathers writings themselvs which the Churches care provided to be done to the false glosses tables and indexes annexed to those writings and that to be taken out of those writings which ever was and still is in them and Printers and Correctours complaining of that fault of making alterations in the Fathers Editions which they did not so much as think of Which is a most slupendious insincerity And thus saith he are the Fathers maimed and curtailed by Papists insomuch that Sixtus Senensis praises Pope Pius 5. for this his care in purging the Fathers works I say this whole talk of his is most prodigiously unjust For that Index Expurgatorius extended not to any writings or works of the Fathers but only to the marginal notes and false glosses and indexes or tables put to them by the hereticks and therfor are Tertullian Origen and some others still printed intire though ther be not a few things in them contrary to Catholik faith And this the very words of Junius a Correctour of a Press cited by the Doctour clearly intimates What saith he Papists dare not do with the Fathers they practise upon us he means Protestant printers and writers and with their little forks thrust out our annotations in the margent and our sayings in the indices although they be consonant to the Fathers minds But saith he this care was so great in Pius 5. that Sixtus Senensis commends the Pope for his industry in purging the Fathers works He did so indeed but if the Doctour had spoken out the sentence he had betrayed his own false heart which he would not willingly do Expurgari saith Senensis emaculari curasti omnium Catholicorum Scriptorum ac praecipue veterum Patrum scripta haereticorum aetatis nostrae faecibus contaminata venenis infecta Your Doctour our Disswader makes Senensis praise the Pope for his purging the Fathers as though he had scowred and scraped off the substance wheras he commended him only for his care in cleansing them from the infectious notes and glosses superadded to them by the hereticks of our times But Sir that I may tell you once for all The falsifications of Authours perverted by this your Disswader are so many so notorious and gross ones that in the very relating them I shall tire both my self and you My design is only to let you know that this whole work of his Disswasive from Popery if the proofs and citations he brings for his talk were true as they are all false signifies nothing at all Two worthy Catholik Gentlemen have discovered by the help of the Libraries in London and Oxford so many most gross falsifications one of them a hundred and fifty the other yet more and greater that it cannot but amaze an honest minded render to behold them Pray read them Sir and ponder seriously and so rid of that trouble I shall make the more haste in my own design It was their endeavour it seems to show him to be dishonest mine is only to prove him impertinent God reward them for their pains and help me in mine For my hand denies me now his office not able to write with that facility it was wont But becaus I saw no abler pen to appear as I thought they would in the confutation of this slanderous book I judged it my part Sir to give you som general hints of light concerning it till there might issue som more plenary confutation by a better hand And here Sir you must know too that I had no sooner finished this my Epistle but that I understood of another book against this Doctour Taylors Disswasive a very solid book written by Ja. Ser. in order to his own book called Sure-Footing lately set forth which made me doubt for a while whether I should let this of mine appear especially when I considered the industry care and solidity of those three men the last wherof had so taken up what the other two had left for me to say and so utterly confounded this Disswasive that I might well be silent But I remembred a story which I had sometime read in holy writ of Joas the King of Israel who coming to visit Elizeus the Prophet when he lay sick on his death-bed was bid by him for his encouragement against his enemies to strike the ground with the javelin he had in his hand Joas at his word struck the floor three times But the holy man of God was angry with him and said If thou hadst struck five or six or seven times thou hadst smote Syria even to an utter consummation but now thou shalt smite it but thrice So very faulty is this Disswasive that it cannot be smote too often even to an utter consummation §. 2 Which is about a leash of new Articles Sayes that in the Church of Rome faith and Christianity encreas like the moon and that ther be now two new articles of faith a coining namely the immaculate Conception and the Popes being above the Councel and one other lately produced in the Councel of Trent sess 21. which is That although the antient Fathers did give the Communion to Infants yet they did not beleev it necessary to salvation Which decree is saith he beyond all bounds of modesty and evident truth Here your Doctour tells news of one Article lately made and two more a coining which will shortly be out of the mint both which news he knows but we know not Indeed Sir this section belongs more to a writer of Diurnals or weakly Intelligencer than to a Doctour of Divinity And therfor at the reading of it I turned suddenly to the frontispiece of the book to see whose Imprimatur it had to it And I found it licensed not by Mr. l'Estrange but Geo. Stfadling First then he tells us news to come and then news past A pair of faith articles are now he saith in the mint and will shortly come forth The Virgins immaculate Conception and the Popes being above a Councel But how can your Disswader say that these two are shortly to com forth whereas

The Canon or Article of saith concerning this point runs thus Si quis dixerit parvulis antequam ad annos discretionis pervenerint necessariam esse Ettcharistiae communionem anathema sit And this is all the articles of faith determined in that Councel upon this affair wherein the faithful are forbid to hold that the Communion of Infants is necessary to salvation If any one sayes the Councel shall say that communion of the Eucharist is necessary to babes before they come to years of discretion let him be Anathema And this doctrin I am perswaded your Disswader himself holds for good But this would not make him sport enough And therfor he lets pass the Canon or Article of saith and speaks of the doctrin or Declaration of it which is not propounded for faith at all to any beleever although all Catholiks that know it adhere to it as good and solid And this is his first legerdemain to propound that for an Article of faith which is only a doctrin or declaration of faith His next trick is to make it run short like a Canon of faith wheras it is a large and serious explication wherein those words he catches at are so connexed with others that their rationality there appears which here is hid Third is that he makes it the Councels busines to determin only a matter of fact of the ancient Fathers not beleeving infants communion necessary though themselves used it which was none of the Councels intention but insinuated only by way of anticipation to cut off the arguments of hereticks who strengthned their errour about the necessity of infants communion by example of the ancient Fathers who practised it Denique eadem sancta Synodus docet parvulos ufu rationis carentes nulla obligari necessitate ad Sacramentalem Eucharistiae Communionem Siquidein per Baptismi lavacrum regencrati Christo incorporati adeptam jam filiorum Dei gratiam in illa aetate amittere non possunt Neque ideo tamen daninanda est antiquitas si eum morent in quibusdam locis aliquando servavit Ut enim sanctissimi illi Patres sui sacti probabilem causam pro illius temporis ratione habuerunt ita certe eos nulla salutis necessitate id fecisse sine controversia credendum est Thus speaks the Councel in their doctrin or declaration of that Article of faith Si quis dixerit But enough of this busines And although your Disswaders talk deserv it not yet your own satisfaction concerning these three novelties here specified becaus I thought it might haply require what I have said therof pray take it in good part And be assured that faith and Christianity in the Roman Church increases not like the moon although out of that Church it decreas indeed like the moon in her wain daily and in all Reformations to the wors §. 3. Which is about Indulgences Sayes that the doctrin of Indulgences is wholly new and unknown to antiquity as Antonius Prierias Byshop Fisher Agrippa and Durandus Popish doctours do acknowledg And hence it is that Gratian and Magister sententiarum both of them eminent doctors among the Papists have not a word of them Indeed in primitive times when the Byshop imposed several pennances and that they were almost quite performed and a great caus of pitty intervened or danger of death or an excellent repentance or that the martyrs interceded the Byshop did somtimes indulge to the penitent and relax som remaining parts of his pennance But the Roman doctrin of Indulgence is another thing They talk of Jubilees and treasure of the Church and pilgrimages which ancient Fathers either speak against or never heard of In sine theirs is becom a doctrin of solution not absolution that is the sinner is to go free without any punishment which is destructive to true repentance and right hope to Christs merits and free pardon nourishes pride and brings in money condemned by holy Scriptures and ancient Fathers who teach repentance reducing to a good life faith in Christs merits and hope in his promises Neither can any Papists tell what they are the better for their Indulgences or whether they be absolutions or compensations whether they take off actual pennances or potential such as be due in the court of man or of God whether they avail if the receiver do nothing for them or not whether they depend only of Christs satisfaction or the Saints likewis And therfor the Councel of Trent durst determin nothing about all these things but contented themselves only to declare this That ther is in the Church a power of granting Indulgences advising Catholiks to set other superfluous and curious questions aside Sir if I had had the opportunity to print the four paragraffs which to lessen the book I left out of my Fiat Lux becaus one of them was about Indulgence I should need to say the less to this section wherin I must notwithstanding be brief that I may speak somwhat also to those that follow Three things are in this his third section consusedly jumbled together by your Disswader concerning this busines of Indulgence Faith School-philosophy and Abuses Catholik faith and Tradition he sets down himself p. 17. and acknowledges it for good Now lest the Roman Emissaries saith he should deceiv any of the good sons of the Church we think it fit to acquaint them that in the primitive Church when the Byshop imposed severe pennances and that they were almost quite performed and a great caus of pitty intervened or danger of death or an excellent repentance or that the Martyrs interceded the Byshop did somtimes indulge to the Penitent and relax som of the parts of his pennance and according to the example of S. Paul in the case of the incestuous Corinthian gave them ease left they should be swallowed up with too much sorrow These are his words And in them he hath set down exactly not only the faith but all the faith of Roman Catholiks in this point to stop the mouths of Roman Emissaries which faith and practise he acknowledges also expresly to be antient and primitive And thus much he would have us beleev that Protestants hold and allow although not their books and writings only which manitestly gainsay it but their very practise which hath long ago abandoned and is now utterly ignorant either of confession or pennance or relaxation or indulgence and the very Articles of the English Protestant Church refute him But he that writes against Popery need not heed what he sayes If another say the contrary so that he speak against Popery too they will both pass for good But the Papists laith your Disswader they are quite gone from this primitive way their doctrin of Indulgence is another thing quite another thing And then jumbles together heaps of their school-disputes about solutions absolutions compensations relaxations and such like stuff which together with som abuses that time has brought forch as well in that as other affairs and

was determined in the Councel of Lateran be the matter and subject of his discours in this section ought he not in plain terms to have told us what this piece of popery is that we may know what he speaks of Surely he ought If it neither be owned by so many popish doctours which here he names and names not any one popish doctour that owns it if it neither be determined in the Councel of Lateran nor he himself can name any other Councel wherein it was lately or otherwise determined how is it Popery What doctours own it What Councel has declared it What people profes it And what is that thing they should profes declare or own What is it I say This he ought to have spoken openly sincerely and plainly And yet he endeavours not at all which he should one would think have principally heeded either to set down what doctours own it or what it is they own but spends his whole time in telling us only of a great company of popish doctours that like not of that Roman doctrin which he never declares himself what it is And then exhorts all his charge and all good people to take heed of that Roman doctrin that scandalous doctrin that blasphemous novelty which was determined in the Councel of Lateran and yet is another thing from that which was determined in the Councel of Lateran not any part of Catholik beleef until that Councel nor yet esteemed to belong to faith after that Councel by the greatest of popish doctours about which they make many foolish questions as whether a mouse may run away with her maker c. Sir your Doctour who pretending a Disswasive from Popery by which he doubts not but his reader will understand the Roman Catholik faith never meant to touch at all their real Religion which is universally in their hearts and hands and no power of man is able to confute but either som obscure parcels of philosophy or abuses of men which he is better able to make sport withall was fallen here it seems upon the Catholik faith afore he was aware And therfor he suddenly drew back and so blundered up and down in the affrightment that he seems neither to know what to speak nor against what he is to speak of The Roman doctrin of Transubstantiation was first determined in the Lateran Councel The opinion was not determined in the Lateran Councel as it is now held in Rome What would this man have What does he speak of What opinion is that which is now held in Rome differing from that of the Lateran Councel What is that doctrin of the Lateran Councel differing from that is now held in Rome What is that Rome the Church of Rome or Court of Rome the City of Rome or schools in Rome And is it in all Rome or som particular streets or parishes or schools or shops And how do they hold it with their hands or teeth or pens or hearts as a matter of faith or busines of dispute as delivered to them or invented by them in their confession of Religion or profession of Philosophy These things ought all of them to have been exprest that we might rightly understand who in Rome hold it and how they hold it and what is that same It they hold But your Disswader hopes that upon those general words of his The opinion was not determined in the Lateran Councel as it is now held in Rome his unwary reader will be bold to think more than he dares himself utter And perhaps he is not deceived For few readers are wiser than their book But the Romans make many foolish and blasphemous questions about it The more blasphemous and foolish they who urge them to it if any one amongst them have resolved such doubts as infidelity in derision of holy things hath raised They who aforetime denied Gods Incarnation gave occasion of as foolish and blasphemous disputes as any these be And if any then studied to give an answer to such fordid unmanly and scurrillous opposition although they might fail in discretion yet their heart was innocent and intention good The busines which I suppose your Doctour would be at here is the real presence of our Lords blessed and glorious body under the species of corruptible elements which is one of the paragraffs I left out of my Fiat And I am sorry now with all my heart it was left out becaus here is no time or place to treat of it as that great and weighty subject would require Neither is it my intention here to declare the old Christian Tradition but only to give you Sir to understand that this Disswader though he may hurt his unwary reader yet he nothing at all indammages the old Catholik faith by any words of his which speak it to be new Large volumes have been written upon this subject enough to satisfie any moderate well disposed mind qui legit intelligat Let me only give you notice Sir that this parcel of Christian faith now abolisht here in England was so antient that the very old Pagans and Jews derided the primitive Christians above a thousand years ago for their worshipping a breaden God as they pleased then and the infidels of our times are not ashamed now to misname that sacred mystery It was so universally beleeved that their adversaries by that one only mark expressed as it were in short the very substance of their Religion Since the Christians adore that which they eat said one of the Infidel writers well enough acquainted with the cours of Christian Religion let my soul be with Philosophers It was so sure and undoubted in their hearts that som ancient holy Fathers have elucidated the mystery of the Incarnation by this of the real presence in the Eucharist as the more manifest It was so grave and solemn that all the Churches or Temples in the Christian world were built principally for it and the devotion of those times studied to erect them with a strength and magnificence answerable as far as they could to the majesty of that divine mystery It was such a princely leading point of faith that it drew all other pieties after it frequent prayers and meditations alms-deeds contrition for sins singing of psalms hymns and canticles in the Quire before that presence in the Altar Confessions Sermons Catechise Processions Fasts Festivals and all that real fear and love of God that has been ever found in Christian hearts Finally it is the very legacy of Jesus Christ the holy One to his Spouse the Church whereby he proved himself both to be a poor and most loving and also omnipotent Espouse Another man might leave wealth and possessions but though he be never so kind and loving he cannot leave his body to his wife to remain ever with her for exercise of her love for comfort of her heart and glorifying of her soul by vertue wherof she should be raised up to follow and joyn with him in the eternal

glory of another world This was a Testament only fit for Jesus Prince of Angels and men to make And this I suppose is that piece of Popery your Disswader here so fumbles at that he knows not what to call it or how to express it in his words O but it is Transubstantiation which the Disswader dislikes And what is Transubstantiation what does it mean What is that long winded hard word of Transubstantiation what is the meaning of it For Catholik Religion which your Disswader calls Popery is not words nor are words Catholik Religion but the sence and life and meaning delivered us by help of words for faith hope and charity to feed upon Neither Consubstantiality nor Trinity nor Incarnation nor Transubstantiation and such other like phrases are any thing at all of any Religion Your Disswader abuses the world when he tells you he knows when Transubstantiation first came up The meaning of it was in the Christian world all those many ages before that Lateran Councel he speaks of or else it had not been in the world then Pray let him tell me whether the consubstantiality of the Son of God with his eternal Father who made all things be a novelty or new article yea or no. He knows the very time as himself here speaks when it began to be owned publickly for an opinion and that very Councel in which it was said to be passed into a publick doctrin and by what arts it was promoted and by what persons it was introduced And if he do not know all this I can tell him Does this prove that same Consubstantiation to be a novelty yea or no Let him answer me directly I am a plain man and love plain dealing Was Jesus the Son of God and Saviour of mankind beleeved any otherwayes to be true and really God after that Councel had declared him to be consubstantial to Almighty God his heavenly Father than he was before Christians ever heard of that word Constsubstantiality or Consubstantiation If Christians notwithstanding that new word still beleeved and adhered to one and the same old faith they did before then say I the same of Transubstantiation And if that new word made no new article no more does this Nor doth the one word any more belong to Christian Religion than the other and both indeed only so far as they conveigh the old faith by this new invented word guarded against the subtilties of the hereticks then living who by their circumventing sophistry deluded all other expressions concerning the real presence of the Godhead in our Lords humanity and of his humanity in the Eucharist save only that other of Consubstantatiion and this of Transubstantiation both words in those dayes equally new And when those heresies and hereticks are once vanished ther is no further use of the words amongst Christians who beleev and worship by verthe of their Christian Tradition the very thing it self Gods divinity in his humanity and Christs humanity in his sacred Eucharist without troubling their heads with those hard words which were invented against subtil hereticks unless haply the same heresies should rise again And the Catholik flock acts and beleevs after both those Councels just as their Christian predecessours did before They acknowledg Christ our Lord really God and fear and love and hope in him whether they ever hear of his consubstantiality or consubstantiation with God or no. Nor do they ever trouble their heads to know what is the meaning of con or what is substance or what be accidents or what substantiation or consubstantiation no more after that Councel of Nice than before it Such terms and phrases are besides the simplicity of their holy and innocent beleef which holds notwithstanding all that is really meant by those words taught them in a more natural and plainer way So likewise do Catholik beleevers after the Councel of Lateran worship their crucified Redeemer in the Eucharist in the same manner others did before it being the very same Christians with those that lived the age before and think no more of Transubstantiation many thousands of these now then those others did that word making no more difference before and after this Councel of Lateran then had Consubstantiation made amongst the Catholik Christians which were before and after that other Councel of Nice By those words som cunning wolves had been by their Pastours discovered and separated from the sheep and after that the whole flock fed quietly in the same hills and by the same fountains they did before And in this sence Catholik Divines might say and truly say that Transubstantiation is not of faith either before the Councel or after if any one of them did indeed ever say so For Christian faith is not words as I said before nor words any Religion And if those Catholik Divines who ever they were meant any thing else as namely that the Christians before that Councel of Lateran who indeed worshipped their Redeemer in the Eucharist as true and fully as any that lived after that Councel ever did or can were not given generally to understand explicitely that Christ our Lord is so present in the Eucharist that ther is there no other substance but himself in this sence they spoke true that so much had not been spoken expresly by a Councel but yet that the faith and practice of Christians both before and after that Councel was the same And so consequently ther was no more of faith after that Councel than was before it whether we consider the learned or the common slock of Christians For these worship Christ in the Eucharist after that Councel as others did before it though neither of them think of Transubstantiation and those learned ones spake and wrote of our Lords presence in the Eucharist before that Councel as others do after it and both do equally beleev the thing that is meant by Transubstantianon which in a diverse sence according as men speak either of the word or meaning of the word may be either said to be or not to be of faith either before the Lateran Councel or after it Those words of Tertullian in his 2. book ad uxorem where he speaks of the marriage of a Gentile with a Christian woman Non sciet maritus quid secretò ante omnem cibum gustet si sciverit panem non illum credat esse qui dicitur c. Those also of S. Cyprian in his Coena Domini Panis iste communis in carnem sanguinem mutatus c. And again Panis iste non in specie sed natur â mutatur c. Those likewise of St. Chrysostom de poenitent serm 5. Non quod panis sit respicias neque quod vinum sit reputes c. And again Mysteria hic consumi Christi corporis substantiâ c. Those too of S. Greg. Nyssen in his magna Catechista Rectè ergo nunc quoque Dei verbo sanctificatum panem 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and again Haec autem

dat virtute benedictionis in illud transelement at â eorum quae apparent naturâ Lastly that I may not forget my own design which is not here to prove Catholik faith but only to take a little view of this Disswasive from it those words of S. Cyril in his Mystagogica quarta Hoc sciens pro certissimo habens panem bunc qui videtur â nobis non esse panem etiamsi gustus panem esse sentiat sed corpus Christi vinum quod à nobis conspicitur tametsi sensu gustus vinum esse videatur non tamen vinum sed sanguinem esse Christi c. I say these and such like words of ancient Christian Divines many hundreds of years before the Councel of Lateran speak as much the thing meant by Transubstantiation as any Doctour can express it now though these may know more of the word than they And indeed the definition of the Catholik Councel makes no alteration at all in the practice of Catholik faith which so considers their Lords presence in the Eucharist that it never heeds the Quomodo or concomitances the adoration love and devotion being still and ever in all things the very same If Christ our Lord should appear to two Christians now as he did once to S. Paul in a splendour of light and a voice out of that shining brightnes should issue so efficacious that they should both of them be fully perswaded in their hearts to worship him whom they beleeved both of them there present I suppose these two would equally do well and equally do the same thing although one of them should haply think ther was no other thing there but his Lord in an appearance of light and the other should not think at all of the light whether it were a substance or only an appearance of it But if a third man should deny the real presence of our Lord in that light he would for certain be of another faith So it is here Protestants who deny the real presence are of another beleef from Catholiks who acknowledg it but Catholiks who equally adore it are all of one beleef though perhaps not one of a million ever thinks of Transubstantiation O but Christ might be present in the Eucharist although Transubstantiation were not He might so and Christ likewise may be owned for God though Consubstantiation were never thought of Both there and here somthing is explicately spoken which was latitant in the former practice and beleef and he that can may understand it But the millions that never heard of it so long as they beleev and worship their Crucified Redeemer as they ought in the Eucharist are never the worse Had it not been for hereticks neither Consubstantiation nor Transubstantiation had been ever heard of and yet the practice and faith of Catholik Christians the same it is The holy Fathers which your Disswader cites against this particle of Catholik beleef som say nothing at all there concerning that thing som speak what he cites in another manner som teach quite contrary But this I intend not now to insist upon Only thus much in general and I pray you Sir mark it well Those ancient Fathers who say somtimes that the words of our Lord are to be understood spiritually not carnally and that those symbols are a figure of his body agree with all Catholiks that are now in the world no less in the meaning of those their words than others wherin they manifestly assert the real presence in this Sacrament For all Catholiks say that our Lord is not to be so understood that his holy body in the Eucharist is to be fed upon in a carnal way as though it should be divided into gobbets and so digested by the stomack into flesh and blood as other meats are but that as that holy body now glorified is becom a spiritual body as good S. Paul speaks totally spiritual and divine and not now subject to any condition or laws of material corruptible bodies here on earth so is it spiritually to be taken as the food not of a mortal body but the immortal spirit So likewise do all Catholiks acknowledg and beleev that the symbols after the powerfull blessing of Christs consecration do so becom his sacred body by conversion mutation or transelementation as the same Fathers speak that outward appearance which remains of them is not now any more a figure of bread and wine as it was before but of our Lords precious body and blood which have succeeded in their place So that those very words of the ancient Fathers wherin they say that the elements are now becom a figure of Christs body and blood do prove not only a real presence but a transelementation too or Transubstantiation which your Disswader judges to sound somwhat more For every material body I pray you Sir mark this well I say every material body here on earth as a tree a man or beast or other thing exhibits to the eye ear taste or other sences an outward species of that which it is And the substance ever goes along in nature with that appearance it exhibits unless the power of God should interpose and make it otherwise Thus when I have bread before me or milk for example that I see taken from the cow I see it and feel it and tast it to be such as it shows it self and such it is as it shows it self to be Thus it is in all nature But we are not say those good holy Fathers to think so here For though here be the colour and touch and tast of bread yet after this strange and powerful conversion made by Gods omnipotent words it is no more bread you see it is not natural bread you touch it is not material bread you tast but the blessed body of your Redeemer which is touched seen and tasted under those remaining appearances which are no more now the figure of bread which they were before but the figure of our Lords body under the species appearance or representation of bread now wonderfully concealed And thus much is manifestly and clearly exprest by all those holy Fathers Hoc sciens faith great St. Cyril of Jerusalem pro certissimo habens panem hunc qui videtur à nobis non esse panem etiamsi gustus panem esse sentiat sed est Corpus Christi vinum quod à nobis conspicitur tametsi sensu gustus vinum esse videatur non tamen vinum sed sanguinem esse Christi And this speak all holy Fathers both Greek and Latin It would be endles to bring their testimonies By these few words if Sir you have heeded them well you will presently conceiv the meaning of that speech of Tertullian in his third book against Marcion Acceptum panem distributum discipulis Corpus suum illum fecit Hoc est corpus meum dicendo id est figura corporis mei Figura autem non fuisset nisi veritatis esset Corpus

an Antichristian assembly or that they published any book to that purpos What strange confidence then is this of your Disswader to talk thus at random without book and besides all rule and against truth The occasion of assembling this Councel of Frankford were the misdemeanours of Elipandus Byshop of Tolledo in Spain For Faelix Urgelitanus his Countreyman having consulted Elipandus concerning that scholastick difficulty Whether Christ as man ought to be called the natural or only the adoptive Son of God by means of his discours and a book written by him upon that subject beleeved and said against the ancient language of the Church that Christ was to be held an adoptive child of God and not his natural son And these two together with Claudius Taurinensis who came to them from Italy filled all Spain with the clamour This act of theirs was fond as well as wicked For though in the schools it might haply be held that Christ as man is not the natural but only the adoptive Son of God if that particle as be taken for a note of reduplication yet they could not be igrant that beleevers have nothing to do with such nice logical points These conceiv Christ altogether specifically as he is in himself And so they had ever beleeved him to be the only begotten natural Son of God and we all so many as are made partakers of his grace adopted in him And he that shall preach Christ to be as man only his adoptive Son whether that as of his be taken reduplicatively or specificatively he makes but an ass of himself and a knave to boot But these three though often admonished yet would they not desist And therfor in a Councel at Ratisbone Faelix by name was condemned respect being then had to the person and dignity of the Archbyshop of Toledo and the other Byshop Faelix therfor was brought to the Emperour Charles his Court who then wintered at Rheginum where after a while he humbly submitted to the Councel there then met together and from thence sent to the presence of Pope Adrian in the Cathedral of S. Peter he publickly acknowledged his errour and returned home to his own City Elipand when he heard of all this grew more violent than before and laboured not only with his whole endeavour to reclaim Faelix to his former errour but by letters patent and large dated to all the Byshops of France and Germany to draw those two Kingdoms to his opinion Wherupon Faelix returned again to his vomic And least the infection should spread any further by the agreement of the Pope and Charles the Emperour a Councel was called at Frankford This was the very busines and occasion of that Councel wherby every one may discern himself not only the improbability that the said Councel of Frankford which purposely met together to maintain the honour of Christ should deface his figures but the falsity also of this your Disswader who tells us that a while after this Councel of Frankford Ludovicus son to Charles the great sent Claudius a famous Oratour to preach against images in Italy p. 60. Wheras Claudius had troubled Italy and Spain too three or four years before that Councel nay before the Councel of Ratisbone which was two years before and his way was condemned with himself both at Ratisbone and Frankford too These things being so how in the name of God comes your Disswader here against so much reason to aver that the Councel of Frankford declared against images that they condemned the second Nicen Synod wherin the use of Images had been maintained that they published a book wherin that Synod was declared Antichristian and that Ludovicus Charlemains son sent down Claudius after that Councel to preach against Images in Italy I know that other Protestants have been guilty too of some part of this his story so far at least as to say in particular that the Frankford Councel was against images But they never set down any of that Councels declaration against them nor is ther any extant Binius who set forth all the Councels at large both shows and copiously proves that the acts of the second Nicen Councel were all confirmed in the Councel of Frankford which is also averred by Alanus Surius Vasquez and several other learned men And since it is likely enough that somthing was done in this Councel about Images wherof ther is so much talk in the world ther can nothing be thought more rational than that Pope Adrian whose legates presided in both the Councels should according to the Churches custom send those decrees of Nice about the same time lately finished unto the Councel now at Frankford that the definition of the Nicen Councel might be made known to all the West by their acceptation and promulgation at Frankford Which also that it was absolutely done and no other thing done but it may sufficiently be gathered by the authority of the Councel of Senon which in the 14. of their decrees speaks thus Carolus magnus Francorum rex Christianissimus in Francosordiensi conventu ejusdem erroris I conomachorum suppressit insaniam quam infaelicissimus quidam Faelix in Gallias Germanias invexerat And the same is ratified by Platina who in the life of Pope Adrian Biennio post saith he Theophylactus Stephanus Episcopi insignes Adriani nomine Francorum Germanorum Synodum habuerunt in qua Synodus quam septimam Graeci appellabant haeresis Faeliciana de tollendis imaginibus abrog at a est as also by Paulus Emilius who in his second book de gestis Francorum speaking of that Councel of Frankford Et imaginibus saith he suus honor restitutus est The like may be proved out of Blondus in his Decads Sabellicus his Aeneads Gablisards Chronology Alanus his Dialogues Nauclerus c. All which various testimonies joyned in one together with the motives of that Frankford Councel the great procurer and protectour of that Councel Charles the great an eminent Champion of the Roman Church the Presidents of that Councel Theophylact and Stephen legates of the same Pope Adrian who had lately finished and confirmed the second Councel of Nice may suffice I should think to refute the trifling humour of this Disswader But his confidence is greater in his readers light beleev then either the weight or truth of his own words But all the devices of Roman writers to palliate this their crime he sayes are frivolous What are these devices and what is their crimes Sir where there is no crime there needs not any palliating devices Is it a crime to keep an image of Christ crucified for us that we may be often put in mind of the good and vertue of his holy passion and our fansie assisted and kept in at our prayers within the compass of their object This is the busines Sir speak directly unto this before you go any further You will make all sorts of prophane Images either to some civil use or indifferent

holy Trinity especially God the Father to be pourtrayed at all And if now they suffer it they have for it I make no doubt a sufficient reason especially since they heed not at all however your Disswader imagines any natural similitude in any of their pictures If they be so made as to raise the sansie to thoughts above and the love and vertues that may bring us thither they care not whether for example Saint Bennet were a man just of that complexion or Christ their Redeemer of those direct features the limner has given him They come not into their Churches nor do they cast their eyes upon their pictures for any such end And if God the Father be represented to their eyes as he is to their ears when he is called Father I see no harm in it If we may use such a form of words when we speak to God as this world we live in may afford our ears why may not the eyes have such an answerable form too But this is a busines which your Disswader if he were a Catholik might well propound in the next general Councel and do otherwise in the mean time if so he please in his own Diocess For neither books nor picturs can be used in any Diocess but what the Ordinary of the place allows And the Byshop still guides himself by the general doctrin and discipline the faith and custom the tradition and laws of the Church in the whole mannagement of his care And when these do not clearly descend to any particular which he is to deal with he uses therin his own discretion going that way if he do well that he findes comes nearest to the rule as temporal superiours also do in their affairs O but the Roman Church with much scandal and against nature and the reason of mankind in their mass-books and breviaries portuises and manuels picture the holy Trinity with three noses and four eyes and three faces in a knot And do they so I have seen I think as many Catholik countreys and mass-mass-books and breviaries portuises and manuels as your Disswader ever did and yet I never saw any such picture therin all my life He has been it seems an earnest pryer into the front and faces of books But did he not mistake trow you and take some fortune-fortune-book written in old letters for a mass-book and thence conclude that all breviaries and mass-books portuises and manuels were stored with such figures However it were the picture was to blame For three noses and three faces ought to have more than four eyes And if ther were but four eyes I cannot see how ther should be three whole faces although ther were there three noses in it But this is as good stuff and as true and as pertinent too as any other part of this his book which he calls a Disswasive from Popery §. 10. Which is against Papal authority Sayes that the Popes universal byshoprick is another novelty though not so ridiculous yet as dangerous as any other And a novelty it is for Christ left his Church in the hands of the Apostles without any superiority of one above another And in the Councel of Jerusalem James and not Peter gave the decisive sentence Christ sent all his Apostles with the same whole power as his Father sent him Therfor S. Paul bid the byshops of Miletum feed the whole flock And well said S. Cyprian that the Apostles were all the same that S. Peter was And this equality of power must descend to all byshops who succeed the Apostles in their ordinary power as embassadours for Christ. So then by the law of Christ one byshop is not superiour to another Christ made no head of byshops Beyond the byshop is no step till you rest in the great shepheard and byshop of souls Under him every byshop is supream in spirituals and in all power which to any byshop is given by Christ. And that this was ever beleeved in ancient times is proved by Pope Eleutherius his epistle to the byshops of France by S. Ambrose S. Cyprian Pope Symmachus S. Denyse Ignace Gelasius Jerom Fulgentius and even Pope Gregory the great Wherfor S. Paul expresly sayes that Christ appointed in his Church first Apostles but not S. Peter first Nor did Peter ever rule but by common councel as S. Chrysostom witnesses And it is even confest by som of the Romish party that the succession is not tyed to Rome as Cusanus Soto Driedo Canus and Segovius Nor was any thing known therof in the primitive times when the byshops of Asia and Africa opposed Pope Victor and Pope Stephen and all byshops treated with the Roman byshop as with a brother not superiour and a whole general Councel gave to the byshop of C. P. equal right and preheminence with the byshop of Rome Finally Christ gave no commandment to obey the byshop of Rome and probably never intended any such thing A man would surely think Sir that this nail is knocked in to the head What could be said more But to be brief with you If all the other sections of this your Disswasive have said nothing this I may say speaks somthing wors than nothing For his reasons are senceles his testimonies either impertinent or manifestly against himself and his whole discours contrary to the laws and constitutions of our English Protestant Church To begin with the last whether you look upon the statutes and acts of Parliament wherby our English Church and government were first settled in England upon the reformation in the dayes of Edward the sixth and afterwards ratified or the articles canons and constitutions that were agreed upon by the byshops and clergy and confirmed both by King Edward Queen Elizabeth King James and our good King Charles we shall clearly see that our English Protestant Church and government is Monarchical and that byshops are as much subjected to their Arch-byshops as Ministers to Byshops and Arch-byshops in like manner to the King in whom the Episcopal power is radical and inherent and in whom is the fulness of ecclesiastical authority and from whom byshops do receiv their place authority power and jurisdiction And that Parson Vicar or other Doctour who shall write or speak contrary to this by the constitutions and canons ecclesiastical made in the time of our late good King Charles he is to be suspended and by the Canons and constitutions ecclesiastical made and confirmed in the Reign of King James he is excommunicated ipso facto and by the laws of Queen Elizabeth and King Edward to be further punished How comes it then that this your disswading Doctour utterly dissolves all this frame of government under pretence of talking against papal power as contrary to the mind and will of Christ which will and mind is notwithstanding most resolutely asserted by the constitutions and laws of this our very English Church and Kingdom which rejected indeed the Roman seat and person but retained still the power and ordination of

to judg the complaints and causes of such as appeal unto him from their own byshops sixtly to decide the controversies that may happen between one byshop and another seventhly to judg the accusations that are against any byshop lastly to call synods and there conclude and decide what may seem best for the welfare and spiritual government of his province Are these the works of authority power and jurisdiction yea or no If they be not how can any autority or power be proved For all power is proved by its act or how in particular may it appear that byshops have any autority over their presbyters of ministers But if they be then is ther more than a precedency or order amongst byshops then did not Christ leav his Church in the hands of the Apostles without any superiority of one above another as this Disswader talks For the laws and constitutions of this our Church and Kingdom do publikly attest that this our English Church is settled according to the will of Christ by archbyshops and byshops which is absolutely true then also did not Christ send all his apostles with the same whole power then were not all the apostles the same that Peter was then did not an equality of power descend from the apostles to all byshops then is there a step beyond the ordinary byshop nay two steps before you come to rest in the great shepherd and byshop of souls then under Christ is not every byshap supream in spirituals nor yet in all the power which to any byshop is given by Christ all this I say is true whatsoever your Disswader talks against not only the Catholik Church and government which was here for above a thousand years together in England but against the very frame and constitution of his own Protestant Church wherof he is himself an unworthy member But ministers when they begin to talk against popery they are so heedlesly earnest that they knock out their own brains and either to get a benefice or honour in it they destroy their own Church that gives it them I can no more wonder now that such an one as Whitby in his book written against worthy Cressy should say so peremptorily that an archbyshop hath no power or autority and that his grace of Canterbury hath no jurisdiction as he there talks impar congressus Achills since a man of such renown as Doctor Taylor should speak the same here and give the Presbyterians and other Sectaries in the Land such a fair occasion and president to undermine and overthrow that Church which is but lately lift out of the ruins of their hands The same argument that proves the byshop an ordinary byshop to be under none but immediately under Christ will prove as much for a single Presbyter or Presbyterian And it is already done by the subtle pen of John Bastwick in his Apologeticus ad praesules Anglicanos which book is so strongly written both against Popish and Protestant Prelacy too that upon the grounds on which all Protestants go it can never be answered and upon the grounds Doctour Taylor here layes it is all of it in a manner confirmed and made good What a strange madnes is it for any one that he may seem to weaken another Church to overthrow his own Truth is here is no tye in England that any one will be held with The scriptur is in every mans bosom to make what he will of it Ancient canons customs and councels they slight as erroneous Their own constitutions and statutes they do not so much as heed What can be expected from hence but eternal dissention and wars Nay the minister to get his orders and benefice the bishop to enter into his See make a solemn protestation of obedience and subjection When they have got their ends they wipe their mouths and so far forget what they have done that they write and act presently as if they had never thought any such thing See here the form of consecration of byshops prescribed and used by our English Protestant Church ' In the name of God Amen I N. chosen byshop of the Church or See of N. do profess and promise all due reverence and obedience to the archbyshop and to the Metropolitan Church of N. and to their successours So help me God through Jesus Christ. Where reverence subjection and obedience is due on one side there must needs be autority power and jurisdiction on the other And that man who hath One set over him with such an authority under Christ cannot be immediately under Christ himself and if he affirm he is so then ipso facto doth he reject and rebel against that autority which in words he acknowledged This is Dr. Taylors case who teaches here that byshops are successours of the Apostles and that ther was no superiority amongst the Apostles that by the law of Christ one byshop is not superiour to another that Christ made no head of byshops that beyond the byshop is no step till you rest in the great shepherd and byshop of souls c. What is this but to reject all obedience and loyalty solemnly vowed and promised and to rebell against all the laws and constitutions of his own Church and finally which is wors than all the rest to give an example to disaffected ministers of doing the like But how does he prove all this very copiously both by reasons of his own and autorities of other men Only the mishap is those signifie nothing at all for him these very much against him But what are his reasons Byshops are the Apostles successours and ther was no superiour amongst the Apostles Mr. Bastwick and such as he will tell you Sir that priest minister and byshop were but several synonomous words for one and the same thing upon divers respects so that it is to be feared your Disswader hath proved too much here and hath spoken against himself but if he hath not proved too much he hath proved nothing I am sure there was a superiority amongst the Apostles and shall demonstrate it by and by as well as I can In the mean time how prove you ther was none Christ sent all his apostles with the same whole power his father sent him Good Sir our Lord sayes indeed as my father sent me so do I send you giving them a legal commission from him as himself had from God his eternal Father But that he sent them every one with the same whole power that is so to teach and govern that they should be subject to no one amongst them these are your Disswaders words cast in by fraud and fallacy and no autority evangelical and therfor prove nothing Nay if Christ had so sent his Apostles every one with the whole power of governing in himself then had he changed his fathers commission For he was sent himself to be one head and governour and yet he had then constituted many But how can you dream good Doctour that Christ sent his apostles

in place and time under several byshops up and down the world Whereas all others besides this one Catholik flock run into several bodies and by their various interpretations dissolv by little and little according as themselvs increas all the whole frame of ancient religion Secondly it may be gathered by this that Christ our Lord instituted a monarchical government of his Church ruled so long as he lived by one and therfor must that government ever remain He set it up to remain For surely he did not set it up to be pulled down again Thirdly becaus there is no power on earth to change it What God has constituted man cannot undo lawfully I mean he cannot Now we have no such body of Christians in England that remain under one who is general pastour over all the Christian flock in the world or do so much as pretend it save only the few Roman Catholiks that are yet here left alive by the strange providence of that God unto whose universal Church they have still adhered notwithstanding the greatest trials that ever poor Christians were put to Neither Quaker Anabaptist or Independent Presbyterian or Prelate-Protestant do so much as pretend to any such thing but they all oppose it And as they do not pretend to belong to any general body that hath a visible head overseeing the whole flock of Christ throughout the world so neither is any of their Church governments monarchical in their respective place if we may beleev themselvs I know our English Protestant Church was first appointed in the dayes of King Edward and Queen Elizabeth to be respectively monarchical that is to say within the precincts of this Kingdom the hierarchy ending in the Kings majesty who is doubtles the supream head and governour both of the Protestant Church and the temporal or civil state in all these his three Kingdoms But indeed and truth none of them acknowledg it For they do not any of them expect as they ought all of them to do a full decisive sentence from the Kings Majesties lips in all their controversies or doubts of faith nor will they acquiesce in his judgment which is a strange mad refractorines in our nation and contrary to our own principles The Independents last tribunal is in the light of his own breast The Presbyterian will not look beyond his Presbyteral Consistory And the Prelate-Protestant writer which I most marvel at ends all in the byshops allowing no autority power or jurisdiction to their Archbyshops but only an order and decent precedency for manners sake which in effect is wholly to dissolve the constituted frame of Church-government in this land They speak not indeed of the Kings majesty for fear I suppose of the rod God hath put into his hands But it is not hard to gather both by their words and actions what they think Whitby of late wrote a book against Dean Cressy and there he sayes expesly that an Arch-byshop hath a decent precedency but no authority and that his Grace of Canterbury hath no jurisdiction and that the Kings Majesty is not the root of Episcopal jurisdiction here in England And yet he was approved and praised even by our Protestant byshops Do they not see that à pari nay à fortiori the same be affirmed of our byshops that they have no autority and that they have but a decent precedency over Presbyters and that they are not the root of ecclesiastical jurisdiction With what a strange blindnes are our eyes possest Nay this great Disswader an eminent man among Prelate-Protestants here teaches publickly that byshops are all supream under Christ. So that this our Church-government by byshops can be no other but Aristocracy the Presbyterians a Democracy and the rest a plain Anarchy every man thinking and acting what is good in his own eyes And none of these who are all fallen from the general flock and general pastour heed unto effect any one thing that may restrain them either statutes canons laws constitutions or ought els But God blesses his true Church with a true obedience Thus I have given you Sir my reason why I think ther is and must be one general pastour over all the whole flock of Christians Pray ponder it well Brief I am in it becaus it is beyond my general design which is only to shew that Doctour Taylors Disswasive from Popery is insignificant I am now come to the testimonies your Disswader cites for himself which I told you before are above half of them impertinent and the rest if he had not fraudulently maimed them flatly against himself As for the first sort your Disswader imagining in his head that the Apostles had no superiour which is the grand falsity on which all his whole discours runs brings all those authors who either say that byshops are the successours of the Apostles or that they had received the keyes of heaven or that they are not to be contemned and the like for witnesses of his opinion as Irenaeus Cyprian Ambrose Anacletus Clemens Hieronimus Gregorius and various others All this is impertinent But the other autorities had they not been curtaild and perverted by him had openly and plainly spoken that Catholik truth which he here opposes namely that the Apostles had a superiour and that all the whole Christian slock have and ought to have one general pastour and that he ever hitherto hath sate since S. Peters death in the Roman See I know it would be worth my labour to set down all those testimonies by him here cited at large as they lye in those Catholik Fathers and Divines as apt at one and the same time to convince this his whole section of falsity and the Catholik doctrin to be no novelty as he sayes it is But becaus this is already done by the above-named Catholik Gentlemen who with a greater patience than I am master of turned over those many ancient authours I will content my self with only the first of them In the whole new testament faith your Disswader ther is no act or sign of superiority or that one apostle exercised power over another but to them whom Christ sent he in common intrusted the Church of God according to that excellent saying of S. Cyprian the other apostles are the same that S. Peter was indowed with an equal fellowship of honour and power c. This then is the excellent saying of S. Cyprian The other apostles are the same that St. Peter was indowed with an equal fellowship of honour and power And he cites it out of his epistle de unit Ecclesiae ad Novatian But did S. Cyprian either say or mean by that saying so much of it as is S. Cyprians that ther was no superiority among the apostles or that the Church of God was intrusted to them in common Nay does not S Cyprian use those words in a discours wherin he endeavours industriously to declare that there was a superiority among the Apostles in which as in a cone