he peradventure never read it But what doth he thinke of the Councells of Constance and Basile who professe themselves every where to be qualified to reform the Church tam in Capite quam in membris as well in the head as in the members They escape fairly if he doe not censure them as Protestants for they were great Reformers and they were no great Papists placing the Soveraign power under Christ in the Church and not in the first Mover I might well call the Reformation in Henry the eights time their Reformation the Papists Reformation rather then ours if the Reformers were more Papists then Protestants as it most evident I pressed him that if the Renunciation of the Bishop of Romes absolute vniversall Monarchy by Christs own Ordination be the essence of a Protestant then the Primitive Church were all Protestants He answereth it is flatsy false I am contented to be silent for the present but when time serveth it may be made appeare to be flatly true and that all that the Primitive Fathers did attribute to the Bishop of Rome was no more them a Primacy of Order or beginning of Vnity and that an absolute Monarchy by Christ Ordination is absolutely repugnant to the Primitive Discipline I proceeded then all the Graecian Russian Armenian Abyssen Christians are Protestants this day He answereth that it it is partly true and partly false and serveth onely to prove that the Protestants have fellow Schismaticks And why partly true and partly false when all the world seeth that all these Churches doe disown and disclaime the Popes Monarchy This is just the old condemned Tenet of the Schismaticall Donatists who did most uncharitably limit the Catholick Church to their own Party excluding all others from hope of Salvation as the Romanists doe now The best is we must stand or fall to our owne Master But by this means they have lost one of the notes of their Church that is multitude for they exclude three or four times more Christians out of the Communion of the Catholick Church then they admit into it I proceeded yet higher then we want not store of Protestants even in the bosome of the Roman Church it self His answer is that to speake moderately it is an impudent falshood and a plain impossibility for whosoever renounceth the Substance of the Popes Authority and his being head of the Church becomes totally disunited from the Church Good words His groundworke is to weake to support the weight of such an heavy accusation A Primacy of Order implyeth an headship as well as Supremacy of power neither is it destitute of all power It hath some power essentially annexed to it to congregate sub paena purè spirituali to propose to give sentence according to the votes of the College It may have an accessary power to execute the Canons according to the Constitutions of Councells and Imperiall Sanctions and Confirmations But all this commeth far short of that headship which he asserteth a Soveraign Monarchicall Headship of absolute power above the whole Church by Christs Ordination This is that Headship which he mainteineth against me every where This is that Headship which the Primitive Church never acknowledged This is that Headship which the Grecians Russians Armenians Abyssines and the Church of England renounce at this day This is that Headship which many of his own Communion who live in the bosome of the Roman Church do not believe as the Councells of Constance and Basile and Pisa the Schoole of Sorbon and very many others every where who do all reject it some more some lesse The maine difference and almost the whole difference between him and me is concerning Coactive power in the Exteriour Court over the Subjects of other Princes against their wills this is so far from being vniversaly believed throughout all places of the Roman Communion that it is practically received in few or no places further then it seemeth expedient to Soveraign Princes If the Pope himself did believe that he had such an absolute Soveraignty of Monarchicall power in the exteriour Court by Christs own Ordination to him and his Successors How could he alienate it from his Successors almost wholy to the Princes of Sicily and to their Heirs for ever within that Kingdome Or how could the Princes retein it If the King and Kingdome of France did believe that the Pope had such an absolute Monarchicall power in the Exteriour Court by Christs own Ordination how could the King of France forbid the Popes Legates without his License or restrain their Legantine Commissions by his Parliaments or sweare them to act nothing contrary to the Liberties of the Gallican Church and to cease to execute their Commissions whēsoever the King and Kingdome should prohibit them or reject Papall decrees further then they are received in that Kingdome Or if the Councell of Brabant did believe it how could they forbid the Subjects to repaire to Rome out of their own Country upon the Popes Summons All men know that there is no Privilege or Prescription against Christs own Ordination Qui pauca considerat facile pronunciat This is ever the end of his Contradictions Lastly he Chargeth me for omitting to answer to his reason that the renouncing the Pope is essentiall to Protestantisme Truly I neither did nor do hold it worth answering Cannot he distinguish between the whole Essence of any thing and one Essentiall He might as well affirm that he who believeth but one Article of his Creed is a Christian. This requireth no great skill to explicate it but I have remitted this Controversy to the Reader as fittest for his determination Sect. III. That Henry the 8. made no new Law But onely vindicated the ancient Liberties of England CHristian Reader thou hast seen hitherto how Mr. Serjeant hath failed altogether to make good his pretensions and in stead of those great mountains of Absurdities and falsifications and Contradictions which he promised hath produced nothing worthy of so weighty a cause or an ingenious Schollar but his own wilfull ridiculous mistakes We are now come to his third Section wherein thou maiest see this young Phaeton mounted in his Triumphant Chariot driving the poore Bishop as a Captive before him now expect to see him tumbling down headlōg with a fall answerable to his height of pride and insolence He professeth himself willing to stand to the Award of the most partiall Protestant living who hath so much sincerity as to acknowledge the Suns shining at noone day or that the same thing cannot both be and not be at once If after this lowd confident bragge he be not able to make any thing good that is of weight against me he hath forfeited either his Iudgement or his ingenuity and deserveth not to be a writer of Controversies I need no partiall Iudges but appeale to the indifferent Reader of what communion soever he be he needeth but to compare my Vndication his Answer my Reply his Rejoinder and my
whole Circuit of Cathage with a Bulls hide by her art so he within his First Movership can comprehend the Patronage of the English Church and the right to Convocate and dissolve and confirm English Synods and to invalidate old Oaths and to impose new Oaths of Allegiance and to receive Tenths and first fruits and all Legislative Judiciary and dispensative power Coactively in the exteriour Court of the Church over English Subjects He cannot plead any Charter from England we never made any such Grant and althoâ—gh we had yet considering how infinitely prejudiciall it is to the Publick Tranquility of the Kingdome we might and ought more advisedly to retract what we unadvisedly once resolved And for Prescription he is so far to seek that there is aâ— cleare Prescription of eleven hundred Yeares against him So there is nothing remaineth for him to stick to but his empty pretense of divine Right which is more ridiculous then all the rest to claime a divine right of such a Soveraign power which doth branch it self into so many particulars after eleven hundred Yeares which for so many Ages had never been acknowledged never practised in the English Church either in whole or in part We cannot believe that the whole Christian world were Mole-eyed or did sit in darknesse for so many Centuries of years untill Pope Hildebrand and Pope Paschalis did start up like two new Lights with their Weapons in their hands to thumpe Princes and knock them into a right Catholick beliefe And indeed this Answer to his pretended demonstration by a reall demonstration where the true Controversie doth lye and who are the true innovators doth virtually answer whatsoever he hath said So I might justly stop here and sâ—spend my former paines but that I have a great mind to try if I can find out one of those many Falsifications and Contradictions which he would make ns believe he hath espied in my discourse if it be not the deception of his sight First he telleth us that our best Champions doe grant that our faith and its grounds are but probable Surely he did write this between sleeping and waking when he could not well distinguish between necessary points of faith and indifferent Opinions concerning points of faith Or to use Cajetans expression between determinare de fideformaliter and determinare de eo quod est fidei Materialiter Between points of faith necessary to be believed And such Questions as doe sometimes happen in things to be believed As for Essentialls of faith the Pillars of the Earth are not founded more firmly then our beliefe upon that undoubted Rule of Vincentius Quicquid ubique semper ab omnibus c. Whatsoever we believe as an Article of our faith we have for it the Testimony and Approbation of the whole Christian World of all Ages and therein the Church of Rome it self But they have no such perpetuall or Vniversall Tradition for their twelve new Articles of Pope Pius This Objection would have become me much better then him Whatsoever we believe they believe and all the Christian World of all Places and all Ages doth now believe and ever did believe except condemned Hereticks But they endeavour to obtrâ—de new Essentialls of faith upon the Christian World which have no such Perpetuall no such Vniversall Tradition He that accuseth another should have an eye to himself Does not all the World see that the Church of England stands now otherwise in order to the Church of Rome then it did in Henry the sevenths dayes He addeth further that it is confessed that the Papall power in Ecclesiastical affaires was cast out of EnglaÌ„d in Henry the eights dayes I answer that there was no Mutation concerniâ—g faith nor concerning any Legacy which Christ left to his Church nor concerning the power of the Keys or any Iurisdiction purely Spirituall but concerning coactive power in the exteriour Court concerning the Politicall or Externall RegimeÌ„t of the Church concerning the Patronage or civill Soveraignty over the Church of EnglaÌ„d and the Legislative Iudiciary and Dispensative power of the Pope in EnglaÌ„d over English Subjects Which was no more then a Reinfranchisement of ourselves from the upstart Vsurpations of the Court of Rome Of all which I have shewed him expresly the first source who began them when and where before which he is not able to give one instance of any such Practises attempted by the Bishop of Rome and admitted by the Church of England Who it is that lookes asquint or awry upon the true case in Controversy between us let the ingenuous Reader Iudge I doe not deny nor ever did deny but that there was a reall separation made yea made by us from their Vsurpations but I both did deny and doe deny that there was any SeparatioÌ„ made by us from the Institution of Christ or from the Principles of Christian Vnity This Separation was made long since by themselves when they first introduced those novelties into the Church and this Seperation of theirs from the pure Primitive Doctrine and Discipiine of the Church doth acquit us and render them guilty of the Schisme before God and man And therefore it is a vain and impertinent Allegation of him to tell us that Governours may lawfully declare themselves publickly and solemnly against the renouncers of their Authority by Excommunication unlesse he could shew that the Bishop of Rome hath such an absolute Soveraignty over us as he imagineth extending it self to all those Acts which are in Controversy between us And that in the exercise of the power of the Keys they proceded duely in a legall manner And especially that they did not mistake their own Vsurpation for the Institution of Christ as we affirm and know they did His whole Discourse about immediate Tradition is a bundle of uncertain presumptions and vain Suppositions First he supposeth that his Rule of so vast a multitude of Eye-witnesses of Visible things is uniform and vniversall but he is quite mistaken the practiâ—e was different The Papalms made Lawes for their Vsurpations and the three Orders of the Kingdome of England made Lawes against them To whom in Probability should our Ancestors adhere to their owâ— Patriots or to Strangers Secondly he presumeth that this uniform practise of his Ancestors was invariable without any shadow of Change but it was nothing lesse First Investitures were in the Crown and an Oath of Fidelity made to the King without any Scruple even by Lanfranke and Anselm both Strangers Afterwards the Investitures were decried as profane and the Oath of Fidelity forbidden Next a new Oath of Allegiance was devised of Clergimen to the Pope First onely for Archbishops then for all Prelates And this Oath at first was moderate to observe the Rules of the holy Fathers but shortly after more Tyrannous to maintain the Roâ—alties of Sainct Peter as their own Pontificalls the old and the new do witnesse First when they tooke away Investitures from the Crown they were all
fathers as the Legacies of Christ and his Apostles are onely to be acknowledged or Obligatory So we acknowledge both his Rules in the Literall sense de facto but the Popes single Supremacy of Power and particular Tradition were never Principles of Vnity neither de facto nor de jure and so he may seek for his flat Schismatick de facto at Rome I said there was a Fallacy in Logick of more interrogations then one when Questions of a different nature are mixed to which one Vniform answer can not be given He saith he put no Interrogatory at all to me True but he propounded ambiguous Propositions to be answered by me confounding St. Peter and the Pope an Headship of Order and an Headship of power which is all one An head of Order hath power to Act First as well as sit â—irst but he acteth not by his own single power but by the conjunct power of the body or College To shew him that I am not ashamed of my voluntary railing as he phraseth it too silly to merit transcribing or answering I will transcribe it for him The Church or Court of Rome have Sophisticated the true Doctrin of Faith by their supplementall Articles contrary to the First Principle and have introduced into the Church a Tyrannicall Government contrary to the second Principle and are so far from being the entire Catholick Church that by them both they are convicted to have made them selves guilty of Superstition and Schisme If this be railing what Terme doth his Language deserve If this be silly what pitifull stuffe is his He said my onely way to cleare our church from Schisme was to disprove his two Rules I answered he was doubly mistaken first in putting us to prove or disprove who are the persons accused the defendants duty is to answer not to prove that is the duty of the accuser They accuse us of Schisme therefore they ought to prove their Rules whereon they ground their Accusation in that Sense wherein they take them not put us to disprove them He urgeth that by this Method no Rebell ought to give any reason why he did so because he is accused of Rebellion by his lawfull Governour By his leave he that condemneth a Subject of Rebellion before he have proved his accusation doth him wrong But he saith the truth is wheresoever there is a contest each side accuses the other and each side defends it self against the others Accusations but we were the first accusers who could not with any Face have pretended to reform unlesse we accused first our actuall Governour of Vsurpation I told him before that he was doubly mistaken now I must be bold to tell him that he is three wayes mistaken First the Pope was none of our actuall Governour in the externall Regiment of the Church by the Lawes of England Secoâ—dly our Reformation was no Accusation but an Enfranchisement of our selves sub moderamine inculpatae tutelae Thirdly I have already manifested the VsurpatioÌ„s of the Court of Rome upoÌ„ other manner of grounds them his ambiguous Rules As we have proved our intention so let him endeavour to prove his My second answer was that although the proofe did rest on oursides Yet I did not approve of his advise that was to disprove his two Rules My reason is evident we approve of his two rules as they were set down by himself it is not we but they who have swerved from them and therefore it were madnesse in us to disprove them He saith he dare sweare in my behalf that I never spake truer word in my life and out of his Supererogatory kindnesse offers him self to be bound for me that I shall never follow any advise that bids me speake home to the point What silly nonsense is this should I follow any maÌ„s advise to disprove that which I approve I have spoken so home to the point without any advise that I expect little thankes from him and his fellowes for it What he prateth of a discipline left by Christ to the Church of England in Henry the eighths time is ridiculous indeed And it equally ridiculous to hope to make us believe that the Removall of a few upstart Usurpations is a change of the discipline left by Christ to his Church And lastly it is ridiculous to Fancy that later usurpations may not be reformed by the Pattern of the Primitive times and the ancient Canons of the Church and the Practise of succeeding Ages because we received them by particular Tradition from our immediate Fathers That one place which he repeateth as having been omitted by me hath been answered fully to every part of it The rest of this Section is but a Repetition of what he hath said without adding anything that is new and in the Conclusion of this Treatise he giveth us a Summa totalis of it again either he must distrust his Readers memory or his Iudgement and yet for feare of not being understood he recapitulates it all over again in his Index Surely he thinketh his discourse so profound that no man understands him except he repeat it over and over again and for my part I did never meet with such a Torrent of Words and such Shallownesse of matter And so I leave him to S. Austins censure alledged by himself In mala causa non possunt aliter at malam causam quis coegit eos habere Sect. II. That they who cast Papall power out of England were no Protestants but Roman Catholicks throughout except onely in that one point of the Papacy HItherto he saith he hath been the larger in his reply because the former points were Fundamentall concerning and totally decisive of the Question They doe concern the Question indeed to blunder and to confound Vniversal Tradition with particular Tradition a Primacy of Order with a single Supremacy of power Iurisdiction purely Spirituall with externall Iurisdiction in foro contensioso otherwise they concern not the Question And for deciding of the Question wherewithall should he decide it who hath not so much as alledged one Authority in the Case Divine or Humane not a Text of Scripture not a Canon of a Councell not a Testimony of a Father who hath not so much as pretended to any Vniversall or perpetuall Tradition but onely to the Particular immediate Tradition of the Roman Church and this he hath onely pretended to but neither proved it nor attempted to prove it nor is it possible for him to prove by the particular TraditioÌ„ of the Roman Church it self that the Bishop of Rome is the Soveraign Monarch of the Church by Christs own Ordination His onely grounds are his own Vapourous Fancies much like Zenoes Vaunts who used to bragge that he sometimes wanted Opinions but never wanted Arguments My six grounds he stileth Exceptions And why Exceptions But let them be grounds or exceptions or whatsoever he will have them to be and let him take heed that every one of those Trifles and Toyes
surmise or rather it is incredible and not onely incredible but impossible They were the men that advised the King to assume the Supremacy Arch-Bishop Warham told the King it was his right to have it before the Pope Bishop Gardmer was the chiefe framer of the oath of Supremacy Bishop Tonstall and Longlands were the chiefe Preachers up of the Kings Supremacy at St. Pauls Crosse. Tonstall justifieth it in his Letter to Cardinal Poole Gardiner and Beckenshaw did write Polemick bookes in defence of the Kings Supremacy The whole Convocation did set forth a Catechisme or Catecheticall booke to instruct the people in the Kings right to the Supremacy called the Institution of a Christian man Bishop Bonner bloudy Bonner who made such Bonefires of the poore Protestants being then the Kings Embassadour with Clement the 7th did so boldly and highly set forth King Henryes Supremacy in the Assembly of Cardinalls that they thought of burning him or casting him into a vessel of Scalding lead if he had not secured himself by flight Suppose it was credible that they all voted out of feare and tooke the Oath of Supremacy out of Feare what feare could constrain them to advise the King to assume the Supremacy as his right to frame the Oath of Supremacy to instruct others in the Kings right to the Supremacy by private Letters by publick Catechismes to preach up his Supremacy to propugn his Supremacy in their Polemick writings in their Orations before the Cardinalls themselves with hazard of their lifes to tickle the Kings ears with Sermons against the Popes Supremacy Who shall still say what these men did was out of feare must be a very credulous man The contrary is as evident to the world as Noone day light I will conclude this point of the Feare of the Kings violent Cruelty with Bishop Gardiners Testimony of himself He objecteth that as a Bishop he had sworn to maintein the Supremacy of the Pope To which he answereth that what was holily sworn is more holily omittedâ— then to make an Oath the Bond of Iniquity He confessed him self to have been married to the Church of Rome bona fide as to his second wife but after the return of his firsâ— wife that is the truth to which he was espoused in his Baptism being convicted with undeniable evidence he was necessitated out of Conscience to forsake the Church of Rome in this particular Question of Supremacy and to adhere to his first wife the truth and after her to his Prince the Supreme head of the English Church upon earth Secondly I pleaded that although it doth not alwaies excuse a toto from all guilt to be misled by others into errour yet it alwaies excuseth a tanto it extenuateth the Guilt This Allegation is so evidently true that he hath not confideÌ„ce enough to deny it which is a wonder but argueth against it first how could we thinke their example to be followed whom we confesse to have done what they did out of feare Or rather what a shamlesse untruth is this His witnesse saith that feare might be the Occasion of the debate but reason and Conscience were their directours in the decision and we have demonstrated that their actions could not possibly proceed from feare His second answer is why doe we not rather follow them in renouncing their Schisme as those Bishops did after the Kings death Once proved false is alwaies presumed to be false Who told him that they made any retractation afâ—er the Kings death after they were freed from their imminent feare They made no Retractation but held their Bishopricks in King Edwards time untill other Questions did arise and executed the Statute of Supremacy as rigorously as they did in Henry the eighths time For proofe where of I cite the Testimony of Queen Elizabeth given to their Faces in their lives times before the most eminent Embassadours of the greatest Princes when they might have contradicted it if they could when the Emperour and other Roman Catholick Princes interceded with her for the displaced Bishops She gave them this answer that they did now obstinately reject that Doctrin which most part of themselves under Henry the eighth and Edward the sixth had of their own accord with heart and hand publickly in their Sermons and writings taught unto others when they themselves were not private persons but publick Magistrates Observe the words first of their own accords Secondly not onely under Henry the eighth but Edward the sixth therefalleth his Plea to the ground Thirdly when they themselves were publick Magistrates and consequently in a Capacity of doing rather then of suffering Lastly with heart and hand not onely in their Sermons but also in their printed Writings We use to say there is no defence against a Flaile certainly against Subscriptions and publik writings there can be no Defence To the Queenes testimony I adde another of Sanders that the Bishops of Winchester London Durrham Worcester Chichester Excellent Men and inwardly Catholicks yet being made Bishops in the Schisme they had not the Spirit of courage Therefore they resisted faintly to the Kings Primacy or rather they subscribed simply both to it and all other innovations which seemed not to conteine open haeresy least they should lose their Bishopricks When may we expect a true word from him Thirdly he urged the beginners of a fault may be lesse culpaâ—le then their followers when their Provocations be greater Their Provocations were no lesse then expectation of death and destruction by the Kings inhumane Cruelty but our continuance in Schâ—sme compared to the Motives of theirs is in a manner gratis all our reasons being for our Livings and Interest heretofore and now a vain glorious Itch to approve ourselves to our party We have had many proofes of his Veracity here is one more of his Charity Suppose his new light had lead him into ready Paths not Precipices which no man will grant him but his own Fellowes Yet why should he accuse us of Hipocrisy rather then of errour in Iudgement who have lost all our estates for our Consciences which probably he never had to loose nor would have quitted it so if he had had it but onely that his own guilt doth dictate such uncharitable Censures to him No Mr. Serjeant we are no such Changlings or turning weather cocks that is your own part And you may live to act it over againe such hot water freeseth soonest Are you so blind that you do not see that this Accusation might be retorted upon you and upon your great Coâ—verts whom you propose to us for Patterns Who as you say had been Schismaticks in Henry the eighths time you might as well say for the most part of them in Edward the sixths time also and had no other way in the World to preserve or recover their Bishopricks in Queen Maryes dayes but by preteÌ„ding at least such a Conversion But we are not so uncharitable as you we
Apostolicall Bishop and his Primacy of Order so loÌ„g as the Church thought fit to continue it to that See if this would content him To my third reason he excepteth If Monarchy be of Divine Institution the Venetians and the Hollanders are in a sad case I am glad when I find any thing in him that hath but a resemblance of matter more then wind and empty words although they weigh nothing when they come to be examined The Venetians and Hollanders may be in a sad Condition in the Opinion of such rash Censurers as himself is who have learned their Theology and Politicks but by the halues Who taught him to argue from the Position of one lawfull forme of Government to the Deniall of another All lawfull Formes of Government are warranted by the Law of Nature and so have their Institution from God in the Law of Nature The Powers that be are ordained of God whether they be Monarchicall or Aristocraticall or Democraticall Man prepareth the Body God infuseth the Soule of Power which is the same in all Lawfull Formes But though all lawfull Formes of GovernmeÌ„t be warranted by the law of nature yet not all in the same Degree of Eminency There is but one soule in the body one Sun in the heaven one Maister in a Family and anciently one Monarch in each Society all the first Governours were Kings The soule of Soveraign Power is the same in all Formes but the Organ is more apt to attain its end in one Form then another in Monarchy then in Aristocracy or Democracy And we say God and Nature doe alwaies intend that which is best Thus it is in the Law of Nature which is warrant sufficient for any form of Government but in the Positive Law of God he never instituted or authorised any form but Monarchy In the last Paragraph where I say that the Popes Headship of Iurisdiction is not of divine Institution he excepteth that it is my bare saying and my old â—rick to say over againe the very point in dispute between us If this be the very point in dispute beâ—ween us as it is indeed it is more shame for him who letteth the very point in dispute alone and never offereth to come neare it especially having made such lowd bragges that he would charge the Crime of Schisme upon the Church of England with undeniable Evidence and prove the Popes Headship of Iurisdiction or Power by a more ample cleare and continued Title then any right of Law or Humane Ordinances can offer Quid tanto dignum tulit hic promiss or hiaâ—u As for my part I know my Obligation whilest I am upon the defensive to make good my ground and when it is my turn to assault I shall discharge my duty If he have any thing to say to the Huguenots of France they are at age to answer him themselves Our Controversy is onely concerning the Church of England SECT 6. That the King and Church of England had sufficieÌ„t grounds to seperate from the Court of Rome I had reason to wonder not at our Grounds but their sileÌ„ce that having so long so ofteÌ„ called for our grounds of Seperation and charged us that we have no grounds that we could have no grounds now when sufficient Grounds are offered to them two of them one after another should passe by them in deep silence And this Dispatcher being called upon for an answer unlesse he would have the cause sentenced against him upon a Nihil dicit with more haâ—â— then good speed gives us an answer and no Answer like the Title of an empty Apothecaries Box. If there be any Monster the Reader may looke for it on that side not on our side He may promise the View of a strange Monster in his Antepasts and Postpasts and blow his Trumpet to get pence a piece to see it as he phraseth it but if the Readers expect till he shew them any such rare sight they may wait untill Dooms day and all the remedy he offers them is to say he hath abused them as he doth often Now roome for his Case or his two Principles of Vnity which are evermore called in to help at a dead lift But his case is not the true case and his Rules are leaden Rules they might be streighâ— at the beginning but they have bended them according to their self Interest Both his case and his Principles have been sufficiently discussed and fully cleared so that I will not offend the Reader with his sleight dish of Coleworts sodden over and over againe He is angry that I make our seperation to be rather from the Court of Rome then from the Churcâ— of Rome and stileth it perfect Impudence So my Assertion be evidently true I weigh not his groundlesse Calumnies Let any man looke upon our GrievaÌ„ces and the Grounds of our Reformation 1. the intollerable extortion of the Roman Court 2. the unjust Vsurpations of the Roman Court 3. the malignant influence of the Roman Court upon the body politick 4. the like malignant influence of the Roman Court upon the body Ecclesiastick 5. and lastly the Violation of ancient Liberties and Exemtions by the Roman Court and he can not doubt from whence we made our Separation All our sufferings were from the Roman Court then why should we seek for ease but where our Shoe did wring us And as our GrievaÌ„ces so our ReformatioÌ„ was onely of the Abuses of the Roman Court Their bestowing of prelacies and dignities in England to the prejudice of the right patrons Their Convocating Synods in England without the Kings leave Their prohibiting English Prelates to make their old Feâ—dall Oaths to the King and obliging them to take new Oaths of Fidelity to the Pope Their imposing and receiving Tenths and First fruits and other arbitrary Pensions upon the English Clergy And lastly their usurping a Legislative Iudiciary and Dispensative Power in the exteriour Court by Politicall Coaction These are all the Branches of Papall power which we have rejected This Reformation is all the Separation that we have made in point of Discipline And for Doctrine we have no Difference with them about the old Essentialls of Christian Religion And their new Essentialls which they have patched to the Creed are but their erroneous or at the best probable Opinions no Articles of Faith He is still bragging of his Demonstrations yet they are but blind Enthymematicall Paralogismes wherein he maketh sure to set his best legge formost and to conceale the lamenesse of his Discourse as much as he can from the eyes of the Reader and still calling upon us for rigorous Demonstration I wish we knew whether he understaÌ„d what rigorous Demonstration is in Logick for no other Demonstration is rigorous but that which proceedeth according to the strict Rules of Logick either a priore or a posteriore from the cause or the effect And this Cause in Difference between us whether those Branches of power which the Pope claimeth and we have
obey their Priests then their Kings But they must move their Rudder according to the Various Face of the Sky and await for a fitter opportunity As our Kings did which fell oâ—t at the Reformation when they followed his Counsaile in good earnest and with the Civill sword did lop away all Papall Vsurpations and abuses Other Division then this to divide between the rotteâ— and the sound we made none The great division which followed our Reformation was made by themselves and their Censures Our Articles do testify to all the world that we have made no division from any Church but onely from Errours and Abuses Seventhly he pleadeth that in case these temporall inconveniences had not been otherwise remediable yeâ— Ecclesiasticall Communion ought not to be broken for temporall Concernments To prove this Conclusion he bringeth six reasons some pertinent some impertinent and very improper but he might have saved his labour For if he understand his Conclusion in that sense wherein he ought to understand it and wherein I hope he doth understand it of deserting the Communion of the Catholick Church or of any member of the Catholick Church qua â—ale as it is a Member for meer temporall respects Concedo omnia I grant the conclusion but if by breaking Ecclesiasticall Communion he understand deserting the Communion of a particular Church as it is erroneous and wherein it is erroneous his Conclusion is not pertinent to his purpose nor his six proofes pertinent to his conclusion But he might remember first that our Grounds by his own Confession do not all relate to temporall inconveniences but some of them to Eternity and Conscience and that they ought to be considered conjointly Secondly that we do not make these temporall Inconveniences to be irremediable we our selves have found out a Remedy and it is the same which he himself adviseth in this place to thrust out all entroachments and Vsurpations with the civill sword If they will grow Angry upon this and break Ecclesiasticall Communion themselves it is their Act not ours who have acted nothing who have declared nothing against any right of the Bishop of Rome divine or humane but onely against his encroachments and Vsurpations and particularly against his Coactive poweâ— in the Exteriour Court within the English Dominions They might take us to be not onely very tame Creatures but very stupid Creatures first to suffer them to entrench and encroach and usurp upon us dayly and theÌ„ to be able to perswade us to Isachars condition to undergoe our burthen with Patience like Asses because we may not break Ecclesiasticall Communion for temporall concernments We have done nothing but what we have good warrant for from the Lawes of God and nature let them suffer for it who either seperate from others without just cause or give others just cause to seperate from them In the next place followeth a large Panegyricall Oration iâ— the praise of Vnity of the Benefit and Necessity of it mixed with an Invective against us for breaking both the Bonds of Vnity The former of those considerations is altogether superfluous To praise Vnity which no man did ever dispraise but to his own perpetuall Disgrace The latter is a meer Taâ—tology or repetition of what he hath said before which I will not trouble the Reader withall but onely where I find some new weight added He saith wee acknowledge the Chnrch of Rome to be a true Church Right Metaphisically a true Church which hath the true essence and being of a Church but not Morally true or free from Errours He demands what is the certain Method to know the true sense of Scripture If he please to take so much paines to View my answer to Militier he may find both whom wee hold to be fit Expositors of Scripture and what is the right manner of expounding Scripture If he have any thing to say against it he shall have a faire hearing He telleth us that our best Champions Chillingworth and Falkland doe very candidly confesse that we have no certainty of Faith but probability onely He citeth no place and I do not hold it worthy of a search whether they doe confesse it or not It is honour enough for them to have been genuine Sonnes of the English Church I hope they were so and men of rare parts whereof no man can doubt yet one of them was a Lay man it may be neither of them so deeply radicated in the right Faith of the English Church as many others But our chiefest Champions are those who stick closest to the Holy Scriptures interpreted according to the Analogy of Faith and the Perpetuall Tradition of the Vniversall Church but for that Assertion which you father upon them that we have no certainty of Faith but probability onely We detest it And when you or any other is pleased to make tryall You will find that we have as great assuraÌ„ce altogether for our faith as your selves have for your old Articles of faith and much more then you have for your new Articles He accuseth us for joining iu Communion with Greeks Lutherans Huguenots perhaps Socinians Presbyterians Adamites Quakers c. And after he addeth Roman Catholicks Are not Huguenots Presbyterians in his Sense If they be why doth he disjoin them I know no reason why we should not admit Greeks and Lâ—â—herans to our Communion and if he had added them Armenians Abyssines Muscovites and all those who do professe the Apostolicall Creed as it is expounded by the first four Generall Councells under the Primitive Discipline and the Roman Catholicks also if they did not make their Errours to be a Condition of their Communion As for Adamites and Quakers we know not what they are and for Socinians we hold them worse then Arrians The Arrians made Christ to be a Secondary God erat quando non erat but the Socinians make him to be a meer creature And for Presbyterians what my Iudgement is he may find fully set down in my reply to the Bishop of Chalcedons Epistle But saith he every one of these hath a different head of the Church The English head is the King The Roman Catholick head is the Pope The Grecian head is the Patriarch The Presbyterian head is the Presbytery or Synod and the Lutheran head is the Parish Minister First for the Lutherans he doth them egregious wrong Throughout the Kingdomes of Denwark and Sweden they have theit Bishops name and thing and throughout Germany they have their Superintendents And to the rest I answer him that there are severall Heads of the Church Christ alone is the Spirituall head the Soveraign Prince the Politicall head the Ecclesiasticall head is a Generall Councell and under that each Patriarch in his Patriarchate and among the Patriarchs the Bishop of Rome by a Priority of Order We who maintain the King to be the Politicall head of the English Church doe not deny the spirituall Headship of Christ nor the supreme power of the
hold out encroachments with the point of the sword without any medling with just right Other division then this which he himself hath allowed we believe our Ancestours intended none we hold none and so are accountable for none The main Question is whether the Britannick Churches were de facto subject to Rome or not I have demonstrated the contrary already that they were not and had alwaies their Ordinations at home But his Conclusion which he puts upon me that true complaints against Governours whether otherwise remediable or no are sufficient reasons to abolish that very Government is a vain assertion of his own no CoÌ„clusion of mine He starteth a Question here little to his own Credit whether he that mainteineth the Negative or he that mainteineth the Affirmative ought to prove He saith according to his old Pueriles that a Negative may be proved in Logick No man doubteth of it or denieth it Quis eâ—im potest negare I said on the Contrary that in this case which commeth here in difference between us according to the strict rules of Law the burthen to proue resteth onely on his side who affirmeth As the Question is here between us whether we had other Remedies then to make such a Reformation as we did We say No. They say Yea. It is possible to â—rove there might be other Remedies â—ut it is impossible to prove there were no â—ther Remedies Galen or Hippocrates himâ—elf would not have undertaken such a Taske to prove that there were no other Remedies for a disease then that which they used It is not for want of Logicall Forms that Negatives are not to be proved â—n matter of Fact but for want of sufficient Mediums He saith he is no Bowler and so â—nexpert as not to understand what is the soaling of a Bowle It may be it is true but if I should put him to prove this Negative it is impossible But so farre as a Negative of that nature is capable of proofe I did prove it by our Addresses to Popes and Councells and long expectation in vain that we had no other Remedy then that which we used to thrust out their Vsurpations by the power of the sword which course he himself adviseth and we practised The division is not made by them who thrust out Vsurpations but by them who brought them in and defend them I said that not onely our Ancestors but all Catholick Countries did maintein their own privileges inviolated and make themselves the last Iudges of their Grievances from the Court of Rome Hence he concludeth with open Mouth therefore there were other Remedies there needed no Division Alas poore man how he troubleth himself about nothing They and we used the very same Remedies the same that he adviseth in this place The Pope would not ease them upon many addresses made What then had not the King the Sword in his own hands Did it not lie in his power to right himself as he listed and to admit those pretended encroachments onely so far as he thought just and fitting Yes the King had the sword in his hands and did right him self and cast out those Papall Usurpatious so far as he found Iust and now when we have followed your own advise you call us Schismaticks and Dividers Sr. we are no Dividers but we have done our Duties and if we prove those things which we cast out to be Vsurpations as we have done you are the Schismaticks by your own Confession He pleadeth If Papall Authority be of Christs Institution then no just cause can possibly be given for its Abolishment Right But those Branches of Papall power which we have cast out are neyther of Christs Institution nor of Mans Institution but meer Vsurpations Neither doe we seek to abolish Papall Authority but to reform it from Accidentall Abuses and reduce it to its first Institution The best Institutions Divine or Humane may sometimes need such Reformation Here is nothing like proofe but his World of Witnesses and his Immemoriall Tradition presumed not proved To shew that no Nation suffred so much as England under the Tyranny of the Roman Court he saith I produce nothing but the pleasant saying of a certain Pope Well would he have a better witnesse against the Pope then the Pope him self Habemus confitentem reuÌ„ He was pleasant indeed but Ridentem dicere verum Quid vetat VVhat hindereth that a man may net tell the truth laughing He asketh whether those Testimonies which I produce be Demonstrative or rigorous Evidences I thinke he would have me like the unskilfull Painter to write over the Heads of my Arguments This is a Demonstration It would become him better to refute them and shew that they are not Demonstrative then to trifle away the time with such frivolous Questions I shewed that England is not alone in the Seperation so long as all the Eastern Southern Northern and so great a part of the Western Church have seperated themselves from the Court of Rome and are seperated by them from the Church of Rome as well as we In answer to this he bids me shew that those I call Christians have any infallible or certain Rule of Faith c. This is first to hang men up and then to examine their cause first to excommunicate four parts of five of the Christian world for their own Interests because they will not submit their necks to the Roman Yoke and embrace their upstart Vsurpations with as much Devotion as the genuine Legacies of Christ and his Apostles It behoved the Court of Rome to have weighed the case more maturely before they gave such a temerarious sentence against the much greater part of Christendome in so weighty a cause But for their rule of Faith they have a more certain and Authentick Rule then he himself by as much as the Apostles Creed is a more Authentick rule of Faith then Pius the fourths Creed and the Holy Scriptures a more infallible ground then particular supposititious Tradition which wanteth both Perpetuity and Vniversality I said that we desired to live in the peaceable Communion of the Catholick Church as well as our Ancestours as far as the Roman Court will give us leave He answereth that he knoweth very well we would be glad that the Church of Rome would own us for hers c That lack Straw or Wat Tiler after they had rebelled had no mind to be hanged That it is no Charity or Courtesy in us but a request of an unreasonable favour from them to admit us into their Communion and would be most absurd in Government c. Whether they hold us for theirs or not is not much materiall if they did it were the better for themselves if they doe not it is not the worse for us so as Christ own us for his it skilleth not much whether they say come ye blessed or goe ye cursed whether we be the wheat or Chaffe their tongues must not winnow us Although he snuffe at
it seemeth by what passed lately between us that he understandeth the Rules of Opposition or right Contradiction better then your self First the Emphasis lieth not in the word true but in the words say and censure Cannot a man believe or hold his own Religion to be true but he must necessarily say or ceÌ„sure another mans which he coÌ„ceiveth to be opposite to it to be false Truth and Falshood are Contradictory or of eternall Disjunction but there is a meane between believing or holding mine own Religion to be true and saying or censuring another mans which perhaps is opposite to be false both more prudentiall and more charitable that is silence to looke circumspectly to myself and leave other men to stand or fall to their own Maister S. Cyprian did believe or hold his own Opinion of Rebaptisation to be true yet did not censure the opposite to be false or remove any man from his Communion for it Rabshakeh was more censorious then Hezekiah and down right Atheists then conscionable Christians Secondly that which he calleth his Religion is no more in truth then his Opinion and different Opinions are stiled different Religions In opinions it is not necessary to hold with any party much lesse to censure other parties Sometimes seeming different Opinions are both true and all the Opposition is but a Contention about words and then mutuall censures are vaine sometimes they are both false and then there is more use of Mutuall Charity then mutual Censures and evermore whether true or false an Errour against Charity is much greater then a meer speculative errour in Iudgement Prejudice and selâ—love are like a coloured glasse which makes every thing we discern through it to be of the same colour and on the otherside rancour and animosity like the tongue infected with Choller maketh the sweetest meats to tast bitter In each respect censures are daÌ„gerous and his principle pernicious that He who doth not censure every Religion whieh he reputeth contrary to his own hath no Religion I set down some Principles whereof this is the first particular Churches may fall into Errours He answereth t is true if by Errours he means Opinions onely No I mean Fundamentall Errours also and not onely fall into some Fundamentall Errours but apostate from Christ and turn Turkes and change their Bible into the Alchorâ—a whereof we have visible experience in the world He answers that Principle is not so undeniable as I thinke in case that Particular Church adhere firmly to her rule of Faith Immediate Tradition Well but we see visibly with our eyes that many particular Churches have not adhered to any Tradition Vniversall or Particular Mediate or Immediate but have abandoned all Apostolicall Tradition then to what purpose serveth his Exception in case that Church adhere firmly to immediate Tradition when all the World seeth that they have not adhered firmly to Apostolicall Tradition His Preservative is much like that which an old Seaman gave a freshwater Passenger when he was to goe to Sea to put so many pibble stones into his mouth with assurance that he should not cast whilest he held them between his teeth What sort of Tradition ought to be reputed Apostolicall what not I have shewed formerly My second Principle was that all Errours are not Essentialls or Fundamentalls He demands what is this to his Proposiâ—â—oÌ„ which spake of Religion not of Opinions Very much because he maketh Opinions to be Essentialls of his Religion as wee see in the new Creed of Pius of fourth so do not we To the third Principle we agree thus farre that an Errour de side formaliter or in those things which are Essentialls of Faith doth destroy the being of a Church I adde that Errours in those things Quae sunt fidei materialiter that is in Inferiour Questions which happen in or about things believed or which are not in Essentialls howsoever they may be lately crowded into the Catalogue of Essentialls do not destroy the being of a Church My fourth Principle was that every one is bound according to the just extent of his power to free himself from such Errours as are not in Essentialls He answereth Why so my Lord if those errours be not Essentiall they leave accordinâ— to your own Grounds sufficient means of Salvation and the true being of a Church How prove you then you ought to breake Church Communion c. As if no Errours ought to be remedied but onely those which are absolutely exclusive from all hope of Salvation as if those Errours which are onely impeditive of Salvation ought not to be eschewed The least Errour maintained or committed against the dictate of Conscience is a sinne every good Christian ought to doe his uttermost endeavonr to free himself from sinne it is not lawfull to doe evill that good may come of it Yes saith he but not to break Church Communion which is essentially destructive to the being of a Church or to endanger our soules where there is no necessity First they who free themselves from known Errours doe not thereby break Church Communion but they who make their Errours to be a Condition of their Communion Let him heare the Conclusion of the Bishop of Chalcedon In case a Particular Church do require profession of her Heresy as a Condition of Communicating with her Division from her in this case is no Schisme or sinne but virtue and necessary Where he speaketh onely of materiall Heresy It was they who made their Errours the Condition of their Communion and therefore the Schisme and sinlyeth at their doores Secondly Schisme doth not destroy the being of a Church for the Church continueth a Church still after the Schismaticks are gone out of it but it destroyeth the Schismaticks themselves Lastly to free ourselves froÌ„ known Errours when they are made Conditions of Communion is so far from being dangerous to salvation that as the Bishop confesseth truely it is virtue and necessary The second proofe of our Moderation was our Charity that we left them as one should leave his Fathers house whilest it is infected with some contagious Sicknesse with an hearty desire to return again so soone as it is cleansed This Charitable desire of ours I prooved by our daily prayers for theÌ„ in our Letany that God would bring them out of the way of Errour into the way of truth and particularly by our prayer on Good Fryday for them That God would have mercy upon all Hereticks and fetch them home to his Flock that they may be saved among the remnant of true Israelites and be made one fold under one Shepheard Iesus Christ our Lord. And this our Charity is the more conspicuous by this that in bulla caenae that is the next day before anniversarily they doe as solemnly curse and Anathematize us To this he answereth first that they doe more for us and hazard their lifes dayly to convert us They hazard their lifes to serve a forrein interest not to convert but
to pervert as many as they can not to sow good seed in the Lords Field but to superseminare or sow Tares above the wheat We should thank them more to stay at home then to compasse Sea and Land to gaine Proselites as the Pharisees did and made them twofold more the Children of Hell then themselves He saith that this is the solemne Custome of their Church every Good Friday Let it be so but they have not the same incentive and provocation which we have we do not curse and Anathematise theÌ„ the day before as they doe us This Advantage we have over them that we render blessing for cursing which they doe not He addeth that they cannot be understood under the notion of Hereticks first because we acknowledge theirs to be a true Church and therefore not hereticall Secondly they are of Christs Flock already and therefore not reductble to his Flock To the First â— answer that a particular Church which is onely materially Hereticall not formally doth still continue a true Church of Christ. The Bishop of Chalcedon understood these things much better then himself this is confessed by him in the place formerly alleged A particular Church may be really Hereticall or Schismaticall and yet morally a true particular Church because she is invincibly ignorant of her Heresy or Schisme We agree with him wholy in the sense onely we differ in the expression What he calleth really Hereticall we stile materially Hereticall and what he calleth morally a true Church we use to stile Metaphysically a true Church that is by truth of Entity not of Morality Secondly I answer that the Flock of Christ is taken variously sometimes more largely sometimes more strictly more largely for all those that are In domo by outward profession more strictly for those who are Ex domo so in the Church that they are also of the Church by inward Sanctification And our Collect hath reference to this later acception of this word Flock So Fetch them home blessed Lord to thy Floek that they may be saved He taketh it ill that our Church hath chaÌ„ged these words in the Missall recall them to our Holy Mother the Catholick and Apostolick Church into this dwindling puling puritanicall expression of one Floek and one Fold under one Shepheard Whether it be because he hath a Pick against Scripture phrases as sounding too preacherlike or rather because our Church did presume to name the right Shepheard Iesus Christ and not leave it to their Glosses to entitle the Pope to that Office But certainly the Authority of the Catholick Church is not formidable at all to any Genuine Sonnes of the Church of England I doe readily acknowledge that it is the duty of each Orthodox Church to Excommunicate Formall Hereticks and them who swerve from the Apostles Creed as the rule of Faith but this doth not oblige the Church of England to Excommunicate all materiall Hereticks who follow the dictate of their conscience in inferiour Questions which are not Essentialls of Faith and do hold the truth implicitly in the preparation of their minds Neither do I ever know that the Church of England did ever excommunicate Papists in grosse qua tales but onely some particular Papists who were either convicted of other Crimes or found Guilty of Contumacy It were to be wished that the Court of Rome would use the same Moderation and remember how Ireneus reproved Pope Victor that he had not done rightly to cut of from the Vnity of the Mysticall body of Christ so many and so great Churehes of God This is that great nonsense which this egregious Prevaricatour hath found in our Collect that the English Church cannot reconcile her doctrine and her practise together Let him not trouble his head with that but rather how to recoucile himself with his own Church He will have prayers to be onely words no works but his Church maketh Prayer Fasting and Almes to be three satisfactory works My third proofe of our Moderation was that we doe not challenge a new Church a new Religion or new holy Orders but derive our Church our Religion our Holy Orders from Christ and his Apostles by an uninterrupted Succession we obtrude no Innovations upon others All this is quite omitted by this great pretender to Sincerity and yet he knoweth or may know that there have been pretended Reformers who have committed all these excesses But he catcheth hold of two words of my defence that we have added no thing I wish they could say as much nor taken away any thing but Errours To the former part he excepteth that he who positively denies ever addes the contrary to what he takes away He that makes it an Article there is no Purgatory no Masse no prayers to Saincts hath as many Articles as he who holds the Contrary I have taken away this answer before and Demonstrated that no negative can be a Fundamentall Article or necessary Medium of Salvation because it hath no Entity That there are an hundred greater disputes and Contradictions among them selves in Theologicall Questions or in these things quae sunt fideâ— materialiter then those three are between us and them Yet they dare not say that either the Affirmatives or Negatives are Articles of Faith The ChristiaÌ„ Church for fifteen hundred yeares knew never more then 12. old Articles of Faith untill Pius the 4th added twelve new Articles And now this young Pythagoras will make us more then 1200. Articles affirmative Articles and Negative Articles Fundamentall Articles and Superstructive Articles Every Theologicall truth shall either be a Fundamentall Article or an indifferent and unconcerning Opinion He saith our 22. Article defineth the Negative to Purgatory yet I like an ill tutored Child tell my old Crasy Mother the Church of England that she lies I hope by this time the Reader knoweth sufficiently that his penne is no slander If the Church of England did ever ill it was when she begot him Neither doe I tell the Church of England she lies nor dissent in the least from the Definition of the Church of England neither doth the Church of England define any of these Questions as necessary to be believed either necessitate medâ—i or necessitate praecepti which is much lesse but onely bindeth her sonnes for peace sake not to oppose them But he himself can hardly be excused from lying where he telleth us the good simple Ministers did sweare to maintein them Perhaps he was one of the simple Ministers did he ever sweare to maintein them did he ever know any man who did sweare to maintein them For him to urge such falshoods after they have been so often detected is double Effronterie Periisse puto â—ui pudor periit He inferreth further By the Bishops Logick these propositions that there are not two Gods that the devills shall not be saved nor the Saints in Heaven damned that there is no Salvation but through Christ must cease to be Articles of Faith and
become indifferent unconcerning Opinions because they are Negative I wish no more disparagement to any man then to be the authour of such an absurd assertion Either they are Fundamentall Articles or unconcerning Opinions How should they cease to be Articles which never were Articles That there is one God and one Saviour Iesus Christ that the life of the Saints is everlasting and the Fire of the devills Everlasting are Articles of Faith but every thing which may be deduced from these is not a distinct Article of Faith To the latter part of my plea that we tooke nothing away but weeds he pleadeth first that it is but a self supposition or a begging of the Question By his leave I have demonstrated that all the Branches of Papall power which are in controversy between them and us are all grosse Vsurpations and weeds which did never sprout up in the Church of England untill after 1100 yeares no man can say without shame that such were planted by Christ or his Apostles Secondly he excepteth that to take away Errours is a requisite act af Iustice not a proofe of Moderation On the contrary therefore it is a proofe of Moderation because it is a requisite Act of Iustice all virtue consisteth in the meane or in a moderation It is not his particular pretended supposititious Tradition which doth secure us that Christ was and that the Holy Scripture is the Genuine word of God but the Vniversall and perpetuall Tradition of the Catholick Church of Christ. My last proofe of our Moderation was that we are ready in the preparation of our minds to believe and practice whatsoever the Catholick Church of this present Age doth believe and practice And this is an infallible preservative to keep a man within the Pale of the Church whosoever doth this Cordially cannot possibly be a formall Heretick or Schismatick because he is invincibly ignorant of his Heresy or Schisme No man can have iust cause to seperate his Communion a Communione orbis Terrarum from the Communion of the Christian world If he would have confuted this his way had been to have proposed something which the Christian World united doth believe or practise which wee are not ready to believe or Practice This he doth not so much as attempt to doe but barketh and raileth without rime or reason First he telleth us we say that there is no Vniversall Church Chuse Reader whether thou wilt believe him or our Leiturgy wherein we pray dayly that God will inspire the Vniversall Church with the Spirit of Truth Vnity and Concord He telleth us that they doe not doubt but we have renounced our Creed Chuse Reader whether thou wilt believe him or our Leiturgy wherein we make profession dayly of the Apostolick Nicene and Athanasian Creeds He telleth us that we have renounced our reason If he had said onely that we had lost our reason it is more then any man in his right wits would say but to say we have renounced our reason is incredible The reason of all this is because we give no certein Rule to know a true Church from an Hereticall He supposeth that no Hereticall Church is a true Church The Bishop of Chalcedon may instruct him better that an Hereticall Church is a true Church whilest it erreth invincibly He saith that he hath lived in Circumstances to be as well acquainted with our Doctrin as most men are Yet he professeth that if his life were at stake be could not Determine absolutely upon our Constant Grounds VVhether Presbyterians Anabaptists or Quakers are to be excluded from the Vniversall Church or no. The nearer relation that he hath had to the Church of England the more shame for him to scoffe so often at the supposed Nakednesse of his Mother and to revile her so virulently without either ground or Provocation which gave him his Christian being He hath my Charitable Iudgement of Presbyterians in my Reply to the Bishop of Chalcedons Epistle And for the other Sects it were much better to have a little patience and suffer them to dye of themselves then trouble the world so much about them they were produced in a Storme and will dye in a Calme He may be sure they will never molest him at any Councell either Generall or Occidentall It is honour enough for them to be named in earnest by a Polemick writer But what manner of Disputing is this to bring Questions in stead of Arguments As what new Form of Discipline the Protestants have introduced What are the certain Conditions of a right Oecumenicall Councell What is the Vniversall Church and of what particular Churches it doth consist What are the notes to know a true Church from an Hereticall We have introduced no new discipline but reteined the old Our Conditions of a right Oecumenicall Councell are the same they were not altogether so rigorously exacted in case of invincible necessity We are readier to give an account of ourselves then to censure others either to intrude ourselves into the Office of God to distinguish perfectly formall Schismaticks from materiall Or into the Office of the Catholick Church to determine precisely who ought to be excluded from her Communion who not We exclude all those whom undoubted Generall Councells have excluded the rest we leave to God and to the determination of a free Councell as Generall as may be But because I would not leave him unsatisfied in any thing I am contented to admit their own Definition of the Vniversall Church That is the Company of Christians knit together by the profession of the same faith and the Communion of the same Sacraments under the Government of lawfull Pastours Taking away that purple patch which they have added at the latter end of it for their own Interest And especially of the Roman Bishop as the onely Vicar of Christ upon Earth And if they had stinted at a Primacy of Order or beginning of unity I should not have excepted against it He objecteth that Protestants have no grounds to distinguish true believers from false That were strange indeed whilest we have the same Scriptures interpreted by the same perpetuall Tradition of the Vniversall Church according to the same Analogy of Faith wherein we give this honour to the Fathers not to be Authours but witnesses of Tradition whatsoever grounds they have to distinguish true believers from false we have the same But because I made the Apostles Creed to be the rule of Faith he objecteth First then the Puritans who deny the Article of Christs descent into Hell must be excluded quite from the Vniversall Church If they be so what is that to the Church of England if they be turned out yet let them be heard first They plead that the manner of Christs descent is not particularly determined but let it be determined or not they ought to be turned out of the Vniversall Church by a Generall Councell and it may be they will submit to the Authority of a Generall
Governed The Supreme Governesse in respect of its Representative a Generall Councell to which all Ecclesiasticall Officers higher or lower whether Constituted by Christ or substituted by the Church doe owe an account And the Governed in respect of that Vniversality of Christians which he mentioneth And this sounds much more sweetly in Christian eares then to make either the Pope the Maister or the Church of Rome the Mistresse of the Church He brought an Argument for the Succession of the Roman Bishop drawn from the Vicissitude of Humane affairs I retoâ—ted it upon himselfe that Rome itself was as much subject to this Vicissitude as any other place it may be destroyed with an Earthquake He saith It must be an unheard of Earthquake which can swallow up the whole Diocesse if the City be destroyed yet the Clergy of the Roman Diocesse can elect to themselves a new Bishop But this new elected Bishop shall be no more the Bishop of Rome after it is destroyed But that which concerneth him and the cause more is he proposeth my Objection by halfes I said it might be destroyed by warres also that is both City and Diocesse and become a place for Satyrs to Dance in and Owles to scrâ—ech in As great Cityes as Rome have run that Fortune In that case what will become of his Election I added it may become Hereticall or Mahumetan He answereth True so may the whole Church if it had pleased God so to Order causes No by his leave not so Christ hath promised that his Vniversall Church shall never faile but he hath not promised that Rome shall never faile I said the Church never disposeth so of her Offices as not to be able to change her Mesnagery according to the Vicissitude of Humane affaires He opposeth that I granted in the foregoing Page that Christ himself and not the Church instituted this Prineipality or Primacy and bids me shew that the Church hath Authority to change Christs Institution I did not grant it but suppose it but whether granted or supposed it is not materiall to the purpose The Church hath no power to change Christs Institution in Essentialls but all Ecclesiasticall Officers whatsoever are her Officers and she hath power to dispose of them and govern them and to alter what is not Essentiall I know there are other meaus between Tyranny and Anarchy besides Aristocracy even all lawfull Formes of Government as Monarchy and Democracy but in the Government of the Catholick Church Monarchy and Democracy had no place unlesse it were in respect of Particular Diocesses or Provinces and therefore to have named Monarchy here had been superfluous and impertinent But the Government of the Primitive Church in the Apostles and their Successours was ever Aristocraticall first by an equall Participation of power in the Apostles and then by a Subordination of Bishops in their Successours and this as well out of Generall Councells as in them as well before there were Generall Councells as after It is not my want of Memory but his want of Iudgement to pursue such shadowes as these and nickname them Contradictions He askes how should a Primate of Order who hath no power to Act at all in order to the Vniversall Church have more power to prevent her good or procure her harme then one who hath Soveraignty of power This is his perpetuall Practise to dispute from that which is not granted St. Peter was a Primate of Order aâ—ong the Apostles and no more yet he had power to act singly as an Apostle and as a Primate among the Apostles he had power also to Act jointly with the Aposâ—olicall College so have all other Primates of â—rder Whatsoever Mr. Serjeant thiâ—kes Our Saviâ—uâ— thought this Form of Goveâ—ment as conducible to the good of his Church both to procure her Good and to prevent her harm as an absolute Soveraignty I doe not feast the Reader with Contradictions Nothing is more true then my Assertion but he abuseth his Reader with notorious Fictions If the Papacy be the Bridle in the mouth of the Church then without peradventure the Pope is the Rider though the Papacy be not I said enough before to let him see the unfitnesse of his lâ—dicrâ—us Allegory and taxed him for it if he delight in it let him pursue it Nos hac a Scabie tenemus ungues How the Church doth both govern and is governed I have shewed him formerly In his answer he fell into a large Encomiuâ— of the Papacy demanding among other things What Christian Prince can chuse but be glad to have an Arbitrator so prudent so pâ—â—â—s so distinteressed as a Good Pope should be and if this Authority were duely Governed I told him that to looke upon men as they should be was to write dreaming He rejoineth that he lookes not upon men at all in this place but speakes of the Office it self And challengeth me what say you to the Office it self I answer first he saith not truely for he did looke at men in this place otherwise why did he adde this Condition as a good Pope should be And this other If this Authority were duely governed Certainly he who lookes upon an Arbitrator so prudent so pious so Disinteressed as a good Pope should be looketh something upon men And so in truth he ought to doe but his fault is that he lookes upon them as they should be and not as they commonly are which is the same fault I taxe him with to write Dreaming not waking Now to his Question What say you to the Office it self I say first that though he hath stated it p. 624 Yet he hath not stated it at all neither I feare dare he state it nor is willing to state it He telleth us indeed sometimes of the Substance of the Papacy but wherein the Substance of the Papacy consists except some Generall unsignificant Expressions of an Headship or Chief Governourship or First Movership about which we have no Controversy with them and which are equally appliable to a Primacy of Order and a Soveraignty of Power he saith nothing Whether the Pope be an absolute Monarch or a duke of Venice inferiour to the whole Senate whether he have a Coactive power in the Exteriour Court throughout all other Princes dominions without their leaves Whether he have the right to conferre Bishopricks Convocate Synods Impose Pensions For bid Oaths of Allegiance and require new Oaths of Allegiance to himself Set up Legantine Courts Receive Appeales make Lawes dispense with Lawes at his pleasure he saith nothing yet these are the onely Controversies we have with them to aske what we say to the Popes Authority without stating of it without stinting of it is an unreasonable demand I say secondly that he ought to explain himself by what right he doth challenge this Authority Divine or Humane or onely out of Prudentiall reasons If he challenge it by divine right or Humane right he ought to prove the right according to the just extent of
by all Catholicks c. For which you are excommunicated It is true they did not deny us Communion for holding this Opinion nor presse upon us an unconscientious Approbation of this Opinion directly for any thing that I know but neverthelesse they have by their power subjected a Generall Councell to the Pope they have procured it to be defined though not expresly in the Councell of Florence and to be expresly defined in the Councell of Lateran under Leo the tenth Hence it is that all the Councells since the Councells of Constance and Basile and the two Pisan Councells have wanted Conciliary Freedome and been altogether at the Disposition of the Popes to prorogue them to tranfferre them to stin◠them what matters they might handle and what not to deferre their Determinations untill he had formed or created a party or wrought some of the dissenting Bishops to his will to ratify or reject their decrees at his pleasure When or where was it ever heard before that there was twice as many Bishops of one Nation in a Generall Councell as of all other Nations in the world Hence was that complaint of the Fathers in the Councell of Trent that the Synode was guided by the Holy Ghost sent from Rome in a Male. If it had not been for this thing but the Fathers had been permitted freely to have proceeded in the Councell of Trent in the Resolution of that noble Question concerning the Residence and divine Right of Bishops in all probability this great rent had been made up and he and I had not needed to have disputed this Question at this Day Thus by this Opinion and by their Sinister Practises to establish it they are causally and formally Schismaticall and have been both the procreating and conserving Cause of this great Schisme the procreating cause by altering the Hierarchy and Disordering the Members which doth necessarily produce a disturbance and Schisme in the Body and the conserving cause by destroying the Freedome of Councells which are the proper Remedies of Schisme Whether these later Councells were Occumenicall or Occidentall or neither is not the point in debate They are those which they call Generall They were as Generall as they would permit them to be and to conclude it was their fault that they were not more Generall So though this were not the very cause alleged by them why they did excommunicate us yet it was one of the Causes of the Schisme and consequently of our Excommunication I leave every man free to Iudge for himself but for mine own part I am so great a Lover of the peace of Christendome that I should not oppose the Bishop of Romes headship of Order if he would be content with it and that is as much as many whom he stileth his own Sons do yield him But though that be sufficient for the Catholick Church it is not sufficient for the Court of Rome to fill their Coffers they love not such a Dry Papacy I dispute onely whether the Popes right be Divine or humane or mixed as Gerson thought either score may justly challenge Duty But I am very positive that whatsoever the Bishop of Rome hath more then this Primacy of Order or beginning of Vnity he had it by humane right and by humane right he may lose it Neither doe I goe about to deprive the Bishop of Rome or any Bishop whatsoever of any Iurisdictiō purely spirituall which was left them as a Legacy by Christ or by his Apostles but I deny that Apparitors or Pursivants or Prisons are of Christs Institution I deny that Christ or his Apostles did ever either exercise themselves or grant to others Authority to exercise Coactive Iurisdiction in the exteriour Court over the Subjects of other Princes within their Dominions and without their leaves If Subjects submit Volenti non fit injuria but then it is not Coactive If Princes give leave as they have done in all Ages so far as they judged it expedient for the publick good then it is very lawfull but without the Subjects submission or the Princes leave there may be indeed a spirituall kind of Coactiō in the interiour Court of Conscience but no true coactiō in the exteriour Court of the Church I see he understandeth not the sense of that Logicall restriction The Papacy as it is such which signifieth not the Papacy as it ought to be or so far as all Roman Catholicks doe agree about it but the Papacy as it is Qualified in present or as it is owned or obtruded or endeavoured to be obtruded by the Pope and Court of Rome So the Papacy as it is such is opposed or contradistinguished to the Ancient Papacy in the purer and more Primitive times which was not guilty of those Vsurpations which the modern Popes have introduced Thus still my Contradiction doth end in his misunderstanding My fourth ād last charge of Schisme upō the Pope and Court of Rome was thus They who take away the Line of Apostolicall Successiō throughout the world except in the See of Rome who make all Episcopall Iurisdiction to flow from the Pope of Rome and to be founded in his Lawes to be imparted to other Bishops as the Popes Vicars and Coadjutors assumed by them into part of their Charge are Schismaticks But the Pope and Court of Rome and their mainteiners do thus Therefore the Pope and Court of Rome and their mainteiners are Schismaticks To this Argument he vouchsafeth no answer at all in due Forme as it ought to be and I have no reason to insist long upon his Voluntary Iargon All the Answer which he intimateth is this that this Tenet is not Generall among them but points of Faith are held generally Here is an answerlesse Answer without confessing or denying either Proposition such an Answer doth not become one who maketh himself so great a Master in the Art of disputing I charge not their whole Church but the Pope and Court of Rome and all their Abetters and Mainteiners with the Crime of Schisme I conclude no more then I assume He answers that the whole Church dot not hold these Tenets What is that to the purpose As if a Particular person as the Pope or a Particular Society as the Court of Rome or the greater part of a Church as all their Abetters and mainteiners could not be Schismaticks except the whole Church be Schismaticall which is most absurd I am free to charge whom I will if he will not answer for them he may be silent but if he undertake to be their Advocate let him defend them in due Forme as he ought and not tell us that he is not concerned as a Controvertist to defend any thing but Points of Faith Which is neither better nor worse in plain English then to run away from the Question All our Controversy is whether such and such pretended Privileges be Papall Rights or Papall Vsurpations If he dare not maintein them to be just rights either by divine Law
His Friend Possivine calls him a Virulent Adversary and if ever Mr. Serjeant read him throughly it is ten to one he will change his note Thus much for my Communion with the Eastern Churches it is the same with the Southern and Northern Churches all which doe plead better Tradition then himself Whereas he saith that my Assertion that the Creed conteined all points necessary to be believed is grounded onely upon my falsifying of the Councell of Ephesus he bewrayeth his ignorance both in the Fathers and in his own Authours The Scripture is none of those particular Articles which are necessary to Salvation to be believed but it is the Evidence whereby those Articles are revealed and wherein they are comprehended The Creed was composed before the Canon of Scripture was perfected They have not onely changed from their Ancestours in Opinions but they have changed their own Opinions into necessary Articles of Faith which is worse I denied that the Councell of Trent was a Generall Councell as wanting the requisite Conditions of a Generall Councell which they themselves judge to be necessary The summons ought to have been generall but it was not The great Patriarchs ought to have been present but they were not neither the Patriarchs of Constantinople Alexandria Antioch and Hierusalem nor any of them nor yet the Patriarchs of Armenia Abissina Mosco Mussall c. nor any of them He answereth they had no right to be summoned thither unlesse to be called to the Barre as Delinquents nor to sit there nor are to be accounted Christians It had need to be a large Barre indeed to hold them all Was it ever heard before that a fifth part of a Councell did call foure parts to the Barre Their Ancestours had right to be summoned to a Generall Councell and to sit and vote there as well as the best how have their posterity lost this right Had they been heard and condemned in a Generall Councell No. But he urgeth what need hearing when themselves in the Face of the whole world publickly confessed and maintaine their imputed fault How what needed hearing O Iust Iudge He that giveth a right Sentence yet if he give it without hearing is an unrighteous Iudge They confessed their imputed Fault but did they confesse it to be a Fault No I warrant you he can not say it for shame Or how should they confesse it in the Face of the whole Christian world They are the Christian world themselves and your Roman world is but a Microcosme in comparison of them The case is so evident and notorious that no man can doubt of it The Continent hath not left St. Peters Boat but St. Peters Boat hath left the Continent The Innovation or swerving from Apostolicall Tradition was not in the Christian world but in the Court of Rome who would have advanced their Aristocraticall power to a Soveraign Monarchicall power but the Christian world would not give way to it if this were an errour in them all their Ancestours were guilty of it as well as they But the Court of Rome being conscious to themselves that they were the Innovators to free themselves from feare of being censured by the Christian World adventured to give the first blow by censuring the whole Christian world it self This was a Bolder Act then that of Pope Victor which Irenaeus misliked so much He will never leave his Socraticall manner of disputing by Questions what certain Rule have we to know what Sects are of she Church Although I needed not yet I have answered this demand formerly All those are of the Church who weare the Badge and Cognisance of Christians that is the Apostles Creed as it is explicated by the foure first Generall Councells as all those Churches doe and have not been cast out of the Church by the Sentence of a Generall Councell as none of these Churches have no nor yet by the Sentence of the Roman Church it self if we may trust the Bishop of Chalcedons Survey cap. 8. Neither doth the Roman Church excommunicate all the Christians of Affrick Asia Greece and Russia but onely such as doe vincibly or sinfully erre He addeth that there are innumerable who are not formall Hereticks but onely Hereticis Credentes These continue good Christians still and are Churches still and ought not to be excluded froÌ„ Generall Councells though supposed to be materially in an errour much lesse being innocent and in no Heresy or Schisme either formall or Materiall I pleaded that though it were true that all the other Patriarchs were such Materiall Hereticks yet of all others they ought especially to have been summoned The reason is evident because they that are sick have more need of the Physitian then they that are in health Hence he inferreth that it is more necessary that Hereticks be called to a Generall Councell then Orthodox Fathers Not so both are necessary the one to Cure the other to be cured but the especiall Consideration or end of a Councell is for those that erre that they may be reduced I said the Pope hath not that Authority over a Generall Councell that the King hath over a Parliament He answereth that he is so plaine a man that he understandeth not what the Authority of King or Parliament signifies I will help him The King may dissolve a Parliament when he pleaseth so may not the Pope a Generall Councell against their wills If the King dye by whose writ it was called the Parliament is dissolved so is not a Generall Councell by death of the Pope The King hath a Negative voice in Parliament so hath not the Pope in a Generall Councell I urged that the Protoâ—patriarchs are not known or condemned Rebells He answereth first this is onely said againe not proved He is alwaies stumbling upon the same Block It doth not belong to me to prove they were not condemned but to himself who accuseth them to shew when and where they where condemned Secondly he answereth that their Errours have been condemned by Councells and for the most part some of their own party being present But the condemning of their errours is no sufficient warrant for the excluding of their persons out of Generall Councells Neither were these Councells Generall Councells or such as had any Iurisdiction over the Protopatriarchs Moreover they condemne Papall Errours as well as he condemneth their Errours whether is more Credit to begiven to the Pope in his own cause charging all the Patriarchs in the world or to all the other Patriarchs in the world unanimously condemning his Vsurpations in the name of the Catholick Church He demands whether there might not be a Parliament of England without having the fifth part of the Members found in that Councell and yet be a lawfull Parliament I think there might if the absence of all the rest proceeded from their own neglect but not if it proceeded from want of Summons as the absence of the Protopatriarchs did He bids me rub up my memory he believes
SCHISME GARDED and beaten back upon the right owners Shewing that our great controversy about Papall power is not a quaestion of faith but of interest and profit not with the Church of Rome but with the Court of Rome wherein the true Controversy doth consist who were the first innovators when and where these Papall innovations first began in England with the opposition that was made against them By JOHN BRAMHALL D. D. Bishop of Derry Act. 25. 10. I stand at Caesars judgmēt seate where I ought to be judged Psalm 19. 2. Dies diei eructat verbum nox nocti indicat scientiam GRAVENHAGH Imprinted by JOHN RAMZEY Anno M.DC.LVIII To the CHRISTIAN READERS especially the Roman-Catholicks of England CHristian Reader the great Bustling in the Controversy concerning Papall power or the discipline of the Church hath been either about the true sense of some Texts of holy Scripture As thou art Peter and upon this rocke will I build my Church and to thee will I give the Keies of the Kingdome of heaven and feed my sheepe Or about some privileges conferred upon the Roman See by the Canons of the Fathers and the Edicts of Emperours but praetended by the Roman Court and the mainteiners thereof to be held by divine right I ēdevour in this Treatise to disabuse thee and to shew that this challenge of divine right is but a Blind or Diversion to withhold thee from finding out the true State of the Quaestion So the Hare makes her doubles and her iumpes before she come to her Forme to hinder Tracers from finding her out I demonstrate to thee that the true controversy is not concerning St. Peter we have no formed difference about St Peter nor about any point of faith but of interest and profit nor with the Church of Rome but with the Court of Rome and wherein it doth consist namely in these quaestions VVho shall conferre English Bishoprickes who shall convocate English Synods who shall receive tenths and first fruites and Oathes of Allegiance and Fidelity VVhether the Pope can make binding Lawes in England without the consent of the King and Kingdome or dispense with English Lawes at his owne pleasure or call English Subjects to Rome without the Princes leave or set up Legantine Courtes in England against their wills And this I shew not out of the opinions of Particular Authors but out of the publick Lawes of the Kingdome I prove moreover out of our fundamentall Lawes and the writings of our best Historiographers that all these branches of Papall power were abuses and innovations and usurpations first attempted to be introduced into England above eleven hundred yeares after Christ with the names of the Innovators and the praecise time when each innovation began and the opposition that was made against it by our Kings by our Bishops by our Peeres by our Parliaments with the groanes of the Kingdome under these Papall innovations and extortions Likewise in point of doctrine thou hast been instructed that the Catholick faith doth comprehend all those points which are controverted betvveene us and the Church of Rome vvithout the expresse beliefe vvhereof no Christian can be saved vvhereas in truth all these are but opinions yet some more dangerous then others If none of them had ever bene started in the vvorld there is sufficient to salvation for points to be believed in the Apostles Creed Into this Apostolicall faith professed in the Creed and explicated by the foure first Generall Councells and onely into this faith vve have all been baptised Farre be it from us to imagine that the Catholick Church hath evermore baptised and doth still baptise but into one half of the Christian faith In summe doest thou desire to live in the Communion of the true Catholick Church So do I. But as I dare not change the cognisance of my Christianity that is my Creed nor enlarge the Christian faith I meane the essentialls of it beyond those bounds vvhich the Apostles have set So I dare not to serve the interest of the Roman Court limit the Catholick Church vvhich Christ hath purchased vvith his blood to a fourth or a fifth part of the Christian vvorld Thou art for tradition So am I. But my tradition is not the tradition of one particular Church contradicted by the tradition of another Church but the universall and perpetuall tradition of the Christian vvorld united Such a tradition is a full proofe vvhich is received semper ubique ab omnibus alvvaies every vvhere and by all Christians Neither do I looke upon the oppositiō of an handfull of Heretickes they are no more being compared to the innumerable multitudes of Christians in one or two ages as inconsistent vvith universality any more then the highest mountains are inconsistent vvith the roundnesse of the earth Thou desirest to beare the same respect to the Church of Rome that thy Ancestours did So do I. But for that fullness of power yea coactive power in the exteriour Court over the subjects of other Princes and against their vvills devised by the Courte of Rome not by the Church of Rome it is that pernicious source from vvhence all these usurpations did spring Our Ancestours from time to time made Lavves against it and our reformation in pointe of discipline being rightly understood vvas but a pursueing of their steppes The true controuersy is vvhether the Bishop of Rome ought by divine right to have the externall Regiment of the English Church and coactive jurisdiction in English Courtes over English Subjects against the vvill of the King and the Lavves of the Kingdome SCHISME GARDED and beaten back upon the right owners Or A cleare and CIVIL ANSWER to the railing accusation of S. W. in his late Booke called SCHISME DISPAT'CHED Whatsoever S. W. alias Mr. Serjeant doth intimate to the contrary for he dare not cough out it is a most undeniable truth that no particular Church no not the Church of Rome it self is exempted from a possibility of falling into errours in faith When these errours are in Essentials of faith which are necessary to salvation necessitate medii they destroy the being of that Church which is guilty of them But if these errours be in inferiour points such as are neither absolutely necessary to Salvation to be known nor to be believed before they be known such an Erroneous Church erring without obstinacy and holding the truth implicitly in praeparatione animi may and doth still continue a true member of the Catholick Church and other coordinate Churches may and ought to maintein Communion with it not withstanding that they dissent in opinion But if one Church before a lawfull determination shall obtrude her own Errours or Opinions upon all other Churches as a necessary condition of her communion or after Determination shall obtrude doubtful opinions whether they be Erroneous or not as necessary Articles of Christian faith and so not onely explain but likewise enlarge the Ancient Creeds she becommeth Schismaticall As on the
so the onely View of Mr. Serjeants railing writings are a sufficient Antidote to a staied man against such extreme scurrility And I wonder that the Church of Rome which is so provident that none of her Sons in their writings swerve from their rule of faith should permit them so Licentionsly to transgresse the rule of good manners and whilest they seem to propugn true Piety to abandon all Civility as if Zeale and Humanity were in consistent When Michaell the Arch-angell disputed with the Devill about the body of Moses he durst not bring a railing Accusation against him Whether doth this man think him self to have more Privilege then an Archangell or us to be worse then Devills When the Holy Ghost fell upon the Apostles it was indeed in fiery Tongues to expresse Devotion but likewise in cloven tongues to expresse Discretion St. Paul would have the Servant of the Lord to be gentle to all men in meeknesse instructing those that oppose them selves if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth This is the right way to gaine soules The mild Beames of the Sun wrought more effectually upon the Travailer then the blustering Blasts of the Northwind Generosus est animus hominis The mind of man is Generous and is more easily led then drawn The Lord was not in the loud wind nor in the Earthquake nor in the Fire but in a still voice Such a one Maister Serjeants is not If he had objected but two or three Absurdityes or contradictions it had been able to have troubled a man because there might have been some Verisimilitude in it but when he Metamorphoseth my whole Discourse into absurdityes and Contradictions that they lye as thick as Samsons Enemyes heaps upon heaps with the Iawbone of an Asse it sheweth plainly that they are but made Dragons without any reality in them Like that strange Monster which a cunning Cheat promised to shew his credulous Spectators An Horse whose head stood in the place of his Taile And when all came to all he him self had tyed the Horse to the manger the wrong way There needs no Application So an expert Puppet-player can at his pleasure make the little Actors chide and fight one with another and knock their own heads against the Posts by secret Motions which he him self lendeth them So the Picture of a glorified Saint by changing of the prospect may be turned into a poore Lazar. He professeth that he hath the gift of unpraejudiced sincerity if he could be credited upon his bare word but Remember to Distrust was Epictetus his Iewell No man proclaimeth in the Streets that he hath rotten Wares to sell and Iuglers when they are about to play their tricks use to strip up their sleeves in assurance of faire dealing What pledge he hath given us in this Treatise of such Candor and unprejudiced sincerity wee may observe by the sequele In summe Reader he complaineth much of Wording yet he himself hath nothing but words He calleth earnestly for rigid Demonstrations but produceth none And if the nature of the subject would beare one he knowes a way how to turn it into a Contradiction He hateth Contradictions with all his heart Mistake him not it is in another not in him self It were to be wished that he knew a little better what Contradictions are least innocent propositions go to wrack in his fury under the Notion of Contradictions As poore old women doe for witches in some part of the world He is a great Friend to Christian Peace and a mighty Desirer of Vnity if wee may trust his word If he be indeed it wil be the better for him one Day but who would have thought it that scratching and biting among reasonable men were a ready way to Vnity I doubt it is but such an Vnity as Rabshakeh desired between Senacherib and Hezekiah a slavish Vnity I proposed but three Expedients in the Conclusion of my Vindication of the Church of England to obtein a wished peace in Christen dome such as themselves cannot deny to be lawfull and all moderate men will judge necessary to be done To reduce the present Papacy to the Primitive forme The Essentialls of faith to the Primitive Creed And Publick and private devotions to the Primitive Leiturgies But this peaceable man is so far from listening to them that he doth not vouchsafe to take notice of them But in answer wisheth us To receive the roote of Christianity that is Practicall Infallibility in the Church he meaneth the Church of Rome which being denyed there is no religion left in the world His stile is too-sharp his Iudgement over partiall his Experience too small his sentences and censures over rash and ' rigorous his Advises too Magisteriall to be a fit instrument of procuring peace But let us listen to those truths which he proposeth whether they be as he avoucheth with more Confidence then discretion as evident in themselves as that two and three make five If he can make this good his worke is done but if there be no such thing as thou wilt find learn that all is not gold that glisters And let him take heed that ' his new light be not an ignis fatuus which maketh Precipices seem plaine wayes to wandrimg misâ—ed persons A SVRREIOINDER or Defence of the Bishop of Derrys Reply to the Appendix of Mr. William Serjeant The First part of his Rejoinder is a Corollary drawn from his former Principles brought against Doctor Hammond That little remaines to be replyed to mee in substantiall points Since neither can I deny there is now a breach made between us Nor doe I pretend demonstrative and rigorous evidence that the Popes Authority was an Vsurpation Nor lastly doe I pretend that probable reasons are a sufficient ground to renounce an Authority so strongly supported by long possession and Vniversall Delivery of immediate Forefathers as come from Christ or that it was prudence to hazard a Schisme upon the uncertain Lottery of a Probability These grounds are supposed by him to be demonstrated against Doctor Hammond and are barely repeated here to try if he can kill two Birds with one Bolt made of a Burre But I refuse the Province at present as a needlesse and a thanklesse Office N'eedlesse in respect of his learned Adversary who will shew him sufficiently the weaknesse of his pretended Demonstration And thanklesse in respect of him self who had taxed mee in this Rejoinder of busying my self to answer an objection that was not addressed to me Yet least Mr. Serjeant should feign that I seeke Subterfuges I wil briefly and clearly declare my Sense of his grounds as they are here proposed that he may fight no more with his own shadow as it is his common use in hope I may recover his good opinion of my Candour and ingenuity And if it please him he may borrow Diogenes his Candle and Lanthorn at noon Day to search for contradictions First that
phantastick Persons who have been great pretenders to demonstration but always succeslesse and for the most part ridiculous They are so conceitedly curious about the premisses that commonly they quite mistake their conclusion Causes encombred with Circumstances and those left to the election of free agents are not very capable of demonstration The Case in difference between us is this as it is stated by me Whether the Church of England have withdrawn themselves from Obedience to the Vicar of Christ and seperated from the Communion of the Catholick Church And upon those Termes it is undertaken by him in the words immediatly following And that this Crime is justly charged upon his Church not onely with Colour but with undeniable Evidence of fact will appeare by the position of the Case and the nature of his exceptions We have the State of the Controversy agreed upon between us Now let us see how he goeth about to prove his intention What Church soever did upon probable reasons without any neeessary or convincing grounds break the Bonds of Vnity ordained by Christ in the Gospell and agreed upon by all true churches is guilty of Schisme But the Church of England in Henry the eightâ—s dayes did upon probable reasons without any necessary or convincing grounds break the Bonds of Vnity ordained by Christ in the Gospell and agreed upon by all true churches therefore the church of England is guilty of Schisme I doe readily assent to his Major proposition and am ready to grant him more if he had pleased to insert it That that Church is Schismaticall which doth breake the Bonds of Unity ordained by Christ in his Gospell whatsoever their reasons be whether convincing or probable and whosoever doe either consent to them or dissent from them But I deny his Minor which he endeavoureth to prove thus Whatsoever Church did renounce or reject these two following Rules or Principles first that The doctrines which had been inherited from their Forefathers as the Legacyes of Christ and his Apostles were solely to be acknowledged for Obligatory and nothing in them to be changed Secondly that Christ had made St. Peter first or chief or Prince of his Apostles who was to be the first mover under him in the Church after his departure out of this World and to whom all others in difficulties concerning Matters belonging to Universall faith or Government should have recoâ—rse and that the Bishops of Rome as Successors from St. Peter inherited from him this privilege in respect of the Successors of the rest of the Apostles That Church did breake the Bonds of Vnity ordained by Christ in his Gospell and agreed upon between the Church of England and the Church of Rome and the rest of her communion But the Church of England did all this in Henry the eyghts dayes that very yeare where in this unhappy Separation began upon meerly probable no convincing grounds Therefore c. To his former Proposition I made this exception That he would obtrude upon us she Church of Rome and its dependents for the Catholick Church Uppon this he flyeth out as it is his Custome into an invective discourse telling me I looke a squint at his position of the case He will not find it so in the conclusion And that I strive Hocus-pocus like to divert my Spectators eyes With a great deale more of such like froath where in there is not a syllable to the purpose except this that he did not mention the word Catholick in that place The greater was his fault It is a foule Solecisme in Logick not to conclude contradictorily I did mention the Catholick Church in the State of the Question Whether the church of England had separated it self from the communion of the Catholick Church And he had undertaken in the words immediatly following to charge that very Schisme upon us with undeniable Evidence And in his very first Essay shuffles out the Catholick Church and in the place thereof thrusts in the Church of Rome with all the rest of her communion He might have known that wee doe not looke upon the Church of Rome with all the rest of her Communion as the Catholick Church Nor as above a fifth part of the present Catholick Church And that wee doe not ascribe any such in fallibility in necessary truths to the Roman Church with all her dependants as wee doe to the true Catholick Church Nor esteem it alwayes Schismaticall to seperate from the modern Roman Church Namely in those points wherein shee had first seperated both from the primitive Roman Church and from the present Catholick Church But wee confesse it to be alwayes Schismaticall to seperate from the Communion of the Catholick Church united Thus much he ought to take notice of and when he hath oecasion hereafter to write upon this Subject not to take it for granted as they use to doe that the Catholick Church and the Roman Church are convertible Termes or tell us a Tale of a Tub what their Tenet is that these Churches which continue in Communnion with the Roman are the onely true Churches We regard not their Schismaticall and uncharitable Tenets now no more then we regarded the same tenets of the donatists of old They must produce better authority then their Owne and more substantiall proofes then he hath any in his Budget to make us believe that the Roman Church is the Catholick Church It is charity to acknowledge it to be a Catholick church inclusively but the greatest uncharitablenesse in the world to make it the Catholick church exclusively that is to seperate from Christ and from hope of Salvation as much as in them lieth all Christians who are not of their own communion Howsoever it is well that they who used to vaunt that the Enemy trembled at the name of the Catholick church are now come about themselves to make the Catholick Church to be an appendix to the Roman Take notice Reader that this is the first time that Mr. Serjeant turns his back to the question but it will not be the last My next taâ—ke is to examine his two Rules or Bonds of Unity And first concerning his Rule of faith I doe not onely approve it but thanck him for it and when I have a purpose to confute the 12 new Articles of Pius the fourth I will not desire a better medium then it And I doe Cordially subscribe to his Censure that the Transgressors there of are indeed those who are truly guilty of that horrid Schisme which is now in the Christian world To his second Rule or principle for Government that Christ made Sâ— Peter First or Chiefe or Prince of his Apostles who was to be the first mover under him in the church after he departed out of this world to whom all others should have recourse in greater Difficulties If he had not been a meer Novice and altogether ignoranâ— of the Tenets of our English Church he might have known that wee have no controversy
with Sâ— Peter nor with any other about the privileges of St. Peter Let him be First Chiefe or Prince of the Apostels in that sense wherein the Ancient Fathers stiled him so Let him be the First Ministeriall Mover And why should not the Church have recourse to a prime Apostle or Apostolicall Church in doubtfull cases The learned Bishop of Winchester of whom it is no shame for him to learn might have taught him thus much not onely in his own name but in the name of the King and Church of England Neither is it questioned among us whether St. Peter had a Primacy but what that Primacy was And whether it were such an one as the Pope doth now Challenge to him self and you challenge to the pope But the King doâ—h not deny Peter to have been the prime and prince of the Apostles I wonder how it commeth to passe that he who commonly runneth over in his expressions should now on a suddain become so dry upon this Subject If this be all be needed not to have forsaken the Communion of the Church of England for any great Devotion that he beareth to St. peter more then wee But yet wee dare not rob the rest of the Apostles to cloath St. Peter Wee say clearly with St. Cyprian Hoc erant utique caeteri Apostoli quod fuit petrus pari consortio praediti honoris Poâ—estatis sed exordium ab Vnitate proficisciâ—ur Primatus Petro daâ—ur ut una christi Ecclesia una caâ—hedr a monstretur The rest of the Apostles were even the same thing that Peter was endowed with an equall Fellowship both of honour and power but the beginning commeth from Vnity the primacy is given to Peter to signify one church and one chaire It is wel known that St. Cyprian made all the Bisshop ricks in the World to be but one masse Episcopatus unus est Episcoporum multorum concordi numerositate diffusus whereof every Bishop had an entire part cujus a singulis in solidum pars tenetur All that he attributeth to St. Peter is this beginning of Vnity this primacy of Order this preheminence to be the Chief of Bishops To be Bishop of the principall Church from whence Sacerdot all Vnity did spring Yet I esteem St. Ciprian as fauorable an Expositor to the See of Rome as any they wil find out of their own Chaire that was no more interessed in that See This primacy neither the Ancients nor wee doe deny to St. Peter of Order of Place of preheminence if this first Movership would serve his turn this controversy were at an end for our parts But this Primacy is over leane The Court of Rome have no Gusto to it They thirst after a visible Monarchy upon earth an absolute Ecclesiasticall Soveraignty A power to make Canons to abolish Canons to dispense with Canons to impose pensions to dispose dignities to decide Controversies by a single Authority This was that which made the breach not the innocent Primacy of St. Peter as I shall demonstrate by evident proofes as cleare as the noone day light Observe Reader that Mr. Serjeant is making another Vagare our of the lists to seeke for his Adversary where he is sure not to find him here after if he have a mind to employ his pen upon this subject and not to barke at the Moonshine in the water let him endeavour to demonstrate these foure things which wee deny indeed First that each Apostle had not the same power over the Christian world by virtue of Christ Commission As my Father senâ— mee so send I you which St. Peter had Secondly that St. Peter ever excercised a single Iurisdiction over the persons of the rest of the Apostles more then they over him besides and over and above his Primacy of Order or beginning of Vnity Thirdly that St. Peter a lone had his Commission granted to him by Christ as to an Ordinary Pastour to him and his Successors And all the rest of the Apostles had their CoÌ„missions onely as Delegates for term of life This new hatched Distinction being the foundation of the present Papacy I would be glad to see one good author for it who writ within a thoâ—sand yeares after Christ. Lastly that the Soveraignty of Ecclesiasticall power and Iurisdiction rested in St. Peter alone and was exercised by him alone and not by the Apostolicall College During the hystory of the Acts of the Apostles Now let us proceed from St. Peter to the Pope which is the second part of his rule of Government And that the Bishops of Rome as Successors of St. Peter inherited from him this Privilige in respect of the Successors of the rest of the Apostles And actually exercised this power in all the Countreyes which kept Communion with the Church of Rome what Privilege To be the first Bishop the Chiefe Bishop the principall Bishop the first mover in the Church just as S. Peter was among the Apostles we have heard of no other Privilege as yet If a man would be pleased ou of meer pitty to his starving cause to suppose thus much what good would it doe him Doth he think that the pope or the court of Rome would ever accept of such a Papacy as this or thanke him for his double diligence He must either be meanly versed in the Primitive Fathers or give little credit to them who will deny the Pope to succced St Peter in the Roman Bishoprick or will envy him the Dignity of a Patriarck with in his just Bounds But the Breach between Rome and England was not about any Episcopall Metropolitical or Patriarchall rightes A Patriarch hath more power in his proper Bishoprick then in his province and more in his province then in the rest of his Patriarchate But papall power is much greater then any Bishop did ever challenge in his own Diocesse In my answer to his Assumtion I shal shew sufficiently who they were that Brake this Bond of Vnion and are the undoubted Authors of Schisme But before I come to that I would know of him how the Pope did inherit all those Privileges which he claimeth from S. Peter or how he holds them by Christs own ordination in holy Scripture First all the Eastern Churches doe affirm Confidently that the most of these Privileges were the Legacyes of the Church representative not Christ or St. Peter And it seemeth to be very true by that of the Councell of Sardica Si vobis placet Sancti Petri memoriam honoremus If all these Priuileges were the popes inheritance it was not wel done of old Osius to put it upon a Si placet content or not content and to assigne no better a reason then the memory of a Predecessour It semeth likewise to be true by the Councel of Chalcedon which attributeth the primacy of the Bishop of Rome to the Decrees of the Fathers and the dignity of that imperiall City And when the popes
be Christs own Ordinance If it be recorded in Scripture it is either in Nicodemus his Gospell or in the Popes Decretall Epistles Certainly in the Genuine Scriptures there is no manner of mention of any such thing Heare the ingenuons Confession of a more learned Adversary Neque Scriptura neque Traditio habet sedem Apostolicam it a fixam esse Romae ut inde auferri non possit there is neither Scripture nor Trrdition to prove that the See of St. Peter is so fixed to Rome that it cannot be taken from it But if the Bishop of Rome did in herit the Privileges of St. Peter By Christs own Ordination recorded in Scripture then there were Scripture to prove that it cannot be taken away from Rome Christs own Ordination must not be violated Behold both his grounds Scripture and Tradition swept away at once It will not serve his turne at all to say that I take him in a Reduplicative sense as if he spake of the Bishops of Rome as of Rome Either Christ ordained in Scripture that the Bishop of Rome should succeed St. Peter in his privileges And then the Bishop of Rome doth succeed St. Peter as Bishop of Rome Or Christ hath not ordained in Scripture that the Bishop of Rome should succeed S. Peter in his privileges And then the Bishop of Rome is not St. Peter Successour by Christs own Ordination He may be his Successour upon another account but by Christs own Ordination recorded in Scripture he cannot be if Christ himself have not ordained in holy Scripture that he should be He addeth that I picked these Words out of a Paragraph a leafe after Why is he not bound to speake truth in one Paragraph as well as in another Or will he oblige one who combatteth with him to watch where his Buckler is ready and be sure to hit that These things are as cleare as the light and yet he vapours about my frivolous and impertinent answers and wonders how any man can have the patience to read such a Trisler Let the Reader judge which Scale hath more weight in it How should the Bishop of Romes Succession to S. Peter be Christs own ordination recorded in Scripture When both his fellowes and he himself doe ground the Bishop of Romes right to succeed St. Peter upon the fact of St. Peter Namely his dying Bishop of Rome Bellarmine distinguisheth between the Bishop of Romes succession of St. Peter and the reason of his succession The succession saith he is from the institution of Christ by divine right and commanded by Christ but the reason of this succession is from the fact of S. Peter not from the institution of Christ. Which two are irreconciliable For if Christ commanded that the Bishop of Rome should succeed St. Peter as he saith Deus ipse jussit Romae figi Apostolicam Petri sedem quae autem jubet Deus mutari ab hominibus non possunt Then not the fact of St. Peter but the mandate of Christ is the reason of the succession There was no need that St. Peter should doe any thing to perfect the commandement of Christ and on the otherside if the fact of St. Peter be the true reason of the Bishop of Romes succession theÌ„ it is evident that Christ did not command it Let it be supposed to avoid impertinent disputes that Christ did create a chiefe Pastor of his church as an office of perpetuall necessity without declaring his pleasure who shall be his successour but leaving the choise either to the chief Pastor or to the church without peradventure in such a case the Office is from Christ and the perpetuity is from Christ but the right of the Successour is from them who make the application whether if be the Cheif Pastor or the Church The Succession of the Bishop of Rome to S. Peter is not recorded in Scripture The fact of S. Peter is not recorded in Scripture No such ordination of Christ is recorded in Scripture that the Bishop of Rome should be S. Peters Successour And therefore it is impossible that the Succession of the Bishop of Rome to S. Peter should be Christs own ordination recorded in Scripture Then what is this Mandate of Christ and where conteined The Mandate is an old legend conteined in Marcellinus Leo Athanasius Ambrose and Gregory some of which point at it others relate it some define it as a matter of faith That S. Peter a little before his Passion being ready to depart out of Rome did meete Christ in the gate who told him that he came to Rome to be Crucified againe Thereby intimating that St. Peter must suffer martyrdome there Here is no mandate of Christ to S. Peter to fixe his See at Rome much lesse that he should place it there for ever never to be removed True saith Bellarmine but yet non est improbabile Dominum etiam aperte jussisse ut Sedem suam Petrus it a figeret Romae ut Romanus Episcopus absolute ei succederet It is not improbable that the lord did command plainly that Peter should fixe his See at Rome that the Roman Bishop should succeed him absolutely Alas this is but a poore ground to build a mans faith upon that it is not improbable And therefore the said Author proceedeth Tameâ—si forte c. Although peradventure it be not of divine right that the Romaen Bishop because he is the Roman Bishop doth succeed S. Peter in the prefecture of the Church And though it were supposed a point of faith That the Bishop of Rome were S. Peters Successour Yet it cannot be a point of faith that Pope Vrban or Pope Clement are S. Peters Successours and true Bishops of Rome because there can be no more then morall Certeinty for it Who can assure us of their right Baptisms and right Ordinations according to the common Roman grounds How can wee be sure of their Canonicall Election that two third parts of the Cardinalls did concurre or that the Election by Cardinalls now and by the Emperours and by the People formerly were all Authentick formes though I doubt not but any of these might serve to obteine an humane right But especially what can secure us from the â—aint of Simoniacall Pravity which they who knew the Intrigues of States doe tell us hath born too great Vogue in the Conclave of late dayes And if it cannot be a point of Faith to believe the present Pope is St. Peters Successour for these reasons neither can it be a point of Faith that any of them all hath been his Successour for the same reasons I doe not urge these things to encourage any man to withdraw Obedience from a lawfull Superiour either upon improbable or probable suppositions but to shew their temerarious presumption who doe soe easily chaÌ„ge humane right into Divine right and make many things to be necessary points of Faith for which there never was revelation or more then Morall Certainty Sest I. Cap. II. The next
thing which offereth it self to our Consideration is his Minor Proposition Whether the church of England did breake these Bonds of Vnity c But I hold it more Methodicall to examine first the Proofes of his Major That these were the right Bonds of Vnity and so dispatch that part out of my hands All which was agreed upon unanimouslly between the Church of Rome and its dependents and the Church of England and delivred from hand to hand in them all by the Orall and immediate Tradition of a World of Fathers to a world of Children successively as a rule of Faith or Difcipline received from Christ and his Apostles which so vast a Multitude of Eye witnesses did see visibly practised from Age to Age is undoubtedly true and such a rule is infallible and impossibe to be Crooked But these two Rules are such Rules And so he concludeth that they are incapable of Vsurpations and as easy to teach faith as Children learn their A B C. I have given his Argument as much force and edge as I could possibly but all this Wind shakes no Corn. His other two Rules were not so much to be blamed as this Rule of Rules Orall and immediate Tradition Of such Orall and immediate Tradition it was that our Saviour told the Sribes and Pharisees That they made the Commandements of God of none effect by their Tradition And St. Peter told the dispersed Iewes that they were redeemed by the blood of Christ from their vain Conversation received by Tradition from their Fathers These were such Traditions as The Iewes pretended they had receiued from Moses and the Prophets as the Romanists pretend now to have received their Traditions from Christ and his Apostles Otherwise wee doe not onely admit Orall Traditions in generall as an excellent Introduction to the Doctrin of saving truth and a singular help to expound the holy Scriptures but also particular unwritten Traditions derived from the Apostles and delivered unto us by the manifest Testimony of the Primitive Church being agreeable to the holy Scriptures The Apostles did speak by inspiration as well as write and their Tradition whether by word or writing indifferently was the word of God into which faith was resolved The Traditions of the Catholick Church of this present or another age have this Privilege to be free from all Errours that are absolutely Destructive to Salvation but this they have not from the nature of Tradition which is subject to Errour to Corruption to Change to Contradiction Mobilitate viget viresque acquirit eundo but from the speciall Providence and protection of Christ who hath promised to be with his Church untill the end of the World In summe I deny both his Propositions First his Major Immediate Tradition from Parents to Children is not a certain and infallible Rule of Truth and Faith Traditions are often doubtfull doe often change with the times and sometimes contradict one another As we see in the Different Traditions of the Eastern and Western Churches about the observation of Easter And the Councells of Nice and Frankford about Images c. Neither points of Faith nor Papall rights are so visible as he imagineth Credulity and Ignorance and Prejudice and Passion and Interest doe all act their parts Upon his Grounds there can be no Ecclesiasticall Usurpations yet Experience teacheth us that there have been such Vsurpations in all Ages If he had reason to renounce the immediate Tradition of his Father and Grandfather and great Grandfather Then others may have the like and better reasons Let him believe the Suns dancing upon Easter morn and the Swanssinging and the Pellicans digging of her Breast with her Bill and all the Storyes of King Arthur and Robin Hood for it may be he hath received all these from his Elders by immediate Tradition He him self Confesseth that the possession of goverument must be such a possession as may be presumable to haue come from Christ not of such an one as every one knowes when it began P. 49. To what purpose is it to pretend tradition for all those branches of Papall power which are in controversy betweene them and us seeing all of them had their first originall eleven hundred yeares after Christ Secondly this is not all he ascribeth moreover too much to the immediate Tradition of the present Church but much more then too much to the immediate Tradition of his elders to make it absolutely infallible cui non potest subesse falsum and to resolve Faith into it The last resolution of Faith must be into that which is formally the word of God The voice of the present Church may be materially the word of God in regard of the matter and thing testified but it cannot be formally the word of God in respect of the Witnesses and manner of testifying But immediate Tradition is often a Seminary of Errours Thirdly he makes the Orall and immediate Tradition of Fathers to their Childâ—ren to be a more ready and safe Rule of Faith then the holy Scriptures which are the Canon of Faith and so ready that it is as easy as for Boyes to learn their A B C. aud so safe that it is impossible to be made crooked Lastly he Confoundeth the Tradition of the Roman Church with the Tradition of the Catholick Church yet the one is but particular the other Universall Tradition Saint Augustine setteth us downe a certeine rule how to know a true genuine Apostolicall tradition Quod univers a tenet Ecclesia nec Conciliis institutum sed semper Retentum est nonnifi authoriate Apostolica traditum verissiÌ„ me creditur Whatfoever the whole Church doth hold which was not instituted by councells but allwayes received is most rightly beleeued to have bene delivered by Apostolicall authority These three markes conjoinctly do most firmly prove an Apostolicall Tradition I do not denie but that there have bene Apostolicall Traditions which have wanted some of these Markes but they were neither necessary to salvation nor can be proved at this day after sixteene hundred yeares to have bene Apostolicall Traditions Whatsoever wanteth either universality or perpetuiâ—y is not absolutely uecessary Neither can the reception of one Apostolicall Church proue a tradition to be Apostolicall if other Apostolicall Churches do reject it and contradict it To conclude we give all due respect to Tradition but not so much to Orall Tradition as to Written Tradition as beingmore certain lesse subject to mistakes and more easily freed from mistakes Liter a scriptamanet A serious person if he be but to deliver a long message of importance from one to another will be carefull either to receive it in writing or put it in writing Nor so much to particular immediate Tradition as we do to Vniversall and perpetuall tradition He overshooteth himself beyond all aime in affirming of immediate and Particular Tradition that where it hath place it is impossible for usurpations or abuses to enter or find admittance He might as
well tell us that it is impossible to make a crooked line with a leaden Rule Particular Tradition is flexible and is often bended according to the interests and inclinations of particular ages and places and persons He saith that there can be no encroachments so as men adhere to this method that is immediate Tradition He telleth us that they did adhere to this Method and that there was such immediate Tradition and yet we have seen and felt that encroachments and vsurpations and abuses did not onely creep into the Church but like a Violent Torrent did beare down all opposition before them I produce but two Witnesses but they are beyond exception The one is Pope Adrian the sixth in his Instructions to his Nuncio Franciscus Cheregatus when he sent him to the German Princes at the diet of Nuremberg Wee know that in the holy See for some yeares past many things have been to be abhominated Abuses in Spirituall things Excesses in Mandates and all things changed perversly Neither is it to be marveiled at if sicknesse descend from the head to the members from the Chiefest Bishops to other inferiour Prelates c. And againe Wherein for so much as concerneth us you shall promise that wee will doe our uttermost endeavour that in the first place this Court from whence peradventure this evill hath proceeded may be reformed that as the Corruption flowed from thence to all inferiours so likewise the health and reformation of all may proceed from thence Pope Adrian Confesseth abominable abuses and excesses and perverse mutations and corruptions and yet Mr. Serjeant would make us believe that where this Method of Orall and immediate Tradition is used there can be no changes Either this Method was not used or this Method is not a sufficient preservative against innovations both wayes his demonstration falleth to the ground My other Witnesse is the Councell of nine cheife Cardinalls who upon their Oaths delivered up as their veredict a bundle of abuses grievons abuses abuses not to be tolerated they are their own words ye a Monsters to Paul the third in the yeare 1538 beseeching him that these spots might be taken away which if they were admitted in any Kingdome or Republick would streight bring it to ruine Never any man did make encroachments and innovatious to be impossible before this man His assumtion is as false as his major proposition But these two Rules whereof this is one part that the Bishops of Rome as Successors of S. Peter did inherit from him this privilege to be the first or Chiefe or Princes of Bishops c. Were agreed upon unanimously between the church of Rome and its dependents and the church of England and delivered from hand to hand in them all by the Orall and immediate Tradition of a World of Fathers to a World of children successively as a Rule of discipline received from Christ and his Apostles c. If all this were true it concerneth us nothing we may perhaps differ from them in judgmeÌ„t but have no formed quarrell with them about this that I know of We are willing to submit not onely to the Ordinances of Christ bâ—t to the just ordinances of man and to yeeld for the common Peace and Tranquility of Christendome rather more then is due then lesse But otherwise how was that unanimously agreed upon between the Churches of Rome and England and so delivered by Fathers to Children as a thing accorded whereof the Church of Rome is no better accorded within it self unto this day I mean concerning the divine right of the Bishop of Rome to all the privileges of St. Peter when the Popes greatest Champions maintein it so coldly as a thing that is not improbable that peradventure may be peradventure may not be as grounded upon a fact of St. Peter that is as much as to say not upon the Mandate of Christ And though wee should be so kind-hearted as to suppose that there is some part of Papall power in the abstract not in the concrete which is of Christs own institution Namely The beginning of Vnity that is a power to Convocate the Church and to preside in the Church and to pronounce the sentence of the Church so far and no further then power purely spirituall doth extend although there be no speciall mandate of Christ to that purpose for one to be the successour of S. Peter or any prime or chiefe of all other Bishops yet in the Iudgement even of the greatest opposers of Ecclesiasticall Hierarchy it is the dictate of nature that one should preside over the rest Ex dei ordinatione perpetua necesse fuit est erit ut in Presbyterio quispiam loco dignitate primus actioni gubernandae praesit Yet what is this to that great Bulke of Ecclesiasticall Authority which hath been conferred upon that See by the decrees of oecumenicall councells and by the Civill Sanctions of Christian Emperours which being Humane Institutions may be changed by Humane Authority Can one scruple of divine right convert a whole masse of Humane right into divine Wee see Papall power is not equall or alike in all places but is extended or contracted variously according to the different Privileges and liberties of severall Churches and kingdomes We see at this day the Pope hath very little to doe in Sicily as I have shewed in my Vindication of the Church of England by reason that one of his Predecessors long since hath alienated in a manner the whole Ecclesiasticall Iurisdiction to the Soveraign Prince of the Country and to his Heirs Wee may call it by deputation or delegation but this is plain it is to him and his Heâ—res for ever This is certain divine right cannot be extended or contracted There is no Privilege or prescription against divine right That which belongeth to one person by divine right cannot be alienated to another person by humane right for then Humane right should be stronger then divine right In summe although there be some colour or pretext of divine right for a beginning of Vnity wheresoever the Catholick Church should fix it yet it appeareth evidently by the Vniversall practice of the Christian world in all ages that there is no Colour nor so much as a shadow of divine right for all the other Branches of papall power and those vast Privileges of the Roman Court. In the Councell of Constance they damned most of the Articles of Iohn Wickliffe down right without hesitation but when they came to the one and fortieth Article It is not necessary to Salvation to believe that the Roman Church is supreme among other Churches they paused and used some reservation It is an errour if by the Roman Church he understood the Vniversall Chureh or a Generall Councell or for as much as he should deny the primacy of the Pope above other particular Churches Their judgement is clear enough they yeilded to the Pope primatum not suprematum A primacy of
is the Keeper of both the Tables and wee say that for the first Table the Bishops ought to be his Interpreters Thirdly as wee question not the Popes legislative or coactive power over his own subjects so we submit to the judgemeÌ„t of the Catholick church whether he ought to have a primacy of order as the successour of S. Peter and as a consequent thereof a right if he would content himself with it to summoÌ„ Councells when and where there are no Christian Soveraignes to doe it and to joyne with other Bishops in making spirituall Lawes or Canons such as the Apostles made and such as the primitive Bishops made before there were christiaÌ„ Emperours But then those Canons are the Lawes of the Church not of the Pope As those Canons in the Acts of the Apostles were the Lawes of the Apostolicall College The Apostles and Elders and Brethren not the Lawes of S. Peter Then their Lawes have no Coactive Obligation to compell Christians in the outward Court of the Church against their Wills or further then they are pleased to submit theÌ„selves All exteriour coactive power is from the Soveraigne Prince and therefore when and where Emperours and Kings are Christians to them it properly belongeth to summon Councells and to confirm their Canons thereby making them become lawes Because Soveraign Princes onely have power to License and Command their Subjects to Assemble to assign fit places for their Assembling to protect them in their Assemblyes and to give a Coactive power to their Lawes without which they may doe their best to drive away Wolves and to oppose Heriticks but it must be with such Armes as Christ had furnished them withall that is persuasions Prayers Teares and at the most seperating them from the Communion of the faithfull and leaving them to the Iudgement of Christ. The Controversy is then about new upstart Papall Lawes either made at Rome such are the decretalls of Gregory the ninth Boniface the eighth Clement the fifth and succeeding Popes Or made in England by Papall Legates as Otho and Othobone Whether the Pope or his Legates have power to make any such Lawes to bind English Subjects and compell them to obey them against their Wills the King of England contradicting it The first time that ever any Canon of the Bishop of Rome or any legislative Legate of his was attempted to be obtruded upon the King or Church of England was eleven hundred yeares after Christ. The first Law was the Law against taking Investitures to Bishopricks from a Lay hand And the first Legate that ever presided in an English Synod was Iohannes Cremensis of both which I have spoken formerly Observe Reader and be astonished if thou hast so much faith to believe it That the Pope should pretend to a legislative power over British and English Subjects by divine right and yet never offer to put it in execution for above eleven hundred yeares It remaineth now to prove evidently that Henry the eighth by his Statute made for that purpose did not take away from the Bishop of Rome any Privilege which he and his Predecessors had held by Inheritance from St. Peter and been peaceably possessed of for fifteen hundred yeares But on the contrary that eleven hundred yeares after St. Peter was dead the Bishops of Rome did first invade the right of the Crown of England to make Lawes for the externall Regiment of the Church which the Predecessors of Henry the eighth had enjoyed peaceably untill the dayes of William Rufus nemine contradicente And that the Kings Lawes were evermore acknowledged to be true Lawes and obligatory to the English Subjects but that the Popes decrees were never esteemed to be binding Lawes in England except they were incorporated in to our Lawes by the King and Church or Kingdome of England Whence it followeth by irrefragable consequence that Henry the eighth was not the Schismatick in this particular but the Pope and those that maintain him or adhere to him in his Vsurpations First for the Kings right to make Lawes not onely concerning the outward RegimeÌ„t of the Church but even coÌ„cerning the Keys of Order and jurisdiction so far as to oblige them who are trusted with that power by the Church to doe their dutyes it is so evident to every one who hath but cast his Eyes upon our English Lawes that to bestow labour on proving it were to bring Owles to Athens Their Lawes are extant made in all Ages concerning faith and good Manners Heresy Holy Orders the Word the Sacraments Bishops Priests Monkes the Privileges and Revenues of Holy Church Marriages Divorces Simony The Pope his SenteÌ„ces his oppressions and usurpations Prohibitions Appeales from Eeclesiasticall judges and generally all things which are of Ecclesiasticall Cognifance and this in those times which are acknowledged by the Romanists themselves to have been Catholick More then this they inhibited the Popes own Legate to attempt to decree any thing contrary to the Kings Crown and dignity And if they approved the decrees of the Popes Legates they confirmed them by their Royall Authority and so incorporated them into the Body of the English Lawes Secondly that the Popes decrees never had the force of Lawes in England without the Confirmation of the King Witnesse the decrees of the Councell of Lateran as they are commonly called but it is as cleare as the day to any one who readeth the eleveÌ„th the six and fortieth and the one and sixtieth Chapters that they were not made by the Councell of Lateran but some time after perhaps not by InnoceÌ„t the third but by some succeeding Pope For the author of them doth distinguish himself expresly from the Councell of Lateran It was well provided in the Councell of Lateran c. But because that statute is not observed in many Churches we confirming the foresaid statute doe adde c. Again It is known to have been prohibited in the councel of Lateran c. But we inhibiting the same moro strongly c. How soever they were the Popes decrees but never were received as Lawes in England as wee see evidently by the third Chapter That the Goods of Clergimen being convicted of Heresy be forfeited to the Church That all Officiers Secular and Ecclesiasticall should take an Oath at their Admission into their Office to their power to purge their Territories from Heresy That if a Temporall Lord did neglect being admonished by the Church to purge his Lands from Heresy he should be excommunicated And if he contemned to satisfy within a yeare the Pope should absolve his Subjects from their Allegiance And by the three and fortieth Chapter That no Ecâ—â—â—siasticall person be compelled to swear allegiance to a Lay man And by the six and fortieth Chapter that Ecclesiasticall persons be free from taxes Wee never had any such Lawes all Goods forfeited in that kind were ever confiscated to the King We never had any such Oaths Every one is to answer for himself We know
legislative power in England was a grosse Vsurpation and was suppressed before it was well formed But they are affraid of the old Rule Breake ice in one place and it will crack in more If they did confesse one Errour they should be suspected of many If their Infallibility was lost all were gone And therefore they resolve to bear it out with head and shoulders and in place of disclaiming a single power to make Ecclesiasticall Lawes and to give them a coactive obligation in exteriour Courts they challenge a power to the Pope some say ordinarily others extraordinarily some say directly other indirectly to make and abrogate Politicall Lawes throughout Christendome against the Will of Soveraign Princes They who seem most moderate and Cautelous among them are bad enough and deserve right well to have their workes inserted into the Rebells Catechisme If a Civill Law be hurtfull to the Soules of Subjects and the Prince will not abrogate it If another Civill Law be healthfull to the Soules of the Subjects and the Temporall Prince will not enact it The Pope as a Spirituall Prince may abrogate the one and establish the other For Civil power is inferiour and consequently subject to Spirituall power And The Ecclesiastick Republâ—ck ought to be perfect and sufficient to atteine its end But the power to dispose of things Temporall is necessary to atteine Spirituall ends And It is not lawfull to chuse an Infidel or Hereticall Prince but it is the same danger or dammage to chuse one who is no Christian and to tolerate one who is no Christian and the determination of the Question whether he be fit to be tolerated or not belongs to the Pope In good time From these premisses wee may well expect a necessary Collusion Who ever see such a Rope of Sand so incoherent to it self and consisting of such Heterogeneous parts composed altogether of mistakes Surely a man may conclude that either nocte pinxit The learned Author painted this Cypresse tree in the night or he hath a pittifull penurious Cause that will afford no better proofes But I hope the quarrel is dead or dying and with it much of that Animosity which it helped to raise in the World At least I must doe my Adversaryes in this cause that right I find them not Guilty of it Let it dye and the memory of it be extinguished for ever and ever Sect. I. Cap. VII So I passe over from the Popes Legislative power to his Iudiciary power Perhaps the Reader may expect to find something here of that great Controversy between Protestants and Papists whether the Pope be the last the highest the infallible Iudge of Controversies of faith with a Councell or without a Councell For my part I doe not find them so well agreed at home who this Iudge is All say it is the Church but in Determining what Church it is they differ as much as they and wee Some say it is the Essentiall Church by reception whatsoever the Vniversall Church receiveth is infallibly true Others â—ay it is the Representative Church that is a Generall councell Others say it is the Virtuall Church that it is the Pope Others say it is the Virtuall Church and the Representative Church together that is the Pope with a Generall Councell Lastly others say it is the Pope with any councell either Generall or Patriarchall or Provinciall or I thinke his College of Cardinalls may serve the turne And concerning his infallibility all men confesse that the Pope may erre in his Iudgement and in his Tenets as he is is a private Doctor but not in his Definitions SecoÌ„dly the most men doe acknowledge that he may erre in his Definitions if he Define alone without some Councell either generall or Particular Thirdly others goe yet higher that the Pope as Pope with a particular Councell may Define erroneously or heretically but not with a Generall Councell Lastly many of them which goe along with others for the Popes Infallibility doe it upon a Condition Si maturus procedat consilium audiat aliorum Pastorum If he proeeed maturely and hear the Counsell of other Pastors Indeed Bellarmine saith that if any man should demand Whether the Pope might erre if he defined rashly Without doubt they would all answer that the Pope could not define rashly But this is meer presumption without any colour of proofe I appeale to every rationall man of what communioÌ„ soever he be whether he who saith The Pope cannot erre if he proceed maturely upon due advise doe presume that the Pope cannot proceed immaturely or without due advise or not rather that he may proceed rashly and without due advise Otherwise the condition was vainly and suâ—eâ—fluously added frustra fit perplura quod fieri potest per pauciora But the truth is wee have nothing concerning this Question nor concerning any Iurisdiction meerly Spirituall in all the Statutes of Henry the eighth They doe all intend Coactive Iurisdiction in the Exteriour Court of the Church Yet although nothing which he saith doth constrain me I will observe my wonted Ingenuity Wee give the Supreme Iudicature of Controversies of Faith to a Generall Councell and the Supreme Power of Spirituall Censures which are Coactive onely in the Court of conscience but if the Soveraign Prince shall approve or confirm the Acts of a generall Councell then they have a Coactive power in the Exteriour Court both Politicall aud Ecclesiasticall There is nothing that wee long after more then a generall Councell rightly called rightly proceeding or in defect of that a free Occidentall Councell as Generall as may be But then wee would have the Bishops to renounce that Oath which hath been obtruded upon them and the Councell to declare it void I. A. Bishop c. will be faithfull to St. Peter and to the Holy Apostolicall Church of Rome and to our Lord Pope Alexander c. I will be an assistent to retein and to defend the Roman Papacy and the Royalties of St. Peter Where this Oath is esteemed Obligatory I doe not see how there can be a Free Councell But I retire my self to that which concerneth our present Question and the Lawes of Henry the eyghth concerning Iudiciary Power in the Exteriour Court of the Church The First Branch of this third Vsurpation s Whether the Bishop of Rome can receive Appeales from England and send for what English Subjects he pleaseth to Rome without the Kings leave The First President and the onely President that we have of any Appeale out of England to Rome for the First thousand yeares after Christ was that of Wilfrid Arch-Bishop of Yorke though to speak the truth that was rather an Equitable then a Legall appeale to the Pope as the onely Bishop of an Apostolicall Church in the west and an honorable arbitrator and a Faithfull Depositary of the Apostolicall Traditions not as a Superiour Iudge For neither were the Adverse Parties summoned to Rome nor any witnesses produced both
Court of the Church whereby men are compelled against their wills by Exteriour Meanes This the Apostles had not froÌ„ Christ nor their Successours froÌ„ them Neither did Christ ever assume any such power to him self in the world My Kingdome is not of this world And Man who made me a Iudge or divider over you Yet the greatest Controversies at this day in the Ecclesiasticall Court are about Possessions as Glebes Tithes Oblations Portions Legacies Administrations c. And if it were not for these the rest would not be so much valued in Criminibus non in Possessionibus potestas vestra quontam propter illa non propter has accepistis Claves regni Caelorum Saith St. Bernard well to the Pope Your power is in Crimes not in possessions for those and not for these you received the Keys of the kingdome of Heaven But suppose the Controversy to be about a Crime Yet who can summon another mans Subjects to appear where they please and imprison or punish them for not appearing without his leave All that power which Ecclesiasticall Iudges have of Externall Coaction they owe it wholy either to the Submission of the parties where the Magistrate is not Christian as the Iewes at this day doe undergoe such Penitentiall Acts as are enjoined them by their Superiours because the Reverence of them who obey doth supply the defects of their power who Command Or where the Magistrate is Christian they owe it to his Gracious Concessions Of which if any Man doubt and desire to see how this Coactive power how these externall Privileges did first come to be enjoyed by Ecclesiasticall persons Let him read over the first booke of the Code and the Authenticks or Novels of Iustinian And for our English Church in Particular let him consult with our best Historiographers Eadmerus was one whom they need not suspect of partiality as being Pope Vrbanes own Creature and by his speciall appointment placed over Anselm at his own intreaty as a Superviser to exercise his Obedience Whose injunctions had so much power over him that if he placed him in his Bed he would not onely not rise without his Command but not so much as turn him self from one side to another Vt cum Cubili locasset non solum sine praecepto ejus non surgereâ— sed nec latus inverteret What Marvell is it if the ancient Liberties of the English Church went first to wrack in Anselms Dayes about the Yeare of our Lord 1000 for he died Anno 1109 who being a Stranger Primate had so totally surrendered up his own reason to the Popes Creature Yet this Eadmerus saith of Lanfranke His wisdome recovered other Customes which the Kings of England by their Munificence had granted to the Church of Canterbury in ancient times and established them for ever by their sacred Decrees that it might be most free in all things All externall exemption and Coaction is Politicall and proceedeth originally from the Soveraign Prince This is that which S. Paul teacheth us The weapons of our warfare are not Carnall The weapons of the Church are Spirituall not worldly not externall But Citations and Compulsories and Significavits and Writs ad excommunicatum capiendum which are not written by the Bishops own hand yet at his beck and Apparitors and Iaolers c Are Weapons of this world and tend to externall Coaction For all which the Church is beholden to the Civill power to whom alone externall Coaction doth properly and originally belong This is that which St. Chrysostome observed in his comparison between a Bishop and a Shepheard It is not lawfull to cure men with so great Authority as the Shepheard cureth his Sheep For it is free for the Shepheard to bind his sheep to drive them from their meat to burn them to cut them But in the case of the Bishop the Faculty of curing consisteth not in him who administreth the Phisick but in him that is sick c. St. Chrysost. speaketh of power purely Spirituall which extendeth it self no further theÌ„ the Court of conscieÌ„ce where no man can be cured against his will But Soveraign Princes have found it expedieÌ„t for the good both of the Church and of the Commonwealth to strengthen the Bishops haÌ„ds by imparting some of their Politicall authority to him from whose gracious indulgence all that externall coactive power which Bishops have doth proceed Now to apply this to our purpose Wheresoever our Lawes doe deny all Spirituall Iurisdiction to the Pope in England it is in that sense that wee call the exteriour Court of the Churâ—h the Spirituall Court They doe not intend at all to deprive him of the power of the Keys or of any Spirituall power that was bequeathed unto him by Christ or by his Apostles when he is able to prove his Legacy Yea even in relation to England it self Our Parliaments never did pretend to any power to change or Abridge divine right Thus much our very Proviso in the body of our Law doth testify that it was no part of our meaning to vary from the Articles of the Catholick Faith in any thing Nor to vary from the Church of Christ in any other thing declared by the holy Scripture and the word of God necessary to salvation If wee have taken away any thing that is of divine right it was retracted before it was done Then followeth the true Scope of our Reformation Onely to make an Ordinance by Pollicies necessary and convenient to represse Vice and for good Conservation of the Realm in peace unity and tranquillity from ravine and spoile insuing much the ancient Customes of this Realm in that behalf That wich professed it self a Politick Ordinance doth not meddle with Spirituall Jurisdiction If it had medled with Spirituall Iurisdiction at all it had not insued the ancient Customes of the Realm of England In summe that externall Papall power which we rejected and cast out and which onely we cast out is the same which the English Bishops advised Aâ—selm to renounce when it was attempted to be obtruded upon the Kingdome But know that all the Kingdome complaineth against thee that thou endeavourest to take away from our Common Maister the Flowers of his Imperiall Crown Whosoever takes away the Customes which pertein to his royall dignity doth take away his Crown and Government together for we prove that one cannot be decently had without the other But we beseech the consider and cast away thy Obedience to that Vrban who cannot help the if the King be offended nor hurt thee if the King be pacified Shake of the yoke of Subjection and freely as it becomes an Arch-bishop of Canterbury in all thy Actions expect the Kings pleasure and Commands What soever power our Lawes did divest the Pope of they invested the King with it but they never invested the King with any Spirituall power or Iurisdiction witnesse the Injunctions of Queen Elisabeth witnesse the publick Articles of
our Church witnesse the Professions of King Iames witnesse all our Statutes themselves wherein all the parts of Papall power are enumerated which are taken away His Entroachments his Vsurpations his Oaths his Collations Provisions Pensions Tenths First fruits Reservations Palls Vnions Commendams Exemptions Dispensations of all kinds Confirmations Licenses Faculties Suspensions Appeales and God knoweth how many pecuniary Artifices more but of them all there is not one that concerneth Iurisdiction purely Spirituall or which is an essentiall right of the power of the Keys They are all Branches of the Externall Regiment of the Church the greater part of them usurped from the Crowne sundry of them from Bishops and some found out by the Popes themselves as the payment for Palls which was nothing in S. Gregoryes time but a free gift or liberality or bounty free from imposition and exaction Lastly consider the grounds of all our grievances expressed frequently in our Lawes and in other writers The disinheriting of the Prince and Peers The destruction and Anullation of the Lawes and the Prerogative Royall The Vexation of the King Liege people The impoverishing of the Subjects the draining the Kingdome of its treasure The decay of Hospitality The disservice of God And filling the Churches of England with Forreiners The excluding Temporall Kings and Princes out of their Dominions The Subjecting of the Realm to spoil and ravine grosse Simoniacall contracts Sacrilege Grievous and intolerable oppressioÌ„s and extortions Iurisdiction purely Spirituall doth neither disinherit the Prince nor the Peers nor destroy and anull the Lawes and Prerogative royall nor vex the Kings Liege people nor impoverish the Subject nor draine the Kingdome of its Treasures nor fill the Churches with Forreiners nor exclude Temporall Kings out of their Dominions nor subject the Realm to spoile and Ravine Authority purely spirituall is not guilty of the decay of Hospitality or disservice of Almighty God or Simony or Sacrilege or oppressions and extortions No No it is the externall regiment of the Church by new Roman Lawes and Mandates by new Roman Sentences and Iudgements by new Roman Pardons and dispensations by new Roman Synods and Oaths of Fidelity by new Roman Bishops and Clerkes It is your new Roman Tenths and First fruits and Provisions and Reservations and Pardons and Indulgences and the rest of those horrible mischiefs and damnable Customs that are apparently guilty of all these evills These Papall Innovations we have taken away indeed and deservedly having shewed the expresse time and place and person when and where and by whom every one of them was first introduced into England And we have restored to every Bird his own Feather To the King his Politicall Supremacy to the Peers their Patronages to the Bishops that Iurisdiction which was due to them either by Divine right or Humane right More then these Innovations we have taken nothing away that I know of Or rather it is not wee nor Henry the eighth who did take these Innovations away but our Ancesters by their Lawes three foure five hundred yeares old so soone as they began to sprout out or indeed before they were well formed as their Statutes yet extant doe evidence to the world But that filth which they swept out at the Fore doore the RomaÌ„ Emissaryes brought in again at the back doore All our part or share of this worke was to confirm what our ancesters had done I see no reason why I might not conclude my discourse upon this Subject Mutatis Mutandis with as much Confidence as Sanders did his visible Monarchy Quisquis jurabit per Viventem in aeternum c. Whosoever shall sweare by him that liveth for ever that the Church of England is not Schismaticall in respect of any Branches of Papall power which shee hath cast out at the Reformation he shall not forswear himself But Wagers and Oaths and Protestations are commonly the Arguments of such as have got the wrong end of the staffe I will shut up this long Discourse concerning Henry the eighths Reformation with a short Apostrophe to my Countrymen of the Roman Communion in England They have been taâ—ght that it is we who Apostate from the Faith of our Ancesters in this point of the Papacy that it is we who renounce the Vniversall and perpetual Tradition of the Christian world Whereas it is we who maintain ancient Apostolicall Tradition against their upstart Innovations whereas it is we who doe propugne the Cause of our Ancesters against the Court of Rome If our Ancesters were Catholick in this Cause we cannot be Schismaticall Let them take heed least whilst they fly oâ—t of a Panicall Feare from a supposed Schisme they doe not plunge themselves over head and eares into reall Schisme Let theÌ„ choose whether they will joine with their Ancesters in this cause or with the Court of Rome for with both they cannot joine If true English blood run in their veins they cannot be long deliberating about that which their Ancesters even all the Orders of the Kingdome voted unanimously That they would stand by their King and maintaine the rights of his Imperiall Crown against the Vsurpations of the Roman Court. I have represented clearly to you the true Controversy betweeÌ„ the Church and Kingdome of England and the Court of Rome concerning Papall power not as it is stated by private writers but in our English Lawes a glasse that cannot deceive us for so farre as to let us see the right Difference Let them quit these grosse Vsurpations Why should they be more ashamed to restore our lust rights then they were to plunder us of them Let them distinguish between Iurisdiction purely Spirituall and Iurisdiction in the exteriour Court which for the much greatest part of it is Politicall between the power of the Sword which be longeth to the Civill Soveraign and not to the Church further then he hath been graciously pleased to communicate it between that Obedience with procedeth from feare of wrath or from feare of Gods Revenger to execute wrath that is the Soveraign Prince and that Obedience which proceedeth meerly from conscience And then there is hope we may come to understand one another better It is true there are other Differences between us but this is the main Difference which giveth Denomination to the Parties And when they come to presse those Differences they may come to have such another account as they have now The wider the hole groweth in the middle of the Milstone Men see clearer through it Dies Diei eructat verbum nox nocti indicaâ— Scientiam The latter day is the Schollar of the former Sect. I. Cap. X. BY this time wee see that Mr. Serjeants great Dispatch will prove but a sleevelesse Errand and that his First Movership in the Church which he thought should have born down all before it is an unsignificant expression and altogether impertinent to the true Controversy between them and us Vnlesse as Dido did encompasse the
for free Elections but shortly after there was nothing to be heard of but Provisions and such Simoniacall Arts. It is as easy to shape a Coat for the Moone which alteretb every day as to fit one constant Tradition to all these diversified Practises Thirdly he supposeth that all Parenâ—s have Iudgement to understand aright what they see and to penetrate into the secret Caballs and Practises of their times And Ingenuity void of self Interest to relate it rightly to their posterity But herein also he will fall much short of his aime Most Parents know what is acted publickly but they know little what is done in their retiring Roome They know who is their Bishop But who invested him what Oathes he hath made they are to seeke Most Parents see a Bishop fit in his Consistory But by what authority he sits whether meerly by the power of the Keys or partly by Concession of the Soveraign Prince they know nothing What doe thy understand of any distinction between Iurisdiction Spirituall and Ecclesiasticall and Politicall What Legends of Fopperies have been broughâ— into the Church by this Orall Tradition and the Credulity of Parents And if all Parents had Iudgement to understand these things Yet who shall secure us that they are void of Self interest The Philosopher found that all the people forsooke him so soone as the market Bell began to ring Lastly he supposeth one constant succession of Truth upon this Tenour or Method throughout many Ages Why doe wee heare words when we see deeds We see them change dayly if they had not changed we had had no need to leave their CoÌ„pany I have shewed him wheÌ„ and where and by whom all these changes wherein they and wee differ concerning discipline did come into the Church of EnglaÌ„d at least all those which made the Breach between us Immediate Orall Tradition without any further Corroboration is but a â—oy Perpetuall and Vniversall Tradition is an undeniable Evidence or so Vniversall for time and place That the Opposers have been censured in a manner Vniversally for Hereticks or Heterodox In a chaine if one linke be loose or have a notorious Crack or Flaw there is little trust to be reposed in it Then what Credit is to be given to the pretended Chaine of Tradition where the eleven first Linkes are altogether divided from the rest and fastened to the hand of the Soveraign Prince beyond the Popes reach The four next Linkes are full of Cracks and Flawes the Pope pulling at the one end and the Prince holding at the other The last Linke of all in England is put again into the hand of the Prince Where so many Centuries are wanting he is like but to maintain a poor TraditioÌ„ All this while I speake onely of the externall Regiment of the Church But it is a wonder to me why he of all others should so much magnify this MediuÌ„ of Immediate TraditioÌ„ as an inâ—allible Rule For if I be not misinformed by some FrieÌ„ds his Fathers chalked out another way to him by their Examples and Instructions to hold himself in the Communion of the Church of England But let that passe as not much materiall If he reduce his Argument into any Form he will quickly find that it halteth on both sides Whatsoever we received by immediate Tradition from our Fathers as the Legacy of Christ is infallibly true But we received those points of discipline wherein we differ by immediate Tradition from our Fathers as the Legacies of Christ. I deny both his Propositions my reasons he will find formerly at large I charged him for making two distinct Rules of Vnity whereas one would have served his Turne that he might have more opportunity to shuffle the later Vsurpations of the Popes into the ancient discipline of the Church For this I am lashed as a man that cannot or will not write common sense with a deale of such poore stuffe not worth repeating Cannot a man abandon his Religion unlesse he abandon his Civility also He might remember that I had the honour to be a Doctor in the Vniversity I think assoone as he was a Schooleboy in the Country The first part of my Charge is confessed by him self that his first Principle doth also include the truth of the second If his second Principle be comprehended in the first then it is no new distinct Principle but either an inference or a Tautologie But let him carve and mince his Principles into shreds if he please rather then I will draw the Saw of Contention about the dream of a Shadow To the second part of my Charge he answereth that Neither I nor any man else can instance of any Vsurpation which did ever come in either in Secular or Ecclesiasticall Government pretending that Tenour or could come in so long as men adhered to that Method Doth not he pretend to that Tenour Or indeed taketh it for granted and would make us believe they doe adhere to that Method If they doe not his demonstration doth not weigh a Graine Yet I have shewed him heaps of usurpatioÌ„s more perhaps theÌ„ he is desirous to see Some men have made the Pope infallible in point of faith formerly but he is the first that ever made him uncapable of usurping and I thinke will be the last if he can perswade us with reason to be thus mad he deserveth to have his head stroked Go Go Mr. Serjeant Learn better there are more wayes of erring in point of Tradition either reall or supposed then the Conspiracy of a World of Fathers to tell a World of Children this Lye that ten yeares agoe they practised that which all the World besides knoweth they did not practise Of all men Juglers pretend most to perspicuous Evidence I was contented to admit both his Rules in Generall to try what use he could make of them against us but whether I use sharpnesse or blandishments he is still waspish See Reader the right Protestant Method which is to bring the Controversy from a Determinate State to Indetermination and Confusion I feare he will rather dislike my being too distinct and particular I have shewed him expresly what Branches of Papall power we have altogether rejected and what we are not unwilling to acknowledge for peace sake if that would content him which is more then he hath done hitherto as much as he will doe and I feare more then he dare doe They are not free from their Jealousies and Dissensions at home among them selves Hitherto he hath not adventured to let us know into what Church he himself resolveth his Faith whether the Virtuall Church that is the Pope or the Representative Church that is a Generall Councell or the essentiall Church that is the whole multitude of Believers whose Approbation is their reception And in this very PaÌ„ragraph he hath one passage that pointeth at the last opinion making the consent of Catholick Fathers immediatly attesting that they received this Doctrin from
their fore fathers to be the infallible voice of the Church At other times he maketh the extent of Papall power to be a matter of Indifferency wherein every Church is free to hold their own Opinions In his Rule of Discipline he maketh St. Peter onely to be the Head the Chiefe the Prince of the Apostles the First mover in the Church all which in a right sense we approve or do not oppose Why doth he not acknowledge him to be a visible Monarch an absolute Soveraign invested with a plenitude of power Soveraign Legislative Iudiciary Dispensative All the rest of the Apostles were First Movers in the Church even as well as St. Peter except onely his Primacy of order which we allow When your men come to aâ—swer this they feign the Apostles were all equall in relatioÌ„ to ChristiaÌ„ people but not in relatioÌ„ to one another Yes even in Relation to themselves and one another as hath beeÌ„ expresly declared long since in the First Generall Councell of Ephesus not now to be contradicted by them Petrus Ioannes aequalis sunt ad alterutrum dignitatis Peter and Iohn were of equall Dignity one towards another A Primacy of Order may confist with an Equality of Dignity but a Supremacy of power taketh away all Parity Par in parem non habet potestatem He is blind who doth no see in the History of the Acts of the Apostles that the supremacy or Soveraignty of power did not rest in the person of any one single Apostle but in the Apostolicall College These indefinite Generalities he stileth Determinate points It may be Determinate for the generall truth but Indeterminate for the particular manner about which all the Controversy is Yet he who never wanteth Demonstrative Arguments to prove what he listeth will make it evident out of the very word Reformation which we own and extoll that we have broken the Rule of Unity in Discipline If he doe he hath good luck for by the same reason he may prove that all the Councells of the Christian world both Generall and Provinciall have broken the Bond of Vnity by owning and extolling the very word Reformation both name and thing As for the points of our Reformation I doe not referre him to Platonicall Ideas to be found in the Concave of the Moone but to our Lawes and Statutes made by all the Orders of our Kingdome Church and Commonwealth not as they are wrested by the tongnes and pens of our Adversaries Malice may be a good informer but a bad judge but as they are expounded by the Genuine and Orthodox Sons of the English Church by our Princes by our Synods by our subsequent Parliaments by our Theologians by our most Iudicious Lawiers in their Injunctions in their Acts in their Canons in their writings which he may meete with if he have such a mind in earnest without any great search in every Library or Stationers shop Sect I. Cap. XI We doe not suffer any man to reject the 39. Articles of the Church of England at his pleasure yet neither doe we looke upon them as Essentialls of saving Faith or Legacies of Christ and of his Apostles but in a meane as pious Opinions fitted for the Preservation of Vnity neither doe we oblige any man to believe them but onely not to contradict them Yet neither is the Bishop got into a wood nor leaveth his Reader in another further from knowing what these Doctrines of saving Faith are then he was at first It is Mr. Serjeants Eyesight that failes him through too much light which maketh him mistake his ancient Creed for a wood and the Articles for trees persons who are gogle eied seldome see well wherein all things necessary to be believed are comprehended And although he inquire Where are the processions of the Divine Persons the Sacraments Baptism of Children the Government of the Church the acknowledging there is such a thing as Scripture to be be found in the creed The Bishop is so far from being gravelled with sâ—ch doughty Questions that he pitieth his simplicity aÌ„d returneth him for answer that if he be not mopâ—eyed he may find the Procession of the Divine Persons in his Creed that the Sacraments and Discipline of the Church are not to be reckoned amoÌ„g the Credenda or things to be believed but among the Agenda or things to be acted and the Holy Scripture is not a particular Doctrin or point of Faith but the Rule wherein and whereby all Fundamentall Doctrins or points of Faith are comprehended and tried So still his truth remaineth unshaken that the Creed is a Summary of all particular points of saving faith which are necessary to be believed He proceedeth that the Protestants have introduced into the Church since the Reformation no particular Form of Government in stead of that they renounced A grievous accusation We had no need to introduce new formes having preserved the old They who do onely weed a Garden have no need to set new Plants We have the Primitive Discipline of the Church and neither want Spirituall nor Ecclesiasticall nor Politicall Government If you have any thing to say against it cough out and spare not And although we want such a free and generall Communion with the Christian World as we could wish and such as Bishops had one with another by their formed Letters Yet we have it in our desires and that we have it not actually it is principally your faults who make your Vsurpations to be Conditions of your Communion And so I leave him declaiming against Libraries of Bookes filled with dead words and thousands of Volumes scarcely to be examined in a mans whole life time and quibling about Forefathers and inheriting and Reformation and Manasseh Ben Israel and repeating the same things over and over againe as if no man did understand him who did not heare him say over the same things an hundred times He Chargeth me that having granted that They and we do both maintain his Rule of Vnity yet I do immediatly disgrace it by adding that the Question is only who have changed that Doctrin or this Discipline we or they We by substraction or they by Addition Which is as much as to say the pretended Rule is no Rule at all When he and his Merry Stationer were set upon the Pin of making Contradictions doubtlesse this was dubbed a famous Contradiction or an absurdity at least As if a man might not hold one thing in his Iudgement and pursue another in his Practice professe one thing in words and perform another in deeds Video melior a proboque Deterior a sequor Medea see that which was right and approved it but swerved altogether from it in her Practise They professe saith St. Paul that they know God but in workes they deny him The Church of Rome professeth in words to adde nothing to the Legacies of Christ and his Apostles but in their deeds they doe adde and adde
advanceth the Papacy above the Representative Church is no worse then their Virtuall Church the Pope and the Court of Rome with all their adherents they who have the Keys in their hands such a party as he dare not say his soule is his own against them nor maintain the Contrary that a Generall Councell is above the Pope He urgeth that I ascribe no more to S. Peter and the Pope for their first Movership but onely Authority to sit first in Councell or some such things I ascribe unto the Pope all that power which is due unto him either by divine right or humane right at the Iudgement of the Church but I doe not hold it meet that he should be his own Carver And for S. Peter why doth he not leave his wording of it in Generalls and fall to work with Arguments in particular if he have any We offer him a faire tryall for it that S. Peter never enjoyed or exercised any greater or higher power in the church then every one of the Apostles had either extensively or intensively either in relation to the Christian world or the Apostolicall College except onely that Primordium Vnitatis or Primacy of Order which he scoffeth at every where Yet neither do we make his first Movership void of all Activity and influence as he accuseth us First we know he had Apostolicall power which was the highest spirituall power upon Earth As my Father sent me so send I you Secondly some power doth belong to a First Mover even by the Law of nature besides the First seate As to convocate the Members to preserve Order to propose such things as are to be discussed to receive the Votes to give the Sentence and to see it executed so far as he is trusted by the Body What the Church of England believeth of the Popes inheriting St. Peters Privileges and the exercise of that power before the Reformation and how the breach was made and when I have shewed abundantly already Wee have seen his rare skill in the discovery of a Falsification or a ContradictioÌ„ now let us see if his sent be as good to find out an Absurdity He maketh me argue thus The Pope did not exercise St. Peters power because he exercised St. Peters power and much more which is as much as to say totum est minus parte aud more does not contain lesse and then he Crowes out his Victory aloud a hopefull Disputant who châ—seth rather to run upon such Rocks c. What Rocks doth he mean I hope none of the Acroâ—eraunia those ridiculous things which he calls Rocks are soapy bubbles of his own Blowing This inference is none of mine but his own Is it not possible for this great pretender to sincerity to misse one Paragraph without Falsifications Give him leave to make Inferences and Periphrases which is as much as to say and Africa did never abound so much with Monsters as he will make the most rationall writing in this world abound with Absurdities I desire the Courteous Reader to view the place and either to pitty his Ignorance or detest his Impudence The words which I answered were these That the Bishops of Rome actually exercised St. Peters power in all those Countries which kept Communion with the Church of Rome that very yeare when this unhappy Seperation began My answer was that this Assertion did come far short of the truth in one respect for the Popes exercised much more Power in those Countries which gave them leave then ever St Peter pretended to Here is no other inference but this The Pope exercised more power then ever St. Peter pretended to therefore this Assertion that he exercised St. Peters power came short of the truth which consequence is so evideâ—t that it can admit neirher denyall or doubting What hath this to do with his whole is lesse then the part or more does not contain the lesse But now suppose I had said as he maketh me to say on his own head that in this case the whole is lesse then the part or more does not contain the lesse what had he to carpe at Hath he never heard or read that in morality the half is more then the whole Hath he forgotten his Ethicks that he who swerveth from the Meane or strict measure of virtue whether it be in the excesse or in the defect is alike Culpable and commethshort of his Duty If the Pope as Successour to S. Peter did usurp more power then S. Peter had right to no man in his right wits can call it the actuall exercising of S. Peters power The second part of my answer was that as the Pope exercised more power then was due to him in some places where he could get leave so in other places no lesse then three parts of foure of the Christian World that is all the Eastern Southern and Northern Churches his Vniversall Monarchy which he claimed was Vniversally rejected For this I am first reviled Are moderate expressions of shamelesnesse sufficient to Character this man c. If better was within better would come out But Stultis the saurus iste est in linguasitus ut discant male loqui melioribus And then when he hath first censured me he attempteth to answer me as well as he is able that the Pope exercised his power over them by excommunicating them as Revolters As Revolters In good time They were Christians and had Governours of their own before either there was a Church of Rome or Bishop of Rome and never acknowledged themselves to be his Subjects untill this day nor regarded his Excommunicatious upon that score at all If they were Revolters the Apostolicall Age and all succeding Ages were joined in the Revolt These are his rigorous demonstrations to prove the Popes single Iurisdiction by divine right from his own impotent Actions If the Pope have a Supremacy of Power by divine right he hath it over the world but that we see evidently he never enjoyed from the beginning if he did did not enjoy it universally from the beginning then certainly it cannot be an Apostolicall Tradition I doe begin with the Eastern Church because their case is plainest as having Proto-patriarchs of their own and Apostolicall Churches of their own but when that is once acknowledged I shall be contented to joine issue with him in the West First for our Britannick Churches and next even for the Church of Rome it self that the Popes Vniversall Monarchy and plenitude of Soveraign power by divine right was neither delivered from Parents to Children by perpetuall Tradition as a Legacy of Christ and his Apostles nor received by the Sonnes of that Individuall Church as a matter of Faith but onely a Primacy of Order or beginning of Vnity which we do not oppose nor yet those accessions of humane power which Christian Emperours and Oecumenicall Councells have conferred upon that See provided they be not exacted as a divine right His First Movership and
the Lawes and histories of his native Country If he had perused them diligently he might have observed how the Court of Rome and Crown of England were long upon their Gards watching one another and the one or the other gained or lost mutually according to the Vigour of their present Kings or Popes or according to the exigence of the times His seventh Objection that the like Lawes to ours in England were made in the Papacy it self but those could not be against the Popes Headship of the Church and his tenth Objection that then there never was a Papist Country in the world because equivaleÌ„t Lawes to ours were made in France Spaine Italy Sicily Gormany Poland c and his answer to my demand what law full Iurâ—sdiction could remaine to the Pope in England where such and such Lawes had force The same that remaines still to him in France Spaine Italy where the like lawes are in force in his last paragraph are a dish of unsavoury mushromes all sprung up from his own negligent mistake or wilfull Falsification let him chuse whether he will in confounding the Lawes of Mortmain with the other Lawes against the Popes Vsurpations Which I distinguished exactly both at the beginning of that discourse the Statute of Mortmain justified and at the Conclusion But to leave this Digression But besydes this grosse errour there want not other inconsequences and fallacies in his discourse as in his seventh Objection from the Popes particular Headship of his own Church to an Vniversall Headship over the Catholick Church and from an Headship of order to a Monarchicall Headship of power and in his tenth Objection from like lawes to the same Lawes from Lawes made to Lawes duely observed We had Lawes made against Non-conformists in England will he conclude thence that we have no Non-conformists in England the Argument would hold better the Contrary way Ex malis moribus bonae leges And in his last Paragraph from Coactive Iurisdiction in the Exteriour Court to Iurisdiction purely Spirituall in the Court of Conscience and from Coactive Iurisdiction with the leave of the Prince to the same without Leave Wee see all Roman Catholick Countries doe stint the Popes Coactive Iurisdiction over their Subjects more or lesse according to their severall Liberties which they could not doe at all if he held it by Christs own Ordination His eighth Objection that upon this new Law made by Henry the eighth England stood at another distance then formerly from Rome is a Fallacy non causae pro causa when a false cause is assigned for a true cause Our just Lawes are not the right cause of our distance from Rome but the Popes unjust Censures and that Character which some of our Countrimen give of us But this distance is greater among the Populacy then between the Estates who do not much regard the Popes Censures either in making or observing of Leagues To his ninth Objection in his order and his last in my order that this Posiâ—â—on takes away the Question and makes all the Controvertists in England on both sides talke in the aire because it makes the Pope to have had no Authority there to be cast out I answer I wish it did but it doth not The Pope had Authority there and Authority usurped fit to be cast out notwithstanding our former good Lawes But yet I must confesse this Position doth much change the Question from spirituall Iurisdiction in the inner Court to Coactive Iurisdiction in the exteriour Court and makes him and many other such Controvertists talk in the aire who dispute onely about Headships and First Moverships when the true Controversy lieth in point of Interest and profit Sect. 4. That the Britannick Churches were ever exempted from forrein Iurisdiction for the first six hundred years and so ought to continue After I had shewed the Equality of the Apostles except onely a Priority of Order and that the Supremacy of power did not rest in any single Apostolicall College that Nationall Patriarchs were the highest Order constituted by the Apostles in the Church and how some Patriarchs came to be advanced above others with the true dignity or Preheminence of Apostolicall Churches the summe of all the rest of this Section might be reduced to a Syllogisme Those Churches which were exempted from all forrain Iurisdiction for the first 600 years cannot be subjected to any forrain Iurisdiction for the future against their own wills But all the Britannick Churches were ever exempted from forrain Iurisdiction for the first six hundred yeares The Major Proposition was proved by me undeuiably out of the first Generall Councell of Ephesus to which Mr. Serjeant hath objected nothing Next I proved the Minor First by Prescription Affirmanti incumbit probatio The burthen of the proofe in Law resteth upon the Affirmer but they are not able to shew so much as one single act of Iurisdiction which ever any Bishop of Rome did in Brittaign for the first six hundred yeares Secondly I proved it from the Antiquity of the Britannick Church which was ancienter then the Roman it self and therefore could not be subject to the RomaÌ„ from the beginning Thirdly because the Britannick Churches sided with the Eastern Churches against the Roman and therefore were not subject to the Roman Foâ—rthly because they had their Ordinations ordinarily at home which is an infallible sign of a free Church subject to no Forrein Iurisdiction Lastly because they renounced all Subjection to the Bishop of Rome I am forced to repeat thus much to let the Reader see the contexture of my discourse which Mr. Serjeant doth whatsoever he can to conceale or at least to confound and disjoint Out of this he picketh here and there what he pleaseth First he pleadeth that my Title is the Vindication of the Church of England but the Church of England can derive no title from the Britannick or Scottish Churches He never read or quite forgetteth the State of the QuestioÌ„ I will help his memory Let him read the Vindication by the Church of England we understand not the English Nation alone but the English dominion including the British and Scotish or Irish Christians So at unawares he hath yielded the Bishopricks of Chester Hereford Worcester for all these were Suffragans to Carleon Wales Cornwall Ireland Scotland with all the adjacent Ilands that is to say two third parts of the English Dominion Secondly he pleadeth that for this many hundred yeares they acknowledged the Popes Authority as well as the Church of England I answer that this will doe him no good nor satisfy the Generall Councell of Ephesus at all which hath decreed expresly in the case of the Cyprian Prelates and they Command the same to be observed in all Provinces that no Bishop occupy another Province which formerly and from the beginning was not under the power of him or his Predecessors and if any doe occupy another Province that in this case let him restore it
is such an immediate Tradition There is not so much as a Nationall Tradition for those Branches of Papall power which we have rejected and much lesse for the divine right of them And if there were such a Particular Tradition yet wanting both perpetuity and Vniversality we deny that it is a sufficient proofe of any right This and the Privilege to receive Appeales which is a Protopatriachall Privilege is all he produceth If he would know what a Spirituall Monarch is let him consult with Sanders de Visibili Monarchia and Bellarmine in his first booke de Ponâ—fice Romano But he is quite out of his aime who knoweth no meane between a flat Tyrant and an Ordinary Chief Governour Vpon these Termes a President of a Councell a Maister of a College a Major of a Corporation should be so many Monarchs I have shewed him what are those Branches of Soveraign Monarchicall Power which the Popes have Vsurped and when each Vsurpation did begin the first of theÌ„ about 1100. yeares after Christ with the Opposition that was made unto them by the King and Kingdome of England If he will speake to the purpose let him speake to these in particular and trouble us no more with his Chief Governourships or hold his peace for ever All the Controversy between them and us is in point of Interest and the Externall Regiment of the Church which is due to every Christian Soveraigne in his own Kingdome It is not we but they who have changed their Governour He would faine perswade us if he could that no Catholick will believe that a Patriarch is dependent on a King in Ecclesiasticall affaires yet he himself hath confesâ—ed formerly that they hold that every good King is to take Order to see Ecclesiasticall GrievaÌ„ces remedied and the Canons of the Church observed Then Patriarchs are not altogether independent upon Kings in Ecclesiasticall affaires if a King be bound to see that a Patriarch execute the Canons and see Patriarchall Grievances remedied Soveraign Princes have founded Patriarchates and confirmed Patriarchates and conferred Patriarchates and taken away Patriarchates still here is some dependence Gregory the Great was a Patriarch and a Pope yet he acknowledged that he ought due SubjectioÌ„ to the Law of Mauritius in an Ecclesiasticall affaire I being subject to your Command have transmitted your Law to be published through diverse parts of the world And because the Law it self is not pleasing to Almighty God I have expressed my Opinion thereof to my Lords Wherefore I have performed my duty on both sides in yeilding Obedience to the Emperour and noâ— concealing what I thought for God But Mr. SerjeaÌ„ts reasoÌ„ is silly beyoÌ„d all degrees of coÌ„parisoÌ„ Otherwise St. Peter could not preach at Rome if Nero were a King nor St. Iames at Hierusalem without unkinging Herod See what a doughty Argument he hath brought Apostles or Patriarchs or Bishops or Priests may perform the Ordinance of Christ notwithstanding the Prohibition of Pagan Emperours and Kings therefore they are independent upon them and owe no Subjection or Obedience to any Kings Christian or pagan Yes Sr. although they owe theÌ„ onely passive ObedieÌ„ce in that yet they owe them active Obedience to their other lawfull Commands even in Ecclesiasticall affaires But now he saith he will give me fair Law Put the case Papall Government had not been of Divine but onely of Humane Instituâ—ion yet it ought not to have been rejected unlesse the abuses had been irremediable I allow him to give law and shuffle and cut aÌ„d use what expressioÌ„s he pleaseth yet I used but an innoceÌ„t allusioÌ„ to the soaling of a Bowle and it is thrice cast in my teeth But for his faire law I thaÌ„k him I will take no Law from him but what I can win my self He would be glad with all his Heart to have but a good pretense of Humane Institution for those Branches of Papall power which are really controverted between us but I deny him all manner of Institution both divine and Humane and have shewed that they are but upstart Vsurpations of the Popes themselves after 1100. years and wanting lawfull Prescription even in these last ages which ought to be plucked up as weeds so soone as they are discovered and to be removed before all other things by those who are in Authority Ante omnia spoliatus restitui debet And here he is at us again with his often repeated and altogether mistaken case which hence forward I shall vouchsafe no other answer to but passe by it with a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He demanded whether I would Condiscend to the Rejection of Monarchy or extirpation of Episcopacy for the misgovernment of Princes or Prelates I answered No We fancy not their Method who cannot prune a tree except they pluck it â—p root and Branch but I gave him three reasons why this could not advantage his cause First never any such abuses as these were objected to Princes or Prelates in England Secondly we desire not the extirpation of the Papacy but the reduction of it to the Primitive Constitution Thirdly Monarchy and Episcopacy are of divine Institution so is not Papall Soveraignty of Iurisdiction To the first he saith nothing but by way of Recrimination the most ignoble kind of answering especially when he himself cannot but condemne them in his own Conscience for notorious Fictions of Cretian Minotaures But these abuses which we complain of are the proper subject of the next Section He is here pleased to relate a pretty story of the late Archbishop of Canterbury that he confessed himself to lein a Schisme in a private discourse I warrant it was private enough without either witnesse or parties as this Author was told by a very grave person whose Candour he hath no reason to suspect And why doth this grave person appeare in a Vizard without a name or appeare after the parties death that durst not have said it in his lâ—fetime and for feare to be detected now telleth us it was in private And when all is done it is ten to one this worthy person if he be in rerum natura is an utter enemy and of another Communion We have had many abhominable lies spread abroad in the world upon the bare Testimony of some such single Adversary as the Apostacy of Bishop King the Defection of King Charles the hopes they had of my Lord of Sâ—rafford when all that knew my Lord of Strafford and that witnesse knew right well he never did in the presence of any other nor ever durst offer to him any discourse of that nature To the second he answereth that we have already exâ—â—rpated the Papacy out of England No we have onely cast out seven or eight Branches of Papall Iurisdiction in the exteriouâ— Court which Christ or his Apostles never challenged never exercised never medled withall which the Church never granted never disposed He might still for us enjoy his Protopatriarchate and the dignity of an
rejected be the Legacies of Christ or Papall VsurpatioÌ„s is not capable of such rigorous Demonstration but dependeth upon Testimony which Logicians call an Inartificiall way of arguing But if by rigorous Demonstration he uâ—derstand convincing proofes those grounds which I offer in this Section do contain a rigorous Demonstration That Discipline which is brimfull of intollerable Rapine and Extortion and Simony and Sacrilege which robbeth Kings and Subjects Ecclesiasticall and Secular of their just rights which was introduced into the Church of England eleven hundred yeares after Christ which hath a Malignant Influence upon the Body Politick which is Destructive to the right ends of Ecclesiasticall Discipline which in stead of securing men in peace doth thrust them into Manifest and manifold Dangers both of soule and body which is contrary to Generall Councells and the ancient Liberties of particular Churches qua talis as it is such is no Legacy of Christ but ought to be purged and reformed from all such abuses and VsurpatioÌ„s But such is that Papall Discipline which the Bishop of Rome excercised in EnglaÌ„d before the Reformation and lesse then which they will not goe and such are all those Branches of Papall power which we have cast out The truth of this AssertioÌ„ I have made manifest in my Vindication c. 6 and this is the place of a further examination of it if he did discharge the part of a faire solid Disputant to leave his windy Invectives which signify nothing to the cause but to his own shame and to proceed closely and ingenuously to the investigation of truth without prejudice or partiality But on the Contrary he minceth my grounds and concealeth them and skippeth over whatsoever disliketh him and choppeth them and chaÌ„geth them and confoundeth them that I caÌ„not know mine own Conceptions againe as he hath dressed them aÌ„d disordered them and mutilated them I proposed five distinct Grounds of our ReformatioÌ„ aÌ„d casting out so many Branches as we did of Papall power if he dealt like a just Adversary he should pursue my Method step by step but he reduceth my five grounds into three that between two Methods he may conceale and smother whatsoever he hath no disposition to answer as he dealeth with many points of weight and moment and particularly with all those Testimonies and instances I bring to prove the intolerable extortions and manifold Vsurpations and malignant Influence of the Roman Coutt upon the Body Politick and Ecclesiastick being much the greater part of my discourse But I doe not altogether blame him for they are so foule that a man can find small credit or contentment in defending them For once rather then loose his Company I will pursue his Method Let us give him the hearing He reduceth my five grounds to three first such as entrench upon Eternity and Conscience May not any Heretick object that the Church imposed new Articles of faith c. or complain of new Creeds when she addeth to her publick Professions some points of Faith held formerly Might not he Complaine of perill of Idolatry as your Brother Puritans did for Surplesses c Might not he pretend that all Hereticks and Schismaticks were good Christians and that the Church was Tyrannicall in holding them for excommunicate Might he not shuffle together Faith with Opinion and falsly allege as you doe here you were forced to approve the Popes Rebellion against Generall Councells and take Oaths to maintain Papall Vsurpations This is all the Answer I get of this brave Disputant as if the unjust complaints of the Puritans did satisfy the just exceptions of the Protestants It is probable enough that he him self was one of our Brother Puritans in those dayes otherwise he could not well have talked so wildly of perill of Idolatry from Surplesses His discourse is so sleight and impertinent that I will not vouchsafe any answer but leave it to the Reader to compare my Vindication and Reply with his Rejoinder That they have added new Essentialls to Faith is fully evinced against them in this Treatise Sect. 1. cap. 11. What our Iudgement is concerning their Idolatry he shall find exactly set down in my answer to Militier Pa. 133. As for the Oaths of Fidelity which every Bishop must make to the Pope he may satisfy him self Sect. 1. Cap. 5. and see the From of it cap 7. Or if he Desire to see a later form let him take this I Henry Archbishop of Canterbury will be faithfull and Obedient to St. Peter from this houre as formerly and to the holy Apostolick Church of Rome and to my Lord Pope Alexander the sixth and his Successours I will give no counsaile nor consent nor act any thing towards the losse of their lifes or members or liberty I will discover their Counsailes to no man to their prejudice which they have communicated to me by themselves or their Messengers I will help them to retein and defend the Roman Papacy and the Royalties of St. Peter saving my Order against all men I will entertein the Popes Legates honorably going and comming and help them in their necessities I will visit the Papall Court every yeare if it be on this side the Alpes and every two yeares if it beyond the Alpes unlesse the Pope dispense with me So help me God and the Holy Gospell What fidelity can a King expect from a Subject who hath taken this Oath if the Pope please to attempt any thing against him If the Popes Superiority above a Generall Councell be but held as an indifferent Opinion in their Church and not a point of Faith as he intimateth yet it is such an Opinion as he dare not contradict it is fere communis it is almost the Common OpinioÌ„ of all RomaÌ„ Catholicks if Bellarmine say true and fere de fide almost a point of Faith upoÌ„ which modern Popes and Councells are accorded It is determined expresly in their last Generall Councell of LateraÌ„ that the Bishop of Rome alone hath Authority over all Councells Were these all the grounds he could find which entrench upon Eternity and Conscience He might have found more that by means of Papall abuses there described hospitality was not kept the poore not susteined the word not preached churches not adorned the Cure of soules neglected divine Offices not performed Churches ruined He might have found Oaths Customes writings grants statutes rights privileges to have been not onely weakened but exinanited by the Popes infamous Messenger called Non obstance And all this attested by the Lords Spirituall and Temporall and the whole Common-wealth of England But it is no matter whether he take notice of it or not whilest he answereth nothing He faith my second sort of Grounds are those which relate to Temporall inconveniences and injuries to the State by reason of the Popes pretended encroachments which I huddle together in big Terms Do I huddle theÌ„ together Nay I haÌ„dled them distinctly under three heads or notions First the intolerable
because no reason doth permit that such an Assembly should be made in an Imperiall City without the leave of the Lord of the place Thirdly because Generall Councells were made then at the Publick Charge He might have added that Councells did receive their Protection from Emperours and they who sit in Councells were the Subjects of Emperours In the second place he erreth in this also that we have taken away the meanes of assembling Generall Councells We have taken away no power from the Pope of convocating any Synods except onely Synods of the King of Englands Subjects within his own dominions without his leave which Bellarmine himself acknowledgeth to be agreable to reason If the Pope have any right either to convocate Generall Councells himself or to represent to Christian Soveraigns the fit seasons for Convocation of them either in respect of his Beginning of Vnity or of his Protopatriarchate we do not envy it to him since there may be a good use of it in respect of the division of the Empire so good caution be observed Bellarmine confesseth that that power which we acknowledge that is that though the Pope be no Ecclesiasticall Monarch but onely chief of the Principall Patriarchs yet the right to convocate Generall Councells should pertein unto him But it may be this is more then Mr. Serjeant did know My last Ground was the Exemtion of the Britannick Churches from forrein Iurisdiction by the Generall Councell of Ephesus As to the Exemtion of the Britannick Churches he referreth himself to what he had said formerly and so do I. To the Authority of the Councell of Ephesus he answereth that howsoever Cyprus and some others are exemted from a Neighbouring Superiour falsly pretending a Iurisdiction over them yet I shall never shew a Syllable in the Councell of Ephesus exemting from the Popes Iurisdiction as head of the Church Not directly a maÌ„ may safely sweare it for the Councell never suspected it the world never dreamed of it the Popes themselves never pretended to any such headship of Power and Vniversall Iurisdiction over the whole Church in those dayes All that the Primitive Popes claymed by divine right was a Primacy of Order or Beginning of Vnity due to the Chaire of St. Peter all that they claimed by humane right were some Privileges partly gained by Custome or Prescription and partly granted by the Fathers to to the See of Rome because it was the Imperiall City But there is enough in this very Canon collaterally to overthrow all the Vsurpations of the Roman Court There is no need that Britain should be named particularly where all the Provinces without exception are comprehended Let the same be observed in other Diocesses and in all Provinces There is no need that the Bishop of Rome should be expressed where all the Bishops are prohibited That no Bishop occupy another Province which formerly and from the beginning was not under the power of him or his Predecessours If the Fathers were so tender of pride creeping into the Church in those dayes or of the danger to lose their Christian Liberty in the case of the Bishop of Antioch who pretended neither to divine right nor Vniversall Iurisdiction what would they have said or done in the present case of the Bishop of Rome who challengeth not onely Patriarchall but Soveraign Iurisdiction not over Cyprus onely but over the whole world not from Custome or Canons but from the institution of Christ If Maister Serjeant be in the right then the Bishop of Antioch was quite out to sue for the Iurisdiction of Cyprus which beloÌ„ged more to the Bishops of Rome then to him Then the Bishops of Cyprus were quite oâ—t to challenge the Ordination of themselves and Iurisdiction over one another as a proper right belongiâ—g to themselves which they hold onely by Courtesy and favour from the Bishop of Rome Then the holy Synod was quite out to Determine so positively that not onely Cyprus but every Province should enjoy its rights and Customes inviolated which it had from the beginning without a Salvo or saving the right of the Bishop of Rome or a restriction so long as he pleaseth to permit them and to doe it in such Imperiall Terms It hath pleased the holy Synod or such is our pleasure Lastly the Pope himself was out to ratify the Privileges and exemptions of the Cyprian Bishops not onely from the Patriarch of Antioch but from himself also and to suffer his divine right to be trampled under foot by Customs and Canons which are of no force without him But this is the least part of the passages in the foure First Generall Councells which are repugnant to the Popes pretensions of a Generall Monarchy The Eastern Churches doe still adhere firmly to the Primitive Discipline and for this cause the Pope hath thought fit to excommunicate them Si violandum jus est regnandi causâ violandum est Against all our Grounds the most intolerable extortions that ever were heard of most grievous Vsurpations malignant Influence both upon the State Politick and Ecclesiastick and undoubted Privileges he produceth nothing but immediate Tradition and you must be content to take his bare word for it for he is altogether unfurnished of proofes Some men by telling strange Stories over and over do come at last to believe them It may be he believeth there was a Tradition for those Branches of Papall power which we cast out but we deny it altogether and require him to prove first that there was such a Tradition in England next that a particular Tradition is a sufficient proofe of divine Institution We admit readily that the Vnity of the Church is of great importance and the breaking of it an heinous Crime and that no abuses imaginable are sufficient excuse for a totall desertion of a just power Thus far in the Thesis we agree but in the Hypothesis we differ That which is a sufficient ground for a reformation is not a sufficient Ground for an extirpation So many so grievous so unconscionable extortions and Vsurpations and malignant influences as we complain of and prove are without all peradventure a sufficient ground of Reformation which is all our Ancestours did or we defend though not a sufficient cause of the extirpation of any just Authority Our Grounds are sufficient for a Reformation of abuses and encroachments which we acknowledge and which is all we did at the Reformation but for the abolition of any just power it is his fond Imagination we disclaime it altogether We have cast out all Papall Coactive Iurisdiction in the Exteriour Court as being Politicall not Spirituall but for any Papall Iurisdiction either purely spirituall or justly founded we have not medled with it Those things which we have cast out are onely abuses and Vsurpations So there is no need of that Consideration which he proposeth whether the abuses were otherwise remediable or not for our Reformation is that very Remedy which he himself hath prescribed to
Opinions of the Romanists and yet some of my Instances were in Cardinall Richlieus dayes and since very lately Adding that I contradict myself yet once more affirming that I hope those seditious doctrins at this day are almost buryed What Satisfaction doth this man owe to his Reader to conceale from him all the Presidents Lawes Sentences of Emperours Kings Common-wealths Vniversities and to present him nothing but such Fopperies as these I will not vouchsafe to spend any time about them but onely give the Reader an Ariadnes clew to guide him out of this Imaginary Maze I have shewed him what these seditious Opinions were where they were hatched and when namely in the beginning of Queen Elisabeths Reign And though some few of my Instances were after that time yet the maine body of them was much more ancient as in the Empire from Charles the great to Charles the fifth and in France from Carolus Calvus downward So I might truely say that the Instances cited by me were long before those disloyall Opinions were hatched and yet they are not so lately hatched but I hope they are almost buried at this day A man would have thought that I deserved thankes for my Charity not to be traduced But it is all one let the Reader judge who it is that trippeth up his own heeles When I said It was great Pity that he was not one of Christs Counsaâ—lers when he formed his Church It did not suppose that Christ had any Counsailers but to taxe him who takes upon him so Magisterially to dictate what was necessary then for Christ to doe This I called sawcinesse and justly Good Christians as I told him formerly ought to argue thus Christ formed his Church thus Therefore this is the best Forme not thus This is the best Forme therefore Christ Formed it after this manner The onely reason why I cited that text of St. Paul One Body one Spirit one Hope one Lord one Faith one Baptisme one God and Father of all was this that St. Paul reckoning up seven Bonds of Vnity should omit this which Mr. Serjeant makes to be the onely Bond of Vnity namely unus Papa One Pope or one Bishop of Rome Christ saw it necessary to make a Bond of Vnity between the Churches And that for this reason he gave the Principality to St Peter and Consequently to the Bishops of Rome All this he supposeth on his own head but doth not goe about to prove any thing if St. Paul had been of the same mind that was the proper place to have recorded it and doubtlesse he would not have omitted it This Argument which onely I used he doth not touch but fancieth that I make these seven Bonds of Vnity or Obligations to Vnity or meanes of Vnity to be seven markes of those which be in the Church which I never dreamed of And therefore I passe it by as impertinent Onely adding that our Ground for Vnity of Faith is our Creed and for Vnity of Government the very same forme of Discipline which was used in the Primitive Church and is derived from them to us When I wished that he had expressed himself more clearly whether he be for a beginning of Order and Vnity or for a single head of Power and Iurisdiction I spake of St. Peter of whoÌ„ the case is cleare that he had no more power over his Fellow Apostles then they had over him and that the Supremacy of Power rested in the Apostolicall College All that St. Peâ—er had was a beginning of Vnity What St. Peter had the Pope may pretend a claime to what he had not the Pope hath no pretence for Neither Iohn Patriarch of Constantinople nor any other ancient Bishop nor yet St. Gregory himself did ever dream of such a singular Headship of Power as he mentions that is that no Bishop in the Church should have Power but he Although the Court of Rome and their adherents come very near it at this day deriving all the power of Iurisdiction of all other Bishops from the Pope That Power which Iohn affected and St. Gregory impugned then and we impugne now is the Power of Vniversall Iurisdiction in the Exteriour Court If that were an Heresy in him as he confesseth let them looke to themselves Neither is the Bishops Primacy of Order so dry a Primacy as he pretendeth nor destitute of those Privileges which belong to a Primate of Order by the Law of Nature To call Assemblies sub paena spirituali or to intimate the necâ—ssity of calling them to propose doubts to receive Votes and to execute so farre as he is trusted by the Church This is the single Power of a Primate of Order but besides this he hath also a conjoint power in the Government of the Church What he saith to the prejudice of Generall Councells I have answered formerly He askes me What other Successour St. Peter had who could pretend to an Headship of Order except the Bishop of Rome I answer that I did not speake of what St. Peter had but what he might have had or may have whensoever the Representative Church that is a Generall Councell should give the Primacy of Order to another Bishop Since he is so great a Friend to the Schoole of Sorbon he can not well be ignorant what their learned Chancellour hath written expresly upon this Subject in his Booke de Aâ—seribilitate Papae not the taking away of the Papacy but Removall of it And what Bellarmine confesseth that neither Scripture nor Tradition doth prove that the Apâ—sâ—olicall See is so fixed to Rome that it cannot be removed He urgeth that then the Church should remaine without this Principality at the death of every Pope untill all the Churches in Iapan China and India had given their consent yet I acknowledge it to be of perpetuall necessity First he doth me wrong I did not say positively that it is of perpetuall necessity but that I like it well enough and the reason being of perpetuall necessity seemeth strongly to imply the necessity of the thing Secondly I answer that there is no need to expect such far fetched Suffrages so long as the Primacy may remaine fixed where it is unlesse a Generall Councell or one as Generall as may be think fit to remove it and if a Generall Councell remove it it will take order for the future succession And this same reason doth clearly take away his answer to my instance That as the Dying of such a Bishop Lord Chancellour of England doth not perpetuate the Chancellourship to that Bishoprick because there is a Soveraign Prince to elect another so the dying of St. Peter Bishop of Rome doth not perpetuate the Primacy to that Bishoprick because a Generall Councell when it is in being hath power to transferre it to another See if they find it expedient for the publick good The Bishop knoweth right well that the Church of Christ is both his Spouse and his Family both the Governesse and the
that Authority which he doth challenge and not wave the extent as a thing Indifferent If he challenge it out of Prudentiall Reasons it ought to be considered whether the Hopes or the Hazards the Advantages or Disadvantages the ConvenieÌ„ces or Inconveniences of such a Form of Government particularly circumstantiated doe over ballance the one or the other And the surest tryall of this is by experience It will trouble him to find so many Advantages which the Church and Kingdome of England have received from Papall Iurisdiction I speak not of the Key of Order as may overweigh all those Disadvantages which they have susteined by the Extortions and Vsurpations and Malignant Influence of the Papacy If he attribute no more power to the Pope then all Roman Catholicks universally do approve which is the onely Rule that he giveth us to know what is the Substance of Papall Authority he need not be so impetuous this Question is near an end He askes whether wee and the Eastern Southern and Northern Christians be under the Government of Patriarchs or any other Common Government I answer wee and they are under the same Common Government which the Primitive Church was under from the Dayes of the Apostles long before there were any Generall Councells that was the Government of Bishops under Primates or Patriarchs For as I have said formerly a Protarch and a Patriarch in the Language of the Primitive Church are both one We have as much Opportunity to Convocate Synods as they had then before there were Christian Emperours and more yet by such Councells as they could Congregate though they were not Generall they governed the Church If there be not that free Communication of one Church with another that was then either by reason of the great distance or our mutuall misunderstanding one of another for want of the old Canonicall Epistles or Literae Formatae the more is the Pity We are sorry for it and ready to contribute our uttermost endeavours to the Remedy of it With these western Churches which have shaken of the Roman Yâ—ke we have much more Communion by Synods by Letters by Publishing our Confessions aÌ„d we might justly hope for a much nearer union yet both in doctrine and Discipline if God would be graciously pleased to restore an happy Peace That we have it not already in so large a measure as we might is their onely Faults who would not give way to an Vniform Reformation Sometimes they accuse us for having too much Communion with them at other times they will not grant us to have any at all Concerning the rest of the Western Churches which submit to the Papacy we have the same Rules both of Doctrine and Discipline which they had We have the same that they have saving their Additionall Errours We have broken no Bonds of Unity either in Faith or Discipline we have renounced no just Authority either Divine or Humane we adhere to the Apostles Creed as the ancient and true Rule of Faith into which alone all ChristiaÌ„s that ever were have been baptised and we renounce the upstart additionall Articles of Pius the fourth We are willing for peace sake to give the Pope the same Primacy of Order which St. Peter had above his Fellow Apostles but the Supremacy of power was not in St. Peter but in the Apostolicall College neither is now in the Bishop of Rome but in a Councell of Bishops He saith we maintein a larger Brotherhood then they but never goe about to shew any visible Tye of Government We shew them the same Badge or Cognisance of our Christianity that is the same Creed and the same Discipline or Government that is the same Colours derived down from the Apostles by an uninterrupted Succession The same Doctrine and the same Discipline is Tye enough To take an exact View it is necessary the Organ should be perfect the Medium fit and the Distance convenient if any one of these were Defective in Mr. Rosses View he might well mistake but I may not doe him that wrong to trust your Testimony without citing his words He urgeth If Christ have left any Vnity of Government in his Church and Commanded it to be kept and we have taken a Course to leave no such Vnity then we have rebelled against Christ and his Church and falsly pretend to have him our Spirituall head I admit this now let him Assume But you Protestants have taken a Course to leave no Vnity of Government in the Church which Christ left and Commanded to be kept I deny his Assumtion altogether and he saith not one word to prove it This is his Enthymematicall manner of Arguing He procedeth That to have a Generall Councell for an Ecclesiasticall Head is to confesse that there is no Ordinary Vnity of Government in Gods Church but extraordinary onely when a Councell sits I deny this Proposition altogether and the reason is Evident because besides a Generall Councell which sitteth but rarely neither is it needfull that it should sit often Nisi dignus Vindice nodus inciderit there are particular Councells which in lesser Exigents serve the turn as well as Generall There are Patriarchs and Bishops which are Ordinary and perpetuall In an Aristocracy it is not necessary that the Governours should be evermore actually Assembled In the first three hundred yeares there were no Generall Councells held there was lesse hope of ever holding them then then now yet there was an Ordinary Vnity of Government in Gods Châ—rch in those dayes for which they were not indebted at all to any visible Monarch Bâ—t when a Generall Councell doth sit the Supreme Ecclesiasticall power rests in it He wonders why I should make the King onely a Politicall Head Contrary to our Common Assertion It seemeth that though he hath been bred among us yet he hath not been much versed in our Authors No man that ever understood himself made him otherwise Yet this Politicall Head hath a great Influence upon Ecclesiasticall Causes and persons in the Externall Regiment of the Church He demandeth is there any Orderly Common Tye of Government obliging this Head to Correspond with the other head If not where is the Vnity I answer yes the direction of his Spirituall Guides that is his Bishops and Synods If this Method be so great a Rarity with him it is his own fault He had said more properly to Correspond with the other Heads then Head He saith It is false to say that they have sometimes two or three heads since there can be but one true or rightly chosen Pope True but the Election may be uncertain that no man living can know the true Pope so whether there be three Popes or one Pope and two pretenders yet if the right Pope cannot be made appeare it is all one relatively to the Church If the Trumpet give an uncertain sound who shall prepare himself to the Battell He telleth us further that when the See of Rome is vacant the Headship is
in the Chiefe Clergy whom they call Cardinalls as secure a Course as mans wit can invent As Chiefe as their Cardinalls are the much greatest part of them were but Ordinary Parish Priests and Deacons of old The Cardinalls indeed have to doe with the Church of Rome in the Vacancy but what pretense have they from St. Peter What have they to doe with the Vniversall Monarchy of the Church Before he told us that theiâ— Headship was Christs own Ordination now he telleth us that this Headship is sometimes in the College of Cardinalls and that it is as secure a Course as mans wit can invent What a Contradiction would he make of this He demandeth doth the Harmony of Confessions shew that we have one Common certain Rule of Faith or any particular sort of Government obliging us to an Vnity under the Notion of Governed I doe shew him one Common certain Rule of Faith even the Apostles Creed and a particular sort of Government even the same was used in the Primitive Times What am I the better he will take no notice of them because I will not fixe upon that Rule of Faith and that Form of Government which he Fancieth Yet I am for Tradition as well as he but it is Vniversall and perpetuall Tradition such a Tradition is the Creed and in deed is that very Tradition which is so renowned in the Ancients He chargeth me with saying That Hereticks can have no Baptisme Let him either make his accusation good or suffer as a Falsifier All that I say is Turkes Iewes Hereticks and Christians have not the same Baptisme The reason is plaine because Turkes and Iewes have no Baptisme at all Secondly we ought to distinguish between the Baptisme of Hereticks and Hereticall Baptisme if the Baptisme it self be good the Administration of it by Hereticks doth not invalidate it at all but if the Heretick baptise after an Hereticall Forme as without due Matter or not in the Name of the Trinity such Baptisme is Hereticall and naught But all this is needlesse to understand the right scope of my words I said that a Body cousisting of Iewes Turkes Hereticks and Christians had not the same Baptisme I did not say that every one of these wanted true Baptisme He might as well charge me with saying that Christians can have no true Baptisme I have manifested elswhere that the Creed is a List of all Fundamentalls and in the same Section and Chapter the Reader shall find that the Bishop is not a Falsifier bu Mr. Serjeant is both an egregious Calumniator and Falsifier of the Councell of Ephesus I toâ—ke the word Paganisme in the ancient Primitive sense for Infidelity as it is contradistinguished to Christianity The true reason of that Appellation was because Country Villages did continue long in their Infidelity after Cities were converted to Christianity So the Turkes are the onely Pagans which we have now in this part of the World What a piece of Goteham Wisdome is this to quarrell about names when we agree upon the things Turkes and Pagans in my sense were the same thing both Infidells But he instructs the Learned Bishop that the Turkes acknowledge a God So did the Pagans also if Lactantius say true Non ego illum Lapidem colo quem video sed servio eiquem non video He addeth that I affirme the Councell of Ephesus held in the yeare 430 Ordered something concerning Turkes which sprang not up till the yeare 630 and calleth this good sport If there be any sport it is to see his Childish Vanity If I listed to play with words I could tell him that the Mahumetans sprung up about the yeare 630 the Turkes many Ages after But the answer is plaine and easy the Councell of Ephesus did give Orders for all Ages ensuing concerning Infidells but Turkes are Infidells and so it gave Order concerning Turkes Socinians and Arrians may admit the Apostles Creed interpreted their own way but they ought to admit it as it is interpreted by the Frst foure Generall Councells that they doe not and so they believe not all Fundamentalls as they should doe What he Objecteth further that Puritans hold not the Article of Christs descent into Hell and the Roman Catholicks and Protestants differ about the sense of two other Articles hath been answered formerly The Puritans will tell him that the manner of Christs descent hath not bene determined hitherto And I doubt much he understandeth not the Romish and English Tenets so well as he should SECT IX That the Pope and Court of Rome are most guilty of the Schisme My first Charge was this That Member of any Society which leaveth its proper place to assume an higher place in the Body is Schismaticall But the Pope and his Party do not content themselves that the Church of Rome should be the Sister of other Patriarchall Churches and the Mother of many Churches unlesse she be Lady and Mistrisse of all Churches or that the Pope should be the Brother of Other Bishops or a fellow of other Bishops as he was stiled of old unlesse he may be the Lord and Maister of all Bishops That the former is his proper place I clearly proved by Letters not of himself to other Bishops that might be Condiscension as for a Generall to call his Officers Fellow souldiers but of other Bishops to him no under Officer durst presume to call his Generall fellow souldier That he assumeth the other place to himself is proved out of the new Creed of Pius the fourth I acknowledge the Roman Church to be the Mother and Mistrisse of all Churches and I promise and sweare true Obedience to the Bishop of Rome as to the Vicar of Iesus Christ. And in the Oath of Allegiance which all Bishops sweare to the Pope IAB Bishop c. will be Faith full to St. Peter and to the holy Apostolicall Church of Rome and to our Lord Pope Alexander c. There is a great distance between the old Brother Bishop and fellow Bishop and this Oath of Allegiance to the Pope as to their LiegeLord First he Chargeth me that I doe flatly falsify his words which doe never deny her to be a mother but a Sister onely Either I falsified his words or he falsified mine My words were these First they make the Church of Rome to be not onely the Sister of all other Patriarchall Churches and the Mother of many Churches but to be the Lady and Mistresse of all Churches The two Former Branches of Sister and Mother are both acknowledged the last onely of Lady and Mistresse is denyed He falsifieth my words in his answer thus because she takes upon her to be Mistresse where she is but Sister to other Churches You see the word Mother is left out and because I bring it in againe as I ought to make the Argument as it was before his Curtaling of it I am become the Falsifier with him and he who is the Falsifier in earnest is innocent I
of his own Patriarchate yet subordinate to a Generall Councell but in a Generall Councell or in the GovernmeÌ„t of the Catholick Church he is but one of the Optimates or a Fellow governour with other Bishops He saith it was never pretended by Catholicks that the Pope was the King of the Church I wonder that he is no betâ—er acquainted with the Sorbone disputes whether the Regiment of the Church be an absolute Monarchy tempered with an Aristocracy We have a Meritorious Sacrifice that is the Sacrifice of the Crosse We have a Commemorative and Applicative Sacrifice or a Commemoration and Application of that Sacrifice in the Holy Eucharist A Suppletory Sacrifice to supply any want or defects in that Sacrifice he dare not owne and unlesse he do owne it he saith no more then we say What I spake of our Registers I intended principally of that Register of the right Ordination of Protestanâ— Bishops that he may see when he will for his love and have the Copy of any Act in it for his money but he had rather wrangle about it then take such paines if he will have a little Patience I will ease him of that Labour and Expences It is no insuperable difficulty nor any difficulty at all to us to find out that Catholick Church which we have in our Creed but to find out his Roman Catholick Church is both a Contradiction in adjecto and an Apple of Contention serving to commit him and his Friends together among themselves which he knoweth and therefore declineth it I called not the Ancient Bishop of Italy either Episcopelles or the Popes hungry Parasiticall Pensioners but the Flaâ—terers of the Roman Court and Principally those petty Bishops which were created during the Councell of Trent to serve the Popes turne If he think that Court free from such Moths he is much mistaken Neither are these expressions mine originally I learned them from the ancient Bishops of Italy themselves who gave them those very names of Episcopelles c. Neither did I taxe any man in particular He desires me to examine my Conscience whether I doe not get my living by preaching that Doctrine which I put in my Bookes which how many notorious Falsities Contradictions and Tergiversations they have in them may be judged by this present worke Yes if he and his merry Stationer may be my Iudges Now his worke is ended and answered I will make him a faire offer If he be able to make but one of all his Contradictions and Falsifications and absurdities good I will be reputed guilty of all the rest if he be not I desire him both to examine his own Conscience and Discretion what reward he deâ—erveth both at the hands of God and man for so many notorious Calumnies As for his Faults I shall rather leave them to the Iudgement of the Reader then trouble myself with the Recapitulation of them In the close of my Discourse I answered an exception of his that I cited Gerson against myself The words of Gerson or rather of the Eastern Church when they seperated from the Roman are these Potentiam tuam recognoscimus Avarâ—â—iam tuam implere non possumus Vivite per vos We know thy power we cannot satisfy thy Covetousnesse Live by yourselves They knew that he had a Patriarchall power and that he was the first or chiefe of the Patriarchs but this power we deny not that power which we deny is a Supremacy of single power and that by Christs own Ordination The Question is whether the Grecians did acknowledge such a power due to the Pope in these words That they did not I prove first by the practice of most of all the Eastern Churches who excommunicate the Pope yearly as a Schismatick for challenging this power Secondly I prove it by the Testimony of all their writers especially the modern Greeks as Hieremy and Cyrill the two succeeding Patriarchs of Constantinople and Nilus an Archbishop c. who all deny this power to the Pope in the name of the Greek Church Thirdly I prove it by his own confession in this very Chapter There is no one point produced by him which our Church lookes upon as a point of Faith in which they dissent from us and consent with the Protestants except that one of denying the Popes Supremacy How doe they grant the Popes Supremacy and deny the Popes Supremacy and yet continue the same without Variation as they have done I doe not say this is a Contradiction but let the Reader Iudge His reasons are mere Prevarications not reasons First here is no Opposition between power and covetousnesse unlesse he mean all Affirmatives and Negatives whatsoever be the Subjects or Predicates are Opposites and if they were it signifieth nothing Secondly he demands what power had the Pope over them except Spirituall Iurisdiction I answer he shewed them sufficiently at the Division of the Greek Empire and then they stood in need of his assistence against the Turke His third fourth and fifth Arguments may be reduced to one and when they are twisted they will not have the weight of one single haire The Difference was about undue Subsidâ—es and Taxes but the Demanding Subsidies seems incredible had there not been some preacknowledged power to ground such demands upon Yes there was his Protopatriarchall power and that tentered and stretched out to the uttermost extent and when he would have extended it yet higher the Grecians cast out his Vsurpations I see he doth but grope in the darke I will help him to some light Peter Steward upon Caleca tells him what these undue Subsidies and Exactions were when the Popes Legates brought yearly the Chrisme from the Apostolick See to Constantinople they would not depart from thence unlesse they had eighty pound weight of Gold besides other Gifts bestowed upon them Lastly he addeth Gerson concludes that upon this Consideration they might proceed to the Reformation of the French Churches notwithstanding the Contradiction which perhaps some of the Court of Rome would make which evidenceth that the acknowledgement of the Popes just power was reteined and encroachments on their Liberties onely denyed Concedo omnia His Protopatriarchall power was acknowledged his Soveraignty of Iurisdiction was denyed as an encroachment and this is the same Method which we observed in England And so Mr. Serjeant concludes his Rejoinder that the Bishop began like a Bowler and ends like one of those Artificers who going to mend one hole use to make other three Iust Mr. Serjeant just As your mind thinketh so the Bell clinketh If there be any of those Artificers here it is yourself whose constant Custome is to make holes where there are none and out of an eager desire of Contradicting others to plunge yourself irrecoverably into reall Contradiction With Scurrility you began this Rejoinder and with Scurrility you end it That which followeth is a Dish of thrice sodden Coleworts or a vain recapitulation of his own Imaginary Achievements which the Reader
cited the words of St. Bernard to prove that the Pope was not Lord or Maister of other Bishops and the Roman Church a Mother of other Churches not a Lady or Mistresse He distinguisheth between Dominam and Magistram an Imperious proud Lady Mistrisse and a Schoole-Mistresse or Teacheresse Adding that they use the word Magistram in the latter sense So they say no more then we we do acknowledge the Church of Rome to be a Teacheresse and the Pope a Teacher as it is an Apostolicall Church and he an Apostolicall Bishop but all the Question is of the other word Dominum which the Pope taketh to him self as well as Magistrum as we have seen in the Oath of Allegiance which he makes all Bishops to sweare Neither doth St. Bernard oppose proud Imperious Dominion to Gentle Dominion but he contradistinguisheth Dominion to no Dominion and thy self not a Lord of other Bishops but one of them Not a Lord of other Bishops saith St. Bernard A Lord of other Bishops saith the Oath of Fidelity I will be faithfull to our Lord Pope Alexander He urgeth that the Bishop hath brought a Testimony which asserts the Church of Rome to be the Mother of other Churches and so of the Church of England too St. Bernard asserted the Church of Rome to be the Mother of other Churches so did the Bishop but not to be the Mother of all other Churches no more did the Bishop particularly not of the Church of Britain which was ancienter then the Church of Rome and so could not be her daughter Let them prove their right that they are our Mother and we are ready to doe our filiall Duty saving alwayes that Higher duty which we owe to our Mother Paramount the Vniversall Church But neither can they prove their right that they are our Mother neither is that Subjection which they Demand the Subjection due to a particular Mother but to an Vniversall Lord. But Schisme involves in its Notion disobedieÌ„ce c. And so the Bishop concludes the Mother Schismaticall because she is disobedient to her Daughter His first errour is to make the Church of Rome to be our Mother The second to thinke that a Mother may challenge what Obedience she listeth of her Daughter The third that Schisme consisteth altogether in the Disobedience of Subjects Causall Schisme may and doth Ordinarily consist in the unlawfuli Injunctions of Superiours My second reason to convince them as guilty of Schisme was the new Creed set out by Pius the fourth This he calleth a Calumny He cannot speake lower then Calumnies Absurdities Contradictions Falsifications c. A high Calumny to slander them with a matter of truth It is such a Calumny as they will never be able to shake of He referreth the Reader to what he hath said in the first Section and I to my Answer there He saith it is known that each point in that profession of Faith that is the twelve new Articles was held of Faith by the former Church How held of Faith as an Essentiall of Faith And this known to whom to the man in the Moone But here is the maddest Contradiction that ever was and might well have become his Merry Stationer It is a Contradiction to pretend that he Pius the 4. made a new Creed till it be shewn that any of these points was not formerly of Faith and be proved satisfactorily that the Apostles Creed conteined all necessary points of Faith A Contradiction I see many men talke of Robin Hood who never shot in his Bowe talke of Contradictions who know not what they are Observe the equity of these men They Visibly insert 12 new Articles into the Creed and then would put us to prove that they were not of Faith before and that all necessary points of Faith are contained in the Apostles Creed He is resolved to keep two strings to his Bowe and knoweth not which of them to trust to Heare you Sr. If they be Articles of Faith now as you have made them then they were alwayes Articles of Faith and all those were damned which did not believe them but that you dare not say My third Charge of Schisme was because they mainteine the Pope in his Rebellion against Generall Councells Here he distinguisheth between a Schooleman and a Controvertist to no manner of purpose for it is altogether impertinent There is no man who inveigheth so much against wording aÌ„d Quibling as himself and yet the world hath not a greater Worder or Quibler then he is Wherefore to prevent the Readers trouble and mine own and his shifting and flinching and to tye him within his Compasse perforce I made bold to reduce my Argument to a Syllogisticall Forme They who subject a Generall Councell which is the Highest Tribunall of Christians to the Pope are guilty of Schisme But the Pope and Court of Rome with all their mainteiners that is much the Greater part of of their writers doe subject a Generall Councell to the Pope Therefore the Pope and Court of Rome with all their Mainteiners that is the much greater part of their Writers are Guilty of Schisme Here he should have answered Punctually to the Proposition or Assumtion either by denying granting or distinguishing but for all his calling for a Rigorous Demonstrative way he liketh it not because he cannot make such impertinent extravagant excursions as he useth to doe which are the onely help he hath at a dead lift All the Answer he giveth is this He the Bishop is accused of a Contradiction and Nonsense and to cleare himself he telles us he will now lay aside the one part of the Contradiction and endeavour to make good sense of the other To what Proposition to what â—erme doth he apply this answer I see no Contradiction I see no Nonsense in my discourse nor any body living but himself I said no such thing as he pretendeth What doth the man meane by these waves of brainlesse butterd fish by these heterogeneous incoherent Fopperies and Chimaeraes which have no existence but in his own pate If he meane to answer let him doe it clearly like a Schollar since I have found this way to tye him to his matter and restraine his torrent of words I shall put it in practice oftner Yet if I meet with any such thing as is substantiall among his vapouring expressions which hath but the least resemblance of an answer though it be not reduced into Forme I will gleane it out and examine the weight of it Such is this which followeth Was it for this Opinion of the Pope above the Councell c. How were they guilty of Schisme for this unlesse they had denyed you Communion for holding the Contrary or prest upon you an unconscientious approbation of it which you know they did not Foole not your Readers my Lord It was not for this Tenet which you impute to the Court of Rome but for that of the Popes Headship or Spirituall Iurisdiction over all Gods Church held