Sienna told them that in the blindness wherein they were they placed their glory in that which was truly their shame and that on the contrary they held those things to be a reproach to them whereon their honour and Salvation did depend to wit in humbling themselves under their Head which was God Furthermore they have no love for any but sinners they despise the poor and howsoever the Canons forbid them they keep about their persons Pimps debauchers of Women Flatterers Buffoons Players where they should have had wise and holy men In fine instead of the Law of Truth the Law of Vanity is in the mouths of the Bishops and the lips of the Priests preserve knowledge but it is that of the World and not of the Spirit And a little after At present says he the State and Dignity of the Bishops may be known by their Earthly riches by their affairs and sordid cares of the World by their troublesome Wars and by their Temporal Dominion Alas the Lord Jesus said plainly that his Kingdom was not of this World he retired himself alone into a Mountain when he knew that they went about to make him a King How then is it that he who holds the place of Jesus Christ not only accepts Dominion but seeks it and that he whom Jesus Christ has taught to be meek and lowly in heart should reign in pleasures in luxury in violence in pride in haughtiness in riches and in rapines And yet a little after The Bishops have renounced Hospitality they neglect the poor of Jesus Christ but they make themselves fat and feed their Dogs and other Beasts as if with a formed design they would be in the number of those to whom Christ shall say I was poor and you relieved me not go ye cursed into Eternal fire For Generally almost all the Bishops lie under the evil of Covetousness they are ravishers of others goods and but ill despencers of the Churches turning aside to other uses that which they ought to employ in Divine uses or the feeding of the poor What Bishop is there adds he who does not more love to be a rich Lord and Honoured in the World then to help the poor The whole design of their lives is but for the things of the World They love to array themselves after the Fashion of that and as for the Ecclesiastical Ornaments whether they be Corporal or Spiritual they scarce make any account of them and therefore it was that S. Brigit said That the Bishops took the counsel of the Devil who said to them Behold those honours which I offer you the riches that are in my hand I dispence pleasures the delights of the World are sweet you must enjoy them That same Saint says further that the Covetousness of the Bishops is a bottomless Gulph and that their pride and their luxurious Lives was an unsavoury steam which made them abominable before the Angels of Heaven and before the Friends of God upon Earth As to the other Prelats and the Curats the same Author represents them to us after this manner In these Times says he there are very few Elections that are Cononically made and without under hand canvassings on the contrary the greatest parts of the Prelats and Beneficed men are made by Kings and Princes in an unlawful manner and which is more being brought in by Canvassings and Simony they are confirmed by the Popes against the Priviledges of the Churches and the Statutes of Germany and against all manner of Justice Furthermore the Bishops ordinarily promote to dignities and the Cure of Souls their Cooks their Collectors of their Tribute their Pensionaries the Grooms of their Stables Hence Ubertine said That the Antient Holiness of the Prelats wasted away by degrees and that it began to fall by Canvassings by Pomp and by Simony by unlawful Elections by Covetousness and by the abundance and superfluity of Temporal things by the promotions that the Bishops made of their Creatures by neglecting the Divine-worship and by other perverse works and that by Reason of those ill dispositions the Devil was let loose against the present State of the Church Now none of them who are called to the Pastors Charge and the Cure of Souls inform themselves either of the quality of their Flock or of their manners or their vices Not one Prelate called to the Government of a Monastery will take the pains to Observe either its Rules or the Order of its Ceremonies or the Discipline of the Religious there is not wholly any more mention made of the Salvation and Edification of those that are under them but they only inform themselves very exactly of the plenty of their Revenues and what such a Benefice may bring in Yearly though yet they do not reside there It is these Curates that Vincentius cri'd out upon when he said O what Obduration is there in the Church of God! The Prelats are Proud Vain Sumptuous Simonists Covetous Luxurious Men that regard only this Earth They neglect their Ecclesiastical Duties they are void of Charity Intemperate Lazy For they neither perform Divine Offices nor Preach and do nothing but what creates Scandal They despise the foresight of their Holy Mother the Church which ordains that when the Rectors of Churches shall not be able to Preach they should employ fit persons which should in their stead edify the people by their word and their Example and that they should supply them with all needful things But on the contrary the Prelats and Curates are only careful to put into their places men that are very well skilled not to feed the sheep but to poll them to destroy and flea them He goes on with that vehemency throughout a large Chapter where he relates the many complaints of the Abbot Joachim Saint Catherine of Sienna and of Saint Brigitt Behold this last among the others Those who Rule the Churches commit three sins the one is that they live a beastly and luxurious life the other that they have a Covetousness as insatiable as the Gulphs of the Sea and the third is That they are Prodigal to satisfy their own vanity as the Torrents that pour forth their waters impetuously such horrible sins which they commit ascend up to Heaven before the face of God and hinders the Intercession of Jesus Christ as the black Clouds disturb the purity of the Air The Revenues of the Church are given not to the Servants of God but to those of the Devil to the Debauchers of Women to Adulterers Gamesters Hunters Flatterers and such like men and hence also it is that the house of God is become Tributary to the Devil The Abbot who ought never to be out of his Monastery but to be the head and example to the rest of the Religious is become the head of a whole Troop of leud Women with their Trains of Bastards instead of being an Example to and feeder of the poor he makes himself Master
Judges of things no otherwise then by what they tell them and by some light appearances without informing themselves any further Nevertheless it is certain that there never was a more unjust Accusation then that nor whose injustice could be more easily seen if they would but open their Eyes a little For as to that which respects that pretended Novelty of Religion which they say that we have introduced I would fain have them mark out some positive Articles of our Faith that were not always believed in the Christian Church and which they themselves to this day do not believe in the Church of Rome without any ways scrupling them I confess that they may have among them some Questions of the School about which our positive Doctrine is different from that of the Church of Rome as the Question of the Nature of Concupiscence that of the dolors of the Soul of Jesus Christ and that of the Definition of the Faith But besides that those Questions are very few in Number and that they are scarce known by the People we have the Holy Scriptures so clearly on our side upon all those points that they cannot lay any Novelty to our Charge and for the rest all our great Differences consist in respect of us in Negative Articles that is to say in those points which the Church of Rome believes and which we do not believe as the Sacrifice of the Mass Transubstantiation Oral Manducation Adoration of the Host Purgatory Invocation of Saints and Angels Religious Worship of Images that of Relicks the Divine Service in an unknown Tongue the Necessity of the Caelibacy of the Clergy the merit of good works the Authority of Traditions the Monarchy of the Pope the Infallibility of the Church of Rome her Soveraign power over mens Consciences and other such like Doctrines It is True that we have rejected those Doctrines but since it is also true that we have rejected them only because they are Novelties that men have added to God's Revelation beyond which there can be nothing in Religion that should not be new what ground have any of them to accuse us as Innovators They would have far more ground to say that we are too rigid Followers of Antiquity and that we urge our Scruples and our Aversions for these Novelties further then we ought or at least that we deceive our selves and take that for new which indeed is not so If they said no more but that we should labour to justify our selves but to charge us under that pretence with a Spirit of Novelty is the most unreasonable and groundless thing in the World That which makes the Fallacy is That the people whose sight is extream short and who Judge of the Novelty and Antiquity of things only by that which appears open to them imagine that all that which they received from their Fathers and which they found setled when they came into the World is Antient throughout so that a false Antiquity which shall be only of two or three Ages past passes in their Judgments for as good and true a one as if it had been always so Notwithstanding which it is certain that in matters of Religion nothing can be truly Antient but that which was from the beginning and nothing can be Divine but that which is from Jesus Christ and his Apostles for it is a thing very evident and acknowledged on both sides that from the Time of Jesus Christ and his Apostles There has been no immediate Revelation whence it follows That all that which is sprung up since is humane and by consequence New This is the True Idea that we ought to form of Old and New and not that popular Idea which cannot but be false and deceitful and yet notwithstanding it is upon this latter that they ground themselves when they accuse us to have been Innovators and to have made a new Religion as if Jesus Christ had been an Innovator then when he would correct the abuses that the Jews committed in their Divorces by telling them In the beginning it was not so It is after the same manner that they charge us with having made a new Church for they play upon the Equivocalness of the word New The People who imagine that all that which appears to them in another form then that which they have been wont to see is new believe that our Society is new because they see that we do not Assemble our selves any more with them as we did before that we have other places then the usual that we do not any more say Mass in our Assemblies that we hold another Order and that we have other Ministers But there needs here only a Distinction For a thing is called New either with respect to its being and its Essence in respect of its External State and its changeable Accidents When an Infant comes into the World they say a new man is born when a new House or Town is built where there none before they say it is a new Town or a new House and the same may be said when one thing is essentially changed into another thing as when God changed Moses's Rod into a Serpent or when Jesus Christ changed the water of Cana into Wine it might be said that it was a new thing because in effect it was not essentially the same thing that it was before But when it is only changed in its State or External Form as when a Man changes his countenance his Stature or his Inclination manner of acting or Cloaths or when he repairs a House or a Town if then any should say this were a new thing without doubt he would speak improperly It is not less manifest that it is no more then a sigurative Expression which ought not to be taken litterally nor in a rigorous sence So when Saint Paul calls a converted man a new Man a new Creature and the Church a new Heaven a new Earth a new World every one sees that these are ways of speaking that ought not to be taken literally but figuratively for a Believer is essentially the same man and the same Creature of God that he was before his Conversion and Heaven Earth and the World are not changed in their Essence by the manifestation of the Gospel Besides a thing that is changed in its external Form may be called new either with respect to the State wherein it was immediately before its change or with respect to the Just and lawful State wherein it should be according to its first Establishment so when one repairs a ruined House if it keeps its first proportion We may say that it is made new in respect of what it was before its Reparation but if its first and natural Fashion should be changed it would be new even in respect of what it should have been according to the Model by which it was made at first These Distinctions clear this whole Dispute and it is not difficult to apply them to the subject we
had a Plenitude a fulness of Power 11. What could they say to those Titles which the Popes attributed to themselves of being the spouses Husbands of the Church and the Vicars of Jesus Christ The Church my Spouse said Innocent the Third were not married to me if she did not bring me something she has given me a Dowry of an inestimable price the fulness of all spiritual things the greatness and spaciousness of Temporals the Grandeur and Abundance both of the one and the other She has bestowed on me the Miter in token of things Spiritual The Crown for a sign of the Temporal the Mitre for the Priesthood the Crown for the Kingdom substituting me in his place who had it wrote on his Vestment and his Thigh The King of Kings and Lord of Lords After the same stile Martin the fifth intitled himself in this manner in the Instructions which he gave to a Nuntio that he sent to Constantinople as Raynaldus relates The most Holy and most Happy who has Heavenly power who is the Lord of the Earth the successor of Peter The Christ or Annointed of the Lord the Lord of the Vniverse the Father of Kings the Light of the World the Soveraign High Priest Pope Martin 12. What could they say to that Scandalous applying to the Popes those passages of the Scripture which only and immediately regard God himself and his Son Jesus Christ Baronius relates that Alexander the Third making his Entry into the Town of Montpellier a Sarasin Prince prostrated himself before him and adored him as the Holy and venerable God of the Christians and that those that were of the Popes train ravished with Admiration said one to another those words of the Prophet All the Kings of the Earth shall worship him and all Nations shall do him service So in the Council of Later an one complemented Leo the Tenth with these Applications of Scripture God has given you all power both in Heaven and in Earth Weep not Daughter of Sion Behold the Lion of the Tribe of Judah of the stock of David And those of Palermo by the Relation of Paulus Jovius prostrate at the feet of Martin the Fourth made their addresses to him in the same words that they say to Jesus Christ before their Altars Thou that takest away the Sins of the World have mercy upon us Thou that takest away the the sins of the World have mercy upon us Thou that takest away the sins of the World grant us thy peace 13. What could our Fathers say to those strange Declarations of some Popes that maintained that all Laws resided in them that all the Rules of Justice were enclosed within their Breasts that it was necessary to the Salvation of every Creature that he should be subject to the Pope of Rome that they had in their hands the Temporal and Spiritual Sword and other expressions of the like nature So Paul the second answered Platina who requested him that he would dismiss him to the prosecuting of his suit about a very important affair before the Auditors of the Rota because the Sentence that the Pope had given was unjust Is it so then says he that you would have us be brought to be try'd before the Judges Do not you know that we have all the Laws shut up within our own Breast In the close of that business Platina having taken the boldness to say he would demand Justice of a Council the Pope put him into a strait Prison So also Boniface the Eighth begins one of his Decretals in these words Licet Romanus Pontifex qui jura omnia in scrinio pectoris sui censetur habere It was the same person who desin'd the necessity of subjecting ones self to the Pope after this manner Subesse Romana Pontifici omni humanae Creaturae dicimus declaramus definimus pronuntiamus esse de necessitate Salutis and who said that although the Papal Authority was given to a man and that though it was exercised by a Man it was never the less Divine that though the Papal power came to be depraved yet it could not be judged by any man but by God alone because the Apostle has said that the Spiritual man judges all things and is himself judged of no man That there are two Swords that are in the power of the Church the Spiritual and the Temporal the one of the which had its use for the Church and the other the Church her self exercised the one is in the hand of the Pope and the other in those of Kings and Souldiers but whose management depends on the good pleasure and the sufferance of the Pope 14. What could our Fathers say to those prodigious pretensions that the Popes made over Emperours and Kings even to make their Crowns depend on their pleasure to dethrone them to give away their Kingdoms to others and to absolve their Subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance Every one knows what the decisions were that Gregory the Seventh made in a Council held at Rome in the year 1076. against the Emperor Henry the Fourth whom he had deposed and whose Subjects he had absolved of their Oaths of Allegiance One may call those decisions the Dictatorship of the Pope do but see some of their Articles as they are set down by Baronius That the Bishop of Rome only could wear the Imperial Ornaments That all Princes were wont to kiss the feet of the Pope alone That only his name ought to be mentioned in the Churches That there was but one chief name in the World which was that of the Pope That he had right to depose Emperours That his Decrees could be made void by none whosoever he were but that he alone could make void all others That he could loose the Subjects of wicked Princes from their Oaths of Allegiance The Decretals are full of the like attempt of Boniface the Eighth upon Philip the Fair one of our Kings He went so far as to excommunicate him and to absolve his subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance and in fine to give away his Crown to the Emperor Albert. I confess that he was punished as he deserved and that the French on this occasion served their Prince with great zeal The same Platina mentioned before could not forbear making this reflexion on the Death of this Pope Thus dy'd this Boniface who thought of nothing less then of terrifying Emperors Kings and Princes and all men that he might the more inspire into them a Religious respect and who pretended to give and take away by force whole Kingdomes to overturn and re-establish all men by the meer motion of his Will But howsoever it was the bad success of Boniface could not hinder our Fathers from judging as they ought of these insolent pretensions of the Popes and taking notice that those who made their very Religion to serve their Ambition seeing their Ambition had no bounds had a peculiar interest
can't tell how to pass so favourable a Judgment Errors in Religion have a far different Character from those in Philosophy and in Religion it self those which always when they arrive vitiate the mind and heart are far more odious then those which do not deprave the mind and those which hinder all the saving Essicacy of the Gospel are infinitely more so how much more when they are gathered together to an exceeding great number and mutually uphold and sustain one another not unlike those black Clouds which in the most Stormy days of Winter joyn themselves one to another to make up but one general one and to deprive us of the light of the Sun Hitherto possibly they will not contest any thing But if it be reasonable enough that there should be no quarrel made about those general Propositions they ought not further to make any in this particular Question if the Actions of our Fathers were in their own nature good and just since we suppose not only that those things which they rejected and caused others to reject were Errors but also that they were Capital Errors of that last sort which I spoke of just before which one cannot look on without dread and amazement For it is upon that supposition that we defend our Fathers and if they dispute it with us they ought to quit this dispute about Forms and to enter upon a Discussion of the very Foundation it self They may alleadge that they had a long continued possession in favour of those things which our Reformers opposed since they were found establisht in the Church many Ages ago and that as in a Civil Society the Laws forbid those to be molested who are in a long and Antient possession and to be bound to produce their first Title though at the same time it should be maintained that they are Usurpers So also our Fathers ought not to be heard any further against the Sentiments and Customes which the Times had in some sort consecrated and made venerable But this Answer will be of no Use to them for not to alleadge here That the greatest part of those Opinions and Practises were new enough as has been sufficiently Justified not to say that they had been publickly disputed and by consequence That that possession whereof they speak was not peaceable Who knows not that there can be nothing prescribed in matters of Faith and Worship against the True Religion since that Religion is of God in all its parts and that there is neither any Time nor Custom nor possession that can make a true thing of a false or a Divine institution of a humane Tradition or any Vertue of a Vice In a Civil Society Laws Establish Prescriptions with very good Reason because without them the peace of the Community which is the only end that those Laws propound to themselves cannot be well preserved But in a Religious Society the principal end is the Glory of God and Salvation of the Faithful which are two things that are established on certain Perpetual and Invariable Foundations and by consequence have no respect to any long prepossessions on the contrary side how Antient soever they may have been If Religion were capable of any such Prescriptions Christianity would be bound to let Paganism alone for how long time past has Paganism been seated in the Possession of the Faith of men Saint Paul himself acknowledges it in those very places wherein he exhorts such to be Converted Turn you says he from these Vanities unto the living God who made Heaven and Earth who in Times past suffered all Nations to walk in their own ways and elsewhere God having winked at the Times of Ignorance commands now all men every where to Repent They cannot therefore bring any thing of Prescription against us and it will always remain certain that if that which our Fathers have said concerning the Corruption of the Latin Church in their days be true as we suppose it to be the Reformation was an Action good and just in it self and by Consequence in that respect they can have nothing to say against their Call to it But as it is not enough to establish a Lawful Call to suppose that what is done is good in it self and as it is further necessary that the person that does it should have right to do it it remains yet to be further inquired into whether our Fathers had power to do what they did For how many Actions are there that are just in themselves which it does not belong to all the World to do and which then become unjust and ill when every one thrusts himself in of his own Authority without being lawfully called It is not permitted for Example to all the World to punish the wicked although that punishment might be just it is not permitted to all men to change publick Customs although those changes should be good and advantageous to the Society We ought then to see what Call our Fathers had to Reform themselves and others But this Question would be easily decided if it be considered that in all Societies there are two sorts of Common Actions the one fort of those that are so Common as to belong to all the Body taken Collective as they speak in the School and not to each particular person So in a Parliament to pronounce a Sentance to absolve a man or to condemn him they are the Actions of the whole Body and not of each of those who compose it so to declare War and to make peace are the Acts of him or those who hold all the Rights of the State in their hands But there are other Actions which are so Common in a Society as to belong to each particular person or as they say to all Distributive and not to all Collective So to give ones advice in an Assembly is the Act not of the whole Body but of each particular person who composes it and to live in a Kingdom to contract Alliances to possess one's goods to labour to defend one's self against the incommodities of Life are Actions so Common as to belong to all particular Persons And so the Civilians have very well distinguished in saying that there are some Acts which respect Omnes ut singulos and that there are others which belong ad Omnes ut universos To Apply that Distinction only to our present Subject I say that in Religious Society which is the Church Faith Piety Holiness and by Consequence the Rejecting of Errors of false Worship and of Sins are those common Actions that belong to all private men The Just Lives by his Faith says the Scripture and as it would be ridiculous to demand of any man in a Civil Society what Personal Call he had to live to labour to avoid that which would be hurtful to his Life and to have a care of his own preservation so it is also an Absurdity to demand of our Fathers what call they had to believe aright in
Consequence it is to that we must refer that Call If I had a mind here to set down all the passages of St. Augustine when he establishes this Truth I should engage my self in an excessive Tediousness It shall suffice to set down some few that may clearly let us see what his Doctrine was upon this matter Judas says he Represented the Body of the wicked and Saint Peter represented the Body of the good the Body of the Church I say The Body of the Church but the Church which consists in the good For if St. Peter had not represented that Church our Lord would not have said to him I give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven For if that had been said but to St. Peter only the Church does not do it But if it be done in the Church to wit that the things that are bound on Earth are bound in Heaven and that those which are loosed on Earth are loosed in Heaven in as much as he which the Church Excommunicates is Excommunicated in Heaven and he to whom the Church is Reconciled is Reconciled in Heaven since that I say is done in the Church it follows that St. Peter receiving the Keys represented the Holy Chvrch. And as the good who are in the Church were represented in the person of St Peter so the wicked who are in the Church were represented in the person of Judas and it is to those that Jesus Christ said Me you have not always And further after having described the Church of the Truly Faithful in these Terms God has sent his Son into the World to the end that those who believe in him should by the laver of Regeneration be loosed from their Sins as well Original as Actual and that being delivered from Everlasting Damnation they should live in Faith Hope and Charity as Pilgrims in this World amidst Temptations and Labours and amidst the Corporal and Spiritual Consolations of God walking in Christ Jesus who is their way But because in that very way in which they walk they are not free from those Sins that arise through the Infirmity of this Life he has appointed them the saving Remedy of Alms to help their prayers which he has commanded them to make Forgive our Trespasses as we forgive them that Trespass against us After I say having described the Church of the Just in that manner he adds This is that which makes the Church blessed in Hope in this miserable life and it is this Church that Saint Peter represented by the primacy of his Apostleship Nam Ecclesiae gerebat figurata generalitate personam If you look upon Saint Peter in himself he was but a man by Nature a Christian by Grace and the first of the Apostles by the super-abundance of Grace But when Jesus Christ said to him I will give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven he Represented the whole Body of the Church that Church I say which in that Age was moved with divers Temptations as by so many Storms Torrents and Tempests and which yet does not fall into ruine because it is founded upon the Rock from which Saint Peter took his Name I say that Saint Peter took his Name from it for as the Name of Christian is derived from Christ and not that of Christ from that of Christian so that of Saint Peter is derived from the Rock and not that of the Rock from the Name of St. Peter and therefore Jesus Christ said to him Thou art Peter and upon this Rock I will build my Church For Saint Peter having made this Confession Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God our Lord told him that he would build his Church upon that Rock which he had confessed For that Rock was Jesus Christ upon which Saint Peter himself is built according to what is said No man can lay other Foundation then what is already laid which is Jesus Christ It is that Church therefore that was founded upon Jesus Christ which received from him in the Person of Saint Peter the Keys of that Kingdom that is to say the Power of binding and loosing In the same sense he says elsewhere That there are some things said to Saint Peter that plainly seem properly to belong to him and which nevertheless cannot be so well understood if they are not referred to the Church that Saint Peter represented and of which he was the Figure by that Primacy which he had among the Disciples as are adds he these words I will give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven Yet elsewhere Jesus Christ has given the Keys to his Church to the end that that which it should bind on Earth should be bound in Heaven and that whatsoever it should loose should be loosed that is to say to the end that he that should not believe that his Sins are pardoned in the Church to him they should not be pardoned and that on the contrary he who being in the bosom of the Church should beleive that his Sins were pardoned and who should be reduced by a holy correction should obtain pardon It is not rashly says he in another place that I make two Orders of men One sort are so much in the House of God that they are themselves that House that is built upon a Rock and that which is called the only Dove the Spouse without Spot and Wrinkle the Inclosed Garden the hidden Fountain the Wells of Living Water the Paradise where the Fruit of Apples is It is this House which has received the Keys and the Power to bind and loose and it is this to which he said That if any would not hearken to it when it Reproved and Corrected that he should be esteemed as a Heathen man and a Publican That House consists in Vessels of Gold and Silver in Precious Stones and Incorruptible Wood and it is to that that Saint Paul says Bear with one another in love keeping the Vnity of the Spirit in the Bond of Peace and again The Temple of God is Holy which Temple ye are It Consists in the good in the Faithful in the Holy Servants of God spread abroad every where joyned together in a spiritual Vnity by the Communion of the same Sacraments whether they know one another by sight or whether they do not But as for the others they are so in the House as not at all to belong to the Structure of the House and they are not in that Society that is Fruitful in Peace and Righteousness They are as the Chaff amidst the good Corn and we cannot deny that they are in the House since the Apostle says that there are in the
with a sensible displeasure that I mention the lives that we have led We are the causes that have swell'd this storm so high let us cast our selves into the Sea and since you have our Confession punish us after what manner you please A little before that he had said That the Troubles wherewith France was found to be agitated were the effect of a just Judgment of God and that they had drawn that judgment upon themselves by that Corruption of manners which was to be found among all Orders of men and by the subversion of all Ecclesiastical Discipline Charles the ninth also in those Memoirs that he gave to that Cardinal for the Council had expresly set down this Article That his Majesty with the most extreme regret was constrained to complain of the unclean lives of the Ecclesiasticks who brought so much Scandal and Corruption amongst the Common people beyond the scandal they took at their Ministers that to him it seemed necessary that it should be very speedily provided against Tell me I beseech you what could any justly conclude from the so licentious lives of Persons who for so long a time since had made themselves Masters of that Religion but that there was very little appearance that that Religion was preserv'd in its Antient Purity I acknowledge the ill life of the Pastour is not of its self a sufficient reason to separate from him but I affirm that when that wicked life is found to be so general in the Clergy and remains there for some Ages without amendment it gives a prejudice exceeding reasonable of some great corruption in that very Religion it self For Men of such impure manners can be but very ill Guardians of Faith and Piety 7. The Corruption of the Church of Rome in particular that is to say of that Church which calls her self the Mother and Mistress of all others and which had in possession the Government of them according to her own will confirmed our Fathers in this prejudice For by this means they saw the Evil did not confine it self only to the borders but that it was got into the very heart it self that is into that Church which as the Chief shed its influence on the others Further I think I need not prove that Corruption where every one will yield it as a thing that cannot be contested Those who have read the Histories of Luitprand of Glaber of Matthew Paris of Platina of Baronius and Onuphrius and of many others cannot deny that since the ninth Century the See of Rome has been most frequently filled with Popes whose Lives and Government have not very much edified the World Every one knows the Complaints that all the Earth had made and which it made yet in the days of our Fathers not only against the Popes but against all that they call the Court of Rome the Corruption whereof was looked on as the Cause of that in all the other Churches I shall not urge this matter further but it seems to me that our Fathers did not deserve the least blame if they could not believe that such a sort of men could have a great zeal for the glory of God and the Salvation of men or that they were so fit and likely to preserve Christianity intire amongst them nor in fine that whereas it was for so many Ages accused to be the very Center of all Vices it could be the Centre of all the Doctrines of Faith and Holiness 8. But altho' our Fathers should not have reflected on the persons of such men yet it is very certain that they found enough Characters of Irregularity in the Maxims in the pretensions and the Government of the Popes to make them justly conclude That they could not but be very ill Conservators of the purity of Religion What else could they gather from that excessive Pride so intolerable to all Christians that consisted in making their Feet to be Kissed with a submission far beyond what was yeilded to Kings in making themselves to be born on the shoulders of men and to be served by the greatest Princes or by their Ambassadors to wear three Crowns and to be Adored upon the Altar after their Election c 9. What could they say to those proud Titles which they with the greatest scandal affected to have given them as that of God in the Canon Law whereof see the words It evidently appears that the Pope who was called God by Constantine can be neither bound to any thing nor loosed by any Secular Power For it is manifest that a God cannot be judged by men To the same purpose Augustin Steuchus says That Constantine called the Pope God and that he acknowledged him to be so and he assures us that from thence it was that he made that Excellent Edict in his Favour he would say that false Donation He adored him says he as God as the successour of Christ and of Peter and rendred him all the ways that he could Divine Honours Worshipping him as the living Image of Jesus Christ So Clement the seventh Anti Pope with his Cardinals at Avignon in a Letter which they wrote to Charles the sixth which is set down by Froissard they make no scruple of calling him a God upon Earth seeing as there is say they but one only God in the Heavens there cannot and ought not of right to be more then one God on Earth After the same manner Angelus Politianus in an Oration that he made for those that were sent as Deputies from the City Sienna to Alexander the sixth ascribes Divinity to him We rejoyce among our selves says he to behold you raised above all humane things and elevated even to Divinity it self seeing nothing next unto God which is not set under you He was not the only person that treated that Pope as God for Raynaldus relates that amidst the Pomps of his Coronation one might see in divers places of the streets of Rome the Arms of the Pope with Verses and Epigrams underneath among which this Distich might be Read Caesare magna fuit nunc Roma est maxima sextus Regnat Alexander ille vir iste DEVS 10. What could our Fathers say to that Divine power that the Flatterers of the Popes attributed to them As the Glossary of the Decretals which remarks That every one said of the Pope that he had all Divine power caeleste arbitrium That by reason of that he could change the nature of things applying the essential properties of one thing to another That he could make something of nothing that a Proposition which was nothing he could make to be something That in all things that he should please to do his will might serve for a Reason That there is none that could say to him why dost thou do that That he could dispence with whatsoever was right and make injustice to become Justice by changing and altering of that which was right And in fine that he
consequence for all than for one 9. In fine it will also follow from thence that our Fathers were bound upon that pretence of the Latin Church to examine all the Points of that Religion For firmly to assure themselves of the Truth of that Priviledge it was not enough to consider it in its Grounds and its Causes which are those Proofs that they call a Priori they ought further to look on it in its effects that is to say to see it in the Doctrines of that Church in its Maxims in its Voice and diligently to take notice whether they may see all the Characters of Infallibility resplendent in it or whether they may not discover some Error It was after this manner that the Disciples of Jesus Christ acknowledged and cleaved to him I have given unto them says he the words which thou gavest me and they have received them and have known surely that I came out from thee To whom should we go Said they to him Thou hast the words of Eternal Life Our Fathers had so much the more reason to use theirs also when all the prejudices of Corruption which we have taken notice of in the foregoing Chapters presented themselves to their sight They observed there all the Characters of humane Weakness of Ambition Covetousness Interest Negligence of plotting Contrivances and of the Spirit of the World and all the other marks of Fallible men who can then blame them for holding so circumspect a course to come to the full and clear knowledge of the Truth So that that pretence of Infallibility was so far from driving our Fathers from the examining of those Doctrines which were taught in their days that the very same thing necessarily engaged and led them to it CHAP. VI. An Examination of the proofs which they produce to establish the Infalliblity of the Church of Rome LEt us see nevertheless upon what Foundations that pretended Prerogative of the Latin Church is built They produce on this Subject some passages of Scripture and some Arguments But as to the Passages of Scripture it is evident that there is not any one which respects more peculiarly the Latin Church then the Greek the Aegyptian the Aethiopian and others every one of which has as much reason to apply them to themselves as the Latin Yet we do not here dispute about a favour common to all Christian Societies but about a peculiar prerogative pretended to by the Latins For they are all agreed that all other Societies have err'd notwithstanding all those passages They ought then necessarily to alleadge something which belongs to the Latins peculiarly exclusively from all others or they ought to come to an acknowledgment that those passages do not at all establish the Infallibility of a visible Church since if they did so establish it being so general as they are they would have the same cogency in favour of the Greeks the Armenians and the Jacobites as well as the Latins 1. In effect one sort of those passages respect the true Church of Jesus Christ that is to say not that multitude of men who make profession of Christianity or who live in the same external Society of Religion but the truly faithful those holy men whom God has inwardly regenerated by his Spirit and whom he leads to life everlasting It is of that Church that it is said That she is the body of Jesus Christ That there is one Body and one Spirit That Jesus Christ is her head That she is his spouse It is only of the truly Faithful and no otherwise that these promises are verifi'd Vpon this Rock will I build my Church and the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it I will be with you always unto the end of the World I will pray the Father and he shall give you another Comforter who shall abide with you for ever The Spirit of Truth shall lead you into all Truth where two or three are gathered together in my Name I will be there in the midst of them These passages denote nothing less then an Infallibility either in the whole Body of the Visible Church or in the side that is strongest or in Councils or in the Decisions of Popes or in Traditions and Ancient Customs but they only signify that God will have always some truly Faithful upon the Earth even unto the end of the World and that he will accompany them with such a measure of the light and grace of his Spirit as shall in the end bring them to the Glory of his Kingdom 2. There are others which they yet make use of far less to the purpose because they signify only the Duty of Pastors and what they are appointed to do and not that that in effect they shall do Such as these Go Teach all Nations Baptising them in the Name of the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost Son of man I have set thee for a Watch-man over the House of Israel The Priests lips shall keep knowledge and they shall seek the Law at his Mouth I have set watch-men upon thy walls O Jerusalem which shall never hold their peace day nor night And he gave some Apostles and some Prophets and some Evangelists and some Pastours and Teachers For the perfecting of the Saints for the work of the Ministery for the edifying of the Body of Christ These and some other like passages shew to what the Offices of the Ministry are naturally appointed and the Obligation of those that are called to it but they are very far from giving from thence a Prerogative of Infallibility 3. They alledge also some passages that recommend to the Faithful the having a respect for and an Obedience to their Pastors Such are these He that heareth you heareth me and he that rejecteth you rejecteth me Obey them that have the rule over you and submit your selves for they watch for your Souls The Scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses seat All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe that observe and do but do not ye after their works But I cannot see what this last passage should let us see but that all those Exhortations that God makes to the Faithful to have a submission to the word of their Pastours denote very truly the Duty of the people in that matter but they do not in the least settle any Infallibility in their Pastours For is this that that Jesus Christ would say That the Scribes and Pharisees as long as they sat in the Chair of Moses were Infallible he that on the contrary accus'd them of having made void the Commandments of God by their Traditions and who elsewhere gave his Disciples such a Charge to take heed of the leaven of the Pharisees that is to say of their pernicious Doctrines How many times is that Obedience that Respect and that Submission recommended to Children to give to their Fathers in the Scriptures Is it that the Scripture in that ascribes to their
they make use of the Visibility of the Church to prove its Infallibility The True Church of Jesus Christ says one ought always to be Visible always plainly to be discerned whence it follows that she cannot err for if it were possible for her to do so she could be no longer acknowledged as a True Church and there would be no more means proposed to all men for their Salvation None can be saved out of the Communion of the True Church since it is impossible for any to be saved without Faith and that according to the Apostle none can have Faith without that Preaching which ought to be made by the Ministers of the Church The True Church ought then to be always Visible to the end that all men should set themselves under its Ministry to obtain Salvation or that at least they should be inexcusable if they did not so place themselves and by Consequence it is necessary that she should be Infallible To this Reason which alone makes a long Controversie and about which they make very long Chapters they add some passages of Scripture from whence they conclude that the Church is always Visible and some others that contain in their Opinion not only the promises of a perpetual Visibility but of a Visibility shining with such a brightness and such splendour that the True Church may be known to Strangers and Infidels to be so To Answer this Argument of theirs in the first place I say That the True Church may be so far from being always discernable by all men as they pretend it to be as that one cannot say so much as that all men have always been able to know that there has been a Society of Christians in the World for not to alledge that the Christian Church in its Original then when the Apostles were as yet in Jerusalem or thereabouts was very little known to the rest of the world not to say that the knowledge of that new Society did not so soon spread it self over the Roman Empire nor in the bordering Countries that the most of the people were ignorant for some time of what it was to be Christians it cannot be denyed that many Ages had slipt away before that the most considerable part of the Earth as all America could have any knowledge that there were any Christians in the World How then can any one say the True Church is always Visible and always discernable to all men Is it because those Americans before these last Ages were not men or is it because they were not bound to work out their own Salvation They ought then in good earnest to acknowledge that God is most free in the dispensing of the means of Salvation which he proposes to whom he will and refuses to whom he will Till the external Communion with the True Church shall be the only means of and absolutely necessary to Salvation none can conclude that she ought to be perpetually visible and discernable by all men For it frequently happens that God for most just reasons but which we ought not to search out with too great Curiosity may withdraw from men the external means of their Salvation and yet notwithstanding he does not fail to convince by other ways which render them inexcusable worthy of Condemnation Men are bound to place themselves in the true Church then when it is discernable to them to be so but when it is not so as it is not at this day to the Southern Nations we ought not to believe that God will damn them for not having put themselves into it they have other crimes enough to be punished for without making God to violate his Justice in that respect See here what I say for the defending of Gods Justice and to let you see the rashness of those Arguments which suppose that God is bound to make those Gentlemen Infallible to the end that he may condemn men with some reason But further I do not deny that one cannot in some sence say that God has always preserved some True Church Visible upon Earth but that one ought not to play with those ambiguous Terms it is necessary to make a distinction and to shew clearly in what sence it may and in what sence it may not be found to be True For beside that that I have said in the first place That the True Church is not Visible nor to be generally known by all we ought not to imagine that the True Church must be always Visible in one certain place that is to say that one only People one Society one body which has been for time a True Church may not in the end lose that quality after whatsoever manner that comes to pass whether it be by an entire forsaking of Christianity or whether it be by an extreme and general Corruption of that Religion God has sometimees taken away his Candlestick from the midst of a people according to that threatning which he made to the Church of Ephesus I will come quickly unto thee and take away thy Candlestick out of its place except thou repent The greatest part of the African Churches which heretofore were so flourishing are now no longer so and there is not any place upon the Earth neither Paris nor Constantinople nor Jerusalem nor Antioch nor Rome nor Avignon neither the Latin Church nor the Greek nor the Armenian nor the Aethiopian neither the Chair of Saint Peter nor that of Saint James nor that of Saint John nor that of Saint Denis that can promise it self that it shall never perish There are no such promises in the Scripture and it is a speech very criminal in the Mouth of any Church whatsoever it be if she says I sit a Queen and am no widow and shall see no sorrow When therefore they shall say that God keeps up always a True Church in the World let them remember that it is in a way Independant on any Places and Sees or if that restriction will not please them let them produce those clear and solid and peculiar priviledges to us which may set the Latin Church above all its Fellows For as to that that some set before us that saying of Jesus Christ to S. Peter I have prayed for thee that thy Faith fail not it is clear from a plain view of that passage that it only regards the person of Saint Peter with relation to that violent Temptation wherewith he was hurried in the House of the High Priest and under which there wanted but a little of his Faith having wholly perished and that it does not in the least concern his pretended Successours whereof there is not so much as one word in all the Scripture I say the same to that Commandment that Jesus Christ gave him to Feed his sheep which respects only his re-establishment in the Office of an Apostle after his fall nor is there any promise adjoyned for his Successors nor for their See whereof there is not a
much frequented it would be nevertheless least of all so in the quality of a True Church in that its natural beauty is so darkned and its Visage so disfigured that in judging according to its Appearances one can but very difficultly say that God does yet preserve some Faithful ones in that Communion and under that Ministry But they will say may not a Church fall into that Condition and yet for all that be a true Church I answer that a Visible Society as I have shewn is not called a true Church but only with respect to those true Believers who are in it and not with respect to the others When then it comes to pass that the party of the Men of the World prevails and fills that Society with its Corruptions all that Society taken in the general does not fail as yet to be called a True Church while their is some appearance how small soever it may be that God does yet keep and hold in it those good men who do not defile their Souls with that Corruption of the wicked But how can say they yet further those good men preserve themselves in the midst of such a Society I answer That they may preserve themselves there after that manner that one may preserve himself in a contagious Air where he draws in the Air because it is necessary to his Life but yet he may keep himself as well as he can from that Contagion by the help of Antidotes There are two things in a Corrupted Church the good and the evil if a Man can separate that good from the evil that is to say if he can take the one and keep himself from the other without falling into Hypocrisy and being bound to do as those who equally take the good and the evil which he knows not how to do without dividing between God and his Conscience he may be saved in a corrupted Communion and there may not be another more pure This evidently appears from the Examples of Zachary and Elizabeth of Simeon of Joseph and the Holy Virgin and divers other persons who liv'd in the Jewish Church when our Saviour came into the World and who preserved their Piety though that Church was fallen into the highest Corruption under the Ministry of the Scribes and Pharisees Jesus Christ himself who reproved the abuses of those wicked men and exhorted his disciples to take heed of their false Doctrines did not fail to live in that Common Society and to be found in the Temple with them and after that he had been Crucified by them his disciples did not wholly withdraw themselves from their Communion during some time and till they had indispensable reasons for it I will shew in the Progress of this Treatise that it does not from thence follow that we may at this day abide in the Roman Communion and that it much less follows that we may return thither by forsaking the Communion of the Protestants under a pretence that we may separate the good from the bad the pure from what is impure since we can no more do that then not become wicked Impostures Hypocritical and Detestable before God and Men. But as this is a point that belongs to another Place it shall suffice me to have clearly shewn in this Chapter in what manner and with what distinctions it may be said that there is always a true Visible Church and to have made it appear that it no ways follows from thence that she must needs be Infallible as the Church of Rome pretends that she is After all this it is not difficult to find out the just and true sence of some passages of Scripture which they abuse in this matter of Visibility For as to that of the Gospel whereof we have spoken Tell it to the Church and if he will not hear the Church let him be unto thee as the Heathens and the Publicans It is clear that particular Churches are treated of there and that the personal differences which we may have one with another and the meaning of it is that the Faithful are bound when they receive any wrong from their brethren to carry their complaints to the Church and to refer themselves to its Judgment Or if it is not to be understood in those Times and in those places where there shall be Churches established to the Judgment of their Guides and Pastors who may end those private Quarrels And if they will infer from thence that then there must be always a Visible Church that may be in a Condition to attend to those Reconciliations this is that that has no colour of Reason For that Command of Jesus Christ obliging the Faithful no further then as it lies in their power it would be but a very bad arguing to say that he has so engaged for that that he will so order it that there shall be perpetually a visible Assembly to hear Complaints and give Judgments It is within a little as if one should say that he was engaged that we should always have wherewithal to Lend and wherewithal to give Alms because he has bid us to Lend without hoping for any thing again and to make our selves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness Or that our Kings were bound never to leave vacant the Office of a Constable or that of the Mayor of the Palace under a pretence that heretofore they order'd their subjects to acknowledge those Dignities and to have recourse to them in certain Affairs Tell it to the Church then does not in the least suppose that the True Church ought to be always in such a State wherein she should have Authority to pass her Judgments for the determining private Quarrels And besides what I have said Experience contradicts it for it is most true that during the hottest Persecutions of the Heathen Emperours where all was laid in desolation that it had in many places nothing like a Visible Tribunal to which men could easily address themseves There are some other Passages that denote the duty of the Pastors and in particular of the Apostles as those where they are called The Salt of the Earth the light of the World a City set upon a Hill a Candle not lighted to be set under a Bushel and the Gentlemen of the Roman Church do not fail to set them down to give some colour to their Pretensions But this is evidently to abuse the Scriptures to make them establish the perpetual Visibility of the Church after that meaning wherein they understand those passages which exhort the Apostles and after them the Ministers of the Gospel to acquit themselves faithfully of their charge without negligence and weariness from the Consideration of their Calling and the end to which God had appointed them For besides that their Office does not bind them to that of a Martyr which does not suppose a very splendid State of the Church Besides that the same does not oblige them to be Martyrs if they were not specially
souls but to make Jesus Christ reign who is the only Monarch of the Church We Preach not our selves saith St. Paul but Jesus Christ the Lord and our selves your servants for Jesus sake and elsewhere he says that he was made a Minister of the Church of God All these passages by themselves are very concluding but taken together make up a Demonstration that will persuade all men who are not prepossest with prejudice For what likelyhood is there that God would have filled his Scriptures with so many things contrary to this Dominion if he had had a design to invest the Pastors of his Church with an Authority so absolute over mens Consciences and of making them Soveraign Lords of their Faith Is not that Authority after the way they pretend to it a real Empire and a much more powerful Empire than the Temporal ones which they set up over the Hearts and Souls of men where the others do but establish theirs over their bodies Bellarmine and Du Perron busie themselves very much in eluding the force of that passage where Jesus Christ forbids his Disciples that Dominion They say that he forbids not Dominion but the manner of that Dominion that is to say that he would not have them affect that Dominion nor that they should Rule Tyrannically or with violence but that nevertheless he would have them Rule Who sees not the absurdity of this answer For when Jesus Christ said The Kings of the Gentiles exercise Lordship but it shall not be so with you it is clear that the distinction that he makes between Kings and Pastors falls upon that Dominion and not upon the manner of that Dominion I confess that he forbids the affectation of that Dominion but I affirm that he forbids also that Dominion it self as it appears from his words for he says not the Kings of the Gentiles affect Dominion but he says they do exercise that Dominion and that it shall not be so with them which shews he would distinctly say that they should not exercise Lordship Else it was necessary that in those words Jesus Christ should have set down some difference between the Government of the Gentile Nations and that of his Church But that difference cannot consist in this that they ought not to affect the manner of Dominion in his Church for that would make him say that they ought or might lawfully affect it in the Civil Government which yet is not true And as to what they say of a Tyrannical and violent Domination they evidently deceive themselves For the contest of his Disciples was no ways about that violent Dominion nor about the gentleness of that Dominion but about the Dominion it self they strove among themselves which of them should be greatest Whence it follows that Jesus Christ who answers to their thoughts speaks of a Dominion whatsoever it be and not simply of a Tyrannical one To which I add that those other Passages to which they know not how to apply those evasions learly determine the sence of that saying of Jesus Christ 2. But the Scripture is not contented only to forbid that Soveraign and Absolute Authority to the Ministers of the Church it farther gives the Faithful a right to examine that which they teach and at the same time obliges them to do it to separate the Good from the Bad. Hence it is that Jesus Christ who would have his Disciples do all that that the Scribes and Pharisees who sat in the Chair of Moses commanded them to do yet would have them discern also their false Doctrines and to take heed of them Take heed to your selves says he of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Saducees which in the close he explains of the leaven of their Doctrine In the sight of that Saint John gives this Lesson to the Faithful Not to believe every spirit but to try the spirits whether they be of God and Saint Paul To prove all things and to hold fast that which is good The same Apostle elsewhere prays That they may have an abundant measure of all judgment and knowledge That they might try things that differ that they might be sincere and without offence until the day of Jesus Christ And there where he lets us understand that the Pastors in building upon the Foundation might heap up Wood Hay Stubble as well as Gold Silver and Pretious Stones it is evident from that Advertisement that he engages them to make a just discerning of those things It is not less clear that he supposes in the Faithful an Examination and a judgment in respect of those things which their Pastors should teach them when he has recourse to their Testimony for the Justification of his Doctrine We have not says he handled the word of God deceitfully but have commended our selves to every mans Conscience in the sight of God by the manifestation of the Truth Ye are witnesses and God also says he to the Thessalonians how holily and justly and unblameably we behaved our selves among you that believe But what more can be added to the force of his words which we find in his Epistle to the Galatians If we our selves or an Angel from Heaven preach to you another Gospel than we have preached to you let him be accursed Who can deny that he forbids by those words that blind obedience which they would have us give at this day to the Pastors of the Church and that he does not on the contrary command us to examine their Preaching by the Rule of the Primitive and Original Gospel Who sees not that that exaggeration which he uses serves but to let us see the importance the necessity the force of that obligation which he would lay upon us and how inviolable and indispensable it is He commands us not only to make a sincere discernment he does not only speak of a simple rejecting of that that shall be Forreign and Alien to it and shall not agree with the Gospel He enjoyns an Anathema an Execration He would not only have us pronounce it against men indefinitely or against those whom the Councils and the Popes shall declare Hereticks he declares that it ought to be pronounced against an Apostle against himself the most famous among the Apostles against him who had had Visions and Revelations who had been caught up into the third Heaven and who had laboured with such an abundant expence of his blood and of his Life for Jesus Christ This is not all yet he enjoyns the same against an Angel from Heaven if he undertook to Preach another Gospel than that which he has Preached unto us What can be said more weighty What is there in the Church beyond an Anathema What is there upon Earth among men greater than Saint Paul What is there in Heaven above an Angel And shall the ordinary Pastors the Prelates Patriarchs Popes and Councils be exempted from that Rule when the Apostles and Angels themselves are not
Frederick what the Pope desired obliged the Emperour Charles who had been Elected in the Room of Maximilian and the Princes assembled at Wormes to cite Luther to appear before them The Emperour gave him to that effect his Letters of safe Conduct and Luther having compared and constantly maintained his Doctrine without any ways regarding either the threats or the sollicitations of the Partisans of the Court of Rome they were upon the point to imprison him notwithstanding the safe conduct of the Emperour and to treat him as they had heretofore done John Huss and Jerome of Prague in the Council of Constance But the Elector Palatine vehemently opposing himself to that breach of the publick Faith they were contented with proscribing him by a publick Edict In that Edict they treat him as a Lunatick as one possest by the Devil and as a Devil incarnate they banish him all the Territories of the Empire they forbid him Fire and Water Meat and Drink they order that his Books should be publickly burnt and threaten to all that contradict the most rigorous punishments in the world After all that who can say that our Fathers could yet with any shadow of Reason hope for a Reformation on the part of the Popes and the Prelats We may see in their Conduct not only a repugnance to a Reformation but a setled design and an unshaken resolution to defend their Errours Superstitions and Abuses of what nature soever they were and to hazard all rather then once to consent that the Church should be purged We may see that they made use of all that the most exact and refined policy could make them contrive of all the Authority that the splendour of their Dignities and the places which they held could give them amongst men and of all that force and violence that the Favour of Princes and the credulity of the people could afford them They went so far as loudly to declare themselves Lords of mens Faith They exclaimed they wrote they disputed they accused they condemned they terrified they excommunicated they had recourse to the secular power and could our Fathers without being blind look any further for a Reformation from such persons as those CHAP. III. That our Fathers not being able any more to hope for a Reformation on the part of the Pope or his Prelats were indispensably bound to provide for their own Salvation and to Reform themselves VVE come now to inquire what our Fathers were bound to do in so great a Confusion They were perswaded not only that it was possible for the Latin Church to have within it a great many Corruptions and Abuses but that it really had a very great Company of them that false worship Errors and Superstitions had broke in as an Inundation upon the Christian Religion and that those abuses growing more gross and growing every day more strong put Christianity into a manifest danger of Ruin Moreover there was not any hope of Remedy either on the part of the Pope or on the part of the Prelats For the Court of Rome with all its Associates had loudly declared against a Reformation maintaining that the Church of Rome could not Err that she was the Mistress of Mens Faith and not to believe as she believed was a Heresie worthy of the Flames and as to the Prelats they had all servile obedience to the wills of the Popes besides that Ignorance that Negligence that Love of the things of the World and those other Vices in which they were plunged How be it the business was not about matters of small Importance nor about the Questions of the School most commonly unknown to the People nor about some speculative notions which could not be of any Consequence to the Actions of true Holiness The Controversy was about divers things essential to Religion which not only fell within the knowledge of the People but which likewise consisted in matters of practice and which by Consequence being wicked as our Fathers could make no doubt that they were could not but be very contrary to the right Worship of God and mens Salvation For the debate was about a Religious Worship which they were to give not to God alone but to Creatures also to Angels to Saints to Images and to Relicks about certain and infallible Springs from whence they ought to draw their Salvation in building their confidence upon them for besides the mercy of God through the Merit and Satisfaction of Jesus Christ they joyned to that the merit of our good-works our own Satisfactions the over and above Satisfactions of the Saints and the Authority of the Bishop of Rome in dispencing of Indulgences They Treated of other works which they held that we ought to do through the Obligation of our Consciences and with assurance that they were good and those they made a part of our Sanctification for they added to those that God had commanded us those that the Popes and their Prelats commanded out of their meer Authority They Treated of ill actions from which we ought to abstain out of the motions of our Consciences and which one could not commit without sin for besides those that God had forbidden us they likewise placed in this Rank those which it should please the Church to forbid us They Treated about a certain and infallible Rule of Faith upon which the Minds and Consciences of Christians might stay and rest for they would have that principle consist in the Interpretations in the Traditions and Decisions of the Church of Rome or its Prelats The Controversy was about Jesus Christ himself for they said that the Sacrament of the Eucharist was the very Person of the Son of God and they adored it under that Quality the Question was about divers Customs introduced into the publick Ministry or generally establisht by the Customs of the People that our Fathers thought very contrary to the Spirit of the Gospel and true Piety In fine in all those and other such like things they Treated about the peace and just rights of the Conscience the glory of God the hope of Salvation and the Preservation of the Church of Jesus Christ upon Earth Let them tell us then precisely what our Fathers ought to have done Was there any thing in the World of greater concernment then those things which I have set down Or to speak better was there nothing that could any ways stagger them or hold the minds of all honest men in suspence for so much as one moment Were they bound to renounce their Conscience their God and their Salvation under a pretence that the Flatterers of the Church of Rome speak of her what the Holy Scripture says of the Godhead That if she pulls down there is no person that can build up if she shuts there is none can open if she retains the Waters all is dried up if she lots them out they shall overflow the Earth Do they believe that they ought to have precipitated themselves
who laboured in the Reformation of their Churches religiously Observed They constrained no person and they rejected nothing that was not Alien to the Christian Religion But says the Author of the Prejudices Those two hundred Burghers of a Swisse Town were as Learned and ready in matters of Divinity as we may easily Judge Swisse Burghers to be I answer that this is the Objection of the Pharisees This People said the Enemies of Jesus Christ know not the Law But Jesus Christ did not answer them amiss when he said to them Father I thank thee Lord of Heaven and Earth that thou hast bid these things from the Wise and Prudent and revealed them unto Babes Let the Author of the Prejudices if he will be of the number of those wise and prudent ones we shall not envy him his readiness and his Learning and we shall rest satisfied with this that it has pleased God to place us in the same Rank with those mean Swisse Burghers to whom as much Babes as they were God vouschafed to make his Gospel known The true knowledge of Christians does not consist in having a head full of Scholastick Speculations and a Memory loaded with a great many Histories and multitudes of passages of divers Authors or a great many Critical Notions nor in having well-studied Lombard Albertus Magnus Thomas Aquinas Scotus Bonaventure Capreolus Aegidius Romanus Occham Gabriel Biel the Canon Law the Decretals and all those other great Names wherewith they stunned the People in times past Our True knowledge is the Holy Scripture Read with Humility Charity Faith and Piety See here all that those poor Burghers of Zurich knew they were neither Prelats nor Cardinals nor Doctors of Lovain nor of the Sorbonne but they were good men they feared God they studied his Word and for the rest of the State of their understandings and the degree of their light may appear by the Reformation which they made for the Tree may be known by its Fruits 4. Objection The matter which was to have been handled in that pretended Synod cannot be more considerable For they Treated therein about abolishing all at once the Authority of all the Councils that were held in the Church since the Apostles days under a pretence of reducing all to the Scripture Answer Since the True Authority of the Fathers and Councils consists in their Conformity with the Divine writings the way solidly to establish them is to reduce all to the Scripture as they did in that Synod If the Author of the Prejudices pretends to give the Fathers and Councils and Authority quite different from that of the Word of God whereof they ought to be the Ministers and Interpreters we may answer him that he affronts them under a pretence of Honouring them For as it is the greatest real injury that can be done to a Subject to give him the Authority of his Prince So it is the most real injury which they can do to the Fathers to invest them with the Authority of God 5. Objection They medled with the Faith of all the other Christian Churches which the Switzers could not but condemn in embracing a new Faith Answer The Swisses did not embrace a new Faith but they renounced those Errors that it may be might have prevailed for some Ages but which were new in regard of the Christian Religion They did not condemn other Churches in that which they had of good but they condemned that evil which they had in them A sick person who has cured himself condemns the diseases of others but he condemns not that Life which remains in them On the contrary he exhorts them to be healed for fear least remaining in that sick condition they should die 6. Object They treated about all those dangerous Consequences which that Change of Religion would have produced and which were easy to have been foreseen Answ They Treated also about the Glory of God and their own Salvation and all those dangerous Consequences which could not but come from the blindness and passion of those who would hold the People of God under their servitude ought not to have prevailed over two such great interests as that of the Glory of God and Mens Salvation All these Objections are well near the same that the Pagans made against the Primitive Christians and it seems that the Author of the Prejudices has studied them out of Celsus Prophyrie and Julian to make use of them against us 7. Object Moreover they declared that they would have men make use of the Authority of the Scripture only and by that rash and unheard of Prejudice they condemned the procedure of all the foregoing Councils wherein they were wont to produce the opinion of the Fathers to decide the controverted Questions Answ The Scripture is the only Rule of the Faith of Christians and there is no other but that alone whose Authority we ought to admit as Soveraign and decisive of Controversies It is not True that all the foregoing Councils admitted of the Opinions of the Fathers and their Traditions under that Quality The Author of the Prejudice lays it down without Proof and Reason 8. Object The Church being in possession of its Doctrine they ought to have forced Zuinglius to produce his Accusations against that Doctrine and to have made the proofs which he alleadged against it to have been examined But in stead of that they ordered that he should appear in that Disputation in Quality of Defender and that it should be the others part to convince him if Error Answ If the Church of Rome would have the World believe the Doctrine that she Teacheth it is fit she should furnish it with proofs and her pretended possession cannot assure it Those who propound any thing as matter of Faith are naturally bound to prove it and it is absurd to say that Possession discharges that Obligation for the Faith ought to be always founded upon proof and it never stands upon meer possession otherwise the Heathens ought to have kept their Religion which was established on so Antient a Possession 9. Object All that Examination was further grounded upon this ridiculous Principle That if there could not be found any person within the Territory of Zurich that could make the Errors of Zuinglius appear by the Scripture it ought to be concluded that he had none As if the weakness of those who opposed his Doctrine could not be an effect of their Ignorance rather then a default in the cause they defended Answ This Objection is no more to the purpose then the foregoing What could the Senate of Zurich have done more then to have assembled all the Clergy of their States to have called the Bishop of Constance or his Deputies thither to have received all the World and given all liberty of propounding their Arguments and Proofs It belonged to them to propound them if they had any and if they had none they ought to have acknowledged that 'till then
learned The one extends its use unto all that is Necessary for Instruction and the Conduct of life and the other in heaping up of general difficulties makes it unprofitable to Instruct us in the least Truths What Judgment can we make of this diversity unless this that the language of these Gentlemen changes according to the difference of Times and Interests as one has said of them elsewhere When the case is about gaining credit to their Translation of the New Testament they speak as advantagiously of the Scripture as it is possible for them to speak and when the business is to oppose a Reformation made according to the Rule of the Scripture but which notwithstanding has not the happiness of their Agreement you see what they say of that same Scripture The Scripture shall then to speak properly be only to be commended by the Intrest of their Translation and as long as that Interest shall remain shall be the Collection of the divine Teachings of our Lord The Testament that assures us of the Inheritance of our Father The mouth of Jesus Christ who although he is in Heaven speaks continually upon earth not only the nourishment of sound Souls and those who are establish'd in grace as the Body of the Son of God but even the Consolation of Sinners the light of the blind the remedy of the Sick and the life of the dead For these are the Titles that the Preface gives it but whenever that Interest shall cease those praises shall do so too and it shall be nothing but a Ridiculous way and impossible for the Instructing of men in the Truth I would therefore very fain know of these Gentlemen whether it were only upon the sight of their Translation that S. Cyprian S. Augustine and S. Gregory wrote that which the Preface relates or whether those Fathers did not consider the Scripture in it self For if it be the first they forgot to tell us that they only spake out of a Prophetick Spirit of that Translation and if it be the Second why have they entertained us with that admirable proportion of the Scripture to great and small to the strong and weak and that easy and intelligible manner wherewith it propounds to us all that is necessary for the Conduct of our life since that without the Translation of Mons it is an Infinite way which has no end a ridiculous way and Impossible to Instruct men in the Truth What can the Author of the Prejudices say to defend himself from this Manifest Contradiction which he discovers between him and his Colleague Will he say that the Scripture is in truth a good means for the Instruction of men but that it is so only with the Interpretations of the Fathers But the Author of that Preface speaks for Scripture alone separated from the Interpretation of the Fathers such as its Translation is for he excuses himself in that he had not made a collection of notes and explanations drawn out of the writings of the holy Fathers and he does not fail to say that in his Translation as plain as it is not only the Souls of the more learned but of the more simple also and unlearned may find that which will be necessary for their Instruction Will he say that he does not mean to exclude the learned from the use of the Scripture but only the more simple for the Instruction of which former he does not deny but that it would be a most proper means But besides that his Brother speaks formally of the Instruction of the more simple why has the Author of the Prejudices made it a ridiculous and Impossible way an infinite way which has no Issue a way which is of so excessive a length that one can never rationally hope to come to the end of it whatsoever diligence one should make Will he say that the Scripture ought to be joined with Tradition and that without Tradition it cannot give a perfect Instruction But the Preface says expresly that they will find in that Translation all that will be necessary for Instruction Will he say that in order to the Scriptures Instructing one the Sence of the Church ought to be added to it But the Preface says that according to Saint Augustine the Scripture lays down all that is necessary for the Conduct of our lives after a most easy and Intelligible manner and that she explains and makes clear her self Will he say that in order to the Scriptures being capable to Instruct us we ought at least to read it with Dependance upon the Church and to take it from her hand But wherefore then would these Gentlemen have the People to read their Translation since they are only private Doctors and not the Church Wherefore when the Prelats rais'd to the highest dignities have forbid the reading of it by their Ordinances have we seen Printed writings maintain on the contrary there was in those Ordinances a Threatning of the Will and Commandment of God who would that we should hear his Son and not that we should suppress his Gospel a Contradiction to the Holy Scripture which was set down in writing for no other end but to be heard and practis'd by all Nations of the world a Contradiction of all the Councils which have always taken the Scripture for the Judge of the belief of the Church and of all the Difficulties and Questions that can arise in the Doctrine of Faith or Manners a Contradiction of all the Holy Fathers who advis'd the Faithful above all things continually to read the word of God Why has one Introduc'd two Lay-men Parishoners Saint Hilary Montanus saying one to another The Bishops cannot take away from us the Gospel that Jesus Christ has given us that God spoke to all his People when he said To day if you will hear my voice harden not your Hearts a Bishop cannot take away our Eyes from us to hinder us from seeing and considering our way we should not see Jesus Christ our Saviour our Pastor and our great Bishop who goes before us in his Gospel That if a Bishop would turn us away from if an Apostle if an Angel from Heaven would stop up this way and would go about to lead and guide us in another we ought not to believe him Why has he made us see those Parishoners holding That there is nothing more contrary to the Gospel then a prohibition to read and have it that bread and nourishment is not more necessary to preserve the life of the Body then the word of God is to maintain Life in our Souls That all Christians have a natural right that cannot be taken from them of Instructing themselves by the word of God and labouring to understand it and that the Holy Scriptures were given to the whole Church and not only to the Bishops who have no right to deprive the Faithful of them That this is say they what the Divel would preach up if he were
and another I am of Christ is Christ sayes he divided Was Paul crucified for you or were you baptized in the name of Paul Which implyes this that we are all immediately united to Jesus Christ because it is he only who dyed for us and in his name alone that we are baptized and to pretend that the faithful are joyned to Jesus Christ by his Ministers is to divide him into as many Parties or into as many Sects as there are Ministers But it manifestly follows from thence that the faithful ought to be no further united with their Pastors than as it shall appear to them that their Pastors are to Jesus Christ and that they ought to separate from them when it shall appear to them that they themselves are separated from him and that they would separate the Flocks which they had committed to them This is what the light of common sense dictates without further reasoning for to what good would the Communion of those pretended Pastors tend howsoever invested they should be in Titles and Dignities without that of Jesus Christ That which I have said of their Communion with them I must also say of their dependence on them That which the Faithful have upon Jesus Christ is immediate and absolute and that which they have on their Pastors is mediate and conditional our Souls and our Consciences do not belong to them to dispose of at their will and pleasure In this respect we belong to Jesus Christ alone who has purchased us at the price of his blood and who governs us by his Spirit and his Word The Pastors are only Ministers Interpreters or the Heralds who make us to understand his Voice and all the dependence which we have on them is founded upon that which both they and we have upon Jesus Christ our Soveraign Lord of which it is both the cause and the rule and measure We ought therefore to be subject to them while they shall act as his Ministers and his Interpreters while their Actions and their Government bear the characters of his Authority But as those Ministers are men who may abuse their Offices and act against their head if it happen that the characters of the Divine Authority which subjects us to them do not appear in their word if there appear a contrary character there if instead of leading us to Jesus Christ they turn us from him if they would govern as Lords and not as Ministers if they attribute that absolute obedience to themselves which we own to none besides our Saviour In a word if to depend on them we must violate the dependence which we have on Jesus Christ can they then say that we cannot and that we ought not to separate from them and to renounce an unjust Government If they would decide this Question by the Scripture St. Paul tells us That if he himself or an Angel from Heaven should preach to us another Gospel than that which he has preached he should be accursed He sayes that upon the occasion of some false Teachers that troubled the Churches of Galatia and speaking only of them one would think that he ought to have been contented to have let his Anathema fall upon those particular Teachers that might err and who had not so great an Authority but that one might very well separate himself from them when they should happen to prevaricate But to take away all pretence of distinction and wrangling disputes he makes a most express choice of two of the greatest Authorities that were among creatures of an Angel and an Apostle the only two created Authorities to which God has communicated the favour of Infallibility and he has enjoyn'd us to anathematize them if it should happen that they should preach another Gospel than that of Jesus Christ we know very well that the Angels of Heaven are uncapable of ever committing that sin we know very well that he himself would never have committed it and yet notwithstanding he turns his discourse upon himself and upon the Angels and is not this to give us to understand that there is no created Authority either in the Heaven or upon the Earth upon which we ought absolutely to depend and from which we ought not to separate in case it should turn us from Jesus Christ Let them tell us whether the dependance that the people owe to the body of their ordinary Pastors that is to say of those who possess the Offices of the Church who may have been very ill chosen who may have intruded themselves by very bad wayes who may be carried out therein to all the passions and disorders of humane nature whether I say the dependence which they owe to them be stronger and more inviolable than that which they ought to have for an Apostle and such an Apostle as St. Paul and even for an Angel from Heaven if he should become a Preacher This latter dependence notwithstanding is not absolute it may be lawfully broken upon a certain case who will take the boldness to say after that that it cannot and ought not to be done in a like case But if to the Scripture we would add experience that would teach us that there have been sometimes those seasons in which good men have been forced to separate themselves from the Body of their Pastors for not to speak of the seven thousand which in Elias's time preserved their purity against the Idolatry whereinto the Church of Israel had fallen who according to all that appears lived separated from the Body of their Idolatrous Pastors at least in a negative Separation we need but to turn our eyes to the Example of the Orthodox in the time of the Arians For there are two actions evident in that History one that Arianism had invaded the body of the Ordinary Pastors and the other that those among the Orthodox who were of any zeal and courage separated themselves from that infected body and would not own them for True Pastors while they should remain in Heresie The first of these Actions is justified by almost an infinite number of proofs taken out either from History or the Testimony of the Ancients For before the death of Constantine the Arians who had been condemned in the Council of Nice fell upon the person of St. Athanasius and some time after they banish'd him as far as Treves This was their first Victory but they did not stop there they got over to their side the Spirit of Constance after the death of Constantine who remaining sole Emperour employed all his Authority and the Arians all their artifices to establish Arianism every where The greatest part of the Bishops fell either under their violence or seduction Divers Councils were assembled and many forms of faith laid down there which all tended to set up the Dogm of Arius some more openly and others more covertly Those among the Bishops who made any opposition were cruelly persecuted deposed from their places sent into exile and treated
there is reason for that or no it is sufficient that he consents that they should not any more have had those for their Pastors which were so before and that they should have withdrawn themselves from their communion and external worship we demand no more at present We ought now to pass on to the second Proposition upon which the Objection is grounded that I have propounded in the beginning of this Chapter and to examine whether the Priviledge of the Church of Rome is such that one ought not upon any pretence whatsoever to separate ones self from her communion All the world knows that this is the pretension of that Church and that it is for that that she makes her self the Mother and the Mistress of all others and that she has also made it to be defined in her Council of Trent It is upon that account that one of her Popes Boniface the Eighth formerly determined That it was necessary to the Salvation of every creature to be subject to the Bishop of Rome But clearly to decide so weighty a Question there seems to me to be only these two wayes The first is to enquire whether that Church can or cannot fall into Error and cease to be the True Church of Jesus Christ for if it be true that she can never fall into Errors nor lose the quality of a true Church we must conclude that we ought alwayes to remain in her Communion But if on the contrary she may erre and cease to be a true Church we must also conclude that we may and ought to separate our selves when there shall be a just occasion there The second way is that laying aside the Question Whether she may err or not we examine whether it be true that God has made her the Mistress of all other Churches as she pretends whether he has established her to be the perpetual and inviolable Center of the Christian Unity with a command to all the faithful not to fly off from her For if it be an Order that God has made we cannot resist it without destroying our selves but if it be only an ill-grounded pretension of that Church her communion is neither more necessary nor more inviolable than that of other particular Churches But as to the first of these wayes I have already shewn that it engages those who will follow it in the examination of the foundation and in effect the proofs that they set before us to establish the Infallibility of the Roman See are neither so clear nor so concluding that it should not be necessary to see whether the Doctrines that the Church of Rome teaches answer that pretension which she makes to be infallible and unable to fall away or to say better those proofs are so weak and so trivial that they themselves bind us to have recourse to the examination of the Doctrines of that Church to judge of her pretension by them These two Arguments are equally good as to their form The Church of Rome cannot err in the Faith therefore the things which she teaches us of Faith are true And the things which the Church of Rome teaches us are not true therefore the Church of Rome may err I do not here examine the question which of these two wayes of reasoning is the more natural I yield if they will that they should chuse the first but when they shall have chose it good sense would also require that if the things which they shall set before us to prove this Proposition The Church of Rome cannot err in the faith do no wayes satisfie the mind if instead of assuring us they plunge us into the greatest uncertainties we must pass over to the other way and by consequence we must enter into the examination of the foundation But to judge of what nature those proofs are which they give for the infallibility of the Church of Rome we need but a naked view of them For they are not the express declarations of the will of God although it should be very necessary that they should have such a one for the establishment of so great and peculiar a priviledge the knowledge of which is so very important to all Christians They are not evident consequences drawn from some passages of Scripture or some actions of the Apostles they are neither clear and convincing reasonings nor even strong presumptions and such as have much likelihood They are strained consequences which they draw as they are able from two or three passages of the Scripture and which a man that should have never heard them speak of that Infallibility with all his circumspection would not have gathered They produce the Testimony that St. Paul gives to the Church of Rome in his dayes That her faith was spoken of through all the world and they consider not that he gives the same testimony to the Thessalonians in far higher terms than to the Romans for he tells them That they were an example to the faithful and that the word of the Lord sounded from them not only in Macedonia and Achaia but in every place also Although they do not conclude the infallibility of the Church of Thessalonica from thence They do not see that he renders well near the same testimony to the Philippians in adding a clause that seems much more express to wit That he is assured of this very thing that he which had begun a good work in them would perform it until the day of Jesus Christ Although they cannot notwithstanding conclude infallibility from thence in the behalf of the Church of Philippi In effect these testimonies only regard the persons who at that time composed those Churches and not those who should come after them and do not found any priviledge on them They produce the passages of the Gospel that relate to S. Peter as this Thou art Peter and upon this Rock I will build my Church and the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it and this I will give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven c. and this I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not when therefore thou art converted strengthen thy brethren and this Feed my sheep But to perceive the weakness of the consequence which they draw from these passages we need but to see that which is between two things of which it is necessary that we should be assured before we can conclude any thing First of all we must be assured that S. Peter was at Rome that he preached and fixed his See there for these actions are not so evident as they imagine they are inveloped with divers difficulties that appear unconquerable and accompanied with many circumstances that have no appearance of truth and which make at least that whole History to be doubted I confess that the Ancients did believe so but they have sometimes readily admitted Fables for truths and after all these
are matters of fact whereof we have not any Divine Revelation about which according to the very principle of our Adversaries all the whole Church may be deceived and which by consequence are not of faith nor can serve as a foundation for an Article so much concerning the faith as this is That the Church of Rome cannot err and that it is alwayes necessary to salvation to be in her communion Secondly We must be assured that the Bishops of Rome are the True and ordinary Successors of S. Peter in the Government of every Christian Church For why should not they be his Successors in the Government of the particular Church of Rome as well as the Bishops of Antioch in the particular Government of that of Antioch When the Apostles preached in those places where they gathered Churches and setled Pastors they did not intend that those Pastors after them should receive all the rights of their Apostleship nor that they should be Universal Bishops They say that there must have been one and that that could have been in no other Church but that where S. Peter dy'd But all this is said without any ground The Church is a Kingdom that acknowledges none besides Jesus Christ for its Monarch he is our only Lord and our Soveraign Teacher and after that the Apostles had formed Churches and that the Christian Religion had been laid down in the Books of the New Testament the Pastors had in those Divine Books the exact Rule of their Preaching and their Government Those who have applyed themselves only to that have alwayes well governed their Flocks without standing in need of that pretended Universal Episcopacy which is a Chimerical Office more proper to ruine Religion than to preserve it In the Third place we must be assured that S. Peter himself had received in those passages some peculiar dignity that had raised him above the other Apostles and some rights which were not common to all of them But this is what they cannot conclude from those forecited passages for granting that Jesus Christ has built his Church upon S. Peter has he not also built it upon the other Apostles is it not elsewhere written That we are built upon the foundations of the Apostles and Prophets Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone Is it not written That the New Jerusalem has twelve foundations wherein the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb are written If Jesus Christ has prayed for the perseverance of the faith of S. Peter has he not made the same Prayer for all the other Keep them sayes he in thine own name that they may be one as we are If he said to him Strengthen thy Brethren is it not a common duty not only to the Apostles but to all the Faithful Let us consider one another sayes S. Paul to provoke unto love and to good works If he said to him Feed my sheep did he not say to all in common Go and teach all Nations If he said to him I will give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven has he not said to all of them I appcint unto you a Kingdom as my Father hath appointed unto me Whatsoever ye shall bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven and whatsoever ye shall loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven In the Fourth place we must be assured that when there should be in all those passages some peculiar priviledge for S. Peter exclusive from the rest of the Apostles that it is a thing that could be transmitted down to his Successors and not some personal priviledge that resided in him alone and must have dyed with him For can we not say that the twelve Apostles being the twelve foundations of the Church the priviledge of S. Peter is to be first in order because he was the first who laboured in the conversion of the Jews at the day of Pentecost and in that of the Gentiles in the Sermon that he made to Cornelius May we not say that Jesus Christ has particularly prayed for his perseverance in the faith because that he alone had been winnowed by the Temptation that hapned to him in the Court of the High Priest That he said to him alone When thou art converted strengthen thy brethren because that he alone had given a sad experience of humane weakness That he said to him thrice Feed my sheep or my lambs because that he only having thrice denyed his Master by words full of horror and ingratitude our Lord would for his consolation and re-establishment thrice pronounce words full of love and goodness In fine when those Texts should contain a peculiar priviledge that might be communicated to the Successors of S. Peter we must be assured that that priviledge must be the perpetual infallibility of the Church of Rome and a certainty of never falling away from the quality of a True Church And this is that which they know not how to conclude from those passages for in respect of the first The Church may have been built upon S. Peter and upon his first Successors and remain firm and unshaken upon those foundations that is to say upon their Doctrine and Example although in the course of some Ages the Bishops of Rome have degenerated and changed the faith of their Predecessors and the words of Jesus Christ extended even to the Successors of S. Peter would not be less true when they should not extend themselves unto all those who bear that name S. Paul has called the Churches of Asia in the midst of which Timothy his Disciple was when he wrote his first Epistle to him he has I say called them the pillar and ground of Truth For although those Titles belong in general to every Church it is notwithstanding certain that they regard more directly and more particularly that part of the Universal Church I would say the Churches of Asia where Timothy resided when S. Paul wrote to him But the word of this Apostle does not fail to be true although in the course of many Ages those Churches have degenerated from their first purity and though the Successors of Timothy lost it very quickly after And as to the Prayer that Jesus Christ made to God that the faith of S. Peter might not fail when they would extend it down to his Successors they cannot conclude a greater Infallibility for them than that of S. Peter himself who preserving his faith concealed at the bottom of his heart outwardly denyed his Master three times and who according to the opinion of our Adversaries lost entirely his love and had fallen from a state of Grace being no more either in the Communion of God nor in that of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ Let the Church of Rome therefore call her self infallible as much as she pleases in vertue of the Prayer of Jesus Christ that Infallibility will not
down to the Council of Trent after which we may say that their separation was full and entire Luther therefore having been excommunicated by the Popes Bull with all those who should follow his Doctrine after the manner that we have seen he appealed to a free Council and proposed the Causes of his appeal in a publick Declaration that he caused afterwards to be Printed wherein with great humility he demanded of the Emperour the Electors the Princes of the Empire and in general of all the Powers of Germany that they would joyn themselves with him in his appeal or at least that they would defer the Execution of the Bull until having been lawfully called and heard by equitable Judges he should be condemned He protested that in case his so just a demand should be refused and that they should continue to obey the Pope rather than God the consciences of his persecutors would remain chargeable before God's Tribunal But those who had already condemn'd him for a like appeal to a Council did not leave off their prosecuting him for all that The Pope did not fail to cause his Bull to be publish'd with great Solemnity he added even in that which they call Coena Domini which is published every year a new clause bearing excommunication against Luther and those of his Sect. And because in his first condemnation he had given him threescore dayes time to recant that term being expired he pronounced a new and peremptory Excommunication against him by which he cursed him and his followers eternally and declared them guilty of Treason and Heresie he spoil'd them of all their Honours and Goods and injoyn'd all Arch-Bishops Bishops Prelates Preachers c. to preach or to stir up others to preach against them in all places Notwithstanding he earnestly solicited as well by his Letters as his Nuntio's the Emperour Charles the Fifth and all the Princes of Germany to employ all their Power and Authority against Luther and his followers Those solicitations produced them the Citation of Luther to the Assembly of Wormes of which I have spoke in the second Part and in the end the Imperial Edict called the Edict of Wormes which banish'd him from all the Lands of the Empire as a mad-man possess'd with the Devil a Devil clothed in humane shape an Heretick a Schismatick This Edict forbad him Fire and Water and the commerce of all the World and ordain'd that after the term of twenty dayes he should be taken and put into a strong Prison in order to be severely punished But besides all this it carried this further in it that it extended to all his favourers followers and complices and that his Books should be publickly burn'd Luther giving way to this furious storm withdrew himself for some time into a safe place under the protection of John Frederick Elector of Saxony and Leo after having excited all that Tragedy dyed in the flower of his age the first day of December in the year 1521. But the hatred of the Reformation did not dye with him he had for his Successor as well in that hatred as in his See Adrian the Sixth who was chosen the eighth of January 1522. After this new Pope had taken possession of his Papacy he sent a Nuntio into Germany and though as we have seen in his instructions he charged him in an express Article seriously to acknowledge before the Assembly of Nuremberg the disorders both in the Court of Rome and in the whole Body of the Prelates and the rest of the Clergy he did not fail nevertheless to charge him also at the same time to denounce terrible threatnings against Luther's followers for so it was that he called those who then embraced the Reformation He wrote with the same Spirit publick and private Letters to the Princes and other States of the Empire who were assembled together and he omitted nothing to stir them up to make use of Fire and Sword and the uttermost violence on that occasion We may see those Letters in Bzovius and Raynaldus and find in them all the characters of an extream passion He uses there divers reasons to animate them taken from their honour and their own interests He sets before their eyes the example of the Council of Constance wherein John Husse and Hierom of Prague were burn'd that of S. Peter in inflicting death on Ananias and Sapphira and that of God himself who made the Earth swallow up Dathan and Abiram He complains of them and sharply censures them in that they had not severely put the Edict of Wormes in Execution and to stir them up the more he assures them that the design of the Lutherans was to overthrow every Humane Order to dethrone all the Princes and to pillage all Germany under a pretence of the Gospel He repeated the same things in his instructions to his Nuntio and after having enjoyn'd him to represent to the Princes all that might move him to extirpate those pretended Hereticks so far as to tell them that they ought to imitate the generosity of their Ancestors some of which had carried with their own hands John Husse to the Stake he concludes with the words of Jeremiah when he prophesied the ruine of the Moabitish Infidels and which this Pope applied against those Christians Cursed is he that doth the work of the Lord negligently and who keepeth back his sword from blood He wrote also to John Frederick Elector of Saxony Letters full of heat wherein after having made a bloody invective against Luther and his Doctrine and having exhorted that Prince to abandon him he fiercely threatens him that if he do not do it he should feel the effects of his anger and that of the Emperours I declare to thee sayes he in the authority of God Almighty and our Lord Jesus Christ whose Vicar I am upon Earth that thou shalt not go away unpunished in this present world and that everlasting fire shall attend thee in the world to come For we live at the same time together both I Adrian Pope and the Emperour Charles whose truly Christian Edict thou hast contemned which he made against the Lutheran Perfidiousness These Letters wrought but a small effect in the mind of Frederick who was a pious Prince and one that loved the Truth but they did not also work much upon those of the rest of the Princes assembled at Nurenberg and the answer which they made deserves to be set down It contained well near these Articles That they could not execute the Sentence of the Apostolick See against Luther nor the Edict of Wormes without incurring themselves very great dangers That the far greater part of the people had been for a long time perswaded that Germany suffer'd a great many troubles on the side of the Court of Rome by reason of its abuses and that all the world was then fully instructed in it by the Writings and Tenets of the Lutherans That if they had rigorously executed the Popes
the bad Fish the Vessels of Gold and Silver and those of Wood and Earth and in this confus'd notion the Church is the Field the Floor the Net and the House that the holy Scripture speaks of But as this mixture which I have spoken of may be understood two wayes either in respect of Manners or in regard of Doctrines we must note in the Third place that this notion of the Mixed Church according to S. Augustine is divided into two for he would have us sometimes conceive of it as a Body wherein the righteous are only mingled with the unrighteous that is to say with the wicked whose manners are vitious and corrupted and sometimes also he would have us conceive it as a Body where the Hereticks are mixed with the truly faithful as well as the righteous with the unrighteous In the former case the mixed Church is a pure communion in respect of Doctrine but corrupted in regard of manners and in the second it is a communion not only corrupted in regard of manners but impure also and corrupted in regard of its Tenets These two sorts of mixture are without doubt in the Hypothesis of S. Augustine the first made all the ground of his dispute against the Donatists and as for the second he often explains himself in his Books and particularly in the Psalms against the Donatists where he sayes That after Jesus Christ had purged his floor by the preaching of the Cross the righteous were as the new seed which he spread abroad over all the Earth to the end they should make another harvest at the end of the world But that this harvest grew up amidst the Tares because there are Heresies every where Haec messis crescit inter zizania quia sunt haereses ubique In that same Psalm and elsewhere in divers places he quotes the Example of the Jewish Church in which he saies that the Saints the Prophets and the righteous were mixed not only with the wicked whose manners were debauched and criminal but also with the superstitious and Idolaters that which leaves no difficulty about it for Idolatry is the greatest of all Heresies We must note in the Fourth place that S. Augustine would have us consider the mixed Church in two different States For as for that which respects mens manners he sayes that sometimes the wicked do not prevail over the righteous either in number or Authority but that sometimes also they prevail in such a manner that the good are often oppress'd under their multitude and this is that which he treats particularly of in his Third Book against Parmenianus And so in regard of Heresies he means that sometimes they grow so powerful as to infect almost all the Body and this is what he expresly shews in a Letter to Vincentius a Donatist Bishop and in that which he wrote to Hesychius Thus it is that S. Augustine has conceiv'd of the Church and according to these different notions and these different states he has spoken differently of separations from it As for that which regards the truly righteous and faithful there is no question but that he thought that we ought to have not only an internal communion of charity with them founded upon the Unity that is between all the members of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ who have all but one and the same faith one and the same piety and the same righteousness but an external communion also which consists in joyning with them in the same Assemblies in partaking of the same Sacraments in approving their faith piety good works and in one word in accounting them their brethren as far as it is possible for them to know them But this is not that which makes the difficulty all the Question is concerning the mixed Church and all the dispute is to know how according to S. Augustine the Corn and the Tares that is to say the truly faithful and the Hereticks ought to remain together in the same communion and in what case they might separate themselves We must therefore note in the Fifth place that in the Doctrine of that Father there is a certain separation that a man can never make under any pretence whatsoever without being a Schismatick and that there is another that he may lawfully make and which it is sometimes necessary that he should He has distinguish'd between two external bonds that should unite us to one another the first is that of the External and General Call to Christianity the second is that of the participation of the same Sacraments and the same Assemblies It is the first bond that S. Augustine would have to be inviolable not only in regard of the faithful between themselves but also in regard of the wicked and Hereticks and not only while we suffer them to be in the publick Assemblies but even then when we excommunicate them and deprive them of the communion of the Sacraments And thus it is that he understands that which Jesus Christ said in his Parable That the Tares ought not to be pluck'd up which the Enemy had sown among the good Wheat in the same field but that he would leave both to grow together until the harvest and it is this kind of Unity whereof he sayes that there is no just necessity of ever breaking praecidendae unitatis nulla est justa necessitas it is the Unity of the same Net that enclos'd both good and bad Fish the Unity of the same Floor that contain'd both the good Seed and the Chaff the Unity of the same Field where the Tares grew up with the Wheat the Unity of the same House where there are Vessels of Wood and Earth with those of Gold and Silver and in a word this Unity that we call the external and general call to Christianity It is therefore first of all in this sense that he means that there is a Church from which we ought never to separate our selves under any pretence whatsoever and from which all those who separate themselves are Schismaticks for he understands it of that mixed Church that Field that Floor that Net that common House out of which we must never go forth nor drive out others howsoever wicked and Heretical they may be there being none but God who can make this separation and who will in effect make it at the end of the world And as it was thus that the Donatists had separated themselves so it was chiefly upon this that he convinced them of Schism for they own'd none for Christians but those of their own Party they rejected the Baptism of all the rest they looked upon them as Pagans who had no more any shadow of Christianity and when Proselytes came over to them they made them pass through all the degrees of the Catechumeni before they would receive them and they began to make them Christians anew as if they had come out of a Society of absolute Infidels as I have noted in my Fourth
the state of grace where the goodness of God had sent the Gospel in declaring to them that they ought to fear being cut off as the Jews from the Covenant of God he addresses himself to the whole body of the Gentiles converted to Jesus Christ Ad totum Gentium corpus adds he And certainly that horrible Apostasy of the whole world which has fallen out since manifestly shews us that this advice of S. Paul was not unprofitable For God having diffused in so great an extension of Countreys almost in a moment the waters of his Grace so that Religion flourished every where within a very little while after the truth of the Gospel was vanished and the treasure of salvation banished out of the Earth But whence could that change come unless from this that the Gentiles were fallen away from their Call and therefore it is that he clearly professes in a Letter to Melancthon that they had separated from all the world Plusquam enim absurdum est postquam discessionem à toto mundo facere coacti sumus alios ab aliis desilire The Author of the Prejudices yet further makes use of an Article of our Confession of Faith to prove the same thing which sayes That we believe that no one ought of his own authority to thrust himself into the government of the Church but that that ought to be done by election while it is possible and while God permits it Which exception we emphatically add to it because it has failed sometimes and even in our time in which the state of the Church was interrupted till God had raised up men after an extraordinary manner to order the Church a new which was in ruine and desolation Grounding himself on these two passages he insults over Monsieur Vigerius the Author of the Discourse in the Book of the Perpetuity of the Faith because he had declared That none of us had ever said that it could be possible that the Church should no longer subsist and that he defied Monsieur Arnaud to shew him one only Author among us who had thought so Before he had expressed such desires sayes the Author of the Prejudices it would have been well to the purpose that he had better informed himself about that which not only some Authors of his Sect have wrote but the Master of all their Authors which is Calvin who sayes a great deal more than that which is contained in that Book of the Perpetuity of the Faith since he looks upon the Church not only as possible to perish but as having effectually done so for many Ages so far as to say that the threatning of S. Paul which he pretends to be spoken to the whole body of the Gentiles had its effect that all the Gentiles had fell from their Call through a general Apostasy that the light of the Gospel had vanished in respect of them and that they had lost the treasure of salvation It is upon this foundation that he builds his Proposition and pretends to make us pass for worse men than the Donatists But all this is nothing else but an effect of the unjust and violent hatred that this Author has conceiv'd against us and Monsieur Vigerius had reason to deny that which he has denyed As the dispute here is only to know what our Hypothesis is upon the point of the perpetual subsistence of the Church it would be sufficient methinks to stop the mouth of the Author of the Prejudices to tell him that he troubles himself to no purpose that we do not believe that intire extinction of the Church throughout all the world which he layes to our charge and that he has mistaken the meaning of Calvin and that of our Confession of Faith for there is no likelihood that he should better know what we believe than our selves nor that he should be a more faithful Interpreter of the sense of Calvin and that of our Confession of Faith than we our selves Notwithstanding to make the Character of the Author of the Prejudices more and more known and what judgement we ought to make of that which he propounds when he speaks with the greatest confidence it will be good to relate here the testimony that Monsieur the Cardinal of Richelieu has given to the Protestant Churches concerning that that they believe and teach upon the subject of the perpetual subsistence of the Church until the end of the world For we might say that he had the Author of the Prejudices in his view and wrote about this matter only to confute him There is not sayes he any point in controversie between our Adversaries and us about which their Confessions of Faith speak so clearly and agree so uniformly as this which I may truly say ought not to be put into the number of the controverted points The Confession of Ausburg which may be said to be as well the Rule as the source and origine of all the other Confessions of Faith of our Adversaries sayes in express terms that the Church ought perpetually to remain one and holy That of Saxony sayes that the Article of the Creed which declares the Church Holy and Catholick was inserted therein only to confirm the faithful against the doubts that they might have of the stability of the Church That of the Switzers does not only affirm this truth but sets down the same reason for it that I my self have made use of here above since God sayes it would from all eternity that men should be saved we must acknowledge this truth that the Church has alwayes been for the time past that she subsists for the present and that she will do so till the end of the world The Scotch holds this Article to be so undoubtedly true that it compares the belief of it to that of the Mysterie of the Trinity saying That as the faithful believe the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost so they also constantly believe the perpetuity of the Church The Flemish professes the same truth and gives the reason altogether founded upon the Regality of Jesus Christ which being perpetual supposes in all times some subjects over whom he must reign The French Confession alone sayes nothing upon this occasion but it is so far from saying nothing of it through the difficulty that they found in this point that on the contrary the certainty which they had of it was in my opinion the cause of their silence She does not therefore it may be speak any thing because she did not think she could doubt of so evident a truth of which her founders have spoke so clearly for her Luther teaches it in terms so express that he makes perpetuity to enter into the definition of the Church as a quality that making a part of its essence is altogether inseparable from it He draws the duration of the Church from an Article of the Creed and the words of Jesus Christ which bind us to believe it saying that it is an
bad conduct of their Pastors Heaven and Hell would be very miserably dispensed while the time of those disorders lasted For our adversaries themselves are constrained to confess that this quarrell that made so great a noise that produced so many Excommunications so many Separations so many acts of violence and so many banishments and which ended by the dishonour of the Council of Chalcedon was founded upon nothing but a personal animosity sayes Baronius or as Sirmundus sayes upon an indifferent controversie which concerned nothing the doctrine of the faith on which side soever it had been decided If we must therefore judge according to the relation of these two Authors all that we can say is that both the parties were equally Schismatical who violated the peace and unity of the Church without any just reason and who mutually excommunicated one another for nothing and if we add that rigorous judgement against the Schifmatical Societies without any exception or distinction we must say that there was then no longer a true Church upon the Earth nor any hope of salvation But to go yet further If all those who live in the communion of Schismaticks are out of the Church in a state of Damnation I would fain have them satisfie me about some difficulties that I find in the History of the same Vigilius For the two first years of his Papacy it was he that was called a false Pope a Schismatick an Usurper of the Bishoprick of Sylverius whom the Hereticks had banished to set up this man who had promised them to communicate with them And in effect Liberatus and Victor of Tunis relate that after he was in possession of the Papacy he wrote to the Hereticks as having the same faith with them and Bellarmine declares that at this time Vigilius was an Anti-Pope and a Schismatick because that Sylverius the lawful Pope was yet living and there could not be two lawful Popes at the same time Baronius and Petavius say the same thing Notwithstanding it is true that during these two years of Schism Vigilius was peaceably acknowledged to be the Bishop of Rome both by the Church of Rome and by all Christendom No Church refused to live in his communion no Bishop withdrew himself from him as a Schismatick He performed without any opposition all the Functions of his Bishoprick he received the honours and had the profits of it All the Earth was then Schismatical with him and by consequence there was no further either a Church or Salvation in the World if it was only in the person of Sylverius and some Bishops who had subscribed to the Sentence of the Deposition and Anathema that Sylverius being in Exile pronounced against Vigilius and against all those who should adhere to him After this I would fain have them tell me how Vigilius could pass from the state of a Schismatick to that of a true Pope It was say Baronius and Bellarmine by the consent of the Clergy and People of Rome who assembled together and chose him lawfully after the death of Silverius But besides that this new Ordination of Vigilius and this Assembly of the People and Clergy is an effect of the invention of Baronius which is grounded upon nothing but one word of Anastasius the Popes Library-keeper who lived above three hundred years after besides this I say that the People of Rome and that Clergy had not they themselves lost through Schism the form of the true Church how was it restored to them how could they re-establish themselves Who gave that right to a company of Schismaticks cut off from the communion and the covenant of Jesus Christ to make a Rebell a Schismatick an excommunicated person a man that by the sentence of Sylverius could not perform any Sacerdotal Function to make such a one I say a lawful Pope See here already some inconveniencies considerable enough that flow from that rigorous sentiment but if we would go yet further we may find it may be others that are not less severe For what will they say to the Schisms that fell out so frequently in the Latin Church through the concurrence of Anti-Popes Will they dare roundly to pronounce all those people who have lived and dyed under the obedience of those false Popes and who by consequence having been engaged in a true Schism have been totally cut off from the Christian Communion and deprived of salvation Let the Author of the Prejudices who has taken such pains to damn the World without any mercy take the pains if he pleases to examine one matter of fact that I will set before him and which should be enough methinks to decide this Question at least in regard of him It is this that during the great Schism of two Anti-Popes which was ended at the Council of Constance there were Saints that the Church of Rome has canonized and whom it prayes to who lived and dyed under two contrary obediences and who by consequence dyed both the one sort and the others in a true Schism For in the year 1380. S. Catherine of Siena dyed under the obedience of Vrban the Sixth in the year 1381. S. Catharine of Swedeland the Daughter of S. Bridget dyed under the same obedience In the year 1395. S. Margaret of Pisa dyed under the obedience of Boniface the Ninth in the year 1399. S. Dorothy of Prussia dyed under the obedience of the same Pope and in the year 1405. S. William the Hermite of Sicily dyed under the obedience of Innocent the Seventh On the other side in the year 1382. S. Peter of Luxemburg dyed under the obedience of Clement who was the Anti-Pope of Vrban and some time after S. Vincent of Ferrara lived and wrought Miracles in the party of Benoist the Anti-Pope of Gregory the Twelfth Behold here Saints of both sides and yet one or the others must of necessity have been Schismaticks From whence it appears that the Church of Rome her self is concerned to oblige the Author of the Prejudices to moderate his style and not to take as it seems he has done that which the Fathers have said in disputing against the Schismaticks in its utmost latitude But although all that I have said should have no place the holy Scripture distinctly decides this difficulty For if he would but read the History of the Ten Tribes of Israel after they were separated from that of Judah at the instigation of Jeroboam he will find that they were in a real Schism since they had forsaken the Worship at Jerusalem and had built new Altars against the express commandment of God and yet nevertheless that did not hinder God from preserving his truly faithful and elect even in the midst of them For there were those seven thousand who in the time of Elias had not bowed the knee to Baal and whom S. Paul calls the remnant of the Election of Grace were not these Israelites engaged in a bad party Had
to come to an agreement with us that our Assemblies are Holy and Lawful even in a far greater degree then they were before To begin that Disquisition with the Condemnation of the Popes and their Council I confess that if it were the Court of Rome that out of its pure Liberality should Communicate Christianity to those only whom it should please and that none could either have or preserve it but by the continual influence of its Favour after the same manner as we have the Day by the influence of the Sun it would depend on her and her Councils to take it from us whensoever she should see good with all its Rights and Priviledges We might very well say that it would be too injurious to take it away from us that we did not deserve so hard a Treatment yet we should be deprived for that very Reason when she should have taken them from us whether it should have been with Justice or against it with or without any reason But we do not believe that either the Court of Rome or its Council or that all that party who have followed them though it should have a thousand times greater strength and Authority then it has would carry their pretensions so high as to imagine that it depends on their meer good pleasure to bestow on or to take away Christianity and its Rights I do not say from an innumerable multitude of Men as that is which makes up the Body of the Protestants but even not so much as from two or three persons who should be assembled in the Name of Jesus Christ Saint Paul has said indeed Who art thou O man that repliest against God Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it Why hast thou made me thus Has not the Potter of the Earth power out of one and the same clay to make one Vessel to honour and another to dishonour And by these words he gives us to understand the absolute Power that God has to make us whatsoever it shall seem good to him But he has Taught us nothing of the like Power concerning the Pope and his Councils he has not said Who are you that contend against Rome Nor has he ascribed to him the power to make and destroy us as it shall please him In effect There is none but God alone on whom our Christianity depends it is his Favour that has given it to us his Spirit and his word have formed it in us and his Apostle has Taught us to say with a Holy boldness That there is no Creature either in Heaven or upon the Earth that can be able to Separate us from his Love We ought then to lay aside that Soveraign and absolute Authority and to come to the causes or reasons that could have been able to move the Court of Rome and its Council to condemn the Protestants and to deprive them of their Rights for if those causes are not only vain and frivolous but unjust and contrary to the Christian Faith and Piety as we maintain them to be a Condemnation of that Nature cannot but fall back upon those who have thrown it since they themselves have broken the Christian Unity so that their ill Carriage has made them justly lose that of which they would unjustly deprive the others And because in those kinds of Contests That which one Party loses by its injustice and its obstinacy in Error is recollected and restored in the other Party which does its Duty The Condemnation of the Council of Trent being ill done as we suppose cannot but have heightned and strengthned the Rights of the Protestants As to the Reformation it is not less True that if that should be found to be indeed Conformable to the Word of God and the inviolable Laws of Christianity as we suppose that it is I mean if the Things that our Fathers rejected were indeed Errors and Superstitions contrary to the True Faith and Piety as we maintain them to be so Holy an Action would be so far from depriving our Fathers of the Right of that Christian Society that on the contrary it could not but fortify that Right and render it more lawful then it was before For before the Reformation That Society was as I may so say a Composition of good and evil of Justice and Injustice by reason of those Errors which were mixed with the true Doctrine and those Superstitions which were to be found in conjunction with that Religion whereas the Reformation having freed it of that which it had of impurity and dross has without doubt put it into a far more Holy State and much more agreeable to God How prejudiced soever they may be they can never maintain it That Error and Superstition should establish any right of Society nor deny that as they are in their own nature more worthy of the Aversion of God and men then their Approbation they render those Societies unlawful and criminal For although all the World by a Universal Consent should be united in believing a Heresy or practising an Idolatrous Worship That consent how General soever it should be would not change the natures of things Heresy would be always Heresy and Idolatry Idolatry and in that respect the Agreement of all mankind would make up a wicked and unjust Society Whence it follows That a mixt Communion is only lawful in proportion to that which it has of good and that as its Justice is lessened when its Corruptions increase so its Justice also increases when its Corruptions are lessened We ought not then to imagine that the Reformation of the Protestants has deprived them of the Right of that Christian Society but we ought to assert on the contrary That it has put them in that respect into a far more advantageous condition then they were in before There is nothing further remaining but that Separation which was but by accident as they speak the Consequence of the Reformation if the whole Latin Church had done her Duty she would have reformed her self as well as our Fathers But the Court of Rome and its Clergy would not and that Refusal has caused that breach of Communion which is fallen out between the two Parties It concerns us to inquire Whether even upon supposition that that Reformation was Just and by consequence that that Refusal of it which they made was unjust That Separation could lawfully hinder our Fathers from holding a Christian Society among themselves But this is what they cannot maintain with the least colour of Reason For if the Reformation was Just and if the Refusal which they made was unjust how can the injustice of that Party which should have forgot its duty and which would have constrained the other Party to have forgot it too deprive the other Party of those Rights that Faith Holiness The Fear of God and the Communion of Jesus Christ have naturally given it Must Injustice needs Triumph over Justice and Error over Truth Is it that the
Assemblies most lawful For as to that which is said in the Scripture I will smite the Shepheard and the Sheep shall be scattered abroad it would be manifestly to abuse that passage if they would conclude from it an absolute necessity of the Pastors for the subsistence of that Society For that is a Prophecy which notes not that which the Faithful ought to do when they have no Pastors but that which should befal the Disciples of Jesus Christ in the Time of his Passion when the fury of the Jews and the sad Condition wherein they should behold their Divine Master should force them to be scattered which has nothing common to the Question we are now Treating of In the Third place I say that to understand well the true use and the Necessity of the Actions of the Ministry the Church must be considered in two Seasons in her first formation and in her subsistence For in her first formation it is certain that the Actions of the Ministry were necessary for the calling of men to the light of the Gospel whereof as yet they had no knowledge and by Consequence they were necessary to the Establishment of the Christian Communion or Society amongst them which could not be without that knowledge To this end Jesus Christ employed his Apostles and Evangelists Go says he and Teach all Nations baptizing them in the name of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Ghost and it is that to which Saint Paul has a chief regard when he says That Christ has given some Apostles and some Prophets and some Exangelists and some Pastors and Teachers for the gathering together of the Saints for the work of the Ministry for the edifying of the Body of Christ Those glorious Heralds by the efficacy of their word accompanied with the power of Jesus Christ called together the Church if we must so say as the Holy Assembly of God they Established the Christian Religion in the World and so united men among themselves in an External Society by the profession of one and the same Faith of one and the same Hope and Charity which inspired them so that the Acts of their Ministry were absolutely necessary for that first Establishment because their Preaching was the only means that God would make use of to draw men from the Pagan Idolatry or the Jewish Obstinacy and to give them that Faith without which they could never have had a Christian Society In this respect there is Reason to urge the force of the word Church which signifies not a rash and tumultuary Assembly made by chance or Sedition but an Assembly lawfully called for it was God himself who called it by the voice of his Apostle according to the Prophecy of David The mighty Lord the Eternal God hath spoken and called to all the Earth from the rising up of the Son to the going down of the same He has called the Heavens from on high and the Earth to Judge his People saying Gather ye my Saints together In this first Establishment the Apostles and Evangelists did three things On one hand they spread abroad the Faith every where and by this means bound men in an External Communion or Society on the other hand they set together the Christian Truths which are the Objects of Faith in the Cannon of the Scriptures and in fine they established Ordinary Pastors for the upholding and Government of the Church By the first of those things in Establishing the Faith in mens hearts they assembled called them together and put them into a Society by the second they laid as I may so speak the Fountain or the External and perpetual Magazine of the Evangelical Doctrine By the Third they provided for the Ordinary Dispensation of that Fountain setling of Ministers to distribute it by their Preaching the Sacraments and the Exercise of Discipline Of these three things there is none but the first only to which we ought to refer the Convocation of the Church and Establishment of the Christian Society But we must say that all Three serve for its preservation and increase for they are so many ways and means which the Apostles left for the preservation of the Faith and strengthning of it in those who had before received it and to propagate it to their Children and in those who had not as yet received it in which the preservation of a Society consists The first contributes much for as Lights or Torches lighted all together preserve and mutually strengthen their fire and are capable of lighting others So many faithful Christians united together confirm one another in the Faith and Piety and are fit to Communicate that Faith and Piety to those who have not yet received it The Second does not contribute less for the Faithful preserve and increase their light their Faith Piety Sanctity by the immediate Reading of the Holy Scriptures Infidels themselves may be converted this way and those that go astray be brought back to the purity of the Gospel The Third is also of exceeding great Use for the Pastors by their Preaching their Direction and their Writings by their Examples by the Sacraments they Administer and in a word by all the Actions of their Ministry confirm the Faith where it is and propagate it where it is not The Divine Wisdom has so prepared its divers means for the preservation of that Society and the Propagation of his Church That if the Actions of the Ministry do not produce that effect for which they are appointed the other means shall and supply that defect In Effect when the publick Preaching and presence of the Pastors fail the Reading of the Scripture private Exhortation of the simple Christians the writings of their Pastors either dead or absent may come to succour and make the Faith and Charity and Piety subsist and by consequence the External Society of the Church and its Assemblies How then are the Actions of the Ministry necessary They are so first By Necessity of Precept as they speak I mean as it is a means that Jesus Christ has ordained the Use whereof we cannot neglect without sin Those who contemn it resist the Order that God himself has established and make themselves unworthy of his Grace and to this those passages in the Scripture refer which recommend the Pastors to the Faithful He that heareth you heareth me and he that rejecteth you rejecteth me Obey them that have the Rule over you and submit your selves for they watch for your Souls 2. The Actions of the Ministry are necessary to the Churches well being though not absolutely necessary to its being It is not absolutely impossible for a Church to subsist without having actually any Pastors not only because sometimes Faith and Piety may subsist without their heavenly food which is the Word and Sacraments as a Body may subsist sometimes without its nourishments but also because one part of that food may come to us otherwise then from the mouth of the
ordinary Ministry was intirely lost and that it was renewed by an extraordinary and immediate Call of God For it is upon that that with great heat to very ill purpose he spends his reasonings throughout his whole fifth Chapter in Allegations of Fathers and Observations to no purpose upon the Rights of that pretended immediate Ministry We Answer him in a Word that he only Combats his own Shadow for we do not hold that the Ordinary Ministry established by the Apostles was absolutely extinct It is a Good that belongs to the Church and as the Church has alwayes subsisted by the special Providence of God though in a different State that same Providence has also made that Good to subsist alwayes It is True that it was very ill dispens'd while it was in the hands of bad Stewards and that where the Inheritage should have been cultivated and have brought forth without doubt much fruit it produced on the contrary abundance of Thorns and Briars But notwithstanding the Inheritance was not lost The Ministry was alwayes preserved not only de Jure in as much as the Church is never lost but de facto also for it alwayes had Ministers ill chosen indeed ill called designed to bad uses called by very confused Calls but called notwithstanding and having a Right sufficient to make them do their Duty if they would and if they were capable So that the good State of the Ministry might be very well altered Corrupted Interrupted overthrown but the Ministry was not absolutely lost I will not be afraid even to go further and to say that when it should be true that the Ministry should be wholly annihilated that which notwithstanding has never hapned and it may please God that it never shall it would not be necessary that God should renew it by an immediate and every-way Supernatural Mission while there should be two or three of the Faithful in the World who would be able to Assemble together in the Name of Jesus Christ For the Right of the Ministry would alwayes remain in those two or three and they might confer a Lawful Call upon one of themselves If it could even happen that there should not be absolutely any more Faith upon the Earth and that Heresy or Paganism or Judaism or Mahumetanism should generally overspread the whole World without leaving any Truly Faithful in it which certainly will never come to pass since we have the promise of Jesus Christ to the contrary I say in that case Provided that the Book of the Holy Scripture remained the young Buds of the Church and that of the Ministry would subsist even there The Apostles who left it to the world would yet further call men from thence a second Time to the true Faith and by that true Faith to the Re-establishing of a Christian Society and by the Re-establishing of that Christian Society to that of the Ministry without any absolute necessity of Gods immediately sending new Apostles One man only who should learn the heavenly Truths contained in that Book might teach them to others and reduce Christianity to its first State if God would Accompany the word of that man with his Ordinary Blessing Those who are acquainted with History are not Ignorant that in the Fourth Century two young men named the one Edesius and the other Frumanius having been taken on the Sea and carried Captive to the King of the Indies converted many persons to the Christian-Faith in that Country and that they might make Assemblies there where they might celebrate the Worship of God This is that which manifestly discovers the Injustice of the Author of the Prejudices and other Writers of Controversy of the Church of Rome when they demanded Miracles to prove the Call of the first Reformers For while the Scripture remains in the midst of men it is not necessary to make new miracles to Authorize Ministers that Scripture sufficiently Authorises the Church immediately by it self to confer a Call when its Pastors forsake it It would sufficiently Authorise one man alone whoever he should be a Lay-man or Clergy-man to communicate the light of his Faith to others if he were the only Faithful Person that was in the World it would Authorise two or three Faithful who should find themselves alone to Assemble together and to provide for the Preservation and Propagation of their Society and Miracles would not be necessary for all that because in all that there would be nothing new there nothing that might not be included in the Revelation of the Scripture or drawn from thence by a just Consequence as it may appear from what I have handled in the foregoing Chapter Miracles are necessary to those who preach new Doctrines and those which are not of antient Revelation and which besides have not in themselves any Character of Truth such as the Sacrifice of the Mass the Corporal Presence of Christ in the Sacrament Transubstantiation Purgatory Invocation of Saints Merit of good Works Adoration of the Host c. are It belongs to those who teach those things to tell us whence they hold them and since they give us them as holding them from Gods hand it belongs to them to prove them by Miracles for they cannot prove them otherwise and when they should even have wrought Miracles or things that should pass for such it would belong to us to examine them since Jesus Christ has given us warnings upon that point which we ought not to neglect See here what I had to say upon the Fifth Chapter of the Author of the Prejudices The sixth wherein he treats further of the same matter contains nothing which I have not already satisfied It pretends that the Call of our First Reformers was not Ordinary under a pretence that some few received their Ministry from the people that others were ordain'd by meer Priests and that those who had been Ordained by Bishops have says he Anathematiz'd that Church from which they received their Ordination But as to the first we have shewn him that the Calls that are made by a Faithful People are Just and Lawful in a case of absolute necessity that naturally dispences with Formalities Besides that those Calls were very few in number that they were not followed that they do not infer any Consequence against the Body of the Pastors and that even when it should have had any Irregularity that Irregularity would have been sufficiently repaired by the hand of Fellowship which the other Pastors have given those who were so called and by the consent that the whole Body of that Society gave to their Calls We ought not for that to leave off holding them for Ordinary although in that Respect they should be remote from the Common Practice no more or less then they in the Church of Rome to leave off holding the Call of Pope Martin V. and that of divers other Popes for Ordinary although they were not made according to the accustomed Forms I demand