doth not entrench upon the King's Supremacy telling you that you need not obey the Pope if he commanded you to fight against your King wherein they put a fallacy upon you for they know the Pope can Excommunicate and depose him even for a very small matter say your Canonists and then he is no longer Your King They pretend further this Supremacy over Kings in Temporals is not the Doctrine of your Church but only of some Jesuites upon whom they lay all those foul Doctrines of Deposing and murthering Kings so wickedly maintained by divers eminent Writers of your Church But this is a delusion also for when or where did the Pope or the Heads of the Roman Church condemn these Opinions or suppress these Seditious Books nay on the contrary the Books are approved and the Authors preferred at Rome even when France condemns them And those honest and loyal secular English Priests that have ventured to write against this usurped Power of the Popes over Kings in Temporals though they held his Supremacy here in Spirituals have been persecuted almost to death by the Roman Bishop they have been suspended and their Books condemned and their persons so odiously represented that no English Catholicks durst harbour them witness the learned F. Preston under the name of Roger Widrington in King James's days with his fellow-Priests and Peter Walsh Author of the Letter to the Catholicks who is at this day a great Sufferer by the Pope's means meerly for writing that you of the Roman Church ought to be Loyal to the King in all matters of Temporal cognizance a clear evidence that whatever your Church may pretend they will not endure that any of you Catholicks shall hold the King's power to be above the Pope's in any thing and consequently they will not allow you to be good Subjects Now to sum up all these particulars how grievous an abuse is it for a Forreign Prelate whose Predecessors had no Authority here at all to usurp such a power over you as to impose New and inexpedient Articles upon you Why should you enslave your selves to him that cannot have so much as a Spiritual Jurisdiction here without breaking the Canons of the most famous General Councils Why may you not take the same liberty to oppose his Decrees that your Ancestors in all Ages have done they whom you account good Catholicks rejected his Doctrines sometimes despised his Bulls and Excommunications frequently and always opposed his pretended claim of a Supremacy over this Nation why should you call that an Article of Faith and account it the Principal point of Religion viz. That England ought to be subject to Rome which even in those you call Catholick Times was declared to be no less than Treason and no other than an Opinion that did destroy the Prerogative of the King the Priviledges and Liberties of this Church the freedom and quiet of all English Subjects They were Romanists in other Points who condemned Appeals to Rome and maintained that the Crown of England was in no Earthly subjection and that the King had no Supream but God only who counted all the Power which the Pope ever had here meerly permissive tolerated by this Nation so long as they pleased and such as might be curbed lessened hindred or taken away by the Supream Authority of this Nation when ever they saw expedient It was a King and Parliament of your Religion in most points that restored the King to his just Supremacy and took away the precarious or usurped and much abused Power of the Roman Bishop here they thought a Supremacy in Spirituals as to this Kingdom was more than he had any Right to but he and his Agents expect to be allowed to over-rule the Temporal Laws also methinks if you have the Nobleness and Gallantry of true English spirits your affections for the Roman Church should not rob you of your love to your Native Country nor suffer you to endure those pretences which dishonour the King and despoil him of his Ancient Rights and enslave this free Church and Nation to one that only seeks his own ends in claiming this Subjection for though the holding the Pope's Supremacy doth contribute to the support of his own Grandeur yet it doth not further any mans Salvation and it is so far from doing any good in those Nations where it is allowed him that it might be made appear the setting up and abetting this Supremacy hath occasioned the murther of many Princes stirred up the complaints of all sorts of people and filled Christendom for many Ages with Massacres Treasons War and Bloodshed which was so notorious in the German Empire that it came to be a Proverb saith Guiccardine It is the property of the Church to hate the Caesars And the mischief it hath done in England by rifling the Nations wealth before the Reformation and disturbing its Quiet since is so well remembred and so deeply resented by the generality of the people that they will never endure that heavy Yoak any more nor can they be perswaded scarce ever to esteem them Loyal Subjects or true to their Countries Interest who do not renounce this unjust and odious Jurisdiction Why therefore O my Friends will you be so imprudent to oppose the Rights and Prerogative of your Lawful Sovereign the Priviledges of that Church wherein you were born the Freedom and Interest of your beloved Country the desire of your fellow-Subjects and best Friends yea and your own liberty also Why will you oppose I say all these meerly to support an unjust and groundless Power which no Ecclesiastick ought to have any where much less in so remote and so free a Monarchy to support a Power which is inconsistent with the Security of the Crown the Peace of the Kingdom and the welfare of Private persons S. Peter never bid any to honour his Successor the Pope thus but his Opinion was that you must submit to the King as Supream 1 Pet. ii 13. and his Counsel follows thereupon viz. that you should Fear God and Honour the King ver 17. S. Paul commands Every Soul to be subject to the Higher Powers Rom. xiii 1. Neither Bishops nor Apostles themselves are excepted saith S. Chrysostome And S. Bernard tells Pope Eugenius that the Apostles were forbid to exercise Dominion Luke xxii 25 26. and therefore he adds If you would have Apostolical and Royal Power together you lose both Finally therefore it is unreasonable for the Roman Bishop to challenge such Authority here and the Laws of God and Man forbid it so that I may expect you shall be so far from receiving any Articles for the sake of this Authority that you shall not scruple to renounce the Authority it self which was so ill-gotten at first so wretchedly abused while it did obtain and so legally taken away at last and in so doing you will demonstrate your selves to be Loyal to your King Faithful to your Country Friends to your
they confess he is principally so but add that Saints and Angels are so in an inferiour manner which we utterly deny We say Christ is really present in the Sacrament of the Altar this they confess but add he is corporally there by the Transsubstantiation of the Bread c. and this we deny We say the Scriptures are the Rule of Faith and they will not absolutely deny it but add their own Traditions which we reject We say there are XXII Books of the Old Testament Canonical and they confess these all to be so but they add divers and call them Canonical which we affirm to be Apocryphal I could give more instances but these may suffice to shew that the Protestant Doctrines look most like the Ancientest as being received by both Parties but the Roman Opinions are Novel Enlargements of Old Catholick Truths so that a Protestant becoming a Romanist must take up many Articles barely upon the credit of that Church and begin to believe many things anew questioned by the bigger part of Christendom but a Romanist turning Protestant retains all the Old Essentials of his former Faith and doth only become a Primitive Roman Catholick III. The Discipline and Government of the Church of England are more agreeable to Primitive patterns than those of the present Roman Church are Our King hath the same Power that the Religious Kings of Judah had the same which the great Constantine and the succeeding Emperors for many years enjoyed the same power which the Ancient Kings of this Nation exercised viz. A power to convene his Clergy and advise with them about affairs of the Church A power to ratifie that which the Bishops and Clergy agree upon and give it the force of a Law A power to chuse fit persons to Govern the Church A power to correct all Offenders against Faith or Manners be they Clergy or Lay-men And finally A power to determine all Causes and Controversies Ecclesiastical and Civil among his own Subjects by the advice of fit Counsellors so as there lies no Appeal from his Determination and this is that we mean when we call him Supreme Governour of this Church which our King must needs be or else he cannot keep his Kingdoms in peace Besides for Spiritual Jurisdiction and sacred Administrations we have a Patriarch of our own The Arch-Bishop of Canterbury Primate of all England whom Vrban the Second call'd the Pope of the other World And his See was usually styled The Chair of the English Patriarch and is reckoned among the Patriarchates by a Forreign Writer And now his Priviledges and Liberties are restored by Law and his Title and Authority confirmed so that there lies no Appeal from him but to the King we have also Right Reverend Bishops together with other inferiour Priests and Deacons the only Primitive and proper Orders of the Clergy who can prove their Ordination to be as goodas any of the Romish Priests can do And are now Consecrated and Ordained by a more excellent Form and more agreeing to the eldest times than Rome it self can shew and if you will Judge impartially it must be confessed that the Clergy of England are altogether as Learned and generally more painful and pious than in any Catholick Country whatsoever Our Canons for Ecclesiastical Government are all founded on the Canons of Ancient Councils as I could shew by particular induction if time would permit and for the Exercise of our Discipline it is managed with more moderation and ease to the People than that of the Roman Church is IIII. You may consider our Divine Service and Sacred Administrations which as far as ever God made necessary to Salvation may be had in this Church We have the Holy Scriptures plainly translated Learnedly interpreted and practically Preached We have daily Prayers by a Form so Grave and so Agreable to the undoubted parts of Ancient Liturgies that it may challenge all Christendom to produce any thing so consonant to the purest Primitive Devotions A Form which hath all those parts of the Roman Offices which were known and used in the first three Centuries but wants all the Innovations and Corruptions of the present Mass And is used in English for the benefit of the meanest Christian in our Assemblies We have also those two Sacraments which Christ ordained and many of the Elder and Later Doctors own no more As for the other five Rites falsly called Sacraments viz. Confirmation Matrimony Holy Orders visiting of the Sick Repentance and Satisfaction for wrongs done we retain these but not by the name of Sacraments keeping the Primitive and main part of them only attended with fewer Ceremonies We press and practice also Charity and good works as much as the Roman Church doth and it may be demonstrated that more and greater gifts have been given in England to pious uses by private persons since the Reformation than in two Centuries before And though we dare not say we shall merit Eternal life by them because that is the gift of God yet we believe none can come to Heaven without good works In a word the Church of England worships God as he hath prescribed in Holy Scripture She commands all that he enjoyns and forbids all that he prohibits and therefore wanteth nothing that is necessary to Salvation V. You may look upon our Ceremonies which are few and easie Ancient and Significant and though we do not place so much Religion in Externals as the Church of Rome doth yet here is prescribed all that is needful for decency and order viz. That the Clergy always wear Grave and distinct habits and have peculiar Garments in Divine Administrations that Churches be adorned and neat that the People be Reverent in Gods House that the memory of our Saviours chief Acts and the Festivals of the Holy Apostles be religiously observed That Lent with the Vigils of great Feasts the Ember weeks and all the Fridays in the Year be kept as days of Fasting or Abstinence and if some Protestants do not observe them yet others do and are commended for it and you may follow the best not the most you will have more liberty by turning to the English Church as to Circumstantials and greater helps as to the Essentials of Religion So that it is upon all accounts your wisest and safest course to embrace this so true so Primitive so Pious and so rational a Religion Let me therefore shut up my Charitable and Friendly Advice by Requesting you to consider all these things without prejudice or passion and then I hope you will perceive how much the Religion of this Church excells that of Rome in Antiquity Integrity and Usefulness and no longer suffer your selves to be so sadly imposed on and so miserably made to serve the ends of Avarice and Ambition And if you have taken such prudent and pious Resolutions you shall not only be freed from the inconveniences you complain of here but also have
the substance and nature of Bread and Wine The Schoolmen confess Transubstantiation is not Ancient And two of the most famous of them plainly deny it The Administring the Sacrament in One kind is no older than the Council of Constance as was noted before the practice of the whole Church and of Rome it self being otherwise till then Finally many things were never decreed and imposed as necessary to be believed till the late Council of Trent such as the equalling Apocryphal books and Traditions to the undoubted Canon of Scripture Justification by the merit of Good works c. Which Council of Trent was never fully owned by the Catholicks of France Nor was it ever received as a lawful Council by this English Nation It would be too tedious to run over all the rest of those Points wherein the Roman differs from the English Church or else it might be shewed that the Appeals to Rome and the Pope's Vniversal claim Veneration of Relicks Invocation of the Blessed Virgin Pilgrimages c. were wholly unknown to the three first Centuries as the ingenuous Romanists will confess and our Writers have largely proved By all which it appears that the Old Religion of Rome for the first three hundred years had no formal Invocation of Saints nor Angels no Purgatory nor Prayers to be delivered thence no Images no Transubstantiation no half Communion no Jubilees no Indulgences ' no constrained Coelibate no Prayers in an unknown Tongue no customary Auricular Confession no Apocrypha in her Canon of Scripture nor the rest Now if you strip your Church of these Doctrines she retains scarce any thing but the Protestant Articles of the Church of England But if you take Rome with these Additions her Religion is not so Old by far as the Religion of this Church Perhaps it will be pretended Though these Decrees were made in later Ages yet the Determinations were made by vertue of Apostolical Traditions preserved in the Roman Church from the very beginning and upon this Pretence your Late Writers of Controversie have generally laid aside all Arguments from Scripture and Ancient Fathers and resolve all into Oral Tradition and the Infallibility of the Roman Church But what is this but to confess that the Scriptures the Ancient Fathers and all written Records which are Impartial witnesses do make against them only these unknown Traditions which are only in their own keeping and may be of their own devising these they say bear witness for them which is to make themselves Judges in their own Cause and may justly occasion your enquiry whether the former Popes knew of these Traditions or no if not how then came the later Popes to the knowledge of them If they knew of them of old why did they let them sleep so long and suffer the Church to erre for so many years for want of them Did they discharge their Vniversal Headship well in this Concealment But in very truth it is Evident the first Popes knew of no such Traditions and the later Popes have invented them to support their New designs which appears by the Ancient Popes declaring directly contrary to these pretended Apostolical Traditions of which take a few Examples Pope Gaius writes That the Righteousness of the Saints avails nothing to our Pardon or Justification Pope Gelasius denies Transubstantiation as was noted just now The famous Gregory the Great saith He himself was the Emperors Servant and owed him obedience and declares That God had given the Emperor power over Priests as well as others The same Pope disowns the Title of Vniversal Bishop as unfit for him or any other He also determines that it is lawful for Priests who cannot contain to marry And he allows Images for History and Memory only A later than he also in the Canon Law Decrees that in such Diocess where there be people of Divers Languages The Bishop shall provide fit men to celebrate Divine offices and Minister the Sacraments of the Church according to the diversity of Rites and variety of their Languages Decretal Greg. l. 1. Tit. 31. cap. 14. The aforesaid Pope Gregory the First affirms that the Book of Maccabees is not Canonical And as well the Ordinary Gloss as the Old Editions of the Bibles which were allowed by the Roman Bishops and used in that Church before the Council of Trent do all distinguish between the Canonical Books and those which the Protestant Church now call Apocrypha Yet the contrary to all these hath been afterwards decreed upon pretence of being Apostolical Traditions By which account you may see if your Prejudices hinder not that the present Roman Church as it differs from the Church of England retains neither the Old Religion of the Scriptures nor that of the Primitive Church in general nay nor that of the Ancient Church of Rome for they have omitted some Points added others and altered so many that though Rome keep the Old Name it doth not keep the Old Faith We may now seek Rome in the midst of Rome as Juvencus Vitalis said Nor can it be denied saith Another but the Roman Church is not a little different from its Ancient beauty and splendor There is not the Faith the Manners nor the Worship of the Primitive Roman Church and therefore according to S. Ambrose They that have not Peter ' s Faith cannot succeed to Peter ' s Inheritance and as S. Hierome observes They are not the Sons of the Saints who possess their places but they which follow their Works And That only saith Lactantius is the Catholick Church which retains the true Worship of God You might have seen and heard in Rome of Old a Bishop without a Triple Crown or the Title of Vniversal Churches without Images Priests under no Vows of Single life Litanies without any names of Saints or Ora pro nobis the Mass celebrated in a known Tongue Bibles calling divers books Apocrypha which are now reckoned Canonical Scripture People not enslaved by Auricular Confession not debarred of the Cup not frighted with Purgatory nor impoverished with purchasing Prayers and Indulgences to save them from thence c. To conclude therefore Why may you not justly desert them who have in so many things departed from the Old Religion taught by Christ and his Apostles believed by the Ancient Fathers and received by the first and best Bishops of that same Church If you desire to be really of the Old Religion nay if you would hold the Faith of the Primitive Roman Church you may come much nearer to it by embracing the Religion of your own Country than by retaining the Opinions of the Modern Church of Rome which are most of them meer Innovations And though you have reverenced them while you supposed them Ancient and Apostolical yet we hope you will now renounce them when they are evidently discovered to be Gibeonites disguised on purpose to deceive and
Emperor Anastasius The Vicar of God by the Divine command presiding over the Earth An Authority like this also was exercised by the Western Emperors of the French Line being stayled The Rulers of the True Religion a Title given to Charles the Great and to Ludovicus by two several Councils which they had called and the present French Kings do claim the Supremacy over the French Churches as may be seen in â—â—ohellus and P. Pithâ—us cited before Sect. 5. One of the French Writers telling us it is the Opinion of his Nation that Le Royiassisté de son Conseil d'estate est â—â—â—es Diâ—â— Chief Terrieâ— de l'Eglise de son Royanme 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pape And it may be proved concerning other Christian Princes that they allow not the Pope to impose his Decrees on their Kingdoms nor to exercise any Jurisdiction among them but by their special License and consent and prohibite his exercising any power over their Subjects when they please And why may not the King of England being a free and absolute Monarch be allowed as great a Priviledge in his own Dominions Do you not tell us that Pope Eleutherius called King Lucius by the Title of Vicar of Christ and doth not King Edgar call himself Christs Vicar and none taxed this Title then Did not the Saxon Kings preside in all National Councils and make Laws for Religion by the advice of their own Bishops by their own Authority Did they not erect new Sees for Bishops and change them as they saw fit Did they not invest all Bishops by delivering the Ring and Pastoral Staff And the same power was still exercised by K. William the Conqueror for all things both Divine and Humane depended on his Order saith an Old Historian And when the Pope began to encroach upon the King's Supremacy here in England he was generally opposed as we noted before And in the aforesaid Parliament of Richard the Second the Nation declared That they would not endure that the Crown of England should be submitted to the Pope and the Laws and Statutes of this Realm by him defeated and avoided at his pleasure for Bracton our most famous Lawyer affirms that The Kings of England have no Supream on earth but God And accordingly the Kings and Parliaments of this Nation made Laws in reference to Religion as they saw expedient and among the rest they enacted many Laws in a direct opposition to the Pope's Spiritual as well as Temporal Jurisdiction declaring thereby that they esteemed him no Head of this Church but an ambitious and dangerous Encroacher upon the Rights of the Crown as you will find by perusal of those several Statutes cited in the Margin By which Laws long since enacted it is declared to be Treason to receive or harbour any Agents or Emissaries from Rome against the King's Proclamations and without his special License Upon all which Considerations the Judges have declared that the Act of Parliament for Restoring the Supremacy over the Church unto the Crown was not the introducing a New Law but a declaration of the Old For it was many hundred years before that King Henry the Second did declare That be would account it high Treason in any man that should affirm the Pope's Authority was above his And before that Anselm was told That it was impossible for him to keep the Faith which he owed to the King and to pay Obedience to the Pope contrary to his Royal Pleasure Which methinks may fitly admonish you who do own the Pope's Supremacy over England and yet glory much in your Loyalty to the King to enquire how these two can stand together Our Saviour saith No mancan serve two Masters Matth. vi 24. however not two Supream Lords neither can there be two highest Powers in one Kingdom nor can any Subjects obey both since they will sometimes command contrary things 'T is true if the Roman Bishop would profess to our King as his Predecessor Leo the Fourth did to Lotharius of France Concerning your Capitulars or Imperial Precepts we through the assistance of Christ promise as much as we are able to keep and conserve the same for ever If he would acknowledge himself subject to our King in his Dominions as his Predecessors were to the Emperours of Old if he behaved himself toward his Majesty as S. Gregory did to Mauritius who calls that Emperour his Lord and himself his Servant declaring that He was subject to the Emperours Commands and accordingly had done his duty in publishing a Law which the Emperour ordered him to promulge though for his own part he thought it not agreeable to the Laws of God If the present Popes claimed no more than a Primacy of order and precedency among other Bishops then the case might easily be determined But you know of later times the pretences of Rome are much higher for she challenges a Supremacy over all Christian Princes a power to depose them an Authority to abrogate or dispense with their Laws and absolve their Subjects from their Allegiance a Priviledge to be appealed unto as to the last and highest Tribunal on Earth so that Clement the Fifth is recorded in the Acts of the Council of Vienna to have said That all the Right of Kings depended on him alone and Boniface the Eighth owned himself not only Lord of France but of all the World for So great was the Impudence of this Boniface saith the French Chronologer that he presumed to affirm the Kingdom of France was a Fee of the Papal Majesty And as to this Kingdom Pope Innocent the Fourth saith That the King of England was his Vassal and his Slave and they esteem England also a Fee of the Papacy and so is Ireland too it seems Whereupon the Pope hath dared to nominate a King of Ireland and hath given away the Kingdom of England to those who attempted to conquer it he hath condemned our Laws and absolved the Subjects of England from their Allegiance upon which many of your Party have entred into Conspiracies and Rebellion So that now it appears the Pope claims an Absolute Supremacy over our King and his Realms and how he can be a good Subject of the King of England who professes Obedience to this Forreign Princely Prelate is very hard to be understood if you believe this claim and own the Pope to be above the King you must then obey him even when his Orders contradict those of your lawful Sovereign and so you are the Pope's Subjects not the King 's nor can his Majesty have any security of your Allegiance any longer than he pleases the Roman Bishop so that he Reigns over you at the Pope's mercy I know many of you English Catholicks have so Loyal an affection for the King that your Church-men are forced to invent many plausible pretences to perswade you that the Supremacy claimed by the Pope