spiritual let him acknowledg that the things I write unto you are the commandments of God the Lord. 38. But if any be ignorant let him be ignorant 39. Wherfore brethren covet to prophesie and forbid not to speak with tongues 40. Let all things be done decently and in order Thus runs this fourteenth Chapter in your own translation And if it do nothing at all concern Church-service why should the Roman Liturgy be reconciled to it any more than adultery to the third commandment Or what disparagement is it to this service that it cannot be reconciled to that law which no way concerns it If it do concern Church-service then must all the Common prayer and Service of our Protestant Church of England be abolished being as irreconcileable to this rule as you say adultery is to the seventh Commandment Say which you please If it concern not any Church-service you justifie as to this account the custom of the Roman Church if you say it do you condemn your own Truth is the Spirit of our Lord magnified his primitive Church when it began to spread and appear in the world with many particular graces that the Jew and Pagan might discern in it somthing extraordinary and by that exteriour siga be induced to beleev that the founder of that Religion was no ordinary person as gift of miracles tongues and prophesies The new converts of Corinth seemed to be more pleased with the gift of tongues than any other and when they met together fell a gabling all at once not two or three only but more and perhaps the greatest part of them all at one and the same time as the Apostle here intimates v. 23. one for example in the Congo language the other that of Mexico one Ethiopian the other Arabian one the Indian another the Slavonian and none understood another nor could well hear one another for the confused noise as we may gather by v. 2. and v. 11. and so became barbarians to one another This gift then and special grace of Gods Spirit though it might astonish a Pagan that should look upon them which was all that holy Spirit intended by it yet it could not edifie him any further or move him if he should be left to himself to think otherwise of them than that they were a company of mad gabling distracted people especially when he considered that some of them seemed to exhort some to sing some to pray and all in a cluster at one and the same time no man heeding the other or understanding a word he said if he should And this disdorder the Apostle here labours to rectisie in this whole fourteenth chapter And it is manifest that the apostle here neither spake nor thought of any Church-service either in one language or other but only of that temporal gift which is now past away long ago with the people that had it Nor can it prudently be applied to any Church-service that I know in the world For there is no such doing any where Much less can it relate to any custom of the Roman Church where all the people are devoutly praying to one and the same God in quiet and silence both in spirit and understanding heart and mind too the priest knowing what himself speaks or prayes and the people understanding both what he acts and does in their behalf and his own and what also they beg of God themselves either with words or without them So that here is no kind of parity at all Nay if neither the Priest did understand himself what he speaks nor the people what they pray both which are absolutely fals yet would the Apostle allow even that as a good custom though not so perfect so long as the words contained piety and the heart stood piously affected in pronouncing them He that speaketh in an unknown tongue saith he v. 2. speaketh not to men but to God and though man understand not yet in spirit he speaketh mysteries And again v. 4. he saith that such an one edifieth himself and v. 14. he teaches that such a ones spirit prayeth though his mind or understanding doth not and v. 17. that he gives thanks well With these of our learned Apostle your Disswaders words throughout this his section are I am sure absolutely irreconcileable For he saith such an one prayes only with his lips and not in spirit that there is neither affection nor edification in any such prayer and that the heart and spirit sayes nothing and asks for nothing and so receives nothing which Salomon calls the sacrifice of fools thus speaks your Disswader quite contrary to Apostolical sobriety And not that custom I should think but your Disswaders invectives against it are irreconcileable with this fourteenth chapter Saint Paul sayes that such a one prayes in spirit the Disswader that he prayes onely in his lips Saint Paul that he edifies himself the Disswader that his soul has no benefit and that there is neither edification nor affection or any good by such prayers Saint Paul that he prayes well and gives thanks well the Disswader that he does ill But I need not stand upon this now There is no such thing in the use of the Roman Liturgy where priests and people pray both in spirit and mind too both with heart and understanding also Only let me tell you thus much that St. Paul in one verse of his chapter checks your Disswader and all his whole discours in this section Linguis loqui nolite prohibere faith he v. 39. Do not sorbid to speak with tongues But your Disswader forbids and labours here might and main against it Doth the Apostle speak here of Church-service or not If he do then Church-service in an unknown tongue is allowed if he do not then none of this chapter is against Church-service in an unknown tongue Surely your Disswader did never ponder these things as he ought Nay if this discours of the Apostle concern Church-service so that your Disswader hence may rightly gather that the popish Mass in an unknown tongue is irreconcileable with it I may upon the same ground prove more strongly that S. Paul would have the popish Mass in an unknown tongue to be practised Volo omnes vos linguis loqui saith he v. 5. I will that ye all speak with tongues or I would that you all spake with tongues which is according to your Disswaders meaning I will have you all turn Papists or I would ye were all turned Papists But lastly if this 14. chapter to the Corinthians be to be understood of Church-service and Church-preaching and Church-praying as this disswading Doctour would have it then Sir must our Protestant pulpits and service-pews all down and the Quakers way must come up infallibly For what saith the text here Sive lingua quis loquitur secundum duos aut ad multum tres per partes unus interpretetur si autem non fuerit interpres taceat in ecclesia sibi autem loquatur Deo
S. Austin doubts whether those very affections men bear to things in this life which are lawfully had but lost with som grief may not burn and afflict them in that place of expiation as well as other venial offences and be som part of the wood hay and straw the Apostle mentions And truly the doubt is very rational and remains still a doubt But when your Disswader takes hereupon occasion to say that St. Austin doubted Purgatory I cannot doubt but that he wanted either sincerity in his heart or eyes in his head But in the time of Otho in the twelfth age of the Church the doctrin of Purgatory was got no further than a Quidam asserunt Some say so Sir Otho here cited to say quidam asserunt speaks not at all of any expiation after death as your Disswader would have us think but after judgment which som divines in those dayes held over and above that which their faith had delivered which opinion had then but a some say so for it as it hath also now and it was then and is now but a philosophical opinion Can you beleev your Disswader did not seo this It was truly if he did see it a gross and inexcusable insincerity to make Otho say it was only the opinion of som that ther was a purgation after death who expresly treats of that particular opinion concerning a purgation after judgment which their faith and religion did not reach unto But as I told you before I must not insist upon your Disswaders falsifications however they be various and very gross becaus that work is well don already and my design looks another way As he is to blame for making som Fathers think and speak what they did not so is he while he makes all the Fathers in general to acknowledg and practise as much in this point as any Roman Catholik beleevs and yet addes withall that those Fathers notwithstanding agreed not with the Roman doctrin which himself never declares what it is most palpably ridiculous But the doctrin of Purgatory is grounded faith your Disswader upon salse principles as upon a supposed distinction betwixt venial sins and mortal between sin and its obligation to punishment c. Sir if we would speak properly neither is this beleef of future expiations nor any other point of Catholik Religion to be called a doctrin or opinion or judgment of som divines or all divines or any such like thing For it is the faith as well of divines as other Christians unto which they as well as these submit all equally with the same resignation and no doctrin of any mans Upon the pin of this one mistake if it be a mistake and not rather a malicious wilfulness hangs all this your Doctors Disswasive which being removed all his whole book falls to the ground And therfor it were worth the labour to discours more copiously upon this subject which all Anticatholiks either understand not or dissemble that they may have the more ample field of scholastical Divines and som rotten Casuists to ride a hunting in when they chase Popery which the world must beleev to be a doctrin of divines And this doctrin must not be the doctrin of any one of their schools much less of all their schools but of this or that obscure man who followed no school at all nor any good thing that he delivered but som uncouth odd speech unheedfully dropt from his pen nor this candidly delivered neither as he spoke it but wrested and perverted against his meaning And this is the mode of chasing that wild beast of Popery with seven heads and ten horns made by the slight of ministers both terrible and yet at the self-same time ridiculous to people not to all for God be thanked there be very many grave and wise men in the land but only to the inferior and more numerous sort of people such as will stand to hear Jack Pudding talk in Bartholomew Fair. But I have not now time to enlarge my self upon this subject as it may deserv I say then that no Catholik faith which ministers express by the odions name of Popery is properly speaking any mans doctrin much less is it a doctrin grounded upon this or that principle as indeed all school doctrin is but it is a Catholik faith and beleef grounded immediately upon the veracity and truth of the Revealer our Lord and his Apostles But your Disswader speaks still of doctrin and Roman doctrin and grounds of doctrin as if he were utterly unacquainted with faith Christian faith and of all he is to speak imagining Religion to be som school conclusion of Philosophers wherein he is either notoriously mistaken or would in his heart have others most notoriously to mistake Wherfor although I could easily defend those scholastical grounds wheron he sayes the doctrin of Purgatory is built yet I must first tell him that which is of more concern both for himself and others to know namely that those are not be they true or fals any grounds of Purgatory at all nor is Purgatory a doctrin built upon those grounds What then are those assertions that som sins are mortal som not that the pardon of sin may stand with an obligation to temporal punishment c. They are Sir rational congruities invented by Catholik Divines the more fully to clear unto weak beleevers the rationality and truth of that old Christian Tradition concerning our expiatory sufferings after this life before entrance into glory But if we will look for more ancient and Christian-like grounds for this expiation so far as one busines of faith may be said to be grounded on another even as Gods attributes are said by school-divines one to flow from the other namely in order to our understanding which cannot otherwise think or speak of that most simple and infinit being the great depositum fidei affords other grounds far better more intelligible simple and easie grounds of Purgatory than those your Disswader catches at although even they be solid and good ones too As for example these Christians are culled and called out of darknes by the mercy of their gracious Redeemer unto purity light and holines which they are to practice and act all their whole life after and if they do otherwise they shall suffer accordingly so much of pain as they have had of unlawful pleasures to the despight of that precious blood that redeemed and brought them out of sin and darknes and of that holy Spirit of his wherwith they have been anointed every one as he hath acted in his body whether good or evil being to receiv accordingly after this life So that he who shall at all times cooperating faithfully with Gods holy grace keep his hands pure and heart clean from such enormities as may violate friendship with his Redeemer shall be in another condition at his departure then he who hath in his life time polluted himself and don injury to the sanctifying blood of Christ by
this deluge of Goths and Vandals But why do I expostulate with you who write these things not to judicious readers but fools and children who are not more apt to tell a truth then beleev a ly But what follows next Towards the beginning of this lurry say you were the Brittons extirpated by the Saxes who in after-times received Austin from Rome a man very little acquainted with the Gospel Here 's the thanks good S. Austin hath who out of his love and tendernes to our nations welfare after so long and tedious journeys entred upon the wild forrest of our paganisme with great hazards and inexpressible sufferings of hunger cold and other corporal inconveniences to communicate Christ Jesus and his life and grace unto our nation After this say you religion daily more and more declined till the Reformation rose This is the sum of your story which if I like not I may thank my self say you for putting you in minde of it Indeed Sir it is so fals and defamatory and loaden with foul language not only against all nations ages and people of all conditions but against the honour of sacred gospel it self which must utterly dye and have no life or power in the world for so many ages together that I think neither I or any els can like it that bears any respect either to religion modesty or truth You say in this your chapter that I am better at telling a tale then mannaging an argument But I shall now beleev that you are equally good at both Popery then is nothing but vice and Protestancy is all vertue I would we could see where this Protestancy dwells 13 ch from page 262. to 278. Your thirteenth chapter takes up my three following paragraffs about the history of religion wherein after that according to your wonted manner you tell me that I do not my self understand what this thing that thing the other thing means altho it be part of my own discours you say at length that ther is no such matter as I speak make another story of your own of the same mettle with your former imposing afresh upon popery by which I do not indeed know what you mean a wain-load of adulteries drunkennes atheisme poisonings avarice pride cruelties tumults blasphemy rebellions wars crimes and yet threatning to fay if you should chance to be provoked far harder things then these Sir may no man provoke a wasp nor force you to your harder things You are a terrible man of arms But if this be the right character of Popery which here and elswhere up and down your book you give us I tell you first it will be a difficult matter to know in what age or place popery most reigns secondly that it is a thing I am so far from excusing that I wish it back to the pit of hell from whence it issued thirdly that Roman catholiks if you be indeed against this popery are all on your side for to my knowledg their religion is as opposite to it as light to darknes or God to Belial lastly that you need not be so tenderly fearful for the spreading of popery for honest men will be ready to stone him that teaches it and knaves hypocrites adulterers traitors theeves drunkards atheists rebels if you have given a right description of poperty are all Papists already these need no conversion the other will by no rhetorick be moved to it Indeed you fright us all from papistry For though som love iniquity as it is gainful or pleasursom and must needs suffee for it when they are condemned at the sessions and cannot avoid it yet is no man willing to suffer either loss of goods or imprisonment death or banishment for the bare name of popery that hath neither good nor gain in it In a word wicked men will act your popery but not own it And they which own a popery which I see you are not acquainted withall will not only dislike others but hate themselvs if through any frailty or passion they should ever fall into any article of your Popery here described Good Sir take heed of blaspheming that innocent Catholik flock which the Angels of God watch over to protect them Be afraid to curs them whom God hath blessed or impose that upon their Religion which it detests 14 ch from page 278. to 286. Your fourteenth chapter which is upon my title of Discovery labours to show that som of the contradictions which I mentioned in Fiat Lux to be put upon popery are no contradictions at all and labour may Well Sir although slanders put upon them be never so contradictory and opposite yet must they have patience All is true enough if it be but bad enough While our Kings reign in peace then the Papists religion is persecuted as contrary to monarchy when we have destroyed that government then is the papist harassed spoiled pillaged murdered becaus their religion is wholly addicted to monarchy and papists are all for Kings Have not these things been done over and over within the space of a few years here lately in England All men now alive have been eye-witnesses of it These things as put upon papists ceas to be contradictions And if they should be contradictions both parts are therfor true in our countrey logick becaus they are put upon papists Is there not something of the power of darknes in this One latin word of mine which shuts up that my paragraff of Discovery Ejice ancillam cum puero suo becaus I english it not you translate it for me or rather interpret it Bannish all men out of England but Papists this according to your gloss must be my meaning And you seem to exult that Fiat Lux who in outward show pretends so much moderation should let fall a word that betrayes no little mischief in his heart Good Lord whither does passion hurry mans spirit All that period of mine in the end of the foresaid § is but meerly coppied out of one of Saint Pauls letters which he wrote to the Galatians the fourth chapter of that Epistle wherein those very words alluding to a passage in Moses his pentateuch are exprest Do you either read in your English Bible Bannish all men out of England or understand any such meaning of Ejice ancillam cum puero suo Gal. 4. 30. Pray peruse the ten last verses of that chapter attentively and see if I have not in my discours so coppied out their meaning and very words too so far as it behooved that I have done nothing els Abraham had two sons saith St. Paul one of a handmaid the other of a free woman c. These things are an allegory c. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the spirit even so it is now But what saith the scriptur Cast out the bondwoman with her son for the son of the bond-woman shall not be heir with the son of the free-woman c. Pray tell
though he were resolved not to speak any one word true or to the purpos And yet he would seem to do it perhaps on the same motive that Sir Toby Matthews flitted from the richer by shoprick of Durham to that of York becaus as he himself gave the reason he wanted Grace But Doctor Taylor must remember his own doctrin that an Archbyshop although he have Grace yet he has no jurisdiction with it and it is a question whether is better to have power without grace or grace without power He is well enough as he is if he could be content But ambition and covetousnes will know no bounds And as your Doctor in this his Disswasive prattles about a Popery which is no part of Catholik religion so does he wholly pass by their chief religion which is in a manner their whole popery and all their religious customs attending it not that only which the first reformers allowed of as their faith of one God all powerfull most wise and good who made all things visible and invisible and by his providence conserves them in their being who in the fulnes of time sent his beloved son to reconcile the world to himself c. but that also which they rejected and principally inveighed against as first internal sanctification and renovation of our spirits which was the end of Christs appearing in the world the efsicacy of his grace in our hearts and the intention of his counsels and laws secondly the comfort merit and necessity of good works unto which holy gospel by all sweet promises invites us Gods holy spirit moves the very excellency of mans nature and condition suggests the name and profession of Christian calls for and future happines requires These by the first Protestants were all cried down as mortal sins and of no value at all in the eyes of God by which doctrins they debauched mankind and made men so dissolute careless and licentious that if good nature right reason and the gracious working of God in our hearts had not more force upon some than the principles of the first Protestancy earth had become a meer hell by this Thirdly he passes by the priesthood altar and sacrifice which Christ our Lord instituted for our daily atonement in the figuration of his holy passion at which old Christians with all fear and reverence offered up their daily praises requests and supplications to God for themselves and allies and whole Church of Christ for all distressed persons for kings and princes and for all men that we may lead a quiet and godly life in this world Fourthly the seven sacraments of Christs which are so many conduits of sanctification for our several necessities and for all conditions of men and for all degrees of spiritual comforts Fifthly the obligations of vows which any shall freely make for Gods glory and his own advancement in piety in continency in charity and the blessed condition of singing and praising God in monastical retirement Sixtly the communion and union of the whole body of Christians under one visible pastor by whom they are aptly knit and compaginated together into one flock and body of Christ however they may differ otherwis in countrey language laws civil government and other affections Sevently the marks of the true Church and the autority she hath to keep her people in unity of faith and observance of their Christian duties Eightly the danger of original sin and actual transgressions which however we may have heard of Christian faith and beleev it to be true may notwithstanding exclude us eternally from the bliss of heaven now opened to beleevers such as by mortifying ungodly lusts shall render themselves conformable to their Lord and head who is ascended into heaven and gone before to prepare there a place for them in bliss with himself Ninthly the necessary concurrence of Gods grace and mans will unto his justification and sanctity and future glory in him Qui creavit te sine te non salvabit te sine te as good S. Austin speaks Tenthly the necessity and great benefit of prayer alms-deeds and fasting which is practised in the Catholik Church and commended to all as worthy fruits of that religion which labours to root out pride of life concupiscence of eyes and concupiscence of flesh thereby and our obligation to exact justice in all our contracts and dealings with our neighbour Eleventhly the danger of living and dying in sin to such as profess Christianity and uselesnes of faith without the good works of grace attending it Twelftly the possibility of keeping Gods commandments with the assistance of his grace Lastly not to mention more the great duty incumbent upon all Christians when led away by the deceit of Satan flesh and this wicked world they shall chance to have strayed from their holy rule to set all streight again by humble confession restitution and other penal satisfactions for their fault These and such like principles of ancient Christianity our first reforming Protestants Luther and Calvin with other their companions all apostate priests from the mother Church so stifly cryed down as notorious popery that they have thereby corrupted the whole world But your Doctour in this your Disswasive from Popery for reasons best known to himself takes no notice of them at all Protestant writers however loth to practise them yet ashamed they are now to speak against good works as their fore-fathers did Indeed every one of them that upon the hope of a richer benefice writes against Catholik Religion makes both a new Popery and a new Protestancy too and whilo they speak in general against that they may say in particular of this what they pleas For Protestants had never any Councel to make them all agree how much of Popery they should reject or what they should positively establish nor ever will nor can have nor do they care so they keep but their livings and places that they have extorted from Catholik hands which they know they cannot keep except by libelling against Popery they get the power of the land honester and better men then themselvs to back and support them in their wayes whether any thing be ever settled or no. I should also here set down the substantial customs of Catholik Christians in their chappels and churches oratories and private houses wholly neglected by the Disswader though they be in the hearts and hands of them all throughout the whole earth If he had declared either their substantial faith or customs he had lost his credit with some but he had saved his own soul which now is becom as black as hell with slaunders lyes and uncharitable depravations both of their customs and immaculate Religion What he can pervert and make sport with that he puts upon them for popery and what he cannot that must be thought no popery at all But this I cannot now insist upon My letter is already grown too long ANd yet I cannot but give you notice Sir that even these