they are still continued among them we must conclude that the honour due to the Creator is offered to the Creature I need not bring Instances of these they are so well known 3. In â—The many Consecrations that are used among â—hem of Images Crosses Habits Water Salt Oyl Candles Bells Vessels Agnus Dei's and Grains with a vast deal more by which those things are so consecrated as to have a vertue in them for driving away Devils for being a security both to Soul and Body and a remedy against all Temporal and Spiritual evils This way of Incantations was one of the grossest pieces of Heathenism and is now by them brought into the Christian Religion And the opinion that upon these Consecrations a Vertue is conveyed to those things is infused into the people by their authorized offices In which if in any thing it is not to be believed that the Church lies and deceives her Children This is plainly to consider God as the Heathens did their Idols and to fetch down Divine Vertues by charms as they did And 4. Their worshipping with Divine Honour that which by all the Indications that we can have of things we know is no other than what it appears to be even Bread and Wine in its substance and nature Thus Divine Adoration is offered to those Elements contrary to the universal practice of the Christian Church for 1200 years and this passes among them as the most important piece of their Worship which has almost swallowed up all the rest Thus the true Ideas of God and the chief design of the Christian Religion is overthrown in that Communion and what can we think of a Church that in the most important of her Offices adds this Prayer to the absolution of Sinners The passion of our Lord Iesus Christ the merits of the blessed Virgin and all the Saints and whatever good thou hast done and whatever evil thou hast suffered be to thee for the pardon of sin the increase of Grace and the reward of eternal life where we see clearly what things they joyn in the same breath and in order to the same ends with the passion of Christ. When they have cleansed their Churches of these objects of Idolatry and Superstition and their Offices of those Impious Addresses to Saints and that infinite number of Enchantments then they may upon some more advantage ask Why have we made the Schism It is because they have corrupted the Doctrine of Christ and the Gospel and if those things upon which the Separation subsists were removed it could no more subsist than Accidents can do without a Subject The next thing upon which we ground our Separation is That not only the Church of Rome would hearken to no Addresses nor Remonstrances that were made to her for reforming those abuses but that by Anathema's and the highest censures possible all are obliged to believe as she believes in those very particulars and are bound to joyn in a Worship in which those things which we condemn are made indispensable parts of our publick Devotions So that we must either mock God by concurring in a Worship which we believe Impious and Superstitious or we must separate from them None can be admitted to Benefices of Cure or preferment without swearâ—ng most of these Opinions which we think are false Nor can any Eminent Heretick be received among them without swearing that he in all things receives the Doctrines of the Church of Rome and that he thinks all that do not receive them worthy of an Anathema If the Errours of the Church of Rome had been only speculative opinions or things of less moment we could have better born with them or if they had only held to their own customes without imposing them on us we could have held in several things a sisterly Communion with them as we do with the Greek Churches but when they have not only brought in and obstinately maintained those corruptions but have so Tyrannically imposed them on the World it is somewhat strange to see men make such grimaces and an appearance of seriousness while they ask this question of which they know so well how to have resolved themselves One thing is likewise to be considered that in the examination of the corruptioâ—s of that Communion it is not sufficient to say somewhat to sweeten every one of them in particular but it is the complication of all together that we chiefly insist on since by all these set together we have another view of them than by every one of them taken asunder This then is our answer to the question so often repeated We have not made the Schism from the Church of Christ as it was setled by the Apostles and continued for many ages after them but they have departed from that and have refused to return to it On the contrary they have condemned and cursed us for doing it Upon this all that they objâ—ct against the first Reformers as having been once of their Communion falls to the ground For if these things which we object to them are true then since no man is bound to continue in Errours because he was bred up in them this is no just prejudice against those men All the flourishes raised upon this ground are but slight things and favour more of a monastick and affectate Eloquence than of the weight and solidity of so renowned a Body What is said of pulling down the Altars and of that elegant figure of Christs being the Sparrow and the Churches being the Turtle that loved to make their Nests in them is really very hard to be answered not for the strength that is in it but for another reason that in Reverence to that Assembly I shall not name The Sacrifice of the death of Christ we acknowledge as that only by which we come to God and in a general sense of that term the commemoration of it may be also called a Sacrifice and the Communion Table an Altar and such we still retain and for any thing further either of Altar or Sacrifice till they give a better authority for it than a fanciful allusion â—o an ill-understood Verse of a â—salm we shall not be much concerned in it If Wars and Confusions have followed in some places upon the reforming those abuses they were the effects of the Rage and Cruelty of those Church-men that seemed never like to be satiated with the blood of those that had departed from them And if the specious pretence of Edicts Princes of the Blood the preserving the House of Bourbon the defending France from Foreigners joyning with that natural appetite that is in all men to preserve themselves engaged some in Wars under the minority of their Kings it is nothing but what is natural to man and these who condemn it most yet ought to pity those whom their Predecessors in whose steps they now go constrained to do all that they did And the Rebellions in England and Ireland in King Henry the Eighth Edward
the Sixth and Queen Elizabeth's time when no Persecutions provoked them to them and no Laws gave them any colour for them are a much stronger prejudice against their Church chiefly since these were set on by the Authority and Agents of Rome so that they may well give over the pursuing this matter any further As for the argument set before them from the Greatness and Glory of their King and his Zeal to have all again re-united into one Body how powerful soever it may be to work upon their fears and to touch them in their Secular concerns it cannot be considered as an argument to work on their reasons They expressed their Zeal for their King in his greatest extremity while he was under age and after all the heavy returns that they have met with since that time they have continued in an Invincible Loyalty and submission in all things except in the matters of their God If the Heroick greatness Glorious success and the more inherent qualities of a Princely mind are good Arguments to work on Subjects they were as strong in the times of a Trajan a Decius or a Dioclesian to perswade the Christians to turn Heathens But it is very probable this is the strongest of all those motives that have produced so many Conversions of late while men either to make their Court or to live easie are induced to make shipwrack of the Faith and of a good Conscience And I shall not add that it seems those who are so often making use of this Argument feel the mighty force it has on themselves and so imagine it should prevail as much on others as they find it does on their own Consciences or rather on their Ambition and Covetousness I will prosecute the matter of this Letter no further and therefore shall not shew in how many places the Secretary that penned it has discovered how much he is a Novice in such matters and what great advantages he gives to those who would sift all the expressions the figures and the periods in it But the Respect I pay to those that subscribe it as well as the importance and gravity of the subject stop me So from the reviewing this Letter I go next to consider the Methods laid down by the Assembly for carrying on those Conversions A MEMORIAL Containing diverse Methods of which very great use may be made for the Conversion of those who profess the pretended Reformed Religion The first Method Is that which Cardinal Richelieu used for reducing either in the way of Disputâ— or Conference those of the P. R. R. and to perswade them in an amicable manner to re-unite themselves to the Church THis Method is to attack them by â— Decree of a Synod of theirs thaâ— met at Charenton 1631. by which theâ— received to their Communion those of thâ— Ausbourg Confession who hold the Reaâ— Presence of the Body of Iesus Christ in the Eucharist together with diverse other Articles that are very different from the Confession of Faith of those that are the P. Reformed Vpon which the Minister Dailee in his Apology says That if the Church of Rome had no other errour besides that they had not had a sufficient reason for their separating from her It is certain that none of all the other points of our Belief that are controverted are either of greater importance or harder to be believed than this which has been ever esteemed even by themselves one of the chief grounds of their Separation and is that by which the people are most amused As for that which the Minister Dailee says for eluding the force of this Objection That the Lutherans do not adore Iesus Christ in the Sacrament It is altogether unreasonable since Calvin himself reproves the Lutherans for that and is forced to acknowledge that adoration is a necessary consequence of the real Presence What is more strange says he than to put Jesus Christ in the Bread and not to adore him and if he is in the Bread then he ought to be adored under the Bread Thus since according to the Calvinists in the same Synod one does not overthrow the grounds of Salvation by the belief of the Real Presence and the other points of their Confession concerning which they dispute that Cardinal thought he could convince them of their errour in separating faom the Communion of the Church of Rome in which according to their own Maximes one could be saved It was by the like reasoning that the African Fathers convinced the Donatists called the Primianists that they had unjustly separated themselves from the Catholick Church because it received Cecilian iâ—to its Communion since they had made a decree of Vnion with the Maximianists whom they had formerly condemned It was in the Council of Carthage held under Anastasius that the Fathers used this against those Hereticks and in the Fourth Canon they set this before them That they might see if they would but open their eyes a little to the Divine Light that they had as unjustly â—ut themselves off from the unity of the Church as the Maximianists according to what they said had separated themselves from their Communion Remarks IF Cardinal Richelieu had not â—een an abler States-man than as it appears by this argument he was a Divine the Princes of Europe would not have such cause as they have at present to dread the growth of the French Monarchy of which he laid the best and strongest foundations It is a common Maxime That no man can excel but in one thing so since his strength lay in the Politicks no wonder he had no great Talent for Divinity But if this at first view seemed to him to have somewhat in it to amuse weak minds especially when it surprized them with its novelty yet it is a little unexpected to find it taken up by so great a Body and set in the front of their Methods for making Proselytes after the weakness of it has been so evidently discovered 1. Great difference is to be made between a speculation that lies in the mind and is a mans particular opinion and that which discovers it self in the most solemn acts of Worship for the former unless it is such as subverts the foundations of Religion we can well bear with it These are errours in which the person that holds them is only concerned whereas the other errors become more fruitful they corrupt the Worship they give scandal and infect others Therefore we will without scruple own that whether a man believe Consubstantiation or Transubstantiation so long as that lies in his brain as a notion we may conclude him a very ill Philosopher and a worse Divine for holding it but still we will receive him to our Communion that being a solemn stipulation of the New Covenant made with God through Christ And therefore since such a person acts nothing contrary to that Covenant we ought to admit him to it But Idolatry being contrary to the Laws upon which that
that threatening clause of forfeiture used by those of Constance in their Decree for a General Council And at Trent it was declared That if any Prince did suffer a Duel to be fought in his Dominions he was thereupon to forfeit that place in which it was fought Now by the same authority that they could declare a forfeiture of any one place they could decâ—are a forâ—eiture of a Princes whole Dominion for both those Sentences flow from the same Superiour Jurisdiction And thus we see seven of those Councils which they esteem general have either decreed confirmed or assumed this right of Deposing Kings for Heresie or indeed for breaking their Orders and Writs 4. The fourth mark oâ— Tradition is â—hat which has been of late so famous by Mr. Arnauld's endeavours to prove from thence that the belief of the Corporal Presence in the Sacrament is a Doctrine derived down from the Aposâ—les days which is this If any one Age has universally received an opinion as an Article of Faith it must be concluded that that Age had it from the former and that from the preceding till we arrive at the Apostles days And this he thinks must hold the stronger if the point so received wâ—s a thing obvious to all men in which every one was concerned and to which the nature of man was inclined to make a powerful opposition I shall not examine how true this is in general nor how applicable in fact it is to the Doctrine of the Corporal Presence but shall only say that allowing all these marks to be the sure Indications of Apostolical Tradition the Doctrine of Deposing Princes for favouring Heresie has them all much more indisputably than the other has Take any one Age from the eleventh Century to the sixteenth and it will appear that not only the Popes the Bishops and all the Ecclesiastical Order received it but that all the Laity likewise embraced it Though this was a matter obvious to sense in which many were much concerned It might have been hoped that Princes upon their own account for fear of an ill Precedent would have protected the â—eposed Prince But on the contrary they either entred into the Croisades themselves or at least gave way to them vast Armies were gathered together to execute those Sentences and the injured Princes had no way to keep their people firm to them but by assuring them they were not guilty of the matters objected to them which shewed that had their people believed them guilty they had forsaken them And yet as it was the terrour of a Croisade was such and the Popes authority to depose Princes was so firmly believed that they were for the most part forced to save themselves by an absolute submission to the Popes pleasure and to what Conditions or Penances a haughty Pope would impose on them So certain it is that this Doctrine was universally received in those ages And thus it appears that all the Characters by which it can be pretended that an Apostolicâ—l Tradition can be known agree to this Doctrine in so full and uncontestable a manner that they cannot bring such Evidence for the points in dispute between them and us So that the Assembly General by condemning this Doctrine have departed from the Tradition of their own Church more apparently than it can be pretended that either Luther and Calvin did in any of those Doctrines which they rejected and therefore they ought not any more to complain of us for throwing off such things as they found on Tradition when they have set us such an Example From which I shall only infer this That they themselves must know how weak a foundation Oral Tradition is for Divine Faith to build upon and that it must be established upon surer grounds FINIS ERRATVM Page 85. line 21. for First read Second Books Printed for and Sold by RICHARD CHISWELL FOLIO SPeed's Maps and Geography of Great Britain and Ireland and of Foreign Parts Dr. Cave's Lives of the Primitive Fathers in 2. 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