of turfe which once forc't its passage through the midst of a Rock and with good reason too for why should an acknowledg'd fallibility bridle them now whom before an acknowledg'd infallibility could not restrain But you would make Queen Mary co partner in your Schism and alledge her retaining for some time the title of Head of the Church and her refusing to admit of a Legate from Rome which things you say will make it lesse strange that this Supreme Power of the Popes should be disclaimed in the time of King Henry the eighth Yet as for the first you know well enough that she never pretended it as her lawful title but onely permitted that the former phrase of the Lawes which nick-named her so might be used till she having setled the turbulent spirits raised by your good doctrine which opposed her renouncing it found an handsom occasion to disclaim that title usurp't by her late Predecessors Your selfe confessing that she urg'd the matter afterwards in a Parliament and with much difficulty obtained it Which plainly cleares her and makes your bringing her Authority upon the stage very frivolous the fact being acknowledgedly against her will But I see not how it can excuse you rather it accuses your Brethren at that time both of schism and impudence in forcing their Princess to retain an unjustly assumed title against both her Will and her Conscience What force he puts in her denying a Legate no man knowes unless he could dive into the mysterious depth of the Doctors thoughts For besides that there was another Legate in England at that time All Catholick Countries when they saw it convenient have done the same and yet arâ— reputed true sons of the Church since they retaine as humble an Obedience to the See of Rome and as firmly acknowledge her authority as those who admit them But I see the Doctâ—â— knowes not in what the absolute Supremacy as he calls it of the Pope consists Every waving of any request or favour is with him a flat denial and rejection of the Authority as if they who denied the former Kings of England subsidies deny'd them to be Monarchs or Heads of the Common-wealth Neither can I see that this as you fancy makes your breach lesse strange but rather much stranger that whereas Rome was so farre from that tyranny falsely by you imputed to her that you might have as Queen Mary and as Catholick Kings now doe deny'd to admit the Popes Legats and all such flowers of pious friendship or as you will call them extravagant encroachments and yet have remained in true charity with the faithful and Communion with that your Superiour yet neither this moderate carriage nor any thing else could satisfie your resolute and desperate disobedience but to reject the very Authority it selfe utterly to extirpate it root and branch and cast it out of this Island This renouncing then of the chiefest Authority of the Church you left you call in a strange expression the Bottome upon which the Foundation of Reformation was laid upon which by the same workmen who pulled downe a good house to build a worse was erected a superstructure in King Henry's dayes the number of the Sacraments translation of the Bible and the use of the Lords prayer in the English Tongue as if the Lords Prayer was never used in the vulgar language till King Henry's holinesse ordained it As for the Kings Vicar-general who presided in his duely-assembled Councel as you call it I can say no more of him but he was a proper fellow Domini similis like his Master Vicegerent to him in that high and mighty title of the Chief of Schismaticks the rotten Head of the corrupted body But Mr. Doctor proceeds in his Schism much farther advanced as he tells us in King Edwards dayes Yet first he is resolved to clear the way and remove a rub which he apprehends very dangerous to wit lest we should think to prove the acts made in his dayes invalid and vilifie them because the King was yet alas but a child assuring us therefore that the Lawes of this Realm ordain that what is done by the Protector is done by the Child and that too as well as if the Child had been a man But I will secure the Doctor of his sâ—are for though the child had been a man and had had as many wives as his Father yet neither he nor they had been a jot further from being plain Schismaticks unless this child or man had been wiser holier and oldeâ— than all Gods Church so to justifie the breach which his Father had made Very pitiful then had been the Doctors reâ—uge had the infant King the Head of theiâ— Church been at yeares of discretion but yeâ— far more pitiful is it the then Protector steering the helm of the Common-wealth whoâ—e traiterous and ambitious designe to intercept Queen Mary's succession being manifestly discover'd whatever he acted against Catholicks or their Religion Q. Mary's supports ought in all reason but the Doctors be rather imputed to interest than piety But nothing can prejudice as he thinks the regularity of his Reformation Schism once admitted as sacred no wonder if tyranny treachery and ambition be not onely lawful but pious and commendable Yet his tyranny in secular matters is become even the Supream Power in Ecclesiastical and so the Reformation goes on in the Doctors Book currantly and merrily especially though some Bishops resisted and were punisht yet as the Doctor sayes Arch-Bishop Cranmer who kept a Wench in King Henries time and the far greater number of Bishops joyning with him all is well and the Reformation valid Then to cry quits with us for their persecuting our Bishops he puts us in mind how their friends in Queen Maries dayes were not onely persecuted with fire but with â—agot too To answer which let the Dr. but clear those malefactors from Schisme and Sedition and we shall acknowledge the cruelty ours and the innocency theirs otherwise let them remember our pretended persecution was onely execution of justice and theirs a most sacrilegious and irreligious tyranny But I smell by the Dr. that he hath been in Iohn Foxes kennel The Reformations he mentions introduced in the Popedom of this head junior of their Church are many changes as the Dr. tells us and recessions from the doctrine and practises of Rome That is now grown reason enough to think all that was done to be lawfully done Besides saith he That of Images the lawfulnesse of the marriage of the Clergy was asserted the Dr. likes that point of faith dearly the English Liturgy formed the people got wine to their bread c. But that ill-favord c. dashes out the best Then then it was the Dr. should have added that those two sweet singers of Israel Hopkins and Sternhold as Cleveland expresses it murdered the Psalmes over and over with Another to the same then did the Later of these in a fit of divine fury
no doubt bid God give his foes a rap Then then it was that that second Solomon Robert Wisedom inspired questionless from Heaven warbled out that melodious and exquisit hymn which with a sweet twang closes up the book of Psalmes Preserve us Lord by thy dear word From Turk and Pope defend us Lord. And the rest of that devout piece able to ravish any Christian heart to hear it These and such other rarities of Reformation were then added as harmonious Epithalamiums to this under-age Bride-Church to celebrate her espousals or marriage with her Infant-Head After this the Dr. treates of the Reformation made under Queen Elizabeth in his 15. Paragraph consisting of five or six lines on either side a long Parenthesis which Parenthesis tells us partly strange news that Queens as well as Kings have according to our Laws Regal Power partly open fictions that this plenitude of power is as well in Sacred as Civil affairs and that they have this by the Constitution of our Monarchy Whereas he cannot but know there had been many a Monarch in England ere their Schismatical Laws were made which first allowed the King a plenitude of power in sacred matters In the next place he touches the ordination of their new created Bishops evidenced as he saith out of the records to have been performed according to the ancient Canons by the imposition of the hands of the Bishops Yet this modest evidencing Record durst never shew its head for about fifty years notwithstanding the outcries made by Catholicks against the pretended ordinations of Protestant Bishops and strong presumptions to the contrary till at length when the memory of that present age was past which might discountenance that pretence and argue it of impudence out steps a new old Record assuring us that they were regularly ordained And this is the firmest Basis the Protestant Ministry or Bishops have to witnesse that they have any more Authority to preach then an Anabaptistical Zelot whose profession is perhaps a Weaver his Calling his own Intrusion his Pulpit a Tub and his Diocesse a Conventicle But suppose you had a material Mission from the hands of Catholick Bishops and that Mr. Mason had vindicated you in this point yet can either Mr. Mason or any else even pretend to manifest that those Catholick Bishops gave you a Mission that is sent and Authorised you to preach Protestant Doctrines or could do it in case they would having no such power from the Church from whom they have all their power Unlesse you evidence this both Mr. Mason and Dr. Hammond may as well say nothing For since they gave you no such authority as you make use of that is to preach against the formerly received Faith nor sent you any such errand as you now declare and preach it follows that whatever you do to prejudice and extinguish that doctrine to propagate which they meant your Mission is done onely upon your own head without any authority but your own selfe-assumed licentiousnesse to talk and say what you list not derived from the consecrated hands of your Catholick Ordainers but from your own unhallowed schismatical hearts But Mr. Dr. is always afraid where no fear is answering at large here a supposed objection of ours against Q. Elizabeth for unchairing some Bishops and installing others But alas I am more courteous to the Queen than the Doctor imagines and think no worse of her but onely that in that fact she did after kind for supposing her once the Head of Schisinaticks and Chief-Bishopesse of their Church I see no reason but she should depose Bishops Catholikely affected and install heretical ones and in a word she and her Bishops voâ—e and act whatever they thought good and I cannot tell what should hinder them since the now rejected Authority of Gods Church could not All the superstructures of the Reformation then which the Doctor so often and so largely in this Chapter hath shown to be done regularly I grant him to have been done as regularly as his own heart could wish or mans wit imagine for the Authority of the Church being schismatically renounced and the infallible rule of Faith which could onely oblige men to an unanimous beleefe being broken and rejected these grounds I say being layed I yeeld that the superstructure not onely of their heresie but even of Lutheranism Zuinglianism Calvinism Arminianism Puritanism Brownism Socinianism Presbyterianism Anabaptism with those of Quakers and Adamites but even of Turcism and Atheism were all very regular orderly rational and connatural superstructures upon the forelaid foundations The ruine of all Faith must needs accompany the renouncing of Certainty Yet I had forgot to let the Reader see how the Doctor excuses the Queen for devesting some Bishops of their dignity and his excuse is because those Bishops refused to take the oath of Supremacy concluding that therefore she dealt justly in devesting those Bishops which thus refused to secure her Government or to approve their fidelity to their lawfull Soveraign By which one may see the Doctor knowes not the difference between the oath of Allegiance and the oath of Supremacy The oath of Allegiance or fidelity was instituted expresly for that purpose what needed she then presse them to take the oath of Supremacy to approvâ— their Fidelity or Allegiance cannot one be a true subject to his King by acknowledging him his Liege Soveraign unless he will take his oath he is Head of the Church As if neither any of the former Kings of England nor any of the Catholike Princes that now are or ever have been had so much as one true subject because none of them takes the Oath of Supremacy What followes is onely a narration how the Schism went on and the rent was made worse At length he shuts up this Chapter by pronouncing an absolute Negative of their guiltiness of Schism from this one evidence that all was done by those to whom and to whom onely the rightful power legally pertained to wit the King and Bishops of this Nation So as the King must be Head of the Church that 's concluded hoagh all the world say and swear the contrary though himselfe have not brought one express word to prove it Nay more he hath EVIDENCE it is no Schism because the King and the Bishops voted it as if whatsoever the King and Bishops vote let it be what schismatical doctrine it will though Socianism and Turcism it must not be schismatical so blind is prejudice that it can neither see without its own spectacles nor beyond its own narrow limits The Doctor discourses all this Chapter long as if he made account all the world were comprised in one poor corner of it England like the home-bred fellow that thought the Sun set at the next town if a King or Queen here with a few Bishops partly out of feare partly out of favour some out of malice and contradicted by others decree any thing it makes the case irrefragable
an indulgence or priviledge granted and given him by the Church in her Canons Which last is our tenet and most evidently visible in the very Testimonies alleaged against us His second Testimony for the two last were onely his over-sights or observations begins after the old strain thus And ACCORDINGLY the same Balsamon on Conc. Carthag Can. 16. doth upon that Canon professedly found the Authority of Princes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to advance an Episcopal See into a Metropolis and a new to constitute Bishops and Metropolitans Thus far the Doctor Where he is over head and ears again in a grievous mistake for neither doth Balsamon found the Authority of Princes to execute such Acts as of their own power on that Canon there being not a word in it to that purpose Neither doth he PROFESSEDLY say any thing as of himself but that you are PROFESSEDLY mistaken And had he said it I conceive it no such strong Argument That a professed Adversary should speak so professedly against one But indeed neither he nor the Canon say any such matter The Canon not so much as names either Episcopal or Metropolical Seâ—s but the main business there treated is That Bishops and Priests should not live upon base occupations nor employ themselves in secular businesses Which Balsamon in his Scholion or Comment more elucidates from like prohibitions of other Patriarchs adding in the end out of other mens opinions and not his own profession these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But some say these Canons or Constitutions take place when any one who hath taken holy Orders shall exercise a secular Ministery without the command of the Emperor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. And they adde saith Balsamon that the King is neither under Laws nor Canons and therefore he may securely make a Bishoprick a Metropolis c. and anew constitute Bishops and Metropolitans Where the Reader may see he introduces this as a deduction of others and that from no other grounds then this A King is neither bound by Canons nor Laws that is his Will is his Law or he may do lawfully what he lists and then indeed these grounds supposed I blame not the inference that he should erect transplant nâ—y pull down not only Bishops and Patriarchs but the whole Hierarchy it self your present lot consequent to these your grounds Thus at length we have found the bottom-stone of the Doctors grounds Why Kings may erect Patriarchates by their proper power not to be Councils as he pretended but their own all-lawful inerrableness to do what they please let Councils Canons Parliaments and Laws say what they will to the contrary A foundation fitting indeed to build the Doctors Assertion upon but in all other respects able to ruine and overthrow both Laws Commonwealths Canons and Church In his fifteenth Section persisting still in his seigned supposal That the Popes power is onely Patriarchal he goes on to prove that the antiquity of translating Patriarchs and Bishops belongs to Kings as well as of erecting Of which he gives some instances in our Countrey of England By which what he means to prove I cannot easily conjecture If he intends that Kings did oft do such things I wonder who denies it but if they did it by their proper right without the order or consent either of the Apostolical See or the Ecclesiastical State of his own Bishops he brings not one word in proof but rather expresly manifests the contrary from the carriage of St. Anselm then Archbishop of Canterbury as learned and pious a Prelate as that age produced who as the Doctor confesses when the King would have cut off as much from the Diocess of Lincoln as would make a new Bishoprick at Ely Anselm wrote to Pope Paschalis desiring his consent to it assuring him he would not give his consent but salvâ authoritate Papae the authority of the Pope being secured Where you see plainly the Archbishops consent was necessary and that without it the Kings desire seemed controleable Next that the Archbishop himself even with the Kings authority to back him would not venture on it till the Pope's consent was asked Here then Mr. Doctor you have a positive Testimony of the gravest Prelate our Countrey hath ever been honored with refusing the sufficiency of the Kings sole authority to conclude such businesses without his and the Popes consent which therefore more justly challenges audience in the Court of Reason then all your dumb Negatives though they were a thousand more To conclude in what your Testimonies were Positive to wit that such things were done de facto so far we yeeld to them in what they are Negative tacitly inferring that because they were done and no mans right named therefore they were done de jure by the proper right of him that did them So far we allow them no credit at all First Because they might have been performed by the secular Authorities either with consent of the Bishops or some indulgent grant of the Church to pious Princes or by order from the Pope or else Concession of some former Council an example of which we had lately in the Council of Chalcedon Next because Histories intending onely to relate matters of fact mention rather those that put things in execution and more visibly appear in the transacting them such as are Secular Magistrates and stand not scanning or debating much by whose right things were done which belongs to Lawyers and would be but a by-discourse hindering the orderly process of their Narrative strain Thirdly because every one who hath the least smack of Logick knows A Negative Argument proves nothing such as are all yours here alleaged For this is the tenor of them Historians say Some Kings translated some Patriarchates and it is not mentioned they did it by the Churches power therefore they did it by their own which will be found in good Logick to fall very far short of concluding Lastly because the Church ever challenged as her own proper right asserted to her by the Canons the jurisdiction and power to intermeddle in businesses purely Ecclesiastical In his seventeenth Paragraph he proposes two other Objections of the same nature with the rest The first in common that the King could exempt from Episcopal Jurisdiction which he says is largely asserted and exemplified in Coudrayes case 5 Report 14. And truly the Doctor is to be commended for his fair and sincere expression For it is indeed meerly asserted and exemplified without the least shadow of proof In the first example there alleaged King Kenulphus is said to have exempted a Monastery Consilio consensis Episcoporum Senatorum Gentis suae which was no instance of power in him unless it was also in the Bishops and Nobles That he could not or would not do it without their agreement The exemption of Reading Abbey by Henry the First argues no authority he being the Founder of it and not bound to give his goods to the Church
the true Charge the only way for a Protestant to clear his Church from Schism is to shew it not guilty of doing this either by disproving the former to be the necessary Rule of Unity in Faith or the latter the necessary Bond of Government both which though they somtimes say yet because in these Books professedly composed for their Vindication from the guilt of Schism they directly and of set purpose handle neither it is clear they intend to shuffle not speak pithily The first Principle which also includes the truth of the second wee hold by this manifest Evidence that still the latter Age could not bee ignorant of what the former beleev'd and as long as it adhered to that method nothing could bee alter'd in it which way of assurance carries with it the Testimony of all that are truly called Christians and this by so ample a memory and succession as is stronger than the stock of human Government and action no right of Law or human Ordinances being able to offer so ample clear and continued a Title They must remember how their Forefathers who began that which they call the Reformation were themselves of this profession before their pretended reform They ought to weigh what reasons their Ancestors should have had to introduce such an alteration They must confesse themselves guilty in continuing the breach unless they can alledge causes sufficient to have begun it had the same ancient Religion descended to these daies For the constant beleefe of the Catholike world both was at the time of your division and still is that these Principles are Christs own ordination recorded in Scripture derived to us by the strongest Evidences that our nature is capable of to attain assurance what was done in Antiquity Evidences inviolable by any humane either power or proof except perfect and rigorous demonstration to which our Adversaries doe not so much as pretend and therefore without further dispute remain unanswerably convicted of Schism And though after this it bee superfluous to say any thing to any Book which does not so much as attempt to demonstrate either of these Points false yet I shall bestow a few thoughts to declare the quality of the Lord of Derry's Arguments not examining them any further than to shew how litle they are to the purpose In his two first Chapters though there bee many things false and more taken up without proof yet I will not touch them because hee onely pretends to settle the Question which is already done for my part And so I will begin my Animadversions where he begins his Arguments in the third Chapter His first proof is because not Protestants but Roman Catholikes themselves made the first separation 1. If it were so how does that acquit you since continuance in a Breach of this nature which cannot be sodered by time is as guilty as the very beginning Now these two Bonds of Unity being of Christs own institution no time can sear the bleeding wound And this because we hold by the fore-declared strength they now must have demonstrations to contradict it as well as the first Separaters 2. How does he prove they were not Protestants because they persecuted Protestants what then did not Luther persecute Carolstadius and Zuinglius doe they not now in Germany and other Countries Lutherans permit no Calvinists Calvinists no Lutherans Did not you persecute Puritans and Brownists Doe you not now complain to bee persecuted by others will you make all these Papists or why are not they Reformers as well as you you will say many of these first breakers died Catholikes True but upon Repeutance Of Gardiner whom you presse so particularly it is recorded that upon his death bed he said Peccavi cum Petro exivi cum Petro sed nondum flevi cum Petro and so fell on a bitter weeping for that offence But in a word is not this renouncing the Pope the most essential point of your Reformation All the rest your good natur'd Religion can either embrace or censure and as occasion serves admit or refuse Communion with the deniers of any other Article never so fundamental this only is indispensable Then be sure wee never hear you again deny but that they who made this first Breach had in them the quintessence of your Reformation and were far less consistent with Catholicism than your modern younger brother Sectaries are with your kind of Protestancy since your selves confess the admittance of the Popes Authority more destructive to you than the denial of Prelacy His second Argument is because in the separation of England from Rome there was no new Law made but onely their ancient Liberties vindicated The first part is so notoriously false that I wonder any one can have the face to pronounce it a Law was made in Henry the 8ths time an Oath invented and exacted by which was given to the King to be Head of the Church and to have all the power the Pope did at that time possess in England That this was a new Law none but impudence it self can deny As for the second part let us see how hee proves it Hee brings divers allegations wherein the Popes pretences were not admitted as being in the prejudice to the State or Church of England What is this man about that hee so forgets the question Doe wee professe the Pope can pretend no more than his right or is the question of this or that particular action of the Popes or does he think a legitimate Authority in common is rejected when the particular faults of them who are in Authority are resisted Is Magistracy or Royalty rejected when Pleas are commenced against Kings or Commonwealths as going beyond their true Jurisdiction Yes but the Pope is expresly deny'd the Power to doe such or such things Why then even by this fact hee is acknowledged to have power in other things since to limit an Authority implyes an admittance of it in cases to which the restraints extend not But hee presses Lawes anciently receiv'd in our Kingdome What is his meaning were not those Lawes in force in the beginning of Henry the eighths Reign or was his breach but the conservation of these Lawes and wee began our Religion there Are there any of these laws which are not equivalently in France Spain Germany Nay Italy it selfe Are none of these therefore Catholikes are they in as little communication with the Pope as Henry the eighth after his breach or the Protestants in Q Elizabeths times How ridiculous how impudent a manner of speaking and arguing is this to force his Readers to renounce their eyes and ears and all evidence In this fifth Chapter hee argues out of the Liberties of the Britannick Churches But first I would know what this belongs to us unless it bee prov'd that their practicks were an obliging precedent to us have wee any Title from the Britannick Churches otherwise than by the Saxon Christians who onely were our Ancestors and by whose conquests and lawes
but upon the conditions which pleases himself Which answer likewise serves for all Hospitals and such like pious Houses founded by the King The third example of the Abbot of Buries exemption by the King is Recorded without particular circumstances and so must stand for an example of the Kings execution or command to the secular Magistrate to proceed accordingly but proves nothing That the King did it without consent of the Bishop under whom it was These are all the cases of secular exemptions produced by that learned Lawyer which you see are pure examples of the Kings exempting either with the Bishops consent or by title of asking what conditions he thought fit to annex to his own Liberalities as every private person may or at most alleaged so abstractedly that any of these or many other causes may justly be supposed to have intervened But I mistake there is yet one more to which the Doctor thought good to give a particular efficacy by citing the very words of the Charter which are these Hoc regali authoritate Episcoporum ac Baronum attestatione constituo I appoint this by my royal Authority with the attestation of my Bishops and Barons But had the Doctor remembred he had named this King before William the Conqueror he would have understood that Regali Authoritate signified as much as in the first of Kings doth that famous phrase Ius Regis that is the power of the sword the power of taking away any mans goods and giving them to another the power of doing all wrong as is not onely known of the Conquerors other proceedings but even out of this fact taking the goods of a Bishop and the provision ordained for Souls and attributing them to an Abbey And this by the very words of the Charter without any course of Law or consent of any Justice or power in the Commonwealth So that our Doctor has brought us in a very special example for Henry the Eighth the worst of his Successors to imitate and justifie his Spiritual Authority by To that which he affirms of the Chatholick German Emperors the Kings of France and England that they claimed to be founders of all Bishopricks in their Dominions and Patrons of them to bestow them by investiture I answer they did very well to found as many as they pleased that is to enrich and enlarge the Church with Episcopal Revenues by their pious Donations and when they have done to claim deservedly the Advowsons and present whom they please to be invested by the Church whom yet if they be found unworthy the Church rejects notwithstanding the Kings presentation and authority and consequently this is done by the consent of the Church Neither is this annexed to the Kingly dignity onely as a particular badg of his Authority over the Church but even private Subjects when either themselves or their Ancestors have founded some Ecclesiastical Benefice challenge to themselves the Advowsons without any prejudice to the Church who allows it reasonable that the Friends of the Donors should rather enjoy that benefit then others Unless perhaps the persons be found unfit which in that case obliges the Church to use her Authority by interposing her resusal This therefore private persons can do as well as Kings and yet I hope the Doctor will not say That all those are Lords and Heads of the Church Lastly he might as well have made mention of the Pope and Clergies ressistance to Kings that usurped the investitures as of the others claiming of them both being equally notorious in History and the Princes in the end having yeelded that their pretence was unjust Next he tells us the Kings of France and England claimed a just right that no Legate from Rome could use Iurisdiction here without their leave What a terrible business is this Or what follows hence None can imagine but the Dr. himself who certainly had some meaning in it or other They did so indeed and so do Catholick Kings sometimes to this day who yet communicate with the Church and are accounted obedient sons as long as they proceed with due moderation But that they did it in disacknowledgment of the Popes Supremacy or that the Legate brought not his Jurisdiction with him from Rome but was glad to receive it of the King ere he could use it this the Doctor will never be able to make good Nay they were so far from denying the Popes Authority even in this kinde That our Kings of England procured of the Pope that the Archbishop of Canterbury should be Legatus Natus But now the Doctor hath resolved me of my former doubt which was with what art possible he could make these imperfect Testimonies serve his purpose adding here immediately these words All these put together are a foundation for this power of the Princes to erect or translate a Patriarchate As if he should have said Though there be not one word in any single Testimony expresly manifesting That it is principally the Kings power or excluding the Churches yet I have produced many things little to the purpose if considered in their single selves which notwithstanding I would intreat you to believe that ALL THESE PUT TOGETHER ARE A FOUNDATION c. Where note that here again also he observes his former invincible method of reserving his strongest Arguments till the last putting immediately before his Conclusion That the Legates were often not admitted in England so as out of the very non-admission of the Legates the Doctor infers an absolute power in Princes to erect and translate Patriarchates Besides were all this granted what is it to your or our purpose since we accuse you not of Schism for breaking from the Popes subjection as a private Patriarch but as the chief Pastor and Head of the Church But because the Doctor could not handsomly transfer this Primacy from Rome to Canterbury to secure him from the subjection to Antichrist therefore he was pleased to mistake it all along this Chapter for a Patriarchate and then undertakes to shew from some few Testimonies de facto That it was not the Churches but the Kings Authority to erect and translate them Whereas besides the answers in particular already given no prudent man can doubt but in the process of fifteen or sixteen hundred years and in such a vast extent as the Christian world there may be found twenty or thirty matters of Fact if one will take Histories to collect them either out of ambition ignorance rebellion or tyranny against the most inviolable right that can be imagined Besides many things might often be mentioned by Historiographers as done without particularizing the Authority by which they were done Especially in our case where by reason of the connexion between the Soul and Body of the politick world the Ecclesiastical and Secular State they seem to act as one thing The Temporal Authority most commonly putting in execution the intentions of the Church And this also makes them appear more visibly
not from the Tribunal of the Jews much less their Synagogue representing their Church as the Doctor would perswade us but from the Tribunal of Portius Festus a Roman Governor under Caesar to Caesar himself I will onely put down the words as I finde them in their own Translation and so leave the Doctor to the Readers Judgement either to be accused for willfully abusing or ignorantly mistaking them But Festus willing to do the Iews a pleasure answered Paul and said wilt thou go up to Ierusalem and there be judged of these things before me Then said Paul I stand at Caesars judgement-seat where I ought to be judged c. Act. 25. 9 10 c. And now is not this Doctor think you the fittest man among all the sons of the Church of England to have a Pension for writing Annotations in folio on the Bible His last proof is that Iustinians third Book is made up of Constitutions de Episcopis Clericis Laicis Bishops Priests Laymen First we answer and the same may be said of the Theodosian Code that all the Laws found there must not necessarily be Iustinians since the Keepers of the Laws use not onely to put in their Law-books those Constitutions themselves made but also those they are to see observed among which are the Canons and Laws of the Church made before by Councils and other Ecclesiastical Powers Secondly We grant Iustinian may make Constitutions of his own concerning Bishops and Clergymen in what relates to temporal affairs or as they are parts of the civil Commonwealth And lastly If he shall be found to have made any Laws concerning them and without the Authority of the Church entrenching upon Ecclesiastical businesses let the Doctor prove he had power to make such and he will in so doing clear him in that part from that note of Tyranny which is objected against him What you say concerning the Canons of Councils that they have been mostly set out by the Emperors It is very certain you might if you had pleased instead of your Mostly have put Always the causing them to be promulgated belonging to the Office of the supreme secular Powers whose obligation it is to see that the Churches decrees be received and put in execution What you clap in within a Parenthesis as your custom is to intermingle truth with falshood that Canons of Councils received their Authority by the Emperor In the sence you take it is a great error For never was it heard that an Emperor claimed a negative voice in making a Canon of a Council valid which concerned matters purely Spiritual nay nor disaccepted them decreed unanimously by the Fathers but all the world lookt upon him as an unjust and tyrannical incroacher They receive indeed Authority from the Emperor in this sense that his subscription and command to proclaim them makes them have a more powerful reception and secures them from the obstacles of turbulent and rebellious spirits But this will not content you your aym is that they should not have the Authority or validity of a Canon without the last-life-giving-hand of the Emperors vote which is onely a strain of your own liberality to him or rather of your envy towards the Church without any ground of his rightful claim to any such Jurisdiction over Councils SECT 7. Other empty Proofs of this pretended Right confuted THese rubs being removed it will be our next sport to address an answer to his nineteenth Section it self where omitting his ten Parenthesisses which contain nothing but either sayings of his own or Greek out of Strabo's Geography That the Romans kept their assizes at divers places or Testimonies from the Council of Chalcedon already answered omitting these I say I will briefly resume the whole sence of the Paragraph as well as I can gather it out of the some-thing-more Lucid intervals of his mad Parenthesisses And this I take to be the sum of it That Kings should according to emergent conveniences change their Seats of Iudicature and that the same reasons may require a removal of Ecclesiastical Seats wherefore there being nothing to the contrary constituted either by Christ or his Apostles it follows That Kings may when they please erect and consequently remove Primacies and Metropolitans I answer That Secular Courts may be removed upon good occasions is so evident to every Fool that it needs neither Greek nor Strabo to prove it That Ecclesiastical Seats for greater conveniences of the Church be also subject to removal is likewise evident and constituted by the Council of Chalcedon Can. 17. But his inference That it belongs to the right of Kings to erect and transfer them is weaker then water nor has the Doctor infused into it the least grain of Reason to strengthen it Yet first to prove it he says Nothing is found either by Christ or his Apostles ordered to the contrary Which is a most pitiful Negative proof as indeed the greatest part of his Book iâ— and supposes to make it good That neither Christ nor his Apostles said did or ordered any thing but what is exprest in Scripture which is both expresly contrary to Scripture it self and to common reason also Besides this wise proof is both most unjust towards us and silly in him to expect unjust towards us ingaging us to prove out of Scripture That Kings cannot erect Primacies and Patriarchates whereas there is no such word there as either Primate or Patriarchate which he would have us shew thence not subject to Kings Nor is it less silly in him to expect That the Scripture should make mention of the erection or not erection of Primacies and Patriarchates by Secular Powers since the Secular Powers when the Scripture was written being most bloody Tyrants and Persecutors of the Church were more likely to hang up all Primates and Patriarchs then either erect or remove their Seats to a more convenient place Yet if you would see something to the contrary why Kings should not use Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction I can produce you the sence of the Catholick Church the best Testimony that can be alleaged for the meaning of Gods Spirit but because this weighs little with you I shew you next the Testimony of common sence and reason which tells you Faber fabrilia tractet and that those whose education institute of life particular designment to and total dependence on any course of life makes them more strongly addict all their thoughts to perfect themselves knowingly and magisterially in that their proper profession are fitter by far for such an employment then those whose diversly-distracted studies render them half-knowing or half-careful in such performances How much then is it more convenient that Ecclesiastical persons should manage the affairs of the Church then Secular Princes whom partly their necessary Temporal occasions partly voluntary Recreations Court attendances and entertainments so quite take up that they can have but saint and weak reflections either of knowledge or care in comparison of the others upon
the most concerning business imaginable the ordering Gods Church The Doctors Conclusion then which he says is both rational and evident is both irrational and very dim-coloured to any eye but his own who supposes as he tells us here for our farther confirmation That he hath made it already clear from the refutation of our Plea for St. Peters Universal Pastorship whereas it hath been manifested he had not one express word of proof to make good his pretended confutation insomuch as I promise him a general pardon and acquittance for the frivolousness of all the rest if he can shew me in his Answer that any one place expresly testified that which he pretended to evidence by Testimonies What he adds That it was appointed by the Council of Chalcedon de jure that the King may erect a Primacy when he pleases I dare be bold to call a forgery and that it needs an ID EST of the seventeens to make the Councils words sound to his purpose What he tells us next as a thing certain That King Ethelbert at the time of Austins planting the Faith did erect a Primacy at Canterbury the seat of his Kingdom Imperii sui totius Metropolis saith Bede c. is such a childish piece of insincerity that it craves as much pity as it deserves anger For Bede onely tells us there How the King answered them that he could not assent to their new doctrine yet because they were strangers and desired to communicate to him what they believed to be true he would not trouble them but rather kindly entertain them c. Then follows the Doctors Testimony Dedit ergo eis manfionem in Civitate Dovernensi quae Imperii sui totius erat Metropolis Eisque ut promiserat cum administratione victus temporalis c. Wherefore he gave them a dwelling place in the City of Canterbury the Mother-City of his whole Dominions and with administration of Temporal food he hindred them not from Preaching So that the giving them an House in Canterbury to dwell in and meat to eat is a clear evidence with Master Hammond That the King yet a Heathen erected a Primacy when certainly he knew not then what a Primacy meant Lastly To convince absolutely That Kings were Heads of the Church and translated and erected Primacies at pleasure he concludes That had it not been for this there is no reason assignable why this Nation being in Constantine's time under three Metropolitans there should be an addition of two Provinces or that the Metropolitical power should be so removed As if it could not be done at all unless the King did it What an Argument is here to bring for an up-shot of his proofs That the King is Head of the Church We both acknowledge that some removals of Ecclesiastical Seats have been in England but the Question is Whether it belongs to the Kings or the Popes to cause these removals he undertakes to prove it the Kings right we deny it The Doctor produces his Sacra Anchora or last proof That there is no reason assignable why these Sees were removed had it not been that the King had power We answer We can tell how to remove them without the Kings power to wit by the Popes which is the question he professes to make head against But proceeds not farther then onely to say it must needs be the King and that we cannot assign the Pope and that the thing was done and therefore the King must necessarily be the doer of it Thus you see the Doctor is constant to his Principles in putting his strongest Arguments in the rear What man living is able to withstand so potent and cunning an Adversary Besides suppose there had been neither Pope nor King was there any impossibility that consent of Bishops might remove the Primacy to another See especially the Bishops being anciently of such Authority in England That no weighty affairs were transacted but they had a share in the managing of them You see then Mr. Doctor there are two reasons assignable for the fact which you prove to be the Kings power because he did it and then prove he did it because otherwise it could not have been done After he hath thus convinc't Kings to have power also over Ecclesiastical affairs he proceeds to prove that this power of theirs taken away by the Laws is resumable and although his supposition being shown to be groundless there needs no answer to what he builds upon it yet we will not be so discourteous as to slight his mistakes by affording them no Reply Under Pope Melchiades in Constantines time was made a Decree that if the Donatist Bishops in Africk would return to the Unity of the Church they should be allowed either to keep the Bishopricks they had or be provided of others their obstinacy permitted not this to be executed and therefore it was recalled Neer a hundred years after under Pope Anastasius a National Council in Africa ordained a request to Him and other Bishops of Italy by whose predecessors the revocation had been made that the Donatist Bishops might retain their places if they would return to the Catholike Church the cunning Balsamon puts the provision it self for a Canon of this Council and it had been a foul offence in the Doctor to have taken notice of the request though he must needs have read it in Baronius whom he cites in the very place Therefore he concludes that Laws made at Rome do not take away the liberty of another National Council to make contrary Laws thereunto Although as far as can be drawn out of the fact and Council it argues the direct contrary and that it was not lawful for their National Council to infringe what had been done at Rome so unlucky is the Doctor in bringing Arguments so restiff and kicking that they cast their rider out of his inteâ—t He tells next that a Law though made by a General Council and with the consent of all Christian Princes yet if it have respect to a civil right may in this or that Nation be repealed quoting one Roger Widrington and Suarez the latter of them gives this reason because such a Law made at a general meeting of Princes is intrinsically a civil Law But what the Doctor will do with this after he hath produced it I cannot certainly say onely I see he must be very fruitful in unprov'd suppositions ere it will be able to do him or his cause any good First he must suppose that the title of the Head of the Church is a thing not Ecclesiastical but belonging to a civil right next that that same title is denyed their Kings only upon pretence of a Canon of a Council and not upon Christs donation of it to St. Peter these two unproved ând ungranted positions I say he must suppose gratis Otherwise to what end does he argue that the Canons of Councils are repealable and the Kings right by consequence resumeable What follows next
in the 23 Section that this is affirmed and intended by Balsamon to all Canons in general as the judgement of learned men in his notes on the sixteenth Canon of the Council of Carthage hath already been answered and shown that it is not Balsamon who affirms it but other men neither doth he call them learned men as the Doctor here imposes on him but onely says that some men say the Emperor can do such and such things And he adds that those persons proceed upon this ground that the Emperor may do lawfully whatever he lists His last Paragraph for which as his former custom was he reserves the best of his strength proves that this right of Kings to be head in Ecclesiastical affairs cannot be alienated by prescription The testimony he introduces is of one Sayr a late Monk who wrote his Book at Rome a man likely to speak much in the Doctors behalf whose opinion in case he should say any thing against us being but of a private Casuist may with the like facility be rejected as alleadg'd But what says honest Sayr he tells us that when prescription is neither of the Law of Nature nor the divine Law nor the Law of Nations but onely the civil and Canon Law there it extends no farther then every supreme Prince in his Realm by his Law is supposed to will that it shall be extended and therefore that no subject can prescribe exemption from making appeal to his King or that his Prince may not punish him when Reason and Iustice requires Let the testimony it self be what it will what was the Doctor dreaming on when he produced it Marry he dreamt two things First that the Pope had heretofore prescribed against the Kings of England in their pretended right of being head in Ecclesiastical matters next this prescription of the Pope hath not its force from any thing but a Canon or Civil Law These two points the Doctor dreamingly supposes to be certain principles and it is discourtesie in us not to grant them gratis for fear we should spoil his learned Conclusion What a shame is this for a Doctor of Divinity whereas every boy that hath been but two years at Cambridge knows he is first to establish his premises firmly ere he can claim any certainty of truth in his Conclusion to suppose his premises true and upon that grant kindly made by himself to himself conclude at pleasure what he lists And what an unconscionable piece of affected ignorance is this to bring a Testimony which could not possibly be applyed to his purpose without proving the two former self-made suppositions and yet to neglect that necessary task and conclude in these vain words It were easie to apply this distinctly to the confirming of all that hath been said but I shall not expatiate It is now become an old excuse with the Doctor to cry he is out of his way when he comes to a passage he cannot get over but all-to-be-labours things frivolous and which his self-laid grounds once supposed would be out of question Thus you see an end of his sixth Chapter which was totally built upon this ground that the Authority of Head of the Church was no more then Patriarchal and consequently needed in rigour of dispute no other reply but onely to deny the supposition and bid him prove it What has been answered to each particular was onely to let the Reader see how inconsequently and weakly he builds even upon his own foundations SECT 8. A Reply to Doctor Hammonds Narrative Confession of his Schism THe Doctor having laid his tottering grounds for the Kings Supremacy in Ecclesiastical affairs by alleadging some Testimonies expresly against himself and his cause and not one expresly for them but what his fellow-schismaticks afforded him Next having supposed upon his own strongly-dreaming imagination without one direct place of any Authentick writer against clouds of most plain Testimonies from Fathers and Councils frequent in our Controvertists and not touched by him in way of answer against the most visible practice and universal belief of the whole Catholick world that the Pope is onely a private Patriarch and hath no right of Jurisdiction over the universal Church And lastly out of a few Testimonies witnessing de facto that Kings did erect and remove Patriarchates without any word excluding the Churches precedent orders having concluded that such a power belonged de jure to Kings and was annext to a Crown These three things most gravely supposed he goes about to clear the Church of England from the imputation of casting off obedience to the Bishop of Rome at the Reformation which is the intent of this Chapter But first he lays down at large the whole history of Schism ommitting onely the main things that might disgrace it and by what degrees or steps this miserable Kingdom and Church came to renounce the obedience to those Ecclesiastical superiors who had by their own confession for eight or nine hundred years steered that-then-secure Barque in a calm unity of Faith and which Authority all the then present world except King Henry's now friend but late Antagonist Luther acknowledged and submitted to First he tells us this was done by the Clergy in a Synod recognizing the King to be supreme Head of the Church of England Secondly By their submitting themselves to the King and thirdly the definition of the Universities and Monasteries after debate that the Pope had nothing to do more in England then any other extern Bishop that is nothing at all And all this in this sort concluded subscribed and confirmed by their corporal oaths which word corporal was well put in for their Souls and Consciences never went along with it was afterwards turn'd into Acts of Parliament in which it was resolved upon the question to defie the Pope and all his works In answer to which though a bare narration how a Schism was made deserve none yet to devoid it of al excuse it may pretend to I object first that it did not originally spring from Conscience no not even an erroneous one but from manifest malice and viciousness Next that the Kingdoms assent to this il originiz'd breach was not free And thirdly that though both these were granted yet this act of theirs so largely laid out by Doctor Hammond is truly and properly a Schism and entitles them schismaticks nay the more the Doctor dilates upon it the more schismatical he makes the breach of which the two latter himself though never so loath must acknowledge unless he will deny his own words To begin with the first all the world knows that till King Henry violenced the breach all England both Clergy and Laity were as equally and as peaceably conjoyned to the Catholike Church under the government of her supreme Pastour the Bishop of Rome as either France or Spain are now neither did they ever express any scrupulosity that they had remained under such a Government ever since the Conversion of their first
and Schism And though the Doctor excuses the imputation of King Henries Sacriledge saying That Sacriledge is no more Schism then it is Adultery yet it is enough if he grant as he must That both his Sacriledge and his Schism were born of the same mother-occasion the Kings lust and so though the Doctor say That facies non omnibus una Yet I answer Nec diversa tamen qualem decet esse sororum their faces not the same Nor different yet as sisters well became Neither is this all to shew that the first occasion of the breach was not Conscience The King himself desired oftentimes afterwards a reconcilement which being not possible without revoking all he had done despair made him resolve Over shooes over boots to make the rupture still wider while he lived though at his death when it was no time to dally the care of his Soul now out-weighing the pleasure of his Body he with extream grief of heart repented him of his Schism By this one may see how justly the Doctor pretended Pag. 18 19 as an excuse of his Schism The care of their Conscience and the not-admitting any sin which the Church may oblige them to subscribe to whereas if the original of the breach be this as it most evidently is then I cannot conceive the Church obliged the ring leader of it to any sin in bidding him keep his own wife But if you pretend another which by the whole scope of this Chapter you seem not to do it will be found to have no nobler an extraction then the former onely perhaps the carnal sin in him may be changed into a spiritual one in you that is King Henries lust into your self-conceited pride and refractory disobedience which may indeed outâ—vy and excel him though not excuse you But perhaps your grounds which before absolved the Rebel Out law and Anabaptist will absolve him too by saying it was King Henries present perswasion that his wife was to be put away and then comes in the whole eighth Paragraph of the second Chapter to plead for the adulterous King thus Nay though the error be really on his side yet if the doctrines so proposed that he ought to keep his wife as the condition of Communion be indeed agreeable to truth but yet be really apprehended by him to whom they are thus proposed to be false and disagreeable it will even in that case be hard to affirm That that man may lawfully subscribe or Kâ—-Henry lawfully keep his wife contrary to his present perswasion Thus much for the first thing I undertook to shew that the original of this breach proceeded not from Conscience the second will also appear no less manifest That the progress and promoting of it was altogether as unconsciencious The second consideration which renders this Schism more inexcusable in the now Protestants is That when it first was brought into this Kingdom it was no free choice of the Ecclesiastical State which could the Doctor prove he would think it perhaps of some weight The King using all means both by perswasions and force to make men subscribe persecuting continually those that refused and putting to death many upon the same score among the rest those two Lights of our Nation for learning and piety Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas Moor most intimate with the King and in the sincerest loyalty addicted to him till their knowing conscienciousness made them refuse to subscribe lest they might at once prejudice Loyalty and Religion by a preposterous obedience But what need more proofs since the Doctor grants here Section five That it is easie to believe that nothing but the apprehension of dangers which hung over them by a Praemunire incurred by them could probably have inclined the Clergy to subscribe thus he Though blowing and supping both at once he striaght-way addes That the Reasons or Arguments offered in debate were the causes as in all charity we are to judge of their decision Whereas I cannot see any reason why the Doctor should be so uncharitably charitable as to judge them not onely weak but to have been hardned and lost for the future all feeling of Conscience for their lapse since the fore-going fear bears the weight of a strong prejudice against the clear Verdict of Conscience and the future recantation of all the Bishops who then subscribed in Queen Maries time and their persisting in Queen Elizabeths days rather evidences That the curb being removed which misled them it was Conscience which made them return and strength and force of Conscience which made them afterwards persevere in the same judgment The third thing I am to prove and make the Doctor confess is That there was a breach made which denominates them truly and properly Schismaticks The first part is so clear that it needs no proof since the very deed bears witness For first your self acknowledge you renounced the Authority of the Roman See and cast it out of this Iland Which Authority yet you must acknowledge likewise That all the whole World which before the breach you held the onely good Christians submitted to as sacred and descended from Christs institution which Authority was known and held both by them and your selves till then to be over both you and your King in Ecclesiastical matters and had enjoyed the possession of that Claim confessedly eight or nine hundred years nor this upon title onely of a Patriarchate your Conversion or Grant of Kings but of an Universal Primacy and Pastorship over the whole Church by Christs grant and before your conversion was dream'd on Lastly The Government of the Church thus established was held by all those whom before that day you accounted the onely Faithful as of Divine Right and a point of Faith and that the denial of it twisted into one crime both Heresie and Schism A manifest breach then and Schism there was made by you first from that supreme Ecclesiastical Governor under whom both you and your Ancestors till that time had ever-continued and next from the Universality of Christians by erecting to your selves a new structure of Church-Government which all the vast Congregation of these from whom you broke detested and abhorred as Sacrilegious and Schismatical Singularity therefore most clearly manifested it self in your new Church-Government and if singularity be opposite to a community of which Communion is the Form it follows evidently That your singularity destroyed Communion and so was formally Schism Again if multitudes of things of the same species cannot be made one otherwise then by the unity of order it follows That what dissolves this order dissolves the unity and so causes a breach or Schism But you manifestly unravelled all the then constituted order of Gods Church by casting out of the Kingdom the supreme Authority in which as in a knot the other several ends were sum'd and tied up therefore you also unravelled and broke asunder its unity This then as it is acknowledged by you so in it self is
be rendred that the Government was injust ' which as you see could not Irrational therefore was that present perswasion of theirs and if so not sprung from reason therefore from unreasonable passion that is from vice therefore sinful and obnoxious to punishment as all other like perswasions are which make men think and act against their duties and obligations Besides all the Logick we have hitherto heard assures us nothing can convince the understanding but evidence and therefore men take so much paines about the moods and figures that the discourse may prove evident wherefore whatsoever assent comes not out of Evidence must come from our will and wilfulnesse and by consequence cannot be free from desert of punishment if it happen to be wrong and wrongfull Neither availes it to pretend invincible ignorance since no man living if free from a proud spirit can be so sottish as not to know that it is his obligation to obey his Superiors so long setled in the possession of their command till most open and undeniable Evidences and not seeming ones onely should discover that Authority null And if the obligation be of belief he must condemn the Churches judgment in not seeing the falsity of her doctrine and prefer his own before millions more learned who liv'd and dy'd in that faith which savours too strong of a self-conceited pride or else imagin so little sincerity left in the Church that all see and wilfully adhere to a known falshood but himselfe which is a plain sign of a rash and Pharisaical presumption And are not those punishable yet the Doctor would stroke such a fellow on the head and give him sugar plums for following his present perswasion and self-conceit which he nicknames conscience Nay he highly applauds his first Reformers whose conscience no doubt was tainted with the same leaven The Material Schism then which was manifestly your fact is made formal by your want of evidence that the doctrine was erroneous and consequently her Government violable Both which joyn'd together give you in plain termes your own name of flat proper and formal Schismaticks and entitle you to all the bed-roll of vices and curses which you hoarded up for your self and your friends in your first Chapter SECT 11. The Doctors argument that the Popes power in England was deriv'd under the Kings Concession refuted BUt it is now high time to returne to overlook the work who after the declaration of the matter of fact confesses no great hold can be taken from the freeness of the Clergy's determination and therefore the whole difficulty devolves to this one enquiry whether the Bishop of Rome were Supreme Head or Governour of the Church of England in the reign of King Henry the eighth That is we are come about again to the beginning of the Book But I am mistaken he tells us he hath largely disproved in his Chap. 4 5 6. all pretensions from St. Peters Supremacy and from Englands Conversion to whose particular answers I refer the Reader for full satisfaction and he has now invented a new ground of the Popes Supremacy in England to wit the voluntary Concession of our Kings What the Doctor meanes I cannot imagine Some particular priviledges and as I may say pious curtesies have out of a special respect been granted by our Kings to that See to whom they owe their first knowledge of Christ and his Law but these are not the thing in debate The right of Supreme Authority is our question now who ever held this to come from the Concession of our Kings Yet this ayr-beating Champion of Schism first fancies this to be our tenet and then beats it all to dirt He is as valiant as Sir Iohn Falstaff let him tell his own story and hee 'l make you beleeve he has kill'd eleven Enemies when but one opposed him We onely found the Popes Primacy upon his Succession to St. Peter This is the onely adversary-point the Doctor is to combate which he hath most weakly opposed with grosse mistakes palpable contradictions to Scripture and pinning all the words that made for his purpose to every testimony as hath been shew'd But to counterfeit a triumph he makes every trivial thing done either by or about the Pope to be the very ground of his Primacy and then falls to work and impugnes them as really as if he thought we held them The Pope cannot doe any good action or convert a Nation but that must be the ground of his Universal Pastorship over us and be impugned accordingly A beggerly penny cannot be given to the Pope by our Kings for pious uses and out of a gratefull obligation but the poore Peter-pence and such like petty grants must presently be the Popes Universal Authority given him by the Concession of our Kings and that as such must be impugned The Kings of England France c. cannot be said by G de Heimburgh to be free from swearing obedience to the Pope at their instalment an obligation peculiar to the Empire of Germany but presently the Doctor concludes hence an absolute power in our Princes I suppose he means in Ecclesiastical matters for in temporal none denies it so as now the very ceremony of swearing obedience to the Pope is become the very granting of the formal universal Pastorship and they that doe it not are concluded to be free from the Popes Jurisdiction though he knows well enough that the King of France who as he confesses performes no such ceremonious courtesie towards him acknowledg'd notwithstanding himselfe subject to him as the Head of Gods Church Lastly which he touches here againe he cannot read in some Authors that Kings de facto executed the erecting and removing of Patriarchates though the testimony doe not exclude the Churches fore ordering it but presently the Popes Universal Power must be supposed to be transdignifi'd into a private Patriarchate and as a Patriarchate impugned Thus nothing can come amiss to the Doctor Every argument he undertakes to manage is equally strong and unresistable A pot gun will serve him to batter downe the walls of Rome He was borne a Controvertist and it is an even wager whether hee be better in the gift of Use and Applicatioon or in the Art of Dispute and Consutation Next comes another Dilemma or forked Argument which though proceeding on the former false supposition needs no answer yet for the Readers recreation we will afford a glance First it is observable that he never brings this bug-bear Argument upon the stage but when he has made a Prologue for it of some forg'd supposition of his own and then the Thing in vertue of that acts and talkes through the vizard of a mistake and yet ere it comes to a Conclusion the Doctors weak reason cracks to make both ends meet The summe of it is this that The Authority of the Pope was either originally in our Kings so as they could lawfully grant it to the Pope or not if not then the grant
to overload a weak patience and every small discountenancing makes those that have enjoy'd a long case cry out persecution I see your parchment Church shrinks and â—naâ—kles at the sight of the fire while the Catholike remaines firm and unconsum'd nay growâ— clearer in the midst of it And yet I doe not intend to deny many of you have been very great losers by these late Revolutions but onely to say your sufferings are to bee refer'd to a civil not religious account or at least that nothing even in your own judgment essential to Religion is persecuted or so much as deny'd in England for Bishops and Service-book and Kings Supremacy you must not call essential without contradicting your own both profession and practise since you can so kindly embrace your Sister-Churches and communicate with them who deny those points as zealously as the fiercest Anabaptist Lastly our literal sound of Hoc est Corpus meum which the Doctor calls our principal espoused doctrine of Transubstantiation Indeed wee had rather wed our beleefe to that sence of Gods word which Fathers Councils and the perpetual doctrine and practise of Gods Church hath recommended to us as the Virgin-daughter of him who is the Truth than to a loose Polygamy of 40. several interpretations Minerva's born of your own heads whose mutually-contradicting variety â—hews them to come by the paternal line from him who is the Father of all falshood For these prejudices instill'd into the hearts of Catholikes the Doctor and his Church spare us very charitably and are far from casting us out of the Church For Gods sake Mr. Dr. whither would you have cast us Would you throw the house out of the windowes I mean the Church Gods house out of the window of Schism which you broke in the side of it Again let us but see how artificial nay incomparable nonsence this Dr. speakes I conceive nothing can bee cast out of a thing that was never in it shew us then that there was once a constituted Church of Protestants govern'd by the King as Supreme Head and holding their doctrines and practises in which the Roman Catholike once was but receded from that Doctrine and Government and invented this new Religion which hee holds at present Unlesse the Catholikes were once thus in you how could you cast them out What a weakness is this to think that Robin Hood Little Iohn and a few Outlawes doe King Richard and all England a great deal of favour in not casting them out of their Rebel-commonwealth as no true members of it and denying them the protection of their seditious counter-lawes under which Lawes and in which Common-wealth neither the King nor his good subjects were ever reputed One word more ere I leave this point to let the rational Reader see whether the Protestants or we bee more chargeable of judging and despising others Suppose Mr. Doctor wee who are sons of the Catholike Church had both judged and despised you upon our own private heads it had been but to judge and despise our equals But your Reformation had been impossible unlesse you had first both judged despised and prefer'd your selves above your Supreme Governours the Church and all your Forefathers The chief Government impower'd actually over you in Ecclesiastical Affaires you rejected and cast out of this Island Next many of your wise Brethren since preaching teaching and writing whole Bookes to shew that that Governour is Antcichrist the Beast in the Apocalypse and what not Could these things bee done without judging and despising You made Reformations and recessions from the former Churches doctrine cry'd out she had erred was a Strumpet the Whore of Babylon impious sacrilegious idolatrous Was not this the most rash judging the most venemous railing at and reviling of Gods sacred Spouse formerly your Mistresse and Mother that ever was foam'd out of the mouth of madness it selfe Again the whole world whom you esteemed before good Christians and all your Ancestors in England condemned by their contrary beleefe your new Reformed Doctrine And doe you think your innovators could have broach't their opposite doctrines without both judging and despising all this vast Authority Your Charity then Mr. Doctor in this point can bee onely imagin'd to consist in this that you have not judged and despised your selves for all else that you thought formerly to deserve any Authority you both judged despised rejected revil'd and condemned In a word our judging you is our subscribing in our own thoughts to that Verdict which the Church has past against you whose tribunal was held by all the whole Christian world and your selves also till you became guilty to be the most high and sacred that ever gave sentence since the world's Creation As for despising your persons we deny it as a meer calumny and professe our selves bound to honour every one according to his quality and degree the reasons indeed which you produce to clear your selfe from Schism we despise as worse than ridiculous A Paradox in a matter indifferent if maintain'd ingeniously deserves its commendations but the most manifest absurdities that can bee imagin'd and in which are interessed mens salvations such as is the renouncing an Authority granted to bee the most ancient most sublime most sacred in the world upon fallible incertain and unevident grounds and onely sustain'd by plain contradictions false and self-â—eign'd suppositions ID ESTS of our own adding the best proof not arriving so high as a probability These I say Mr. Doctor have nothing to secure them from our despising unlesse perhaps it bee their falling below ouâ— contempt Of the mixt temper of these is the constitution of your Book which shews that you have been used to row at your own dull pleasure in the shallow and softly-murmuring current of a Sermon but never launch't with a well rigg'd Ship of Reason into the â—oysterous Maine of deeper controversies Thus the Doctor concludes his Treatise of Schism closing up his tenth Chapter with these words I foresee not any objection which may give mee temptation or excuse further to enlarge on this matter No truly I could never yet discern you guilty of that fault that objections gave you any great temptation to answer them since I have not seen you put one Objection or Argument of ours worth a straw from the beginning of the Book to the end On the contrary when you light on a wrong supposition of your own as that the Pope is onely a private Patriarch that the Papal Authority in this Island came to the Pope from the Title of its Conversion or from Concession of our Kings then I observe a very strong temptation in you to enlarge a whole Chapter upon that which no body objects except your own fancy Hee adds that he professes not to know any other branch of Schism or colour of fastning that guilt upon our Church made use of by any which hee hath not prevented Yes Mr. Doctor I told you before how you
examine whether his complaints bee true or false since he does not shew there was no other remedy but division and much more since it is known if the authority be of Christs institution no just cause can possibly be given for its abolishment but most because all other Catholick Countries might have made the same exception which England pretends yet they remain still in communion with the Church of Rome whose Authority you cry out against as intolerable nay the former Ages of our Countrey which your selfe cite had the same cause to cast the Popes supremacy out of the land yet rather preferred to continue in the peace of the Church then attempt so destructive an innovation as Schism draws after it Neither nâ—w after we have broke the ice do our neighbour Nations think it reasonable to follow our example and drown their unity in the waters of Contradiction Lastly the pretences on which the English Schism was originally made were far different from those you now take up to defend it there was then no talk of imposing new Creeds as the conditions of Communion no mention of the abominations of Idolatry and Superstition which now fill your Pulpits nor indeed any other original quarrel but the Popes proceeding according to the known Lawes of the Church which unfortunately happen'd to bee contrary to the tyrannical humour of the King The other point of due moderation is a very pleasant Topick had I a mind to answer at large his Book The first part of moderation is the separating themselves from their Errours not their Churches this signifies to declare them Idolaters superstitious wicked and neverthelesse communicate with them reconciling thus light to darkness and making Christ and Antichrist to be of the same society I confesse this a very good moderation for him that has no Religion in his heart or acknowledges his own the worst there being no danger for him to fear seducing by communication with others But whoever is confident of his own by this very fact implicitely disapproves others I cannot say mine is true but I must say the opposite is false mine is good but the opposite I must say is naught mine necessary but I must judge that which is inconsistent carries to damnation though I am bound both to pity and love the person that disâ—ents Therefore who does not censure a contrary Religion holds not his own certain that is hath none The second part of moderation hee places in their inward charity which if hee had manifested by their external works we might have had occasion to beleeve him Our Saviour telling us the tree is known by the fruit it bears The third part therefore hee is pleased to think may bee found in that they onely take away Points of Religion and adde none Wherein is a double Errour For first to take away goodnesse is the greatest evil that can be done What more mischievous than to abrogate good lawes good practises Let them look on the Scotch Reformation who have taken the memory of Christ from our eyes by pulling down Pictures and Crosses the memory of His principal actions by abolishing Holydayes the esteem of vertue by vilifying his Saints and left him onely in the mouths of babling Preachers that disfigure him to the people as themselves please What if they took away the New Testament too and even solemn Preaching and left all to the will of a frantick Teacher were not this a great moderation because they added nothing The second abuse is that he who positively denies ever adds the contrary to what hee takes away Hee that makes it an Article there is no Purgatory no Mass no prayer to Saints has as many Articles as he who holds the contrary Therefore this kind of moderano is a purefolly The last Point hee deems to be a preparation of mind to beleeve and practise whatever the Universal Church beleeves and practises â— and this is the greatest mock-fool Proposition of all the rest First they will say there is no Universal Church or if any indeterminate that is no man knowes which it is and then with a false and hypocritical heart professe a great readiness to beleeve and obey it Poor Protestants who are led by the nose after such silly Teachers and Doctrines who following the steps of our old mother Eve are flatter'd with the promses of knowledge like the knowledge of God but paid onely with the pure experience of evil In his seventh Chapter hee professes that all Princes and Republicks of the Roman Communion doe in effect the same things which the Protestants doe when they have occasion or at least plead for it What non sense will not an ill cause bring a desperate man to All this while hee would perswade the World that Papists are most injurious to Princes prejudicing their Crowns and subjecting their Dominions to the will of the Pope Hee has scarce done saying so but with a contrary blast drives as far back again confessing all hee said to be false and that the same Papists hold the very doctrine of the Protestants in effect and the difference is onely in words So that this Chapter seems expresly made to justifie the Papists and to shew that though the Popes sometimes personally exceed yet when their passion is over or the present interest ceases then they acknowledge for Catholikes and Orthodox those who before oppos'd them as also that the Catholike Divines who teach the doctrine of resisting the Pope in such occasions are not for that cast out of Communion which is as much as to say it is not our Religion or any publick Tenet in our Church that binds any to those rigorous assertions which the Protestants condemn If this be so what can justifie your bloody Lawes and bloodier Execution for the fourscore years you were in power Why were the poor Priests who had offended no farther than to receive from a Bishops hands the power of consecrating the body of Christ condemned to die a Traitors death Why the Lay-man that harboured any such person made liable to the same forseiture of estate and life Why were Baptisms Churchings Burials Marriages all punished Why were men forced to goe to your Synagogues under great penalties Seldom any lawful conviction exacted but proceeding upon meer surmises A Priest arrested upon the least suspition and hurried before the Magistrate was not permitted to refer his cause to witnesses but compelled to be his own Accuser and without any shadow of proof so much as enquir'd after if he deny'd not himselfe immediatly sent to prison as a Traitor A Priest comming to his Trial before the Judges was never permitted to require proof of his being a Priest It sufficed that having said Mass or heard a Confession he could not prove himselfe a knave What shall I say of the setting up of Pursuivants to hare poor Catholikes in all places and times I have seen when generally they kept their houses close-shut and if any knock't there was a sudden
pang and sollicitude before they durst open their doors They could neither eat nor sleep in any other security than that which a good Conscience gave them But the cruelst part of all was to defame us of Treason First you make a Law that to acknowledge the Successor of S. Peter had a common superintendency over the Church was Treason and then brand us for Traitors Should a Presbyterian or Independent Power make it Treason to acknowledge Prelacy would you think it reasonable presently to conclude all the older-fashion'd Protestants Traitors Nor can I perswade my selfe I offer any violence to Charity if I plainly and roundly charge you that in all this you proceeded flatly against your Consciences it being impossible you should really judge the bare receiving Orders beyond Sea to be Treason which is abundantly convinc't by your very offer of pardon nay sometimes preferment if hee whom you made the people beleeve was a dangerous and bloody Traitor would but go to Church with you For what Priest dyed for being a Priest but hee might have rescu'd himselfe at the last hour by such submission What Priest was so bad whom you were not ready to entertain with honour if hee would take party with you So unlucky is his Lordship in this Chapter that whatever his intention is he absolves us or at least condemns himselfe if he would be understood as the Letter of his Exceptions sounds he absolutely clears our Religion of a calumny which the Protestants most injuriously charge upon us that our vassalage to the Pope destroyes our subjection to our Prince citing so many instances where Catholikes remaining such have disobey'd the Pope If he on purpose layes his sense to bee ambiguous of which I have some jealousie because hee uses that jugling phrase in effect then hee absolutely proves himselfe a Deceiver In short if he mean honestly he justifies us if otherwise every honest man will condemn him But whatever his inward meaning is the Case open'd will declare it self Christ being to build his spiritual Kingdom upon the Basis not onely of the Roman Monarchy then flourishing but of a multitude of Kingdomes either bred out of the destruction of that or originally independent and distinct from it which in process of time should embrace his Faith saw it necessary to make such a band of Unity betwixt the Churches of which his spiritual Empire was to be integrated that it neither should be offensive to temporal Princes nor yet unprovided of meanes to keep the Church in such amity as to be able to work like the Congregation of Hierusalem which had Cor unum animam unam For this reason he gave the principality among his Apostles to S. Peter and consequently to his Successors among theirs The effect of this Principality was that when publick meetings of Bishops were necessary all emulation who should have recourse to the other was taken away since it was known all were to defer to him meet as and where was most fitting for him Again if any inconvenience fel among Christians there wanted not one who was by office to look to it though in the place where it fell out there were no superior Authority to curb the offenders This one Seat might by the ordinary providence of Almighty God keep a continuance of Succession from S. Peter to the end of the World whereas the vicissitude of humane nature permitted not the like to be done to all the Sees where all the rest of the Apostles had signed their Faith by their precious death Hence 't is the See of Rome is invested with the special priviledge of Mother and Mistress of the Church But not to dive into all or the questionable consequences of this Primacy this onely I intend to insist upon that it is the hinge upon which all the common government and unity in Faith Sacraments Ceremonies and communication of spiritual Fraternity depends which being removed the Church vanishes into a pure Anarchy no one Province or Country having the least obligation to any other to repair to it to obey it to make Meetings and common Ordinances with it So that the whole frame of the Church will be utterly dissolv'd ceasing to be a Church and becomming a ruinous heap of stones precious indeed in themselves but without order shape or connexion By this it clearly followes whatever is the truth of those Questions which our Bishop reckons up to have been disputed between other Christian Countries and the Papacy that as long as this Principality wee speak of is acknowledged so long there is an Unity in the Christian Church all particular Churches being by this subordination perfectly one both with their Head and among themselves This is the bridle our Saviour put in the mouth of his Church to wield it sweetly which way he pleased No dissention in Faith or Discipline nay not any war among Christian Princes could annoy the World if this Authority were duly preserved and governed Many excellent effects we have seen of it and more the world is likely to enjoy when the admirable conveniences of it shall bee unpassionately understood What Christian Prince can chuse but be glad to have an Arbitrator so prudent so pious so disinteressed as a good Pope should be to reconcile differences and to hinder bloodshed either in his own people or between his neighbours And who sees not that the Popes office and condition among those who reverence him is perfectly proper for such an effect beyond the hopes of wisedom that had not known th'exprience of it What a desperate attempt then is it to bite at this bridle and strive to put the whole Christian World in confusion This is your crime in this consists your Schism in this your impiety and wickedness Agreeing then that this is the substance of the Papacy temporal preheminences and wealth being but accidental to it wee shall presently see all those arrows which the Bishop shoots against us fall directly on his own head For if the Papacy stand firm and strong in all those Countries that have resisted the Pope when they conceived hee encroach'd on their ' liberties it is evident notwithstanding all such disputes the Being and Nature of one Church is entirely conserved they all governing themselves in an Unity of Faith and Sacraments and Correspondence like one Body as is visible to any that will but open his eyes and so are Members of one Christian Community Whereas the Reform as they call it has cut off England from all this communication and correspondence and made it no part of any Church greater than it self and by consequence that can pretend to Universality and Catholicism but a headless Synagogue without Brotherhood or Order if joyned with any other it is not in a common head but with the tayles of opposition to the Roman Catholike No more can the several Protestant Churches be allow'd to compose one Body than all the ancient Hereticks did nay than Turks and Iewes and