Prejudices is Will they say to defend themselves that their is a very great difference between the Jewish Visible Church and the Christian that this has its Rights Priviledges and Promises which the other had not For she has a Soveraign Authority over the Faith of her Children a priviledge that she can never err and promises of a perpetual visibility But to come to that they ought first to renounce all those general proofs upon which they found that Absolute Obedience to the Latin Church They need say no more as the Author of the Prejudices has done that the darkness of our minds our personal Prejudices the uncertainty wherein we are of being deceived in our Judgments the being overwhelmed with a thousand cares and a thousand Temporal necessities which almost wholly take us up and which will not allow us to give more then a very little Time to the Examining the Truths of Religion the want of necessary helps the ignorance narrow and limited understandings of the greatest part of mankind constrain us to refer our selves to the Church All that would be to no purpose if they restrain it to a priviledge of the Christian Church For these very same general reasons had place in the time of the Jewish Church men saw not then more clearly then they do in these days they were not more assured in their Judgments they were not less cumbred with worldly affairs they were not less unprovided of necessary helps for the Examination of the Truths of Religion they were not then less ignorant and their minds less narrow then men are now in these days and yet notwithstanding all that did not make it their duty blindly to follow their Pastors or Ordinary Guides These are then nothing but shadows and frivolous pretences which having been of no force then cannot have any weight now We need not further say as the Author of Prejudices has done That it is certain that God can save men and even the most ignorant and simple That yet he does not offer them any other way to Salvation then that of the True Religion That it is therefore necessary that that should be not only possible but easy to be known that yet notwithstanding it is clear that there is no way more difficult more dangerous and less fitted to all capacities then that of examining all its Tenets One may equally apply all those propositions to the Times of the Old Testament as well as to those of the New God could save men there He made no other way to Salvation then that of the True Religion That ought then to have been easily known and that way of Examination was not less dangerous nor more fitted to all sorts of capacities then it is now Notwithstanding all that had not any force to hinder the Faithful from Examining it They cannot then in these days draw any consequence from what they so propose I affirm the same thing of all those other inconveniences which they invent to take away from every one that right of Examining the State of Religion by the Scripture and not wholly to believe their Pastors as that it would be to introduce a Principle of Schism and Division that every one might make himself a Judge of the Church that every one might make a Religion according to his Fancy that it is a great rashness for private Persons to imagine that they have more Understanding and more Wisdom than the whole Church and other such like things They may see that all those arguings are brought in vainly and to no purpose for if they were good and solid being so general as they are they would serve for all Times and all Places and would have their Force in favour of the Jewish Church as well as they would have them conclude in Favour of the Latin In the second place those Rights Priviledges and Promises which they would ascribe to the Christian Visible Church in exclusion of the Jewish are evidently null if they would make them depend precisely on Christianity For as I have before noted the Greek Church the Armenian the Nestorian and Aethiopian might pretend to them as justly as the Latin and yet the Latin applies them to her self in particular to the prejudice of all the others They ought then either to shew us what reason she has to appropriate those Rights Priviledges and general Promises and to make that that regards the Body of the Universal Church become particular to her or it is necessary they shew us that indeed they are not those Rights Priviledges and Promises that are common to all Christian Societies and that they are peculiar to the Latin Church But they know not how to do either the one or the other For neither Nature nor Grace have given any of those Priviledges or Rights to the Latins in exclusion from all other Christians They are neither more Lords of our Consciences nor more Infallible than others Christianity is Uniform throughout The Scripture also does not contain any one particular promise for them On the contrary Saint Paul says That in Jesus Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek nor Barbarian nor Scythian nor Bond nor Free but Christ is all and in all So that the Latin Church has no reason to draw that to her self which is a common Right nor to pretend any peculiar Priviledges But in the summ of all we have made it appear in the foregoing Chapters that those pretended Priviledges of Infallibility which they ascribe to the Christian Church Visible and those promises of perpetual Visibility in that Sence of Visibility wherein they understand it are Chimaeras which have not any Foundation either in Scripture or Reason And as to that right of soveraign-Soveraign-Authority it cannot here be alledged but to very ill purpose For it is that which is yet in Dispute and whereof we have shewn the falsity from the example of the Jewish Church But they may draw from that example a consequence against the Latin one because that if that pretence would have been heretofore pernicious and destructive to Religion and the true Church as they may see it would have been it follows that it will be so yet in these days If then they cannot set before us any other difference between those two Terms and those two Churches which hinders my Conclusion the Argument will hold intire for it will not be enough to overthrow it meerly to say that the Christian Church has that Authority and that the Jewish had it not but they ought to give us a reason for it 3. But to proceed with our Reflexions If that Maxim whereof we treat were true that is to say if men were bound to give to their ordinary Pastors a blind obedience in the matters of Religion to see with their Eyes to tread in their Steps and to devest themselves of their own conduct to rest upon theirs the Jews who rejected Jesus Christ and his Doctrine during the time of his Preaching
who laboured in the Reformation of their Churches religiously Observed They constrained no person and they rejected nothing that was not Alien to the Christian Religion But says the Author of the Prejudices Those two hundred Burghers of a Swisse Town were as Learned and ready in matters of Divinity as we may easily Judge Swisse Burghers to be I answer that this is the Objection of the Pharisees This People said the Enemies of Jesus Christ know not the Law But Jesus Christ did not answer them amiss when he said to them Father I thank thee Lord of Heaven and Earth that thou hast bid these things from the Wise and Prudent and revealed them unto Babes Let the Author of the Prejudices if he will be of the number of those wise and prudent ones we shall not envy him his readiness and his Learning and we shall rest satisfied with this that it has pleased God to place us in the same Rank with those mean Swisse Burghers to whom as much Babes as they were God vouschafed to make his Gospel known The true knowledge of Christians does not consist in having a head full of Scholastick Speculations and a Memory loaded with a great many Histories and multitudes of passages of divers Authors or a great many Critical Notions nor in having well-studied Lombard Albertus Magnus Thomas Aquinas Scotus Bonaventure Capreolus Aegidius Romanus Occham Gabriel Biel the Canon Law the Decretals and all those other great Names wherewith they stunned the People in times past Our True knowledge is the Holy Scripture Read with Humility Charity Faith and Piety See here all that those poor Burghers of Zurich knew they were neither Prelats nor Cardinals nor Doctors of Lovain nor of the Sorbonne but they were good men they feared God they studied his Word and for the rest of the State of their understandings and the degree of their light may appear by the Reformation which they made for the Tree may be known by its Fruits 4. Objection The matter which was to have been handled in that pretended Synod cannot be more considerable For they Treated therein about abolishing all at once the Authority of all the Councils that were held in the Church since the Apostles days under a pretence of reducing all to the Scripture Answer Since the True Authority of the Fathers and Councils consists in their Conformity with the Divine writings the way solidly to establish them is to reduce all to the Scripture as they did in that Synod If the Author of the Prejudices pretends to give the Fathers and Councils and Authority quite different from that of the Word of God whereof they ought to be the Ministers and Interpreters we may answer him that he affronts them under a pretence of Honouring them For as it is the greatest real injury that can be done to a Subject to give him the Authority of his Prince So it is the most real injury which they can do to the Fathers to invest them with the Authority of God 5. Objection They medled with the Faith of all the other Christian Churches which the Switzers could not but condemn in embracing a new Faith Answer The Swisses did not embrace a new Faith but they renounced those Errors that it may be might have prevailed for some Ages but which were new in regard of the Christian Religion They did not condemn other Churches in that which they had of good but they condemned that evil which they had in them A sick person who has cured himself condemns the diseases of others but he condemns not that Life which remains in them On the contrary he exhorts them to be healed for fear least remaining in that sick condition they should die 6. Object They treated about all those dangerous Consequences which that Change of Religion would have produced and which were easy to have been foreseen Answ They Treated also about the Glory of God and their own Salvation and all those dangerous Consequences which could not but come from the blindness and passion of those who would hold the People of God under their servitude ought not to have prevailed over two such great interests as that of the Glory of God and Mens Salvation All these Objections are well near the same that the Pagans made against the Primitive Christians and it seems that the Author of the Prejudices has studied them out of Celsus Prophyrie and Julian to make use of them against us 7. Object Moreover they declared that they would have men make use of the Authority of the Scripture only and by that rash and unheard of Prejudice they condemned the procedure of all the foregoing Councils wherein they were wont to produce the opinion of the Fathers to decide the controverted Questions Answ The Scripture is the only Rule of the Faith of Christians and there is no other but that alone whose Authority we ought to admit as Soveraign and decisive of Controversies It is not True that all the foregoing Councils admitted of the Opinions of the Fathers and their Traditions under that Quality The Author of the Prejudice lays it down without Proof and Reason 8. Object The Church being in possession of its Doctrine they ought to have forced Zuinglius to produce his Accusations against that Doctrine and to have made the proofs which he alleadged against it to have been examined But in stead of that they ordered that he should appear in that Disputation in Quality of Defender and that it should be the others part to convince him if Error Answ If the Church of Rome would have the World believe the Doctrine that she Teacheth it is fit she should furnish it with proofs and her pretended possession cannot assure it Those who propound any thing as matter of Faith are naturally bound to prove it and it is absurd to say that Possession discharges that Obligation for the Faith ought to be always founded upon proof and it never stands upon meer possession otherwise the Heathens ought to have kept their Religion which was established on so Antient a Possession 9. Object All that Examination was further grounded upon this ridiculous Principle That if there could not be found any person within the Territory of Zurich that could make the Errors of Zuinglius appear by the Scripture it ought to be concluded that he had none As if the weakness of those who opposed his Doctrine could not be an effect of their Ignorance rather then a default in the cause they defended Answ This Objection is no more to the purpose then the foregoing What could the Senate of Zurich have done more then to have assembled all the Clergy of their States to have called the Bishop of Constance or his Deputies thither to have received all the World and given all liberty of propounding their Arguments and Proofs It belonged to them to propound them if they had any and if they had none they ought to have acknowledged that 'till then
submission and hindring them from entring upon any Examination of the Matters of Religion But blessed be God that notwithstanding all the endeavours they have hither to made on a subject that has exhausted all the subtilties of the Schools the Justice of our Cause which is the same with that of our Fathers has not receiv'd the least prejudice and we can even assure our selves that there has been nothing said the weakness and impertinency of which may not easily be display'd to the bare light of common sence For either those things which our Fathers rejected and which we reject with them are in deed Errors Superstitions and Inventions of men as we believe them to be or they are not If they are not we will be the first that shall Condemn the Reformation and when they shall let us see that on the contrary they are the Truths and right worship that belong to the Christian Religion we shall be very ready to receive them But if in deed they are Errors and Corruptions as we are perswaded they are with what Reason can any man demand by what right we rejected them since it is all one as to demand what right we have to be good men and to take care of our own Salvation We may see then from thence that all those Evasions are nothing else but vain wranglings and that we ought always to examine those Tenets that are Controverted for the Justice or Injustice of the Reformation intirely depends on their Truth or Falshood If we have right at the Foundation they ought not to raise a contention about the Form for to be willing to believe in God according to the purity of his word and to be ready to serve him sincerely are the things to which we are all obliged and which cannot be condemned in whomsoever they are found as on the contrary side to harden one's self in Errors to practise a false Worship and to expose one's self to the danger of Damnation under pretence of observing some Formalities is such a guidance of one's course as can never be Justified It will here be to no purpose that they say that in this Controversy concerning the Justice of the Reformation they do not suppose that we have any reason in the Foundation of it but that on the contrary they have a mind to let us see that we have no right at all in the Foundation since we have none at all in the Form and that they would only say that those things which we call Errors and a false Worship are not so indeed as we imagine them to be since they are the Institutions of a Church that can't Err and to whose Authority we ought absolutely to submit our selves This is in my judgment the course that not long since an Author has took in a Book Intitled Just Prejudices against the Calvinists For he pretends to conclude that our Religion is faulty in the very Foundation because there are Errors in the manner of our Reformation and that those things which we reject as Errors are the Truths that we ought to believe because we ought to acquiesce in the Authority of the Church of Rome But that can never hinder us from coming to a discussion of the Foundation it self separated from all Forms and from all prejudices for when these Gentlemen have reasoned against us after this manner You are faulty in the very Foundation because you have not had right in the Form we oppose to that this other Reasoning whose consequence is not less Valid as to the subject about which it is concerned We have not done wrong in the manner because we have right in the Foundation And when they tell us That which you call our Errors Transubstantiation Adoration of the Host Purgatory c. they are not Errors since we cannot Err we Answer them You can Err because the Transubstantiation the Adoration of the Host the Pargatory c. that you teach are Errors And when they reply You ought to believe that which we teach you because you ought to acquiesce and rest in our Authority we rejoyn again We ought not to acquiesce in your Authority because you teach us those things which we ought not to believe In these two ways of Reasoning it is certain that ours is the more equal the more just and more natural For it is by far the more just and natural that the Judgment of those Formalities should depend on the highest Interest that can be in the World which is that of the glory of God and ourown Salvation then on the contrary to make the glory of God and our own Salvation to depend upon some Formalities It is far more reasonable to judge of the Infallibility that the Church of Rome pretends to by the things that she teaches then to judge of the chings that she Teaches by a pretence of her Infallibility But although these two ways were equally Natural and equally Reasonable they can not deny that that which at first drew nearer to the Examen of the Foundation were not more sure and that all good men who ought to neglect nothing conducing to their Salvation were not bound to enter into it in Order to the avoiding of Errors They Propose on one side for a Principle the Authority of the Church of Rome against which there are a thousand things to be said on the other side we Propose the Authority of God himself speaking in those Scriptures which all Christians receive and which the very Enemies of Christianity respect who will dare to deny that in this Opposition it were not more sure to side with that part which rules all by the Authority of God You may deceive your selves say they in taking that for the word of God which is not so And are not you answer we more liable to deceive your selves in taking that for the Church of God which is not so and in taking those for Infallible who are no ways so There is far greater Reason to hope that God will then assist you with the illumination of his Spirit when with humility you search out the sence of the Scriptures which you are so often commanded to do then when you search them through humane prejudices to submit your Consciences to a certain Orde of Men whom God has never told you that they ought to be the Masters of your Faith After all if they will make use of the Authority of the Church of Rome and the pretended faults of our Reformation as an Argument sufficient to let us see that those things which we call Errors are not really so they can demand nothing more of us then to set down this proof in its order with the rest and maturely to consider it in its turn before we determine our selves But to pretend that that ought to hinder us from considering also the proofs on the contrary side by which we may see that those things that we call Errors are really so this were an injust
None are ignorant how they had mingled some false pieces into the true Works of the Fathers as in those of Justin Martyr of Origen of Saint Cyprian of Saint Athanasius of Saint Hilary of Saint Ambrose of Saint Chrysostome of Saint Jerome of Saint Augustin and almost generally of all the Fathers whose names they have made use of to authorise their forgeries None are ignorant what alterations they had made in the true writings of the Fathers whether by changing their words or adding to them or sometimes in cutting off considerable clauses and whole passages entire Who sees not that these ill practises which of themselves are so odious in all sorts of matters and especially in those of Religion could not but encrease the just suspitions that our Fathers had of all that which they named Tradition 14. We might make the same judgment of that visible abuse about Reliques which was brought into the Church For on the one side the devotion of the people was so hot as to that point that it could not keep it self within any measure and on the other the Cheats about them were so multiplied that even those of the weakest understandings could not behold them without being ashamed of them That prodigious quantity of the wood of the true Cross which is scattered over the World witnesses this as likewise the Slippers and Hose of Saint Joseph the Shift of the Blessed Virgin her Coifs her Fillets her Girdles her two Combs her Cloaths her Wedding-Ring the Sword wherewith Saint Michael fought with the Devil the twelve Combs of the Apostles some of the Stones wherewith Saint Steven was stoned the Skin of Saint Bartholomew the Coals that broiled Saint Laurence Aarons Rod the Bones of Abraham of Isaac and Jacob And beyond all that the multiplication of one and the same Relique which is to be found in divers places for there is nothing more ordinary then for one to see two three or four Bodies of the same Saint as of Saint Gervase Saint Protais Saint Sebastian of Saint Pretonilla Saint Anthony and some others All which being very much recommended to the People as the true objects of their Devotion not only without any certain grounds but very often with all the appearances of falsness could not but create a vast prejudice of corruption in that Church and Religion 15. Moreover when our Fathers cast their eyes upon the four chief means that God has established in his Church for the preserving of true Faith and Piety in it which are the Scriptures the publick Worship Preaching and the Sacraments and when they considered after what manner they were altered and the use of all those means almost brought to nothing it was not possible they could do otherwise than conclude that corruption whereof we dispute For as to the Scripture instead of making that the only Rule of Faith they had joyn'd Traditions with them that is to say the most uncertain thing in the World the most subject to Impostures and the most mixed with humane inventions and weaknesses Instead of recommending the reading of that Divine word to the Faithful for their Instruction and their Comfort it could scarce be found even in the hands of some Church-men And as for the Schools they knew far better how to quote Aristotle the Master of the Sentences Albertus Magnus Saint Thomas and Saint Bonaventure then the Prophets and Apostles As for the publick Service they performed it some Ages ago in a strange Tongue unknown to the people who by this means were depriv'd of that benefit which they might justly expect So that the Assemblies were become in that respect Springs stopt up for any publick edification and their little Prayers themselves the Lords Prayer and the Creed were then read almost only in Latin and the Women and Children and People seemed to know God only by the Idea that was given them of that Tongue in which notwithstanding they understood nothing As for Preaching besides that the Pulpit in the greatest part of that time was abandoned we have yet some Books of the Sermons which they made in those days as of Jacobus de Voragine of a Menot a Maillard a Barelette a Discipulus de Tempore which did no very great honour to their Age. They treat there far oftner of the Legends of the Saints then the truths of Religion and that which was yet more deplorable instead of the Word of God they Preached almost nothing else but scandalously extravagant Opinions raw Parallels of a Saint with Jesus Christ ridiculous stories pleasant buffooneries and such like things which to speak moderatly were exceedingly remote from the natural design of the Pulpit and rendred it not only despised but after a sort odious For that which respects the Sacraments not to touch on those multitudes of unprofitable ceremonies wherewith they had loaded them we must confess that that opinion of the necessity of the intention of the Priest which was so generally taught in the School and which Eugenius the Fourth had defin'd in his Instruction to the Armenians in the Council of Florence it destroy'd almost all the benefit of those sacred Mysteries and cast mens Consciences into perpetual scruples and uncertainties For unless they could establish a revelation for every particular Christian what assurance could we have that he who administers the Sacrament to us had an intention to do that which the Church enjoyns him to do or that he had not an intention contrary to that of the Church What assurance could be given that in all that long Train of Priests Bishops and Popes that is to say the Bishops of Rome who had been from the beginning of Christianity down to this present time there had not been any in whom that intention which they make so necessary to the operation of the Sacrament had been defective Yet if one only Priest that shall happen to Baptise a Pope had not had an intention to Baptize him or if he himself was not truly a Priest by the default of the intention of him who gave him Orders or him who Baptized him If one only Bishop who confers Orders on a Pope then when he is made Priest had not an intention to do what the Church pretends to do all that which would come in consequence of that default would be spoiled the Bishops that that Pope afterwards should promote would not be lawful Bishops the Priests on whom those Bishops had conferred Orders would be no lawful Priests and the Sacraments that those Priests should administer would not be lawfully administred What could our Fathers think of such a dreadful confusion which they knew not how to undo unless by supposing a perpetual Miracle Which is that God should have so over-rul'd the intention of all those men that howsoever Wicked Athestical Hypocritical or Profane they should have been yet that not one of them nevertheless should fail in having an intention to do that which the Church enjoyns But what assurance have we
follows not only that God had the same concern in the preservation of the purity of that Church as of that of the Latin Church but that he had yet a far greater For above this that Church had external help for the Conversation of its purity far greater than the Latin Church ever had For it was shut up in one only people and in one Country only It had one Language only one only Tabernacle one only Temple but one civil Government but one only Political Law and but one King where the Western Church had all those apart in many places And yet notwithstanding all that it could not be kept from Corruptions not only at one but divers times not only in matters of small Consequence but after a strange manner by a heap of depraved Traditions by false glosses on the Law by open Idolatries and by a multitude of other things wherewith their Prophets reproached them Had they not then very great reason to think that the Latin Church which had no peculiar promises that it should be kept from Corruption in being distinguisht from that of Israel was not more happy then that in the Conservation of its Purity 4. To this example of the Church of Israel our Fathers adjoyn'd that of the Greek and other Eastern Churches which God had at first honour'd with Christianity as well as the Latin and that the times had nevertheless so dissigur'd them that they did not any farther appear to be what they were heretofore Indeed into what errours and superstitions did not those Churches fall And in how many points does not the Church of Rome find it self to differ at this day from them Some of them observe Circumcision with Baptism others keep up the sacrificing of living creatures after the manner of the Jews some solemnly every Year Baptize their Rivers and their Horses others believe that the smoke of Incense takes away their sins others hold that the Prayers of the Faithful deliver from the pains of Damnation those Souls that are then in Hell others give Pass-ports in due Form to the dying to carry them to Paradise and a thousand other such-like impertinencies that are found to be establisht among those People Why might it not be possible that the Latin Church should have degenerated as well as those Churches Is it that their Christianity was from the beginning different from that of the Latin's or is it because the Latin Church had some peculiar priviledges beyond all others No certainly their Vocation was equal on one part and on the other and the nature of things being so if those Nations had corrupted themselves those of Rome might corrupt themselves as well as they 5. Our Fathers who were not ignorant of those Examples could not but represent all to themselves also in my judgment the times past wherein errours and corruption had visibly prevail'd over the Truth even then when those very Churches of the East and West were joyn'd together in one Body They knew that that had past in the Council of Antioch in favour of the Macedonians in the Councils of Sirmium of Milan of Ariminum at Selucia and at Constantinople in favour of the Arrians and in a Council at Ephesus in favour of the Eutychians without thinking of that which they said of those two Councils held at Constantinople in favour of the Iconoclastes or abolishers of Images the one under the Emperour Leo Isaurious the other under Constantine Copronimus That very thing was an evident token to them that the Latin Church might be very likely in their times fallen into other corruptions and that errour had triumpht over truth For it was not at all impossible that that which had hapned frequently in respect of some errours might not yet with greater success and longer duration happen in respect of other errours 6. Moreover They observed that Councils of a great name among the Latins as those of Constance and Basil had been rejected and opposed by other Councils and that in the most weighty points of Religion to wit in the Case of the Supreme Authority that ought to govern the Church upon Earth For some rais'd the Authority of the Councils above that of the Pope and others would have it that the Popes should have an absolute and an independent and perfectly Monarchical Rule over the Church what could our Fathers conclude from so manifest a contest if not that it had a vast confusion in it and that it was exceeding necessary to the quiet setling of their Minds and Consciences to enter on an examination of that which those men taught in the business of Religion 7. Our Fathers were confirmed in that design when they set before their eyes those obscure Ages through which the Latin Church had past For who knows not what the ninth tenth and eleventh Centuries were not to speak of those that followed them As for the ninth Baronius is forc't to conclude the History of it with saying That it was an Age of affliction to the Church in general and chiefly to the Church of Rome as well by reason of the complaints it had against the Princes of the West and East and the Schism of Photius as by reason of intestine and implacable Wars which had began then to be formed within the very Bosom of that Church That this Age was the most deplorable and dismal above all the rest because those who ought to have been watchful in the Government of the Church not only slept profoundly but the very same Persons laboured all they could intirely to drown the Apostolick-Ship For the Tenth as there are very few Persons but will acknowledge that it was buried in darkness more gross then that of Aegypt so it will be needless here to produce the proofs The eleventh was scarce happier and Baronius begins the History of it with a remark of so universal a Corruption of manners cheifly among the Church-men that it had made way says he for the common beleif of the near approach of Antichrist and of the end of the world How could it be possible that during such gloomy times Religion Faith and Worship should be preserved without any alteration Saint Paul has joyn'd together Faith and a good Conscience as two things that mutually sustain one another and has taken notice that those who cast off a good Conscience make Shipwrack of the Faith In effect saith Saint Chrysostome then when men lead corrupted Lives it is impossible they should keep themselves from falling into perverse Doctrines 8. To these considerations we might joyn that of the two sorts of Philosophies which successively had reign'd in the Church to wit that of Plato and the other of Aristotle to whose principles they had strove to accomodate the Christian Religion For it is scarce to be conceiv'd but that mixture of Platonic and Peripatetic Opinions with the Doctrines of Jesus Christ should have defaced the Faith and quite alter'd his true Worship It was for this
called to it Jesus Christ having told them That when they should be persecuted in one place they should fly unto another besides that I say there is so great a difference between the duty of the Pastors of these last Ages which are so far behind that of the Apostles and that which those Pastors have actually done that one caunot know how to draw any consequence from the one to the other One cannot also conclude any thing from some Expressions of the Antient Prophets which seem to promise a great Temporal Prosperity to the Church no one is ignorant that the Stile of the Prophets may be full of figures and darkned with Vails that they ought not to be taken Literally unless men would be deceiv'd and imitate the Error of the Jews who take them in that manner For the Prophets are wont to represent Spiritual blessings under the borrowed Images of Temporal things and so also the Spirit of Christianity obliges us to explain that which they said of the Messiah and of his Church and not to delineate its prosperities and worldly Grandeur which have no relation at all to the nature of the Gospel Not that one cannot say that some of those Prophecies have been accomplish'd according to the Letter of them in the Times of Christian Emperours for then Kings were its nursing-Fathers and Queens its nursing-Mothers But that one ought not to draw a necessary consequence from thence either for all Times or for all Places and as men are always prone to abuse Temporal blessings such a worldly Prosperity of the Church would tend but in the end to corrupt it CHAP. VII That the Authority of the Prelats of the Latin Church had not any right to bind our Fathers to yeild a blind obedience to them or to hinder them from examining their Doctrines HItherto we have not opposed in our course the Book of Prejudices not but that the end which he proposes to himself has a great connexion with the things of which I have treated but because that Authour has not beleived it necessary to make us renounce the Reformation to justify the Latin Church from those strange disorders which moved the minds of our Fathers nor to speak of that priviledge which she pretends that God has given her by making of her Infallible We do not pretend says he to prove directly the Authority and Infallibity of the Catholick Chureh For although it would be most profitable to do it and though those among the Catholicks who have taken that method have used a most just and lawful way Yet as the prepossessions wherewith the Calvinists are full keep most of them from entring upon these Principles howsoever solid and true they are Charity obliges us to try other ways also and that which follows here seems one of the most natural It supposes for a Principle nothing but a Maxim of Common Sence to wit That a man who finds himself joyned to the Catholick Church by himself or by his Ancestors ought not to break off from her to joyn himself to any other Communion if he discover in that new Communion any signs of errour which may make him judge with reason that he ought not to follow it and that he cannot reasonably hope that God has established it to lead men into the truth So it is that he has thought himself bound to employ himself wholly in that way to rid himself of a great deal of trouble and that he may in this progress load us with a multitude of injuries Yet he must excuse me if I am not of his mind The way which he takes is neither just nor natural It is not just because it takes for granted and indisputable those things which not only are but are almost only to the matters of our Difference For it supposes that that Party which would not have a Reformation and from which our Fathers broke of was the Catholick Church but that is that very thing which is questioned and our Dispute can never be decided but by deciding the whole controversy If he will take that advantage of us that we to accommodate our selves to the custom of the World sometimes give those of the Church of Rome the Name of Roman-Catholicks he cannot be ignorant that those sorts of Condescentions which only respect words cannot infer any consequence as to things nor that they can give any ground to make those suppositions in this Dispute which may be regulated by more solid Principles Further that way which he would follow supposes that our Fathers in reforming themselves made a new Communion and that is yet that very thing that is in Question and we maintain that it cannot be reasonably called so as it will appear in the Progress of this Treatise I say also that that course is not natural For before we should come to consider whether there were not signs of errour in our Reformation the nature of things would first let us see whether our Fathers had not just reasons taken from the state of the Latin Church to Reform themselves and whether it was not possible for that Church to corrupt it self But that could not be well known but by examining what that State was in the days of our Fathers with that pretence of Infallibility as we have done But though the Author of those Prejudices has beleived that he might spare himself the trouble of proving to us the Infallibility and Authority of those whom he calls the catholick-Catholick-Church yet he fails not to require us to submit our selves to those by rendring them an absolute obedience He would have it that we being all so apt to deceive our selves in our Judgments and that the search of true Religion being so difficult that the surest way is for us to see with their Eyes says he to tread in their steps and wholly to strip our selves of our own guidance to give it unto them So also the chief Priests and the Scribes spake among the Jews This People who know not the Law are cursed But Jesus Christ said of these also Let them alone they be blind leaders of the blind and both shall fall into the Ditch If the Maxim of that Authour be good he must affirm that our Fathers were very unhappy for having had their eyes to see those disorders which reigned among the Church-men in their days and that God had highly favoured them had he made them to have been born stupid and blind for he conceivs it would be so far from causing them to fall and be deceived according to the threatning which Jesus Christ gives to those who leave themselves to be so blindly guided that it would be on the contrary the only means to go on with any certainty Howsoever it be we are not bound to be so blind that before we lose the use of our Eyes we must not examine this Question whether we ought to lose them or not Nature and Grace have given them to us they would have
us that we do not deceive our selves in that particular choice that we make of the Authority of the Latin Church to refer our selves to her For we must in that choice rely on our own Reason Who shall secure us that the Lain Church herself does not deceeive her self in the discerning that she makes of the Tenets of Religion That Church is composed of the People and Prelates those people have not more Light than other men and those Prelates are not less subject than the others to that darkness of understanding to Negligence to Prejudices to Passions to a secret Obstinacy in their Opinions and beyond all that they have not a peculiar Interest to favour mens Errors and Superstitions to retain them the more easily in their obedience But those People and those Prelates are a very great number What does that signifie The Heathens and their Guides are yet a far greater number than they and yet they fail not to deceive themselves They are say they rich and powerful and raised in dignity The Heathens and the Mahometans are not less They have external marks but who knows whether those marks are good and whether they do not abuse themselves in the Consequence they pretend to draw from them They assure you that they do not deceive themselves they condemn you if you do not believe that which they believe and they live as to themselves in a perfect peace of mind But the Author of those Prejudices has taught us to answer That all those who compose other Societies appear to have the same assurance with us that they are in the Truth they do not condemn the Latins with less confidence than the Latins condemn them with they are not less exempt from the fear of deceiving themselves they live also in as great a Peace and Tranquillity That assurance also and that confidence that freedom from trouble and fear that Peace and that Tranquillity grounded upon the belief that they are in the right way and that they walk after their Light are marks so ambiguous and so deceitful that they may be found most frequently to be joyned infinitely more frequently with Errour and the way of Hell than with Truth and the way of Salvation These are the very words of the Author of those Prejudices whereof we change only the Application But say they yet farther Do you not believe that the Latin Prelates have a more clear light than you We cannot know any thing by that and they do not know anything themselves from thence since no person can make himself certain by his own light according to the Author of Prejudices They may from thence methinks see of what Nature that Argument is but they will be more apt to be distasted with it if they will but consider that their Principle tends to confound all Religion and to render the very existence of a Deity suspected For if there be nothing of certainty in those Judgments that we make by our own light why do we follow the Christian Religion more than the Pagan or the Mahometan Is it because that the Church has bid us do so This is but a very bad reason for the Church would never tell us that its Religion was bad when it would be so in effect there is no Society whatsoever but would say that its Religion was good and better than all others Is it because our Birth our Education Interest Reputation or the the friendship that we have with some persons or the Laws of the Country wherein we are will not suffer us to embrace any other Religion and such-like motives that engage us These are yet but the very worst Reasons and those who are not Christians but from thence though possibly they may not be a small number may say that they are not at all such for if those very tyes had been applyed to Paganism they would have been Pagans as they are now Christians How then ought we to be Christians It is necessary that we should be so from out of a Love and Approbation of that Religion it self But that Love and that Approbation ought to be the effects of our own Light and not of that of other men and our own light ought to dictate to us what is the Religion of God and to make us approve of and love it under that quality Should we then have nothing of certainty in that matter should we be always in doubt under a pretence that our Light might deceive us and those admirable effects that Religion produces in our souls that confidence quiet joy that tranquillity hope freedom from trouble and from fear would they be nothing but ambiguous and deceitful marks which are most frequently to be found more joyned with error and the way of Hell then with the Truth and way of salvation thither it is that that Principle of the Author of those Prejudices leads us Besides how do we come to believe there is a God Is it because the Church tells us so That would be a very ill reason for we believe on the contrary that there is a Church but by the belief that we have that there is a God we believe it without doubt by the impression of a thousand Characters of the Deity in our minds and on our hearts that appearin the Fabrick of the World in his Government or his ordering the Affairs of it and particularly in man himself and in his most pure and most natural inclinations Our Reason it self is a lively Image of it But that impression is wrought but by our own Eyes which make us see a Deity in things it is not by others Eyes that we see it but by our own Is it necessary then that we should doubt whether there be a God or not Must we never be certain because our Eyes deceive us somtimes and because we are not Infallible The Author of the Prejudices will say without doubt That we urge his Principle too farr that he never pretended to shew that we could not be assured by our own light without the Authority of the Church that there was a God and that the Christian Religion in opposition to that Religion which the Jews now profess or to all those Fantastick Religions that reign in the World and are the meer effects of the impostures and humours of men cannot but be the true Religion That that discernment is not hard to be made the advantage of the Christian Religion above all those others being most clear and manifest Indeed so he has explained himself from the very beginning of his Preface whence it appears that he would not hinder the examination of the matters of Religion but when particular controversies that divide the divers Sects of Christians shall be treated of I may say then if I am not mistaken That there are two parts in his Hypothesis that in the first he yields to every one a liberty to judg by his own Light of the Truth of the Christian Religion
of their Alms and he may be seen far oftner in the field with the Souldiers then in his Cloister He ought to be the Father and the Instructer of his Brethren but he is their Seducer and their Tyrant For while he enjoys himself and lives in Pomp and Delights those poor miserable Religious pass away all their days in murmurings and afflictions That Author describes in the same Stile the Lives of the Canons Monks and other Ecclesiasticks and that which he has said does not leave us any more room to doubt that there was in the Church in those days as great and as general a disorder as can be conceived He does not spare the Court of Rome but on the contrary he sets forth livelily enough their excess even to say that that Court is the Seat of the Beast that is to say the Church of the wicked that is the Kingdom of darkness That it is a loathsome pit that devours Riches and is filled by Covetousness That the Law is far from the Priest the Visions of the Prophet and the Councel of the old men That the heads of the Church serve themselves by Simony and Ambition and that in a word the sins of those people are such that they cannot be either concealed or denyed since Rome is become a Gulph of Crimes Where the Pope ought to cry with Jesus Christ Come and you shall find rest for your Souls he cries Come and see me in a far greater Pomp and Pride then ever Solomon was in come to my Court empty your purses there and you shall find destruction for your Souls The disorder of that Court and that of the whole Clergy of those times was a thing so little to be contested that Adrian the sixth did not scruple to acknowledge it in the Memoirs that he gave his Nuntio for the Diet of Nuremberg and which Raynaldus Relates For he gave him an express charge to confess That the Troubles of Germany about the matters of Religion had fallen out by Reason of the sins of Men and particularly of the Priests and Prelats of the Church That the Scripture shewed that the sins of the people came from those of their Priests for which Reason it was as Chrysostome says that when our Saviour would heal Jerusalem he entered first into the Temple to correct the sins of the Priests doing like a wise Physitian who goes to the root of the evil That for many years past abominable things had been committed in the holy See that spiritual things had been abused through the excess of its Injunctions and that all things had been perverted there That the evil had spread it self from the Head to the Members from the Popes to the Inferiour Prelats and that as many as they all were that is to say Prelats and Ecclesiasticks they were come to that pass that for a long Time there had not been any that were good no not so much as one We could produce a multitude of other such Testimonies if we did not hope that unbyass'd persons would agree upon it as not long since an Author in these Times has done in a Book Intituled Motives to a Re-union to the Catholick Church The cause of the Separation says he was the open abuse of Indulgences and the Ignorance Covetousness and the Scandalous lives of the Church-men The Superstition of the meaner sort of people who had not been well instructed the immense riches and riotous profuseness of the Prelats their too great care in Externals in their Magnificence Ornaments and increasing of Ceremonies and little Devotion in the Chief-worship of God the indiscreat zeal of some Brethren who seemed to have cast off all honour for the Master to give it to his Servants The Tyranny that Parents exercised over their Children to imprison them in Cloisters the wickedness of those who contrived false Miracles to draw to themselves the concourse of the People Add to that Politick humane Considerations of some Princes and Kings who had not received from the Pope all possible Satisfaction or who took occasion from thence to cast themselves among a Party of persecuted men the better to Establish their affairs in brief all that which Ignorance Superstition and Covetousness could Contribute served for a pretence to those who would separate themselves to Reform those Disorders The Ground was not only specious but it had been in a manner accompanied with Truth if the Church in those days had been throughout in that miserable condition which we have described and principally so in those places wherein that detestable Separation began Those who separated were aided indirectly by the zeal of some good men who cried out loudly against those disorders abuses and corruptions of manners The people who judged no otherwise then by the appearance suffered themselves to be easily carried away with that Torrent seeing that they did not complain but of those things which they knew were but too true and which the better sort of Catholicks granted Behold then in what a condition the Church was in those days and we may from thence methinks ask all rational persons whither they believe in good earnest that our Fathers ought to have expected a Reformation from the hands of a Clergy which on the one side had so many worldly interests that bound them to oppose it and which on the other found it self so deeply sunk into Ignorance Superstition and Corruption But to urge that matter yet further we need but to set down those just complaints which they had made for a long time touching those disorders and the continual demand that all the World made for a good Reformation at least in respect of manners of Discipline and those most gross abuses without ever being able to obtain it I pass by the complaints of the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries which would be but too great if they were compared with those just grounds that all honest men in those days had for them For those two Centuries were famous for wickedness grievous crimes and those who know any thing of History cannot deny it But not to go so far not to say any thing either of the Scandalous Lives of the Popes of that Time or the Wars wherewith they filled all the West or of the Abuses they committed in their Excommunications or of the Baptizing of Bells Wherewith they increased the Ecclesiastical Ceremonies or of the vices which reigned then throughout all the Clergy can they tell us what good effect those smart Censures of Saint Bernard wrought and those of Petrus Cluniensis of Abbot Joachim of Petrus Blesensis of Conrard Abbot of Vrspurg of Honorius of Autun of Bernard Monk of Cluny of Arnoul an English Monk of John Bishop of Salisbury of Matthew Paris of William Durandus Bishop of Mande of Robert Bishop of Lincolne of Francis Petrarch Archdeacon of Parma of John Vitoduram of Dante of Marsilius of Padua and I know not how many others who cried out as loudly
matter which shall be Treated of in its place In effect there are two sorts of Calls which we ought not to confound That of the Reformation and that of the perpetual Exercise of the Gospel-Ministry And the Author of the Prejudices himself seems to have Judiciously enough distinguished them when he lays down two sorts of Separation the one Negative which consists only in a rejecting of those things that are ill and the other Positive which goes so far as to set up a Body apart with the Exercise of the Ministry We shall therefore speak elsewhere of the Right that our Fathers had to set up a publick Ministry and it shall suffice for the present to have solidly Established their Call to Reform To shut up this Chapter it remains only that we speak a Word to a Question which they here raise about this Call in the same sence in which we here consider it For they demand of us whether it was Ordinary or Extraordinary To which I Answer That it was both the one and the other in different respects It was Ordinary as to its Right since all men have an Ordinary and perpetual Right to reject Errors and Superstitions and to employ themselves in making their Brethren to reject them according to the Common Laws of Piety and Charity The Pastors also have an Ordinary and perpetual Right to do the same Thing and to make use of that Publick Authority which their Function gives them for the guidance of their Flocks It was Ordinary as to the Obligation which lay as well upon the People as the Pastors to do that which they did because it was a Law of Christianity and not a new Law or Commandment that bound them to it their Duty was founded upon the principles of that very Gospel and of the same Christian Religion which Jesus Christ had Founded and whereof they made a Profession But I affirm that it was likewise Extraordinary in two things First of all in respect of that extream and indispensable Necessity which lay upon them to do what they did For although we have always a Right to reject those Errors and that false Worship which may creep into the Church and although we should be always bound to make use of it also if it were so yet it is not always Necessary to come to the practise or the Exercise of that Right and of that Obligation at least to so Publick and Splendid a one as that of our Fathers was because the Church is not always in a State of Confusion and Disorder as she was in their Time Things Ordinarily glide away in a more regulated course the Publick Ministry is more pure and the Gospel more disingaged from the oppression of Traditions or Humane Superstitions Secondly That Call was Extraordinary in respect of those qualities wherewith God invested our first Reformers and those who joyned with them in so great a work for it is not an Ordinary thing to see such eminent gifts and that in so great a Number as those which appeared in the Age of the Reformation accompanied with such an Heroical Spirit as our Fathers had and such a great Love for the purity of the Gospel as the People had who received their Instructions All which constrains us to acknowlede a particular and special Providence of God throughout the whole Conduct of that great Divine Work who raised up Labourers fitted for the Harvest which he had prepared CHAP. V. An Answer to the Objections that are made against the Persons of the Reformers WE have hitherto methinks sufficiently justified the Action of our Fathers in the business of the Reformation It appears that they had but too many Reasons to suspect a great Corruption not only in the Government of the Church but in the Worship and Doctrines of it also and too just motives to engage them to make a more particular Examination It may not less appear by what we have said concerning the Infallibility of the Church of Rome and that absolute Authority which she ascribes to her self over mens Consciences that her pretensions have no Foundation and that all the Faithful have a Right to Judge of the matters of Religion by themselves and to discern what is good from what is ill We have seen nevertheless that our Fathers were not moved so publickly to make use of their Right but by an extream and utmost Necessity and if they will do them Justice they ought freely to acknowledge what the Author of the Prejudices has not dared to deny that they had a sufficient Call to go as far as a Negative Separation and openly to refuse to believe and to Act what their Consciences should not allow them to approve But as that Motion of Conscience was not Universal or common to all those of their Time and as it had encountred the interests of a great Body that was in possession of the Government of the Latin Church they have laboured to render it odious by all sorts of ways and even those who were not able directly to condemn it have not failed to search out divers pretences to cry it down and having nothing to say against their Actions they have taken up something against their persons This is that that the most of our Adversaries endeavour with great Care this is that that their Writers of Controversies and Missionaries who are spread abroad on all sides among us and who make use of all sorts of ways to gain Proselytes do even now all their days and this is that that the Author of the Prejudices in particular has done His Argument may be well nigh reduced to this That there is no likelyhood that God committed the care of Reforming his Church to persons whose Life and Conduct was Disorderly and Scandalous And the Conclusion that he pretends to draw from it is that we ought to reject without any further Examination that Reformation and to put our selves into the Communion of the Church of Rome 1. It will be no difficult matter to shew him that Blessed be God we have as to what concerns us on every side matter of Edification from the manners of those who were first of all made use of in so Holy and so Necessary a Work and this we shall presently make out But before I come to that I am obliged to tell him that his way of Reasoning is the most captious and the most contrary to the interests of the true Religion that can be imagined and that it is contrary even to the Interests of that Church of Rome which it would defend I say in the first place that it is captious For since our Fathers Reformed themselves only out of the motion of their Consciences which dictated to them that they ought to do it for the Glory of God and their own Salvation how can he pretend that we who have followed them out of the same Reason can revoke an Action which we believe to be just and lawful out of meerly
readily subject Germany to the Council of the Pope and because the Pope used also all his endeavours to stir up new affairs for the Emperour on the side of Italy Moreover a division fell out in the Council for the Pope having transferr'd it from Trent to Bolognia to have it more at his ordering the greatest part of the Bishops yielded to that transferring but many also held themselves firm to Trent and would not obey it which made a great difficulty to arise when the Emperour and the Princes of Germany came to demand as they afterwards did that the Council should be re-established at Trent because those of Bolognia stood upon it as a point of honour not to go back to find those of Trent there King Francis the First dyed in this time and Henry the Eighth King of England being dead also the Reformation was quickly after received in England under the Reign of Edward the Sixth which a little disturb'd the joyes of the Court of Rome They were yet more disturb'd by the Acts of Protestation which the Emperour had made against the Assembly at Bolognia that he had treated it as an unlawful Assembly and a Conventicle insisting that they should return to Trent with threats that if the Pope continued to neglect his duty he would himself out of his own Authority provide for the disorders of the Church They were troubled also at the Interim which the same Emperour published afterwards throughout all Germany This Interim was a certain Formulary of Religion that the Emperour had made to be drawn up to be observed until the holding of a Lawful Council He establish'd therein the whole Body of the Roman Doctrine and allowed only the Marriage of Priests and Communion under both kinds But although this Formulary was neither approved by the one sort nor the other that at Rome the Pope had censured it and the Protestants look'd upon it as the greatest of all their oppressions the Emperour did not fail to use violence to the Protestants to make them receive it And this filled Germany with an infinite number of persecutions such as those that Conquerours when they cruelly abuse their prosperity as Charles the Fifth did are wont to make the vanquished suffer But while he thus satiated himself with these violences and indignities Paul the Third dyed at Rome the tenth of November 1549. The Death of this Pope was follow'd with divers Writings which wounded his Memory in the most bloody manner in the world But letting pass his Manners and the rest of his Government wherein we are not concerned I shall only say that the evils which our Fathers suffered in all places for the Cause of the Reformation during the fifteen years of his Papacy cannot be express'd For under the name of Hereticks or Lutherans they imprisoned them they banished them they deprived them of their Estates they massacred them they burned them and not to speak of our France England Scotland Flanders Holland Brabant Haynalt Artois Spain Savoy Lorrain Poland were as so many Theatres wherein there might be every day seen some of those Tragical Executions and where they spoke of nothing but the extirpation and rooting out of these Hereticks Julius the third succeeded Paul This man freely transferr'd his Council back to Trent to make all opposition between the Emperour and himself cease but in the Bull which he publish'd he declar'd that it belong'd to him to rule and guide the Council that he remitted it to be followed and continued in the same state in which it was when it was broken off and that he would send his Legates thither to preside in his place in case he could not come thither himself in person These clauses netled the Protestants so that seeing themselves press'd by the Emperour to submit themselves to the Council they freely declared to him that they could not do it otherwise than upon these conditions to wit That they should begin to treat of matters all anew without having regard to that which had been already done That their Divines should be received and have a deliberative voice That the Pope should not pretend to preside but that he should submit himself to it and in fine that he should absolve the Bishops from the Oath by which they were ty'd to him and that without that they could not hold that to be a free Council Notwithstanding this Declaration the Emperour made his Decree by which he ordain'd that they should submit themselves to the Council promising on his part that he would give Safe-Conduct to all the World to come thither and to propose there all that they should judge necessary for the good of the Church and salvation of Souls and that he would give order that all things should be treated and determined holily and Christianly according to the holy Scripture and the Doctrine of the Fathers and that the state of the Church should be reformed there and false Doctrines and Errours taken away Thus the Council of Trent was continued whither the Pope sent his Legate and two Nuntio's to preside there in his Name with orders to begin the first Session the first day of May 1555. which was yet nevertheless prorogued to the first of September following The Elector of Saxony and the Duke of Wirtemberg both Protestants with some Imperial Cities resolved to send their Deputies thither and made them demand of the Emperours Embassadour a Letter of Safe-conduct in the same form that the Council of Basil had given it to the Bohemians with an intermission till their Divines should be arrived This demand was not without some difficulty but the Question having been agitated at Rome they thought good to agree that they should have a Safe-conduct in general terms without delaying upon that account the decision of the chief matters and before the expediting of this Safe-conduct they had determined the principal Points touching the Eucharist to wit Transubstantiation the Real Presence the Adoration of the Host the Concomitance the Custom of the Feste Dieu the reservation of the Sacrament and the necessity of Auricular Confession before the Communion They agreed only with the Embassadour of the Emperour that they should delay the decision of these four Questions Whether it was necessary to salvation that all should receive the Sacrament in both kinds Whether he that received in one took less than he that received in both Whether the Church was in an Error when she ordained that the Priests only should receive in both Whether the Eucharist ought also to be given to little children Which was already a meer Fallacy as if the Protestants had nothing to propose but only about those four Questions When the Protestant Deputies were arrived they openly complained of the form of their Safe-conduct and they demanded one in the form of that of Basil to the Bohemians but they refused it They demanded that they might be heard in full Council but they would not and they obtained with great
the Prejudices has set before us which is that Schismaticks are out of a state of Salvation For I hold that this Proposition cannot be maintain'd after the manner that the Author of the Prejudices has propounded it that is to say absolutely and without any distinction I am not ignorant that to establish this rigorous sentiment they produce some passages of the Fathers who have in effect spoke of Schism in extreamly vehement terms as if they had a design to exclude from the communion of God and all hopes of salvation all those in general who should be found engaged in it But that very thing ought to be an example to let us see that we must not alwayes take according to the rigour of the Letter all that the Fathers have said in the heat of their disputes For unless we should be altogether unreasonable we must place a difference between three sorts of persons who are to be found in a Schismatical communion 1. The Authors of Schism who usually are the Pastors and Guides of the flock 2. Understanding persons who take part in the affairs and who very well knowing what they do give their consent to Schism and defend the Authors of it 3. The people that is to say the ignorant persons who scarce know any thing that passes or who know but very confusedly And for that which regards the Authors and other intelligent persons as it is most frequently passion interest pride and ambition that make them separate and that all those passions turn them in the end into an implacable hatred against their brethren they deserve our condemnation for those crimes are incompatible with the Spirit of Jesus Christ and it is a manifest demonstration that the world and its corruption reigns in the souls of those who are guilty of it we must therefore say of such Schismaticks as these that while they remain in this condition there is no hope of salvation for them because that the true faith the Covenant of God and the communion of Jesus Christ cannot subsist under the reign of those brutal passions But to imagine that the whole body of a people who are to be found engaged in a Schism either through the faction of the more powerful or a conscience prepossess'd by a zeal without knowledge by a Piety too scrupulous should be depriv'd of all hope of salvation this would be without doubt to fall into a very rigid Opinion To make this clear by Examples I have already mentioned elsewhere that Victor Bishop of Rome excommunicated the Churches of Asia upon the difference about the day of Easter from whence there followed a Schism between those Churches and this of Rome I do not now enquire to which of the two parties the crime of the Separation ought to be imputed either to the Asiaticks who adhered too strictly to the custom of their Ancestors and the Authority of Polycarp or to Victor who without Prudence and Charity separated him from divers great and flourishing Churches about a matter that was left self-free and indifferent in Religion I only say that this would be an horrible injustice to condemn those people to eternal flames who should be found to be engaged in that ridiculous quarrel only through the capricious humours of their Bishops In effect we have seen that notwithstanding this Schism they did not fail both the one and the other to sit together in the Council of Nice We must pass the same judgement of a Schism that fell out in the fourth Century at Antioch between the Meletians and the Eustatians both the one and the other Orthodox and separated from the Arrians but who nevertheless would not communicate together because that although Meletius had preached and defended the Council of Nice and suffered persecution for it yet he had been created Bishop by the Arians by reason of which the other Orthodox would no more communicate with those of his party which obliged them to hold their Assemblies apart It was therefore a true Schism on one side and on the other but as it proceeded only from an excess of zeal on the side of the Eustatians we ought not to pass a sentence of damnation so lightly against them I say the same thing of the Schism that fell out about the end of the Fifth Century between Acatius Bishop of Constantinople and Felix the Third Bishop of Rome who mutually excommunicated one another for the interests of John Talaia and Peter Mongus competitors for the Patriarchate of Alexandria Acacius defended the side of Peter whom Felix accused to be a Heretick and an enemy to the Council of Chalcedon and Felix on the contrary upheld Talaia whom Acacius had accused of Perjury and to be unworthy of a Bishoprick and this Schism also lasted down to their Successors thirty and five years between the East and West But although Acacius drawn in by intrigues to the side of an hypocrite had wrong at the foundation yet we ought not notwithstanding to believe that all those great Churches who kept communion with him and defended his memory after his death were absolutely cut off from the hope of Paradise In the Sixth Century there was another Schism whereof I have already spoken which was very contentious and embroiled under the Emperour Justinian Vigilius being Bishop of Rome and Mennas Patriarch of Constantinople The ground of the quarrell was taken from the Writings that had been approved in the Council of Chalcedon and which afterwards were condemned as heretical by the Emperour Justinian and the condemnation was subscribed by Mennas and the other Patriarchs and their Bishops Vigilius who was of another opinion undertook the defence of those Writings and excommunicated Mennas and the rest who had condemned them But some Months after he took off his Excommunication at the solicitation of the Empress Theodora to whom he owed his Bishoprick and which was more in the following year he himself pronounced an Anathema against those three Writings But the Bishops of Africa Illyria and Dalmatia persisted to defend them and those in Africa assembled in Council excommunicated Vigilius as a dissembler Some time after Vigilius repenting himself of that which he had done undertook a second time the defence of those Writings Justinian on the contrary made an Edict by which he renewed their condemnation and Vigilius on his side excommunicated all those who should consent to this Edict In fine the Fifth General Council assembled at Constantinople where in spight of all the Decrees of the Bishop of Rome the three Writings were condemned and all those who should approve them were excommunicated Vigilius persisting in his opinion was banished and dyed some years after But his Successors Pelagius and Gregory approved the Council and subscribed to what had been done there and it was in fine generally received by all and reckoned for a Fifth General Council We must acknowledge that if the people were to be saved or damned according to the good or
any Relation to that Religion was not of the Essence of the Church but its State the mixture of Errors and Abuses with the sound Doctrine the Corruptions of Worship the Vices of the Ministry the Superstitious Ceremonies the form of Government the Religious as they speak that is to say the divers Orders of Monks the different degrees of the Hierarchy Feasts Processions Fasts and in a Word all that which has been noted in the Objection and in which that Church was then different from the Protestant All that I say belonged to the condition of the Church then and could by consequence be changed without making either the one or the other a new Church That the Faithful found themselves insensibly overpowred by almost an infinite number of the Worldly who mingled themselves with them as Tares with the Wheat That those worldly made themselves Masters of the Pulpits the Ministry the Councils that they brought in Errors Superstitions and Abuses that they changed the form of the Government of the Church and that of the Publick Worship all that does not respect the Essence of the Church which consists only in the True Faith but its Condition so that when our Fathers Reformed those things we may well say they Changed the State of the Church in their days but not that they changed the Church nor that they made a new one and their Church will not cease notwithstanding that Change to be joyned by a true Succession of Times and Persons to that which was before A Town full of Strangers who make themselves more powerful there left desolate by those popular diseases which those Strangers brought thither and filled with those disorders which they caused does not cease to be the same Town by a True Succession of Times and Persons when those Strangers should quit it and its good Citizens be established in their Just and Lawful State as heretofore Rome sackt by the Goths did not cease to be the same Rome when it was freed from them and a River swelling with the Waters of the neighbouring Brooks that make it overflow the Fields and break over its Banks is yet the same River when those Waters go back and retire into their Ordinary Channel CHAP. III. That the Ministry Exercised in the Communion of the Protestants is Lawful and that the Call of their Ministers is so also WE come now to Justify the Right that we have to the Gospel-Ministry and to defend our Call not only against the Ordinary Objections of those of the Church of Rome but also against the Accusations of the Author of the Prejudices in Particular For that Author who thinks it meritorious to go beyond others especially in his Passions is not contented meerly to say that we are Pastors without Mission and Ministers without a Call but by a heat of Zeal obstinately adhering to him he call us Thieves and Robbers Tyrants Rebells false Pastors and Sacrilegious Vsurpers of the Authority of Jesus Christ Nevertheless as those injuries are nothing else but the Effect of his ill humour it will be no hard matter to shew him that all the Conditions that we can rationally require to make a Ministry Just and Lawful are to be found in that of the Protestant Ministers and that Thanks be to God they can reproach them with nothing on that occasion This is that which I design to shew in this Chapter and to this Effect I shall first propound some Observations which I Judge necessary for the unfolding of that Question I say then in the First place That we do not here dispute about the Call that our Fathers had for a Reformation but only of that which they had and which we have after them for the Ordinary Ministry of the Gospel For we ought to take great heed least we confound as the Author of the Prejudices has done those two sorts of Calls that we acknowledge our Fathers to have had and which the Church of Rome disputes with them For That which they had to Reform themselves that is to say to reject that which we call their Errors and Superstitions that were brought into the Latin Church and that which regards the Ordinary Preaching of the word of the Gospel the Administration of the Sacraments and the Exercise of Discipline These two Calls are wholly different The one which is that of the Reformation is of Right common to all Christians there being no one who is not Lawfully called by his Baptism to destroy Errors contrary to the Nature or Purity of the true Faith and to exhort his Neighbours to do the same thing for the Interest of his own Salvation and that of the Glory of God as I have already shewn in my Second part From whence it follows That in that Respect they can have nothing to say against our Fathers and much less against those whom they call the first Reformers since being as they were in publick Offices they had more of a Call for that then was necessary The other which is that which respects the Ordinary Preaching of the Word of the Gospel the Administration of the Sacraments and the exercise of Discipline is not common to every private man On the contrary no one ought on his own head to thrust himself in without being otherwise Lawfully called The Reason of this Difference is that the Reformation consisted in the meer Acts of Faith and Charity which are those Particular Acts that none can dispence with because no one can say that it does not belong to him to be of the true Faith or to be Charitable but the Preaching of the Word the Administration of the Sacraments and the exercise of Discipline are those Acts of Authority that no one can do in his own name but in the name of another that is to say in the Name of God or in the Name of the whole Church so that he ought to be Lawfully Authoriz'd to do them It is then this latter Call that we are concerned about in this Question 2. In the Second place we must note that we do not here any more dispute about that Extraordinary Ministry which Jesus Christ himself immediately Communicated to his Apostles to give men the first Call to the Christian Faith and to Assemble them in a Society For our Fathers did not make any new Convocation nor any new Society nor any new Church as I have shewn in the Two Foregoing Chapters They did not preach a new Testament or a new Covenant differing from that which the Apostles preached They were not qualified either as new Apostles or new Prophets or new Evangelists they did not bring with them any new Revelation to the World but they Purged and Reformed the Corrupted State of Religion and the Church by the same Scriptures that the Apostles left us they laboured to Reduce things into their Antient and Natural State and for the rest they Preached the same Gopel and Administred the same Sacraments that the Apostles left and
I know not how many others that were evidently either the Remnants or Imitations of Antient Paganism Who would think it strange that an Idea of a Religion that plainly appear'd to be so little advantagious to it or to say better which was so contrary to the Spirit and the true design of Christianity should have touched our Fathers and inspir'd into them a desire of knowing those things a little more particularly then they had as yet done 3. They were yet further carri'd out with that desire when they considered the ill Effects that those Ceremonies borrow'd from the Pagans had produc'd and some others that were annexed to them as Rosaries Chaplets holy Salt their Pilgrimages and and Monastick Vows and such like things For they manifestly fill'd the minds of men with superstition they caused a thousand abuses among the people they ordinarily made way for lying Forgeries and which rendred them yet far more odious they fomented a too natural negligence which every one has for works of true and solid Piety whether by busying the minds of Christians too much or perswading them that they had very well acquitted themselves of their duty by doing these External things or lastly whether it was by infusing into them a false Idea of Divinity as if all its worship did consist in such Trumpery Who is it that sees not what a great prejudice this was against a Religion that taught such things and so solemnly enjoyned them to be practised 4. It had been yet very hard if our Fathers had not been offended by that worldly Pomp wherewith they saw Religion so excessively cloathed For they very well knew that true Christianity was contented to gain the Hearts and Souls of men by the Majesty of its Doctrines and Holiness of its Precepts And that for the rest it professed to retain its simplicity notwithstanding which they observed a clean contrary Character in the Magnificence of their Tenples in the Gold of their Tabernacles in the Pride of their Sacrifices in the Riches of their Ornaments and in general in all that external splendour which seem'd destin'd only to strike extraordinarily the sences and by this means to raise an ill grounded Admiration that which is proper to only corrupt Religions which as Tertullian takes notice labour to gain their Authority and to obtain the belief of the People by their Pomp and their profuseness 5. The Natural Effect of the Doctrines of Christianity when they are receiv'd with Faith and when its worship is practised with Devotion is to comfort the Conscience and to give it a certain satisfaction and calm which is better felt then it can be exprest But our Fathers were so far from receiving that Effect from the Doctrines and worship wherein they made in their days almost the Fundamentals of Religion to consist as in the Invocation of Saints the absolute Obedience to the Pope or to his Councils the conceit of Mens satisfactions the Adoration of Reliques the Pilgrimages and other things of the like nature they were I say so far from receiving it from these Doctrines that on the contrary they could not but feel secret remorses after having practised them For the Consciences of Christians are naturally carried out to none but God alone and cannot endure that that which is due to him should be divided between him and the Creatures They have naturally a reluctance to call upon any other Being then the first Cause of all to pay a Religious service to lifeless Images to subject themselves to any other Oracle then that of God to attribute any part of their Redemption to any others besides Jesus Christ who has acquired for them a fullness of Salvation And in a word to lay hold on any Creature as the object of their Confidence or Piety so our Fathers knowing from their own Experience that these Tenets and Devotions were not only barren of all that quiet but at the same time contrary to the peace of their Souls they could not but receive a great prejudice against those Tenets and against those Devotions themselves and against that Religion that proposed them 6. But that was not all they saw yet many things in that Religion most formally opposite to many plain and express passages of Scripture As the point of Images to the second Commandment Thou shalt not make to thy self any graven Image c. That of Communion only in one kind to that Command of Jesus Christ Drink ye all of this That of Praying in an unknown Tongue to the Prohibition of St. Paul in the fourteenth of the first Epistle to the Corinthians Else if thou shalt bless with the Spirit how shall he that occupieth the Room of the unlearned say Amen at thy giving of thanks seeing he uuderstandeth not what thou sayest For thou verily givest thanks well but the other is not Edified And the business of blind Subjection to the Ministers of the Church to that strict Declaration of the Apostle We have not Dominion over your Faith That of the Papal Monarchy to these words of our Saviour The Kings of the Gentiles exercise Lordship c. but it shall not be so with you That of humane satisfactions to the words of St. John The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all Sin And that of the Sacrifice of the Mass to that Doctrine of St. Paul to the Hebrews That Jesus Christ has once offered up himself for us I do not at all enquire whether the force of these passages may be eluded and distorted to a sence that may agree with those points which I have mentioned I do not enter upon that It is enough if any see that opposition of which I speak to appear at 1 sight that it likewise strikes the Soul and seems at least strong enough to Create great scruples and to form a prejudice that carri'd our Fathers on to examine those things a little more narrowly 7. To which they were yet further urg'd by the Consideration that they made of some Maxims and Distinctions which they ordinarily made use of to uphold the worshipping of Creatures for they discovered in them something that was extremly Scandalous For Example where they maintained the Worshipping of Angels and that of the Saints by saying that they did not adore them but by a lower sort of Adoration proportioned to the excellency they acknowledged to be in them not that they gave them that supream Adoration which is due to none but God alone I do not here put it in Question whether this distinction be good or bad it is sufficient that it had the ill luck to fall in with that which the Antient Heathens made use of for the defence of those Adorations which they paid to their Genius's to their Heroes to their Demy and inferiour Gods c. For the Pagans said the same that men did them great wrong in laying it to their charge that they worshipped their Genius's and inferiour Gods with that Soveraign Worship
the cumbrance of a thousand cares will not allow us to give more then a very little time for the examining the Truths of Religion all that hinders us from hearkning to you and makes us to cleave inviolably to the highest Authority that can be in the World and that we discover without any difficulty in our Society because that though there are Sects among us who dispute the Truth of its Tenets yet there is nothing in it that can make that Height of Authority which has so many external marks to be opposed with any colourable pretence In effect setting aside their Opinions their Worship and their Religion it self in the Foundation of it they cannot dispute with that Heathen Society from those external marks upon which they would found that Authority And the Christians would not have been in a condition to have equal'd themselves with them in that regard Would you have the consent of many people They had all the World of their side Would you seek for Antiquity They had been almost throughout all Ages Do you require Temporal Prosperity It was say they their Religion that gave them their Empire Would you have Magnificence Where was there any thing more Magnificent then their Temples and more splendid then their Solemnities Would you have Unity In the Plurality of their Gods and Varieties of their Ceremonies they kept peace among themselves and adopted the Gods of one an other Do you demand Miracles They boasted that they had them and the most Illustrious ones as those Oracles which foretold things to come those Apparitions of their Gods their Recoveries and Resurrections from the dead There was nothing then that could justify the Apostles but the falseness of the Pagan's Religion and the Truth of the Christian But for that they must of necessity enter upon that way of Examination and make those people to set about it whom they desired to convert But this is plainly that which that principle of the Author of those Prejudices would have hindred as we have shewn Whence it follows that it is a pernitious Principle contrary of Jesus Christ to his Apostles and to the true Interests of the Gospel But can they answer nothing to these last Reflexions that I have made It seems to me that they can possibly say but two things the one That those who were converted by the word of the Apostles and the other Preachers of the Gospel were constrained to hear them against that Order by a secret inspiration which dictated to them to make use of it also The other thing is That Jesus Christ and his Apostles proved their Call to be Extraordinary from Heaven and more eminent then that of their ordinary Pastors by Miracles and that in that Case the Faithful are bound to go beyond that Rule and to hear those that shall be so sent to them against that very Authority of the Church As to the first I do not believe that wise persons ought to admit of it For if they take those secret inspirations to be inward motions that form within a man frequent and strong desires to do a thing without suggesting any Reason the Spirit of God does not work so in the Conversion of men It works according to the Testimony of St. Paul as a light that inlightens the understanding to the end we may know what is the hope of our calling Then when those desires and inward motions are contrary to that duty to which we are all naturally engaged they ought rather to pass for Temptations then for Inspirations and a man would be very much bound to repress them under that Quality instead of following and obeying them Those pretended Inspirations then which tended to make the first Preachers of the Gospel be heard would have been so far from having had that effect that on the contrary they would have gone farther against their Consciences because they would have been found to have been contrary to a Duty supposing that intire obedience to the Church in matters of Faith a Duty They would have been troubled to know whether they ought to examine Religion or not That Rule might they say would have me not do it a blind Inspiration which is not supported by any Reason and which cannot have any certain mark of Divinity can never be strong enough to Authorise the breaking of that Rule But it cannot be yet alleadged to serve for an excuse towards that Religious Communion to which they had submitted themselves for if that Communion had a right of Soveraignty over them she would not be bound to strip her self of it when an inspiration should speak to them and we can but very ill defend the cause of the first Christians by that way If they would understand it so as those inward motions should be supported by some Reason that they should not be intirely blind it is necessary that they produce that Reason and not speak any more of Inspiration That Reason then in my Judgment can be no other then those Miracles that Jesus Christ and his Apostles wrought and by which they proved their Call to be divine and extraordinary I confess that if we suppose that all men have a right to make clear the Truth of things by themselves there is nothing more true then to say that Jesus Christ and his Apostles made themselves to be heard by their Miracles and that their Miracles were made use of to prove their Heavenly Call For their Miracles were plainly applied to the minds of men to make them consider that which they taught and in the end joyning their Miracles to their Doctrine they saw that they both mutually upheld one another that neither of them were false and that both the one and the other had the Characters of Divinity they did then conclude from thence that their Call was Divine and Extraordinary But if we suppose that Principle of the Author of Prejudices there is nothing more false then to say that their Miracles bound men to hear them and prov'd their Call to be Extraordinary For that Principle being as it is founded upon the darkness of our understanding upon the uncertainty of our Judgments and the easiness wherewith we are liable to deceive our selves it is manifest that it ought to be extended even unto Miracles because that there are true and false Miracles good and bad and those that false Prophets work as well as they that are sent from God We ought then to make a distinction and a distinction that is not easy to be made the Angels of darkness so disguising themselves into Angels of Light But that Reason of the darkness of the Understanding the uncertainty of our Judgments and that readiness we have to deceive our selves has if you please more place in that Distinction then in that of that Doctrine We may be easily surprized and by consequence we ought to give over that Discerning to the Church and yet follow in that its light and its decisions And
whole Scripture is full of this Doctrine that the Spirit of God is immediately given to every Believer even down to that place where St. John tells them That they had an Vnction from the Holy Spirit and that they knew all things that the anointing which they had received of Jesus Christ abode in them and that they needed not that any man should teach them but that that anointing taught them all things From whence these two Truths result the one That every faithful one in particular has Fellowship with the Holy Spirit which animates and governs him immediatly and the other That that Spirit is not a meer Spirit of Docility and resting in what is taught them to make the Faithful receive the words of their Pastors but a Spirit of discerning which makes them capable of knowing things by themselves and to judge of them For this is that St. Paul means by that Spirit of Wisdom and of Revelation and St. John by that Vnction which teaches all things and frees us from the necessity of being taught by men that is to say of depending absolutely on their Authority as those men would do who should not be capable of discerning by themselves and there is this thing very considerable in that Discourse of St. John that he makes the subjects of it those false Teachers who laboured to seduce the Faithful I have says he wrote these things concerning those who seduce you But the anointing which you have received abideth in you and you have no need that any man should teach you c. Which lets us plainly see that he meant that that Unction was sufficient to secure them from that Seducing and by Consequence to make them discern by themselves the true from the false As to all the rest they do but mock when they call that Spirit a private Spirit under a pretence that it is given to each Believer for it is the same Spirit that animates the whole Mystical Body of our Saviour that Regenerates and Sanctifies them it is in one word the Spirit of the whole Church It may with far greater reason be said that they introduce a private Spirit who restrain to the Pastors alone the right of discerning the good from the bad and who would not that any Laymen should interpose For if the whole body be animated but by one only and the same Spirit why should not all the Faithful have the same right with the Pastors since they all partake of one same Light though in a different measure In fine if they would have it that to yield to every one a right to examine the matters of Religion would be to bring in a private Spirit let them tell us by what Spirit they would have one examine the question of the Church by what Spirit they would have every one know and rest assured that the Latin Church is the True Church of Jesus Christ by what Spirit they would have the Faithful chuse that side where they should refer themselves to their Pastors for in all those points they cannot deny that men ought to follow their own light since they cannot in the least make those judgments by the Eyes of their Prelates as we have noted before Behold then that private Spirit since it pleases these Gentlemen to call it so which they themselves are constrained to admit which shews us the nullity of that inconveence that they would pretend to remedy We ought then to go higher yet and to examine that great Argument which the Author of those Prejudices has chose above all others as being alone sufficient to make us acknowledge the necessity of referring ones self blindly to the Church It consists in letting us know That all the men in the world may deceive themselves that the darkness of our Vnderstandings our Prejudices and our Passions engage us to that And if M. Claude says he can propose evident falshoods as proofs of the highest certainty who can assure us that we are not in the number of those who deceive themselves and make an ill choice in the matters of Religion and that the persuasion that we have well chosen is not any effect of our Prejudices and our Passions and other secret obstinacy in our Opinions from whence he concludes that it must be a thing to be despaired of ever to be able to distinguish the true Religion amidst so many Sects who all lay claim to it or to chuse among so many Opinions which they propose as Authorised by the Scripture those which one ought to believe from those that one ought to reject unless that same impotence that lies upon us to discern the Truth by our own light and which would not open a way to find it should make us go from the way of Reason wherein we should see nothing but uncertainty to that of Authority which would draw us out of that confusion and in the end he advertises us that that Authority is that of the Catholick Church that is to say the Latin Prelates We see then that thanks to the Philosophy of this Author all must be good Pyrrhonists to become good Catholicks we ought to doubt of every thing if we would be assured of any thing But to speak what appears to me that Argument cannot make any impression on the mind because it destroys it self as usually those false subtilties do For if we cannot be assured in those judgments that we make by our own Light because that may deceive us who can assure us that that Authors Argument will be good and concluding since we cannot judg of it but by that same Light which will not give according to him any certainty If the use of our Reason produces nothing but doubts why would he yet give us a Reason the Consequence whereof can be no other than doubtful and by which he cannot also gain any thing over us It may be it is good it may be it is not so our Light deceives us in other things it may very well deceive us in that What likelyhood then is there that we should be persuaded by an Argument that combates it self and which takes away from it self the force of persuading Moreover That Argument destroys the design of the Author of those Prejudices and overthrows the Cause it would Establish For if there be no certainty in the judgments that we make by our own Light who shall secure us that we do not deceive our selves in chusing the way of Authority since we cannot make choice of that but by that same Light which is says he so deceitful We cannot less fear in that very thing the obscurity of our Understandings our Prejudices and Passions the inclination that we have to Error and who shall assure that Author who shall assure us our selves that that persuasion where it is and which he would communicate to us is not an effect of his Prejudices of his Passions or of some obstinacy in his Opinions Who shall warrant
and that he does not take away from them in that respect the certainty of their Judgments but that in the second he takes it from them over other particular matters but all that is but an Artifice whereby he would prevent and elude if he could those just and natural Consequences which he foresaw might be drawn from his Principle For the very same Reasons which he proposes to hinder us from the examining the particular points of Religion and the very same grounds upon which he builds his Conclusion have place also in the comparing the Christian Religion with other Religions So that one may say that the second part of his design destroys the first and that he himself overthrows that that he had establisht For tell me if the uncertainty of our Judgments founded upon this that we see that others deceive themselves by the darkness of our understanding by our Prejudices by our Passions and by those secret Attacks that we have of our thoughts tell me if that has not place as well in the Judgment that they make That there is a God and that the Christian Religion is alone from God and the only True one as in that that we make That their Purgatory is but an imaginary Fire that their Transubstantiation is but a human invention and that the Sacrifice of the Mass is no where to be found in the Scripture Are there no Profane or Atheistical persons in the World Are there no Jews nor Pagans nor Mahometans As we are persuaded that they deceive themselves so are they persuaded that we deceive our selves but may not they demand of us what assurance we have that the darkness of our Understandings our Prejudices our Passions or some other secret tye that lyes upon our thoughts have no part in our persuasion What will the Authour of the Prejudices answer to them Will he say That the advantage that the Christian Religion has over all other Religions is most clear and manifest I may say to him the same that the advantage that the Protestant Religion has above the Roman is most clear and manifest and in saying so I shall affirm nothing whereof I am not well convinced If he replies to me that I ought not to be so confident of my own Light that that which appears to me to be most clear and manifest does not appear so to others that the darkness of the Mind Prejudices Passions c. make men deceive themselves and that I have no assurance that I am not of that number The Jew the Mahometan the Pagan the Libertine the Atheist who shall come behind him will exclaim as often as they shall have occasion after the same manner This is justly what we have to say this Author pleads our cause admirably well After all That Principle of the Author of those Prejudices was so far from turning aside our Fathers from examining by themselves the matters of Religion that on the contrary it bound them to do it the more For being concerned for their own salvation there was no person more intrested than themselves and being so easily apt to deceive themselves in the choice of those Opinions that they were enjoyned to believe and of that Worship which they were to practise they ought not naturally to have trusted any but themselves They might it is true deceive themselves but their Prelates might deceive themselves as well as they and if in the Church the people must refer themselves to their Prelates and each of those Prelates in particular must refer themselves to the whole body of the Church they will find that neither the one nor the other will be cured and that that Church to which they should all refer themselves would be but an Ens Rationis as they speak in the Schools and a Platonic Idea Prudence then bound our Fathers to examine that which they should know both from the imperfections of the Minds or the Hearts of men and from the examples of those before them who fell into error together with the danger which men are in on the account of their Prejudices their Passions and their Interests all that could produce no other effect in them than to excite them to make an examination the most exactly and diligently that it was possible for them to do cleansing their Hearts from every evil thought and imploring the Grace and Blessing of God upon them For they were assured that if they did the Will of the Father they should know his true Doctrine and that if any did lack Wisdom begg'd it of God that he would give it them since he gives to all liberally and upbraideth not Those are the promises of the Gospel Those to whom God grants that Grace which inlightens the mind and opens the Heart do not only not deceive themselves in the choice of Saving Doctrines and in the rejecting of those that are Damnable but they have for that all the assurance that they can reasonably wish for for the Truth makes it self to be perceived by far other Characters than those of a disguised falshood The Invocation of Saints the Worshipping of Images the Adoration of the Host the Conceit of Purgatory have never produced in the souls of the Devout Persons of the Church of Rome that sweet joy that Peace and that Contentment of the Soul which the Protestant rejoyces in when he calls upon God alone when he Worships him without Images as he has commanded him when he Adores Jesus Christ sitting at the Right Hand of his Father and when he places his only Confidence in his Satisfaction and in his Merit a deceived Conscience may be sometimes in Security but that security is never enjoyed like a true Quiet It is the Rest of a Lethargy where a mans feels no pain because he has no feeling which is very different from that Rest that gives a perfect Health besides that the security of a deceived Conscience is not long continued inquietudes return from time to time chiefly in the Affections and at the time of Death where that Tranquillity that the True Religion gives is solid and well grounded and displays its vertue peculiarly in the most grievous Accidents of our Life and in the very Agonies of Death it self Such are those Divine impressions that David felt when he said The Law of the Lord is perfect Converting the soul the Testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple The statutes of the Lord are right rejoycing the heart his judgments are more desirable than gold and sweeter than honey And elsewhere Thy word has been sweet unto my taste yea sweeter than honey to my mouth And yet further in another place The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him and he will shew them his covenant The Disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ felt them when they said Did not our heart burn within us while he talked with us by the way and while he opened to us the
adored it and that he should never have done the same Actions that were practised by others they may very well understand what Judgment their Ministers used in their Conduct during those first Years For according to all their Principles they ought to have Condemned it since it was as little allowable to Zuinglius to partake with that Worship as it is at present to the Calvinists and since they pretend that it is so far forbidden them that they urge the Obligation that they say lies upon them not to take any part in it as the chief Reason of their Separation So that Zuinglius remaining yet in Communion with those who adored the Eucharist contributed to that adoration by his Ministry and joyning himself to their Assemblies rendred himself guilty of all those sins which the Calvinists apprehend to be committed in remaining united to the Church He would every day have betrayed his Conscience he would every day have committed a criminal Idolatry And it is in that condition that the Calvinists pretend that God made use of him for the greatest Work that ever was done which was the Reformation of the Error of all their Fathers Answer As that Accusation is founded upon this only thing That it is very hard to be believed so also we shall here Answer in saying That it is very hard to be believed That Zuinglius did any thing during that Time that should be repugnant to the Dictates of his Conscience All the Histories of his Life shew that he was a man of strict Piety and of a severe Virtue that he was not used to those Juggles of the Hypocrite which we may see practised by so many and even by those who would appear the most severe and that moreover he never did any thing remote from the sincerity of an honest man They cannot then without equally violating the Laws of Justice and those of Charity suspect on those meer Conjectures that he went contrary to his sentiments on that Occasion and the Author of the Prejudices ought to produce the proofs of his Accusation or to suffer himself to be condemned for Injustice and Malignity It is true that during that Time Zuinglius neither quitted his Ministry nor forsook those who adored the Eucharist but who has told the Author of the Prejudices that men ought to forsake a People that are in Error in the same Time that they have hopes of disabusing them and labour to reduce them into the right way As the Reformation of a Church is not the work of a Day none can think it strange that Zuinglius did not propose all of a sudden all that he had to say and that he did one thing after another It is sufficient that during the Time wherein he set himself to that Work he did not in the least partake in the abuses which he had a design to correct and therefore the Author of the Prejudices ought not to have accused him without ever laying down the proofs of his Accusation The History of Zuinglius relates that he was called to the Church of Zurich in the beginning of the Year 1519. and that from the first moment wherein he was there he set himself with all his might to the Instruction of his Flock to the Reformation of those grosser Errors wherewith the Ministry was then infected and to the correcting of mens manners which succeeded so well with him by the blessing of God that within less then four years he changed the Face of that Church and disposed it to a thorough Reformation But among those Errors that he opposed he applied himself particularly to the Sacrifice of the Mass shewing the People out of the Scripture that there could be no other real Sacrifice then that upon the Cross whence it is very easy to conjecture that he carefully avoided to assist in a Ceremony that he so openly opposed and from which he himself withdrew his Hearers 3. Object Zuinglius engaged the Magistrates of Zurich to call a Synod and to make themselves Judges and Arbiters for the Ordering the State of the Religion of their Canton There was never till then a Synod of that Nature spoke of and it is an astonishing thing that mens rashness and insolence should have been able to have carried them out to so great an excess The Council of two hundred that is to say Two hundred Burghers of a Switz Town as learned and ready in matters of Divinity as one may believe the Switz Burghers were called together all the Church-men under their jurisdiction to dispute before them with an Intention to Order the State of Religion with the understanding of the matter Answer It were much to be wished that the discourse of the Author of the Prejudices were as well Ordered as that Action of the Senate of Zurich was besides these Abuses and Superstitions that were Ordinary they had seen for some Time past a Preacher of Indulgences in that Church called Samson sent by the Pope to distribute his Pardons That Preacher managed his part so well that there were not any Crimes how great soever they were that were or should be committed which he did not set a price upon without making any other difficulty then about the Sum that was be paid to him and by that means he put the whole Country into a dreadful disorder filling it with profligate Persons Zuinglius opposed this Seducer with all his might and at the same time he laboured to give his Flock the knowledge of the true Principles of the Christian Religion and to reduce them back to one only Jesus Christ and his Scripture in freeing them from the Errors and Superstitions of Mens Invention But as the Word of God was never yet without Adversaries the greater number of the Church-men lifted themselves up against Zuinglius and accused him before the people to be a Heretick which forced the Senate it self to take knowledge of those Accusations and to call together a Synod composed of all the Church-men of its State wherein every one had the liberty to propose what he would against Zuinglius and Zuinglius that of defending himself And that very thing was done by the consent of the Bishop of Constance who sent his Deputies thither and among others John le Fevre his Vicar General What was there in all that that might not come from the Justice and Prudence of a Senate If the Accusations wherewith they charged Zuinglius had been well grounded it had been the Duty of the Magistrate to have enjoyned him Silence and being false as they were it was the Magistrates duty to uphold him What is it that the Author of the Prejudices can blame in that Conduct They called a Synod We maintain it to be the Right of Kings and Soveraign Magistrates within the extent of their States The Holy Story Testifies that Josias intending to set up the pure worship of God in his Kingdom called together an Assembly of Priests Prophets
have us that we should be with her For in respect of the Lutherans the business is only about a meer Toleration which we give to those among them who desire it with a Spirit of Charity waiting till it shall please God to dissipate their Error But the Church of Rome that calls it self infallible would have us not only to have a meer Toleration for her but that we should make a profession of believing all that she believes for when she separated her self from us she Anathematised all those who did not believe all that she had decided in her Council of Trent The Matters therefore are not equal between the Roman and the Lutheran Communion in respect of us To put them into an Equality it is necessary that the Roman Church should openly put her self into the state wherein the Lutherans are that she renounce the Invocation of Saints Religious worship of Images humane Satisfactions Indulgences Purgatory the worshipping of Relliques the publick Service in an unknown Tongue the merit of good Works Transubstantiation Adoration of the Sacrament the Sacrifice of the Mess the Papal Monarchy the pretension of Infallibility the blind Obedience that she would have us give to her decisions It is necessary that she should acknowledge the Scriptures to be the only rule of faith and manners that she should carefully recommend the Reading of them to the People that she should confess their sufficiency without the help of tradition that she should believe the Authority of that Scripture independent even in respect of us on that of the Church that she should distinctly lay down the Doctrine of Justification and that of the distinction of the Law and the Gospel that she should form a Just Idea of the Faith and of good works and that she should take care to abolish all the popular Superstitions which we behold among them When she shall have done all that with some other things which the Lutherans have done also although she do retain the point of the Real presence after the same manner that they do we shall not fail to offer her the same Toleration which we yield to the Lutherans and the same conditions which we give to them which is that we should not engage our selves to believe that presence that we should always protest against it as an Error and that they shall do nothing to force us to embrace it When the Church of Rome shall be in that condition which I have set down if we do not make her these offers if we do not even make them with all the ardour imaginable we will be very well contented in that Case that they should accuse us of humane Policy and that they should tell us that we are a sort of men without any Conscience Justice and Charity But 'till then we will take God and men to witness that there is not the least equity in those invectives and that it is to oppress our innocency to ascribe that as the Author of the Prejudices has done to an interested Policy or a capricious humour which is but too well founded upon the things themselves See here what I had to say upon the Twelfth Chapter of the Author of the Prejudices It may now be Judged of what force his Accusations are We should after that pass on to his Thirteenth Chapter But as that Chapter is but a sending us to a Book of Monsieur Arnaud's Intituled The Overthrow of the Morals of Jesus Christ by the Calvinists I shall also content my self with referring my Readers to the Answer which I hope to make him It shall suffice for the present to say That the Doctrine of the Saints Perseverance as the Synod of Dort has laid it down is a Doctrine of the Scripture and that all the pretended Consequences which Monsieur Arnaud would draw from it are of the same nature of those which profane Persons draw from all the Doctrines of Religion when they would abuse them to their Ruin CHAP. VIII That our Fathers in their Design of Reforming themselves were bound to take the Holy Scripture alone for the Rule of their Faith IT it now necessary to Examine by what Principle or upon what Rule our Fathers proceeded in their Reformation But before we go any further we shall do well to weigh what the Author of the Prejudices says who has made an express Chapter upon this matter The Argument of that Chapter is framed in these words That the way which the Calvinists propound to instruct men in the Truth is ridiculous and impossible After having entred upon his subject As the matter is saith he about the promise which they make of discovering divers Truths of the Faith to the Catholicks which are in their Judgments obscured and quite altered in the Church of Rome there will be nothing more Just or more natural then in the first place to inquire into the way which they would take to perform it to the end that we may Judge by the very nature of that way what we may justly expect For if it be found that they would engage us in an infinite way and which could not come to an issue there could not be a more lawful excuse to hinder us from hearkening to them nor a more evident conviction of the rashness of their enterprise Behold here methinks Two Declarations of that Author sufficiently express concerning the means which we propound to instruct men in the Truth the one That it is a ridiculous and impossible way and the other That it is an infinite way c. and which can come to no issue for we may well perceive that that Periphrasis of expression If it be found that they would engage us in an infinite way c. made use of in the beginning of a Disputation means that it will be so found in effect and that it is as much as if it had been positively said they would engage us in an infinite way and which has no end there being no other difference between those two expressions unless that this latter is the more plain and that the other has more of the Air of the Philosophical Method of those Gentlemen After that preamble the Author goes on It is true says he that if we will hear them speak upon this subject without any more deep searehing into that which they say we shall have reason enough to be satisfied For they baldly promise to lead us to the Faith by a short an easy and a clear way without confusion without danger of wandring aside and this way say they is the Examination of the Articles of the Faith by the Scripture which is the only Rule that God has given us for the deciding of the differences of Religion and assuring us of what we ought to believe all others being subject to Error This is the Explication of the way which we propose which is to take the Holy Scripture for the only Rule of our Faith He adds But because in a
render it incapable to defend the Truth I pass over in silence a multitude of other things which sensibly shew us the falseness of that pretence of Rome such as are the lapses of Marcellinus and Liberius the Contradictory decisions of divers Popes their inconstancy their capricious humours their interested Judgments and I know not how many other Characters incompatible with a true Rule of Faith It is sufficient to know that that pretence has never been publickly received in France and that our Kings and our Parliaments have always most vehemently opposed it As to the Prelats and the other Ecclesiasticks after the sad Descriptions that we have given of their state in the days of our Fathers and many Ages before them there is no likelyhood that they can yet further with the least shadow of Reason propose them as a Just Rule of Faith which way soever they are considered whether in General or in particular whether separated or assembled together Their Ignorance their negligence in spiritual things their sinking into vices their excessive love of the World and in a word all that which we have have seen in them will not permit us to believe that we should be bound to trust absolutely to their word about the Subject of the Reformation They had given but too many marks that they were subject to Error since the greatest part of those things which were to be reformed came from them or from those who went before them And besides that they were themselves express parties in that affair considering the complaints that they made of them and that they were engaged to uphold the superstitions in which they had held the People we are not Ignorant that they had a servile dependance on the Court of Rome to which they were bound by Oath that they would no stir nor speak nor act but according to her Inspirations and her Orders as experience has Justified it to us in the Council of Trent In fine their Prelats were men and such men as had made the Church to fall into that Lamentable Corruption out of which our Fathers sought to get out and how could they take them for an Infallible Rule As for that which respects the people if the Author of the Prejudices is as is reported the Author of the Treatise of the Perpetuity of the Faith he would it may be fain make them pass with us for Infallible and give them to us to be the Rule of our Faith But we have shewn him often enough already that he is deceived in his opinion What was there more liable to deceive them and more to incline them to abuses and superstitions then the people and above all a people ignorant of the Mysteries of the Gospel such as was for a long time that of the Latin Church How could a people that ought themselves to undo the false prepossessions with which they had been imbued serve for the Rule of a Reformation But some will say if there had been nothing in the Body of the Church capable of being a Rule of Faith why did your Fathers demand a Council to hear their Complaints and give them a remedy I answer that our Fathers demanded a Council not such a one as that of Trent made up of the Creatures of the Pope who waited for the Holy Ghosts coming from Rome in a Cloak-Bag as the Roman Catholicks have reproached them but such a free Council as wherein they might yet have hoped that God would have presided and his word have been heard They demanded it not as the Rule of Faith blindly to submit their Consciences to all that which should be there determined for they well knew that they owed that submission only to God but as a humane Ordinary means in the Church that Christian Charity and the love of Order made them desire to try if they could not by that way re-establish the purity of the Gospel in the West by the way of the Scripture I acknowledge that there had lain a great difficulty in the choice of persons but if yet notwithstanding they would have proceeded sincerely in it and in the fear of God without letting the interests of flesh and blood enter in the difficulties were not unconquerable Passion Contention a Spirit of Division was not as yet generally spread over all they were not as yet so obstinate in Error as they have been since All the Learned men that were then in it acknowledged the necessity of a Reformation and desired it They had therefore a ground to demand a free Council and these who know History are not ignorant that to elude that demand which appeared to all the World to be so Just and Reasonable that the Court of Rome thought it needful to make use of the most deep and imperceptible piece of its Policy But howsoever it be there is a great difference between a Council that should submit it self to and Rule it self by the Word of God and between a Rule of Faith Our Fathers might very well demand the first and expect to obtain it although he state of the Church was then extreamly corrupted for there was yet some good desires which without doubt would have wrought some effect if they had not been stifled or turned aside But it does not follow from thence that they must after what manner soever have taken that Church for the Soveraign and Infallible Rule of their Religion They would not have more reason to say that we ought to turn to the side of Tradition which the Council of Trent has raised to the same Honour and Authority with the Scripture We shall quickly see which ought to have been believed It shall suffice to say here that although the greatest part of the Roman Traditions are new as the Protestants have often demonstrated them to be yet that in the Age of our Fathers which was as it were the sink of the foregoing there was scarce any Error nor any Superstition how gross soever that they did not labour to defend under the pretence of Tradition so that Tradition is so far from being able to serve for a Rule that it ought it self to be corrected and regulated according to that Maxim of Jesus Christ In the beginning it was not so As to the Antient Fathers I confess that their Writings may be of great use to Learned men to furnish them with a great measure of knowledge but they can never have Authority sufficient to serve for a Rule of Faith The Fathers were men subject to Errour to Prejudices and Surprises as well as other men and there appear but too many signs of it in their Writings They have submitted themselves to the Authority of the Scripture They have called it the balance and exact Rule of all things a sure Anchor and Foundation of the Faith They have taken in their Controversies Jesus Christ speaking in his Gospel for their Judge They have Exhorted their Hearers and their Readers to believe them only so far
how to Read What will become of those who have no understanding nor any readiness of mind How can all those People examine all those Points the Discussion of the least of which notwithstanding is evidently necessary to make them rationally determine It is easy to see that all that heap of Objections and Difficulties which the Author of the Prejudices has proposed against the way of the Scripture tends only to lead men to the Authority of the Church of Rome to the end they should subject themselves to that as a Soveraign and Infallible Rule But as the Doctrine of the Soveraign Authority of that Church is not one of those first Principles which the light of Nature dictates to all men since of Thirty parts of our known World there are at least nine and twenty who do not acknowledge it and as they cannot also say that it is one of the first and common notions of Christianity since of all those who profess themselves to be Christians there are Three parts which reject it The Author may freely give us leave if he pleases that we should first demand of him upon what Foundation he would build that Doctrine to make us receive it as a point of Divine Faith I say of Divine Faith for if we should hold it only as a matter of human Faith he himself would see well that we could not believe the things which the Church of Rome should teach in vertue of its Authority otherwise then with a humane Faith since the things which depend upon a principle cannot make an impression in us different from that which the principle has made To the end therefore that I should believe with a Divine Faith that which the Church of Rome shall teach me by its Authority it is necessary that I should also believe its Authority with a Divine Faith Thus far methinks we should not have any Controversy Let us see therefore upon what Foundations of Divine Faith he would pretend to establish this Proposition The Authority of the Church of Rome is Soveraign and Infallible He can only do it by these Three ways The first is by a new Revelation that God should have made to us of this Truth the Second in shewing that it is one of the Articles that is contained in the Revelation of the Apostles and the Third in shewing us the Characters of Divinity and Infallibility impressed upon the Church of Rome even after the same manner as every thing proves it self by the marks that distinguish it and thus it is that we pretend that the Scripture forces the acknowledgment of its own Divinity The first of these ways is nullified since they agree with us that since Jesus Christ and his Apostles there has been no new Revelation and that there must not be any expected The second would be proper and necessarily supposes a recourse either to Tradition or the Scripture for there are but these two Channels in which we can seek for the Revelation of the Apostles But that of the Scripture is forbidden us by the Author of the Prejudices by reason of the unconquerable difficulties which he discovers there It is says he a way full of obstacles and difficulties and even those who profess to spend all their days in the Study of Divinity ought to judge that Examination to be above all their abilities He must therefore content himself with the way of Tradition But before he can make use of that he must be first assured and that with a certainty of Divine Faith that that which that Tradition contains is come down from the Revelation of Jesus Christ and his Apostles or at least that this particular point of the Authority of the Roman Church in the state wherein it is at present must have proceeded from thence that the Apostles must have Transmitted it viva voce down to their Successours and that their Successours must have received it and Transmitted it down to those who descended from them in the same sence and every whit the same as the Apostles had given it to them If he cannot be assured of that Transmission all that he would build upon it will be uncertain and if he cannot be assured of it with a Divine Faith that which he would build upon it will not be more so But how can he be assur'd of that He has no more that living Voice of the Apostles to represent it to us he must rely upon Testimonyes would it therefore be the Roman Church that must assure us But her Divine and Infallible Authority is as yet in Question and while it shall be questioned it remains suspended it cannot be believed any further then with a humane Faith Shall it be the Scripture that must give Testimony to that Tradition But there are so many Difficulties in that way says the Author of the Prejudices That it is Evident that it is not that which God has chosen to Instruct us in his Truths Must we learn it from that Tradition it self But to decide that point whether that Tradition came from the Apostles or no Tradition it self can be yet no other than a humane Testimony I mean that the Successors of the Apostles declare to us that they have received such and such Doctrines from the Apostles viva voce and that they have receiv'd them in the same sence in which the Apostles gave them to them we cannot at the most have more then a humane Faith for them for they are men as well as others Hitherto therefore there cannot be had a Divine Faith concerning the point of the Sovereign and Infallible Authority of the Roman Church and nothing by Consequence that can assure the Conscience and set the mind of man at rest Let us therefore pass over to the third means which is that of examining the Characters of Divinity and Infallibility that may be seen in the Roman Church It is in my Judgment in the sight of this that they give us certain external Marks and we have already seen that the Author of the Prejudices establishes upon this that Authority about which we dispute The most eminent Authority says he that can be in the world is easily discover'd to be in the Catholick Church because though there are Sects that dispute with it the Truth of its Tenets yet there are none that can with any Colour contend with it for that eminence of Authority which arises from its External Marks But without entring here far into the Controversy touching those Marks I say that he is very far from being able to establish such a certainty upon them as we ought to have of a Principle of Religion And this will appear from these three Reasons The First is That the greatest part of those marks are common to false Societies and even to Schismatical Churches which not only are not Infallible but which are actually in Errour as I have shewn in the first part of this Treatise The Greek Church for example in
fitted to all the World are sufficient to Salvation The Author of the Prejudices may chuse therefore whensoever it shall please him other Propositions to exaggerate the pretended difficulties of the Scripture But what choice soever he should make and what side soever he should take it is certain that those unconquerable difficulties which according to him render the way of the Scripture ridiculous and impossible to the simpler sort are nothing else but the Visions and Dreams of Fancy which admits or would create changes and that he can say nothing more vain and chimerical then that which he has displayed in the 14th and 15th Chapters This is what will manifestly appear if we consider that the Scripture is the Rule of Faith two ways for it is so either to form the Faith to a degree of perfection and compleatness as much as a Man is capable of it in this Life or to form it to a degree of meer sufficiency for Salvation In the former respect it is the Rule of Faith not only for the things which it clearly contains but generally for all that which it contains whether in express Terms or in equivalent whether by near consequences or remote in a word after what manner soever it be In the Second it is the Rule of Faith meerly for the things that are Essential to Religion which it clearly contains and after a manner fitted to the understanding of all the World To make a Just and Right use in the former respect I confess that we must necessarily go over a great many Obstacles and conquer a great many difficulties We must weigh the words exactly examine the Stile consider the Reasons compare it with like expressions consider the passages that seem contrary to it penetrate into the true sence of ambiguous and obscure places look to the connexions of the Discourse to the matter treated of and to the end and design of him who speaks To this effect it is necessary to know how to distinguish the Apocryphal Books from the Canonical to understand the Original Tongues to Judge of the Translations by and even to consult Interpreters All that requires without doubt a great deal of care earnest application a great deal of study and it is very true that to acquit ones self well of it the whole life of a man is not too long I shall even say that it is too short and that humane abilities are too weak to exhaust the Scripture which is an infinite depth of Mysteries and Heavenly Truths and therefore it is that the Author of the Preface to the New Testament of Mons has very well said that we may always lose our selves in the abysses of Learning and Wisdom which we adore without being able to comprehend Notwithstanding it is our duty to advance in that knowledge as far as we can and it would be but a very bad reason for dispensation in that Case to alledge the lengths and difficulties of it for however we cannot attain to an intire perfection yet we may notwithstanding make a considerable progress and the more a man advances in that study the more Joy and Comfort he has But as to the Second way in which the Scripture is the Rule of the Faith to wit to form the Faith in a degree of meer sufficiency for Salvation through the Essential things which it clearly contains in this regard I say its use is freed from all those lengths and all those difficulties and accomodated to the capacity of the meanest requiring nothing else but good sence and a good Conscience which God gives to the smallest of his Children First There is no necessity for that that a man should study the Question of the Apocryphal and Canonical Books for that discussion which is necessary when they would penetrate into the abstruse things of the Scripture which may be drawn from it by 〈◊〉 consequences or by a narrow Examination of its terms and the structure of the discourse because those particular things do not carry so sensible a Character of their Divinity with them as the rest That Discussion I say which is necessary in that Case is not so when they restrain themselves as the simpler sort do to the essential things which the Scripture clearly Teaches because those things make themselves sensibly to be owned to be Divine and by consequence Canonical which is sufficient for the certainty of their Faith if they remain in that Degree Secondly They have no need either to consult the Original Tongues or the different ways of Reading because that those exact Observations which are necessary when we would make use of the Scripture in the first Degree are not so when they would in the Second Imperfect Translations sufficiently contain those clear things that make up the Essence of Religion and the different ways of Reading do not make any difference Those things are neither in one only passage nor in one only Book they are so abundantly spread over the whole body of the Scripture that the faults of Translators or varieties of Manuscripts cannot hinder us from finding them there And if sometimes it happens that the boldness and unfaithfulness of a Translator should go so far as on set purpose to falsify any place of Scripture as Veron has done not long since in reference to a passage in the Acts which says that the Apostles served the Lord and which Veron has Translated that they said Mass in the Lord or as the Authors of the Translation of Mons have done who have inserted into that same passage that the Apostles Sacrificed to the Lord and another in the Epistle to Philemon wherein Saint Paul says that he trusted to be given to the faithful through their Prayers where they have Translated it that he trusted he should be given to them through the merit of their Prayers when that I say should fall out there would be found enough persons in the Church who would not fail to advertise the people of such unfaithfulness that they might take heed of them Lastly I say That it is not necessary that the simpler sort should consult the interpreters of the Scripture to assure themselves of its true meaning for the Objects of their Faith are so clearly explained there they are laid down in so many places they are so well connected with one another they are there in such a manner that provides so well for all that is necessary for the instruction of the mind for the consolation of the conscience and the Sanctification of the Soul that with the Grace of God which accompanies them in his Elect they have no need of any thing but their meer view to insinuate and enter into their hearts and to form therein a True Faith To dissipate in a few words all that the Authour of the Prejudices has set down in his 14th and 15th Chapters I shall only tell him that he can require but these four conditions in the Objects of Faith to render them
Transubstantiation the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Adoration of the Host And that which is yet further considerable is That as the Essential Truths of Religion are so linked with one another that there is not any one that may not be as I may so speak the Center of all the rest that is to say which may not have references to all the rest and immediate connexions and which all the others may not serve to prove and uphold which makes out divers ways or manners of establishing them in the minds of the most simple even so those Errors that are destructive are so repugnant to those Truths that there is not any one which may not be opposed not only by all in general but even almost by each one in particular which shews that there are divers ways of overthrowing them and destroying them in the minds of the weakest and when they shall escape one of those ways they will be sufficiently overthrown by another For Example Transubstantiation which is repugnant to the sincerity of God is also repugnant to the Truth of the humane nature of Jesus Christ to the formation of his Body of the substance of the B. Virgin to the state of that Glory wherein he is at present to the Article of his Ascension and of his existence in Heaven to the manner in which he dwells in us which is by his Spirit and by our Faith to the nature of that hunger and thirst which we should have for his flesh and for his blood which is Spiritual to the Character of both the Sacraments wherein there never is any Transubstantiation made and to the perpetual Order that God observed when he wrought Miracles which was to lay them open to mens Eyes and Sences so that when a man should not be capable of perceiving any of those repugnances he would perceive the others which would produce the same effect and which would be sufficient to make him reject those Errors See here then all the Conditions that are necessary for the forming of a True Faith even in the Souls of the most simple behold them found in the Scripture and by consequence behold the Scripture remaining the Rule of Faith in spight of all the endeavours of the Author of the Prejudices It is in vain that he so strongly opposes it it will always be what God has made it that is to say the Fountain and only source of the Truth of Religion or as St. Irenaeus speaks the Foundation and Pillar of our Faith which only can give us quiet of mind and peace of Conscience The Difficulties which the Author of the Prejudices forms against the Scripture have these Three Characters The one That they may be turned against himself that is to say that as he has made them upon the subject of the Scripture We may also make them upon the subject of Tradition and the Church of Rome to which he would send us back the other That in regard of the Scripture they are null and to no purpose and the Third That in regard of Tradition and the Roman Church they are solid and unconquerable and this is what will appear if what I have said in this and in the foregoing Chapter be well Examined The End of the Second Part. An HISTORICAL DEFENCE OF THE Reformation Against a Book Intituled Just Prejudices against the CALVINISTS THE THIRD PART Of the Obligation and Necessity that lay upon our Fathers to separate themselves from the Church of Rome CHAP. I. That our Fathers had just sufficient and necessary Causes for their Separation supposing that they had right at the bottom in the controverted Points WE should certainly be the most ungrateful persons in the World if after the favour that God has shewn us in re-establishing the Purity of his Gospel in the midst of us we should not think our selves bound to give him everlasting Thanks So great and precious an advantage highly calls for our resentments and that in enjoying it with delight we should pay our Acknowledgements to the Author of it But what ground soever we should have to rejoyce in God we must notwithstanding avow that we should be very insensible in regard of others if we could behold without an extream affliction the misery of so many men who voluntarily deprive themselves of that good Those who are at present engaged in those Errors and Superstitions from which it has pleased the Divine Goodness to deliver us are our Brethren by the External Profession of the Christian Name and by the Consecration of one and the same Baptism and how can we intirely rejoyce while we see them in a state which we believe to be so bad and so contrary to our common Calling I know that God only who is the Lord of mens hearts and minds can dissipate that gloomy darkness which they are involved in and that it is our Duty to pour out our ardent and continual Prayers to him for his Grace for them but we ought not to neglect humane methods among which that of justifying the Conduct of our Fathers in the subject of their Separation is one of the most efficacious and as it is by that especially that they labour to render us odious so is to that that I shall allow the sequel of this Work The Separation of our Fathers ought to be distinguish'd into three Degrees the First consists in that which they have loudly pronounc'd against the Doctrines and Customs of the Church of Rome which they judg'd to be contrary to Faith and Piety and which they have formally renounced the Second consists in this that they have forsook the External Communion of that Church and those of its party and the Third in that they have made other Assemblies than hers and that they have rank't themselves under another Form of Ministry We have treated of the First already where we have shewn the Justice and Necessity of the Reformation which our Fathers made the Third shall be spoken to in the Fourth Part and this is designed to examine the Second Our Inquiry therefore at present will be to know whether our Fathers in Reforming themselves ought to have separated themselves from the other Party who were not for a Reformation or whether notwithstanding the Reformation they ought yet to have abode with them in one and the same Communion and to have liv'd in that respect as they did heretofore This is that which I pretend to make clear in this Third Part of this Work To enter upon this business I confess that if we could suppose it as a certainty That all Separation in matters of Religion is odious and Criminal we ought to be the first in condemning the Actions of our Fathers and that whatever aversion we should have for the Errors and Abuses which we see reigning in the Church of Rome we ought to labour to bear them as patiently as it could be possible for us to do in waiting till it should please God
of it but they would have subordinate heads humane heads on whom they might depend by an external dependance and that was necessary for them to be by that means linked to Jesus Christ after the same manner that they would have us at this day to depend on the See of Rome Wherefore did S. Paul say to them Is Christ divided Why did he not say to them that as for Paul and Apollos they had no reason to take them for their heads but that it was far otherwise as to Peter since God had set up him and his Successors for ever to be the heads of the Universal Church Why in stead of that did he conclude after this manner That no one should glory in men for all things are yours whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come all are yours and ye are Christs and Christ is Gods Is it not to let them understand that Jesus Christ is the only head of the Church that there is only his communion that is absolutely necessary and that as for other Ministers whosoever they were they were appointed for our use as all other things to serve us in as much as they lead us to Jesus Christ If the Church under the New Testament ought to be inviolably ty'd to the See of Rome how should the Scripture have been silent in so weighty a truth which could not be ignor'd without extream danger nor contested without evident damnation Notwithstanding we do not find any other head of the Church in those Sacred Books but Jesus Christ nor any other High Priest but him We do not find in the Scripture any Universal Bishop nor Ministerial head or subordinate or any particular Church the Mistress of all others We find there indeed that Jesus Christ being ascended up on high gave some to be Apostles others to be Prophets some Evangelists some Pastors and Teachers for the assembling of the Saints for the work of the Ministry for the edifying of the body of Christ How came the Apostle to forget in that Enumeration the chief of all Offices to wit that of the Ministerial Head of the whole Church and the Universal Vicar of Jesus Christ in the Government and conduct of his flock If the Christian Church ought in that to resemble the Synagogue and to have as that a Soveraign High Priest upon earth who should be the head of that Religion and who should have his Successors as the ancient High Priest had whence comes it that the Scripture has alwayes regarded that Ancient High Priest as a Figure of Jesus Christ that it alwayes referred it to him and never to the Roman Bishops nor even to S. Peter who was then alive and who should by consequence have exercised that pretended charge which they would make to descend from him There is therefore no lawful foundation in all that pretension of Rome and her See We ought to pass the same judgement on all other Sees and other particular Churches with which it is just we should hold communion while they teach good and sound Doctrine and that we should even bear with them when they should fall into some errors provided they constrain no body to believe them but from which it is also just to separate our selves when they shall fall into errors contrary to the communion of Jesus Christ our only Saviour and when they would violently force all others to believe the same If in a long course of Ages Rome has usurped by little and little the rights that do not belong to her if she has found it very easie through the ignorance or complaisance of men in the diverse intrigues of the World to raise her Throne as high as our Fathers beheld it and as we do yet at this day If her flatterers have not failed alwayes to raise her pretensions as high as Heaven and if she has been lull'd asleep with the sound of those sweet charms that enchant her we do not believe that that ought to prejudice our separation We have no other aversion for her communion than that which our conscience gives us and if it shall please God to re-establish her in her ancient purity she would not have so great a joy to spread forth her arms to us as we should have an impatience to demand her peace of her But as long as we shall see her in that bad state wherein we are perswaded she is we cannot but bewail and pray for her and yet notwithstanding no body can blame us for preferring our own salvation to her communion CHAP. III. That the Conduct of the Court of Rome and those of her party in respect of the Protestants has given them a just cause to separate themselves from them supposing that they had had right at the foundation BEfore we leave this matter of our Separation from the Church of Rome there yet remains two Questions for us to examine the one Whether our Fathers were not too precipitate in so great an affair whether they did not act with too much haste or Whether they had sufficient motives from the conduct of those from whom they separated to forsake in the end their communion The other Whether with all that they can say that they separated themselves from the communion of the Catholick Church spread over the whole World as the Donatists did heretofore and whether they did not fall into the same crime with those ancient Schismaticks against whom Optatus and S. Augustine so strongly disputed I will treat of this second Question in the following Chapter and this here shall be design'd to the clearing of the former To effect this methinks we need but freely to set before their eyes all that I have said in the second Part touching the necessity that lay upon our Fathers to reform themselves For since it clearly results from those matters of fact which I have set down that the Popes and those of their party were so far from applying themselves seriously to a Reformation that they studied on the contrary only how to stifle the truth from the very first moment they beheld it appear and to defend their Errors and Superstitions by all manner of wayes who sees not that that inflexible resolution which had not yielded either to the first or second admonition rendred from that time the separation of our Fathers just and exempted them from all reproach For when there are Errors capable of giving ground for a separation it ought to be defer'd only upon a hope of amendment and that hope seem'd to be sufficiently destroy'd by those Historical actions which I have already set down Notwithstanding to shew them more and more how the conduct of our Fathers was very prudent in that respect and full of circumspection it will not be besides our purpose to resume here the close of their story from the unjust condemnation of Luther and his Doctrine made by Pope Leo the Tenth
for that they had referr'd that business to a National Council in defect of a General one and he maintained that the Authority of the See of Rome was very much wounded in that reference and that a National Council could not deliberate about matters of Religion In fine after a great many disputes which only serv'd more and more to discover the obstinate resolution that the Roman party had taken up not to suffer a Reformation this Diet ended with a Decree of the Emperour which referr'd the whole affair to a General Council or a National one in Germany or to an Imperial Assembly if they could not obtain a Council and that nevertheless the Execution of the Decree of Ausburg should remain suspended All this pass'd in the year 1541. See here what the success of the Conference of Ratisbon was The year following which was 1542. the Pope assign'd the Council to be held at Trent in the Month of November he sent a Bull to the Emperour in Spain and after to the Kings exhorting them to send their Embassadors thither and he himself deputed thither three Cardinals in quality of Legates he sent thither some Bishops also But this Convocation had not then any effect by reason of the War that was carried on about the same time between King Francis the First and the Emperour And this latter seeing himself to have two Wars upon his hands that with France and the other with the Turks made a new Decree at Spire by which he gave peace to the Protestants but more than that he ordain'd that they should make choice of some Learned and well-meaning persons to draw up a Formulary of the Reformation that the Princes should do the same and that all those pieces being referred to the next Diet they should there resolve with a common consent that which they should judge fit to be kept about the matters of Religion till the meeting of a Council This Decree was made in the year 1544. But the Pope was so netled at this that he wrote to the Emperour in a very threatning style complaining above all things of this that he had not referred that which concerned Religion to the decision of the Church of Rome and that he had favoured those who were Rebels to the Apostolick See Some time after King Francis the First and the Emperour made a Peace and one of the Articles of their Agreement was that they should defend the Ancient Religion that they should employ their endeavours for the Union of the Church and the Reformation of the Court of Rome that they should jointly demand of the Pope the calling of a Council and that they should labour to subdue the Protestants This obliged the Pope to prevent them He therefore again assigned the Council to be held at Trent the fifteenth day of March 1545. and dispatched away his Legates thither but at the same time he resolv'd to use all his endeavours to oblige the Emperour to turn his Arms against the Protestants to oppose them at the same time with the Spiritual and Temporal Sword or to say better to the end that the War might serve him for a pretence to elude the Council For that purpose he made use of the Ministry of his Nuntio and afterwards of that Cardinal Farnese whom he sent to the Emperour as his Legate whose chief pretence was the refusals which the Protestants had propounded anew against his pretended Council He made therefore very powerful solicitations to the Emperour by his Legate with offers to aid him with men and money and even to cause him to be assisted by the Princes of Italy and the Emperour who on his side was very glad to take this occasion to subdue Germany to himself readily accepted of this proposition so that a War was concluded between them but the conclusion was kept very secret till the time of Execution Notwithstanding the better to cover this design the Emperour appointed a Conference of Learned Men to be held at Ratisbon upon the subject of Religion according to his last Decree but he did not fail to cite the Arch-Bishop of Cologne to appear before him who had embraced the Reformation and afterwards excommunicated him and deprived him of his Arch-bishoprick And as for the Conference at Ratisbon which gave some jealousie to the Bishops who were already assembled at Trent it was quickly after broken by the unjust conditions that some Monks who were there as the Commissioners of the Emperour would impose on the Protestant Divines The Council was opened the thirteenth of December of the same year 1545. But in fine after a great many artifices and dissimulations able to have lull'd asleep the most vigilant after a great many contrary assurances given to the Protestants the Emperour sent the Cardinal of Trent in Post to Rome to give the Pope notice that he should make his Troops march with all diligence The Treaty which they had made together was published the eight and twentieth of July 1546. bearing this among other things That the Emperour should employ his Arms and open force to make those Germans who should reject the Council return to the ancient Religion and to the obedience of the holy See and the Emperour soon after openly declared himself as well by the Letters which he wrote to divers Cities in Germany to the Elector of Cologne and the Prince of Wirtemburg as by the answers that his Ministers gave to the Embassadors of those Towns who were with him The Pope on his side presently published a Bull dated the fifteenth of July by which he commanded that they should make solemn Processions exhorting all Christians to put up prayers to God for the happy success of the War which the Emperour and himself had undertaken at their common charges against the Germans who should either profess Heresie or protect it Before this he had wrote to the Switzers Letters dated the third of June by which he gave them notice of the Emperours design praying them to send all the succours they could possibly The Emperour would at the beginning cover this War with another pretence than that of Religion but the Pope would never suffer him to do it So that the Emperour having no further way left to disguise himself began with the proscribing of the Duke of Saxony and the Lantgrave of Hessia and moreover he sent his Army into the field The Protestant Princes on their parts took up Arms also for their just defence The success of this War was not so happy for the Protestants all Germany saw it self soon enslav'd under the Arms of the Emperour and according to all humane appearance the Reformation also had been presently destroy'd if God who never utterly forsakes his Church had not provided for it by his Providence It hapned that the Pope and the Emperour quarrell'd about those temporal interests which were far more prevalent in their minds than that of Religion which fell out because the Emperour would not
difficulty to be heard in a Congregation in the house of the Legate In this Congregation they demanded on the behalf of their Masters 1. That the Article of the Superiority of the Council above the Pope decided in the Councils of Constance and Basil might be laid down for a foundation 2. That the Pope since he was a party in this affair should not preside in the Council but that he should submit to it both himself and his See to be judged there 3. That he should for this effect absolve the Bishops of the Oaths that he had given them 4. That the matters which had been already decided should be judged of again after their Divines had been heard since they could not till then have come to the Council not having had Safe-conduct 5. That they should deferr all judgement till they came 6. That they should judge according to the Word of God and the common belief of all Christian Nations But the Prelates would not hear these Propositions and the Legate who consulted the Pope upon all matters and more especially upon these had already thus vehemently explained himself That they had much rather lose their lives than release any thing of the Authority of the Holy See Some dayes after the Divines of Wirtemberg and those of Strasburg arrived at Trent and presented their Confession demanding that it should be examined and offering themselves to explain and defend it but this was to no purpose for the Pope had expresly forbad his Legate to permit that they should enter upon any publick conference neither vivâ voce or by Writing in the matters of Religion Thus things were carried on in this Council But while affairs were manag'd after this manner the Pope who for some time before had been discontented at the Emperour had made his Treaty with King Henry the Second and the King on his side had also very secretly treated with Maurice the Elector of Saxony for the Liberty of Germany so that matters were all on a sudden ready for a War and the news being come to Trent the Pope presently separated the Assembly giving order to his Nuntio's to give notice of it every where and to suspend the Council till another time This War freed Germany from its slavery under Charles he was forced to set all the Princes at liberty whom he kept Prisoners and in fine to make the Peace which was concluded at Passaw the last day of July 1552. By this Peace it was concluded that the Emperour should call within six Months the General Assembly of the Empire there to provide means for the accommodating of the differences of Religion and that notwithstanding no person should be disquieted upon that occasion and thus the Interim of the Emperour was abolished But if Germany had then any Quiet the Persecutions were enflamed elsewhere against the Reformed Edward the Sixth being dead in England and Mary having succeeded him the Pope sent Cardinal Pool thither in quality of his Legate who negotiated there the re-establishing of the Authority and Religion of the Pope This made the flames to be kindled and their punishments to be renewed after the most cruel manner in the world for in one only year they made an infinite number of the people to be burn'd for the sake of Religion and one hundred seventy and six persons of great quality Elizabeth the Daughter of Henry the Eighth and Sister to Mary was confin'd to a strait Prison On the other side Ferdinand King of Hungary and Bohemia and Arch-Duke of Austria made a rigorous Edict upon the same occasion for all the Lands of his obedience and drove away from Bahemia alone more than two hundred Ministers The Emperour on his part alwayes caused the Laws of the Inquisition to be most rigorously observed in the Low-Countreys The Duke of Savoy did the same thing in his Countreys France every day beheld nothing but these sad Executions and yet nevertheless all these bloody pursuits did but increase in all places the number of those who embraced the Reformation Pope Julius the Third dyed the three and twentieth of March 1555. and Marcellus the Second was chosen in his place who not having held the See more than-two and twenty dayes had for his Successour Paul the Fourth In this same year there was an Imperial Assembly held at Ausburg where the Treaty of Peace made at Passaw was confirmed and the freedom of Religion granted by the Emperour and the King of the Romans in Germany The Decree was presently published But notwithstanding the people of Austria and Bavaria having demanded with very great urgency a Reformation of their Princes it was refused them and they agreed only that they should receive the Communion under both kinds in waiting for a Council This did not fail to give great displeasure to the Pope beholding on one side that all parts of the World were swallow'd up by the Superstitions and Errors of his Church and on the other that even the Roman Catholick Princes of whom he expected an entire obedience undertook without his consent to change something in Religion In this same time Charles the Fifth weary of affairs and having but a weak constitution resolved to quit the World and for this effect having made Philip his Son to come to Brussells he demis'd to him the Soveraignty of the Low-Countreys in his favour and a Month after he yielded to him the Crown of Spain He resigned the Empire to Ferdinand his Brother and reserving to himself the Pension of an hundred thousand Crowns he retired into a Monastery This hapned in the year 1556. and he dyed two years after the one and twentieth of September 1558. Pope Paul the Fourth from the first beginning of his Papacy turn'd all his thoughts to avoid the Council and to make the rigors of the Inquisition to rule in all places saying That this was the only means to destroy Heresie and the only fort of the Apostolick See For this effect he made an Ordinance which he caused all the Cardinals to sign by which he renewed all the censures and punishments denounced by his Predecessors against the Hereticks and declared that all the Prelates Princes Kings and Emperours fallen into Herefie ought to be held fallen from and deprived of all their Benefices Estates Kingdoms or Empires without any other declaration that they could not be re-established by any authority not even by that of the Apostolick See and that their goods should be given to the first possessor He quarrell'd at the same time with Ferdinand maintaining that the Resignation of Charles in his favour could not be done but by his hands and that in that case it belonged to him to make whom he should please Emperour Notwithstanding two things fell out that gave him a great deal of grief the one that Mary Queen of England being dead Elizabeth succeeded her and that the Emperour Ferdinand having propounded to the Protestants in the Diet of Ausburg which was held in
that every Society which has not that extension is not the Church so that this reasoning is alwayes sound your Society is shut up in a little part of the world Therefore it is not the Church and that it is by this Principle that S. Augustine has disputed against the Donatists and convinced them of Schism This is the summ of his eighth Chapter In the ninth he labours to apply these general Maxims to our Separation and 1. He sayes That our Communion is not spread over all the world any more than that of the Donatists and that not having that visible extension which is the perpetual mark of the True Church it follows that it is not so and by consequence that we are all Schismaticks 2. He sayes We carry the principle of the Donatists much higher than those Schismaticks stretch'd it for as for them they did not say that there ever was a time in which the Church had wholly fell into Apostasic and that they excepted the Communion of Donatus but as for us we will have it that there has been whole Ages in which all the world had generally apostatized and lost the faith and treasure of salvation 3. He labours to shew that the Societies of the Berengarians of the Waldenses and Albigenses c. in whom he sayes we shut up the Church could not be this Catholick Church of which S. Augustine speaks And lastly He concludes from thence that we are Schismaticks and by consequence out of a state of salvation Before we enter upon the particular Examination of the Propositions whereof this Objection is made up it will be good to note that there is nothing new in all that and that it is nothing but that some mark of visible extension that the greatest part of the Controversial Writers of the Roman Communion have been wont to propound when they would give the marks of the True Church There is this only difference to be found in it that the others labour to ground this upon what they produce out of the passages of the Scripture whereas the Author of the Prejudices grounds his argument upon the sole Authority of S. Augustine and some Fathers But when it should be true that S. Augustine and the African Fathers disputing against the Donatists should have prest this visible extension of the Church too much and urged it further than they ought will the Author of the Prejudices believe that he ought to hold all those things that the Fathers have advanc'd in their disputes for infallible and all their reasonings and hypotheses to have been so Does he not know what Theodoret himself who was a Father has noted concerning some of those who were before him That the vehemence of Disputation had made them fall into excesses just as those who would rectifie a crooked Tree turn it too much on the other side from that straightness which it ought to have And is he ignorant of what S. Athanasius said concerning Dionysius of Alexandria whose Authority the Arians objected to him That Dionysius had said so not with design to make a simple exposition of his faith but occasionally having a respect to the times and persons That a Gardiner is not to be found fault with if he cultivate his Trees according to the quality of the soil sowing one planting another pruning this and plucking up that We must sayes S. Jerome distinguish between the different kinds of writing and especially of Polemical and Dogmatical For in the Polemical the dispute is vagous and when they answer to an adversary they propound sometimes one thing and sometimes another they argue as they think fit they say one thing and do another or as the Proverb sayes they offer bread and give one a stone But in the Dogmatical on the contrary they speak openly and ingenuously We may easily apprehend by that that we ought not to hold for Canonical all that the Fathers may have wrote in the heat of their disputes or to take what they have said according to the rigour of the Letter since they themselves acknowledge that having the Pen in their hands they often advance things that on other occasions ought not to be press'd So that though it should be true that S. Augustine and the African Fathers had made that visible extension an inseparable and perpetual mark of the True Church yet we should not fear to say in respect of them what S. Augustine himself has said concerning S. Cyprian whom the Donatists objected to him I do not hold the Writings of Cyprian for Canonical but I examine them by the Canonical Scriptures That which I find in them conformable to the holy Scriptures I receive with praising him and I reject with the respect that I owe to his person what I find in them disagreeing thereto We should make no scruple to apply to them what the same S. Augustine has said on the subject of S. Hilary and some other Fathers whom they alledg'd to him We must throughly distinguish these sorts of writings from the Authority of the Canonical Books For however we should read them yet we cannot draw convincing testimonies from them and it is allow'd us to depart from them when we see that they themselves have departed from the truth It is therefore certain that the Author of the Prejudices has but weakned his proof when instead of labouring to establish it on the Scripture as the rest have done he restrains it to the meer Authority of S. Augustine and some Fathers We have thought that we ought to have freely represented this to the Author of the Prejudices to oblige him a little to moderate his pretensions for he imagin'd that the sole Authority of S. Augustine and some Fathers was enough to convince us I will sayes he convince them we have frequently told him already and shall tell him here again That the Scripture is the only rule of our Faith that we do not acknowledge any other authority able to decide the disputed Points in Religion than that of the Word of God and that if we sometimes dispute by the Fathers it is but by way of condescention to those of the Church of Rome to act upon their own principle and not to submit our consciences to the word of men But because that he may also imagine under a pretence of this declaration that we have no other way to answer his argument I shall undertake to answer here and shew him if I can that he has abused the Authority of S. Augustine and that he has neither comprised or had a mind to comprehend either the true sentiments of that Father or ours This is that which I design to shew him in this Chapter and in the following But before we enter upon this matter it will be necessary to clear in a few words the History of the Donatists and to represent what was the beginning of their quarrel and what their Separation was The Author of the
to our Children as well as to us it ought to be given not only to us but to our Children So that without going any further I have in that respect all the Certainty that I can reasonably desire As to the second I say that the Word Baptise equally signifying in the Original Tongue to plunge and to wash and being used divers times in this latter sence as it may appear in the Translation of Mons in the seventh of Saint Mark and eleventh of Saint Luke and there being moreover nothing in the Scripture that precisely enjoins Immersion or forbids Aspersion it is my part to believe that in the Thoughts of Jesus Christ those two wayes of Baptizing are indifferent and that so much the more as I know the Spirit of the Gospel is not so nice and punctual about forms or the manners of External Actions which is proper to Superstition So that I have further for that all the Assurance that I ought to have For the third being certain as I am by the Promises of Jesus Christ that God has alwayes Preserved a True Church in the World that is to say the Truly Faithful howsoever mixt they may have been with the Worldly I am assured also that the Baptism which was Administred not only before the Reformation but since in the Latin Church and in other Christian-Societies where the Essence of Baptism remains is good because that being made in the Name of the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost it is the Baptism of the True Church although it be administred by Persons filled with Errors and Superstitions Baptism is not theirs they are only the Ministers of it That Sacrament belongs to God and his Truly Faithful ones in what Quarter of the World soever they be That same Scripture that sayes That the Promise is made to us and to our Children and to all that are a far of even as many as the Lord shall call says by a necessary Consequence that the Seal of that Promise which is Baptism and all the other Rights of the Covenant of Jesus Christ belongs to us and to our Children that is to say to the Truly Faithful The Hereticks who Administer it do not do it as a good that belongs to them under that Quality for in that respect nothing belongs to them but as a good that belongs to the True Church the Dispensation whereof they have by the part which they have yet with her For they Baptise not by that which divides them from the truly Faithful but by that which after some manner Associates and unites them with them It is therefore the Baptism of the True Church which they give and not that of Heresy it is the Church that Baptises by them and in that respect they are yet as I have said the Dispensers of its goods If the Author of the Prejudices desires yet further to see a greater Number ot proofs drawn from the same Scripture that should Establish this Truth he needs but to read what Saint Augustine has wrote in his Treatise against the Epistle of Parmenio and that of Baptism against the Donatists and he will learn there not to make any more Questions of that Nature I know not for the rest whether he as well as the others of his Communion who shall take the pains to read this work will be satisfied But I dare say at least that I have done all that was possible for me to do to set before them without Offence the Truths that are most Important for them to know It belongs to them to make a serious Reflection upon that which I have represented to them and upon the present State of Christianity which the prophaneness Impiety and Debauchery of mens Minds do every day reduce into an Evident danger of ruine if we do not bring a Remedy both on the one and the other side Nevertheless instead of having in view that grand Interest upon which the Glory of God wholly depends and the Salvation of men they apply themselves only to destroy us and their Passion prevails to that height that they do not take heed of making irreparable Breaches in Religion as that is of bringing the Use and Authority of the Holy Scripture to nothing provided they can but do us any Mischief But although they should do whatsoever they pleas'd God would alwayes be a Witness on our Side that in the Foundation of the Cause that upon which we have Separated from them is the Love which we have for the Truth and the Desire that we have to Work out our own Salvation And to let them see that it is not a false Prejudice that Corrupts us let them go through all the Christian Communions that are in the world Let them Judg in cold blood and I am assured that they will come to a serious Agreement that ours is the purest Church nd the most approaching to the Primitive one Our Opinions are the Fundamental Opinions of Religion which are great Solid and Convincing our Worship has nothing that is not Evangelical for it consists in Prayers to God in Thanksgivings in Singing of Psalms in Celebration of Fasts in Humiliation in Acts of Repentance in tears and groans when we are prest with the thoughts of our Sins and the Wrath of God our Morals consist more in Exhortations in Censures in Corrections in Threatnings on Gods side in Representations of the Motives that bind us to do good Works then in unprofitable decisions of Cases of Conscience Our Government is plain remote from the Formalities of the Bar founded as much as can be upon good Reason Justice and Charity but very opposite to the Maximes of Humane Policy and especially to Ambition Covetousness and Vanity which we believe to be the Mortal Enemies of Religion Every one in the World knows that and yet notwithstanding the Author of the Prejudices and all those who with him take false lights have not fail'd to cry out against us not only after a very uncharitable but an unchristian manner As for us we shall alwayes pray to God for those who will not Love us we shall bless them that Curse us but we shall also with Gamaliel give them this Advice Take heed that in Tormenting us you do not fight against God instead of fighting with him Let us pray on both sides that he would give us his Blessing and his Peace and that he would make us to do his Will FINIS A TABLE OF THE CONTENTS of the CHAPTERS The First Part. Wherein it is shewn that our Ancestors were obliged to Examine by themselves the State of Religion and of the Church in their Days CHap. I. General Considerations upon this Controversy The Division of this Treatise Page 1. Chap. II. That the State of the Government of the Latin Church some Ages ago gave to our Fathers Prejudices of its Corruption in Doctrine and Worship sufficient to drive them more nearly to Examine their Religion Page 8. Chap. III. That