really apprehended by him to whom they are thus proposed to be false it is hard to affirm that that man can lawfully subscribe and therefore rather then do it the Doctor makes account he may remain out of Communion and that lawfully too This is the Doctors assertion which indeed might serve out of a Pulpit to an Auditory that he would claw with giving them that sweet and as they esteem it Christian liberty of holding what they list but to any judicious person that knows what Government is it is in reality the sublimated quintessence of perfect Non-Religion and Anarchy The Position comes to this That none should be condemned or punished by his Governors for not-doing that the contrary whereof he thinks is to be done To give which Position the least shadow of likelihood the Doctor is necessarily obliged to prove first That no Pride Interest or Passion can make one think wrong and consequently culpable in so thinking which if the Doctor do he will work wonders and with a turn of his hand convert this world of miserable sinners into a Heaven of pure and perfect Saints But let us hear an Argument or two upon the Doctors principles An ambitious or proud man blinded by his Passion begins to think and really true that the long established Government of the Commonwealth is tyrannical and upon this thought he proceeds to jumble all the Land into intestine Seditions and to dismount the Governors from the top of Authority and as he tells you conscientiously too that is with a perfect perswasion according to his present Passion Force him not to subscribe to obey his lawful Magistrate saith the Doctor he may not do it lawfully it is against his Conscience A revengeful or malicious man thinks that in all right and reason he may endamage the party that offered the affront and upon the lawfulness of his so doing while his humor possesses him he would lay his Soul Controle him not saith the Doctor he is in an â—rror but yet governs himself at present according to Conscience he may not lawfully subscribe or â—eal a pardon contrary to his present perswasion The Anabaptist thought himself nearly touched in Conscience to cut off the heads of his Mother and Sister for kneeling at the Communion Urgâ—… him not to the contrary saith the Doctor 〈◊〉 cannot lawfully spare them it is against his preseâ—… perswasion The Puritans following the Protestants example refuse obedience to the Church of England seeing in her so many dregâ—… of Popery remaining Unjustly did the Church of England saith the Doctor in obliging them to her obedience and cutting off poor Bastâ—… wicks Burtons and Prynnes Ears who did according to their Conscience or present perswasion Neither will it avail you to Answer that these were told by Gods Law that their actâ—… were unwarrantable and therefore were culpable For it is easie to reply that you were as much and as earnestly commanded by God to hear the Church and obey your lawful Superiors and incurred a far greater sin if you did not to wit the sin of Schism which your selfe unfortunate Pen has out of the Fathers described to be a venomous compound swoln with the mixt poyson of all sorts of Vices The Reader will by this see to what a pass this Doctors Logick would bring the world if his Position should take place That no man should be obliged to or punished for anything against his present perswasion which he terms his Conscience The contrary to which that I may a little more elucidate from its first grounds the Reader may please to consider That this present perswasion which a man is so fixt in may either begin in the Understanding or proceed from the Will If in the Understanding it must be onely a perfect demonstration that can beget in it so firm an adherence and then being rational it is not onely excusable but laudable Otherwise it is an irrational resolvedness sprung from a passionate distorsion of the interessed Will pushing and exciting the Understanding without due deliberation first to pitch upon and afterwards pertinaciously to adhere to a thing more then the light of Reason it self gives Which being in the Will vicious is consequently as all other Vices are culpable liable to correction and by correction reformable So as Licet non possumus opinari quando volumus that is Although we cannot deem or think a thing true but we must have some Motive or other true or false why we think so yet with this it well consists that a perverse affection in the Will may blinde and lead astray the Understanding by proposing false Motives for true ones And therefore when the Will by deserved punishment is whipt out of her viciousness the Native lustre of the Understanding will quickly disenvelop its self from the cloud of mistake in which the Passion exhaled vapors had enwrapt her You see then Doctor which perhaps you never reflected on before A man may be obliged to retract a present perswasion and however he pretends Conscience for his excuse be punished too if he does not since his bad will was the cause of his erroneous judgment as the cases of the fore-mentioned Malefactors your Clients have as I hope by this time better informed you But perhaps you would not have this method used in matters of Religion And why not Unless the violating the ever-sacred Authority of Christs Church and renouncing the main support of all Religion the Rule of Faith things in the conserving of which the eternal salvation of mankinde consists be less deserving punishment in the offenders or less worth taking notice of by the Governors of the Church then the wrong of thirteen-pence half-penny is by the Laws and Governors of the Commonwealth The result then of your discourse comes to this That all your dwindling suppisitions anâ— may bees which you wisely put down foâ— proofs and sometimes for grounds remain still in question or rather unquestionably unsupposable Your tenderness of Conscience not to sin against God in subscribing to the errors forsooth of his Church which he hath commanded you to hear onely Pharasaical arrogancy and singularity in you which makes you think and style at pleasure any thing Error which the whole Church holds if contrary to your private judgment Lastly Our pretended making Communion impossible will be found to be onely a self-opinionated pride in you and of all pride 's the most miserable and filly to adhere so pertinaciously against Evidence of Authority to a few obscure scraps of writers speaking on the by and your own self acknowledged fallibility All these and whatever pretences you here in sinuate will all lie at your doors and loudly call you Schismaticks unless you can evidence with most perfect demonstrations that those things were Errors which the Church obliged you to subscribe to that is that the Churches doctrine was or is erroneous and consequently her self not infallible This if you evidence I shall grant you have
the true Charge the only way for a Protestant to clear his Church from Schism is to shew it not guilty of doing this either by disproving the former to be the necessary Rule of Unity in Faith or the latter the necessary Bond of Government both which though they somtimes say yet because in these Books professedly composed for their Vindication from the guilt of Schism they directly and of set purpose handle neither it is clear they intend to shuffle not speak pithily The first Principle which also includes the truth of the second wee hold by this manifest Evidence that still the latter Age could not bee ignorant of what the former beleev'd and as long as it adhered to that method nothing could bee alter'd in it which way of assurance carries with it the Testimony of all that are truly called Christians and this by so ample a memory and succession as is stronger than the stock of human Government and action no right of Law or human Ordinances being able to offer so ample clear and continued a Title They must remember how their Forefathers who began that which they call the Reformation were themselves of this profession before their pretended reform They ought to weigh what reasons their Ancestors should have had to introduce such an alteration They must confesse themselves guilty in continuing the breach unless they can alledge causes sufficient to have begun it had the same ancient Religion descended to these daies For the constant beleefe of the Catholike world both was at the time of your division and still is that these Principles are Christs own ordination recorded in Scripture derived to us by the strongest Evidences that our nature is capable of to attain assurance what was done in Antiquity Evidences inviolable by any humane either power or proof except perfect and rigorous demonstration to which our Adversaries doe not so much as pretend and therefore without further dispute remain unanswerably convicted of Schism And though after this it bee superfluous to say any thing to any Book which does not so much as attempt to demonstrate either of these Points false yet I shall bestow a few thoughts to declare the quality of the Lord of Derry's Arguments not examining them any further than to shew how litle they are to the purpose In his two first Chapters though there bee many things false and more taken up without proof yet I will not touch them because hee onely pretends to settle the Question which is already done for my part And so I will begin my Animadversions where he begins his Arguments in the third Chapter His first proof is because not Protestants but Roman Catholikes themselves made the first separation 1. If it were so how does that acquit you since continuance in a Breach of this nature which cannot be sodered by time is as guilty as the very beginning Now these two Bonds of Unity being of Christs own institution no time can sear the bleeding wound And this because we hold by the fore-declared strength they now must have demonstrations to contradict it as well as the first Separaters 2. How does he prove they were not Protestants because they persecuted Protestants what then did not Luther persecute Carolstadius and Zuinglius doe they not now in Germany and other Countries Lutherans permit no Calvinists Calvinists no Lutherans Did not you persecute Puritans and Brownists Doe you not now complain to bee persecuted by others will you make all these Papists or why are not they Reformers as well as you you will say many of these first breakers died Catholikes True but upon Repeutance Of Gardiner whom you presse so particularly it is recorded that upon his death bed he said Peccavi cum Petro exivi cum Petro sed nondum flevi cum Petro and so fell on a bitter weeping for that offence But in a word is not this renouncing the Pope the most essential point of your Reformation All the rest your good natur'd Religion can either embrace or censure and as occasion serves admit or refuse Communion with the deniers of any other Article never so fundamental this only is indispensable Then be sure wee never hear you again deny but that they who made this first Breach had in them the quintessence of your Reformation and were far less consistent with Catholicism than your modern younger brother Sectaries are with your kind of Protestancy since your selves confess the admittance of the Popes Authority more destructive to you than the denial of Prelacy His second Argument is because in the separation of England from Rome there was no new Law made but onely their ancient Liberties vindicated The first part is so notoriously false that I wonder any one can have the face to pronounce it a Law was made in Henry the 8ths time an Oath invented and exacted by which was given to the King to be Head of the Church and to have all the power the Pope did at that time possess in England That this was a new Law none but impudence it self can deny As for the second part let us see how hee proves it Hee brings divers allegations wherein the Popes pretences were not admitted as being in the prejudice to the State or Church of England What is this man about that hee so forgets the question Doe wee professe the Pope can pretend no more than his right or is the question of this or that particular action of the Popes or does he think a legitimate Authority in common is rejected when the particular faults of them who are in Authority are resisted Is Magistracy or Royalty rejected when Pleas are commenced against Kings or Commonwealths as going beyond their true Jurisdiction Yes but the Pope is expresly deny'd the Power to doe such or such things Why then even by this fact hee is acknowledged to have power in other things since to limit an Authority implyes an admittance of it in cases to which the restraints extend not But hee presses Lawes anciently receiv'd in our Kingdome What is his meaning were not those Lawes in force in the beginning of Henry the eighths Reign or was his breach but the conservation of these Lawes and wee began our Religion there Are there any of these laws which are not equivalently in France Spain Germany Nay Italy it selfe Are none of these therefore Catholikes are they in as little communication with the Pope as Henry the eighth after his breach or the Protestants in Q Elizabeths times How ridiculous how impudent a manner of speaking and arguing is this to force his Readers to renounce their eyes and ears and all evidence In this fifth Chapter hee argues out of the Liberties of the Britannick Churches But first I would know what this belongs to us unless it bee prov'd that their practicks were an obliging precedent to us have wee any Title from the Britannick Churches otherwise than by the Saxon Christians who onely were our Ancestors and by whose conquests and lawes
that professes her self fallible that is uncertain of the truth of her Doctrine cannot without accusing her self of the greatest injustice and tyranny in the World binde others to the belief of the said Doctrine For it carries the prejudice of the highest unreasonableness with it for a man to tell me I will force you â—o believe that which yet I my self know not whether it is to be believed or no. Let not Dr. Hammond then blame our Church for obliging men to subscribe to her Doctrine unless he can evidence first That she hath not that which she hath ever from the beginning of the Church pretended to to wit a security from fallibility by the perpetual assistance of her Spouse and Saviour But rather let him invent if he can any rational excuse for his own Church which professing her self fallible and so wanting all power to oblige to belief would notwithstanding have others believe her accounting the Puritans Anabaptists Presbyterians and Independants Schismaticks if they do not and dares enstyle her self a Church that is a Commonwealth which hath power and means to oblige to Unity in belief whereas her own professed fallibility or uncertainty evidences that she wants all the Nerves which should connect the Members of such a Body These grounds laid it were not amiss to insert here what the Author of that Epistle which was writ from Bruxels in answer to Dr. Hammond saith upon this place By this saith he you may perceive much of his discourse to be not onely superfluous and unnecessary but contrary to himself for he laboreth to perswade That the Protestant may be certain of some truth against which the Roman Catholick Church bindeth to profession of Error which is as much as to say That he who pretends to have no infallible Rule whereby to govern his Doctrine shall be supposed to be infallible and that he who pretends to have an infallible Rule shall be supposed to be fallible at most because fallible Objections are brought against him Now then consider what a meek and humble son of the Church as this Dr. would he thought ought to do when on the one side is the Authority of Antiquity and Possession such Antiquity and Possession without dispute or contradiction from the Adversary as no King can shew for his Crown and much less any other person for any other thing together with the perswasion of Infallibility and all the pledges Christ hath left to his Church for motives of Union On the other side uncertain Reasons of a few men pretending to Learning every day contradicted by incomparable numbers of men wise and learned and those few men confessing those Reasons and themselves uncertain fallible and subject to Error Certainly without a byass of interest or prejudice it is impossible to leave the Church if he be in it or not return if he be out of it For if infallibility be the ground of the Churches power to command belief as she pretends no other no time no separation within memory of History can justifie a continuance out of the Church Thus far that Letter which had it not been strangled in the birth and miscarried in the Printer's hand might have saved me the labor of this larger conâ—ute and being exactly short might justly be styled Dr. Hammonds Iliads in a Nut-shell since the force of it was so united the Reason in it so firmly connected as might have cost the Doctor a full ten years siege ere he could make a breach into it with his Brown-Paper Bullets But now it is high time to reflect upon the Doctors manner of arguing who tells us here That he needs give no more answer to our objection of a Schismatical departure then this That they who acknowledge not the Church of Rome to be Infallible may be allowed to make a supposition which is founded in the possibility of her inserting Errors in her Confessions c. And so goes on with three or four Suppositions all built upon that first general Supposition That the Roman Catholick Church hath erred or is not infallible I commend the Doctor for his wit The whole question is reduced to this one point Whether the Church erred or no as is most manifest For if she evidently errâ—d he and his Ancestors may possibly be excused for not believing her and rejecting her Government by Schism which she told you was sacred but if she was infallible no plea nor evasion can possibly serve your turn neither is it your or their supposing it which can make her fallible and so be a fit ground to build your excuse on Now comes this Gentleman who in the first page of his Book is entitled Doctor of Divinity to handle this Question and onely desires in courtesie that the main matter in controversie out of which it was easie to infer what he pleased should first be supposed or granted and that upon that ground he would evince his cause Just like that young smatâ—eâ—er in Logick who undertook to prove his fellow a Goose but first he would needs have him suppose that whatsoever had two Legs was one of those tame Fowl which his wary fellow notwithstanding his importunity refusing to grant he was left quite blank and his wise Argument at an end Such is the on-seâ— such must be the event of the Doctors Logick You and your first Reformers are Schismaticks says the Catholick in rejecting the Government of the Church and her chief Pastor which she told you was both lawful and sacred Your Church erred saith the Doctor and so we could not be obliged to believe her I but answers the Catholick you must first prove evidently that she is fallible and subject to Error O replies the Doctor we suppose that to be most certainly true and without all dispute Risum teneatis amici Yet Mr. Hammond hath involved another Error in the same passage more unpardonable if possible then the former so fruitful is his Logick of inconsequent absurdities For what man ever arrived to that heigth of mistake as to endeavor to manifest his innocency by the voluntary confession of a crime which implies the objected fault and much more to boot or to alledge for his plea against the accusation of his adversary that which more deeply condemns and is objected to him as a far more hainous crime by the same adversary Yet such is this Doctors acuteness He is accused by us of Schism and lays for the ground of his excuse That he acknowledges not our Churches infallibility which is charged upon him not onely to be both Schism and Heresie but as the very sink of all Infidelity For what man of Reason but stands in an hovering disposition of minde to embrace any Religion or rather Irreligion nay even Turcism it self as your best Champion the Lord Faulkland professes he would when a stronger blast of a more probable Reason shall turn the sail of his Wind-Mill Judgment knowing and acknowledging as he must and does That neither
his own private interpretation of Scripture nor the Church he is in is infallible or secured from Error by any promise of Christ. The denying this Infallibility therefore Mr. Doctor is the greatest crime we charge you with but you free of your Suppositions suppose it your chief virtue and put it for the ground of all your excuse In this Infallibility is founded all the power of the Church obliging to belief the inviolableness of her Government the unjustifiableness of any Schism the firm security that Faith is certain and lastly whatever in the Church is sacred The Doctor therefore in clearing himself by denying the Infallibility of the Church does the self-same as if some discontented subject having first out-lawed himself by denying the Laws and rejecting the Government of England and afterwards becoming obnoxious to those Laws by Robbing Murthering c. should endeavot to plead Not guilty by alledging That though indeed the English Subjects who accept the Laws and allow the Government of England are liable to punishment if they offend against them Yet I saith he who suppose this Government Tyrannical and these Laws unjust especially having a present perswasion and thinking in my Conscience they are so cannot be obliged to keep them and therefore must not be accounted a factious man nor be liable to punishment if I break them What will become of this malefactor Master Doctor your Logick clears him But the Reader and I am perswaded wiser judgments will think him more highly deserving the Gallows for refusing subjection to the Laws and Government and you more deeply meriting Excommunication for rejecting the Churches Infallibility the onely ground of her Authority then for all the rest of your particular faults which issue from that false principle But it is pretty to observe how the Doctor never clears himself from Schism upon any other grounds then those which if admitted would prove all the Malefactors in the World innocent and make it lawful nay an obligation in Conscience to dissolve the whole Fabrick of the Worlds Government So true it is That the very position of a Fallibility of Faith first lays and in time hatches the Cockatrice Eggs of both Atheism and Anarchy SECT 5. Containing some Observations upon Mr. Hammonds third Chapter of the Division of Schism WHen I had perused his third Chapter with intent to see what it might contain worth the answering finding scarce any thing which made either against us or for him I thought I had mistaken the Title of his Book but looking back I found it to have indeed this Inscription OF SCHISM A DEFENCE OF THE CHVRCH OF ENGLAND AGAINST THE EXCEPTIONS OF THE ROMANISTS BY H. HAMMOND D. D. So that now I remain'd satisfied what was the Title but much more unsatisfied to find my expectation so totally deluded and that in a large Chapter containing thirty six pages almost a full quarter of the Book not five words were found which touched the question directly nor could in any way be a preparative to it So as we have here 66 pages of 182. well towards half the Book premised by the Doctor to introduce the Question like the Mindian Gate too large an entrance for so narrow a Corporation Frivolous then had been the long Preamble of this Chapter had it been to the purpose and tended to the Question but if it be found nothing at all to the Question but to wave and conceal the main and indeed sole matter which concerns it nay more to have prevaricated from the very scope for which he would seem to intend it then I will leave it to the Reader to imagin what commendations this Chapter and its Author doth deserve Our Question is of Schism In this Chapter he undertakes to shew the several sorts of it which therefore he divides into Schism against Fraternal Charity and Schism against some one particular Governor as in the People against a Priest or Deacon in those against a Bishop in Bishops against their Arch-Bishops in Arch-Bishops against their Primate or Patriarch and there he stops lest if he had ascended a step higher to the Authority of the Pope he should have said more truth then will serve his turn For you must know he has a deep design against Antichrist and is resolved that half a score odd stories or some few words and unwarrantable practices of discontented persons especially being cited in Greek shall utterly overthrow him in despite of manifest practice of Antiquity clouds of testimonies from Fathers and the Doctrine of the Catholick Church of whose fallibility he is far from even pretending to any infallible Evidence But that we may manifest what we laid to his charge that all this long Chapter is but waste-paper the Reader may please to take notice that the Schism we charge the Protestants with is not of the peoples Schism against a Deacon or Presbyter nor of a Deacon or Presbyters Schism against a Bishop nor any link in that chain of Schisms which he there enumerates but we accuse them and their Fore-Fathers the first Reformers First of a Breach or Schism from the whole Catholick Church This is without controversie the Schism of Schisms and which in the first hearing of the word Schism objects it self to our understanding as being simply properly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such whereas the other are nothing but particular refractory disoâ—â—diences in comparison of this and may well consist with your obedience to the Universal Church This this I say is the chief and main Schism we impute to his fellow Protestants yet the Doctor in his present Book entituled Their Defence from Schism takes no notice of the chief thing he ought to clear them of will not have it come into play nor allow it a place in his Division as if it were either none at all or else such a slight one as was not worth taking notice of Strange that he could use such prolixity in trifling Schisms impertinent to the present discourse and not afford the least mention to the greatest Schism of all when the scope and aim of his Chapter necessarily required it and the Question forcibly exacted it Strange that he could remember even the peoples Schism against a Deacon or Presbyter and forget that which breaks from the whole body of the Universal Church But the Doctor is more carefull to preserve his own Copy-hold then the Churches Free hold for according to his division and Doctrine in this Chapter his Parishoners would be Schismaticks for disobeying him or a puny Deacon but neither he nor the Deacon Schismaticks at all for disobeying the whole Church And thus the Dr. has established his own Authority to be more inviolable then the Popes and by this one Division has quite conquered and got the upper-hand of Antichrist Secondly What is become of General Councils all this while Have not they as great an Authority as any private Patriarch Primate Arch-Bishop Bishop Dr. Hammond or a Deacon Far grâ—â—ter