proved by so long so tedious a method hath in it so many intrigues and Labyrinths of Question and is like a long line so impossible to be perfectly strait and to have no declination in it when it is held by such a hand as yours that unless it be by material enquiries into the Articles of the Religion you can never hope to have just grounds of confidence In the mean time you can consider this if the Romane Church were the Catholike that is so as to exclude all that are not of her communion then the Greek Churches had as good turn Turks as remain damned Christians and all that are in the communion of all the other Patriarchal Churches in Christendome must also perish like Heathens which thing before any man can beleeve he must have put off all reason and all modesty and all charity And who can with any probability think that the Communion of Saints in the Creed is nothing but the Communion of Roman Subjects and the Article of the Catholike Church was made to dispark the inclosures of Ierusalem but to turn them into the pale of Rome and the Church is as limited as ever it was save only that the Synagogue is translated to Rome which I think you will easily beleeve was a Proposition the Apostles understood not But though it be hard to trust to it it is also so hard to prove it that you shall never be able to understand the measures of that question and therefore your salvation can never depend upon it For no good or wise person can beleeve that God hath tied our Salvation to impossible measures or bound us to an Article that is not by us cognoscible or intends to have us conducted by that which we cannot understand and when you shall know that Learned men even of the Romane party are not agreed concerning the Catholike Church that is infallibly to guide you some saying that it is the virtual Church that is the Pope some that it is the representative Church that is a Councel Some that it is the Pope and the Councel the virtual Church and the representative Church together Some that neither of these nor both together are infallible but only the essential Church or the diffusive Church is the Catholique from whom we must at no hand dissent you will quickly finde your self in a Wood and uncertain whether you have more then a word in exchange for your soul when you are told you are in the Catholike Church But I will tell you what you may understand and see and feel something that your self can tell whether I say true or no concerning it You are now gone to a Church that protects it self by arts of subtlety and arms by violence and persecuting all that are not of their mindes to a Church in which you are to be a Subject of the King so long as it pleases the Pope In which you may be absolved from your Vows made to God your Oaths to the King your promises to men your duty to your Parents in some cases a Church in which men pray to God and to Saints in the same Form of words in which they pray to God as you may see in the Offices of Saints and particularly of our Lady a Church in which men are taught by most of the principal Leaders to worship Images with the same worship with which they worship God and Christ or him or her whose Image it is and in which they usually picture God the Father and the holy Trinity to the great dishonour of that sacred mystery against the doctrine and practise of the Primitive Church against the express doctrine of Scripture against the honour of a divine attribute I mean the immensity and spirituality of the divine Nature You are gone to a Church that pretends to be infallible and yet is infinitely deceived in many particulars and yet endures no contradiction and is impatient her children should enquire into any thing her Priests obtrude You are gone from receiving the whole Sacrament to receive it but half from Christs Institution to a humane invention from Scripture to uncertain Traditions and from ancient Tradition to new pretences from prayers which ye understood to prayers which ye understand not from confidence in God to rely upon creatures from intire dependance upon inward acts to a dangerous temptation of resting too much in outward ministeries in the external work of Sacraments and of Sacramentals You are gone from a Church whose worshipping is simple Christian and Apostolical to a Church where mens consciences are loaden with a burthen of Ceremonies greater then that in the dayes of the Jewish Religion for the Ceremonial of the Church of Rome is a great Book in Folio greater I say then all the Ceremonies of the Jews contained in Leviticus c. You are gone from a Church where you were exhorted to reade the Word of God the holy Scriptures from whence you found instruction institution comfort reproof a treasure of all excellencies to a Church that seals up that fountain from you and gives you drink by drops out of such Cisterns as they first make and then stain and then reach out and if it be told you that some men abuse Scripture it is true for if your Priests had not abused Scripture they could not thus have abused you but there is no necessity they should and you need not unless you list any more then you need to abuse the Sacraments or decrees of the Church or the messages of your friend or the Letters you receive or the Laws of the Land all which are liable to be abused by evil persons but not by good people and modest understandings It is now become a part of your Religion to be ignorant to walk in blindeness to beleeve the man that hears your Confessions to hear none but him not to hear God speaking but by him and so you are liable to be abused by him as he please without remedy You are gone from us where you were only taught to worship God through Jesus Christ and now you are taught to worship Saints and Angels with a worship at least dangerous and in some things proper to God for your Church worships the Virgin Mary with burning incense and candles to her and you give her presents which by the consent of all Nations used to be esteemed a worship peculiar to God and it is the same thing which was condemned for Heresie in the Collyridians who offered a Cake to the Virgin Mary A Candle and a Cake make no difference in the worship and your joyning God and the Saints in your worship and devotions is like the device of them that fought for King and Parliament the latter destroys the former I will trouble you with no more particulars because if these move you not to consider better nothing can But yet I have two things more to adde of another nature one of which at least may prevail upon you whom I suppose
understandings The first is where was your Church before Luther Now if you had called upon them to speak something against your religion from Scripture or right reason or Universal Tradition you had been secure as a Tortoise in her shell a cart pressed with sheavs could not have oppressed your cause or person though you had confessed you understood nothing of the mysteries of succession doctrinal or personal For if we can make it appear that our religion was that which Christ and his Apostles taught let the truth suffer what eclipses or prejudices can be supposed let it be hid like the holy fire in the captivity yet what Christ and his Apostles taught us is eternally true and shall by some means or other be conveyed to us even the enemies of truth have been conservators of that truth by which we can confute their errors But if you still aske where it was before Luther I answer it was there where it was after even in the Scriptures of the Old New Testament and I know no warrant for any other religion and if you will expect I should shew any society of men who professed all the doctrines which are now expressed in the confession of the Church of England I shall tell you it is unreasonable because some of our truths are now brought into our publick confessions that they might be oppos'd against your errors before the occasion of which there was no need of any such confessions till you made many things necessary to be professed which are not lawful to be believed For if we believe your superinduc'd follies we shall do unreasonably unconscionably and wickedly but the questions themselves are so useless abstracting from the accidental necessity which your follies have brought upon us that it had been happy if we had never heard of them more then the Saints and Martyrs did in the first ages of the Church but because your Clergy have invaded the liberty of the Church and multiplyed the dangers of damnation and pretend new necessities and have introduc'd new articles and affright the simple upon new pretensions and slight the very institution and the Commands of Christ and of the Apostles and invent new sacramentals constituting ceremonies of their own head and promise grace along with the use of them as if they were not Ministers but Lords of the Spirit and teach for doctrines the Commandments of men and make void the Commandment of God by their tradition and have made a strange body of Divinity therefore it is necessary that we should immure our faith by the refusal of such vain and superstitious dreams but our faith was compleated at first it is no other then that which was delivered to the saints and can be no more for ever So that it is a foolish demand to require that we should shew before Luther a systeme of Articles declaring our sense in these questions It was long before they were questions at all and when they were made questions they remained so a long time and when by their several pieces they were determined this part of the Church was oppressed with a violent power and when God gave opportunity then the yoke was broken and this is the whole progress of this affair But if you will still insist upon it then let the matter be put into equal ballances and let them shew any Church whose confession of faith was such as was obtruded upon you at Trent and if your religion be Pius quartus his Creed at Trent then we also have a question to aske and that is where was your religion before Trent The Councel of Trent determined that the souls departed before the day of judgement enjoy the beatifical vision It is certain this Article could not be shown in the confession of any of the antient Churches for most of the Fathers were of another opinion But that which is the greatest offence of Christendom is not only that these doctrines which we say are false were yet affirmed but that those things which the Church of God did alwayes reject or held as Uncertain should be made Articles of faith and so become parts of your religion and of these it is that I again aske the question which none of your side shall ever be able to answer for you where was your religion before Trent I could instance in many particulars but I shall name one to you which because the thing of it selfe is of no great consequence it will appear the more unreasonable and intolerable that your Church should adopt it into the things of necessary belief especially since it was only a matter of fact and they took the false part too For in the 21. Session the fourth Chapter it is affirmed that although the holy Fathers did give the Sacrament of the Eucharist to Infants yet they did it without any necessity of salvation that is they did not believe it necessary to their salvation which is notoriously false and the contrary is marked out with the black-lead of every man almost that reads their works and yet your Councel sayes this is sine controversiâ credendum to be believed without all controversie and all Christians forbidden to believe or teach otherwise So that here it is made an Article of faith amongst you that a man shall neither believe his reason nor his eyes and who can shew any confession of faith in which all the Trent doctrine was professed and enjoyned under pain of damnation and before the Councel of Constance the doctrine touching the Popes power was so new so decried that as Gerson says he hardly should have escaped the note of heresy that would have said so much as was there defined so that in that Article which now makes a great part of your belief where was your religion before the Councel of Constance and it is notorious that your Councel of Constance determined the doctrine of the halfe communion with a Non obstante to Christs institution that is with a defiance to it or a noted observed neglect of it and with a profession it was otherwise in the primitive Church Where then was your religion before Iohn Hus and Hierom of Pragues time against whom that Councel was convened But by this instance it appears most certainly that your Church cannot shew her confessions immediately after Christ and therefore if we could not shew ours immediately before Luther it were not halfe so much for since you receded from Christs Doctrine we might well recede from yours and it matters not who or how many or how long they professed your doctrine if neither Christ nor his Apostles did teach it so that if these Articles constitute your Church your Church was invisible at the first and if ours was invisible afterwards it matters not For yours was invisible in the dayes of light and ours was invisible in the dayes of darkness For our Church was alwayes visible in the reflections of Scripture and he that had his eyes of faith
others were neer unto death for his sake and that it is a precept of Christian charity to lay down our lives for our Brethren that is those who were combined in a cause of Religion who were united with the same hopes and imparted to each other ready assistances and grew dear by common sufferings we need enquire no further for the expressions of friendships Greater love then this hath no man then that he lay down his life for his friends and this we are oblig'd to do in some Cases for all Christians and therefore we may do it for those who are to us in this present and imperfect state of things that which all the good men and women in the world shall be in Heaven that is in the state of perfect friendships This is the biggest but then it includes and can suppose all the rest and if this may be done for all and in some cases must for any one of the multitude we need not scruple whether we may do it for those who are better then a multitude But as for the thing it selfe it is not easily and lightly to be done and a man must not die for humor nor expend so great a Jewel for a trifle {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} said Philo we will hardly die when it is for nothing when no good no worthy end is served and become a Sacrifice to redeem a foot-boy But we may not give our life to redeem another unless 1. The party for whom we die be a worthy and a useful person better for the publick or better for Religion and more useful to others then my selfe Thus Ribischius the German died bravely when he became a Sacrifice for his Master Maurice Duke of Saxony Covering his Masters body with his own that he might escape the furie of the Turkish Souldiers Succurram perituro sed ut ipse non peream nisi si futurus ero magni hominis aut magnae rei merces said Seneca I will help a dying person if I can but I will not die my selfe for him unless by my death I save a brave man or become the price of a great thing that is I will die for a Prince for the republick or to save an Army as David expos'd himself to combat with the Philistin for the redemption of the Host of Israel And in this sense that is true Praestat ut pereat unus quam Unitas better that one perish then a multitude 2. A man dies bravely when he gives his temporal life to save the soul of any single person in the Christian world It is a worthy exchange and the glorification of that love by which Christ gave his life for every soul Thus he that reproves an erring Prince wisely and necessarily he that affirms a fundamental truth or stands up for the glory of the Divine attributes though he die for it becoms a worthy sacrifice 3. These are duty but it may be heroick and full of Christian bravery to give my life to rescue a noble and a brave friend though I my selfe be as worthy a man as he because the preference of him is an act of humility in me and of friendship towards him Humility and Charity making a pious difference where art and nature have made all equall Some have fancied other measures of treating our friends One sort of men say that we are to expect that our friends should value us as we value our selves which if it were to be admitted will require that we make no friendships with a proud man and so farre indeed were well but then this proportion does exclude also humble men who are most to be valued and the rather because they undervalue themselves Others say that a friend is to value his friend as much as his friend values him but neither is this well or safe wise or sufficient for it makes friendship a mere bargain and is something like the Country weddings in some places where I have been where the bridegroom and the bride must meet in the half way and if they fail a step they retire and break the match It is not good to make a reckoning in friendship that 's merchandise or it may be gratitude but not noble friendship in which each part strives to out-do the other in significations of an excellent love And amongst true friends there is no fear of losing any thing But that which amongst the old Philosophers comes nearest to the right is that we love our friends as we love our selves If they had meant it as our Blessed Saviour did of that general friendship by which we are to love all mankind it had been perfect and well or if they had meant it of the inward affection or of outward justice but because they meant it of the most excellent friendships and of the outward significations of it it cannot be sufficient for a friend may and must sometimes do more for his friend then he would doe for himself Some men will perish before they will beg or petition for themselves to some certain persons but they account it noble to doe it for their friend and they will want rather then their friend shall want and they will be more earnest in praise or dispraise respectively for their friend then for themselves And indeed I account that one of the greatest demonstrations of real friendship is that a friend can really endeavour to have his friend advanced in honour in reputation in the opinion of wit or learning before himselfe Aurum opes rura frequens donabit amicus Qui velit ingenio cedere rarus erit Sed tibi tantus inest veteris respectus amici Carior ut mea sit quam tua fama tibi Lands gold and trifles many give or lend But he that stoops in fame is a rare friend In friendships orbe thou art the brightest starre Before thy fame mine thou preferrest far But then be pleas'd to think that therefore I so highly value this signification of friendship because I so highly value humility Humility and Charity are the two greatest graces in the world and these are the greatest ingredients which constitute friendship and expresse it But there needs no other measures of friendship but that it may be as great as you can express it beyond death it cannot goe to death it may when the cause is reasonable and just charitable and religious and yet if there be any thing greater then to suffer death and pain and shame to some are more insufferable a true and noble friendship shrinks not at the greatest trials And yet there is a limit even to friendship It must be as great as our friend fairely needs in all things where we are not tied up by a former duty to God to our selves or some pre-obliging relative When Pollux heard some body whisper a reproach against his Brother Castor he kill'd the slanderer with his fist That was a zeal which his friendship could not warrant Nulla
to have a tender and a religious Conscience The first is That all the points of difference between us and your Church are such as do evidently serve the ends of covetousness and ambition of power and riches and so stand vehemently suspected of design and art rather then truth of the Article and designs upon Heaven I instance in the Popes power over Princes and all the world his power of dispensation The exemption of the Clergy from jurisdiction of Princes The doctrine of Purgatory and Indulgences which was once made means to raise a portion for a Lady the Neece of Pope Leo the tenth The Priests power advanced beyond authority of any warrant from Scripture a doctrine apt to bring absolute obedience to the Papacy but because this is possibly too nice for you to suspect or consider that which I am sure ought to move you is this That you are gone to a Religion in which though through Gods grace prevailing over the follies of men there are I hope and charitably suppose many pious men that love God and live good lives yet there are very many doctrines taught by your men which are very ill Friends to a good life I instance in your Indulgences and pardons In which vitious men put a great confidence and rely greatly upon them The doctrine of Purgatory which gives countenance to a sort of Christians who live half to God and half to the world and for them this doctrine hath found out a way that they may go to Hell and to Heaven too The Doctrine that the Priests absolution can turn a trifling repentance into a perfect and a good and that suddenly too and at any time even on our death-bed or the minute before your death is a dangerous heap of falshoods and gives licence to wicked people and teaches men to reconcile a wicked debauched life with the hopes of Heaven And then for penances and temporal satisfaction which might seem to be as a plank after the shipwrack of the duty of Repentance to keep men in awe and to preserve them from sinking in an Ocean of Impiety it comes to just nothing by your doctrine for there are so many easie waies of Indulgences and getting pardons so many con-fraternities stations priviledg'd Altars little Offices Agnus Dei's amulets hallowed devices swords roses hats Churchyards and the fountain of these annexed indulgences the Pope himself and his power of granting what and when and to whom he list that he is a very unfortunate man that needs to smart with penances and after all he may choose to suffer any at all for he may pay them in Purgatory if he please and he may come out of Purgatory upon reasonable terms in case he should think it fit to go thither So that all the whole duty of Repentance seems to be destroyed with devices of men that seek power and gain and finde errour and folly insomuch that if I had a minde to live an evil Life and yet hope for Heaven at last I would be of your religion above any in the world But I forget I am writing a Letter I shall therefore desire you to consider upon the premises which is the safer way For surely it is lawful for a man to serve God without Images but that to worship Images is lawful is not so sure It is Lawful to pray to God alone to confess him to be true and every man a Liar to call no man Master upon Earth but to rely upon God teaching us But it is at least hugely disputable and not at all certain that any man or society of men can be infallible that we may put our trust in Saints in certain extraordinary Images or burne incense and offer consumptive oblations to the Virgin Mary or make vows to persons of whose state or place or Capacities or Condition we have no certain revelation we are sure we do well when in the holy Communion we worship God and Jesus Christ our Saviour but they who also worship what seems to be bread are put to strange shifts to make themselves believe it to be Lawful It is certainly Lawful to believe what we see and feel but it is an unnatural thing upon pretence of faith to disbelieve our eyes when our sense and our faith can better be reconciled as it is in the question of the real presence as it is taught by the Church of England So that unless you mean to prefer a danger before safety temptation to unholiness before a severe and a holy religion unless you mean to lose the Benefit of your prayers by praying what you perceive not and the Benefit of the sacrament in great degrees by falling from Christs Institution and taking halfe instead of all unless you desire to provoke God to jealousie by Images and Man to jealousie in professing a religion in which you may in many cases have leave to forfeit your faith and lawful trust unless you will still continue to give scandal to those good people with whom you have lived in a common religion and weaken the hearts of Gods afflicted ones unless you will choose a Catechism without the second Commandment and a faith that grows bigger or less as men please and a hope that in many degrees relyes on men and vain confidences and a Charity that damns all the world but your selves unless you will do all this that is suffer an abuse in your prayers in the Sacrament in the Commandments in faith in hope in Charity in the Communion of saints and your duty to your supreme you must return to the bosome of your Mother the Church of England from whence you have fallen rather weakly then maliciously and I doubt not but you will find the Comfort of it all your Life and in the Day of your Death and in the day of Judgment If you will not yet I have freed mine own soul and done an act of duty and Charity which at least you are bound to take kindely if you will not entertain it obediently Now let me adde this that although most of these objections are such things which are the open and avowed doctrines or practises of your Church and need not to be proved as being either notorious or confessed yet if any of your Guides shall seem to question any thing of it I will bind my selfe to verify it to a tittle and in that sense too which I intend them that is so as to be an objection obliging you to return under the pain of folly or heresy or disobedience according to the subject matter And though I have propounded these things now to your consideration yet if it be desired I shall represent them to your eye so that even your self shall be able to give sentence in the behalfe of truth In the mean time give me leave to tell you of how much folly you are guilty in being moved by such mock-arguments as your men use when they meet with women and tender consciences and weaker
reason might easily have seen these truths all the way which constitute our Church But I adde yet further that our Church before Luther was there where your Church was in the same place and in the same persons for divers of the errors which have been amongst us reformed were not the constituent Articles of your Church before Luthers time for before the last Councels of your Church a man might have been of your Communion upon easier terms indulgences were indeed a practise but no Article of faith before your men made it so and that very lately and so were many other things besides So that although your men cosen the credulous and the simple by calling yours the old religion yet the difference is vast between truth and their affirmative even as much as between old errors and new Articles For although ignorance and superstition had prepared the oare yet the Councels of Constance and Basil and Trent especially were the forges and the mint Lastly if your men had not by all the vile and violent arts of the world stopped the mouths of dissenters the question would quickly have been answered or our Articles would have been so confessed so owned and so publick that the question could never have been asked but in despite of all opposition there were great numbers of confessors who did protest and profess and practise our doctrines contrary to your Articles as it is demonstrated by the Divines of Germany in Illyricus his Catalogus testium veritatis and in BP. Mortons appeal But with your next objection you are better pleased and your men make most noise with it For you pretend that by our confession salvation may be had in your Church but your men deny it to us and therefore by the confession of both sides you may be safe and there is no question concerning you but of us there is great question for none but our selves say that we can be saved I answer 1. That salvation may be had in your Church is it ever the truer because we say it If it be not it can adde no confidence to you for the proposition gets no strength by our affirmative But if it be then our authority is good or else our reason and if either be then we have more reason to be believed speaking of our selves because we are concerned to see that our selves may be in a state of hope and therefore we would not venture on this side if we had not greater reason to believe well of our selves then of you And therefore believe us when it is more likely that we have greater reason because we have greater concernments and therefore greater consideration 2. As much charity as your men pretend us to speak of you yet it is a clear case our hopes of your salvation is so little that we dare not venture our selves on your side The Burger of Oldwater being to pass a river in his journey to Daventry bad his man try the ford telling him he hoped he should not be drowned for though he was afraid the River was too deep yet he thought his horse would carry him out or at least the boats would fetch him off Such a confidence we may have of you but you will find that but little warranty if you remember how great an interest it is that you venture 3. It would be remembred that though the best ground of your hope is not the goodness of your own faith but the greatness of our charity yet we that charitably hope well of you have a fulness of assurance of the truth and certainty of our own way and however you can please your selves with Images of things as having no firm footing for your trifling confidence yet you can never with your tricks outface us of just and firme adherencies and if you were not empty of supports and greedy of bulrushes snatching at any thing to support your sinking cause you would with fear and trembling consider the direct dangers which we demonstrate to you to be in your religion rather then flatter your selves with collateral weak and deceitful hopes of accidental possibilities that some of you may escape 4. If we be more charitable to you then you are to us acknowledge in us the beauty and essential form of Christian Religion be sure you love as well as make use of our charity but if you make our charity an argument against us remember that you render us evil in exchange for good and let it be no brag to you that you have not that charity to us for therefore the Donatists were condemned for Hereticks and Schismaticks because they damn'd all the world and afforded no charity to any that was not of their Communion 5. But that our charity may be such indeed that is that it may do you a real benefit and not turn into Wormwood and Colliquintida I pray take notice in what sense it is that we allow salvation may possibly be had in your Church We warrant it not to any we only hope it for some we allow it to them as to the Sadduces in the Law and to the Corinthians in the Gospel who denied the resurrection that is till they were sufficiently instructed and competently convinced and had time and powers to out-wear their prejudices and the impresses of their education and long perswasion But to them amongst you who can and do consider and yet determine for error and interest we have a greater charity even so much as to labour and pray for their conversion but not so much fondness as to flatter them into boldness and pertinacious adherencies to matters of so great danger 6. But in all this affair though your men are very bold with God and leap into his judgment-seat before him and give wild sentences concerning the salvation of your own party and the damnation of all that disagree yet that which is our charity to you is indeed the fear of God and the reverence of his judgments we do not say that all Papists are certainly damn'd we wish and desire vehemently that none of you may perish but then this charity of judgment relates not to you or is derived from any probability which we see in your doctrines that differ from ours but because we know not what rate and value God puts upon the article It concerns neither you nor us to say this or that man shall be damn'd for his opinion for besides that this is a bold intrusion into that secret of God which shall not be opened till the day of judgement and besides that we know not what allayes and abatements are to be made by the good meaning and the ignorance of the man all that can concern us is to tell you that you are in error that you depart from Scripture that you exercise tyranny over souls that you leave the Divine institution and prevaricate Gods Commandement that you divide the Church without truth and without necessity that you tie men to believe things