himself once to any one opinion here in England he sodainly entertains such a prejudice against all the rest that there is left in him no further place for counsel for all other wayes besides his own are condemned as soon as his own is accepted and he does no sooner think himself sure but all others must in the same time be lost And yet he hath but his own judgment for it neither supported only with the appearances of I know not what spirit or internal light which he and his enjoy and all others want And if a man press him once to further difficulties than himself hath thought on though without the reflection upon them he could never be able to settle any firm judgment about these things in particular one shall soon find that he heeds not any of those things without which the other could not be judiciously concluded nor is able even by the help of that light or spirit of his to satisfy therein either himself or other man which argues plainly that the spirit and light he pretends is nothing but his own private resolution not sufficiently amplified and yet irrationally fixed against all autority and counsel The Christians in antient times especially for the first four hundred years after Christ had many serious and grave disputes with the Jew and pagan which being rational and weighty and about the foundations of Christianity whereon the other articles were built did pusle even the wisest of their clergy to answer but after all the ratiocination ended whether it sufficed or no they still concluded with this one word Credo which the love of Christ had fastned upon them as emperour Julian comonly surnamed the Apostate testifies of them And this although in philosophy and logick it had been a weak answer yet in religion it was the best and only one to be made so that all the burden fell at length upon the autority of Jesus Christ who being both a man and one too that was crucified as a malefactor undertook to send forth religion into the world under the title of a divine Prophet and the onely Son of God almighty maker of heaven and earth which could not but at first make a disturbance both among the Jewes and Gentiles where it should be preached And the great mystery begins here and here it must end for this autority being once admitted from the Church that brings it all other catholick truths will follow by a kind of consequence from the same hands and therefor this autority of his which can never be demonstratively proved unto us that live now but only by vertue of the Church that derives it us Christ must maintain himself by signs and wonders and such signall proofs of his divine providence over his Church from time to time that his deity may somewhat appear in his Churches progres and defence and all other doctrins must be made good by it and the Church that first preached it to us In any age of the Christian Church a Jew might say thus to the Christians then living Your Lord and maister was born a Jew and under the jurisdiction of the high Priests these he opposed and taught a religion contrary to Moses otherwise how coms there to be a faction but how could he justly do it no human power is of force against Gods who spake as you also grant by Moses and the Prophets and divine power it could not be for God is not contrary to himself And although your Lord might say as indeed he did that Moses spake of him as of a Prophet to com greater than himself yet who shall judg that such a thing was meant of his person for since that Prophet is neither specified by his name or characteristicall properties who could say it was he more than any other to come And if there were a greater to com than Moses were surely born a Jew he would being com into the world rather exalt that law to more ample glory than diminish it And if you will further contest that such a Prophet was to abrogate the first law and bring in a new one who shall judge in this case the whole Church of the Hebrews who never dreamed of any such thing or one member thereof who was born a subject to their judgments This is the great oecumenicall difficulty and he that in any age of Christianity could either answer it or find any bullwark to set against it so that it should do no harm would easily either solv or prevent all other difficulties should arise by the same autority by which it was cleared For if Christ were not only a lawfull Teacher but even one that was greater than Moses as Christians beleev him to be and both the one and the other pretended this great work of establishing a Church surely Christ must do it in as great an excellency as Moses and with some advantage the doctrin and disciplin must be as sublime and stated as permanently as his and Christ who wrote no law must so provide notwithstanding that his Church might otherwise have one from him and keep it as uniformly as the Hebrew Church did theirs Wherefore as Moses after he had done all things which belonged to himself to do constituted Aaron and his Successours to be guides rulers overseers and judges of all Controversies that might arise in the tribes about any points of their religion he had written them So must St. Peter and his Successours be inabled by some equall if not more speciall means sith they also were constituted by Christ to govern his flock to captivate all men to the obedience of Christs will otherwise his Church could not go on so uniformly in all ages which uniformity is the glory and indeed the very life and conservation of a Church as that of the Hebrewes did Nor may any body prudently imagin that the Spirit of Jesus in his Church and all the members thereof cooperates in every one immediately unto truth as it does to grace for then why should he constitute doctours and pastours and bishops over us as the good apostle learnedly asserts in his epistle to the Ephesians Ipse de dit quosdam quidem apostolos quosdam autem prophetas alios vero Evangelistas alios autem pastores doctores ad consummationem sanctorum in opus ministerij in aedificationem corporis Christi donec occurramus omnes in unitatem fidei agnitionem filii dei in virum perfectum in mensuram aetatis plenitudinis Christi ut jam non simus parvuli fluctuantes circumferamur omni vento doctrinae in nequit â hominum in astutia ad circumventionem erroris Most excellent pathetical words where we have first the doctrin that pastours are set over us in the Church to guide us then the end of that constitution which he declares first positively then negatively the positive end is a perfect unity of faith which by that means must vegetate and fructify and grow up in one
autority which can onely constitute religion so likewise all anticatholicks both Independent Presbyterian and Protestant have the same power and advantage each one against another which any other may pretend against him scripture easy scripture interiour light and spirit whiles none of them will in the interim admit of any living judg nor of the autority of a foregoing Church wherein they found themselvs when they first went out and changed And I have already said and truly said that no man ever yet was impowred even from heaven to go out of the general flock but to have recours unto it nor considering the order God hath set ever can be Nor is there any surer rule of discerning a fals pretension than that of the Apostle Exierunt ex nobis which if it held good in the Church when that apostle was alive it must needs do so unto all generations so long as the Church remains by vertue of him who promised to confirm it and therein his deity must chiefly appear even vnto the consummation of the world And if we consider the first ingress of all these religions we shall find that the catholick faith entred our land first and chased hence our antient paganisme after it had been here existent a thousand years the Protestant went forth out of it the Puritan by and by out of the Protestant not to mention any further subdivision and the catholick religion entered by vertue of her own powerful integrity all the others by force either of Parliament or Sword that Church as she entered peaceably so she remained quietly all the time of her stay in the Kingdom but the others neither stay nor enter without disturbance she hath a rule to go by and a judg to submit unto in all affairs others as they will be their own judg so must the rule speak as they list and no otherwise which manner of proceeding if it have its free cours must needs work much disorder in a kingdom I have often marvelled that these various wayes of religion here in England which multiply without end or any hope of reconciliation have not all this while appealed to the sacred majesty of the King who hath been acknowledged by all the parties to be supreme in all his kingdoms as well in spirituals as temporals and head as well of the Church as State Certainly had this been don and that all had rested upon his verdict as they ought by reason of their own acknowledgment to do much mischief had been prevented But we were so far all of us from doing so that on the contrary first we secretly murmured against both Queen Elizabeth and King James and then broke forth into open hostility against his son Indeed that private swelling of the murmuring waters were an ill boding omen of the vast tempest which followed afterwards in the reign of our good King Charls with so dismal and violent a rage that it both split the ship and drowned our pilot We did not appeal then with submission to his judgment as by our own law and agreement upon our revolt from Popery we ought to have don but forced him imperiously to our own and when in right reason he could not consent unto it we made no conscience to destroy and cut off not so much his head as our own which being a singular unparallel'd piece of insolent cruelty never yet acted before upon earth it will remain an eternal blemish both upon the men and religion too so long as the world lasteth Did we sincerely think our King to be head as well of Church as of State how then durst we subjugate him to our selves in the affairs of both and under pretens of purity of religion oppress him from whom under God all our religion should be derived as the head and sours of it The body may prepare blood and vital spirits to be presented to the head but of these are not made animal spirits till the head receivs and makes them such for the good of the whole and from the head com down all those influences that be fitted and proportioned unto that life which the animal lives So may and ought every kingdom either apart or in Parliament assemblies to propose affairs unto their head but can take none as authentick till he have determined and derived them to us whether civil or spiritual if so be he be head of both resting quiet within our selves both before and after he hath don it for what hand or foot ever questioned the spirits which the head derived it or pretended either to mend or make them But we have by these our proceedings condemned our selves if we do not indeed think him our spiritual head as we profess in words of vise hypocrisie if we do beleev him so of inconsequent madnes But to remove the Pope the King is head with us and to remove the King the people is head and to remove one another each particular person is his own head So arbitrary a thing it is with us to set up and pull down power at our pleasur It would seem very strang to a rational man that the Pope who is in our esteem the worst of men should keep together the people of many kingdoms which as they be not at all subject to him in civil affairs so are they very divers among themselves both in habits manners language lawes and other weighty respects and inclinations in a constant unity of religion from age to age and yet a noble vertuous prudent King should not be able to do so much among his own subjects all of one guarb one law one language for one age together the Pope all the while we beleev to be a fals and onely pretended Head the King an acknowledged and true one This is a greater secret and yet greater too upon this account that if any should fall away from the Popes religion the apostate runs himself into no more danger upon that account than what he willingly brings upon himself the loss of further communion with him and his Church for the Popes excommunication signifies no more and all the Pope can do is but to excommunicate him who before by his own voluntary act put himself out of his communion But the King hath a temporal sword in his hand to take corporal reveng upon rebellion and apostacy and the people subject to him in faith are likewise subject in other temporal respects and by their rebellion against him hazzard their estates and lives I know well enough that Popes are generally as civil and accomplished gentlemen as be in Europe and for the most part very learned yet can I never beleev but that there be others in the Christian world both priests doctours and byshops as learned as the pope himself and as wise too and accomplisht persons in any perfections either natural or moral and yet can none but He hit upon this feat of guiding the Christian flock in unity and peace Nay which yet augments the
experience hath proved it for every one hath a text both to defend himself and oppose his neighbour whether it be in earnest or as it often happens in sport and jest whether wrong or rightly applied Nor can the Bible be well translated for the original carries oftentimes so great a latitude and amplitude of senses that it cannot be brought into a vulgar tongue without confineing the signification to the great alteration and perhaps subversion of the holy penmans intention Besides when men write or speak with a special peculiarity of spirit as all indeed do but those holy writers much more this genius of theirs is so lapt up in their own words or sounds that by transmigration out of the coverture in which that Spirit was born and bred as a snail in her shell it doth in a manner quite expire and vanish We find daily that books translated out of one tongue into another lose much of their connatural grace and sweetness if not all the whole genuine power and life they carried in their own character So ticklish and volatile a thing is that hidden genius couched in the rinde of mens words Nor is a man better known by his face than writings I mean if he draw his discours and sens out of his own bowels for otherwise if he be only a book botcher or collectour out of other authours it will signifie little which I take to be the reason why many spiritual books written in these times out of antient contemplatives although the matter is the same and the language mended yet be they in these penmen but dry unsavory stuff which in the first authour was a fragrant ravishing devotion the good things therin contained have by their transmigration lost their own spirit and the latter authour if so I may call him had not another to give them answerable to their nature By all this I would say thus much that the Bible translated out of its own sacred phrase into a prophane and common one loses both its own property and amplitude of meaning and is likewise devested of its peculiar majesty holines and spirit which is reason enough if there were no other why it should be kept inviolate in its own stile and speech Sacred doctrin like the persons is not to pass de domo in domum but remain under that roof which first covered them And as for peoples instructions it is as I said before to be made by the priests and pastours of the religion on whose lips the sacred knowledg hangs and thence drops down upon the assembly out of that book according to occasion and times as holy Church whole book that is shall judge it fit We commit not to children the whole pot of honey whereby they may surfeit and hurt themselves but give them only some few drops upon a stick of licoras so much as they can digest and make use of for their health And if the book wherin religious rites be grounded lawfully may and in reason ought and in practise ever hath been kept segregated in a language not common to vulgar ears much more are the sacred solemn rites themselvs to be performed in a tongue that is segregated from common use answerable to the Book according to which they be executed which custom as it renders that great Act more majestick and venerable so doth it carry with it much of convenience and no inconvenience at all For thus the Church all over the world as opposite to Babel wherein were so many divisions of tongues shall as in heart and faith so also in lip and language be unanimous and linked together and the great work of Religion wherein all Christian people from one coast of heaven to another do unanimously conspire be so uniformly executed that men may in all places of the world meet with their own Christian Church in one mode and fashion both to acknowledg and joyn with it in their orisons Nor could otherwaies any one priest serve in several countries or administer presently in a place which himself or others with him had converted for which caus men studying to get that one language which is stretched as large and wide as is the catholick Church throughout the world have in all places one tongue and that no hard one to convers withall which did not the Church use it in her rites would in time be utterly neglected The Hebrew Church being immured in one Kingdom had not those many reasons which her younger sister whose territories are extended from East to West hath to keep her rites in a language differing from the vulgar and yet she did so Inconvenience in this practis there can be none assigned but only this that if the latin tongue be used at the altar then cannot the vulgar people understand what is said But this is not of any moment For first the people have all the whole scope and purpose and frame of sacred liturgy set down in their own prayer-books and if they will in their hearts and mind whereby they may if they pleas as equally conspire and go along with the priest in their devotions as if he spake in the mother tongue Secondly catholick people come together not for other busines at the Mass but only with fervour of devotion to adore Christ crucified before them and by the mediation of that sacred blood to pour forth their supplications for themselvs and others which being don and their good purpos of serving and pleasing that holy Lord that shed his blood for us renewed they depart in peace This is the general purpos of the Mass so that eyes and hands to lift up knees to bow and hearts to melt are there of more use than ears But thirdly there is no need at all for the people either to hear or understand the Priest when he speaks and prayes and sacrifices to God in their behalf Sermons to the people must be made in the peoples language but prayers presented to God for them if they be made in a language that God understands it is enough This was well enough conceived by the whole congregation of Israel who commonly stood in vaste multitudes without in a large outward court when the priest entered his sanctum sanctorum to offer and pray for them who all the while were so far from hearing that they could not see him this if any doubt he may both discern it in the old law and in our gospel too where Zacharias is said to be praying at the altar when all the people stood without Why then may not the younger sister Church of Christians likewise pleas and pacify her heavenly father with sacred words and rites addressed unto him in the behalf of the people although these do not understand nay not so much as hear what is said And what matters it if I pray for a friend whether he hear me or no so that God unto whom I pray do hear and accept of my humble addresses St. Paul wrote to Rome from
Corinth most heartily in his letters requesting their praiers and he esteemed it as good as if he had himself been by and heard it and yet the catholick altar is not so far from the people as Corinth is from Rome Wherefore in St. Pauls judgment one may pray for another not onely priest for the people but people also for the priest without being understood or so much as either heard or seen Nor could St. Paul in his own reason ever deny the efficacy of those praiers which be made by one for another in any whatever language for it was all one to him what language the Romans spake and if he did reflect upon it he could not be ignorant that they spake not the language of Corinth when he wrote to them from thence that they should pray for him there at so great a distance But if any will yet be obstinate and object unto me that S. Paul himself even in his epistle he wrote to Corinth from Ephesus which was his first letter he sent to that people speaks there about the end of the same letter very much against their praying and prophesying in an unknown tongue he may know first that even the tongue of the Romans whose prayers notwithstanding S. Paul so earnestly requested at Corinth was an unknwn tongue to those that lived there and yet that wise apostle would not we may think contradict himself Secondly then what was the matter The busines was this There were in the primitive Churches up and down many gifts and gratuities bestowed upon Christian people by that holy Spirit who would thereby exalt the gospels glory as extemporary prophesies working of miracles gift of tongues and the like and S. Paul hearing at Ephesus of some disorders in Corinth upon that account as those kind of gifts are possible to be abused he wrote to them about it to let them know that the spirit of Jesus for such his voluntary donations unto men was indeed to be praised but yet that Christians should not therefor place in those things their utmost glory and then to diminish further the huge esteem they had there of gifts and tongues before all other he lets them know that of all the other gifts that in particular was liable to the greatest inconveniences even far more than either wonder-working or prophecy This is the apostles drift as any one may see that understands a grave and sober letter But what is all this to any service of the Church But thirdly that I may make the thing yet a little plainer the Latin in which the Catholick service is kept is no unknown tongue and therefor that objection of no valiew against it There is no tongue in the world can be said absolutely either a known tongue or unknown but only with relation unto people and so every language in the world is in respect of som people a known tongue and in respect of others an unknown English is an unknown tongue to Vienna but not to London high Dutch is an unknown tongue to London but not to Vienna And therefor that we may conclude a tongue to be known or unknown we must compare it to the family or people in reference to whom it is used and no otherwise and that family or people must be considered not in any other respects if they have many but only in relation to that particular rank or order which refers unto such a language An English merchant living in Anwerp hath two languages which himself and family speaks English and Dutch and both of them in reference both to England and Holland jointly may be called both known tongues and unknown but in his busines with the English dutch is the unknown tongue in his Holland affairs english So the Pope as he is governour and lord of the city of Rome speaks Italian as all the other people there do and it is the only known tongue in that degree and order but as he is head of the whole Church spread over the earth which is a mystical body distinct from the body politick and hath a language of its own quite differing from the Italian that passes through Germany France and Spain both Indies and the Islands the north and south world wheresoever Christians live so he uses and speaks that general language which is latin and in that sens Italian is an unknown tongue and Latin only the known tongue of the Christian world So that in order to religion that one language that is spoken not in one corner but runs quite through the hous and is common to all as they be ranked in the series of Christianity wherein they are trained up by the father of the family and which in reference to religion he only speaks himself is the only known tongue in order to it and all other tongues unknown And so not latin but english not latin but dutch not latin but spanish is an unknown tongue to the Christian world for all these though they be the known languages of particular kingdoms which be but a corner of Christianity yet not they but latin is the known language of the whole Christian body and family through the world The hous of God is but one in it self although it be disperst over several nations and the language fitted for all the body must consequently be but one wherein all those nations are united and linked together exteriourly even as they be joined interiourly in faith which in that one tongue is carried up and down and conserved and all other tongues english french spanish be accidental to Christians as they be Christians even as the times and places of their abode be nor be they fastned unto them by their Christianity but by corporal birth and education which be contingent and altogether accidental to religion So then latin in reference to religion which for reasons above named must use one language is so far from being an unknown tongue that it is the only one known language of the Christian world united to Christian faith as the proper garment to a body by whose fashion it is discerned I know that a part of the Church useth greek in her Liturgy and som few people Hebrew as well as the generality does Latin But I mention only the latin tongue becaus my countrimen take notice only of that And all the three languages agree in this that they are segregated from vulgar use consecrated by the cross of the Meffiâ—s approved by the general pastour and equally liable to the present objection which is so trufatical that it casts not the least blemish upon popery for that custom and I hope all wife men will be of my mind Our land me thinks should thank the Pope for keeping his Mass and Psalter in such an unknown tongue For so our vulgar if they should be curious to see it yet can they neither be offended by what they hear nor so much as discern that our own English communion-book is drawn out of the
in it nor do we move the plants to their growth and ripenes nor do we know our selves how these or any other things in nature are wrought Thus destitute are we of any rules of providence whereby this world is either set or kept in order that we neither prescribe them nor see them observed or do our selves understand them we are neither called to advise for the ordering of the being of things under us or is our help required for their conserving or our suffrage demanded for the putting a period to their existences And are not we in the mean time goodly rulers and disposers of the world that have neither hand in the making or guiding of it I knew once an innocent that took a fansy in his brain that he was master and disposer of all the burdens that came up in barges and lighters by a river that ran through the town and would constantly be upon the bridg at the hour they were to unload where standing very serious and attentive as soon as he saw the porters to carry forth out of any barge a burden of coal or corn or other provision he still bad them aloud and with autority to take it and carry it that way which he saw them inclined to go and all the day long he was never disobeyed Such masters and governours are we of this world with power to bid a bird to fly or ant to creep or wolf to run or heavens to move even as we see they do and so we are obeyed and no otherwayes nor no otherwayes do we know either what they will or ought to do We do indeed feed upon som creatures we either ensnare or which stand tame to our hands and tirannize over som others subjugating them either by subtilty or force will they nill they to our yoke but this is no more than the beast fish and birds do to one another And as for the ebbing and flowing of those several events and accidents that be proper only unto man as peace and war wealth and poverty arts policy religion and the like what a labyrinth is he in that enters into consideratition of their varieties and causes the ends and motives of them If religion be a thing so necessary to our salvation how is it that our good God left the gentiles for so many hundred years all over the face of the earth to walk after the errours of their mind in the blindnes and darknes of their understanding what had they done before they were born to deserv it and if they be so dealt withal without desert how does Gods justice appear And again if a particular religion be not necessary for example the Christian why did Christ our Lord put those poor harmles men his apostles to so many labours necessities and dangers of death to plant it in the world And how comes it that even this religion now revealed and preacht in the world makes so small progres and brings forth so little fruit among us Why should the Turk and his alcoran cast forth the only true religion out of all his Territories where it did once so gloriously triumph and fructifie Syria Egypt Africa Greece and heresies and schisms out of other places The assurance of our own souls immortality would conduce not a little to the exciting of our dull and drowsy spirits unto a more quick and lively care of our future bliss and so dull we are and doubtfull of all things that it were almost necessary we had it and yet we are God wot so far from that that we even doubt our selves whether we our selves have any thing immortal in us nor is there left an argument in reason to convince us of it Is it not a strang thing that man the most excellent of creatures upon earth should be so left to his own disposition to turn and swarve as he pleases either to right hand or left and by that means to fill the earth with injurious disorders and enormities of sin which might as well have ever remained innocent and peaceable and all other creatures both above and below us go on orderly in their cours prescribed by their maker without any irregularity or deviation Does not every good maister of a hous keep his whole family in order if he can and know how to do it And God wants neither wisdom power or goodnes that he should be either not desirous or ignorant or not able to make all actually good What chain of causes known to man may unriddle these things Are not all things in daily change both to Kingdoms in general and each mans particular person both in matter of fame wealth power and other accidents But how do all these things happen as they do what is the immediate caus efficient what the final where doth the justice appear Histories tell us of little else but warres battles desolations deluges translation of empires the rise and downfall of kingdoms in their power renown and civility alteration of states and lawes succession of deepest barbarisme to most high civility and again of most exquisite civility unto horridest barbarisme mutation of languages pestilences oppression and liberties of people c. By what lawes of the almighty are all these things ordered and what justice infers such heaps of misery upon feeble mankind especially since we see even with our eyes that all invasion which sets afoot the greatest and most oecumenick changes is generally unjust If we do but only consider the horrid turmoils that have been at times in our own countrey by the Romans and Brittons Brittons and Saxes Saxes and Normans Scotch and English the two houses of York and Lancaster nay but the meer troubles of these last twenty years from 1640. to 1660. whereof we have been spectators and sufferers nor will there any pen be able to set down the miseries we have undergone wherein rebellion prevailed over loialty dissimulation over truth tenant over Lord subject over King even to the murdering of that sacred person by a pretended form of justice in the face of the world without any caus exhibited against him but only his own defence against their rebellion and the depriving his loiall subjects of their estates liberties and lives souldiers all the land over hovering daily over our heads like ravens over sick and dying bodies c. What justice what providence appears to us in all these things Are we not as blind as beetles to discern it The iniquity of man we understand well enough but Gods justice in so ordering or permitting it who can discern and yet there is doubtles a reason in heaven for all What distinction appears in this world betwixt the just man and unjust save that uprightnes and honesty for the most part goes to the worst Is it not a mystery that so many innocent souls persons of most exact vertue and good conscience both towards God and man should walk up and down many of them hungry and half starved traduced and
not in that manner the Evangelist uses or if he did he could not intend to affirm that which neither he nor God himself can make good Nor will we grant any thing to Christ but what we can do our selves or understand at least how it may be don If there were upon earth any speaking oracle unto whom all parties would submit in these affairs disputes would soon end if such a one be excluded or denied the very rising of them is as ominous as the blazing of a comet or coming of a whale into a river and portends great disturbance and desolation The world had that fearful apprehension when they first beard that Luther would shine with his own light and defy the stars of heaven But they were more than assured of much approaching mischief when they once understood that Calvin had left the Roman Sea to show himself and domineer and sport in the fresh waters of Geneva §. II. Reason WHo shall then set up himself for a guide to his neighbour in affairs of religion which must needs carry an obscurity far above all that is in nature and how and which way will he do it that a good disinterested judgment may approve of his pretensions There can no other way whereby any should now afresh after Christian religion has been above sixteen hundred years profest in the world set up himself a new extraordinary directour be thought of or imagined but either som high inconfutable reason internal special light or purer interpretation of formerly received Scripture And what man is there in the world can now wisely begin to pretend any of these things to the disparagement of the rest of the Christian world Reason carries the fairest show and seems most civil and manly and if it lean upon principles of faith formerly received it may do much good for the strengthning or securing of religion in weak beleevers but then it makes not saith but supposes it and must know withal and if it be right reason cannot but know that all argumentations are answerable which if they rely upon obscure suppositions may according to the height of the maisters conceit pretend much but can prove nothing irrefragably Did religion com at first by reason or must it only begin now A good beleever cannot but think that Christ the great maister had a reason for what he taught but he must beleeve first before he can think so and altho he had a reason himself yet since he taught us none we can have from him no other reason but his autority and this may be beleeved but not evidently proved for his miracles recorded and not seen are as pure an object of faith as his autority and person nay if I had seen them I could not have told my self unto whom the intricacies of whole nature are so much unknown whether nature and art might compas them or no and so might I conclude him to be some ingenious person or great naturallist but not a god Nor is it likely that Christ ever meant that reason should frame our religion both becaus he constituted such men to plant faith as were not any maisters of arts and if reason had been the business it had been fitter to send them about the world to learn than to teach as also becaus himself though he did oftentimes with subtil and most rational argumentations confute the Pharisees errours yet did he never by any reason that I can remember establish his own doctrin nor answer to any Quomodo though he was often put to it but still when the Jews demanded How can this or that be How can man forgiv sins How can this man give us his flesh to eat he repeated again his own assertion and doctrin and might perhaps confirm it by miracle but he proved it not by reason And it was very fitting if so be he were such a person as we beleev him to be that he should be taken upon his word and not stand to give his vassails a reason of his will If Christ our Lord had been no more than an ordinary wise legislatour yet could he not rationally intend at once both the unity of his Church upon earth and the guidance of all men in it onely by reason of their own for my reason is not his and may well prove contrary as well to it as that of my neighbours whence will result together not onely not one religion but also no religion whiles one neighbours reason differs from another and perhaps both from Gods Wherfore wise and holy Church hath in all ages both forbid her children to dispute their principles of religion in the sense they had received them and also refused to be tried before any Senate by the philosophy of any pure man to stand or fall by his axioms This is apparent not only by ancient writings of Christian doctours but by a fact of Emperour Julian who falling from Christian religion amongst other oppressions he deprived Christians of their schools of literature throughout the Roman Empire telling them by way of jeer that Christians need not any learning unto whom this one word Credo is sufficient And indeed it is sufficient for faith and must needs be both the sufficient and only means of conserving a Church in uniformity for religion must be somthing which may be common to all persons that profess it and equally proportioned to all capacities and conditions and such a thing is to Beleeve but not to ratiocinate all men both rich and poor wise and unlearned prince and peasant may equally beleev one and the same thing and so hold it uniformly from time to time but if that very thing were to be set up unto each one by his own proper reason the several kinds of beings in sensitiv or vegetative nature even from the oak to the mustard seed would not more differ than that one judgment in several men have there not been fifty or threescore several interpretations of these few words Hoc est corpus meum c. and almost a hundred opinions amongst the masters of reason about their summum bonum And if any say that it is enough for som great master in these times by the strength of his reason to rais a religion that is onely to be accepted and others of weaker abilities may either take all that from him or only follow and hold what themselvs are able by their own reason to reach This cannot satisfie at all for first if I must take a religion upon the credit of some great masters reason which my self cannot judg or comprehend I had as good take it from the first master and beleev as I do and not suffer another in these dayes to make himself lord over me and lead me another way of his own and he indeed that does so does not only by this slight put himself into the place of Him who conveighes faith but of Christ himself who made it for the sense is the life and spirit of all
much in that age as in the first when she took her faith from him that did manifestly so comport himself as if he would be taken for a God and promised his Church by the general spirit he would send her to teach her all truth and strengthen her therein against all opposition even to the consummation of the world which none but God or one exceeding near unto him could make good and if this were not performed the imposture was in the first beginning That building must needs stand firm that rests upon a Deity which hath influence upon the whole fabrick to keep it up and if it be not so kept up and conserved the Church doth but vainly flatter her self when she boasts of the divinity of her support if she fail in her doctrin and faith Christ is not God Whensoever therfor we read either in the Acts of the apostles or other ancient story of the conversion of a Kingdom or people unto the right religion of Christianity we still find it was done not by any private illumination of any one who living before in darknes with the rest was now secretly called to teach others but by a resignation unto a former doctrin brought from Christ by his missioners and preachers by submission to a truth delivered to them from without not rising up within them Faith comes by hearing and every man upon earth that hath ever been approved Christian received it that way and was made thereby not a maister but disciple to the Church Wheras on the other side this spirit and light and such like discoveries we so frequently talk of makes us not schollers but maisters ipso facto and urges not to submit to foregoers but to condemn them not to resign our own but to captivate others understandings not to go to the Church but to go out of it and that upon the single motive of a new illumination which none had before us and we from no body I know well enough that a man cannot be converted and becom a good Christian without the assistance of Gods grace exciting and cooperating with us to our good when the truth is taught and revealed to us But this I suppose is not the Light men talk of for this is rather in the affection and will than in the understanding and bids us hearken to another not to our selves to join with a Church already planted not to begin a new one of our own heads It sayes not to us make a vineyard of your own but go into mine And the intellectuall Light men speak of if we have any we receiv it afterwards as a reward of our humility in that Church where we did not kindle it but found it already burning to guide our feet by it in the wayes of peace Crede intelliges said a great Prophet Beleev and you shall understand but we must beleev first and by that obscure step of beleef which is as a duksy twi-light between the darknes of infidelity we lived in before and the light of truth we go to arrive we to all future happines But we in England that pretend this new Light and secret Spirit are separated by it from a former Church but brought to none nor are we made disciples by it but maisters on the sudden and enabled to teach all men that which we never received from any which is absolutely against the whole cours of Christianity and will if it be admitted set open a gap unto all fanatick fansies St. Paul professes he was apostle not of men nor by men but by God and the reason is becaus his first call was extraordinary from heaven as was likewise the suggestion he had to his mission and yet that God that called him although he showed him so singular a favour yet would he not dispense with his own orders and constitutions even in him but sent him to the good Priest Ananias to be by him instructed and catechised and admitted into his Church and with those people St. Paul found in the profession of that faith did he often conferre even he that was so strangly called from heaven conferred the Gospel which afterwards he preached as himself speaks in his epistle to the Galatians with those people and with that Church he found in actuall possession and profession of that faith least saith he I should have run in vain that is least he should do or think or preach any thing amiss contrary to the truth received unto which he was called which he could no otherwaies by the constitutions Jesus himself had made be assured of but by comparing his doctrin with that which was believed and practised in the Church before him into which he was now incorporated as a member in that body by the assistance of the grace he had received to be first a disciple and then afterwards a maister and teacher and when he did become a doctour he did not make himself one no nor his calling by Christ sufficed to do it but he was made such a one under the hands of the apostles and by their approbation autority and sacred ordination as may be seen in the book of the Acts ch 13. Nor was he to teach without that Churches leav or contrary to her faith but by her direction and in subjection to her This is a faithful speech and worthy of all consideration which seriously pondered would dissipate in a moment all whatsoever pretences of light spirit reason or other thing that shall mov any to a new way by himself contrary to what he hath received seen practised in the Church before him And if any would seriously peruse the Acts of the apostles wherein the footsteps of primitive Christianity fufficiently appear he shall find that all that were called unto Christs religion were brought to the feet of the apostles and priests who received them at the door and brought them into the hous of God by the laver of Baptisme and imposition of hands and confession of sins and it was not onely the ordinary but sole ingress into that Church and none were ever esteemed to be of that body but only by those means which also the pastours of the Church were only to mannage He that comes not in at the door saith Christ is neither sheep nor shepheard but a theef and a robber And true Christian religion consists not in going out of a Church but coming in there to submit to the ancient dictates of piety which Christ revealed §. 13. Independent and Presbyterians Plea TO a judicious man whom a word sufficeth it will already appear that no opinion or way here in England can have any advantage over the other by vertue of discoveries made by any light spirit or reason since there can no such be legally pretended to set up any new religion apart from the former but to join rather with the old which if it be not absolutely true Christ is not God and all Christianity but a human invention But yet
living Honourable mention of Saints deceased proves an immortality of the soul and this immortality renders the saints even after their deceas still more honourable so that he that honors them must needs believ this and he that truly beleevs this will be apt to honour them I am God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob God is not the God of the dead but of the living so argues and disputes our Lord Christ proving the souls immortality by the honourable mention of souls departed And his argument is good and very subtile for if God be the God even of souls departed then souls departed are not nothing but som subsisting thing for God cannot be said to be the God of that which is not And these two effects a beleef of our immortality and a pronenes to imitate their good works so highly crowned hath this memorial of saints wrought all over the catholick world where ther is not a man but will urge himself somtime or other for the respect he bears to such a glorious saint who by shedding his blood or mortifying his body magnified God and his religion upon earth to do somthing either of pennance or charity superabundant over and above what he should have thought upon himself without that help in imitation of the good pattern of him who being once a man compassed with the same infirmities that we now be hath shewed us notwitstanding both by his life and doctrin that such good works are both feasible by frail man and very commendable too and beneficial even to the reward of never ending glory And to this end do Catholicks read their saints lives labouring each one to the degree of his devotion to rais up in himself the lively sparkles of hope and faith and charity by those examples which he sees not confined only to the one age of the apostles but translucent in all times and places by his continued goodnes to his Church whose mercy endureth for ever Nor are those saints lives so prodigious and incredible as we in England take them to be I speak of solid authenticated legends For I have my self seen with mine own eyes and known hundreds of living men that have equalled them in those practises And he that knows the vigorous nature and life of Gospel where it is really put to practise and not only verbally profest will wonder at nothing If ye say to this mountain remove hence saith our Lord to aright beleever all things are possible and I am confident by what I have seen my self that ther be now as bad a world as it is an immens number of people among Catholicks as eminent in all perfections as ther have been in any age and som of them equall too even to the glorious saints of old whose legends we read For thousands of people do make it their very profession even as people here in London set up and profess a trade to lead their lives exactly according to the tenour of gospel noting every evening before they sleep all the deviations even of their very thoughts and making resolutions in the morning for the renewed practis of all such vertuous actions that may probably lye in their way and in particular such a vertue to day that to morrow this in the third and so they end their lives All the Catholick world knows I do not lye And all this is don not by any force of nature but against it by the meer power and vertue of their religion whereby I have known many men to subdue corrupt nature even to amazement and miracle And the various examples both of good people yet alive and of eminent saints departed whose cells and vestments and beads and books are yet reserved amongst them incourage Catholicks unto this vertuous adventure while not only by sight of their lives who live amongst them and of the mortified figures of the holy persons deceased and bloody necks of their martirs but also by sermons and the continual rites of the Church prefiguring before them the conversation and passion both of Jesus himself and his many glorious followers who have imitated his steps that none might think but that the same life might be led though not in the same degree and the same valour be shown in undergoing both carnal castigations and death even by meer man through the grace of him who strengthens us to all things they are made continually to remember and seriously lay to heart both what they are to do and whom to imitate by which reflections they are more moved towards all the good works of piety than without them such a poor weak spirit as mans is housed in mouldring clay could ever bee And that this hath been the practis of the Christian Church in all times to set before the people the lively pourtraits of their holy and well deserving foregoers for their greater incitation unto semblable good works unto which their religion calls them I could easily show throughout all ages but that I intend here to speak no more than what may somwhat allay the preconceived prejudice we have taken up against the Popes religion especially in the few particulars I touch upon of which I speak no more than what I think may suffice to unbeguile such as list seriously to ruminate upon the truth And if in these things which seem harder to us their caus be just I should think the lesser prejudices should fall away of themselvs and we at length love one another as we ought for no man I think does willingly hate the innocent Only two testimonies of the primitive respect unto saints and their images amongst Christians taken not out of the bowels of the Church but from her enemies one from the Jew the other from the Pagan sufficiently known in history I cannot but here mention The Jews in the first three ages of the Church even from the apostles to Constantine the great accused the Christians not only in private but even before the Roman emperours and Senate of three great violations of Moses law first that they broke the sabboth and had turned it from the seventh day of the week unto the first making that holiday which Moses ordained for work and that a working day which Moses made holy secondly that they worshipped images of their saints and kept them not only in their houses but in their oratories and chappels thirdly that they brought in a strange God Jesus Christ they meant which neither they nor their forefathers knew all which seemed expresly against the letter not only of the general law but of the two tables of the ten commandements The pagan all over the empire laughed at the Christians for three ridiculous worships of theirs namely of a breaden God of the priests genitals and of an asses head the first whereof proves the primitive sacrifice of which I have already spoken the second their confession the third their use and respect they had of images for the Jewes had defamed Jesus Christ our Lord whose
them or to them in the catholick but not in the protestant sens If any one like not this my way of explicating this holy custom of the Church he may use what other he pleases But this I do use as most facile and connatural to pious oratory which easily diverts unbeleevers objections and best answers to the state not only of Christian saints but also those of the old law who could not see the necessities of men upon earth by any mirrour of divine essence which then they enjoyed not and yet they were prayed unto then as well as the Christian Saints be now And to me it seems irrational to defend an easy custom of religion by a hard subtility of philosophy which clears not but renders that obscure and doubtful which was clear and utterly undoubted of before All Christians ever beleeved saints invocation to be lawful and pious but it entered not into the Creed of any that those of another world either hear or see what we do in this and this opinion brought to clear the other practis is harder to beleev than it and no point of faith neither although by the subtility of Christian Philosophers it be rendered probable enough to such as allowed of the Christian custom aforehand This pious rite of saints-invocation common to the Hebrew and Christian Church is necessarily justified upon the supposal of three principles which all I think will grant First that Gods grace whereby men are made partakers of the divine nature is in a singular manner in some persons more than others secondly that the souls of those holy people and merits of their good works are immortal with God even after their death thirdly that God cannot dislike the reflections of his divine nature diffused in them out of the fulnes of his beloved son when any one makes use of them the easier to find mercy in his sight And all protestant objections as Come unto me saith Christ c. are but childish for who does a man come unto or go unto but Christ and God alone when he sues to none but him for grace and mercy whether he use or use not the helps of other intercessour with himself to facilitate his request As innocent therefor is popery in this as in any other her religious practises and we destitute of argument to carp at them for it Let us therefore love and not hate rather honour than diminish them without caus §. 28. Dirge ALl over the catholick world prayers are constantly made for the dead both in publick and private Insomuch that one day in a week the altar is set apart for that purpos and it is a rare thing when one half hour in every day is not spent there by some priest or other together with the people for that end nor is there a private person in the world that makes any orisons apart but will send forth som short ejaculations for the requiem of souls departed before he give over So that I may truly say it is as ordinary for Catholicks to pray for the dead as for the living and for one another as for themselvs And this custom carries with it so great a show of piety that for my part I could never dislike it and I have heard but few discreet persons speak otherwise against it than only as an ungrounded opinion For of it self what can it be but purest humanity to remember our friends when they are out of sight and to pray for them even after their deceas a most pious charitablenes The question is whether the doctrin be well grounded or whether it may make for good accordingly to use it If the deceased be utterly dissolved and soul and body equally extinguished then it is likely my praier cannot avail for any benefit nor will it becom either my charity or discretion to pray for them that are not for God is not the God of the dead but of the living as our Lord speaks nor is he to be requested for benefits to any thing that is not existent and absolutely incapable to receiv them But if their souls be still immortal with God where or in what condition soever they be it cannot hurt I should think either me or them to wish them well for wheresoever they are if so be they are any thing they are present to God who fills all things if not more yet assuredly as much as we that live this mortal life and as they themselvs were when they lived amongst us and God whom we pray unto is equally present both to them and us who assuredly hears and sees and knows us both And since the Almighty has set a limit to our knowledg none to our charity towards any man no reason can be given why I may not wish well unto them all my life time even after their deceas whom I might pray for while they lived even by the command of him who bad me do well unto all and have love which is ever accompanied with well wishes and praiers even to my very enemies never prescribing me either limit of time or measure of charity Those I pray for after their deceas must needs be if they be yet subsisting either in hell or heaven or som third place I speak vulgarly that I may be understood not heeding at all whether a soul in Aristotles philosophy may be said in rigour to be in any place or no in right reason whatsoever is must needs be somwhere and that is all my meaning If the soul I pray for should chance even then to be in heaven then my prayer for him is answerable to Gods will and so not evil but good whiles I beg rest to him to whom God hath given it for prayer though it often supposes yet it doth not necessarily require a want of the good thing prayed for in him I wish it unto otherwayes I could not say as well and truly Our father who art in heaven sanctified be thy name thy kingdom com thy will be don as I say afterwards Give us this day our daily bread c. In the former there is no want to be imagined for they both are and shall be whether I pray so or no and I do but only show my love and charity to God in wishing him to be as he is most holy powerful and just and desiring that to him which he neither does nor ever can want all sanctity power and glory but in the other requests a want is presupposed before the petition If he should be in hell fith it is not Gods will I should know so much I can no more be interpreted to gainsay his pleasur than when I prayed for the same person upon earth and wished him what he should never have for even then also I knew no more of Gods disfavour towards him than now I do and my good wishes in both places presented ever under a tacite condition of Gods good pleasur may be equally acceptable in order to any effect either
day But thanks be to Him that provided a wise and vigilant Pilot with whom he sits himself invisibly at the stern to guide him and such as voiage in the same ship with him unto all truth even to the consummation of the world Histories will tell us how careful and more then humanly happy Popes have been in all ages in reconciling Christian princes and resolving difficulties between them in examining of doctrines in counselling and perswading high spirited children ready to fly out into heresies to humility and resignation in governing so many bodies of Religious which be all subjected under him as other parts of the Church be and are so numerous that one would hardly beleev ther should be so many religious houses in the Christian world all serving God night and day with that silence order and cleanlines every one in his way and institute that it is the goodliest thing in the world to behold St. Bennet rose in the sixth age of the Church about the year 529. and yet about the year 1480. it is written that ther were then of his order fifteen thousand monasteries in the world and the other families of S. Francis S. Augustine S. Dominick the Society and others are none of them much less numerous and all these families have still recours to the Pope both for their rule and statutes and for all difficulties that may occurre in their spiritual government And who can be sufficient for all these things None surely but he that is singularly assisted from heaven and Christ our Lord in my judgment hath no less shown his divinity and power in the Pope than in himself as much in his spirituall and mystick as he did in his natural body and the life indeed which by his Spirit he livs in his Church is in a manner the very same with his naturall one now praying now disputing amongst the doctours now fasting then watching then healing the sick and working miracles then persecuted maligned envied somtimes at a feast somtimes hungrying somtimes making merry with a loaf of bread and few fishes the disciples now defending their maister now the maister defending his disciples c. for so the Pope protects innocent beleevers and these again defend him But of all those glorious things our Lord did in his life time conversion of people confutation of pharisaical opposers releeving of poor healing of diseases and the like he hath shown greater abundance in his Church than in himself according as himself promised Ye shall do greater things than these Which confutes the antient calumny of our old adversary the Jew who ascribed all our Lords miraculous operations either to som gipsie tricks he learnt when he was in Egypt or to som evill spirit he had got to attend his person either of which had it been true had failed with his peson and his power had not extended to his Church And all things considered I think I may truly say that Christ in the Pope and Church is more miraculous than he was in his own person and I doubt not but the nativity of his Church and miraculous conversation passion resurrection and ascension shall be the same with his So that he who contemns the Pope contemns Christ who presides in him and he that contemns the Church villifies his spirit which lives and movs and animates that body I could be very copious in this subject but I must not be prolix in any thing I only desire my reader to consider this one thing which after serious thought he will find to be true that if there had not been Popes in all ages both to conserv and propagate faith we had either never heard any news of Christianity here in England or not kept it undisturbedly so long All the whole gospel and body of Christianity is his purely his and from him we received it Nay the first great fundamental of Christian religion which is the Truth and divinity of Christ had it not been for him had failed long ago in the world and what then had becom of all the rest For after Pope Sylvester according to the faith of his ancestors had by means of his three Legates great Osius bishop of Corduba White and Vincent two priests established in the first councel of Nice the said divinity of Christ our Lord wherein he is consubstantial to that almighty One who made the earth and stars against Arrius and his allies who began to teach the contrary it is incredible to say what frequent murmurations resorts and conciliar meetings were made afterward up and down the world by the priests and byshops who had drunk in the contrary opinion and in that point deserted him against their Pope and Pastour for three or four hundreed years together till in a manner all the whole Church not only clergy but laiety and the princes of Christendom opposed him in it while the Pope now left in a manner alone or with a very thin retinue of beleevers and all his successors one after another fought even to sweat and blood for the vindication of that great Christian article even against the whole world And he so far overcame at length that there be scarcely in these dayes any that doubt of that which the Pope only by the authority of his place and title wrought out of the very fire Whence I may truly say that Christ is the Popes God for if the Pope had not been or had not been so vigilant and resolute a pastour as he is humanly speaking Christ had not been taken for any such person as he is beleeved this day And let men talk what they will by their vain philosophy this I will boldly say and am assured of that if the Pope be not an unerring guide in matters of religion and faith all is lost A man once rid of the controul of his autority may as easily deride and as solidly confute the incarnation as the sprinkling of holy water nor could the reason of the whole earth be able to convince him And after all this shall children and boyes jeer and revile in our streets and pulpits this sacred majesty of the Pope whom the vertue wit valour and nobility of all Christendome hath ever so highly honoured and we if we consider things as we ought can never love too much shall we cast unjust and vile contumelies upon him who holding a solicitude for all the Churches of Christs has so many millions of the greatest spirits in the world depending upon his lips for direction and truth with whom and under whom have concurred in his general councels so many thousands of renowned prelates venerable byshops princely cardinals grave patriarchs subtile divines and doctours Abbots and Generals of orders oratours chancellors knights and barons sent to his assistance by the Kings and Potentates of Christendom the very stars of our earthly hemisphere met together either to make up or grace and strengthen his great counsell convened in subordination to his legates nay emperours
themselves have thought it an addition of honour to sit in that solemn and thrice venerable assembly though in a separated place Shall we I say mock and revile this sacred person Let not such a thing be said of us any more let it not be told in Gath or the streets of Askalon that we use any such rude behaviour lest the very uncircumcised Philistins condemn our vast inexcusable incivility Nor yet let us either envy or malign the respect which Pappists give to Him from whom they received their Christianity and by whose vigilance and care it hath been kept inviolate amongst them from its first ingres into the land even to this very day Shall our eye be therefor evil becaus theirs is good §. 30. Popery IN the more flourishing doctrins of the Catholick Church I could be largely copious but I have said as much as may suffice my intended purpos which was so far to excuse even that religion also that if all do not embrace yet none may persecute and hate it Wherefor I do purposly omit to speak of other more plausible parts of Popery viz. 1. The obligation which all who beleev in Christ have to attend unto good works and the merit and benefit of so doing 2. The possibility of keeping Gods commandements with the assistance of divine grace 3. The liberty and freedom of human will either to comply with grace or resist it 4. The sacred councel and excellency of divine vowes 5. The right and obligation to restitution when any one shall have wronged his neighbour either in his soul or body fame goods or estate 6. The power and autority of of the Church in her tradition and decisions 7. The fasts and abstinence at certain times from som kind of meats which is all the religion we read Adam was injoined to observ in Paradise that we may therby be more apt to acknowledg Gods gifts and goodnes at those times we enjoy other good things of his bounty and at other times them and to sanctify our spirit for divine retirements 8. The divine ordination and unspeakable comfort and benefit of Confession 9. The caelibate and single life of the clergy who thereby freed from much solicitude of this world though not without som troublesom struggling against unseemly lusts of youth may approach the altar like angels of God who neither marry nor are given in marriage 10. The doctrin of indulgencies which be nothing els but a releas from som temporal penalties due to sin after repentance and remission which the Church does generally bestow by commutation as when for example an indulgence of such penalties for so many daies or years is granted unto such as upon the time appointed shall repent and confess fast pray give almes and communicate for the Churches preservation and concord of Christian princes which is a doctrin as rational and well grounded as any in Christianity though we in England will not understand it 11. Finally the ecclesiastick hierarchy and supremacy whereby catholick religion like a flourishing fair tree spreads his boughs in several kingdoms of the earth even from sea to sea so united all of it in all its parts and connexed together that ther is no catholick upon earth but is under som priest all priests subordinated to their byshops these to their metropolitan all metropolitans to the Patriarchs and Patriarchs united in the Papal cone every leaf cleavs to som twig every twig to som branch every branch to som bough every bough to the bole and the bole to the root And several other such like points of the Roman religion which coming all together from once hand have stood unchangeable in all ages the same and depending all upon the verity of the first revealer have an equality of truth though not of weight These and several others with the other half dozen more offensive doctrins I have cleared and explicated our reformers cut off at one blow when they taught us that it would suffice to salvation only to beleev in Christ without any more ado and that other things were popish superstitions whereby we became a strang kind of servants that beleev their maister but heed not either to fulfil his orders or do his commands For they told us and we have hitherto beleeved it That ther be no such things as good works pleasing to God but all be as menstruous rags filthy odious and damnable in the sight of heaven That if it were otherwis yet are they not in our power That with the assistance of any grace to be had Gods commandements are impossible to be kept and it would be therefor vain to attempt it especially sith we have in us no strength of free will to act any thing but evil That it must needs be foolishnes to vow unto God sith we can do nothing we ought to do and no less foolish if we have vowed to pay it That what wrong soever we do to another God is merciful and restitution fruitles both becaus one sin cannot make satisfaction for another nor any thing clear us but the blood of Christ alone unto which if we should concurr our selves by doing good works or satisfying for ill we should be half our own redeemers That the Church which presumes to teach other things than we allow is a fals mistres distracted and knows not what she sayes That to fast from sin is fast enough without depriving our stomachs of good flesh when we have a mind to it and yet becaus we sin in every thing we do neither is that fast possible to be kept That confession is needless How can man forgive sins That our clergy find themselvs men and not angells and love women as well as others and first revolted from popery principally for their sakes preferring a good wife before the whore of Babylon and the altars that kept them asunder are thrown down the honest pulpit standing now solitary speaks for them and brings them happily together That of indulgencies there is no need since obligation to penalties is shaken off long ago by our own autority without any indulgence from another That papal supremacy is the only obstacle to our liberty and therefor it must be abolished And let popery hang together as close as it can it shall go hard but we will find a battery to shake it So much indeed hath sophistry and continual clamour against popery and state punishments lying ever most heavily upon the professours of it prevailed over our judgments that now ther is no goodnes no worth no truth in it no none at all it is all naught all and every part of it naught nothing but naughtines superstition and vanity All that I will say for the present is this If popery be a bad religion more is the pitty for the professors of it suffer as much for it as might well serv for a good one Millions of people for the beleef they have in it and the love they bear its holy counsels and
them do not understand otherwis they would not cull out of it so many various texts against the Christian doctrin of good works and their merit so absolutely impertinent to that purpose that I cannot but be ashamed to see grave men to defend the caus so frivolously the works whose merit S. Paul disables there were apparently such as were don before conversion of which the abettours would have those works to be the caus works acted in Judaisme and Paganisme without Christ without the assistance of his grace without his command without his promis of reward for them end consequently without any acceptablenes they might have upon those grounds But what is all this to the disabling of Christian good works don in Christ by his speciall grace out of obedience to his command with a promis of everlasting reward and intrinsick acceptability thence accrewing Look if Gospel do not make out Christian merit in this point see if do no clearly speak forth both Christs word commanding his grace assisting his love accepting and the riches of his goodnes crowning all such good works don in him for his love with eternal reward Come ye blessed for I was hungry c. But this only by the way The occasion then of that sacred epistle being manifestly to make peace between two stickling barrettours as it required a great judgment and spirit in the author to write it well so could it admit but little of method in its progres And a man may easily discern that the Apostle turns himself now against the Jew then sodainly against the Gentile then to the Jew again still disabling all the utmost they could either of them do or pretend to do before their conversion as any way of ability and power to merit either it or the grace and life they had by it And it is to be noted too that wheras the Jew had three times more of plausibility on his side than the Gentile had St. Paul speaks least against him that was the weakest side and most oppressed but where he checks the Gentile once he rebukes the Jew three times and never lins till he had laid his insulting in the dust So proper it is to an ingenuous nature to withold the strong domineering party that the weaker and oppressed may gather a little heart and discern himself at least in as good a postur as his antagonist Now my purpos sith it is very like that of the good Apostles I shall not I hope be blamed for imitating so great a Doctour in his method And although to every one of my five chapters I do adjoin som generall contents as I have said yet are they not to be looked upon as confined to that place but that other matters will in each chapter and its severall paragraffs occurr and also those very contents be elsewhere hinted at for I do intermingle my topicks according as they seemed at any time conducing to the right understanding I aim at which I have don on purpos to keep up the appetite and refresh it with variety So in tasts an olla hath that good rellish which all the things contained in it without that generall mixture and seasoning would never have apart My Reader will see also that somthings are but slightly touched which he would think ought to have been more seriously prosecuted som again he will imagin too prolix others too often to appear and too sodainly to vanish like Virgills ghost Omnibus vmbra locis adero and all so interwoven that in one paragraff it can hardly be guessed what is to be handled in the next These and other such things which many may dislike I have a reason for and I hope my reader whose profit and pleasur I only wait upon will give me leav to use it A seasonable gentle air invites men abroad whom a strong wind would have kept within doors and I hope this my familiar discours may move many of my countrimen who would not have looked upon solid and studied controversies to read and perhaps recover that good disposition of mind I wish them even with their own pleasur and good liking Our land this last twenty years hath been in a chaos of confusion a Tohu and Bohu without either form or order and we all find our selves in a mist in a wood in a darknes almost invincible by our severall divisions and subdivisions of parties in the way of Faith But I hope that by the help of this Discours which is intended as a generall light unto all Books Sermons or Controversies wherby people are drawn into so many severall distracting opinions we shall find the way out at least know where we are My order and phrase be suited to the present times but the matter and purpos concealed in it of a lasting concernment Qui legit intelligat This is all I have to prefate and I wish no more but truth and peace to all and to the whole Israel of God FIAT LVX First Chapter There is no colour of reason or just title may move us to quarrell and judg one another with so much heat about Religion §. 1. Diversity of feuds THe applaus and honour of this world is a thing desired and pleasing to all persons from the Prince in the court to the Peasant in the cottage even as wealth and place by which it is atchieved Nor is there one of a thousand that follows not the inclination to the end be may attain it in that degree his condition is capable and they get it som by chance of birth and education som by industry and worth som by subtilty and wit Hence proceed those many high attempts we so much wonder at in this world for arts and trades began at first through a necessity of food and the conveniency we found in mutuall society such attempts I mean as were apt to lead the vulgar into a fit of admiration as be the two great excellencies of power and knowledg and their great atchievements that for defence of laws and kingdoms this for the adornment of nations and purer pleasurs of more refined intellects And both of these have many branches and kinds and each hath a diversity of graduall perfections He that cannot sway a Province will tirannise in his Parish and if he cannot appear abroad will domineere in his own hous so likewise on the other side what glory the emulous Plebeian sees given to higher spirits for sciences they cannot reach or for a supervisorship of Religion they may not hope for this by the contempt of the one and reformation of the other do they go about to compas in the world first by words and pen if they can write then if they multiply and grow strong enough by rude force and violence and still the pretens for all is cleanly and fair washed over that applaus and glory may both accompany strengthen and crown the design What strang things have been attempted by emperours and great captains and commanders upon earth all
histories make mention and it is a pleasant speculation to consider it But the method and severall wais of enhancing fame by inventions and discoveries of truths prosecuted by contemplativ heads what and how various they have been in the Pagan world we may in part gather out of Aristotle Plato Lucretius M. Tullius Cicero and som other few monuments yet kept amongst us What they have been in the Christian world lives more fresh in our memories but these are of two sorts one in explication and defens of faith against all opposition possible to be made by any kind of adversaries Jew Heretick or Pagan and this hath been the emploiment of the most sublime eagles that ever the Christian Church had S. Austin Magister sententiarum Alensis S. Thomas Aquinas Bonaventure Gandavensis Scotus and the like The other in opposition to faith which rose up in severall ages for the exercise of this mystick Body who was in his own person not onely opposed by outward adversaries but deserted by his own I love those eminent Pagan wits and this commendation they have that they are our first masters in all our Sciences that they performed what they undertook to write most solidly acutely and exactly both for judgment clearnes and method and thirdly that they confuted one another for they were divided in opinions as well as we and it was expedient they should be so not in reviling words as we Christians do but in sober and purest reason although the arguments of their discours inferred somtimes very little to the confutation of an adversary becaus they often proceeded upon severall principles not ever rightly understood or at least for more particular advantage wilfully mistaken And in this method of sobriety do our two great Schollers the Lawyer and Physician write when they put forth treatises either one body of art against another or one member and person in particular against another in the same body So likewise did our subtile Schoolmen proceed five hundred years ago with no lesse sweetnes of spirit than profundnes of reason whose intention was to explicate and defend Christianity even in the way of Aristotles Philosophy by which the Pagans had for a thousand yeaâ—… opposed it to the much prejudice of Christian Religion which the Priests and Doctours of ancient times would not undertake to defend by a Philosophy they found so much tending to atheism and in so many things fals that is to say contrary to the principles and faith they had received from Jesus whose word they preferred before all the Philosophers reasons in the world These Schoolmen divided into divers branches by occasion of a severall interpretation of Aristotle either in the way of S. Thomas of Aquin the Dominican whose doctrine for the most part was followed in Cambridge or of subtile Scotus the Franciscan whose chair was at Oxford And in other parts of the Christian world they had their chairs erected according either as chance or favour pleased But all was then don with no less exact charity than sublime reason for they had nothing els to do in their Schools but onely by argument and disputation to try the grounds and solutions whether if a Pagan himself or others antagonist whose person every opponent represents should dispute against them they could then be able to come off in their defensions with applaus and honour and without prejudice of their Faith But when we come to view the opposite judgments in matters of religion commonly called heresies especially in this last age for the rest before these daies have perished by the prevalency of one party against which all the rest bandied together as these be very gross and homly disputes so are they mannaged on the opponents side with so much unseemly behaviour such unmanly expressions that discreet sobriety cannot but loath and abhorr to read them Not reason but defiances not charity but execrations not subtilties but downright defamations not civil respect but vilest disesteem not cool perswasion but precipitous condemnation fills each page we look on and fire and stones fly about where meeknes peace and charity should most appear And all these religion-disputes whether we consider the subject they are about or the manner they are handled or the distracting variety into which they run concerning faith revealed which can be but one I do not see what other effect they can hav upon mankind but to subvert all civill respect and charity and good manners and laws and kingdoms where they come For no man is content if he pretend to have discovered a new way of religion unless all other men embrace it and press and pulpit must ring with loud cries against all that do not be they neighbours or superiours untill the sword it self be sharpened in our hands for battle Thus beginning with the spirit we end with the flesh It is not my meaning to interpose in any particular controversy whose multitude hath already made the world to nauseate but to hold up my discours in such generall tearmes as I shall think may serve if we lay our hands upon our heart and ponder them with a Christian seriousnes so many of us as be now uncharitably bent against our neighbour somewhat to allay and mitigate the many flaming heats of discord raging here in England as much or rather more than any other countrey for opinions concerning faith which as they are taken up at first upon self-conceit interest as experience hath sufficiently shown so are they upon all rules of Christian vertue and prudence if we ever mean to be happy to be deposed Be not many maisters for where all would sway there none obay and so ruin and mischief must needs follow The difficultie is I know not how to express the parties in this religion-feud that I may not offend for so bitterly is each side bent against the other that they will not endure to have them called by their own names But I notwithstanding should deem it not only a civility but a due debt so to do for that is every ones name by which himself will be called and not what an enemy gives him The Protestant is such a one and so to be named though his foe on one side sirname him Papist and his adversary on the other call him heretick so the Catholick likewis by his junior foe is called Papist by his elder enemy a Galilean and altho he may if he will yet do not think him bound to answer either to that appellation or this and therfore if I behave my self civilly towards him I can use neither And as it is for nomination of persons so likewis for the verities of their opinions no party will endure that any one truth of the other side should be acknowledged and he that shall do it will be looked upon as a common enemy by the rest Insomuch danger is even ordinary neighbourhood and civility amongst us when these feuds are once raised I have known good Protestants endangered these times
have both by their example and doctrin endeavoured incessantly the eradication of the sinful weed But happy is that man in whom the three fold members of concupiscence are become through his care and industry over himself either quite dead or at least expiring for he only lives and lives like a man and is free The other noises which is the subject and matter of this my present consideration are the many clashing opinions about God and religion an empty aiery business as I think ere long will appear a ghostly fight a skirmish of shadowes or horsmen in the clouds and yet 't is prodigious to speak what real heart-burnings what deadly rancour it breeds in mens minds and what a deluge of mischief it causes in the world It is a thing I have often and deeply considered not without horrour and commiseration The result of my thoughts herein is thus much surely there is somthing invisible over man and stronger and more politick than he that does this contumely to mankinde that casts in these apples of contention amongst us that hisses us to war and battle as waggish boyes do dogs in the street which being once set on tear and devour one another upon no other cause or motive than that impulsion For how els could it possibly come to pass that a company of men altogether unknown to one another in several places grabs constitutions employments ages and educations should all of a suddain no man knows how rise up conspire and jump together in a conceit before unthought of and to all other men besides themselves improbable so unanimous and vigorously as to put all to a hazard for its defence and propagation will or nill the whole world that may dislike it with such heat of earnestnes as is never seen to appear in any known good thing Can this be any thing els than an impression made upon us by som invisible substance or doemon that by this aiery phantosme inflames us one against another unto our utter worrying and devouring unto whom our deadly feuds arising thereon may haply give no less content and sport then dogs fighting in the streets to wanton boys that set them on This we may suspect at least and if we do methinks it should make our pens and weapons drawn for the maintenance of our fansy fall out of our unwary hands And is it otherwayes possible that any faction in the world should not have the capacity to think that as they judge and condemn all the world besides themselvs so also by all the rest of the world are they themselvs judged and can they not see it as ridiculous in themselvs to judg as in another whose judgment they contemn and as easily suspect themselvs as they do censoriously disesteem their neighbour whom they cannot but acknowledg to be in other things their equalls ther elders oftentimes in age superiour haply in naturall parts more eminent in birth and breeding equally subjects of our common creatour and haply in all civil respects their betters Is not this prodigious and what can it rationally be attributed unto but some maligne substance invisible that makes a fool of mankind Are not men blasted Are they not inchanted I should think nothing els can be said for it and therfore they run and fling and turn up tail and snuff the wind and hoof-beat the earth and bellow to battle as if they were stung with gad flies But let us use moderation God dwells not in a whirlwind If every one would but once begin to suspect himself as in all prudence he may the business were half ended and a right under standing very forwardly on §. 3. Nullity of title FOr the things of this world why men should contend so much the reason is enough apparent we live and our being is supported by them Nor is it an easie thing especially if men do not apply themselves unto very serious consideration to distinguish between things necessary and superfluous or to know when we have enough But that we should struggle so much about opinions even unto blood and utter ruin sometimes of whole Kingdoms except it be don in order to the things of this world wherin we labour by such means for a greater share than otherwis would happen to us or that the wicked fiend is in it no satisfactory reason in the world can be given For tell me I pray you Sir that struggle so much and so earnestly for the propagation of your opinion What good is it that I should think as you do Is it for your own interest or for mine If your own I am not bound to serv your fansy or inslave my understanding to your pleasur if for mine I thank you for your good will but refuse your service Although you may have a thought concerning God or natur perhaps better than mine if I have any or worth my hearing if I have none yet can you not rationally think either that you are bound in justice to communicate it unto me or I to embrace it There is nothing but charity to urge you which is neither obstinate nor seditious nor doth any law of justice oblige me to accept of your favour if you offer it sith every one stands as free in himself either to refuse or accept a good turn proffered by another as that other to present it Will you urg and force me to be of your opinion which perhaps I look upon either as of no concernment at all to me or false And who made me your vassail So great a vassail as to command my thoughts and those too which are versed not about your self or me but our common creatour and his works and providence which if they be rectified in you by any light to me unknown enjoy your own happines I envy it not leav me to my self as I do you and do not importunely against the very laws of right reason obtrude a courtesy upon him that likes it not nor thinks it so Had you any true charity for me you would not disturb my peace which even in your own judgment is one of our greatest goods for an opinion of yours which you cannot but see to be in my judgment of so little valiew Let it be what it will a forced favour is an affront force but a dog to eat or drink when he has not a list to it and see but how that very poor beast will take it Are not you and I worms of the earth both of us and equally subject unto that sours of light which is above Why then should you go about to perswade me to take my influence from your body which is of no less opacity than mine own You are inlightened you say and have received a truth which I want First you are assured no more than my self that it is a truth and although you may think you be one mans word is in this thing I am sure as good as anothers and if you have received it and it be such
consisting both of the millions of invisible spirits and the great machin of this visible world he will be found as the only substance and all things besides him a thinne shadow he solid entity and the great univers in comparison of him but a meer show far more differing than the body of a hous or tree and the shadow thereof in the Sun and therefor high contemplativs have called the world a vanity a lye a shadow a non entity and so indeed it is compared with God wherein all being is subsistent in its substantial primogenial perfection It must needs be so whereby we may see how deeply the sensual and carnal men of this world are deceived in their judgments whilst they look upon this world and the things of this world especially that part of it they use for their pleasur and delight as things of true real and solid substance but God the authour of all as an aiery flying fansy taking the substance for the shadow and the shadow for the substance so grosly do we delude our selves in our conceits of God and for his good deeds towards us dishonour him in requital But the inveiglement of pleasures brings us below our manhood and makes us think like beasts The obscurity of this most high God and his unaccessible light not to use any further argument than what is vulgar and before our eyes will be made more than manifest if we do but cast our eyes upon the sons of men round about this globe of earth our selves inhabit and their various both inquests after him and conceptions of him If men could do this one thing exactly all further pains of implanting in us true humility instead of pride amazement in place of arrogance fear in the room of presumption self denial in exchange of that prodigious self-confidence that abounds and rules in us might soon ceas Who is he that dare presume in any way of his own invention when he considers as very true it is all mankind so many several wayes in all ages groping after a deity like so many blind men in a vast plane by the help not of eyes for who can discover or see him but of that pittiful reed of weak imagination And are not all these equally his creatures do they not equally show their love in seeking after him have they not at their birth equal right to his favour which before they were born they could no wayes demerit And how then can infinite goodnes so neglect infinite wisdom so far unheed infinite power so desert this poor wretched worm that very fain would love him would be very glad to find him would think it a happines to serv him and for this end seeks after him so incessantly so variously and by reason that he is a hidden God so fruitlesly as he does In this perplexity remains mankind till there appear a prophet or teacher to each nation who may direct and lead them But when this happens how much is poor man the nearer There be haply as many several prophets as there be nations upon earth for though two or three nations may follow one yet some one nation hath two or three and all these equally pretend to be divine tho their laws and rules and religious rites be not only divers but oftimes opposite What can we think when we contemplate this where is truth and how shall we have it sith we cannot find it out our selves if not from the hands of such as pretend to come from God And yet they cannot all be true which then is fals and who is true is there any way in nature to know it for all establish their own way and honour by all inventions possible within their reach somtimes by miracles which their own disciples believ tho others deride them oftentimes by visions and prophecies generally by a show of sanctity with a concours of threats and promises both present and future to the violatours and observers of their law And therefor if any be true as it is but a surmise to think it so is it a meer chance to hit it which is generally done by birth or casual circumstance of perswasion Besides a religion once established be it true or fals when it is once received it is then taken for true in the space of some succeeding ages is reformed anew by other teachers or interpreters who in time lead men out of the former way into their own somtimes slowly gradually and insensibly that they are brought into another religion before they be aware sometimes by open hostility to the former which whether by covin or violence yields at last to the ingres of a new one This is the right case and business concerning religion in the world people still being vehemently bent upon that they fasten upon tho haply it be quite opposite to the former wherein both themselvs and forefathers lived Such is the miserable instability of mankind which is a sign that God and his truth how confident soever men may be is ever hidden and in-evident for men do not use to depart from evidence let Philosophers dispute never so subtilly to prove snow is black they will get no followers a contrary evidence detains even them that cannot tell how to answer their arguments from a submission unreasonable Nor is there all this while any one sect upon earth but condemns all other wayes besides his own which he no less admires than he disesteems them yea separating from a former religion to another either in all things opposite or a part onely men are apt to inveigh as bitterly against that now as then they did against this and with equal confidence of truth in both places Where then is truth and who sees it Is not God indeed hidden does he appear at all to any for although all say they see him and his truth with their eyes it is evident enough by the mutations both personal and national that be made in the world there is no such matter from God and from truth no man does willingly depart as also by the opposite professions of it with such equal confidence that it is not in the power of any man to say of himself assuredly where it is Archimed had an opinion that he could move the whole earth had he but a place out of the earth to set his foot on and so must he who shall judg of this controversie stand in some place a part where he may oversee all not interested in any in a word he must be out of the earth nor is the atheist a fit judg although he may bear himself for one for as none can judg of men but he that owns such a thing as humanity so neither can he give any plausible judgment of religions who acknowledges none nor yet is it an easy thing to pluck up the general connatural seeds of religion implanted in mans spirit and sprouting forth rather into the profession of a fals religion than none Who dare
which move Planets or bodies unto us here altogether invisible except we either rise higher or they descend towards us in their motion warmed and vegetated by their fires as we by our sun If it be thus as well it may for aught I can know of my self what a strange consort of hymnes and praises rise up in the univers continually and without ceas as incens in several keys of musick unto that great holy One who made us all to supply the defects of those small pittiful services we poor worms perform unto him in this our earthly system This may seem far more rationall thank to think that we gross corporeall creatures and sensuall sinners are the only people in the univers who serv the almighty and that all those eminent bright shining systems above us whose order method properties bulk and nature is so obscure are there set and appointed for nothing else but onely for our use which we cannot yet say what it is and when we have imagined our utmost is not of the value of any one star in the firmament or that bodies of their vast capacity should be utterly empty and have no creature at all within them I should of my self be so far from thinking that the stars of the firmament are onely for our use that I should doubt whether the very elements amongst which we live and breath earth aier and water and the beasts minerals and plants contained in them are onely made to serv us tho chiefly intended for our benefit The very gradual perfections of nature hath in it self a worth and decency beseeming the Creatour tho man had never been And if all had been onely aimed for our use would not a less sea have served our turn and fewer birds beasts fish and plants What use have we of all the great depth of earth under us to the center or larg vast aether about us And if we were such absolute lords of the world as we conceiv our selves to be how is it that nothing at all in natur is at our command not the sea not the aier not the earth it self nor any thing upon it or in it will either come or go or alter or stop his course at our pleasure which King Canutus observed well when standing with his nobles by the Thames side he perceived the tide to rush upon him altho he had commanded it to com no nearer What kind of vassails be these inferiour natures under man that will obey us in just nothing Besides when any one is absolute maister of a hous wholly destined to his use surely such a one can go and com into any room thereof without controul but let man walk down either into the bottom of his seas to see his fish there or into the cellars of his earth amongst the mettals and tell me if he be not stifled as soon as other creatures But if he once attempt to mount the upper rooms of his habitation tho it be but into the first or second region of the aier he shall fail at the very first step for his ethereal greeces will not bear the gross unweildly bulk of their Lord so ill is the house fitted for the maisters constitution from the very top to the bottom Can we not honour and bless God for the use he hath lent us of all these things which is great and various but we must by the vanity of our hearts appropriate and monopolise the univers to our selvs as if it were for no other use at all but ours The manifold use and services we have of the stars and elements beasts birds fish and plants which do all administer unto man in somthing or other according to the exigence either of his necessities thence to be supplied or his corporal delight or mental speculation to be furnished from that great body which the divine goodnes therefor made before man that in the first instant of his being he should want nothing ought to make us thankful but not proud And so the holy prophet admiring the excellency and perfection of place that mankind by his creators goodnes hath over other visible creatures amongst whom he livs and the various uses he hath of them doth in one of his sweet psalms invite man thereupon to magnifie this his great benefactour who set him in so high a place when he needed not to have put him in any and if man do so he shall do well But he must not appropriate more to himself than is given or instead of being thankful for the dominion he has received vainly conceit a dominion he has not Aristotle fansied our earth to be the center of the Univers and the stars to be a sift essence differing from all the four elements placed in the circumference but the great wits of the world that lived before him Pythagoras Empedocles Anaxagoras Democritus Epicure were of another mind And although our Christian Schoolmen have now for five of six hundred years explicated and defended the principles of their religion even in the way of Aristotle by which for a thousand years it had been opposed by the pagan yet do they not intend to mix his philosophy with those principles of their faith nor does the great Christian Church therefore canonise his philosophy for truth becaus she suffers her own truths to be declared and explicated by it If Christianity be true it fears no antagonists but will bear the test of any right philosophy but yet philosophy that it may be right indeed must be corrected and ordered by this divine truth as well as this explicated in som things by it And if another Christian philosopher should explicate his faith now afresh in the way of Democritus or Pythagoras as in the first times of the Church it was declared in the way of Plato and in these latter ages by Aristotle so he do it piously and warily and square not his rule of faith by them but them by it I cannot see why it may not commendably be done But then as he does use those explications to satisfy a pythagorean or epicurean so must he confidently reject as dissonant to right reason what he finds unapt to square with the received truths of Jesus Christ as we do now deal with Aristotle This if it were done as Christian religion will be justified when it is perceived to stand with the right reason of any Philosophy so likewise when another Philosophy contrary to Aristotles is once understood all the whole univers both for number weight and measure its essences relations concatenation origin life and qualities would hang as loose suspence and doubtful as if nothing had been ever said of it Aristotles reasons will make Democritus and his disciples doubted and again the great learning and subtility of Democritus Anaxagoras Epicurus Empedocles will as much disable Aristotle and the doubt may be as pregnant among Christians as other men where the catholick Church interposes not the autority of some received tradition to cast
the scales But whether she do this or no is not to my purpos now in hand who intend onely to insinuate unto such as multiply opinions about religion both without and against that Church that even nature it self is vastly obscure and unknown to man who lives in it and nothing in a manner but only what enters our senses can be so certainly known and concluded by any that he may prudently either swagger or fight for his opinion And religion and the things of another world must needs be yet more obscure than those of this It is observable that Christ and Moses and other holy Apostles and Prophets when in their discours they touch incidentally upon things of nature their chief purpos being ever to teach the way of vertue and true piety they comply oftentimes to the capacity and judgement of the hearer what ever it be So Christ our Lord told us that at the finall day the stars shall fall from heaven insinuating by that amongst his other expressions the great disturbance of nature then to happen wherein comets which the vulgar calls stars may shoot indeed but the Philosophers stars cannot fall upon us out of the firmament except all return to the old Chaos and one System mix with another Moses calls the sun and moon the two greater lights and the stars of the firmament the lesser altho contrary to philosophicall truth when he intended to declare unto the people that have vulgarly such conceptions of them that sun and moon and all the other stars and planets were created by that God he revealed The Psalmist under the similitude of an Eagle which renews his youth expresses moral renovation which he might well do sith men had so fansied of the eagle whether indeed he do so or not The like compliance was used by him who told the people that the stars in their ranks fought against their enemies in which phrase he insinuated Gods providence in battles condescending to the peoples imagination who looked upon the stars as a pitched field of champions under the Lord of those hosts of heaven to defend the innocent Thus leaving us in the same imagination about things of nature they found us in they endeavoured all of them onely to chalk us out the right way unto that felicity whereof the knowledg of these and other wonderments of Gods power shall be the least part by serving him as we ought from whom have issued prodigies we shall never know in this life and who is himself the wonder of all wonders onely to be seen and known in the other Having seriously perused the Schools and learning of the ancient Pagan Philosophers this I finde that their disciples however conceited of their demonstration and knowledg did rather beleev than know any thing and the first maister invented himself properly speaking not so much a philosophy as faith Take Aristotle and his School on one side Democritus and Epicure on the other these two schools were mainly opposite both in their principles and whole body of learning And yet none that understand them well can tell by any strength of nature or force of their arguments which of them is with truth According to learned Democritus and Epicure all things began in time by a fortuite concours of atomes which in all eternity filled the immensity of space and as these made the world so do they by their incessant mobility work continually insensible alterations till after long time they fly all asunder again and make casually another world either here again or in som other part of the immens space quite of another mode and fashion unto this so that matter upon this account is all and does all According to Aristotle the world had no beginning but partiall generations daily wherin form gives the act and essence and matter is so far from being all that it is but a pure potentiallity and prope nihil almost just nothing These were the opposite principles of two differing Philosophies But were they known or evident to either of the maisters If they had sought for an argument to prove them they had laboured in vain one therfor conceited that matter was all things the other that matter was nothing c. and upon this conceit which nothing but the autority of the maister to whom they would adhere fastened upon the disciples they raised a Philosophy which being thus founded upon a human faith or fansy all their following ratiocinations could never effect that it should be rather called knowledg than beleef or fantosme And this is the reason why the ancient Christian Priests grave and learned men who had entertained an esteem of their maister above all mortall men would never give way that the articles of Christian faith should be tried by the principles either of Aristotelian or Epicurean beleef and since the disciples of those men would adhere so firmly to fals and indemonstrated principles of human teachers they thought it much more reasonable that they should hold constantly what they had received from a divine maister and not submit to the test of such ungrounded inevident and contradicting principles of men as much opposite one to another as all perhaps to Christian faith even Aristotles philosophy as well as the rest What more assured pillars be there in Aristotles school than these Ex nihilo nihil fit 2. quod incipit esse desinit esse 3 quae conveniunt in aliquo tertio conveniunt inter se 4 accidentis esse est inesse 5. ex duobus entibus in actu non fit unum 6. Ã privatione ad habitum non datur regressus not to mention others And yet those catholik priests perceived well enough that Christian principles were contrary unto these and these to them the first to creation the second to the souls immortality the third to the Trinity fourth to the Eucharist fifth to the Incarnation sixth to the resurrection Some ages after rose our Christian philosophers whom we commonly call Schoolmen and raised a fine piece of art upon Christian principles defended and made good even in Aristotles way And these becaus the forenamed and such other Aristotelian axioms carried a plausible appearance of truth in the ear they did accept them indeed but in a sens of their own so that they do not in this Christian school make out that sens they did in the others though they bear the same sound And it is pretty to see how one and the same axiom is made in several schools to butteres up waies that be destructive to one another God made the world in time saith the Christian and none but he could do it for it is not in the power of any creature no not of the highest intelligence to make a thing of nothing for ex nihilo nihil fit of nothing is nothing made namely by the power and force of nature though it may by God the first caus so speaks he The world is eternal saith Aristotle and could not be made
witty jest and jeer and so having given it a flap with a fox tail they pass on soberly to other matters in hand as is commonly done in the pulpits of witty preachers or if they handle it more seriously they do either for their own advantage mistake the doctrin or the proofs they bring against it whether through fraud or ignorance 't is hard to say and the foundations of catholick religion which be tradition and scripture they do so variously expound in severall times and places that one text shall have twenty several interpretations which if they be not catholick pass all for good here and at one time an autority of a father or councel shall be accepted and diversly interpreted in another time and place quite rejected now one piece of catholick doctrine shall be vehemently cryed down and at another time taken up again and maintained and at one and the same time in several parts of the world twenty points for example of catholick faith shall all of them be somewhere received and somewhere rejected amongst Protestants for they being still their own maisters may choos and throw away what they pleas and as long as they list without controul wheras the Romans keeping still one and the same treasury of religion and faith afford matter for them all either to take or leave either to approve or laugh at as they lâ—st as a well furnished table affords wanton children both what they may feed upon themselves and what being full they may spoil and play with and cast to the dogs §. 15. Scripture ANd whence com all these divisions only from this that every man hath a reason an interpretation a light a spirit of his own by which the bible which is now in all mens hands is made to speak what we pleas and our thoughts and tongues are our own what lord shall us controul This is a sad case while all of us upon those only motives which all men may take up at any time to abuse his innocent neighbour proceed to mutual hostility without end The very books that have been written against Roman catholick this last hundred years as they be furious and virulent so be they also so many and various that they would if they were all brought together fill up the Tower of London and by them have people been inflamed to such a height against the Romans that their bodies dignities honours fame houses and goods have been ineffably harrassed to this day And yet no body can say what ill that religion ever did in the world until Henry the eights dayes when it was first rejected and persecuted and when we have laid them in the dust we fly upon one another and pull and tear upon the same motiv all that stands in our light Reflect countrimen upon your selves shall we continue in a contest that can never possibly be ended and being prosecuted to the utmost must needs infer a general ruin upon all for whatsoever we say against any one may be said by any other against our selves and proved by the same argument and the same thing may be done to us upon the same account we do it to another All appellation to a visible judg is by anticatholicks jointly excluded and to the Roman catholick with whom unity hath ever dwelt we will not return nor can it be yet expected for the general disrepute unto that way hath so filled our ears and hearts that hating the very name of Papist we have not power to consider soberly what their religion may be Nay we are verily perswaded even from our nurses milk that Protestants are the only professors and Papists enemies to the gospel although to all the world besides the gospel is well enough known to be the Roman catholicks own and sole religion by which they walked and lived here in England many hundred years unto a fruitfulnes of all good works before Protestancy appeared and we pretend to fight against them only for the gospel and with the gospel whiles they forsooth are beleeved to have nothing at all to defend themselvs but a little traditional trumpery of mans inventions with a greater heap of vices of their own And upon this account proceed all our books that are written against Papists and popery in effect like unto that picture that was carried not long ago up and down the Protestant world wherein was drawn a fair ballance as a type of the two religions in whose left hand scale hanged beads girdles cardinals caps monks hoods fryars cowles disciplines crosses to signifie Popery in the other a fair great Bible to signifie Protestancy which hanging upon the ground quite weighed up the other scale into the air as light as very vanity And so credulous is the generallity of mankind that by such toies as these we are carried away unto not onely a dislike but even the highest detestation and contempt of a sacred religion without further examination But what do I speak of the generallity of the vulgar Even our sober and most judicious men who in other things speak and think like oracles in this busines of popery are not abashed to speak like children that talk of hobgoblings in the dark so prevalent is a prejudice brought upon us by the virulent impression of often iterated calumnies Nor are we able by the restraint of this great prejudice either to read the books or ponder seriously the reasons of our catholick neighbours for their faith Yea I have heard som Protestants in other things most wise and judicious to say openly that as for Papists he loved their persons but their religion he hated in his heart the reason is clear he knew the one and not the other And as we do all of us by this old imbibed prejudice detest Popery though we know not what it is so by any new-received dislike when we have once bodied with any one faction we revile all the rest and none will yield to another although in all reason that religion that hath precedency of time with all the other helps any juniour way can pretend unto might one would think have so much if not precedency yet equallity of respect as not to be by a way that is new in the world so bitterly reviled especially when all that venemous bitterness which by any junior sect is cast upon his foregoer may and is as heavily thrown upon himself by his successour But thus rancour and malice spreads abroad in our hearts and whole kingdom against his rule and doubtles to his great displeasure who carefully obliged us to the contrary rules of love and which is to be lamented the first sours and origin of all these defamations is the Pulpit where both by word and example we are taught to defame and hate even those we do not know We may fear som great curs lies upon our poor nation for these our unnatural disorders even so far as to blind us that we cannot see the truth Unto his dogs set upon
their devouring sport even Acteon the maister may seem a stag and be torn a pieces by them Wrath puts a new shape upon an adversary who through such a black medium though he be never so innocent in himself will appear all odious especially when the wrath is unjust and the occasion of it taken but not given for then 't is cursed and works marvellous dark effects in the heart of him that bears it And by this we may suspect our selves to be blasted with such an unwarrantable passion when upon a conceived prejudice of our own we do more hate those have don us good than such as really hurt us I cannot but take notice that our learned protestant all these many years he hath by the Puritan been outed of his ecclesiastical possessions he wrote little or nothing against him and with no considerable violence but most virulent books he put forth continually against the Papist who did him no harm and meddled not at all with him and then hanged with him upon the same cross of persecution and might justly reply unto him as the good thief to the evil one Nunquid tu non Deum times qui in eadem damnatione es And what evil hath the Protestant ever received from the Roman catholick that he should treat him thus even none at all but all good imaginable The Protestant hath been instructed in his Universities for Oxford and Cambridg were both of them built by Catholicks as well as the cathedrals and parish Churches he hath lived all his life upon their benefices studies their books preaches in their pulpits even that gospel which he had from catholick archives this is the harm the catholick ever did or the Protestant received from him and yet Lord what volumes of invectives do we powre forth even to this day against him who hath done us all good and never any harm at all neglecting in a manner the true adversary who hath utterly undon us Is not this a piece of phrensy what can one think it els when any nips us behinde to fly into the face and scratch him that innocently stands before us our maister and benefactour But the Protestant seeing that outrage done unto him which he had done to Catholicks before upon the very same motives and with the like words and deeds might fear perhaps that himself should now appear justly punished and the catholick at length be justified But let us see a little further if our hot contesting combatants can find any rational medium to conclude demonstrativly or maintain infallibly or know certainly any thing at all concerning points of religion If they cannot they have som reason to be silent none to quarrel either one with another or all of them against the Roman catholick The wayes and practis of a visible foregoing Church is concluded by a general consent of all the Catholick only excepted to be erroneous antiquity of former ages overwhelmed with Egyptian darknes conciliary meetings of byshops and pastours a conspiracy against purity of gospel and the Pope who was anciently beleeved sole judg and general pastour over all a grand seducer and now scripture though it be wrested out of the hands of Papists that somthing might be held by us which is plausible must be not the truth only but the sole judg of it too This is it we all pretend to stand upon Be it then admitted for truth who has the right meaning of it the Roman catholick who hath lived by it now above sixteen hundred years in all unanimity or the Protestants who wresting it out of catholick hands about one hundred year ago hath ever since been contesting and quarrelling about it not only with the catholick but amongst themselvs even to this present day The gospel is no doubt a good rule but if we for our own ends to avoid the judgment of any tribunal upon earth do constitute our selves each one the sole speaking judg by that rule we do thereby make our selves both judg and rule too for it is all one to arbitrate with a mans own words or to do it with another bodies words which he without controul will interpret and thus excluding one judg whom we found in actual possession of the chair we set up a thousand who will determin more rashly and yet as resolutely as he and we still further off from any final conclusion than before Do we not see this to be true by the daily fresh uprise of so many several sects which do all promote themselvs by vertue of the same pretens These twenty years last past the zelots who preached so vehemently against our innocent good King all the land over did they not all find a text in scripture for their purpos and not only one text to preach upon but hundred others to elucidate and confirm their doctrin which notwithstanding all wise men knew were not taken in their own genuin sens and meaning and yet who could convince them of that who had as much light within and without too as all Protestancy ever taught sufficient for judgment even against him who first sent us the scriptur and was then found in actual possession of the chair and a Protestant that should have gone about to confute them must have denied the principles by which he was himself first constituted Com com 't is more than manifest by all our proceedings this hundred year that our bitter invectives against the Pope who swayed Christianity had no other end but only this that we might all sway and none of us be controuled I would fain know if I should deny the great fundamental upon which all religion is built namely that the soul of man is an immortal substance and distinct not only from the grosser tangible parts but even from the very best and purest both animal and vital spirits which without doubt be mortal and that there is any other world for men to pass into after this life of mutability whether I could not sufficiently prove my negative out of scripture making use of all the advantages of semisentences parables figures stories tropes with as much reason light and spirit and as equal plausibility as any sect deduces their tenets and so another likewise who should hold that heaven and the world to com is nothing but a condition of serenity in this life a fourth that there is no hell angels or divels c. sith there is no tribunal to judg who can outbrave any such defendant when he faces his antagonist with the light of a text which none but himself must understand Scripture must do all by that light all walk how many soever several gainsaying paths they tread I will no further contest about the meaning of it What is this Scripture It is Gods word But you had it not immediately from God but found it in other mens hands all whom from one series to another till you come to the Pope who first sent it us we have all aforetime concluded to be
wonder take any one kingdom under his spiritual jurisdiction and they shall remain a hundred yea thousand years in all peace and unity upon religions account But let that kingdom once divide and separate from him and presently all those very self same byshops who before in their subordination to the Pope easily mannaged the peoples consciences and kept them in a most orderly peaceablenes not know in their separation from him which way to turn themselves but that heresies and schismes will rise and augment themselves without end in despight of all their power and endeavours as if unity and truth and peace were tied to the Popes chair Those that understand not catholick religion have stood many of them exceedingly amazed at this consideration and not without caus for whence can this happen It is not becaus Popes are all saints and only they for the venerable and renowned priests under him and great multitudes of people about him in all nations which shine like stars in the firmament may be without controul as good and holy many of them as himself and although Popes be for the most part very good civil and discreet men yet if it should happen that som one be no better than he should yet even that man shall be as zealous of unity in religion and preserv it as exactly as the best which exalts our wonderment unto such a height that we are even forced to acknowledg that there is some great secret in this business not easily to be resolved for all other byshops and princes the more worldly and sensual they be the less care have they of their flock and people If we shall say that these be the great powers of God upon him the doubt is at an end and a reason appears why people do fear so much to be excluded his communion if this be not admitted I am at a loss and can find no reason why a good king and true head of his Church if himself or the people can make him so should not be able by his acknowledged autority and sword to keep his own subjects in an unity of faith and peace as well as a bad Pope for so we beleev them all to be and pretended head keeps together other mens subjects of different manners and languages without sword or axe or corporal rods only by the meer love of his communion and fear they have to lose it Nor can we say that new opinions about religion are never broacht among catholiks for this as it cannot be expected amongst so many millions of great wits and spirits that be amongst them up and down the world so is it so far from being true that all the heresies that have rose in Christianity were invented ever by some catholick I mean that had been formerly such for his opposition to and apostacy from his general Pastour makes him ceas to be catholick any longer and generally by priests who preferring their own judgments before their pastours and the tradition they had hitherto walked by in the pride of their hearts led people after them out of the fold of the Church And whoever does so puts himself by his own autority in locum Petri and is to be looked upon by all good Catholicks who have care of their own salvation as a dangerous guide Thus did first begin our own Protestancy by Martin Luther Calvin and other fallen priests and the fall of murmuring Judas from the colledg of apostles of contesting Adam and Eve from the bliss of paradise of dissenting Lucifer and his angels from heaven who are said to dispute with Michael and his angels as Luther did with Eckius and his fellow Catholicks signifie nothing else But what does the Pape or Christian pastour do in this case When the tumult is once raised and a disorder begun in any part of his flock by som proud turbulent spirit amongst them the Pape first whistles him and his fellow petulcous rams into order by charitable admonition which still increases lowder by degrees and if this will not serv but that they will still be refractory he casts in his shepheards crook amongst them and divides the turbulent from the peaceful and so the infection stayes The disquiet ones being driven out depart in a rout together but within a while they separate and walk by sixes and seavens and subdivide at length so often that at last they go single whiles every sheep amongst them will be a ram and every ram a shepheard But the other quiet ones that hear the voice of their sheapherd and follow him in peace as becoms sheep to do enjoy all happines and spiritual content amongst themselvs to the unspeakable comfort of their souls under him whom Christ the great Messias hath set over them and this is called the Catholick flock which for the love they bear to their honoured pastour and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we commonly call Papists and somtimes becaus they will not forsake either their sheapheard or divine pastures of truth and sacraments wherein they have been brought up when we would speak more civilly we call them Recusants If any one shall think I speak too much in favour of catholick religion let such know that I favour nothing but truth and peace and it is the part of an ingenuous and well bred nature to support what he can the weaker side especially if he know it to be innocent and injuriously opprest as it often happens in this world that the stronger in right may be the weaker in repute Nor can any fewd amongst us ever be ended which is the thing I aim at so long as errour and injustice are maintained And although we quarrel furiously one with another yet considering that our strifes amongst our selves proceed upon the very same grounds and motives we pretend all of us to have against the general adversary we all hate till this capital dislike of Popery be diminished our other fewds must needs be kept alive No peace amongst our selves till we revoke our words and ill deeds against our innocent neighbours and at last comply charitably with them against whom our first dissention sprang up in this land Ephraim is against Manasses and Manasses against Ephraim but both against Juda and becaus they are both against Juda their lawful superiour therefor are they so furiously bent against one another whiles Ephraim to be in Juda's place who is thrust out by both parties labours to depress Manasses and Manasses for the same reason to trample upon Ephraim Thus is Presbyterian against Independent and Independent against Presbyterian but both against the Papist Protestant against Puritan and Puritan against Protestant but both against the Catholick And as soon as the Protestant had by violence supplanted and cast his Roman-neighbours out of all their dignities honour and livelihood the rancour had utterly ceased had not the Puritan rose up out of the Protestant bowels and subverted him by the same means he had used to his catholick foregoers and
things of catholick profession don by him and the people he converted But partly by the great succeeding persecutions raised by the Roman emperours against Christianity partly by the unwearied endeavours of the Pagan priests here in the land against it about the time of Marcus Aurelius the Roman emperour and year of our Lord 190. there were hardly any remnants of it left in this island Wherefore our noble Brittish King Lucius moved by the fame of that holy faith sent to Eleutherius then Pope in Rome to entreat he would destin into our countrey some of his special pastours to teach us his Christian faith The Pope sent him two good priests Fugatius and Damian who arriving here with some few others who were pleased to accompany them made both the King himself and his Queen and very many of his subjects Christian And this Christianity of the Brittons no man I think will doubt it to be catholick since the whole profession of it both while the Brittons lived in this land and after that they were expelled by the Pagan Saxes into the mountains of Wales doth clearly manifest it if Priests living together in monasteries some hundreds of them many times together and exercising in Churches their priestly functions upon the reall and mysticall body of Christ if praying before crucifixes erecting of crosses solemnizing of feasts keeping of Lent vigils and embers honouring of Saints making oblations and orisons for the dead may as it needs must signifie so much Nor can it be imagined that Pope Eleutherius sent to us by his Priests any other religion than his own And this is called Englands second conversion as that by Joseph of Arimathea the first and both of them equally to one and the same catholik faith and no other which however now by a strange judgment of heaven it be for a time traduced yet in primitive ages it was looked upon as a most sacred and blessed religion and then persecuted by none but such as were profest enemies to Christ himself as I could show at large but I must make haste After two or three hundred years this Religion all that while profest in the land was again banished by the utter overthrow and flight of the Brittons professors of it into our english Alps in Wales where Christian and Christianity lay hid together and the pagan Saxes who had driven them out equally hated both their faith and them Wherefor about the year of our Lord 596 the time of emperour Mauritius Pope Gregory the great of his own proper motion and good will towards us destined unto the conversion of the Saxes or Englishmen who being then pagans had possest themselvs of all the English territories S. Austin byshop and abbot who with forty other Priests his companions all good children of blessed S. Bennet preached here so powerfully that upon one Christmas day he baptised more then ten thousand souls for which good work of our conversion the Kingdom of England ever owned that good Pope for their spiritual patron and apostle And the children of S. Bennet are indeed our very fathers who first begat us in Christ and regenerated our English nation to the life of future bliss This Christian religion brought in by S. Austin the Brittons could not deny it to be conformable unto their own catholick faith received formerly from Pope Eleutherius in all matter of doctrin although they were so transported with passion against the Saxons their antient adversaries that they would neither let their own priests whereof they had more store then they had use of go forth to their conversion nor yet forbear to disturb good S. Austin in his so pious a work But such good Christians did our forefathers the Saxons after their conversion prove that they yielded nothing to the antient Brittons before them yea rather they exceeded them so that all the land was stored by them with goodly monasteries of S. Bennets order brave cathedral Churches fair colledges and libraries manuscript crosses shrines oratories sufficient and wholsom laws for all occasions hospitals corporations and all that might be necessary either to our temporal or spiritual welfar And all our people were wholly attentive to their devout contemplations of a life to com in Christ our great redeemer Church and State being now most piously and prudently provided for when William the Conquerour in the year of our Lord 1066 Constantine Duca being Emperour of the East came in upon us from France and conquered us This valiant captain finding our catholick religion conformable to his own Christianity although he abrogated much of our civil law and used in temporal affairs too too much of violence thereby to subjugate the land more perfectly to himself yet he medled not at all with any alteration in religion nor once excepted against it but lived himself with the rest of his subjects both saxes and normans and died contentedly therein building of his own devotion som fair monasteries to S. Bennet before his death wherein God might night and day be served and praised for his souls greater expiation from that tinctur of bloodshed it might have contracted in his wars and vehement proceedings with the saxon nobility after his victory And in this same catholick religion did both Norman and Saxon live peaceably together and without any the least disturbance upon that account though for civil respects York and Lancaster raised broils enough untill the end of King Henry the eighths reign about six hundred years together after the Conquerours ingress into the land the people offering daily their prayers and orisons before the altar and sacred crucifix together with their priests and prelats all Roman catholicks without any schisme or disturbance From whence we may note first that all the three conversions of our Kingdom wherein we lived unanimously so long together were all of them to one and the same catholick Roman faith secondly that this faith as it represents Christ its divine sours in purity which all men might see if they would have but patience to examine it so likewise both in unity and unchangeablenes as there is but one God and he immutable so is there but one faith and it unchangeable Thirdly that catholick religion is so far from being an enemy to the state-politick as som reformers to its greater disparagement would pretend that it is the great founder and maintainer of it Nor ever had this land for so many hundred years it was catholick upon the account of religion any disturbance at all whereas after the exile of that catholick beleef in our land from the period of K. Henries reign to these dayes we have ever been either in actual disquiet or at least in fears vulgar heads uncontroulable in their fansies since they were by the reformation constituted in effect both judges and contrivers of controversies ever raising som new fangled way or other to disturb or at least to threaten and indanger our peace And it is a thing of much wonder
that a nation such as England is so wise and serious in all other things so judicious and grave should be perswaded by any mans words against the dictamen of their own reason if they would but consult it to beleev any such thing of this innocent faith when they cannot but clearly see in all histories both our own and others that amongst all the pretended wayes of Christianity only catholick religion both sets up and preservs the Crown which giddy headed sects indanger Som of our english clergy tell us of a thousand I know not what dangers of the Pope thereby to get the assistance of secular power to their own ends but what is indeed the occasion they know assuredly that the Pope if he were once admitted would both separate them from the secular life they lead and bring into order their exorbitant opinions And what harm if both these things were done If we do but search antiquities we shall find that none of our ecclesiastiastical benefices were given by princes and people to maintain a wife and children but only such single abstracted contemplative men as had consecrated themselvs and all their whole affections to God to serv him in all singlenes of heart in prayer and fasting and perfect charity and in the sacrifice of the altar all the dayes of their life without any solicitude after this world as priests of antient Christianity did and not for women and children unto whose generation against ecclesiastical custom and constitutions our ministers give as much attendance as any secular man whatsoever and generate children which after their death unles they show in their life time more of wordly solicitude than their spiritual state permits must lie upon the parish and as for ordering our dissentions in points of faith I should think not only the Pope who would assuredly do it but any whatsoever thing in the world though it were but an owl in an ivy bush should deserv thanks if he effected it But I return to my story §. 18. Item NOt only the kingdoms of the continent Germany Hungary Italy France Spain but all the Northern coasts and islands Denmark Norway England Ireland and the isles about them were now in a full and quiet possession and profession of their catholick religion when upon a little occasion heaven so willing it for some great sin or neglect of mankind the whole scene was changed on the sodain and catholick faith in our northern coasts to the grief and amazement of all that were then alive utterly abolished even by the discontent of one person and he but a private one neither upon this occasion The Pastour of Christianity upon some solicitation of Christian Princes for a general compliance throughout all Christendom to their design sent forth in the year 1517. a plenary indulgence throughout the world in favour of the Cruciata against the Turk Albertus byshop of Mentz delegated by the Pope to see it executed in Germany committed the preaching and promulgation of it unto the Dominican friars which the hermits of St. Austin within the same place took ill but especially Martin Luther a preacher and professour in that order esteeming himself the best deserving man in the town grew exceeding wroth that any should be chosen before himself to execute that work which was likely to have as great an auditory and confluence of people as might happen in a mans life time to the no small repute of him who should be thought worthy before another to divulge the bull and make the exhortation sermon in the behalf as it were of the whole Christian world Vexed therfore that he was thus neglected and as he thought undervaliewed not only by words but books and papers secretly thrown about he diminished first the dominicans then the byshop then indulgences themselvs Catholick superiours and princes blamed this misdemeanour of Luther as a practis of much danger and sedition but he grew not any thing better thereby but rather more head-strong and furious as unlawful passion increases by the very means of mitigation inveighing now with more boldness as far as he durst both against Prince and Prelate too Insomuch that the duke of Saxony after a year or two invited friar Luther to his court where by dispute and colloquy with the eminent doctour Eckius if he could not make his caus good he might grow better principled at least for Gods sake and his own good condescend to moderation and peace But Luther after much tiresom talk told at last very boldly both the duke and his doctour too that the quarrel was not begun for God nor for God should it be ended And so departing thence he proceeded now with more virulent words to incens the people unto whom he promised liberty from their vowes and fastings and other penitential observances whereby he perverted much of the laity clergy and religious people both men and women who 't is strange to consider it violating their vowes deserted that Catholick Church besides which they had never known nor heard of other to follow the serpentine enticements of one private person and he if not the worst yet at least none of the best that ever were Thus when one ram has leapt over a hedg all the other poor sheep so many as be within ken of the fact are apt to follow So prone is man to go astray like sheep and do amiss to our own ruin without any other reason for it than the sight of a president acting before us what our own naturall inclination is apt of it self without the curb of religion or law of its own natur to embrace And so much was the world disposed at that ill hour to a dissolute loosnes that Luther was still gaining upon people even from his first apostacy But when he had once married himself unto Catherine Bore a Nun by him seduced out of the monastery of Mymick contrary to both theâ—r vowes so that he was now become a sure and fast enemy as well to continence as before he had shown himself to abstinence 't is wonder how fast they flocked to him on all sides not only from the vulgar laiety but even from all instutes and profession and countries even the priests and votaries of chastity Oecolampadius a monk of S. Briger Jacobus Praepositi an Augustine Andreas Carolstadius an archdeacon in Wittenberg Suinglius a cannon of Constance Martin Bucer a dominican fryar Lismanin a Franciscan Richerius a Carmelite John Calvin a curate priest Philip Melanchton out of Germany Michael Servetus out of Spain Bernardin Ochyn and Peter Martyr out of Florence John Alasco out of Poland Sebastian Castalio out of France Beza out of Burgundy Stancar and Valentine Gentile out of Italy Blandrate Alciate and David Georg out of Transylvania c. who being all hitherto catholicks took occasion now by the example of Luther to fall away whereby as the body of holy Church was purged of some unquiet spirits so was Luthers retinue in a short space
three things I could not tell what to think of First that both in the Churches of the city and university and countrey whatever the text might be still pope and popery was brought in Secondly that never any good thing was said of it but all evil Thirdly that contradictory opinions and practises were generally put upon that way and yet our ministers who could not but see it did not so much as regard it at all but equally flourished all of them in whatever they said against it without the dislike or check of any or so much as the exception of him who had spoke of it aforetime even contrary things in the same place If Popery thought I be so bad let it passe what a Gods name should we talk so much of a thing that is past and gone and buried with my grandfather and no man sees or is like to be troubled with it any more How coms this nois so frequent in all places about a poor busines as if it were don by design of defamation Are our ministers afraid we should turn Papists who know not but by their report what Papist means nor can no more understand what they be than we can tell what complexion Julius Caesar was of We know this way is every where spoken against and much evil is said of it but that has been don afore now to the best things and a general decrying defamation seems rather a conspiracy of interest than any deserved reproach And to what purpos since it is dead and gon should we speak of it at all much less evil and so much evil too We ought to speak well of the dead at least not ill for dead men do not bite and ghosts afright none but babes and to speak ill of another as it argues a fear we have they may be able to hurt us and a desire by our defamation to disable them from so doing so doth it fill our hearts with rancour which if the party be dead is wholy useles But it is a strang thing that popery or any religion upon earth should be such a fardell of trumpery sin and villany without any good at all in it Such a thing one would think were impossible to be found And it is yet more strang that noble persons should voluntarily lose their estates honours dignities in court and esteem among their neighbours who were it not for that obstacle would dearly love them and somtimes their lives too for a thing hath no goodnes at all in it The old Pagan religion contained in it many good things but this Popery is a hous of Judas all stench and rottennes for our ministers and the word of God must be beleeved And yet again let Popery be what it will if it signifie any one religion it is the strangest thing in the world it should be evil in both extreams that be contradictory and exclude one another Ministers speak ill of it that may easily pass and the highest ill I cannot gainsay it yea and nothing but ill they may have a reason for it But contradictory ills and so many of them and so tangible apparent ones 't is a wonder of wonders that one and the same faith and profession should be able to exhibite And yet I have never heard let a minister say what he will against popery that the byshop ever calls him to an account for it as it is don in other things even of less importance insomuch that Prynnes book against stage-plaies is now questioned Against Popery and only Popery all goes currant No man if he speak but ill enough can speak amiss of it and only here two evil extreams are not opposite One preacher saies that the Papists worship stocks and stones to which they are superstitiously addicted night and day another that all their religion is to worship a piece of bread One that their consciences are so daily tortured and afrighted with the fire of purgatory and doomsday and pennances for their sins that they never have quiet life another that they carry their top and top gallant so high that they will go to heaven without Christ and get eternall glory of themselves without any god-a mercy to him One that murders adulteries lies blasphemies and all sin make up the bulk of popery another that papists are so wholly given to good works that they place in them excessive confidence One that the Pope himself and all his papists fall down to pictures and commit idolatry with them another that the Pope is so far from falling down to any thing that he exalts himself above all that is called God and is very Antichrist himself He that hates and would destroy my person will not surely worship my picture One that they wallow without any conscience or fear of God in their excesses another that they nothing but torture their carcasses with disciplines and fastings as if men could not go to heaven in a whole skin One that in respect of chastity they villifie matrimony which the apostle calls honourable another that by a superesteem of their own they make matrimony a sacrament thereby equalling it with baptisme One that the ignorance of papist priests is so gross and palpable that generally they can hardly read latine another that the little ones which profess the gospel had by their simplicity prevailed over all the vast learning of the subtil popish clergy One that popery began in the twelfth age of the Church another in the ninth another in the sixt another in the fourth another in the very primitive times of the aposstles I cannot now call to minde the numberles contradictories I observed put upon the papists Nor could I ever determine of my grand Sires religion by such reports Wherefor after a year or two I put my self to travel all alone and solitary to make my long intended discovery Humansy speaking it was rashly done of me and I several times thought so when I met afterwards with troubles I did not then foresee that were even ready to sink me For in all my sufferings which were many and frequent I could not but think of my many dear friends whose weeping tears in that my humour I had neglected I beleev to this honour that somthing went before me to provide my entertainment and provoke people againstime for coming to spy the land for as loon as I set my foot on the other shore and ever since afflictions have still accompanied me Nor yet was I ever so much offended with any mans abuse as therefor to think ill of the religion which I knew him to transgress It is not to be expected that all the men of a kingdom should equally imbibe the religion of the place It may well be pardoned if only one in four follow pure sensual nature as they received it from the womb even amongst the best professions Religion is superadded to nature as salt and is several wayes imbibed by men Som drink it in as water and with a little
labour are quite concorporared with it and make as it were one body with the spirit thereof such were the glorious saints of the Church Som take it in as powdered beef or other flesh unto a perfect seasoning yet so as that still the flesh is more and hath the denomination these are upright good men preserved by the power of their religion from putrefaction and unsavorines although they be men still upright men Som take it in as clay in a less degree and more imperfect mixture but yet they shew it in their lives and conversation for it keeps them together and if in one action they miss of grace in another they recover it But som again in the fourth place are like a marble stone or brick which rubbed over with salt imbibes nothing and such as these have the name of religion upon them nothing in them and they may be met with every where especially in outward society and commerce for they are still abroad even when better people are retired and sometimes they will for their own interest get into inclosures too where they procure much disturbance and vexation to the saints In a word catholick religion is wondrous good and fruitful as it was said of Canaan and brings forth huge clusters of lovely grapes all over the land but there be also giants and the sons of Anak to be met with there and I escaped not their hands But God knew the innocence of my heart and I beleev his good angel supported me For the main I got the end I went for and having passed through some part of Holland and Germany France and Flanders returned to my countrey to participate of the miseries which our civil wars then commenced upon pretens of a purer reformation and further elongation from popery did bring upon us And out of the love I bear my protestant countrimen I set forth this little Light that they may no more be inveigled to infect their hearts and hands with the hatred and ruin of the innocent For catholick faith which we call popery is in it self a most sacred and pure religion it makes million of saints though it permit some bad ones even as protestancy which brings all things to a naked beleef that must suffice what ever life we lead though it suffer some honest men not apt by the light of reason to transgress so oft as they may makes a million of loos and wicked ones but this is the difference that there the few evil ones have som remors for doing ill here the multitude of desperadoes have none at all Catholicks cannot doubt of their faith if Christ who promised to be with his Church unto the worlds consummation be a true prophet and again if he be a true prophet then all reformers who jointly affirm the Church to have failed for so many ages must needs be in an errour But I com to my travels and particular observations so much as may serv to my present purpos §. 22. Messach I Was edified and amazed to see catholick people flocking to Church not upon sundaies only but every day in the week to their sacred orisons the bells ringing to that purpos all the town over not only every several hower in the morning until midday but at verspers compline and even at midnight mattens when all the religious of a kingdom are called up in the very depth of their sleep to chant forth psalms hymnes and canticles to the prais and glory of the almighty It deighted me to enter their Churches which be kept so sweet and clean and in such a religious quiet retirednes that it would make a man at his entrance into them as they say of the kingdom of Florida in a sweet spring day to forget wife and children and all worldly busines But when I beheld the deep reverence and earnest devotion of the people the majesty of their service the gravity of their altars the decency of their priests certainly said I within my self this is he hous of God and gate of heaven Alas our Churches in England as they be now be as short of those either for decency use or piety as stables to a princely pallace there they be upon their knees all the week long at their prayers many of then constantly an hour together in the morning and half an hour he that is least and my hous saith God is the hous of prayer but our Churches are either shut up all the week or if they be open are wholly taken up with boies shouting running and gamboling all about On Sundaies indeed our people sit quiet and decently drest but to bow the knee is quite out of fashion and if any one chance to do it as he is rare to behold so is he very nimble at it and as soon up as down as if he made a courtship with his knees or only tried if his nerves and sinews were as good to bow as stand upright And our whole religious work here is to sit quietly whiles a minister speaks upon a text conferring notes answering difficulties expounding words drawing conclusions and putting together for ampler dilucidation one text to another as if he were reading to students in the school some piece of Aristotles Perihermenias And thus we spend all our daies ever learning and teaching and our whole religion is to teach and learn as if religion were only to lend the ear to one who cries Hearkens or an art of knowing how to speak an hour upon two or three words of a vers which for my part as I am well enough assured that it is not the great work of Christian religion so neither is it the true work of Christian preaching whether we consult reason or presidents of antiquity to find it For as all sermons left us by greek and latine fathers are grave short and pithy such namely as they being all priests used to deliver at the altar between the Evangile and Creed so were they ever most free from any such verbal comparing of text with text vers with vers and the like various vanities which so take up our English preachings that our sermons be little or nothing else and only serv to spend time and vent our own frivolous verbosity If it do happen that a more learned Protestant do make a sermon of solid matter as sometimes they will he will be sure before he make an end by one conceit or other to have a fling at the Papists to the end that people may think as indeed they do that Papists have no such doctrine though the preacher know himself that he got it all out of their books which is a pretty piece of legerdemain but very frequent in this land Another thing I have observed and it is worth observation that of all the sermons I have ever heard in England I have never known any to deliver ex proposito the proper and peculiar doctrin of protestancy by which and for which we first revolted from the catholick
Church as that our good works be all mortal sins and damnable before God that we have no will or power to do good or avoid evil that the commandements of God are impossible to be kept c. but rather all contrary as if we were ashmed of our own doctrin and afraid to speak before the people what we know in reason could not but offend Christian ears But all generally do preach when they preach any good thing the doctrin of catholicks though ever abused with their own modes and mixtures For every sect as it hath a peculiar spirit so hath it a mode and vein and method proper to it self The Independent speaks many good words but inconsequent and unconnexed so much roving up and down as if he had a mind to be prophet errant and before he gives over to say somthing of every thing The Presbyterian ever pursues some Platonick idea for example the ingoing and outgoings of Christ which is so thin and bodiles that he is forced to assign six or seven wayes to discern it then gives twelv consequent effects nineteen wayes to get c. in which wayes he does even tire himself as you may perceive by his melting and breathing when he comes to the high hills of eighteenthly and ninteenthly and after some months labour and travel in these his wayes at last with much ado he finishes his text which before he handled it was good and easy doctrin but is now by his tedious exercise rendered obscure intricate and full of doubts The Protestant cuts his text out logically into so many parts and then walks through them all with an even rhetorick adorned with witty conceits and flowers of common places still bringing un that parcel of the text he is handling with such proportion and measure in the close that a man must needs say when he has done that he has shewed a featous piece of art and when his or Presbyterian or Independents sermon is ended then is the great work of their religion done though all to little purpos for a dead mans foot say what you will to him will never warm is shoo But the Catholick if he speak like himself having gravely and pithily prest the intention of the gospel for such a day unto the peoples practis and devotion falls to the great works of sacrifice if it be in the morning and of evensong in the after noon adoration prayer and charity which is the summe wherein his religion consists and all his preaching servs but as a pair of bellows to make those coles burn Nor does any good old catholick that is well grounded in the constant practis of his faith care at all for any further instruction knowing aforehand that it can tend to nothing els than what before he knew and yet endeavours to practis For with him pure religion and undefiled is not to hear words but do deeds to reliev the orphan and widow and to keep our selvs unspotted in this world which unspottednes we attain by complying heart and hand unto the rule and sacraments of Jesus Christ Nor did the primitive Christians for three hundred years ever hear any sermon made to them upon a text all their whole life time but meerly flocked together at their priests appointment to their messach or dominicum or Leiturgy or by what other name for they used many at several times to avoid the pagans discovery their Christian sacrifice was called And it is most strang that we should pretend here in England to be Christians and the only good ones and yet reject those two great things which were by all Christendom esteemed in every age the very essences of Christianity the tribunal of absolution and the great Legacy of Jesus his body to his spous the Church insisting wholly upon preaching which as it is an accidental and relative work of our Christianity so is it common with us an all religions both Mahometan Jew and Pagan whose sermons if any should hear he could not tell by the morality of the master to what religion they belonged It is hard to say why against all the vogue of antiquity we should be so violent as to abolish the Christian sacrifice pull down the altars banish the priesthood yea and persecute it unto death except we mean to repaganise our selvs Our protestant forefathers when they first rose found manifestly all the Christian world over that this incruent sacrifice according to the order of Melchisedeck was and had ever been the sum of all apostolical devotion for which our many goodly fair Churches shrines and altars were built which hang now forlorn and desolate in our hands like great dead carkasses after the soul is departed for the inshrined body of Jesus was the life and soul of our Churches which then died all of them when he departed mouldring away ever since into dust and rottennes And therefor Martin Luther with his Kate the Adam and Eve of protetestancy did not for that reason presume to pull down the altars although they would not keep them up without the mixtur of som errour of their own But we in England in our strang heat tore down all without either president of the catholick world or our own reforming forefathers We cannot but see if indeed we see any thing that every law and religion hath been still annexed with a corresponding sacrfice Yea so surely and universally that sacrifice seems both to be born with religion and with religion to be extinguished The first men who worshipped God in the world as Cain and Abel are said to have don it with a sacrifice after the flood with religion again renewed was also sacrifice renewed by Noah and when afterwards through divers persecutions religion was brought into hazzard nothing did the prophets so much lament as the ceasing of their sacrifice as may be be seen in the book of Kings and Daniel And not without reason for all other kinds of good things offered or don to God are common also unto creatures only sacrifice is a worship so due to the Almighty as none either in heaven or earth may partake with him in it an other sacrifice properly socalled besides this according to the order of Melchisedeck there never was any amongst Christians For although faith hope and prais be by way of analogy called a sacrifice in an improper and translated locution to set forth the worth and acceptablenes of them yet this is so far from derogating to the great and solemn sacrifice properly so called that it presupposes and establishes it for the other could not have that analogical name except that thing were unto which they may bear analogy prais could not be commanded as sacrifice if there were no such thing as sacrifice thence the commendation should be drawn and to whose worth it should allude as it were impertinent and foolish to express the sweetnes of any oratory by the name of honey and sugred rhetorick if we did beleev there were no such
in old times and so it doth still And I hope none of us hereafter will have the heart to hate and persecute that religion whose charity and goodnes is so great that it extends beyond the very horison and utmost limits of this world §. 29. Pope THe catholicks as I perceived by their books and practises do all the world over pray for their Pape and pastour with a most tender affection which I esteemed a piece of most civil piety practised in all ages for the comfort and good of him they look upon as supreme head and governour of their religion under God upon earth We may perceiv in the epistles of good St. Paul that to pray for one another was a thing very familiar to the primitive Christians but when S. Peter their prince and head fell into danger the whole Church then united their supplications in his behalf as one in whose welfar they were universally and in a more peculiar manner all of them concerned Peter was kept in prison saith the sacred text in the Acts and prayer was made without intermission by the Church unto God for him I doubt not but that they praied likewise for other apostles too that God would keep and bring them out of danger but the writer of that Story gives us no notice of any universal praier made for any one but only Him the head and prince of all the whole congregation therby to intimate the singular respect and love they did universally bear him But we in England do not more ordinarily call a Spade a Spade than we do traduce defame execrate the Pope and proclaim him whom also we do not know leud wicked sensual proud seducer serpent Antichrist and I know not what and that not only in our ordinary society but in books and sermons not only som of us but all hate him not in England only but all protestant places not now only but in all times since Protestancy began and our very children by that time they com to be eight or nine year old are by our example and imitation inabled to say after us like parrets Pope is a rogue pope is a rogue This behaviour of ours if it be not impious yet no man I should think will after serious consideration deny it to be unmannerly And what kind of spirit must this be that delights so much in defamations and curses Surely the spirit of God is a meek civil and quiet spirit Either the Pope is good or evil if he be good why do we hate him if bad why do we not pray for him as gospel teaches us to do even for our enemies and sinners but still defame and curs him to make him wors I know much good he has don our land even so much good as the Christianity we had from him hath ever wrought amongst us but never any evil no not in the least kind Ministers above all others stand excessively ingaged to him even for the very bread they eat for the formality of their clothes and cassocks they wear for the pulpits they preach in for the parishes and tithes they liv upon for the universities they were brought up in for the degrees they have taken there and the canon of their ordination for the catholick learned books they study and the very gospel they either do or seem to preach all which were originally from the Pope And as for others of the laety if the Churches they meet in once a week and the hopes they have of a life to com if the good wholsom laws of the land if corporations or other orderly dispositions in the kingdom if the antient militia now almost abolished wherein earls and marquesses command the counties dukes over them and the King over the dukes that in a moment all the land might be up at his Majesties beck and the like militia by sea where admiral vice admiral and reere admiral were all subjected to the king besides the train bands for defence of cities so orderly and wisely instituted if kingly autority and his crownland if the orderly sittings and proceedings in Parliament if dignities and titles of honour if the decency of gowns and caps and modes and rules of government in colledges halls and Innes of law if our very fashion of preaching and administring sacraments if all these and several such like things ordered and constituted amongst us be of any worth or commendable or may deserv any thanks we must then be civil towards the Pope and his catholick beleevers who invented disposed and ordered all these things for our good And yet we are so far from thinking of any of these things which might civilise us towards him that transported we cannot our selves tell how with animosity and passion we inveigh endlesly not only against Papists but even against the Pope himself who as he never hurt us so likewise doth he even to this day wish us all both temporal and spiritual good And I should think we might hereupon take occasion to admire at the Popes great civility and temperance not again to be paralel'd in the world who though he hath seen so many hundred virulent books writ against him and heard more words yet hath he never been known to let fall the least word of passion against any nor move any engine for revenge And thus much several of our countrimen have experienced of late years in Rome where railing at the Pope even under his nose as a wicked proud Antichrist they received being called before him no other check but this My friends be peaceable while you are in my territories least the people should fall upon you and hurt you when you are out of my territories say of me what you please I have seldom known any noble person but if his honour were traduced especially if falsly undeservedly and by an inferiour person and frequently and in a high degree but he would move more or less to a just reveng of his right Only the Pape goes quietly on in his cours as the full moon in the firmament which heeds not at all the barkings of so many curres that vainly open their mouths against her But in the interim can there be any thing more unseemly than a young Minister in a pulpit here in England vapouring and talking before a congregation that come thither to hear Gods word against a gentleman a grave venerable person a byshop a Prince who also living a thousand miles off hears not a word he saies and if he did would heed it as little We read a story in the book of Kings of a company of boies that mockt at Eliseus a grave and venerable person as he was going up to Bethel crying Vp baldpate up baldpate and the very bears issuing sodainly out of the woods tore them in sunder May not we justly fear som such like event for the like if not greater crime of ours shall fall upon us who do not only call that venerable person and his priests Baldpate but
promises of future reward do voluntarily and of their own accord forsake the world and all worldly pleasures to serv God night and day in poverty humility and chastity and multitudes of others of a secular condition in several parts of the earth have rather chosen to live an afflicted life in this world contemned abused pillaged beaten put to death by their persecutours than to forsake that religion and these too as noble and wise persons many of them as any the earth hath had But if any will yet be contentious and maintain his hatred still against Popery I earnestly request he would seriously ponder these few following Queries which I borrowed of a friend It will not be deny'd but that the Church of Rome was once a most pure excellent flourishing and Mother Church for this is not only by good St. Paul amply testified in his epistle to the said Romans but acknowledged also by Whitaker in his answer to Dr. Sanders by White in his defence of his way by Fulk and Reinolds and also by K. James in his speech to the Parliament This Church could not ceas to be such but she must fall either by Apostasie Heresie or Schism I. Apostasie is not onely a renouncing of the Faith of Christ but the very name and title to Christianity No man will say that the Church of Rome had ever such a fall or fell thus II. Heresie is an adhesion to some private and singular opinion or errour in Faith contrary to the general approved Doctrin of the Church If the Church of Rome did ever adhere to any singular or new opinion disagreeable to the common recived Doctrin of the Christian world I pray satisfie me as to these particulars viz. 1. By what General Councel was she ever condemned 2. Which of the Fathers ever writ against Her Or 3. By what authority was She otherwise reproved For If seems to me to be a thing very incongruous that so great a Church should be condemned by every one that hath a minde to condemn her III. Shisme is a departure or division from the Vnity of the Church wherby the Band and communion held with som former Church is broken and dissolved If ever the Church of Rome divided her self by Schisme from any other body of faithful Christians or brake communion or went forth from the Society of any Elder Church I pray satisfie me as to these particulars 1. Whose company did She leave 2. From what body did She go forth 3. Where was the true Church which She forsook For it appears somwhat strange to me that a Church should be accounted schismatical when ther cannot be assigned any other Church different from her which from age to age since Christ his time hath continued visible from whence She departed If these Queries were well pondered or if men would once beleev as most true it is that by irrefragable principles which all must needs acknowledg who will own a Christianity in general Popery may be proved to be as good a religion as the best then Facta est Lux. But this is a little beyond my intention which aims no further than only to put our passions to a demur for which it may suffice us to think that Popery is not ill And if I should yet say more and endeavour to prove it good those that be of that Way will say I speak too little and they who be not will think I say too much I had a purpos in the three last dialogues of my Reclaimed Papist to make Popery appear not only a good religion but the best and not only the best but the only sole Christianity which Christ planted upon earth and which every right reason that admits of Christ must needs approve But I hope I was therfore discouraged and hindred in that work that it might be left for som better hand and I should my self very much rejoyce to see it don It is now besides my purpos my paper also is already too much swelled my mind calls for freedom and my pen is dulled Acta est pars acroamatica sequitur moralis Fifth Chapter Moral topicks for charity and peace §. 31. Conclusion AS without the indifferency and moderation I have hitherto laboured to implant ther cannot be in us any capacity of a right understanding so ther be yet som moral topicks remaining which are apt to implant this moderation and indifferency as to consider first the sad precipices men have run themselves and others by their headiness and temerarious obstinacy in their opinions and conceits about religion secondly that the connatural excellency of a good Christian consists not in finding new waies to the reformation of other mens thoughts but putting in practis the old received well known dictates of sobriety justice and piety in our selves thirdly that charity which the apostle makes to be the end and highest perfection of religion and indeed all vertue suggests good and moderate thoughts of our neighbour c. But these and such like topicks be a subject fitter for a pious preacher than a civil logician and so leav them What I should speak at this time unto any such purpos take it in the golden words and phrase of the honourable Lord Chancellour the Oratour of the Land Gentlemen the distempers of religion which have too too much disturbed the peace of this Kingdom is a sad argument indeed It is a consideration that must make every religious heart to bleed to see religion which should be the strongest obligation and cement of affection and brotherly kindness and compassion made now by the pervers wranglings of passionate and froward men the ground of all animosity hatred malice and reveng And this unruly and unmanly passion which no question the divine nature exceedingly abhors somtimes and I fear too frequently transports those who are in the right as well as those who are in the wrong and leaves the latter more excusable than the former when men who find their manners and dispositions very conformable in all the necessary obligations of humane nature avoid one anothers conversation and grow first unsociable and then uncharitable to each other becaus one cannot think as the other doth And from this separation we intitle God to the patronage of and concernment in our fancies and distinction and purely for his sake hate one another heartily It was not so of old when one of the most antient Fathers of the Church tells us that love and charity was so signal and eminent in the primitive Christians that it even drew admiration and envy from their greatest adversaries Vide inquiunt ut invicem se diligunt Their adversaries in that in which they most agreed in their very prosecution of them had their passions and animosities among themselvs they were only Christians that loved and cherished and comforted and were ready to dye for one another Quid nunc dicerent illi Christiani si nostra viderent tempora sayes the incomparable Grotius How would they look upon our sharp and virulent contentions in the debates of Christian religion and the bloody wars that have proceeded from those contentions whilst every one pretended to all the marks which are to attend upon the true Church except only that which is inseparable from it Charity to one another My Lords and Gentlemen This disquisition hath cost the King many a sigh many a sad howr when he hath considered the almost irreparable reproach the Protestant religion hath undergone from the divisions and distractions which have been so notorious within this Kingdom What pains he hath taken to compose them after several discourses with learned and pious men of different perswasions you may see by a declaration he hath published upon that occasion by which you see his great indulgence to those who can have any protection from conscience to differ with their brethren And I hope God will so bless the candour of his Majesty in the condescentions he makes that the Church as well as the State will return to that unity and unanimity which will make both king and people as happy as they can hope to be in this world If aught yet remain to be said in the heavenly words of blessed S. Paul I shall conclude it all Quosdam quidam posuit deus c. Some hath God set over us in his Church first apostles secondly prophets thirdly doctours then virtues then graces of healing opitulations gubernations sorts of tongues Are all apostles are all prophets are all doctours are all vertues have all men the grace of healings do all speak with tongues do all interpret But do you emulate the better graces And I do yet show unto you a more excelling way If I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not charity I am but as sounding brass and tingling cimbal And if I shall have prophesy and know all mysteries and all sciences and if I shall have all faith so that I can translate mountains and have not charity I am nothing c. This is the great rule of our happines and square of all perfection Et quicunque hanc regulam secuti fuerint pax super illos super Israel Dei FINIS