people run away from the Church of ROME as much as any thing indeed to consider the general termes GOD uses there Thou shalt not make to thy self any graven Image c. Thou shalt not only not Worship them but not so much as fall down before them would make a person that is not taken more with the Golden Legends than with Scripture afraid of prostrations before Images upon the account of devotion it is not all your plea that you do not terminate your worship on the Image but on the person represented by the Image that will excuse you at the great tribunal for not to mention that in the same manner the Heathen used to defend their grossest Idolatry and that you are forced to borrow their very Arguments your own Authors do confesse that the common people are apt to pay adoration and do pay adoration to the Images themselves and why will you lay such a Stumbling block before the people Much might be said of the adoration you pay to the consecrated Hoste you confess that the worship you give to it is the same worship you give to God What if that Wafer should not be turned into the Body and Blood of Christ what if it should remain as very a Wafer as it was before consecration what if it should not be God as you have all the demonstration that sense or reason can give you that it is not changed into another substance what monstrous Idolatry would this be Ay but we believe it to be GOD why Madam doth your belief that such a thing is God or Christ excuse you from Idolatry should you believe a Stone to be GOD and adore it might not you justly be charged with Idolatry you look upon the Heathens as Idolaters because they adore the Sun Ay but they believe that Sun to be God and how then according to your plea can they be Idolaters If there be such a Transubstantiation in the Sacrament as you fancy and an Adoration of the Hoste so very necessary what 's the reason the Apostles of our Lord that saw Christ before their eyes only could not believe that there were two Christs one sitting at the table the other reached out to them What 's the reason I say that they sate still and paid no Adoration to the Bread which according to you was Transubstantiated into Christ If they did not adore it what a presumption is it in you to give the highest Worship to the consecrated bread upon a pretence that that bread is God under the accidents of Bread But of this I have said enough before and could you but find time to read what our Authors have written upon this subject it could be nothing but hardness of heart and resolution to be blind could keep you in a Church that fills your head with Doctrines contrary to the nature of a Sacrament contrary to all that Moses and the Prophets nay and all sound Philosophers have said I will not say any thing here of your strange unbloody Sacrifice of the Mass a thing unheard of in the purer Ages of Christianity and which the Scripture is so great a stranger to that one would wonder how Mankind came to light upon the notion Nor of your Doctrine of Merits because I find your Priests have two strings to their Bow and tell the people one thing and their adversaries when they dispute with them another affirme and deny it as they see occasion and necessity requires Onlyone thing I must needs take notice of before I take my leave and that is the Gigantick Argument that some of your Gentlemen boast of and which strikes all Protestants dead at the first hearing of it If there be any thing true this must be true that there is a GOD if there be a GOD there must be a true Religion if there be a true Religion there must be a true revealed Religion if there be a true revealed Religon the Christian Religion must be that true revealed Religion and if the Christian Religion be true then the Religion of the Church of ROME must be true for the Argument that proves the Christian Religion to be true proves the Religion of the Church of ROME to be true which is this Either the Christian Religion was propagated without miracles or by miracles if by miracles then it must be divine if without miracles then it is the greatest miracle that a Religion so contrary to flesh and blood should prevail with sensual men The same say they is true of the Religion of the Church of ROME For if it be propagated by Miracles it must be divine if without Miracles it must be so much more because it prescribes things contrary to Flesh and blood as Penances Austerities c. And thousands of People do embrace it I will not make my self merry here in a thing so serious else I could have told you that I have hard of an Argument when I was at School somewhat like this He that drinks well sleeps well he that sleeps well commits no Sin He that commits no Sin will be saved therefore he that drinks well will be saved But I forbear And as to the aforesaid Argument whereby one of your Priests that hath printed it thinks to end all Controversies I will say no more but this First that as there is no Christian but must readily confess that the Miracles Christ and his Apostles wrought were a Confirmation of the Divinity of their Doctrine so there is no man of any brains can admit of the other part of the dilemma as Universally true that a Religion that goes against Flesh and blood if propagated without Miracles must therefore be necessarily Divine Secondly that so far as the Religion of the Church of ROME agrees with the truly Christian Religion so far it is undoubtedly true and it will naturally follow that if the Christian Religion be true the Religion of the Church of ROME so far as it agrees with the Christian Religion must needs be true And the same may be said of the Protestant Religion but that the Roman Religion must therefore be true where it goes away and differs from the truly Christian Religion revealed to us in the Gospel is a consequence which none but Children can approve of Thirdly with this Argument a man might prove the Divinity of almost any Religion in the World He that is no stranger to History must needs know what severities what austerities of life the Brachmans or the Heathen Friers in the Indies do both prescribe and practise and what Proselites they make and how full the Kingdom of the great Mogol is of them how some Wallow in ashes day and night how others go charged with heavy Iron Chaines all their dayes how others stand upright upon their Leggs for whole weekes together c. How in Japan and other places of the Indies the Priests perswade the people to fast themselves to death to go long Pilgrimages to give all they have to
the Priests to throw themselves down from steep rocks and break their necks and all to arrive the sooner to the happiness of another World c. I think there cannot be thingsmore contrary to flesh and blood than these and yet we see these Doctrines are propogated daily without any force of Armes only by Example and perswasion to be sure without any Miracle but I hope that doth not prove their Religion to be divine It 's a Dictate of the light of Nature that the way to Heaven is strait and therefore people that are religiously inclined are easily won over to those men whom they see exercise such severities upon themselves To Conclude Madam when all is done what the true Church is must be tryed by the Writings of the Evangelists and Apostles We see that even in the Apostles dayes corruptions crept into the Church Witness the Churches of Corinth Galatia and Colosse c. and the simplicity of the Gospel began even then to be perverted and mingled with idle and foolish opinions and practises and therefore we must needs think that after the Apostles decease the Church of Christ was subject to the same fate so that if there be any standard or touch stone left whereby the truth and sincerity of a Church can be tried and we must needs think so well of GODS providence that he would not leave his Church without some rule to rectifie their Errors by in case she should be infected with any it must be the Primitive institution of the Christian Religion and that Church as I said before which teaches things that approach nearest to that primitive institution must be the true Church And Madam do but once more for your Souls sake and for your Salvations sake compare the Doctrines and practises of the Church of ROME with the Doctrines and practises of the Gospel the Fountain of Christianity and try whether you can find there the Doctrines of Communion under one kind of publick prayers in a tongue unknown to the people of Purgatory of the Mass of Transubstantation of the Church of Rome's supremacy and infallibility of Worshipping and adoring the Virgin Mary and praying to Saints of Veneration of Relicks and Images of adoration of the Hoste c. Do not force any places of Scripture and try whether you can make sense of any of these Doctrines by Scripture View the Stream of the Gospel and search whether there be any thing like these Doctrines in it why will you make your reason a Slave to your Priests magisterial Sentences How can you answer it to GOD that you did not improve your reason more What have you your reason for but to judge what is agreeable to the Word of GOD and what is not Is not this acting like a Creature void of reason to be guided altogether by what a few blind guides say to you without enquiring at the Law and Testimony whether things are so as they say or no Wonderful stnpidity I stand amazed at it It is not all the seeming Holiness of those Priests you converse withal that make the Church you are in a true Church There is no Sect in the World but when they are under a Cloud necessity and the discouragment they are under and their desire to make Proselytes makes them outwardly Religious There may be and no doubt are Zealous and outwardly pious men in all Religions in the World but that doth not make every Religion true and divine An outward shew of Piety is the only way of propagating any Religion The Devil himself could not propagate Heathenisme and Idolatry but by the pretened Zeal and Piety and Abstinence and Mortification of Apollonius Tyaneus who yet by the confession of the whole Christian world was no better then a Wizard and Conjurer I make no application to any particular Priest in the Church of ROME I do not deny but men may be in great Errors and be very Zealous for their errours and seemingly very pious in their Zeal and when their Errors are not very wilful and destroy not the true Worship of GOD for ought I know they may find mercy in the day of our Lord. I grant there is a great shew of outward Piety in the Church of ROME very dazeling and very moving but the great danger lyes here that the Worship they give to GOD with one hand they strike and pull down with the other I know too well the practise of their Churches and a Heathen that should come into their Temples beyond Sea would verily believe that they Worship a Multiplicity of Gods as well as he whatever their pretentions may be to the contrary It is not what people say so much as what they do that GOD takes notice of and though you should Ten Thousand times protest that you Worship and adore GOD alone yet while GOD sees you adore the Virgin Mary with as great Zeal and reverence as you do him pray to her oftener then you do to him make as many bowes to her and other Saints as you do to him and other things of that nature how can he believe you Religion is a thing that will not bear jests and Hypocrisy GOD will not be put off with contradictions between speeches and Practises Madam I do from my heart Pitty you and as it might be the weakness of your Judgment that might lead you into this Erroneous Church so I beseech you for Christs sake to return to the Church you have rashly left where you cannot run a hazard if you will but follow the plain Doctrines of the Gospel besides which we preach nothing and enjoyn nothing as necessary to Salvation Should these entreaties and beseechings be alledged against you in the last day as things which you have contrary to reason refused and slighted how dreadful would your condition be I have discharged my Duty and given you warning I would not have your Guilt lye at my Door and therefore have let you know my real thoughts and Sentiments concerning your condition and the Church you are in The Great GOD of Heaven open your eyes that you may see and fear Time was when you would have believed us as much as you do now the Priests of the Church of ROME It 's strange that now they should speak nothing but truths and we nothing but falshood Do you think we do not understand the Scriptures and Fathers and Antiquity as well as they And can we all be so besotted with interest and passion that none of us should yied to the dictates of their Church if we could prevail with our sense and reason to believe that the things wherein they differ from us were agreeable to the Gospel sure we have a great many men among us that are great Lovers of Peace and would be glad that the whole Christian world were agreed and would these men stand out against that union if it could be done with a safe Conscience Certainly we have men as learned among us as ever
Arch-Bishops of Canterbury where fear of being counted Knaves and Fools for putting in things contrary to what was publickly known may justly be supposed to have kept the publick Notaries from asserting things notoriously false In these Registers I say it will be found what succession our first Protestant Bishops had how Arch-Bishop Parker the first Arch-Bishop of Canterbury under Queen Elizbeth to go no higher was consecrated December 17. 1559 by four persons then actually Bishops and who had formerly been Ordained by Bishops of the Church of ROME Viz. William Barlow in Henry the 8th dayes Bishop of St. Davids under Edward the 6th Bishop of Bath and Wells under Queen Mary driven into Exile and returned under Queen Elizabeth John Scory formerly Bishop of Chichester Miles Coverdale formerly Bishop of Exeter and John Hodgkins Bishop Suffragan of Bedford not to mention that the Queens Letters Patents in case any of the other should be sick or forced to be absent were directed to three Bishops more that had formerly been Popish Bishops and were turned Protestants Viz. Anthony Bishop of Landaff John Bishop Suffragan of Thedford and John Bale Bishop of Ossery But all this hath been so clearly demonstrated out of the Publick Records first by Mr. Mason and since by Arch-Bishop Bramhal that he that writes of it can onely transcribe out of them and those that deny these Records must be men of strange Foreheads and of thegreatest disingenuity From these men that had their Priesthood from the Church of Rome our Priesthood is lineally derived so that if our Priesthood be not valid theirs cannot be and if Heresie doth not make the Episcopal office void nor disable a man from conferring Episcopal order on other men as is evident from the second Councel of Nice with your Church an Oecumenical Counsel which received Bishop Anatolius tho consecrated by Dioscorus a Heretical Bishop if I say Heresie doth not make the Episcopal order void then suppose We were Hereticks our Priesthood which is derived from Popish Bishop that turned Protestants must be a true Priesthood still and to this purpose I remember one of your Church said lately once a Priest for ever a Priest Madam if your desire to know the truth be honest and sincere you should Act like a person that hath a mind to be satisfied and search the Publick Records and till then believe not every Tale that 's told you the Common Plea of your Priests that our Records are sophisticated and that we have put in what we please argues only boldness and ignorance when they can shew neither where nor when nor by whom they they were corrupted Those that talk so seem neither to understand what a publick solemne thing the Consecration of a Bishop is in England nor to reflect how difficult it is to fill a publick Register with falsities as to matters of fact when there are so many hundered men that know what is done at such a time and View the Records and would most certainly speak of it if they found a flaw in the Relation But if we should deal thus with the Church of ROME question all their Registers in the Vatican and say which we might do with far greater reason that they are things packed and invented by men that have a mind to keep up a faction I know what Language we should meet withal But will you boast say you of having derived your orders from the Church of ROME when you believe the Church of ROME to be an Idolatrous Church Madam It is not the Office of a Bishop in your Church we find fault withal but the abuses of it A Church that 's guilty of very great corruption both in Doctrine and manners may have something that 's good and allowable and he that retains that is not therefore guilty of her corruption nor espouses her Errours Your Idolatry is one thing and your Orders are another The Jews did take many good things from the Heathens and the Christians many commendable things from the Jewes but that neither made the Jewes approve of the Heathenish Worship nor the Christians allow of the Jewish Errours We are not so disingenious as to make the breach between you and Us wider then needs So far as you go with Scripture and true Antiquity we hold with you where you contradict both We cannot with a safe Conscience bear you Company He that sees a Pearl lye among a great deal of Trash if he take the Pearl is not therefore obliged to take the Rubbish too and if we have derived our Orders from you that inferrs no necessity that we must therefore consent to your Notorious depravations of the ancient simplicity of the Gospel The Christians heretofore that approved of the Baptism of the Donatists did not therefore presently acknowledge the truth of their opinions and he that should take a good custome from the Turks cannot be therefore said to approve of all things that are in the Alcoran Madam there is nothing more easie than to cavil at the most prudent Action in the World especially where People take a slight survey of things and do not with seriousness and deliberation weigh the circumstances of the fact and do not examine the inside as well as the outside and I must confess upon the best examination of your actions and proceedings in this Revolt to the Church of ROME you never took the Right way to be satisfied for instead of pondering the Arguments and Motives of Our departure from the Church of ROME and of the reasons we alledge for our Church and Doctrine you made it your chief imployment to read their Books and believed what they said to be Oracles for no other reason but because they talked with greater arrogance and confidence If you say that you could not judge of Arguments having never been bred a Schollar I would but ask you how you durst change your Religion then Did you change it without reason and without ground and if you are not able to Weigh the strength of Arguments how can you be sure that you are in the true Church at this time It is not talk but Arguments that must demonstrate the truth of a Religion and if you have not sufficiently weighed the Arguments of both sides It is a thousand to one you may still be in the wrong way and you know not but you may be as much out now as you were formerly Madam so great a thing as the change of your Religion upon which no less then Eternity depends might justly have challenged some years study before you had resolved upon it To do a thing of this nature upon so slight a Survey Consider whether it doth not argue rashness and weakness rather than Piety and Devotion To leave a Religion you have been bred and born in a Religion founded upon the Word of GOD and which you had Liberty to Examine by the Scripture upon reading a Popish Book or two without diving to the Bottom of the
several controversies without reflecting on the importance of the points in question without studying a considerable time which Religion comes nearest to Scripture and which goes far thest off is such an Argument of impatience that you only seem to have yeilded to a dangerous temptation of the Devil If the Controversies between the Church of ROME and us are so intricate as you say and above your capacity to dive into them you have then run over to that Church in the dark and have as little reason to be satisfied with your proceedings as you believe you have with our way of Worship You plead that you have been sitting up whole nights and weeping and praying that God would discover to you which is the true way to Salvation and from that time forward you found inclinations to go over to that Church and is this a sufficient argument to justifie your forwardness when you had already begun to doubt whither our Church were a true Church or no because you found not that satisfaction in it your sickly desires wanted it was then an easie matter to give ear to confident People that magisterially and peremptorily assured you that you would find satisfaction in their Church and being fed with this hope your inclinations to that Church grew stronger every day as Our Mother Eve the hopes of being like GOD suggested to her by the Serpent did egg and spur her on to eat of the fatal Tree We do not forbid people to pray to GOD to lead or direct them into the right way though sometimes it may be a perfect tempting of GOD when People are in the right way to desire GOD to discover to to them by a Sign of their own choice whether they are in it or no. But then if we pray to GOD to direct us we must not neglect the means GOD hath appointed in order to our satisfaction but must compare Scripture with Scripture and Books with Books and Arguments with Arguments and search which Religion agrees most with the Doctrines and Practices of Christ and his Apostles and as the noble Berrheans did examine all the Doctrines obtruded to our belief by the Scripture and doing thus and continuing this search and these prayers together no doubt but GOD in his own good time will answer us and Direct us But to pray to GOD to direct Us and not to use the means in the use of which he hath promised to direct Us We do in a manner mock him or desire him to work a Miracle for Us or to vouchsafe Us some extroardinary Revelation when we have Moses and the Prophets and may hear them And I am confident had you joyned this way with your Prayer examined the Doctrines of the Church of ROME and compared them with the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ seen whether there be any thing like it in the Bible and searched whether Christ and his Apostles ever taught such Doctrines and done all this not slightly but seriously and solidly It s impossible you could ever have turned Papist for if our Gospel be true that Religion can never be true for there is nothing in the World can run more counter to the Gospel than the Doctrines of that Church wherein we differ from them and they had need put the Bible among prohibited Books for should the people have Liberty freely to peruse it the Church of ROME would grow very thin and despicable I am sensible your Priests find fault with our Translation of the Bible and Cry out that there are great defects in it but when they talk so they had need talk to Women not to men of Learning and that understand Greek and Hebrew the Languages in which the Word was Originally written The Honesty of our Translators appears sufficiently from hence because if any sentence in the Bible be capable of a double sense they express the one in the Text and the other in the Margin and where they do but in the least vary from the Original they either discover it by the Italick Character or give you notice of it in the Margin then which there can be nothing more honest And let any Papist of you all shew Us wherein any thing in our Bibles is ill Translated out of malice or design or expressed in words which the Original will not bear If We examine Translations by the Original then sure I am there is few translations go further from it than the Vulgar Latine or the Rhemist Testament as were an easie matter to prove if I intended more than a Letter You are much taken with their Mortifications and Pennances which you say we have not in our Church But it 's a signe Madam you did not rightly understand our Religion We are so far from condemning Mortification and severity of life that we do commend it provided it be in order to subdue the body of Sin and to raise our selves to a greater pitch of Vertue Provided these severities be separated from all opinion of merit and from an opinion of their being satisfactory and expiatory and used only as helps to work in us a perfect detestation of Sin And I will assure you there are more in the Church of England that use severities in this humble holy way than you are aware of We indeed do not ordinarily inflict them on all persons because we know not their constitution nor what their nature will bear nor have we any command for it in the word of GOD but these things we leave to every mans discretion Urging that where Sins require stronger remedies there men ought to make use of them and if their corruptions will not be gone by reasonings and Arguments that there they must inflict mulcts and penalties on themselves to drive the Unclean Spirit out Though I must say still that Religious severities and austerities are not certain signs of a true Religion for Heathens do use them as much as Christians nay more than Christians Witness the Brahmanes in the Indies and the religious Pagans dispersed through all the Eastern parts and if you conclude that therefore the Church of ROME must be in the right because they inflict great pennances and severities and make daily use of them I am afraid you only forbear turning Turk or Heathen because you never saw their far greater severities in Religion than the Church of ROME can boast of But still the Protestant Church hath not the real Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Sacrament which the Church of ROME hath And are you sure the Church of ROME hath it I am perswaded you did never tast it nor see it nor feel it nor Smell it and how do you know it what because the Priests of that Church do tell you so No say you It is because Christ saith in express termes this is my Body And here I confess I stand amazed that men with learning and reason about them can sink into an opinion so contradictory that if all the consequences
the Sun did shine upon nay the Church of ROME hath at this day few men to equal ours for Learning and knowledge And would all our Learned men be so stubborne and obstinate as not to agree with the Church of ROME if they did not see plainly that there is Death in that Pot and that the Errours in that Church cannot be subscribed to without hazarding the welfare of their Souls I will but use your own Argument when you went over to the Church of ROME and were perswaded by the earnestness of her Priests to yeild to their reasonings what pleasure can we take in promoting your Damnation What can be our interest in deceiving you You used that Argument on their side why will you not use it on our side Judge you whither we that have the Gospel on our side for what we teach are not in a safer way than that Church which for all the new Doctrines they have added to the Old Creedes are forced to run to the broken Cisterns of Tradition and I know not what Fathers whose writings they know not whether they be genuine or no As you are now you live in willful opposition to the Doctrine and Precepts of the Gospel And O Remember what St. Paul doth say 2 Thes. 1. 7 8. That the Lord Jesus will ere long come down from Heaven with all his Holy Angels to take Vengeance on those who have disobeyed the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Once more therefore I charge you before Almighty GOD and our Lord Jesus Christ to repent of your Errours and to return to the bosome of that Church in which you received your life and being and the Principles of Religion and Christianity But if all this seem to you no more but Bugbears I have delivered my own Soul and should be sorry that this discourse should stand as a Witness against you in the Last day which GOD knows was only intended as a motive to draw you back to that Fold from which you have Wandered and gone astray Feb. 20. 1677. I am Madam Your Faithfull Friend to serve You. N. N. FINIS Postscript Madam AS in the publishing of this Letter I had no other design but to prevent the fall of others into the like dangers so I have particularly insisted on those motives which have of late tempted some persons to go over to the Roman Church and though I have represented these motives as yours yet in this I have been so far from doing any thing against the laws of private discourse or friendship or acquaintance that I have only touch'd upon the common stumbling-blocks which make unwary people joyne themselves to that Church blocks which might easily be removed if men or Women would but give themselves leave to think and would prefer the solid dictates of their reason before the suggestions of their soft and sickly passions One thing I had almost forgot and which indeed is the great bug-bear whereby your Church-men fright their people from running over to us and that is that our Church began but about an hundred and fifty years ago that Luther and Zwinglius were the Authors of it and that we had no Church before pittiful shifts indeed to keep people from seeing the Sun at noon suppose our Religion did but begin then why must people be alwayes in an Errour must they never reform when they have done amiss if there were Monstrous Errors in the Church of ROME which the aforesaid persons saw would be the death of Christianity and which they could not subscribe to without debauching their reason or wronging both their own and other mens Consciences was it not rational they should protest against such things to give their fellow Christians warning when the House is on fire would you have no body awake to alarm the Neighbours to look to themselves Did they see so many thousand men ready to be drown'd and would you have had them hold their tongues and barbarously suffered them all to be drown'd Did they see the Christian Religion like to be swallowed up by darkness and Ignorance and was it not time to rouze the slumbering world But however that these men were the first broachers of our Religion is Notoriously false First because long before them there were men that lived in the External communion of the Church of ROME but dislik'd the Errours as they crept in and grew dangerous and though they were overaw'd and silenc'd many times by the higher powers of the Roman Court yet they both detested those corruptions and as they had opportunity protested against them as were an easy matter to prove from age to age if it had not been done already over and over by Divines of our Church so that though these men that lived long before Luther and whom GOD still rais'd to vindicate his truth as it grew more and more polluted were not call'd Protestants by the People yet in effect they were so and consequently there were Protestants many years before Luther and Zwinglius And though they were not suffered by the Ignorant and imperious Ecclestiastical powers to meet and assemble themselves in publick yet they made a Church as much as the followers of Holy Athanasius did when the whole world was turned Arrian as much as Elijah and those seven thousand the Oracle mentions made a Church when the Whole Country was over run with Idolaters These seven thousand we read lay hid and durst not appear in publick being oppress'd by the Idolatrous powers that sat at the stern and thought there was no good fishing but in troubled waters And indeed in this manner our Church was dispers'd long before Luther among the greater multitude of the followers of the corrupted Roman Church as a hand-ful of wheat lies scatterd in a bushel of Chaff and though it did not appear in Pomp and grandeur yet that external splendour is not essential to the truth of a Church your own men may be convinced by the aforementioned examples Secondly if your Champions speak strictly of the Religion which we profess in the Church of England they are under a mistake when they make Luther or Zwinglius the Authors of it for our Reformation began some time after and was both begun and carried on with great deliberation and consideration under Edward the 6. by publick authority whose proper province it is to take notice of what is amiss in a Kingdom or Common wealth whether it be in Church or State and to reform and mend it It 's no great matter when a Reformation begins so the Reformation be but just and if such a Reformation had begun but yesterday that would not have made it unlawful and that our Reformation was just and necessary hath been prov'd by our Divines beyond all reasonable contradiction and how could it but be just when the decrees of the Church of ROME control'd the Word of the Living GOD and vyed with the Oracles of the Gospel How and when the several Errours