Indulgence to obtain which they visit such and such places and Churches so many times and in this expedition people of both sexes the lame and the blind tire themselves when whoever can read Latin finds that if he complies with the Precepts and Injunctions which are the conditions of every Indulgence of hearty repentance of all their sins and a sincere amendment of life and the like he shall be sure to enjoy all the benefits and more than are promised by that Indulgence though he should lie in his bed whilst others make those perambulations and yet this kind of fatuity is the ground of all those Indulgences and of the Pilgrimages which are undertaken except for Penance whereas if the conditions be performed they have no need of the Indulgence and if they be not they have no benefit by it though it costs even the poorest people some money which they cannot well spare in most places Mr. Cressy is not so sturdy a maintainer of all the points in difference with the Roman Church but he would willingly part with the Prayers in an unknown tongue though he says there is scarce a rustick so ignorant but well understands what the Priest does through the whole course of the Mass but I must confess my self so much more ignorant than his Rustick that though I have seen many Masses I never heard any nor saw any Congregation so intent as if they did desire to hear any thing that is said but whisper and talk and laugh except only at the Elevation and if the Congregation be great especially at a high Mass it is hardly possible that any considerable number of them can understand one word that is spoken nor is it held necessary for as the Priest takes more than ordinary care by an affected and industrious pronunciation not to have what he says understood so the people generally think themselves only concerned in being present and that it is not necessary for them to hear or understand what is spoken because all that relates to them is done and completely performed by the Priest He confesses that it was far from being the Churches primary intention that the publick office should be in a tongue not understood by the people for it was at first composed he says in the language generally spoken and understood through Europe by which I suppose he means the Latin tongue in which he is much mistaken both that Latin was generally spoken and understood through Europe I am not sure that it was the language of all Italy it self or that in the first composing of Liturgies they were all one and the same or in one Language In the East and throughout the Greek Church we are sure they had and still have different Liturgies and we have no reason to believe that in the Latin Church the Liturgies were the same throughout the West but were such as the Bishops allowed or made for their own Dioceses We know that the British Church retained its Liturgie for many years and that it was near if not above one thousand years for it was not till the time of Gregory the Seventh before Spain parted with the Gothish Liturgie and accepted that from Rome and how many alterations have been since made in it is known to all who will inform themselves and after all I think S. Ambrose's Missal is still retained in Milan notwithstanding the Bull of Clement the Eighth and of the succeeding Popes and therefore I cannot doubt but that and very many particulars in common practioe are parts of that Religion of State which may without breach of charity or unity be altered and reformed by the Soveraign in such order as such mutations are made for the advancement of Gods service in such a Kingdom or Province for which it is made But Mr. Cressy would find himself as much deceived even in the making up that breach if the Popes consent be necessary to it as he was formerly in his draught of a protestation or subscription for the fidelity of the English Catholicks yet we know that Pope Pius in the beginning of Elizabeth's Reign was very willing to have dispensed with the usage of the English Liturgie the Communion in both kinds and whatever else was practised in that Church upon condition that the Popes authority and supremacy might have been resetled in that Kingdom which he knew would be a good bargain and enable him to undo all the rest when he should think it necessary but Mr. Cressy would have proceeded more warily if he had before he left the Church in which he was first ordained a Priest procured a Reformation in those two particulars for which he is now so willing to compound Indulgences and the praying in an unknown tongue which are greater blemishes in the Church he hath betaken himself into than all he hath left in that which he is departed from We are come at last to the Doctors exception against the Church of Romes denying the reading of the Bible indifferently and with this exception Mr. Cressy makes himself very merry as if the principles of the Religion of the Church of England must fall to the ground or as he says utterly go to wrack if that liberty were denied for how then should every sober enquirer into Scripture frame a Religion to himself And so pleases himself with endeavouring to perswade others contrary to his own conscience that every one of the Church of England hath liberty to frame a Religion to himself whereas he well knows that every member of the Church of Rome hath as much liberty to frame a Religion to himself as any one of the Church of England hath who is as much obliged to conform himself to the doctrine of that Church as the other is to that of Rome And for the opinion it hath of the Scripture it answers for it self in these words Article Sixth Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary for salvation so that whatsoever is not read therein nor may be proved thereby is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an Article of the Faith or be thought requisite or necessary to Salvation How will this serve his turn to frame a Religion to himself But then he recreates himself with a Dialogue which he makes between the Doctor and one of his Parishioners which if he pleases is his own case whilst he triumphs in his conquests of those poor people which he perverts what do those simple creatures know of the authority of the whole Church when he amuzes them with points of Controversie of good works and of Christs very flesh and blood in the Sacrament contrary to the very evidence of all his senses to which all miracles have been subjected have those people any other knowledge or information of the sense of the Catholick Church than from him and would it not better become them to answer him that in those points they would chuse rather to believe their own Minister to whom
his Second Iourney afterwards to Ierusalem in which he takes care that they might not think that he had any Superiour there To whom we gave place by subjection no not for an hour He proceeds then in the same jealousie to make a comparison with St. Peter He that wrought effectually in Peter to the Apostleship of the Circumcision the same was mighty in me towards the Gentiles effectually in Peter mighty in Paul a word of an equal energy and lest all this might be looked upon as speaking behind his back after he had mentioned the respect he had received from the other Apostles from Iames and Cephas and Iohn he tells them that when Peter came to him he withstood him to the face because he was to be blamed and the manner of his expostulation with him seems very rough as with a man that stood upon the same level with him not as with the sole Vicar of Christ If thou being a Iew livest after the manner of the Gentiles and not as do the Iews why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Iews Whosoever seriously reflects upon the tampering that had been with the Galathians to lessen their confidence in Paul and the gradations by which he endeavoured to reconfirm them in the same faith he had formerly taught them cannot but believe that the Apostle had therein a purpose to root out any such Opinion of priority out of their hearts especially when in no other place after this there appears the least mention of or appeal to St. Peter in the many errours and mis-interpretations of the words and actions of our Saviour and of them in the Life of the Apostles from whence many troubles and great disorders sprung and grew up amongst Christians of that Age. He shall do well to consider whether it be probable that St. Peter himself or any of his Successors did pretend a Precedency or Superiority over Saint Iohn the Evangelist who lived Twenty Years after Saint Peter and to let us know when the first Pope discovered his Supremacy over other Bishops and then we know well enough how it was introduced in Temporalities If Mr. Cressy and the rest of the enemies of the Church of England who will not allow any members of the same to have any hope without deserting their Mother of a place in Heaven and hardly admit them to be in their wits upon Earth would enter upon the disquisition of these particulars which are warily declined in all their Writings or very perfunctorily handled the foundation doctrine and discipline of that Church would be in a short time utterly overthrown and demolished or worthily vindicated and supported in the judgment of most learned and discerning men and there can be but two reasons why they should decline this method which they should the rather imbrace because all other have proved ineffectual and in near two hundred years the appeal to Fathers and Councils or Scripture it self hath not reconciled many persons in any one controverted particular but those two reasons so unwarrantable that they will never be owned will never suffer them to admit the method and pursue it closely The first is that if they should proceed in this ingenuous and substantial way they would be cut off from those common places in which they are only versed and by which they are supplied to urge all things which have been thought heretofore material to that matter and to reply to what is said of course but especially they will find themselves restrained from that multitude of ill words in which they so much delight of calling those they do not love and whose arguments they cannot answer Hereticks who are condemned already to Hell-fire and from asking the old stale question that hath been as often answered as asked Where was your Church before Luther and from their so often vain excursions upon the voluptuousness of Henry the Eighth whom they would fain perswade the world to be the Founder of the Church of England and all the reformation to have been devised by him Whereas if they would seriously study these material points the first whereof would go very far towards the facilitating the resolution upon the rest they might easily discern that no member of the Church of England by their own rules can be comprehended within any of their decrees for an Heretick which serves their turn only as an angry word to throw at any mans head whom they desire to make odious to all Roman Catholicks and they would be as easily convinced that we never had any thing to do with Luther that in all those quarrels and wars which were either occasioned by him or accompanied his doctrine there was not a man of the English Nation that was ever engaged and that it was long after his time not at all by his model that the Church of England without one sword drawn and in as peaceable and grave a manner as ever that Nation hath concurred in the making of any of those excellent Laws which distinguishes them from all the subjects of the world in the happiness they enjoy did reject those superstitions and inconveniences which they could not sooner free themselves from with those circumstances of justice and peace and the retaining whereof would have been more for the benefit and advantage of the Court of Rome than for the Church of England or the good of that Kingdom and as such alterations cannot be supposed to be made with so universal a consent but that many of all conditions adhered still to the exercise of their Religion with all the circumstances which they had been before accustomed unto and for which no body suffered in many years nor till by their treasonable acts and conspiracies they appeared dangerous to the State For King Henry the Eighth he had some personal contests with Clement the Seventh who was then Pope from whom he received such personal indignities as in the opinion of most of the Princes of that Age who had all out-grown the wardship of the Pope he could not but resent and vindicate himself from nor did he do it any other way than his most glorious Catholick Predecessors had always done upon far less injuries or provocations as Edward the First and Edward the Third and others whose Religion was never suspected often restrained him from exercising any authority or jurisdiction in England to which they well knew he had no other authority or right but what the Crown had granted him and forbid any of their Subjects to repair to Rome or to receive any Orders from thence which was upon the matter all that Henry the Eighth did and was no more than Lewis the Twelfth of France had done very few years before but was so far from being inclined or favouring to any reformation or alteration in Religion that he proceeded as long as he lived with the utmost severity against all who were but suspected to be averse from the Catholick Religion and caused many of them
a short time they vanished and were no more heard of What was urged or insinuated by any Men of discretion and understanding that might make any impression upon sober unwary and misinformed Men was carefully and learnedly answered by Persons assigned to that purpose that the Church or the State might not undergoe any prejudice by want of seasonable advice without mingling any of the others froth or dregs in their compositions which they left to the chastisement of those who could as dexterously manage the same weapons and were fitter for their company And methinks grave and serious men or they who ought to be grave and serious should be afraid of imitating such adversaries in their licence and excesses lest they should get into a scoffing vein which they should not easily shake off or lose their credit with worthy Men for dishonouring the cause they maintain ironically A man will hardly be thought provident enough or solicitous for his own peace and credit who having discovered this unruly frantick disease will expose himself to the malignity thereof by approaching so near the company of those angry Wasps and Hornets who are like to be willing to take any opportunity to be revenged upon a Person who hath presumed to be offended with their manner of writing and in the same instant submitted his own to their censure which is like to be liable to as many exceptions of weakness and impertinence To which I shall only say that whatever other faults they shall discover in this short writing of mine they shall not find the same of which I complain I shall give no body ill words nor provoke them by contemning their Persons and I chuse rather to be at their mercy than not to endeavour the best way I can to divert men from that indecent way of reviling each other and instead of answering Arguments to traduce the Persons who urge them Truth is of so tender and delicate a constitution that it is defiled by rude handling and hath advantage enough to encounter and conquer its adversaries by the vigour of its own beauty without aspersing the deformity of the other farther than unavoidable reason makes it manifest I shall not interpose in those Arguments which are now most agitated in that scurrilous style that I complain of but chuse to take upon me to make Animadversions upon a Book lately published at least lately come to my sight Intituled Fanaticism Fanatically imputed to the Church of England by Doctor Stillingfleet and the imputation Refuted and Retorted by S. C. The Author whereof professes himself an avowed Enemy to the Church of England and would be thought as much an enemy to the foul custom introduced into the Controversies concerning it and the liberty men assume to deride Religion instead of vindicating it to wound the profession by a petulant and scornful mention of the Professors and by expressions full of pride and vanity and destructive to peace and government and yet how contrary soever this way of writing is to his practice and inclination he hath some jealousie of himself that upon the insupportable provocation he hath received some phrases of bitterness may have scaped his Pen which he doth believe he hath very good authority not to make any excuse for and there being such plenty of that noisom Gall scattered throughout his whole discourse it will be but just to take a view of his provocation and whether his revenge be no more than proportionable to the occasion and then whether the imputation be not rather confidently retorted than reasonably refuted and whether in the endeavoring the one or the other the bounds and limits of all modesty and civility are not so far transgressed that the Author is liable to just censure I do the rather enter into the List upon this occasion because I may infallibly presume that I know the Author of that Discourse for I no sooner read it which was long after it was published but that it was manifest to me by many particulars contained in it in which I cannot be deceived that it is written by Mr. Cressy with whom I have been acquainted very near fifty years and have very long esteemed him for his parts and learning and for his good nature and his good manners all of which were in as great perfection then as they have been ever since or are at present and therefore as I shall treat him with that candor that becomes an old Friend so I do not suspect his reception and interpretation of it will be such as is worthy of that temper of spirit which he professes to be of nor do I despair of presenting some considerations and reflections to him which may so work upon it as to induce him to believe that both in regard of the matter it self and the manner of treating Dr. Stillingfleet he hath swarved very much from those Rules which he prescribes to others and pretends to observe himself and then the tenderness of his own Conscience will instruct him what reparation he ought to make But before I enter into the debate I must first declare that the Religion I profess and defend is the Religion of the Church of England and not the particular opinions much less the expressions of any member of it how worthy soever and Mr. Cressy who professes to be an adversary to it ought to insist only upon what is owned and avowed by her and not hope to wound her through the sides or by the weakness or passions of those who have deserted her or still adhere to her And in the second place that I do not take upon me to write against the Catholick Church of which the Church of England is a vital part or against the Religion professed in any Catholick Country but against the Roman Catholick Subjects of his Majesties Dominions whose Religion I take to be different from that which is professed and established in any Catholick Country in Europe and disavowed by all the Catholick Countries out of Europe And one of the principal reasons that engages me in this Discourse is to endeavour to draw the dispute that is between the Church and the Laws of England and his Majesties Subjects of his own Dominions who profess to be of the Roman Faith into a narrower room and within that compass that properly contains it And I have always thought that they have had too much countenance and too great a latitude allowed them in reducing the contest to what concerns all the members of the Roman Church equally with themselves as if the Roman Catholicks of England withdraw their obedience from the Kings authority and oppose the Laws of the Land so much to the damage of their Estates and the danger of their lives if the Laws were prosecuted against them only for the support and in the defence of the cause common to all other Catholicks Whereas I say the difference between us depends wholly upon the personal authority of the Pope within the Kings
lewd seditious Books are sold as that none such may be printed And if this kind advertisement of Mr. Cressy hath that operation upon the Magistrates of all sorts both the Printers and Sellers and it may be the Buyers of the multitude of Popish Books which are every day vented with as much freedom as the Book of Common-Prayer they of his own Religion will have new cause to celebrate his prudence and acknowledge the great advantage he hath brought to their cause by his pen as he hath to their persons by his modesty and his manners Mr. Cressy comes at last after very much passion and much more virulence against the poor Protestants than the Doctor hath expressed against the Roman Catholicks to a matter of importance indeed in which he believes which might have kept him from triumphing so soon he is absolute master of the field and that is to peace and unity which he says is more fit to be the subject and argument of writings composed by Ecclesiastical persons that is unity of faith and doctrine pag. 102. and in truth whoever is really an enemy even to that unity of faith and doctrine how hard soever to be attained must be an enemy to mankind but I must tell him too that the writings of Ecclesiastical persons have not hitherto in any age contributed to the production of that unity I mean such who have a pride petulancy of understanding obstinacy of will that will suffer nothing to be called peace and unity but a prostration of all other men to their dictates Mr. Cressy and his Ecclesiastical Friends affect and insolently prescribe a unity that is neither practicable nor desirable and there are other Ecclesiastical persons as humorous who are such enemies to unity that they think it not necessary to peace especially in Ecclesiastical matters that is in matters of Religion all men may think and speak and do what they please and upon the irrationality of these last the former impute all the folly and all the madness that would introduce the most uncontroulable confusion to those who observe order and discipline with more regularity and obedience than any of the pretenders will do It must not therefore be the Ecclesiastical persons who have given each other too ill words to be of one mind who can procure this unity of faith and doctrine that must constitute this peace but it must be the writings and actions of Magistrates who by the execution of those Laws and rules which the wisdom of the State for which they are made have provided for that purpose can infallibly establish that unity and peace that is necessary for it Magistrates who do not pretend any jurisdiction out of their own limits nor will suffer those who live within it to be disobedient much less to revile the Laws which are provided for the publick peace Where there are no Laws confusion is necessary and natural and where the Laws are not executed it is as unavoidable and in some degree necessary So that where unity is not as much provided for as is necessary for peace it is the Magistrates fault and not the fault of Ecclesiasticks who can only prosecute it by the ways prescribed by the Laws I say where unity is necessary for nothing is more mistaken or more misapplied than this precious word Unity Who doth not know or hath not had it frequently in his observation that men who have the same end affect several ways which lead to that end and he who goes the farthest way about may possibly come sooner to the end than he that believes he goes more directly to it However if he comes thither later he is liable to no other reproach than being laughed at for being longer upon the way than he needed to have been I knew two Gentlemen of good quality and fortunes one of which I think is still living who were very near neighbours in Berkshire and lived in that good correspondence and conversation as persons of quality and authority in their Country use to do they had both very frequent occasions to ride to London and the house of one of them was the confessed way of the other thither but the difference was whether from thence the nearest way was by Windsor or by Maidenhead and in that they were so great Opiniators that they still parted at the door and one took the one way and the other that which he conceived to be nearest and in twenty years they never made the journey together How light soever the instance seems to be it will be found fit enough to be applied to very many differences of opinion which by the excess of fancy on the one side and the defect of judgment of the other are blown up into a magnitude that dazles the eyes of too many spectators and for the determination of the rest there wants not a submission and obedience to authority the difference only is where that authority is placed to which obedience ought to be paid We of the Church of England hold ours to be due to the King the Church and the Law Mr. Cressy would have us pay it to the Pope which we cannot submit to not because he is fallible but because he is not a Magistrate who hath any jurisdiction over us In matters that concern Religion we resort to the Articles of the Church which we are obliged to conform to He would have us observe the Canons of the Council of Trent which we are forbidden to do and he as an English Catholick is not bound to upon which we shall enlarge hereafter and this election to believe that the Church of England which flourishes at least as much in learned and pious men as any Church of the world can better direct English-men in the way to Heaven than the Church of Rome is the greatest use we make of our reason which is not like to deceive What that union is that was intended certainly by our Saviour when he left his Church established under spiritual Governours will best appear by the rules he prescribed and the directions he gave in order thereunto which we may lawfully believe he never intended for such a unity as Mr. Cressy and his friends dream of and that he foresaw the same could never be and depended more upon what was necessary towards it upon the civil Magistrates than upon the Ecclesiastical power He prescribed the essential principles himself of that Religion which he intended should be established and left persons trusted by him who not only knew his mind but knew all things which are necessary to be known for the accomplishment of it And no temporal or spiritual authority under Heaven hath power to alter any thing that was setled by him or his Apostles who were the only Commentators intrusted by him to explain whatsoever might seem doubtful in what himself had said and they performed their parts with that plainness in what is necessary that there remains no difficulty to men
life but there are too many particulars in the lives of the Saints to charge the Church with believing and therefore it may be wondered at that they are so much countenanced But the instance I would insist upon is our Ladies House at Lauretta which is alledged to have remained still at Nazareth till after the year twelve hundred time enough to have reduced the greatest Palaces into dust but that after that time some Catholick writers name the year when it begun its journey it was taken by Angels the very house in which the lived and had received the salutation from the Angel and carried to a mountain in Dalmatia and at three stages more whereof one was a wood belonging to a widow named Lauretta many years rest intervening it was brought to and left in the place where it now stands and where it is covered with the most rich and very beautiful Church which for the good widows sake in whose wood it rested some years is called Lauretta and where her Image and her House receives visits and very rich presents from all parts where the Catholick Religion is professed for the reception and entertainment whereof a good Town is built several Religious houses Pilgrimages made thither from far and near and hereby that people may without going so far as Nazareth see the house of our Ladies abode the Church in Plate and Jewels is richer than any other in the world not to speak of the incredible number of miracles which have been wrought there since the miraculous coming of that Cottage thither I dare not ask Mr. Cressy whether he doth believe this wonderful voyage or progress because I dare not say he doth not since he hath brought his reason and his judgment into such a marvellous captivity but I would presume to ask whether the Church as it can be contracted into that denomination for if the Pope be enough the Church to declare Heresies and determine controversies which are yet undetermined methinks he should be Church enough to answer questions and in this particular he is more concerned for being a Soveraign temporal Prince in his own Dominions as well as the Supreme Prelate he is in some degree answerable for the discretion and the good manners as well as the Religion and the Faith of his subjects May we ask whether it may be presumed that he and his Consistory with which he consults in matters of importance that he doth believe this miracle or may it be presumed he doth not To say he doth believe it is to accuse him of such an impotency of understanding as the most illiterate Frier is hardly guilty of as to imagine that a thing so monstrous in nature and so impertinent as to any pious or prudent effect can be true To say that God can do as much is an answer that may as well support the most notorious fiction that is in Ovid's Metamorphosis and it may be as well replied that God if he had done it would have provided some such witnesses in the way as should have made it manifest that he had done it whereas they who have been at so prodigious a charge in beautifying and enriching that little mansion have not yet been able to purchase one Record of so long a voyage but satisfie themselves that they who take the pains to come thither do easily believe it whereas more go thither to see those who do pretend to believe it than to see the Relique that draws men thither I never spoke with any Roman Catholick who knew so much of the story as I have here mentioned for most that have been there or have heard of the stories of it have heard no more than that our Ladies own House is there and for ought they know Nazareth may be within three miles of it who hath pretended to believe it he was not bound to it it was not of Divine faith it might be of humane and Historical faith I ask him whether he believes it as much as he doth that Iulius Caesar was Emperor of Rome That he cannot say neither In a word most Catholicks laugh at it as much as I do and many of them are as angry at it so that I suppose it may become us to conclude that the Pope doth not believe it to be true or rather that he knows it to be a fiction and if that be so with what conscience and sincerity can he suffer or indeed permit such a Pageantry to be acted in his Territories to the delusion of so many millions of Christians and to the scandal and opprobrium of Religion in exposing the dignity of the Mother of our Lord to so much derision only for his own benefit and advantage for it 's no small revenue that accrews to the Pope's Exechequer by the visitation and adoration of that Mansion of our Lady Many come to Rome in a year for no other reason than that they may worship our Lady at Lauretta and many go thither immediately without going to Rome as lately a great Ecclesiastical Prince did and returned without so much as seeing the Pope after he had for the cure of his Hypochondriack indisposition liberally presented our Lady with as many Jewels as are worth above five thousand pounds Sterling which she could not but receive very graciously yet his infirmity hath encreased ever since though it may be his Present hath much added to the devotion of the place for the fight of the richness of the Copes and Plate and other Utensils is a great part of the business of the Visitants Though it was a very pertinent scoffe upon the occasion that was used by a Legate in France who was afterwards Pope himself when he passed in state through that Kingdom and found all passages thronged with people who upon their knees implored and expected his benediction he repeated it often with the usual ceremony of making the sign of the Cross with these reiterated words Sivulgus vult decipi decipiatur however I say it might be a proper benediction for such occasion in the high-way yet to induce men to so solemn Pilgrimages and to the performance of so solemn acts of devotion there ought to be some such solid and substantial foundation of it as may be a support to real piety which can hardly be imagined in this case and I cannot tell whether it were not rather to be wished that the Pope and Cardinals and Prelates of the Roman Court did at the expence of their reputation really believe all that Machine than suffer it to be shewed without their own believing it at the expence of their sanctity at least of their ingenuity Nor could it seem strange to any man if an honest man of a good understanding who hath not been moped in his education with such discourses and hath in the pursuit of his own satisfaction fallen into some doubts of things practised in his own shall if he had no other exception to it refuse to cast himself into
his Nuntio and assumed the exercise of the Regal power both at Land and Sea and imprisoned those Catholicks and threatned to take their Lives who had promoted the peace and desired to return to the King's Subjection And when since the Kings happy Restoration the Nobility and Catholick Clergie of Ireland thought it necessary to present some Testimony of their future Allegiance to the King in which they declared that the Pope had no power to dispence with their fidelity to his Majesty or to absolve them from any Oaths they should take to that purpose which Declaration was attested and subscribed by many of the principal Catholick Nobility and others of the best quality and interest as likewise by some of their Titular Catholick Bishops and many of their Secular and Regular Clergie But complaint and notice hereof being sent to Rome the Pope was so offended at it that he caused his Nuntio in Flanders to command some of the Clergy who had subscribed that Paper to attend him and threatned to excommunicate them and Cardinal Barbaryne at the same time writ a Letter to the Bishops and Clergie of Ireland in which he signified how much the Pope was displeased that such a subscription and declaration had been made and commanded them to discountenance and suppress the same and take care that it should proceed no farther and the Cardinal added That they should remember what they well knew that the Kingdom remained still under Excommunication This being the case it cannot but be very necessary that his Majesty should know what opinion his Catholick Subjects have of this Foreign power which will observe no limits but of his own prescription and will concern all Roman English Subjects to explain their sence of it that they may not be thought to desire only the protection of those Laws which gives them equal title to whatever all other Subjects enjoy and to be willing to be dispenced with for performance of all those obligations which other Subjects are under and in consideration whereof the other benefits are granted to them VII Whether the English Catholick Subjects are not bound in Conscience to submit to the Laws of the Land in all things which are not against the Law of God and who is to be judge whether they are against the Law of God or no and if Men are forbid to keep Company or to have conversation with dissolute and prophane Persons how they can justifie the living in continual company with and in constant profession of friendship to those who they conceive and believe to be out of a possibility of Salvation and for which if in truth they do believe it the saying they may believe as well as hope that they will repent and become Catholick before they dye when whatever they may hope they do not in truth believe that they will ever change their Religion so that it is more reasonable to believe from the learning reason and judgment of many Catholicks that they do not believe it whatever they are obliged to say or rather whatever others say to them and whether Protestants who do think that the Papists do really believe they must be damned are not very excusable if they avoid and decline any commerce or conversation with them even to the abstaining from buying or selling with them or from entertaining any Servant of that Religion since it cannot reasonably be presumed that a Servant can love a Master which it is his duty to do who he doth believe will infallibly be damned VIII How Mr. Cressy and the rest who have received Orders in the Church of England can justifie or excuse their being re-ordained after they change their Religion since so many Councils have declared against it and no one for it and since the succession of Bishops is as plainly manifest in one Church as in the other and in truth may be more doubted upon their own grounds in the Roman from the number of Schismes and the continuance of them in which so many excommunicated Persons have been consecrated Bishops and they again ordained Priests under the same condemnation which may be supposed to have made a great confusion by many Mens having conferred Orders who by their Rules I say were Laymen themselves However what difference can there be assigned why such of the Greek Church who come to them are not re-ordained but those of the Church of England are compelled to be IX Whether St. Peter exercised any jurisdiction or assumed any superiority over the rest of the Apostles during the Seven Years he remained at Antioch as he ought to have done if the Supremacy was annexed to his Person or in the Four and twenty Years he reigned in Rome and whether the contrary be not manifest by St. Paul's Epistle to the Galathians not so much by the Contest that was between him and St. Peter about Circumcision even at Antioch in St. Peter's own Diocess where St. Paul withstood him to his face because he was to be blamed which is poorly answered by those who say it was in the warmth of disputation when all men contradict each other without distinction of quality or degree But I say I do not urge the equality so much by that contradiction though it be not answered as by the matter occasion and substance of that Epistle which seems to be written principally upon that Subject St. Paul had converted that People the Galathians from Paganisme to the Faith of Christ and he was no sooner gone from them to another place but some other Christians for there was no attempt to reduce again to Paganisme were inclined to amuse with Scruples that they were not throughly informed of the whole faith that was necessary nor by one who had ever seen our Saviour and so was not like to be himself informed as well as they especially when St. Peter preached contrary to what the other taught so that the weight of what was objected by those whoever they were was the incompetency of the Person who had taught them in comparison of the other and particularly of St. Peter So that St. Paul could not at this time have been ignorant of that Supremacy if there had been any this Epistle being written above Seventeen Years after his conversion nor could he have avoided the mentioning of it upon this argument if he had known it especially since he writ that Letter from Rome where Peter at the same time was nor could he more clearly have confuted that Opinion than he hath done except he had believed St. Peter himself to have affected it which he had no reason to do since he knew who they were who had infused those suggestions He gives them a short accompt of his own Apostleship and how he had spent his time since of his first Journey to Ierusalem yet that he went not thither till three Years after his conversion and till after he performed many acts of his Apostleship in which he received no direction from any Of
to be burned as Hereticks very few days before having made new Laws for the discovery of them stricter than had been ever before And there is no reason to believe that he did not die as much a Catholick as he was when he writ against Luther nor did any Catholick Prince forbear to enter into the strictest alliance with him notwithstanding the Popes Bulls of Excommunication Deprivation and Interdiction nor was there one Mass the less said for it in England and after his death his obsequies were with all possible solemnity observed as hath been said before in Paris at Nostre Dame by Francis the First notwithstanding all those Bulls from Rome in all which nothing can be more observable than that the great Emperor Charles the Fifth who had threatned and compelled that weak humorous Pope into all those acts of folly and presumption against the King had no sooner made him commit that insolence but himself entred into a straiter friendship and confederacy with the Excommunicated King than had ever before been between them The other reason why they will very unwillingly expose their interest to this manner of debate is That it would divide their party which if they were solicitous only for truth would not prevail with them Other Catholick Kingdoms and Nations which differ from one another as well in the profession as the exercise of the Roman Religion as the French hold a Council to be above the Pope and the Spaniards the Pope to be above a Council and many other particulars when they come to know that the Crown and Church of England have established only amongst themselves such an exercise of Christian Religion that in all the substantial and essential points is the same which they profess without censuring them or what they find fit to do in their Countries and have only made such alterations as by the constitution of that Kingdom they may lawfully do and which they find more agreeable to the manners of the Nation and for the peace and happiness of the people They will not think themselves concerned in the policy of other Kingdoms nor the Popes authority so much of the Essence of Catholick Religion that they are bound to support all his pretences which are different in all those Countries which are most devoted to him and therefore cannot flow from any determination of our Saviour which would have made it the same in all places besides they too well know that in all the particulars proposed the Catholick Doctors are not of one mind who are now kept united to them by not knowing the constitution of the Church of England nor that the Roman Catholicks in that Kingdom refuse to give that security for their duty to the King and for their peaceable and good behaviour as all other their fellow subjects chearfully give and as are required of all by the Laws of the Kingdom and if they would perform that common duty it is very probable that there appearing no more danger to threaten the State from them than from other men those Laws which the iniquity of their forefathers brought upon them by their conspiracies and treasons may be suspended towards their innocent Children until such time as their peaceable demeanour and good carriage shall make it appear just to be abolished This expedient for the reasons aforesaid will be obstructed by the Religious and regular Clergie who have so absolute a dependence upon the Pope that they are in truth subjects to no other Prince and probably some few of the secular Clergie may concur with them though more of them if they can discern any security to themselves in disclaiming the Popes authority which few of them look upon as of the Essence of their Religion and have in their hearts as well as in their professions as sincere purposes towards the King and his People However I know not why all the Lay Catholicks of his Majesties Dominions should bind up their interest with those who have different obligations from them nor how they can excuse themselves from not throughly examining every one of the particular heads proposed by which they will receive this benefit and information that they will clearly discern what is necessary for them to retain and insist upon without which in their conscience as thus informed they cannot continue members of the Catholick Church and what is so much of the policy of the State that is warrantable or unwarrantable only as it is established by the Soveraign authority and by this means they will know how to give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and to render unto God that which belongs unto God the just distribution whereof is of an equal concernment to all Christians being equally enjoyned by our Saviour Christ. THE END A Brief Catalogue of Books newly Printed and Reprinted for R. Royston Bookseller to his Most Sacred Majestie THe Works of the Reverend and Learned Henry Hammond D. D. containing a Collection of Discourses chiefly Practical with many Additions and Corrections from the Author 's own hand together with the Life of the Author enlarg'd by the Reverend Dr. Fell Dean of Christ Church in Oxford in large Folio Nova Vetera Or a Collection of Polemical Discourses addressed against the Enemies of the Church of England both Papists and Fanaticks in large Folio by Ieremiah Taylor Chaplain in Ordinary to King Charles the First of Blessed Memory and late Lord Bishop of Down and Conner Reflexions upon the Devotions of the Roman Church With the Prayers Hymns and Lessons themselves taken out of their Authentick Authors In Three Parts In Octavo New The Christian Sacrifice and the Devout Christian and Advice to a Friend these last three Books written by the Reverend S. P. D. D. in 12. Eph. 4. 31. Pag. 11. Pag. 26. Pag. 31. Pag. 32. Pag. 219. Pag. 35. Pag. 68. Pag. 94. Pag. 102. Mark 16. 16. Ver. 14. Mat. 3. 14. Mark 9. 10. Luke 18. 34. Rom. 10. 9 Rom. 1. 29 30. Rom. 10. 9 1 Cor. 3. 11 12. 1 Cor. 4. 5. Mat. 13. 29 30. Lib. 9. Ep. 39. Phil. 1. 15 18. 2 Esa. 4. 21. 26 27. Numb 12. 1. Zach. 8. 19.
IMPRIMATUR THO. TOMKYNS Ex Aed Lambethanis Nov. 29. 1673. ANIMADVERSIONS Upon a Book Intituled FANATICISM FANATICALLY Imputed to the Catholick Church By Dr. STILLINGFLEET And the Imputation Refuted and Retorted by S. C. By a Person of Honour LONDON Printed for R. Royston Bookseller to His most Sacred Majesty 1673. TO Dr. Stillingfleet SIR HAving lately it may be later than most men in England who are inquisitive after Books had a view of a little Book in answer to a Book of Yours which I had not then seen Intituled Fanaticism Fanatically Imputed by him Dr. Stillingfleet to the Catholick Church I had read very few leaves in it when I was able warrantably to say that Mr. Cressy was the Author of this Book a person whom I had long known and familiarly conversed with before he was perverted in his Religion aud had often seen since and upon the whole I must confess if there had not been some particulars in it which could not suffer me to be deceived I could hardly have believed that so much pride and bitterness and virulence could upon so little provocation and with so little excuse have dropped from his pen. The confidence of it amazed me as much as the rudeness and though I could not expect that a man who had treated his own Mother with so little respect could have much reverence for your Person who have so vigorously defended her and fully vindicated her from all the reproaches that Classis of men have been able to cast upon her and exposed their malice and their ignorance more nakedly to the view of the world than I think hath been ever done before for which all her true children are and always must be indebted to you and to your memory I thought the little angry Book fit to receive some answer and the Author of it worthy of reprehension and admonition which he might receive with less disturbance from an old Friend and I thought it likewise unreasonable that you whose studies are so wholly engrossed by and dedicated to the publick should be put to the trouble to free your self from these feeble calumnies which every man who hath read your Works is able to do and every man who loves the Church is bound in justice to do Besides I was willing to invite other Lay-men to shew with more efficacy their concernment for the Church and the Protestant Religion so variously and maliciously assaulted on all hands though God be thanked impotently enough that the defence of it may not be looked upon as the sole duty of the Clergy These were the motives that invited me to undertake this little task which I was not long performing and yet even when I had finished it if so imperfect a draught can be called finishing I chanced to have the pleasant sight of your Answer to several late Treatises c. and I can with a very good conscience assure you that mine was dispatched before I did see it and therefore especially since you have only taken a slight notice in the Preface of Mr. Cressy's waspish invectives I am willing if you please that my short Animadversions may be likewise presented to his view which is intirely left to be communicated or suppressed or corrected according to your judgment by SIR Your most affectionate unknown Servant ANIMADUERSIONS Upon a Book Intituled FANATICISM FANATICALLY Imputed to the Catholick Church By Dr. STILLINGFLEET And the Imputation Refuted and Retorted by S. C. IT was the wish not the hope of the most excellent Lord Bacon in his never enough admired Advancement of Learning that good Books had the quality or faculty of Moses's Rod that being become a Serpent eat up and devoured the other Serpents which were produced by the Rods of the Sorcerers or Magicians The number was so great in his time of idle and impertinent and Seditious Books and the number of the Readers who were delighted with them was likewise so great that Books of Learning weight and importance found little countenance and few Men at leisure to peruse them and he saw no remedy but by such a miracle What would that great and discerning Person think if he had lived in these days when the licence of writing and publishing light and scandalous Books of all Arguments without any rules or limits of modesty is grown the Epidemical disease of the Nation and a reproach to the Government in the violation of the Laws the contempt of the Magistrate and the general contagion that is spread abroad and threatens the very peace of the Kingdom at least disturbs the sober conversation of it The spirit of Martin Marprelate which hath for so many years been expired or extinguished is revived with greater insolence and improved and heightned as well against the State as the Church in a petulancy of language in a style so new and unbecoming Men of honest education that the gravest arguments in Divinity it self and Texts of the Sacred Scripture are handled in a manner and fashion and with such vain and Comical expressions as have not used to be admitted in the lightest arguments or in sober and chast mirth The important and vital parts of Government the dignity of the Laws established and even the Person of the King himself and the greatest Magistrates are arraigned censured and inveighed against in such a bitterness of words with terms so reproachful as have not been ever used in good company and as if the English tongue were too narrow to comprehend all the Ribaldry and filthiness of their thoughts and inventions they coin new words of contempt and indignation and make use of a Dialect never heard of but in the company of Ruffians and the lowest and most debauch'd of the People which for wit sake they apply to their vile purposes so that this extravagance if not timely suppressed doth really seem to threaten not only a general corruption of manners but of the purity and integrity of the Language and of the good humor and good nature and modest conversation of the Nation and upon this occasion I cannot but lament the want of that caution and prudence which was heretofore observed when this unruly Spirit first broke out in the time of Martin Marprelate who had a contribution of Jests and Scoffs and Comical inventions brought to him by all the party who desired to expose the Church and the Government of it to the contempt and scorn of the loose and rude People It was not thought worthy of any serious Man to enter into the lists with such adversaries or to take notice of their Pamphlets but Men of the same Classis of the same rankness of Wit and fancy and of honester principles were the Champions in that quarrel Thom. Nash was as well known an Author in those days as Martin who with Pamphlets of the same kind and size with the same pert Buffoonry and with more salt and cleanliness rendred that libellous and seditious crew so contemptible ridiculous and odious that in
for which I am solicitous that it would rather increase and propagate the prejudice that is against it I do therefore provide a more natural countenance to support it and which legally will supply the defect of the name by having it Licensed by lawful Authority without which it shall never be published IF Dr. Stillingfleet hath in truth cast any contemptuous aspersions upon Mr. Cressy or if he hath suffered any scorn or calumny only for recommending to devout Christians instructions for the practice of Christian vertues and piety in the greatest perfection that this life is capable of If he hath selected the most Sacred things and Persons in the Catholick Church on purpose to be contaminated with his Ink full of Gall and Poyson thereby administring new Arms to Atheists If he hath endeavoured to shew that all the Religion professed in the World and that thing that bears the name of a Catholick Church for so many Ages before the time of Luther and Calvin was nothing for their Worship but Idolatry for their Devotions but Fanaticism and for their doctrine and discipline nothing but faction ambition and avarice And if the Doctor hath imployed his talent of reasoning upon these subjects to discharge his excess of spleen and choler and to give free scope to all unchristian and even inhumane passions with all which the three first Pages do confidently and directly charge him I must confess that Mr. Cressy will not only be excusable for any Zeal and confidence he shall express against such an adversary but that the Doctor hath neither direction or authority from the Church of England in either of the particulars nor would I undertake to vindicate him from that great guilt But if nothing of all this be true and if the Doctor hath neither said or done any thing of this with which he is charged Mr. Cressy shall but comply with his obligations in seriously considering whether he hath observed St. Paul's injunction Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice And of the greater importance any controversie is especially if it hath any relation to Religion the swarving from that rule can never be dispensed with and therefore it will be proper in the first place to examine the evidence that is to prove this charge or charges against the Doctor before we consider the three Imputations by which it is said he would fright men from the Communion of the Catholick Church or the other three Retorsions by which Mr. Cressy is confident to wound the Protestant Churches upon both which reflexions will be made in the proper season Though I am no stranger to the writings of Dr. Stillingfleet but have read I think all that he hath published at least all that I have seen of his and as I always admired the strength and vigour of his ratiocination and the clearness of his style and expressions a faculty not natural to all very Learned and pious men by which he renders the most difficult points and which are usually by others wrapt up in obscure terms plain and intelligible to vulgar understandings So I have been exceedingly delighted with the softness gentleness and civility of his language which can never flow from an insolent or proud spirit in which he represents things which in themselves are light and as such might be neglected in a pleasant not reproachful manner a dialect his adversaries are not acquainted with And when he is compelled to answer Arguments or rather Allegations full of bitterness and reproachful words which would tempt another to take the advantage they are liable to with some sharpness he passes by the provocation and collects what can possibly be found like reason out of what is alledged and refutes it with very much less severity than the matter would justifie and seems sometimes to require Yet knowing Mr. Cressy well too and that he is not of a quarrelsome disposition or apt to give ill words in his discourse and to have a full understanding of what he reads that cannot be imposed upon I had some fear that the Doctor had upon some great provocation exceeded his former limits he had prescribed to himself and retorted the language of his adversaries with a bitterness natural enough for them though not to him And that temper I wished might never depart from him and therefore I was in some pain till I could procure the Doctor 's Book that had raised so much passion in Mr. Cressy and which I had not seen before But when I had carefully read those places to which the exceptions were made and examined as well as I could the signification or implication of every word I begun to suspect that I was mistaken in my former conjecture and that Mr. Cressy was not the Author of that Imputation Refuted but when I again reflected upon the reasons which had first produced that judgment of mine I found they had still the same strength and had then nothing to hope but that his obedience to those Friends whose commands he ought in no wise to resist for the writing and publishing his discourse had prevailed likewise with him to publish it in their and not his own words and I shall hereafter give Mr. Cressy a warrantable reason why I am still of the same opinion The first thing Mr. Cressy lays to his charge is That he accuses the Catholick Church of Fanaticism which he says no man ever presumed to do before and that he hath written an invective against the life and prayer of Contemplation commended and practised only in the Catholick Church it being a state which from the infancy of the Church he says hath been esteemed the nearest approaching to that of glorified Saints and the evidence that he produces to make this charge good is That the Doctor that he might make an entrance into the invective with a better grace hath produced on his Stage antiquely dressed the famous Teachers and erecters of Schools for Contemplation S. Bennet S. Romaulde S. Bruno S. Francis S. Dominique and S. Ignatius exposing them to the derision of prophane persons for which he threatens him shrewdly upon an Epigram in the Margent out of Martial Before he proceeds farther in his evidence lest the Doctor may be too much exalted with the novelty of his invention of his prophanely imployed Wit he doth assure him that he hath heard that kind of Wit before when he was a young Student in Oxford in a repetition Sermon to the University which he says if fancy be alone considered far better deserved applause wherein the Preacher descanting upon the whole life of our Saviour rendred him and his attendants men and women objects of the utmost scorn and aversion as if they all of them had been only a pack of dissolute vagabonds and cheats But presently the Preacher changing his stile as became a Disciple of Christ with such admirable dexterity and force of reason
combination of the Presbyterians and Independants whom they do likewise as unskilfully to their purpose irreconcile to them as if they could subdue the whole Kingdom and so care not whom they provoke If the noise and clamour and evil-speaking of these men do awaken the sleeping Laws to take that vengeance upon them that they were ordained for and which yet remain in that drowzy posture that their own modesty may reduce them to the manners of Gentlemen and Subjects or if the Kings mercy continue as obstinate toward them as their guilt and provocation so that he thinks fit still to abate the sharp edge of the Laws towards them in which very few men wish his Majestie less merciful there are still other Laws which the dignity of his Government will not suffer him to restrain and which are provided to vindicate those who do their duty from the extravagant passions and insolence of those who observe no rules of good behaviour and of peaceable conversation And what may be inflicted upon them of this kind will be unpitied by all good Catholicks and will never be thought a persecution of their Religion and it may be their Superiours at least upon their observation to what ill use they put their tongues may exact from them that silence for cherishing whereof their Order was first instituted and hereafter only imploy such in their missions as may return to them again without doing them any harm or bringing prejudice to the Religion they profess Mr. Cressy thinks he hath a wonderful advantage against the Church of England because he says he can find no religious Orders in it he cannot hear so much as of one single person whom he might call a Fanatick for leaving the flesh and the world to the end he or she might intirely consecrate themselves to God in solitude and exercises of spiritual prayer and mortification and if God should call any one to such a state of life there is an utter want amongst them of instructors or instructions proper for it I will not enter into any discourse of the benefits or inconveniences or ill uses which are too often made of those Monasteries and Religious houses of the He 's and the She 's I have nothing to say against them nor do I doubt that there are amongst them many persons of great learning and vertue and therefore I shall say no more but that most Catholick Kingdoms think the number of them too great and frequently forbid the erecting more of them and the Popes themselves have done the like in Italy and have dissolved many of them but I may say which is as much as is necessary to say that we have no cause to lament the absence of them in England since any defects which arise by the want of them is so abundantly provided by the noble Colledges in both the Universities and the great Free-Schools all so plentifully endowed not only for the good education of Youth in all principles of vertue piety and good literature but for the support of them after they are bred in the improvement of their parts for the service of the Church and of their Country insomuch that it may be truly said that more Scholars are liberally maintained upon the sole charge and charity of the several Founders and greater emoluments assigned for the encouragement of learning in England than can be said of any Kingdom in Europe how much larger and richer soever and I believe the Common-wealth of Learning in all other parts doth think and with great reason that all kinds of Learning are at this day in as great a heighth and perfection as they have been in any age in any Kingdom of the world and Mr. Cressy cannot forget though he doth not care to acknowledge that himself had his education in a Religious house founded by Walter Merton where he received a much more liberal and bountiful education and support than he hath ever had from S. Benedict and from whence he brought more learning than he hath found in any other place that he hath since inhabited or I doubt than he hath yet about him In this Religious house where I think he lived as many years as he hath done since under a worse discipline he had opportunity and obligation to consecrate himself to God in as much solitude as would contribute thereunto and to exercises of spiritual Prayer and mortification He was as much bound to chastity and to all kind of temperance as the severe Rules and Statutes of a magnificent Founder could oblige him and which he was likewise sworn to observe And I believe he under went as severe and a much more beneficial Novitiate there in which silence likewise was a part of the mortification as he did afterwards at Douay for I saw him in both those It is very true there and in all other Colledges if they found that the obligations they were under were stricter than they could submit to they are at liberty to quit those benefits their Founder hath bequeathed them and to dispose of themselves according to their inclinations otherwise they may enjoy the other to their lives end as very many do who prefer that solitude before the pleasures of the world It is very true that the Church and State of England did by observation and experience find that vows did not make people chast who would not be restrained by conscience of their duty to God and that those actions were not worthy the name of vertue and piety I speak still only of our own Country which were the effects of force and want of opportunity to decline them In a word the practice they had too much testimony and evidence of made them conclude that the mischief from those inclosures constraints and vows was greater and more apparent than the benefit and advantage and so they thought not fit to restrain that liberty which God and Nature did allow to all those persons who would decline the profit of those Communities in which they were possessed of them and betake themselves to another condition of life And I doubt not but Mr. Cressy knows that many learned Catholicks have always been and still are very averse to those vows and inclosures of Women which seems not to be much favoured by the Church it self the constitutions whereof require a greater number of years than are now required before they receive the vail and whether the scandalous lives of many Religious men abroad brings not a greater prejudice to the Religion they profess than their habit and vows brings honour to it I leave to his observation The other defect he finds in our Church of want of instructors and instructions for those in case God should call any one to such a state of life in solitude and exercises of spiritual prayer and mortification is yet more strange Without doubt if God doth in truth call any one to such a state of life he will not leave him destitute of instruction and
is a species of Logick they make often use of to many purposes For our parts we have as much reason to be confident of all the good offices they can do us in Heaven as the others are but because we do not know what their province there is or whether there be such a line of communication that they know what we would have them to do for us we acquiesce in a profound veneration of their lives and of their deaths and a full confidence that they do enjoy the reward of both without importuning them by any particular address of our own in our behalf having an assurance in our selves that they will do us all the good they can though our ignorance knows not how to ask it from them and this is all that our Church informs or instructs us of our duty and behaviour to Saints And Mr. Cressy will not take it ill that I tell him if his Church History consists in the lives of any Welch Saints and Martyrs or of those who were before the year six hundred as there were many more before than there were after he cannot reckon those to belong to the Church of Rome since he well knows that before the arrival of Austin the Monk in England there had never been mention there of the Bishop of Rome but most of the Christians had been long before driven into Wales by the tyranny and power of the Pagan Saxons who spent their time more profitably by subduing the other parts of the Kingdom than they could have done by pursuing them into those mountains and narrow retreats where they could better have defended themselves So that the British Christians remained for some time in some quiet in those parts and lived under the direction of their Bishops and Prelates in the exercise of the Christian Religion according to the institutions which they had received from their first Planters and after Austin came into this Island with a worthy and no doubt a very pious intention and God blessed him so much that he converted a Pagan King and most of his subjects who were at that time only they who lived within the circuit of Kent which opened a door to him and those who succeeded him for a larger conversion for which his and their name ought always to be mentioned with reverence and gratitude as blessed instruments God used for the good of the Nation though they were not the first Planters of Christianity in the Island as Mr. Cressy well knows and that when Austin desired to confer with the British Christians and had two several meetings with their Bishops and Prelates they were so much offended with the proposition he made to them of their subjection to the Pope that they did not only positively reject that but would not consent to change the course of their observation of Easter in which they had always concurred with the Eastern Christians nor yield to any thing else that he proposed left they might be thought to have any respect for the Pope So that I say if his Saints are before the year six hundred he hath no claim to them but must either be content to be without their merits and miracles or that we may have an equal share with him upon our joynt stock of Christianity and I hope he hath not in his History inserted the lives or miracles of any which have been left out as exploded upon the reformation of more ancient Legends Methinks Mr. Cressy seems to imitate the example of angry women who think it lawful to give worse words than they receive which is the natural progress of choler he provokes first the Doctor by reproaching him with the number of Fanaticks amongst us to tell him that there is Fanaticism likewise in many of their Church and so mentions the Visions and Revelations and Miracles in many persons of great esteem amongst them and by those pertinent instances puts him into great wrath and he again to be revenged on him will no longer be contented that we have too many Fanaticks in the Church but will prove that the very nature and essence of our Church it self and our Religion is pure putid-Fanaticism A man would have expected upon this undertaking that he should presently have singled one of the Articles of the Church that is so founded but that would have held him too much to the point and restrained him from those wandrings with which he is so delighted that would withhold him from falling upon the person of the Doctor or upon the Presbyterians and Independents with whom no body can blame him for being angry for they drove him from the Church by driving him from his preferments in the Church And from this charge upon the Church without any one instance he falls again upon the Presbyterians and Hugonots of France and reckons up some of the opinions they hold and maintain and then says pag. 94. That he must take the boldness to tell him a great boldness indeed that the Doctor himself does hold the same and if he denies it it is because he is ignorant of what passes in his own mind Now the Doctor must be lost for if his own denial cannot absolve him from being concluded to be of an opinion and Mr. Cressy knows better of that which the Doctors ignorance keeps him from discerning of what passes in his own mind he is to blame if he doth not lade him with all opinions which he wishes he would own But to prove this intricate averment like a great Magistrate he takes upon him to administer many questions to him and kindly to make answer to them on his behalf and so makes him as arrant a Fanatick as he can wish Yet after all this he is compelled to confess with perhaps That it would be rashness in him to affirm that the Church of England doth ground her faith upon such a Fanatick principle as the Doctor lays and if the Doctor wrongs the Church of England he good man is unwilling to wrong her with him And in this fit of good nature he makes a kind of an Apology for the Bishops who may be deceived themselves in the Doctors principles by the negligence that is used in licensing Books to the Press or rather the Doctors virulence against poor Catholicks was so highly approved by the grave Censor Librorum that rather than it should be hindred from doing mischief to them he was content that the Principles also should pass which utterly destroy the foundations of his own Church and so concludes with some instances of the perfunctory care that is taken in the licensing Books The Church of England cannot but be now secure when a Benedictine Mark is so vigilant as to stand Sentinel that she may receive no prejudice from her own Children and he doth very well to put the Bishops in mind that they may be more solicitous what Books are suffered to be printed who have no less obligation upon them to look that no
the infancy of the Church and did no great harm No doubt S. Paul wished that all who were to preach Christ had had the same thoughts and had used the same words and had had the same affection towards each other which unity would much have advanced the propagation of Christianity but he knew that was impossible and that different apprehensions and different conceptions must be always attended with difference of expressions whilst the birth and life and death and resurrection of Christ was taught though they who preached him had their own passions and prejudices towards each other he was still glad that the number of the Christians were increased There may be much good done in the world without taking its rise purely from Conscience and only to please others or to imitate others and the like may be done to anger and to cross and contradict other men and though the Authors of that good have lost their reward yet there is matter of rejoycing still that good is done It is very well worth our reflexion how little pains our Saviour took who well foresaw what disputations would arise concerning Religion to the end of the world to explain any doctrinal points or indeed to institute any thing of speculative doctrine in his Sermon upon the Mount which comprehends all Christianity but to resolve all into practice and his Apostles though they met with a world of questions and disputes and in the highest points of the mystery of Religion were very short in their answers and determination and left no room for any contention in the understanding upon any matter of faith it depending purely upon believing what was past and done and of which they received unquestionable evidence but in the application of this faith to practice they were large in their discourses and clear to remove all doubts they had observed into how many Schisms and Sects the Church of the Iews had run by their several interpretations of the Law and the Prophets of both which they had all equal veneration and from both gathered arguments enough to found an animosity against each other that vented it self in all the acts of uncharitableness and denunciation of Hell-fire to their opponents and they did all they could that the Gospel and the professors thereof might not be exposed to the like mischiefs by the same disputations Men might set their wits on work to raise doubts and scruples and improve them to what degree they please by the subtilty of their own invention they were difficulties of their own making not finding Christ and his Apostles left their Declarations of what we are to believe and what we are to do so clearly stated that we cannot dangerously mistake and so much the more clearly by informing us what we are not to believe and what we are not to do by the obligations of Christianity and as they did no doubt foresee the weakness and the wilfulness of the succeeding times and that men would make use of the Scriptures themselves to the prejudice of Religion they took care that they might know that there is much in them above their understanding and that they should govern themselves by what is easie plain to be understood therein and above all that they should not presume to censure and judge those who differ from them in their opinions because Christ hath reserved all those differences to be determined by himself and except it were inflicting Ecclesiastical censures upon corruption of manners and transgressing against Christian duties It was some Ages before the Church expressed any great severity upon differences in opinions and used such circumspection in the expressions upon their determinations as rather pleased all persons concerned than strictly defined the matter in controversie The Primitive Church never prescribed any other rule to themselves to judge by than the sacred Scriptures by consent of which they made all their definitions and determinations and as no man yet at least with any countenance of authority hath pretended to understand the intire meaning of any one of the Prophets so it was some time a long time before the Revelation of S. Iohn was received into the Canon of the Church for the difficulty of it and whosoever hath since undertaken to understand it hath received more censure than approbation from pious and learned men nor have they attained to credit enough to be believed Seek not out the things that are too hard for thee neither search the things that are above thy strength is very good counsel and proportioned to mens different faculties and understandings he that is stronger than I may search for things that are too hard for me and there is no harm in that search but I who am weaker am in no degree obliged to make that search nor shall fare the worse because I am so weak The Dialogue between the Angel and the Prophet Esdras may be very good Divinity thoughs it be contained in the Apocrypha He that dwelleth above the Heavens may only understand the things that are above the heighth of the Heavens The more thou searchest the more thou shalt marvel for the world hasteth fast to pass away and it cannot comprehend the things that are promised to the righteous in time to come Let us endeavour to do the things which we are plainly enjoyned to do and which we can very well comprehend at least let us forbear doing any thing which we are as plainly forbidden to do and we shall in due time obtain those things which for the present we cannot comprehend It hath been an artifice introduced to perplex mankind and to work upon the conscience by amusing and puzling the understanding to perswade men to believe that there is but one Church and one Religion in which men may be saved that by their confident averring themselves to be that Church and of that Religion others may be prevailed with to be of their party and they who with most passion abhor their presumption and so withdraw from their Communion adhere to the same unreasonable conclusion and will not suffer them to be a Church at all or capable of salvation and form their own Church upon those principles only which most contradict the other whereas there is room enough in Heaven for them all and we may charitably and reasonably believe that many of all Christian Churches will come thither and that too many of every one of them will be excluded from thence There is indeed as was said before but one faith which no authority upon Earth can change or suspend or dispence with but Religion which is the uniting or the being united of pious men in the profession of that Faith may be exercised in several and different forms and ways and with several ceremonies according to the constitutions and rules of the several Countries and Kingdoms where it is practised and there are so many Churches united in one and the same faith and methinks the very stile
Church from the corruption of Doctrine and contentions and contradictions in the practice of Religion as any exorbitancies in state is so far from being soveraign that he holds upon the matter the little authority he hath in other things but precariò of him who hath the exercise of the other jurisdiction And as this mischief and confusion is very demonstrable to all men who understand the foundation and rules of Policy and Government so the benefits which accrew from this distinction are not discernable by the eyes of reason or of faith Temporal Princes and Kings cannot have authority to change Religion nor are qualified to perform the Offices and functions of Religion that 's true Nor hath any Ecclesiastical and Spiritual power authority to change Religion The Pope whom some Men call the Church nor a General Council which no doubt is the most natural representative of the Universal Church doth not pretend that they can change Religion Our Saviour left our Religion intire and the Apostles left all things so plain which he directed that no power under Heaven can add to or take from that body of Religion which they commended to all Christians nor can it be more reasonably imagined that God will suffer any Christian state to make such an alteration than that the Universal Church shall fall away from being Christian but if Christianity were deposited with one Church-man or any body of Church-men we have too much reason to apprehend what would become of it by the progress Arianisme once and other Heresies too made in the World by possessing many great and learned Men even of the Fathers themselves So that we may say that the purity of Christian Religion hath been in truth preserved by the piety of Princes with the advice and assistance of their National and Ecclesiastical Councils more than by any spiritual authority Religion it self then must not cannot be changed but the advancement of it the information in it the exercise and practice by which it is best to be made manifest cannot be so well provided for as by that supreme soveraign authority to which God hath intrusted the peace and prosperity of a Nation which best knows how to establish such formes and ceremonies and circumstances in what pertains to Religion as are most agreeable to the nature and inclination and disposition of a people A conformity in humours and in manners is a great introduction to conformity in Religion and will not suffer the pride and affectation and singularity of any man to contradict the order established This Soveraign Authority knows best how to preserve Peace in which the being of a Nation consists and how to reform errors which are grown and prevent those which are growing by such ways as may not disturb that peace and such errours as are grown too obstinate are too deep rooted to be pulled up without shaking the whole peace of the Kingdom he will let alone drawing by degrees such nourishment from it as most cherishes it until a fitter season for the intire cure of it No Reformation is worth the charge of a Civil War Nor was it a light reproach which Seneca charged upon Sylla Qui patriam durioribus remediis quam pericula erant sanavit The Remedy was worse than the Disease and God knows Christianity hath paid very dear for the too hasty and passionate application of remedies to very confessed diseases when the disease was not ripe for the remedy nor the remedy proportioned to the disease State surgery cannot be used with too much caution nor are the wounds and sores of it cured at once or with one kind of medicine but the lenitives and corrosives must be applied successively and if the first will do it there cannot be too little used of the latter No sore is so ill cured as that which is hastily cured There is no necessity nor convenience that the outward exercise and forms of Religion be the same in all climates and in all Countries Nay it is very necessary that it be different according to the natures and customes of the people It would be very incongruous where genuflexion is neither the posture of reverence or devotion to introduce a command for kneeling and there are many particulars worthy of the same consideration They do equally mistake who believe that the out-works of Religion must be equally with the same passion guarded and preserved as the walks themselves that no form or ceremony or circumstance in Religion may not be altered or parted with more than the faith it self and they who would be always mending and altering and reforming according to every model description they meet with as a thing indifferent and only to please the fancies of men where there is no indifference there may be alterations made by and according to the wisdom of the Government and as the good Order and peace of the Nation requires and with the same gravity and deliberation as all other mutations and provisions are made but there must be out-works still and such as may secure the walls from rude approaches every fanciful Engineer must not demolish the out-works upon pretence they are too high or too irregular nor must the decency of the prospect so much transport others as not to suffer the least alteration in them though thereby the walls would be the better garded No one Classis of men will dispassionately weigh all necessary consideration in this matter but that authority which must provide for the publick peace is the most competent provider for this branch of it It is no irreverence to the purest times to believe that in the first plantation of Christian Religion I speak not of infusion of Christian Religion into the Apostles and the inspiration by the Holy Ghost but of the plantation of it by the Apostles and those who succeeded them by the strength of their reason and the powerful effects of their lives and actions the same method and order and application was used and observed as is in other Plantations The Sun and the Soil are first consulted and husbandry practised accordingly in the sowing of Seeds or setting of Plants and that husbandry altered and improved according to seasons and upon observation and experience what is most like to advance the Plantation If ever the Spaniard loses the West Indies which it is probable enough he will do it will be by his positive and rigorous adhering to the same rules which were most prudently established by Philip the Second upon the first conquest of that Empire and under which the Infant Plantation prospered exceedingly and not admitting any such material alterations since as would produce more benefit and advantage now than the other did then and which time and the people will make if the policy of the Government do not first introduce it and then it is very hazardous that the presumption of doing it will shake off that authority that should have done it It may be observed in the
Plantation of Christianity that where the age and the people were most inclined to superstition which in the first conversion and growth of Religion they were not disposed to at least to that worship and reverence which shortly after degenerated into superstition there was least care taken to introduce Forms and Ceremonies into the Church but when prophaneness broke in as a torrent and the lives of Christians discredited the doctrine of Christ and the power of Princes was found necessary to reform the manners of the Church such Forms and Ceremonies were brought into the exercise of Religion as were judged most like to produce a reverence into the professors towards it and to manifest that reverence in providing whereof General Councils medled very little knowing very well that they could not be the same in all places and that every State and Kingdom knew best what ways and means were most like to contribute to the general end the reverence for Religion and sure there cannot be too intent a care in Kings and Princes to preserve and maintain all decent Forms and Ceremonies both in Church and State which keeps up the veneration and reverence due to Religion and the Church of Christ and the duty and dignity due to Government and to the Majesty of Kings in an age when the dissoluteness of manners and the prophaneness and pride of the people too much inclines them to a contempt of Religion to a neglect of order and to an undervaluing and contending with the most Soveraign authority That the Secular power cannot provide for Ecclesiastical Reformations because Kings and Princes are not qualified to perform the offices and functions of Religion because they do not pretend to consecrate Bishops to ordain Priests or to administer the Sacraments is an argument to exclude them as well from the temporal as spiritual jurisdiction in the determination of matters of right between private men in the punishment of the most enormous crimes and offences Justice must be administred according to the established rules of the Law and not the will and inclination of the Iudge and it cannot be presumed that Kings can be so well versed in the Laws and customs which must regulate the proceedings of Justice and therefore may be excluded from the authority and power of judging the people and they are wonderful careful that you may not believe that they would bereave them of that inherent power and authority which they confess is committed to them alone but why the one and not the other since they can as well provide for the one as for the other is not so easie to be comprehended by any rules of right reason Kings provide for the good administration of justice by making learned men Iudges whose province it is to execute the Law in all cases and they provide for the advancement and preservation of Religion by making pious and learned men Bishops and use their advice and assistance in matters relating to the Church as he doth that of the Judges in cases pertaining to the Law and as he doth other Counsellors in such things as have an immediate dependance upon the Wisdom of State and both Bishops and Iudges are bound to render an account of their actions to Kings who have intrusted them and if they have been corrupt in the discharge of their several Offices they are equally liable to the Kings displeasure and to such punishments as the Laws have provided for such enormities which are inflicted upon them by the Kings authority And as no foreign power can be so competent as the King 's to administer this Justice since it must either controul it or be controuled by it so it is no easie matter for the Pope to prove himself a more spiritual Person than Kings are who have been in all Ages thought to have somewhat of the Priest and the Prophet by their very Office whereas some Popes have been pure Lay-men when they have been chosen to that Supreme office which is all the qualification they have to be more Ecclesiastical after and very many have been chosen Popes who never were Bishops which is not a necessary qualification for that dignity every Deacon-Cardinal being as capable to be elected Pope as the Priest and Bishop Cardinal and he that was a Bishop before consecrates no Bishops himself after he is Pope but that function is performed by other Bishops by vertue of his Commission or Bull and the same may as regularly be done by Bishops by vertue of Kings Commissions in their several Kingdoms otherwise it would be in the power of Popes to extinguish the function of Bishops in any Princes Dominions and therefore the French Ambassador declared in his Masters name to Innocent the Tenth that if he persisted in the refusal to make Bishops in Portugal upon that King's nomination they should chuse a Patriarch of their own who should supply that defect But God be thanked that senseless usurpation and exemption of the Clergie from the common justice of Nations is pretty well out of countenance and since the Republick of Venice so notoriously baffled Paul the Fifth upon that very point other Kings and Princes have chastised their own Clergie for transcendent crimes without asking leave of his Holiness or treating them in any other manner than they do their ordinary Malefactors For the unity proposed and professed by us in the Creed I believe one holy Catholick and Apostolick Church if it be well considered in what time that Creed was made which is not yet defined or determined by any Church and if it had been made by the Apostles themselves according to the fancy of some men that every one of the Apostles should contribute his Article it would then be Canonical Scripture which it is not pretended to be yet I think it is agreed by most learned men that it was framed in the infancy of Christianity and in or very soon after the time of the Apostles themselves and then it can have no other signification than Credo Sanctam Apostolicam Ecclesiam esse Catholicam which was a necessary Article at that time when the believing that the Church was to be universal and to consist equally of Gentiles as well as Iews was one of the most difficult points of Christianity and most opposed and for the Confirmation whereof the Apostles took most pains after they were all reconciled to it themselves and as it could have no other sence then so the restraining it to any one Church now or to make it serve for a distinction between Churches and Nations and to produce a separation between them must be very unnatural if any sence at all To conclude then this discourse of unity I know not how Mr. Cressy can refuse to submit to that good rule and determination that S. Gregory long since gave upon the third Interrogation administred to him by Austin the Monk Cum una sit fides cur sunt Ecclesiarum diversae consuetudines altera consuetudo Missarum
that he says is not to be imputed to want of authority in the Pope but to the unruliness of mens passions and pride and I say it serves the Doctor 's turn if his authority be not such as can curb and suppress the unruliness of the passions and pride of his own Subjects He will not understand how the Doctor can say that the Church of England makes no Articles of Faith but such as have testimony and approbation of the whole Christian World of all Ages and are acknowledged to be such by Rome it self and in other things she requires subscription to them not as Articles of Faith but as inferiour truths which she expects submission to in order to her peace and tranquillity Mr. Cressy is the only man alive that can find obscurity in this clause and I confess his exception to it is so obscure that I will rather rely upon the Readers understanding of the most exact plainness of it than inlarge my self in any explanation and I wish that he could say as much for the Church of Rome that it makes no Article of Faith but such as have the testimony and approbation of the whole Christian World of all Ages our complaint is that he multiplies articles of faith to that degree that he will not suffer us to be saved for believing all that most Christians believed for a thousand years together without the least doubt of their Salvation nor will he yet let us know the full extent he would have our faith reach to for we are no less obliged to submit to what he or his Successors shall declare hereafter to be matter of faith than to what is at present contained in the whole Canons of the Council of Trent which makes it absolutely necessary for the peace of Conscience as well as the peace of Kingdoms to protest against and as far as in us lies to restrain that exorbitant authority but of all arguments it is a most pleasant one that if the Church of England believes nothing as of faith but what the Popes and Church of Rome do likewise believe Therefore it follows that the Church of Rome notwithstanding its Idolatry Fanaticisme c. failes in no necessary point of faith which would be true if it added nothing to that confessed faith that must destroy it He then involves himself in his old circle of the Churches authority and of that Churches being the Church of Rome and of the residence of that authority being in the Person of the Pope which whosoever refuses to submit to must be an Heretick to all which enough hath been said before nor can I enlarge upon it without saying somewhat that I have said before which I have no mind to do We come now to the Seventh and Eighth Chapters concerning Penance c. upon which I shall enlarge the less because the Church of England is so far from condemning Confession or Penance that it uses and commends both and upon Confession always satisfaction is enjoyned there as much as in the Church of Rome it is true that with us it is not so positively enjoyned that is men are not compelled to it nor are those forms used in ours or those interrogatories administred by which those secrets are extorted from Men and Women which they would willingly conceal and which may lawfully be concealed as in their Church but Penitents are lest to their own liberty and their own method of drawing such information and comfort from their Confessors as they believe most useful to them which was the original end of Confession and from which very many good Catholicks believe there is at present too great a deviation God forbid the integrity and piety of any Church should be suspected much less condemned for the evil livers who remain within the pale of it No Church hath ever yet nor any will ever be but the triumphant without abundance of them yet it being the principal end and the most manifest perfection of Religion to introduce an innocence of life and a sincerity of manners into all those who profess it all Churches cannot too severely affect that Discipline which hath the greatest operation upon the lives and actions of their Children whether there are not some corruptions creeped into the common practice of auricular Confession whether the ordinary customary Confessors are not too remiss or over curious in examining and consequently in informing their Penitents or too easie and perfunctory in their absolutions will not become me to determine but Mr. Cressy well knows that very many learned and pious Catholicks do publickly lament the scandalous corruptions which have been practised and countenanced in that vital part of their Religion Who those Apostates from the Catholick Church are who have left their Monasteries out of carnal liberty and carnal lusts I am not at all informed but if they are so carnally minded I doubt some of them may be instructed by him to ask him how he forgot what he had formerly believed and whether he was in a moment inspired to answer to a new Catechisme full of new Articles of Faith If conscience hath had no influence upon them they have been very weak and not Roman Catholicks enough to be tempted by the Woman since they might have had the full use of her with much more good husbandry and less guilt without leaving their Monasteries for it is a ruled and a vowed case by most if not all their Casuists that fornication is a less sin than marriage and the reason they give is that the last is living in perpetual adultery Whoever hath lived in those places which are most inhabited by Religious Men is very little conversant with the Catholick same if he doth believe the major part of Religious Men to be enough mortified against that liberty though no doubt very many of them have subdued the temptation and it will not only be charity but common justice to think that those Apostates over whom Mr. Cressy so much infults have been governed by their Conscience since it was hardly possible they could be invited by the Woman having enough of that Sex at their devotion without the obligation and impediment of marriage and till Mr. Cressy informs us why Monasteries are better Schools of Holiness and Devotion than our Colledges are whose Discipline is as severe admitting cleanliness be to be preferred before slovenlines and doctrine much stricter enough hath been already said for their vindication and need not be repeated I think I understand the excuse that Mr. Cressy makes for the notorious transgressions which have been in the matter of confession and absolution in reference to which he says the Doctor is not ignorant that not very long since among several dangerous positions collected out of some modern Casuists such scandalous relaxations in administring the Sacrament of Penance had a principal place all which were not only condemned by the Bishops of France almost in every Diocess but also a Book the Author of which
think never saw that excellent Person to take upon them to asperse a Noble man of the most Prodigious learning of the most exemplar manners and singular good nature of the most unblemished integrity and the greatest Ornament of the Nation that any Age hath produced with the Character of a Socinian Mr. Cressy well knows that before that time of his Journey into Ireland in the Year One thousand six hundred thirty eight that Noble Lord had perused and read over all the Greek and Latine Fathers and was indefatigable in looking over all Books which with great expence he caused to be transmitted to him from all parts and so could not have been long without Mr. Dallies Book if Cressy's presenting it to him had not given him opportunity to have raised this scandal upon his memory nor could that Book have been so grateful to him if he had not read the Fathers For Mr. Chillingworth if Mr. Cressy had not been very wary in saying any thing that might redound to the honour of any of the present Prelates he cannot but know that the present Arch-Bishop of Canterbury had first reclaimed him from his doubtings and they were no more nor had he ever declared himself a Catholick except being at S. Omers amounts to such a Declaration before ever he was sent for by Arch-Bishop Laud and I am very much deceived which I think I am not in that particular if Chillingworth's Book against Mr. Knott was not published before the time of Cressy's Journey in thirty eight into Ireland and I know had been perused by him and therefore Mr. Dallies Book could not interrupt him in his study of the Fathers nor induce him to fix his mind upon Socinian grounds which now serves his turn to reproach all men and the Church of England it self for refusing to believe his miracles or to submit to that authority to whose blind guiding he hath lazily given up himself and all his faculties Yet he does so much honour to those grounds that he does confess that they obstructed a good while his entrance into the Catholick Church the contrary whereof I know to be true as much as negative can be true and that he never thought of entring into the Religion he now professes till long after the death of the Lord Falkland and Mr. Chillingworth nor till the same rebellious power that drove the King out of the Kingdom drove him likewise from the good preferments which he enjoyed in the Church and then the necessity and distraction of his fortune together with the melancholick and irresolution in his nature prevailed with him to bid farewell to his own reason and understanding and to resign himself to the conduct of those who had a much worse than his If the having read Socinus and the commending that in him which no body can reasonably discommende in him and the making use of that reason that God hath given a man for the examining of that which is most properly to be examined by reason and to avoid the weak arguments of some men how superciliously soever insisted upon or to discover the fallacies of others be the definition of a Socinian the party will be very strong in all Churches but if a perfect detestation of all those Opinions against the Person and Divinity of our Saviour or any other doctrine that is contrary to the Church of England and the Church of England hath more formally condemned Socinianism than any other Church hath done as appears by the Canons of One thousand six hundred and forty can free a man from that reproach as without doubt it ought to do I can very warrantably declare that that unparallel'd Lord was no Socinian nor is it possible for any man who is a true Son of the Church of England to be corrupted with any of those Opinions But in truth if Mr. Cressy hath that Prerogative in Logick as to declare men to be Socinians from some propositions which he calls Principles which in his judgment will warrant those deductions though he confesses he does not suspect the Doctor will approve such consequences yet he is confident with all his skill he cannot avoid them that is he is a Socinian before he is aware of it and in spight of his teeth this is such an excess in the faculty of arguing as must make him a dangerous Neighbour and qualifies him excellently to be a Commissioner of the Inquisition who have often need of that kind of subtilty that will make Heresies which they cannot find All this invention is to perswade his new friends of that which they call the old Religion that his old Friend's Religion is new that they have no reverence for antiquity no regard for the Authority of the Fathers and only make use of their natural reason to find out a new Religion for themselves whereas in truth whoever will impartially and dispassionately make the enquiry shall find that there is no one substantial controversie between the Roman and the Church of England but what is matter of Novelty and hath no foundation in Antiquity and that the Fathers are more diligently read and studied in our Church than they are in theirs and more reverence is paid to them by us than by them though neither they nor we nor any other Christian Church in the World do submit or concur in all that the Fathers have taught who were never all of one mind and therefore may very lawfully have their reasons examined by the reasons of other men This that I say concerning the reading and the reverence paid to the Fathers ought to be believed till they can produce one Prelate or Member of the Church of England who hath ever used such contemptuous words of the Fathers Ego ut ingenuè fatear plus uno summo Pontifici crederem in his quae fidei mysteria tangunt quà m mille Augustinis Ieronymis Gregoriis c. Credo enim scio quòd summus Pontifex in his quae fidei sunt non posse errare quoniam authoritas determinandi quae ad fidem spectant in Pontifice residet which are the words of Cornelius Mussus an Italian Bishop and much celebrated amongst them for his extraordinary learning in Epis. ad Rom. cap. 14. pa. 606. Michael Medina a man as eminent in the Council of Trent as any who sate there in the debate whether a Bishop was Superiour to a Presbyter jure Ecclesiastico or jure Divino when they who sustained the former alledged Saint Ierome and S. Augustine to support their opinion Medina said aloud Non mirum esse si isti nonnulli alii Patres re nondum eo tempore illustratâ in eam haeresim incidissent How would Mr. Cressy and his Friends insult if a Doctor of the Church of England should publish in Print by the authority of the Church Illud asserimus quo juntores eo perspicaciores esse Doctores contra hanc quam objectant multitudinem Respondemus inquit ex verbo
by taking away the strong supporters which have hitherto upheld it and erecting rotten or mouldering pillars in the place and all this benefit and advantage may be lost or prevented by his fond and unseasonable advertisement if the King and the Bishops have prudence enough to make good use of it by driving away or discountenancing such a perfidious and unskilful champion May they not from hence apprehend that as he came to them upon a sudden and unexpected so that he is upon thoughts of returning to the Church for which he hath so much care and entering into a kind of correspondence with his adversaries by giving good counsel how to behave himself better But how comes it to pass that this miserable Doctor who he yet seems to think may mean well to be so stupidly couzened and deceived that instead of complying with his engagement to defend the Church he hath betrayed her and the whole cause to all the Fanatick Sects which have separated from her and with most horrible cruelty sought her destruction and with her the ruine of Monarchy All this tragical demolishing of foundations consists in this that he allows all sober enquirers to be for themselves judges of the sence of Scripture in necessaries and judges likewise what points are necessary This saying of his hath betrayed the cause of his Church and left her in a most forlorn condition tottering upon foundations and principles which to Mr. Cressy's certain knowledge were not extant at least not known in England thirty years since Let it be in the first place observed and it is sure worthy to be observed that this most pernicious proposition which hath in such an instant brought the Church of England into such a tottering condition is not made use of nor so much as taken notice of by any of those enemies of hers the Presbyterians Anabaptists or Independents who have been so vigilant and industrious so many years to make her totter and yet now the work is so near done to their hands by a secret friend who is the more able to do them good by his not pretending any affection towards them neither of them will put their cause upon that proposition nor apply it to their own designs and therefore it is possible that it may not be altogether so dangerous to the Church as he would have it supposed to be and of which it is probable he would not have given notice if he had in truth thought it to be dangerous In the next place let us examine whether the Doctor himself cannot make another and better interpretation of his own words than his implacable enemy hath done all good Physicians compound their Antidotes according to the nature and malignity of the poyson that their patients have swallowed Now the poyson that Mr. Cressy and his lurking brethren usually bait their traps with and by which they catch most of their prey is Their confident denouncing damnation against those and all those who are not of their mind that is who are not received into the Church of Rome and not intirely submit to all her dictates That the Scripture consists in dumb letters which cannot declare its own meaning and therefore is liable to be misinterpreted by the wit of bold and presumptuous men as the founders of all Heresies have been and therefore they can only be safe who receive and conform themselves to that interpretation of Scripture that the Church in the custody of which it is deposited hath given and declared to be Orthodox That that Church is the Church of Rome where there constantly resides a Supreme Magistrate who in case any new opinions shall start up to the prejudic of Religion which have not been enough convinced by former definitions of the Church hath full authority committed to him by our Saviour to declare and determine what is agreeable or contrary to the sence of the Scripture since it cannot be supposed that our Saviour would constitute an officer and not indue him with all necessary faculties or not qualifie him sufficiently for the discharge of so great a trust and from hence they resolve that the greatest danger of damnation is not from the commission of those sins against which the spirit of God hath so plainly denounced it but in an obstinate presumption in contradicting the opinions or directions of the Catholick Church and refusing to submit to the authority of the Vicar of Christ who hath the unquestionable power to bind and to loose to pardon and to condemn sins having the Keys of Heaven and of Hell and therefore whilst they will depend upon him and put themselves under his protection they cannot but be safe This is the common poyson which these men carry about them to administer to those who they find most like to be deluded and in the composition of it there are some ingredients according to the humour of the compounder which cannot be according to the Catholick prescription since that Soveraign power of their Supreme Magistrate the Pope is not nor ever will be acknowledged to be an essential part of the Roman Catholick Religion Let us now see what Antidote the Doctor hath provided for the prevention or expulsion of this poyson to confirm men in their absolute confidence and dependence upon the Scripture the force and virtue whereof that poyson would enervate he says That it is repugnant to the nature of the design to the wisdom and goodness of God to give an infallible assurance to persons in writing his will for the benefit of mankind if those writings may not be understood by all persons who sincerely endeavour to know the meaning of them in all such things as are necessary for their Salvation and consequently there can be no necessity supposed of any infallible society of men either to attest or explain those writings amongst Christians and this and no more than this is the sence of that which contains all that confusion which Mr. Cressy thinks must bring confusion upon his own Church as into that of the Roman and from thence the Doctor proceeds to shew how incompetent a Magistrate they have chosen to determine all differences in Religion which he proves by such arguments as are very natural for the proving thereof and for the answering avoiding whereof we shall be compelled anon to take notice of Mr. Cressy's admirable artifice and dexterity Now if the Doctor hath for want of skill in discerning consequences made choice of an improper medium to prove that which he hath a mind to prove God forbid that there should be such Tragical effects to attend that argumentation as the destruction of Church and State and it would be as unreasonable to condemn an argument that he who uses it thinks to his purpose because it was never used till within thirty Years One man says that the Scripture is so very difficult that no man can understand it without repairing to the advice of an adversary who will tell him the interpretation
the arms of such a Church that seems to believe or without believing to countenance such an imposture or any other thing contrary to common sense and repugnant to all motions of Piety Mr. Cressy will not part with the Doctor without kindly putting him in mind of his Souls health and that being a genuine English Protestant he will find an Excommunication denounced ipso facto against all such as shall in the manner there expressed openly oppose any thing contained in the Nine and thirty Articles in the Book of Common-Prayer and of Ordinations of Bishops and Priests c. which Excommunication he says is there declared to remain in force till the Offender repent of his wicked errour which he ought to revoke Having told him this he wishes him to reflect upon his Book called Irenicum long since published by him and comparing it with the Constitutions of the Church ratified with an Excommunication and thereupon to ask his conscience whether he hath not incurred that Excommunication since his guilt having been publick and notorious no repentance no retractation appears c. He foresees that himself who hath so often subscribed to those constitutions and so often taken those Oaths which accompanie them will be thought liable to that Excommunication having so apparently renounced all the obligations and shewed no other repentance than in a constant reviling and malice towards the Church in which he received his Baptism and therefore to clear himself from reproach he declares that the Doctor cannot doubt of the validity or legality of that Excommunication he for his part may so the Doctor is to look only to himself But if Mr. Cressy had not been in great hast as it cannot be denied that he hath used great expedition in his conclusion he might have thought himself obliged for the more full conviction of the Doctor to have alledged those particulars in his Irenicum which have involved him in that Excommunication and then that that Book was published by him after he had subscribed to the Thirty nine Articles c. neither of which he hath done nor I believe will ever be able to do I confess I have not the Irenicum now in my reach and therefore must only resort to Mr. Cressy himself for a vindication and methinks he contributes very fairly to it in a testimony he gives him pa. 100 without any purpose of good will towards him where he says It cannot be denied but that the Doctor did not during the late calamities joyn in the clamour for destroying the Church he was no root and branch enemy but on the contrary generously undertook their defence and with great boldness told his then Masters in his Irenicum that though Episcopal Government and Ordinations as likewise Deans and Chapters which anciently were the Bishops Councils were not necessary nor perhaps convenient as matters then stood yet neither was their utter destruction they might if the state pleased be retained without sin in all which he believes he hath laid an indelible reproach upon the Doctor but I must tell him that he hath therein given a larger testimony of the Doctor 's courage and affection to the Church than all his revilings will be able to deface For a young Scholar who had then no obligation to the Church by Oaths or Subscriptions and knew little of the constitution of the Church of England to tell his Masters as he justly calls them who had newly Murthered their King and perswaded the People to believe that Bishops were therefore suppressed because they were Anti-christian that they might still be retained without sin was such a flat contradiction to the Doctrine they would have the People be taught that he shewed more courage in saying so than all the English Catholick Clergy ever expressed who owed as much Allegiance to the King or would be thought to owe as much as any of his other Subjects yet never wrote one line or published one Opinion against whatsoever the Rebels said or did He might well say that Episcopal Government and Ordination were not necessary as matters then stood in a Government whose foundation was laid in the most precious blood of the King and the most horrid Sacriledge and Murthers that were ever perpetrated by Christians and when no honest man would or could be made a Bishop But it is too much countenance to Mr. Cressy's unwarranted calumnies to take pains to absolve the Doctor from his aspersions who stands an object of reverence and esteem with all men who have either for the Church However such is Mr. Cressy's modesty that for the excellent performance of his task he desires no other Iudges but the Prelates of the Doctor 's own Church which could have been no excuse for me to interpose my poor opinion in the matter but when he so frankly calls upon any indifferent Reader to judge between them two whether with better success he hath defended the cause of the Church of England against the Church of Rome or he Mr. Cressy the cause of the Doctor 's own Church against himself I may hope that I may be looked upon as one of those indifferent Readers who is called upon or authorized by him to speak my opinion in the matter and upon that supposition I do assure him upon the reputation of an old Friend that he hath very much hurt his own Church in his very passionate and uncomely way of defending her and in seeming to look upon some very Excentrick Lives in the estimation of most learned Catholicks as essential parts of their Religion and to make such Miracles and Dreams and Apparitions the very foundations of the Romish faith which the most credulous in the Church do but believe are possible to be true and the wisest and most learned think never to have been and lastly in undertaking to answer a Book which upon his own or his Associates clamour was necessarily to be full of citations of Catholick Authors and Testimonies contrary to what he averred and without applying any answer to them to declare that he will not examine them nor cares whether they are true or false So that his whole Book consists in nothing else besides the petulant insolent language but finding fault with the method of the Doctor 's arguing and his making use of new and other Principles than have heretofore been insisted upon in arguments of this kind and leaves all the material parts of the Book unanswered which possibly may make his Superiours believe that he hath not performed the task they imposed upon him very laudably For the Doctor having solidly discharged all that can be expected from him he needs no such private and obscure testimony as mine which can do him no good but he hath the acknowledgement of the King himself and the Church whose worthy Champion he deserves to be esteemed and it is like he performs the work the better because Mr. Cressy and so many of his Associates are so much offended and do so