TRUE CANONICAL SCRIPTURES Here note 1. That our Religion hath its Essential parts And its Integral parts and Accidentals I. The Essentials of our Religion are contained in the Baptismal Covenant which is expounded in the CREED the LORDS PRAYER and the DECALOGUE as delivered and expounded by Christ and the Law of Nature II. Our Entire Religion in the Essentials Integrals and needful Accidentals is contained wholly in the Law of Nature and the Canonical Scriptures The Essentials are delivered down to us two wayes 1. In Scripture with the rest 2. By the sure tradition of the Vniversality of Christians in actual Baptizings and the daily profession of Christianity This is all the Protestants Religion If you fasten any other on us we deny it we own no other And none know What is my Religion that is What I take for the Rule of my holy Faith Love and Life so well as my self P. This is meer craft you will make that only which is past controversie among us to be Your Religion that so your Religion may be past controversie too R. It is such Craft as containeth that naked truth which we trust all our own salvation on I say that I have no other Religion And if you know better than I disprove me P. I disprove you three wayes I. Because the Name Protestant signifieth no such Religion but somewhat else lately taken up II. Because the Angustane Confession the thirty nine Articles and such like are by your selves called The Articles of your Religion III. Because all your Writings declare that besides these you hold all those controverted points which are contrary to that which you call Popery R. I pray you mark D. that he would perswade you that he knoweth my Religion better than I do my self What if I should pretend the like as to his Religion Were I to be believed P. No but if you have an odd Religion of your own that proveth it not to be the Protestant Religion R. Remember D. that I come not hither to perswade you to any other Religion than this which I have mentioned Let him talk as long as he will what is other mens opinions I perswade you to nothing but this to take Gods Law of Nature and the Scripture for your Religion Either this is Right or Wrong If Right fix here and I have done If Wrong let that be disputed But yet I open to you all his three deceits I. The name Protestant doth not signifie our Religion but our Protesting against the Papists corruptions and additions I have no Religion but Christianity I am a Christian and that signifieth all my Religion I am a Catholick Christian that is of the Common Christian Faith and Church and not of any heretical dividing Sect And I am a Reformed Protestant Christian because I renounce Popery Therefore I rather say The Protestants than the Protestant Religion As if I were among Lepers If I say I am no Leper that signifieth not my Essence But if I say I am a Man and I am not a Leper I speak my Nature and my freedom from that disease So if I say I am a Christian Protestant I mean only that I am a Christian and no Papist or renouncing Popery as by the word Catholick I renounce all Sects and Schisms I tell you This is my meaning when I say I am a Protestant and can you tell my meaning better than my self II. And as to what he saith of the thirty nine Articles and other Church Confessions I answer None of these are our Religion in the sense now in question that is They are not taken by us to be the Divine Revealed-Rule of our Faith Love and Life which is our Religion now disputed of And that this is so I prove to you past all question For 1. Else should we have as many Religions as we have Church Confessions and should alter our Religion as oft as we alter our Confessions and our Religion should be as New as those Confessions All which the Protestants abhor 2. All those very Confessions themselves do assert that Gods Word is our only Religion and all mens Writings and Decrees are lyable to mistakes To pass by all the rest these are the words of our sixth Article Holy Scripture containeth all things Necessary to 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 faith or be thought Requisite or necessary to salvation What would you have more plain and full And in the Book of Ordination it is askt Are you perswaded that the Holy Scriptures contain sufficiently all doctrine required of necessity for eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ And are you determined out of the said Scriptures to instruct the people committed to your charge and to teach Nothing as required of necessity to eternal salvation but that which you shall be perswaded may be concluded and proved by the Scripture Is not this plain P. Why then do you call the thirty nine Articles the Articles of your Religion And what is their use And why are all required to subscribe them R. 1. Their Use is to signifie how the Conjunct Pastors who use them do understand the Holy Scriptures in those points And that partly for the satisfaction of all forreign Churches who may hear us accused of Heresie or Error and partly to be a hedge to the Doctrine of young Preachers to keep them from vending mistakes in the Churches and also to try the soundness of their understandings 2. The Confessions and Articles and Catechisms are our Religion as the Writings of Perron Bellarmine Suarez c. or many of these agreeing are the Roman Religion They are not the Divine Revelation and Rule of faith and practice to us But they are the expression of our own conceptions of the sense of several chief matters in that Rule or Revelation So that they are the Expression of our faith or Religion taken subjectively for acts and habits and not our objective Rule it self Our Sermons and Prayers are our Religion in this sense that is The Expression of our own Religious Conceptions And so are your Sermons and your Writings also to you But if this were our Rule of Faith and Life and so our Divine Objective Religion then we should be of as many Religions as we are several persons For every one hath his several Expressions And every new Sermon or Book or Prayer would be a new part of Religion And so with you also So that this doubt is past all doubt Our Confessions are but the expressions of our personal belief and not our Rule of Faith III. And as to your third pretence that we have other Articles as opposite to Popery I answer Our Religion as a Rule of Faith and Worship is one thing And our Rejecting all Corruptions and Additions is another E. g. My Religion is that our God is only the true God
and his own General Councils The Kings of France Spain c. may easily prove that they have more power to cast out the Pope than he hath to cast out half Christs Sacrament And they may better forbid their own Subjects to obey a forreign Usurper than he can forbid all the world to obey Christ 7. And for all this the wit of man can hardly devise What Reason they have to do it What point of their Religion What Interest of their own did engage them to it Unless it be their Interest to shew that they are Above Christ and the Scripture I do not yet discern their reason 8. And yet they have with Resolution and obstinacy persisted herein divers hundreds of years and denyed the requests of Emperours Nobles and great part of several Kingdoms in this point This and the leaving out the second Commandment seem to be of purpose to shew that they are above the Maker of the Ten Commandments and of the Gospel How long Lord shall Tyranny oppress the Nations of the Earth and the Honour and Domination and Wills of Rebels prevail to tread down Truth and Godliness and keep the notice of thy salvation from the sinful miserable world whilest yet we daily pray by thy Command that Thy Name may be Hallowed Thy Kingdome come and Thy Will be done on Earth as it is done in Heaven Whether the Pope be the Antichrist meant in the Scripture by that name or not you see that my passing it by doth shew my cautelousness in resolving as Zanchy and others before me have done because I am confessedly so far unstudyed or ignorant of the sense of the Revelations and some other Scripture Prophecies as that I must leave such cases to such as Bishop Downame and others that have deeper insight into them Every man should be best at that which he hath most studyed But I must needs say that though I take it to be indispensible duty to keep up all due charity to all professed Christians such instances as these which I have here opened do utterly disable me from confuting that man who shall assert that this pretended Vicar of Christ and King or Monarch of the world and so King of Kings and Lord of Lords is an abominable Usurper and insolent Traytor against God and the true King and Head of the Universal Church How long will Princes and Prelates Learned and Unlearned be deluded by him or fear Power And when shall he be restrained from hindering Christs Gospel and the Peace and Concord of the Christian world FINIS Johns Nov. Repr p. 426. Protestants formally such have not enough to be brought to the unfeigned Love of God above all things and special Love to his servants and unfeigned willingness to obey him I deny you have any certain knowledge or feeling that you love God or his servants or willingness to obey c. Knot against Chillingworth Ch. 2. p. 122. In no one doctrine Protestants would seem more unanimously to agree than in this That all things necessary to salvation are contained evidently in Scripture which they hold as the only foundation of the whole structure of their Faith and Religion Note this Confession See Dr. Holden Analys fidei Li. 1. c. 3. Lett. 1. He that would know what stress we lay on Tradition as the Medium may see it fully in my Reasons of Christ Relig. And Dr. Holden is more for us than for the Papists Cap. 3. Q. Was it from the Church that the first Church received it Or was it not the same Divine Religion which the first Church whether Council or Practicers received without the Tradition of Council or Practicers If so this cannot be essential to Religion If the Apostles words were to be believed their proved Writings are to be believed And their Writings were proved theirs before a General Council or Universal Practice witnessed it Even by each Church and person that received any Epistle from any one of them So that if the Doctors will but differ in their Expositions the Scripture is no more the sure Word of God or to be believed by Catholick faith Of the Pope without a General Council Mark then that it may be de fide divina though not of Catholick necessity without the proposal of Council or universal practice Johns Nov. Rep. p. 19. of the explication of Terms Know you not that Divines are divided what are the points necessary to be believed explicitely necessitate medii Some and those the more antient hold that the explicite belief of God of the whole Trinity of Christ his Passion Resurrection c. are necessary necessitate medii Others among the recentiors that no more than the belief of the Deity and that he is the rewarder of our works is absesolutely necessary with that necessary to be explicitely believed He doth better interpret the distinction of Explicite and Implicite on another occasion in another sense Holden l. 1. c. 9. p. 169. Queret an teneatur quispiam aâ— internum Divinae fidei actum quem nec semper fortasse in eius potestate situm novimus Quamdiu sane arbitretur quispiam hujusmodi fidei actum lumini naturali rationi oppositum contrarium esse nequaquam poterit ad illum eliciendum astringi Aquin. p. 3. q. 75. a. 5. ad 3. Fides non est contra sensum sed est dâ— eo ad quod sensus non attingit But doth not sense say Here is Bread and Wine Vid. Aquin. 3. q. 82. a. 7. c. Vid. Aquin. 3. q. 69. a. 9. Vid. Aquin. 3. q. 82. a. 8. 2 Cor. 12.12 Rom. 15.19 Act. 14.3 15.12 Matth. 21.15 So they do by forbidding to eat Flesh in Lent And yet say they eat Christs flesh in Lent When Irenaeus cited by Occumenius Com. in 1 Peâ— c. 3. bringeth in Blandina proving to the Heathens that Christians did not eat flesh and drink blood in the Eucharist because that they use even to abstain for exercise sake from Lawful flesh See my More Reasons for the Christian Religion and the Lord Herbert de Veritate Apply this to Mr. Johnsons Rejoynder on this Point and you will see his Vanity
it me with such evidence as may make it indeed my own The Lord Unite us by Truth Love and Humility Amen Septemb. 1. 1673. Richard Baxter THE CONTENTS PART I. WHat is the Protestants Religion and what the Papists pag. 1. Chap. 1. The occasion of the Conference with an humbling consideration to staggerers ibid. Chap. 2. The Conditions of the Conference p. 6. Chap. 3. What is the Religion of the Protestants Of the name Protestant The Augustane and other Confessions The thirty nine Articles The Essentials of Christianity to be distinguished from the Integrals and Accidentals p. 9. Chap. 4. What is the Papists Religion out of Veron Davenport c. p. 25. PART II. Fourteen Principles in which the Papists and Protestants seem agreed by which the Protestant Religion is by the Papists confessed and maintained to be all true p. 40. PART III. Twenty five Charges against Popery enumerated to be all in order proved as Reasons why no one that hath Religion or Sense and Reason should turn Papist p. 61. PART IV. The first Charge made good viz. against Transubstantiation In which Popery is fully proved to be the shame of Humane Nature contrary to SENSE REASON SCRIPTVRE and TRADITION or the Judgement of the antient and the present Church devised by Satan to expose Christianity to the Scorn of Infidels p. 75. Chap. 1. The first Reason to prove that there is Bread after the Consecration from the certainty of the Intellects Perception by the means of sense ibid. Twenty Reasons against the denying of common senses p. 77. Chap. 2. The Papists Answers to all this confuted p. 88. Chap. 3. The second Argument against Transubstantiation from the contradictions of it p. 96. Chap. 4. The third Argument from the certain falshood of their multitudes of feigned Miracles in Transubstantiation Thirty one Miracles in it enumerated with Twenty aggravations of those Miracles p. 99. Chap. 5. The Minor proved viz. That these Miracles are false or feigned p. 110. Chap. 6. Arg. 4. Transubstantiation contrary to the express Word of God p. 117. Chap. 7. Arg. 5. All these Miracles are proofless yea the Scripture abundantly directeth us otherwise to expound This is my Body p. 123. Chap. 8. Arg. 6. Transubstantiation nullifieth the Sacrament p. 128. Chap. 9. The Novelty of Transubstantiation as contrary to the faith of the antient Christians And the singularity contrary to the Judgement and Tradition of most of the Christian world p. 132. Chap. 10. The second part of the Controversie That it is not Christs very flesh and blood into which the Bread and Wine is turned p. 146. Chap. 11. The Conclusion The Scandal of our difference removed Whether the falshood of one Article prove the Papists foundation false Whether it do so by the Protestants Whether Papists have any more Infallibility than others The necessity of discerning the Essentials of Christianity The distinction of Explicite and Implicite faith considered How come so many Princes Nobles Learned men and whole Nations to be Papists All Christians besides Papists are of one Church though of many opinions How come so many among us at home of late inclinable to Popery What hope of Concord with the Papists How to help them off their Councils Snares in the point of Transubstantiation Of their denying the Cup to the Laity p. 152. Reader I Hope the Printers Errata are not many and I am discouraged from gathering them because I see men had rather err themselves and calumniate the Author than take notice of them So hath Mr. Danvers done by me in a Book against Infant Baptism where as an Introduction to abundance of mistakes in History he abuseth his Reader by several scraps of a Book of mine so curtail'd as to be insufficient to signifie the sense And among them feigneth me to write Chr. Direct p. 3. pag. 885. l. 13. to Institute Sacraments as that which man may do instead of Nor to Institute Sacraments and so maketh his credulous flock to believe that I assert that very thing which I write against Though the place was markt with a Star in the Errata and the Reader desired specially to Correct it But such dealing is now grown so common with such men that we must bear it as the effect of their disease PART I. What is the Protestants Religion and what the Papists CHAP. I. The occasion of the Conference D. SIR I am come to crave your help in a matter of great importance to me I was bred a Protestant but the Discourses of some Roman Catholicks have brought me into great doubts whether I have not been all this while deceived And though I cannot dispute the case my self with you I desire you to dispute it in my hearing with a Catholick Priest whom I shall bring to you R. With all my heart But let me first ask you a few Questions Quest 1. Did you ever understand what the Protestants Religion is D. I take it to be the 39 Articles Liturgie and Government of the Church of England R. No wonder if you be easily drawn to doubt of that Religion which you no better understand Can you hold it and not know what it is Quest 2. Do you know what it is to be a Christian D. It is to believe in Christ and to Love and obey Him Our Baptism is our Christening R. Very true And in your Baptism you are Dedicated and Vowed to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost renouncing the Lusts of the Flesh the World and the Devil Quest 3. And have you been a true Christian and lived according to this Vow Have you obeyed God more than the desires of your flesh Have you preferred the Kingdom of Heaven before all the pleasures honours and riches of this world Have you sincerely submitted to the healing saving Doctrine Law and example of Christ and to the sanctifying motions of his Holy Spirit And have you lived soberly righteously and Godlily in the world and made it your care and business to deny your self and mortifie all fleshly inordinate desires as it is the care of sensual men to gratifie them D. I have had my faults as all men have but I hope none can say but I have lived honestly towards all And if I have been faulty in drinking sports or gaming it hath been to no ones injury but my own R. I ask you not whether you are a sinner For so are all men But whether you are a truly Penitent Converted sinner and whether yet you are true to your Baptismal Vow and Covenant Can your Conscience say that you Love and Trust and obey God and your Redeemer before all the world and that you love not Pleasure Riches and Honour more than God and Holiness and Heaven and that it is more of the care and business of your life to Know and Love and serve God better and to make sure of your salvation than to please your flesh or prosper in the world In a word Do you heartily and in
your practice take God for your God even for your All and Christ for your Teacher King and Saviour and the Holy Ghost for your Sanctifier turning in heart and life from the Devil the world and the sinful pleasures of the flesh This is the question which I desire you to answer But I will prevent your answer lest you mistake my purpose and think I make my self your Confessour and I will tell you why I ask the question Either you have thus Kept your Baptismal Vow by a Godly life or else you have broken it by worldliness and sensuality c. If you have kept it and are a truly Godly person you have resolved your own doubt and absolutely confuted Popery already For no honest man and true Christian can possibly turn Papist without gross contradiction D. How prove you that R. Most easily I pray you do but mark 1. It is their principal Doctrine that the Pope is the Head of the Universal Church on earth and that the Church subjected to him is the Universal Church and that out of that Church there is no salvation and that no one is a true member of Christ and his Church who is not a subject of the Pope 2. And they all confess that every one shall be saved that is a true Christian and keepeth his Baptismal Covenant and that Loveth God above all So that they must needs hold that none in the world but Papists do truly Love God keep that Covenant and are true Christians Now if you can know that you have the true Love of God and are true to your Baptism you must needs confess that Popery is false which saith that none Love God above all but Papists D. But what if I have not Loved God and obeyed him above my flesh R. I 'le tell you what followeth 1. It is no wonder if you forsake the Protestants Religion who never truly entertained it If your Heart and Life were not devoted unfeignedly to God you were no true Christian nor indeed had any true Religion at all And he that hath no Religion turneth from none which he truly had If you were never a true Christian you were never a true Protestant And then what wonder if you turn Papist For you have no experimental Knowledge of that Religion which you seem to forsake 2. And how could you expect better but that God should penally forsake you and give you over to believe deceits if you have dealt so falsly and deceitfully with him as to live to the world and flesh which you renounced and neglect that God and Saviour and sanctifier to whom you were so solemnly devoted And if you have been so treacherous and unwise as to prefer a bruitish transitory pleasure before Gods Love and the Joyes of Heaven 3. And what honour is it to the Church of Rome that none but Infidels and false-hearted hypocrites and perfidious breakers of their Covenant with God did ever turn to them If you turn Papist you confess that you were a wicked hypocrite before 4. But the chief thing which I would tell you is that turn up and down as oft as you will to this Church or that Church to this side or that side you will never be saved unless you become a holy serious mortified Christian As long as you love pleasures wealth and honour more than God and Holiness and Heaven you shall never be saved whether you be Papist or a professed Protestant It would make the heart of a Christian ake to see so many thousands cheated by the Devil to take this opinion or that opinion called the true faith and this side or that side called the true Church to be to them instead of a holy heavenly heart and life And how many thousands especially Papists that are truly of no Religion do dispute and plot and disquiet the world as for Religion To hear a prophane man swear that his Religion is right or that man to think to be saved for being of the true Church and faith whose heart was never set on Heaven but liveth in drunkenness lying idleness fornication and thinketh that the Priests absolution sets all right again Without true Holiness no man shall be saved what Church soever he joyn with and with it no man shall be damned For God cannot hate them that have his nature and Image D. Well sir I came not to dispute with you but to desire you to meet a Roman Catholick Priest that I may hear you both together R. I have the greater hopes of you because you have so much regard of your soul as to be willing to hear what can be said For most that turn to them never come to an impartial tryal but rashly follow the deceiver or stay till they are secretly hardened by false insinuations and then take on them to desire to hear both when they are first resolved to be gone But you must tell me what is the question that you desire should be disputed D. I would know whether the Papists or the Protestants be the True and safe Religion R. I undertake to give you that plain undenyable evidence for your resolution which should fully satisfie any reasonable man at least that professeth himself a Christian so be it you will perform these reasonable conditions 1. That you will be impartially willing to know the truth 2. That you will honestly resolve to Live according to it when you know it and to be True to the True Religion 3. That you will bring such a man to confer with me who will yield to the Reasonable Conditions of a disputant such as your Doubt and the nature of the matter doth notoriously require and not a Knave and studied Deceiver who will set himself purposely to hide the truth D. These conditions are so reasonable that I must not deny them CHAP. II. The Conditions of the Conference between a P. and R. and D. R. SIR I am desired by this person who is brought by some of you to doubt of our Religion to debate this Case with you in order to his satisfaction Whether the Papists or the Protestants be the True and Safe Religion P. That is too large a Question We cannot dispute of all our Religion at once I will begin with you about some one of the Articles of the Church of England or the Visibility of your Church in all Ages or the Resolution of your faith c. And this I will do only on these conditions 1. That you bring some express Text of Scripture which without your Interpretation Reasonings or Consequences doth assert that Article of yours which I shall accuse or contradict any Article of our faith which shall be questioned 2. Or if you will go from the express words to Reasoning that we keep to the strictest Rules of Logick and that you use nothing but Syllogism and that all be done in writing and not by word of mouth R. Neighbour D. you promised me to bring another kind of Disputant
The words could not come down to us without some to deliver them We have the Bible by Tradition and we have practical Tradition of Baptism and the Creed by it self and that in many languages where we are sure we have all the necessary sence But do you remember that this is Vniversal Tradition and not meer Roman Tradition such as is certain by moral Evidence even the consent of all that are yet of cross opinions and Interests as to matter of fact Historical Evidence and not the pretended certainty of a Pope and his favourites phanatically claiming a spirit of Infallibility But I am not now disputing with you I am only telling you that the Protestant Religion is nothing but Christianity and the Scriptures And all our Confessions are our Religion besides Consent but as our Sermons and Treatises are which vary as they are various expressions of mens various subjective faith while Gods word varyeth not P. If the Bible be your Religion then the Ceremonial Law of Moses is your Religion For that is part of the Bible R. You study what to say against another and never think how it concerneth your selves 1. Is not the Bible at least Part of your Religion You dare not deny it And is the Ceremonial Law of Moses therefore your Religion 2. I told you that as a perfect man hath hair and nails which are but Accidents so the Bible hath more than the Integrals of our Religion 3. The Ceremonies of Moses in that sense as now they are delivered to us in the Bible are parts or appurtenances of our Religion That is the historical narrative of those Abrogated Laws which now bind us not as Laws but tell us as the Prophesies what was heretofore and how Christ was fore-typified and what intimations of Gods will we may gather from the history And the abrogated Laws are no otherwise delivered to us and so we must use them P. If the ten Commandments be your Religion you must keep the Jewish seventh day Sabbath so that neither there can you fix R. The same answer will serve 1. The ten Commandments are no otherwise part of our Religion thâ—n they are of yours 2. They are a Law to us as delivered and expounded by Christ and in Nature and the seventh day is an abrogated part of Moses Law P. If the Creed be your Religion you must take the Article of Christs descent into Hell to be necessary to salvation R. 1. Is the Creed no part of your Religion As you answer so may we 2. I did not tell you that the Creed had no more than the Essentials I told you that all the Essence of Christianity is in the Baptismal Covenant And he that understandeth that understandeth it all And that the Creed the Lords Prayer and the Christian Decalogue are the exposition of it But the Exposition may have somewhat more than the Essentials 3. The Creed was not written first in English nor Latine And Christs descent to Hades is more needful to be believed than his descent to Hell as the word is commonly taken in English But to conclude remember 1. That I profess here to own and plead for no other Religion as we explained the word but Gods Law of Nature and Scripture 2. That I profess to perswade D. to no other And you cannot make me a Religion against my will CHAP. IV. What is the Papists Religion R. I Have plainly told you what my own and the Protestants Religion is viz. Nothing but Christianity contained Integrally in the holy Scriptures And the Essentials being the Baptismal Covenant explained in the Creed Lords prayer and Christian Decalogue are delivered to us both in the said Scriptures and by distinct Tradition which also hath brought down to us the Scripture it self Not a Tradition depending on the pretended Authority of the Roman Pope or party or on any other that shall pretend the like But that Historical Evidence of matter of fact which is surelier given us by all sorts of Christians taking in the Concord of many Hereticks Infidels and Enemies which evidence dependeth not on the credit of supernatural Revelation but on the natural credibility yea and certainty of such universal Circumstantiated Concordant testimony and is necessarily antecedent to the Belief of supernatural Revelations in the particulars as sight and hearing were in the auditors of Christ and the Apostles seeing these two Acts of Knowledge Whatever God saith is True and This God saith must necessarily go before our Belief or Trust that This is True because God saith it And so we run not in a circle and need not a supernatural faith for the founding of our first supernatural faith that is A first before the first Without fraud or obscurity this is our faith and Religion Now do you as honestly and plainly tell me What is Yours which D. must be perswaded to For I confess that I take it to be an unintelligible thing and despair that ever you give any man a certain notice what it is which may be truly called the Religion of your roman-catholick-Roman-Catholick-Church P. I shall make you understand it if you are willing But 1. Note that Religion being a larger word than faith includeth also Practice or Manners we must give you a distinct account of each For they have not the same Causes Our Faith is Divine But our Manners or Practice must follow the Laws of the Church as well as the Immediate Laws of God These must not be confounded R. Man hath three faculties Intellective Volitive and Vitally Executive or Active Our Religion subjectively must be in all viz. The Sanctity of all by Holy Life Light and Love And therefore the Rule which is our objective Religion doth extend to all to Intellect Will and Practice And surely for All there is a Rule directly Divine given by Inspiration of the Holy Ghost or Christs own words and subordinate Rules by Christs Ministers which are directly Humane and no otherwise Divine than as God hath in General authorized them thereto Even as the Soveraign hath the only Vniversal Legislative power and Magistrates by Him are authorized to subordinate mandates and acts of Government And so we have a Divine Faith and Revelation and a subordinate Humane faith and Ministerial Revelation or Preaching We have Divine Perswasions and subordinate Perswasions of men We have Divine Laws yea and executions and we have Humane subordinate Laws and executions If you resolve to call the Humane Divine so far as they are indeed Authorized by God I will not quarrel about words But remember 1. That so you must do also on the same reasons by the Laws of Kings and the Commands of Parents who are as much authorized by God to their proper Government 2. And I hope you mean not to Confound these Humane Laws with Gods own Vniversal Laws nor humane faith with Divine faith And be it known to you It is the Divine Revelations and Laws as distinct from the Humane which we are
time And the occasion of it was a particular Protestation of the German Princes and not directly a Protesting against Popery R. It is not Names but Religion which we dispute of And it is that which each party Professeth to be their Religion Therefore you must take our Profession or you change the subject of the dispute And we profess that the Law of Nature which no sober man questioneth and the Scriptures are All our Religion Therefore if you please you shall suppose that the name Protestant were not now in the world It doth not signifie our Religion But we now use it to signifie our Protesting against Popery or that we agree in substance and in rejecting Popery with those that made that particular Protestation mentioned by you Names are oft given from accidents as Africanus Germanicus Britannicus c. to several Roman Captains when yet their Humanity was the same before they were so named P. Turks Socinians Quakers c. Protest against Popery It seems then they are Protestants too and your companions R. 1. Thus some men study to deceive by turning from the question to another Our question I tell you is Whether the Religion of the Protestants be Infallible and not Whence is their name 2. But by a Protestant we mean only one that taketh the Scripture for the Rule and Christianity for the Essence of his Religion Which no one doth that denyeth any essential part of it If we do so prove it and you shall have our answer How do you judge of any man among your selves that taketh Gods word proposed by your Church for his Religion and yet mistaketh the Church in any point As Durandus that thought the matter of Bread continues whom Bellarmine yet denyeth to be an Heretick So is it with any among us that mistake the sence of Scripture in some such point When a Name is put upon any person or party from a common accident you may if you will call all by that name which that accident agreeth to And so Papists are called by some Non-conformists now in England because they Conform not But the world knoweth well enough that it is Protestants which are commonly meant by that name and not Papists Quakers Seekers c. though these conform not And so you may say if it please your self that Turks Jews Heathens Socinians Quakers Ranâ—ers are Protestants because they Protest against or reject Popery But the world knoweth who is meant by the Name Even Christians rejecting proper Popery And for my part I deal openly with you I care not if the name Protestant were utterly cast aside If any man be so deceived by it as 1. Either to think that it signifieth the Essence of our Religion unless you mean as we Protest for Christianity 2. Or that we take those called Protestants for the whole Catholick Church they make it an occasion of their own deceit Names of distinction are used because men know not else readily how to speak intelligibly of one another without circumlocutions And then cometh the Sectarian and taketh his Party for all the Church at least which he may lawfully Communicate with and the name of his party to notifie his Religion And then comes the crafty Papist and pretends from hence that such a named Religion is new and asketh you where was there any e. g. Protestants before Luther My Religion is naked Christianity the same as is where the name of a Protestant is not known and as was before it was known and as if the name of the Pope had never been known But now the Pope and his Monarchical Vsurpation over all the world are risen and known I am one of those that protest against them as being against Christianity which is my Religion But so as to addict my self to the opinions of no man or party that opposeth them wholly and absolutely and beyond evidence of truth I take the Reformed Churches to be the soundest in the world But I take their Confessions to be all the Imperfect expressions of men and the Writings of Protestant Divines to be some more clear and sound and some more dark empty and less sound and in many things I differ from many of them Choose now whether you will call me a Protestant or not I tell you my Religion which is simple Christianity Names are at your own Will I could almost wish that there were no name known besides that of CHRISTIAN as notifying our faith and Religion in the Christian world Though as notifying Heresie and sin there must be proper names as in Rev. the name Nicolaitans is used Even the word Catholick had long a narrower sense in the Empire with many than I now own it in Though as it signifieth One that is of the Church Vniversal loveth Vniversally all true Christians and hath Communion with them in Faith Love and Hope so I like it and am A CATHOLICK CHRISTIAN I dispute for nothing else I perswade this person here in Doubt to nothing else but 1. To hold fast to true and meer Christianity 2. To Reject all in Popery or any other Sect that is Evidently against it 3. To suspend his belief of all that 's doubtful and to receive nothing as a part of Divine faith or Religion till he be sure that indeed it is of God And now these Principles being supposed let us proceed and try whether Popery be of God or not PART III. The Protestants Reasons against Popery D. I Have heard what you have said in stating the Protestants Religion I now expect to hear what Reasons you have against that which you call Popery And afterwards that you prove all that you charge upon it But I adjure you first that you say nothing but what you believe in your conscience to be the truth as one that looketh to be judged for it R. With many Papists confident and vehement protestations go instead of Arguments and we oft hear them say If this be not true I am content to be torn in a thousand pieces We will seal it with our blood We will lay our salvation on it And do you think we have not souls to save c. Which is much like as if they would end all Controversies by laying Wagers that they are in the right or by protesting that they are honester and credibler men than their adversaries And it is no more than a Quaker or other such Sectary will say the most proud and ignorant being usually the most confident But yet though I expect not that you should receive any thing from me upon Protestations but upon Proofs I will here promise you that I will charge nothing on the Papists but what in my Conscience I am verily perswaded to be true The Reasons which resolve me against Popery are these and such like I. Reason Their Doctrine of Transubstantiation is so notoriously false and inhumane even contrary to the fullest ascertaining evidence that mankind can expect on earth viz. for all men on pain
what Turks did ever exercise such Inhumane fury Besides their burning and tormenting men as Hereticks that will not do all this and more and will not say as they require them XI Reason Their Church indeed is invisible while they deny it and an unknown thing For 1. Men are forced into it by such bloody Laws as that they cannot rationally be known to be Consenters 2. And they have no certain faith to constitute a Church-member For they hold that his obligation to believe is according to his inward and outward means of which no man can possibly judge And so no man can know whether himself or another have that faith which is required as necessary to salvation And many of them say That they that believe not in Christ have saving faith and are in the Church if they had not sufficient means XII Reason The Papacy doth intolerably tyrannize over Kings and teach such Doctrines of Perjury and Rebellion as their very Religion as is not in the practice of it to be endured in any Kingdom nor dare they fully practise it The Crowns and Lives of Princes being at the mercy of the Pope As the said Laterane Council sheweth XIII Reason Their Church is oft Essentially unholy heretical and wicked because the Pope is often so who is an Essential part of it And therefore it is not the holy Catholick Church General Councils have upon examination judged their Popes to be Hereticks Schismaticks Adulterers Murderers Simonists yea guilty of Blasphemy or Infidelity it self And the Church cannot be Holy whose Essential part is so unholy XIV Reason Their Churches succession is so notoriously interrupted and their Papacy so often altered in its causes as that it is become a confounded and a meer uncertain thing So many notorious or judged Hereticks Simonists Murderers Sodomites Adulterers have possessed the Seat who were therefore uncapable that the line of succession must needs be interrupted by them And so many wayes have they been made or elected sometimes by the people sometimes by the City-Presbyters sometimes by Emperours sometimes by Cardinals sometimes by Councils that if any one way of Election be necessary they have lost their Papacy long ago If no one way be necessary then the Turk may make a Pope XV. Reason Their Church called One is really two in specie one Headed by a Pope and another by a General Council For while the Head or Supream Ruler is an Essential part and one part of the people own one Head and another part own another Head as they do the Churches thus constituted cannot be One. And also de individuo there have been long two or three Popes at once and consequently two or three Churches And to this day none knoweth which was the right XVI Reason They plead for a Church which never had a being in the world that is All Christians Headed by one Pope When all the Christian world did never take him for their Head nor were governed by him to this day XVII Reason They dreadfully injure the holy Scriptures as if Jesus Christ and all the Prophets and Apostles in all those Sacred Records had not had skill or will to speak intelligibly and plainly to deliver us the doctrines necessary to salvation But they make their Voluminous Councils more intelligible and sufficient as if they had done better than Christ and his Apostles And when men must only Discern Gods Laws and Judge Causes by the Law they make themselves Judges of the Law it self that is of God the Judge of all and of the Law by which they must be judged XVIII Reason There is no other Sect of Christians under Heaven which hath so many differences among themselves or have written so many Books against one another as the Papists And though many of them are of great importance yea some are about the very Essence or Constitutive Head of their Church yet have they no handsomer way to palliate all by than by saying that these are but Opinions and no Articles of faith and the Infallible Judge dare not decide them No though it be diversity of Expositions of Gods own Word yet Commentators still differ without any hope of a decision as if Gods Word were not to be believed but were only the matter of uncertain Opinion till the Pope and Council have expounded it and no more Scripture is de fide than they expound XIX Reason Perjury is made the very Character of their Church or the brand by which it is stigmatized As is visible 1. In the Trent Oath imposed on their Clergy which whoever taketh he is immediately perjured and 2. By their disobliging men from Oaths and Vows even the Subjects of Princes from their Oaths of Allegiance whenever the Pope shall excommunicate them and give their Dominions to others as is decreed Concil Later sub Innoc. 3. Can. 3. XX. Reason They are guilty of Idolatry in their ordinary Worship by the Mass while they worship Bread as their Lord God Nor will it justifie them to say that if they thought it to be Bread they would not worship it Any more than it would justifie Julian to say that he would not worship the Sun if he thought not that it was God And they confess that if it prove to be still Bread their Worship will prove Idolatry and we desire no other proof And I am not able to justifie their sending God his Worship by a Cross Crucifix or other Image as a medium cultum from being a gross Violation of the second Commandment which they leave out XXI Reason Their Religion greatly tendeth to Mortifie Christianity and turn it into a dead Image by destroying much of its life and power 1. By befriending Ignorance and hiding the holy Scripture forbidding all the people to read them in a known tongue without a special license blaspheming Gods Word as if so read it had more tendency or likelihood to hurt men than to profit them to damn them than to save them when they will say otherwise of all their own Vulgar postils and such like writings 2. And by teaching the people a blind devotion viz. to pray in an unknown tongue and to worship God by words not understood 3. And by making up a Religion much if not far most of external formalities and a multitude of ceremonies and the opus operatum of their various Sacraments As if God delighted in such actions as befit not the acceptance of a grave and sober man or as if Guilt and Sin would be wiped off and charmed away into virtue and holiness by such corporeal motions shews and words XXII Reason Their Religion though it thus tend to gratifie the ungodly by deceitful remedies and hopes yet is very uncomfortable to the godly For 1. By it no man can know that he is a true believer and not a child of Hell much less that he shall be saved For they teach that no Divine can tell them what Articles are necessary to be believed to salvation
other Ordinances as in the Eucharist Nor know I what they mean by the Forms of bread and wine under which they say that Christs Body and blood is given But I am past doubt that Bread and Wine are still really in substance there And whereas the same men say that It is Christs humbled flesh and blood as sacrificed on the Cross that is Commemorated but his Glorified Body and soul only which are Communicated and Received I must say 1. That Christ plainly tells us of his Giving us his Sacrificed Body or flesh it self to eat as he is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the World And he saith Take Eat this is my Body which is broken for you c. so that the same body is Commemorated and Communicated But how Communicated In the effects of his sacrifice His Body was given a sacrifice to God for us and the fruits of that sacrifice given to us And thus he was given a sacrifice for the life of the world And thus we do receive him By our bodily taking and eating the Bread we profess that our souls take him to be our Saviour and Cause of our Life both as Purchasing and Meriting it on Earth and Interceding and Communicating it in and from Heaven 2. And this Doctrine will not serve the Papists turn who tell us that Bread and Wine are ceased and that Christs very flesh and blood is there into which all the substance of the bread and wine are turned and that his natural Body before his death was in the same sort given under the forms of Bread and Wine as now and will not be beholden to this subterfuge And indeed it is strange if the Sacrament at the first Institution should be One thing and ever after another thing and that the Bread should ever since be turned into Christs body upon the Priests Consecration and not be turned into it because not yet glorified upon his own words This is my Body Therefore we must let this go and speak of what they own and hold indeed And as for any other Bodily presence influence or communication of Christs Body or Soul besides that which they call Transubstantiation we have nothing to do with it in this Controversie That the substance of the Bread and Wine is not turned into the substance of the flesh and blood of Christ is proved I. Because the Glorified Body of Christ is not formally and properly Flesh and Blood Though it be the sâ—me Body which was Flesh and Blood The Apostle Paul saith 1 Cor. 15.50 51. Now this I say brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God nor doth corruption inherit incorruption Behold I shew you a mysterie We shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed It is not only Dr. Hammond but other of the best expositors who shew that by Flesh and blood and corruption here is not meant sin but flesh and blood formally considered which is ever corruptible And the Papists commonly confess this If therefore it be flesh and blood which the bread and wine are turned into then either Christ hath two bodies or two parts of one which are utterly heterogeneal one flesh and blood and the other not one corruptible and the other incorruptible II. And this feigneth Christ to be often Incarnate even thousands and millions of times And to lay down that Incarnate body again as oft as it corrupteth and to take up a new one as oft as the Priest please and yet all but one Whereas the Church and Scripture have ever told us but of one Incarnation of Jesus Christ III. And it is expresly contrary to his promise Joh. 6.51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven If any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever And the bread which I give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world v. 34. Who so eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me and I in him As the living Father hath sent me and I live by the Father so he that Eateth me even he shall live by me He that eateth of this bread shall live for ever These are the express promises of Christ But the Papists say that wicked men and unbelievers eat the flesh of Christ who shall not live for ever nor have eternal life nor dwell in Christ but are more miserable by their hypocrisie I pass by abundance of other arguments because commonly used and these are as many as my ends require and I would make the Reader no more work than needs CHAP. XI The Conclusion of the first Book The Causes of Popery R. I Have now made plain to you 1. What the Protestants Religion is or at least my own and all that I perswade you or any other to embrace 2. And also that it is granted to be all true by the generality of the Papists as is explained and proved 3. And I have told you by an enumeration of some particulars why I am not a Papist and why I do disswade you from it 4. And I have made good my first charge in the point of Transubstantiation if any thing in the world can be proved The second I shall leave till another time viz. To shew you how far their Religion as Popish is from Infallible Certainty and what horrid confusion is among them and how they have done much to promote Infidelity in the world by building Religion upon some notorious untruths and upon a multitude of utter uncertainties Though I doubt not but among them there are many true Christians who practically resolve their faith into the surer evidences of Divine Revelation yet I shall clearly prove to you that all those whose practical faith is no surer or better than the notional opinions of their Divines will allow have no certain faith or Religion at all And what impudency is it to make men believe that there is no certainty of Religion to be had but in their way who build their Religion upon such a multitude of uncertainties and certain falshoods as will amaze you when I come to open them to you viz. that ever so many Learned men and persons of all ranks can be induced so to jest in the matters of their salvation And if I be not by death or other greater work prevented I hope in order to make good all the rest of the Charges before mentioned which are our Reasons against the Popish way of Religion In the mean time tell me what you think of that which is already said D. I know not how to confute what you have said And yet when I hear them on the other side me thinks their tale seems fair and I cannot answer them neither so that between you both we that are unlearned are in a sad case who must thus be tost up and down by the disputations of disagreeing Priests so that we know not
Full and Easie SATISFACTION WHICH IS THE TRUE AND SAFE RELIGION In a CONFERENCE Between D. A DOUBTER P. A PAPIST and R. A REFORMED CATHOLICK CHRISTIAN In Four Parts I. The true stating of our Difference and opening what each Religion is II. The true easie and full Justification of the Reformed or Protestant Religion III. The Protestants Reasons and Charges against Popery enumerated IV. The first Charge viz. Against Transubstantiation made good In which Popery is proved to be the SHAME OF HUMANE NATURE notoriously contrary to SENSE REASON SCRIPTURE and TRADITION or the Judgement of the Antient and the Present Church devised by Satan to expose Christianity to the Scorn of Infidels By Richard Baxter London Printed for Nev. Simmons at the Princes Arms in St. Pauls Church-yard 1674. and still continueth so to do And while I can say that I know of no Nobleman living who hath read more of my Writings than You have done all that know the End of Writing will consent that there is no Noble Name which I should prefer And as I long ago read in the Learned Spanhemius's Dedication of his Dubia Evangelica p. 3. to You well joyned with the famous Usher the predication of Your Judicium supra aetatem maturum rerum omnium cognitione subactum pectus and that as attested by the Illustrious Duke of Rohane the Most Sagacious Arbiter of ingenies And years and experience have been long adding to Your knowledge Being not a stranger to the Truth of this my self I have great reason to be Ambitious to stand right in Your esteem For who reverenceth the Judgement of ignorant Readers Or doth not reverence the Judgement of the Wise And therefore to give You an account of my self and of this writing Since I overgrew that Religion which is taken up most on humane trust by increasing knowledge I increased mens displeasure and my judgement not falling just into the mold of any Sect among Church-dividers there is scarce any Sect which doth not according to their various interests signifie their displeasure Some only by Magisterial Censures more credibly acquainting the world what they are themselves than what I am or what is my judgement But from others I take a meer slander for Clemency and as Philostratus saith de Dicto Phavorini Et dum Socratis cicutam non bibam aereâ privari statuâ non laedit Simple Christianity is my Religion I determine to know nothing but Christ Crucified and Glorified And I am past all doubt that till simple Christianity become the terms of Church-Unity and Concord the Church will never see Unity or Concord which shall prove universal or durable So certain am I that the Wits of the Learned much less of the Community of vulgar Christians will never arrive at the stature of Concord in numerous and difficult points Nor the marvellous diversity of Educations occasions temperatures and capacities be ever united in any thing but what is plain and simple And as Certain am I that the Universal Conscience of true believers will never unite in any thing which is not evidently divine And yet as certain am I that the forsaking of the determination of the Holy Ghost and the Apostles Acts 15.28 and of Pauls Decision Rom. 14. 15. hath been the Engine of Church-Divisions and many calamitous distractions to this day And that that blessed Prince who must have the honour and comfort of beginning the true healing and Concord of the Churches must pare off all their superfluities and leave them at best among their things indifferent and unite them on the terms of simple Christianity And as to Popery I have certainly found that the Cross Interests and Passions of Disputers have made us though really too distant to seem commonly about many Doctrinals more distant than indeed we are And that it had been better with us if such men as judicious Ludov. le Blank had had the stating of our Controversies at the first that differing words and methods might not have passed with either side for damnable errors in the faith I mean in the points of fore-knowledge predestination providence predetermination concurse original sin free-will universal Redemption sufficient Grace effectual Grace the nature of Faith Justification Sanctification Merit Good Works Certainty of Justification and of Salvation Perseverance c. For my knowing this to be true I am censured by those on one extream as too favourable to the Papists being indeed an Enemy to injury calumny uncharitableness or cruelty to any in the world But I am much more displeasing to the Roman party Because I know that One man is naturally uncapable of being the Monarch of all the world That the King of Rome as the Geographia Nubiensis calls him was never by Christ made King of Kings and Lord of Lords That he never was nor can be a Pastor at the Antipodes and over all the Earth or as far as Drake and Candish did Navigate That it 's a sorry Argument Monarchy is the best Government Ergo An universal Monarchy is best That the Government setled in Nature and Scripture is for Princes to rule Churchmen and all by the Sword and the Pastors of all particular Churches to rule their Congregations by the Church-Keys that is by the Word using Synods for due concord and correspondency And this much will do better than all the stir that the Clergies Ambition hath made in the world I know that the Pope standeth on no better a foundation than the other four Patriarchs And that he was but the chief Prelate or Patriarch in one Empire as the Archbishop of Canterbury is in England And that the Greek Church never took his Primacy in that one Empire to be of Divine Right For if they had they had never set up the Patriarch of Constantinople against him who never claimed his Primacy as jure Divino I know that the great Council of Chalcedon decreed Act. 16. Bin. 734. We following alwayes the definitions of the holy Fathers and the Canon have our selves also defined the same things concerning the Priviledges of the same Most Holy Church of Constantinople New Rome For to the Seat of Old Rome because of the Empire of that City the Fathers consequently gave the Priviledges And the one hundred and fifty Bishops most beloved of God being moved with the same intention have given equal Priviledges to the Most Holy Seat of New Rome Reasonably Judging that the City adorned with the Empire and Senate shall enjoy equal Priviledges with Old Regal Rome I know that their late Bishop of Chalcedon saith against Bishop Bramhall Survey pag. 69. To us it sufficeth that the Bishop of Rome is St. Peters Successor and this all Fathers testifie But whether he be so jure Divino vel humano is no point of faith Vid. Bellarm. 1.2 de Pont. l. 12. And Holden Analys fid l. 1. c. 9. p. 161. Multa sunt quae traditione universa firmiter innituntur puta S. Petrum fuisse Romae
quae revelata non sunt ideoque ab articulorum fidei Catholicae numero excluduntur I know that there never was such a thing as a true Universal Council in the world unless Christ and his Apostles were such nor ever must or will or can be I know that they were called Universal but as to one Empire and that Emperours called them together who had nothing to do without that Empire and that unless accidentally any inconsiderable number no Churches out of the Empire were summoned or sent their Bishops thither Which needs no other proof than the knowledge of the limits of the Roman Empire and the Notitiae Episcopatùum and the Names subscribed to each Council in Binnius and the rest I know that long ago their Raynerius said Cont. Waldens Catal. in Biblioth Patrum Tom. 4. p. 773. The Churches of the Armenians and Ethiopians and Indians and the rest which the Apostles converted are not under the Church of Rome And that Godignus and others make no doubt but the Abassines had the faith from the dayes of St. Matthew and the Eunuch I know that Theodoret. Histor Sanct. Patr. c. 1. saith James the Bishop of Nisibis came to the Synod of Nice for Nisibis then obeyed the Roman Empire Nothing can be more plain I know that Jacob. de Vitriaco and others say Hist Orient c. 77. that the Churches of the Easterly parts of Asia alone exceeded in number the Christians either of the Greek or Latin Churches And that Brochardus that lived at Jerusalem saith that those called Schismaticks by us are far better men than those of the Roman Church And to perswade the Kings of other Kingdoms that the necessary way of Church-Union is to unite all their Subject-Churches under the Patriarchs of another Empire is no wiser than to tell all the world that they must be under the Bishop of Canterbury I know that it was long ere Our antient Britains and especially Your Scots would so much as eat with the Roman Clergy as Beda sheweth And I know that their Melch. Canus saith Loc. Com. cap. 7. fol. 201. That not only the Greeks but almost all the rest of the Bishops of the whole world have fought to destroy the priviledges of the Church of Rome And indeed they had on their side both the Arms of Emperours and the greater number of Churches And yet they could never prevail to abrogate the power of the One Pope of Rome Was this Pope then or the Roman Church Universal Besides that to this day they are but about the third or fourth part of the Christian world And I know that General Councils are their Religion and what the General approved Council at Lateran sub Innoc. 3. hath Decreed against Temporal Lords and their Dominions and absolving of their Subjects from their Oaths of Fidelity Besides what Greg. 7. hath said in his Concil Rom. of his power to take down and set up Emperours The knowing of these things maketh me taken for their enemy And their Image of Worship in an unknown Tongue with their Bread-Worship and multitude of ludicrous deceitful toyes are things which my soul can never be reconciled to Much less to that renunciation of humanity which hereafter I detect in the following Treatise And having given You this Account of my self I add as to this Treatise 1. It grieved me to hear that so many refused the Parliaments Declaration against Transubstantiation And I desired to shew them what it is 2. Instead of joyning with those who talk much of the danger of Popery in the Land to keep it out I thought it better to publish the Reasons which satisfie me against it and leave the success of all to God 3. And having occasion to re-print the First Part of my Key for Catholicks with Corrections instead of the Name before prefixed of one whose face I never saw nor ever had a word from but ignorantly endeavoured to have provoked him to do good I thought Your Name fittest to be gratefully substituted who were the first then that checked my imprudent temerity Though I was not so vain as to expect of late in your multitude of greater business that You should read over my more tedious Writings I despair not but You may find leisure in perusing this to see that I have prefixed Your Name to nothing but what Sense and Reason and Religion do avow And so Craving Your Pardon for the boldness and tediousness of this Address I rest Your Graces humble much obliged Servant Richard Baxter August 27. 1673. TO THE READER THis Dialogue cometh not to you from an apprehension of any extraordinary excellency of it as if it did much more than is already done but as extorted by mens necessity 1. Because so many ignorantly turn Papists of late 2. And some are pleased to Say I dare not say To Think that it is long of men in my condition 3. And it is the Art of the Papists which our vanity encourageth to seek to bring the old Books into oblivion which are unanswerable and to call still for new The intended Use of this is 1. To tell those that will dispute with a Papist on what terms and in what order to proceed lest they be cheated into a snare 2. To teach the Ignorant Doubters truly to understand wherein the difference between us and the Papists doth indeed consist that the talk of Sectaries Calling that which displeaseth them Popery nor the scandal of our real or seeming divisions may not delude them nor Papists puzzle them by putting them to prove every word in our thirty nine Articles or other Writings 3. To Resolve all that will be Resolved by Senses Reason Scripture or the Judgement and Tradition of the Church Of the multitude of Reasons against Popery enumerated I have here made good but one by a special disputation because I would not make the Book too big The rest I shall easily prove in another Volume if greater work and shortness of life do not hinder it which I fully expect And lest I have no more opportunity to answer their Charges against us on the other side I have reprinted and added Corrected the first part of my Key for Catholicks where it is long ago done and never answered There is extant one Piece of theirs against me unanswered called Mr. Johnson's Rejoynder about the Visibility of the Church which I seriously profess I have left unanswered as utterly unworthy of my precious Time till I have no greater matter to do which I hope will never be And he that will well study his opening of the terms in the latter end will see to how pitiful a case they are reduced I conclude with this solemn Profession That I am satisfied of the truth of what I write and must dye ere long in the faith which I here profess and lay my hopes of endless happiness on no other way And that I would joyfully receive any Saving Truth from Papists or any other who will bring
You hear his conditions you shall hear my answer 1. The Case which you told me you were in doubt of and desired satisfaction in was Which is the True and Safe Religion This he refuseth to Dispute Pretending that we cannot dispute of our whole Religion at once But did you never hear him give any Reasons against our Religion If he have Why can he not do it now I expect not all in a word but let him give them one by one and say his worst I am sure I can give you many against theirs And we will after debate them particularly as largely as you please 2. If Writing be it that you desire for your satisfaction I ask you whether you have read all or the fourth part of what is written against Popery already Have you read Dr. Challoner of the Catholick Church Dr. White Dr. Field Dr. Downame of Antichrist Chillingworth Dr. Abbot Dr. Willet Bishop Vsher Bishop Morton Dr. Stillingfleet and an hundred more Why should I expect that you should read what I shall write if you will not read what 's written already 3. Can you stay so long unresolved without injury to your soul till he and I have done writing You cannot but know that from Sheets we must proceed to the writing of Volumes in answering each other as others have done And this is like to be many years work for men that have other business And how know you that we shall all Live so long 4. Are you able when it cometh to tedious Volumes to examine them and find who is in the right Or will you not rather take him to conquer who hath the last word And it 's like that will be the longest liver 5. And as to a strict syllogistical form do you understand that best I avoid it not but shall consent to use it as far as you understand it Do you know all the Logical forms of arguing all Moods and Figures and all the fallacies Or do you not perceive that you have broken your promise with me and brought a friend of darkness who cometh purposely to hide the truth D. I must needs profess that the Question which I would have debated is Which is the True and Safe Religion And that it is not tedious writings nor long delayes but present conference which must satisfie me And that it is plain Scripture and Reason that must satisfie me who understand not Logick I pray let me hear your own Conditions which you think more just R. The Conditions which the nature of the Cause directeth us to are these I. That we first truly state the question to be disputed For we cannot dispute till we are agreed of what That is 1. That we agree what we mean by our Religion and 2. That I tell you what is the Religion of Protestants which I undertake to defend And that he tell us what is the Religion of the Romanists which must be compared with it II. That our Conference consist of these several parts 1. That premising the principles in which we are agreed I tell you the Reasons why you should not be a Papist 2. That he tell you the Reasons why you should turn Papist or what he hath against Our Religion 3. That then we come to dispute these Reasons distinctly where I will prove my charges against them and he shall prove his charges against us one by one III. And that in all our disputes we shall consent 1. Not to interrupt each other in speech but if the length seem to overmatch the hearers memory we will take brief Notes to help our memories as we go and crave the recitation of what shall be forgotten For the strength of Truth lyeth so much in the connexion of its parts that when it is mangled into scraps by uncivil interruptions it is deformed and debilitated and cannot be well understood 2. That we bind our selves by solemn promise to speak nothing which we unfeignedly judge not to be truth nor any thing designedly to hide or resist the truth which we discern These terms are so just and necessary that I will avoid him as a fraudulent wrangler who will deny them For I come not to scold nor to try who hath the strongest Lungs the nimblest Tongue or the lowdest voice or the greatest confidence or fiercest passion but to try who hath the truth and which is the true way to Heaven For the servant of the Lord must not strive especially about words and barren notions for that doth but tend to increase ungodliness D. Your Method is so reasonable and so suited to my own necessity that I must profess no other can so much tend to my satisfaction And therefore I hope it will not be refused Here after long opposition the P. at last agreeth to these terms CHAP. III. What is the Religion of the Protestants R. I. THe word Religion is sometimes taken Objectively And so I mean by it The objects of Religious Belief Love and Practice which are 1. The Things themselves which are the principal objects called by Logicians The Incomplex terms 2. The organical object or the Revelation of these Things containing 1. The Words or other Signs 2. The sense or notions signified For instance Matth. 17.5 This is my Beloved son in whom I am well pleased Here 1. The Real Incomplex object is Christ Himself the beloved Son of God and God the Fathers well-pleasedness in him 2. The signal part of the organical object or Revelation is the Words themselves as spoken then and written now 3. The signified notions are the Meaning of the words and are the chief part of the organical object that is the Divine Revelation The word Religion is of larger extent in its sense than Faith For it containeth all that Revelation which God hath made Necessary to salvation which is twofold 1. That which is to inform the understanding with necessary knowledge and faith 2. That which is necessary to a Holy Will and a Holy Life to the Love of God and man and to well doing which are Precepts Promises and Threatnings II. The word Religion is oft taken also subjectively as they speak For the Acts and habits of Love and Obedience Now I suppose we are agreed that it is not Religion in this last sense that we are to dispute of which is as divers as persons are But it is that which we call Objective Religion even the Organical part directly And if by all this D. understandeth us not in plainer words our Question is Of the True Divine Revelation viz. Which is the True Rule of Faith Will and Practice that which is held to be such by the Protestants or that which is held to be such by the Papists P. I grant you that this is the state of the Question R. I here declare to you then What is the Religion of the Protestants IT IS THE LIGHT and LAW OF GOD CONCERNING HOLY KNOWLEDGE and BELIEF HOLY WILL and PRACTICE CONTAINED IN NATURE and THE
If now I say also that Hercules is not God and Bacchus is not God and Venus Mars Mercury Pallas Neptune Pluto Ceres c. are not Gods is this a new Religion or an addition to the former If the Baptismal Covenant be the Essentials of my Religion and the Creed Lords Prayer and Decalogue the Explication of it and if the Scripture be my Entire Religion and if the Papists will come and add a multitude of new Articles and Corruptions my rejecting of those additions is no more an alteration of my Religion than the sweeping of my house or the washing of my hands is an alteration of them So that notwithstanding all that you have said my Religion is nothing but the Law of Nature and Scripture and my rejecting of Popery is no otherwise my Religion than my freedom from the Leprosie c. is my humanity P. Observe I pray you that It is no part of your Religion to be against Popery R. Observe I pray you that Popery is against my Religion that is against much of the Christian Religion and therefore my Religion is against Popery But I will not quarrell with you about words When God hath Revealed to us his Will and the Papists add their corrupting inventions Gods Revealed Will is my Religion your Corrupting additions are contrary to it Call my rejecting such Corruptions and additions by the name of my Religion Reductively as Nihil is objectum Intellectus Malum Voluntatis and as non-agere is part of obedience or Call it no part of my Religion in the primary notion but a Rejecting of its contraries so we understand each other I care not The truth is the Rejecting of some of your errors directly contradicting the Scripture it self may be called part of our Religion as the Negation of the Contrary is included in the sense of an Affirmative But your remoter additions are contrary to our Religion but not so directly For instance when the Scripture saith There is bread after Consecration and you say There is no bread My Religion containeth the Assertion that There is bread And so includeth a contradiction to your Negative that saith There is none Now to say that it is none of my Religion to deny your Negative who say There is no bread would import that It is none of my Religion which affirmeth that there is bread Contradictions cannot both be true Properly that word that saith There is bread is my Religion But this word contradicteth you that say There is none But in another instance my Religion saith that The Righteous shall go into life everlasting and the rest to everlasting punishment and tells us of a Heaven and Hell only hereafter And you tell us of Limbus Patrum Infantum and of Purgatory The Scripture enableth us by consequence to confute this but if it did not it were enough for me to say It is none of my Religion because not Revealed by God in Nature or Scripture And as it is your Addition so to deny it is not directly and properly my Religion it self but the Defence and Vse of my Religion God tells us in Scripture that He created Heaven and Earth If one should assert as from God that God created ten thousand Heavens and ten thousand Earths this is a faith of his own invention or addition and it is enough for me to say I have no such faith because God revealeth no such thing So thaâ— still the Scripture is the Protestants Religion as your Polydor Virgil truly describeth them and others confess P. All this is meer delusion For It is not the words but the sense that is your Religion as you will confess And if your Articles or Confessions contain a false sense or your Books or Sermons shew that you falsly expound the Scripture your Religion is then false R. Such Confusion may cheat a heedless hearer But any one that will take heed may quickly perceive that you here fraudulently play with the ambiguity of the word Religion and quite turn to another question For you now speak of subjective Religion that is of the Acts and habits of the person whereas we are disputing only of objective Religion which is Gods Revelation and our Rule If I understand any Texts of Scripture amiss my faith is so far defective in my selfs But Gods Word which is my Rule is never the more imperfect I pray you consider how justly you have spoken 1. Is a mans Act of faith Gods Word or Revelation 2. What need you dispute of the Protestants Religion if we have as many Religions as persons For it is as certain that we have as many degrees of our understanding many Texts of Scripture 3. Would not this prove also as many Religions as persons among your selves Is it not most certain that no two Papists in the world have just the same sense or conceptions of the Scriptures and Councils in each particular The Law of God is my only Religion objectively as how disputed of If I mistake any essential part of it so as to deny it I am personally a Heretick If I mistake any Integral part I so far err from the Rule of my Religion or faith But I still profess that I take Gods Word or Law only for my sure unchangeable Rule or objective Religion and I am daily learning to understand it better and as soon as I see my error I will reform it and blame my self and not my Rule And I think you will say the same of your Rule and of your personal errors P. This shall not serve your turn For every Law must have its promulgation And if it be not manifested to you that Scripture is Gods Law and sufficient it cannot be your Rule I ask you therefore Qu. 1. Is it the Scripture in the Original or in the Translations which you say is your Religion Law or Rule R. I told you our Divine Rule consisteth of Words and Meaning It is only the Originals which are our Rule or Religion as to the very words that is Only the Original words were of that Divine Inspiration But every Translation is so far Gods Word in sense as it expresseth truly the sense of the original words P. Qu. 2. I pray you what then is the Religion of all the unlearned Protestants who know not a word of the Originals They may see now that you have stript them of all Divine Religion R. Their Religion is the same objectively with that of the most learned as delivered from God but it is not equally learned and understood by them Gods Word in the Original Tongues is given them as the Rule of Faith and Worship and Teachers are appointed to help them to understand it When these Teachers have Translated it to them they have the same sense though not the same words for their Religion And to know the Words is not so necessary to salvation as to know the sense or sentence though by other words For the words are but means to
information of men So the sixth General Council condemned Honorius of Heresie by false Information and misunderstanding his Epistles p. 20. The Pope saith Suarez to a particular action belonging to humane Prudence hath no infallible assistance of the Holy Ghost As that such or such an excommunication is valid or that such or such a Kingdom is disposable by the Pope for such and such causes So far Veron who is most favourable to you in narrowing our faith R. Thus far you have resolved me but I must crave somewhat more Qu. I. Are there no Essential Constitutive parts of your Religion more necessary than the Integrals and Accidentals Have you no description for it but that It is Divine Revelation proposed by the Church The Doctrine of Sacrificing was a Divine Revelation to Adam and the difference of clean and unclean Beasts to Noah and the Jewish Law was Gods Revelation to Moses and them And yet I suppose Christianity is somewhat different from all these Is not Christianity your Religion Hath Christianity no Constitutive special Essence but only the Genus of Divine Revelation which is common to that with all other Divine Revelations And what if you add to a Prophet or Apostle Was Agabus Prophesie of Paul or Pauls of the event of the shipwrack c. essential to Christianity Hath Christianity no Essence Or is all Divine Revelation essential to it P. You take advantage of the disagreement of our Doctors You know that some few acknowledg distinct fundamentals and some deny the distinction in your sense And most of us say that no man can enumerate the things necessary to all but that it dependeth upon mens various capacities educations and means of knowing And in sum that no more is necessary to all to be explicitly believed but that Gods Revelations are true and that All are Gods Revelations which the Church proposeth as such You may take our judgement much from him that cometh nearest to you whom I have heard you much praise as most moderate and judicious viz. Dr. H. Holden Anal. fid l. 1. c 5. Lect. 2. p. 53. Divines disputing of the necessity of points to be believed do commonly tend this way to denote the Articles of things revealed the explicite and express belief whereof is as they opine altogether necessary to all Christians The resolution of which question is among them so doubtful and uncertain as that they are in this as ☞ they are in all things else distracted and divided into various Opinions which they that care for them may seek To me they are as Nothing while the Authors of them profess that they have nothing of Certainty Yea to one that meditateth the matter it self laying by all preoccupation it is most clearly manifest that the Resolution of this question is not only unprofitable that I say not pernicious as it is handled by Divines but also vain and impossible It is unprofitable because no good accrueth by it to souls ☞ It is pernicious while Divines for the most part assert that only One or Two Articles yea as some say no singular Article at all is necessary to be believed of all by an explicite faith For hence however the truth of the matter be the colder Christians taking occasion do little care to obtain that degree of Knowledge in the Mysteries of faith which they might commodiously and easily attain It is Impossible seeing it is Manifest that no particular Rule or Points to be believed or Number of Articles can in this Matter be given or assigned which shall be wholly common and necessary to all Christians For this dependeth on every individual mans natural capacity means of instruction and all the other circumstances of each mans life and disposition which are to each man so special that we can determine of nothing at all that is common to all But I handle the Necessity of points to be Believed in a far other sense For the Articles of the Christian faith which I now call necessary I do not at all understand to be such as all and every one must distinctly know or hold by explicite assent But I mean only such the belief of which is accounted universally by the whole Catholick Church so substantial and essential as that he that will deservedly be esteemed and truly be a member of it must needs adhere to them all at least Implicitely and Indirectly that is by believing whatsoever the holy and Universal Church doth Catholickly believe and teach as a Revealed Doctrine and Article of divine faith And therefore he is for that cause to be removed from its Communion and Society who shall pertinaciously and obstinately deny the least of them much more if he maintain the contrary while he knoweth and seeth that it is the Universal sentence of that Church that we must adhere to that as an Article of faith And in this sense I will henceforth use the word Necessity R. This might have been said in fewer and plainer words viz. That your Divines herein do commonly err and that perniciously and yet that indeed he is of the same mind viz. that It is impossible to name the Articles necessary to be believed explicitely of all because each mans divers capacity means and circumstances diversifie them to each But that only this one thing is explicitely to be believed That whatsoever the Holy and Universal Church doth Catholickly believe and teach as a Revealed Doctrine and Article of faith is true And therefore that no man must pertinaciously deny any thing which he knoweth the Church so holdeth So that nothing is necessarily to be believed actually and indeed but Gods and the Churches Veracity P. Another of ours that cometh as near you as most openeth this more fully Davenport alias Fr. a Sancta Clara De. Nat. Grat. p. 111 c. As to the Ignorance of those things that are of necessity of Means or End there is difference among the Doctors For Soto 4. d. 5. q. 5. l. de Nat. Grat. c. 12. Vega l. 6. c. 20. sup Trid. hold that now in the Law of Grace there is no more explicite faith required than in the Law of Nature Yea Vega ib. Gabriel 2. d. 21. q. 2. ar 3. 3. d. 21. q. 2. think that in the Law of Nature and in Cases in the Law of Grace some may be saved with only natural knowledge and that the habit of faith is not required Whom Horantius terms men of great name and will not accuse of heresie I would this great mans modesty were more frequent with modern Doctors Yea Alvarez de aux disp 56. with others seemeth to hold that to justification there is not at all required the knowledge of a supernatural object or the supernatural knowledge of the object Others hold That both to Grace and Glory is required an explicite belief of Christ Bonav 3. d. 25 c. Others that at least to salvation is an explicite belief of the Gospel or
things unseen and above sense And this is their meaning We see not God Christ Heaven Angels c. But faith hath alwaies Intelligible Evidence of Verity and as our Mr. R. Hooker saith can go no further than it hath such Evidence However I appeal to any that have not been disputed out of their wits whether If God would give us as full a sight of Heaven and Hell and Angels and Blessed souls as we have of the Bread and Wine before us and as full a Hearing of all that they say in justification of Holiness or Lamentation of sin and as full sensible acquaintance with the world we go to and our title to it as we have with this world I say whether this would not be more ascertaining and satisfactory to us and banish all doubts more than our present faith doth I love not to hear men lie as for God and talk and boast against their experience as if the interest of faith required it Things revealed to faith Are Certain and Infallible But that is because we have certain evidence 1. That God cannot lie 2. And that God revealed them and so that they are True But if we did see feel taste c. we should be more certain Else why is it said that we now know but enigmatically and as in a glass and as children but hereafter shall see as face to face and know as we are known when faith is done away as being more Imperfect than Intuition We have evidence to prove that the Revelation made to David Isaiah Jeremiah Peter Paul c. were of God and that their words are by us to be believed c. But to see hear taste feel c. would be a more quieting Assurance Therefore when all the sound senses of all men living perceive after consecration that there is Bread and Wine this Certainty is 1. in order antecedent to that of faith and 2. by Evidence more satisfying and assuring than that of meer faith as to a prophets Revelation And therefore to reject it on pretence of faith is a subversion of all natural methods of assurance and is but pretended I think by your selves The sixth Principle That except those Immediate Inspirations which none but the Inspired do Immediately and clearly perceive we have no Revelations from God but by signes which are created beings and have their several Natures and so may be called Physical though signifying Moral things And thus far our natural and supernatural Revelations agree R. Every being is either Vncreated which is God only or Created in a large sense that is Caused What God Revealed to Christ Peter Paul c. we have knowledge of but by signes In Scripture these signes are Words These words signifie partly the mind of God and the speakers or writers and partly the matter spoken or written When it is said that It is impossible for God to lye it can mean nothing to us but that it is impossible that God should make us a deceitful sign of his will The voice of an Angel Prophet Apostle a thousand Miracles c. are but signes of the matter and of Gods will And if God can ordinarily make false natural signes we are left unassured that he cannot make false signes by an Angel or a Prophet or a Miracle And so all faith is left uncertain P. Then you will make God a lyar or deceiver whenever any man is deceived by natural signes R. Not so For men may deceive themselves by taking those for signes of a thing which are none and so by misunderstanding them And the Devil and bad men may promote this deceit But whenever God giveth man so plain a sign of the Matter and his Will as that no errour of an unsound sense an unqualified object a culpable or diseased fantasie or Intellect interveneth then if we are deceived it can be none but God that doth deceive us which cannot be because he cannot lye And as it is an unresistible argument against the Dominican doctrine of Physical Predetermination as absolutely necessary to all acts of natural or free agents that If God physically predetermine every lyar to ivery lye that is mentally conceived or uttered then we have no certainty but he might do so by the Prophets and Apostles so is it as good an argument against Papists that if he ordinarily deceive the senses of all sound men by a false appearance of things seeming sensible he may do so also by the audible or legible words of a prophet The seventh Principle That he that will confute sense and prove that we should not Judge according to its perceptions must prove it by some more certain evidence that contradicteth it R. I suppose you will not question this P. No The word or Revelation of God is a more certain evidence R. How know you that there is any word of God but by your senses P. But yet by sense I may get a certainty which is above that of things sensible As I know by the world that there is a God by a certainty above that of sense R. 1. If that were so yet if things sensible be your media you destroy your Conclusion by denying them and undermine your own foundation 2. But it is not true The knowledge of the Conclusion can be no stronger than that of the principles even of the weaker of them If you are in any uncertainty whether there be Sun Moon Heaven Earth Man Beast Heat Cold or any Created sensible being you must needs be in as much doubt whether there be a God that made them The eighth Principle That Believing or Assenting is Intellection of the Truth of something revealed and therefore must have Intelligible Evidence of Truth in the thing believed R. I know that Assiance or Trust as it is the act of the Will reposing it self quietly on the Believed fidelity of God is not Intellection But the Assenting act is an Intellection or an Act of Knowledge of a Verity not as Science is narrowly confined to principles but as Knowledge is taken in genere for notitia So to believe is no other than to know that this is true because God saith it Joh. 6.69 We believe and are sure that thou art that Christ c. Joh. 3.2 We know that thou art a Teacher come from God for no man could do such works c. Joh. 21.24 We know that his testimony is true See Rom. 7.14 8.28 2 Cor. 5.1 We know that if this earthly house c. 1 Tim. 1.8 1 Joh. 3.2 Joh. 8.28 32. 1 Cor. 15.58 We know that our Labour is not in vain c. Therefore your denying the certainty where the evidence is most notorious and telling men of Meriting if they will but believe your Church without any Evidence of certainty is a meer cheat The ninth Principle That Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Saviour of the World and that Christianity is the true Religion and Gods appointed sufficient way to Heaven
including Godliness which is its final part R. By Christianity I mean both our Believing Loving and obeying Christ as the way to the Father and our Believing Loving and Obeying God our Father as the end of Christs Mediation The Knowledge of God and the Mediator being Eternal Life Joh. 17.3 And as Taking a man for my Physicion is taking him by his medicines to help me to my health and so Health is finally included so taking Christ for my Saviour is to take him by faith to be the means of bringing me to the Love of God and to Glory And so I include Godliness in Christianity and the Law of Nature in the Law of Grace P. We are agreed on the truth of this but not of the medium by which it must be made known to us R. At the present I ask no more than that we agree in Christianity as the true and sufficient Religion and way to life The tenth Principle That Baptizing is our Christening And that all that are truly Baptized are Christians and members of the visible Church untill they Apostatize or are justly excommunicate at least P. I grant you all this as a common Principle with Christians R. Then you grant us 1. That our Religion is the True Religion of Gods appointment sufficient to salvation For it is Christianity which you confessed to be such 2. You grant that we are baptized into the true Catholick Church which is the body of Christ The eleventh Principle That all that are truly Baptized have the pardon of all their sins and have present right to salvation if they so die R. I mean that they that are Internally true Consenters to the baptismal Covenant and are baptized have all these benefits of Baptism And that Infants have them as rightly dedicated to God and baptized Do not you Consent to this P. Yes you know we do R. Then you fully grant that all among the Protestants who in Infancy or at age are truly baptized are in a state of salvation Why then would you make people believe that there is no salvation in our Churches when you grant the right to all that are Baptized P. But you are not Baptized by lawful Ministers R. Take heed what you say Your party holdeth that even Schismaticks and Hereticks Baptism is valid if they have all that is essential to Baptizing in the doing of it Yea that a lay mans or womans baptizing is valid If you deny it I will shame you by producing the common consent of your Doctors and your censure of Cyprian and making the contrary doctrine to be a Heresie P. But you have not all that is essential to Baptism because you are not intentionally Baptized into the true Catholick Roman Church For while you are not subject to the Pope you are not baptized into the Church and therefore Bellarmine sheweth that indirectly we are obliged to the Pope by baptism which you intend not R. Come come strive not against your knowledge 1. If our Baptism have not all that is essential why do you never rebaptize Protestants when they turn to you Do you not find that you condemn your selves 2. Why do not you your selves put the name of the Pope into your words of baptism 3. Doth your Tradition tell you that the ancient Churches did baptize men into a subjection to the Pope 4. Did any of the Primitive Christians baptize men into the name or subjection of Peter or any Apostle 5. Doth not Paul expresly renounce it as to himself and Peter 1 Cor. 1.12 13 14 15. Every one of you saith I am of Paul and I of Apollo and I of Cephas and I of Christ Is Christ divided Was Paul Crucified for you or were ye baptized in the name of Paul c. 6. Did not Christ himself tell us all that was Essential to baptism in his institution Matth. 28 without making any mention of Peter or the Pope P. I cannot deny but our doctrine inferreth that all that are baptized among you have a true Sacrament but not the Benefit of it and so are not in a state of pardon and salvation Or at least when you come to age by refusing the Pope you turn Hereticks and lose it R. I know some of your divided writers say that we have Sacramentum but not Rem Sacramenti But 1. You say that a Character is imprinted by Baptism and all sin done away and the person in a state of life unless he come feignedly which you will not charge on Infants nor can you prove it by those of the Anabaptists themselves that are baptized at age And saith Aquinas when the fiction ceaseth the fruits of baptism are obtained 2. And it will be long ere you will prove that to be baptized into the name of the Trinity is uneffectual if we leave out the Pope 3. And you will hardly make a man understand what you mean by the validity of the Baptism of Hereticks and Schismaticks if it neither take the Baptized into the true Visible Church nor the invisible or a state of saving grace And as to Infants losing it as you say at age by Heresie 1. Will you save all the Anabaptists that are baptized at age If their baptism put them into a state of salvation and they continue just of the same faith and mind that they were baptized in sure that faith which put them in a state of salvation will keep them in it or not be damning through defectiveness to morrow which made them heirs of Heaven to day But you cannot make your doctrines hang together 2. And they that are Baptized in Infancy are baptized into the same faith which they continue in at age The Minister intendeth no other The Parents Sponsors c. intend no other And will that prove defective even to Salvation after which was saving then 3. If Baptism make us Christians and if Christianity be the true Religion sufficient in suo genere to salvation then we that continue in the Christianity which we were baptized into by your confession continue in the true saving Religion And this is all our Religion P. It is not every one that owneth Christianity that shall be saved Hereticks own it in general and yet contradict it by their Heresies R. It is every one that truly owneth Christianity in mind and will that shall be saved else Christianity were not a saving sufficient Religion The question is not whether objective Christianity or faith be sufficient to save him that believeth not or is not subjectively a Christian nor whether the doctrine of faith be sufficient in omni genere But whether it be a sufficient doctrine or obâ—ective faith in suo genere If a Heretick deny any essential part of it he believeth not that which he really understandingly and prevalently denyeth It is but the Name of Christianity and not the Thing which he owneth who disowneth any of the essence Our question is now whether our professed objective Faith be true and sufficient
truly believed that Christ was the Messiah They erred that thought it lawful to eat things offered to Idols and yet they erred not in believing in Christ No two men in the world its like have the same degree of personal faith and knowledge as I oft said before But if our professed object of faith that is Gods word were false in one thing we could not be sure that it were true in any thing Yet here I told you before 1. That a man may be much surer that one part of Scripture is Gods word than another because some Copies are doubtful in the diverse Readings of some particular words or sentences and which of them that so differ is Gods word we oft know not But so much as we are sure is the word of God we are sure is true So if the Authority of some few books was once doubted of as 2 Pet. Jam. Jud. Heb. c. and yet be by any it followeth not that they doubt of the truth of any which they know to be the word of God 2. Or if any do hold that the Penmen might be left to their natural fallibility in some by historical circumstances or words it would not follow that one Article of the Gospel or Christian faith is doubtful which is plainly as the Kernel of it delivered in all the Scripture and also by infallible Universal Tradition by it self in the Sacrament Creed Lords Prayer and Decalogue And our case also much differeth from the Papists in this For We profess that our objective faith Gods word is Infallible and we are Infallible so far as we believe it But we confess that we are lyable to misunderstand some parts of it and so far are fallible as being imperfect But the Papists say that their Pope and Councils and Universal Practicers are personally Infallible so as not to be lyable to any misunderstanding of any Article of faith say some or Article of Catholick faith say others And so they make their own Act of Believing to be Commensurate and equally certain with Gods word of faith and therefore they allow you to question them in all if they err in one as pretending to a gift of never erring in any D. But is it not a great reason to incline us to them rather than to you when They only pretend to Infallibility and You confess that you are all fallible in your Belief R. This is to be the subject of our next Conference and therefore not now to be anticipated only I shall tell you that It is a meer noise of ambiguous words to deceive the heedless that cannot search out the meaning of them 1. We not only Pretend but Profess and prove that our Christian Religion is altogether Infallible For which end I have written divers Treatises my self 2. And we profess that all the mystical Church of Christ that is all sincere Christians do truly and Infallibly believe all that is Essential to Christianity and as much of the Integrals as they can know 3. And we profess that the Catholick Church-Visible that is All professors of Christianity in the world do profess all these Essentials of Christianity and are Infallible in this profession But we hold withall that there is no particular Church or Bishop no Synod or Council that is so Infallible but that 1. They that hold to the Essentials may misunderstand and err about some Integrals 2. And those persons have no Certainty that they shall not err by Heresie or Apostacy from the Essentials themselves So that the Church is Infallible because it is essentiated by believing an Infallible Word which who ever believeth not ceaseth to be of the Church not Gods Word infallible because the Church or any number of men believe it or say Its true For Truth is before Knowledge and Faith As Aristotle was a Philosopher because he understood and taught the doctrine of real Philosophy and not that doctrine called Physicks or Philosophy because that Aristotle knew or taught it But alas What work shall I shew you when I come to open their bewildring uncertainties D. But to deal freely with you methinks their way of measuring out the Necessaries in Faith and Religion according to mens various parts and opportunities seemeth to me more satisfactory than yours who fix upon certain points as the Baptismal Covenant as Essentials For there is great diversity of mens Capacities R. This cometh from confounding several Questions as if they were all one 1. It is one Question What is the Christian Religion 2. ☞ It is another Question Whether the Christian Religion be absolutely necessary to the salvation of all those to whom it was never competently revealed 3. And it is another Question Whether more than the Essentials of Christian Religion be not necessary to the salvation of many who have opportunity to know more Alas what work doth Confusion make in the world To the first It is evident that as Mahometanism is a thing which may be defined so much more may Christianity Who that writeth of the several Religions of the world Ethnick Jewish Mahometan and Christian do not take them to be distinguishable and discernable Especially when Christ hath summed up Christianity into a Covenant and given it us in express words and affixed a flat promise of salvation to the true Covenanters and the Church hath ever called our Baptism our Christening Is Christianity Nothing If Something Why may it not be defined and differenced from all false Religions And if so It hath its Essential Constitutive parts All this is plain to Children that will see 2. And then as to the second question it concerneth not our Controversie at all It is but Whether any Infidels may be saved Or any that are no Christians And if it could be proved that any are saved that are no Christians do you thereby prove that they are Christians or members of the Christian Church or that Christianity is not a Religion which may be defined 3. And as to the third question We are on all sides agreed in it That they that have more than the naked Essentials of Christianity revealed to them aptly are bound to believe more Yea it is hardly conceiveable that any one should know and believe the Essentials only and no more It is not Essential to the Christian Covenant or Christianity to know that the Name of Christs Mother was Mary or that Pontius Pilate was the man that condemned him And if an Ignorant man thought that his continuance in the Grave was four dayes I do not think that this would damn his soul to Hell Much less the not believing that Mary dyed a Virgin And yet it is not like that any man should come to the Essentials of Christianity by any such way as should acquaint him with no one of these or any point besides the said Essentials And yet it is certain for all this that he that truly receiveth the Essentials and is true to the Baptismal Covenant shall be
were but General Assemblies of the Empire inconsiderable occasional accidentals excepted even as our Convocations or the Scots General Assemblies were though in a far larger Empire But all this I have done already in other writings beyond all reasonable contradiction D. Tell me then how it cometh to pass that so many Princes Nobles Learned men and Religious can be so marvellously deluded R. Alas poor man You talk as if you knew not your self nor mankind how bad a thing corrupt unsanctified nature is Why do you not also ask How cometh it to pass that the far greatest part of the World even five parts of six are Heathens and Mahometanes and that most of the World are wilful self-destroyers many ruining their very bodies Eating and Drinking and Whoreing and Idling them into Gowt Stone Dropsies and an hundred Maladies but far more ruining their souls Why do you not also ask How reasonable Creatures of all Professions are so worse than mad as to sell their souls and everlasting hopes for a dream and shadow or for dirt and dung even for a few Cups or Morsels or merry hours which they know are like the mirth of drunkenness which is quickly gone and ends in sickness and in shame For a great Name and a large attendance in their way to the grave For the thoughts and breath of mortal man And for that which all men first or last are forced to call meer Vanity and Vexation Were not men mad in sin had they never heard a Preacher the sight of a dead Carkass and a grave would do more to make them sober and considerate than is done with most When most of the World will obstinately follow the Devil their enemy by known sin to everlasting misery against all the commands exhortations promises threatnings mercies and warnings of God himself and all the perswasions of their truest friends What wonder if the same men can be Papists or any thing But I will tell you some of the particular Causes I. Abroad in other Countries there are all these Reasons easily discernible 1. Who knoweth not how great an advantage Education hath to form mens judgements to almost any thing how bad soever That which children receive if it be not disagreeable to their sensible interest how commonly and tenaciously do they follow Whence is it that the whole Empires and Kingdoms of Pagans are all of one mind and the Kingdoms of Mahometans of another One Kingdom almost all Greek Christians and another Papists and another Lutherans and another Reformists c Hath not education a great hand in this 2. And the custome of the Countrey and the company which they converse with is of no small power with mens minds Especially when men live where almost all are of a mind they think that concord is a sign of truth and modesty forbiddeth them to be wiser than all the Countrey 3. And when they know few or none of another mind how should they know what they are And when they hear an hundred lies against them and never hear them speak for themselves they think that the Law of modesty humanity and converse oblige them to believe that so Many so Great and so Learned and Religious persons will not impudently lie When as perhaps the lye it self is a Tradition which the lyars received on the same terms in modest credulity from their teachers or fathers 4. And specially the Names of Order Government Vnity and Concord deceive many millions of souls For Order and Vnity are justly amiable to nature it self And the purblind know not an Image from a Man 5. Especially when civil Wars or Church discords have distracted the World and made men aweary of all that 's present and suspicious of all things which seemed to have a hand in their disappointments this maketh men hearken to any thing which pretendeth to certain settlement Order and peace Even as a man that by turning round is wheelsick will lay hold on the next post or fixed thing to keep him from falling down 6. And when their Teachers make them believe that all Christians besides them do live like mad-men in Sects and Schismes distractedly tearing out one anothers throats What wonder if this make men willing of any way which pretends to peace and glad to run into any Cottage which will keep them from such a storm 7. But the great cause is 1. The Blindness of mens minds 2. The wickedness of all unrenewed hearts and 3. The power of carnal Interest 1. Few men are of great natural parts for wit and fewer improve them by any serious study of things spiritual 2. Almost all men study with the byas of prejudice and partiality and as men that would have one side to be right because it is for their worldly ends 3. Sin Ruleth in most souls and the enmity against God and his Laws prevaileth in carnal minds Rom. 8.6 7 8. And enmity is an ill student and seeker of truth and friendship is an incompetent judge of sin 4. None but a few self-denying persons can bear to be reproached as Hereticks and Schismaticks by all about them 5. Especially the countenance or discountenance of Great ones doth more with such than Heaven and Hell 6. And that 's not all But he that will not be a Papist in most of their Countreys must be undone and in many must be rackt tormented and burnt And it is but few that have learnt to go to so high a price for truth and to be Religious at such a rate 8. Therefore it is a thing utterly unknown among them who is heartily a Papist and who not For when men must take on them to be Papists or be undone or burnt millions will seem to be such that are not For 9. Most of the World have no Religion in truth and power to overcome the world and flesh and therefore will seem to be of that Religion which hath the upper hand and serveth their turns 10. Yea the very Belief of the Immortality of the soul the Resurrection and the life to come is feeble if not unsound and lifeless in the most of men And so is the Belief of the Christian faith And a man that doubteth whether there be another life or not will make as sure as he can of the pleasures of this present life And I fear that this is the case of no small number of Papists to think I know not whether there be any other life of retribution I rather think that there is none But lest it should prove true I will be of some Religion And where can I be with more ease and safety than in that which my Rulers and Teachers and the whole Countrey say is right If it prove otherwise I hope God will excuse me while I obey my Governours and do as the most do He that much doubteth of the truth of Christianity it self may easily fall in with any Sect which seemeth for his interest I fear Melancthon too truly said that
Italians maintain that Christ is in the Sacrament when they do not believe that he is in Heaven 11. And many Nicodemites think that a man needs not expose himself to danger for his faith but may keep it to himself and do as his neighbours do especially where they have no other society to joyn with they think it better to joyn with the Popish Churches than none 12. And I have reason to think that it is but few among the multitude that understand indeed what the Papists hold while they go with them in the general Name and profession And in particular about Transubstantiation When even the subtle Schoolmen are not agreed of its proper sense as Durandus his instance for one doth prove I do not think that one of an hundred that receiveth their Eucharist doth in his heart believe that It is not Bread But some think that their Church it self meaneth otherwise And some say It is not for such as I to contradict them and dispute but I will leave every one to think as he will and so will I. 13. And as for Princes and Lords abroad Those that have once escaped Popery will take heed how they entertain it again unless lust and folly have sold them for a prey But they that live where their subjects are Papists dare not venture to shake so great a fabrick lest they overthrow themselves For 1. People are tumultuous 2. The Popish Clergie are rich and powerful and exceeding numerous 3. Religion is a thing that men are tender and tenacious of who are seriously of any 4. The Popish doctrine of deposing and killing excommunicate Kings maketh many Princes flatter the Priests for fear of losing â—heir lives They think that it is better make some advantage of the Popes friendship than to have such an enemy whose Knives and poison have easie access and whose armies we must watch against in peace as in a continued War and we know not when they are in our own houses or near us nor where nor when we are in safety 14. And alas the Great ones of the World have the greatest Temptations and not the weakest lusts and passions and have more of worldly and carnal Interest to carry them away 15. And the Papists Religion is notably suited to their lusts and carnal ends All which and much more may tell you that it no wonder that so many forreign Princes and States and Nobles can cleave to so sensless a way as Popery D. II. But how come so many among us in England to turn Papists of late years where Popery is discountenanced by the King Parliament and Laws R. Many of the same Causes do this which I need not reherse And 1. Too many both Noble and ignoble are prepared by their Lusts and by a vicious life There are many things in Popery which greatly accommodate a carnal mind and a debauched guilty Conscience which the Christian Protestant Religion affordeth not And a profligate flagitious person is likeliest to be forsaken of God and to be given up to believe a lye seeing they received not the truth in the love of it that they might be saved 2 Thess 2.10 11 12. I fear nothing so much as lest men turn Heart-Infidels and Tongue-Papists as the suitablest Reserve lest Christian Religion and the life to come should prove a truth And indeed great sins Cry for great Vengeance And what Greater than for Mind Will and Life to be forsaken of God 2. And alas except Lawyers Physicions and others bred up to Studies and Employments how few are there of Nobility or Gentry that are hard studying men And the great Mysteries of Religion will not be well learned and defended by a life of eating drinking playing jeasting gaming hawking hunting visitings of empty company lustfulness worldliness or vain-glorious pomp No men grow wise or Christians indeed by such a course 3. And indeed the Popish Priests are more industrious than too many of our Incumbent Ministers for which they are Commendable in their way The Erroneous are oft more zealous than the Orthodox And they that apprehend themselves between fear and hope are usually more industrious than they that by possession are secure which maketh the lower side so oft get up and the upper side go down And I would I might not say that our Ministers are too few of them able to deal with a trained Sophister Some are unable in this particular cause because they take it as a baffled pack of notorious Errors and thought that few sober persons were in danger of it And so they have honestly bent their studies and labours to the winning of sensual persons from their sins and are unfurnished in the Popish Controversies knowing that they can refer them to multitudes of Books which are unanswerable But alas too many also are unable through meer ignorance lowness of parts and gross insufficiency or negligence not only in this but other parts of their Ministerial work 4. And we have incurred no small dammage and danger by ignorant Over-doing against the Papists Partly with the self-wise Sectaries calling many laudable or blameless things by the Name of Popery Antichristianity and Idolatry because they are cross to their pre-judging partial conceits And partly by some unsound doctrines which some defend as parts of the Protestant Religion And partly by magnifying verbal differences and making a noise about them as if they were real and such as salvation lyeth on For want of skill to state a controversie and discern a verbal difference from a real And when a Papist can but shew their Novices one such palpable error in the Writings of a Protestant What sad work will he make with it and still harp upon that string and perswade the people that the rest of our differences are such like And thus many Overdoing well-meaning ignorant men both Ministers and people have unwittingly done as much to harden Papists and increase their numbers almost as if Satan had hired them as Spies to betray the Churches and Cause of Christ Yea and if one better studied in these points shall go a sounder and more successful way to work and take these weapons out of the Papists hands which some ignorant Protestants have given them the same mens blind zeal will rage against them as some did against Chillingworth Anthony Wotton and divers others our greatest Champions as if it were not themselves but these that were befriending Popery So that they neither can confute them soundly themselves nor will suffer others but zealous Protestants assault Christs ablest servants at their backs while their faces are towards the adversaries whom they oppose 5. But nothing among us except Ignorance and wickedness increaseth them more than the scandal of our numerous and some of them abominable Sects When the people see many zealous professors turn Quakers or Ranters or Seekers or Antinomians or Socinians or Familists and shall see the more tolerable parties Episcopal Presbyterian Independant Erastian Separatists and Anabaptists