Deut. 29.29 Secret things belong to the Lord our God but things revealed unto us and our Children for ever This is the reason why we rest in the words of Christ This is my Body leaving the manner to him that made the Sacrament we know it is Sacramentall and therefore efficacious because God was never wanting to his own Ordinances where man did not set a bar against himself But to determine whether it be corporeally or spiritually I mean not only after the manner of a spirit but in a spirituall sense whether it be in the Soul only or in the Host also And if in the Host whether by Consubstantiation or Transubstantiation whether by Production or Adduction or Conservation or Assumption or by whatsoever other way bold and blind man dare conjecture we determine not Durand Motum sentimus modum nescimus praesentiam credimus This was the belief of the Primitive Church this was the Faith of the antient Fathers who were never acquainted with these modern questions de modo which edifie not but expose Christian Religion to contempt We know what to think and what to say with probability modesty and submission in the Schools But we dare neither scrue up the Question to such an height nor dictate our Opinions to others so Magisterially as Articles of Faith Nescire velle quae Magister maximus Docere non vult erudita est inscitia O! Against multiplying of questions and controversies how happy had the Christian world been if Scholars could have sate down contented with a latitude of Generall sufficient saving Truth which when all is done must be the Olive branch of peace to shew that the deluge of Ecclesiasticall division is abated without wading too far into particular subtilties or doting about Questions and Logomacâ—ies whereof commeth envy strife raylings evill surmisings perverse disputings Old controversies evermore raise up new controversies and yet more controversies as Circles in the water do produce other Circles Now especially these Scholasticall quarrels seem to be unseasonable when Zenos School is newly opened in the world who sometimes wanted opinions but never wanted Arguments Now when Atheism and sacrilege are become the mode of the times Now when all the fundamentals of Theology Morality and Policy are undermined and ready to be blown up Now when the unhappy contentions of great Princes or their Ministers have hazarded the very being of Monarchy and Christianity Now when Bellonia shakes her bloody whip over this Kingdom it becometh well all good Christians and subjects to leave their litigious questions and 〈…〉 to bring water to quench the fire of civil dissention already kindled rather than to blow the Coals of discord and to render themselves censurable by all discreet persons like that half-wirted fellow personated in the Orator Qui cum Capit is mederi debuisset reduviem curavit when his head was extremely distempered he busied himself about a small push on his fingers end But that which createth this trouble to you and me at this time is your Preface The Occasion of this Discourse and Epistle Dedicatory wherein to adorn your vainly imagined Victory in an unseasonable Controversie you rest not contented that your Adversary grace your Triumph unless the King of great Britain and all his subjects yea and all Protestants besides attend your Chariot Neither do you only desire this but augurate it or rather you relate it as a thing already as good as don P. 37. for you tell him that his eyes and his ears do hear and see those truths which make him to know the faults of that new Religion which he had sucked in with his milk you set forth the causes of his Conversion The tears of his Mother and the Blood of his Father whom you suppose against evident truth to have dyed an invisible Member of your Roman Catholick Church And you prescribe the means to perfect his Conversion which must be a conference of your Theologians with the Ministers of Charentou If your charity be not to be blamed The Authors indiscretion to wish no worse to another than you do to your self yet prudent men desire more discretion in you than to have presented such a Treatise to the view of the world under his Majesties protection without his licence and against his conscience Had you not heard that such groundless insinuations as these and other private whisperings concerning his Fathers Apostatising to the Roman Religion did lose him the hearts of many subjects If you did why would you insist in the same steps to deprive the Son of all possibility of recovering them To no purpose If your intentions be only to invite his Majesty to embrace the Catholick Faith The King is already a better Catholick than himself you might have spared both your Oyl and labour The Catholick Faith flourished 1200. years in the world before Transubstantiation was defined among your selves Persons better acquainted with the Primitive times than your self unless you wrong one another do acknowledge that the Fathers did not touch either the word or the matter of transubstantiation Discursus modestus JesuitaruÌ„ p. 13. Watsons quod lib. l. 2. Art 4. Mark it well neither name nor thing His Majesty doth firmly beleeve all supernaturall truths revealed in sacred Writ He embraceth cheerfully whatsoever the holy Apostles or the Nicene Fathers or blessed Athanasius in their respective Creeds or Summaries of Catholick Faith did set down as necessary to be believed He is ready to receive whatsoever the Catholick Church of this age doth unanimously believe to be a particle of saving Truth But if you seek to obtrude upon him the Roman Church with its adherents for the Catholick Church excluding three parts of four of the Christian world from the Communion of Christ or the opinions thereof for Articles and fundamentals of Catholick Faith neither his reason nor his Religion nor his charity will suffer him to listen unto you The Truths received by our Church are sufficient in point of Faith to make him a good Catholick More than this your Roman Bishops your Roman Church your Tridentine Councill may not cannot obtrude upon him Listen to the third generall Councill Par. 2. Act. 6. c. 7. that of Ephesus which decreed that it should be lawfull for no man to publish or compose another Faith or Creed than that which was defined by the Nicene Councill Not lawfull to add to the old Creed And that whosoever should dare to compose or offer any such to any persons willing to be converted from Paganism Judaism or Heresy if they were Bishops or Clerks should be deposed if Laymen anathematized Suffer us to enjoy the same Creed the Primitive Fathers did which none will say to have been insufficient except they be mad Concil Flor. Sess 10. prof sid in bulla Pti quarti as was alleged by the Greeks in the Councill of Florence You have violated this Canon you have obtruded a
AN ANSWER TO Monseiur de la Militiere his impertinent Dedication of his Imaginary Triumph To the KING of Great Britain to invite him to embrace the Roman Catholick Religion By John Bramhall D. D. and Lord Bishop of Derry HAGUE Printed in the Year 1653. An Answer to Monseiur de la Militiere his Epistle to the King of great Britain wherein he inviteth his Majesty to forsake the Church of England and to embrace the Roman Catholick Religion SIR YOu might long have disputed your Question of Transubstantiation with your learned Adversary and proclamed your own Triumph on a silver Trumpet to the world before any Member of the Church of England had interposed in this present Exigence of our Affairs I know no necessity that Christians must be like Cocks Plut. that when one Crows all the rest must Crow for Company Monseiur Aubertine will not want a surviving friend to teach you what it is to sound a Triumph before you have gained the victory He was no fool that desired no other Epitaph on his Tomb than this Here lyes the Author of this sentence Prurigo Disputandi scabies Ecclesiae Sir Henry Wotton the itch of disputing is the scab of the Church Having viewed all your strength with a single eye I find not one of your Arguments that comes home to Transubstantiation but only to a true reall presence which no genuine Son of the Church of England did ever deny no nor your Adversary himself Christ said This is my Body what he said we do stedfastly believe he said not after this or that manner neque con neque sub neque trans And therefore we place it among the Opinions of the Schools not among the Articles of our Faith The holy Eucharist which is the Sacrament of peace and unity rences in the Church directly about the Sacrament for the first 800. years ought not to be made the matter of strife and contention There wanted not abuses in the Administration of this Sacrament in the most pure and Primitive times as prophaness and uncharitableness among the Corinthians 1 Cor. 11. The Simonians and Menandrians and some other such Imps of Sathan unworthy the name of Christians Theod. ex Ignatio did wholy forbear the use of the Eucharist but it was not for any difference about the Sacrament it self but about the naturall Body of Christ They held that his flesh and Blood and Passion were not true and reall but imaginary and phantasticall things The Maniches did forbear the Cup but it was not for any difference about the Sacrament it self They made two Gods a good God whom they called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or light and an evill God whom they tearmed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or darkness which evill God they said did make some creatures of the Dreg or more feculent parts of the matter which were evill and impure And among these evill creatures they esteemed Wine which they called the Gall of the Dragon for this cause not upon any other scruple they either wholy absteined from the Cup Leo. Ser. 4. de quad Epiph. haer 30. 46. or used Water in the place of wine which Epiphanius recordeth among the errors of the Ebionites Aug. li. de Haeres c. 64 and Tacians And St. Austine of the Aquarians Still we doe not find any clashing either in word or writing directly about this Sacrament in the universall Church of Christ much less about the presence of Christ in the Sacrament Bel. l. 1. de Sac. Euch. c. 1. Neque ullus veterum disputat contra hunc errorem primis sex centis Annis The first that are supposed by Bellarmine to have broached any error in the Church about the reall presence were the Iconomachi after 700. years Primi qui veritatem corporis Domini in Eucharistia in quaestionem vecarunt fuerint Iconomachi post Annum Domini 700. Bel ibid. Syn Nic. 2 Act 6. only because they called the Bread and Wine the Image of Christs body This is as great a mistake as the former Their difference was meerly about Images not at all about the Eucharist so much Vasques confesseth Disp 179. c. 1. that In his â—udgement they are not to be numbred with those who deny the presence of Christ in the Eucharist We may well find different observations in those dayes Yet different observations as one Church consecrating leavened Bread another unleavened One Church making use of pure Wine another of Wine mixed with Water One Church admitting Infants to the Communion another not admitting them but without controversies or censures or animosity one against another we find no debates or disputes concerning the presence of Christs Body in the Sacrament and much less concerning the manner of his presence for the first eight hundred years And different expressions Yet all the time we find as different expressions among those Primitive Fathers as among our modern writers at this day some calling the Sacrament the sign of Christs Body the figure of his Body the Symbol of his Body the mystery of his Body the exemplar type and representation of his Body saying that the Elements do not recede from their first nature others naming it the true Body and Blood of Christ changed not in shape but in nature yea doubting not to say that in this Sacrament we see Christ we touch Christ we eat Christ that we fasten our teeth in his very flesh and make our Tongues red in his Bloud Yet notwithansting there were no questions no quarrels no contentions amongst them there needed no Councils to order them no conferences to reconcile them because they contented themselves to believe what Christ had said This is my Body without presuming upon their own heads to determine the manner how it is his Body neither weighing all their own words so exactly before any controversie was raised nor expounding the sayings of other men contrary to the analogy of Faith The first doubt about the The first difference abouâ— the presence of Christ in the Sacrament presence of Christs Body in the Sacrament seems to have been moved not long before the year 900. in the dayes of Bertram and Paschasius but the controversie was not well formed nor this new Article of Transubstantiation sufficiently concocted in the dayes of Berengarius after the year 1050. as appeareth by the gross mistaking and mistating of the question on both sides First Berengarius if we may trust his adversaries knew no mean between a naked figure or empty sign of Christs presence and a corporeall or Locall presence and afterwards fell into another extreme of impanation on the other side the Pope and the Councill made no difference between Consubstantiation and Transubstantiation they understood nothing of the spirituall or indivisible being of the flesh and blood of Christ in the Sacrament as appeareth by that ignorant and Capernaiticall retractation and abjuration which they imposed upon Berengarius Penned by
the reuniting forsooth of Christendome All the satisfaction I should enjoyn you is to perswade the Bishop of Rome if Gregory the Great were living The Authors satisfaction to perswade the Pope to leave that vain Title you could not fail of speeding to imitate the piety and humility of our Princes that is to content himself with his Patriarchicall dignity and primacy of Order Principium unitatis and to quit that much more presumptuous and if a Popes word may pass for current Antichristian terme of the Head of the Catholick Church If the Pope be the Head of the Catholique Church then the Catholique Church is the Popes body which would be but an harsh expression to Christian ears then the Catholick Church should have no Head when there is no Pope two or three Heads when there are two or three Popes an unsound Head when there is an hereticall Pope a broken Head when the Pope is censured or deposed and no Head when the See is vacant If the Church must have one Universall visible Ecclesiasticall Head a generall Councill may best pretend to that Title Neither are you more successfull in your other Reason Hatred of Episcopacy or the true cause why the Parliament persecuted the King why the Parliament persecuted the King Because he mainteined Episcopacy both out of Conscience and Interest which they sought to abolish For though it be easily admitted that some seditious and heterodox persons had an evill eye both against Monarchy and Episcopacy from the very beginning of these troubles either out of fiery zeal or vain affectation of Novelty like those who having the green-sickness prefer chalk and meal in a corner before wholsome meat at their Fathers table or out of a greedy and covetous desire of gathering some sticks for themselves upon the fall of those great Okes yet certainly they who were the contrivers and principall actors in this business did more malign Episcopacy for Monarchy's sake then Monarchie for Episcopacies What end had the Nuncio's faction in Ireland against Episcopacy whose mutinous courses apparantly lost that Kingdom When the Kings consent to the Abolition of Episcopacy in Scotland was extorted from him by the Presbyterian faction which probably the prime authors do rue sufficiently by this time were those Presbyterian Scots any thing more favourable to Monarchy To come to England the chief Scene of this bloody Tragedy If that party in Parliament had at first proposed any such thing as the Abolition either of Monarchy or Episcopacy undoubtedly they had ruined their whole design untill daily tumults and uncontrollable uprores had chased away the greater and sounder part of both Houses Their first Protestation was solemnly made to God both for King and Church as they were by Law established The true causes of the troubles in Englâ—â—d Would you know then what it was that Conjur'd up the storm among us It was some feigned jealousies and fears which the first broachers themselves knew well enough to be fables dispersed cunningly among the people That the King purposed to subvert the fundamentall Lawes of the Kingdome and to reduce the free English Subject to a condition of absolute slavery under an Arbitrary Government For which massy weight of malitious untruth they had no supporters but a few Bull-rushes Secondly that he meant to apostate from the Protestant Religion to Popery and to that end had raised the Irish Rebellion by secret encouragements and Commissions For which monstrous calumny they had no other foundation except the solemn religious Order of divine Service in his own Chappell and Cathedral Churches then some unseasonable disputes about an Altar or a Table and the permission of the Popes Agent to make a short stay in England more for reasons of State than of Religion And some sensless fictions of some Irish Rebels who having a Patent under the great Seal of Ireland for their Lands to colour their barbarous murthers shewed it to the poor simple people as a Commission from the King to levy forces And lastly some impious pious frauds of some of your own partie whose private whispers and printed insinuations did give hopes that the Church of England was comming about to shake hands with the Roman in the points controverted Which was meerly devised to gull some silly creatures whom they found apt to be catched with chaff for which they had no more pretext of truth than you have for your groundless intimations in this unwelcome dedication These suspitions being compounded with Covetousness Ambition Envy Emulation desire of Revenge and discontent were the sourse of all our Calamities Thus much you your self confess in effect that this supposition that the King and Bishops had an intention to re-establish the Roman Catholique Religion was the venom which the Puritan faction infused into the hearts of the people P. 11. to fill them with hatred against a King worthy of love And the Parliament judged it a favourable occasion for their design to advance themselves to Soveraign Authority Be Judge your self how much they are accessary to our sufferings who either were or are the Authors or fomenters of these damnable slanders There was yet one cause more of this cruell persecution which I cannot conceal from you because it concerns some of your old acquaintance There was a Bishop in the world losers must have leave to talk whose privie Purse and subtill Counsells did help to kindle that unnaturall war in his Majesties three Kingdomes Our Cardinall Wolsey complained before his death That he had served his King better than his God But certainly this practise in your friend was neither Good service to his God to be the author of the effusion of so much innocent blood nor yet to his King to let the world see such a dangerous president It is high time for a man to look to himself when his next neighbours house is all on a flame As hitherto I have followed your steps though not altogether in your own Method or rather your own confusion So I shall observe the same course for the future Your discourse is so full of Meanders and windings turnings and returnings you congregate Heterogenious matter and segregate that which is homogeneous as if you had made your Dedication by starts and snatches and never digested your whole discourse On the contrary where I meet with any thing it shall be my desire to dispatch it out of my hands with whatsoever perteins unto it once for all I hope you expect not that I should amuse my self at your Rhetoricall flowers and elegant expressions they agree well enough with the work you were about The Pipe playes sweetly whilst the Fowler is catching his prey Trappings are not to be condemned if the things themselves are good and usefull but I prefer one Pomegranate Tree loaden with good fruit before a whole row of Cypresses that serve onely for shew Be sure of this that where any thing in your Epistle reflects upon the Church
of England I shall not miss it first or last though it be but a loose unjoynted peece and so perhaps hitherto untouched We are onely accused of Schism Amongst other things which you lay to our charge you glance at the least twelve times at our supposed Schism But from first to last never attempt to prove it as if you took it for granted I have shaped a Coat for a Schismatick and had presented it to you in this answer but considering that the matter is of moment and merits as much to be seriously and solidly weighed as your naked Crimination without all pretext of proof deserves to be sleighted lest it might seem here as an impertinent digression to take up too much place in this short discourse I have added it at the Conclusion of this Answer in a short Tract by it self that you may peruse it if you please Presbyterians and Brownists have been Romes best friends You fall heavily in this Discourse upon the Presbyterians Brownists and Independents if they intend to return you any answer they may send it by a messenger of their own As for my part I am not their Proctor I have received no Fee from them And if I should undertake to plead their Cause upon my own head by our old English Law you might call me to accompt for unlawfull maintenance Onely give me leave as a by-stander to wonder why you are so cholerique against them for certainly they have done you more service in England then ever you could have done for your selves And I wonder no less why you call our Reformation a Calvinisticall Reformation brought into England by Bucer and Peter Martyr a blind Reformation yea the intire ruine of the Faith of the very form of the Church and of the civill Government of the Common-wealth instituted by God P. 16. Though you confess again in our favour that if our first Reformers had been interrogated whether they meant P. 19. P. 14. any such thing they would have purged themselves P. 17. and avouched their Innocence with their hands upon the new Gospell The gifts of Enemies are no gifts If such as these are all your courtesies you may be pleased to take them again Our first Reformers might safely swear upon any Gospell old or new that they meant no such thing And we may as securely swear upon all the books of God old or new that there is no such thing But why our Gospell should be younger or newer than Sixtus Quintus his Gospell or Clemens Octavus his Gospell passeth my understanding and yours also Comparisons are odious therefore I will not say that the true English Protestant standing to his own grounds is the best subject in the world But I do say that he is as good a subject as any in the world and our principles as Innocent and as auxiliary to civill Government as the Maximes of any Church under Heaven And more than yours where the clashing of two Supreme Authorities and the exemption of your numerous Clergy from the Coercive power of the Prince and some other novelties which I forbear to mention do alwayes threaten a storm Tell me Sir if you can what Church in Europe hath declared more fully or more favourably for Monarchy than the poor Church of England L. Cant. 1643. C. 1. That the most high and Sacred Order of Kings is of Divine Right being the Ordinance of God himself founded in the prime Lawes of Nature and clearly established by express Texts both of the old and new Testament Moreover that this power is extended over all their Subjects Ecclesiasticall and Civill That to set up any Independent coactive power above them either Papall or popular either directly or indirectly is to undermine their great royall Office and cunningly to overthrow that most Sacred Ordinance which God himself hath established That for their subjects to bear Arms against them Offensive or defensive upon any pretence whatsoever is to resist the powers which are ordeined of God The English Reformation not Calvinist cal And why do you call our Reformation Calvinisticall contrary to your own Conscience contrary to your own confession That in our Reformation we reteined the antient Order of Episcopacy P. 9. as Instituted by divine authority and a Liturgy and Ceremonies whereby we preserved the face or Image of the Catholick Church P. 10. And that for this very cause the disciplinarians of Geneva and the Presbyterians did conceive an implacable hatred against the King for the Churches sake and out of their aversion to it Did they hate their own Reformation so implacably If these things be to be reconciled reddat mihi minam Diogenes He that looks more in disputation to the Advantage of his partie than to the truth of his grounds had need of a strong memory We reteined not onely Episcopacy Liturgy and Ceremonies but all things else that were conformable to the discipline and publick service of the primitive Church rightly understood No Sir we cannot pin our faith upon the sleeve of any particular man as one used to say We love no nismes M. Tho. Sq. neither Calvinism nor Lutheranisme nor Jonsenianism but onely one that we derive from Antioch that is Christianism We honour Learning and Piety in our fellow servants but we desire to wear no other badge or Cognizance than that we received from our own Master at our Baptism Bucer was as fit to be Calvins Master as his Scholar So long as Calvin continued with him in Germany he was for Episcopacy Liturgy and Ceremonies and for assurance thereof subscribed the Augustane Confession and his late learned Successor and assertor in Geneva Monsieur Deodate with sundry others of that Communion were not averse from them Or why do you call our Reformation blind It was not blindness but too much affectation of knowledge and too much peeping into controverted and new fangled Questions that hath endamaged our Religion It is you that teach the Colliers Creed not we Howsoever you pretend to prove that our Reformation was the ruine of the Church and Common-wealth wee expect you should endeavour to prove it You cannot so far mistake your self as to conceive your authority to be the same with us that Pythagoras had among his Scholars to have his Dictates received for Oracles without proof what did I say that you pretend to prove it That 's too low an expression you promise us a demonstration of it P. 19. so lively and evident that no reason shall be able to contradict it Are you not afraid that too much expectation should prejudice your discourse by diminishing our applause Quid tanto dignum feret hic promissor hiatu Do you think of nothing now but Triumphs Lively and evident demonstration not to be contradicted by reason is like the Phenix much talked of but seldom seen Most men when they see a man strip up his sleeves and make too large promises of fair dealing
a Church nor that Church any privileges unless the Court of Rome might have the Monopoly of them There is a vast difference between the Catholick Church and a Patriarchall Church The Ca-Catholick Church can never fail any Patriarchall Church may Apostate and fail We have a promise that the Candle shall not be put out we have no promise that the Candlesticks shall not be removed Rev. 2.5 The Roman Church it self not absolutely faln to ruin But suppossing that which wee can never grant the Catholick Church and Roman Church were Convertibles yet still you do us wrong First we do not maintain that the Roman Church it self is faln to ruin and desolation we grant to it a true metaphysicall being though not a true morall being we hope their errors are rather in superstructures than in fundamentals wee doe not say that the Plants of saving truth which are common to you and us are plucked up by the roots in the Roman Church but we say that they are over-grown with weeds and in danger to be choked Next for Idolatry Whether the Roman Church be guilty of Idolatry whether and why and how far we accuse your Church of it deserves further Consideration First you agree with us That God alone is the Object of Religion and consequently that all Religious worship is due terminatively only to him that God alone is to be invocated absolutely or ultimately that is so as to grant our requests and fulfill our desires by himself and that the Saints are not the objects of our prayers but joynt petitioners with us and intercessors for us to the throne of Grace Secondly we profess as well as you that there is a proportionable degree of honour and respect due to every creature in Heaven and Earth according to the dignity of it and therefore more honour due to a glorified Spirit than to a mortall man But withall we adde that this honour is not servitutis but charitatis not of service as to our Lords and Masters but of love and charity as to our friends and fellow servants of the same kind and nature with that Honour which we give to holy men on Earth And herein we are confident that we shall have your consent Thirdly we agree in this also that abundant love and duty doth extend an honourable respect from the person of a dear friend or noble benefactor to his Posterity to his memory to his Monument to his Image to his Reliques to every thing that he loved or that pertained to him even to the Earth which he did tread upon for his sake Put a Liefhebber or Virtueso among a company of rare Pictures and he will pick out the best pieces for their proper value But a friend or a child will more esteem the Picture of a Benefactor or Ancestor for its relation The respect of the one is terminated in the Picture that of the other is radicated in the exemplar Yet still an Image is but an Image and the kinds of respect must not be confounded The respect given to an Image must be respect proper for an Image not Courtship not Worship not Adoration More respect is due to the person of the meanest beggar than to all the Images of Christ and his Apostles and a 1000. Primitive Saints or Progenitors Hitherto there is neither difference nor perill either of Idolatry or superstition Wherein then did consist this guilt of Idolatry contracted by the Roman Church I am willing for the present to pass by the private abuses of particular persons which seem to me no otherwise chargeable upon the whole Church than for Connivence As the making Images to counterfeit tears and words and gestures and complements for advantage to induce silly people to believe that there was something of divinity in them and the multitude of fictitious Relicks and suppositious Saints which credulity first introduced since covetousness hath nourished I take no notice now of those remote suspitions or suppositions of the possibility of want of intention either in the Priest that consecrates the Sacrament or in him that Baptised or in the Bishop that ordeined him or in any one through the whole line of succession in all which cases according to your own principles you give divine worship to corporeall Elements which is at least materiall Idolatry I will not stand now to examine the truth of your distinctions of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yet you know well enough that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is no religious worship and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is coin lately minted that will not pass for current in the Catholick Church Whilst your common people understand not these distinctions of degrees of honour what holds them from falling downright into Idolatry Neither do I urge how you have distributed the Patronage of particular Countries the Cure of severall Diseases the protection of all distinct professions of men and all kinds of creatures among the Saints just as the Heathen did among their Tutelary Gods nor how little warrant you have for this practise from experience nor lastly how you build more Churches erect more Altars offer more presents powr out more prayers make more vows perform more offices to the Mother than to the Son Yet though we should hold our peace methinks you should ponder these things seriously and either for your own satisfaction or ours take away such unnecessary occasions of scandall and disunion But I cannot omit that the Councill of Trent is not contented to enjoyn the Adoration of Christ in the Sacrament which we never deny but of the Sacrament it self that is according to the common current of your Schoolmen the Accidents or Species of Bread and Wine because it conteins Christ Why do they not adde upon the same grounds that the pix is to be adored with divine worship because it conteins the Sacrament Divine honour is not due to the very Humanity of Christ as it is abstracted from the Deity but to the whole person Deity and Humanity hypostatically united Neither the Grace of Union nor the Grace of Unction can confer more upon the Humanity than the Humanity is capable of There is no such Union between the Deity and the Sacrament neither immediatly nor yet mediately mediante corpore Neither do you ordinarily ascribe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or divine worship to a Crucifix or to the Image of Christ indeed not Terminatively but transeuntly so as not to rest in the Image or Crucifix but to pass to the exemplar or person crucified But why a piece of Wood should be made partaker of divine honours even in Transitu or in the passage passeth my understanding The Heathens wanted not the same pretext for all their gross Idolatry Let them plead for themselves Non ego c. I do not worship that stone which I see but I serve him whom I do not see Lastly whilst you are pleased to use them I may not forget those strange
insolent forms of prayer conteined in your books even ultimate prayers if we take the words as they sound directed to the Creatures that they would protect you at the hour of death and deliver you from the devill and confer spirituall graces upon you and admit you into Heaven precibus meritisque by their prayers and merias You know what merit signifies in your language a Condignity or at least a Congruity of deferâ— The exposition of your Doctors is that they should do all this for you by their prayers as improper a form of speech as if a suppliant intending only to move an ordinary Courtier to mediate for him unto the King should fall down upon his Knees before the Courtier and beseech him to make him an Earl or a Knight or to bestow such an Office or such a Pardon upon him or to do some other Grace for him properly belonging to the Prerogative Royall How agrees this with the words Precibus meritisque A begger doth not deserve an Alms by asking it This is a snare to ignorant persons who take the words to signifie as they sound And it is to be feared doe commit down-right Idolatry by their Pastors faults who prescribe such improper forms unto them The Roman Court most Tyrannicall Concerning Tyranny which makes up the arriere of the first supposed Maxim Wee do not accuse the Roman Church of Tyranny but the Roman Court If either the unjust usurpation of Sovereign power or the extending thereof to the destruction of the Laws and Canons of the Church yea even to give a Non obstante either to the Institution of Christ or at least to the uniform practise of the Primitive Ages or to them both If the swallowing up of all Ecclesiasticall Jurisdiction and the arrogating of a supercivill power paramont If the causing of poor people to trot to Rome from all the Quarters of Europe to wast their livelihoods there If the trampling upon Emperours and the disciplining of Monarchs be Tyrannicall either the Court of Rome hath been Tyrannicall or there never was Tyranny in the world I doubt not but some great persons when they have had bloody Tragedies to act for their own particular ends have sometimes made the Roman Church a stalking horse and the pretence of Catholick Religion a blind to keep their Policies undiscerned But if we consider seriously what cruelties have been really acted throughout Europe either by the Inquisitors Generall or by persons specially delegated for that purpose against the Waldenses of old and against the Protestants of later dayes against poor ignorant persons against women and children against mad-men against dead carkasses as Bucer c. upon pretence of Religion not onely by Ordinary forms of punishment and of death but by fire and faggots by strange new devised tortures we shall quickly find that the Court of Rome hath died it self red in Christian blood and equalled the most Tyrannicall persecutions of the Heathen Emperours Our second supposed Maxim The other Maxim whereupon you say that our Reformation was grounded was this That the onely way to reform the Faith and Liturgy P. 21. and government of the Church was to conform them to the dictates of holy Scripture of the sense whereof every private Christian ought to be the Judge by the light of the Spirit excluding Tradition and the publick Judgement of the Church You add P. 26. that We cannot prove Episcopacy by Scripture without the Help of Tradition And if we do admit of Tradition we must acknowledge the Papacy for the Government of the Catholick Church as founded in the Primacy of St. Peter Your second supposed ground is no truer than the former Much mistaken we are as far from Anarchy as from Tyranny As we would not have humane Authority like Medusa's head to transform reasonable men into sensless stones So we do not put the reigns of Goverment into the hands of each or any private person to reform according to their phantasies And that we may not deal like blunderers or deceitfull persons to wrap up on involve our selves on purpose in confused Generalities I will set down our sense distinctly When you understand it I hope you will repent of your rash censuring of us of whom you had so little knowledge The Scripture the rule of supernatural truths Three things offer themselves to be considered first concerning the Rule of Scripture Secondly the proper Expounders thereof and thirdly the manner of Exposition Concerning Scripture we believe That it was impossible for humane reason without the help of divine Revevelation to find out those supernaturall truths which are necessary to Salvation 2. That to supply this defect of naturall reason God out of his abundant goodness hath given us the holy Scriptures which have not their authority from the writing which is humane but from the Revelation which is divine from the holy Ghost Thirdly that this being the purpose of the Holy Ghost it is blasphemy to say he would not or could not attain unto it And that therefore the holy Scriptures do comprehend all necessary supernaturall truths So much is confessed by Bellarmine that All things which are necessary to be believed L. 4. de verbo Dei cap. 11. and to be done by all Christians were preached to all by the Apostles and were all written 4. That the Scripture is more properly to be called a Rule of supernaturall truths than a Judge or if it be sometimes called a Judge it is no otherwise than the Law is called a Judge of civill Controversies between man and man that is the rule of judging what is right and what is wrong That which sheweth what is streight sheweth likewise what is crooked Secondly Who are the proper expounders of Scripture and hoâ—… far concerning the proper Expounders of Scripture we do believe that the Gospell doth not consist in the words but in the sense non in superficie sed in medullâ And therefore that though this infallible rule be given for the common benefit of all yet every one is not an able or fit Artist to make application of this Rule in all particular cases To preserve the common right and yet prevent particular abuses we distinguish Judgement into three kinds Judgement of Discretion Judgement of Direction and Judgement of Jurisdiction As in the former Instance of the Law the ignorance whereof excuseth no man every subject hath Judgement of Discretion to apply it particularly to the preservation of himself his estate and interest The Advocates and those who are skilfull in the Law have moreover a Judgement of Direction to advise others of less knowledge and experience But those who are Constituted by the Soveraign power to determine emergent difficulties and differences and to distribute and administer justice to the whole body of a Province or Kingdom have moreover a Judgement of Jurisdiction which is not onely discretionary or directive but authoritative to impose an Obligation
though not perfect according to a perfection of degrees as gold is true Gold though it be mixed with some dross We believe that this inherent Justice and sanctity doth make them truly just and holy But if the word Justification be taken in sensu forensi for the acquittall of a man from former guilt to make an offender just in the eye of the Law as it is opposed to Condemnation Rom. 8.33 It is God that justifieth who is â—e that condemneth Then it is not our inherent righteousness that justifies us in this sense but the free Grace of God for the merits of Jesus Christ Of Merits Next for merits we never doubted of the necessity of good Works without which Faith is but a fiction We are not so stupid to imagine that Christ did wash us from our sins that we might wallow more securely in sin but that wee might serve him in holiness and righteousness all the dayes of our life We never doubted of the reward of good Works Come ye blessed of my Father c. for I was hungry and ye fed me Nor whether this reward be due to them in Justice Henceforth is layd up for me a Crown of righteousness 2 Tim. 4. â— which the Lord the just Judge shall give me in that day Faithfull promise makes due debt This was all that the antient Church did ever understand by the name of Merits Let Petavius bear witness Discrt Eccles li. 2. c. 4. Antiqui patres omnes prae caeteris Augustinus cumque iis consentiens Romana Catholica pietas agnoscit merita eò sensu nimirum ut neque Dei gratiam ulla antecedant merita haec ipsa tum ex gratiâ tum ex gratuitâ Dei pollicitatione tota pendeant All the Antient Fathers especially St. Austin and the Roman and Catholique faith consenting with them do acknowledge Merits in this sense that no Merits go before the grace of God and that these very Merits do Depend wholly on grace and on the free promise of God Hold you to this and we shall have no more difference about Merits Do you exact more of us than all the Fathers or the Roman and Catholique piety doth acknowledge It is an easie thing for a wrangling Sophister to dispute of Merits in the Schools or for a vain Orator to declame of Merits out of the Pulpit but when we come to ly upon our death-beds and present our selves at the last hour before the Tribunal of Christ it is high time both for you and us to renounce our own merits and to cast our selves naked into the Arms of our Saviour That any works of ours who are the best of us but unprofitable servants which properly are not ours but Gods own gifts and if they were ours are a just debt due unto him setting aside Gods free promise and gracious acceptation should condignly by their own intrinsecall value deserve the joyes of Heaven to which they have no more proportion than they have to satisfie for the eternall torments of Hell This is that which we have renounced and which we never ought to admit Of Invocation of Saints If your Invocation of Saints were not such as it is to request of them Patronage and Protection spirituall graces and Celestiall joyes by their prayers and by their merits alas the nisest Virgins have oyl in their Lamps little enough for themselves Yet it is not necessary for two Reasons First no Saint doth love us so well as Christ No Saint hath given us such assurance of his love or done so much for us as Christ No Saint is so willing or able to help us as Christ And secondly we have no command from God to invocate them So much your own Authors do confess and give this reason for it S. Clara Probl. 37. ex Horantio Lest the Gentiles being converted should believe that they vere drawn back again to the worship of the creature But we have another command Call upon me in the day of trouble and I will hear thee We have no promise to be heard when we do invocate them But we have another promise Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my Name ye shall receive it We have no example in holy Scripture of any that did invocate them but rather the contrary See thou do it not Rev. 22.9 I am thy fellow servant worship God We have no certainty that they do hear our particular prayers especially mentall prayers yea a thousand prayers poured out at one Instant in severall parts of the world We know what your men say of the glass of the Trinity and of extraordinary Revelations But these are bold conjectures without any certainty and inconsistent the one with the other We do sometimes meet in antient Authors with the Intercession of the Saints in Generall which we also acknowledge or an oblique invocation of them as you term it that is a prayer directed to God that he will hear the intercession of the Saints for us which we do not condemn Or a wish or a Rhetoricall Apostrophe or perhaps something more in some single antient Author But for an Ordinary Invocation in particular necessities and much more for publike Invocation in the Liturgies of the Church we meet not with it for the first six hundred years or thereabouts All which time and afterwards also the common principles and tradition of the Church were against it So far were they from obtruding it as a necessary fundamentall Article of Christian Religion Of prayer for the dead with Purgatory It is a common fault of your writers alwaies to couple Prayer for the dead and Purgatory together as if the one did necessarily suppose or imply the other In whose steps you tread Prayer for the dead hath often proceeded upon mistaken grounds often from true grounds both inconsistent with your Purgatory Many have held an Opinion that though the souls were not extinguished at the time of their separation from the body yet they did lye in secret receptacles in a profound or dead sleep untill the resurrection doing nothing suffering nothing in the mean time but only the delay of their glory Others held that all must pass through the fire of Conflagration at the day of judgement These opinions were inconsistent with your Purgatory yet all these upon these very grounds used prayer for the dead Others called the mercifull Doctors held that the very pains of Hell might be lessened by the prayer of the living Such a prayer is that which we meet with in your own Missall O King of Glory deliver the souls of all the faithfull deceased from the pains of Hell from the deep lake Tartarus from the mouth of the Lion that is the Devill that the bottomless pit of Hell do not swallow them up A man may lawfully pray for that which is certain if it be to come but one cannot lawfully pray for that which is past The souls which are in
edge of the razor doth touch the very throats of his servants that the glory of the work may wholy redound to himself We may not limit God to those means which seem most probable in our eyes So long as Joseph trusted to his friend in Court God did forget him when Pharaohs Butler had quite forgotten Joseph then God remembred him God hath nobler wayes of restitution than by Battails and bloudshed that is by changing the hearts of his creatures at his pleasure and turning Esau's vowed revenge into love and kindness I confess P. 74. 75. His Majesties escape out of England almost miraculous his Majesties resolution was great so was his prudence that neither fear which useth to betray the succours of the Soul nor any indiscreet Action or word or gesture in so long a time should either discover him or render him suspected When I consider that the Heir of a Crown in the midst of that Kingdom where he had his breeding whom all mens eyes had used to Court as the rising Sun of no common features or physiognomy at such time when he was not onely believed but known to be among them when every Corner of the Kingdom was full of Spys to search him and every Port and Inne full of Officers to apprehend him I say that he should travail at such a time so long so far so freely in the sight of the Sun exposed to the view of all persons without either discovery or suspition seeme little less than a miracle That God had smitten the eyes of those who met him with blindness as the eyes of the Sodomites that they could not find Lots door or the Syrian Souldiers that were sent to apprehend Elisha This strange escape and that former out of Scotland where his condition was not much better And seems to presage that God hath something to do with him nor his person much safer do seem strangely to presage that God hath yet some great work to be done by him in his own due time You attribute this rare deliverance P. 76. Prayers and tears the proper Arms of woman and the hopes of his conversion in part to the prayers and tears of his Mother prayers and tears were the onely proper Arms of the old Primitive Christians more particularly they are the best and most agreeable defence of that sex but especially the prayers and tears of a Mother for the Son of her desires are most powerfull As it was said of the prayers and tears of Monica Especially of Mothers for St. Austine her Son fieri non potuit ut filius istarum lacrymarum periret It could not be that a Son should perish for whom so many tears were shed God sees her tears and hears her prayers and will grant her request if not according to her will and desire we often ask those things which being granted would prove prejudiciall to our selves and our friends yet ad utilitatem to his Majesties greater advantage which is much better She wisheth him a good Catholick and God will preserve him a good Catholick as he is We do not doubt but the prayers of his Father who now follows the Lamb in his whites for his perseverance Yet not so powerfull as his Fathers intercession now in Heaven will be more effectuall with God than the prayers of his Mother for his change P. 77. The Authors instance of Henry the great not pertinent Your instance of his Majesties Grand-father your grand King Henry the fourth is not so apposite or fit for your purpose He gained his Crown by turning himself towards his people you would perswade his Majesty to turn from his people and to cast away his possibilities of restitution that is Plutarch to cut off a naturall leg and take one of wood To the tears of his Mother you adde the blood of his Father P. 77. 78. The just commendation of K. Charls whom you justly stile happy and say most truly of him that he preferred the Catholick Faith before his Crown his liberty his life and whatsoever was most dear unto him This faith was formerly rooted in his heart by God not secretly and invisibly in the last moments of his life to unite him to the Roman Catholick Church but openly during his whole Reign all which time he lived in the bosom of the true Catholick Church It is gross impudence to feign that he dyed a Roman Catholick Yet you are so extremely partiall to your self that you affirm that he died invisibly a Member of your Roman Catholick Church as it is by you contre-distinguished to the rest of the Christian world An old pious fraud or artifice of yours learned from Machiavell to gain credit to your Religion by all means either true or false but contrary to his own profession at his death contrary to the express knowledge of all that were present at his murther Upon a vain presumption that Talem nisi vestra Ecclesia nulla parerit filium And because you are not able to produce one living witness you cite St. Austin to no purpose to prove that the elect before they are converted do belong invisibly to the Church Yea and before they were born also But St. Austine neither said nor thought that after they are converted they make no visible profession or profess the contrary to that which they beleeve Seek not thus to adorn your particular Church not with barrowed but with stollen Saints Whom all the world know to have been none of yours What Faith he professed living he confirmed dying In the Communion of the Church of England he lived and in that Communion at his death he commended his soul into the hands of God his Saviour The Authors confession confutes his demonstration that Prostants have no faith That which you have confessed here concerning King Charls will spoil your former demonstration that the Protestants have neither Church nor Faith But you confess no more in particular here than I have heard some of your famous Roman Doctors in this City acknowledge to be true in generall And no more than that which the Bishop of Chalcedon a man that cannot be suspected of partiality on our side hath affirmed and published in two of his Books to the world in Print That Protestantibus credentes c. persons living in the Communion of the Protestant Church if they endeavour to learn the truth and are not able to attein unto it but hold it implicitely in the preparation of their minds and are ready to receive it when God shall be pleased to reveal it which all good Protestants and all good Christians are they neither want Church nor Faith nor Salvation Mark these words well They have neither Church nor Faith say you If they be thus qualified as they all are they want neither Church nor Faith nor Salvation saith he His intelligence as good in Heaven as upon earth Lastly Sir to let us see that your