But until then as he said in the Comedy Quid verba audiam cum facta videam so may I say to you Quid verba audiam cum facta non videam To what purpose should you give us Charitable Words which presently you retract again by denying us your Charitable Actions And as these things you must do if you will stand to and make good this pretended Charity so must I tell you again and again that one thing you must not doe I mean you must not affright poor People out of their Religion with telling them that by the Confession of both sides your way is safe but in your judgment ours undoubtedly damnable Seeing neither you deny Salvation to Protestants Dying with repentance nor we promise it to you if ye Die without it For to deal plainly with you I know no Protestant that hath any other hope of your Salvation but upon these grounds that unaffected ignorance may excuse you or true repentance obtain pardon for you neither do the heavy censures which Protestants you say pass upon your Errors any way hinder but they may hope as well of you upon repentance as I do For the fierce Doctrine which God knows who teaches that Christ for many Ages before Luther had no visible Church upon Earth will be mild enough if you conceive them to mean as perhaps they do by no visible Church none pure and free from corruptions which in your judgment is all one with no Church But the truth is the corruption of the Church and the destruction of it is not all one For if a particular man or Church may as you confess they may hold some particular Errors and yet be a member of the Church Universal why may not the Church hold some Universal Error and yet be still the Church especially seeing you say it is nothing but opposing the Doctrine of the Church that makes an Error damnable and it is impossible that the Church should oppose the Church I mean that the present Church should oppose it self And then for the English Protestants though they censure your Errors deeply yet by your favour with their deepest censures it may well consist that invincible ignorance may excuse you from damnation for them For you your self confess that ignorance may excuse Errors even in Fundamental Articles of Faith so that a man so erring shall not offend at all in such his ignorance or Error they are your own words p. 19. And again with their heaviest censures it may well consist that your Errors though in themselves damanble yet may prove not damning to you if you Die with true repentance for all your sins known and unknown 5. Thus much Charity therefore if you stand to what you have said is interchangeably granted by each Side to the other that Neither Religion is so fatally destructive but that by ignorance or repentance Salvation may be had on both Sides though with a difference that keeps Papists still on the more uncharitable Side For whereas we conceive a lower degree of repentance that which they call Attrition if it be true and effectual and convert the Heart of the Penitent will serve in them They pretend even this Author which is most charitable towards us that without Contrition there is no hope for us But though Protestants may not obtain this purchase at so easie a rate as Papists yet even Papists being Judges they may obtain it and though there is no entrance for them but at the only door of Contrition yet they may enter Heaven is not inaccessible to them Their Errors are no such impenetrable Istmus's between them and Salvation but that Contrition may make a way through them All their Schism and Heresie is no such fatal Poyson but that if a man joyn with it the Antidote of a general repentance he may Die in it and live for ever Thus much then being acknowledged I appeal to any indifferent reader whether C. M. be not by his Hyperaspist forsaken in the plain Field and the point in question granted to D. Potter viz. That Protestancy even without a particular repentance is not destructive of Salvation so that all the Controversie remaining now is not simply whether Protestancy unrepented destroys Salvation as it was at first proposed but Whether Protestancy in it self that is abstracting from ignorance and contrition destroys Salvation So that as a foolish Fellow who gave a Knight the Lie desiring withal leave of him to set his Knighthood aside was answered by him that he would not suffer any thing to be set aside that belonged unto him So might we justly take it amiss that conceiving as you do Ignorance and Repentance such necessary things for us you are not more willing to consider us with them than without them For my part such is my Charity to you that considering what great necessity You have as much as any Christian Society in the World that these Sanctuaries of Ignorance and Repentance should always stand open I can very hardly persuade my self so much as in my most secret consideration to devest you of these so needful qualifications But whensoever your Errors superstitions and impieties come into my mind and besides the general bonds of humanity and Christianity my own particular Obligations to many of you such and so great that you cannot perish without a part of my self my only comfort is amidst these Agonies that the Doctrine and Practice too of Repentance is yet remaining in your Church And that though you put on a Face of confidence of your Innocence in point of Doctrine yet you will be glad to stand in the Eye of Mercy as well as your fellows and not be so stout as to refuse either Gods pardon or the Kings 6. But for the present Protestancy is called to the Barr and though not sentenced by you to Death without Mercy yet arraigned of so much natural malignity if not corrected by Ignorance or Contrition as to be in it self destructive of Salvation Which controversie I am content to dispute with you only remembring you that the adding of this limitation in it self hath made this a new Question and that this is not the conclusion for which you were charged with want of Charity 7. Ad 7. and 8. § C. M. Now this is our gradatio nof reasons Almighty God having ordained mankind to a supernatural end of Eternal Felicity hath in his providence setled competent Means c. I HIL In your gradation I shall rise so far with you as to grant that Christ founded a visible Church stored with all helps necessary to Salvation particularly with sufficient means to beget and conserve Faith to maintain Unity and compose Schisms to discover and condemn Heresies and to determine all controversies in Religion which were necessary to be determined For all these purposes he gave at the beginning as we may see in the Ep. to the Ephesians Apostles Prophets Evangelists Pastors and Doctors who by word of mouth taught their
Testament I believed by Fame strengthened with Celebrity and Consent even of those which in other things are at infinite variance one with another and lastly by Antiquity which gives an Universal and a constant attestation to them But every one may see that you so few in comparison of all those upon whose consent we ground our belief of Scripture so turbulent that you damn all to the Fire and to Hell that any way differ from you that you profess it is lawful for you to use violence and power whensoever you can have it for the planting of your own Doctrine and the extirpation of the contrary lastly so new in many of your Doctrines as in the lawfulness and expedience of debarring the Laity the Sacramental Cup the lawfulness and expedience of your Latine Service Transubstantiation Indulgences Purgatory the Popes infallibility his Authority over Kings c so new I say in comparison of the undoubted Books of Scripture which evidently containeth or rather is our Religion and the sole and adequate object of our Faith I say every one may see that you so few so turbulent so new can produce nothing deserving authority with wise and considerate men What madness is this Believe them the consent of Christians which are now and have been ever since Christ in the World that we ought to believe Christ but learn of us what Christ said which contradict and damn all other parts of Christendom Why I beseech you Surely if they were not at all and could not teach me any thing I would more easily persuade my self that I were not to believe in Christ than that I should learn any thing concerning him from any other than them by whom I believed him at least than that I should learn what his Religion was from you who have wronged so exceedingly his Miracles and his Doctrine by forging so evidently so many false Miracles for the Confirmation of your new Doctrine which might give us just occasion had we no other assurance of them but your Authority to suspect the true ones Who with forging so many false Stories and false Authors have taken a fair way to make the Faith of all Stories questionable if we had no other ground for our belief of them but your Authority who have brought in Doctrines plainly and directly contrary to that which you confess to be the Word of Christ and which for the most part make either for the honour or profit of the Teachers of them which if there were no difference between the Christian and the Roman Church would be very apt to make suspicious men believe that Christian Religion was a humane invention taught by some cunning Impostors only to make themselves rich and powerful who make a profession of corrupting all sorts of Authors a ready course to make it justly questionable whether any remain uncorrupted For if you take this Authority upon you upon the six Ages last past how shall we know that the Church of that time did not Usurp the same Authority upon the Authors of the six last Ages before them and so upwards until we come to Christ himself Whose questioned Doctrines none of them came from the Fountain of Apostolick Tradition but have insinuated themselves into the Streams by little and little some in one Age and some in another some more Anciently some more lately and some yet are Embrio's yet hatching and in the Shell as the Popes Infallibility the Blessed Virgins immaculate conception the Popes power over the Temporalities of Kings the Doctrine of Predetermination c. all which yet are or in time may be imposed upon Christians under the Title of Original and Apostolick Tradition and that with that necessity that they are told they were as good believe nothing at all as not believe these things to have come from the Apostles which they know to have been brought in but yesterday which whether it be not a ready and likely way to make men conclude thus with themselves I am told that I were as good believe nothing at all as believe some points which the Church teaches me and not others and some things which she teaches to be Ancient and Certain I plainly see to be New and False therefore I will believe nothing at all Whether I say the foresaid grounds be not a ready and likely way to make men conclude thus and whether this conclusion be not too often made in Italy and Spain and France and in England too I leave it to the judgment of those that have Wisdom and Experience Seeing therefore the Roman Church is so far from being a sufficient Foundation for our belief in Christ that it is in sundry regards a dangerous temptation against it why should I not much rather conclude Seeing we receive not the knowledg of Christ and Scriptures from the Church of Rome neither from her must we take his Doctrine or the Interpretation of Scripture 102. Ad § 19. In this number this Argument is contained The Judge of Controversies ought to be intelligible to learned and unlearned The Scripture is not so and the Church is so Therefore the Church is the Judge and not the Scripture 103. To this I answer As to be understandible is a condition requisite to a Judge so is not that alone sufficient to make a Judge otherwise you might make your self Judge of Controversies by arguing The Scripture is not intelligible by all but I am therefore I am Judge of Controversies If you say your intent was to conclude against the Scripture and not for the Church I demand why then but to delude the simple with Sopistry did you say in the close of this § Such is the Church and the Scripture is not such but that you would leave it to them to infer in the end which indeed was more than you undertook in the beginning Therefore the Church is Judge and the Scripture not I say Secondly that you still run upon a false supposition that God hath appointed some Judge of all Controversies that may happen among Christians about the sense of obscure Texts of Scripture whereas he has left every one to his liberty herein in those words of S. Paul Quisque abundet in sensu suo c. I say Thirdly Whereas some Protestants make the Scripture Judge of Controversies that they have the Authority of Fathers to warrant their manner of speaking as of * Contra Parmen l. 5. in Prin. Optatus 104. But speaking truly and properly the Scripture is not a Judge nor cannot be but only a sufficient Rule for those to judge by that believe it to be the word of God as the Church of England and the Church of Rome both do what they are to believe and what they are not to believe I say sufficiently perfect and sufficiently intellible in things necessary to all that have understanding whether they be learned or unlearned And my reason hereof is convincing and demonstrative because nothing is necessary to be believed
Creed without the former can be possibly guarded from falling into them and continuing obstinate in them Nay so far is this Creed from guarding them from these mischiefs that it is more likely to ensnare them into them by seeming and yet not being a full comprehension of all necessary points of Faith which is apt as experience shews to misguide men into this pernitious error That believing the Creed they believe all necessary points of faith whereas indeed they do not so Now upon these grounds I thus conclude That Creed which hath great commodities and no danger would certainly be better then that which hath great danger and wants many of these great commodities But the former short Creed proposed by me I believe the Roman Church to be Infallible if your doctrin be true is of the former condition and the latter that is the Apostles Creed is of the latter Therefore the former if your doctrin be true would without controversie be better than the latter 83. Whereas you say If the Apostles had exprest no Article but that of the Catholick Church she must have taught us the other Articles in particular by Creeds or other means This is very true but no way repugnant to the truth of this which follows that the Apostles if your doctrin be true had done better service to the Church though they had never made this Creed of theirs which now we have if instead thereof they had commanded in plain terms that for mens perpetual direction in the faith this short Creed should be taught all men I believe the Roman Church shall be for ever Infallible Yet you must not so mistake me as if I meant that they had done better not to have taught the Church the substance of Christian Religion for then the Church not having learnt it of them could not have taught it us This therefore I do not say but supposing they had written these Scriptures as they have written wherein all the Articles of their Creed are plainly delivered and preached that Doctrin which they did preach and done all other things as they have done besides the composing their Symbol I say if your doctrin were true they had done a work infinitely more beneficial to the Church of Christ if they had never composed their Symbol which is but an imperfect comprehension of the necessary points of simple belief and no distinctive mark as a Symbole should be between those that are good Christians and those that are not so but instead thereof had delivered this one Proposition which would have been certainly effectual for all the aforesaid good intents and purposes The Roman Church shall be forever Infallible in all things which she proposes as matters of Faith 84. Whereas you say If we will believe we have all in the Creed when we have not all it is not the Apostles fault but our own I tell you plainly if it be a fault I know not whose it should be but theirs For sure it can be no fault in me to follow such Guides whether soever they lead me Now I say they have led me into this perswasion because they have given me great reason to believe it and none to the contrary The reason they have given me to believe it is because it is apparent and confest they did propose to themselves in composing it some good end or ends As that Christians might have a form by which for matter of Faith they might profess themselves Catholicks So Putean out of Thomas Aquinas That the faithful might know what the Christian people is to believe explicitly So Vincent Filiucius That being separated into divers parts of the world they might preach the same thing And that that might serve as a mark to distinguish true Christians from Infidels So Cardinal Richlieu Now for all these and for any other good intent I say it will be plainly uneffectual unless it contain at least all points of simple belief which are in ordinary course necessary to be explicitly known by all men So that if it be a fault in me to believe this it must be my fault to believe the Apostles wise and good men which I cannot do if I believe not this And therefore what Richardus de sancto Victore says of God himself I make no scruple at all to apply to the Apostles and to say Si error est quod credo à vobis deceptus sum If it be an Error which I believe it is you and my reverend esteem of you and your actions that hath led me into it For as for your suspicion That we are led into this perswasion out of a hope that we may the better maintain by it some opinions of our own It is plainly uncharitable I know no opinion I have which I would not as willingly forsake as keep if I could see sufficient reason to induce me to believe that it is the will of God I should forsake it Neither do I know any opinion I hold against the Church of Rome but I have more evident grounds than this whereupon to build it For let but these Truths be granted That the authority of the Scripture is independent on your Church and dependent only in respect of us upon universal Tradition That Scripture is the only Rule of Faith That all things necessary to salvation are plainly delivered in Scripture Let I say these most certain and divine Truths be laid for foundations and let our superstructions be consequent and coherent to them and I am confident Peace would be restored and Truth maintained against you though the Apostles Creed were not in the world CHAP. V. The ANSWER to the Fifth CHAPTER Shewing that the separation of Protestants from the Roman Church being upon just and necessary causes is not any way guilty of Schism 1. AD § 1.2 3 4 5 6 7. In the seven first Sections of this Chapter there be many things said and many things supposed by you which are untrue and deserve a censure As 2. First That Schism could not be a Division from the Church or that a Division from the Church could not happen unless there always had been and should be a visible Church Which Assertion is a manifest falsehood For although there never had been any Church Visible or Invisible before this age nor should be ever after yet this could not hinder but that a Schism might now be and be a Division from the present Visible Church As though in France there never had been until now a lawful Monarch nor after him ever should be yet this hinders not but that now there might be a Rebellion and that Rebellion might be an Insurrection against Sovereign Authority 3. That it is a point to be granted by all Christians that in all ages there hath been a visible Congregation of faithful people Which Proposition howsoever you understand it is not absolutely certain But if you mean by Faithful as it is plain you do free from all error in faith then
requiring men upon only probable and Prudential motives to yield a most certain assent unto things in humane reason impossible and telling them as you do too often that they were as good not believe at all as believe with any lower degree of Faith be not a likely way to make considering men scorn your Religion and consequently all if they know no other as requiring things contradictory and impossible to be performed Lastly Whether your pretence that there is no good ground to believe Scripture but your Churches infallibility joyn'd with your pretending no ground for this but some Texts of Scripture be not a fair way to make them that understand themselves believe neither Church nor Scripture 9. Your Calumnies against Protestants in general are set down in these words Chap. 2. § 2. The very doctrine of Protestants if it be followed closely and with coherence to it self must of necessity induce Socinianism This I say confidently and evidently prove by instancing in one Error which may well be termed the Capital and Mother-heresie from which all other must follow at ease I mean their Heresie in affirming that the perpetual visible Church of Christ descended by a never interrupted Succession from our Saviour to this day is not infallible in all that it proposeth to be believed as revealed truths For if the Infallibility of such a publick Authority be once impeached what remains but that every man is given over to his own wit and discourse and talk not here of holy Scripture for if the true Church may err in defining what Scriptures be Canonical or in delivering the sense and meaning thereof we are still devolved either upon the private Spirit a foolery now exploded out of England which finally leaving every man to his own conceits ends in Socinianism or else epon natural wit and judgment for examining and determining what Scriptures contain true or false Doctrine and in that respect ought to be received or rejected And indeed take away the authority of Gods Church no man can be assured that any one Book or parcel of Scripture was written by Divine Inspiration or that all the Contents are infallibly true which are the direct Errors of Socinians If it were but for this reason alone no man who regards the eternal salvation of his Soul would live or die in Protestancy from which so vast absurdities as these of the Socinians must inevitably follow And it ought to be an unspeakable comfort to all us Catholicks while we consider that none can deny the infallible authority of our Church but jointly he must be left to his own wit and ways and must abandon all infused Faith and true Religion if he do but understand himself aright In all which Discourse the only true word you speak is This I say confidently As for proving evidently that I believe you reserved for some other opportunity for the present I am sure you have been very sparing of it 10. You say indeed confidently enough that the denyal of the Churches infallibility is the Mother-heresie from which all other must follow at ease which is so far from being a necessary truth as you make it that it is indeed a manifest falshood Neither is it possible for the wit of man by any good or so much as probable consequence from the denialaof the Churches Infallibility to deduce any one of the ancient Heresies or any one Error of the Socinians which are the Heresies here entreated of For who would not laugh at him that should argue thus Neither the Church of Rome nor any other Church is infallible Ergo The Doctrine of Arrius Pelagius Eutyches Nestorius Photinus Manichaeus was true Doctrine On the other side it may be truly said and justified by very good and effectual reason that he that affirms with you the Popes Infallibility puts himself into his hands and power to be led by him at his ease and pleasure into all Heresie and even to Hell it self and cannot with reason say so long as he is constant to his grounds Domine cur it a facis Sir Why do you thus but must believe white to be black and black to be white vertue to be vice and vice to be vertue nay which is a horrible but a most certain truth Christ to be Antichrist and Antichrist to be Christ if it be possible for the Pope to say so Which I say and will maintain howsoever you daub and disguise it is indeed to make men apostate from Christ to his pretended Vicar but real Enemy For that name and no better if we may speak truth without offence I presume he deserves who under pretence of interpreting the Law of Christ which Authority without any word of express warrant he hath taken upon himself doth in many parts evacuate and dissolve it So dethroning Christ from his dominion over mens consciences and instead of Christ setting up himself In as much as he that requires that his Interpretations of any Law should be obeyed as true and genuine seem they to mens understandings never so dissonant and discordant from it as the Bishop of Rome does requires indeed that his Interpretations should be the Laws and he that is firmly prepared in mind to believe and receive all such Interpretations without judging of them and though to his private judgment they seem unreasonable is indeed congruously disposed to hold Adultery a venial sin and Fornication no sin whensoever the Pope and his adherents shall so declare And whatsoever he may plead yet either wittingly or ignorantly he makes the Law and the Law-maker both stales and obeys only the Interpreter As if I should submit to the Laws of the King of England but should indeed resolve to obey them in that sence which the King of France should put upon them whatsoever it were I presume every understanding man would say that I did indeed obey the King of France and not the King of England If I should pretend to believe the Bible but that I would understand it accordingly to the sense which the chief Mufty should put upon it who would not say that I were a Christian in pretence only but indeed a Mahumetan 11. Nor will it be to purpose for you to pretend that the precepts of Christ are so plain that it cannot be feared that any Pope should ever go about to dissolve them and pretend to be a Christian For not to say that you now pretend the contrary to wit that the Law of Christ is obscure even in things necessary to be believed and done and by saying so have made a fair way for any foul interpretation of any part of it certainly that which the Church of Rome hath already done in this kind is an evident argument that if she once had this Power unquestioned and made expedite and ready for use by being contracted to the Pope she may do what she pleaseth with it Who that had lived in the Primative Church would not have thought it as utterly improbable
contemporaries and by writings wrote indeed by some but approved by all of them taught their Christian posterity to the Worlds End how all these ends and that which is the End of all these ends Salvation is to be atchieved And these means the Providence of God hath still preserved and so preserved that they are sufficient for all these intents I say sufficient though through the Malice of Men not always effectual for that the same means may be sufficient for the compassing an end and not effectual you must not deny who hold that God gives all men sufficient means of Salvation and yet that all are not saved I said also sufficient to determine all controversies which were necessary to be determined For if some controversies may for many Ages be undetermined and yet in the mean while men be saved why should or how can the Churches being furnished with effectual means to determine all Controversies in Religion be necessary to Salvation the end it self to which these means are ordained being as experience shews not necessary Plain sense will teach every man that the necessity of the means must always be measured by and can never exceed the necessity of the end As if eating be necessary only that I may live then certainly if I have no necessity to live I have no necessity to eat If I have no need to be at London I have no need of a Horse to carry me thither If I have no need to Fly I have no need of Wings Answer me then I pray directly and Categorically Is it necessary that all Controversies in Religion should be determined or is it not If it be why is the question of Predetermination of the immaculate conception of the Popes indirect power in temporalties so long undetermined if not what is it but Hypocrisie to pretend such great necessity of such effectual means for the archieving that end which is it self not necessary Christians therefore have and shall have means sufficient though not always effectual to determine not all controversies but all necessary to be determined I proceed on farther with you and grant that this means to decide controversies in Faith and Religion must be indued with an Universal Infallibility in whatsoever it propoundeth for a Divine truth For if it may be false in any one thing of this nature in any thing which God requires men to believe we can yield unto it but a wavering and fearful assent in any thing These grounds therefore I grant very readily and give you free leave to make your best advantage of them And yet to deal truly I do not perceive how from the denial of any of them it would follow that Faith is Opinion or from the granting them that it is not so But for my part whatsoever clamour you have raised against me I think no otherwise of the Nature of Faith I mean Historical Faith than generally both Protestants and Papists do for I conceive it an assent to Divine Revelations upon the Authority of the revealer Which though in many things it differ from Opinion as commonly the Word Opinion is understood yet in some things I doubt not but you will confess that it agrees with it As first that as Opinion is an Assent so is Faith also Secondly that as Opinion so Faith is always built upon less evidence than that of Sence or Science Which assertion you not only grant but mainly contend for in your sixth Ch. Thirdly and lastly that as Opinion so Faith admits degrees and that as there may be a strong and weak Opinion so there may be a strong and weak Faith These things if you will grant as sure if you be in your right mind you will not deny any of them I am well contented that this ill-sounding Word Opinion should be discarded and that among the Intellectual habits you should seek out some other Genus for Faith For I will never contend with any man about Words who grants my meaning 8. But though the Essence of Faith exclude not all weakness and imperfection yet may it be enquired whether any certainty of Faith under the highest degree may be sufficient to please God and attain Salvation Whereunto I answer that though men are unreasonable God requires not any thing but Reason They will not be pleased without a down weight but God is contented if the Scale be turned They pretend that Heavenly things cannot be seen to any purpose but by the mid-day-light But God will be satisfied if we receive any degree of light which makes us leave the Works of Darkness and walk as Children of the Light They exact a certainty of Faith above that of Sence or Science God desires only that we believe the conclusion as much as the premises deserve that the strength of our Faith be equal or proportionable to the credibility of the Motives to it Now though I have and ought to have an absolute certainty of this Thesis All which God reveals for truth is true being a proposition that may be demonstrated or rather so evident to any one that understands it that it needs it not Yet of this Hypothesis That all the Articles of our Faith were revealed by God we cannot ordinarily have any rational and acquired certainty more than moral founded upon these considerations First that the goodness of the precepts of Christianity and the greatness of the promises of it shews it of all other Religions most likely to come from the Fountain of goodness And then that a constant famous and very general Tradition so credible that no Wise Man doubts of any other which hath but the Fortieth part of the credibility of this such and so credible a Tradition tells us that God himself hath set his Hand and Seal to the Truth of this Doctrine by doing great and glorious and frequent miracles in confirmation of it Now our Faith is an assent to this conclusion that the Doctrine of Christianity is true which being deduced from the former Thesis which is Metapyhsically certain and from the former Hypothesis whereof we can have but a Moral certainty we cannot possibly by natural means be more certain of it than of the weaker of the premises as a River will not rise higher than the Fountain from which it flows For the conclusion always follows the worser part if there be any worse and must be Negative Particular Contingent or but Morally certain if any of the Propositions from whence it is derived be so Neither can we be certain of it in the highest degree unless we be thus certain of all the principles whereon it is grounded As a man cannot go or stand strongly if either of his Legs be weak Or as a building cannot be stable if any one of the necessary Pillars thereof be infirm and instable Or as If a meassage be brought me from a man of absolute credit with me but by a messenger that is not so my confidence of the Truth of the Relation
Authority of Universal Tradition that we would have them believe Scripture But then as for the Authority which you would have them follow you will let them see reason why they should follow it And is not this to go a little about to leave reason for a short turn and then to come to it again and to do that which you condemn in others It being indeed a plain impossibility for any man to submit his reason but to reason for he that does it to Authority must of necessity think himself to have greater reason to believe that Authority Therefore the confession cited by Brerely you need not think to have been extorted from Luther and the rest It came very freely from them and what they say you practise as much as they 115. And whereas you say that a Protestant admits of Fathers Councils Church as far as they agree with Scripture which upon the matter is himself I say you admit neither of them nor the Scripture it self but only so far as it agrees with your Church and your Church you admit because you think you have reason to do so so that by you as well as by Protestants all is finally resolved into your own reason 116. Nor do Hereticks only but Romish Catholicks also set up as many Judges as there are Men and Women in the Christian World For do not your Men and Women Judge your Religion to be true before they believe it as well as the Men and Women of other Religions Oh but you say They receive it not because they think it agreeable to Scripture but because the Church tells them so But then I hope they believe the Church because their own reason tells them they are to do so So that the difference between a Papist and a Protestant is this not that the one judges and the other does not judge but that the one judges his guide to be infallible the other his way to be manifest This same pernitious Doctrine is taught by Brentius Zanchius Cartwright and others It is so in very deed But it is taught also by some others whom you little think of It is taught by S. Paul where he says Try all things hold fast that which is good It is taught by S. John in these words Believe not every Spirit but try the Spirits whether they be of God or no. It is taught by S. Peter in these Be ye ready to render a reason of the hope that is in you Lastly this very pernitious Doctrine is taught by our Saviour in these words If the Blind lead the Blind both shall fall into the Ditch And why of your selves Judge you not what is right All which speeches if they do not advise men to make use of their Reason for the choice of their Religion I must confess my self to understand nothing Lastly not to be infinite it is taught by M. Knot himself not in one Page only or Chapter of his Book but all his Book over the very writing and publishing whereof supposeth this for certain that the Readers are to be Judges whether his Reasons which he brings be strong and convincing of which sort we have hitherto met with none or else captious or impertinences as indifferent men shall as I suppose have cause to judge them 117. But you demand What good Statesmen would they be who should ideate or fancy such a Commonwealth as these men have framed to themselves a Church Truly if this be all the fault they have that they say Every man is to use his own judgment in the choice of his Religion and not to believe this or that sense of Scripture upon the bare Authority of any Learned man or men when he conceives he has reasons to the contrary which are of more weight than their Authority I know no reason but notwithstanding all this they might be as good Statesmen as any of the Society But what has this to do with Common-wealths where men are bound only to external obedience unto the Laws and Judgments of Courts but not to an internal approbation of them no nor to conceal their Judgment of them if they disapprove them As if I conceived I had reason to mislike the Law of punishing simple Theft with Death as Sir Thomas Moore did I might profess lawfully my judgment and represent my reasons to the King or Common-wealth in a Parliament as Sir Thomas Moore did without committing any fault or fearing any punishment 118. To that place of S. Austin you cite lib. 32. cont Faust You see that you go about to overthrow all Authority of Scripture and that every mans mind may be to himself a Rule what he is to allow or disallow in every Scripture I shall need give no other Reply but only to desire you to speak like an honest man and to say whether it be all one for a man to allow and disallow in every Scripture what he pleases which is either to dash out of Scripture such Texts or such Chapters because they cross his opinion or to say which is worse Though they be Scripture they are not true Whether I say for a man thus to allow and disallow in Scripture what he pleases be all one and no greater fault than to allow that sense of Scripture which he conceives to be true and genuine and deduced out of the words and to disallow the contrary for Gods sake Sir tell me plainly In those Texts of Scripture which you alledge for the infallibility of your Church do not you allow what sense you think true and disallow the contrary And do you not this by the direction of your private reason If you do why do you condemn it in others If you do not I pray you tell me what direction you follow or whether you follow none at all If none at all this is like drawing Lots or throwing the Dice for the choice of a Religion If any other I beseech you tell me what it is Perhaps you will say the Churches Authority and that will be to dance finely in a round thus To believe the Churches Infallible Authority because the Scriptures avouch it and to believe that Scriptures say and mean so because they are so expounded by the Church Is not this for a Father to beget his Son and the Son to beget his Father For a foundation to support the house and the house to support the foundation Would not Campian have cryed out at it Ecce quos gyros quos Maeandros And to what end was this going about when you might as well at first have concluded the Church infallible because she says so as thus to put in Scripture for a meer stale and to say the Church is infallible because the Scripture says so and the Scripture means so because the Church says so which is infallible Is it not most evident therefore to every intelligent man that you are enforced of necessity to do that your self which so Tragically you declaim against in others The
either your Church or Pope in as much as there is no more repugnance between the Scriptures existence and our infallibility than there is between theirs 138. Obj. But if Protestants will have the Scripture alone for their Judge let them first produce some Scripture affirming that by the entrance thereof infallibility went out of the Church Ans This Argument put in form runs thus No Scripture affirms that by the entring thereof infallibility went out of the Church Therefore there is an infallible Church and therefore the Scripture alone is not Judge that is the Rule to judge by But as no Scripture affirms that by the entring of it Infallibility went out of the Church so neither do we neither have we any need to do so But we say that it continued in the Church even together with the Scriptures so long as Christ and his Apostles were living and then departed God in his providence having provided a plain and infallible Rule to supply the defect of living and infallible Guides 141. But the Jewish Church retained Infallibility in her self and therefore it is unjust to deprive the Church of Christ of it Ans That the Jews had sometimes an infallible miraculous direction from God in some cases of moment he doth affirm and had good warrant but that the Synagogue was absolutely Infallible he no where affirms and therefore it is unjustly and unworthily done of you to obtrude it upon him And indeed how can the Infallibility of the Synagogue be conceived but only by setling it in the High Priest and the company adhering and subordinate unto him And whether the High Priest was Infallible when he believed not Christ to be the Messias but condemned and excommunicated them that so professed and caused him to be crucified for saying so I leave it to Christians to judge But then suppose God had been so pleased to do as he did not to appoint the Synagouge an infallible guide Could you by your rules of Logick constrain him to appoint such a one to Christians also or say unto him that in wisdom he could not do otherwise Vain man that will be thus always tying God to your imaginations It is well for us that he leaves us not without directions to him but if he will do this sometime by living Guides sometime by written Rules what is that to you may not he do what he will with his own 144. Ad § 24. Neither is this Discourse if you mean your Conclusion that Your Church is the infallible Judge in Controversies confirmed by Irenaeus at all Iren. l. 3. c. 3. For neither has Irenaeus one syllable to this purpose neither can it be deduced out of what he says with any colour of consequence For first in saying What if the Apostles had not left Scripture ought we not to have followed the Order of Tradition And in saying That to this Order many Nations yield assent who believe in Christ having Salvation written in their hearts by the Spirit of God without Letters or Ink and diligently keeping ancient Tradition Doth he not plainly shew that the Tradition he speaks of is nothing else but the very same that is written nothing but to believe in Christ To which whether Scripture alone to them that believe it be not a sufficient guide I leave it to you to judge And are not his words just as if a man should say If God had not given us the light of the Sun we must have made use of Candles and Torches If we had had no Eyes we must have felt out our way If we had no Leggs we must have used Crutches And doth not this in effect import that while we have the Sun we need no Candles While we have our Eyes we need not feel out our way While we enjoy our Leggs we need not Crutches And by like reason Irenaeus in saying If we had no Scripture we must have followed Tradition and they that have none do well to do so doth he not plainly import that to them that have Scripture and believe it Tradition is unnecessary which could not be if the Scripture did not contain evidently the whole tradion Which whether Irenaeus believed or no these words of his may inform you Non enim per alios c. we have received the disposition of our Salvation from no others but from them by whom the Gospel came unto us Which Gospel truly the Apostles first preached and afterwards by the will of God delivered in writing to us to be the Pillar and Foundation of our Faith Bellarm. de verbo Dei l. 4 c. 11. Upon which place Bellarmine's two observations and his acknowledgment ensuing upon them are very considerable and as I conceive as home to my purpose as I would wish them His first Notandum is That in the Christian Doctrin some things are simply necessary for the Salvation of all men as the knowledge of the Articles of the Apostles Creed and besides the knowledge of the ten Commandments and some of the Sacraments Other things not so necessary but that a man may be saved without the explicit knowledge and belief and profession of them His Second Note is That those things which were simply necessary the Apostles were wont to preach to all men But of other things not all to all but something to all to wit those things which were profitable for all other things only to Prelats and Priests These things premised he acknowledgeth That all those things were written by the Apostles which are necessary for all and which they were wont openly to preach to all But that other things were not all written And therefore when Irenaeus says that the Apostles wrote what they Preach in the World it is true saith he and not against Traditions because they preached not to the People all things but only those things which were necessary or profitable for them 145. So that at the most you can infer from hence but only a suppositive necessity of having an infallible Guide and that grounded upon a false supposition In case we had no Scripture but an absolute necessity hereof and to them who have and believe the Scripture which is your assumption cannot with any colour from hence be concluded but rather the contrary 146. Neither because as he says it was then easie to receive the Truth from Gods Church then in the Age next after the Apostles Then when all the ancient and Apostolick Churches were at an agreement about the Fundamentals of Faith Will it therefore follow that now 1600 years after when the ancient Churches are divided almost into as many Religions as they are Churches every one being the Church to it self and heretical to all other that it is as easie but extremely difficult or rather impossible to find the Church first independently of the true Doctrin and then to find the truth by the Church 148. Neither will the Apostles depositing with the Church all things belonging to truth be any proof
that the Church shall certainly keep this depositum entire and sincere without adding to it or taking from it for this whole depositum was committed to every particular Church nay to every particular Man which the Apostles converted And yet no man I think will say that there was any certainty that it should be kept whole and inviolate by every man and every Church It is apparent out of Scripture it was committed to Timothy and by him consigned to other faithful men and yet S. Paul thought it not superfluous earnestly to exhort him to the careful keeping of it which exhortation you must grant had been vain and superfluous if the not keeping of it had been impossible And therefore though Irenaeus says The Apostles fully deposited in the Church all truth yet he says not neither can we infer from what he says that the Church should always infallibly keep this depositum entire without the loss of any truth and sincere without the mixture of any falshood 149. Ad § 25. C. M. proceeds and tells us That beside all this the Doctrine of Protestants is destructive of it self For either they have certain and infallible means not to Err in interpreting or not If not Scripture to them cannot be a sufficient ground for infallible Faith If they have and so cannot Err in interpreting Scripture then they are able with infallibility to hear and determine all Controversies of Faith and so they may be and are Judges of Controversies although they use the Scripture as a Rule And thus against their own Doctrine they constitute another Judge of Controversies besides Scripture alone C. H. And may not we with as much reason substitute Church and Papists instead of Scripture and Protestants and say unto you Besides all this the Doctrine of Papists is destructive of it self For either they have certain and infallible means not to Err in the choice of the Church and interpreting her decrees or they have not If not then the Church to them cannot be a sufficient but meerly a phantastical ground for infallible Faith nor a meet Judge of Controversies For unless I be infallibly sure that the Church is infallible how can I be upon her Authority infallibly sure that any thing she says is infallible If they have certain infallible means and so cannot Err in the choice of their Church and in interpreting her decrees then they are able with Infallibility to hear examine and determine all Controversies of Faith although they pretend to make the Church their Guide And thus against their own Doctrine they constitute another Judge of Controversies besides the Church alone Nay every one makes himself a chooser of his own Religion and of his own sense of the Churches decrees which very thing in Protestants they so highly condemn and so in judging others condemn themselves 150. Neither in saying thus have I only cried quittance with you but that you may see how much you are in my debt I will shew unto you that for your Sophism against our way I have given you a Demonstration against yours First I say your Argument against us is a transparent fallacy The first part of it lies thus Protestants have no means to interpret without Error obscure and ambiguous places of Scripture therefore plain places of Scripture cannot be to them a sufficient ground of Faith But though we pretend not to certain means of not Erring in interpreting all Scripture particularly such places as are obscure and ambiguous yet this methinks should be no impediment but that we may have certainmeans of not Erring in and about the sense of those places which are so plain and clear that they need no Interpreters and in such we say our Faith is contained If you ask me how I can be sure that I know the true â—â—aning of these places I ask you again can you be 〈◊〉 that you understand what I or any man else says They that heard our Saviour and the Apostles Preach could they have sufficient assurance that they understood at any time what they would have them do if not to what end did they hear them If they could why may we not be as well assured that we understand sufficiently what we conceive plain in their writings 151. Again I pray tell us whether you do certainly know the sense of these Scriptures with which you pretend you are led to the knowledg of your Church If you do not how know you that there is any Church Infallible and that these are the Notes of it and that this is the Church that hath these Notes If you do then give us leave to have the same means and the same abilities to know other plain places which you have to know these For if all Scripture be obscure how come you to know the sense of these places If some places of it be plain why should we stay here 152. And now to come to the other part of your dilemma in saying If they have certain means and so cannot Err methinks you forget your self very much and seem to make no difference between having certain means to do a thing and the actual doing of it As if you should conclude because all men have certain means of Salvation therefore all men certainly must be saved and cannot do otherwise as if whosoever had a Horse must presently get up and Ride Whosoever had means to find out a way could not neglect those means and so mistake it God be thanked that we have sufficient means to be certain enough of the truth of our Faith But the Priviledge of not being in possibility of Erring that we challenge not because we have as little reason as you to do so and you have none at all If you ask seeing we may possibly Err how can we be assured we do not I ask you again seeing your Eye-sight may deceive you how can you be sure you see the Sun when you do see it Perhaps you may be in a dream and perhaps you and all the men in the World have been so when they thought they were awake and then only awake when they thought they Dreamt But this I am sure of as sure as that God is good that he will require no impossibilities of us not an Infallible nor a certainly unerring belief unless he hath given us certain means to avoid Error and if we use those which we have will never require of us that we use that which we have not 153. Now from this mistaken ground that it is all one to have means of avoiding Error and to be in no danger nor possibility of Error You infer upon us as an absurd conclusion That we make our selves able to determine Controversies of Faith with Infallibility and Judges of Controversies For the latter part of this inference we acknowledge and embrace it We do make our selves Judges of Controversies that is we do make use of our own understanding in the choice of our Religion But this if it be
Sacraments Commandments c. for that is not here the point to be proved but only that they taught them all things necessary so that nothing can be necessary which they did not teach them But how much of this they put into their Creed whether all the necessary points of simple belief as we pretend or only as you say I know not what is another Question now to be examined 73. We urge against you That if all necessary points of simple belief be not comprized in the Creed it can no way deserve the name of the Apostles Creed as not being their Creed in any sense but only a part of it To this you say That the Faith of the Apostles is of larger extent than their Creed Answer It is very true that their whole Faith was of a larger extent but that was not the Question but whether all points of simple belief which they taught as necessary to be explicitely believed be not contained in it And if thus much at least of Christian Religion be not comprized in it I again desire you to inform me how it could be called the Apostles Creed 74. To other Reasons grounded upon the practice of the Ancient Church appointing her Infants to be instructed for matters of simple belief only in the Creed From her admitting Catechumens unto Baptism and of Strangers unto her Communion upon their only profession of the Creed you have not that I perceive thought fit to make any kind of answer 75. Ad § 26. In this Section you practise that trick of a Caviller which is to answer Objections by other Objections an excellent way to make Controversies endless D. Potter desires to be resolved Why amongst many things of equal necessity to be believed the Apostles should distinctly set down some in the Creed and be altogether silent of others Instead of resolving him in this difficulty you put another to him and that is Why are some points not Fundamental expressed in it rather than others of the same quality Which demand is so far from satisfying the former doubt that it makes it more intricate For upon this ground it may be demanded How was it possible that the Apostles should leave out any Articles simply necessary and put in others not necessary especially if their intention were as you say it was to deliver in it such Articles as were fittest for those times Unless which were wondrous strange unnecessary Articles were fitter for those times than necessary But now to your Question the Answer is obvious These unnecessary things might be put in because they were circumstances of the necessary Pontius Pilate of Christs passion The third day of the Resurrection neither doth the adding of them make the Creed ever a whit the less probable the less fit to be understood and remembred And for the contrary reasons other unnecessary things might be left out Besides who sees not that the addition of some unnecessary circumstances is a thing that can hardly be avoided without affection And therefore not so great a fault nor deserving such a censure as the omission of any thing essential to the work undertaken and necessary to the end proposed in it 76. You demand again as it is no hard matter to multiply demands why our Saviours descent into Hell and Burial was expressed and not his circumcision his manifestation to the three Kings and working of Miracles I answer His Resurrection Ascension and sitting at the right hand of God are very great Miracles and they are expressed Besides S. John assures us That the Miracles which Christ did were done and written not for themselves that they might be believed but for a further end that we might believe that Jesus was the Christ and believing have eternal life He therefore that believes this may be saved though he have no explicite and distinct Faith of any Miracle that our Saviour did His Circumcision and Manifestation to the Wise men for I know not upon what grounds you call them Kings are neither things simply necessary to be known nor have any near relation to those that are so As for his Descent into Hell it may for ought you know be put in as a thing necessary of it self to be known If you ask why more than his Circumcision I refer you to the Apostles for an answer who put that in and left this out of their Creed and yet sure were not so forgetful after the receiving of the Holy Ghost as to leave out any prime and principal foundation of the faith which are the very words of your own Gordonius Huntlaeus Cont. 2. c. 10. num 10. Likewise his Burial was put in perhaps as necessary of it self to be known But though it were not yet hath it manifestly so neer relation to these that are necessary his Passion and Resurrection being the Consequent of the one and the Antecedent of the other that it is no marvel if for their sakes it was put in For though I verily believe that there is no necessary point of this nature but what is in the Creed yet I do not affirm because I cannot prove it that there is nothing in the Creed but what is necessary You demand thirdly Why did they not express Scriptures Sacraments and all Fundamental points of faith tending to practice as well as those which rest in Belief I answer Because their purpose was to comprize in it only those necessary points which rest in belief which appears because of practical points there is not in it so much as one 77. We affirm That if your Doctrin were true this short Creed viz. I believe the Roman Church to be Infallible would have been better that is more effectual to keep the believers of it from Heresie and in the true Faith than this Creed which now we have A proposition so evident that I cannot see how either you or any of your Religion or indeed any sensible man can from his heart deny it Yet because you make a shew of doing so or else which I rather hope do not rightly apprehend the force of the Reason I will endeavour briefly to add some light and strength to it by comparing the effects of these several supposed Creeds 78. The former Creed therefore would certainly produce these effects in the believers of it An impossibility of being in any formal Heresie A necessity of being prepared in mind to come out of all Error in Faith or material Heresie which certainly you will not deny or if you do you pull down the only pillar of your Church and Religion and deny that which is in effect the only thing you labour to prove through your whole Book 79. The latter Creed which now we have is so uneffectual for these good purposes that you your self tell us of innumerable gross damnable Heresies that have been are and may be whose contrary Truths are neither explicitly nor by consequence comprehended in this Creed So that no man by the belief of this
The only Fountain of all these mischiefs being indeed no other than your pouring out a Flood of persecutions against Protestants only because they would not sin be damned with you for company Unless we may add the impatience of some Protestants who not enduring to be Torn in peeces like Sheep by a company of Wolves without resistance chose rather to die like Soldiers than Martyrs 96. Obj. But-they endeavoured to force the Society whereof they were parts to be healed and reformed as they were and if it refused they did when they had power drive them away even their superiours both Spiritual and Temporal as is notorious The proofs hereof are wanting and therefore I might defer my answer until they were produced yet take this beforehand If they did so then herein in my opinion they did amiss for I have learnt from the Ancient Fathers of the Church that nothing is more against Religion than to force Religion and of S. Paul the Weapons of the Christian Warfare are not carnal And great reason For humane violence may make men counterfeit but cannot make them believe and is therefore fit for nothing but to breed form without and Atheism within Besides if this means of bringing men to embrace any Religion were generally used as if it may be justly used in any place by those that have power and think they have truth certainly they cannot with reason deny but that it may be used in every place by those that have powe◠as well as they and think they have truth as well as they what could follow but the maintainance perhaps of truth but perhaps only of the profession of it in one place and the oppression of it in a hundred What will follow from it but the preservation peradventure of Unity but peradventure only of uniformity in particular States and Churches but the immortallizing the greater and more lamentable divisions of Christendom and the World And therefore what can follow from it but perhaps in the judgment of carnal policy the temporal benefit and tranquillity of temporal States and kingdoms but the infinit prejudice if not the desolation of the kingdom of Christ And therefore it well becomes them who have their portions in this life who serve no higher State than that of England or Spain or France nor this neither any further than they may serve themselves by it who think of no other happiness but the preservation of their own fortunes and tranquillity in this World who think of no other means to preserve States but humane power and Machiavillian policy and believe no other Creed but this Regi aut Civitati imperium habenti nihil injustum quod utile that to a King or City that has Ruling Power nothing that is profitable is unjust Such men as these it may become to maintain by worldly power and violence their State-instrument Religion For if all be vain and false as in their judgment it is the present whatsoever is better than any because it is already setled and alteration of it may draw with it change of States and the change of State the subversion of their fortune But they that are indeed Servants and lovers of Christ of Truth of the Church and of Man-kind ought with all courage to oppose themselves against it as a common Enemy of all these They that know there is a King of Kings and Lord of Lords by whose will and pleasure Kings and Kingdoms stand and fall they know that to no King or State any thing can be profitable which is unjust and that nothing can be more evidently unjust than to force weak men by the profession of a Religion which they believe not to lose their own Eternal Happiness out of a vain and needless fear lest they may possibly disturb their temporal quietness There is no danger to any state from any mans opinion unless it be such an opinion by which disobedience to authority or impiety is taught or licenced which sort I confess may justly be punished as well as other faults or unless this sanguinary Doctrine be joyned with it that it is lawful for him by humane violence to enforce others to it Therefore if Protestants did offer violence to other Mens Consciences and compel them to embrace their Reformation I excuse them not much less if they did so to the sacred Persons of Kings and those that were in authority over them who ought to be so secured from violence that even thier unjust and Tyrannous violence though it may be avoided according to that of our Saviour When they persecute you in one Citty fly into another yet may it not be resisted by opposing violence against it Protestants therefore that were guilty of this crime are not to be excused and blessed had they been had they chosen rather to be Martyrs than Murtherers and to die for their Religion rather than to fight for it But of all the men in the World you are the most unfit to accuse them hereof against whom the Souls of Martyrs from under the Altar cry much louder than against all their other Persecutors together Who for these many Ages together have daily sacrificed Hecatombs of Innocent Christians under the name of Hereticks to your blind zeal and furious superstition Who teach plainly that you may propagate your Religion whensoever you have power by deposing of Kings and Invasion of Kingdoms and think when you kill the Adversaries of it you do God good service But for their departing corporally from them whom mentally they had forsaken For their forsaking the external Communion and company of that part of the unreformed part of the Church in their superstitions and impieties thus much of your accusation we embrace and glory in it And say though some Protestants might offend in the manner or the degree of their separation yet certainly their separation it self was not Schismatical but Innocent and not only so but just and necessary 99. Ad § 36. What you cite out of Optatus l. 2. cont Parm. Thou canst not deny but that thou knowest that in the City of Rome there was first an Episcopal Chair placed for Peter wherein Peter the head of the Apostles sate whereof also he was called Cephas in which one Chair Unity was to be kept by all lest the other Apostles might attribute to themselves each one his particular Chair and that he should be a Schismatick and sinner who against that one single Chair should erect another All this is impertinent if it be well lookt into The truth is the Donatists had set up at Rome a Bishop of their faction not with intent to make him Bishop of the whole Church but of that Church in particular Now Optatus going upon S. Cyprians ground of one Bishop in one Church proves them Schismatick for so doing by this Argument S. Peter was first Bishop of Rome neither did the Apostles attribute to themselves each one his particular Chair viz. in that City for in other places
pretend is the true sense of them When you have produced certain grounds for all these things I doubt not but it will appear that we also may have grounds certain enough to believe our whole Religion which is nothing else but the Bible without dependence on the Churches infallibility Suppose you should meet with a man that for the present believes neither Church nor Scripture nor God but is ready and willing to believe them all if you can shew some sufficient grounds to build his faith upon will you tell such a man there are no certain grounds by which he may be converted or there are If you say the first you make all Religion an uncertain thing If the second then either you must ridiculously perswade that your Church is infallible because it is infallible or else that there are other certain grounds besides your Churches infallibility 46. Obj. The Holy Scripture is in it self most true and infallible but without the direction and declaration of the Church we can neither have certain means to know what Scripture is Canonical nor what Translations be faithful nor what is the true meaning of Scripture Ans But all these things must be known before we can know the direction of your Church to be infallible for no other proof of it can be pretended but only some Texts of Canonical Scripture truly interpreted Therefore either you are mistaken in thinking there is no other means to know these things but your Churches infallible direction or we are excluded from all means of knowing her direction to be infallible 47. Obj. But Protestants though they are perswaded their own opinions are true and that they have used such means as are wont to be prescribed for understanding the Scripture as Prayer conferring of Texts c. Yet by their disagreement shew that some of them are deceived Now they hold all the Articles of their faith upon this only ground of Scripture interpreted by these rules and therefore it is clear that the ground of their faith is infallible in no point at all Ans The first of these suppositions must needs be true but the second is apparently false I mean that every Protestant is perswaded that he hath used those means which are prescribed for understanding of Scripture But that which you collect from these suppositions is clearly inconsequent and by as good Logick you might conclude that Logick and Geometry stand upon no certain grounds that the rules of the one and the principles of the other do sometimes fail because the disagreement of Logicians and Geometricians shew that some of them are deceived Might not a Jew conclude as well against all Christians that they have no certain ground whereon to relie in their understanding of Scripture because their disagreements shew that some are deceived because some deduce from it the infallibility of a Church and others no such matter So likewise a Turk might use the same argument against both Jews and Christians and an Atheist against all Religions and a Sceptick against all reason Might not the one say Mens disagreement in Religion shews that there is no certainty in any and the other that experience of their contradictions teacheth that the rules of reason do sometimes fail Do not you see and feel how void of reason and how full of impiety your sophistry is And how transported with zeal against Protestants you urge arguments against them which if they could not be answered would overthrow not only your own but all Religion But God be thanked the answer is easie and obvious For let men but remember not to impute the faults of men but only to men and then it will easily appear that there may be sufficient certainty in reason in Religion in the rules of interpreting Scripture though men through their faults take not care to make use of them and so run into divers errors and dissentions 48. Obj. But Protestants cannot determine what points be fundamental and therefore must remain uncertain whether or no they be not in some fundamental error Ans By like reason since you acknowledge that every error in points defined and declared by your Church destroys the substance of Faith and yet cannot determine what points be defined it followeth that you must remain uncertain whether or no you be not in some fundamental error and so want the substance of Faith without which there can be no hope of Salvation But though we cannot perhaps say in particular thus much and no more is fundamental yet believing all the Bible we are certain enough that we believe all that is fundamental As he that in a receipt takes twenty ingredients whereof ten only are necessary though he know not which those ten are yet taking the whole twenty he is sure enough that he has taken all that are necessary 49. Ad § 29. Obj. It is generally delivered by Catholick Divines that he who erreth against any one revealed truth tâ—seth all Divine Faith Now certainly some Protestants must do so because they hold contradictions which cannot all be true Therefore some of them at least have no divine faith Ans I pass by your weakness in urging Protestants with the authority of your Divines Yet if the Authority of your Divines were even Canonical certainly nothing could be concluded from it in this matter there being not one of them who delivers for true doctrin this position of yours thus nakedly set down That any error against any one revealed truth destroys all divine faith For they all require not your self excepted that this truth must not only be revealed but revealed publickly and all things considered sufficiently propounded to the erring party to be one of those which God under pain of damnation commands all men to believe But if the Reader will be at the pains he may see this vain fancy confuted out of one of the most rational and profound Doctors of your own Church I mean Estius upon the third Book of the Sententes the 23. Distinct and the 13. Section beginning thus It is disputed whether in him who believes some of the Articles of our Faith and disbelieves others or perhaps some one there be faith properly so called in respect of that which he does believe 50. But if Protestants have certainty they want obscurity and so have not that faith which as the Apostle saith is of things not appearing This argument you prosecute in the next Paragraph but I can find nothing in it to convince or perswade me that Protestants cannot have as much certainty as is required to faith of an object not so evident as to beget science If obscurity will not consist with certainty in the highest degree then you are to blame for requiring to faith contradicting conditions If certainty and obscurity will stand together what reason can be imagined that a Protestant may not entertain them both as well as a Papist Your bodies and souls your understandings and wills are I think of the same
Council of Trent so accordingly on the other side by the Religion of Protestants I do not understand the Doctrine of Luther or Calvin or Melancthon nor the Confession of Augusta or Geneva nor the Catechism of Heidelburg nor the Articles of the Church of England no nor the Harmony of Protestant Confessions but that wherein they all agree and which they all subscribe with a greater Harmony as a perfect rule of their Faith and Actions that is The Bible The Bible I say The Bible only is the Religion of Protestants Whatsoever else they believe besides it and the plain irrefragable indubitable consequences of it well may they hold it as a matter of Opinion but as matter of Faith and Religion neither can they with coherence to their own grounds believe it themselves nor require the belief of it of others without most high and most Schismatical presumption I for my part after a long and as I verily believe and hope impartial search of the true way to Eternal Happiness do profess plainly that I cannot find any rest for the sole of my Foot but upon this Rock only I see plainly and with mine own eyes that there are Popes against Popes Councils against Councils some Fathers against others the same Fathers against themselves a Consent of Fathers of one Age against a Consent of Fathers of another Age the Church of one Age against the Church of another Age. Traditive interpretations of Scripture are pretended but there are few or none to be found No Tradition but only of Scripture can derive it self from the Fountain but may be plainly proved either to have been brought in in such an Age after Christ or that in such an Age it was not in In a word there is no sufficient certainty but of Scripture only for any considering man to build upon This therefore and this only I have reason to believe This I will profess according to this I will live and for this if there be occasion I will not only willingly but even gladly lose my life though I should be sorry that Christians should take it from me Propose me any thing out of this Book and require whether I believe it or no and seem it never so incomprehensible to humane reason I will subscribe it with Hand and Heart as knowing no demonstration can be stronger than this God hath said so therefore it is true In other things I will take no mans liberty of judgment from him neither shall any man take mine from me I will think no man the worse man nor the worse Christian I will love no man the less for differing in opinion from me And what measure I mete to others I expect from them again I am fully assured that God does not and therefore that men ought not to require any more of any man than this To believe the Scripture to be Gods word to endeavour to find the true sense of it and to live according to it 57. This is the Religion which I have chosen after a long deliberation and I am verily persuaded that I have chosen wisely much more wisely than if I had guided my self according to your Churches authority For the Scripture being all true I am secured by believing nothing else that I shall believe no falshood as matter of Faith And if I mistake the sense of Scripture and so fall into Error yet am I secure from any danger thereby if but your grounds be true because endeavouring to find the true sense of Scripture I cannot but hold my Error without pertinacy and be ready to forsake it when a more true and a more probable sense shall appear unto me And then all necessary truth being as I have proved plainly set down in Scripture I am certain by believing Scripture to believe all necessary Truth And he that does so if his life be answerable to his Faith how is it possible he should fail of Salvation 58. Besides whatsoever may be pretended to gain to your Church the credit of a Guide all that and much more may be said for the Scripture Hath your Church been Ancient The Scripture is more Ancient Is your Church a means to keep men at Unity So is the Scripture to keep those that believe it and will obey it in Unity of belief in matters necessary or very profitable and in Unity of Charity in points unnecessary Is your Church Universal for time or place Certainly the Scripture is more Universal For all the Christians in the World those I mean that in truth deserve this name do now and always have believed the Scripture to be the Word of God whereas only you say that you only are the Church of God and all Christians besides you deny it 59. Thirdly following the Scripture I follow that whereby you prove your Churches infallibility whereof were it not for Scripture what pretence could you have or what notion could we have and by so doing tacitely confess that your selves are surer of the Truth of the Scripture than of your Churches authority For we must be surer of the proof than of the thing proved otherwise it is no proof 60. Fourthly following the Scripture I follow that which must be true if your Church be true for your Church gives attestation to it Whereas if I follow your Church I must follow that which though Scripture be true may be false nay which if Scripture be true must be false because the Scripture testifies against it 61. Fifthly to follow the Scripture I have Gods express warrant and command and no colour of any prohibition But to believe your Church infallible I have no command at all much less an express command Nay I have reason to fear that I am prohibited to do so in these Words call no man Master on Earth They fell by infidelity Thou standest by Faith Be not high minded but fear The Spirit of truth The World cannot receive 62. Following your Church I must hold many things not only above reason but against it if any thing be against it whereas following the Scripture I shall believe many mysteries but no impossibilities many things above reason but nothing against it many things which had they not been revealed reason could never have discovered but nothing which by true reason may be confuted many things which reason cannot comprehend how they can be but nothing which reason can comprehend that it cannot be Nay I shall believe nothing which reason will not convince that I ought to believe it For reason will convince any man unless he be of a perverse mind that the Scripture is the Word of God And then no reason can be greater than this God says so therefore it is true 63. Following your Church I must hold many things which to any mans judgment that will give himself the liberty of judgment will seem much more plainly contradicted by Scripture than the infallibility of your Church appears to be confirmed by it and consequently must be so
foolish as to believe your Church exempted from Error upon less evidence rather than subject to the common condition of mankind upon greater evidence Now if I take the Scripture only for my Guide I shall not need to do any thing so unreasonable 64. If I will follow your Church I must believe impossibilities and that with an absolute certainty upon motives which are confessed to be but only Prudential and probable That is with a weak Foundation I must firmly support a heavy a monstrous heavy building Now following the Scripture I shall have no necessity to undergo any such difficulties 65. Following your Church I must be servant of Christ and a Subject of the King but only Ad placitum Papae I must be prepared in mind to renounce my allegiance to the King when the Pope shall declare him an Heretick and command me not to obey him And I must be prepared in mind to esteem Vertue Vice and Vice Vertue if the Pope shall so determine Indeed you say it is impossible he should do the latter but that you know is a great question neither is it fit my obedience to God and the King should depend upon a questionable Foundation And howsoever you must grant that if by an impossible supposition the Popes commands should be contrary to the law of Christ that they of your Religion must resolve to obey rather the commands of the Pope than the law of Christ Whereas if I follow the Scripture I may nay I must obey my Sovereign in lawful things though an Heretick though a Tyrant and though I do not say the Pope but the Apostles themselves nay an Angel from Heaven should teach any thing against the Gospel of Christ I may nay I must denounce Anathema to him 66. Following the Scripture I shall believe a Religion which being contrary to Flesh and Blood without any assistance from worldly power wit or policy nay against all the power and policy of the World prevailed and enlarged it self in a very short time all the World over Whereas it is too too apparent that your Church hath got and still maintains her authority over mens Consciences by counterfeiting false miracles forging false stories by obtruding on the World suppositious writings by corrupting the monuments of former times and defacing out of them all which any way makes against you by Wars by persecutions by Massacres by Treasons by Rebellions in short by all manner of Carnal means whether violent or fraudulent 67. Following the Scripture I shall believe a Religion the first Preachers of Professors whereof it is most certain they could have no worldly ends upon the World that they could not project to themselves by it any of the profits or honours or pleasures of this World but rather were to expect the contrary even all the miseries which the World could lay upon them On the other side the Head of your Church the pretended Successor of the Apostles and Guide of Faith it is even palpable that he makes your Religion the instrument of his ambition and by it seeks to entitle himself directly or indirectly to the Monarchy of the World And besides it is evident to any man that has but half an eye that most of those Doctrines which you add to the Scripture do make one way or other for the honour or temporal profit of the Teachers of them 68. Following the Scripture only I shall embrace a Religion of admirable simplicity consisting in a manner wholly in the worship of God in Spirit and Truth Whereas your Church and Doctrine is even loaded with an infinity of weak childish ridiculous unsavoury superstitions and ceremonies and full of that righteousness for which Christ shall Judge the World 69. Following the Scripture I shall believe that which Universal never-failing Tradition assures me that it was by the admirable supernatural Work of God confirmed to be the Word of God whereas never any miracle was wrought never so much as a lame Horse cured in confirmation of your Churches authority and infallibility And if any strange things have been done which may seem to give attestation to some parts of your Doctrine yet this proves nothing but the truth of the Scripture which foretold that Gods providence permitting it and the wickedness of the World deserving it strange signs and wonders should be wrought to confirm false Doctrine that they which love not the Truth may be given over to strange delusions Neither does it seem to me any strange thing that God should permit some true wonders to be done to delude them who have forged so many to deceive the World 70. If I follow the Scripture I must not promise my self Salvation without effectual dereliction and mortification of all Vices and the effectual Practice of all Christian Vertues But your Church opens an easier and a broader way to Heaven and though I continue all my life long in a course of sin and without the Practice of any Vertue yet gives me assurance that I may be let into Heaven at a Postern-gate even by any Act of Attrition at the hour of Death if it be joyned with confession or by an Act of Contrition without confession 71. Admirable are the Precepts of piety and humility of innocence and patience of liberality frugality temperance sobriety justice meekness fortitude constancy and gravity contempt of the World love of God and the love of mankind In a Word of all Vertues and against all vice which the Scriptures impose upon us to be obeyed under pain of damnation The sum whereof is in manner comprised in our Saviours Sermon upon the Mount recorded in the 5 6 and 7. of S. Matthew which if they were generally obeyed could not but make the world generally happy and the goodness of them alone were sufficient to make any wise and good man believe that this Religion rather than any other came from God the fountain of all goodness And that they may be generally obeyed our Saviour hath ratified them all in the close of his Sermon with these universal Sanctions Not every one that saith Lord Lord shall enter into the Kingdom but he that doth the will of my Father which is in Heaven and again whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and doth them not shall be likned unto a foolish man which built his house upon the sand and the rain descended and the flood came and the winds blew and it fell and great was the fall thereof Now your Church notwithstanding all this enervates and in a manner dissolves and abrogates many of these precepts teaching men that they are not Laws for all Christians but Counsels of perfection and matters of Supererrogation that a man shall do well if he do observe them but he shall not sin if he observe them not that they are for them who aim at high places in heaven who aspire with the two sons of Zebede to the right hand or to the left hand of Christ But if a man will be content
and most Royal Charity Besides it is in a manner nothing else but a pursuance of and a superstruction upon that blessed Doctrin wherewith I have adorn'd and arm'd the Frontispiece of my Book which was so earnestly recommended by your Royal Father of happy memory to all the lovers of Truth and Peace that is to all that were like himself as the only hopeful means of healing the breaches of Christendom whereof the Enemy of souls makes such pestilent advantage The lustre of this blessed Doctrin I have here endeavoured to uncloud and unveil and to free it from those mists and fumes which have been rais'd to obscure it by that Order which envenoms even poison it self and makes the Roman Religion much more malignant and turbulent than otherwise it would be whose very Rule and Doctrin obliges them to make all men as much as lies in them subjects unto Kings and servants unto Christ no farther than it shall please the Pope So that whether Your Majesty be considered either as a pious Son towards your Royal Father K. James or as a tender hearted and compassionate Son towards your distressed Mother the Catholick Church or as a King of your Subjects or as a Servant unto Christ this work to which I can give no other commendation but that it was intended to do you service in all these capacities may pretend not unreasonably to your Gracious acceptance Lastly being a Defence of that whole Church and Religion you profess it could not be so proper to any Patron as to the great Defender of it which stile Your Majesty hath ever so exactly made good both in securing it from all dangers and in vindicating it by the well ordering and rectifying this Church from all the foul aspersions both of Domestick and Forein enemies of which they can have no ground but their own malice and want of Charity But it 's an argument of a despairing and lost cause to support it self with these impetuous outcries and clamors the faint refuges of those that want better arguments like that Stoick in Lucian that cried 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 O damn'd villain when he could say nothing else Neither is it credible the wiser sort of them should believe this their own horrid assertion That a God of goodness should damn to eternal torments those that love him and love truth for errors which they fall into through humane frailty But this they must say otherwise their only great argument from their damning us and our not being so peremptory in damning them because we hope unaffected Ignorance may excuse them would be lost and therefore they are engaged to act on this Tragical part only to fright the simple and ignorant as we do little children by telling them that bites which we would not have them meddle with And truly that herein they do but act a part and know themselves to do so and deal with us here as they do with the King of Spain at Rome whom they accurse and Eccommunicate for fashion sake on Maundy-Thursday for detaining part of S. Peters Patrimony and absolve him without satisfaction on Good-Friday methinks their faltring and inconstancy herein makes it very apparent For though for the most part they speak nothing but thunder and lightning to us and damn us all without mercy or exception yet sometimes to serve other purposes they can be content to speak to us in a milder strain and tell us as my adversary does more than once That they allow Protestants as much Charity as Protestants allow them Neither is this the only contradiction which I have discovered in this uncharitable Work but have shewed that by forgetting himself and retracting most of the principal grounds he builds upon he hath saved me the labour of a confutation which yet I have not in any place found any such labour or difficulty but that it was undertakeable by a man of very mean that is of my abilities And the reason is because it is Truth I plead for which is so strong an argument for it self that it needs only light to discover it whereas it concerns Falshood and Error to use disguises and shadowings and all the fetches of Art and Sophistry and therefore it stands in need of abler men to give that a colour at least which hath no real body to subsist by If my endeavors in this kind may contribute any thing to this discovery and the making plain that Truth which my Charity perswades me the most part of them disaffect only because it has not been well represented to them I have the fruit of my labour and my wish who desire to live to no other end than to do service to Gods Church and Your most Sacred Majesty in the quality of Your Majesties most faithful Subject and most humble and devoted Servant WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH THE PREFACE TO THE AUTHOR OF Charity Maintained With an Answer to his Direction to N. N. SIR UPON the first news of the publication of your Book I used all diligence with speed to procure it and came with such a mind to the reading of it as S. Austin before he was a setled Catholick brought to his conference with Faustus the Manichee For as he thought that if any thing more then ordinary might be said in defence of the Manichean Doctrine Faustus was the man from whom it was to be expected So my persuasion concerning you was Si Pergama dextrâ defendi possunt certè hac defensa videbo If Troy by any Power could stand 'T would be defended by your hand 1. For I conceived that among the Champions of the Roman Church the English in Reason must be the best or equal to the best as being by most expert Masters trained up purposely for this war and perpetually practised in it Among the English I saw the Jesuits would yield the first place to none and Men so wise in their generation as the Jesuits were if they had any Achilles among them I presumed would make choice of him for this service And besides I had good assurance that in the framing of this building though you were the only Architect yet you wanted not the assistance of many diligent hands to bring you in choice materials towards it nor of many careful and watchful eyes to correct the errors of your work if any should chance to escape you Great reason therefore had I to expect great matters from you and that your Book should have in it the Spirit and Elixir of all that can be said in defence of your Church and Doctrin and to assure my self that if my resolution not to believe it were not built upon the rock of evident grounds and reasons but only upon some sandy and deceitful appearances now the Wind and Storm and Floods were coming which would undoubtedly overthrow it 2. Neither truly were you more willing to effect such an alteration in me than I was to have it effected For my desire is to go the right way to Eternal
Happiness But whether this way lie on the right-hand or the left or strait forwards whether it be by following a living Guide or by seeking my directions in a Book or by hearkening to the secret whisper of some private Spirit to me it is indifferent And he that is otherwise affected and has not a Travellers indifference which Epictetus requires in all that would find the truth but much desires in respect of his ease or pleasure or profit or advancement or satisfaction of friends or any human consideration that one way should be true rather than another it is odds but he will take his desire that it should be so for an assurance that it is so But I for my part unless I deceive my self was and still am so affected as I have made profession not willing I confess to take any thing upon trust and to believe it without asking my self why no nor able to command my self were I never so willing to follow like a sheep every shepheard that should take upon him to guide me or every Flock that should chance to go before me but most apt and most willing to be led by reason to any way or from it and always submitting all other Reasons to this one God hath said so therefore it is true Nor yet was I so unreasonable as to expect Mathematical demonstrations from you in matters plainly incapable of them such as are to be believed and if we speak properly cannot be known such therefore I expected not For as he is an unreasonable Master who requires a stronger assent to his conclusions than his arguments deserve so I conceive him a froward and undisciplin'd Scholar who desires stronger arguments for a conclusion than the matter will bear But had you represented to my understanding such reasons of your Doctrine as being weighed in an even ballance held by an even hand with those on the other side would have turned the Scale and have made your Religion more credible than the contrary certainly I should have despised the shame of one more alteration and with both mine armes and all my heart most readily have embraced it Such was my expectation from you and such my preparation which I brought with me to the reading of your Book 3. Would you know now what the event was what effect was wrought in me by the perusal and consideration of it To deal truly and ingenuously with you I fell somwhat in my good opinion both of your sufficiency and sincerity but was exceedingly confirmed in the ill opinion of the Cause maintained by you I found every where Snares that might entrap and Colours that might deceive the Simple but nothing that might persuade and very little that might move an understanding Man and one that can discern between Discourse and Sophistry In short I was verily perseaded that I plainly saw and could make it appear to all dis-passionate and unprejudicate Judges that a vein of Sophistry and Calumny did run clean through it from the beginning to the end And this I undertook with a full resolution to be an adversary to your Errors but a Friend and Servant to your Person and so much the more a Friend to your Person by how much the severer and more rigid Adversary I was to your Errors 4. In this work my Conscience bears me witness that I have according to your advice proceeded always with this consideration that I am to give a most strict account of every line and word that passeth under my Pen and therefore have been precisely careful for the matter of my Book to defend truth only and only by Truth And then scrupulously fearful of Scandalizing you or any Man with the manner of handling it 6. In your Pamphlet of Directions to N. N. you have loaded not only my person in particular but all the Learned and Moderate Divines of the Church of England and all Protestants in general nay all wise Men of all Religions but your own with unworthy Contumelies and a Mass of portentous and execrable Calumnies 7. To begin with the last you stick not in the begining of your first Chapter to fasten the imputation of Atheism and Irreligion upon all wise and gallant Men that are not of your own Religion In which uncharitable and unchristian Judgment void of all colour or shadow of probability I know yet by experience that very many of the Bigots of your Faction are partakers with you God forbid I should think the like of you Yet if I should say that in your Religion there want not some temptations unto and some Principles of Irreligion and Atheism I am sure I could make my Assertion much more probable than you have done or can make this horrible imputation 8. For to pass by first that which experience justifies that where and when your Religion hath most absolutely commanded there and then Atheism hath most abounded To say nothing Secondly of your notorious and confessed forging of so many false Miracles and so many lying Legends which is not unlikely to make suspitious men to question the truth of all Nor to object to you Thirdly the abundance of your weak and silly Ceremonies and ridiculous Observances in your Religion which in all probability cannot but beget secret contempt and scorn of it in wise and considering men and consequently Atheism and Impiety if they have this persuasion setled in them which is too rife among you and which you account a piece of Wisdom and Gallantry that if they be not of your Religion they were as good be of none at all Nor to trouble you Fourthly with this that a great part of your Doctrine especially in the Points contested makes apparently for the temporal ends of the teachers of it which yet I fear is a great scandal to many Beaux Esprits among you Only I should desire you to consider attentively when you conclude so often from the differences of Protestants that they have no certainty of any part of their Religion no not of those Points wherein they agree whether you do not that which so magisterially you direct me not to do that is proceed a destructive way and object arguments against your adversaries which tend to the overthrow of all Religion And whether as you argue thus Protestants differ in many things therefore they have no certainty of any thing So an Atheist or a Sceptick may not conclude as well Christians and the Professors of all Religions differ in many things therefore they have no certainty of any thing Again I should desire you to tell me ingenuously whether it be not too probable that your portentous Doctrine of Transubstantiation joyn'd with your foremention'd persuasion of No Papists no Christians hath brought a great many others as well as himself to Averroes's resolution Quandoquidem Christiani adorant quod comedunt sit anima mea cum Philosophis Forasmuch as the Christians worship that which they eat let my Soul be with the Philosophers Whether your
exception against a Physitian that himself was sometimes in and recovered himself from that Disease which he undertakes to cure or against a Guide in a way that at first before he had experience himself mistook it and afterwards found his error and amended it That noble writer Michael de Montai'gne was surely of a far different mind for he will hardly allow any Physitian competent but only for such Diseases as himself had passed through And a far greater than Montai'gne even he that said Tu conversus confirma fratres when thou art converted strengthen by Brethren gives us sufficiently to understand that they which have themselves been in such a state as to need Conversion are not thereby made incapable of but rather engaged and obliged unto and qualified for this Charitable Function 41. The Motives then hitherto not answered were these 42. I. Because perpetual visible profession which could never be wanting to the Religion of Christ nor any part of it is apparently wanting to Protestant Religion so far as concerns the points in contestation II. Because Luther and his followers separating from the Church of Rome separated also from all Churches pure or impure true or false then being in the world upon which ground I conclude that either Gods promises did fail of performance if there were then no Church in the World which held all things necessary and nothing repugnant to Salvation or else that Luther and his Sectaries separating from all Churches then in the World and so from the true if there were any true were damnable Schismaticks III. Because if any credit may be given to as credible records as any are extant the Doctrine of Catholicks hath been frequently confirmed and the opposite Doctrine of Protestants confounded with supernatural and Divine Miracles IV. Because many points of Protestant Doctrine are the damned Opinions of Hereticks condemned by the Primitive Church V. Because the Prophecies of the Old Testament touching the Couversion of Kings and Nations to the true Religion of Christ have been accomplished in and by the Catholick Roman Religion and the Professors of it and not by Protestant Religion and the Professors of it VI. Because the Doctrine of the Church of Rome is conformable and the Doctrine of Protestants contrary to the Doctrine of the Fathers of the Primitive Church even by the Confession of Protestants themselves I mean those Fathers who lived within the compass of the first 600. years to whom Protestants themselves do very frequently and very confidently appeal VII Because the first pretended Reformers had neither extraordinary Commission from God nor ordinary Mission from the Church to Preach Protestant Doctrine VIII Because Luther to Preach against the Mass which contains the most material points now in controversie was persuaded by reasons suggested to him by the Devil himself disputing with him So himself professeth in his Book de Missa Privata That all men might take heed of following him who professeth himself to follow the Devil IX Because the Protestant cause is now and hath been from the beginning maintained with grosse falsifications and Calumnies whereof their prime Controversie writers are notoriously and in high degree guilty X. Because by denying all humane Authority either of Pope or Councils or Church to determine Controversies of Faith they have abolished all possible means of suppressing Heresie or restoring Unity to the Church These are the Motives now my Answers to them follow briefly and in order 43. To the first God hath neither drecreed nor foretold that his true Doctrine should de facto be alwaies visibly professed without any mixture of falshood To the second God hath neither decreed nor foretold that there shall be alwaies a visible Company of Men free from all Error in it self Damnable Neither is it alwaies of necessity Schismatical to separate from the external Communion of a Church though wanting nothing necessary For if this Church supposed to want nothing necessary require me to profess against my Conscience that I believe some Error tho never so small and innocent which I do not believe and will not allow me Her Communion but upon this condition In this case the Church for requiring this condition is Schismatical and not I for separating from the Church To the third If any credit may be given to Records far more creditable than these the Doctrine of Protestants that is the Bible hath been confirmed and the Doctrine of Papists which is in many points plainly opposite to it confounded with Supernatural and Divine Miracles which for number and Glory out-shine Popish pretended Miracles as much as the Sun doth an Ignis fatuus those I mean which were wrought by our Saviour Christ and his Apostles Now this Book by the Confession of all sides confirmed by innumerous Miracles foretels me plainly that in after Ages great Signs and Wonders shall be wrought in confirmation of false Doctrine and that I am not to believe any Doctrine which seems to my understanding repugnant to the first though an Angel from Heaven should teach it which were certainly as great a Miracle as any that was ever wrought in attestation of any part of the Doctrine of the Church of Rome But that true Doctrine should in all Ages have the testimony of Miracles that I am no where taught So that I have more reason to suspect and be afraid of pretended Miracles as signs of false Doctrine then much to regard them as certain arguments of the truth Besides setting aside the Bible and the Tradition of it there is as good story for Miracles wrought by those who lived and died in opposition to the Doctrine of the Roman Church as by S. Cyprian Colmannus Columbanus Aidanus and others as there is for those that are pretended to be wrought by the Members of that Church Lastly it seems to me no strange thing that God in his Justice should permit some true Miracles to be wrought to delude them who have forged so many as apparently the Professors of the Roman Doctrine have to abuse the World To the Fourth All those were not a See this acknowledged by Bellar de Scrip Eccles in Philastrio by Petavius Animad in Epiph de inscrip operis By S. Austin Lib. de Haeres Haer. 80. Hereticks which by Philastrius Epiphanius or S. Austine were put in the Catalogue of Hereticks To the Fifth Kings and Nations have been and may be Converted by Men of contrary Religions To the Sixth The Doctrine of Papists is confessed by Papists contrary to the Fathers in many points To the Seventh The Pastors of a Church cannot but have Authority from it to Preach against the abuses of it whether in Doctrine or Practice if there be any in it Neither can any Christian want an ordinary commission from God to do a necessary work of Charity after a peacable manner when there is no body else that can or will do it In extraordinary cases extraordinary courses are not to be disallowed If some
Antichrist are wholly lost and extinguished So unfaithful or negligent hath been this keeper of Divine verities whose eyes like the Keepers of Israel you say have never Slumbred nor Slept Lastly we deny not but a Judge and a Law might well stand together but we deny that there is any such Judge of Gods appointment Had he intended any such Judge he would have named him lest otherwise as now it is our Judge of Controversies should be our greatest Controversie 11. Ad 2 3 4 5 6. § In your second Paragraph you sum up those arguments wherewith you intend to prove that Scripture alone cannot be Judge in Controversies Wherein I profess unto you before hand that you will fight without an Adversary For though Protestants being warranted by some of the Fathers have called Scripture the Judge of Controversies and you in saying here That Scripture alone cannot be Judge imply that it may be called in some sense a Judge though not alone Yet to speak properly as men should speak when they write of Controversies in Religion the Scripture is not a Judge of Controversies but a Rule only and the only Rule for Christians to judge them by Every man is to Judge for himself with the Judgment of Discretion and to choose either his Religion first and then his Church as we say or as you his Church first and then his Religion But by the consent of both sides every man is to judge and choose and the Rule whereby he is to guide his choice if he be a natural man is Reason if he be already a Christian Scripture which we say is the Rule to judge Controversies by Yet not all simply but all the Controversies of Christians of those that are already agreed upon This first Principle that the Scripture is the Word of God But that there is any man or any company of men appointed to be judge for all men that we deny and that I believe you will never prove The very truth is we say no more in this matter than evidence of Truth hath made you confess in plain terms in the beginning of this chap. viz That Scripture is a perfect Rule of Faith for as much as a writing can be a Rule So that all your reasons whereby you labour to dethrone the Scripture from this office of Judging we might let pass as impertinent to the conclusion which we maintain and you have already granted yet out of courtesie we will consider them 12. Your first is this a Judge must be a person fit to end Controversies but the Scripture is not a person nor fit to end Controversies no more than the Law would be without the Judges therefore though it may be a Rule it cannot be a Judge Which conclusion I have already granted Only my request is that you will permit Scripture to have the properties of a Rule that is to be fit to direct every one that will make the best use of it to that end for which it was ordained And that is as much as we need desire For as if I were to go a Journey and had a guide which could not Err I needed not to know my way so on the other side if I know my way or have a plain rule to know it by I shall need no guide Grant therefore Scripture to be such a Rule and it will quickly take away all necessity of having an Infallible guide But without a living Judge it will be no fitter you say to end Controversies than the Law alone to end Suits I answer if the Law were plain and perfect and men honest and desirous to understand aright and obey it he that says it were not fit to end Controversies must either want understanding himself or think the World wants it Now the Scripture we pretend in things necessary is plain and perfect and men we say are obliged under pain of Damnation to seek the true sense of it and not to wrest it to their preconceived Phansies Such a Law therefore to such men cannot but be very fit to end all Controversies necessary to be ended For others that are not so they will end when the World ends and that is time enough 13. Your next encounter is with them who acknowledging the Scripture a Rule only and not a Judge make the Holy Ghost speaking in Scripture the judge of Controversies Which you disprove by saying That the Holy Ghost speaking only in Scripture is no more intelligible to us than the Scripture in which he speaks But by this reason neither the Pope nor a Council can be a Judge neither For first denying the Scriptures the writings of the Holy Ghost to be Judges you will not I hope offer to pretend that their decrees the writings of men are more capable of this function the same exceptions at least if not more and greater lying against them as do against Scripture And then what you Object against the Holy Ghost speaking in Scripture to exclude him from this office The same I return upon them and their decrees to debar them from it that they speaking unto us only in their decrees are no more intelligible than the decrees in which they speak And therefore if the Holy Ghost speaking in Scripture may not be a judge for this reason neither may they speaking in their decrees be Judges for the same Reason If the Popes decrees you will say be obscure he can explain himself and so the Scripture cannot But the Holy Ghost that speaks in Scripture can do so if he please and when he is pleased will do so In the mean time it will be fit for you to wait his leisure and to be content that those things of Scripture which are plain should be so and those which are obscure should remain obscure until he please to declare them Besides he can which you cannot warrant me of the Pope or a Coucil speak at first so plainly that his Words shall need no farther explanation and so in things necessary we believe he has done And if you say the Decrees of Councils touching Controversies though they be not the Judge yet they are the Judges Sentence So I say the Scripture though not the Judge is the Sentence of the Judge When therefore you conclude That to say a Judge is necessary for deciding Controversies about the meaning of Scripture is as much as to say he is necessary to decide what the Holy Ghost speaks in Scripture This I grant is true but I may not grant that a Judge such a one as we dispute of is necessary either to do the one or the other For if the Scripture as it is in things necessary be plain why should it be more necessary to have a judge to interpret them in plain places than to have a judge to interpret the meaning of a Councils decrees and others to interpret their Interpretations and others to interpret theirs and so on for ever And where they are not plain there if we using
true Priest he cannot possibly escape damnation Such a man for his comfort you tell first you that will have mens Salvation depend upon no uncertainties that though he verily believe that his sorrow for sins is a true sorrow and his purpose of amendment a true purpose yet he may deceive himself perhaps it is not and if it be not he must be damned Yet you bid him hope well But Spes est rei incertae nomen You tell him secondly that though the party he confesses to seem to be a true Priest yet for ought he knows or for ought himself knows by reason of some secret undiscernable invalidity in his Baptism or Ordination he may be none and if he be none he can do nothing This is a hard saying but this is not the worst You tell him thirdly that he may may be in such a state that he cannot or if he can that he will not give the Sacrament with due Intention and if he does not all 's in vain Put case a man by these considerations should be cast into some agonies what advice what comfort would you give him Verily I know not what you could say to him but this that first for the Qualification required on his part he might know that he desired to have true sorrow and that that is sufficient But then if he should ask you why he might not know his sorrow to be a true sorrow as well as his desire to be sorrowful to be a true desire I believe you would be put to silence Then secondly to quiet his fears concerning the Priest and his intention you should tell him by my advice that Gods goodness which will not suffer him to damn men for not doing better than their best will supply all such defects as to humane endeavours were unavoidable And therefore though his Priest were indeed no Priest yet to him he should be as if he were one and if he gave Absolution without Intention yet in doing so he should hurt himself only and not his penitent This were some comfort indeed and this were to settle mens Salvation upon reasonable certain grounds But this I fear you will never say for this were to reverse many Doctrines established by your Church and besides to degrade your Priesthood from a great part of their honour by lessening the strict necessity of the Laities dependance upon them For it were to say that the Priests Intention is not necessary to the obtaining of absolution which is to say that it is not in the Parsons power to damn whom he will in his Parish because by this Rule God should supply the defect which his malice had caused And besides it were to say that Infants dying without Baptism might be saved God supplying the want of Baptism which to them is unavoidable But beyond all this it were to put into my mouth a full and satisfying answer to your Argument which I am now returning so that in answering my objection you should answer your own For then I should tell you that it were altogether as abhorrent from the goodness of God and as repugnant to it to suffer an ignorant Lay-mans Soul to perish meerly for being misled by an undiscernable false Translation which yet was commended to him by the Church which being of necessity to credit some in this matter he had reason to rely upon either above all other or as much as any other as it is to damn a penitent sinner for a secret defect in that desired Absolution which his Gostly Father perhaps was an Atheist and could not give him or was a villiain and would not This answer therefore which alone would serve to comfort your penitent in his perplexities and to assure him that he cannot fail of Salvation if he will not for fear of inconveniencies you must forbear And seeing you must I hope you will come down from the Pulpit and Preach no more against others for making mens Salvation depend upon fallible and uncertain grounds lest by judging others you make your selves and your own Church inexcusable who are strongly guilty of this fault above all the men and Churches of the World whereof I have already given you two very pregnant demonstrations drawn from your presumptions tying God and Salvation to your Sacraments And the efficacy of them to your Priests Qualifications and Intentions 69. Your making the Salvation of Infants depend on Baptism a Casual thing and in the power of man to confer or not confer would yield me a Third of the same nature And your suspending the same on the Baptizers intention a Fourth And lastly your making the Real presence of Christ in the Eucharist depend upon the casualties of the Consecrators true Priesthood and Intention and yet commanding men to believe it for certain that he is present and to adore the Sacrament which according to your Doctrine for ought they can possibly know may be nothing else but a piece of Bread so exposing them to the danger of Idolatry and consequently of Damnation doth offer me a Fisth demonstration of the same conclusion if I thought fit to insist upon them But I have no mind to draw any more out of this Fountain neither do I think it Charity to cloy the Reader with uniformity when the Subject affords variety 70. Sixthly therefore I return it thus The Faith of Papists relies alone upon their Churches infallibility That there is any Church infallible and that theirs is it they pretend not to believe but only upon prudential motives Dependance upon prudential motives they confess to be obnoxious to a possibility of erring What then remaineth but Truth Faith Salvation and all must in them rely upon a fallible and uncertain ground 71. Seventhly The Faith of Papists relies upon the Church alone The Doctrine of the Church is delivered to most of them by their Parish Priest or Ghostly Father or at least by a company of Priests who for the most part sure are men and not Angels in whom nothing is more certain than a most certain possibility to Err. What then remaineth but that Truth Faith Salvation and all must in them rely upon a fallible and uncertain ground 72. Eighthly thus It is apparent and undeniable that many Thousands there are who believe your Religion upon no better grounds than a man may have for the belief almost of any Religion As some believe it because their Forefathers did so and they were good People Some because they were Christened and brought up in it Some because it is the Religion of their Country where all other Religions are persecuted and profcribed Some because Protestants cannot shew a perpetual succession of Professors of all their Doctrine Some because the service of your Church is more stately and pompous and magnificent Some because they find comfort in it Some because your Religion is farther spread and hath more Professors of it than the Religion of Protestants Some because your Priests compass Sea and Land to gain
not go about this noble work presently If he should not How shall we know that the calling of the Council of Trent was not upon his own voluntary motion or upon humane importunity and suggestion and not upon the motion of the Holy Ghost And consequently how shall we know whether he were assistant to it or no seeing he assists none but what he himself moves to And whether he did move the Pope to call this Council is a secret thing which we cannot possibly know nor perhaps the Pope himself 96. If you say your meaning is only That the Church shall be infallibly guarded from giving any false sense of any Scripture and not infalliblyassisted positively to give the true sense of all Scripture I put to you your own Question why should we believe the Holy Ghost will stay there Or why may we not as well think he will stay at the first thing that is in teaching the Church what Books be true Scripture For if the Holy Ghosts assistance be promised to all things profitable then will he be with them infallibly not only to guard them from all Errors but to guide them to all profitable truths such as the true senses of all Scripture would be Neither could he stay there but defend them irresistibly from all Vices Nor there neither but infuse into them irresistibly all Vertues for all these things would be much for the benefit of Christians If you say he cannot do this without taking away their free-will in living I say neither can he necessitate men to believe aright without taking away their free-will in believing and in professing their belief 97. Obj. To the place of S. Austin I would not believe the Gospel unless the Authority of the Church did move me Contr. ep Fund c. 5. Answ I answer That not the Authority of the present Church much less of a Part of it as the Roman Church is was that which alone moved Saint Austin to believe the Gospel but the perpetual Tradition of the Church of all Ages Which you your self have taught us to be the only Principle by which the Scripture is proved and which it self needs no proof and to which you have referred this very saying of S. Austin Ego vero Evangelio non crederem nisi c. p. 55. And in the next place which you cite out of his Book De Util. Cred. c. 14. he shews that his motives to believe were Fame Celebrity Consent Antiquity And seeing this Tradition this Consent this Antiquity did as fully and powerfully move him not to believe Manichaeus as to believe the Gospel the Christian Tradition being as full against Manichaeus as it was for the Gospel therefore he did well to conclude upon these grounds that he had as much reason to disbelieve Manichaeus as to believe the Gospel Now if you can truly say that the same Fame Celebrity Consent Antiquity that the same Universal and Original Tradition lies against Luther and Calvin as did against Manichaeus you may do well to apply the Argument against them otherwise it will be to little purpose to substitute their names instead of Manichaeus unless you can shew the things agrees to them as well as him 98. If you say that S. Austin speaks here of the Authority of the Present Church abstracting from consent with the Ancient and therefore you seeing you have the present Church on your side against Luther and Calvin as S. Austin against Manichaeus may urge the same words against them which S. Austin did against him 99. I answer First that it is a vain presumption of yours that the Catholick Church is of your side Secondly that if S. Austin speak here of that present Church which moved him to believe the Gospel without consideration of the Antiquity of it and its both Personal and Doctrinal succession from the Apostles His Argument will be like a Buskin that will serve any leg It will serve to keep an Arrian or a Grecian from being a Roman Catholick as well as a Catholick from being an Arrian or a Grecian In as much as the Arrians and Grecians did pretend to the Title of Catholicks and the Church as much as the Papists now do If then you should have come to an Ancient Goth or Vandal whom the Arrians converted to Christianity and should have moved him to your Religion might he not say the very same words to you as S. Austin to the Manichaeans I would not believe the Gospel unless the Authority of the Church did move me Them therefore whom I obeyed saying believe the Gospel why should I not obey saying to me do not believe the Homoousians Choose what thou pleasest If thou shalt say believe the Arrians they warn me not to give any Credit to you If therefore I believe them I cannot believe thee If thou say do not believe the Arrians thou shalt not do well to force me to the Faith of the Homoousians because by the Preaching of the Arrians I believed the Gospel it self If you say you did well to believe them commending the Gospel but you did not well to believe them discommending the Homoousians Doest thou think me so very foolish that without any reason at all I should believe what thou wilt and not believe what thou wilt not It were easie to put these words into the mouth of a Grecian Abyssine Georgian or any other of any Religion And I pray bethink your selves what you would say to such a one in such a case and imagine that we say the very same to you 101. And whereas you say S. Austin may seem to have spoken Prophetically against Protestants when he said Why should I not most diligently inquire what Christ commanded of them before all others by whose Authority I was moved to believe that Christ Commanded any good thing Answ I answer Until you can shew that Protestants believe that Christ commanded any good thing that is That they believe the truth of Christian Religion upon the Authority of the Church of Rome this place must be wholly impertinent to your purpose which is to make Protestants believe your Church to be the infallible expounder of Scriptures and judge of Controversies nay rather is it not directly against your purpose For why may not a member of the Church of England who received his Baptism Education and Faith from the Ministry of this Church say just so to you as S. Austin here to the Manichees Why should I not most diligently inquire what Christ commanded of them the Church of England before all others by whose authority I was moved to believe that Christ commandded any good thing Can you F. or K. or whosoever you are better declare to me what he said whom I would not have thought to have been or to be if the belief thereof had been recommended by you to me This therefore that Christ Jesus did those miracles and taught that Doctrine which is contained evidently in the undoubted Books of the New
Church you say is Infallible I am very doubtful of it How shall I know it The Scripture you say affirms it as in the 59. of Esau My spirit that is in thee c. Well I confess I find there these words but I am still doubtful whether they be spoken of the Church of Christ and if they be whether they mean as you pretend You say the Church says so which is infallible Yea but that is the Question and therefore not to be begged but proved Neither is it so evident as to need no proof otherwise why brought you this Text to prove it Nor is it of such a strange quality above all other Propositions as to be able to prove it self What then remains but that you say Reasons drawn out of the Circumstances of the Text will evince that this is the sense of it Perhaps they will But Reasons cannot convince me unless I judge of them by my Reason and for every man or woman to relie on that in the choice of their Religion and in the interpreting of Scripture you say is a horrible absurdity and therefore must neither make use of your own in this matter nor desire me to make use of it 119. But Universal Tradition you say and so do I too is of it self credible and that has in all Ages taught the Churches Infallibility with full consent If it have I am ready to believe it But that it has I hope you would not have me take upon your word for that were to build my self upon the Church and the Church upon You. Let then the Tradition appear for a secret Tradition is somewhat like a silent Thunder You will perhaps produce for the confirmation of it some sayings of some Fathers who in every Age taught this Doctrine as Gualterius in his Chronology undertakes to do but with so ill success that I heard an able Man of your Religion profess that in the first three Centuries there was not one Authority pertinent but how will you warrant that none of them teach the contrary Again how shall I be assured that the places have indeed this sense in them Seeing there is not one Father for 500 years after Christ that does say in plain terms The Church of Rome is Infallible What shall we believe your Church that this is their meaning But this will be again to go into the Circle which made us giddy before To prove the Church Infallible because Tradition says so Tradition to say so because the Fathers say so The Fathers to say so because the Church says so which is Infallible Yea but reason will shew this to be the meaning of them Yes if we may use our Reason and rely upon it Otherwise as light shews nothing to the Blind or to him that uses not his eyes so reason cannot prove any thing to him that either has not or uses not his reason to judge of them 120. Thus you have excluded your self from all proof of your Churches Infallibility from Scripture or Tradition And if you fly lastly to Reason it self for succour may not it justly say to you as Jephte said to his Brethren Ye have cast me out and banished me and do you now come to me for succour But if there be no certainty in Reason how shall I be assured of the certainty of those which you aledge for this purpose Either I may judge of them or not if not why do you propose them If I may why do you say I may not and make it such a monstrous absurdity That men in the choice of their Religion should make use of their Reason which yet without all question none but unreasonable men can deny to have been the chiefest end why Reason was given them 121. Ad § 22. An Heretick he is saith D. Potter who opposeth any truth which to be a Divine Revelation he is convinced in Conscience by any means whatsoever Be it by a Preacher or Lay-man be it by reading Scripture or hearing them read And from hence you infer that he makes all these safe propounders of Faith A most strange and illogical deduction For may not a private man by evident reason convince another man that such or such a Doctrine is Divine Revelation and yet though he be a true propounder in this point yet propound another thing falsely and without proof and consequently not be a safe propounder in every point Your Preachers in their Sermons do they not propose to men Divine Revelations and do they not sometimes convince men in Conscience by evident proof from Scripture that the things they speak are Divine Revelations And whosoever being thus convinced should oppose this Divine Revelation should he not be an Heretick according to your own grounds for calling Gods own Truth into question And would you think your self well dealt with if I should collect from hence that you make every Preacher a safe that is an infallible Propounder of Faith Be the means of Proposal what it will sufficient or insufficient worthy of credit or not worthy though it were if it were possible the barking of a Dog or the chirping of a Bird or were it the Discourse of the Devil himself yet if I be I will not say convinced but persuaded though falsly that it is a Divine Revelation and shall deny to believe it I shall be a formal though not a material Heretick For he that believes though falsly any thing to be Divine Revelation and yet will not believe it to be true must of necessity believe God to be false which according to your own Doctrine is the formality of an Heretick 122. And how it can be any way advantagious to Civil Government that men without warrant from God should Usurp a Tyranny over other mens Consciences and prescribe unto them without reason and sometimes against reason what they shall believe you must shew us plainer if you desire we should believe For to say Verily I do not see but that it must be so is no good demonstration For whereas you say that a Man may be a passionate and Seditious Creature from whence you would have us infer that he may make use of his interpretation to satisfie his Passion and raise Sedition There were some colour in this consequence if we as you do made private men infallible interpreters for others for then indeed they might lead Disciples after them and use them as Instruments for their vile purposes But when we say they can only interpret for themselves what harm they can do by their passionate or seditious interpretations but only endanger both their Temporal and Eternal happiness I cannot imagine For though we deny the Pope or Church of Rome to be an infallible Judge yet we do not deny but that there are Judges which may proceed with certainty enough against all Seditious Persons such as draw men to disobedience either against Church or State as well as against Rebels and Traytors and Thieves and Murderers 123. Ad §
a crime is common to us with you as I have proved above and the difference is not that we are choosers and you not choosers but that we as we conceive choose wisely but you being wilfully blind choose to follow those that are so too not remembring what our Saviour hath told you when the Blind lead the Blind both shall fall into the Ditch But then again I must tell you you have done ill to confound together Judges and infallible Judges unless you will say either that we have no Judges in our Courts of Civil judicature or that they are all Infallible 154. Thus have we cast off your dilemma and broken both the Horns of it But now my retortion lies heavy upon you and will not be turned off For first you content not your selves with a moral certainty of the things you believe nor with such a degree of assurance of them as is sufficient to produce obedience to the condition of the new Covenant which is all that we require Gods Spirit if he please may Work more and certainty of adherence beyond a certainty of evidence But neither God doth nor man may require of us as our Duty to give a greater assent to the conclusion than the premises deserve to build an infallible Faith upon Motives that are only highly credible and not infallible as it were a great and heavy building upon a Foundation that hath not strength proportionable But though God require not of us such unreasonable things You do and tell men they cannot be saved unless they believe your Proposals with an infallible Faith To which end they must believe also your Propounder your Church to be simply Infallible Now how is it possible for them to give a rational assent to the Churches infallibility unless they have some infallible means to know that she is infallible Neither can they infallibly know the infallibility of this means but by some other and so on for ever unless they can dig so deep as to come at length to the Rock that is to settle all upon something evident of it self which is not so much as pretended But the last resolution of all is into Motives which indeed upon examination will scarce appear probable but are not so much as avouched to be any more than very credible For example if I ask you why you do believe Transubstantiation What can you answer but because it is a Revelation of the prime Verity I demand again how can you assure your self or me of that being ready to embrace it if it may appear to be so And what can you say but that you know it to be so because the Church says so which is Infallible If I ask what mean You by your Church You can tell me nothing but the Company of Christians which adhere to the Pope I demand then lastly Why should I believe this Company to be the Infallible Propounder of Divine Revelation And then you tell me that there are many Motives to induce a Man to this belief But are these Motives lastly infallible No say you but very credible Well let them pass for such because now we have not leisure to examine them Yet methinks seeing the Motives to believe the Churches infallibility are only very credible it should also be but as credible that your Church is Infallible and as credible and no more perhaps somewhat less that her Proposals particularly Transubstantiation are Divine Revelations And methinks You should require only a Moral and Modest assent to them and not a Divine as you call it and Infallible Faith But then of these Motives to the Churches Infallibility I hope you will give us leave to consider and judge whether they be indeed Motives and sufficient or whether they be not Motiues at all or not sufficient or whether these Motives or Inducements to your Church be not impeached and opposed with Compulsives and enforcements from it or lastly whether these Motives which You use be not indeed only Motives to Christianity and not to Popery give me leave for distinction sake to call your Religion so If we may not judge of these things how can my judgment be moved with that which comes not within its cognizance If I may then at least I am to be a Judge of all these Controversies 1. Whether every one of these Motives be indeed a Motive to any Church 2. If to some whether to Yours 3. If to Yours whether sufficient or insufficient 4. Whether other Societies have not as many and as great Motives to draw me to them 5. Whether I have not greater reason to believe you do Err than that you cannot And now Sir I pray let me trouble You with a few more Questions Am I a sufficient Judge of these Controversies or no If of these why shall I stay here why not of others Why not of all Nay doth not the true examining of these few contain and lay upon me the examination of all What other Motives to your Church have you but your Notes of it Bellarmine gives some 14. or 15. And one of these fifteen contains in it the examination of all Controversies and not only so but of all uncontroverted Doctrines For how shall I or can I know the Church of Romes conformity with the Ancient Church unless I know first what the Ancient Church did hold and then what the Church of Rome doth hold and lastly whether they be conformable or if in my judgment they seem not conformable I am then to think the Church of Rome not to be the Church for want of the Note which she pretends is proper and perpetual to it So that for ought I can see Judges we are and must be of all sides every one for himself and God for us all 155. § 26. C. M. I ask whether this Assertion Scripture alone is Judge of all Controversies in Faith be a Fundamental point of Faith or no I HIL I answer This assertion that Scripture alone is Judge of all Controversies in Faith if it be taken properly is neither a Fundamental nor Unfundamental point of Faith nor no point of Faith at all but a plain falshood It is not a Judge of Controversies but a Rule to Judge them by and that not an absolutely perfect Rule but as perfect as a written Rule can be which must always need something else which is either evidently true or evidently credible to give attestation to it and that in this case is Universal Tradition So that Universal Tradition is the Rule to judge all Controversies by But then because nothing besides Scripture comes to us with as full a stream of Tradition as Scripture Scripture alone and no unwritten Doctrine nor no Infallibility of any Church having attestation from Tradition truly Universal for this reason we conceive as the Apostles persons while they were living were the only Judges of Controversies so their Writings now they are dead are the only Rule for us to judge them by There being
nothing unwritten which can go in upon half so fair Cards for the Title of Apostolick Tradition as these things which by the confession of both Sides are not so I mean the Doctrine of the Millinaries and of the necessity of the Eucharist for Infants 156. Yet when we say the Scripture is the only Rule to Judge all Controversies by methinks you should easily conceive that we would be understood of all those that are possible to be Judged by Scripture and of those that arise among such as believe the Scripture For if I had a Controversie with an Atheist whether there were a God or no I would not say that the Scripture were a Rule to judge this by seeing that doubting whether there be a God or no he must needs doubt whether the Scripture be the Word of God or if he does not he grants the Question and is not the man we speak of So likewise if I had a Controversie about the Truth of Christ with a Jew it would be vainly done of me should I press him with the Authority of the New Testament which he believes not until out of some Principles common to us both I had persuaded him that it is the Word of God The New Testament therefore while he remains a Jew would not be a fit Rule to decide this Controversie In as much as that which is doubted of it self is not fit to determine other doubts So likewise if there were any that believed Christian Religion and yet believed not the Bible to be the Word of God though they believed the matter of it to be true which is no impossible supposition for I may believe a Book of S. Austines to contain nothing but the Truth of God and yet not to have been inspired by God himself against such men therefore there were no disputing out of the Bible because nothing in question can be a proof to it self When therefore we say the Scripture is a sufficient means to determine all Controversies we say not this either to Atheists Jews Turks or such Christians if there be any such as believe not Scripture to be the Word of God But among such men only as are already agreed upon this That the Scripture is the Word of God we say all Controversies that arise about Faith are either not at all decidable and consequently not necessary to be believed one way or other or they may be determined by Scripture In a Word That all things necessary to be believed are evidently contained in Scripture and what is not there evidently contained cannot be necessary to be believed And our reason hereof is convincing because nothing can Challenge our belief but what hath descended to us from Christ by Original and Universal Tradition Now nothing but Scripture hath thus descended to us Therefore nothing but Scripture can Challenge our belief Now then to come up closer to you and to answer to your Question not as you put it but as you should have put it I say That this position Scripture alone is the Rule whereby they which believe it to be Gods Word are to judge all Controversies in Faith is no fundamental point Though not for your Reasons For your first and strongest reason you see is plainly voided and cut off by my stating of the Question as I have done and supposing in it that the parties at variance are agreed about this That the Scripture is the Word of God and consequently that this is none of their Controversies To your second That Controversies cannot be ended without some living Authority We have said already that necessary Controversies may be and are decided And if they be not ended this is not through defect of the Rule but through the default of Men. And for these that cannot thus be ended it is not necessary they should be ended For if God did require the ending of them he would have provided some certain means for the ending of them And to your Third I say that your pretence of using these means is but hypocrital for you use them with prejudice and with a setled resolution not to believe any thing which these means happily may suggest into you if it any way cross your pre-conceived perswasion of your Churches infallibility You give not your selves liberty of judgment in the use of them nor suffer your selves to be led by them to the Truth to which they would lead you would you but be as willing to believe this consequence Our Church doth oppose Scripture therefore it doth err therefore it is not Infallible as you are resolute to believe this The Church is Infallible therefore it doth not err and therefore it doth not oppose Scripture though it seem to do so never so plainly 157. You pray but it is not that God would bring you to the true Religion but that he would confirm you in your own You confer places but it is that you may confirm or colour over with plausible disguises your erroneous doctrine not that you may judge of them and forsake them if there be reason for it You consult the Originals but you regard them not when they make against your Doctrin or Translation 159. Notwithstanding though not for these reasons yet for others I conceive this Doctrin not Fundamental Because if a man should believe Christian Religion wholly and entirely and live according to it such a man though he should not know or not believe the Scripture to be a Rule of Faith no nor to be the Word of God my opinion is he may be saved and my reason is because he performs the entire condition of the new Covenant which is that we believe the matter of the Gospel and not that it is contained in these or these Books So that the Books of Scripture are not so much the objects of our Faith as the instruments of conveying it to our understanding and not so much of the being of the Christian Doctrin as requisite to the well-being of it Iraeneus tells us as M. K. acknowledgeth of some barbarous Nations that believed the Doctrin of Christ and yet believed not the Scripture to be the Word of God for they never heard of it and Faith comes by hearing But these barbarous people might be saved therefore men might be saved without believing the Scripture to be the Word of God much more without believing it to be a Rule and a perfect Rule of Faith Neither doubt I but if the Books of Scripture had been proposed to them by the other parts of the Church where they had been before received and had been doubted of or even rejected by those barbarous Nations but still by the bare belief and practice of Christianity they might be saved God requiring of us under pain of damnation only to believe the verities therein contained and not the divine Authority of the Books wherein they are contained Not but that it were now very strange and unreasonable if a man should believe the matter of these
writings be as fit for such a purpose as the Decrees of your Doctors Surely their intent in writing was to conserve us in unity of Faith and to keep us from Error and we are sure God spake in them but your Doctors from whence they are we are not so certain Was the Holy Ghost then unwilling or unable to direct them so that their writings should be fit and sufficient to attain that end they aimed at in writing For if he were both able and willing to do so then certainly he did do so And then their writings may be very sufficient means if we would use them as we should do to preserve us in unity in all necessary points of Faith and to guard us from all pernitious Error 81. If yet you be not satisfied but will still pretend that all these words by you cited seem clearly enough to prove that the Church is Universally infallible without which Unity of Faith could not be conserved against every wind of Doctrin I Ans That to you which will not understand that there can be any means to conserve the unity of Faith but only that which conserves your authority over the Faithful it is no marvel that these words seem to prove that the Church nay that your Church is universally Infallible But we that have no such end no such desires but are willing to leave all men to their liberty provided they will not improve it to a Tyranny over others we find it no difficulty to discern between dedit and promisit he gave at his Ascension and he promised to the Worlds end Besides though you whom it concerns may happily flatter your selves that you have not only Pastors and Doctors but Prophets and Apostles and Evangelists and those distinct from the former still in your Church yet we that are disinteressed persons cannot but smile at these strange imaginations Lastly though you are apt to think your selves such necessary instruments for all good purposes and that nothing can be well done unless you do it that no unity or constancy in Religion can be maintained but inevitably Christendom must fall to ruin and confusion unless you support it yet we that are indifferent and impartial and well content that God should give us his own favours by means of his own appointment not of our choosing can easily collect out of these very words that not the Infallibility of your or of any Church but the Apostles and Prophets and Evangelists c. which Christ gave upon his Ascension were designed by him for the compassing all these excellent purposes by their preaching while they lived and by their writings for ever And if they fail hereof the Reason is not any insufficiency or invalidity in the means but the voluntary perversness of the Subjects they have to deal with who if they would be themselves and be content that others should be in the choice of their Religion the servants of God and not of men if they would allow that the way to Heaven is no narrower now than Christ left it his yoak no heavier than he made it that the belief of no more difficulties is required now to Salvation than was in the Primitive Church that no Error is in it self destructive and exclusive from Salvation now which was not then if instead of being zealous Papists earnest Calvinists rigid Lutherans they would become themselves and be content that others should be plain and honest Christians if all men would believe the Scripture and freeing themselves from prejudice and passion would sincerely endeavour to find the true sense of it and live according to it and require no more of others but to do so nor denying their Communion to any that do so would so order their publick service of God that all which do so may without scruple or hypocrisie or protestation against any part of it joyn with them in it who does not see that seeing as we suppose here and shall prove hereafter all necessary Truths are plainly and evidently set down in Scripture there would of necessity be among all men in all things necessary unity of Opinion And notwithstanding any other differences that are or could be unity of Communion and Charity and mutual Toleration By which means all Schism and Heresie would be banished the World and those wretched contentions which now rend and tear in pieces not the Coat but the Members and Bowels of Christ which mutual pride and Tyranny and cursing and killing and damning would fain make immortal should speedily receive a most blessed Catastrophe But of this hereafter when we shall come to the question of Schism wherein I perswade my self that I shall plainly shew that the most vehement accusers are the greatest offenders and that they are indeed at this time the greatest Schismaticks who make the way to Heaven narrower the yoak of Christ heavier the differences of Faith greater the conditions of Ecclesiastical Communion harder and stricter than they were made at the beginning by Christ and his Apostles they who talk of Unity but aim at Tyranny and will have peace with none but with Slaves and Vassals In the mean while though I have shewed how Unity of Faith and Unity of Charity too may be preserved without your Churches Infallibility yet seeing you modestly conclude from hence not that your Church is but only seems to be universally Infallible meaning to your self of which you are a better judge than I Therefore I willingly grant your conclusion and proceed 86. As for your pretence That to find the meaning of those places you confer divers Texts you consult Originals you examin Translations and use all the means by Protestants appointed I have told you before that all this is vain and hypocritical if as your manner and your doctrin is you give not your self liberty of judgment in the use of these means if you make not your selves Judges of but only Advocates for the doctrin of your Church refusing to see what these means shew you if it any way make against the doctrin of your Church though it be as clear as the light at noon Remove prejudice even the ballance and hold it even make it indifferent to you which way you go to heaven so you go the true which Religion be true so you be of it then use the means and pray for Gods assistance and as sure as God is true you shall be lead into all necessary Truth 88. Whereas you say that it were great impiety to imagin that God the lover of Souls hath left no certain infallible means to decide both this and all other differences arising about the interpretation of Scripture or upon any other occasion I desire you to take heed you commit not an impiety in making more impieties than Gods Commandments make Certainly God is no way obliged either by his promise or his love to give us all things that we may imagine would be convenient for us as formerly I have proved at large
It is sufficient that he denies us nothing necessary to Salvation Deus non deficit in necessariis nec redundat in superfluis So D. Stapleton But that the ending of all Controversies or having a certain means of ending them is necessary to Salvation that you have often said and supposed but never proved though it be the main pillar of your whole discourse So little care you take how slight your foundations are so your building make a fair show And as little care how you commit those faults your self which you condem in others For you here charge them with great impiety who imagine that God the lover of Souls hath left no infallible means to determine all differences arising about the interpretation of Scripture or upon any other occasion And yet afterwards being demanded by D. Potter why the Questions between the Jesuits and Dominicans remain undetermined You return him this cross interrogatory Who hath assured you that the point wherein these learned men differ is a revealed Truth or capable of definition or is not rather by plain Scripture indeterminable or by any Rule of Faith So then when you say it were great impiety to imagine that God hath not left infallible means to decide all differences I may answer It seems you do not believe your self For in this controversie which is of as high consequence as any can be you seem to be doubtful whether there be any means to determin it On the other side when you ask D. Potter who assured him that there is any means to determine this Controversie I answer for him that you have in calling it a great impiety to imagine that there is not some infallible means to decide this and all other differences arising about the Interpretation of Scripture or upon any other occasion For what trick you can devise to shew that this difference between the Dominicans and Jesuits which includes a difference about the sense of many Texts of Scripture and many other matters of moment was not included under this and all other differences I cannot imagine Yet if you can find out any thus much at least we shall gain by it that general speeches are not always to be understood generally but sometimes with exceptions and limitations 89. But if there be any infallible means to decide all differences I beseech you name them You say it is to consult and hear Gods Visible Church with submissive acknowledgment of her Infallibility But suppose the difference be as here it is whether your Church be Infallible what shall decide that If you would say as you should do Scripture and Reason then you foresee that you should be forced to grant that these are fit means to decide this Controversie and therefore may be as fit to decide others Therefore to avoid this you run into a most ridiculous absurdity and tell us that this difference also whether the Church be Infallible as well as others must be agreed by a submissive acknowledgment of the Churches Infallibility As if you should have said My Brethren I perceive this is a great contention amongst you whether the Roman Church be Infallible If you will follow my advice I will shew you a ready means to end it you must first agree that the Roman Church is Infallible and then your contention whether the Roman Church be Infallible will quickly be at an end Verily a most excellent advice and most compendious way of ending all Controversies even without troubling the Church to determine them For why may not you say in all other differences as you have done in this Agree that the Pope is supream head of the Church That the substance of Bread and Wine in the Sacrament is turned into the body and blood of Christ That the Communion is to be given to Lay-men but in one kind That Pictures may be worshipped That Saints are to be invocated and so in the rest and then your differences about the Popes Supremacy Transubstantiation and all the rest will speedily be ended If you say the advice is good in this but not in other cases I must request you not to expect always to be believed upon your word but to shew us some reason why any one thing namely the Churches Infallibility is fit to prove it self and any other thing by name the Popes Supremacy or Transubstantiation is not as fit Or if for shame you will at length confess that the Churches Infallibility is not fit to decide this difference whether the Church be infallible then you must confess it is not fit to decide all Unless you will say it may be fit to decide all and yet not fit to decide this or pretend that this is not comprehended under all Besides if you grant that your Churches infallibility cannot possibly be well grounded upon or decided by it self then having professed before that there is no possible means besides this for us to agree hereupon I hope you will give me leave to conclude that it is impossible upon good ground for us to agree that the Roman Church is Infallible For certainly light it self is not more clear than the evidence of this syllogism If there be no other means to make men agree upon your Churches Infallibility but only this and this be no means then it is simply impossible for men upon good grounds to agree that your Church is Infallible But there is as you have granted no other possible means to make men agree hereupon but only a submissive acknowledgment of her Infallibility And this is apparently no means Therefore it is simply impossible for men upon good grounds to agree that your Church is Infallible 90. Lastly to the place of S. Austin wherein we are advised to follow the way of Catholick Discipline which from Christ himself by the Apostles hath come down even to us and from us shall descend to all posterity I answer That the way which S. Austin speaks of and the way which you commend being divers ways and in many things clean contrary we cannot possibly follow them both and therefore for you to apply the same words to them is a vain equivocation Shew us any way and do not say but prove it to have come from Christ and his Apostles down to us and we are ready to follow it Neither do we expect demonstration hereof but such reasons as may make this more probable than the contrary But if you bring in things into your now Catholick Discipline which Christians in S. Austins time held abominable as the Picturing of God and which you must confess to have come into the Church Seven Hundred Years after Christ if you will bring in things as you have done the half Communion with a non obstante notwithstanding Christ Institution and the practice of the Primitive Church were to the contrary If you will do such things as these and yet would have us believe that your whole Religion came from Christ and his Apostles this we conceive a
you know all Protestants with one consent affirm it to be false and therefore without proof to take it for granted is to beg the Question 4. That supposing Luther and they which did first separate from the Roman Church were guilty of Schism it is certainly consequent that all who persist in this division must be so likewise Which is not so certain as you pretend For they which alter without necessary cause the present government of any state Civil or Ecclesiastical do commit a great fault whereof notwithstanding they may be innocent who continue this alteration and to the utmost of their power oppose a change though to the former state when continuance of time hath once setled the present Thus have I known some of your own Church condemn the Low-country-men who first revolted from the King of Spain of the sin of Rebellion yet absolve them from it who now being of your Religion there are yet faithful maintainers of the common liberty against the pretences of the King of Spain 5. That all those which a Christian is to esteem neighbors do concur to make one company which is the Church Which is false for a Christian is to esteem those his neighbors who are not members of the true Church 6. That all the members of the Visible Church are by charity united into one Mystical body Which is manifestly untrue for many of them have no Charity 7. That the Catholick Church signifies one company of faithful people which is repugnant to your own grounds For you require not true faith but only the Profession of it to make men members of the Visible Church 8. That every Heretick is a Schismatick Which you must acknowledge false in those who though they deny or doubt of some point professed by your Church and so are Hereticks yet continue still in the Communion of the Church 9. That all the members of the Catholick Church must of necessity be united in external Communion Which though it were much to be desired it were so yet certainly cannot be perpetually true For a man unjustly excommunicated is not in the Churches Communion yet he is still a member of the Church and divers times it hath happened as in the case of Chrisostom and Epiphanius that particular men and particular Churches have upon an overvalued difference either renounced Communion mutually or one of them separated from the other and yet both have continued members of the Catholick Church These things are in those seven Sections either said or supposed by you untruly without all shew or pretence of proof The rest is an impertinent common place wherein Protestants and the cause in hand are absolutely unconcerned And therefore I pass to the eighth Section 10. Ad. § 8. Here you obtrude upon us a double fallacy One in supposing and taking for granted that whatsoever is affirmed by three Fathers must be true whereas your selves make no scruple of condemning many things of falsehood which yet are maintained by more than thrice three Fathers Another in pretending their words to be spoken absolutely which by them are limited and restrained to some particular cases Thus the words of S. Austin cap. 11. lib. 2. cont Parm. That there is no necessity to divide Unity are not spoken absolutely that there never is nor can be any necessity to divide Unity which only were for your purpose but only in such a special case as he there sets down That is When good men tolerate bad men which can do them no spiritual hurt to the intent they may not be separated from those who are spiritually good Then saith he there is no necessity to divide Unity Which very words do clearly give us to understand that it may fall out as it doth in our case that we cannot keep Unity with bad men without spiritual hurt i. e. without partaking with them in their impieties and that then there is a necessity to divide Unity from them I mean to break off conjunction with them in their impieties Which that it was S. Austins mind it is most evident out of the 21. c. of the same book where to Parmenian demanding how can a man remain pure being joyned with those that are corrupted He answers Very true this is not possible if he be joyned with them that is if he commit any evil with them or favour them which do commit it But if he do neither of these he is not joyned with them And presently after these two things retained will keep such men pure and uncorrupted that is neither doing ill nor approving it And therefore seeing you impose upon all men of your Communion a necessity of doing or at least approving many things unlawful certainly there lies upon us an unavoidable necessity of dividing Unity either with you or with God and whether of these is rather to be done be ye judges 11. Iraeneus also says not simply which only would do you service there cannot possibly be any so important Reformation as to justifie a Separation from them who will not reform But only they cannot make any corruption so great as is the pernitiousness of a Schism Now They here is a relative and hath an antecedent expressed in Iraeneus which if you had been pleased to take notice of you would easily have seen that what Irenaeus says falls heavy upon the Church of Rome but toucheth Protestants nothing at all For the men he speaks of are such as Propter modicas quaslibet causas for trifling or small causes divide the body of Christ such as speak of peace and make war such as strain at Gnats and swallow Camels And these saith he can make no reformation of any such importance as to countervail the danger of a division Now seeing the causes of our separation from the Church of Rome are as we pretend and are ready to justify because we will not be partakers with her in Superstition Idolatry Impiety and most cruel Tyranny both upon the bodies and souls of men Who can say that the causes of our separation may be justly esteemed Modicae quaelibet causae On the other side seeing the Bishop of Rome who was contemporary to Irenaeus did as much as in him lay cut off from the Churches unity many great Churches for not conforming to him in an indifferent matter upon a difference Non de Catholico dogmate sed de Ritu vel Ritus potiùs tempore not about any Catholick Doctrin but only a Ceremony or rather about the time of observing it so Petavius values it which was just all one as if the Church of France should excommunicate those of their own Religion in England for not keeping Christmas upon the same day with them And seeing he was reprehended sharply and bitterly for it by most of the Bishops of the World as * Euseb hist l. 5. c. 24. Perron Replic l. 3. c. 2. Eusebius testifies and as Cardinal Perron though mincing the matter yet confesseth by this very Irenaeus himself
Church to Communicate in her corruptions Or you suppose her Communion uncorrupted If the former and yet will take for granted that all are Schismaticks that leave her Communion though it be corrupted you beg the Question in your proposition If the latter you beg the Question in your supposition for Protestants you know are Peremptory and Unanimous in the Denial of both these things Both that the Communion of the Visible Church was then uncorrupted And that they are truly Schismaticks who leave the Communion of the Visible Church if corrupted especially if the case be so and Luthers was so that they must either leave her Communion or of necessity Communicate with her in her corruptions 26. Besides although it were granted Schism to leave the external Communion of the Visible Church in what state or case so ever it be and that Luther and his followers were Schismaticks for leaving the external Communion of all Visible Churches yet you fail exceedingly of clearing the other necessary point undertaken by you That the Roman Church was then the Visible Church For neither do Protestants as you mistake make the true preaching of the Word and due administration of the Sacraments the notes of the Visible Church but only of a Visible Church now these you know are very different things the former signifying the Church Catholick or the whole Church the latter a Particular Church or a part of the Catholick And therefore suppose out of courtesie we should grant what by argument you can never evince that your Church had these notes yet would it by no means follow that your Church were the Visible Church but only a Visible Church not the whole Catholick but only a part of it 27. Lastly whereas you say that Protestants must either grant that your Church then was the Visible Church or name some other disagreeing from yours and agreeing with Protestants in their particular doctrin or acknowledge there was no Visible Church It is all one as if to use S. Pauls similitude the head should say to the foot either you must grant that I am the whole body or name some other member that is so or confess that there is no body To which the foot might answer I acknowledge there is a body and yet that no member beside you is this body nor yet that you are it but only a part of it And in like manner say we We acknowledge a Church there was corrupted indeed universally but yet such a one as we hope by Gods gracious acceptance was still a Church We pretend not to name any one Society that was this Church and yet we see no reason that can enforce us to confess that yours was the Church but only a part of it and that one of the worst then extant in the World In vain therefore have you troubled your self in proving that we cannot pretend that either the Greeks Waldenses Wickliffites Hussites Muscovites Armenians Georgians Abyssines were then the Visible Church For all this discourse proceeds from a false vain supposition and begs another point in Question between us which is that some Church of one denomination and one Communion as the Roman the Greek c. must be always exclusively to all other Communions the whole Visible Church And though perhaps some weak Protestant having this false principle setled in him that there was to be always some Visible Church of one denomination pure from all error in doctrin might be wrought upon and prevailed with by it to forsake the Church of Protestants yet why it should induce him to go to yours rather than the Greek Church or any other which pretends to perpetual succession as well as yours that I do not understand unless it be for the reason which Aeneas Sylvius gave why more held the Pope above a Council than a Council above the Pope which was because Popes did give Bishopricks and Archbishopricks but Councils gave none and therefore suing in Forma Pauperis were not like to have their cause very well maintained For put the case I should grant of meer favour that there must be always some Church of one Denomination and Communion free from all errors in doctrin and that Protestants had not always such a Church it would follow indeed from thence that I must not be a Protestant But that I must be a Papist certainly it would follow by no better consequence than this if you will leave England you must of necessity go to Rome And yet with this wretched fallacy have I been sometimes abused my self and known many other poor souls seduced not only from their own Church and Religion but unto yours I beseech God to open the eyes of all that love the truth that they may not always be held captive under such miserable delusions 28. Let us come now to the Arguments which you build upon D. Potters own words out of which you promise unanswerable reasons to convince Protestants of Schism 29. But these reasons will easily be answered if the Reader will take along with him these three short Memorandums 30. First That not every separation but only a causeless separation from the external Communion of any Church is the Sin of Schism 31. Secondly That imposing upon men under pain of Excommunication a necessity of professing known errors and practising known corruptions is a sufficient and necessary cause of separation and that this is the cause the Protestants alledge to justifie their separation from which Church of Rome 32. Thirdly That to leave the Church and to leave the external Communion of a Church is not the same thing That being done by ceasing to be a member of it by ceasing to have those requisites which constitute a man a member of it as faith and obedience This by refusing to communicate with any Church in her Liturgies and publick worship of God This Armour if it be rightly placed will repel all those Batteries which you threaten us with all 33. Ad § 13.14 15. The first is a sentence of S. Austin against Donatus applied to Luther thus If the Church perished what Church brought forth Donatus you say Luther If she could not perish what madness moved the sect of Donatus to separate upon pretence to avoid the Communion of bad men Whereunto one fair answer to let pass many others is obvious out of the second observation That this sentence though it were Gospel as it is not is impertinently applied to Luther and Lutherans Whose pretence of separation be it true or be it false was not as that of the Donatists only to avoid the Communion of bad men but to free themselves from a necessity which but by separating was unavoidable of joyning with bad men in their impieties 34. Ad § 16. Your second onset drives only at those Protestants who hold the true Church was invisible for many ages Which Doctrin if by the true Church be understood the pure Church as you do understand it is a certain truth it
Reformation which yet when you measure it without partiality you 'll find to be far short of infinite nor their symbolizing in the general of forsaking your corruptions prove any thing to the contrary or any way advantage your design or make for your purpose For it is not any sign at all much less an evident sign that they had no setled design but only to forsake the Church of Rome for nothing but malice can deny that their intent at least was to reduce Religion to that original purity from which it was fallen The declination from which some conceiving to have begun though secretly in the Apostles times the mystery of iniquity being then in work and after their departure to have shewed it self more openly others again believing that the Church continued pure for some Ages after the Apostles and then declined And consequently some aiming at an exact conformity with the Apostolick times Others thinking they should do God and men good service could they reduce the Church to the condition of the fourth and fifth ages Some taking their direction in this work of Reformation only from Scripture others from the Writings of Fathers and the Decrees of Councils of the first five Ages certainly it is no great marvel that there was as you say disagreement between them in the particulars of their Reformation nay morally speaking it was impossible it should be otherwise Yet let me tell you the difference between them especially in comparison of your Church and Religion is not the difference between good and bad but between good and better And they did best that followed Scripture interpreted by Catholick written Tradition which rule the Reformers of the Church of England proposed to themselves to follow 83. Ad 30.31 32. D. Potter p. 81.82 of his Book speak thus If a Monastery should reform it self and should reduce into practice ancient good discipline when others would not In this case could it be charged with Schism from others or with Apostacy from its rule and order So in a society of men universally infected with some disease they that should free themselves from it could they be therefore said to separate from the society He presumes they could not and from hence concludes That neither can the Reformed Churches be truly accused for making a Schism that is separating from the Church and making themselves no members of it if all they did was as indeed it was to reform themselves 84. Now instead of these two instances which plainly shewed it possible in other societies and consequently in that of the Church to leave the faults of a Society and not leave being of it you disingenuously foist in two other instances clean cross to the Doctors purpose of men under colour of faults abandoning the Society wherein they lived 85. But that no suspicion of tergiversation may be fastned upon me I am content to deal with you a little at your own weapons Put the case then though not just as you would have it yet with as much favour to you as in reason you can expect That a Monastery did observe her substantial vows and all principal statutes but yet did generally practise and also enjoyn the violation of some lesser yet obliging observances and had done so time out of mind And that some inferiour Monks more conscientious than the rest discovering this abuse should first with all earnestness sollicite their Superiors for a general and orderly reformation of these though small and venial corruptions yet corruptions But finding they hoped and laboured in vain to effect this should reform these faults in themselves and refuse to joyn in the practice of them with the rest of their Confraternity and persisting resolutely in such a refusal should by their Superiors be cast out of their Monastery and being not to be re-admitted without a promise of remitting from their stiffness in these things and of condescending to others in the practice of their small faults should choose rather to continue exiles than to re-enter upon such conditions I would know whether you would condemn such men of Apostacy from the Order Without doubt if you should you would find the stream of your Casuists against you and besides involve S. Paul in the same condemnation who plainly tells that we may not do the least evil that we may do the greatest good Put case again you should be part of a Society universally infected with some disease and discovering a certain remedy for this disease should perswade the whole company to make use of it but find the greatest part of them so far in love with their disease that they were reslved to keep it and besides should make a decree that whosoever would leave it should leave their company Suppose now that your self and some few others should notwithstanding their injunction to the contrary free your selves from this disease and thereupon they should absolutely forsake and reject you I would know in this case who deserves to be condemned whether you of uncharitable desertion of your company or they of a tyrannical peevishness And if in these cases you will as I verily believe you will acquit the inferiors and condemn the superiors absolve the minor part and condemn the major then can you with no reason condemn Protestants for choosing rather to be ejected from the communion of the Roman Church than with her to persist as of necessity they were to do if they would continue in her Communion in the profession of Errors though not destructive of salvation yet hindering edification and in the practice or at least approbatiof many suppose not mortal but venial corruptions 86. Besides you censure too partially the corrupt estate of your Church in comparing it to a Monastery which did confessedly observe their substantial Vows and all principal Statutes of their order and moreover was secured by an infallible assistance for the avoiding of all substantial corruptions for of your Church we confess no such matter but say plainly That she not only might fall into substantial corruptions but did so that she did not only generally violate but of all the members of her Communion either in act or approbation require and exact the violation of many substantial Laws of Christ both Ceremonial and Moral which though we hope it was pardonable in them who had not means to know their error yet of its own nature and to them who did or might have known their error was certainly damnable And that it was not the Tything of Mint and Annise and Cummin the neglect whereof we impute unto you but the neglect of judgment justice and the weightier matters of the Law 87. Again you compare Protestants to such a Company as acknowledge that themselves as soon as they were gone out of the Monastery that deferred to reform must not hope to be free from those or the like Errors and Corruptions for which they left their Brethren Which is very strange seeing this very hope and nothing else moved
will and encounter with human probabilities being backed with the strength of flesh and blood and therefore conclude that it was farther necessary that this supernatural knowledge should be most certain and infallible To this I answer that I do heartily acknowledge and believe the Articles of our Faith be in themselves Truths as certain and infallible as the very common Principles of Geometry and Metaphysicks But that there is required of us a knowledge of them and an adherence to them as certain as that of sense or science that such a certainty is required of us under pain of damnation so that no man can hope to be in the state of salvation but he that finds in himself such a degree of faith such a strength of adherence This I have already demonstrated to be a great error and of dangerous and pernitious consequence And because I am more and more confirmed in my perswasion that the Truth which I there delivered is of great and singular use I will here confirm it with more reasons And to satisfie you that this is no singularity of my own my Margent presents you with a a M. Hooker in his answer to Travers his supplication I have taught that the assurance of things which we believe by the word is not so certain as of that we perceive by sence And is it as certain Yea I taught that the things which God doth promise in his word are surer unto us than any thing we touch handle or see But are we so sure and certain of them If we be why doth God so often prove his promises unto us as he doth by arguments taken from our sensible experience We must be surer of the proof than the thing proved otherwise it is no proof How is it that if ten men do all look upon the Moon every one of them knows it as certainly to be the Moon as another but many believing one and the same promises all have not one and the same fulness of perswasion How falleth it out that men being assured of any thing by sence can be no surer of it than they are whereas the strongest in faith that liveth upon the earth had always need to labour and strive and pray that his assurance concerning heavenly and spiritual things may grow increase and be augmented Protestant Divine of great authority and no way singular in his opinions who hath long since preached and justified the same doctrin 4. I say that every Text of Scripture which makes mention of any that were weak or of any that were strong in faith of any that were of little or any that were of great faith of any that abounded or any that were rich in saith of encreasing growing rooting grounding establishing confirming in faith Every such Text is a demonstrative refutation of this vain fancy proving that faith even true and saving faith is not a thing consisting in such an indivisible point of perfection as you make it but capable of augmentation and diminution Every Prayer you make to God to encrease your faith or if you conceive such a prayer derogatory from the perfection of your faith The Apostles praying to Christ to encrease their Faith is a convincing argument of the same conclusion Moreover if this doctrin of yours were true then seeing not any the least doubting can consist with a most infallible certainty it will follow that every least doubting in any matter of faith though resisted and involuntary is a damnable sin absolutely destructive so long as it lasts of all true and saving faith which you are so far from granting that you make it no sin at all but only an occasion of merit and if you should esteem it a sin then must you acknowledge contrary to your own Principles that there are Actual sins meerly involuntary The same is furthermore invincibly confirmed by every deliberate sin that any Christian commits by any progress in Charity that he makes For seeing as S. John assures us our faith is the victory which overcomes the world certainly if the faith of all true Believers were perfect and if true faith be capable of no imperfection if all faith be a knowledge most certain and infallible all faith must be perfect for the most imperfect that is according to your doctrin if it be true must be most certain and sure the most perfect that is cannot be more than most certain then certainly their victory over the World and therefore over the flesh and therefore over sin must of necessity be perfect and so it should be impossible for any true believer to commit any deliberate sin and therefore he that commits any sin must not think himself a true believer Besides seeing Faith worketh by Charity and Charity is the effect of Faith certainly if the cause were perfect the effect would be perfect and consequently as you make no degrees in Faith so there would be none in Charity and so no man could possibly make any progress in it but all true believers should be equally in Charity as in Faith you make them equal and from thence it would follow unavoidably that whosoever finds in himself any true Faith must presently persuade himself that he is perfect in Charity and whosoever on the other side discovers in his Charity any imperfection must not believe that he hath any true Faith These you see are strange and portentous consequences and yet the deduction of them from your Doctrine is clear and apparent which shews this Doctrine of yours which you would fain have true that there might be some necessity of your Churches Infallibility to be indeed plainly repugnant not only to Truth but even to all Religion and Piety and fit for nothing but to make men negligent of making any Progress in Faith or Charity 5. As for that one single reason which you produce to confirm it it will appear upon examination to be resolved finally into a groundless Assertion of your own contrary to all Truth and experience and that is That no degree of Faith less than a most certain and infallible knowledge can be able sufficiently to overbear our will and encounter with humane probabilities being backt with the strength of Flesh and Blood For who sees not that many Millions in the World forgoe many times their present ease and pleasure undergo great and toilsom labours encounter great difficulties adventure upon great dangers and all this not upon any certain expectation but upon a probable hope of some future gain and commodity and that not infinite and Eternal but finite and temporal Who sees not that many men abstain from many things they exceedingly desire not upon any certain assurance but a probable fear of danger that may come after What man ever was there so madly in love with a present penny but that he would willingly spend it upon any little hope that by doing so he might gain an hundred thousand pound And I would fain know what gay probabilities you could
is properly an Heresie But the preaching of the Gospel at the beginning was not Universal therefore it cannot be excused from formal Heresie For as he whose Reformation is but particular may yet not deny the Resurrection so may he also not deny the Churches Universality And as the Apostles who preached the Gospel in the beginning did believe the Church Universal though their preaching at the beginning was not so So Luther also might and did believe the Church Universal though his Reformation were but particular I say he did believe it Universal even in your own sense that is Universal de jure though not de facto And as for universality in fact he believed the Church much more Universal than his Reformation For he did conceive as appears by your own Allegations out of him that only the Part reformed was the true Church but also that they were Part of it who needed reformation Neither did he ever pretend to make a new Church but to reform the old one Thirdly and lastly to the first proposition of this unsyllogistical syllogism I answer That to say the true Church is not always de facto universal is so far from being an Heresie that it is a certain Truth known to all those that know the world and what Religions possess far the greater part of it Donatus therefore was not to blame for saying that the Church might possibly be confined to Africk but for saying without ground that then it was so And S. Austin as he was in the right in thinking that the Church was then extended farther than Africk so was he in the wrong if he thought that of necessity it always must be so but most palpably mistaken in conceiving that it was then spread over the whole earth and known to all nations which if passion did not trouble you and make you forget how lately almost half the world was discovered and in what estate it was then found you would very easily see and confess 16. The Donatists might do ill in calling the Chair of Rome the Chair of Pestilence and the Roman Church an Harlot and yet the state of the Church being altered Protestants might do well to do so and therefore though S. Austin might perhaps have reason to persecute the Donatists for detracting from the Church and calling her Harlot when she was not so yet you may have none to threaten D. Potter that you would persecute him as the Application of this place intimates you would if it were in your power plainly shewing that you are a curst Cow though your horns be short seeing the Roman Church is not now what it was in S. Austins time And hereof the conclusion of your own book affords us a very pregnant testimony where you tell us out of Saint Austin that one grand impediment which among many kept the seduced followers of the faction of Donatus from the Churches Communion was a visible calumny raised against the Catholicks that they did set some strange thing upon their Altar To how many saith Saint Austin did the reports of ill Tongues shut up the way to enter who said that we put I know not what upon the Altar Out of detestation of the calumny and just indignation against it he would not so much as name the impiety wherewith they were charged and therefore by a Rhetorical figure calls it I know not what But compare with him Optatus writing of the same matter and you shall plainly perceive that this I know not what pretended to be set upon the Altar was indeed a picture which the Donatists knowing how detestable a thing it was to all Christians at that time to set up any pictures in a Church to worship them as your new fashion is bruited abroad to be done in the Churches of the Catholick Church But what answer do S. Austin and Optatus make to this accusation Do they confess and maintain it Do they say as you would now It is true we do set Pictures upon our Altar and that not only for ornament or memory but for worship also but we do well to do so and this ought not to trouble you or affright you from our Communion What other answer your Church could now make to such an objection is very hard to imagine And therefore were your Doctrin the same with the Doctrin of the Fathers in this point they must have answered so likewise But they to the contrary not only deny the crime but abhor and detest it To little purpose therefore do you hunt after these poor shadows of resemblances between us and the Donatists unless you could shew an exact resemblance between the present Church of Rome and the Ancient which seeing by this and many other particulars it is demonstrated to be impossible that Church which was then a Virgin may be now a Harlot and that which was detraction in the Donatists may be in Protestants a just accusation 18. But the main point you say is that since Luthers Reformed Church was not in being for divers Centuries before Luther and yet was in the Apostles time they must of necessity affirm heretically with the Donatists that the true unspotted Church of Christ perished and that she which remained on earth was O Blasphemy an Harlot By which words it seems you are resolute perpetually to confound True and Unspotted and to put no difference between a corrupted Church and none at all But what is this but to make no difference between a diseased and a dead man Nay what is it but to contradict your selves who cannot deny but that sins are as great stains and spots and deformities in the sight of God as errors and confess your Church to be a Congregation of men whereof every particular not one excepted and consequently the generality which is nothing but a collection of them is polluted and defiled with sin 19. You ask How can the Church more truly be said to perish than when she is permitted to maintain a damnable Heresie I Answer she may be more truly said to perish when she is not only permitted to do so but de facto doth maintain a damnable Heresie Again she may be more truly said to perish when she falls into an Heresie which is not only damnable in it self and ex natura rei as you speak but such an Heresie the belief of whose contrary Truth is necessary not only necessitate praecepti but medii and therefore the Heresie so absolutely and indispensably destructive of salvation that no ignorance can excuse it nor any general repentance without a dereliction of it can beg a pardon for it Such an heresie if the Church should fall into it might be more truly said to perish than if it fell only into some heresie of its own nature damnable For in that state all the members of it without exception all without mercy must needs perish for ever In this although those that might see the truth and would not cannot upon any good ground
it not as well as yours and whether some mens persuasion that there is no such thing can hinder them from having it or prove that they have it not if there be any such thing Any more than a mans persuasion that he has not taken Physick or Poyson will make him not to have taken it if he has or hinder the operation of it And whether Tertullian in the place quoted by you speak of a Priest made a Lay-man by a just deposition or degradation and not by a voluntary desertion of his Order And whether in the same place he set not some mark upon Hereticks that will agree to your Church Whether all the Authority of our Bishops in England before the Reformation was conferred on them by the Pope And if it were whether it were the Popes right or an Usurpation If it were his right whether by Divine Law or Ecclesiastical And if by Ecclesiastical only whether he might possibly so abuse his power as to deserve to lose it Whether de facto he had done so Whether supposing he had deserved to lose it those that deprived him of it had power to take it from him Or if not whether they had power to suspend him from the use of it until good caution were put in and good assurance given that if he had it again he would not abuse it as he had formerly done Whether in case they had done unlawfully that took his power from him it may not things being now setled and the present Government established be as unlawful to go about to restore it whether it be not a Fallacy to conclude because we believe the Pope hath no power in England now when the King and State and Church hath deprived him upon just grounds of it therefore we cannot believe that he had any before his deprivation Whether without Schism a man may not withdraw obedience from an Usurped Authority commanding unlawful things Whether the Roman Church might not give Authority to Bishops and Priests to oppose her Errors as well as a King gives Authority to a Judge to judge against him if his cause be bad as well as Trajan gave his Sword to his Prefect with this commission that if he Governed well he should use it for him if ill against Whether the Roman Church gave not Authority to her Bishops and Priests to Preach against her corruptions in manners And if so why not against her Errors in Doctrine if she had any Whether she gave them not Authority to Preach the whole Gospel of Christ and consequently against her Doctrine if it should contradict any part of the Gospel of Christ Whether it be not acknowledged lawful in the Church of Rome for any Lay-man or Woman that has ability to persuade others by Word or by Writing from Error and unto truth And why this Liberty may not be practised against their Religion if it be false as well as for it if it be true Whether any man need any other Commission or Vocation than that of a Christian to do a work of Charity And whether it be not one of the greatest works of Charity if it be done after a peaceable manner and without any unnecessary disturbance of order to persuade men out of a false unto a true way of Eternal happiness Especially the Apostle having assured us that he whosoever he is who converteth a sinner from the Error of his way shall save a Soul from Death and shall hide a multitude of Sins Whether the first Reformed Bishops died all at once so that there were not enough to ordain others in the places that were vacant Whether the Bishops of England may not Consecrate a Metropolitan of England as well as the Cardinals do the Pope whether the King or Queen of England or they that have the Government in their Hands in the minority of the Prince may not lawfully commend one to them to be consecrated against whom there is no Canonical exception Whether the Doctrine that the King is supream head of the Church of England as the Kings of Judah and the first Christian Emperors were of the Jewish and Christian Church be any new found Doctrine Whether it be not true that Bishops being made Bishops have their Authority immediately from Christ though this or that man be not made Bishop without the Kings Authority as well as you say the Pope being Pope has Authority immediately from Christ and yet this or that man cannot be made Pope without the Authority of the Cardinals Whether you do well to suppose that Christian Kings have no more Authority in ordering the affairs of the Church than the great Turk or the Pagan Emperors Whether the King may not give Authority to a Bishop to exercise his function in some part of his Kingdom and yet not be capable of doing it himself as well as a Bishop may give Authority to a Physician to practice Physick in his Diocess which the Bishop cannot do himself Whether if Nero the Emperor would have commanded S. Peter or S. Paul to Preach the Gospel of Christ and to exercise the office of a Bishop of Rome whether they would have questioned his Authority to do so Whether there were any Law of God or man that prohibited K. JAMES to give Commission to Bishops nay to lay his injunction upon them to do any thing that is lawful Whether a casual irregularity may not be lawfully dispenced with Whether the Popes irregularities if he should chance to incur any be indispensable And if not who is he or who are they whom the Pope is so subject unto that they may dispense with him Whether that be certain which you take for granted That your Ordination imprints a Character and ours doth not Whether the power of Consecrating and Ordaining by imposition of hands may not reside in the Bishops and be derived unto them not from the King but God and yet the King have Authority to command them to apply this power to such a fit person whom he shall commend unto them As well as if some Architects only had the faculty of Architecture and had it immediately by infusion from God himself yet if they were the Kings Subjects he wants not authority to command them to build him a Palace for his use or a fortress for his service Or as the King of France pretends not to have power to make Priests himself yet I hope you will not deny him power to command any of his Subjects that has this power to ordain any fit person Priest whom he shall desire to be ordained Whether it do not follow that whensoever the King commands an House to be Built a Message to be delivered or a Murtherer to be Executed that all these things are presently done without intervention of the Architect Messenger or Executioner As well as that they are ipso facto Ordained and Consecrated who by the Kings Authority are commended to the Bishops to be Ordained and Consecrated Especially seeing the King
if you say so either you want Logick which is a certain sign of an ill disputer or are not pleased to use it which is a worse For speech is a certain sign of a living man yet want of speech is no sure argument that he is dead for he may be dumb and yet living still and we may have other evident tokens that he is so as Eating Drinking Breathing Moving So though the constant and Universal delivery of any Doctrine by the Apostolick Churches ever since the Apostles be a very great argument of the truth of it yet there is no certainty but that truth even Divine truth may through mens wickedness be contracted from its universality and interrupted in its perpetuity and so lose this argument and yet not want others to justifie and support it self For it may be one of those principles which God hath written in all mens Hearts or a conclusion evidently arising from them It may be either contained in Scripture in express terms or deducible from it by apparent consequence If therefore you intend to prove want of a perpetual Succession of Professors a certain note of Heresie you must not content your self to shew that having it is one sign of truth but you must shew it to be the only sign of it and inseparable from it But this if you be well advised you will never undertake First because it is an impossible attempt and then because if you do it you will marr all for by proving this an inseparable sign of Catholick Doctrine you will prove your own which apparently wants it in many points not to be Catholick For whereas you say this Succession requires two things agreement with the Apostles Doctrine and an uninterrupted conveyance of it down to them that challenge it It will be proved against you that you fail in both points and that some things wherein you agree with the Apostles have not been held alwaies as your condemning the Doctrine of the Chiliasts and holding the Eucharist not necessary for Infants and that in many other things you agree not with them nor with the Church for many Ages after For example In mutilation of the Communion in having your Service in such a Language as the Assistants generally understand not your offering to Saints your Picturing of God your worshiping of Pictures 42. Ad § 24. Obj. The true Church must have Universality of place which Protestants wanting cannot avoid the just note of Heresie Answ You have not set down clearly and univocally what you mean by it whether Universality of fact or of right and if of fact whether absolute or comparative and if comparative whether of the Church in comparison of any other Religion or only of Heretical Christians or if in comparison of these whether in comparison of all other Sects conjoyned or in comparison only of any one of them Nor have you proved it by any good argument in any sense to be a certain mark of Heresie For those places of S. Austin do not deserve the name And truly in my judgment you have done advisedly in proving it no better For as for Universality of right or a right to Universality all Religions claim it but only the true has it and which has it cannot be determined unless it first be determined which is the true An absolute Universality and diffusion through all the World if you should pretend to all the World would laugh at you If you should contend for latitude with any one Religion Mahumetism would carry the Victory from you If you should oppose your selves against all other Christians besides you it is certain you would be cast in this suit also If lastly being hard driven you should please your selves with being more than any one Sect of Christians it would presently be replied that it is uncertain whether now you are so but most certain that the time has been when you have not been so Then when the a Hierom. Cont. Luciferianos whole World wondered that it was become Arrian then when Athanasius opposed the World and the World Athanasius then when b In Theodoret. Hist 16. c. l. 2. your Liberius having the contemptible paucity of his adherents objected to him as a note of Error answered for himself There was a time when there were but three opposed the decree of the King and yet those three were in the right and the rest in the wrong then when the Professors of Error surpassed the number of the Professors of truth in proportion as the sands of the Sea do the Stars of the Heaven As c In ep 48. ad Vincentium S. Austin acknowledgeth then when d Commenitorii lib. 1. c. 4. Vincentius confesseth that the Poyson of the Arrians had contaminated not now some certain portion but almost the whole World then when the Author of Nazianzens Life testifies That d In vita Nazianz the Heresie of Arrius had possessed in a manner the whole extent of the World and when Nazianzen found cause to cry out f In Orat. Arian pro seipso Where are they who reproach us with our poverty who define the Church by the multitude and despise the little flock They have the People but we the Faith And lastly when Athanasius was so overborn with Sholes and Floods of Arrians that he was enforced to write a Treatise on purpose g Tom. 2. against those who judge of the truth only by plurality of adherents So that if you had proved want of Univesality even thus restrained to be an infallible note of Heresie there would have been no remedy but you must have confessed that the time was when you were Hereticks And besides I see not how you would have avoided this great inconvenience of laying grounds and storeing up arguments for Antichrist against he comes by which he may prove his Company the true Church For it is evident out of Scripture and confessed by you that though his time be not long his dominion shall be very large and that the true Church shall be then the woman driven into the wilderness 45. Ad § 25.26 You endeavor to prove that the Faith of Protestants is no Faith being destitute of its due qualifications Obj. First you say their belief wanteth certainty because they denying the Universal Infallibility of the Church can have no certain ground to know what Objects are revealed or testified by God Ans But if there be no other ground of certainty but your Churches infallibility upon what certain ground do you know that your Church is infallible Upon what certain ground do you know all those things which must be known before you can know that your Church is infallible As that there is a God that God hath promised his assistance to your Church in all her Decrees that the Scripture wherein this promise is extant is the word of God that those Texts of Scripture which you alledge for your infallibility are incorrupted that that which you
condition with ours And why then may not we be certain of an obscure thing as well as you 51. But then besides I am to tell you that you are here every where extreamly if not affectedly mistaken in the Doctrin of Protestants who though they acknowledge that the things which they believe are in themselves as certain as any demonstrable or sensible verities yet pretend not that their certainty of adherence is most perfect and absolute but such as may be perfected and increased as long as they walk by faith and not by sight And consonant hereunto is their doctrin touching the evidence of the objects whereunto they adhere For you abuse the world and them if you pretend that they hold the first of your two principles That these particular Books are the word of God for so I think you mean either to be in it self evidently certain or of it self and being devested of the motives of credibility evidently credible For they are not so fond as to be ignorant nor so vain as to pretend that all men do assent to it which they would if it were evidently certain nor so ridiculous as to imagine that if an Indian that never heard of Christ or Scripture should by chance find a Bible in his own Language and were able to read it that upon the reading it he would certainly without a miracle believe it to be the word of God which he could not chuse if it were evidently credible What then do they affirm of it Certainly no more than this that whatsoever man that is not of a perverse mind shall weigh with serious and mature deliberation those great moments of reason which may incline him to believe the Divine authority of Scripture and compare them with the light objections that in prudence can be made against it he shall not chuse but find sufficient nay abundant inducements to yield unto it firm faith and sincere obedience Let that learned man Hugo Grotius speak for all the rest in his Book of the Truth of Christian Religion which Book whosoever attentively peruses shall find that a man may have great reason to be a Christian without dependence upon your Church for any part of it and that your Religion is no foundation of but rather a scandal and an objection against Christianity He then in the last Chapter of his second Book hath these excellent words If any be not satisfied with these arguments abovesaid but desires more forcible reasons for confirmation of the excellency of Christian Religion let such know that as there are variety of things which be true so are there divers ways of proving or manifesting the truth Thus is there one way in Mathematicks another in Physicks a third in Ethicks and lastly another kind when a matter of fact is in question wherein verily we must rest content with such Testimonies as are free from all suspicion of untruth otherwise down goes all the frame and use of History and a great part of the art of Physick together with all dutifulness that ought to be between parents and children for matters of practice can no way else be known but by such Testimonies Now it is the pleasure of Almighty God that those things which he would have us to believe so that the very belief thereof may be imputed to us for obedience should not so evidently appear as those things which are apprehended by sense and plain demonstration but only be so far forth revealed as may beget faith and a perswasion thereof in the hearts and minds of such as are not obstinate That so the Gospel may be as a touchstone for tryal of mens judgments whether they be sound or unsound For seeing these arguments whereof we have spoken have induced so many honest godly and wise men to approve of this Religion it is thereby plain enough that the fault of other mens infidelity is not for want of sufficient testimony but because they would not have that to be had and embraced for truth which is contrary to their wilful desires it being a hard matter for them to relinquish their honours and set at naught other commodities which thing they know they ought to do if they admit of Christs Doctrin and obey what he hath commanded And this is the rather to be noted of them for that many other historical narrations are approved by them to be true which notwithstanding are only manifest by authority and not by any such strong proofs and perswasions or tokens as do declare the history of Christ to be true which are evident partly by the confession of those Jews that are yet alive and partly in those companies and congregations of Christians which are any where to be found whereof doubtless there was some cause Lastly seeing the long duration or continuance of Christian Religion and the large extent thereof can be ascribed to no human power therefore the same must be attributed to miracles or if any deny that it came to pass through a miraculous manner this very getting so great strength and power without a miracle may be thought to surpass any miracle 52. And now you see I hope that Protestants neither do nor need to pretend to any such evidence in the doctrin they believe as cannot well consist both with the essence and the obedience of faith Let us come now to the last nullity which you impute to the faith of Protestants and that it is want of prudence Touching which point as I have already demonstrated that wisdom is not essential to faith but that a man may truly believe truth though upon insufficient motives So I doubt not but I shall make good that if prudence were necessary to faith we have better title to it than you and that if a wiser than Solomon were here he should have better reason to believe the Religion of Protestants than Papists the Bible rather than the Council of Trent But let us hear what you can say 53. Ad § 31. You demand then first of all What wisdom was it to forsake a Church confessedly very ancient and besides which there could be demonstrated no other Visible Church of Christ upon earth I answer Against God and truth there lies no prescription and therefore certainly it might be great wisdom to forsake ancient Errors for more ancient Truths One God is rather to be followed than innumerable worlds of men And therefore it might be great wisdom either for the whole Visible Church nay for all the men in the world having wandred from the way of Truth to return unto it or for a part of it nay for one man to do so although all the world besides were madly resolute to do the contrary It might be great wisdom to forsake the Errors though of the only Visible Church much more the Roman which in conceiving her self the whole Visible Church does somewhat like the Frog in the Fable which thought the Ditch he lived in to be all the World 54. You demand again
What wisdom was it to forsake a Church acknowledged to want nothing necessary to Salvation indued with Succession of Bishops c. usque ad Election or Choice I answer Yet might it be great wisdom to forsake a Church not acknowledged to want nothing necessary to Salvation but accused and convicted of many damnable errors certainly damnable to them who were convicted of them had they still persisted in them after their conviction though perhaps pardonable which is all that is acknowledged to such as ignorantly continued in them A Church vainly arrogating without possibility of proof a perpetual Succession of Bishops holding always the same doctrine and with a ridiculous impudence pretending perpetual possession of all the world whereas the world knows that a little before Luthers arising your Church was confined to a part of a part of it Lastly a Church vainly glorying in the dependence of other Churches upon her which yet she supports no more than those crouching Anticks which seem in great buildings to labour under the weight they bear do indeed support the Fabrick For a corrupted and false Church may give authority to preach the Truth and consequently against her own falshoods and corruptions Besides a false Church may preserve the Scripture true as now the Old Testament is preserved by the Jews either not being arrived to that height of impiety as to attempt the corruption of it or not able to effect it or not perceiving or not regarding the opposition of it to her corruptions And so we might receive from you lawful Ordination and true Scriptures though you were a false Church and receiving the Scriptures from you though not from you alone I hope you cannot hinder us neither need we ask your leave to believe and obey them And this though you be a false Church and receiving the Scriptures from you though not from you alone I hope you cannot hinder us neither need we ask your leave to believe and obey them And this though you be a false Church is enough to make us a true one As for a Succession of men that held with us in all points of Doctrine it is a thing we need not and you have as little as we So that if we acknowledge that your Church before Luther was a true Church it is not for any ends for any dependence that we have upon you but because we conceive that in a charitable construction you may pass for a true Church Such a Church and no better as you do sometimes acknowledge Protestants to be that is a Company of men wherein some ignorant Souls may be saved So that in this ballancing of Religion against Religion and Church against Church it seems you have nothing of weight and moment to put into your Scale nothing but Smoak and Wind vain shadows and phantastical pretences Yet if Protestants on the other side had nothing to put in their Seal but those negative commendations which you are pleased to afford them nothing but no Unity nor means to procure it no farther extent when Luther arose than Luthers Body no Universality of time or place no visibility or being except only in your Church no Succession of Persons or Doctrine no leader but Luther in a quarrel begun upon no ground but passion no Church no Ordination no Scriptures but such as they received from you if all this were true and this were all that could be pleaded for Protestants possibly with an allowance of three grains of partiality your Scale might seem to turn But then if it may appear that part of these objections are falsly made against them the rest vainly that whatsoever of truth is in these imputations is impertinent to this Tryal and whatsoever is pertinent is untrue and besides that plenty of good matter may be alledged for Protestants which is here dissembled then I hope our Cause may be good notwithstanding these pretences 55. I say then that want of Universality of time and place The invisibility or not existence of the professors of Protestant Doctrine before Luther Luthers being alone when he first opposed your Church Our having our Church Ordinations Scriptures personal and yet not Doctrinal Succession from you are vain and impertinent allegations against the truth of our Doctrine and Church That the entire truth of Christ without any mixture of Error should be professed or believed in all places at any time or in any place at all times is not a thing evident in reason neither have we any Revelation for it And therefore in relying so confidently on it you build your House upon the Sand. And what obligation we had either to be so peevish as to take nothing of yours or so foolish as to take all I do not understand For whereas you say that this is to be choosers and therefore Hereticks I tell you that though all Hereticks are choosers yet all choosers are not Hereticks otherwise they also which choose your Religion must be Hereticks As for our wanting Unity and Means of proving it Luthers opposing your Church upon meer passion our following private men rather than the Catholick Church the first and last are meer untruths for we want not Unity nor means to procure it in things necessary Plain places of Scripture and such as need no interpreter are our means to obtain it Neither do we follow any private men but only the Scripture the Word of God as our rule and reason which is also the gift of God given to direct us in all our actions in the use of this rule And then for Luthers opposing your Church upon meer passion it is a thing I will not deny because I know not his Heart and for the same reason you should not have affirmed it Sure I am whether he opposed your Church upon reason or no he had reason enough to oppose it And therefore if he did it upon passion we will follow him only in his action and not in his passion in his opposition not in the manner of it and then I presume you will have no reason to condemn us unless you will say that a good action cannot be done with reason because some Body before us hath done it upon passion You see then how imprudent you have been in the choice of your arguments to prove Protestants unwise in the choice of their Religion 56. It remains now that I should shew that many reasons of moment may be alledged for the justification of Protestants which are dissembled by you and not put into the Balance Know then Sir that when I say the Religion of Protestants is in prudence to be preferred before yours as on the one side I do not understand by your Religion the Doctrine of Bellarmine or Baronius or any other private man amongst you nor the Doctrine of the Sorbon or of the Jesuits or of the Dominicans or of any other particular Company among you but that wherein you all agree or profess to agree the Doctrine of the
barely to go to heaven and to be a door-keeper in the house of God especially if he will be content to tast of Purgatory in the way he may obtain it at any easier purchase Therefore the Religion of your Church is not so holy nor so good as the doctrin of Christ delivered in Scripture and therefore not so likely to come from the Fountain of holiness and goodness 72. Lastly if I follow your Church for my Guide I shall do all one as if I should follow a Company of blind men in a judgment of colours or in the choice of a way For every unconsidering man is blind in that which he does not consider Now what is your Church but a Company of unconsidering men who comfort themselves because they are a great company together but all of them either out of idleness refuse the trouble of a severe tryal of their Religion as if heaven were not worth it or out of superstition fear the event of such a tryal that they may be scrupled and staggered and disquieted by it and therefore for the most part do it not all Or if they do it they do it negligently and hypocritically and perfunctorily rather for the satisfaction of others than themselves but certainly without indifference without liberty of judgment without a resolution to doubt of it if upon examination the grounds of it prove uncertain or to leave it if they prove apparently false My own experience assures me that in this imputation I do you no injury but it is very apparent to all men from your ranking doubting of any part of your Doctrin among mortal sins For from hence it follows that seeing every man must resolve that he will never commit mortal sin that he must never examine the grounds of it at all for fear he should be moved to doubt or if he do he must resolve that no motives be they never so strong shall move him to doubt but that with his will and resolution he will uphold himself in a firm belief of your Religion though his reason and his understanding fail him And seeing this is the condition of all those whom you esteem good Catholicks who can deny but you are a Company of men unwilling and afraid to understand lest you should do good That have eyes to see and will not see that have not the love of truth which is only to be known by an indifferent tryal and therefore deserve to be given over to strong delusions men that love darkness more than light in a word that you are the blind leading the blind and what prudence there can be in following such Guides our Saviour hath taught us in saying If the blind lead the blind both shall fall into the ditch 74. Ad § 32. Your next and last argument against the faith of Protestants is because wanting certainty and prudence it must also want the fourth condition Supernaturality For that being a humane perswasion it is not in the essence of it Supernatural and being imprudent and rash it cannot proceed from Divine motion and so is not supernatural in respect of the cause from which it proceedeth Ans This little discourse stands wholly upon what went before and therefore must fall together with it I have proved the Faith of Protestants as certain and as prudent as the faith of Papists and therefore if these be certain grounds of supernaturality our faith may have it as well as yours I would here furthermore be informed how you can assure us that your faith is not your perswasion or opinion for you make them all one that your Churches doctrine is true Or if you grant it your perswasion why is it not the perswasion of men and in respect of the subject of it an humane perswasion I desire also to know what sense there is in pretending that your perswasion is not in regard of the object only and cause of it but in nature or essence of it supernatural Lastly whereas you say that being imprudent it cannot come from divine motion certainly by this reason all they that believe your own Religion and cannot give a wise and sufficient reason for it as millions amongst you cannot must be condemned to have no supernatural faith or if not then without question nothing can hinder but that the imprudent faith of Protestants may proceed from divine motion as well as the imprudent faith of Papists 75. And thus having weighed your whole discourse and found it altogether lighter than vanity why should I not invert your conclusion and say Seeing you have not proved that whosoever errs against any one point of Faith loseth all divine Faith nor that any error whatsoever concerning that which by the Parties litigant may be esteemed a matter of faith is a grievous sin it follows not at all that when two men hold different doctrines concerning Religion that but one can be saved Not that I deny but that the sentence of S. Chrysost with which you conclude this Chapter may in a good sense be true for oftimes by the faith is meant only that Doctrin which is necessary to salvation and to say that salvation may be had without any the least thing which is necessary to salvation implies a repugnance and destroys it self Besides not to believe all necessary points and to believe none at all is for the purpose of salvation all one and therefore he that does so may justly be said to destroy the Gospel of Christ seeing he makes it uneffectual to the end for which it was intended the Salvation of mens souls But why you should conceive that all differences about Religion are concerning matters of faith in this high notion of the word for that I conceive no reason CHAP. VII The ANSWER to the Seventh CHAPTER Shewing that Protestants are not bound by the Charity which they owe to themselves to reunite themselves to the Roman Church 6. Ad § 2. WHereas you say it is directly against Charity to our selves to adventure the omitting of any means necessary to salvation this is true But so is this also that it is directly against the same Charity to adventure the omitting any thing that may any way help or conduce to my salvation that may make the way to it more secure or less dangerous And therefore if the errors of the Roman Church do but hinder me in this way or any way endanger it I am in Charity to my self bound to forsake them though they be not destructive of it Again whereas you conclude That if by living out of the Roman Church we put our selves in hazard to want something necessary to Salvation we commit a grievous sin against the vertue of Charity as it respects our selves This consequence may be good in those which are thus perswaded of the Roman Church and yet live out of it But the supposition is certainly false We may live and die out of the Roman Church without putting our selves in any such hazard Nay to
yielded both these were among the Donatists as much as we yield them to be among the Papists As for D. Potters acknowledgment that they maintained an error in the matter and nature of it Heretical This proves them but material Hereticks whom you do not exclude from possibility of Salvation So that all things considered this argument must be much more forcible from the Donatists against the Catholicks than from Papists against Protestants in regard Protestants grant Papists no more hope of salvation than Papists grant Protestants whereas the Donatists excluded absolutely all but their own part from hope of Salvation so far as to account them no Christians that were not of it the Catholicks mean while accounting them Brethren and freeing those among them from the imputation of Heresie who being in error quaerebant cautâ sollicitudine veritatem corrigi parati cùm invenerint sought for truth carefully being ready when they found it to correct their errors 23. Whereas you say That the Argument for the certainty of their Baptism because it was confessed good by Catholicks whereas the Baptism of Catholicks was not confessed by them to be good is not so good as yours touching the certainty of your Salvation grounded on the confession of Protestants because we confess there is no damnable error in the doctrin or practice of the Roman Church I Answer no we confess no such matter and though you say so a hundred times no repetition will make it true We profess plainly that many damnable errors plainly repugnant to the precepts of Christ both Ceremonial and Moral more plainly than this of Rebaptization and therefore more damnable are believed and professed by you And therefore seeing this is the only disparity you can devise and this is vanished it remains that as good an answer as the Catholicks made touching the certainty of their Baptism as good may we make and with much more evidence of Reason touching the security and certainty of our Salvation 24. By the way I desire to be informed seeing you affirm that Rebaptizing those whom Hereticks had baptized was a sacriledge and a profession of a damnable Heresie when it began to be so If from the beginning it were so then was Cyprian a sacrilegious professor of a damnable heresie and yet a Saint and a Martyr If it were not so then did your Church excommunicate Firmilian and others and separate from them without sufficient ground of Excommunication or Separation which is Schismatical You see what difficulties you run into on both sides choose whether you will but certainly both can hardly be avoided 27. What S. Austin answers to the Donatists argument fits us in answer to yours as if it had been made for it for as S. Austin says that Catholicks approve the Doctrin of Donatists but abhor their Heresie of Re-baptization So we say that we approve those fundamental and simple necessary Truths which you retain by which some good souls among you may be saved but abhor your many Superstitions and Heresies And as he says that as gold is good yet ought not to be sought for among a company of thieves and Baptism good but not to be sought for in the Conventicles of Donatists so say we that the Truths you retain are good and as we hope sufficient to bring good ignorant souls among you to salvation yet are not to be sought for in the Conventicle of Papists who hold with them a mixture of many vanities and many impieties 30. Obj. But Protestants do either exclude Hope by Despair with the Doctrin that our Saviour died not for all and that such want grace sufficient to salvation or else by vain presumption grounded upon a fantastical perswasion that they are predestinate which Faith must exclude all fear and trembling and you add though some Protestants may relent from the rigour of the aforesaid doctrin yet none of them can have true hope while they hope to be saved in the Communion of those who defend such Doctrins Ans * See numb 4. in the fol. edit All this may be as forcibly returned upon Papists as it is urged against Protestants in as much as all Papists either hold the Doctrine of Predetermination and absolute Election or Communicate with those that do hold it Now from this Doctrin what is more prone and obvious than for every natural man without Gods especial preventing grace to make this practical collection either I am elected or not elected if I be no impiety possible can ever damn me If not no possible industry can ever save me Now whether this disjunctive perswasion be not as likely as any doctrin of Protestants to extinguish Christian Hope and filial fear and to lead some men to despair others to presumption all to a wretchless and impious life I desire you ingenuously to inform me and if you deny it assure your self you shall be contradicted and confuted by men of your own Religion and your own society and taught at length this charitable doctrin that though mens opinions may be charged with the absurd consequences which naturally flow from them yet the men themselves are not I mean if they perceive not the consequence of these absurdities nor do not own and acknowledge but disclaim and detest them I add 1. That there is no Calvinist that will deny the truth of this proposition Christ died for all nor to subscribe to that sense of it which your Dominicans put upon it neither can you with coherence to the received Doctrine of your own Society deny that they as well as the Calvinists take away the distinction of sufficient and effectual grace and indeed hold none to be sufficient but only that which is effectual 2. Whereas you say They cannot make their calling certain by good works who do certainly believe that before any good works they are justified and justified by faith alone and by that faith whereby they certainly believe they are justified I answer There is no Protestant but believes that Faith Repentance and universal Obedience are necessary to the obtaining of Gods favour and eternal happiness This being granted the rest is but a speculative Controversie a Question about words which would quickly vanish but that men affect not to understand one another As if a company of Physicians were in consultation and should all agree that three Medicins and no more were necessary for the recovery of the Patients health this were sufficient for his direction towards the recovery of his health though concerning the proper and specifical effects of these three Medicins there should be amongst them as many differences as men So likewise being generally at accord that these three things Faith Hope and Charity are necessary to salvation so that whosoever wants any of them cannot obtain it and he which hath them all cannot fail of it is it not very evident that they are sufficiently agreed for mens directions to eternal Salvation And seeing Charity is a full comprehension of all
chargeable for forsaking that guide which God has appointed me to follow But what if I forsook it because I thought I had reason to fear it was one of those blind guides which whosoever blindly follows is threatned by our Saviour that both he and his guide shall fall into the Ditch then I hope you will grant it was not pride but Conscience that moved me to do so for as it is wise humility to obey those whom God hath set over me so it is sinful credulity to follow every man or every Church that without warrant will take upon them to guide me shew me then some good and evident title which the Church of Rome has to this office produce but one reason for it which upon trial will not finally be resolved and vanish into uncertainties and if I yield not unto it say if you please I am as proud as Lucifer in the mean time give me leave to think it strange and not far from a Prodigee that this Doctrin of the Roman Churches being the guide of faith if it be true doctrin should either not be known to the four Evangelists or if it were known to them that being wise and good men they should either be so envious of the Churches happiness or so forgetful of the work they took in hand which was to write the Gospel of Christ as that not so much as one of them should mention so much as once this so necessary part of the Gospel without the belief whereof there is no salvation and with the belief whereof unless men be snatcht away by sudden death there is hardly any damnation It is evident they do all of them with one consent speak very plainly of many things of no importance in comparison hereof and is it credible or indeed possible that with one consent or rather conspiracy they should be so deeply silent concerning this unum necessarium You may believe it if you can for my part I cannot unless I see demonstration for it for if you say they send us to the Church and consequently to the Church of Rome this is to suppose that which can never be proved that the Church of Rome is the only Church and without this supposal upon Division of the Church I am as far to seek for a guide of my Faith as ever As for example In that great division of the Church when the whole world wondred saith Saint Hierom that it was become Arrian when Liberius Bishop of Rome as S. Athanasius and S. Hilary testifie subscribed their Heresie and joyned in Communion with them Or in the division between the Greek and the Roman Church about the procession of the Holy Ghost when either side was the Church to it self and each part Heretical and Schismatical to the other what direction could I then an ignorant man have found from that Text of Scripture Unless he hear the Church let him be to thee as a Heathen or a Publican or Upon this Rock will I build my Church and the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it Again give me leave to wonder that neither S. Paul writing to the Romans should so much as intimate this their priviledge of Infallibility but rather on the contrary put them in fear in the eleventh Chapter that they as well as the Jews were in danger of falling away That Saint Peter the pretended Bishop of Rome writing two Catholick Epistles mentioning his departure should not once acquaint the Christians whom he writes to what guide they were to follow after he was taken from them That the writers of the New Testament should so frequently forewarn men of Hereticks false Christs false prophets and not once arm them against them with letting them know this onely sure means of avoiding their danger That so great a part of the New Testament should be imployed about Antichrist and so little or indeed none at all about the Vicar of Christ and the guide of the faithful That our Saviour should leave this onely means for the ending of Controversies and yet speak so obscurely and ambiguously of it that now our Judge is the greatest Controversie and the greatest hinderance of ending them That there should be better evidence in the Scripture to intitle the King to this Office who disclaims it than the Pope who pretends it That S. Peter should not ever exercise over the Apostles any one act of Jurisdiction nor they ever give him any one Title of Authority over them That if the Apostles did know S. Peter was made head over them when our Saviour said Thou art Peter c. they should still contend who should be the first and that our Saviour should never tell them S. Peter was the man That S. Paul should say he was in nothing inferiour to the very chief Apostles That the Catechumenists in the primitive Church should never be taught this foundation of their Faith that the Church of Rome was Guide of their Faith That the Fathers Tertullian S. Hierom and Optatus when they flew highest in commendation of the Roman Church should attribute no more to her than to all other Apostolical Churches That in the Controversie about Easter the Bishops and Churches of Asia should be so ill Catechised as not to know this Principle of Christian Religion The necessity of Conformity in Doctrin with the Church of Rome That they should never be pressed with any such necessity of conformity in all things but onely with the Tradition of the Western Churches in that point That Irenaeus and many other Bishops notwithstanding ad hanc Ecclesiam necesse est omnem convenire Ecclesiam should not yet think that a necessary Doctrin nor a sufficient ground of Excommunication which the Church of Rome though to be so That S. Cyprian and the Bishops of Africk should be so ill instructed in their Faith as not to know this foundation of it That they likewise were never urged with any such necessity of Conformity with the Church of Rome nor ever charged with heresie or error for denying it That when Liberius joyned in Communion with the Arrians and subscribed their heresie the Arrians then should not be the Church and the Guide of Faith That never any Hereticks for three Ages after Christ were pressed with this Argument of the Infallibility of the present Church of Rome or charged with denyal of it as a distinct Heresie so that Aeneas Sylvius should have cause to say Ante tempora Concilii Niceni quisque sibi vivebat parvus respectus habebatur ad Ecclesiam Romanam That the Ecclesiastical Story of those times mentions no Acts of Authority of the Church of Rome over other Churches as if there should be a Monarchy and the Kings for some Ages together should exercise no act of Jurisdiction in it That to supply this defect the Decretal Epistles should be so impudently forged which in a manner speak nothing else but Reges Monarchas I mean the Popes making Laws for exercising authority
Erring persons that lead good lives should be judged of charitably c. 7.33 A man may learn of the Church to confute its Errors c. 3.40 We did well to forsake the Roman Church for her Errors though we afterwards may err out of it c. 5.63 64 65 67 87 92. We must not adhere to a Church in professing the least Errors lest we should not profess with her necessary Doctrin c. 3.56 The Examples of those that forsaking Popish Errors have denied necessary Truths no Argument against Protestants c. 3.63 External Communion of a Church may be left without leaving a Church c. 5.32 45 47. F. Whether Faith be destroyed by denying a Truth testified by God Ans Pref. 25. c. 6.49 c. 7.19 The Objects of Faith of two sorts essential and occasional c. 4.3 Certainty of Faith less than the highest degree may please God and save a man c. 1.8 6.3 4 5. Faith less than infallibly certain may resist temptations difficulties c. 6.5 There may be Faith where the Church and its infallibility begets it not c. 2.49 Faith does not go before Scripture but follows its efficacy c. 2.48 Protestants have sufficient means to know the certainty of their Faith c. 2.152 In the Roman Church the last resolution of Faith is into Motives of Credibility c. 2.154 The Fathers declared their Judgment of Articles but did not require their declarations to be received under Anathema c. 4.18 Protestants did not forsake the Church though they forksook its errors c. 3.11 Sufficient Foundation for faith without infallible certainty c. 6.6 45. What Protestants mean by Fundamental Doctrins c. 4.52 In what sense the Church of Rome errs not Fundamentally Ans Pref. 20. To be unerring in Fundamentals can be said of no Church of one denomination c. 3.55 To say that there shall be always a Church not erring in Fundamentals is to say that there shall be always a Church c. 3.55 A Church is not safe though retaining Fundamentals when it builds hay and stubble on the foundation and neglects to reform her Errors c. 5.61 Ignorance of what points in particular are fundamental does not make it uncertain whether we do not err fundamentally or differ in fundamentals among our selves c. 7.14 G. The four Gospels contain all necessary Doctrins c. 4.40 41 42 43. An Infallible Guide not necessary for avoiding Heresie c. 2.127 The Apostolick Church an Infallible Guide to which we may resort c. 3.69 The Church may not be an Infallible Guide in fundamentals though it be infallible in fundamentals c. 3.39 That the Roman Church should be the only infallible Guide of Faith and the Scriptures say nothing concerning it is incredible c. 6.20 H. The difference betwixt Heresie and Schism c. 5.51 There are no New Heresies no more than new Articles of Faith c. 4.18 37 38. Separation from the Church of Rome no mark of Heresie by the Fathers whose Citations are answered c. 6.22 23 24 25 26 27 2â— 30 31 33 34. No mark of Heresie to want succession of Bishops holding the same Doctrin c. 6.18 41. We are not Hereticks for opposing things propounded by the Church of Rome for divine Truth c. 6.11 12. Whether Protestants Schismatically cut off the Roman Church from hopes of salvation c. 5.38 I. The Jewish Church had no Infallibility annexed to it and if it had there is no necessity that the Christian Church should have it c. 2.141 The Imposing a necessity of professing known errors and practising known corruptions is a just cause of separating from a Church c. 5.31 36 40 50 59 60 68 69. Indifferency to all Religions falsely charged upon Protestants Ans Pref. 3. c. 3.12 The belief of the Churches Infallibility makes way for Heresie Pref. 10. An Infallible Guide not needful for avoiding Heresies c. 2.127 The Churches Infallibility has not the same Evidence as there is for the Scriptures c. 3.30 31. The Churches Infallibility can no way be better assured to us than the Scriptures incorruption c. 2.25 c. 3.27 The Churches Infallibility is not proved from the promise that the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it c. 3.70 Nor from the promise of the Spirits leading into all Truth which was made onely to the Apostles c. 3.71 72. The Churches infallibility not proved from Ephes c. 11 12 13. He gave some Apostles c. till we all come in the Vnity of the Faith c. c. 3.79 80. That God has appointed an Infallible Judge of Controversies because such a one is desirable and useful is a weak conclusion c. 2. from 128. to 136. inclusive Infallibility in fundamentals no warrant to adhere to a Church in all that she proposes c. 3.57 Infallible interpretations of Scripture vainly boasted of by the Roman Church c. 2.93 94 95. Whether the denial of the Churches Infallibility leaves men to their private spirit reason and discourse and what is the harm of it Pref. 12.13 c. 2.110 Traditional Interpretations of Scripture how ill preserved c. 2.10 Interprecations of Scripture which private men make for themselves not pretending to prescribe their sense to others though false or seditious endanger only themselves c. 2.122 Allow the Pope or Roman Church to be a decisive Interpreter of Christs Laws and she can evacuate them and make what Laws she pleases Pref. 10.11 c. 2.1 S. Irenaeus's account of Tradition favours not Popery c. 2.144 145 146. His saying that no Reformation can countervail the danger of a Schism explained c. 5.11 A living Judge to end Controversies about the sense of Scripture not necessary c. 2.12 13. If Christ had intended such a Judge in Religion he would have named him which he has not done c. 2.23 c. 3.69 c. 6.20 Though a living Judge be necessary to determin Civil causes yet not necessary for Religious causes c. 2. from 14. to 22. inclus If there be a Judge of Controversies no necessity it should be the Roman Church c. 3.69 Roman Catholicks set up as many Judges in Religion as Protestants c. 2.116 118 153. A Judgment of discretion must be allowed to every man for himself about Religion c. 2.11 The Protestant Doctrin of Justification taken altogether not a licentious doctrin c. 7.30 When they say they are justified by faith alone yet they make good works necessary to salvation c. 7.30 K. Our obligation to know any divine truth arises from Gods manifest revealing it c. 3.19 L. How we are assured in what Language the Scripture is uncorrupted c. 2.55 56 57. To leave a Church and to leave the external Communion of a Church is not the same thing c. 5.32 45 47. Luthers separation not like that of the Donatists and why c. 5.33.101 Luther and his followers did not divide from the whole Church being a part of it but onely reformed themselves forsaking the corrupt part c. 5.56 Luthers opposing himself to all in his reformation no objection against him c. 5.89 90. We are not bound to justifie all that Luther said
and did no more than Papists are bound to justifie what several Popes have said and done c. 5.112 M. They may be members of the Catholick Church that are not united in external Communion c. 5.9 The Protestant Doctrin of Merit explained c. 4.35 36. The Authors Motives to change his Religions with Answers to them Pref. 42.43 The Faith of Papists resolved at last into the Motives of Credibility c. 2.154 The Mischiefs that followed the Reformation not imputable to it c. 5.92 N. What make points necessary to be believed c. 4.4 11. No more is necessary to be believed by us than by the Apostles c. 4.67 70 71 72. Papists make many things necessary to salvation which God never made so c. 7.7 All necessary points of Faith are contained in the Creed c. 4.73 74. Why some points not so necessary were put into the Creed c. 4.75 76. Protestants may agree in necessary points though they may overvalue some things they hold c. 7.34 To impose a necessity of professing known errors and practising known corruptions is a just cause of separation c. 5.31 36 40 50 59 60 68 69. O. A blind obedience is not due to Ecclesiastical decisions though our practise must be determined by the sentence of superiours in doubtful cases c. 5.110 A probable opinion may be followed according to the Roman Doctors though it be not the safest way for avoiding sin c. 7 8. Optatus's saying impertinently urged against Protestants c. 5.99 100. Though we receive Ordination and Scripture from a false Church yet we may be a true Church c. 6.54 P. Whether Papists or Protestants most hazard their souls on probabilities c. 4.57 What we believe concerning the Perpetuity of the Visible Church Ans Pref. 18. Whether 1 Tim. 3.15 The Pillar and ground of Truth belong to Timothy or to the Church c. 3.76 If those words belong to the Church whether they may not signifie her duty and yet that she may err in neglecting it c. 3.77 A possibility of being deceived argues not an uncertainty in all we believe c. 3.26 50 c. 5.107 c. 6.47 By joyning in the Prayers of the Roman Church we must joyn in her unlawful practices c. 3.11 Preaching of the Word and administring the Sacrament how they are inseparable notes of the Church and how they make it visible c. 5.19 Private Spirit how we are to understand it c. 2.110 Private Spirit is not appealed to i. e. to dictates pretending to come from Gods spirit when Controversies are referred to Scripture c. 2.110 Whether one is left to his private spirit reason and discourse by denying the Churches infallibility and the harm of it Pref. 12 13. c. 2.110 A mans private judgment may be opposed to the publick when Reason and Scripture warrant him c. 5.109 A probable opinion according to the Roman Doctors may be followed though it is not the safest way for avoiding sin c. 7.8 It 's hard for Papists to resolve what is a sufficient proposal of the Church c. 3.54 Protestants are on the surer side for avoiding sin and Papists on the more dangerous side to commit sin shewed in instances c. 7.9 R. Every man by Reason must judge both of Scripture and the Church c. 2.111 112 113 118 120 122. Reason and judgment of discretion is not to be reproached for the private spirit c. 2.110 If men must not follow their Reason what they are to follow c. 2.114 115. Some kind of Reformation may be so necessary as to justifie separation from a corrupt Church though every pretence of reformation will not c. 5.53 Nothing is more against Religion than using violence to introduce it c. 5.96 The Religion of Protestants which is the belief of the Bible a wiser and safer way than that of the Roman Church shewed at large c. 6. from 56. to 72. Inclus All Protestants require Repentance to remission of sins and remission of sins to Justification c. 7.31 No Revelations known to be so may be rejected as not Fundamental c. 4.11 A Divine revelation may be ignorantly disbelieved by a Church and yet it may continue a Church c. 3.20 Things equally revealed may not be so to several persons c. 3.24 Papists cannot have Reverence for the Scripture whilst they advance so many things contrary to it c. 2.1 No argument of their reverence to it that they have preserved it intire c. 2.2 The Roman Church when Luther separated was not the visible Church though a visible Church and part of the Catholick c. 5.26 27. The present Roman Church has lost all Authority to recommend what we are to believe in Religion c. 2.101 The properties of a perfect Rule c. 2.5.6 7. Whether the Popish Rule of Fundamentals or ours is the safest c. 4.63 S. Right administration of Sacraments uncertain in the Roman Church c. 2. from 63. to 68. inclusive In what sense Salvation may be had in the Roman Church Ans Pref. 5 7. Salvation depends upon great uncertainties in the Roman Church c. 2. from 63. to 73. inclus Schisms whence they chiefly arise and what continues them c. 4.17 Schism may be a Division of the Church as well as from it c. 5.22 He may be no Schismatick that forsakes a Church for Errors not damnable Ans Pref. 2. No Schism to leave a corrupted Church when otherwise we must communicate in her corruptions c. 5.25 Not every separation from the external Communion of the Church but a causeless one is the sin of Schism c. 5.30 They may not be Schismaticks that continue the separation from Rome though Luther that began it had been a Schismatick c. 5.4 c. 6.14 The Scripture cannot be duly reverenced by Papists c. 2. n. 1. The Scripture how proved to be the word of God c. 4.53 The Divine Authority of the Scripture may be certain though it be not self-evidently certain that it is Gods word c. 6.51 Books of Scripture now held for Canonical which the Roman Church formerly rejected c. 2.90 91. Whether some Books of Scripture defined for Canonical were not afterward rejected c. 3.29 The Scripture in things necessary is intelligible to learned and unlearned c. 2.104 105 106. Some Books of Scripture questioned by the Fathers as well as by Protestants c. 2.34 The Scripture has great Authority from internal Arguments c. 2.47 The Truth of Scripture inspiration depends not on the authority of the Roman Church Pref. 14. c. 6.45 If the Scriptures contain all necessary truths Popery is confuted Pref. 30. to 38. inclusive The true meaning of Scripture not uncertain in necessary points c. 2.84 A determinate sense of obscure places of Scripture is not needful c. 2.127 150. The sense of plain places of Scripture may be known by the same means by which the Papists know the sence of those places that prove the Church c. 2.150 151. God may give means to the Church to know the true sense of Scripture yet it is not necessary it should have that sense c. 2.93 It
is easier to know the Scripture and its sense than for the ignorant in the Roman Church which is the Church and what are her decrees and the sense of them c. 2.107 108 109. In what Language the Scripture is incorrupted and the assurance of it c. 2.55 56 57. The Scripture is capable of the properties of a perfect Rule c. 2.7 In what sense we say the Scripture is a perfect Rule of Faith c. 2.8 The Scripture not properly a judge of Controversies but a Rule to judge by c. 2.11 104 155. The Scriptures incorruption more secured by providence than the Roman Churches vigilancy c. 2.24 When Scripture is made the Rule of Controversies those that concern it self are to be excepted c. 2.8 27 156. The Scripture contains all necessary material objects of Faith of which the Scripture it self is none but the means of conveying them to us c. 2.32.159 The Scripture must determine some Controversies else those about the Church and its Notes are undeterminable c. 2.3 The Scripture unjustly charged with increasing Controversies and Contentions c. 2.4 The Scripture is a sufficient means for discovering Heresies c. 2.127 When Controversies are referred to Scripture it is not referring them to the private spirit understanding it of a perswasion pretending to come from the Spirit of God c. 2.110 Protestants that believe Scripture agree in more things than they differ in and their differences are not material c. 4.49 50. Private men if they interpret Scriptures amiss and to ill purposes endanger only themselves when they do not pretend to prescribe to others c. 2.122 The Protestants Security of the way to happiness c. 2.53 Want of Skill in School-Divinity foolishly objected against English Divines Pref. 19. The Principles of the Church of Englands separating from Rome will not serve to justifie Schismaticks c. 5.71 74 80 81 82 85 86. Socinianism and other Heresies countenanced by Romish Writers who have undermined the Doctrin of the Trinity Pref. 17.18 The promise of the Spirits leading into all truth proves not Infallibility c. 3.71 The promise of the Spirits abiding with them for ever may be personal c. 3.74 And it being a conditional promise cuts off the Roman Churches pretence to infallibility c. 3.75 Want of Succession of Bishops holding always the same Doctrin is not a mark of Heresie c. 6.38 41. In what sense Succession is by the Fathers made a mark of the true Church c. 6.40 Papists cannot prove a perpetual Succession of Professors of their Doctrin c. 6.41 T. Tradition proves the Books of Scripture to be Canonical not the Authority of the present Church c. 2.25 53 90 91 92. c. 3.27 Traditional Interpretations of Scripture how ill preserved by the Roman Church c. 2.10 c. 3.46 No Traditional Interpretations of Scripture though if there were any remaining we are ready to receive them c. 2.88 89 c. 3.46 The Traditions distinct from Scripture which Iraeneus mentions do not favour Popery c. 2.144 145 146. The asserting unwritten Traditions though not inconsistent with the truth of Scripture yet disparages it as a perfect Rule c. 2.10 Though our Translations of the Bible are subject to error yet our salvation is not thereby made uncertain c. 2.68 73. Different Translations of Scripture may as well be objected to the Ancient Church as to Protestants c. 2.58 59. The Vulgar Translation is not pure and uncorrupted c. 2.75 76 77 78 79 80. To believe Transubstantiation how many contradictions one must believe c. 4.46 The Doctrin of the Trinity undermined by Roman Doctors Pref. 17 18. The Church may tolerate many things which she does not allow c. 3.47 Gods Truth not questioned by Protestants though they deny points professed by the Church c. 1.12 Protestants question not Gods Truth though denying some truth revealed by him if they know it not to be so revealed c. 3.16 The Truth of the present Church depends not upon the visibility or perpetuity of the Church in all Ages c. 5.21 c. 7.20 The Apostles depositing Truth with the Church is no argument that she should always keep it intire and sincere c. 2.148 The promise of being led into all truth agrees not equally to the Apostles and to the Church c. 3.34 A Tryal of Religion by Scripture may well be refused by Papists c. 2 3. U. Violence and force to introduce Religion is against the nature of Religion and unjustly charged upon Protestants c. 5.96 What Visible Church was before Luther disagreeing from the Roman Ans Pref. 19. c. 5.27 That there should be always a visible unerring Church of one denomination is not necessary c. 5.27 The Visible Church may not cease though it may cease to be visible c. 5.13 14 41. The Church may not be Visible in the Popish sense and yet may not dissemble but profess her faith c. 5.18 The great uncertainties salvation in the Roman Church depends on c. 2.63 to 73. inclusive Their uncertainty of the right administration of Sacraments c. 2.63 to 68. inclusive The Churches Vnity by what means best preserved c. 3.81 c. 4.13 17 40. Pretence of Infallibility a ridiculous means to Vnity when that is the chief question to be determined c. 3.89 Vnity of Communion how to be obtained c. 4.39 40. Vnity of external Communion not necessary to the being a Member of the Catholick Church c. 5.9 Vniversality of a Doctrin no certain sign that it came from the Apostles c. 3.44 Want of Vniversality of place proves not Protestants to be Hereticks and may as well be objected against the Roman Church c. 6.42 55. We would receive unwritten Traditions derived from the Apostles if we knew what they were c. 3.46 The Vulgar Translation not pure and incorrupted c. 2.75 76 77 78 79 80. W. The whole Doctrin of Christ was taught by the Apostles and an Anathema denounced against any that should bring in new doctrins c. 4.18 The wisdom of Protestants justified in forsaking the errors of the Roman Church c. 6.53 54. The wisdom of Protestants shewed at large against the Papists in making the Bible their Religion c. 6. from 56. to 72. inclusive FINIS ADDITIONAL DISCOURSES OF Mr. Chillingworth NEVER BEFORE PRINTED Imprimatur Ex Aedib Lambeth Jun. 14. 1686. GUIL NEEDHAM RR. in Christo P. ac D. D. Wilhelmo Archiep. Cant. Ã Sacr. Domesticis LONDON Printed for Richard Chiswell at the Rose and Crown in S. Pauls Church-Yard 1687. CONTENTS I. A Conference betwixt Mr. Chillingworth and Mr. Lewgar whether the Roman Church be the Catholick-Church and all out of her Communion Hereticks or Schismaticks p. 1. II. A Discourse against the Infallibility of the Roman Church with an Answer to all those Texts of Scripture that are alledged to prove it p. 26. III. A Conference concerning the Infallibility of the Roman Church proving that the present Church of Rome either errs in her worshiping the Blessed Virgin or that the Ancient Church did err in condemning the Collyridians as Hereticks p. 41. IV. An
trouble you took the next Boat and went to the Church of Rome because that bespake you first You impute to me as I hear that the way I take is destructive only and that I build nothing which first is not a fault for Christian Religion is not now to be built but only I desire to have the rubbish and impertinent Lumber taken off which you have laid upon it which hides the glorious simplicity of it from them which otherwise would embrace it Remember I pray Averroes his saying Quandoquidem Christiani adorant quod comedunt sit anima mea cum Philosophis and consider the swarms of Atheists in Italy and then tell me whether your unreasonable and contradictious Doctrines your forged Miracles and counterfeit Legends have not in all probability produced this effect Secondly if it be a fault it is certainly your own for your discourse intended for the proof of a positive conclusion That we must be Papists proves in deed and in truth nothing but even in shew and appearance no more but this Negative that we must not be Protestants but what we must be if we must not be Protestants God knows you in this Discourse I am sure do not shew it Mr. Lewgars Reply § 1. The minor of Mr. Chillingworths Argument against my ground is very weak being framed upon a false supposition that a Protestant could name no other Church professing a diverse Faith c. from the Greek Church which was the Catholick Church for if he could not indeed name any other the title would remain to the Greek Church But he hath the Roman to name and so my ground cannot conclude either for the Greek or Abyssine or any other besides the Roman but for that it does except he can name some other § 2. His second answer is weak likewise for my Minor is always true at least they thought it to be so whose Authorities I produce in confirmation of it as will appear to any one that considers them well how their force lies in Thesi not in Hypothesi not that the Church was not then divided into more Societies than one but that she could never be § 3. As for his Instance to the contrary wherein he believes I will not say the Churches excommunicated by Victor ceased to be a true member of the Catholick If I say so I say no more than the Ancient Fathers said before me Iraeneus when he desired Victor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not to cut off so many and great Churches and Ruffinus reprehendit eam quod non benè fecisset abscindere ab unitate corporis c. § 4. But howsoever the case of Excommunication may be the division of external Communion which I intended and the Fathers spake of in the alledged Authorities was that which was made by voluntary separation § 5. Whereby the Church before one Society is divided into several distinct Societies both claiming to be the Church of which Societies so divided but one can be the Catholick and this is proved by the Authorities alledged which Authorities must not be answered by disproving them as he does for that is to change his Adversary and confute the Fathers sayings instead of mine but by shewing their true sense or judgment to be otherwise than I alledged it § 6. To his demand upon the places alledged I Answer that I do not build my whole faith of this conclusion upon the Authority of those Fathers for I produce them not for the Authority of the thing but of the Exposition The thing it self is an Article of the Creed Unam Catholicam grounded in express Scripture Columba mea unica but because there is difference in understanding this Prophesie I produce these Authorities to shew the Judgment of the Ancient Church how they understood it and the proper answer to this is either to shew that these words were not there or at least not this meaning and so to shew their meaning out of other places more pregnant § 7. And I promise that whensoever an equal consent of Fathers can be shewed for any thing as I can shew for this I will believe it as firmly as I do this § 8. But this is not the Answerers part to propound doubts and difficulties but to satisfie the proof objected § 9. And if this course be any more taken I will save my self all farther labour in a business so likely to be endless § 10. His second Answer to the places is wholly impertinent for therein would he disprove them from watching a necessity of resting in the judgment of the Roman Church whereas I produced them only to shew that among several Societies of Christians only one can be the Catholick and against this his second Answer saith nothing § 11. In his third Answer he makes some shew of reply to the Authorities themselves but he commits a double Error One that he imposes upon me a wrong conclusion to be proved as will appear by comparing my conclusion in my Paper with the conclusion he would appoint me § 12. Another that he imposes upon the Authorities a wrong Interpretation no way grounded in the words themselves nor in the places whence they were taken nor in any other places of the same Fathers but meerly forged out of his own Brain For first the places do not only say that the Societies of Hereticks and Schismaticks are no part of the Church but that the Church cannot be divided into more Societies than one and they account Societies divided which are either of a diverse Faith or a diverse Communion Neither do they define Hereticks or Schismaticks in that manner as he does § 13. For an Heretick in their Language is he that opposes partinaciously the Common Faith of the Church and a Schismatick he that separates from the Catholick Communion never making any mention at all of the cause § 14. And if his definition of a Schismatick may stand then certainly there was no Schismatick ever in the World nor none are at this day for none did none does separate without some pretence of Error or unlawfulness in the Conditions of the Churches Communion § 15. And so I expect both a fuller and directer answer to my Argument without excursions or diversions into any other matter till the judgment of Antiquity be cleared in this point Mr. Chillingworths Answer Ad § 1. The Minor of my Argument you say is very weak being grounded upon a false Supposition That a Protestant could name no other Church professing a diverse Faith from the Greek which was the Catholick Church And your reason is because he might name the Roman But in earnest Mr. Lewgar do you think that a Protestant remaining a Protestant can esteem the Roman Church to be the Catholick Church or do you think to put tricks upon us with taking your proposition one while in sensu composito another while in sensu diviso For if your meaning was that a Protestant not remaining but ceasing to be a
place of God by giving unto her this worship proper to God and not that they terminated their action finally in her or did in very deed think her to be a God and not a Creature But to speak properly you say nothing is offered to her or to her honour but to God in honour of the Blessed Virgin Belike then if through Henly I go from hence to London I may not be said properly to go to Henly but only to London or if through Water I see the Sand I may not be properly said to see the Water but only the Sand. Away with such shifting Sophistry either leave your practice of offering to Saints if it be naught or colour it not over with such empty distinctions if it be good Christ saith to his Apostles in regard of their relation to him He that heareth you heareth me and he that despiseth you despiseth me and yet who doubts but they that heard the Apostles did properly hear them and they that despised them did properly despise them though their action staid not in them but reached up to Heaven and to Christ himself You pray to Saints and Angels though you do not terminate your prayers in them and yet I doubt not but your prayers to Saints may be as properly called prayers as those you make to God himself For though these be of a more excellent nature than they yet do they agree in the general nature that they are both prayers As though a Man be a more excellent living creature than a horse yet he agrees with him in this that both are living creatures But if nothing be properly offered to her or to her honor why do you in your sixth Answer say you may offer any thing to the Virgin Mary by way of presents and gifts by the doctrin of the Roman Church Certainly he that offers by way of gift or present offers as properly as he that offers by way of sacrifice as a horse is as properly a living creature as a Man But if it were so as you say which is most false that you did not properly offer to the Blessed Virgin but to God in honour of her yet in my judgment this would not qualifie or mend the matter but make it worse For first who taught you that in the time of the Gospel after the accomplishment of the prediction sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not but a body hast thou prepared me after this Interpretation of it in the Epistle to the Hebrews He taketh away the first that he may establish the second that it is still lawful to offer Tapers or Incense to God Secondly in my understanding to offer to God in honour of the Virgin is more derogatory from Gods honour than to offer to her in the honour of God For this is in my apprehension to subordinate God to her to make her the terminating and final object of the action to make God the way and her the end and by and through God to conveigh the worship unto her But for incense you say it is a foul slander that it is offered any way to the Blessed Virgin To this I answer that your imputing slander to me is it self a slander For 1. In your 5th Answer you have given a clear intimation that you have never been out of England so that you cannot certainly know what is the practice of your Church in this point beyond Sea And he that lives amongst you and has but half an Eye open and free from prejudice cannot but see that the Roman Religion is much more exorbitant in the general practice of it than it is in the Doctrine published in Books of Controversie where it is delivered with much caution and moderation nay cunning and dissimulation that it may be the fitter to win and engage Proselytes who being once ensnared though they be afterwards startled with strange and unlookt-for practices yet a hundred to one but they will rather stifle their Conscience and dash all scruples against the pretended Rock of their Churches Infallibility and blindly follow those guides to whose Conduct they have unadvisedly committed themselves than come off again with the shame of being reputed weak and inconstant so terrible an Idol is this vain nothing the opinion and censure of foolish men But to return again to you I say your ignorance of the practice of the Roman Church beyond the Seas does plainly convince that you have rashly and therefore slanderously charged me with the Crime of slander As for your reason you add consider it again and you will see it is worth nothing For what if incensing in time of Mass be understood by all sorts of People to be directed to God alone which yet you cannot possibly know yet this I hope hinders not but that in Processions you may Incense the Images of the Saints and consequently according to your Doctrine do this Honour to the Saints themselves represented by the Images I my self unless I am very much mistaken was present when this very thing was done to the Picture of Saint Benet or Saint Gregory in the Cloyster of Saint Vedustus in the Monastery in Doway But indeed what a ridiculous inconsequence is it to think that Wax Tapers may lawfully be offered to the Saints and incense may not or if Incense may not which you seem to disclaim as impious that Wax Tapers may 4. Demand Whether the Collyridians were not condemned as Hereticks by the Ancient Church First for offering a Cake upon a Anniversary Feast to the Blessed Virgin Secondly for that they did this not being Priests Answ The Collyridians were condemned as Hereticks for two things First for imploying Women in the place and Office of Priests to offer a Cake not in the nature of a gift or present but in the nature of a a Vt in nomen Virginis Collyridem quandam Sacrificarent Epiph. haer 78. Offerunt panem in nomen Mariae omnes autem pane participant Sacrifice which was never lawful for any but b Deo enim ab aeterno nulla tenus mulier Sacrificavit Idem haeres 79. men and those c Diaconissarum ordo est in Ecclesia sed non ad Sacrificandum nam neque Diaconis concreditum est ut aliquod mysterium perficiant Id. Ibid. consecrated Secondly for offering this a vid. sup littera a Sacrifice 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the name of the Blessed Virgin i. e. unto her her self directly and terminatively as an act of b Mortuis eultum divinum praestantes Id. Ibid. And again Revera virgo erat honorata sed non ad adorationem nobis data sed ipsa adorans Deum And again Non ut adoretur Virgo nec ut Deum hanc efficeret c. Sit in honore Maria Pater Filius Spiritus S. adoretur Mariam nemo adoret Deo debetur hoc mysterium Id. Ibid. Divine Worship and adoration due unto her as unto a Sovereign c Pro Deo hanc
spiritual matters as the City was to other Cities and Countries in temporals I leave it to indifferent men to judge 2. Secondly that they differed not only from the particular Roman Church but also from all other Churches that agreed with it in those doctrins 3. Thirdly I desire you would answer me directly whether the Roman Church taking it for that particular Church be of necessity to be held Infallible in Faith by every Roman Catholick or not To this Question I instantly desire a direct answer without tergiversation that we may at length get out of the cloud and you may say Coram quem quaeritis adsum If you say they are not bound to believe so then it is no Article of Faith nor no certain truth upon which men may safely rest without fluctuation or fear of error And if so I demand 1. Why are all your Clergy bound to swear and consequently your Laity if they have Communion of Faith with them by your own grounds bound to believe That the Roman Church is the Mistris of all other Churches where it is evident from the relation and opposition of the Roman to other Churches that the Roman Church is there taken for that particular Church 2. Secondly why then do you so often urge that mistaken saying of Iraeneus Ad hanc Ecclesiam necesse est omnem convenire Ecclesiam falsely translating it as Cardinal Perron in French and my L. F. in English All Churches must agree with this Church for convenire ad signifies not to agree with but to come unto whereas it is evident for the aforesaid reason that the Roman is here taken for that particular Church 3. Thirdly if that particular Church be not certainly infallible but subject to error in points of faith I would know if any division of your Church should happen in which the Church of Rome either alone or with some others should take one way the Churches of Spain and France and many other Churches another what direction should an ignorant Catholick have then from the pretended Guide of Faith How shall he know which of these Companies is the Church seeing all other Churches distinguished from the Roman may err and seeing the Roman Church is now supposed subject to error and consequently not certain to guard those men or those Churches that adhere unto it from erring 4. Fourthly if that particular Church be not infallible in Faith let us then suppose that de facto it does err in faith shall we not then have an Heretical head upon a Catholick body A head of the Church which were no member of the Church which sure were a very strange and heterogeneous Monster If to avoid these inconveniences you will say that Roman Catholicks must of necessity hold that particular Church infallible in faith I suppose it will evidently follow that S. Austin and S. Cyprian notwithstanding those sentences you pretend out of them were no Roman Catholicks seeing they lived and died in the contrary belief and profession Let me see these absurdities fairly and clearly avoided and I will dispute no more but follow you whithersoever you shall lead me 3. Thirdly I answer that the places alledged are utterly impertinent to the conclusion you should have proved which was That it was impossible that two Societies of Christians divided upon what cause soever in external Communion may be in truth and in Gods account both of them parts of the Catholick Church whereas your testimonies if we grant them all say no more but this That the Societies of Hereticks which are such as overthrow any doctrin necessary to salvation and of Schismaticks which are such as separate from the Churches Communion without any pretence of error in the Church or unlawfulness in the conditions of her Communion I say they prove only this that such Societies as these are no parts of the Church which I willingly grant of all such as are properly and formally Hereticks and Schismaticks from which number I think with S. Austin they are to be exempted Qui quaerunt cautâ sollicitudine veritatem corrigi parati cùm invenerint Whereas I put the case of such two Societies which not differing indeed in any thing necessary to salvation do yet erroneously believe that the errors wherewith they charge one another are damnable and so by this opinion of mutual error are kept on both sides from being Hereticks Because I desire to bring you and others to the truth or to be brought to it by you I thought good for your direction in your intended Reply to acquaint you with these things 1. That I conceive the in your discourse is this That whensoever any two Societies of Christians differ in external Communion one of them must be of necessity Heretical or Schismatical I conceive there is no such necessity and that the stories of Victor and the Bishops of Asia S. Cyprian and Pope Stephen make it evident and therefore I desire you to produce some convincing argument to the contrary and that you may the better do it I thought good to inform you what I mean by an Heretick and what by a Schismatick An Heretick therefore I conceive him that holds an Error against Faith with obstinacy Obstinate I conceive him who will not change his Opinion when his reasons for it are so answered that he cannot reply and when the reasons against it are so convincing that he cannot answer them By the Faith I understand all those Doctrines and no more which Christ taught his Apostles and the Apostles the Church yet I exclude not from this number the certain and evident deductions of them A Schismatick I account him and Facundus Hermianensis hath taught me to do so who without any supposing of error in the conditions of a Churches Communion divides himself either from the obedience of that Church to which he owes obedience or from the Communion of that Church to which he owes Communion 2. Another thing which I thought fit to acquaint you with is this That you go upon another very false and deceitful supposition viz. that if we will not be Protestants presently we must be Papists if we forsake the Church of England we must go presently to the Church of Rome Whereas if your Arguments did conclude as they do not that before Luthers time there was some Church of one Denomination which was the Catholick Church I should much rather think it were the Church of Greece than the Church of Rome and I believe others also would think so as well as I but for that reason which one gives why more men hold the Pope above a Council than a Council above a Pope that is because Councils give no maintenance or preferment and the Popes do Think not yet I pray that I say this as if I conceived this to be your reason for preferring the Roman Church before the Greek for I protest I do not but rather that conceiving verily you were to leave the Church of England to avoid