The language of prayer proved to be no indifferent thing from St. Pauls arguments No universal consent for prayers in an unknown tongue by the confession of their own Writers Of their doctrine of the efficacy of Sacraments that it takes away all necessity of devotion in the minds of the receivers This complained of by Cassander and Arnaud but proved against them to be the doctrine of the Roman Church by the Canons of the Council of Trent The great easiness of getting Grace by their Sacraments Of their discouraging the reading the Scriptures A standing Rule of devotion necessary None so fit to give it as God himself This done by him in the Scriptures All persons therefore concerned to read them The arguments against reading the Scriptures would have held against the publishing them in a language known to the peâ—ple The dangers as great then as ever have been since The greatest prudence of the Roman Church is wholly to forbid the Scriptures being acknowledged by their wisest men to be so contrary to their Interest The confession of the Cardinals at Bononia to that purpose The avowed practice of the Roman Church herein directly contrary to that of the Primitive although the reasons were as great then from the danger of Heresies This confessed by their own Writers p. 178 CHAP. IV. Of the Fanaticism of the Roman Church The unreasonableness of objecting Sects and Fanaticisms to us as the effects of reading the Scriptures Fanaticism countenanced in the Roman Church but condemned by ours Private revelations made among them the grounds of believing some points of doctrine proved from their own Authors Of the Revelations pleaded for the immaculate Conception The Revelations of S. Brigitt and S. Catharin directly contrary in this point yet both owned in the Church of Rome The large approbations of S. Brigitts by Popes and Councils and both their revelations acknowledged to be divine in the lessons read upon their dayes S. Catharines wonderful faculty of smelling souls a gift peculiar to her and Philip Nerius The vain attempts of reconciling those Revelations The great number of female Revelations approved in the Roman Church Purgatory Transubstantiation Auricular Confession proved by Visions and Revelations Festivals appointed upon the credit of Revelations the Feast of Corpus Christi on the Revelation made to Juliana the Story of it related from their own Writers No such things can be objected to our Church Revelations still owned by them proved from the Fanatick Revelations of Mother Juliana very lately published by Mr. Cressy Some instances of the blasphemous Nonsense contained in them The Monastick Orders founded in Enthusiasm An account of the great Fanaticism of S. Benedict and S. Romoaldus their hatred of Humane Learning and strange Visions and Revelations The Carthusian Order founded upon a Vision The Carmalites Vision of their habit The Franciscan and Dominican Orders founded on Fanaticism and seen in a Vision of Innocent the third to be the great supporters of the Roman Church The Quakerism of S. Francis described from their best Authors His Ignorance Extasies and Fanatick Preaching The Vision of Dominicus The blasphemous Enthusiasm of the Mendicant Fryers The History of it related at large Of the Evangelium aeternum and the blasphemies contained in it The Author of it supposed to be the General of the Franciscan Order however owned by the Fryers and read and preached at Paris The opposition to it by the Vniversity but favoured by the Popes Gul. S. Amour writing against it his Book publickly burnt by order of the Court of Rome The Popes horrible partiality to the Fryers The Fanaticism of the Franciscans afterwards of the followers of Petrus Johannis de Oliva The Spiritual State began say they from S. Francis The story of his wounds and Maria Visitationis paralleld The canting language used by the spiritual Brethren called Beguini Fraticelli and Bigardi Of their doctrines about Poverty Swearing Perfection the Carnal Church and Inspiration by all which they appear to be a Sect of Quakers after the Order of S. Francis Of the Schism made by them The large spreading and long continuance of them Of the Apostolici and Dulcinistae Of their numerous Conventicles Their high opinion of themselves Their Zeal against the Clergy and Tythes their doctrine of Christian Liberty Of the Alumbrado's in Spain their disobedience to Bishops obstinate adhering to their own fancies calling them Inspirations their being above Ordinances Ignatius Loyola suspected to be one of the Illuminati proved from Melchior Canus The Iesuites Order founded in Fanaticism a particular account of the Romantick Enthusiasm of Ignatius from the Writers of his own Order Whereby it is proved that he was the greatest pretender to Enthusiasm since the dayes of Mahomet and S. Francis Ignatius gave no respect to men by words or putting off his Hat his great Ignorance and Preaching in the Streets his glorying in his sufferings for it his pretence to mortification the wayes he used to get disciples Their way of resolution of difficulties by seeking God their itinerant preaching in the Cities of Italy The Sect of Quakers a new Order of Disciples of Ignatius only wanting confirmation from the Pope which Ignatius obtained Of the Fanatick way of devotion in the Roman Church Of Superstitious and Enthusiastical Fanaticism among them Of their mystical Divinity Mr. Cressy's canting in his Preface to Sancta Sophia Of the Deiform fund of the soul a superessential life and the way to it Of contemplating with the will Of passive Vnions The method of self-Annihilation Of the Vnion of nothing with nothing Of the feeling of not-being The mischief of an unintelligible way of devotion The utmost effect of this way is gross Enthusiasm Mr. Cressy's Vindication of it examined The last sort of Fanaticism among them resisting authority under pretence of Religion Their principles and practices compared with the Fanaticks How far they are disowned at present by them Of the Vindication of the Irish Remonstrance The Court of Rome hath alwayes favoured that party which is most destructive to Civil Government proved by particular and late Instances p. 235 CHAP. V. Of the Divisions of the Roman Church The great pretence of Vnity in the Church of Rome considered The Popes Authority the fountain of that Vnity what that Authority is which is challenged by the Popes over the Christian World the disturbances which have happened therein on the account of it The first Revolt of Rome from the Empire caused by the Popes Baronius his Arguments answered Rebellion the foundation of the greatness of that Church The cause of the strict League between the Popes and the posterity of Charles Martel The disturbances made by Popes in the new Empire Of the quarrels of Greg. 7. with the Empeperour and other Christian Princes upon the pretence of the Popes Authority More disturbances on that account in Christendome than any other matter of Religion Of the Schisms which have happened in the Roman Church particularly those
after the time of Formosus wherein his Ordinations were nulled by his successors the Popes opposition to each other in that Age the miserable state of that Church then described Of the Schisms of latter times by the Italick and Gallick factions the long continuance of them The mischief of those Schisms on their own principles Of the divisions in that Church about the matters of Order and Government The differences between the Bishops and the Monastick Orders about exemptions and priviledges the history of that Controversie and the bad success the Popes had in attempting to compose it Of the quarrel between the Regulars and Seculars in England The continuance of that Controversie here and in France The Jesuits enmity to the Episcopal Order and jurisdiction the hard case of the Bishop of Angelopolis in America The Popes still favour the Regulars as much as they dare The Jesuits way of converting the Chinese discovered by that Bishop Of the differences in matters of Doctrine in that Church They have no better way to compose them than we The Popes Authority never truly ended one Controversie among them Their wayes to evade the decisions of Popes and Councils Their dissensions are about matters of faith The wayes taken to excuse their own difference will make none between them and us manifested by Sancta Clara's exposition oâ— the 39. Articles Their disputes not confined to their Schools proved by a particular instance about the immaculate conception the infinite scandals confessed by theiâ— own Authors to have been in their Church about it From all which it appears that the Church of Rome can have no advantage in point of Vnity above ours p. 355 CHAP. VI. An Answer to the Remainder of the Reply The mis-interpreting Scripture doth not hinder its being a rule of faith Of the superstitious observations of the Roman Church Of Indulgences the practice of them in what time begun on what occasion and in what terms granted Of the Indulgences in Iubilees in the Churches at Rome and upon saying some Prayers Instances of them produced What opinion hath been had of Indulgences in the Church of Rome some confess they have no foundation in Scripture or Antiquity others that they are pious frauds the miserable shifts the defenders of indulgences were put to plain evidences of their fraud from the Disputes of the Schools about them The treasure of the Church invented by Aquinas and on what occasion The wickedness of men increased by Indulgences acknowledged by their own Writers and therefore condemned by many of that Church Of Bellarmins prudent Christians opinion of them Indulgences no meer relaxations of Canonical Penance The great absurdity of the doctrine of the Churches Treasure on which Indulgences are founded at large manifested The tendency of them to destroy devotion proved by experience and the nature of the Doctrine Of Communion in one kind no devotion in opposing an Institution of Christ. Of the Popes power of dispensing contrary to the Law of God in Oaths and Marriages The ill consequence of asserting Marriage in a Priest to be worse than Fornication as it is in the Church of Rome Of the uncertainty of faith therein How far revelation to be believed against sense The arguments to prove the uncertainty of their faith defended The case of a revolter and a bred Papist compared as to salvation and the greater danger of one than the other proved The motives of the Roman Church considered those laid down by Bishop Taylor fully answered by himself An account of the faith of Protestants laid down in the way of Principles wherein the grounds and nature of our certainty of faith are cleared And from the whole concluded that there can be no reasonable cause to forsake the communion of the Church of England and to embrace that of the Church of Rome p. 476 ERRATA PAg. 25. l. 19. for adjuverit r. adjuvet p. ibid. Marg. r. l. 7. de baptis p. 31. Marg. r. Tract 18. in Ioh. p. 64. l. 13. dele only p. 75. Marg. r. Trigaut p. 101. l. 24. for I am r. am I p. 119. l. 28. for is r. in p. 135. Marg. for 68. r. 6. 8. p. 162. l. 17. after did put not Ch. 3. for pennance r. penance p. 219. l. 10. for him r. them p. 257. l. 21. for or r. and l. 31. for never r. ever p. 350. l. 21. for their r. the p. 414. l. 18. for these r. their p. 416. Marg. for nibaldi r. Sinibaldi p. 417. l. 2. before another insert one p. 499. l. 16. after not insert at p. 526. Marg. for act r. art p. 546. l. 8. after for insert one Two Questions proposed by one of the Church of Rome WHether a Protestant haveing the same Motives to become a Catholick which one bred and born and well grounded in the Catholick Religion hath to remain in it may not equally be saved in the profession of it 2. Whether it be sufficient to be a Christian in the abstract or in the whole latitude or there be a necessity of being a member of some distinct Church or Congregation of Christians Answer The first Question being supposed to be put concerning a Protestant yet continuing so doth imply a contradiction viz. That a Protestant continuing so should have the same Motives to become a Catholick takeing that term here only as signifying one of the communion of the Church of Rome which those have who have been born or bred in that communion But supposing the meaning of the Question to be this Whether a Protestant leaving the communion of our Church upon the Motives used by those of the Roman Church may not be equally saved with those who are bred in it I answer 1. That an equal capacity of salvation of those persons being supposed can be no argument to leave the communion of a Church wherein salvation of a person may be much more safe than of either of them No more than it is for a man to leap from the plain ground into a Ship that is in danger of being wrackt because he may equally hope to be saved with those who are in it Nay supposing an equal capacity of salvation in two several Churches there can be no reason to forsake the communion of the one for the other So that to perswade any one to leave our Church to embrace that of Rome it is by no means sufficient to ask whether such a one may not as well be saved as they that are in it already but it is necessary that they prove that it is of necessity to salvation to leave our Church and become a member of theirs And when they do this I intend to be one of their number 2. We assert that all those who are in the communion of the Church of Rome do run so great a hazard of their salvation that none who have a care of their souls ought to embrace it or continue in it And that upon these grounds 1. Because they must
an image if not in one neither is it in the other But what doth this answer signifie unless there be an equal presence and union of the Divine nature of Christ with the Image as there was with the humane nature Which union was the reason of the adoration given to the person of Christ and what ground can there be then of giving divine worship to the Image of Christ unless the same union be supposed If the humane nature without the union of the divine could yield us no sufficient reason of divine worship being given to it how much less can an Image deserve it which can only at the best represent but the external lineaments of that humane nature And if the divine nature be supposed united with the Image then the same divine honour is due to the Image of Christ which is to God himself which yet these Nicene Fathers deny and the Image then joyned with the divine nature is as proper an object of divine worship without respect to any Prototype as the person of Christ is consisting of the divine and humane nature Again they urge If the humane nature of Christ be represented in the Image of Christ to be worshipped as separate from the divine this would be plain Nestorianism To this the good Nicene Fathers not knowing what to answer plainly deny the conclusion and cry They Nestorians No they lye in their teeth they were no more Nestorians than themselves nor so much neither And now good men they say It is true they do represent Christ only by his humane nature in an Image and when they look on Images they understand nothing but what is signified by them as when the birth of the Virgin is represented they conceive in their minds that he who was born was truly God as well as man Alas for them that they should ever be charged with the worship of Images They plead for nothing now but a help to their profound Meditations by them But the Controversie was about worship what ever they think and their Adversaries argument did not lye in the Images being considered as an object of perception but of worship i. e. if the Image can only represent the humane nature of Christ as separate from the divine and in that respect be an object of worship to us then the charge of Nestorianism follows but this they very wisely pass by and their distinction of the Image from the principal cannot serve their turn since the Image receiving the worship due to the principal must have not only the name as they say but the reason of worship common with the principal which it represents After this the Fathers of Constantinople proceed to another Argument which is That all the representation of Christ allowed us by the Gospel is that which Christ himself instituted in the Elements of the Lords Supper whose use was to put us in remembrance of Christ. No other Figure or Type being chosen by Christ as able to represent his being in the flesh but this This was an honourable Image of his quickning body made by himself say they which he would not have of the shape of a man to prevent Idolatry but of a common nature as he took upon him the common nature of man and not any individuated person and as the body of Christ was really sanctified by the divine nature so by institution this holy Image is made divine through sanctification by Grace Here the Nicene Council quarrels with them for calling the Eucharist an Image contrary as they say to the Scriptures and Fathers but they are as much to be believed therein as in their admirable proofs that the worship of Images was the constant doctrine of the Church and having strenuously denyed this they suppose that to be enough to answer the argument Besides these particular arguments against the Images of Christ the Council of Constantinople useth many more against the Images of any other Because these being the chief there can be less reason for any other besides that there is no tradition of Christ or his Apostles or the primitive Fathers for them no way of consecration of them prescribed or practised no suitableness in the use of them to the design of Christian Religion which being in the middle between Iudaism and Paganism it casts off the Sacrifices of the one and not only the Sacrifices but all the Idolatries of the other and it is blasphemy to the Saints in Heaven to call in the Heathen superstitions into Christianity to honour them by that it is unbecoming their glory in Heaven to be set up on earth in dull and sensless Images that Christ himself would not receive testimony from Devils though they spake truth neither can such a Heathenish custome be acceptable to the Saints in Heaven though pretended to be for their honour That nothing can be plainer in the Gospel than that God is a Spirit and will be worshipped in Spirit and in truth to which nothing can be more contrary than the going about to honour God by worshipping any Image of himself or his Saints These and many other arguments from the Scriptures and Fathers that Council insists upon to shew the incongruity of the worship of Images to the nature of God and the design of the Christian Religion to which the Council of Nice returns very weak and trivial answers as shall more largely appear if any one thinks good to defend them And we have this apparent advantage on our side that although the Popes of Rome sided with these worshippers of Images yet the Council at Francford condemned it called together by Charles the Great Not out of misunderstanding their Doctrine as some vainly imagine because as Vasquez well proves the Copy of the Nicene Council was sent to them by Pope Adrian because the Acts of that Council were very well known to the Author of the Book written upon this subject under the name of Charles the Great and published by du Tillet at Paris about the middle of the last Century which is acknowledged by their learnedst men to have been written at the same time because the Popes Legats Theophylactus and Stephanus were present and might easily rectifie any mistake if they were guilty of it and none of the Historians of that time do take notice of any such error among them But Vasquez runs into another strange mistake himself that the Council of Francford did not condemn that of Nice which is evident they did expresly by the second Canon of of that Council published by Sirmondus And all the Objections of Vasquez are taken off by what Sirmondus speaks of the great authority and antiquity of that MS. from which he published them and from the consent of the Historians of that time that the Council of Francford did reject that of Nice and Sirmondus saith they had good reason to deny it to be an Oecumenical Council where only the Greeks met together and none of other Provinces were called
were far better hold their peace It is very impertinent to say that the Apostle speaks only of extraordinary gifts and not of the settled and ordinary devotions of the Church For the case is the same where the language is not understood whether it be spoken by a Miracle or not And the Apostle layes down a general rule from this particular case that all things must be done to edifying which it appears he judges the use of an unknown language not to be And if after all this it be in the Churches power to reverse the Apostles decree as to praying in an unknown language they may use the very same power as to all other Offices of Religion and may command preaching to be in a tongue as unknown as praying that so the people may meet together and pray and hear Sermons and understand never a word for their great edification Unless among us God should put it into their hearts to speak English whether they would or no as was once said by an ignorant person on the like occasion If all that is intended in the prayers of the people be only an intention to pray whatever the words be Abracadabra might serve to pray with as well as Ave Maria and the old Womans saying of it Avi Mari gratia plinam dams ticum beneditta tu in mulabs yeth Benedictus frictus frentris tui sweet Iesus Amen was as effectual a prayer if she meant it so as could be uttered by the most skilful Priest § 5. 3. But the universal consent of the Christian Church is pleaded for this practice only Protestants excepted and therefore it is insolent madness in them to oppose it as St. Austin saith but we had however rather follow St. Paul who saith it were madness to practise it But I assure you Madam we are not to take all things for granted which are told us by them concerning the opinions and practices of the Eastern Churches as I may in time discover but in this he saith our own Protestant Authors of the Bible of many languages Lond. A. D. 1655. do confess that in most of the Sects of the Christians they have not only the Scriptures but also the Liturgies and Rituals in a tongue unknown but to the learned from which he concludes this to be an universal practice both in the Primitive Greek and Latin Churches and in these latter Sects of Eastern Christians It were a very pleasant enquiry how in the Primitive Greek and Latin Churches the service could be in an unknown language when Greek and Latin were the Mother Tongues of those Churches Doth he think they did not understand their own Mother Tongues How many of their own Writers have confessed that in the Primitive Churches all publick Offices of Religion were performed in the proper language of every Countrey which in express words is affirmed by Origen against Celsus and some of the Church of Rome have been so ingenuous to confess it were much better that custome were restored again So Cassander affirms of Cajetan and that being reproved for it he said he learned this doctrine from St. Paul 1 Cor. 14. and the Title of the twenty eighth Chapter of Cassander his Liturgicks is That the Antients read the Canonical Prayer and the consecration of the Eucharist so as the people did understand it and say Amen Lyra saith That all publick Offices of Religion were in the Primitive Church performed in the Vulgar Tongue So that it was not upon the account of any sanctity in the Greek or Latin that they were more used but because they were more generally understood On which account Pope Innocent the third gave strict command that where people of different languages did inhabit care should be taken to provide men able to administer Sacraments and instruct them in their several tongues which decree of his is inserted in the Canon Law and was not intended out of honour to the Greek and Latin Tongues only but the advantage of the people So likewise Iohn the eighth yielded to the Prince of Moravia to have their Liturgy in the Sclavonian Tongue because St. Paul saith Let every Tongue praise the Lord which is the reason given by the Pope in his Letter extant in Baronius and not meerly on the account of a present necessity for want of Priests who could read Latin as Bellarmin conjectures for he appoints it should be first read in the Sclavonian tongue If this were then a Catholick practice these Popes were hugely to blame to give way to the breach of it And Walafridus Strabo saith in his time among the Scythians the divine Offices were performed in the German Tongue which was common to them and the Germans But our own Protestant Writers he saith own this to be in use in the most Sects of Christians I have endeavoured to find this confession in the Preface cited by him but I cannot meet with it and the learned Bishop who writ it understood these things better than to write so It is true he saith not in the Preface but Proleg 13. n. 19. that the Syriack Tongue is the Tongue of the learned among the Christians throughout the East as appears by the Liturgies and divine Offices which are almost every where performed in this language although it be the Mother-tongue now only to a few about Mount Libanus but any one who enquires into a Catholick practice must not meerly give an account of the most Eastern Christians of whom he here speaks For there are many considerable Churches besides these which do to this day use their own language in their Liturgies as their own Writers attest but I need not go about to prove this since Bellarmin confesseth That the Armenians Aethiopians Aegyptians Russians and others do it but he saith he is no more moved by these than by the practice of Protestants but we cannot but be moved so far by it as thereby to see that the practice of the Church of Rome is no more a Catholick practice than it is founded either on Scripture or Reason § 6. 2. I said the sincerity of devotion was obstructed by making the efficacy of Sacraments to depend on the bare administration whether our minds be prepared for them or not This he saith he had rather look upon as a mistake than a calumny having never read any Council wherein this doctrine is defined and as to the Sacrament of Pennance which he supposeth I chiefly mean the Council of Trent hath determined it to be a calumny for any to say that according to their doctrine it doth confer grace without the good motion of the receiver Madam I either expected he should have understood the doctrine of his own party better or been more ingenuous in confessing it For my quarrel had no particular respect to the Sacrament of Pennance more than to any other Sacrament of theirs and if I can make it appear that it is their doctrine that the efficacy
This is my body Why do not then the people as readily believe that as any other proposition By which we see it is not meerly reading but a more dangerous thing called considering or reasoning which make them embrace some things as they lye in words and interpret others according to the clearest evidence which the nature of the thing the comparing with other places and the common sense of mankind will give But why are we not all of a mind I would fain know the time when men were so This variety of Sects was objected against the Philosophers and thought no argument then it was objected against the primitive Christians and thought of no force then why must it signifie more in England than ever it did in any other age or place But say they It was otherwise in England before the Scriptures came to be read by all it was and is otherwise in all Churches where they are not read therefore these Sects and Fanaticisms are the dire effects of the promiscuous reading the Scriptures This is the common and popular argument All things were well with us when we offered up Cakes to the Queen of Heaven when all joyned in the communion of the Roman Church then there were no Fanaticisms nor New Lights no Sects as there are now in England therefore why should any one make any doubt but he ought to return to the Church of Rome This necessarily leads me into the examination of these two things 1. Whether there be no danger of Fanaticism in the Roman Church 2. Whether the Vnity of that Church be so admirable to tempt all persons who prize the Churches Vnity to return to it § 2. Concerning the danger of Fanaticism in the Roman Church By Fanaticism we understand either an Enthusiastick way of Religion or resisting authority under a pretence of Religion In either sense it shall appear that the Church of Rome is so far from being cleared from it that it hath given great encouragement to it 1. As to an Enthusiastick way of Religion I shall now prove that there have not been greater Enthusiasts among us in England than have been in the Roman Church all the difference is they have been some alwayes others for a time allowed and countenanced and encouraged by those of the Church of Rome but among us they have been decryed and opposed by all the members of the Church of England I shall not insist upon the resolution of faith and the infallibility of the Church which must be carried to Enthusiasm at last but I shall prove it by plain revelations which have been made the grounds among them of believing some doctrines in dispute and the reasons of setting up a more perfect way of life which in the highest strain of their devotion is meer Enthusiasm 1. Revelations have been pleaded by them in matters of doctrine such I mean which depend upon immediate impulses and inspirations since the Canon of Scripture and Apostolical Traditions Of this we have a remarkable instance in a late controversie managed with great heat and interest on both sides viz. of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary about the ending of which a solemn Embassy was sent from the Kings of Spain Philip the third and Philip the fourth to the Popes Paul the fifth and Gregory the thirteenth and an account is given of it by one concerned himself in the management of the Theological part of it which he saith is therefore published that the world may understand upon what grounds the doctrines of faith are established among them One of the chief whereof insisted upon was some private revelations made to some Saints about the immaculate conception which being once received in the Church adds no small strength he saith to any doctrine and gives a solid foundation for a definition i. e. that the matter may be defined to be of faith and necessary to be believed by all Christians Upon this he reckons up several revelations publickly received in the Church one mentioned by Anselm being a divine apparition to an Abbot in a storm a fit time for apparitions whereby he was admonished to keep the Feast of the Conception of the blessed Virgin upon which as Baronius observes that Feast was first kept in England Which revelation Wadding tells us is publickly recited in the office for the day and was not only extant in several Breviaries of England France Spain and Italy but he had divers himself authorized by the Pope wherein it was recommended as true and piously to be believed and accordingly have been publickly sung and used in the Church about an hundred years And what saith he is the consequence of disbelieving this but to say in effect that the Pope and the Roman Church are easily cheated and abused by impostures and forgers of false revelations to institute new Festival Solemnities upon the credit of them Another revelation was made to Norbertus the founder of the Order of the Praemonstratenses in which the Virgin Mary appeared and commended her veneration to him and gave him a white garment in token of her Original Innocency which revelation is believed by all of that Order and taken as the reason of their habit Besides these there are several other revelations to S. Gertrude and others to the same purpose reckoned up by several Catholick Authors which no man ought to reject unless he intends to be as great a Heretick or therein as wise a man as Erasmus was Nay these revelations were so frequent he saith that there hath been no age since the tenth Century wherein there hath not been some made to devout men or women about this matter But above all these most remarkable were those to S. Brigitt who had not one or two but many to this purpose and the latest were of Joanna a Cruce which it seems were at first eagerly opposed but at last came out with the approbation of two Cardinals and several Bishops of the Inquisition in Spain But now who could imagine a thing so often revealed so publickly allowed so many times attested from Heaven should not be generally received but the mischief of it was the contrary doctrine had revelations for it too For Antoninus and Cajetan say S. Catharine of Siena had it revealed to her that she was conceived with Original sin What is to be done now Here we have Saint against Saint Revelation against Revelation S. Catharine against S. Brigitt and all the rest of them Here to speak truth they are somewhat hard put to it for they grant God cannot contradict himself and therefore of one these must be false but which of them is all the question Here they examine which of these doctrines is most consonant to Scripture and Tradition which is most for the benefit of the Church which were persons of the greater sanctity and whose revelations were the most approved For. S. Brigitts they plead stoutly that when they were delivered by her
last times wherein he doth at large set forth the hypocrisie idleness flattery and baseness of the Fryers but coming to shew the near approach of the dangers he mentions he saith It is now fifty five years for about that time Almaric broached his doctrine that some have endeavoured to change the Gospel of Christ into another Gospel which they said would be better more perfect and worthy which they call the Gospel of the Holy Ghost or the everlasting Gospel which will by its coming turn the Gospel of Christ out of doors as saith he we are ready to prove out of that cursed Gospel and a little after he adds That this Everlasting Gospel was publickly explained at Paris A. D. 1254. from whence it is certain that it would be preached unless there were some other thing which hindered And afterwards he saith That in that Book this Everlasting Gospel is said to exceed the Gospel of Christ as much as the light of the Sun doth that of the Moon or the Kernel doth the Shell This Book of his extreamly incensed the Fryers and they presently sent informations against him to the Pope and by their interest got his Book to be condemned and burnt publickly before the Pope and the Court at Anagnia and afterwards at Paris to which purpose the Pope published a Bull and denounced the sentence of excommunication against any who should presume to defend it and the Write of it was deprived of his Ecclesiastical Promotions and banished France as far as the Popes power could do it All this was done in great haste before the Legats from the Vniversity could appear and when they came three of them recanted and returned only Gul. de S. Amore resolved to stand it out and answered all their objections and persisted still in the accusation of that horrible Book and at last prevailed so much that the Pope was fain to condemn the Evangelium aeternum together with S. Amours Book but it appears how unwillingly he did it by his carriage in it which is related by Matth. Paris for he condemned the other Book solemnly and caused the sentence to be publickly executed but he gave order that this Book should be secretly burnt and as much as might be without any offence to the Fryers Lo here the true zeal of the Head of the Church A Book only writ against the Mendicant Fryers is condemned as impious wicked execrable and what not in the Bull against it and a Book against Christian Religion in the highest manner hardly procured to be condemned and when it is with great fear of displeasing the Authors and approvers of it And since that time they have been very careful to suppress the least mention of the latter but very forward to set forth the other For in the Roman Bullarium the Bull against S. Amours Book is set forth at large but not the least intimation of any such Book condemned as the Evangelium aeternum So much dearer to the Pope is the honour of Fryers than of Christ and the Christian Religion And therefore S. Amour said well in the University of Paris before they went That it was to no purpose to go about to procure the condemning that Book at Rome where it had so many Favourers the design of it being to advance the honour of Religious Orders though to the overthrow of the Gospel of Christ. It is well these things were written and preserved by Writers of their own Church and persons of the same Age out of whom only I have given account of them for otherwise according to their usual Method of confuting things which do not please them they would be denyed with a mighty confidence and the world should be told that these are only the Lyes and Forgeries of Hereticks But these are to their shame preserved in their own Books and we can shew them the very words if occasion requires it § 9. Yet we are not to think that only the preaching Fryers sell into these extravagancies for the Franciscans had a great hand in them too and were as forward to promote that which they accounted their common interest And notwithstanding the Popes condemning the Book said to be taken out of Abbot Ioachims Writings yet his doctrine did in no long time after break forth again in the Franciscan Order For toward the latter end of the same Century or as most think in the beginning of the next in the time of Clement the fifth appeared one Petrus Iohannis de Oliva a great Disciple of Ioachims as Guido Carmelita Alphonsus a Castro and Franciscus Pegna affirm All the difference saith Alphonsus between them was that Ioachim made the spiritual State to commence from the founding the Benedictine Order but Petrus Iohannis would have it begin only from S. Francis Which State as Eymericus relates where he recounts his errors began with the Franciscan Order when the Angel of Christ that is S. Francis did set his mark upon all his Souldiers and that S. Francis appeared as Christ did with his wounds upon him For we are to understand that S. Francis in one of his Visions upon the very day of the exaltation of the Cross had the same bleeding wounds on his hands feet and side which Christ had upon the Cross and carried them for two years together before his death and lest this should be suspected Pope Alexander the fourth preached it in S. Bonaventures hearing that himself saw them as the sixth Lesson on S. Francis day in the Roman Breviary and Bonaventure assure us And who dares question the infallibility of the Popes eye-sight Unless the Story in latter times of Maria Visitationis as she was called Abbesse of the Annuntiation in Lisbon may give some suspicion of it For this Virgin had gained so great a reputation for sanctity not only in Portugal but in Spain Italy and the East Indies that she seemed to be a fit match for S. Francis And she out-did him in the number of her wounds for she had thirty two upon her head caused by Christs putting his Crown of Thorns upon her and in her hands and â—eet and side they were as exact as in St. Francis she made no difficulty of shewing them if her Confessor bid her but never otherwise lest she should seem too much to glory in the honour which Christ had done her This Confessor was no less a man than Ludovicus Granatensis a man highly commended for learning and piety who as verily believed them as Pope Alexander did those of S. Francis One day in the Week she laid raggs to her wounds upon which the print of the wounds was made These rags with incredible devotion saith the Writer of the Story were sent to the Pope himself and to the greatest and most religious persons in all parts by whom they were received with great Veneration And when he was Inquisitor in Sicily he saith he saw many of them
condemn them And they triumph in nothing more than when they can handsomely revenge themselves on that bitter enemy of theirs called Reason which they never do with greater pleasure than when they pretend it to be upon the account of Religion In the Church of Rome the case hath been thus among them as in all Religions and places in the World there are some persons of a temper naturally disposed more to Religion than others are being melancholy thoughtful tender and easily moved by hopes and fears These do more easily receive the impressions of Religion which they being possessed with if they be not carefully governed are more lyable to fall into the dotages of superstition or to be transported by the heats of Enthusiasme Against both of them there can be no better cure imaginable than the true understanding the nature and reasonableness of the Christian Religion which fills our minds with a true sense of God and goodness and so arms us against superstition and withall acquaints us that the conduct of the Spirit of God is in the use of the greatest reason and prudence and so prevents the follies of Enthusiasme But it being so much the design of that Church to keep the members of it from knowing any thing against her interest so much as the true practice of Christianity is and therefore keeping the Bible out of the hands of the people they must substitute some other wayes in the room of that to gratifie the earthy dulness of a superstitious temper and the airiness and warmth of the Enthusiastical For the former they are abundantly provided by a tedious and ceremonious way of external devotion as dull and as cold as the earth it self to the other they commend abstractedness of life mental prayer passive unions a Deiform fund of the soul a state of introversion divine inspirations which must either end in Enthusiasme or madness And the perfection of this state lying in an intime Vnion with God as they speak whereby the soul is Deified is to be attained only in the way of unknowing for nothing so dangerous as the use of reason and self-annihilation and many other things as impossible to be understood as practised Which makes it difficult to give any account of such unintelligible stuffe for we must only grope in obscurity and profound darkness and draw a Night piece without lights This way came first into request in the Monastick orders by the examples of their founders as will easily appear by our former discourse but the men who most solemnly preached and divulged it were Rusbrochius Suso Harphius c. and he who in these latter ages hath gathered together most that had been said before him and is commended by Balthasar Corderius and others as a most sublime interpreter of mystical Divinity Ludovicus Blosius from these it were not difficult to put together some of their words and phrases as an account of their Divinity but I rather choose to do it chiefly from a late Author published by Mr. Cressy not many years since who after his many turnings and changes of opinions sits down at last as appears by his publishing Mother Iuliana's revelations and the Preface to Sancta Sophia with the deserved Character of a Popish Fanatick Which Book of Sancta Sophia being compiled by Mr. Cressy out of many writings of Father Augustin Baker and set forth A. D. 1657. with large approbations at the beginning and end of it I hope no doctrine contained therein will be thought a scandal to their Church The design of it is as the title tells us To give directions for the Prayer of Contemplation c. I would they had given directions for understanding it in the first place for if we have no other help than what Mr. Cressy gives in his Preface we may as well hope to understand the Quakers Canting as Mr. Cressy's Let the Reader judge by these few passages in his Preface The only proper disposition towards the receiving supernatural irradiations from Gods holy Spirit is an abstraction of life a sequestration from all business that concern others though it be their salvation and an attendance to God alone in the depth of the Spirit and a little after the lights here desired and prayed for are such as do expel all images of creatures and do calm all manner of passions to the end that the soul being in a vacuity may be more capable of receiving and entertaining God in the pure fund of the Spirit What this pure fund of the Spirit means I had been somewhat to seek for had not Lud. Blosius in the Preface to his spiritual Institution told us that the Deiform fund of the soul is the simple essence of the soul stamped with a divine impress or if this be not plain enough that from whence ariseth a super-essential life but if yet it cannot be understood we may be the less troubled at it since the same Author saith afterward that very few do know that hidden fund of their souls or believe that they have such a thing within them It being it seems like some very cunning drawer in a Cabinet where the main treasure lyes which the owner himself cannot find out till it be broken to pieces for self-annihilation is necessarily required in order to it And this super-essential life as he admirably describes it is a way of knowing without thoughts of seeing in darkness of understanding without reason of unknowing God by perceiving him of being melted and brought to nothing first and then being lost and swallowed up in God by which means all created being is put off and that which is only divine put on being changed into God as iron heated into the nature of fire This being the state of perfection aimed at here in this world we must now consider the directions given in order to it To this end in the first place a contemplative state is commended above an active as more perfect and more easie more simple and more secure from all errours and illusions which may be occasioned by an indiscreet use of Prayer Where by an active and contemplative state we must not understand what we commonly do by those terms but the active-state is the use of reasoning and internal discourse to fix our affections upon God and expressing it self in sensible devotion and outward acts of obedience to Gods will the contemplative in the Authors language is seeking God in the obscurity of faith with a more profound introversion of Spirit and with less activity and motion in sensitive nature and without the use of grosser images and such souls are not of themselves he saith much inclined to external works but they seek rather to purifie themselves and inflame their hearts to the love of God by internal quiet and pure actuations in spirit by a total abstraction from creatures by solitude both external and especially internal so disposing themselves to receive the influxes and inspirations of God
preserve the honour of Regicides it was but seven months and twenty four dayes before Ravaillac perfected that work which the other had begun This observation I owe to an ingenuous and learned Doctor of the Sorbon yet living who detests these practices and doctrines and himself lyes under the same censure there And the more to abuse the world on the same day a Book of Mariana's was suspended which those who look no farther than the name might imagine was the dangerous Book so much complained of but upon search it appears to be a Book quite of another nature concerning Coynes The latter instance concerns the Irish Remonstrance the account of which I take from Caron the publisher of it The Popish Clergy of Ireland a very few excepted were accused of Rebellion for opposing themselves to the Kings Authority by the instigation of the Popes Nuncio after which followed a meeting of the Popish Bishops where they banished the Kings Lieutenant and took the Royal Authority upon themselves almost all the Clergy and a great part of the people joyned with them and therefore it was necessary since the Kings return to give him better satisfaction concerning their Allegiance and to decline the Oath of Allegiance which they must otherwise have taken some of them agree upon this Remonstrance to present to the King the news of which was no sooner come to Rome but Cardinal Barberin sends a Letter to the Irish Nobility 8 July A. D. 1662. to bid them take heed of being drawn into the ditch by those blind guides who had subscribed to some propositions testifying their Loyalty to the King which had been before condemned by the Apostolick See After this the Popes Nuncio at Brussels Iuly 21. 1662. sends them word how displeasing their Remonstrance was at Rome and that after diligent examination by the Cardinals and Divines they found it contained Propositions already condemned by Paul 5. and Innocent 10. and therefore the Pope gave him order to publish this among them that he was so far from approving their Remonstrance that he did not so much as permit it or connive at it and was extremely grieved that the Irish Nobility were drawn into it and therefore condemned it in this form That it could not be kept without breach of faith according to the Decree of Paul 5. and that it denyed the Popes Authority in matters of faith according to that of Innocent 10. By this very late instance we see what little countenance they receive from Rome who offer to give any reasonable security to the King of their Loyalty and by the Popes own Declaration the giving of it is an injury to the faith and a denying his Supremacy For which we are to understand that A. D. 1648. when the Papists were willing to make as good terms for themselves as they could and it was objected to them that they held Principles inconsistent with Civil Government viz. that the Pope can absolve them from their obedience that he can depose and destroy Heretical Magistrates that he can dispense with all Oaths and contracts they make with those whom they call Hereticks upon which they met together and to save themselves from banishment resolved them in the Negative but no sooner was this heard at Rome but the sacred Congregation condemned this resolution as heretical and the subscribers as lyable to the penalties against those who deny the Popes Authority in matters of faith upon which they are cited to appear at Rome and Censures and Prisons are there prepared for them The summ of it then is that they can give no security of their Loyalty to the King against the Popes power to depose him and absolve his Subjects from whatever Oaths they make to him or they must be accounted Hereticks at Rome for so doing For this good old Cause is as much still in request at Rome as ever and it is in their power to be accounted Hereticks at Rome or bad Subjects in their own Countrey but one of them they cannot avoid So much may suffice to shew that the most dangerous Principles of Fanaticism either as to Enthusiasm or Civil Government are owned and allowed in the Church of Rome and therefore the number of Fanaticks among us is very unjustly charged upon the Reading the Scriptures in our own Language CHAP. V. Of the Divisions of the Roman Church The great pretence of Vnity in the Church of Rome considered The Popes Authority the fountain of that Vnity what that Authority is which is challenged by the Popes over the Christian World the disturbances which have happened therein on the account of it The first revolt of Rome from the Empire caused by the Popes Baronius his Arguments answered Rebellion the foundation of the greatness of that Church The cause of the strict League between the Popes and the posterity of Charles Martel The disturbances made by Popes in the new Empire Of the quarrels of Greg. 7. with the Emperour and other Christian Princes upon the pretence of the Popes Authority More disturbances on that account in Christendome than any other matter of Religion Of the Schisms which have happened in the Roman Church particularly those after the time of Formosus wherein his Ordinations were nulled by his successours the Popes opposition to each other in that Age the miserable state of that Church then described Of the Schisms of latter times by the Italick and Gallick factions the long continuance of them The mischief of those Schisms on their own principles Of the divisions in that Church about matters of Order and Government The differences between the Bishops and the Monastick Orders about exemptions and priviledges the history of that Controversie and the bad success the Popes had in attempting to compose it Of the quarrel between the Regulars and Seculars in England The continuance of that Controversie here and in France The Jesuits enmity to the Episcopal Order and jurisdiction the hard case of the Bishop of Angelopolis in America The Popes still favour the Regulars as much as they dare The Jesuits way of converting the Chinese discovered by that Bishop Of the differences in matters of Doctrine in that Church They have no better way to compose them than we The Popes Authority never truly ended one Controversie among them Their wayes to evade the decisions of Popes and Councils Their dissensions are about matters of faith The wayes taken to excuse their own differences will make none between them and us manifested by Sancta Clara's exposition of the 39 Articles Their disputes not confined to their Schools proved by a particular instance about the immaculate conception the infinite scandals confessed by their own Authors to have been in their Church about it From all which it appears that the Church of Rome can have no advantage in point of Vnity above ours 2. § 1. THE other thing objected as flowing from the promiscuous reading the Scriptures is the number of our Sects and the
over them in several things mentioned as grievances by them he publishes two Bulls or decretal Epistles to forbid the Bishops doing it for the future upon this the Fryers openly contemn the Bishops and Preach where they please and hear confessions and bury the dead in spight of them and the Parochial Clergy Innocent 4. finding how necessary their help was to him in the Controversies between him and the Emperour confirms the same priviledges to them by which they grew so insolent that they called the Parish Priests as Matthew Paris relates Ideots Dunces Drunkards Blind guids and would make the people believe that all knowledge and sanctity was only among them insomuch that in Petrus de Vineis who lived in that Age and was Chancellour to the Emperour we read a miserable complaint of the Parochial Clergy against the Fryers viz. that by these means they were brought under the greatest contempt to the general scandal of Religion they expressing the most bitter hatred against them imaginable reproaching their lives and lessening their dues so as they were brought to nothing by it and they were made a laughing stock to all people that they took away the main of their imployment from them and drew away the People from the Churches to the Convents teling them the word of God was to be heard only among them That they had nothing now left to do but to pull down their Churches in which they had scarce any thing left besides a Bell and an old resty Image but these holy Fryers while they had nothing possessed all things and professing poverty were extreamly rich But Innocent 4. a little before his death being wearied by the complaints of the Bishops and Clergy revoked the priviledges which he had so largely granted to the Fryers and confined them within certain limits forbidding them to draw away the people from their Parish Churches upon Sundayes and Holy-dayes or admitting any to pennance who had not first confessed to their Parish-priest but the Fryers were as far from being pacified by this as the Clergy were by the former for therein the Pope upbraids them with violating the rights of others with blaspheaming Religion by such actions displeasing God and drawing the souls of the faithful to perdition but he dying assoon as they had notice of this Bull they said it was a just judgement of God upon him for revoking their priviledges And Alexander 4. was no sooner settled in his Chair but they procured another Bull from him to call in that of Innocent 4. and immediately to suspend all execution of it but this did not satisfie them for they boasted they had killed Pope Innocent by their Prayers and that the V. Mary every time they invocated her name turned to her Son and said Son hear them upon which Innocent was presently struck with a Palsie and dyed from whence arose a saying in the Court of Rome from the Fryers Letanies good Lord deliver us This is related as true by Bzovius ad A. D. 1254. but is looked on as a fable of the Fryers by D'attichy Raynaldus du Boulay and others of any judgement among them But this Bull of Alexander nor all the rest he made for their sakes could make the Bishops and the Clergy give up their rights for in the time of Martin 4. the Fryers procured another Bull for hearing Confessions without license from the Bishops upon which the contention increased between the Bishops and the Fryers insomuch that not waiting the Popes revocation of his grant which he was inclined to by the perswasions of the Bishop of Amiens they called a Synod of the Gallican Church at Paris A. D. 1284. wherein the Archbishop of Bourges being president declared to them that being Pastors of the flock they ought to lay down their lives for their sheep and not to suffer the encroachments were made upon them by the Fryers by whom all things were brought to confusion in the Church that they had used all fair wayes of prevailing with them by the intreaties of the King and Nobles to forbear such intrusions into their offices as they were continually guilty of but all to no purpose they still defending themselves by Papal priviledges whereas there had been contrary Bulls to another granted at Rome And it was then agreed among them that they should maintain their own office against the Fryers incroachments by which the contention increased to so great a height that many invectives Apologies and libels were published one against another to the great disgrace saith Meyerus of the whole Ecclesiastical Order Upon which Pope Martin endeavoured an accommodation by another Bull wherein he required that all Parishioners should Confess to their own Parish Priest at least once a year But this was as far from making peace as any before therefore from Boniface 8. the Fryers procured a new Bull of priviledges which absolutely nulls all the former Bulls of restriction and limitation and by the fulness of his Apostolical power doth exempt them from all manner of power or jurisdiction of the Bishops or any other Ecclesiastical persons and decrees that they were immediately subject to the Pope and to none else And yet this Pope himself not many years after retracted this Bull and set forth that which Clement 5. renewed in order to the composing this difference which had now to the great demonstration of their Vnity and the Popes Authority continued with great violence above fifty years and was far from being ended by this Bull for Benedict 11. in another published on the same occasion saith that instead of peace troubles arose by it instead of unity and concord greater divisions and disturbances and by cutting off one head of the Hydra seven more came into its room Are not the Popes great Peace-makers the mean while Therefore he resolves to try what the other way would do and again inlarges the priviledges of the Fryers which being sound as unsuccessful as ever Clement 5. resumes the Constitution of Boniface which this Pope condemned and to as little purpose as the other had done before And now let us soberly consider whether there hath not alwayes been an admirable Vnity in the Roman Church or if divisions have arose a ready means to suppress them Here we have the Popes interposing by Bull after Bull and so far from ending the differences that occasioned them that they begot more which made the Popes contradict one another nay the same Pope to contradict himself and so the differences became greater than they were at first And after all these Bulls we find the very same Controversie at as great a height in England and Ireland as ever it had been in France or Germany Wadding saith it went so high that the Bishops and Clergy here would not suffer the Fryers to enjoy any of the priviledges granted them by the Popes which caused an appeal to the Pope made by the Fryers to whom in
by our Church Art 25. he saith they are not absolutely rejected as Sacraments but as Sacraments of the same Nature with Baptism and the Lords Supper which they yield to For Transubstantiation which is utterly denyed by our Church Art 28. he very subtilly interprets it of a carnal presence of Christs Body which he grants to be repugnant to Scripture and to destroy the nature of a Sacrament but they do believe Christs Body to be present after the manner of a Spirit and so our Church doth not condemn theirs As to communion in both kinds asserted by our Church Art 30. he saith it is not condemned by the Council of Trent therein which only Anathematizes those who make it necessary to Salvation which our Church mentions not and however we condemn communion in one kind Canus proves him not to be guilty of Heresie who should say that the Church hath erred therein The 31 Article condemns the Sacrifice of the Masse i.e. saith he independently on the Sacrifice of the Crosse which is propitiatory of it self and the other only by vertue of it The 32. of the lawfulness of Priests Marriage he understands of the Law of God in respect of which it is the most common opinion among them he saith that it is lawful The 34. about Traditions he interprets of those which are not Doctrinal The Book of Homilies approved Art 35. he understands as they do Books approved by their Church not of every sentence contained therein but the substance of the Doctrine and he grants there are many good things contained therein For the 36. of consecration of Bishops and Ministers he proves from Vasquez Conink Arcudius and Innocent 4. that our Church hath all the essentials of Ordination required in Scripture and if the difference of form of words did null our Ordinations it would do those of the Greek Church too The last Article he examins is Art 37. Of the Civil Magistrates power in opposition to the Popes Authority and he grants that the King may be allowed a Supermacy i.e. such as may not be taken away by any one as his Superiour and that by custome a sufficient right accrues to him over all Ecclesiastical causes and that by divine and natural right he hath jurisdiction over all Ecclesiastical persons so far as the publick good is concerned And withall he grants that we yield no spiritual jurisdiction to the King and no more than is contended for by the French and the Parliament of Paris That part which denyes the Popes jurisdiction in England he saith may be understood of the Popes challenging England to be a Fee of the Roman See but if it be otherwise understood he makes use of many Scholastick distinctions of actus signatus exercitus c. the sense of which is that it is in some cases lawful for a temporal Prince to withdraw his obedience from the Pope but leaves it to be discussed whether he had sufficient reason for doing it But there can be no Heresie in matter of fact it remains then according to the sense put upon our Articles by him with the help of his Scholastick subtleties we differ no more from them in points of faith than they do from one another For such kind of distinctions and senses are they forced to use and put upon each others opinions to excuse them from disagreeing in articles of faith and there is no reason that we should not enjoy the benefit of them as well as they so that either they must be guilty of differing in matters of faith or we are not § 16. 3. They plead that their differences are only confined to their Schools and do not disturb the peace of the Church But there is as little truth in this as there is Vnity in their Church as plainly appears by what hath been said already Was the Controversie about the Popes temporal power confined to the Schools did not that make for several Ages as great disturbances in the Church as were ever known in it upon any quarrel of Religion Were the Controversies between the Bishops and the Monks confined to their Schools about the extent of the Episcopal jurisdiction in former times or in the renewing of this Hierarchical Warr as one of the Iansenists calls it in France But these things are at large discovered already I shall only adde one thing more which seems more like a dispute of the Schools between the several Orders among them about the immaculate conception and it will easily appear that whereever that dispute began it did not rest in the Schools if we consider the tumults and disturbances which have been made only on the account of it This Controversie began in the Schools about the beginning of the 14 Century when Scotus set up for a new Sect in opposition to Thomas Aquinas and among other points of Controversie he made choice of this to distinguish his followers by but proposed it himself very timerously as appears by his resolution of it in his Book on the Sentences however his followers boast that in this blessed quarrel he was sent for from Oxford to Paris from Paris to Cologne to overthrow all Adversaries and that he did great wonders every where But however this were there were some not long after him who boldly asserted what he doubtfully proposed of whom Franciscus Mayronis is accounted the first after him Petrus Aureolus Occam and the whole order of Franciscans But the great strength of this opinion lay not in the wit and subtilty of the defenders of it nor in any arguments from Scripture or Antiquity but in that which they called the Piety of it i. e. that it tended to advance the honour of the B. Virgin For after the worship of her came to be so publick and solemn in their Church I do not in the least wonder that they were willing to believe her to be without sin I much rather admire they do not believe all their Canonized Saints to have been so too and I am sure the same reasons will hold for them all But this Opinion by degrees obtaining among the people it grew scandalous for any man to oppose it So Walsingham saith towards the latter end of this Century the Dominicans Preaching the contrary opinion against the command first of the Bishops in France and then of the King and Nobles they were out-lawed by the King and absolutely forbid to go out of their own Convents for fear of seducing the people and not only so but to receive any one more into their Order that so the whole Order might in a little time be extinguished The occasion of this persecution arose from a disturbance which happened in Paris upon this Controversie one Ioh. de Montesono publickly read against the immaculate conception at which so great offence was taken that he was convented before the Faculty of Sorbonne but he declared that he had done nothing but by advice of the chief of his Order
for the possibility of salvation allowed to any in their Church is built upon the supposition that they have all that is fundamentally necessary in order to it though there are many dangerous errours and corruptions in that Church whose communion they live in § 16. The Answers to the first Question being thus vindicated there remains little to be added concerning the second For he tells me that he agrees so far with me that every Christian is bound to choose the communion of the purest Church But which that Church is must be seen by the grounds it brings to prove the doctrines it teaches to have been delivered by Christ and his Apostles And to be even with him I thus far agree with him in the way of proof of a Churches purity viz. by agreement with the doctrine of Christ and his Apostles and that that Church is to be judged purest which shews the greatest evidence of that consent and that every one is bound to enquire which Church hath the strongest Motives for it and to embrace the communion of it Being thus far agreed I must now enquire into what motives he offers on behalf of their Church and what method he prescribes for delivering ours For the former he produces a large Catalogue of Catholick Motives as he calls them in the words of Dr. Taylour Liberty of Prophecy Sect. 20. And I do not know a better way of answering them than in the words of the same eminent and learned Person which he uses upon a like occasion to his demonstrating Friend I. S. But now in my Conscience saith the Bishop this was unkindly done that when I had spoken for them what I could and more than I knew they had ever said for themselves and yet to save them harmless from the iron hands of a tyrant and unreasonable power to keep them from being persecuted for their errours and opinions that they should take the arms I had lent them for their defence and throw them at my head But the best of it is though I. S. be unthankful yet the Weapons themselves are but wooden Daggers intended only to represent how the poor men are couzened by themselves and that under fair and fraudulent pretences even pious well meaning men men wise enough in other things may be abused And though what I said was but tinsel and pretence imagery and whipt Cream yet I could not be blamed to use no better than the best their cause could bear yet if that be the best they have to say for themselves their probabilities will be soon out-ballanced by one Scripture-testimony urged by Protestants and thou shalt not Worship any graven Images will out-weigh all the best and fairest imaginations of their Church But then I. S. might if he had pleased have considered that I did not intend to make that harangue to represent that the Roman Religion had probabilities of being true but probabilities that the Religion might be tolerated or might be endured and if I was deceived it was but a well meant errour hereafter they shall speak for themselves only for their comfort this they might have also observed in that Book that there is not half so much excuse for the Papists as there is for the Anabaptists and yet it was but an excuse at the best But since from me saith he they borrow their light Armour which is not Pistol-proof from me if they please they may borrow a remedy to undeceive them and that in the same kind and way of arguing for which he referrs to a letter written by him to a Gentlewoman seduced to the Church of Rome out of which I shall transcribe so much as may over-ballance the probabilities produced elsewhere by him After directions given rather to enquire what her Religion is than what her Church is for that which is a true Religion to day will be so to morrow and for ever but that which is a holy Church to day may be Heretical at the next change or may betray her trust or obtrude new Articles in contradiction to the old c. and shewing the unreasonablness of believing the Roman to be the Catholick Church he descends thus to particulars You are now gone to a Church that protects it self by arts of subtlety and arms by violence and persecuting all that are not of their minds to a Church in which you are to be a subject of the King so long as it pleases the Pope In which you may be absolved from your Vows made to God your Oaths to the King your Promises to Men your Duty to your Parents in some cases a Church in which men Pray to God and to Saints in the same Form of words in which they Pray to God as you may see in the Offices of Saints and particularly of our Lady a Church in which men are taught by most of the principal Leaders to Worship Images with the same Worship with which they Worship God or Christ or him or her whose Image it is and in which they usually picture God the Father and the Holy Trinity to the great dishonour of that Sacred mystery against the doctrine and practice of the primitive Church against the express doctrine of Scripture against the honour of a divine Attribute I mean the immensity and spirituality of the divine nature You are gone to a Church that pretends to be infallible and yet is infinitely deceived in many particulars and yet endures no contradiction and is impatient her Children should enquire into any thing her Priests obtrude You are gone from receiving the whole Sacrament to receive it but half from Christs Institution to a human Invention from Scripture to uncertain Traditions and from ancient Tradition to new pretences from Prayers which ye understood to Prayers which ye understand not from confidence in God to rely upon Creatures from intire dependance upon inward-acts to a dangerous temptation of resting too much in outward ministeries in the external work of Sacraments and Sacramentals You are gone from a Church whose Worshipping is simple Christian and Apostolical to a Church where mens Consciences are loaden with a burden of Ceremonies greater than that in the dayes of the Jewish Religion for the Ceremonial of the Church of Rome is a great Book in Folio You are gone from a Church where you were exhorted to read the Word of God the Holy Scriptures from whence you sound instruction institution comfort reproof a treasure of all excellencies to a Church that seals up that Fountain from you and gives you drink by drops out of such Cisterns as they first make and then stain and then reach out and if it be told you that some men abuse Scripture it is true for if your Priests had not abused Scripture they could not thus have abused you but there is no necessity they should and you need not unless you list any more than you need to abuse the Sacrament or Decrees of the Church or the messages of your
A DISCOURSE Concerning the IDOLATRY Practised in the CHURCH OF ROME AND The danger of Salvation in the Communion of it in answer to some Papers of a Revolted Protestant WHEREIN A particular Account is given of the Fanaticism and Divisions of that Church By Edward Stillingfleet D. D. LONDON Printed by Robert White for Henry Mortlock at the Sign of the Phoenix in St. Pauls Church-yard and at the White Hart in Westminster Hall 1671. THE PREFACE ALthough I see no great effect of the Courtship commonly used towards the Candid and Ingenuous Reader unless it be in diverting the censure from the Book to the Preface yet in some cases it looks like a breach of the Readers priviledge not to give him an account of the occasion and design of a Book Especially when the matter handled therein hath been thought so often discussed and is of so general concernment that every pretender thinks he knows as much already as is to be known in it But we really find no greater advantage hath been given to our Adversaries than this that the things in dispute between us are generally no better understood by the persons they have their designs upon For assoon as they have baffled their ignorance and mistakes these have been ready to yield up themselves and the Cause imagining nothing more could be said for it than they could say for themselves Whereby our Church hath not only suffered in its reputation as far as that is concerned in the weakness of some of its members but strange boasts and triumphs have been made by those of the Church of Rome when such who understood not their own Religion have embraced theirs While these disputes were fresh in the world every one thought himself concerned to enquire into them but since our Church hath been so long established on the principles of the Reformation and other unhappy controversies have risen up the most have taken this Cause for granted and thought it needless to enquire any farther into the Grounds of it Which our Adversaries perceiving they have found far greater success in their attempts upon particular persons than in publick Writings for these have only provoked others to lay open the palpable weakness of their Cause whereas in the other by their wayes of Address and all the arts of Insinuation they have instilled their principles into the minds of some less judicious persons before they were aware of it Thence it is easie to observe that the greatest mischief they have done hath been like the Pestilence by walking in darkness and spreading their infection by whispers in corners All their hopes and strength lye in the weakness and credulity of the persons they deal with but if they meet with any who truly understand the differences between us they soon give them over as untractable But to such whose employments have not given them leave to enquire or whose capacity hath not been great enough to discern their Sophistry their first work is to make a false representation both of the Doctrines and practices of their Church and if they be of such easie faith to believe them they from thence perswade them into an ill opinion of their Teachers who possessed them with so bad thoughts of such a Church as theirs A Church of so great Holiness as may be seen by the Saint-like lives of their Popes and Converts a Church of so great Antiquity bating only the Primitive times a Church of so admirable Unity saving the divisions in it a Church so free from any Fanatick heats as any one may believe that will If this first assault doth not make them yield but they desire at least time to consider and advise in a matter of so great importance then they tell them there is not a man of our Church dares give any of them a meeting if they offer to puâ— it to a tryal they will appoint a day which they foresee will be most inconvenient for the persons they are to meet with If upon that account it be declined or deferred this is spred abroad for a Victory if it be accepted then one thing or other happens that they cannot come either the person goes out of Town unexpectedly or his Superiours have forbidden him or such conferences are not safe for them they are so sorely persecuted or at last what good can an hours talk do to satisfie any one in matters of Religion But if there be no remedy which they are seldome without and a conference happen which they scarce ever yield to but when they are sure of the person for whose sake it is then whosoever was baffled they are sure to go away with the triumph and as an evidence of it such a person went off from our Church upon it which was made sure of their side before If this way takes not then a sett of Questions is ready to be sent if another be returned to them to be answered at the same time this is declined and complained of as hard dealing as though they had only the priviledge of putting Questions and we the duty of answering them If answers be given to them after a Pass or two they put an end to the tryal of their skill in that place and seek for another to shew it in But if the Papers chance to be slighted or business hinders a present answer or there be a reasonable presumption that the person concerned hath already forsaken our Church this becomes the occasion of a new triumph the Papers are accounted unanswerable as the Spanish Armado was called invincible which we thank God we found to be otherwise and it may be are demanded again as Trophies to be preserved for the glory of the Catholick Cause All these several wayes I have had experience of in the compass of a few years since by command I was publickly engaged in the Defence of so excellent a Cause as that of our Church against the Church of Rome I confess it seemed somewhat hard to me to be put to answer so many several Papers which I have received upon their tampering with particular persons of our Church while my Book it self remained unanswered by them after so many years of trying their strength about it For those two who in some small measure have attempted it have performed it in the way that Ratts answer Books by gnawing some of the leaves of them for the body and design of it remains wholly untouched by them But for the satisfaction of any person who desired it I was not willing to decline any service which tended to so good an end as the preserving any member of our Church in the communion of it Which was the occasion of this present writing For some time since the person concerned after some discourses with her brought me the two Questions mentioned in the beginning of the Book to which I returned a speedy answer in the midst of many other employments not long after I received the
by the terms of communion with that Church be guilty either of Hypocrisie or Idolatry either of which are sins inconsistent with salvation Which I thus prove That Church which requires the giving the Creature the Worship due only to the Creator makes the members of it guilty of hypocrisie or Idolatry for it they do it they are guilty of the latter if they do it not of the former but the Church of Rome in the Worship of God by Images the Adoration of the Bread in the Eucharist and the formal Invocation of Saints doth require the giving to the creature the Worship due only to the Creator therefore it makes the members of it guilty of hypocrisie or Idolatry That the Church of Rome in these particulars doth require the giving the creature the honour due only to God I prove thus concerning each of them 1. Where the Worship of God is terminated upon a creature there by their own confession the Worship due only to God is given to the creature but in the Worship of God by Images the Worship due to God is terminated wholly on the creature which is thus proved the Worship which God himself denyes to receive must be terminated on the creature but God himself in the second Commandment not only denyes to receive it but threatens severely to punish them that give it Therefore it cannot be terminated on God but only on the Image 2. The same argument which would make the grossest Heathen Idolatry lawful cannot excuse any act from Idolatry but the same argument whereby the Papists make the Worship of the Bread in the Eucharist not to be Idolatry would make the grossest Heathen Idolatry not to be so For if it be not therefore Idolatry because they suppose the bread to be God then the Worship of the Sun was not Idolatry by them who supposed the Sun to be God and upon this ground the grosser the Idolatry was the less it was Idolatry for the grossest Idolaters were those who supposed their Statues to be Gods And upon this ground their Worship was more lawful than of those who supposed them not to be so 3. If the supposition of a middle excellency between God and us be a sufficient ground for formal Invocation then the Heathen Worship of their inferiour Deities could be no Idolatry for the Heathens still pretended that they did not give to them the Worship proper to the Supream God which is as much as is pretended by the devoutest Papist in justification of the Invocation of Saints To these I expect a direct and punctual answer professing as much Charity towards them as is consistent with Scripture and Reason 2. Because the Church of Rome is guilty of so great corruption of the Christian Religion by such opinions and practices which are very apt to hinder a good life Such are the destroying the necessity of a good life by making the Sacrament of Penance joyned with contrition sufficient for salvation the taking off the care of it by supposing an expiation of sin by the prayers of the living after death and the sincerity of devotion is much obstructed in it by prayers in a language which many understand not by making the efficacy of Sacraments depend upon the bare administration whether our minds be prepared for them or not by discouraging the reading the Scripture which is our most certain rule of faith and life by the multitude of superstitious observations never used in the Primitive Church as we are ready to defend by the gross abuse of people in Pardons and Indulgences by denying the Cup to the Laity contrary to the practice of the Church in the solemn Celebration of the Eucharist for a thousand years after Christ by making it in the power of any person to dispense contrary to the Law of God in Oathes and Marriages by making disobedience to the Church in disputable matters more hainous than disobedience to the Laws of Christ in unquestionable things as Marriage in a Priest to be a greater crime than Fornication By all which practices and opinions we assert that there are so many hinderances to a good life that none who have a care of their salvation can venture their souls in the communion of such a Church which either enjoyns or publickly allows them 3. Because it exposeth the faith of Christians to so great uncertainty By making the authority of the Scriptures to depend on the infallibility of the Church when the Churches Infallibility must be proved by the Scripture by making those things necessary to be believed which if they be believed overthrow all foundations of faith viz. That we are not to believe our senses in the plainest objects of them as that bread which we see is not bread upon which it follows that tradition being a continued kind of sensation can be no more certain than sense it self and that the Apostles might have been deceived in the body of Christ after the resurrection and the Church of any Age in what they saw or heard By denying to men the use of their judgement and reason as to the matters of faith proposed by a Church when they must use it in the choice of a Church by making the Churches power extend to make new Articles of faith viz. by making those things necessary to be believed which were not so before By pretending to infallibility in determining Controversies and yet not determining Controversies which are on foot among themselves All which and several other things which my designed brevity will not permit me to mention tend very much to shake the faith of such who have nothing else to rely on but the authority of the Church of Rome 3. I answer That a Protestant leaving the Communion of our Church doth incurr a greater guilt than one who was bred up in the communion of the Church of Rome and continues therein by invincible ignorance and therefore cannot equally be saved with such a one For a Protestant is supposed to have sufficient convictions of the Errors of the Roman Church or is guilty of wilful ignorance if he hath not but although we know not what allowances God will make for invincible ignorance we are sure that wilful ignorance or choosing a worse Church before a better is a damnable sin and unrepented of destroyes salvation To the second Question I answer 1. I do not understand what is meant by a Christian in the Abstract or in the whole latitude it being a thing I never heard or read of before and therefore may have some meaning in it which I cannot understand 2. But if the Question be as the last words imply it Whether a Christian by vertue of his being so be bound to joyn in some Church or Congregation of Christians I answer affirmatively and that he is bound to choose the communion of the purest Church and not to leave that for a corrupt one though called never so Catholick The Proposer of the Questions Reply to the Answer Madam I
Did not expect that two bare Questions could have produced such a super-foetation of Controversies as the Paper you sent me is fraught with But since the Answerer hath been pleased to take this Method for what end himself best knows I shall not refuse to give a fair and plain return to the several points he insists upon and that with as much brevity as the matter and circumstances will bear The Questions proposed were 1. Whether a Protestant having the same Motives to become a Catholick which one bred and born and well grounded in Catholick Religion hath to remain in it may not equally be saved in the profession of it The 2. Whether it be sufficient to be a Christian in the abstract or in the whole latitude or there be a necessity of being a member of some distinct Church or Congregation of Christians The first he saith being supposed to be put concerning a Protestant continuing so implyes a contradiction but where it lyes I cannot see for a Protestant may have the same Motives and yet out of wilfulness or passion not acquiesce to them He saw no doubt this supposition to be impertinent to the Question and therefore in the second part of the 1. § states it thus Whether a Protestant leaving the communion of the Protestant Church upon the motives used by those of the Roman Church may not be equally saved with those who were bred in it The Question thus stated in its true supposition he answers first § 2. That an equal capacity of salvation of those persons being supposed can be no argument to leave the Communion of a Church wherein the salvation of a person may be much more safe than either of them But before I reply I must do both him and my self right in matter of fact and it is Madam that when you first addressed to me you professed your self much troubled that he had told you a person leaving the Protestant communion and embracing the Catholick could not be saved That we should deny salvation to any out of the Catholick Church you lookt upon as uncharitable and this assertion of his had startled you in the opinion you had before of the Protestant Charity Whereupon you desired to know my opinion in the case and I told you I saw no reason why the same Motives which secured one born and bred and well grounded in Catholick Religion to continue in it were not sufficient also to secure a Protestant who convinced by them should embrace it This Madam your self can witness was the true occasion of your proposing the Question and not as the Answerer supposes that I used the meer Question it self as a sufficient Argument to perswade you to embrace the Catholick Communion This premised I reply that the Answer he gives is altogether forrain to the matter in hand the Controversie not being between a Bred and a Converted Catholick on the one side and a person supposed to be in a safer Church than either of them on the other nor yet between two several Churches supposed to have in them an equal Capacity of salvation but between a person bred in the Catholick Religion on the one side and another converted to it from Protestantism on the other whether the latter may not be equally saved with the former Nor is it to the purpose of the present Question to prove that it is of necessity to Salvation to leave the Protestant Church and become a member of the Catholick because the Question is only of the possibility not of the necessity of Salvation I say it is not necessary to the present Question to prove this but rather belongs to the second where I shall speak to it Whether there be a necessity of being a member of some distinct Church Which being resolved affirmatively by both parts it follows then in order to enquire which this true Church is As for the Example of a man leaping from the plain ground into a Ship that is in danger of being Wrackt meaning by that Ship as I suppose he does the Catholick Church Some will be apt to think he had come nearer the Mark if he had compared the Protestant to a Ship which by often knocking against the Rock on which the Catholick Church is built had split it self into innumerable Sects and was now in danger of sinking his comparison was grounded only on his own supposition but this is grounded on the truth it self of too sad an experience But to leave words and come to the matter His second Answer is § 3. that all those who are in the communion of the Church of Rome do run so great a hazard of their Salvation that none who have a care of their souls ought to embrace or continue in it The first answer as I have shewed was nothing pertinent to the present Question nor comes this second any nearer the matter for though it be supposed that none ought to embrace or continue in the Catholick Church by reason of the great hazard he saith they run of their salvation yet if they do embrace or continue in it why may they not be equally saved that is with equal capacity but this assertion however beside the Question he makes it his main business to prove First § 4. Because those who embrace or continue in the Catholick Church are guilty either of Hypocrisie or Idolatry either of which are sins inconsistent with salvation And here he must give me leave to return upon him a more palpable contradiction than that he supposed to have found in the Question viz. to assert only that those of the Catholick Communion run a great hazard of their salvation and yet affirm at the same time that they are guilty either of Hypocrisie or Idolatry sins inconsistent with Salvation which reduced into plain terms is no other but that they may be saved though hardly and yet cannot be saved But to the Argument The Church of Rome by the Worship of God by Images by the adoration of Bread in the Eucharist and the formal invocation of Saints doth require the giving to the Creature the Worship due only to the Creator Therefore it makes the members of it guilty of Hypocrisie or Idolatry The charge is great but what are the proofs Concerning the first he saith § 5. that in the Worship of God by Images the Worship due to God is terminated wholly on the Creature And surely this implies another contradiction that it should be the Worship of God by Images and yet be terminated wholly on the Creature Nevertheless he proves it thus The Worship which God himself denyes to receive must be terminated upon the Creature but God himself in the second Commandment not only denyes to receive it but threatens severely to punish them that give it that is that Worship him by an Image Therefore it cannot be terminated on God but only on the Image To this Argument which to be just to the Author I confess I have not seen any where
Resurrection 3. He saith that We expose faith to great uncertainty by denying to men the use of their Judgement and Reason as to matters of faith proposed by a Church that is we deny particular mens Iudgement as to matters of faith to be as good if not better than the Churches and to inferre from henâ—e that we make Faith uncertain is just as if on the contrary one should say that Protestants make faith certain by exposing matter of faith determined by the Church to be discussed and reversed by the Iudgement and reason or rather fancy of every private man We have good store of this kind of certainty in England But as for the use of our Iudgement and Reason as to the matters themselves proposed by the Church it is the daily business of Divines and Preachers not only to shew them not to be repugnant to any natural truth but also to illustrate them with Arguments drawn from reason But the use he would have of reason is I suppose to believe nothing but what his reason can comprehend and this is not only irrational in its self but contrary to the Doctrine of St. Paul where he commands us to captivate our understandings to the Obedience of Faith 4. He adds We expose faith to uncertainty by making the Church power extend to making new Articles of Faith And this if it were true were something indeed to his purpose But the Church never yet owned any such power in her General Councils but only to manifest and establish the Doctrine received from her Fore-fathers as is to be seen in the prooems of all the Sessions of the Council of Trent where the Fathers before they declare what is to be believed ever premise that what they declare is the same they have received by Tradition from the Apostles And because it may happen that some particular Doctrine was not so plainly delivered to each part of the Church as it happened in St. Cyprians case concerning the non-rebaptization of Hereticks we acknowledge it is in her power to make that necessary to be believed which was not so before not by inventing new Articles but by declaring more explicitely the Truths contained in Scripture and Tradition Lastly he saith We expose Faith to great uncertainty because the Church pretending to infallibility does not determine Controversies on foot among our selves As if faith could not be certain unless all Controversies among particular men be determined what then becomes of the certainty of Protestants faith who could yet never find out a sufficient means to determine any one Controversie among them for if that means be plain Scripture what one Iudgeth plain another Iudgeth not so and they acknowledge no Iudge between them to decide the Controversie As for the Catholick Church if any Controversies arise concerning the Doctrine delivered as in St. Cyprians case she determines the Controversie by declaring what is of Faith And for other Controversies which belong not to faith she permits as St. Paul saith every one to abound in his own sence And thus much in Answer to his third Argument by which and what hath been said to his former Objections it appears that he hath not at all proved what he asserted in his second Answer to the first Question viz. That all those who are in the Communion of the Church of Rome do run so great a hazard of their Salvation that none who have a care of their souls ought to embrace or continue in it But he hath a third Answer for us in case the former faile and it is § 10. That a Protestant leaving the Communion of the Protestant Church doth incurr a greater guilt than one who was bred up in the Church of Rome and continues therein by invincible ignorance This is the directest answer he gives to the Question and what it imports is this That invincible Ignorance and he doth not know what allowance God will make for that neither is the only Anchor which a Catholick hath to save himself by If by discoursing with Protestants and reading their Books he be not sufficiently convinced whereas he ought in the supposition of the Answerer to be so that the Letter of the Scripture as interpretable by every private mans reason is a most certain Rule of Faith and Life but is still over-ruled by his own Motives the same which held St. Austin in the bosome of the Catholick Church he is guilty of wilful Ignorance and consequently a lost man there is no hope of Salvation for him Much less for a Protestant who shall embrace the Catholick Communion because he is supposed doubtless from the same Rule to have sufficient conviction of the Errors of the Roman Church or is guilty of wilful Ignorance If he have it not which is a damnable sin and unrepented of destroyes salvation So that now the upshot of the Answer to the Question Whether a Protestant embracing Catholick Religion upon the same motives which one bred and well grounded in it hath to remain in it may be equally saved with him comes to this that they shall both be damned though unequally because the converted Catholick more deeply than he that was bred so And now who can but lament the sad condition of that great Doctor and Father of the Church and hitherto reputed St. Austin who rejecting the Manichees pretended rule of Scripture upon the aforesaid grounds left their Communion to embrace the Communion of the Church of Rome And what is become now of their distinction of points fundamental from not fundamental which heretofore they thought sufficient to secure both Catholicks and Protestants Salvation and to charge us with unconscionable uncharitableness in not allowing them to be sharers with us The absurdness of these consequences may serve for a sufficient conviction of the nullity of his third and last answer to the first Question As for what he saith to the second I agree so far with him that every Christian is bound to choose the Communion of the purest Church but which that Church is must be seen by the grounds it brings to prove the Doctrines it teaches to have been delivered by Christ and his Apostles That Church is to be judged purest which hath the best grounds and consequently it is of necessity to Salvation to embrace the communion of it What then you are bound to do in reason and conscience is to see which Religion of the two hath the strongest Motives for it and to embrace that as you will answer the contrary to God and your own soul. To help you to do this and that the Answerer may have the less exception against them I will give you a Catalogue of Catholick Motives though not all neither in the words of the forecited Dr. Taylor advertising only for brevity sake I leave out some mentioned by him and that in these I set down you also give allowance for some expressions of his with which he hath mis-represented them Thus then he Liberty of
Proph. Sect. 20. Speaking of Catholicks The beauty and Splendour of their Church their pompous he should have said solemn Service the stateliness and solemnity of the Hierarchy their name of Catholick which they suppose he should have said their very Adversaries give them as their own due and to concern no other Sect of Christians the Antiquity of many of their Doctrines he should have said all the continual succession of their Bishops their immediate derivation from the Apostles their Title to succeed St. Peter the flattering he should have said due expression of Minor Bishops he means acknowledging the Pope head of the Church which by being old records have obtained credibility the multitude and variety of People which are of their perswasion apparent consent with Antiquity in many Ceremonials which other Churches have rejected and a pretended and sometimes he should have said alwayes apparent consent with some elder Ages in matters Doctrinal The great consent of one part with another in that which most of them affirm to be de fide of Faith The great differences which are commenced among their Adversaries abusing the liberty of Prophecying into a very great licentiousness Their happiness of being Instruments in converting divers he should rather have said of all Nations The piety and austerity of their Religious Orders of Men and Women The single life of their Priests and Bishops the severity of their Fasts and their exteriour observances the great reputation of their first Bishops for faith and sanctity the known holiness of some of those persons whose institutes the Religious persons pretend to imitate the oblique Arts and indirect proceedings of some of those who departed from them and amongst many other things the names of Heretick and Schismatick which they with infinite pertinacity he should have said upon the same grounds the Fathers did fasten upon all that disagree from them These things saith he and divers others may very easily perswade persons of much reason and more piety to retain that which they know to have been the Religion of their Fore-fathers which had actually possession and seizure of mens understandings before the opposite professions to wit of Protestant Presbyterian Anabaptist c. had a name Thus Dr. Taylor an eminent and leading man amongst the Protestants and if he confess that these Motives were sufficient for a Catholick to retain his Religion they must be of like force to perswade a dis-interessed Protestant to embrace it unless the Protestants can produce Motives for their Religion of greater or at least equal force with these which so great a man among them confesseth that Catholicks have for theirs Here therefore you must call upon the Author of the Paper you sent me to produce a Catalogue of grounds or at least some one ground for the Protestant Religion of greater or equal force with all these And as Dr. Taylor saith divers others which he omitted viz. The Scripture interpreted by the consent of Fathers the determination of General Councils the known Maxime of Catholicks that nothing is to be believed of Faith but what was received from their Fore-fathers as handed down from the Apostles The testimonie of the present Church of no less Authority now than in St. Austins time both for the Letter and the sence of the Scripture c. Do this and the Controversie will quickly be at an end Particular disputes are endless and above the understanding of such as are not learned but in grounds and principles 't is not so hard for Reason and common sence to Iudge That you may the better do it in your case I shall desire you to take these two Cautions along with you First That the Subject of the present Controversie are not those Articles in which the Protestants agree with us and for which they may pretend to produce the same Motives we do But in those in which they dissent from us such as are no Transubstantiation no Purgatory no honour due to Images no Invocation to Saints and the like in which the very Essence of Protestant as distinct from Catholick consists What Motives they can or will produce for these I do not foresee The pretence of Scriptures being sufficiently plain hath no place here because then the foresaid Negatives would be necessary to be believed as divine Truths And for their own Reason and Learning it will be found too light when put into the scale against that of the Catholick Church for so many Ages The second Caution is That you be careful to distinguish between Protestants producing grounds for their own Religion and finding fault with ours An Atheist can cavil and find fault with the grounds which learned men bring to prove a Deity such as are the Order of this visible World the general consent of Nations c. In this an Atheist thinks he doth somewhat But can he produce as good or better grounds for his own opinion No you see then 't is one thing to produce grounds for what we hold and another to find fault with those which are produced by the contrary part The latter hath made Controversie so long and the former will make it as short let the Answerer therefore instead of finding fault with our Motives produce his own for the Articles in Controversie and I am confident you will quickly discern which carry the most weight and consequently which are to be preferred A Defence of the foregoing Answer to the Questions CHAP. I. Of the Idolatry practised in the Church of Rome in the Worship of Images The introduction concerning the occasion of the debate The Church of Rome makes its members guilty of Hypocrisie or Idolatry First Of the Worship of God by Images Some propositions for clearing the notion of Divine Worship It is in Gods power to determine the way of his Worship which being determined Gods Law and not our intention is to be the rule of Worship The main question is Whether God hath forbidden the worshipping of himself by an Image under the notion of Idolatry Of the meaning of the second Commandment from the terms therein used the large sense and importance of them which cannot be understood only of Heathen Idols Of the reason of that Law from Gods infinite and invisible nature How far that hath been acknowledged by Heathens The Law against Image Worship no ceremonial Law respecting meerly the Iews the reason against it made more clear by the Gospel The wiser Heathen did not worship their Images as Gods yet their worship condemned as Idolatry The Christian Church believed the reason of this Law to be immutable Of the Doctrine of the second Council of Nice the opposition to it in Greece Germany France and England Of the Scripture Instances of Idolatry contrary to the second Commandment in the Golden Calf and the Calves of Dan and Bethel Of the distinctions used to excuse image-worship from being Idolatry The vanity and folly of them The instances supposed to be parallel answered Madam § 1. THat
private Spirit is not for all these things are necessarily implyed therein And so for all particular doctrines rejected by us upon this principle we do not make them Negative points of faith but we therefore refuse the belief of them because not contained in our only rule of faith On this account we reject the Popes Supremacy Transubstantiation Infalibility of the present Church in delivering points of faith Purgatory and other fopperies imposed upon the belief of Christians So that the short resolution of our faith is this that we ought to believe nothing as an Article of faith but what God hath revealed and that the compleat revelation of Gods will to us is contained in the Bible and the resolution of our worship is into this principle that God alone is to be worshipped with divine and religious worship and therefore whether they be Saints or Angels Sun Moon and Stars whether the Elements of a Sacrament or of the World whether Crosses and Reliques or Woods and Fountains or any sort of Images in a word no creature whatsoever is to be worshipped with religious worship because that is proper to God alone And if this principle will excuse them from Idolatry I desire him to make the best of it And if he gives no more satisfactory answer hereafter than he hath already done the greatest charity I can use to those of that Church is to wish them repentance which I most heartily do CHAP. III. Of the hindrance of a good Life and Devotion in the Roman Church The doctrines of the Roman Church prejudicial to Piety The Sacrament of Pennance as taught among them destroys the necessity of a good life The doctrine of Purgatory takes away the care of it as appears by the true stating it and comparing that doctrine with Protestants How easie it is according to them for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven Purgatory dreadful to none but poor and friendless Sincerity of devotion hindred by prayers in an unknown Tongue The great absurdity of it manifested The effects of our Ancestors devotion had been as great if they had said their prayers in English The language of prayer proved to be no indifferent thing from St. Pauls arguments No universal consent for prayers in an unknown tongue by the confession of their own Writers Of their doctrine of the efficacy of Sacraments that it takes away all necessity of devotion in the minds of the receivers This complained of by Cassander and Arnaud but proved against them to be the doctrine of the Roman Church by the Canons of the Council of Trent The great easiness of getting Grace by their Sacraments Of their discouraging the reading the Scriptures A standing Rule of devotion necessary None so fit to give it as God himself This done by him in the Scriptures All persons therefore concerned to read them The arguments against reading the Scriptures would have held against the publishing them in a language known to the people The dangers as great then as ever have been since The greatest prudence of the Roman Church is wholly to forbid the Scriptures being acknowledged by their wisest men to be so contrary to their Interest The confession of the Cardinals at Bononia to that purpose The avowed practice of the Roman Church herein directly contrary to that of the Primitive although the reasons were as great then from the danger of Heresies This confessed by their own Writers § 1. 2. THe second Reason I gave why persons run so great a hazard of their salvation in the communion of the Roman Church was because that Church is guilty of so great corruption of the Christian Religion by opinions and practices which are very apt to hinder a good life which is necessary to salvation But 1. This necessity I said was taken off by their making the Sacrament of Pennance joyned with contrition sufficient for salvation Here he saith That Protestants do make contrition alone which is less sufficient for salvation and our Church allowing confession and absolution which make the Sacrament of Pennance in case of trouble of conscience they being added to contrition cannot make it of a malignant nature To this I answer That contrition alone is not by us made sufficient for salvation For we believe that as no man can be saved without true repentance so that true repentance doth not lye meerly in contrition for sins For godly sorrow in Scripture is said to work repentance to salvation not to be repented of and it cannot be the cause and effect both together Repentance in Scripture implyes a forsaking of sin as it were very easie to prove if it be thought necessary and without this we know not what ground any man hath to hope for the pardon of it although he confess it and be absolved a thousand times over and have remorse in his mind for it when he doth confess it And therefore I had cause to say that they of the Church of Rome destroy the necessity of a good life when they declare a man to be in a state of salvation if he hath a bare contrition for his sins and confess them to the Priest and be absolved by him For to what end should a man put himself to the trouble of mortifying his passions and forsaking his sins if he commits them again he knows a present remedy toties quoties it is but confessing with sorrow and upon absolution he is as whole as if he had not sinned And is it possible to imagine a doctrine that more effectually overthrows the necessity of a good life than this doth I cannot but think if this doctrine were true all the Precepts of Holiness in the Christian Religion were insignificant things But this is a doctrine fitted to make all that are bad and willing to continue so to be their Proselytes when so cheap and easie a way of salvation is believed by them especially if we enquire into the explication of this doctrine among the Doctors of that Church I cannot better express this than in the words of Bishop Taylor whom he deservedly calls an eminent leading man among the Protestants where after he hath mentioned their doctrines about contrition The sequel of all he saith is this that if a man live a wicked life for sixty or eighty years together yet if in the article of his death sooner than which God say they hath not commanded him to repent by being a little sorrowful for his sins then resolving for the present that he will do so no more and though this sorrow hath in it no love of God but only a fear of Hell and a hope that God will pardon him this if the Priest absolves him doth instantly pass him into a state of salvation The Priest with two Fingers and a Thumb can do his work for him only he must be greatly prepared and disposed to receive it greatly we say according to the sense of the Roman Church for he must be
obedience without this Some that frequent crossing themselves going in Pilgrimage to the Images of Saints baptizing Bells being sprinckled with holy water and buried in a Monks habit are great acts of devotion and others that they are superstitious fooleries Some think that unless they make confession of their sins to a Priest they cannot be pardoned others that sincere confession to God is sufficient and the other never necessary to the pardon of sin though it may be sometimes useful to the ease of the sinner Some that they honour God by setting up Images of him and worshipping them for his sake by addressing themselves to Saints and Angels to be Intercessors with him and others that they cannot dishonour God more than by these things Some that they may pray for what they do not understand as well as what they do others that since men expect to be answered in their prayers they ought to understand what they say in them Since these and other disputes are in the world not barely between Christians and those of other Religions but among Christians themselves what course should a person take who desires to be satisfied For he finds the several parties divided about them Can any man imagine a better way if it could be hoped for than that God himself should interpose and declare his own mind according to what way they ought to serve him And this is acknowledged to be done already by all Christians in the Scriptures and after all this must not all persons concerned be allowed to enquire into that which is owned to be the will of God Or do they think that ordinary people that understand not Latin or Greek ought not to be concerned what becomes of their souls If they be and do in good earnest desire to know how to please God and to serve him what directions will they give him If they tell him they must do as they are bidden true say they if we were to worship you for Gods we would do as you bid us for we think it fitting to serve God in his own way But we would know whether that God whom we serve hath given us any rules for his worship or no Yes say the Priests of the Roman Church he hath done so but it is not fit for you to see them To what end say the people then were they given if they may not be seen How shall we know whether we keep them or no or will you take upon you the guilt of our sins in disobeying his Will since you will not let us know what it is This seems to be a very just and reasonable request and I fear it will one day fall heavy upon those who conceal that which they confess to be the Will of God from the knowledge of the people And it hath been ingenuously acknowledged by some in the Roman Church that the people would never be kept to that way of devotion they are in there if they were suffered to read the Scriptures but the more shame the mean time for those who impose such things upon them under a pretence of devotion which are so repugnant to the Will of God But the same reason which hath made them leave out the second Commandment in their offices of devotion hath brought them to so severe a prohibition of reading the Scriptures in a known language but where themselves are already so secure of the persons that they dare to give way to it and that is lest their consciences should start and boggle at the breaking a command of God when they pretended to serve him § 9. 2. That no objection can be now made against the peoples reading the Scriptures but would have held against the publishing them in a language to be understood by the people For were the people less ignorant and heady less presumptuous and opinionative then than they are now Was not there the same danger of mistaking their sense at that time Was not the people of Israel as refractory and disobedient as any have been since Were they not as apt to quarrel with divine Laws and the authority God had set up among them Did not they fall into Sects and divers opinions by misunderstanding the Law yet were these reasons then thought sufficient for God not to make known his Law to all the people but to commit it only to Aaron and the Priests for them prudentially to dispense it to them No so far from it that strict care was taken to make the people understand it particular commands given for this very end and the Law on purpose declared to be easie and intelligible that they might not make its obscurity a pretence for their Ignorance Was not this Law given them as a rule to direct themselves by Were not all sent to this to learn to govern their actions Wherewithall shall a young man cleanse his wayes by taking heed thereto according to thy word Is not this Law said to convert the soul and to make wise the simple and was that done by not understanding it Was it not the delight exercise and continual Meditation of those who were truly devout among them But how comes our case to be so much worse under Christianity Is the Law of Christ so much more difficult and obscure than the Law of Moses Is not his Sermon on the Mount wherein he delivers the rules of a Christian Life as plain as any Chapter in Leviticus What doth the Gospel teach men but to be and to do good to love all men and to love God above all to believe in Christ and to obey his commands to repent of sins past and to live no longer in them and in short so to live in this world as they hope to live with God in happiness hereafter And are these things so hard to be understood that the people ought not to be made acquainted with them in their own language Or is there any danger they should know them too well Was ever the Law of Moses more perverted by false interpretations than in our Saviours time by the Scribes and Pharisees Why doth not he then take some other care for his own Law to prevent this for the future if that had been judged by him the proper way of cure But thereby we see the mistakes of the people are owing to their Teachers and there can be no means to prevent errours in the people but by stopping them at the fountain heads from whence they run down among them For the common people might have had a better notion of Religion if their minds had not been corrupted by the traditions and Glosses of the Pharisees Therefore methinks they have not gone the wisest way to work in the Church of Rome instead of this prudential dispensing the Scriptures their only way had been to have destroyed them as Dioclesian their predecessour in this kind of prudence once designed For let them assure themselves they who understand Greek and Latin are the
persons they have ten times more cause to fear than the common people And considering the advantage they once had by the horrible Ignorance of Priests and people it must be imputed only to the watchful eye of Divine Providence that the Scriptures being of so little use in the Roman Church have been preserved entire to our dayes There had been no such means in the world to have prevented a Reformation as this for they are not out when they take the Scripture so much for their enemy as appears by the force and restraint they put upon it and the fear and jealousie they are in about it continually If it had not been for this would any one have compared the Scriptures in the hands of the common people as my Adversary doth to a Sword in a mad mans hand Is it of so destructive a Nature and framed for no other use than a sword is which nothing but discretion keeps a man from doing mischief by and all the way a man hath though never so meek and humble to defend himself by it is by destroying his enemy with it if he continues his assault These expressions do not argue any kindness to the Scripture nor an apprehension of any great good comes to the world by it but that really men might have been more at ease and fewer differences in Religion had happened if all the Copies of the Bible had been lost assoon as the Pope had placed himself in his infallible Chair This design was once attempted as I shall shew afterwards but failed of success and I know not how far the principles of this prudence may carry them if ever such a season should fall into their hands again having found so much trouble to them from the Scriptures and so little benefit by them their Church being once owned as infallible For I would fain know whether the Scripture hath not done more mischief according to them in the hands of the Reformers than it can be supposed to do in the hands of the common people If it must be a sword in a mad mans hand whether the more strength and cunning such a one hath he be not capable of doing so much the more mischief by it And if it were possible to get it out of such a mans hands whether it were not the highest prudence and care of the publick safety to do it It can be then nothing but the impossibility of the thing which makes them suffer the Scripture to be in the hands of any who are capable of doing mischief by it and the more mischief they may do the more desirable and prudential it is to take it from them But all men see none are so capable of doing mischief thereby as men of the greatest wit and learning and that have the fairest appearance of piety to the world the consequence then of this doctrine is if pursued to the true design of it that the Scripture should be kept if possible out of the hands of the most subtle learned and pious men above all others if they be not true to the interests of the Roman Church It is but a meer shew to pretend only to keep the people in order for when are they otherwise but when cunning men have the managing of them the true meaning of this principle is that it will never be well with the World till the Books of Scripture are all burnt which are abroad and that only one Original be preserved in the Vatican to justifie the Popes title to Infallibility and that as the Sybilline Oracles of old never to be consulted but in cases of great extremity and that under the inspection of some very trusty officers nor to be interpreted but by the Pope himself If I were of the Church of Rome and owned the principles of it I must needs have condemned the great men of it in former times for want of Prudence in this matter That would have served their turn much better than forging so many decretal Epistles falsifying so many testimonies perverting so many Texts of Scripture to maintain the dignity of the Papal Chair There was only one small circumstance wanting their good will we have no cause to question and that was the possibility of it for although the Roman Church called it self Catholick they were wise enough to know there were many considerable Churches in the world besides theirs where the Scriptures were preserved and from whence copies might be procured by persons who would be so much the more inquisitive the more they were forbidden to get it Therefore they pitched upon an easier way and finding the people under a very competent degree of Ignorance they indulged them and soothed them up in it and told them they could never miss the way to Heaven though never so narrow in the dark Their only danger was too much light for then probably they might be in a great dispute whether the broad way was not the true for there they saw most of their Friends and Leaders And while they kept the people in this profound Ignorance and superstition they jogged on in their opinion as securely to Heaven as Ignatius Loyola's Mule did to Mount-serrat when he laid his Bridle on his neck to see whether he would take the way to pursue the Moor which was the more beaten track or the more craggy and untrodden way to that place of devotion and by a mighty providence and I suppose a little help of the Rider the Beast took the more narrow way But when persons began to be awakened by learning and thereby grew inquisitive in all matters and so by degrees in those of Religion they then espied their errour in letting such a Book lye abroad in so many hands from whence so many irresistible arguments were drawn against the Doctrine and practices of the Roman Church This I assure my self is the true ground of the quarrels against the Reading the Scriptures but that being now irremediable they betake themselves to smaller arts and endeavour to hinder any one particular person whom they have the least suspicion of from meddling with a Book so dangerous to their Church and Religion § 10. For if this were not it what makes them to be more jealous of the use of the Scriptures than ever the Christians were in former Ages Was there not much more danger of misunderstanding the Doctrine of the Gospel at first than ever after Nay were there not very many who were false Apostles and great and dangerous Hereticks presumptuous and arrogant if ever any were But did Christ or his Apostles for all this think it unfit to communicate the doctrine of the Gospel to the people or were the Books containing it written in Languages not to be understood by them no they chose the most popular languages of that time most largely spread and generally understood The Apostles never told their Disciples of the danger of reading the Divine Writings that were among them when they were
the ancient Fathers had of the usefulness of Scriptures to the people than they have in the Roman Church but we need not more to prove it since it is acknowledged by those who are against the reading the Scriptures by the people that it was otherwise in the Primitive Church so Alphonsus à Castro and Sixtus Senensis confess Espencaeus quotes many plain places from St. Austin and St. Chrysostom to prove that the people ought to be very diligent in reading the Scriptures in their own houses and that nothing should excuse them from it and confesseth that St. Pauls precept Colos. 3. let the word of God dwell richly in you was intended for the people and that they ought to have it among them not only sufficiently but abundantly The sum of this argument is that the reasons now urged against the peoples Reading the Scriptures would have held against the publishing of them in a language to be understood by the people that they saw the same inconveniencies which are objected now and yet commended the reading the Scriptures to all that in all the primitive Church the practice was not only retained but vehemently urged after all the Heresies which had risen in the Church in their time and therefore for the Church of Rome to account it wisdome to keep the people from it is to charge not only the Fathers of the Church with folly but the Apostles and our Saviour and God himself CHAP. IV. Of the Fanaticism of the Roman Church The unreasonableness of objecting Sects and Fanaticisms to us as the effects of reading the Scriptures Fanaticism countenanced in the Roman Church but condemned by ours Private revelations made among them the grounds of believing some points of doctrine proved from their own Authors Of the Revelations pleaded for the immaculate Conception The Revelations of S. Brigitt and S. Catharin directly contrary in this point yet both owned in the Church of Rome The large approbations of S. Brigitts by Popes and Councils and both their revelations acknowledged to be divine in the lessons read upon their dayes S. Catharines wonderful faculty of smelling souls a gift peculiar to her and Philip Nerius The vain attempts of reconciling those Revelations The great number of female Revelations approved in the Roman Church Purgatory Transubstantiation Auricular Confession proved by Visions and Revelations Festivals appointed upon the credit of Revelations the Feast of Corpus Christi on the Revelation made to Juliana the Story of it related from their own Writers No such things can be objected to our Church Revelations still owned by them proved from the Fanatick Revelations of Mother Juliana very lately published by Mr. Cressy Some instances of the blasphemous Nonsense contained in them The Monastick Orders founded in Enthusiasm An account of the great Fanaticism of S. Benedict and S. Romoaldus their hatred of Humane Learning and strange Visions and Revelations The Carthusian Order founded upon a Vision The Carmelites Vision of their habit The Franciscan and Dominican Orders founded on Fanaticism and seen in a Vision of Innocent the third to be the great supporters of the Roman Church The Quakerism of S. Francis described from their best Authors His Ignorance Extasies and Fanatick Preaching The Vision of Dominicus The blasphemous Enthusiasm of the Mendicant Fryers The History of it related at large Of the Evangelium aeternum and the blasphemies contained in it The Author of it supposed to be the General of the Franciscan Order however owned by the Fryers and read and preached at Paris The opposition to it by the Vniversity but favoured by the Popes Gul. S. Amour writing against it his Book publickly burnt by order of the Court of Rome The Popes horrible partiality to the Fryers The Fanaticism of the Franciscans afterwards Of the followers of Petrus Johannis de Oliva The Spiritual State began say they from S. Francis The story of his wounds and Maria Visitationis paralleld The canting language used by the spiritual Brethren called Beguini Fraticelli and Begardi Of their doctrines about Poverty Swearing Perfection the Carnal Church and Inspiration by all which they appear to be a Sect of Quakers after the Order of S. Francis Of the Schism made by them The large spreading and long continuance of them Of the Apostolici and Dulcinistae Of their numerous Conventicles Their high opinion of themselves Their Zeal against the Clergy and Tythes their doctrine of Christian Liberty Of the Alumbrado's in Spain their disobedience to Bishops obstinate adhering to their own fancies calling them Inspirations their being above Ordinances Ignatius Loyola suspected to be one of the Illuminati proved from Melchior Canus The Iesuites Order founded in Fanaticism a particular account of the Romantick Enthusiasm of Ignatius from the Writers of his own Order Whereby it is proved that he was the greatest pretender to Enthusiasm since the dayes of Mahomet and S. Francis Ignatius gave no respect to men by words or putting off his Hat his great Ignorance and Preaching in the Streets his glorying in his sufferings for it his pretence to mortification the wayes he used to get disciples Their way of resolution of difficulties by seeking God their itinerant preaching in the Cities of Italy The Sect of Quakers a new Order of Disciples of Ignatius only wanting confirmation from the Pope which Ignatius obtained Of the Fanatick way of devotion in the Roman Church Of Superstitious and Enthusiastical Fanaticism among them Of their mystical Divinity Mr. Cressy's canting in his Preface to Sancta Sophia Of the Deiform fund of the soul a superessential life and the way to it Of contemplating with the will Of passive Vnions The method of self-Annihilation Of the Vnion of nothing with nothing Of the feeling of not-being The mischief of an unintelligible way of devotion The utmost effect of this way is gross Enthusiasm Mr. Cressy's Vindication of it examined The last sort of Fanatioism among them resisting authority under pretence of Religion Their principles and practices compared with the Fanaticks How far they are disowned ai present by them Of the Vindication of the Irish Remonstrance The Court of Rome hath alwayes favoured that party which is most destructive to Civil Government proved by particular and late Instances § 1. 2. WE come to consider whether the reading the Scriptures be the cause of all the Sects and Fanaticisms which have been in England He might much better have charged the Philosophers especially Aristotle with all the disputes in the world for they not only by their writings have occasioned many but have taught men the pernicious use of reasoning without which the world might be as quiet as a Flock of Sheep If they could but perswade men to lay aside that mischievous faculty I dare undertake for them that let the people have the Bible never so much among them they shall never hurt the Church of Rome Do they not tell us that the words of Scripture are plain for Transubstantiation
about A. D. 1254. who was General of the Franciscan Order but the Book was received and defended by both Orders as will presently appear But it will be first necessary to consider what the doctrines are which are contained in this Book and if ever there were higher Fanaticism than is therein or rather greater blasphemies let them have leave to triumph The most perfect account we have of it is from Nicol Eymericus who was himself an Inquisitor and tells us these Heresies or Errors are contained in it 1. That the doctrine of Abbot Ioachim a great Fanatick excelled the doctrine of Christ and consequently the New and Old Testament 2. That the Gospel of Christ is not the Gospel of the Kingdom and therefore is not edifying 3. That the New Testament is to be evacuated or lose its force as the Old hath already 4. That the New Testament shall not remain in force above six years longer viz. to A. D. 1260. 5. That they which shall live beyond that time shall be in the state of perfection 6. That the Gospel of Christ shall give way to another Gospel and so instead of the Priesthood of Christ another Gospel shall succeed 7. That no simple man is fit to instruct men in spiritual and eternal things but they that walk barefoot 8. That although God afflict the Iews in this world yet he will save them though they remain in Iudaism and will in the end deliver them from all the opposition of men remaining such as they are 9. That the Church hath not yet brought forth Children nor will do before the end of the temporal reign which shall be after six years and by this we are to understand that the Christian Religion which hath brought forth many called to the faith of Christ is not the Church 10. That the Gospel of Christ brings no man to perfection 11. That the Gospel of the Holy Ghost coming or Ioachims work obtaining called the Everlasting Gospel or of the Holy Ghost the Gospel of Christ shall be done away 12. That no man in Religious Orders is bound to expose his life for defence of the faith or preserving the worship of Christ but other men are 13. That as when Iohn Baptist came the things that were before must needs be confuted because of new things coming in their place so when the time of the Holy Ghost shall come or the third state of the world the things that were before must be confuted for the sake of the New which are to come from whence it must be understood that the New Testament must be refuted and the old cast away 14. That Christ and his Apostles were not perfect in the contemplative life 15. That the Order of the Clergy shall perish but one of a Religious Order shall be perferred above all in dignity and honour and that as the authority under the Father was committed to one of the married order so under the Holy Ghost to one or some of the order of Monks 16. That those who are over the Colledges of Monks ought in those dayes to think of departing from the Seculars and prepare themselves to return to the ancient people of the Iews 17. That the Preachers which shall be in the last state of the world shall be of greater dignity and authority than the Preachers of the Primitive Church 18. That the Preachers and Doctors of Religious Orders when they shall be infested by the Clergy shall go over to the Infidels and it is to be feared lest they go thither for that end to bring them in battel against the Roman Church according to the doctrine of S. Iohn Apocalyps 15. These may suffice out of twenty seven to let the world know where the height of Blasphemy and Fanaticism was first hatched and no one could imagine that any who had the face or name of Christians should own these things yet they came from those excellent and inspired persons of the newly founded Religious Orders And if it had not been for the mortal hatred that then was between the University of Paris and the Mendicant Fryers who usurped the Professors places in the Vniversity against their will God knows how far this doctrine might have prevailed without the least censure For the Popes were extreamly partial to the Fryers and would hear no ill of them they now finding them their most useful instruments in all their quarrels with Princes the Secular Clergy and the People So Matth. Paris relating the Story of the quarrels between the University and the Fryers tells That though the King and the City were for preserving the priviledges of the Vniversity yet the Fryers being at the Popes devotion and doing them a great deal of service were more acceptable in the Court of Rome and therefore got the better of the Vniversity Nay so zealous was Alexander the fourth in the cause of the Fryers against the Vniversity that in the six years of his Popedom he sent out near forty Bulls against the Vniversity of which not one now appears in the Bullarium but most of them are preserved in that accurate Preface before the Works of Gul. de Sancto Amore the zealous Defender of the Vniversity against the encroachments of the Fryers and in the late History of the Vniversity of Paris In the midst of these heats some intimation was given the Divines of the Vniversity of such a Book which was in great esteem among the Fryers called Evangelium aeternum wherein were very dangerous doctrines which were saith Matthew Paris preached read and taught by the Fryers and were put together by them in a Book called Evangelium aeternum and taken saith he chiefly out of the Books of Abbot Joachim and Richerius acknowledgeth that the Book was composed by the Fryers and that the Divines of Paris by some art got a Copy of it and extracted some Heads out of it which were contrary to faith and upon that as Du Bouley saith they caused it to be burnt publickly at Paris But not being satisfied herewith they preached against it as appears by a Sermon of Gul. de Sancto Amore at the end of his Works wherein he saith That he had seen no small part of that Book and he had heard that it doth in all contain more than the Bible and therein he saith it is taught that the Sacraments of the Church are nothing that the Gospel of Christ is not the true Gospel and that the Book it self is the Gospel of the Holy Ghost and the everlasting Gospel and that the Gospel of Christ should be preached but for five years to come that then men shall have another Rule of life and the Church shall be otherwise managed Which saith he is execrable and abominable to be spoken But not content with bare preaching against them he writ a very smart Book in the name of the Vniversity of Paris de periculo novissimorum temporum of the dangers of the
whose guidance chiefly they endeavour to follow in all things Now he saith the security of such a state above the other lyes in this that a contemplative soul tending to God and working almost only with the heart and blind affections of the will pouring themselves upon God apprehended only in the obscure notion of faith not enquiring what he is but believing him to be that incomprehensible being which he is and which can only be comprehended by himself rejecting and striving to forget all Images and representations of him or any thing else yea transcending all operations of the imagination and all subtlety and curiosity of reasoning and lastly seeking an union with God only by the most pure and most intime affections of the spirit what possibility of illusion or errour can there be to such a soul none doubtless for this is more than a meer sleep of the soul for all reasoning and images of things being wholly laid aside there is not so much as a possibility of dreaming left The next thing he takes notice of which is very well observed is that men given to sublime speculations or I suppose any who have the use of reason are not so capable of it as unlearned persons and Women and therefore Father Leander à Sancto Martino approves the Book as containing very sound and wholesome doctrine for the direction of devout souls and fit and agreeable to our calling and rule and especially for the use of our Dames because they might more easily swallow it as they do pills without chewing and so find not any bitterness in it which is to the same purpose with that reason Baker himself gives viz. that the perfection of contemplation scarcely at all lyes in the operations of the understanding A most admirable way of contemplating with the will but why might it not consist as well in the volition of the understanding as in the contemplation of the Will The proper end of this contemplative life he addes is the attaining to an habitual and almost uninterrupted perfect union with God in the supream point of the spirit or rather fund as Mr. Cressy more mystically calls it and such an union as gives the soul a fruitive possession of him and a real experimental perception of his divine presence in the depth and center of the spirit which is fully possessed and filled with him alone And lest we should think this were all to be hoped for in this contemplative state he saith further that besides this active union wherein the soul her self concurrs there are others meerly passive in which God after a wonderful and inconceivable manner affords them interiour illuminations and touches yet far more efficacious and Divine in all which the soul is a meer patient and only suffers God to work his divine pleasure in her being neither able to further or hinder it The which unions though they last but even as it were a moment of time yet do more illuminate and purifie the soul than many years spent in active exercises of spiritual Prayer or Mortification could do The steps he sets down in order to this state of perfection are 1. The way of external and imaginary exercises of Prayer in which without a discreet diligence and constancy in them the soul may perhaps end her dayes therein A sad case to end our dayes as Christ and his Apostles did who used this low dispensation of praying to the last But alas they never understood these passive unions with God in the fund of the spirit they taught men a plain and intelligible way of serving God and bid them look for perfection in another world 2. Aspirations and pure elevations of the superiour Will 3. The divine inaction 4. Then when one would least expect them follow woful obscurities and desolations and after them 5. Comes the State of perfection Elsewhere he describes the progress towards this State of perfection thus that he who would come to it must practise the drawing of his external senses inwardly to his internal there losing and as it were annihilating them then he must draw his internal senses into the superiour powers of the soul and there annihilate them likewise and those powers of the intellectual soul he must draw into that which is called their unity and lastly that Vnity which alone is capable of perfect union with God must be applied and firmly fixed on God wherein the perfect divine contemplation lyes In which union he saith all is vacuity or emptiness as if nothing were existent but God and the soul yea so far is the soul from reflecting on her own existence that it seems to her God and she are not distinct but one only thing This is called by some mystick Authors the state of Nothingness by others it being indifferent it seems among them the state of Totality but the most sublime description of it is that of the Vnion of nothing with nothing which being hard terms to be understood he explains them thus that the soul being no where corporally or sensibly is every where spiritually and immediatly united to God this infinite nothing By which it is just as intelligible as it was before Nay which I think is the highest state of all it is that the soul comes to a feeling of her not being and by consequence of the not being of creatures the which is indeed a real truth or else intolerable nonsense as we cannot think it otherwise who know we have cause to thank God we are yet in our Wits and are not possessed with such a Spiritual Frenzy as this Author saith Fryer Bernard one of the disciples of St. Francis had neither was the other free from it who as Baker related in the heat of his interiour affection could usually cry out nothing but V. V. V. Neither can any persons who have any use of their understandings left think such discourses the effect of any thing but the height of Enthusiasm or a Religious Madness I do not think such expressions as those I have already produced can be paralleld by the most frantick Enthusiasts that have been since the beginning of the Family of love Yet these Books are licensed approved nay admired in the Roman Church whereas we have alwayes disowned disproved and condemned any such Writers among us and have used all care to suppress and confute them The plain effect of such Enthusiastick fooleries is to make Religion laughed at by some despised by others and neglected by all who take no other measures of it than from such confounded Writers If once an unintelligible way of practical Religion become the standard of devotion no men of sense and reason will ever set themselves about it but leave it to be understood by mad-men and practised by Fools § 15. But supposing this way were intelligible and practicable which it is not yet what would the effect of it be but the highest Enthusiasm For
purpose when he set up Conradus the Emperours Son in Rebellion against his Father This Baronius would fain shift off as not arising from the Popes instigation but some private discontents for which he quotes Dodechindus but Sigonius who follows the same Author saith expresly that he took upon him the Kingdom of Lombardy against his Father by the Authority of Urban himself and Bertholdus whose testimony is afterwards produced by Baronius mentions not only their meeting at Cremona but that Conradus there took an oath of fidelity to the Pope and the Pope in requital solemnly promised him to give him all the advice and assistance he could for the obtaining the Kingdom and Empire of his Father What is somenting and encouraging Rebellion in the highest degree if this be not And the sentence of deposition of Conrade in the Diet at Aken A. D. 1096. expresly mentions as the cause of it his adhering to Pope Vrban against the Emperour his Father and there his Son Henry declared his successour and solemnly swears never to Rebell against his Father But notwithstanding this Oath Conrad being dead this Son is likewise prevailed upon by the Popes instruments to Rebell against his Father for Pascal 2. succeeding Vrban had again excommunicated Henry 4. and at a Council called by him in Rome he made all the Bishops present by particular subscription to Anathematize the Emperours heresie as they were pleased to call it and to promise obedience to Paschal and his Successours and to affirm what the Church affirmed and condemn what she condemns Having by this means secured the Bishops from adhering to the Emperours party there wanted not Agents to solicit his Son to take away his Crown from him And the first thing he did upon his rebellion was to Anathematize his Fathers heresie which was keeping the Empire in spight of the Popes and to promise obedience to the Pope as the Bishops had done at Rome and in the Diet at Northausen A. D. 1105. he calls God to witness that it was no desire of the Empire which made him take his Fathers Government from him but if he would obey the Pope he would presently yield himself to him and become his Slave And when the Son had in a perfidious manner seized on the Person of his Father and he addressed himself to the Popes Legat for his safety he plainly told him he must look for none unless he would publickly declare the justice of Hildebrand and his own unjust persecutions of the Roman See But which is the most evident testimony of all others in this case Henry 4. a little before his death A. D. 1106. at Liege whither he was forced to retire by his Sons rebellion sends an account of the whole quarrel to Philip of France wherein he declares that he had offered all reasonable satisfaction to the Pope only preserving the authority of the Empire but this not being accepted in a most unnatural manner they had armed his most beloved Son his Absolom against him who by their instigation and council had most perfidiously dealt with him but we need not so much proof of this since Baronius confesseth that the Son had no greater cause of rebelling against his Father than that he was excommunicated by the Pope and afterwards very freely delivers his mind that in case the Son did it sincerely as he pretended i. e. out of obedience to the See of Rome it was saith he an act of great piety in him to be thus cruel to his Father and that his only offence was that he did not bind him faster till he was brought to himself i. e. to the Popes beck O the admirable doctrine of obedience at Rome What an excellent commentary is this upon the fifth Commandment and the thirteent to the Romans What mighty care hath the Church of Rome alwayes taken to preserve peace and unity in the Christian Church The Historians who report the passages of this time tell us there was never known so dismal an age as that was for Warres and Bloodshed for Murthers and Parricides for Rapines and Sacriledge for Seditions and Conspiracies for horrible Schisms and Scandals to Religion the Priests opposing the Bishops the People the Priests and in some places not only robbing the Churches burning the Tithes but trampling under foot the holy Eucharist that was consecrated by such whom Pope Hildebrand had excommunicated And must we after all this believe that the Roman See is the fountain of Vnity in the Catholick Church that all Warrs and Rebellions arise from casting off such subjection to the Popes who have been the great fomenters of Rebellion ever since Hildebrands time and the disturbers of the peace of Christendome For we are not to imagine that this quarrel ended with Henry 4. for it was revived again in Henry the fifth's time between Pope Paschal and him and the Pope grants him the priviledges which his Father contended for but afterwards revoked his own grant perjury being no sin at Rome in so holy a cause and raised a Rebellion in the Empire against him and notwithstanding several agreements made between him and the successive Popes could enjoy no lasting peace in his time upon their account and dyed at last without issue going to suppress a new Rebellion After his death Conradus being to succeed as Sisters Son to Henry 5. Lotharius by the arts of the Court of Rome was set up in opposition to him he was fain to part with the rights of the Empire to satisfie the Pope who made him receive the Imperial Crown at his feet In the time of Conradus who succeeded Lotharius the Pope encouraged Guelfo the Duke of Bavaria in a Rebellion against him from whom the two loving factions of Guelphs and Gibellines had their beginning It would be endless to relate the disturbances of the Christian world which arose from the contentions of several Popes about their Authority with Frederick Barbarossa Philippus Suevus Otho 4. Frederick 2. Ludovicus Bavarus and other Emperours till such time as the Majesty of the Empire was lost in Carolus 4. or if we should give an account of all the Warrs and Rebellions and Seditions and Quarrels which happened meerly upon pretence of the Papal Authority in our own Nation or in France or elsewhere But these may at present suffice to give testimony what an excellent instrument of Peace to the Christian world the Authority challenged by the Bishop of Rome hath been and that Authority still vindicated and asserted in the Court of Rome § 6. 2. But although such civil disturbances have happened by the contentions about the Papal authority yet they may say the Church hath had its unity still as long as they were united in the same Head For this they look on as the great foundation of Vnity for say they the unity of the body consists in the conjunction of the members with the head and then
authorised by the Church such as Bishops and Presbyters are the one succeeding the Apostles the other the 72 Disciples and afterwards they deny that the Pope himself can give any power to others to meddle in the charge of a Parish or in Preaching among them but where they are invited to it because Bishops themselves cannot otherwise act out of their own Dioceses and that the Pope in this case doth injury by violating the rights of others and if he should go about to destroy what the Prophets and Apostles have taught he would erre in so doing Besides say they if these Praedicant Fryers have a liberty to Preach where they please they are all universal Bishops and because maintenance is due to all who Preach the people will be bound to pay procurations to them which will be an unreasonable burden upon them Many other Arguments they use against this new sort of Itinerant Preachers and represent the dangers that came to the Church by them at large wherein they describe them as a kind of hypocritical Sectaries that abused the people under a fair shew and pretence of Religion having as they say a form of Godliness but denying the power of it and that the persecution of the Church by them would be equal to what it was by Tyrants and open Hereticks because they are familiar enemies and do mischief under a shew of kindness And that one of the great dangers of the Church by them would be their possessing Princes and people with prejudices against the Government of the Church by the Bishops which having done they can more easily lead them into errours both against faith and a good life That their way of dealing is first with the women and by them seducing the men as the Devil first tempted Eve and by her Adam and when they have once seduced them they tye them by oathes and vows not to hearken to the counsel of their Bishops or those who have the care of their souls That the Bishops ought to suppress these and call in the publick help to do it and to purge their Dioceses of them and that if they do it not the blood of the people will be required of them and destruction will come upon them for it and though Princes and people had taken their part that ought not to discourage them but their folly ought to be made manifest to all men After this they lay down the means to be used for suppressing them and the signes for their discovery saying that they are idle persons busie bodies wandring beggars against the Apostles express command who would have all such excluded the Church as disorderly livers and therefore conclude with an earnest exhortation to all who have a care of the Church to rise up against them as the pernicious enemies of its peace and welfare All these things which are only summarily comprehended in that Book are very largely insisted upon by Gul. de Sancto Amore in another Book entituled Collections of Holy Scripture which is wholly upon this subject The Mendicant Fryers being thus assaulted endeavoured to defend themselves as well as they could and made choice of the best wits among them for their Champions such as Bonaventure and Aquinas then were who undertook their cause and were fain to shelter themselves under the plenitude of the Popes power by which means they were sure to have the Pope on their side but his Authority was here no means of Vnity for the controversie continued long after and was managed with great heat on both sides § 8. Upon the great complaint of the priviledges and exemptions which the Monastick orders had obtained from the Popes Clement 5. promised to have this business discussed in the Council of Vienna and to that end gave order to several learned men to write about it among whom particularly Durandus Mimatensis writ a large discourse not mentioned by Possevin but Printed A. D. 1545. wherein he perswades the Pope to revoke all such exemptions because they were contrary to the ancient Canons of the Church whereby from the Apostles times all places and persons whatsoever were immediately under the jurisdiction of the Bishops and that the Pope neither ought nor could change this order of the Church Because the order of Bishops being appointed to prevent Schisms in the Church it could not attain its end if any persons were exempted from their jurisdiction And if it were in the Popes power to grant such exemptions it were by no means expedient to do it because the order of the Church would be destroyed by it the Bishops contemned and the Church divided and if the Monastick Orders paid no obedience to the Bishops the people would soon learn by their example to disobey them too And supposing it had been expedient before it could not be so then because though the Monastick orders were founded in a state of poverty yet now those who were in them were arrived at such a height of intolerable pride and arrogance that not only their Abbots and Priors but the Fryers thought themselves equal to Bishops and fit to be preferred before other Ecclesiastical persons Thus far Durandus and Aegidius Romanus at the same time writ a Book against the Exemptions of Fryers Against both of them Iacobus the Abbot of the Cistercians writt a defence of Exemptions which was published in Vienna in the time of the Council This matter was hotly debated in that Council but the Pope would not yield to the revocation of them but renews a Bull of Boniface 8. for qualifying and composing the differences that had happened to the great scandal of the Church about them wherein he takes notice of several Bulls before which had taken no effect so excellent an instrument of peace is the Popes Authority and that of a long time a most grievous and dangerous discord had been between the Bishops and Parochial Clergy on one part and the Preaching Fryers on the other Therefore the Pope very wisely considering how full of danger how prejudicial to the Church how displeasing to God so great a discord was and resolving wholly to remove it for the future by his Apostolical authority doth appoint and command that the Fryers should have liberty to Preach in all Churches Places and publick Streets at any other hour but that wherein the Bishops did Preach or did command others to Preach without a particular license to Preach then A greater instance of the discords which have been in the Roman Church nor of the insufficiency of the Popes Authority for the cure of them can hardly be produced than this is The Popes were forced to say and unsay and retract their own grants to mitigate and qualifie them and all to no purpose for the differences continued as great notwithstanding them The first Pope who interposed in this quarrel was Gregory 9. who upon complaint made by the Fryers of the Bishops exercising their jurisdiction
injury the Bishop had done the Iesuits in forbidding them to Preach without licenses from him or till such time as they produced those which they had from his predecessours then they declare the Bishops See to be vacant and caused it to be published in the Churches that the Iesuits did not need any license from the Bishop they null all censures against them recall all Orders published by the Bishop for the good Government of his Diocese The Bishop in the mean time privately sends monitory letters to the people to bear the present persecution with patience but by no means to associate with or to hear those excommunicated persons who had offered such affronts to his authority and jurisdiction by which means the people not being prevailed upon they with a great summ of money procure some secular Iudges to forme a judicial process against the Bishop for Sedition to which end they suborn witnesses against him but could make evidence of nothing tending to sedition but forbidding the Iesuits to Preach This not taking they attempt another way to expose him to contempt upon the Sacred day of their holy Father Ignatius they put their Scholars in Mascarade and so personating the Bishop and his Clergy they make a procession through the Town in the middle of the day and sung the Pater noster and Ave Maria as they went with horrible blasphemies perverting both of them to the abuse of the Bishop and his party instead of saying libera nos à malo they said libera nos à Palafox which was the name of the Bishop and others had the Episcopal staffe hanging at a Horses taile and the Miter on their stirrups to let them see how much they had it under their feet others sung Lampoons against the Bishop others did such things which are not fit to be repeated Which were parts of this glorious triumph of the Iesuits over the Bishop and his Authority But in the midst of this excessive jollity the King of Spains Navy arrived wherein the Kings commands were brought for removing the Vice-Roy who was the great Friend of the Iesuits the news of this abated their heat and the Bishop secretly conveys himself into his Palace which the people hearing of ran with incredible numbers to embrace him for several dayes together upon which the Iesuits complain to the old Vice-Roy of a sedition and obtained from him a command to the Chapter not to yield to the Bishops jurisdiction which caused a great division among them one part adhering to the Bishop and another to the Iesuits The Bishop therefore seeing the differences to rise higher and the Schism to be greater and the miserable condition the Church was in among them was fain to submit and promise to innovate nothing but to wait the Popes decision Not long after another Ship arrived from Spain with an Express from the King wherein the Vice-Roy was commanded immediately to surrender his Government and was severely rebuked for assisting the Iesuits against the Bishop and all the acts in that matter were nulled by the Kings authority but the Iesuits according to their usual integrity gave out just the contrary to the Orders received and framed letters on purpose which they dispersed among the people But these arts never holding long when the Vice-Roy's Successour was established the truth brake forth and the Bishop returned to the exercise of his former Authority But notwithstanding the Kings declaration and the Popes Breve was now published among them the Iesuits persisted still in their obstinate disobedience and although excommunicated by the Bishop yet continued to Preach and act as before And hereby we have a plain discovery what a mighty regard the Iesuits have to the Papal See if it once oppose their designes and what an effectual instrument of Peace and Vnity the Popes Authority is for they presently found wayes enough to decline the force of the Popes Bull. For 1. They said it could have no force there because it was not received by the Council of the Indies it seems pasce oves and dabo tibi claves c. signifie nothing in the Indies unless the Kings Council pleases or rather unless the Iesuits please to let it do so 2. They pleaded bravely for themselves that the priviledges granted them by the Popes were in consideration of their merits and so were of the nature of contracts and Covenants and therefore could not be revoked by the Pope 3. That the Popes constitutions in this matter were not received by the Church and Laws which are not received are no Laws But as the Bishop well urges against them if these wayes of interpreting the Popes Bulls be allowed his Authority will signifie nothing and all his Constitutions shall have no more force than those against whom they are directed be pleased to yield to them and it will be impossible to preserve peace in the Church if it shall be in the power of offenders to declare whether the Laws against them are to be received for Laws or no. But this saith he is the inspiration and illumination of the Iesuits and their method of interpreting the Papal constitutions which he heard very often from their own mouths in the frequent conferences he had with them about these matters But they had another way to decline the Kings Authority for the King and his Council being all Lay-men they had nothing to do in Ecclesiastical matters By which means as the Bishop saith they make themselves superiour both to King and Pope and free from all jurisdiction either spiritual or temporal And I dare appeal to the most indifferent person whether any Doctrine broached by the greatest Fanaticks among us ever tended more to the dissolution of Government the countenancing sedition the perpetuating Schisms in the Church than these of the Iesuits do And therefore the Bishop saith that he had rather lay down his life than by yielding up his jurisdiction expose his Authority to Contempt and the Church to the continual danger of Schisms and by many weighty arguments perswades the Pope if he truly designed the peace and flourishing of the Church speedily and effectually to reform the whole Order of the Iesuits without which he saith it is impossible especially in those remoter parts for the Bishops to preserve any Authority And besides other corruptions among them he tells strange stories of their wayes of propagating Christian Religion in China and other neighbour Nations which they boast so much of at this distance but he saith they who are so much nearer and understand those things better have cause to lament the infinite scandals which they give to the Christian Religion in doing it The account which he gives of these things this Bishop protests he sends to the Pope only to clear his own Conscience that he might not be condemned at the day of judgement for concealing that which he so certainly knew to be true by those who were eye-witnesses of it Their first work is to
not trust the Popes infallibility nor all the promises they pretend Christ hath made to their Church but govern their affaires wholly by the rules of humane Policy And on this account when the heats brake forth in France about Iansenism and both parties made application to the Court of Rome the Pope could never be prevailed with to suffer the main controversies to be touched or any decree to pass about them but at last condemned some ambiguous Propositions as taken out of Iansenius his book which both parties condemned according to their different senses and they were left to dispute it out which sense it was the Pope meant them in And therefore the Iansenists Advocate who was well versed in the practices of the Court of Rome gave them the truest account of the intentions of that Court in their affaire which was to delude both the one side and the other and that Cardinal Ginetti had told him that either nothing would be done or if any thing that which would doe neither good not hurt And therefore in stead of ending the controversies the Popes definition only produced more viz. whether the Propositions condemned were in Iansenius or no whether the Pope might not erre in matter of fact the Iansenists affirming this the Iesuits denying it and charging each other with no less than Heresie about it For upon the Iesuits asserting Octob. 12. A.D. 1661. that the Pope hath the same infallibility that Iesus Christ hath not only in Questions of right but in matters of fact and that thence those of their Church are bound to believe with a divine faith that the 5. condemned Propositions are in Iansenius the Iansenists publish a charge of heresie against the Iesuits and such as was never broached in the Church before being not only a solitary error or simple heresie but a whole source of errors or rather an universal heresie which overthrows all Religion Which they goe about at large to prove by shewing that this builds mens faith on the word of man and not on the word of God because it concerns a thing neither revealed nor attested by God as to know whether Propositions are really an Authors of this last Age and as he goes on to make the Popes word equal with the word of God is not only heresie but horrid impiety and a species of Idolatry for this is giving to man the honour due only to God because such an entire submission of our mind and of all our intellectuals comprehended in the act of our faith is that Adoration which we pay to the prime verity it self And I dare now leave any one to Judge whether upon so late an experiment of the Constitutions of two Popes Innocent 10. and Alexander 7. in order to the ending so great a Controversie as this was it be not apparent that the Popes Authority signifies no more to the ending Controversies than the parties who are concerned are willing that it should i. e. as far as they doe consent to obey them and no farther § 14. But it may be said that it is true there are differences among them about the Popes power and infallibility and therefore he may not be so fit to end Controversies but there is no dispute among them about Pope and Council together therefore in that case they are all agreed that they ought to submit These are fine things to be said and appeare plausibly to those who doe not search into them but those that doe will easily find this as ineffectual a remedy as the other For if we examine but the ways used by the several parties among them to avoid the decisions of some Councils against their particular opinions we may see how little the decrees of Councils can bind those who have no mind to be tyed up by them Either they say the decision depended on a matter of fact which the Council was not sufficiently informed in and they believe a Council may erre in a matter of fact or else it did not proceed after the way of a Council or it was not general or its decrees were not received by the Catholick Church or though some were received yet not all or however the infallibility of a Council is not absolute but supposing that it proceeds according to the constant tradition of the Church which unavoidably leaves the matter as much under debate as if the Council had never meddled with it But if they doe in earnest believe that the Pope and Council can put an end to all Controversies among them when they please I would fain know why they have not done this hitherto Is not unity desirable among them if not why doe they boast of it if it be why have they not obtained it since they can so easily doe it what made them so extremely cautious in the Council of Trent of meddling with any thing that was in Controversie among themselves or was it that they were all so much of a mind that they had nothing to doe but to condemn their enemies which was so far from being true that there were very few things which came into bebate that they were agreed in and therefore they were put sometimes to strange shifts to find out general and ambiguous terms which might not displease the dissenters and yet leave the disputes as great as ever They could not agree so much as about the Title of the Council many of the Bishops were for adding to the Title of the most holy Council Representing the Church Vniversal which was eagerly opposed by the Italians and with much adoe avoided by the Legats being no small controversie about words but of very great consequence about the power and authority of Pope and Council if they had been suffered to goe on in it But the Pope hearing of this dispute at the beginning sent word to the Legats not to broach any new difficulties in matter of faith nor to determine any of the things controversed among Catholicks and to proceed slowly in the Reformation Excellent instructions for the advancement of Peace and Holiness Whoever will for that end peruse that incomparable history of the Council will find how high the Controversies among themselves were between the Bishops and the Regulars about priviledges between the Dominicans and Franciseâ—ins in many weighty points between the Italian Bishops and others about Residence and the extent of Episcopal power between the Divines in most of the matters of doctrine as might easily be shewed at large if I loved the pains of transcribing but I had rather referre the Reader to that excellent history it self But I only renew my demand why must no controversies among Catholicks be ended in the Council could they be better decided any where else if so then the Council is not the best means of Vnity if not then it seems there is no necessity of ending controversies among them but they have Vnity enough without it And in truth it is Interest and not
Vnity they look after all such who hold opinions contrary to their Interest must be proceeded against and condemned but for others let them quarrel and dispute as long as they will they let them alone if they touch not the Popes Authority nor any of the gainful opinions and practices which are allowed among them And supposing their Interest be kept up which the Inquisition is designed for the Court of Rome is as great a Friend to toleration as may be only what others call different perswasions they call School points and what others call divisions they call disputes the case is the same with their Church and others only they have softer names for the differences among themselves and think none bad enough for those who cast off the Popes Authority and plead for a Reformation Here then lyes the profound mystrey of their Vnity that they are all agreed against us though not among themselves and are not we so against them too May not we plead for the Vnity that they have on the same grounds We are all agreed against Popery as much as they are against Protestants only we have some Scholastick disputes among us about indifferent things and the Episcopal Authority as they have we have some zealous Dominicans and busie and factious men such as the Iesuits among them are but setting aside these disputes we are admirably well agreed just as they are in the Roman Church § 15. 2. They say they doe not differ in matters of faith But this is as true as the other for are they agreed in matters of faith who charge one another with heresie as we have already seen that they doe But if they mean that they doe not differ in matters of faith because those only are matters of faith which they are agreed in they were as good say they are agreed in the things they doe not differ about for the parties which differ doe believe the things in difference to be matters of faith and therefore they think they differ from one another in matter of faith But they are not agreed what it is which makes a thing to be a matter of faith and therefore no one can pronounce that their differences are not about matters of faith for what one may think not to be de fide others may believe that it is we see the Popes personal infallibility is become a Catholick doctrine among the Iesuits and declared to be plain heresie by their Adversaries The deliverance of souls from Purgatory by the prayers of the living is generally accounted a matter of faith in the Roman Church but we know those in it who deny it and say it was a novel opinion introduced by Gregory 1. against the consent of Antiquity It is a matter of faith say the Dominicans and Iansenists to attribute to God alone the praise of converting grace and that grace efficacious by it self was the doctrine of Fathers and Councils and the Catholick Church and is it not then a matter of faith in their opinion wherein the Iesuits and they differ from each other To which purpose it was well said by the author of a Book printed at Paris A. D. 1651. containing essayes and reflections on the state of Religion that because of the Controversies between the Iansenists and the Iesuits it might with more reason be affirmed now than in the time of Arrianism it self that the whole Church seems to become heretical For admitting saith he what is most certain that the Church hath decreed Calvinism Pelagianism and Semipelagianism to be heresies and that the Doctors are those who sit in the Chair to be consulted withall upon points of Religion all Catholicks are reduced to a most strange perplexity For if a man shall address himself to those of the Iansenian party they will tell him that those who are termed Molinists are Pelagians or at least Semi-pelagians and on the other side the Molinists will bear him down that their Adversaries are Calvinists or else Novatians Now all the Doctors of the Catholick Church a very few excepted are either of the one or the other party I leave you then to consider to what prodigious streights mens minds are reduced since this is held as a general Maxime that whosoever fails in one point of faith fails in all It is a matter of faith say the Dominicans that all persons Christ only excepted were born in sin and therefore the contenders for the immaculate conception must in their judgment differ in a point of faith from them But if this distinction should be allowed to preserve the unity of their Church why shall it not as well cure the divisions of ours The most considerable in all respects of the dissenters from the Church of England declare that they agree with us in all the articles of doctrine required by our Church will this be enough in their opinion to make us at unity with each other if not let them not plead the same thing for themselves which they will not allow to us I cannot understand that the controversies about Ceremonies considered in themselves among us are of any greater weight than the disputes among the Fryars concerning their habits have been and yet this controversie only about the size of their hoods lasted in one Order almost an Age together and was managed with as great a heat and animosity as ever these have been among us and was with very much adoe laid asleep for a time by the endeavours of 4. Popes successively But if this signifies nothing to unity to say that the matters are not great about which the Controversies are if the disturbances be great which are caused by them that will reflect more sharply on their Church than on ours which hath so many differences which they account not to be about any matters of faith But if these differences in point of doctrine among them prove to be none in matters of faith it would be no difficult task upon the same grounds to shew that they have no reason to quarrel with us for breaking the unity of their Church because then we may differ from them as little in matters of faith as they doe from one another This I need not take upon me to shew at large because I find it already done to my hand by F. Davenport al. Sancta Clara in his paraphrastical exposition of the 39. articles of our Church about half of them he acknowledges to be Catholick as they are without any further explication The first he meets with difficulty in is that about the number of Canonical books point blank against the Council of Trent but he acknowledges that Cajetan and Franciscus Mirandula fully agree with our Church in it who quote Hierom Ruffinus Antoninus and Lyra of the same opinion as they might have done many others but because our Church doth not cast them wholly out of the Canon he dares not say it is guilty of heresie simply and the rather because Waldensis and Driedo
and that he would defend what he had said to death His propositions were condemned by the Faculty and the Bishop of Paris upon which he appeals to the Pope and goes to Avignon to Clem. 7. where the whole Order of Dominicans appears for him and the Vniversity against him by their Deputies of whom Pet. de Alliaco was the chief The assertions which he was condemned for relating to this matter were these following as they are written in a Manuscript of Petr. de Alliaco from which they are published by the late author of the History of the Vniversity of Paris 1. To assert any thing to be true which is against Scripture is most expresly contrary to faith This is condemned as false and injurious to the Saints and Doctors 2. That all persons Christ only excepted have not derived Original sin from Adam is expresly against faith This is condemned as false scandalous presumptuous and offensive to pious ears Which he affirms particularly of the B. Virgin and is in the same terms condemned 3. It is as much against Scripture to exempt any one person from Original sin besides Christ as to exempt ten 4. It is more against Scripture that the B.V. was not conceived in Original sin than to say that she was both in Heaven and on Earth from the first Instant of her Conception or Sanctification 5. That no exception ought to be allowed in explication of Scripture but what the Scripture it self makes All which are condemned as the former Against these Censures he appeals to the Pope because therein the doctrine of St. Thomas which is approved by the Church is condemned and that it was only in the Popes power to determine any thing in these points Upon this the Vniversity publishes an Apologetical Epistle wherein they declare that they will rather suffer any thing than endure Heresie to spring up among them and vindicate their own authority in their Censures and earnestly beg the assistance of all the Bishops and Clergy in their cause and their care to suppress such dangerous doctrines this was dated Febr. 14. A. D. 1387. But being cited to Avignon thither they send the Deputies of the Vniversity where this cause was debated with great zeal and earnestness about a years time and at last the Vniversities Censure was confirmed and Ioh. de Montesono fled privately into Spain But the Dominicans did not for all this give over Preaching the same doctrine upon which a grievous perfecution was raised against them as appears not only by the testimony of Walsingham but of the continuer of Martinus Polonus who saith that insurrection were every where made against them and many of them were imprisoned and the people denyed them Alms and Oblations and they were forbidden to Preach or read Lectures or bear Confessions in so much that they were made he saith the scorn and contempt of the people and this storm lasted many years and there was none to help them because their enemies believed in persecuting them they did honour to the B. Virgin Nay the Kings Confessour the Bishop of Eureux was forced to recant for holding with the Dominicans and to declare that their opinions were false and against faith and they made him upon his knees beg the King that he would write to the King of Arragon and the Pope that they would cause Ioh. de Montesono to be sent prisoner to Paris there to receive condigne punishment The next year A. D. 1389. they made Adam de Soissons Prior of a Dominican Convent publickly recant the same Doctrine before the Vniversity and Stephen Gontier was sent Prisoner to Paris by the Bishop of Auxerre as suspected of Heresie because he joyned with his Brethren in the appeal to the Pope and another called Iohannes Ade was forced to recant four times for saying that he favoured the opinions of Ioh. de Montesono But these troubles were not confined only to France for not long after A. D. 1394. Iohn King of Arragon published a Proclamation that no one under pain of Banishment should Preach or Dispute against the immaculate Conception and in Valenciâ— one Moses Monerus was banished by Ferdinand on that account because the tumults could not be appeased without it Lucas Waddingus in his History of the Embassy about the immaculate Conception gives a short account of the Scandals that have happened by the tumults which have risen in Spain and elsewhere on this Controversie which he dares not relate at large he saith because of the greatness of them such as happened in the Kingdom of Valencia A. D. 1344. in the Kingdom of Aragon A. D. 1398. in Barcelona A. D. 1408. and 1435. and 1437. In Catalonia A. D. 1451. and 1461. In all which drawn from the publick Records he saith the Princes were forced to use their utmost power to repress them for the present and prevent them for the future So in the Kingdom of Murcia A. D. 1507. in Boetica or Andaluzia A. D. 1503. in Castile A. D. 1480. The like scandals he mentions in Germany and Italy on the same account and withall he saith that these continued notwithstanding all the endeavours of Popes Princes Bishops and Vniversities but the tumults he saith that happened of later years in Spain were incredibly turbulent and scandalous and drawn from the authentick Registers which were sent by the several Cities to the King and by the King to the Pope which were so great that those alone were enough to move the Pope to make a Definition in this Controversie Especially considering that the same scandals had continued for 300 years among them and did continue still notwithstanding Paul 5. Constitution Which is no wonder at all considering what the Bishop of Malaga reports that the Iesuits perswade the people to defend the immaculate conception with sword and fire and with their blood And I now only desire to know whether these be meer disputes of the Schools among them oâ— no and whether they have not produced as great disorders and tumults among the people as controversies about points of faith are wont to do So that upon the whole matter whether we respect the peace of the world or factious disputes in Religion I see no advantage at all the Church of Rome hath above others and therefore reading the Scriptures can be no cause of divisions among us since they have been so many and great among those who have most prudentially dispensed or rather forbidden it Which was the thing I intended to prove CHAP. VI. An Answer to the Remainder of the Reply The mis-interpreting Scripture doth not hinder its being a rule of faith Of the superstitious observations of the Roman Church Of Indulgences the practice of them in what time begun on what occasion and in what terms granted Of the Indulgences in Iubilees in the Churches at Rome and upon saying some Prayers Instances of them produced What opinion hath been had of Indulgences in the
Fornication Indeed he saith that this falling from that holy chastity which was vowed to God may in some sense be said to be worse than Adultery but he never imagined such a construction could be made of his words as though the act of Fornication were not a greater falling from it than meer marriage could be So much shall suffice for the Instances produced in the Roman Church of such things which tend to obstruct a good life and devotion § 14. The 3. argument I used to prove the danger a person runs of his salvation in the communion of the Roman Church was because it exposeth the faith of Christians to so great uncertainties which he looks on as a strange charge from the Pen of a Protestant As strange as it is I have at large proved it true in a full examination of the whole Controversie of the Resolution of faith between us and them to which I expect a particular Answer before this charge be renewed again To which I must refer him for the main proof of it and shall here subjoyn only short replyes to his Answers or references to what is fully answered already 1. His distinction of the authority of the Scripture in it self and to us signifies nothing for when we enquire into the proofs of the Authority of Scripture it can be understood no otherwise than in respect to us and if the Scriptures Authority as to us is to be proved by the Church and the Churches Authority as to us to be provved by the Scripture the difficulty is not in the least avoided by that distinction And as little to the purpose is the other that it is only an argument ad hominem to prove the Infallibility of the Church from Scriptures for I would fain know upon what other grounds they build their own belief of the Churches Infallibility than on the Promises of Christ in the Scripture These are miserable evasions and nothing else For the trite saying of S. Austin that he would not believe the Gospel c. I have at large proved that the meaning of it is no more than that the Testimony of the Vniversal Church from the Apostles times is the best way to prove the particular books of Scripture to be authentical and cannot be understood of the Infallibility of the present Church and that the testimony of some few persons as the Manichees were was not to be taken in opposition to the whole Christian Church Which is a thing we as much contend for as they but is far enough from making the Infallibility of our faith to depend on the Authority of the present Church which we say is the way to overthrow all certainty of faith to any considering man 2. To that of overthrowing the certainty of sense in the doctrine of transubstantiation he saith that divine revelation ought to be believed against the evidence of sense To which I answer 1. that divine revelation in matters not capable of being judged by our senses is to be believed notwithstanding any argument can be drawn from sensible experiments against it as in the belief of God the doctrine of the Trinity the future state of the soul c. 2. that in the proper objects of sense to suppose a Revelation contrary to the evidence of sense is to overthrow all certainty of faith where the matters to be believed depend upon matters of fact As for Instance the truth of the whole Christian doctrine depends upon the truth of Christs resurrection from the dead if sense be not here to be believed in a proper object of it what assurance can we have that the Apostles were not deceived when they said they saw Christ after he was risen If it be said there was no revelation against sense in that case that doth not take off the difficulty for the reason why I am to believe revelation at any time against sense must be because sense may be deceived but revelation cannot but if I yield to that principle that sense may be deceived in its most proper object we can have no infallible certainty by sense at all and consequently not in that point that Christ is risen from the dead If it be said that sense cannot be deceived where there is no revelation against it I desire to know how it comes to be deceived supposing a revelation contrary to it Doth God impose upon our senses at that time then he plainly deceives us is it by telling us we ought to believe more than we see that we deny not but we desire only to believe according to our senses in what we doe see as what we see to be bread that is bread that what the Apostles saw to be the body of Christ was the body of Christ really and substantially and not meerly the accidents of a body Besides if revelation is to be believed against sense then either that revelation is conveyed immediately to our minds which is to make every one a Prophet that believes transubstantiation or mediately by our senses as in those words this is my body if so than I am to believe this revelation by my senses and believing this revelation I am not to believe my senses which is an excellent way of making faith certain All this on supposition there were a revelation in this case which is not only false but if it were true would overthrow the certainty of faith 3. To that I objected as to their denying to men the use of their judgement and reason as to the matters of faith proposed by a Church when they must use it in the choice of a Church he answers that this cannot expose faith to any uncertainty because it is only preferring the Churches judgement before our own but he doth not seem to understand the force of my objection which lay in this Every one must use his own judgement and reason in the choice of the Church he is to rely upon is he certain in this or not if he be uncertain all that he receives on the Authority of that Church must be uncertain too if the use of reason be certain then how comes the Authority of a Church to be a necessary means of certainty in matters of faith And they who condemn the use of a mans reason and judgement in Religion must overthrow all certainty on their own grounds since the choice of his Infallible Guide must depend upon it Now he understands my argument better he may know better how to answer it but I assure him I meant no such thing by the use of reason as he supposes I would have which is to believe nothing but what my reason can comprehend for I believe an Infinite Being and all the Doctrines revealed by it in Holy Scriptures although I cannot reconcile all particulars concerning them to those conceptions we call reason But therefore to argue against the use of mens judgements in matters of faith and the grounds of believing is to dispute against that which
friend or the Letters you receive or the Laws of the Land all which are lyable to be abused by evil persons but not by good people and modest understandings It is now become a part of your Religion to be Ignorant to walk in blindness to believe the man that hears your Confessions to hear none but him not to hear God speaking but by him and so you are lyable to be abused by him as he please without remedy You are gone from us where you are only taught to worship God through Jesus Christ and now you are taught to Worship Saints and Angels with a Worship at least dangerous and in some things proper to God for your Church Worships the V. Mary with burning Incense and Candles to her and you give her presents which by the consent of all Nations used to be esteemed a Worship peculiar to God and it is the same thing which was condemned in the Collyridians who offered a Cake to the V. Mary A Candle and a Cake make no difference in the Worship and your joyning God and the Saints is like the device of them that fought for King and Parliament the latter destroys the former To which he subjoynes that the points of difference between us and the Church of Rome are such as do evidently serve the ends of Covetousness and Ambition in them and that very many of her Doctrines are very ill Friends to a good life and that our Religion is incomparably beyond theirs in point of safety as in point of Praying to God alone and without Images relying on God as infallible which are surely lawful but it is at least hugely disputable and not at all certain that any man or society of men can be infallible that we may put our trust in Saints or Worship Images c. From whence he concludes So that unless you mean to preferr a danger before safety temptation to unholiness before a severe and holy Religion unless you mean to lose the benefit of yours prayers by praying what you perceive not and the benefit of the Sacrament in great degrees by falling from Christs Institution and taking half instead of all unless you desire to provoke God to jealousie by Images and man to jealousie in professing a Religion in which you may in many cases have leave to forfeit your faith and lawful trust unless you will choose a Catechism without the second Commandment and a faith that grows bigger or lesser as men please and a hope that in many degrees relyes on men and vain confidences and a Charity that damns all the world but your selves unless you will do all this that is suffer an abuse in your Prayers in the Sacrament in the commandments in faith in hope in Charity in the Communion of Saints and your duty to your Supream you must return to the bosome of your Mother the Church of England and I doubt not but you will find the comfort of it in all your life and in the day of your death and in the day of Judgement Thus far that excellent person and I leave you now to judge between the Motives on both sides as they are laid down by him whom my Adversary appeals to and I must thank him for the kindness of mentioning him against me without which I had wanted so good a representation of the Motives of either side and so full an Answer to the pretences brought for the Church of Rome The other Motives which he adds of Fathers Councils and Tradition he knows are utterly denyed by us and I wonder he should insist upon them since in the matters of our debate Antiquity is so evidently of our side as against Worship of Images and Saints against Purgatory Transubstantiation Prayers in an unknown tongue and he thinks it no great matter to allow us a thousand years against communion in one kind and yet all this while Scripture Fathers Councils and Tradition are all on their side For the testimony of the present Church we deny that S. Austin speaks of it as of it self sufficient and though he did that concerns not the Roman Church any more than other parts of the Catholick Church and he may assoon prove Tyber to be the Ocean or S. Peters at Rome to have been before the Temple at Hierusalem as prove the Roman Church to be the Catholick Church or the Mother of all others § 17. But I must conclude with the method he prescribes to you for satisfaction from me which is not to meddle with particular disputes which we know very well the reason of but to call upon me for a Catalogue of our grounds and to bring things to Grounds and Principles as they have learnt to Cant of late and then he saith Controversie will soon be at an end I should be glad to see it so notwithstanding his Friend I. S. accounts it so noble a Science unless he hath changed his mind since for so many years now he hath failed in the Defence of his Demonstrations But to satisfie the men of Principles and to let them see we can do more than find fault with their Religion I shall give an account of the faith of Protestants in the way of Principles and of the reason of our rejecting their impositions which is all we can understand by Negative Points and if we can give an account of the Christian faith independently on their Churches Authority and Infallibility it evidently follows that cannot be the foundation of faith and so we may be very good Christians without having any thing to do with the Church of Rome And I know no other Answer necessary not only to this present demand but to a Book called Protestants without Principles the falsity of which will appear by what follows Principles Agreed on both sides 1. THat there is a God from whom man and all other Creatures had their Being 2. That the notion of God doth imply that he is a Being absolutely perfect and therefore Justice Goodness Wisdom and Truth must be in him to the highest degree of perfection 3. That man receiving his Being from God is thereby bound to obey his will and consequently is lyable to punishment in case of disobedience 4. That in order to mans obeying the will of God it is necessary that he know what it is for which some manifestation of the will of God is necessary both that man may know what he hath to do and that God may justly punish him if he do it not 5. Whatever God reveals to man is infallibly true and being intended for the rule of mans obedience may be certainly known to be his Will 6. God cannot act contrary to those essential Attributes of Justice Wisdom Goodness and Truth in any way which he makes choice of to make known his will unto man by These thing being agreed on both sides we are now to inquire into the particular wayes which God hath made choice of for revealing his will to mankind 1. AN entire